Death of a Literary Widow

by Robert Barnard

  Downstairs in the hall Greg took his coat, and was going to let himself out when he was forestalled by Viola’s son, who came out from the sitting-room, his wife hanging back in the doorway.

  ‘We haven’t met,’ he said, with a formal smile on his face, and holding out his hand. ‘I’m Desmond Seymour-Strachey.’ Greg was first impressed by the handsome face with its lean, almost sunken outlines. Then he saw the watchful, ruthless, dissatisfied eyes. The sort of man who takes an old woman for everything she has. Not that he’d have a chance with Viola.

  ‘I’m glad your mother is feeling better,’ he said. ‘It must have been a terrible experience, at her age. But she seems to have come through it very well.’

  ‘We’re deeply grateful to you for your interest,’ said Desmond. ‘Both of us, my wife and I. Yes, she does seem to have weathered things remarkably well. But we’re worried a bit about her state of mind. She seems a little–well, odd. We feel it may have upset her mentally. Did she say anything–odd to you?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Greg, letting himself out of the front door. ‘She seemed to have things well under control.’

  But what, he thought, as he closed the door behind him, did they think she might have been saying?

  CHAPTER X

  STRATEGIES

  ‘YOU AREN’T HAPPY, Greg, are you?’ his girl-friend Helen asked him.

  Since they were in bed the query was ambiguous, and might have had reference to what had gone before. Greg, however, understood her perfectly well.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he said, gazing up to the ceiling, to which he was sending little puffs of cigarette smoke. ‘It’s this damned Machin business.’

  ‘Is it a business?’ asked Helen. ‘Isn’t it just a fire, with an old woman dying? After all, it happens all the time in these old houses.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Greg. He sat up in bed, stubbed his cigarette out, and put his arms around his knees in thought. ‘Look,’ he said: ‘I’ll tell you the sum total of why I’m uneasy about it–and I tell you I realize it sounds pretty feeble. That’s what makes it so frustrating. First, most of the fires where old people die happen at night. It wasn’t half past nine when this one started, and neither of the old women in the house was in bed. Second, on any other night Hilda might have dozed off in the chair, but not after she’d had a flaming row with Viola.’

  ‘The other one did.’

  ‘OK, Viola did, but she’s different. A row was all in a day’s work for her, and at the end she’d feel pleased with herself and at peace with the world. Hilda might have enjoyed it while it lasted, but at the end she’d have felt upset.’

  ‘Yes, I’d agree with that, from what little I knew of her,’ said Helen. ‘That is, if it was a row, not a sparring match–that wouldn’t have worried her at all.’

  ‘It was a row. Then–what happened afterwards: she panics, everyone says. I’ve never known anyone less likely to panic than Hilda. And the fire was only in its early stages by then, remember. She grabs her handbag and rushes along the landing, and she falls–so hard, they say, that she has a nasty long wound on the back of her head. Can you imagine it–a light little body like Hilda?’

  Helen sat up in bed beside him and thought. ‘Just one thing you said, though, Greg: the fire was in its early stages. OK, but if it was a lot of old papers and stuff in the attic that was burning–old letters and manuscripts and stuff–there might be a hell of a lot of smoke, mightn’t there? And that could easily have panicked her.’

  ‘Granted,’ said Greg. ‘But if that was the case I don’t see that she could have rushed. You couldn’t, through thick smoke, however much you wanted to. And if she didn’t rush, how come she fell so heavily as to make that sort of wound? I know I sound like a bloody know-all, but all I can say is, if that satisfies the police doctor, it doesn’t satisfy me.’

  Helen put her arm round his waist, and for a moment they were silent and companionable.

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh–nothing tangible. The fact that it all seems to come so pat: on top of the row with Viola, just after the publication of the book, just when the second book was going to bring her a lot of money. Old Warleigh would laugh his head off if I put reasons like that to him. Perhaps he’d be right.’

  ‘But say we accept what you’re obviously driving at, who might have wanted her dead?’

  ‘Viola, obviously. Her daughter Rose or her husband–for financial reasons. Either of the Machin boys–because it might be possible to cut Rose out of the agreement about book royalties. That Desmond, I’m pretty sure, has an eye for money.’

  ‘But is the money enough? As a motive for murder?’

  ‘It’s enough if you want it enough.’

  Greg got up, blundered round the tiny bedroom, and then went to the bathroom and showered noisily, as if he were trying to knock sense into his head. Later, as he was dressing and Helen was in the kitchen frying bacon, he shouted: ‘You see, it adds up to nothing. I’m ashamed of myself.’

  ‘But you’re going to do something about it?’ came back Helen’s voice. He looked around the door into the kitchen. She was a small, tough girl–determined, opinionated, with light brown hair and quick, sharp eyes. She had thrown on an old dress and not much else, and she played with the frying-pan as if it was Pancake Day.

  She looked adorable. Eatable.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do something about it.’

  • • •

  Greg Hocking was one of those rare people who drift into teaching and find themselves, to their own surprise, absolutely cut out for the job. At school he had been enthusiastic but undistinguished, and after it he had found himself in a polytechnic in the Midlands, in the state of paralysis of the imagination that tends to grip adolescents when the time for choosing a career looms. He had sampled English, which was taught by doctrinaire young men with fuzzy hair-dos and a weakness for the polysyllabic. He had decided it was not a subject for honest men, and had gone on to history, where he had developed a real interest in local history and a talent for getting old working-class men and women talking about the customs and social conditions of their childhood. It was this talent which had landed him the job with the Oswaldston College of Further Education and he was already unearthing long-forgotten aspects of Lancashire social history, and writing about them in the local paper.

  His girl-friend Helen was Lancashire born: she too had drifted, but into secretarial school. She had stayed there, always conscious that she was preparing herself for an existence of unutterable boredom, and was one of an enormous number of women who were training themselves for an ‘if I don’t marry’ life. She had drilled herself to super-efficiency and had become one of the very highly paid temps the advertisements talk about, because there seemed little point in such jobs unless they were extravagantly rewarded. After a few months she had decided that anything would be better than the ever-changing impersonality of that sort of life. She had taken a job in Manchester which bored her as much as she knew it would, but where she could settle down and get to know the people she was working with.

  She had met Greg at a film-club meeting, where they had laughed through a leaden documentary on Cuba. They were similar types: happy, uncomplicated, but with an undercurrent of seriousness that made them want to take different directions, see with their own eyes, not other people’s. They both hated orthodoxies and band-wagons, catch-phrases and rallying-cries. At the moment their relationship was a weekend one, but both of them occasionally thought that the idea of marriage still had something to be said in its favour.

  As they sat at breakfast, eating a meal hearty even by North Country standards, both of them chewed over more than their fried goodies. Finally Helen, pushing back a plate that still had half a bready sausage on it, said: ‘So what we need now is a plan of campaign then, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Greg, ‘of independent action.’

  ‘Independent, of course,’ said Helen. ‘But your being pal
s with the local superintendent isn’t going to do any harm.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Greg. ‘As far as I could judge, he thought me an incompetent idiot who ought to be minding his own business. I don’t suppose policemen like being taught their jobs any more than the rest of us do. The most I can hope for is that I might meet him over a pint and get him to be indiscreet–tell me if there is any dirt on Desmond Seymour-Strachey, for example.’

  ‘Did you take against him? He seems to be your prime candidate. I haven’t met him. What’s he like?’

  ‘Voracious. Greedy for more. And not a scruple in his head about how he gets it, I’d guess.’

  ‘Then we put him and Viola at the top of the list, do we? Who goes on it next?’

  ‘Well, Rose the daughter, I suppose, and her husband. He’s a deadly dull little man as far as I can see. Wouldn’t have the guts, you’d say. But then, you’d have said the same about Crippen or Christie, wouldn’t you? Then Viola’s other son: open, jolly chap, always laughing. Again, not the type you’d think. But it’s a selfish family, I’d say. They take what they want. I’d keep him well in the running. Then of course there’s Desmond’s wife–I’d forgotten her. I didn’t get much of an impression of her. I’d like to look at her background. Then I suppose Kronweiser was always around the house–but there’s no motive there.’

  ‘That little fat body we saw in the pub one night? He looked a right pill. I saw him in Manchester the other day, all hot and greasy and suspicious.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘Coming out of the office place opposite where I work. He walks like a constipated duck. I’d know him anywhere.’

  ‘Well, that’s the cast-list, as far as I know it. Of course there could be plenty of others I know nothing about.’

  ‘And then there’s the question of motive and opportunity, I suppose, isn’t there?’

  ‘Exactly. The two obvious motives are either money, or just plain dislike and jealousy. If it’s money that’s at the root of it, it’s going to be hellish difficult to get the details.’

  ‘And if it’s just personal feeling, it’s difficult to see why it should happen now. You’re thinking, after all, of Viola Machin, aren’t you? But she and Hilda have been living together for years.’

  ‘True. But you’ve got to remember that it’s now that the whole question of Walter Machin has come up again–because of the new interest in him, and the republishing of the books and so on. So the pair of them have probably been mulling over all the old grievances–in their minds, if not openly.’

  ‘The old grievances . . . ’ said Helen, thoughtfully. ‘We know so little about them. What were they? The rivalry over Walter, and the fact that Viola took him from Hilda some time during the war or just after?’

  ‘It must be that, mainly.’

  ‘It’s very slight, isn’t it Greg? I mean, after so long a time. And of course it mainly works the other way, doesn’t it–I mean Hilda hating Viola.’

  ‘Viola says she got mad about that interview in the paper, about marriages being broken up.’

  ‘But that’s much too slight, surely, Greg?’

  ‘Combined with the rest–’

  ‘But the rest is Hilda’s grievance, not Viola’s. There just must be something more.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Greg thoughtfully. ‘A whole lot more. The problem is that it probably all lies in the past–thirty, forty years back, if it’s Walter Machin that’s at the heart of it, as I begin to think it could be. It’s going to be the very devil to disentangle at this late date.’

  ‘There must be a lot of people around who still remember him well.’

  ‘I see ahead of me,’ said Greg melodramatically, waving a piece of toast and marmalade, ‘hours and hours of interviewing old-age pensioners in pubs.’

  ‘Well, that’s in your line. That’s exactly what you find interesting.’

  ‘They always expect you to buy them drinks. Get the cheaper cuts of meat for the weekends from now on.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone else you could ask–closer?’

  ‘His daughter would hardly have known him–and anyway she’s on my list. The Seymour-Strachey boys would remember him better–but so are they. Of course, there’s their father.’

  ‘Viola’s first? What do you know about him?’

  ‘Not much. I think they split up some time during the war. Wait a bit–Viola said he was a writer of some sort. I have the idea he was some kind of critic. The way Hilda talked gave me the idea they were all four fairly pally early on.’

  ‘It might be worth talking to him, if he’s still alive. Though he might have a grudge.’

  ‘And he might have good cause to be grateful. Being married to Viola is not my idea of bliss unending.’

  ‘Then there are the libraries and places like that. Wouldn’t you find out something about Walter Machin there?’

  Greg’s forehead creased in perplexity. ‘Do you know, I just haven’t a clue. I don’t think he had much of a reputation: he was a nine days’ wonder–if that–just before the war. I should think that wiped out any chance he had of people remembering him. I don’t suppose I’d get anything from libraries that I don’t know already from the Colour Supplement article, or the interviews. Still, I could go into Burnley and give it a try.’

  ‘And there’s his publishers.’

  ‘That’s right. . . ’ The shadow of a project flitted across the further reaches of Greg’s mind. ‘That’s right. Both the old and the new ones. And the new ones, Jackson’s, would know all about the money, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘They would,’ said Helen sceptically. ‘But whether they’d tell. . . ’

  ‘Anyway, so far it comes back to this: either it’s a matter of money, or the whole thing revolves around the two women, and the character of Walter Machin.’ Greg thought for a bit. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I’ve been interested in Walter Machin right from the start.’

  • • •

  On Monday morning Greg had no classes before eleven, so he took the early bus to Burnley and went straight to the Public Library. The reference section he already knew from his work on local history–a long, narrow room, darker than the rest of the library by reason of the heaviness of the books and their respectable bindings. With a nervous swallow he bearded the formidable young lady at the desk at the head of the room: she had always struck him as the sort of librarian who would prefer to see all the desks in her domain empty and all the books permanently under lock and key.

  ‘Contemporary writers,’ she said, as if they bordered on the unmentionable. ‘Was it biographical or critical material you wanted?’

  ‘Well, biographical really I supp–’

  ‘Biographical. Well, there are one or two things.’ She led him down the side passage and pointed to a shelf. ‘Is it anybody very well known?’

  ‘Not terribly, really.’

  ‘You could try there.’ She stabbed a book with a dangerous index finger, and took herself back to her desk, to survey her class and see that no one had taken a whiff of pot while her attention had been distracted.

  Greg took down Twentieth Century Authors and turned unhopefully to the M’s. There he was! Machin, Walter [1910-1948]. But the entry was very brief–only four lines:

  North Country British novelist, author of The Factory Whistle [1939] and Cotton Town [1940], the latter a collection of short stories. Both deal with working-class life, and are in the Walter Greenwood tradition, though rather more ambitious in style and structure.

  Not much of a haul, Greg thought. Nothing he didn’t know already. On an impulse he turned to Seymour-Strachey. Nothing–nothing either under Se- or Str-. Clearly, as Viola had implied, not much of a writer. What other books might there be that could give him a bit of elementary information? He supposed he’d have to consult that formidable biddy at the desk.

  As he made his way up, feeling like a schoolboy with skimped prep, his eye caught, with a start of surprise, the rotund shape of M
r Kronweiser, eyes darting suspiciously in all directions, working at a desk. Of course–his usual work-place had been burned around his ears. He walked on up to the judgment seat, and the librarian cast a disapproving pair of spectacles in his direction.

  ‘That was very helpful,’ Greg stammered. ‘But there’s another man–a writer too, but not very distinguished, I think. He may have gone into something else later–’ his mind ran rapidly over the likelihoods–‘publishing, a university–I just don’t know. But he’s still alive, I think. Are there any specialist reference books?’

  The reference librarian looked somewhat contemptuous, as was indeed, Greg felt, her right.

  ‘There are, of course,’ she said severely, ‘but if you don’t know he went into one or other, wouldn’t it be best to try something more general first?’

  ‘Who’s Who or something of that sort?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the librarian, and marched down the aisle with him once more. Greg noticed out of the corner of his eye Mr Kronweiser waddling out through the door, and thought he’d finished work early for the day.

  ‘It’s out,’ said the librarian, in elegiac tones, as if he were a particularly prickly thorn in the path of her life. She started walking magisterially among the desks. ‘Here,’ she said at last, pointing to the desk newly vacated by Dwight Kronweiser. Greg sank into the leather warmed by his voluptuous posterior.

  Who’s Who had never been Greg’s favourite reading but rather to his surprise, it came up trumps:

  Seymour-Strachey, Gerald Harcourt; Professor of English Literature, University of Grimsby, 1943-74; b. 8th June 1904; s. of Stephen Seymour-Strachey and Charlotte Butler; educ. Wellington College, NZ and University of Melbourne. Publications: Heterosexual Strain in Modern English Literature, The Ern Malley Affair, Sins of My Old Age and Earlier. Recreations: walking, talking. Clubs: none, on principle.