There had been another place where she had pulled herself up. That was also when she was talking about letters from America. She had said that the police would be suspicious of them especially with his—and at that point she had changed tack and said something feeble about his being on the run. I felt sure that she had been going to say something like “especially with his name on it having the same initials”—or the same initials in reverse, or something of that sort. People who have to choose false names for themselves are notoriously prone to choosing ones which have some connection with the original ones, as if that original name were part of their personality which they can not bear entirely to obliterate. There had never been any suggestion that Andrew Forbes was a man of any imagination, and I guessed this was what he had done. Of course he didn’t have to put any name on the envelope, but aerogramme forms and most American airmail envelopes have a special place for the sender’s name and address, and an unsophisticated person might take it to be obligatory to write it. So he had sent the letters to friends down the road, and later to his married niece.
It seemed to me, now that I was getting a fuller view of the murder and its investigation, that the police had not made any great effort in this case. Oh—it was not surprising that by now the thing was as dead as a dodo: that would be normal, for all the police cant about never closing a file on an unsolved case. But at the time . . . It would surely have been a simple enough matter to get a look at the incoming mail of the Forbes family and their closest associates. I had a sense of the police, once they had decided the murderer was Andy Forbes and that he had left the country, washing their hands of the case. The interesting question was why? Was it a feeling that having to live abroad rather than wonderful old England was punishment enough for the poor begger? Was it a feeling that this was a quarrel between two queers, just what one would expect, and who cared? That would have been pretty characteristic of some police attitudes at the time, though a vengeful itch for persecution was a more common one.
Or was it political pressure?
Had there come down from on high a message—doubtless a whispered confidence from someone at the Home Office—a message which in cultured, confident tones said: well, the case was solved, wasn’t it? Was there anything to be gained by pursuing this young thug any further? It would only cause a lot of added grief and embarrassment to the victim’s highly respected family . . . and so on. The unspoken subtext being: to his highly respected family who, quite by chance, happened to be represented in the government of the time. I do know how these things work. The Macmillan government was conscious of the danger of scandal long before the Profumo affair. There was a whopping one very close to the Prime Minister himself, after all.
I rather suspected that this was it; that if there was a lack of zeal among policemen in the pursuit of Andrew Forbes, it was because of a few whispered words from on high.
So I concluded provisionally that Andy Forbes is still alive and well and living in—where? Not Santiago anyway. I had my own ideas about that, and I was willing to bet that when I checked up in my atlas on my return home I would not find any Santiago in the U.S.
I turned out to be half right. There was no Santiago there, but there was, I found—squinting, even with my reading glasses, at the horribly small print of the Times Atlas’s index—some Santiago Mountains in Texas, and a Santiago Park in California. Mrs. Nicholls had mentioned taking the children to Disneyland, not Disneyworld, which probably indicated the West coast, though in view of other places they apparently told people they had visited that was not conclusive. Still, the state of California had acted as a magnet, in the decades since the war, to a host of way-outs and undesirables, as well as to some very desirables indeed, so my attention kept coming back to the West. Santiago Park was to the South of Santa Ana, apparently also a mountainous area. Whether Andrew Forbes had ever lived there, or his sister had ever visited it, I did not know. What I did think was that Mavis Nicholls had begun inadvertently to say the name of the place where her brother had lived, maybe still did live, and that she—an unpractised liar, lying for love—had then changed it for another town whose name was very close in sound. I believed that the place that she had just stopped herself from naming was San Diego.
I wondered about San Diego. I knew from my Defence Ministry days, ’79 to ’80, that it was very much a naval town, with a yachting fraternity well to the fore. This might mean that there was quite a distinct British community there. That might make things easier for me—or more difficult, if Andy Forbes was a member in good standing, and they clammed up.
I rang Reggie’s home in Los Angeles tonight, but I miscalculated the time again, and got only the answering machine. I loathe those things, like all right-minded people, but against my better judgment I put the phone down, got my thoughts together, and then rang his number again.
“Reggie,” I said when the recorded message finished, “get me a good private detective and tell him I want him to find this man: his original name was Andrew Forbes, his current name will either have the initials A. F. or F. A. He has an American wife, probably called Grace, or possibly Greta, and at least two children. He works in the electrical business and he lives in the San Diego area. I suggest the British community there might be a help, if they’re approached tactfully. Love to Helen and little . . . Howard.”
Better not to talk to Reggie. He’d probably want to know how much of the above information was factual, and how much based on guesswork. I felt a load had lightened on my shoulders, and I was glad not to have my optimism shattered. I went down to dinner and chatted with Jeremy about the City (a subject that now bores me inexpressibly) with excellent grace.
• • •
Today I went to morning service in Rochester Cathedral.
I have to admit that these days I am only an occasional churchgoer. That may seem like hypocrisy, since all the time I was a constituency MP I was a pretty regular attender, and this influenced two of my children: both the twins, Fiona and Christopher, are very committed Christians, and inclined to regard me as a backslider. Very well then—I am a backslider and a hypocrite.
I did not ask Jeremy to come with me. I doubt if he has been inside a place of worship since he left school.
As a prelude to going to Rochester, which I knew I would be doing sooner or later, I have taken up Edwin Drood. I had in any case given up Philip—or it had given up me: its wittering verbosity after a time went straight in one ear and out the other, leaving not a wrack behind. Drood is no masterpiece, but it is much more engaging and it gives an added point to my visit, and an excuse for it which I thought might come in useful.
After a good breakfast cooked by Nina I drove down there. Sunday is the only day when driving is any pleasure in the London area these days. The weather was fine, and I enjoyed pottering around the High Street, the gate-house, and the close, where the Dean enquired after Mr. Jasper’s nephew. I had taken the precaution of ringing the Diocesan secretariat and ascertaining that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special adviser on urban affairs would be conducting the service that Sunday. A quarter of an hour before it was due to begin I went into the wonderful old building and found a place towards the high altar. Uncharacteristically I sat on the aisle, directly in view of the pulpit. I wanted to be noticed.
I tried not to mock the service of worship by treating it purely as a means of observing the Archbishop’s special adviser. When he first came in I was genuinely at prayer, asking for guidance in my public and personal life. Some minutes later I got an excellent view of Lawrence Cornwallis in profile: it was an impressive one—regular, fine-drawn, ascetic, set on a tall, lean body. He had a distinguished presence, yet he gave off no impression of arrogance or intolerance. Rochester—sleepy, self-satisfied Rochester, as Dickens saw it—had been lucky to get such a man, even if it presumably only got a marginal amount of his time and attention. Here was one of the Great and Good that one did not have to be cynical about. Such, at any rate, were my first impressi
ons.
The service he conducted veered in the direction of High—shall we say in political terms fifteen to twenty degrees right of centre? His sermon was short, trenchant, relevant, and beautifully spoken. It was at the end of the sermon that he noticed me. I could see that he recognised me, as I always know when people recognise me in the street—a mere flicker of the eyelid will tell me. In the past I would flash a politician’s smile when this happened. Now I no longer do. I saw Lawrence Cornwallis later in the service cast another look in my direction. I wondered about his position in Rochester, and whether he would shake hands and mingle after the service. I thought he probably would, and almost certainly would today—not out of any desire to fawn over a politician, but from a sort of courtesy: his views might be radical, but I suspected his personal standards were old-fashioned. A visitor of some note should be singled out and welcomed. At the end of the service I lingered a little, savouring the spaces through which John Jasper’s voice had echoed, at least in Dickens’s imagination. Then I went out with the last of the congregation.
He was there—not exactly shaking hands with a line of worshippers, but mingling with them, exchanging greetings and enquiring after families. He had fairly clearly been keeping an eye out for me, for when I emerged he came up, arm outstretched, and smiling with what seemed like genuine friendliness.
“Mr. Proctor! Nice to see you here. I recognised you in the congregation.”
“It’s the television,” I said apologetically. “Politicians could be quite anonymous before the box was invented.”
“Very good thing. Makes you more accountable. What brings you to Rochester?”
“Oh, a fine Sunday and the prospect of a pleasant drive,” I lied. “And I happen to be reading Edwin Drood.”
“Ah yes. We get a regular trickle of Droodists. And are you an Edwin dies or an Edwin survives man?”
“Ah—you put me on the spot. I haven’t quite finished the re-read, but I think I’m an Edwin survives man.”
“So am I. It’s a pleasure to meet a right-thinking person. Have you seen the Close?”
“I have, but I thought of taking another turn there before I left.”
“Good, you’re in no hurry. You can come and take a glass of sherry with me.”
“How kind.”
“I’m interested that a retired minister should be—reduced, I almost said, which would be blasphemy locally—should feel the need of the Drood mystery to occupy his time.”
“Harmless, though, don’t you think?” I countered with, as we entered the Close. “I don’t think you’ve been an enthusiast for the government I used to be a member of, so you should rejoice in so harmless a hobby for me.”
He smiled acceptance of what I said.
“I work a lot with young people, and certainly I can’t remember a government that has harmed the interests of young people as this one has.” He said it seriously, but I did not respond. I lost my taste for political argument the day I lost office. He smiled, acknowledging my silence. “I can see you might not want to talk about it. I don’t blame you. Our last Prime Minister had a one-track mind. And it was a very narrow-gauge track.” He ushered me towards a door. “My house—my ‘residence.’ No Droodian associations, I’m afraid.”
He took me through to a sitting room of elegant proportions, though of no particular distinction in the furnishings—probably it had in fact been furnished by the Church Commissioners, whose anonymous taste did little credit to men who were guardians of so wonderful an architectural heritage. On the wall, on the other hand, there was unmistakeably a John Piper (one artist I can recognise), and something I suspected might be a Sickert.
“Younger son,” Lawrence Cornwallis explained. “My brother got all the loot, and I got a few favourite pictures. Quite right too. I’ve never had much idea what to do with money.”
He went to a bookcase in the corner and began pouring two glasses of sherry from a single bottle. I was reminded of my long-ago visit to Lady Thorrington, though this sherry, like Marjorie Knopfmeyer’s, was unremarkable in quality. There was about Lawrence Cornwallis an air of sophistication that would not have been out of place in the Belgravia of the fifties—though it was not a worldly sophistication that he had. I think perhaps the word is not sophistication but distinction. He had a spiritual distinction that was palpable. Oddly enough his next words took me back to the Belgravia of my young manhood.
“I think you’ve forgotten,” he said, “but we’ve met before.”
The politician in me took over.
“Met you? Oh I say, do forgive me: you know in political life one meets so many—”
He was looking at me with a quizzical smile.
“Oh no—before you went into politics, at least in any big way. We met at a small party in Timothy Wycliffe’s flat.”
I looked at him hard. The tiny smile was still there. I was very glad the subject had come up, but I couldn’t remember meeting him, and I couldn’t remember any party. Old men forget—that’s the only explanation, for I have been trying very hard these last few weeks to retrieve all the memories I had of Timothy.
“As far as I remember it was an after-work party,” said Cornwallis. “I think a sort of farewell to you. There were a lot of Foreign Office people there, and a few friends of Tim’s own.”
“Good Lord!” I said. “You’re quite right. Now I’m beginning to remember.”
“I was one of Tim’s friends, of course,” he said, gesturing me to a seat, perhaps to give me a chance to hide any embarrassment I might feel. “And by the way, to get the topic out of the way—and how it does come up as soon as Tim’s name is mentioned!—I’ve been celibate for many years. Since I decided to enter the church, in fact. Others make different decisions, and I don’t blame them, but that was mine. I thought I’d better tell you, since the topic does so hang in the air whenever Tim and his death come up. A lot of people are a bit uneasy on the subject of gay clergymen.”
“I’m not upset by it. Why should I be?”
He raised his eyebrows and looked at me closely.
“Well, I see you at service, clearly knowing what to do, and I assume that as a practising member of the Church of England you have views on the subject.”
This was said with something of the same quizzical smile I had seen on his lips earlier. I got an odd, uneasy feeling that I had been rumbled.
“I’m afraid that much of my Church of England worship was merely formal—the local MP doing his duty. I lack the faculty of reverence or worship.”
“Was this why you were sacked from the government?”
We both laughed.
“Two of my children have it,” I hastened to add. “The faculty for worship, I mean. My twins, Fiona and Christopher. Fiona is studying for the Church—whatever you let her do—and Christopher is in the Sudan on an Oxfam project. But I’m afraid they must have got it from Ann, my wife. I am essentially secular. . . . It’s odd you should bring up Timothy Wycliffe . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about him recently. Writing my memoirs seems to have brought him back to me, and now I can’t get him out of my mind. Particularly his death.”
“Ah yes, his death.” Cornwallis nodded, his eyes narrowing as if in pain. “His death haunted me for many months. I’m not sure it didn’t have something to do with my entering the church. It seemed to me then so terrible—and also so surprising.”
“Ah, you too. Why?”
“People—people in general—often are unsurprised by violent deaths in homosexual circles—deaths like James Pope-Hennessy’s for example. They seem to think it goes with the condition. That’s nonsense, of course. It’s only unsurprising if you’re a homosexual with sadistic or masochistic tendencies, someone who is turned on by violence. I never saw the slightest evidence that Tim was one of those.”
“Did you come to know him very well while you were living in his flat?” I asked.
“Ah—you know about that: not as w
ell as you might expect. I was between bed-sit and flat of my own at the time, and the invitation to spend the ten days I was to be homeless was a piece of casual friendliness to someone he knew only slightly—carnally, it must be said, but slightly. This was at the time when the whole Suez business was starting—when would that be?—around July, fifty-six. Colonel Nasser had just announced the nationalisation of the Canal. I think Timothy was caught on the hop, but it meant even then that he was working twelve hours a day or more. That meant I saw very little of him.”
“You say Tim was caught on the hop—but he wasn’t on the Middle Eastern desk of the F.O. when I was there. He wouldn’t have had any special responsibility for responding to Suez.”
“Sorry—I expressed myself badly. I gathered from conversations while I was staying in his flat that he was thinking of resigning his job there, but that when Suez came up there was so much extra work—for everyone, because of the need to coordinate reactions in the West—that he felt he couldn’t.”
I frowned.
“I had heard that Tim thought of resigning from the F.O. at the time of the invasion, but I hadn’t heard of his intending to so much earlier.”
“You resigned,” Lawrence Cornwallis pointed out. “Was Tim altogether happy and at home at the Foreign Office?”
“Well no, certainly not. He was much too much of a free spirit. But what, I wonder, did he plan on doing?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps go into business, like you.”
A Scandal in Belgravia Page 11
