I knew the sensible thing to do was to turn him down. But it wasn’t just the opportunity to meet his sister on her home ground that lured me on. There was also a come-hither hint of mystery about their family that I couldn’t resist. Sunday morning at Nanstrassoe House was a far more enticing prospect than anything else a weekend in St Austell was likely to throw my way. Oliver knew that, of course.
‘You haven’t told me yet what you want me to do in return for this invitation, Oliver,’ I said levelly.
‘You’ll come, then?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. I’ll come.’
‘Good. In that case, this is for you.’ He pulled something wrapped in a brown-paper bag out of his pocket and handed it to me.
‘What’s this?’ It was the size and shape of a half-pound pack of butter and weighed about the same too.
‘A cake of soap.’ He grinned. ‘Carefully chosen soap. Just the right consistency. Not too hard. Not too soft. I’ve cut it in half lengthways. You should get a perfect impression if you compress the key between the two halves.’
‘What key?’
I didn’t really need to ask. It was only a few days since he’d been locked out of Wren’s basement. But even so I could hardly believe he was going to such lengths to gain entry.
‘I need access to Wren’s records, Jonathan. Greville isn’t going to stop me just by locking a door.’
‘What are you looking for?’
He smiled. ‘It’s best if you don’t know. Best if no one knows. Until I’m ready.’
I was intrigued. There was no denying it. Intrigued and tantalized. A boring holiday job had suddenly blossomed into something much more interesting.
‘I need an impression sharp enough for a locksmith to cut a copy from.’ Yes. He did. And I wondered what he was offering that locksmith in return. Something else it was best for me not to know, probably. ‘Think you can do it?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Good. It has to be done today, though. Bring it to me at the library this afternoon after work. I’ll be in the reference section. But remember: no key, no game of chess; no game of chess, no introduction to Vivien. You get me?’
I assured him I did. But as I watched him walk away, leaving me to carry on to Wren & Co., cake of not-too-hard-not-too-soft soap stowed in my duffel bag, I acknowledged to myself that I didn’t; I didn’t get him at all.
But he got me.
I’d cooked up a cover story for needing to look through the records by the time I reached Wren’s: a discrepancy I was trying to iron out for Jim Turner. With any luck, though, I wouldn’t need to use it. I’d decided to stage my raid on the basement straight after the mid-morning coffee break, when Joan Winkworth was likely to be in one of her mellower moods. She’d arguably be even mellower after lunch, but it was Friday, so several pints with Pete at the General Wolfe were virtually mandatory. I needed to be sober for this.
In the event, the whole thing went off with absurd simplicity. I got the loan of the key from Joan without having to proffer an explanation and, during a five-minute sojourn in the basement, produced what looked to me like a good enough impression for any competent locksmith to work with. Glancing round at the shelfloads of dusty box-files before I left, I wondered what Oliver could possibly want with them. But I reckoned he was right. It was best for me not to know. Certainly not if Vivien Foster was to be the reward for stifling my curiosity.
But on one point I didn’t have to remain curious for long. Pete had news, eagerly imparted to me over his first lager and lime. His sister worked as a chambermaid at the Carlyon Bay Hotel. Among newly arrived guests were Francis Wren and his glamorous Italian wife, retired opera singer Luisa d’Eugenio.
So, the late George Wren’s brother was in town. And he wasn’t staying at Nanstrassoe House.
Now I knew what Oliver and Vivien had been doing prior to my encounter with them at Charlestown. They’d been paying a call on their great-uncle. I mentioned this to Pete, without of course going on to mention a second encounter with Oliver that very morning. Pete fed the information into the spicy mixture he was stirring of surmise and speculation. As he saw it, the Wren clan was gathering – none too cordially, given that Francis preferred a hotel to the family home. They were gathering to decide the future of Wren & Co. Nothing else could explain Francis’s willingness to return to Cornwall only a matter of months after attending his brother’s funeral. ‘Let’s face it, Carlyon Bay’s not a patch on Capri, is it?’ Pete reasoned, as if personally qualified to compare the two. ‘He’s here because he has to be.’
I didn’t argue. It was probably true. But, naturally, Pete didn’t stop there. ‘Olly must have known he was coming. I bet that has something to do with whatever he was looking for in the basement. Francis worked in the company before the war, until about twenty years ago, y’know. Then he suddenly left. No one knows why. Maybe Olly’s on the track of an answer.’
I couldn’t see any mystery there myself. Francis had swapped Cornwall and the china clay business for Italy and a life of luxury with some Sophia Loren lookalike. Who wouldn’t have? Not me. Not Pete either. Except that he maintained there were rumours of past scandals attached to Francis and his wife. ‘The Wrens are a dark lot,’ he assured me, spluttering the words through a mouthful of lager and crisps. ‘Always have been.’
There was more evidence to support Pete’s contention than he knew. My rendezvous with Oliver at the public library late that afternoon was a prime piece. I found him hunched over a bound set of Cornish Guardian back copies. He heaved the massive volume shut as I approached and pulled a chair back for me to sit down beside him.
The atmosphere was warm and torpid, dust-moted shafts of sunlight slanting down from the building’s glass-panelled roof. There were only a couple of other readers in the reference section and they were both too far away to catch our whispered exchanges.
‘How did it go?’
‘Fine. Here it is.’ I took the bag of soap out of my pocket and placed it directly in front of him. ‘I think your locksmith will be pleased.’
‘He better had. Otherwise you won’t get past the door on Sunday.’
‘There won’t be a problem.’
‘Good. Here’s something to be going on with.’ A book I hadn’t noticed till now was lying face down on the table to his right. He turned it over and slid it across to me.
The cover illustration was of a chessboard set up for a game. The title above it was Chess: A Novice’s Guide. ‘Very funny,’ I said ruefully.
‘It’s not a joke. You should borrow it. You don’t want to look a total idiot on Sunday, do you?’
‘Just how good at chess are you, Oliver?’
‘Not as good as I’d like to be. But better than anyone I can find to play against. Ever heard of Bobby Fischer?’
‘No.’
‘He’s a genius. Won what they call the game of the century when he was thirteen. You’ll find the moves in that book. Just brilliant. He should be world champion.’
‘Why isn’t he?’
‘Because he’ll never compromise, never back down from what he thinks is right. I suppose that’s what makes him such a great player.’ Oliver thought about what he’d said for a moment, as if it had some particular significance for him. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I’m off.’ He pocketed the bag of soap and picked up the newspaper volume. I spotted the dates it covered embossed on the spine: July–Sept 1959. And 1959, I recalled, was the year his father had died. ‘Coming?’
‘No. I’ll … take a look at this first.’ I held up Chess: A Novice’s Guide.
‘Good idea. See you Sunday, then.’
‘Yeah. Sunday it is.’
He sloped off and I began leafing through the book. A few minutes later, I saw him through the window, wandering away along Carlyon Road, in the direction of Nanstrassoe House.
That was my signal to cut along to the enquiries desk and ask to see the volume he’d just returned. To win at chess, I r
eckoned you needed to study your opponent every bit as much as the game.
Luckily for me, Kenneth Foster had died in early July rather than late September. The Cornish Guardian of Thursday, 9 July 1959, carried a fuzzy photograph of him which struck me as an eerie preview of what Oliver would probably look like in middle age, beneath the headline Local businessman found dead in car. This was surely what Oliver had been reading – what he’d read many times before, if I was any judge.
Kenneth Foster, 43, a director of Walter Wren & Co. Ltd, one of St Austell’s foremost china clay businesses, was found dead in his car, parked near the end of a rough track on Goss Moor, on Monday. Detective Inspector Hancock of Cornwall Police said the engine of the vehicle was running, with a tube feeding fumes from the exhaust into the car, when two hikers came upon the scene. They pulled Mr Foster from the car and attempted resuscitation, to no avail. An inquest into Mr Foster’s death was opened and adjourned on Tuesday.
Detective Inspector Hancock added that Mr Foster’s seven-year-old son, Oliver, was discovered in the boot of the car in a distressed condition. How the boy came to be there is presently unclear. His grandfather, George Wren, chairman and managing director of Walter Wren & Co., said the family was deeply shocked and saddened by Mr Foster’s death and that nothing in his recent behaviour had prepared them for such an event.
Mr Foster was originally from Kent. He met his wife, Muriel Wren, during wartime service at RAF St Eval. They were married in 1945. He worked at Wren & Co. from then until his death.
I imagined what it must have been like for a seven-year-old boy to be pulled from the boot of his father’s car and to see, as Oliver surely must have, his father’s lifeless body stretched out at the side of the track – the exhaust fumes catching in his throat, tears filling his eyes, fear and panic gripping him. But who was I kidding? I couldn’t really imagine what it must have been like. And I couldn’t ask either. It was locked away in Oliver’s mind. He wasn’t letting go of it. The memory hadn’t faded or lost its sting. It was there, raw and real. It was part of him. Just as it was part of whatever he was trying to accomplish now, nine summers later.
I leafed on through the volume and found a report of the inquest. It added little to the original article except a verdict of suicide and some words from the coroner that Oliver might, it struck me, have taken as a challenge, as soon as he was old enough to understand them. ‘We cannot hope to discover what led Mr Foster to take such a desperate course. The truth will rest with him.’
Or not, of course.
There were several large houses dotted along Carlyon Road. Most of them were, or had been, the residences of china clay magnates. There’d never been many other routes to wealth and status in St Austell. I walked as far as the pillared entrance to Nanstrassoe before heading home that evening. The drive to the house curved away past trees and shrubs that screened the building itself from view. All I could glimpse was a stout-chimneyed roof. There was nothing to see and less to learn – until Sunday.
FOUR
I GAVE SOME time to Chess: A Novice’s Guide in the course of Saturday. It made me realize just what a novice I really was. I played through a few sample games, including Fischer’s ‘game of the century’ against Donald Byrne in 1956, when he was thirteen. Poor old Byrne was all I could think. He just never saw that seventeenth move coming. Still, I consoled myself, chess was just a pretext. I was going to Nanstrassoe for other reasons altogether. As Oliver well knew. But Vivien didn’t.
Sunday morning was quiet and gently sunny. I’d dressed to look as if I didn’t care about appearances, though I’d actually taken a lot of care, of course. Casualness isn’t easy to project when you don’t feel casual. And I didn’t. Not remotely.
I walked through the gates of Nanstrassoe a few minutes before 10.30 and headed along the drive. By now I was expecting nothing but a let-down of some kind. Vivien wouldn’t be at home. Maybe Oliver wouldn’t be either. The deal I had with him wasn’t the sort I could actually enforce. He’d got what he wanted and I didn’t know him well enough to tell if he could be trusted.
That self-pitying train of thought carried me nearly as far as the house, which came into view as I rounded the curve of the drive: a stolid rather than elegant three-storeyed Victorian building of ashlar stone with a pillared porch. A car was at that moment moving away from the porch: a maroon Rover, with a middle-aged woman at the wheel and an older woman next to her. Seeing me, the driver slowed. And an overweight Labrador who’d been watching their departure from a recumbent position jumped up and loped towards me, barking and wagging its tail.
The car halted beside me. The driver wound down her window. She was about my mother’s age – mid-forties – but more chicly dressed than Mum could ever be, with a certain hauteur embedded in her features and bearing. She was Muriel Lashley. She had to be. The passenger, who peered at me curiously through small, round glasses, was a lot older, seventy or so, with a calm, peaceful face that seemed set for a smile, even though she wasn’t actually smiling: Muriel’s mother, perhaps? No. I remembered Pete had said Vivien and Oliver’s grandparents were both dead. Her aunt, then? Harriet Wren? Yes. That fitted. She too was smartly dressed, albeit in a strange, slightly bohemian style mixing yellow tweed with a beret and vividly patterned scarf, whereas Muriel could have stepped straight out of a magazine fashion shoot for the maturer woman.
The Labrador had reached me by now and was amiably licking my hand as Muriel looked me up and down. ‘Can I help you, young man?’ she asked sceptically.
‘Mrs Lashley?’ I ventured.
‘Yes.’
‘Pleased to meet you. My name’s Jonathan Kellaway. I’m a friend of Oliver’s. He invited me over for a game of chess.’
‘Really?’
‘Wonders will never cease,’ remarked Harriet, beaming at me.
‘Oliver hasn’t mentioned you,’ said Muriel.
‘But then he doesn’t mention much at all, does he, dear?’ put in Harriet, unhelpfully in her niece’s opinion, to judge by the pursing of her lips.
‘Is he in?’ I asked airily.
‘Oh yes,’ said Harriet.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Muriel levelly. ‘Yes, yes. Well, go along and see him, then. Enjoy your game.’
‘Goodbye, Jonathan,’ said Harriet as the car pulled away.
I went on patting the dog while the car thrumbled off along the drive. But already he was losing interest. He didn’t follow as I made my way to the porch and rapped the dolphin door-knocker.
The door was answered by a plumply curvaceous girl with black pigtailed hair and olive skin. Her ‘’Ello’ carried some kind of Mediterranean accent. The au pair, I reckoned. Introducing myself as a friend of Oliver’s seemed to surprise her as much as it had his mother. But it got me past the door. She directed me towards the drawing-room and called ahead of me. ‘You ’ave a visitor, Oliver.’
The house was as Victorian inside as it was out, with lots of heavy curtains, murky oil paintings and flock wallpaper. The drawing-room was vast, but crammed, nonetheless, with fat-cushioned armchairs, bureaux, sideboards and cabinets. Sunlight flooding in through high windows relieved the gloom and made a halo of Oliver’s fair hair as he lounged on a couch, flicking through the Sunday Times colour supplement. He didn’t get up or even look in my direction. But he did consent to bid me a courteous good morning.
‘Hello, Oliver. How are you?’
He flung down the magazine and looked at me almost challengingly. ‘Bored. That’s how I am.’
‘Well, it’s Sunday. What d’you expect?’
‘You just missed Mother and Great-Aunt Harriet.’
‘No. I met them as they were leaving, actually. Church?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘What about your … stepfather?’
‘Golf.’
‘And Vivien?’
‘Not up yet. Well, not down yet.’
‘When does she normally get up?’
Oliver smiled lopsidedly.
‘She’ll show herself around eleven. So, until then …’ He swung his feet to the floor and waved me towards an armchair on the other side of the low table in front of him. There was a chessboard on the table, as yet bare of pieces. They were still in the box beside it. Oliver slid the lid half-open and unceremoniously dumped the white pieces on my side of the board. ‘You can have white to start with.’
To start with? I didn’t like the sound of that. But I didn’t argue. ‘Fine.’
But it wasn’t fine, of course. Within a dozen moves, I was like Byrne against Fischer, heading for defeat. I had a terrible feeling some of Oliver’s moves were identical to Fischer’s in that famous game. I couldn’t remember exactly, though I had no doubt Oliver remembered very well.
‘The Gruenfeld Defence is a crackerjack, isn’t it?’
‘A favourite of Fischer’s, presumably,’ I sighed.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Maybe I’ll be better off with black.’
‘Maybe.’
We set the pieces up again. I pushed the queen’s pawn two squares out. Oliver responded in kind. So far so safe.
Then I suddenly became aware that we were being watched. A little boy of five or six, dressed in a cowboy’s outfit, complete with Stetson and gunbelt, was staring at me from a few yards away. His chubby cheeks and the fringe of golden hair visible beneath the brim of his Stetson gave him a cherubic appearance, but his set, stubborn frown and a gleam of hostility in his eyes spoilt the effect. He pulled out his plastic revolver and pointed it at me. ‘Hands up,’ he chirped.
I obeyed theatrically, but Oliver merely grimaced and said, ‘Go away, Adam.’
‘Hands up or I shoot.’
‘Just go away.’
Adam didn’t seem disposed to issue a second warning. He took aim at Oliver and pulled the trigger. A cap detonated, making me jump with surprise. But Oliver wasn’t surprised at all. ‘Maria,’ he bellowed, without looking up from the chessboard.
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