A Death Divided

by Clare Francis

  With some effort, Joe let this pass. He said in the same quiet unhurried tone, ‘So you took Sam up for a weekend?’

  ‘Worst luck.’

  ‘And he stayed on?’

  ‘He thought he’d arrived in heaven,’ she cried scathingly.

  Joe leant back against the doorframe and waited.

  ‘He thought it was the answer to everything’. He was desperate to get away from London, that was the trouble - he just hated London. He was longing to go somewhere beautiful and peaceful where he could paint and draw and see if he could make it as an artist. Poor booby, he couldn’t believe his luck when she invited him to stay.’

  ‘Jenna, you mean?’

  Kate rolled her eyes. ‘Of course Jenna} Oh, she pretended it was for art. She went on and on about the landscape and the wonderful light and how marvellous it would be for Sam’s work - though it seemed to rain absolutely nonstop, so far as I could see - and how wonderful it would be to have an artist around the place, because they had nothing but musicians and writers there and an artist was just what they needed. She made it sound like some amazing artistic colony, like they were all on this great project together!’ The eyes flashed expressively.

  ‘But really, she just wanted to have someone around - that was all. She wanted someone to keep her from getting bored. Poor Sam - he’d always dreamed of working in a sort of artistic community. He couldn’t see that they were just using him, that they just liked having him around.’ She dropped her arms, she sighed mournfully, ‘But then everyone loved having Sam around. Everyone adored him.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘What?’ she said distractedly. ‘Oh, through friends.’

  ‘What was his background?’

  ‘That was the whole thing - he had no real family. He losfj his parents in a crash when he was young. He was brought upt by his grandparents. Churchgoing types. They didn’t under, stand about his art at all. They kept telling him to go out and, get a proper job.’

  ‘You ever meet them?’

  ‘Once. At the funeral.’

  ‘And were they happy with the information they were given about his death?’

  Kate scoffed, ‘Absolutely not! The whole family were disgusted! There was an uncle and aunt who lived abroad somewhere. A married sister. They tried to get the police to reopen the investigation.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Well, that no one had told the truth!’ she declared as if this should have been obvious. ‘They hired a lawyer. I think they did their own investigation - the uncle and aunt. Or maybe it was the married sister. They were definitely very unhappy.’

  Joe had a picture of Sarah’s text message, the address of the Raynors, but couldn’t remember if there’d been a phone number.

  ‘How long was Sam at Pawsey Farm?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, ages. Months.’

  It occurred to Joe that he must have been reasonably happy to have stayed so long, but he didn’t say so.

  ‘Oh, he thought he was happy,’ Kate argued, as though reading his mind. ‘He loved the whole idea of it so much, of being in this lovely supportive environment. But in the end it was him who did all the supporting! Him who tried to keep everyone happy!’

  ‘You went and visited him?’

  ‘Twice. It was all I could stand.’ Whether from this thought or the cold, she gave a violent shiver.

  Joe slipped off his padded jacket. ‘Here.’

  She took it with a cursory nod and slipped it round her shoulders. Her eyelids resumed their nervous fluttering. ‘I hated it there! I hated the way Sam was always at Jenna’s beck and call, always rushing around after her. Totally wasting his time.

  He was meant to be getting an exhibition together - he had this gallery interested and everything - but in all his time there he didn’t paint a single picture. Not one} Just silly sketches and drawings he gave away for nothing to anyone who wanted them. He was completely - completely’ - she grappled helplessly for the word - ‘gone.’

  Somewhere in the passage, china smashed on stone and a male voice cursed, while in the body of the house the babble of voices seemed to have shifted onto a higher note.

  Kate pulled the chair clear of the sewing-machine and sat down, shoulders slumped, full skirt sticking out around her, like Coppelia.

  ‘Then he was dead,’ she said in a small wispy voice. ‘I cried for a week, a whole week. I just couldn’t believe it. He was such a lovely person, Sam. The most lovely tragic person in the world.’

  ‘How did you hear about his death?’

  ‘Jamie called me.

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  Kate looked down, she brushed something off her skirt with her fingertips. She replied sullenly, ‘He said it was an accident. He said Sam’d fallen into the river.’

  ‘He didn’t say how?’

  ‘Not then. Not till I went up there. Then he told me Sam had been trying something stupid on the weir and slipped and fell. But it didn’t sound right to me. It didn’t make any sense,’ she argued, gaining momentum. ‘Sam wasn’t a daredevil type!

  He wasn’t the sort to go off and do something stupid like that!

  And on his own? In the middle of the night?’ She straightened her back, she flexed her shoulders, glanced up at Joe with an uncompromising gleam in her pretty blue eyes. ‘So I started talking to the others. They told me about this stupid thing Jamie had done, walking on the weir, and how it had become a big joke, a sort of challenge, and how Sam had boasted about trying it - not boasted, he could never boast - but said he’d like to give it a try - something like that - and how Jenna had egged him on. But when I said, “So she dared him to do it?”

  They all went silent on me. They wouldn’t - or couldn’t - give me an answer. But even then it didn’t sound right, Joe. It just wasn’t Sam to go and do something like that.’ Her voice tightened. ‘I knew there had to be something else. I just knew.

  It took me a while to find out what it was. But I got there in the end.’ She added with a spark of steel, ‘I wasn’t going to leave that place till I’d found out!’

  She was distracted momentarily, and he found himself urging her forward. ‘And?’

  She brought herself back with an effort. ‘What had happened was that Jenna had got Sam to fall in love with her. She told him it was all over between her and Jamie, that she wanted to be with him instead. All a lie! A complete lie! She had no intention of leaving Jamie. She was just playing one off against the other, trying to get Jamie to give her more attention.

  Disgusting! Utterly disgusting! She just wanted someone around to feed her vanity! To pander to her ego! Well, you can’t do that with someone as lovely as Sam. You can’t play around with someone who feels so passionately, who’s so honest and straightforward and decent and … Well, she might as well have gone to the weir and pushed him over the edge herself!’

  A woman’s voice sounded in the passage. ‘Kate? Anyone seen Kate?’ Joe reached for the open door and closed it silently as the click of heels approached along the flagstones. ‘Kate?

  Kate?’

  For a breathless moment they were two conspirators; they held each other’s gaze as the footsteps paused for what seemed a long while before clicking away down the passage.

  Joe said in a hushed voice, ‘So it was suicide?’

  Kate dropped her eyes. When she spoke again, it was in a murmur. ‘None of them would talk about it openly. No one was prepared to get up and tell the truth in public. But yes, that’s what it was. He died of a broken heart.’

  ‘Nothing was said at the inquest?’

  ‘Oh, I had this terrible argument with Jamie about it! Just awful. I said I thought it was disgusting that the truth wasn’t going to come out. I said it wasn’t fair to the family, that however hard it was for them they deserved to know the truth.’

  She stopped abruptly, as if she’d said rather more than she’d intended.

  ‘But he wasn’t convinced?’

  She gr
ew distant, she pulled at the hem of her skirt, she wouldn’t meet his eye. She stood up slowly and pushed the chair back into place in front of the sewing-machine. ‘He persuaded me it wouldn’t be a good idea,’ she said at last.

  ‘Because?’

  With a slight shrug, an evasive glance, Kate came towards the door and waited for him to move aside.

  But Joe wasn’t ready to move. ‘Because Jenna was having a nervous breakdown?’

  She gave a dismissive snort. ‘Oh, I didn’t care about that Even if it was true, which I didn’t believe for a moment. No.

  Jamie persuaded me it would only do more harm than good, that it would be better to leave everything well alone. I should never have listened to him of course.’ Catching Joe’s unasked question, she said, ‘Well, Jenna didn’t deserve to get off! If you ask me, she should have been punished!’

  Chapter Twelve

  The house was thirties stockbroker, in the style of Lutyens, with a tiled facade, a deep tiled roof, leaded windows, and several pairs of tall octagonal chimneys that showed no smoke.

  It lay behind a heavy screen of shrubs, beyond an ornate five-bar gate, at the end of a short curved drive. A dark house, it was made darker still by the surrounding trees which even in winter seemed to grow too close and too tall, reaching to the very edge of the mossy roof.

  The garden had an air of mild but sustained neglect: the creepers around the porch looked broken and thin, there were dead plants and live nettles in the flowerbeds and a variety of weeds poking up through the worn gravel on the drive. The porch was recessed and dark, with a giant boot-scraper equipped with a tall handgrip, its moth-eaten bristles worn down to the wood. The door was heavy and Gothic, with a castle-sized knocker and bell-pull. Joe tried the bell and heard an answering tinkle deep in the house.

  Nothing happened for a long time. He remembered too late that he was fifteen minutes early and elderly people liked to run their lives by the clock. He was about to turn away and wait in the car when a bolt was drawn slowly back, a lock turned, and the door opened a short way to reveal the bent figure of an old man.

  ‘Mr Raynor?’ Joe took a step forward and introduced himself.

  Before he could offer his hand the old man had moved back to let him enter.

  ‘Come in.’

  The hall had a dark wood floor and dark wood furniture and a series of murky lithographs in black frames. A staircase with a dark carpet and dull metal stair-rods rose dimly towards the only source of light.

  ‘Good of you to see me,’ Joe said.

  Mr Raynor turned stiffly away from the door and gave a formal nod. He was a gaunt man of eighty or more, with pale rheumy eyes overhung by drooping lids, thin white hair combed flat against his skull, and a face that hung in a series of folds as though it had in its time supported a much greater weight of flesh.

  He was not hostile, but he seemed troubled. They had spoken on the phone the previous night at almost ten o’clock.

  If Mr Raynor had considered it rather late for a call he had been too polite to say so. Joe had explained briefly about Jenna’s death and the many uncertainties surrounding it.

  ‘I’m not sure we can help,’ the feeble voice had responded.

  ‘I heard that your family carried out its own investigation into Sam’s death,’ Joe had said. ‘It would be extremely useful to know what you found.’

  There had been a long pause. ‘Perhaps you could call again in the morning.’

  Joe had called at ten, and been invited for twelve thirty.

  Mr Raynor said ‘This way’ and started diagonally across the hall. He walked with a marked roll as though one leg were a bit gammy, or possibly it was a hip, and carried one shoulder higher than the other as if to compensate for it. Breathing audibly, he opened a door to a living room.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting.’

  ‘Of course - I’m early. I’m sorry.’

  The old man gave another formal nod before turning away, only to swivel back, his whole body all at once, as if age or disease had fused his spine, and lift a clawed hand towards the room. ‘Please make yourself at home.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The door clicked, his shuffle faded, and the silence was absolute. It added to the room’s museum feel, everything clean and polished but untouched by habitation. The room was dark and low, with a predominance of wood: wooden panelling and wooden beams and bulky antiques: a tallboy and two display cabinets with china plates on stands; There were paintings so dark they were barely distinguishable from the panelling. The sofa and chairs were fat and squat and covered in unmatched flower-patterned fabric in swirls of brown and cream and what might once have been yellow, with frilly skirts and puffy cushions. There were wall lamps and standard lamps, none of them lit, making the grey light from the window almost blinding. Beyond the leaded panes he glimpsed a rear garden with a lawn and borders overshadowed by trees.

  There were no books and no magazines, the fireplace had no ash, the heating was low or non-existent, and he guessed the room was used just once a year, for Christmas. At first glance he thought there were no photographs either until going deeper into the room he saw beyond one of the display cabinets a side table with china ornaments and photographs in silver frames. His eye fixed immediately on a picture of a young man with golden hair. He held it aslant to catch the light. The shot had been taken in the shade on a sunny day. Sam - he assumed it was Sam - looked eighteen or nineteen. He was sitting sideways, head tilted slightly back, looking at the camera with an infectious smile. Joe heard Dave’s words: That smile was quite something. You couldn’ help but smile right back. Yet for Joe it was the eyes that told the story. Open, fresh, full of life. But also - he had to search for the word - innocent perhaps. Or vulnerable.

  Another picture showed a family group, parents and two children of ten or eleven, boy and girl, but the boy wasn’t Sam.

  He supposed the mother was the married sister Kate had mentioned, though quite whose sister he wasn’t sure. A third picture showed another couple on their wedding day, the groom fair-haired and tall, the bride willowy and pretty, and he wondered if these were Sam’s parents, the ones who had .;’ died. f He was just glancing towards the fourth photograph, a studio shot of an older sibling bending over a podgy baby, when the door sounded and an elderly woman came into the room.

  Too much happened in the next instant to be contained in a single moment. Confusion locked his throat, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t speak, his brain seemed to stall, his mind to expand at terrible speed. He was there in the room, he was staring at the elderly woman; yet he was a world away, and still travelling. On one level he took in the fact that the elderly woman was distressed and was speaking to him urgently. On another, that this house was no more than fifteen minutes from Faversham, that deep in his mind this had sounded a chord which he had ignored or suppressed, that Sarah’s name was Goddard, which meant nothing when anyone could have any name they chose, particularly when they’d been married. On another level, he was already turning back to the photograph, knowing what he had seen, knowing what he would see again, yet all of him in revolt: reason, logic, pride, heart, but most of all pride.

  The instant held still as he looked down, reached for the photograph, held it in his hands.

  Mrs Raynor’s words began to sound in his brain. ‘If you could leave now. We think it would be best.’ Then again, in a trembling voice: ‘Please - if you could leave now.’

  His eyes still on the photograph, he heard himself say in a voice so strange it might have belonged to someone else, ‘Is Sarah here?’

  There was no answer and he looked up to see Mrs Raynor gazing at him in despair.

  ‘If you could tell her I need to speak to her.’

  Mrs Raynor’s pale eyes dulled. She said in a tone of defeat, ‘It’d be best if you left.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Mrs Raynor dropped her head and went soundlessly from the room.

  Joe had no idea how long it was
before he heard Sarah’s footsteps. Seconds. Less. He stayed where he was, by the side table, the photograph in his hand.

  She came in, she saw the photograph. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way.’

  ‘Would there have been a better way?’

  ‘I was going to meet you at the door. That was what I’d planned. But I hadn’t finished explaining things to my grandparents.

  I couldn’t leave them till I’d explained.’

  He stared at her unforgivingly.

  With a long slow breath, she closed the door and came towards him. She seemed pale but sure, and it was this that caused the fury to break in Joe.

  He felt his hands tremble as he put the photograph back on the table. ‘You set me up,’ he accused. ‘Or am I missing something rather more subtle here? You set me up to find Jenna.’

  A slight hesitation before the grey-green eyes met Joe’s gaze full on. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You couldn’t find her on your own, so you used me to find her.’

  Another hesitation. She opened her mouth as if to argue before thinking better of it. ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

  ‘Call me slow, but I’d just like to get this absolutely straight in my head - the two of us didn’t meet by chance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You came to that wine bar specially?’

  ‘That ex-Merrow guy, the one who introduced us - he told me you’d probably be there.’

  ‘What, you found out that I knew Jenna and you made a point of happening to meet me.’

  ‘I knew you’d been to Pawsey Farm. I knew you’d grown up with her. I discovered you worked at Merrow.’

  ‘You mean, you made it your business to find out?’

  She couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

  He shook his head in utter disbelief. ‘And that was all right, was it?’ He heard the bitterness in his voice, and all his pain welled up in the revulsion he felt for it. ‘You didn’t have any problem with that?’

  Her eyes drifted away, and this only fuelled his anger.

  ‘So, everything - everything… You were just - it was all—’ He stopped abruptly. Now that he understood the full extent of his own humiliation, his mind was free to move on.