by James Runcie
Her son was running around wearing a stick-on moustache and holding up a silver-framed photo of his father. Cecilia called to him, and held him close.
Sidney noticed Helena Randall and expressed his surprise that she was there. ‘You’re not a family friend?’
‘But the funeral was a public event. Orlando Richards was a well-known and much-loved figure in Cambridge. I expressed my condolences. The widow asked me back to the wake.’
‘She was being polite. These things are supposed to be private.’
‘Don’t worry, Sidney, I won’t do anything to embarrass you.’
‘Are you going to write any more about what happened?’
‘As you say, it was “an accident”. I am just getting a bit of colour for my report on the funeral. “When the music had to stop”, that kind of thing. It’s good that his wife’s named after the patron saint of music. I’ve even found a poem by Alexander Pope: the Ode on St Cecilia’s Day. I think I might use it at the end; although it might sound like one of your show-off sermons. What do you think?
‘In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats;
Till, by degrees, remote and small,
The strains decay,
And melt away,
In a dying, dying fall.’
‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea, Helena. Too close to the bone, perhaps.’
‘Or even the ivory? Did you see the piano remover crying at the back of the church?’
‘Dennis Gaunt? Only briefly.’
‘Aha, Sidney, I knew you’d spotted him. He was blubbing.’
‘You spoke to him as well?’
‘I did, as a matter of fact.’
‘I thought you told me he had disappeared?’
‘There’s a special house he goes to when it all gets too much. Didn’t they tell you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Used to belong to his mum,’ Helena explained. ‘She died last year. He had it all cleaned out and redecorated ready to sell but now he won’t put it on the market. He likes to go and sit there. Says he feels safer.’
‘He told you all this?’
‘I have other sources.’
‘And you’re not going to reveal them?’
‘You never do, Sidney.’
‘That’s nonsense. But I’m impressed that you’ve found out so much so soon.’
‘It’s either my sharp investigative skills, my astonishing charm or my incredible beauty.’
‘Probably a combination of all three. So it’s a kind of safe house?’
‘I don’t think it’s illegal or anything. But Dennis Gaunt doesn’t want to let it go; which is a problem as his brothers and sisters want the money from the sale. They’re accusing Dennis of dragging his feet.’
‘And there’s nothing else that’s odd about his wanting to be there on his own? No secret assignations?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘And what would this have to do with the death of the husband of our hostess?’ (Sidney did not say his name for fear of being overheard.)
‘Perhaps nothing at all. I hardly think they could be having an affair. But if they’re not connected then I can file two stories for the price of one.’
‘And if your investigations prove fruitless?’
‘There’s always a story somewhere, Sidney.’
‘Even if you have to make one up?’
‘I never do that. I might engage in a bit of embroidery but I need a piece of cloth in the first place.’
‘No matter how small?’
‘The merest handkerchief will do.’
‘That was enough for Iago. Can you tell me where the mother’s house is?’
‘It’s completely empty, by the way. It looks like the removal men have just been, which is appropriate when you think about it.’
‘Does Geordie know?’
‘Why does he need to? The man has done nothing wrong. Dennis was only a spectator at the time of the accident . . .’
‘It’s his firm.’
‘And he’s not breaking the law. At least as far as I can see. All he is doing is sitting in an empty house and talking to himself. When he talks, that is. Otherwise he speaks to me.’
‘What does he say?’
‘You’ll have to read the paper.’
‘Are you keeping evidence from the police?’
‘Nothing criminal. It’s a human-interest story. Dennis Gaunt wants to get away from it all. He’s Cambridge’s answer to Robinson Crusoe, living without possessions, a man who says no to the madness of our modern world. It’s almost religious, his desire for solitude and silence. In fact he’s thinking of becoming a secular hermit.’
‘Which, presumably, is rather difficult given the fact that he has a wife and family and a business to run?’
‘Then you see why this is a story?’
‘The next thing you’ll be telling me is that he listens to Orlando Richards’s recordings.’
‘Now that would be something.’
‘I was being facetious.’
They were interrupted by Cecilia Richards. She wanted a word with Sidney. She was relieved, she said. The bursar had told her that she could stay on in her house for as long as she needed. Her husband had been a wonderful man and the college would put no pressure on her to leave. He knew how difficult it all must be.
‘It was kind of him. I should be glad. And, in a way, I am.’
Sidney put his arm around her shoulder. ‘It must be hard to take anything in.’
Cecilia Richards took her time to reply. ‘Grief is like an endless fugue,’ she said.
Sidney decided that the most straightforward excuse for seeing Dennis Gaunt was to ask for a quotation for his removal to Ely, including Hildegard’s piano.
His brother, Vic, was surprised by the visit. ‘We could have spoken about all this at the fête.’
‘This seemed more businesslike. And I was hoping that I might be able to help your company in what must be a time of need.’
Sidney thought ruefully that he wasn’t lying exactly. What he was saying was partly true, even if there were what might be termed other considerations.
‘I heard you’d been to see our Lennie in hospital. I hope you weren’t stirring anything up?’
‘Not at all, I can assure you . . .’ (But why would Victor Gaunt be so suspicious if he had a clear conscience? Sidney thought.)
‘Just ask us to do the job and we’ll do it, vicar. Best price. Cheaper if you can pay in cash.’
‘I thought a cheque might suit . . .’
‘No. Cash is better. Dennis is the one that gives out the estimates. Do it verbally. Gentlemen’s agreement. That’s the best way.’
‘I gather he’s not here at the moment.’
‘He’s taken a few days off to try and recover.’
‘And when will he be back?’
‘No way of telling.’
‘He’s in your mother’s house?’
‘You must have been talking to that journalist. Is she a friend of yours?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Dennis says she understands him.’
‘I’m sure she does.’
‘Nonsense. We both know she’s just getting a story. Dennis is too soft.’
‘Does he like to have visitors?’
‘Do you want to see him as well? I can give you the address but he won’t let you in. Normally you have to chat on the doorstep.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
‘Try not to upset him, that’s all I ask. Thoughts keep going round and round in his head. The firm’s never had an accident like it and no one will go near us. We’re finished. You’ll probably be our last ever job.’
That evening Sidney was due to dine in college. It was a far more informal affair in the long vacation as most of the fellows were away. Those that remained would need to start talking about a replacement for Orlando, if it was not considered too unseemly to do so.
Over drinks, the bursar wondered if they could get someone young and up and coming (in other words, cheaper). With his mutton-chop whiskers, Walter Collins was something of a historical throwback. He wore three-piece suits, kept a pocket watch, and was prone to perspiration, especially in the summer. His pockets were stuffed with a series of red polka-dot handkerchiefs that were produced to stem the flow from his forehead, cheeks and neck. He never took his jacket off and one of the fellows had suggested that this was because his armpits would be too horrible to contemplate. His body odour was, however, only occasionally unpleasant and he meant well; content if everyone stuck to the rules and procedures that the college had laid down in the fourteenth century and which, he felt, were still relevant today.
Sidney asked Walter how well he knew the Gaunts, how they had come to be chosen as the removal firm and why he had agreed to pay for the removal.
‘It was one of my more charitable gestures, Canon Chambers; a way of supporting tenants who were behind on their rent – I was offsetting their payment against debt, much to Mr Gaunt’s consternation – and I was helping Orlando flourish as a musician by encouraging his late progression from the harpsichord to the piano. As you know, he was determined to master all keyboards, even if it meant changing technique; rather like Wanda Landowska.’
‘Hildegard has mentioned her. Doesn’t she play The Goldberg Variations twice in a single concert; once on the harpsichord and then on the piano?’
‘I believe so. I think Orlando was going to do the same. Such a fine musician. I don’t know how we’ll replace him.’
‘Did he know the Gaunt firm before the move?’
‘I doubt it. They are not people who have anything in common. You’re not coming up with one of your wild surmises, are you, Sidney? It was an accident. I can’t believe anyone would want to kill Orlando. And even you can hardly think it was an elaborate act of suicide.’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that.’
‘Shall we go in?’ the Master of Corpus interrupted, keen that dinner should commence and the subject should change.
Sidney said grace. ‘Benedic, Domine, nobis et donis tuis, quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi, et concede ut illis salubriter nutriti, tibi debitum obsequium praestare valeamus, per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.’
They sat down to watercress soup. The Director of English Literature, Magnus Mortimer, told Sidney that he hoped he might come back from Ely and teach for a term or two. ‘You know how much better you are on the metaphysical poets. I’m afraid I rather stop at the physical. Other colleagues may be keen on complexity and ambiguity but sometimes things are as they are, and I prefer to spend my life as Milton advised, “beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies”.’
Perhaps that was the case, thought Sidney. The greatest literature, like life itself, might open itself up to multiple interpretation, but there was also plain fact and simple truth.
A man was dead. A piano had fallen. There was, perhaps, no special providence.
The original Gaunt family home was a modest terraced house in The Kite with white window frames and a newly painted matching door. The front garden had been paved over. Even in the height of summer, there were no flowers.
Dennis Gaunt was a large round man with a face that was never still, his expressions constantly on the turn. He was either about to smile, or he was in pain, or on the point of being annoyed. Just as some people have a naturally sulky face, Sidney thought, or others looked bored, or angry or unhappy even if they were thinking of nothing at all, Dennis Gaunt was somehow the opposite. He had the permanent unpredictability of a man who was either about to lose his temper or laugh out loud.
After some gentle negotiation, Sidney was allowed inside. There were no pictures on the walls, no comfortable chairs, and there were cotton blinds across the windows so that the light was soft, even and disorientating. There was a jug of water on the table and a single glass. Dennis Gaunt was not sure that he had got another, but managed to find one in a kitchen cupboard that was otherwise empty.
The house could either be taken as a brilliant piece of modernist design or an individual lunatic asylum. ‘This is where I come,’ the host began as he returned with the glass. ‘It’s like a chapel just for me.’ He was dressed entirely in white.
‘And very congenial it is too, Mr Gaunt. I imagine when life gets too much . . .’
‘If I come here then I can try and make my thoughts the same. It’s ordered. I like living with as few possessions as possible. As the philosphers advise. I’ve been doing a course at the Workers’ Educational Association. But you can’t live on nothing, despite what they tell you. Vic said you probably want to ask me about his son: the boy on the crane.’
‘No, it was more about the piano.’
‘Steinway.’
‘So I gather.’
‘It’s a three- or four-man job to move. Iron frame, you see. But there’s a brighter sound. More for the concert hall. Although this was Steinway B, not D. D is a right bugger. B is smaller. Some people call it the perfect piano. Have to be careful choosing the right one. Change when they travel, too. A bit like people. They need careful handling. What did you want to ask?’
‘I have heard you don’t like talking too much.’
‘I don’t mind now you’re here, as long as you don’t stay for too long. I’ve got all day. Well, I haven’t, of course. Some of it’s gone already. Sometimes it’s hard to know how much of the day you have got, don’t you think? How much of the day is left. What is lost now that half of it is gone? What you have to get back tomorrow. If it comes. Better to wait than to mourn, though, don’t you think?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Mourn the day that’s lost. There’s no point. You have to look forward. Tomorrow. Not today or yesterday. If you dwell too much you go mad. That’s not what you want to do. That’s a bad idea. Not that it’s always just an idea. Sometimes it’s something else. Inside you. Is that like God, do you think? Something that’s there all the time? You just have to find it?’
‘Something like that.’
‘So your job is to teach us how? I don’t think I’ve ever found him. I just have ideas. Not that they do much good. Although I try to stop bad ideas. Bad people.’
‘Do you mean like Orlando Richards?’
‘No. No. Not at all. He was a good man. He shouldn’t be dead.’
‘It was a terrible accident, Mr Gaunt. No one’s fault, I think, although you might be blaming yourself. Is that why you’re here?’
‘To blame? Perhaps yes. Accident yes. To blame yes. But not intentional. Not with intent. There’s a Latin phrase for that, isn’t there? Actus reus. I heard it on Round Britain Quiz.’
‘I am sure it wasn’t your fault, Mr Gaunt. When are you hoping to go back home?’
‘Lennie and the boys will be worried about me. Lennie and the boys. The boys and Lennie. It doesn’t matter which way round, does it? It’s just words.’
‘But language defines who we are and what we think and do.’
Dennis Gaunt wasn’t so sure. ‘Anything could be anything, don’t you think? That’s what I’ve been reading about. It’s all about perception. We could be here and not here. Life could be a dream and death could be when we wake up. Birth is when we fall asleep; death is when we wake. I often wonder what it would be like if everything was the opposite of what we think it is.’
He stopped abruptly, stood up as if he was going somewhere, and then returned to his chair. ‘It’s been nice meeting you, Canon Chambers. It’s important to think things through. Look at life another way. Sometimes look away altogether. Especially if a piano is falling. You don’t want to see that.’
‘So you didn’t see what happened?’
‘There was a man taking photographs. What’s he doing? I thought at the time. What does he want photographs for? We move pianos every day. What’s unusual about that? What makes it worthy of a photograph? The decisive
moment. Isn’t that what it’s called? What do you think that moment was, Canon Chambers? The decisive moment? Was it when the foot slipped or the piano fell? Was it when it hit the man, or when it crushed him, or when his heart stopped beating? Or was it when the man came to see us the very first time and he asked us to help move his piano and we said “yes”? Was our “yes” the decisive moment, or was it his first question, or was it the time when Mr Richards decided he wanted a new piano? Do we need a decisive moment in order to decide what we think? Perhaps all our lives are decisive moments? And there is no such thing as a moment anyway. A moment. What is that? A second, a minute, a few minutes? It wouldn’t be five minutes, or three? Perhaps it wouldn’t even be one? Perhaps it doesn’t exist at all? Where are the photographs? Can I see them?’
‘Perhaps you can help?’ Sidney asked, recognising that they were getting somewhere.
‘Maybe I can.’
‘You could explain what is happening in each of them. You might even be able to pinpoint when it all went wrong.’
‘The decisive moment, you mean? That would be hard.’
‘I’m not sure that it would be,’ Sidney replied. ‘There must have been a time from which everything that followed became irreversible and unstoppable; the moment when nothing afterwards could be changed, just before the piano started to fall.’
‘But what about the moment when Mr Richards started walking? Was that more important than the piano falling? If the man hadn’t walked then the piano would not have killed him. You can’t talk about the moment without the ifs. If your dog hadn’t barked, if our Lennie hadn’t slipped, if the man hadn’t walked, if the piano hadn’t fallen? You can’t really talk about that time at all. We only have what’s left; never the time itself. The ruins of a moment.’
‘Then please take me through those ruins,’ Sidney asked.
Hildegard was depressed by Orlando’s death, not only because she had lost a good friend but also because she no longer had a champion. There was no one left in Cambridge who really understood her musicianship and so, when she discovered that her old professor, Leopold Klein, was visiting London from Leipzig, she asked him if he wouldn’t mind coming to spend a day with her. She would show him round the university in exchange for a lesson.
