Rough Cider

by Peter Lovesey

  We’re getting into Freudian theory, I thought. He thinks I’m a sexual kink. “No. It’s something I prefer not to think about.”

  “So you suppress it.”

  “Listen,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “Aren’t you missing the point? The scene I’m unable to visualize is this other nonviolent one, where they are actually lovers.”

  “Quite. And there’s evidence to support it?”

  “She was two months’ pregnant. The facts point to the same guy who was with her in the barn.”

  He brooded silently. We’d turned and were approaching the Faculty of Arts building again. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered him.

  Finally, he stopped and said, “There is a possible explanation. You were emotionally attached to the girl. You idolized her to some extent. It may be that the sight of her giving herself in love to a stranger was what really disturbed you. You couldn’t accept it, so you invented a set of circumstances that left her blameless in your eyes. A rape was more acceptable than her complicity in the act of love.” He studied me keenly with his pale eyes. “Is that a feasible interpretation?”

  I pondered it. “?ou’re saying I invented the rape to obliterate something that was even more unthinkable?”

  “It’s only a hypothesis.”

  “Is there any way I could test it?”

  “You’d need the help of an analyst, I think. You see, it’s possible that there are other factors at work.”

  “Such as?”

  “Your feelings of guilt.”

  I felt a crawling sensation across my scalp. Had he known all along about the Donovan case?

  He explained, “You, presumably, raised the alarm when you found the couple together. The girl subsequently committed suicide. Perhaps you blame yourself.”

  I thanked him and said the discussion had been illuminating.

  At one-thirty I went out to my car and drove out of Whiteknights Park and down Redlands Road to the main campus where the red-brick admin block and science labs were situated.

  Having parked in the London Road, I unlocked the boot and took out a leather briefcase containing the Colt.45 that had been used to murder Cliff Morton. I carried it through the cloisters and into the physics lab. No one was inside. At the far end were two prep rooms. I was fortunate. The man I wanted, Danny Leftwich, was in there alone.

  He put down his coffee. “Hey, what’s this? Off limits, Dr. Sinclair?”

  “Just slumming, Danny.” There was a running battle about the antiquated facilities here, compared with our glass-and-concrete palace up at Whiteknights. Personally, I hankered after a return to the London Road site with its high ceilings and better ventilation, but it wasn’t diplomatic to say so.

  Danny offered me a coffee. We’d met often at the bridge table. He was the senior lab technician in the physics department, an intelligent man in his thirties, a polymath without the least desire to earn a living lecturing students. He reckoned to polish off the crosswords in The Times and The Telegraph before lunchtime, in between supplying the technical needs of professors, lecturers, and research students. Each of the physics labs was superbly maintained, and Danny still found time to place bets for any of us who followed the horses.

  On this occasion I was interested in another of Danny’s enterprises: the university rifle and small-arms club. Through an enterprising and mysterious deal in 1961 with the horticulture department, he’d acquired a stretch of ground at Sonning and sufficient funds from the student union to build one of the best university ranges in the country. I wasn’t a member of the club, but I’d been out there on a Sunday morning to see a match. The facilities and the way Danny managed them were a revelation.

  I opened my case and took out Duke’s pistol. “Seen anything like this before?” I asked him.

  “The Colt automatic? If you don’t mind, Dr. Sinclair…” He held out his left hand, and I placed the gun on his palm. “Always pick up a gun with the nonshooting hand.” He removed the empty magazine and operated the slide to make a visual check of the breech. “No one’s fired this in years. There’s all kinds of gunge in here. Want me to clean it for you?”

  “Please.”

  “Didn’t know you were a gun man, Doc.”

  “You can see from the state of it, I’m not. It’s a relic, a souvenir. And please don’t ask me if I have a certificate for it.”

  “What else have you got in there?” asked Danny as I delved into my case. “God, live ammunition!” He pointed to a sand bucket by the door. “On there, but gently. What is it_World War Two stuff?”

  “No good now, I suppose?”

  “I wouldn’t care to fire it.”

  “Could you dispose of it for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Would the gun still be safe to use with some up-to-date ammunition?”

  “Should be, after it’s cleaned and oiled. I’ll test-fire it if you like. Most of our pistol shooting is small-bore stuff, but I have a few boxes of.45s. Have you ever fired this thing?”

  “Not for a long time. I was still in short trousers. Had to use both hands to control the recoil.” I hesitated. “Could I be there when you test it?”

  “If you can stand an early morning.”

  “How early?”

  “Be at the range on Wednesday at eight A.M.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The trio was playing a number from Call Me Madam as I entered the Pump Room. Appropriate, I thought: The carpeted area under the chandelier where teas were being served was entirely populated by sixtyish women in hats. A scattering of men, mostly blood-pressure cases in tweed suits, had taken up positions in armchairs by the windows, perusing copies of the morning papers clipped to wooden rods.

  Ever since Beau Nash, the Pump Room formalities have been strictly observed. You waited for the lady with the pendant-pearl earrings to escort you to a Chippendale chair and hand you a menu. My request to be seated as far away from the music as possible was frigidly received, and when I said I wouldn’t be ordering until my guest arrived, I was curtly informed that it was customary to wait for one’s friends in the anteroom. I smiled and said yes, but I’d made other arrangements.

  Two fifty-five by the grandfather clock. I was tense. The truth about Barbara might be hard to take. “We had no secrets from each other,” Sally had told me on Sunday, and I was prepared to believe her. Back in those wartime days I’d watched her a number of times in earnest girl talk with Barbara, heads close, voices pitched low, eyes watchful for anyone who might overhear,

  I would ask Sally straight out whether Barbara and Duke had been lovers. Never mind that Harry had said “No chance” and practically throttled me for suggesting it. I wanted more convincing. I wouldn’t believe I was mistaken until I heard it from Sally.

  Then the other question had to be put, courtesy of Alice and her theory. Sally might think it was in bad taste, but I would ask it because only she could tell me the answer. How had Barbara really felt about Cliff Morton? Everyone else had marked him down as a feckless, obnoxious character, and I was still at a loss to imagine her secretly preferring him to Duke.

  Until I’d had it confirmed by Sally, I wasn’t willing to believe that what I’d witnessed as a child in the hayloft was an act of love.

  I’d spent a troubled night thinking over what Simon Ott had said about defense mechanisms. Without result. If only we could analyze the most highly charged moments of our childhood in a dispassionate way, psychiatrists wouldn’t make such a good living. We hold rigidly to the impressions our minds retain, sometimes in the face of evidence to the contrary. I’d never seriously questioned what I believed I saw in 1943. It had become a fact, locked in and not to be disturbed. I was still reluctant to give it an airing.

  I didn’t want to be told that I’d harbored a lie for over twenty years.

  Well, if Sally confirmed that Barbara and Morton had been lovers, she had some explaining to do. Why hadn’t she spoken up when the trial was held? True, she hadn’t been
called as a witness, but presumably she’d made statements to the police. Had she lied to them, or hadn’t they asked her about Barbara’s love life?

  It crossed my mind that Sally’s alcoholism could be due to a guilty conscience. It’s hard to live with the knowledge that you might have saved an innocent man from the gallows.

  Christ, I was getting morbid. Where was Sally?

  Five minutes after three. I looked out towards the paved area of the Abbey churchyard. She was not in sight.

  By 3:25, the place had filled up and I’d heard the trio’s repertoire twice. The head waitress came over to ask how long I expected to occupy the table without ordering. I told her in a bored voice to bring a pot of tea for two and some cakes.

  At 3:50, a queue had formed just inside the door. I watched an exchange between the head waitress and the girl who’d brought my order. The bill was brought to my table without my asking for it. I topped up my teacup, waited for another rendering of Call Me Madam, settled my bill, and joined the newspaper readers by the window.

  I decided to give her until 4:10, even though I didn’t expect to see her now. Too late, I reflected that I should have agreed to meet at the Francis for that lunchtime drink. Then she’d at least have had an incentive.

  So I left the Pump Room, collected my car, and drove up to the Royal Crescent where I saw for myself why Sally had failed to keep the appointment.

  Her house was gutted.

  A fire engine and a police car were drawn up on the cobbles opposite. A few people were standing around outside but there was no activity. It had all happened earlier in the afternoon. The stonework above the first-floor windows was charred to the level of the balustrade. Every pane was smashed, each frame burned out. The debris lay in a pool of black water in the basement. The lower walls and parts of the adjoining frontage were saturated to a deep mustard color.

  I came to a screeching stop beside the fire engine, explained to the men in the cab that I was a friend of the people who lived there, and asked when the fire had happened.

  “We took the call at 2:13,” one told me.

  “Was anyone …?”

  “One woman taken to the Royal United. Unconscious. Pretty bad, Am afraid.”

  “Where is it?”

  He told me, and I raced the MG through the afternoon traffic at actionable speed.

  I parked in the doctor’s bay. Casualty Reception sent me upstairs. The first person I saw was Harry.

  He was slumped on a steel-and-canvas chair outside the Intensive Care Unit, pressing his knuckles against his teeth. He looked up at me and said in a hollow voice. “What the heck?”

  “I went to the house and they told me. What’s happening?”

  “She’s unconscious. Asphyxia. Third-degree burns. I don’t want to see her like that.”

  “Do they hold out any hope?”

  “No one’s saying. I haven’t been here long. Out all day. Got back around four and saw what happened. God!”

  “Any idea of the cause?”

  Harry turned to look at me. “You trying to be funny, mister? She’s a dipso. She smokes. Okay?”

  “Have they said she was drinking?”

  “They said nothing.”

  Out of consideration I did the same. I disliked the man, but this wasn’t the time to question his logic. I sat opposite him and tried to catch up with my thoughts. I know there are all kinds of theories about coincidences, but it was incredible to me that this should happen on the afternoon Sally had promised to meet me. I wanted to know the cause of that fire.

  We waited some twenty minutes before a doctor came out. He’d slipped his face mask down. Harry had his head bowed, so the doctor caught my eye and said in a voice too stiltedly considerate to be bringing good news, “Mr. Ashenfelter?”

  I inclined my head towards Harry.

  NINETEEN

  The bad news wasn’t over. On the stairs, my way was barred by a busybody in a brown suit. He raised his hands, palms facing me, in an officious manner that I thought was a shade excessive for the National Health Service. Probably a nut case, I decided.

  He said, “Hey.”

  To humor him I nodded as I stepped sideways.

  He put his hands on my arm and said, “We’d like a few words with you.”

  “Who are we? I asked.

  He produced from his pocket a card in a plastic folder. “Detective-Inspector Voss, CID, Bath Police.”

  I gave it a glance. It appeared to be an authentic police identity. I raised my face. Looked right into his brown eyes under thick black smudges of eyebrow. I’d read somewhere that policemen attach a lot of importance to the way our eyes first react to theirs. If you blink and look at the back of your hand, they start filling in the charge sheet.

  When I reckoned I’d passed that test, I took in the rest: the squat nose, the lumpy chin, and the muscled neck that looked ready for a scrumdown. Quite ten years older than I, yet in good shape physically. A fit forty. Not one to raise my stick to.

  He said, “Is that your MG outside?” and for an optimistic moment I wondered if this was simply a complaint about the place I’d chosen to park in.

  It wasn’t. He wanted me to drive behind his car to the central police station.

  I asked, “What’s this about, exactly?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “Do you want to know what I’m doing here?” I asked, prepared to be cooperative. “I can tell you that now. We don’t need to go to the police station.”

  He eyed me as he decided between asserting brute authority and providing a reason. Either way, he wasn’t amenable to suggestions from me. “This is the casualty department of a hospital. They don’t want us here, getting in their way.”

  So we drove in convoy to the station where I parked beside his Triumph and followed him inside. Give the police their due, they found me a cup of coffee in a paper cup before they left me on a bench in front of a notice board. I may be cynical, but I interpreted that to mean that I was in for a long wait, and I was right. I spent an hour and twenty minutes with the notice board. By the time I was called, I could have passed an exam on foot-and-mouth disease or the Colorado beetle.

  Inspector Voss had removed his jacket and looked ready to take on the All Blacks football team at Twickenham single-handedly. From the angle I had in the chair in front of his desk, he was hunched forward with his shoulders at the level of his ears. It was some comfort to have a uniformed man seated in the corner behind me, though I could have taken that as a bad sign.

  I was right about the aggressive posture. He started with a head-down charge. No apology for keeping me waiting. Just: “I’ve been hearing things about you, Dr. Sinclair.”

  “From Harry Ashenfelter, I suppose.”

  He tensed and pulled back a fraction.

  I explained, “He must have given you my name.”

  He said with derision, “This is the CID, chum. We’re not incapable of finding out a man’s name.”

  “By asking Harry Ashenfelter?”

  He thrust his jaw forward aggressively. “How long have you known Mr. Ashenfelter?”

  “I met him twenty-one years ago when he was with the American Army, based at Shepton Mallet.”

  “And since?”

  I hesitated. If only to keep this inquisition to a minimum, I didn’t want the entire story to come out now, yet I couldn’t be sure how much Harry had said already. “Last Sunday afternoon I visited him and his wife. The first time since the war. His stepdaughter, Alice, had called on me, and I helped her to find Harry in Bath.”

  “A family reunion, then?”

  “In a way.”

  “So Alice is a friend of yours?”

  I sidestepped that one. “She just turned up at the university where I work-that’s Reading-and made herself known to me.”

  “Why didn’t she go straight to Bath?”

  “Didn’t have their address.”

  Voss curled his lip in disbelief. “Didn’t have her stepfather�
�s address?”

  “I gather he walked out on her mother years ago and they lost touch.”

  “So she met Mrs. Ashenfelter-the lady who died in the fire-for the first time on Sunday?”

  “Correct.”

  While we were talking, he’d picked up a pencil and inscribed a thick, asymmetrical circle on the notepad in front of him. Now he lifted the pencil off the sheet and jabbed it down heavily in the center. “Let’s talk about you. You’d met Sally Ashenfelter before.” He expressed it as a statement.

  “When I was a child.”

  “Of what age?”

  “Nine.”

  “The circumstances?”

  “It was the war. I was evacuated to her village. She happened to work on the farm where I stayed.”

  “Where does Harry Ashenfelter fit in?”

  “He was a visitor to the farm, helping with the harvest. A GI.”

  Voss inched his face closer to mine to add impact to his next observation. “The friend of the GI who murdered Clifford Morton.”

  If it was calculated to throw me, it didn’t succeed. He was policeman, after all. He would have been pretty incompetent if he hadn’t made the connection. I simply gave a nod and returned his look.

  He said as if he were accusing me of something, “You were the boy who gave evidence for the prosecution.”

  “An unsworn statement.”

  “And twenty years later you come back to Somerset with Alice Ashenfelter in tow, disturbing people with all kinds of questions about the case.”

  I said, “Why should anyone be disturbed?”

  By the way of a response he treated me to a gratuitous bit of nostalgia. “Matt Judd handled that case. I learned my trade with him. He was God to me.”

  Remembering Superintendent Judd, I commented, “He put the fear of God into me.”

  Voss brought his hands together in a reverential gesture with the fingers interlocking. “The finest nicker the West Country ever produced.”

  “Always managed to pin it on someone?”

  The wistful expression twitched into a scowl. “Remember where you are, sunny Jim.”