I looked and saw the sea, glittering in the sun, and smiled. ‘All in one’s point of view, isn’t it?’
It was a brief journey. We pulled into the station at the north end of the line and saw the lighthouse just over the hill. Alan asked Suzi about the schedule and was assured that we had plenty of time to go and see it. ‘We’ll signal ten minutes before we’re ready to leave. And we’ll wait for you if you’re not here. There’s no rush.’
That seemed to be the philosophy on Alderney. No rush.
The path to the lighthouse was a little harder going than I had anticipated, and I wished I’d worn boots instead of slippery sneakers. But with the occasional help of Alan’s arm I made it unscathed, and there it was, gleaming white with a broad black band.
‘I never realized a lighthouse was so big. They don’t look huge in pictures.’
‘Ah,’ said Alan. It’s one of his favourite non-reply replies, usually meaning he found my comment too inane for a reasonable rejoinder. Well, he was perhaps right about that. This time.
There was a small admission fee to tour the place, and when we had paid we joined the small crowd gathered around our guide.
Robin!
Why didn’t that surprise me? He was an authority on local history, and the lighthouse was historic. I wondered if we’d have any chance to talk to him privately.
He greeted us with the same impersonal smile he bestowed on everyone and launched into the story of the structure.
It seemed the lighthouse had an active life, with a light keeper, of a little over eighty years, during most of which the light was fuelled by kerosene (he called it ‘paraffin’). The enormous rotating lens magnified the light’s power, so that it could be seen for many miles out to sea, and the fog horn had amazing range and power as well. Sadly (to my mind), the light was altered for electric power in the seventies sometime, and was now decommissioned altogether, replaced by two LED lights on the outside of the tower. The light keeper was long gone, and though the giant horn remained on the tower, it no longer sounded. The whole thing was now controlled electronically from somewhere in England.
‘There is no romance left,’ I muttered as Robin explained that modern navigational aids made powerful lights and foghorns unnecessary.
But the impressive lens was still there, if disused, and the views from various levels of the tower were terrific. The climb to the very top, up a steep ladder with handholds in the steps, was a bit scary, but I managed it and felt triumphant.
‘Well,’ I said as we got back to the bottom and were ready to head back to the train, ‘now I’ve seen a lighthouse. It wasn’t on my bucket list, but it would have been had I known they were so interesting. Now, where’s Robin?’
‘We haven’t a lot of time to get back to the train, Dorothy. And it’s rather a long walk back to the harbour on a hot day.’
‘No rush,’ I said airily, inwardly smiling at Alan’s description. A ‘hot day’ in southern Indiana meant temperatures and humidity levels both in the nineties. A temperature in the sixties with a fresh sea breeze was not ‘hot’ to me, though I admitted the sun was a bit warm. ‘Ah, there he is.’
Robin was chatting to a pair of elderly ladies, pointing to various parts of the house surrounding the tower. I moved up beside them and tried to catch his eye. He steadfastly ignored me. They talked on and on.
I heard the whistle of the train. Alan came up beside me and touched my arm. ‘We must get back, Dorothy.’
‘They won’t leave without us. Suzi said so.’
The two ladies left, reluctantly, and Robin turned to go, still ignoring us.
‘Robin, wait.’ He turned, and the look he gave me wasn’t encouraging.
‘Have you heard the news?’ I asked.
‘About what?’ He sounded forbidding.
‘The Americans have told our police that Abercrombie was on the verge of being arrested for theft.’
‘The least of his sins, I’d have thought.’
‘But don’t you care that the story has been confirmed officially? It made us feel – I don’t know – vindicated, somehow.’
‘I was never in doubt about any of the stories. Nothing that man did would surprise me. Unless he was found to have been altruistic and compassionate.’
The whistle sounded again, several toots.
‘But will you tell Harold, please?’
‘Why? It makes no difference. The man is beyond the reach of human justice and is now incapable of making restitution for any of his many crimes against humanity. You’d better go.’
We went, at a speed that surprised even me. Suzi, from the window of the little engine, gave us a look as we bounded onto the platform. We hurled ourselves through the doors just as they were closing.
EIGHTEEN
‘I thought he’d be interested, at least.’ I was feeling put out.
‘My dear woman, he put his thoughts quite succinctly. What difference does it make now? All the damage is done, and the one who did it has been placed past all human retribution. The only matter that now concerns Robin is whether his friend Harold had a hand in putting him there.’
‘Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way.’ I hit myself on the forehead. ‘Stupid, stupid.’
We’d gone back to our B & B, had our naps and were back to our problem.
‘We need to talk to the chap,’ said Alan. ‘More sherry?’
‘No, I’ve had quite enough, thank you. I wouldn’t mind another couple of biscuits, though. How are we going to find him, to talk to him?’
‘Robin suggested Mr Lewison.’
‘He doesn’t know him. He told me so, just before you came back this morning.’
‘He’ll be on the parish rolls.’
‘They’ll be kept in the church somewhere, probably under lock and key. I suppose there’s always the phone book. There must be one downstairs somewhere.’
‘I’ll look.’ He put down his empty glass and left the room, to return after only a couple of minutes. ‘No listing for Guillot. He may use a mobile only; so many people do these days.’
‘Drat. I don’t want to disturb Mr Lewison today. He has enough to deal with. That poor man didn’t know what he was getting into when he took this temporary job!’
Alan ran a hand down the back of his head. He was thinking. ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘I don’t want this to drag on too long. I have an uneasy feeling … Do you suppose we could find Martha Duckett? She would know where Guillot lives, and she’d be indignant about his attitudes, so she might tell us.’
‘That’s a great idea, Alan. And I’ll bet she’s the old-fashioned type who still has a landline. I’ll go down with you to look her up.’
Martha was in the phone book. She was at home. Yes, she said disapprovingly, she knew where Mr Guillot lived. (She pronounced his name ‘ghillet’, to rhyme with skillet, another sign of her dislike, I thought.) No, she didn’t have his phone number. Why would she want to call him? No, she didn’t have the address, but she could tell us where his house was.
‘Here, I’ll let you speak to Alan. He’s much better at directions than I am.’
He repeated them after her, and I began to write them down. They sounded complicated enough that I wished we had a better map, ours being sketchy in the extreme.
‘White with blue shutters and a red door. Right. Thank you so much.’
‘Sounds like we’ll need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs,’ I said when he’d rung off. ‘We should have bought an OS map.’
‘They’re not always of much help in town. You jotted it all down?’
‘As soon as she had you turning off the High Street into something I couldn’t spell. I suppose it must be French, like so much around here.’
‘And not even pronounced like proper French, but in the local patois.’
‘I wrote it down phonetically, as best I could.’
‘Ah, well. We can but try. How lost can we get on an island this size?’
‘We keep saying that, but I ha
ve my doubts. If it had sounded easy, I’d have been willing to start out right away, but it isn’t easy and I’m not up to a hunt at this point. I’m hungry. Do you suppose the Thai place is open on Sundays? The food was really good.’
‘If not, we could always fall back on the takeaway we stashed in the fridge last night.’
‘It would be pretty awful cold, and I’ve never asked if we could use the microwave.’
‘Then let’s go to Nellie Gray’s. I know it’s open on Sunday; the sign says so. And it’s in the right direction; we can go from there on our search for Harold.’
‘You know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to sit down in our own kitchen in my bathrobe for leftover meatloaf and some brownies.’
Alan gave me a look.
‘All right, that’s my grumble for the evening. Let me put on some decent pants and shoes, and we’ll go do Indian.’
We had a light meal, which was very good, as I’d come to expect. I really do like Indian food; I was just being contrary, and besides, we’d had some last night. No matter. Onward and upward.
Literally. We toiled on up Victoria Street, turned left into the High Street, and then tried to follow Martha’s directions.
Most of my transcriptions were wildly off, but we persevered with the help of the landmarks she had mentioned, finding ourselves eventually in something called La Brecque Philippe. ‘What do you suppose it means?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t the faintest. This would be old Norman French evolved into Alderney French, and I learned only the standard modern language. Look for a white house with blue shutters and a red door. Martha didn’t know the number, but said it was quite a long way up the street.’
Like almost all Alderney streets, this one was on a slope. The grade wasn’t too bad, but I was tired, and not looking forward to the conversation we hoped to have.
There were plenty of white houses, several with blue shutters, several with red doors. We finally came to one with both.
Evening was beginning, as the poets like to say, to lower. ‘Getting home is going to be fun,’ I said. ‘We should have brought a flashlight.’
‘I remember the way,’ said Alan. ‘Most of it,’ he amended, which didn’t make me feel a bit better. He went to the door, picked up the brass knocker and let it fall, once, twice, three times.
Somewhere in a neighbour’s garden a dog barked. A blackbird trilled in a tree several yards away.
He knocked again, hammering hard.
Nothing.
‘He’s obviously not home,’ I said, perhaps more relieved than disappointed. ‘We’ll have to try again tomorrow.’
‘I wish we had his phone number.’
‘Me, too. Maybe if we see Robin again we can ask him for it. We can tell him we already know where he lives.’
‘If this is indeed the right house.’
‘Oh, dear. Yes, there’s that. Well, tomorrow we can maybe get at the parish rolls and find out his phone number and his proper address, and make sure.’ I couldn’t help sighing, and Alan took my hand.
‘I’m sorry, love. This is turning out to be a wretched holiday for you.’
‘A bit like the curate’s egg, perhaps. “Parts of it are excellent, m’lord”,’ I quoted, and we both laughed. ‘Anyway, it’s not your fault. We just seem to fall into these things. I sometimes remind myself of a cartoon character from my childhood. There was a strip with a guy named Joe something – a name with no vowels in it at all. If you tried to pronounce it, it sounded like a sneeze. Anyway, he walked around with a little black cloud over his head all the time, spreading disaster wherever he went. I look up now and then to see if there’s a little black cloud there.’
Alan peered, and shook his head. ‘All I see is a rainbow, my dear.’
After which delightful comment he took my arm, and we walked contentedly back to our room.
We woke early Monday to a truly disgusting day. A weather front had moved in overnight, with cold winds and fitful rain. I was sorely tempted not to get up at all, but I could smell breakfast being prepared, and my stomach decided it needed sustenance. So I dragged myself out, dressed in clothes that would dry quickly if I was forced to go outside, and we got to the breakfast room just as they opened up.
‘I think I want porridge, please. And coffee.’ It was that kind of a day. At home I would have called it oatmeal and made it with raisins and possibly apples, but this wasn’t home. I was deeply suspicious of other people’s porridge, but it was worth a try. Alan opted for the same, and shook his head when I spooned coffee sugar in liberally. Defiantly, I asked the waitress for some butter, and put quite a lot of that in, too.
It actually wasn’t bad. Not like home, but smooth, hot, tasty. ‘All right, I don’t care if you think the way I like oatmeal is weird. It’s the way I grew up with, so there. And I feel much better about the weather with some comfort food inside me. Now what on earth are we going to do today? It’s the kind of rain that penetrates any defences. And darn it, I was going to go down to the harbour and do a little laundry.’
The waitress, who was clearing away our dishes, stopped and said, ‘You can give me your laundry if you like, madam. I can do it here when we’ve finished with the linens.’
I had dimly realized that she was not only waitress, but cook – and now it appeared that she was laundress, as well. And a real sweetheart. ‘Why, bless your heart! It’ll just be one load – underwear and one outfit that I got really muddy the first day we were here. Are you sure it won’t be too much trouble?’
‘No trouble at all. You don’t want to be walking all the way down to the harbour on a day like this!’
A gust of wind flung rain against the front window. It hit like a handful of pebbles. No, indeed, I didn’t want to step foot outside my cosy den.
‘Oh, and I meant to ask, we put some leftover takeaway in the fridge. Would anyone mind if I popped it into the microwave? I promise I’ll clean up any mess I might make.’
‘There’s one in the lounge that’s meant for guests, for just that sort of thing. Have you not seen it? Here, I’ll show you.’
So that settled lunch. We had no table wine left, but tea would do in a pinch.
I went up to get my laundry, gave it to the girl with my profound thanks, and settled down in the lounge with Alan and the morning papers.
After we’d worked our way through The Times and the Telegraph, I went upstairs and brought down a selection of the books we’d bought at Annie’s. The wind blew. The rain continued.
At about ten I could stand it no longer. I was reading the same page of my book over and over, and absorbing none of it. I tossed it aside and stood up. ‘This is ridiculous! We ought to be doing something.’
Alan laid his book down. ‘I agree. I’ve thought about hiring a car. I wonder if they’d deliver one here.’
‘You can ask.’ My lethargy was gone. The thought of being able to go anywhere we liked, quickly, was intoxicating. I had never realized how much a car meant until we didn’t have one. ‘Honestly, I love to walk, but it’s very limiting, isn’t it?’
‘Especially on a day that makes one think about building an ark. I know I saw some advertisements for car hire somewhere.’
‘There should be phone numbers in here.’ I picked up the glossy Alderney guide book from the coffee table, and leafed through. ‘Here you are. You do have brilliant ideas occasionally, my dear!’
We were given a street map of Alderney with the car, much more detailed than the one in the tourist guide. It also, thank heaven, had the one-way streets clearly marked. We hadn’t paid a lot of attention while we were walking; now we realized that in a car we’d need to make a round-about approach to Harold Guillot’s house. ‘If,’ Alan reminded me, ‘that is his house. I think our first stop needs to be the church, to look him up.’
‘And if that fails, I’ve had a thought. Surely the police would have contact information for everyone on the island.’
‘Mmm. Probably. But my dear, do we
really want to go to the police and tell them we’re looking for Harold Guillot, who had an excellent reason for hating Abercrombie?’
‘Oh. I suppose not. St Anne’s first, then.’
But there was no one at St Anne’s, and no indication of where the parish directory might be. ‘It was really stupid of us not to get Mr Lewison’s phone number,’ I said. ‘And I have no idea where the vicarage is. Now what?’
Alan had been thinking while I’d been fulminating. ‘I’d say there’s a good chance he’s visiting Alice. We need to do that, in any case, and if he’s not there, the hospital will almost certainly have his phone number.’
‘Alan, something about foul weather seems to set your synapses synapsing. That’s the second brilliant idea you’ve had today. My brain, on the other hand, seems to be about the same consistency as that oatmeal I had for breakfast.’
‘You’re a fair-weather sort of person,’ he said. ‘All that hot Indiana sunshine when you were young, perhaps. You blossom on a fine day.’
‘I certainly droop on a miserable one. However. Yes, let’s head to the hospital, if you think you can find it.’
NINETEEN
I had not noticed on our previous visits to the hospital how small it was. The building was modern, the staff pleasant and efficient, but there seemed to be very few rooms. We stopped at the nurses’ station to ask a few questions.
‘No, Mr Lewison was here earlier, but he’s left. Yes, certainly I have the number of his mobile.’ She gave it to us. ‘And I’m sorry, but visitors aren’t allowed before eleven. Clergy, of course, can visit at any time.’
‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘where the rest of the rooms might be.’
She laughed. ‘You’re American, aren’t you? I imagine you’re accustomed to huge hospitals with hundreds of beds. We have twenty-two, fourteen of them in the continuing care wing.’
‘So – um – eight beds for the ill or injured?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You must be a healthy bunch here in Alderney!’
Smile and be a Villain Page 13
