On the way home in the train we had a compartment to ourselves. In response to my persistent questioning, Mum finally told me that Cliff Morton had been horribly killed in Somerset and that Duke was charged with his murder. The Americans had picked him up in Magdeburg and brought him back to England. After allowing the British police to question him, they’d handed him over to be tried under English law.
I was speechless.
I told you earlier about my appearance at the trial to make an unsworn statement. It’s still disturbing to recall. I said my piece and answered the judge’s questions, and that was all I saw of No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey. I was ushered out immediately afterwards, catching only a glimpse of Duke in the dock. I wish I hadn’t seen him at all. He looked as if he’d been sentenced already.
I’ve read since that he was called to the witness box by the defense and made a poor impression, even before the prosecutor started on him. He was confused over dates, and he foolishly denied any attachment to Barbara, claiming that he only took her to the Columbus Day show on sufferance, to make up a foursome. He admitted that on Thanksgiving Day (the date of the murder, according to the prosecution case), he arrived at the farm with the intention of inviting Barbara to a party but insisted that he came out of loyalty to Harry, whose idea it was.
As for the rape, Duke conceded that he met me in the yard and learned from me that Morton was attacking Barbara. He claimed that he went into the barn to listen and formed the impression that whatever had been going on was finished, and he could hear no crying or sounds of distress, so he didn’t intervene. He kept insisting that he had no romantic attachment to Barbara. He seemed more concerned about his reputation as a married man than about the charge of murder, shouting angrily more than once at his own defense counsel. It didn’t go down well.
The court didn’t make any allowance for his state of mind after ten or eleven months fighting his way through France and Germany. In fact, they turned it into a point for the prosecution, getting him to admit through a monstrously unfair question that he cared more about every German soldier he’d shot in combat than he did about Cliff Morton. The defense objected, but the damaging admission was made. I’m afraid he came over to the jury as a callous man with an unconvincing story.
Here I stop, because Alice was outraged and wouldn’t let me go on. She was incapable of looking at the trial in a detached way.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, glaring at me through the glasses as if I had some influence over events. “If my daddy was guilty, as the court decided, he couldn’t have been callous. He shot a man who was raping an innocent girl. Call that hotheaded, if you like, but it wasn’t callous. British justice is iniquitous if it hanged him for that.”
I tried to show her the logic of the verdict. “The whole point is that Duke wouldn’t admit to killing Morton. If he had, there might have been more sympathy for him, but it couldn’t have altered the sentence. His best hope then would have been with the Home Secretary, who had the power to commute it to life imprisonment.”
She changed tack. “Isn’t there something called manslaughter for killing under extreme provocation on the spur of the moment?”
Wearily (it was after two A.M.), I explained the prosecution’s case. “They argued that Duke had a strong romantic attachment to Barbara. When he learned from me that she was being attacked, he rushed to the barn. On his own admission, he didn’t go up to the loft. He listened and decided that the attack was over. Then, the prosecution said, he made the decision to go to the farmhouse and fetch the gun from the hallstand, so there was premeditation. The delay put manslaughter out of the question.”
She said, “Justifiable homicide?”
I responded unkindly, “Any second now.” I’d passed the limit of my patience. I told her to give up and get to bed. I’d kept my promise and told her precisely what had happened, and I wasn’t prepared to sit up all night arguing about it.
With much reluctance, plenty of ifs and buts, she finally returned upstairs with her rucksack.
I smoked a cigarette, collected some cushions, and carried them up to the spare room.
EIGHT
My mind was too churned up for immediate sleep. For at least a couple of hours I fretted pointlessly over things that could never be altered. And when I finally dropped off, it was anything but restful. I was a child again, being pursued by familiar ogres: Mr. Lillicrap in his black tin hat, blowing a whistle; Mrs. Lockwood, wielding her slipper and mouthing threats I couldn’t hear; and, in a black Wolseley with a loudspeaker, Superintendent Judd, broadcasting a warning about the wages of sin. Whichever way I fled, whichever corner I turned, I’d be trapped in the Old Bailey with that staple ingredient of all my nightmares: the judge, leaning over me like a gargoyle.
I must have been reprieved towards morning, because I woke at nine-twenty, to the whir of the Kenwood Chef downstairs. My overnight guest was making breakfast. I’d firmly resolved to send her on her way by nine, but when I caught the whiff of fried bacon, I decided to compromise on a cooked breakfast and ten-thirty.
When I put my head around the kitchen door, she was turning a pancake. She’d dressed in her jeans and sweater and fixed her plait.
She said, “Hi. Would you happen to have any maple syrup?”
“With bacon?” I pulled a face.
“And pancakes. Sure.”
“In the fridge door, I think. Will I have time for a shave?”
“All the time you want if you won’t eat my pancakes and bacon.”
I was an instant convert to the American breakfast. Between us, we got through a pack of bacon, five pancakes, the rest of the maple syrup, and four large mugs of coffee. Alice was bright-eyed. I commented that she’d apparently slept well, and she told me she’d taken a sleeping tablet. She’d been up since seven. Doing what, I couldn’t imagine. The Sunday papers had arrived, and it was obvious that she hadn’t opened them. They waited, still folded, beside her plate.
I naively asked, “How did you pass the time?”
“Rooting around.”
I hesitated, rocked by the casual way she spoke. The acrimony boiled up in me again. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is that what you usually do when someone invites you to stay in their home?”
“No, this was special.”
Her manner simultaneously angered and alerted me. I was ready to throw a fit, but I needed to know more. I said as casually as I was able, “Find anything of interest?”
She pretended she was reading the newspaper headlines. Without looking up she said, “Two books on the Gifford Farm murder that you hid in the drawer of your writing desk.”
Still holding myself in check, I said, “And did it occur to you that I might have put them there to save you some distress?”
She looked up sharply. “Give me a break, will you? What do you take me for-some pathetic female out of a Jane Austen novel who might have an attack of the vapors?”
I said icily, “No, but I didn’t take you for a snooper, either.”
She ignored that. She said. “I found something else.”
She lined the newspapers. Under them was a gun. An automatic.
I froze.
She picked it up and pointed it at me, holding it firmly in both hands.
I said, “What’s this, for Christ’s sake?”
She answered with slow sarcasm, “You tell me, Theo. It looks to me like a wartime automatic, U.S.-made. I have the strangest feeling it’s my daddy’s handgun, the murder weapon.”
I took a long, deep breath. She must have been through the house like a sniffer dog. I kept that gun in a metal cash box in the bottom of a filing cabinet.
I said, trying to sound as if we were still discussing pancakes and maple syrup, “You’re right about the gun. Now would you put it down?”
She continued to aim it steadily and wordlessly at me.
“Alice,” I said with more edge, “this isn’t just stupid. It’s blo
ody dangerous.”
Her eyes didn’t register anything.
I suppose I could have called her bluff and invited her to shoot. There was a chance that the gun wasn’t loaded. The magazine and bullets had been stored with it, but they had to be inserted into the hollow handgrip. There was also the point that if she killed me, she’d be deep in trouble and none the wiser.
Would you have taken the chance?
That’s two of us.
I made her an offer instead. “Put the gun down and I’ll tell you about it.”
She pulled the trigger.
From which the logically minded reader will draw two deductions: The gun wasn’t loaded and Alice didn’t care if I wet my pajamas.
It wasn’t, and I didn’t. But no thanks to her. I’m not proud of the language I used.
She lowered the gun slowly and rested it on the table. She found her voice again. The words, on a low, menacing note, owed something to old gangster movies. “Get this straight in your head, Theo, this is showdown time. This had better be the whole story.”
It was a significant moment in our association. The threat of the gun had been removed, replaced now by force of personality. I had every right to take offense at the way she’d abused my hospitality. I should have booted her out. Yet I didn’t. I can’t say I was intimidated. Her tight-lipped aggressiveness was faintly risible. The reason why I played along was, now that she’d found the gun, I wanted her to know the truth about it. It mattered to me that she believed the whole of my story.
I warned her, “You’ll need to think like a nine-year-old to understand this. Last night I told you about Cliff Morton raping Barbara, how I saw it happening and ran out of the bam and blurted it out to Duke. You remember Duke dashed in there. I rushed back to the farmhouse and sobbed out the news to Mrs. Lockwood and Sally Shoesmith. That was the end of my active part in what happened.”
“You remained in the farmhouse?”
“Yes, with Sally. I was shocked and frightened.”
“Did you hear a shot?”
“We wouldn’t have. The cider mill was still making its racket. After a while the door burst open, and Mrs. Lockwood came through the kitchen with Barbara, crying out in distress, as I mentioned. After a bit Sally went out to the yard, and I went up to my room and remained there for the rest of the day. Through the wall I could hear Barbara crying. It was very disturbing. I remember wishing Duke would come up and comfort her, but when I looked out of my window into the yard, the jeep was gone.”
“He left? What time was this?” asked Alice.
“I couldn’t say. Before it got dark, anyway. I felt desolate. Later Mrs. Lockwood brought me some supper on a tray. It was difficult getting to sleep with that violent scene in my mind, and Barbara’s crying. I’m not sure how long I stayed awake. I got some sleep eventually, because towards morning I woke up in a panic. I’d remembered something very important: the present Duke had given me.”
“The carving?”
“I knew where I’d left it. I’d had it in my hands when I went into the barn. I’d put it down on a bale to climb up to the hayloft. I was in such a state when I came out that I’d left it there. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Duke had made it for me personally.”
“You don’t have to explain,” said Alice in a whisper. “I understand exactly how you felt.”
I’d touched a chord.
I went on, “I just had to get it back, and soon. A child’s imagination foresees all sorts of catastrophes. I was scared of the dark, but I knew the Lockwoods were always up by five-thirty, so I had to whip up some courage. I crept out of bed and downstairs. There was a flashlight by the back door, and I was grateful for that. Even so, it was creepy approaching the barn, especially after the shock I’d had the day before. Inside, I could hear creaks and scufflings. Mice, I suppose. There was no going back without my carving, so I scrambled around, searching. I found it too. But first I put my hand on something else.”
Alice’s eyes focused on the gun.
I nodded. “It was lying between two sheaves where it had slipped out of sight. Obviously, I decided, someone had taken it in there and lost it. You’ve got to realize that I knew nothing about Morton being shot. Now this is where you have to put yourself into the mind of a nine-year-old boy. That gun belonged to Duke. I’d found it for him. I wanted to return it personally, get some credit, you see, from the man I idolized. So I slipped it inside my shirt, and a few minutes later I located my precious carving. Luck was with me. I got back unseen to my room.”
“And you kept the gun?”
“I didn’t intend to. For the time being, I had it in the space below the bottom drawer of the tallboy in my room. At breakfast I asked whether Duke would be coming in that day. Mrs. Lockwood’s answer came as a shock. She said it was unlikely if we’d see him again. She was so emphatic that I believed her.”
Alice asked, “Did she give you a reason?”
“I don’t remember any. People then didn’t bother to explain things to children. So I had the gun in my room, and I’d never see Duke again. At the back of my mind I formed a wild idea of’ making my way to the U.S. base at Shepton Mallet and returning it to him in person.”
She softened her mouth into the beginning of a smile. “I doubt whether he’d have appreciated the gesture.”
I shrugged. “It hadn’t occurred to me that he must have smuggled it out of the armory.”
“You could have replaced it in the hallstand drawer in the farmhouse,” suggested Alice, then added, thinking aloud, “But I guess it wouldn’t have earned you the credit you were looking for.”
“True. And I didn’t want the Lockwoods acquiring it by default. But events overtook me. The tragedy of Barbara’s suicide had swift implications for me. Mr. Lillicrap came in a taxi from Frome to collect me. I had to pack my things in such a rush that I almost forgot the gun. At the last minute I retrieved it from the tallboy, wrapped it up in a shirt, and stuffed it inside my suitcase.” I spread my hands, inviting her to fill in the rest. I believe I’d dispelled some of her worst suspicions.
However, she was still frowning. “So what happened when the police came to London to interview you a year later? Didn’t you tell them about the gun?”
“They didn’t ask.”
“At some stage you must have figured how important it was.”
“Yes.”
“You were scared of speaking up?”
“Certainly,” I admitted. “But that wasn’t the reason. I wanted Duke to be acquitted, even though he was guilty. I wasn’t handing the murder weapon to the prosecution.”
“So you kept it all this time.”
“I had a loose floorboard in my bedroom. It went under there with No Orchids for Miss Blandish and some other secrets of my preadolescence.”
Alice eyed the gun thoughtfully. “Are you sure it was the murder weapon?”
“It was the only.45 U.S. Army-issue automatic found at the scene of the crime.”
My sarcasm rolled off her. “And it was loaded when you found it?”
“It stayed loaded until I got it home and learned the trick of releasing the magazine. There were five bullets inside, of the same type as the one fired in the barn.”
She gave a nod. “I saw them in the box.”
“That’s it, then,” I said with an air of finality, getting up from the table. ‘There’s nothing else I can tell you.”
I really believed I was about to show her the door. I’d scraped my memory almost bare, and it was a painful activity. I wanted to turn my mind to the present now. Just a quiet Sunday. The newspapers, a stroll down to the pub for a couple of beers at lunchtime, maybe some serious reading later. Next week’s lectures had to be faced. And I’d probably find myself ringing Val when she came off duty, to smooth the ruffled feathers.
Alice stayed where she was, drawing a circle round the gun with her finger. I might have guessed she wouldn’t be easy to shift.
I limped around the kitchen, tidying
up, sourly brooding over ways to evict her. I had the feeling that even if I yanked her up from the chair by her plait, she wouldn’t take the hint.
“Want a lift to the station?” I asked.
I don’t remember what answer she gave, if any, because I was distracted by the sight of something through the window: a red Ford Anglia moving slowly up the lane. It stopped at my front gate. Two men were inside. They both stared out. There was some hesitation, as if they were checking the address. Then the driver’s door opened and there emerged a stout figure in a blue raincoat and one of those small green trilbys with a feather in the side. He peered at the house, made up his mind, and stepped splayfooted towards the front door. So much for my quiet Sunday.
NINE
Close up, he was even more gross. Features obscured in folds of blotchy flesh. Wisps of colorless hair for eyebrows. As so often in fat men, the voice was the compensating factor, fruity as wedding cake, sonorous, confident, with a saving hint of self-mockery.
“What a salubrious place to live, sir.” A quick revelation of baldness under the hat. “Digby Watmore, News on Sunday, and before you mention it, not in the least surprised that you never read the offensive rag.”
I shook my head. “There’s a mistake, I think.”
The creases formed a pattern of excessive concern. “Mistakes by the million, sir, I’m the first to concede. But the blame lies with the typesetters, not the reporters. It pains me to see how they multilate my copy, and I speak as a man who can spell diarrhea without the aid of a dictionary.” He waited solemnly for me to react, his small, opaque eyes locked with mine.
Trying to sound tolerant, I said, “Do me a favor. Try somewhere else, will you?”
He didn’t budge. He looked past me and raised the hat again. “How timely! The winsome Miss Ashenfelter, from Waterbury, Connecticut. Tell me, my dear, is this the gentleman?”
“Why, yes.” Alice confirmed it by stepping forward and slipping her hand around my arm. “I finally tracked him down.”
Digby Watmore beamed his congratulations, then ran his eyes appraisingly over me. “So! The little evacuee grown up. Enchanting. It’s a wonderful human-interest story.”
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