The Lazarus Tree

by Robert Richardson

  ‘Yes, I think it’s ... I’m not sure where mine is either. It’s years since I read it. I’ll see if I can find it.’

  ‘Yes. But don’t go to any trouble. I can always drive to Exeter and look at the copy in the library.’

  Quex looked at him inquiringly. ‘Why are you so interested? Nobody’s ever classed Ralph as any sort of local genius.’

  ‘I’m not expecting much,’ Maltravers replied. ‘But English literature is something of a passion with me, even when it’s second division.’

  ‘He doesn’t qualify as literature at any level.’ Now Quex sounded dismissive. ‘If you want to read about this area of Devon, I can recommend ...’

  ‘You sound as though you’re trying to put me off,’ Maltravers interrupted. ‘Are they really that bad?’

  ‘They’re ... they’re simplistic. They have a certain curiosity value, I suppose, but no merit otherwise. Believe me.’

  Maltravers wondered if it was because his suspicions were heightened that he felt Quex wanted to be believed.

  ‘I’d still like to read them, if you can find your copy,’ he said. ‘From what I’ve been told, Ralph seems to have had a vivid imagination.’

  ‘Too vivid sometimes. I often wonder what effect he had on the people he told them to. He played on their superstitions.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll have much effect on me — nor even on people in Medmelton these days.’ The calculated remark went home.

  ‘People who live in the country are as sophisticated as anyone else Mr Maltravers,’ Quex said stiffly. ‘And they resent being patronised.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be patronising,’ Maltravers replied levelly. ‘I’m sorry if it sounded like that. Anyway, if you do find the book, I’ll ...’

  ‘As I told you, I haven’t any idea where it might be.’ This was no longer the amiable rector making small talk with a visitor. ‘However, if I do chance to come across it, I’ll pass it on.’

  As they were speaking, Quex had moved forward and Maltravers was still no further into the room than a couple of paces past the doorway. He was implicitly being asked to leave, and decided it would be best to do so when he heard the front door opening again.

  ‘Bernard! It’s me! Where are ...?’

  Quex’s eyes flashed past Maltravers and he instantly cut off the excited, too-happy voice. ‘I’ve got a visitor in the study.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Maltravers reflected that a surprising amount could be injected into one unguarded syllable. Surprise, caution, acknowledgement of warning. He turned and looked down the hall. ‘Hello again. I hope the coq au vin turned out all right.’

  ‘What? Oh ... yes. Thank you.’ Ursula Dean was making as rapid an adjustment of her behaviour as Quex had done a few moments earlier. ‘It was fine. I ... I didn’t realise anyone was here.’

  ‘Mrs Dean’s just come to help sort out a jumble sale,’ Quex put in.

  ‘I imagine they take a lot of organising,’ Maltravers commented. ‘I must let you get on with it. Sorry to have interrupted.’

  Ursula Dean smiled nervously and stepped to one side as he walked towards the front door. She lowered her head as he passed, but he had already seen the carefully applied make-up and noted the high-heeled shoes and well-cut linen suit. She was excessively overdressed for a discussion about who would run the bric-a-brac stall and bore little resemblance to the woman he had seen panicking over her husband’s dinner the night before.

  ‘See you again,’ he said and was through the still open door before he heard her make any response.

  ‘Yes. Of course ... goodbye.’

  He had not gone five paces when he heard the door slam behind him and was somehow certain that Quex had closed it. He went out of the rectory gate opposite the back of St Leonard’s and walked round to the west door. Beneath a ragged crown of dying leaves, sweet chestnuts were scattered beneath the Lazarus Tree, fruit gleaming brown and plump through splits in pale green coats of soft-spiked shells. He picked one up and peeled back the covering, the nut’s surface slightly oily between his fingers. Perhaps there wasn’t an affair going on — and perhaps it didn’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime. As neither Quex nor Ursula Dean appeared to have any skill at deception, they would give themselves away sooner or later, but people’s private lives were not his business and he could see no immediate connection with what else was going on in Medmelton. More interesting had been Quex’s obvious desire to put him off reading Ralph the Talespinner, strong enough to override his anxiety that Ursula Dean would arrive at any moment. Maltravers wondered if it really was years since the rector had read those stories.

  *

  Ursula Dean’s palms were damp as panic pumped through her, escaping in hasty, shallow breathing and agitated heartbeats. She felt dizzy and sat down abruptly on a chair in the hall. As Quex turned from shutting the front door, she looked at him, seeking reassurance.

  ‘Stephen told him about Ralph the Talespinner’s stories but couldn’t find his copy and he asked to borrow mine,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘But he saw me here!’ she protested. ‘What will he think?’

  ‘Nothing. You heard what I said about the jumble sale.’

  ‘But did he believe it?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’ Quex took both her hands in his own. ‘You’re shaking, darling. Stop it. It’s all right.’

  ‘I’m scared.’

  He pulled her to her feet and put his arms round her, smothering her trembling. ‘Then don’t be. Even if he thinks ... no, he won’t think anything. It’s nothing to do with him.’

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him. ‘It’s nothing to do with anyone except us. I’ve already told you that.’

  Ursula Dean pressed her head against him. The moments of ecstasy were brief, the hours of remorse endless. The memory of Bernard in silver and gold cape, hand raised to bless her marriage to Ewan, returned time and again to accuse her. Stories she heard and read about relationships such as they now had, casually begun and ended, never contained her sense of confused guilt. Dear God, what would her mother say if she ever found out? It was an affair between a man and a woman still essentially children, excited by the thrill of forbidden grown-up games but constantly terrified by them.

  And Bernard Quex now had an additional concern. Maltravers had raised Gabriel’s murder when they had first met that morning, perhaps only in passing, but ... now he was specifically looking for a copy of a first edition of Ralph the Talespinner. Did he know something? If he did, what was it? And who else might have been talking to Stephen Hart’s suddenly disturbing visitor? Had the virus returned in another form?

  *

  Maltravers had to wait to be served in Medmelton Stores where he had gone to buy flowers for Veronica; there were several people before him and each transaction involved a leisurely exchange of news and gossip. Every inch of space in the tiny shop was crammed with goods, piled, stacked and shelved in chaotic order. Bunches of dried herbs and springs of garlic hung from the ceiling amid soft toys in cellophane bags, canned fruit stood next to packets of washing powder, aftershave and cough mixture shared limited space with assorted boxes of screws and washers. A route complex as a maze wove round the floor past a march of silver steel shovels, a barrel of dried peas, sacks of smokeless fuel, a tower of yellow plastic buckets, folded deck-chairs and coiled green hosepipes. Next to the cold cabinet, wooden boxes were filled with vegetables mottled with rust-brown soil. Less than a square yard of counter was clear to serve customers, tightly hedged in by display stands of sweets, combs, tights, seeds, instant soup and packets of needles and crisps. You could buy scent, beer, wine, tinned lobster bisque, mops, electric fuses, firelighters, frozen Chinese meals, candles, stamps, children’s clothes, a local paper or softback romantic fiction. It was sub-Post Office, supermarket, hardware store, clothes shop, newsagent’s and chemist’s packed into one room. And a do-it-yourself shop. And a baker’s. And an off-licence
. And a florist’s. Maltravers felt that if he asked for a house-trained elephant he’d be offered a choice of Indian or African.

  Shapeless body in a wrapover Paisley-pattern apron and grizzled hair harsh as steel wool, Mildred Thomson was clearly in her element, a focal point of village life, endlessly chatting as she sliced and wrapped cold meat, spun corners of paper bags into twisted ears or reached towards shelves without having to look where things were. She hardly stopped talking, but as each order, however complex, was completed, she knew the total price to the penny. When Maltravers reached the front of the queue, she took the two bunches of carnations, lilies, spider chrysanthemums and gypsophila, produced a large sheet of paper from beneath the counter like a conjurer and whipped them into a cone.

  ‘Seven pounds,’ she said, handing them back. ‘You came in yesterday evening with Stephen Hart, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m staying with him and Veronica for a few days.’

  A bell tinged as the drawer of an ancient wooden till shot forward, a ten-pound note was flicked beneath a metal spring clip and three pounds change almost simultaneously extracted.

  ‘Been to Medmelton before?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Maltravers realised that even strangers were allotted their portion of conversation and he was expected to make his contribution. ‘It’s a beautiful village. You’ve always lived here, haven’t you?’

  ‘Apart from the war when I was in Plymouth.’

  ‘It must have been quite a contrast living through the bombing,’ he commented. ‘Nothing as dramatic as that here.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised how much happens ... we even had a murder once.’ Liver-brown eyes sharpened, anticipating a reaction.

  ‘I know. As a matter of fact, I knew him. Patrick Gabriel.’

  ‘Oh.’ She seemed disappointed at not creating some sort of sensation. ‘Friend of yours, was he?’

  ‘Not what you’d call a friend, but I met him a few times.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? Because of him?’ Extracting information to add to an extensive collection for passing on to others was an instinct with Mildred. Maltravers made an instant decision.

  ‘In a way. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t like him, but that doesn’t mean that I think anyone should have killed him.’ He registered that customers waiting to be served had abruptly stopped talking. ‘From what I’ve found out, it looks as if the murderer must have been someone who lives in Medmelton.’

  The ‘found out’ had an instant effect and Maltravers could sense sharpened ears behind him as clearly as he could see sudden suspicion in Mildred Thomson’s face.

  ‘The police didn’t find anyone,’ she said guardedly.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t look in the right place.’ Maltravers smiled disarmingly. ‘Anyway, thank you for the flowers. Good morning.’

  He turned to see four alarmed faces and the atmosphere was thick with unanswered questions as he walked out. He deliberately paused outside the door, forcing them to wait in frustration before they dared erupt into excited comment. Broadcasting it full volume from a loudspeaker in the middle of the village green could have been no more effective; virtually everyone would soon know that a stranger from London was staying at Dymlight Cottage and was making Patrick Gabriel’s murder — Medmelton’s very private affair — his business.

  SEVEN

  Nine miniature trophies won at the Medmelton and District Horticultural Show lined Alexander Kerr’s mantelpiece, one less than the number of years since he had retired to the village. It had taken the first twelve months to prepare the earth before flawless onions, leeks for the Welsh to worship and cabbages that it was sacrilege to boil had begun to appear. How it was achieved remained unknown — as did a great deal more about him. It would have been foolish to let others know his growing techniques; it was contrary to the Official Secrets Act to admit what his job had been. Sally Baker, who had first met the mannered, pedantic, middle-grade cultural attaché at the British Embassy in Budapest, was one of the fewer than twenty people in the world who knew at least part of it, and nobody knew it all. Kerr’s CBE — which he never used — was a deliberately low-key official acknowledgement of a man whose subtle manipulation of shadowy contacts almost certainly saved John Kennedy’s life for another year when he stood and looked across the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate in 1962, and once played a critical part in preventing Soviet tanks from crossing the Rhine. Even now, when the perilous Cold War world in which he had lived had gone, he occasionally went to London to give his opinions in what was unofficially called the Past Masters’ Lecture Theatre in the Ministry of Defence basement. But such invitations were becoming infrequent and Kerr remained an anonymous retired civil servant with a gift for growing prize-winning vegetables who supplemented his pension as a part-time tutor in Romano-British history at Exeter University; it would have been indiscreet — in fact it was strictly forbidden — for him to offer lessons in any of the seven European languages in which he was fluent.

  On Monday morning, he was translating The Iliad from the Greek into Polish (the impish fiction ‘Translated by Peter Quince’ appears in a surprising number of books) when the front doorbell rang. Neatly ordered papers and dictionaries disappeared into a desk drawer and the Daily Telegraph, crossword partly completed, was picked up as he went to answer it. Providing a covering explanation of what he had been doing had become part of his humour.

  ‘Sally! If I’d known it was you, I needn’t have bothered.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Masking the trail. Come in and tell me what the problem is.’

  ‘Why should there be a problem?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, it doesn’t become you,’ Kerr replied as he led her through to the sitting room. ‘It’s Monday morning. You went to the stores as usual while the automatic washing machine was doing its business and it’s a fine enough day to hang the things out. But I can see your garden from my window and the line is empty. Like anyone who was part of the diplomatic service, you’re a creature of organisation, but today something’s happened that’s urgent enough to make you break the pattern. So you’ve not called round for an idle chat ... do I really need to go on?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, Alex, what an artist the world lost in you.’

  ‘If you’re going to quote, do it correctly,’ he said sternly. ‘This artist is not dead, but sleeping — with both eyes still open.’

  ‘Then you can tell me what they’ve seen.’

  Kerr’s thin lips squeezed into a thoughtful moue at the tone of her voice. ‘You sound ... serious. Like you did when you first told me your suspicions about Bridgeman in the Prague visa office. And what a very nasty business that turned out to be. It cost two women’s lives.’

  ‘I try to forget about that,’ Sally Baker said quietly. ‘I knew one of them.’

  ‘That’s when I discovered how firmly you were anchored in our waters.’ Kerr smiled comfortingly. ‘Oh, dear. Wasn’t that near the surface? I’m sorry I brought it up. Anyway, whatever this is, it surely can’t be as painful.’

  He guided her to a straight chair isolated in the middle of the room then sat opposite, hands folded together, sunlight filling the window behind him. Against the morning light, flint grey eyes were shadowed amid the web of lines — spun by years of deceit, plotting and strain — that covered his face like a net of pain. Instinctively, the innocuous gardening pensioner had put on the cloak of interrogator again.

  ‘Relate,’ he invited. ‘From the beginning.’

  ‘This isn’t a Room 409 debriefing,’ she reminded him. ‘Stop letting old habits show. You shouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘But you’re one of the few people with whom I can be myself again.’

  ‘And who, pray, is that?’ They smiled at each other before she continued. ‘I’m going to start with this morning, because that’s what has brought it all to the surface. Stephen Hart has a friend visiting him. He’s called Augustus Maltravers
.’

  ‘The writer?’ Kerr queried.

  Sally Baker looked surprised. ‘I don’t know. Is he?’

  ‘I can’t believe there are two people with a name like that. His second novel came out about a year ago and he’s written several plays. Nothing to trouble Iris Murdoch or Tom Stoppard, but better than a lot of the others.’

  ‘It must be him, then. He’s never said what he does — we’ve been too busy talking about other things. Anyway, now I will start at the beginning.’

  Kerr listened for twenty minutes; although she could not see them, Sally Baker knew that the eyes were flickering occasionally as he mentally underlined key fragments of what his brain was simultaneously hearing and recording. When she finished, he would be able to write down everything she had said verbatim, including the hesitations which in the past had so often been crucial.

  ‘Nothing more of immediate relevance or significance.’ She smiled as she concluded. ‘Now I’m back in 409.’

  ‘And concise as ever,’ he remarked. ‘Action recommendation, if any?’

  ‘Nothing by you, of course. But I’d like your thoughts. For a start, did you take any interest in Patrick Gabriel’s death?’

  ‘Naturally I reported it,’ he replied. ‘In my position, you don’t ignore unexplained murders that close to the campfire. London sent a man down to talk to the police, but there wasn’t a trace of anything. Gabriel’s death was nothing more than a local mystery. I received a very comprehensive report — I think someone wanted to put the old boy’s mind at rest. No especial suspects and a fair number were ruled out by the fingerprinting operation where they managed to do it.’

  ‘Did you give your fingerprints?’

  ‘Of course. I am ever the law-abiding citizen and I didn’t want to draw the village bobby’s attention to me. However, they were removed from the Exeter CID file within two hours.’

  ‘So that’s your interest taken care of. Any ideas on the subject?’