He stiffened—perceptibly, involuntarily.
“No. . . . No, I can’t recollect knowing anyone of that name.”
“You stayed for a time in his flat near Belgrave Square. That’s not the sort of place one would forget staying in.”
The tension in his body was palpable.
“No, you’ve got the wrong chap, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t believe there could be many Gerald Fraser-Hymeses of the right age. . . . Look, could we stop playing games? I should emphasize that I’m not in the least interested in your private life—”
“What’s that supposed to mean? What are you implying, eh?”
He was looking immensely fierce, like an outraged colonel, but the fierceness seemed to be genuine. He was talking in a low voice, almost a hiss, but this did not detract from the angry intensity of everything he said. I sighed.
“Mr. Fraser-Hymes, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything or blackmail you. I’ve quite simply become interested in the death of Timothy Wycliffe. I’m just asking you as a friend of his—”
“That’s the trouble with you politicians: you get so bloody arrogant you think you can barge in wherever you like and ask whatever questions you feel like asking. Even a police officer would have to have a bloody warrant! Well, this time you’ve got it wrong. I’m under no obligation to talk to you, and I’m not going to. You can just clear out!”
“Very well,” I said, getting up. “But I can’t see what you’re upset about. You talked to the police at the time.”
He spluttered. The girl came in with plastic cups of coffee. She looked at Fraser-Hymes’s face, put the cups on his desk, and fled.
“So you’ve been getting at police records, have you?” he resumed, still talking in a hiss. “That’s what people mean when they say this government abuses power. You’ve no right to go digging into police records of thirty-odd years ago. All right, I’ll tell you this—what I told them at the time: I was nineteen in 1956. I’d just left school and I was studying at London University. I couldn’t find digs because my parents were so bloody close with their money there wasn’t anything I could afford. Wycliffe offered me a room, and I lived there for a few days, until I cottoned on to the filthy things he and his pals were doing, and the filthy things he wanted me to do with him. Then I got out. That’s it, and that’s all!”
“While you were there, did—”
“No! That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to say. Now get out.”
So out was what I got. I have to say I admired him. What he did took bravery—not because I am at all a formidable person, quite the opposite, but because someone who has been a cabinet minister and a sort of B-team national figure does acquire a certain aura that means people address him with respect, accord him a certain dignity. It is, if you like, a cut-price version of the divinity that doth hedge a king. To order me out of the room demanded bravery.
That in other respects he conspicuously lacked bravery might be argued, but one must remember his age and his occupation. To have “come out” in the world of industry and commerce—what would have been the effect of such a gesture? The ridicule would have been unimaginably crude, the understanding and support virtually nil. His position would have speedily become untenable. He had made his decision: he had settled for an existence of dirty weekends in London, a facade as a marauding bachelor with tastes that the boys could understand. In his small world he had done a really good job of self-defence, had produced a protective camouflage that really did protect.
I did not believe him, obviously. I did not believe Timothy would have offered any young man a room in his flat, even for a short time, without having made his own sexual orientation clear. It was overwhelmingly probable that Fraser-Hymes was one of his boyfriends. Further than that I would not go. It did not seem to me that the man’s reaction was that of a murderer—even one whose crime lay way back in the past. It was, quite simply, too belligerent. The natural instinct would surely be to be apparently cooperative, with a great deal of misleading flimflam and a lavish supply of red herrings. Though he lied as to fact, his reaction to my enquiries seemed basically an honest and spontaneous one. . . . On the other hand, of course, I had caught him on the hop with a subject he must have thought had been buried decades ago.
You note that I have begun to consider the people I talk to in the light of potential murderers.
14
The MAN in QUESTION
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a town or city I disliked more than Los Angeles. I have seen Blackpool and Belgrade, Burnley, Oslo, and Bombay, but none of them is so horrible a nonplace as Los Angeles. It is like being part of a nightmare future, and my instinct after ten minutes in the taxi was to tell him to turn round and take me back to the airport. Not, I imagine, that changing direction is possible on those roads. You will say that I did not come prepared to like the place, but then who does? The reputation of the city has gone everywhere, and the reputation is the truth.
The message had come from Reggie while I was in Leicester. Jeremy had been at work, and the message as taken by Jaime read, “Dective thing he found Fobbs.” I interpreted this to mean that the private detective had found a man he thought might be Andy Forbes. I rang Reggie, got Helen his wife, and she confirmed this, adding that they’d be delighted to see me any time I cared to turn up. I said I’d turn up just as soon as I could get a plane. Jeremy wasn’t due back till late in the evening, so I wrote him a long and affectionate note in explanation, which I was sure he’d just skim through and crumple up. Then I simply packed a few things and rang for a taxi to take me to Heathrow. There are always seats on some plane or other that is going to the States.
The man in the seat beside me on the plane to Chicago wanted to talk about how high interest rates were affecting industry. I told him I’d put all that sort of thing behind me now. I realised suddenly that that wasn’t just an excuse—it was the literal truth about how I feel. All that was another life. We talked about his grandchildren instead. At Chicago I overnighted at the airport hotel (if you opened the window you got the most concentrated dose of diesel fumes I’ve ever experienced), and the next day I caught the early flight to Los Angeles.
Reggie and Helen live in a fairly “nice” part of Los Angeles—that is if you could forget the town itself, the polluted atmosphere, the trip Reggie had to take to work every day, and the rubbish on the thousand and one television channels. I really fear for my grandchild. I don’t know Helen well—I’ve seen her before only once since I flew over for the wedding—but I like what I know. She gave me a warm welcome, introduced me to Howard (who doesn’t look in the least like a Howard, much more like a John or a Charles), and for much of the day until Reggie came home from work we all three played outside in the “fresh air.”
Later that evening, over bourbon and water (a very comfortable drink which I could get a taste for), Reggie and I talked. He had had a recent letter from Christopher in the Sudan and he filled me in there; I brought him up to date about Fiona as far as I could, and of course we talked about Jeremy. One thing I’ll say about my son: he’s a very good listener—very patient and understanding. I don’t suppose he has much to do directly with insurance customers, but he’s the sort of person one feels one can’t lie to or conceal anything from. I said to him:
“This Timothy Wycliffe business is becoming a bit of a mania. Or perhaps a haunting would be a better word—I’m haunted by it. I feel I have to get it off my back before I can do anything else.”
“Is there a book in it?”
“Do you know, I wondered that? It sounds a bit heartless—a sort of bloodsucking—a blatant misuse of a friend’s tragedy. On the other hand I thought it might do good. But at the moment I’m not sure I have any book in me, let alone that.”
“Of course you have a book in you, Pops. You’re the most intensely bookish person I know.”
“That’s not at all the same thing. The memoirs are coming out as dead as last year�
�s turkey.”
“But perhaps a book about Wycliffe’s death would be more interesting to write. You would be more involved. And, let’s face it, everyone loves an unsolved mystery.”
“Whereas no one loves a politician’s memoirs? You’re probably right, though it’s often puzzled me how many copies some of them seem to sell. Still, I’m afraid mine will fall into the instantly remaindered category unless I produce a lot of catty revelations about the PM, and that I’m determined not to do.”
“Still running scared even now she’s gone?”
“Not at all. It’s a question of honour. But I must admit that the thought of a book about Timothy’s death is much more attractive, at the moment, than plodding on with the memoirs.”
“The private eye I hired is pretty sure he’s got the right man. He swears he was extremely discreet, and there’s no way the chap could have got the wind up.”
“I suspect that’s irrelevant now. Andy Forbes’s sister took offence at my going into the local pub and asking questions. Quite rightly, I’m afraid. It was a stupid and insensitive thing to do. I’d guess that she’s almost certain to have alerted him by now.”
“You don’t think he’ll have taken flight?”
“No—if I’ve got the man right I don’t think he will have. What name is he living under now?”
“Frank Andrews.”
“I thought it would be something like that—a simple reversal of initials and a terribly ordinary name.”
“All the information is in the file,” Reggie said, handing it to me. “When will you go?”
“I think I’ll go tomorrow. But maybe I’ll go by train, stay a night or two, try not to rush it. I don’t want to talk to him in a state of jet lag.”
Reggie went away and booked me a seat on Amtrak and a room in a hotel. Rather nice, really, to have got to the stage where one’s children do things for one. In spite of my having been a cabinet minister I’m sure Reggie feels I could barely survive in America on my own. The next day he made sure he not only took me to the station, he practically put me on the train. It was in fact a beautifully clean and safe-making train, and I couldn’t imagine what ghoulies and ghosties he felt he was protecting me from.
The Ulysses S. Grant has a silly name (or perhaps I mean the president had a silly name), but otherwise it had everything I like in a hotel and never these days get. I decided to bask in its comfort and friendliness and not to rush things. I needed to think out my approach to Andy Forbes. I walked around the older parts of the town, soaking up atmosphere—the atmosphere that was so lacking in Los Angeles—and thinking through what I knew of Tim’s death. Basically I could guess what Andy Forbes was going to tell me—if he told me anything. And on the whole I stood by my commitment to his sister. What interested me was the character of the man, and what had moved him to act as he did. I believed that if he did talk he would be honest.
Nothing would persuade me to drive in the States, so hiring a car was out. There was no option but to take a taxi to the address given in the folder Reggie had handed me. (The report, by the way, was admirably full, specifying the length of time Frank Andrews claimed to have been in the States—over thirty years—and details of his wife Grace and his children, his business career, and so on. The report mentioned the visits every two or three years of his sister, either with her husband or with one or other of her children. It said specifically that he had no criminal record, nor did any of his associates in the San Diego area have any suspicion of a criminal past. The report was signed Noel P. Rosegarden, which struck me as an odd name for a private detective—though no odder than Pinkerton, I suppose.)
I asked the taxi to set me down ten numbers short of Frank Andrews’s address, and stood waiting for him to drive off. It was rather a pleasant area—prosperous if not affluent, each house surrounded by a good garden, plenty of trees, with a view out to the intense blue of the Pacific, where yachts and warships mingled peaceably and the sea melted into the sky. The houses themselves were one-story, unimaginative but comfortable—looking not unlike the houses in Australian suburbs. The air was warm but fresh. I walked slowly down, watching and listening to the sounds—commercial radio here, children playing there. Slowly I approached 1468 Riverside Drive, taking my time, keeping cool and collected. Like the other houses, it was a one-story, with a little archway over the front door and a laburnum tree in the small patch of front garden. A low hedge surrounded it in the English manner, and I walked past the gate and round the corner, so that I could see it had a good stretch of lawn and flower beds at the back, as well as a stunning view of the harbour. I walked along by the hedge, taking in the flowers and shrubs, the air of peace and comfort. I stopped with a start when I realized the garden was not empty.
A middle-aged man was playing in a sandpit by the back door with a small child. He was stocky, well set-up, and only just beginning to gain flesh. He was playing tenderly with the tot, but when I involuntarily stopped his eye was caught. People walk around less in America, and I think that was what made him look at me—our eyes, in fact, met. There was a pause of just a second or two as I wondered what to do, and then he got up and walked over, extending his hand over the hedge.
“I think you must be my fate,” he said.
For all my resolutions about keeping cool I found myself totally at a loss, as once I was years ago when I was accused on television of lying, and all I could do was splutter. Faced with his calm directness all I could do now was mutter “not at all” and “please believe I have no intention—” My idiocies came out as splutter. He was the one who was cool.
“You must be Peter Proctor.”
“That’s right.”
“My sister sent me a newspaper picture.”
“But you never thought of . . . taking flight?”
“Good Lord, no.” He gestured deprecatingly. “I’m much too old to take flight. I’ve lived with this a long time, and always at the back of my mind there was the feeling that one day, somehow, somebody was going to come up and confront me with it. Do you know I’ve never once been recognised in the States? Not a tourist from Nottingham saying I reminded him of someone, nor a technician from the BBC scratching his head and wondering. I’m glad it’s happened like this—something big, a confrontation, rather than something awkward and petty. Oh no—I’m not running away.”
He spoke with an American accent, but it may have been the sort of accent, like Alistair Cooke’s, that sounds American to British ears and British to Americans. Certainly there was the odd expression now and then in his speech that reminded me of his long-ago origins. It was an attractive blend—but there was a great deal about the man that made me think I understood Tim’s feelings towards him. There was a tough, uncompromising side to him, but there was also, still, that blinding honesty that his sister had spoken of. I suspected that he had done well in business, but not too well: the honesty, beyond a certain point, would have prevented that.
“I’ll let you in the front door.”
I walked round and he let me through a house that was well, but comfortably, furnished, with family mementos and photographs dotted everywhere—on shelves, television, piano. There was a conventional but convincing painting of a pretty woman hanging over the fireplace that I took to be his wife.
“Grace has taken the older grandchildren to the aquarium. I’m standing duty with Emma. We’re lucky—our eldest girl is married to a naval man and lives in San Diego. Something to drink? Coffee? Beer? Orange juice?”
“Orange juice sounds like a good idea.”
He put some halved oranges into a fearsome machine, which after great heavings and groanings produced a glass of rich yellow liquid. He put sugar in it and handed it to me.
“Who exactly are you?” he asked. “I’m sure I should know, but I don’t. And what is your interest in this?”
It was said in that direct, honest way that made me uncomfortable.
“I was a cabinet minister until a year ago. I worked for a time with
Tim in the Foreign Office. I’m writing my memoirs, and it was that that got me interested in his death.”
“Did I ever meet you in the old days? Were you one of his boyfriends?”
I shook my head. Both of us, miraculously, were perfectly unembarrassed.
“No, I was never that. But I was a friend. I think Tim trusted me.”
He nodded and led the way out into the garden. He took two toys from a little pile, and went down on his haunches and tenderly started the little girl playing with them. He waited, watching her, then took me over to a garden seat and sat down.
“Tim trusted me too,” he said. “That’s a bitter memory to have. . . . Surely Tim can’t figure much in your memoirs? He was never an important man.”
“No. It’s not that he was important to me in a political sense—”
“He wouldn’t have liked your government, would he?”
“No. . . . It’s more in a personal way he’s important. . . . His presence disturbed me, if you can understand that. The memory of him—his gaiety and honesty—wouldn’t go away.”
Andy Forbes nodded, looking down the length of the garden and the years.
“You know, for years now I’ve tried to think of him as he was earlier, not . . . not on that last day. I think that’s what he would have wanted. . . . Yes, I know people are always saying that to justify doing any damned thing they feel like doing, but I do think that’s how Tim would have liked to be remembered. Tim was never morbid, didn’t dwell on things . . .”
“Tim accepted things—himself, other people,” I agreed.
“People here—in America, in California in particular—love analysing themselves, going to shrinks, getting into groups for therapy. It doesn’t seem to help them very much. Me, after a time, I just said: that’s something that I’m going to have to put behind me. It was heartless, maybe, but necessary. And I have put it behind me. That’s why I can remember some of the happier times with Tim.”
A Scandal in Belgravia Page 14
