Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

  I hadn’t thought about it really.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t suppose that’s much help to you. Maybe these,’ he told me, ‘will be more.’ And from the seat beside him, underneath his folded coat, he drew a large manila envelope and handed it across to me.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘They’re the letters that my uncle wrote to Mother, in the war.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, and pushed the envelope away. ‘I couldn’t…’

  ‘Nonsense. He wouldn’t have minded.’

  I wasn’t so sure anybody would want a reporter to read his old letters, but James Cavender insisted I had no cause for concern.

  ‘My mother’s dead. Been dead for twenty years,’ he said. ‘She might have lived much longer, but my father wore her down. He came back to us, after the war,’ he explained, ‘but he wasn’t the same man. He’d been in a Japanese prison camp, all those years, and…well, it would have changed any man, what he went through. He was…difficult.’ He left the rest unsaid, and shifted topics to, ‘My Uncle Andrew wasn’t with us anymore, by that point. He went back to doing business as an art dealer. He travelled. It was only after Father died that he came back to Elderwel to settle.’

  ‘With his garden.’

  ‘With his garden, yes.’

  I looked down, at the envelope of letters.

  James Cavender followed my gaze. ‘They’re from Portugal. I thought you might need to know details of what he was doing in Lisbon.’

  ‘I’m sorry? Why…?’

  ‘Well, it must have something to do with Lisbon, mustn’t it, this story he wanted to tell you? He sent a report there.’

  I nodded, accepting the logic. And then I said slowly, ‘He talked about justice, the day that I met him. He mentioned a murder.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He never spoke of any deaths in Lisbon?’

  ‘He never spoke of Lisbon. There was Ivan Reynolds, naturally – he died, but that was cancer. And my uncle’s wife, but she was in New York.’ He tipped his head as he considered. ‘I should imagine there were any number of murders in Lisbon, in the war years. It was rather like Casablanca, wasn’t it? A neutral place with people from both sides milling about, plotting things in back alleys…a magnet for spies and skullduggery.’

  ‘And there’s nothing in the letters to your mother?’

  ‘About murder? Not that I recall. But you might find a reference that I’ve missed, when you read them.’ He thought of something, brightening. ‘He does mention several acquaintances, people he worked with. Perhaps they might be of some help, if they’re still living. That can be something of a problem, when you get to Uncle Andrew’s age,’ he told me. ‘Finding people still alive. It’s like that poem by Kingsley, do you know the one I mean? “Young and Old”, I think it’s called. “When all the world is young, lad”, that’s how it begins, and how one ought to travel, have adventures, fall in love, and then it finishes quite touchingly:

  ‘When all the world is old, lad,

  And all the trees are brown;

  And all the sport is stale, lad,

  And all the wheels run down,

  Creep home and take your place there,

  The spent and maimed among:

  God grant you find one face there

  You loved when all was young.’

  He pondered this a moment, while he finished off his drink. ‘I suppose that’s why my uncle came to live in Elderwel again, when he was done with dealing art and all his travelling. My mother was there, and myself. Although,’ he said, with faint regret, ‘the face he’d loved the most when he was young, I should imagine, would have been his wife’s. He wrote a fair bit about her in his letters to Mother.’

  I looked at the envelope of letters again, and he said, ‘Those were the ones that I could find straight off; there may be more that I can let you have.’

  I realised he assumed that I was taking on the story, and before I could think of a nice way to let him down gently, he said: ‘I’ll be going through my uncle’s things this next while, clearing out the house before it’s sold. If I do come across a copy of his report, shall I send it to you here, or shall I wait till you come down?’

  I didn’t need more work, I thought. I had more than enough on my plate as it was, without chasing cold leads on an uncertain story that might, in the end, not be worth half the effort. But I looked at his face, at the pale blue eyes that yesterday had been so cold, and now were so expectant. And I couldn’t tell him no. It wouldn’t cost me anything to let him send the damned report, I told myself. I didn’t have to read it. ‘I’m only here till Tuesday morning,’ I relented. ‘So I likely won’t have time to make another trip to Elderwel. But if you do find something, you can always send it on to me in Canada. I’ll give you my address.’ Tearing a sheet from my notebook I wrote the address of my grandmother’s house in Toronto.

  He took it, and thanked me. We stood.

  We said our goodbyes in the lobby. I could have gone up to my room straight away but I stayed there to watch him walk out through the great glass revolving doors. Not that I really expected that lightning would strike twice, but after all, this was the second time a member of his family had journeyed up to London just to talk to me, and I wanted to be absolutely certain this one got away all right.

  He did. There were cabs in a queue at the front of the hotel, and he got into one. I wondered if he’d taken a hotel room for himself somewhere, or if he would be going back tonight, by train. It must have been a nuisance for him, coming all this way and waiting round so long to see me. I decided that he must have loved his uncle very much, to make the effort.

  I was thinking this, and walking slowly back towards the elevator, when someone who’d been sitting on a lobby sofa rose to block my way. A small man, slightly built, with a receding hairline over sharp dark eyes.

  ‘Miss Murray? I was wondering if I might have a word.’

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

  My temper had calmed by the following morning, but the whole thing still seemed so unlikely, to me, so surreal – this stranger drawing me aside to have a seat with him among the hotel lobby’s potted palms, his patronising voice pitched low enough so people wouldn’t overhear.

  He’d shown me his credentials: Sergeant Robert Metcalf, Scotland Yard. He had been very to the point. ‘I believe you are acquainted with a Mr Andrew Deacon,’ he had told me, ‘and that Mr Deacon may have passed you certain information that he wanted you to publish.’

  I had stared at him a moment…then, deciding that what Mr Deacon had or had not given me was none of this man’s business, I’d said only an enquiring, ‘Yes?’

  ‘The thing is, Miss Murray, that a good deal of what Mr Deacon told you is protected by the Official Secrets Act, and I’m afraid that any attempt to make those details public would be very inadvisable. At best, any such publication would be suppressed. At worst, there might be charges brought.’

  ‘Charges against whom?’

  He’d smiled, a condescending smile, instead of answering, but the implication had been clear to me then, as had the threat. It had the opposite effect, with me, from what he had intended. Always had. Just like Pandora’s Box – when someone told me that I couldn’t look inside, it only made the contents fascinate me more.

  I’d placed my own notebook more firmly on top of the manila envelope James Cavender had brought for me, the one that held his uncle’s wartime letters home from Lisbon, and feeling indignation flare inside me I had turned to Sergeant Robert Metcalf. Anyone who fired a warning shot across my bow, I’d thought, deserved a full-scale onslaught in return.

  I couldn’t quite remember what I’d said, what words I’d used…only that I’d been a little fierce, and very probably insulting, in my staunch defence of the freedom of the press. And then, not giving him a chance to speak again, I’d made a perfect exit, putting the whole incident behind me as I’d gone up to my room.

  But now, this
morning, sitting on my bed in my pyjamas with my breakfast tray in front of me, I wished I hadn’t been so hasty; that I’d stayed around a little longer, asked more questions, made an effort to be civil. If I’d kept my wits about me, and kept the man talking, I might have learnt just what Scotland Yard thought I’d been told by Andrew Deacon… might have learnt, in fact, just how they’d known I’d ever met the man.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late. With my toast still in one hand, I reached for the phone and the London directory.

  Sergeant Metcalf wasn’t at his desk. He wasn’t even, the receptionist informed me, in the country. I’d just missed him. He had flown out this morning, and wouldn’t be back until Friday. But if I cared to leave a message on his voicemail…

  So I left a message, brief and to the point: I regretted the way I’d behaved when we met; could he please call me when he got back, at my home in Toronto, so we could discuss this?

  I left him the number and hung up, faintly frustrated, honestly curious now as to what had been in Andrew Deacon’s report. He’d sent two copies off, so his nephew had said – one to Lisbon, the other to Whitehall, to someone named…

  ‘Petty.’ I said it out loud, so it lodged in my memory and, taking a moment to wash down my toast with a swallow of coffee, I once again reached for the phone.

  This was trickier, and more involved, than calling Scotland Yard. Whitehall wasn’t one specific building, it was more of a district – a street, and a place, and a court, lined with government offices, stretching roughly from Trafalgar Square down to the Houses of Parliament. When someone spoke of ‘Whitehall’ they were speaking of the British Civil Service, but which branch…?

  A half-hour of phoning around turned up only one Petty: a Stephen in the Foreign Office.

  Stephen Petty’s secretary had a friendly voice. I almost hated lying to her, but I was fairly certain people in the Foreign Office weren’t inclined to volunteer much information to a total stranger calling, or to journalists.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I wonder if I could just check the status of some correspondence that my father sent to Mr Petty, this past summer.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Your father’s name was…?’

  ‘Andrew Deacon.’

  ‘Deacon…Deacon…Yes, of course, I do seem to remember that. I’m sure I passed that on to Mr Petty. If you’ll bear with me a moment, I’ll go ask him.’

  I was put on hold, and stayed there long enough to drink a second cup of coffee. I was pondering the wisdom of a third one, when the woman’s voice returned, apologetic.

  ‘I’m so sorry. It appears I was mistaken.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There’s no report from anyone named Deacon in our files.’

  I felt a twang of disappointment. Then, ‘I didn’t say “report”,’ I pointed out. ‘I just said “correspondence”. How did you—’

  ‘The thing is,’ she cut in, ‘we don’t have anything at all from Mr Deacon.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So there you are. I’m sorry that we couldn’t help.’ And I was hurried off the telephone as though I were a salesperson.

  I hung the phone up slowly, while the journalistic sixth sense I depended on began to tingle deep within my mind. Well, well, I thought. There might, in fact, be something more to this affair than I had first believed. I might just, after all, have to begin to dig around a bit, and see what I could learn.

  Pushing my breakfast tray down to the end of the bed, I leant over to pick up the big envelope James Cavender had given me, the letters that his uncle had been writing home from Lisbon, in the war. What was it he’d told me? ‘I thought you might need to know details of what he was doing in Lisbon.’

  I was starting to think that he might have been right.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Toronto

  Come back with me to the first of all…

  Let us now forget, and now recall…

  ROBERT BROWNING, ‘BY THE FIRESIDE’

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

  Grandma’s house, like Grandma, never changed. The same scents of paste wax and furniture polish still met me like a wall at the front door, and as always my steps shook the floor just enough to make the chimes ring very faintly in the big old mahogany-cased grandfather clock that stood angled in a corner of the entry hall. Ahead of me, the stairs ran steeply upwards to the bedrooms on the upper floors, while on this level I had a view right straight through to the kitchen.

  Pocketing my key, I swung the front door closed behind me, making sure to turn the deadbolt. Grandma wasn’t always good with locks – not because she was forgetful, but because her mind was frequently preoccupied with other things. She was a busy woman with an intellect that, I suspected, could run rings around my own. I slipped my shoes off, calling out to let her know that I’d arrived.

  She didn’t answer.

  Normally, that wouldn’t have alarmed me. Grandma often did her reading in the afternoon, and nothing short of an earthquake, or the ringing of the telephone, would draw her out of a good book. I wasn’t even sure about the earthquake.

  But today, for some reason, I felt a little bit uneasy at the silence. I called louder. ‘Grandma?’

  She wouldn’t have been out, I thought. She’d known that I was coming, and besides, if she’d gone out she would have left a note for me on the hall table, the way that she always did. Worried, I set down my luggage and started to search.

  She wasn’t upstairs, in her bedroom. Or down in the basement doing laundry. She wasn’t anywhere, as far as I could see. I was standing in the kitchen, trying to decide what to do next, when a flash of movement past the window caught my eye.

  I hadn’t thought to check the yard. Grandma wasn’t really the outdoor type, and her yard wasn’t much of a yard to begin with. When my grandfather had died she’d had it paved with brick, because she hated cutting grass. She’d spared the maple tree, which stood now as an island of natural growth in the narrow space, hemmed in by tall wooden privacy fences that, seen from the windows upstairs, made the back yards of Grandma and all of her neighbours look like rows of those claustrophobic narrow high-walled starting gates they jammed racehorses into. This wasn’t living space, by Grandma Murray’s definition – just the place she kept the garbage cans and, sometimes, hung her laundry out to dry.

  So it was something of a shock for me to see her out there now, and on her knees at that, trowelling topsoil into a raised wooden planter – a new feature – set in the very back corner. I’d never seen her gardening. She looked quite different, doing it.

  She didn’t look herself. I couldn’t put my finger on it, really, but the difference was enough to keep me there, beside the kitchen window. I sat at the table with its tablecloth of yellow gingham checks with little apples spaced between the squares, and resting my chin on the heel of my hand I watched my grandmother the way I might have watched TV.

  She spent a fair amount of time preparing the newly built planter. Her neighbour, I guessed, must have made it for her – he was handy in his workshop, and was always quick to lend a hand to Grandma when she wanted something. Besides, the wood he’d used to make it matched the fence he’d built between their properties. He’d likely had some bits of boards left over, all these years, waiting for just such a project.

  Grandma seemed pleased enough with it. I watched her dig holes and take twiggy somethings out of pots, carefully patting the clumpy roots into the soil. Then she soaked the whole bed with a watering can and stood, dusting her knees with gloved hands, looking satisfied. She still had that look when she came through the kitchen door.

  ‘Katie! Sweetheart, when did you get back? I didn’t hear the taxi.’ Her hug was freshly cold with outside air, and smelt of garden soil and autumn leaves. And it was firm. At eighty-three, my Grandma Murray stood as arrow-straight as always, with her white hair – which had once been red as mine – cut short and styled for convenience. I had hopes that I would age like her, although I knew I’d never match her energy. She ask
ed, ‘How was your flight?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. One of Margot’s friends was on the plane as well. We managed to get seats together, so at least I had someone to talk to.’ As Margot had promised, she’d told her friend, Nick, to keep an eye open for me at the airport, and he, being a security and surveillance expert, had taken her at her word, hunting me down in the check-in line. ‘He was nice. He’s in town for the international Chiefs of Police convention, and…’

  ‘Oh, that reminds me.’ Turning, she apologised, ‘Sorry to interrupt, honey, but you had a call today from a policeman. Metcalf was his name. He called at two o’clock, or thereabouts. Now, you know I don’t like giving anyone your schedule, but he did say you’d called him first, and that it was important, so I told him you’d be home tonight. I hope that was all right.’

  ‘Of course it was.’ I hadn’t actually expected that he’d be in touch so soon. Whatever the Sergeant’s failings, I conceded, he at least checked his voicemail and answered his messages promptly.

  ‘Something to do with the trial, is it?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘I thought it might be. He had an English accent.’ She had her coat off now, and her gardening gloves, and was casting a glance at the clock. ‘We have a bit of time before I have to get supper on the go. How be I make us a couple of Caesars?’

  I didn’t say no. My grandma’s Bloody Caesars were her speciality; my weakness. Since I’d moved back to live with her, it had become a ritual between us, having drinks to celebrate my coming home after assignments.

  I watched her while she moved to wash her hands and get the vodka from the cupboard, trying to think of a way to approach her about Andrew Deacon. She was not a chatty woman, and if she didn’t want to talk about a subject, trying to engage her in discussion could be every bit as challenging as using your bare hands to try to open a determined clam. In the end, I tried to edge in sideways. Looking out the window, I remarked, ‘I see you’ve got yourself a little garden out there.’