The Knocker on Death's Door gfaf-10

by Ellis Peters

  It became more and more clear to him, as he pulsed steadily northwards through the monstrous landscape of the M6, in some stretches of which new bridges produced the only glimpses of beauty, that the date of that obituary— which Sergeant Collins might at this very moment be checking—could not be far removed from the date of T.J. Claybourne’s death. There was a direct connection. But what it was he could not conceive.

  He stopped at the service station at Knutsford, and called Bunty at home. She was used to waiting around, in so far as one ever gets used to it. She reassured and reinvigorated as she always did, giving little sign of the reassurance for which she herself had been waiting. There is a technique that makes life under these conditions easier, and Bunty had it. She even contrived to provide news that was like a shot in the arm.

  “Dominic phoned. He’s been doing some thinking, apparently. Or perhaps not thinking, only reacting emotionally. He says he wants to go and put in a year at least of voluntary service in India. That’s the influence of Kumar and his Swami, of course, but he means it. And he could do worse.”

  “With a degree like his?”

  “Well, that can only be a bonus, can’t it? Whatever he does!”

  George rang off, astonishingly refreshed. How like Bunty to be able to recall to him a world outside Middlehope, that narrow, deep, archaic cleft in the border hills, in itself a world. Everything advanced or receded into due proportion, in one single world this time. He felt enlarged, and at the same time acutely concentrated on the thing he had in hand.

  He called the Abbey. Constable Barnes answered, vast and calm, and called Sergeant Brice to the line.

  “I’m glad you made contact,” said Brice, expansive with relief. He was young and bright and anxious, grateful for the delegation of responsibility, but even more grateful for continued interest and supervision. “We did find something else—the cap off a gold pencil or pen, I don’t know which, but it’s gold, an expensive one and not an ultra-modern type, could be as much as ten years back when it was designed. No, not in the soil-heap—in the pit itself.”

  “Where in the pit?” asked George.

  “Bout amidships, slightly to the left when entering. We’ve stuck a marker in the place.”

  “Good, that was wise. Just hold the thing, don’t clean it up at all, wrap it and hold it. And I’ll tell you what you can do—try it on Robert, see if he recognises it. Don’t press him, just notice his reaction that’s all. If you can let any of the squad go before evening, do. I hope to be back in time to make the dispositions for the night myself. And go home yourself when you’ve got the other clear. If I need to contact you, I’ll call you there.”

  He replaced the receiver and started back to the car, among the hectic comings and going of hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people. Well, well, who would have thought a queer impulse like that would have paid off? What you need in this racket, he thought, clambering in and slamming the door, is lots of patience and lots of slack, to let people run or linger, as they choose, until they trip themselves up in their own cleverness. And their own over-anxiety! Also, of course, a morsel of luck.

  But still he did not understand why!

  He left the M6 at exit number 23, the A580 between Manchester and Liverpool, left that again at Moss Bank and went up into the white roads that veered bleakly towards the moors. He had the impression he always had after using the motorways, of having traversed several kingdoms in the twinkling of an eye, and being astray now in a land where he did not even know the language. And then he was in the uplands, and suddenly it was all familiar, Middlehope all over again, an ingrowing survival from pre-industrial and early-industrial society, an enclosed and private place. And that was Kirkheal Moor. Clearly it was, technically, a town. It had a distinct centre, with church, open square, market-enclosure and shops. But minute, hardly bigger than a village. There was one new estate, but so small as to indicate in itself the hopelessness of enlargement until one of the surrounding towns reached and engulfed, like a swollen sea, this island of the past. And there were four distinct streets, shooting outwards from the square, and a maze of little lanes and alleyways linking them in every direction. Perhaps six or seven thousand souls in all, counting the outlying farms, the bleak sheep-pastures on the moors that swelled on all sides, even the high mosses where solitary souls cut peat. And all practically within gunshot of Liverpool!

  So the end of his journey was incredibly like the beginning. He had made a loop in space-time, and arrived at the very point of his departure. Parking his car in the square, he realised that it could not have been otherwise, that the uncanny relationship was what had made this whole adventure possible, though as yet he did not understand how.

  He had luck, for there was only one Claybourne in the local telephone directory. Perhaps the name was not native here. So much the better for him. Possibly even this one would not have possessed a telephone but for being in business in a small way. What he found, in one of the streets radiating from the square, was a little grocery shop with one narrow, crowded window, so stacked up with tins and packets that it was difficult to see between them, and the diminutive interior had to get its light mainly from the glazed door. An overalled girl, lank-haired and indifferent, was wiping out the interior of the glass-topped counter. She looked at George dully when he asked for Mrs. Claybourne, and then turned without a word and went away through the curtained door at the rear of the shop. Mrs. R. Claybourne, the directory entry had said, which argued that there was no Mr. Claybourne, and the business belonged to the lady.

  The girl drifted back into the shop, still wordless, followed by a slender, erect dark woman in a black dress and a lilac nylon overall. She must have been well into her sixties, slightly dry and withered now, with grey in the dark, abundant hair, but she brought in with her the instant impact of past beauty. Only afterwards was George aware of other impressions she carried unmistakably about with her: of immense and conscious rectitude, complete self-sufficiency and universal suspicion of everyone else. Not a comfortable woman to live with or work with now, but what she might once have been lingered in the chilly remains of striking good looks.

  “I’m Mrs. Claybourne. You wanted to see me?”

  “My name is Felse. If you can spare me a quarter of an hour or so of your time, I should be very grateful. It’s important.”

  She studied him in silence for a moment, her fine dark eyes narrowed. Then, without any questions, she opened the house door wide, and said: “Come in!”

  He had not expected so prompt an entry, but even less was he expecting the first remark she addressed to him, without preamble, as soon as they were safely shut into her neat front room, among the polished brass and the pot plants insidiously creeping round the walls:

  “You’re police, aren’t you?” Not ashamed, not bitter, just bluntly practical. “Not that you’re all that typical, I suppose, but who else could you be? What’s he wanted for now?”

  “I take it you’re referring to your son.” There was not much doubt of it; the startled face in the passport photograph bore a certain resemblance to hers, the eyes specially were her signature. “Thomas J. Claybourne.”

  “Thomas Jeremiah,” she said flatly, and sat down in one of the glossily polished chairs. “Tom after his dad, Jeremiah after mine. He was a good man, my dad, church-warden for thirty years, and honest as the day. Many a time I’ve been right glad he died the year after I got married. Better that than live to know what we were coming down to. But I’ve got nothing to hide, and never have had. Them that will go to the devil must go alone, I’ll abide the same as I always have, in my dad’s way. So don’t think I’m ever likely to be hiding him here from your kind. What is it he’s done this time?”

  George sat down opposite her, and drew out the passport from his wallet, and handed it to her, open at the photograph. “Is this a picture of your son? And these details, are they correct?”

  She took the little book curiously in her hands, turning it to look
at the cover. She had never seen a passport before, much less owned one; she would never in her life have any use for such a flighty thing. “That’s him, all right. Well, I never did! I never thought he meant it when he talked about emigrating.”

  “He never got as far as that,” said George, and felt in his pocket for the one object he had taken from the body itself, a deplorable remnant which had once been a clean, folded handkerchief. The fact of being so neatly and tightly folded inside the lined breast pocket had preserved at least its inner portions, and these had been turned outwards now to conceal the worst, and expose the small initials in Indian ink on the hem, TC. “Can you also identify this as his property? No, don’t take it out of the plastic envelope, just look at it.”

  “Doesn’t need much looking,” she said firmly. “I marked six of these for him, the last time he was here.” She looked up at George. Her eyes were shrewd, and the lines of her face hard as nails; perhaps she had had to be hard to survive. “I always did my duty by him when he chose to remember he was my son. Whether he ever paid his way or not, whether he ever gave a damn for me or not, and whether or not I stopped caring about him, either, when he came I fed him and housed him and mended his clothes. Not for love! Only for duty. He always walked out again as soon as it suited him—as soon as your people quit looking for him and his mates, I shouldn’t wonder, but I never asked him anything. When he went, he went. Like his dad before him, who cleared off without a word two years after we were married, and never showed his face here again. I’m not bothered, they’re neither of them much loss. I get along best alone. Men who walk out on me I don’t follow. This is my place, and here I stay, where I’m independent and respected.” She looked down again, narrowly, at the small plastic packet in her steely fingers, and asked in the same uncompromising voice:

  “What happened to him? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  George told her the bare facts. No one was going to be embarrassed by this woman’s tears, or feel obliged to try and comfort her. The mention of Midshire and Mottisham clearly meant nothing to her; but she knew her responsibilities.

  “You’ll be wanting me to identity the body, I suppose. Tomorrow’s closing day, I could come down then. And I suppose there’ll have to be an inquest before I can get to bury him?” She knew her duty. There was even something admirable in her acceptance of it, after all affection had been drained away out of her blood.

  ‘’I don’t think it will be necessary for you to see the body. If you can tell us who his doctor was, and in particular his dentist, the medical evidence will take care of that. But your help would be invaluable in identifying his belongings. And there’s money which will probably be reclaimable, and which must be yours unless he had a wife.”

  She shrugged, but rather resignedly than coldly. She was not in the least interested in his money. “No, he never married. Too restless, always on the move, job to job and place to place ever since he was eighteen. I gave him money when he needed it. He never came unless he did.”

  “Tell me about him. It might help us to find out what he was doing in our part of the country, and who could have killed him.”

  “What is there to tell you? I brought him up alone, and I brought him up good, and let me tell you, that isn’t easy on your own. But he took after his dad, not after me. Come the time he was seventeen, I never knew where he was, and he’d had three jobs and wrecked the lot. And at eighteen he went off with some smart-aleck friend of his, and I didn’t see him for three years. Three or four times your folks came here asking after him, but always when he wasn’t here. Whether he did all the things they think he did, I don’t know. Far as I know, he only went to gaol once, and that was for some sort of fraud, not a big thing—he got six months. I don’t make any secret of it, I’m responsible for my record, not his, and there isn’t the man born that can say I’ve done him out of a farthing. I tend my own garden. He let his run wild. Twice he took money from me, besides what I gave him. I knew that. I never said nothing that was between him and me, and what never touched a soul besides I forgave him. He wasn’t cruel or vicious. He wasn’t even bad. Only feeble and shiftless and wanting it to come easy.”

  As an epitaph, in her passionless voice, it was not so harsh as it might have been; and now her eyes, so dark and full and meant to be sensuous, had a curious measured softness in the unchanged marble hardness of her face. And George thought, if only somebody could have got her out of here, and stirred her deeply enough to make her forget the narrow, cold springs of her own righteousness, what a woman this could have been!

  “And when was the last time you saw him?”

  “Oh, about five years ago. It was round about the thaw, as I remember, February or March it would be. He came on the quiet, without a word beforehand, like he always did, and after dark, the way I thought he must have been mixed up in something shady and wanting to lie low. But he never told me anything about his affairs. Still, that was the only time he talked about emigrating. Tried to borrow some more money off me, but I hadn’t got it to give him, and a gift it would have been, loans to him always were. I don’t know, he may just have felt like getting out and starting fresh somewhere else, I can’t say it wasn’t so. But what I thought was that the police were after him for something, and he needed pretty bad to get out. If I’d had more, I’d have given it. But now you tell me he had money.”

  “If he meant to go abroad, he needed all he could get. And he never said anything to you about a place called Mottisham? Or a family named Macsen-Martel? Nothing to indicate why he should go to Midshire at all?”

  “I never heard mention in my life of any such people,” she said, “or any such place. He never told me anything. He was too afraid I might tell the truth if I was asked.”

  It seemed that she had told him everything she knew, and there was nothing more to be discovered here, unless through the man’s police record. She would come down by the motorway coach tomorrow, report at the Comerbourne headquarters address George had given her, and look without flinching at the remnants of her son’s property, even at his body if need be; and she would take away the remains, once the coroner had issued a burial certificate, and station the sanctity of a notable funeral like a sign of the cross between her sorry child and his damnation. And George could believe that she would be victorious.

  She was showing him out, with commanding dignity, when the whole case suddenly opened again like a miraculous flower blooming by violent stages in a trick film. From where he had been sitting, his view had commanded three quarters of the whole room, but not the section at his back, on the left of the doorway. As Mrs. Claybourne went to open the door, she halted briefly and nodded in that direction. There was a massive china cabinet in the corner there, its top scattered with home-crocheted lacey doyleys, and sporting a large wedding-photograph as centre-piece.

  “Him I blame,” she said, flashing the first dark fire George had seen in her. “If he’d been different, everything would have been different.”

  George followed her burning glance to the photograph, and felt the short hairs rise like hackles on his neck. Forty years old if it was a day, that photograph, with the bride in a big picture hat and flounced, low-waisted, garden-party dress, the groom in a dark suit and a silk cravat, and both half-obscured by the lilies and carnations of the bouquet; forty years old, but cherished and kept in the shade, and still unfaded. George went a step or two nearer, to confirm what already needed no confirmation.

  The woman was a beauty, cream, roses and jet flushed with joy, without a line of hardness in her face, only a little gawky and a little possessive in the day of her triumph. The man was a different creature, accomplished, exuberant, gay, with a crest of fair hair and a blinding smile. Hardly a photograph of him existed in which he was not laughing, and the laugh was memorable. No wonder even an obituary photograph thirty-five years later had still been recognisable; this was a face that did not change even when it aged.

  Mrs. Claybourne’s errant husband was identic
al with that well-known Midshire landowner and sportsman, deceased in the hunting-field, Robert Macsen-Martel, senior.

  George swallowed a hasty sandwich and coffee at a pub, and drove back down the M6 in the darkening evening, with all and more than he had come north to find.

  No want of motives now, no lack of a link between all these diverse elements.

  He had married her! This was the wildest of all. Not just a fast affair, like all the rest, not just a backstairs or coppice seduction, but a cast-iron, unbreakable, unquestionable marriage. George had even gone so far as to confirm it from the church registers, so incredible did it seem. In May 1929, Robert Macsen-Martel had married Rachel Bowman; under a false name, of course, but that did not invalidate the marriage. Mrs. Claybourne and nobody else had been his wife. For this marriage was four years prior to the acknowledged one in Midshire, to his ageing and unattractive cousin with the money, and six years before the birth of the first of his supposedly legitimate sons.

  It was a thunderbolt. Why had he done it? Seduce her, yes, inevitably and joyously, but why marry her? He had been younger then, of course, already a roamer and already prodigal with his casual favours. It could even have been when he was in flight from some too importunate Middlehope girl that he had wandered up into these parts under an assumed name, and loitered even after the coast was clear again because of Rachel’s bright eyes. But she couldn’t have been such a completely new experience to him, why go so far as to marry her? Why get caught? The answer, of course, was there plain to be seen. Rachel had been the one he couldn’t get any other way. No marriage, no Rachel. She had had a highly moral upbringing, was as religious as her churchwarden father, and as narrow; and more, she had her affections under control, and was not going to be swept off her moral course by love. Robert had wanted her, what Robert wanted Robert must have, and as quickly as possible, and there was only one way of getting Rachel. She had indeed been remarkably beautiful, maybe he had been genuinely in love at the time. Maybe he had always been genuinely in love—at the time! But there was that streak of ignoble caution even in this act of his—he had been careful to retain the protection of his assumed name, and keep a back door open into his real identity, into which he could escape at need. As he had done, after he had exhausted the possibilities of pleasure with her, and begun to discover the drawbacks. Probably he had never thought of it as a permanent thing at all, just an interlude for which he had to pay slightly more than for most of its kind.