A Scandal in Belgravia

by Robert Barnard

  “It’s a nice house,” I said, when Mrs. Nicholls came back.

  “I like it. We had a semi in a nicer area, but when I came into this—when Dad died—we decided to move in here. It had memories, you see, and the three kids were still at home then, and they could have a bedroom each. Later on we were glad that’s what we decided to do. Les—that’s my husband—lost his job in 1982, and having this house without a mortgage on it was a godsend. I don’t know how we’d have managed otherwise.”

  “He’s got another one now?”

  “Works as a barman in one of the pubs in the centre. He’s a skilled engineer and it’s not what he’s used to, but it doesn’t do to complain. There’s many worse off.”

  “I’ve been walking around,” I said, accepting a cup, “trying to imagine what a childhood was like in this street.”

  It sounds patronising now I put it down on paper, but she was not a prickly soul and she didn’t take it as such.

  “It was good—quite good really. It was my childhood here made me want to come back. There were lots of other children, of course, and we played in the streets because no one much around here had cars then—yes, it was all right. Warm and . . . nice. A good place to grow up.”

  “How many children were there in the family?”

  “Just the two of us. Mum couldn’t have any after me. Andy was the elder by two years. Money was always a bit short. Dad had come down from Derbyshire and he was unemployed for two years before Andy was born. But he always had work when I was growing up, and we never went hungry. If money was a bit tight the reason was that they were buying this house. Mum worked in shops, did some charring, anything going really, so a lot of my early memories of Andy are of him looking after me.”

  She sat down with her cup on the other side of the gas fire, and I was able to get a good look at her. She was a woman in her early fifties, inclining to plumpness. She had probably never been more than mildly pretty, but she had made the best of herself tonight—had her hair done, put on a pretty frock—perhaps in anticipation of a visit from a “name.” She gave the impression of someone who, now the children were grown up, had a lot of time on her hands, though she also seemed bright and resourceful, the sort who would always find useful ways of filling it. She was welcoming, fluent, in spite of a certain shyness. She was also tense and on her guard.

  “I loved him,” she said, unprompted. “I looked up to him and I loved him. He was so good to me, even though he was only the two years older: he took me to school, protected me from the bigger children, made me sandwiches if I was hungry. ‘Let’s do you up then, me duck,’ he used to say, doing up the buttons on my coat, or tying my shoelaces. Things other boys around here would have been shy of doing for their kid sisters. When I got a bit older it was wartime, of course, and he’d make sure I could put my gas mask on, took me to the air-raid shelter, all that sort of thing.”

  “A considerate person.”

  “Yes—very. You probably think I’m whitewashing him. I’m not. There was a lot of mischief, a lot of ragging of teachers—there were some wartime replacement teachers who were not up to much. But Andy was never a worry to Mum or Dad. They knew he’d turn out all right. . . .”

  I said diffidently: “That must have made it all the more . . . shocking when they found out.”

  She looked down into her lap, then nodded.

  “Yes . . . He’d been gone to London then some years, of course. But he’d always come back at holiday times, and for weekends. He was getting on so well, earning good money . . .”

  “You didn’t know anything about his . . . private life.”

  Mrs. Nicholls looked up at me pleading, and a blush spread up from her neck and over her whole face. I realized with a stab of surprise that this, not the murder, was the thing she most dreaded talking about; that this was still to her something unmentionable, almost inconceivable.

  “No . . . ’course we didn’t. Dad and Mum would make remarks. When he came back for my wedding, 1955 that was, they’d say: ‘Your turn next, Andy’ and ‘When are you going to bring a nice girl home, son?’ And Andy would say: ‘When I can find someone as nice as Mavis.’ It was just a laugh. No one suspected . . . I mean, that just wasn’t something anyone knew about round here.”

  “And it still bothers you?”

  “Yes it does! I hate the very thought of it. When Andy sent us the snaps of him and his first kiddy from San—”

  She stopped and swallowed.

  “Yes?”

  “—from Santiago I thought ‘Thank God!’ and I was that pleased I was walking on air for a week.”

  At last—information. Children, presumably marriage, and a place to pin him to. Or was there?

  “Santiago,” I said. “That’s in Chile. I didn’t know he went to South America.”

  She was more visibly flustered than at any time in the interview.

  “Oh no, I don’t think that was South America. I think this was a place of the same name in America.”

  “The United States?”

  “That’s where Andy lived, the United States, right up to the time that he died.”

  “And that was—?”

  “Two years ago. Nineteen eighty-eight. He wasn’t old.”

  Mrs. Nicholls was showing signs not just of confusion but of distress—talking too quickly, flushing again. I noted it, to draw my own conclusions later on. I thought it would be politic to go back to the time of the murder.

  “How did you get to hear about Andy’s . . . involvement in the Timothy Wycliffe murder?”

  “Well, the police came round, of course. Les and I were living in a council flat then. Mum sent a neighbour’s kid around, and when I got here—well, I can’t describe it: it was as if her world had fallen apart. She couldn’t stop crying. And Dad wouldn’t believe it—not for days, not weeks. He went around saying: ‘Nobody’s going to tell me that our Andrew is a pansy.’ ”

  “It was that that got to him?”

  “Yes. I suppose you think that’s foolish, you being more sophisticated and more used to that kind of thing. But it’s the truth. It was that made him feel he couldn’t hold up his head. Well, those weeks certainly sorted out who our friends were, I can tell you.”

  “I suppose so. There must have been a lot of talk.”

  “Well, talk you’d expect. There’s always talk about a murder, and as to the other, people round here don’t like that sort of thing, like I said. We’re ordinary folk and we think it’s just . . . disgusting. But the ones who were real friends came round—maybe just to have a kind word with Mum, maybe brought a cake—any little thing, just to show their sympathy. We didn’t look for much, Mr. Proctor. As to the others—the rats I call them—well, I’ve never forgiven some of them for the things they said to Mum and Dad. Even today I can hardly be civil to them.”

  “When did you first hear from your brother?”

  She bit her lip, uncertain how honest to be. She handed me the plate of biscuits, then went on, slowly, carefully.

  “Well, it wasn’t long after. Maybe three weeks. We got a note from Spain, sent under cover to Stan and Betty Martin down the road—they were Mum and Dad’s best friends, and they were real bricks all through. The note just said not to believe what people were saying about him, and it gave a time and a date when he’d try to ring us, if we could be at the Martins’.”

  “And did he?”

  “Oh yes. Andy was a real family boy: he knew how we’d be suffering. He wrote or rang regularly after that, usually through the Martins, because he didn’t feel safe ringing here. It was years before he’d ring this house, scared the phone was being tapped. He always sent letters to the Martins until after our Janie was married. He’d taken a real shine to her when they’d met, and when she settled down he wrote to her. He still—right up to the time he died—sent his letters to her. He thought the police might intercept mail, and anything from America might be opened, especially with his . . . especially with his being on the run and all t
hat.”

  She was getting confused again, repeating herself and suddenly changing what she had nearly fallen into saying. That, at any rate, was my impression, though I kept my face impassive, letting no shadow of suspicion show.

  “What did he tell your dad and mum about that night?”

  “Not much. He said there’d been a fight, and that this Wycliffe was alive when he left the flat. He didn’t need to say more than that. Our Andy was always truthful, straight as they come, and he certainly wouldn’t lie to Mum or Dad.”

  Except, perhaps, if he judged the truth too painful for them to bear.

  “Did they ever go and see him?”

  “No, they didn’t. People like us didn’t just hop on to planes in those days, did they? Mum was scared out of her wits by the very thought of flying. But I think they would have done eventually, because Andy was pressing them and saying he’d pay the fares. But then Mum contracted muscular dystrophy—oh, it must have been about 1968, and she was an invalid for the rest of her life. Dad retired early so he could nurse her.”

  “So you went instead.”

  I put it as a statement. She pursed her lips up, took my cup and poured me another cup of tea. She pressed more biscuits on me, as something to do, then sat down again. She was going to tell me something—how much, and how truthful it would be, I would have to judge when I could sit down and think it through.

  “Yes, I did go. Me and Janie and Terry—my two eldest. Ellie, the youngest, has the same fear of flying that her grandma had, so she stayed at home with Les. . . . I’m not going to tell you much about the trip, and you can fish as much as you like, it won’t make no difference. We all got on very well together. His two were much younger than my two, of course, but Janie mothered them. His wife was rather American, not what I was used to, but we hit it off really well. I got to like her. We did the usual things—went to Disneyland, and so on. I think Terry’s still got his Disneyland T-shirt that Andy bought for him that time. It was a happy trip, one I’ll never forget.”

  “And you talked about the night of the murder.”

  “Well yes, we did. One morning when Gr—when his wife had taken all the children swimming.” She looked down into her cup with a return of that reluctance which came upon her every time the subject of homosexuality came up. “He said that this Timothy Wycliffe wasn’t a bad man, but he was trying . . . well, to push him in that direction, if you see what I mean. And Andy said things built up in him till he felt that—I don’t know—that frustrated, that mixed-up that it all spilled over into violence. Our Andy was never a fighting boy, though he could stand up for himself if he had to, but he wasn’t a great talker either. I think maybe he couldn’t argue with him on his level, and because of that it all built up inside him. It’s as simple as that.”

  It sounded as if it had elements of truth, but I didn’t believe it was as simple as that.

  “But he repeated that he didn’t kill him?”

  “He certainly didn’t kill him! You’ve got to believe that. He was alive when Andy left the flat. I don’t think you understand what sort of a boy Andy was—still was when we got to know him again, was all his life. I suppose by the lights of a man such as yourself he wouldn’t be considered particularly intelligent—though he was good at his job. What he was was straight. That’s why I loved him. That’s why lots of other people loved him too. He was good to people—loyal, helpful, generous, and I don’t mean money. Wasn’t it your boss the last Prime Minister said that the Good Samaritan had to have money?”

  It was my turn to squirm.

  “That may not have been the best thought-out of observations,” I murmured.

  “Seems a funny sort of Christianity to me. Seems to me what made him good was the fact that he stopped and tried to help. Andy was that type. He always had time for people, listened to them, did what he could for them. He was kind and patient and considerate. Now, you’ve read up the facts of the case, haven’t you?” She was looking at me very intently, pleadingly. I nodded. “Well, I ask you: can you see a young chap like that, when the man he’s been fighting is lying senseless on the floor, taking something heavy and bashing his head in?”

  I suddenly made a commitment.

  “No,” I said.

  • • •

  There was still an hour to go before the pubs closed when I left number thirty-five. I had given Mavis Nicholls my phone number as I left, in case anything occurred to her that she had forgotten to tell me. Nothing would, of course. She was a reluctant witness: her brother was innocent, but she simply didn’t want the matter brought up again. I wondered if I might get a different perspective by talking to her neighbours.

  As a minister I had got out of the habit of going into pubs. In fact as a minister one got out of the habit of doing a lot of perfectly normal things. It’s not just lack of time, it’s the danger of being buttonholed and harangued, not to mention blown up. The Duke of York was a nineteenth-century building, honouring presumably the man who later became George V: there were mirrors with brand names of whiskies and cigarettes on them, a lot of brass, but though plush would have completed the picture it had been replaced by green plastic. The man behind the bar served me with all the respect due to a man who has ordered a double Scotch.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” he asked, I thought with more than the nominal welcome to a new customer.

  “I shouldn’t think so. It’s my first time in the neighbourhood. I’ve been visiting Mrs. Nicholls down the road.”

  “Oh yeah? Friend of yours?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nice woman. Her hubbie’s a barman too—down at the Dog and Whistle, just near the station.”

  In books he, or someone propping up the bar, would immediately have started talking about her brother Andy. In real life a bit more helping-on was needed.

  “Sad life,” I said.

  “Don’t see what’s sad about it.”

  It was in fact the man propping up the bar who spoke—a man just next to me, watery-eyed and droopy moustached. I put him down immediately as the resident whinger: the no-one’s-had-a-harder-deal-than-I-have type. But he was sixty or so—the right age for my purposes. He went on, working himself up: “Her husband’s got a job, hasn’t he? Lost his old one, just like me, but he landed on his feet. I got the push when I was sixty. Sixty! You try getting a job when you’re that age. They’re in clover, the Nichollses, mate.”

  “I was thinking of the brother,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re a friend of Andy’s, eh?”

  It was said with an incipient leer. He really was a very unpleasant old man.

  “No, I’m afraid I’ve never met him.”

  “You’re better off not meeting a shirt-lifter like that one. Mind you, I was at school with him and nobody never suspected he was a pooftah, not then. I expect it was these London queers as got to him. Anyway, I don’t see what’s tragic about Andy Forbes. He got away with murder, didn’t he? Did that bloke in, and then got clean off. Them days he could have been strung up, ’stead of living the life of Larry in America.”

  “I was thinking of it from his sister’s point of view. She was obviously very fond of him.”

  “Well, she goes to see him, doesn’t she? It’s no different from if he’d emigrated to Orstralia. Better, because it’s nearer and nicer. I tell you, mate, I wish I had a relative in America who’d pay for me to swan off on holiday there.”

  “Ah yes, she said she did once go there.”

  “Once? She goes there every two or three years. Sometimes Les goes with her, sometimes one or two of the children. He’s fallen on his feet, that’s for sure.”

  “Andy? But I thought he was dead.”

  I didn’t, but I thought it as well to stick to the official line. The man shrugged.

  “First I’ve heard of it if so. Mavis was out there last year, so it’d have to be recent if he is. Mind you, Mavis Nicholls would never say.”

  “She doesn’t talk about her
brother round here?”

  “ ’Course she doesn’t. Use your loaf, mate. Would you talk about him if you had a pooftah brother who’d killed his nancy friend? According to her she goes to visit a cousin. Doesn’t fool anyone. Did you ever hear of a cousin as generous as that? No, it’s Andy, and whatever he’s doing he’s doing well out of it. Don’t tell me he’s had a sad life, nor her either. They don’t know the meaning of the word trouble.”

  Before he could define it for me, with examples drawn from his own experience I hurried in with: “Still, he can’t come back to this country.”

  “Who’d bleedin’ want to?”

  He had pressed in me the button marked “politician,” and I was about to launch myself into a spiel about the transformation we have wrought in this country’s fortunes and so on and so on, when I realized where I was and what I was doing and held back.

  “Any idea what he does in America?” I asked.

  “Search me, mate.”

  “Or where he lives?”

  “No idea. She’s very cagey about that, plays her cards close to her chest. That makes it even more sure it’s Andy she visits. She says they travel around when they’re there.”

  “No specific towns?”

  “Wouldn’t mean much to me if they’d said. I couldn’t tell Oklahoma from New Orleans. They have mentioned things they’ve been to. . . .”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Empire State Building, Space Museum, Golden Gate, that sort of thing.”

  New York, Washington, San Francisco. That wasn’t going to help much. My companion was off on his grievance.

  “It’s obvious he’s not wanting for the ready, isn’t it? Standing them holidays like that. A pooftah kills his boyfriend, and that’s how he ends up. Talk about luck—some people scoop the pool.”

  I bought him a drink and took my leave. I’d had enough whingers in my constituency surgeries to last me a lifetime.

  11

  The GREAT and the GOOD

  On the train back to London, after one of those hotel breakfasts where you help yourself to a selection of near-cold victuals, I did some thinking. My first conclusion was that Andrew Forbes is still alive. If he were dead, why would his sister give the date of his death as 1988 when she had apparently visited him in 1989? Of course it was just possible that she had visited his widow and children, but I remembered her saying about the letters he wrote home: “He still—right up to the time he died—sent them to her.” To me that seemed an odd, if cleverly improvised, formulation. I believe the sentence started out as “He still sends them to her,” and was hurriedly modified.