by Jonathan Coe
Phoebe stared at him. ‘What?’
Michael sprang to his feet, saying: ‘God, I’ve been slow. Of course I’m part of it – that's why Tabitha chose me.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.’
‘She said I had his eyes: my father’s eyes. There’s only one person she could have been talking about. My mother said the same thing. That was what made me so angry in the restaurant. Even Findlay noticed it. He said they were like … blue velvet, or something. And I thought he was just trying to get me into bed.’
‘You’ve lost me, Michael. Completely lost me. Who on earth’s Findlay?’
‘He’s a detective. Tabitha hired him, years ago. Listen.’ He made Phoebe sit up, and explained: ‘Tabitha had a brother called Godfrey, who was killed in the war. Shot down by the Germans.’
‘I know all that. And she also had a brother called Lawrence, who she hated, and when she went mad she started accusing him of murder, or something.’
‘That’s it. Only she was right: he did tip the Germans off about Godfrey’s mission, and that was why he got shot down. I’m almost certain of it. But there was also a co-pilot, who didn’t get killed. He was put in a POW camp and after the war he came back to this country. He drifted around and went to seed a bit, and did all sorts of jobs under different names. John Farringdon was one of them, and Jim Fenchurch was another.’
‘Yes, and what about him?’
‘Well I’m his son.’
Phoebe’s eyes widened in disbelief.
‘You’re what?’
Michael said it again, and she let out a cry of exasperation. ‘Well, don’t you think it might have been a good idea to share this with us earlier?’
‘But I’ve only just realized. In fact, I’m going to have to ask Tabitha about it right now.’ He got up, turned the light on, and began dressing as quickly as he could.
‘Michael, it’s five o’clock in the morning. She’ll be fast asleep.’
‘I don’t care. This is urgent.’ He squeezed himself clumsily into his shoes. ‘You know, I don’t think Tabitha’s mad at all. I think she’s been playing a very clever game.’ Opening the door, he concluded dramatically: ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, she’s as sane as I am.’
‘Saner, perhaps,’ said Phoebe. But not loud enough to hear.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Back Room Boy
MICHAEL needn’t have worried about interrupting Tabitha’s sleep. There was a light coming from her room, the door was unlocked, and she was sitting up in bed, knitting and listening to a transistor radio placed on the bedside table.
‘Why, Michael,’ she cried. ‘You’ve come even sooner than I expected! Is it time for our little chat already?’
‘John Farringdon,’ he said, coming straight to the point. ‘He was my father, wasn’t he?’
‘So, you’re there at last, are you? Well done, Michael. Very well done! Although, to be perfectly frank with you, I was expecting you to get there a little earlier. How long has it taken you now? Nearly nine years, I think. And yet, from reading your books, I’d formed the impression that you were quite an intelligent man.’
Michael drew up a chair next to the bed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I know you’re playing with me now. Have you been playing with me all along?’
‘Playing with you, Michael? That’s not a very nice accusation to make. I’ve been helping you. I’ve always wanted to help you. It’s been my only thought.’
‘Look – I’ve had no help from you: none at all. You never even contacted me in all that time.’
‘I’ve given you rather a lot of money, none the less. Hasn’t that been of any use?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Michael blushed, ashamed to be reminded that he hadn’t even thanked her for her generosity in this area. ‘Of course it has. But how was I to – I mean, if it hadn’t been for Findlay, I would never even have got near the truth of this whole business.’
‘Findlay? Surely you don’t mean Mr Onyx? Mr Findlay Onyx, the detective? Is he still alive, Michael?’
‘Certainly he is. Alive and in prison even as we speak.’
‘And I can guess what for!’ said Tabitha, laughing merrily. ‘Oh, he was a naughty little man. Very naughty indeed. But most professional, I have to admit. It was Mr Onyx who managed to locate your father for me, of course. He told you all about that, I take it?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘So you know that your father was killed by Lawrence, in this very house? The night of Morty’s birthday party?’
Michael nodded.
‘I was very disappointed, I must say,’ said Tabitha. ‘I really thought that Mr Farringdon would have had no difficulty finishing my brother off. But clearly one should never take these things for granted. I was in extremely low spirits when Mr Onyx came to see me the next morning.’ She shook her head, smiling. ‘He was a most conscientious man. Most reliable. He came – at some risk to himself, I must say – to deliver an envelope, containing some of Mr Farringdon’s effects. Among which, I found –’
‘– a photograph?’
‘Exactly, Michael! A photograph. Perhaps you’re not quite as slow as I thought. A photograph of you, sitting at your desk and writing. You can only have been about … eight years old, would you say? There was a little girl in the picture as well. Not very pretty, I’m afraid. Rather prominent teeth. Mr Farringdon was very attached to this photograph, anyway. He’d told me all about it, in one of our long conversations at the Institute, where he had been kind enough to come and visit me on a number of occasions. Oh, yes, those were pleasant afternoons. We talked about all sorts of things. One day, I remember, we had a long and most stimulating discussion about the Lockheed Hudson. I’d always been concerned, you see, about the high amount of magnesium alloy used in construction. It seemed to me that it made the aircraft very vulnerable to fire, particularly if the integral fuel tanks were to rupture. Now, of course, Mr Farringdon had never flown one himself, but …’ Her eyes had glazed over, and she now turned to Michael with a look of bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry, dear, what was I saying?’
‘The photograph.’
‘Ah, yes, the photograph. Well, I held on to it, of course, just as he’d asked me to, although I’m afraid it gave me no means of finding you, because he’d neglected to tell me your name. Perhaps he never even knew it himself. And then one day – it would have been, oh, almost twenty years later – a most extraordinary thing happened. One of the doctors came up to my room and brought me a magazine. Wasn’t that thoughtful of him? All of the staff are familiar with my little hobby, you see, and this was a colour magazine with a lovely long article in it, all about the Mark i Hurricane. Well, I have to say that it wasn’t very well researched: I was most disappointed. The autiior missed several important points – never even mentioned, would you believe, its one real advantage over the Spitfire, which, as you know, was the thickness of the section wings. I actually wrote a letter of complaint to the editor, but it was never published. I wonder why …’
There was a dangerously long silence, and Michael realized that she had drifted off again.
‘Anyway, about this magazine.’
‘I’m sorry: I do tend to get distracted sometimes. The magazine. Precisely. Well, after I’d read this article, I started to look at some of the other items, and imagine my surprise, Michael – imagine my delight, and astonishment – when I found, tucked away at the very back, a charming little short story about a castle and a detective, and at the top of it, the very same picture which Mr Farringdon had given me all those years ago. A picture of you, Michael! You as a little boy! Fate had delivered you into my hands, at last, and not only that, but it turned out that you’d become a writer. It was all too, too perfect! I began to think of a little plan, which would enable me to make financial reparation for what my family had done to you – I knew that you would be short of money, it went without saying: all writers are short of money – and which, at the same time, would inevitably lead y
ou to find out the truth about your father and how he died. You would discover the truth about my family, Michael, and reveal it to the world, in the form of a book. And what a book it would be! I envisaged … a tremendous book, an unprecedented book – part personal memoir, part social commentary, all stirred together into one lethal and devastating brew.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ said Michael. ‘I should have hired you to write the blurb.’
‘I think, in retrospect, that I overestimated you,’ said Tabitha. ‘Much as I enjoyed the extracts which you sent to me, my expectations had been too high. I see now that you weren’t quite equal to the task. You lacked the necessary … dash, the necessary … daring, the necessary … what is the word?’
‘Brio?’
‘Perhaps, Michael. Perhaps that’s what you lacked, in the end.’ She sighed. ‘But then, who could really do justice to my family? Liars, cheats, swindlers and hypocrites, the lot of them. And Lawrence was the worst. By far the worst. To betray your country for money is bad enough, but to send your own brother to his death … Only my family could do such a thing. When it happened, I realized for the first time what they were really like: and after that, what did it matter if they locked me away? I didn’t care what became of me.’ She sighed again, even more heavily. ‘It quite spoiled my war.’
‘You say that almost as if you’d been enjoying it,’ said Michael.
‘But of course I was enjoying it,’ said Tabitha, smiling. ‘We all were. It’s so hard for you young people to understand, I know, but there’s nothing like a good war for pulling a country together. Everyone was so nice to each other, for a while. Everything that had divided us suddenly seemed so petty and inconsequential. Things have changed, since then. Changed terribly. Changed for the worse. We were all so polite, you see. We observed the niceties. Mortimer, for instance … He would never have behaved like this, running around the house and chopping his family up with axes and knives and what have you. It would never have entered his head, in those days.’
‘I imagine not,’ said Michael. ‘Still, it won’t happen again, I don’t suppose.’
‘What won’t happen again, dear?’
‘A war like that.’
‘But we’re at war now,’ said Tabitha. ‘Hadn’t you heard?’
Michael looked up. ‘We are?’
‘Of course. The first bombers were sent out shortly after midnight. I’ve been listening to it on the wireless.’
Michael was stunned. Even after the expiry of the UN deadline, he had somehow never believed that it would happen. ‘But that’s terrible,’ he stammered. ‘It’s a disaster.’
‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Tabitha cheerfully. ‘The allies will have no difficulty establishing air superiority. The F-117A Night-hawk is a most sophisticated craft. The navigation system, you know, features an INAS with both Forward-Looking and Downward-Looking Infra-Red sensors, and it can carry up to four thousand pounds of explosives at speeds of five hundred and fifty miles an hour. The Iraqis have got nothing like it. And then there are the F-111s: well, Colonel Gadaffi already knows what they can do. With EF-111A Ravens blinding the enemy’s acquisition radars, they can fly through an attack corridor at more than fifteen hundred miles an hour. Their weapons bay accommodates up to fourteen tons of ordnance —’
Michael had already lost interest. There were more urgent matters to consider. ‘So you think it is Mortimer?’ he asked.
‘Of course it is,’ said Tabitha. ‘Who else would it be?’
‘It’s just that these killings – they’ve obviously been carried out by someone who knows all about the family. What they’ve been up to, over the years. But Mortimer hasn’t really seen any of them for a long time, has he? How would he know those things?’
‘Why, that’s simple,’ said Tabitha. ‘Mortimer’s read your book, you see. Whenever you sent me part of your manuscript, I would always forward a copy on to him. He found it most interesting. So in a way, Michael, you are responsible for all of this. You should feel very proud of yourself.’
She went back to her knitting, while Michael brooded over the role he could now be seen to have played in this bizarre story. He felt anything but proud.
‘Where is he now?’ he asked.
‘Morty? Well, I’m afraid that’s very difficult to say. He’s hiding somewhere, that’s for sure, but this house is full of secret passages. It’s a veritable warren. I found that out the night I locked Lawrence in his bedroom. A few minutes later, you know, he was downstairs playing billiards, so there must be some hidden link between the two rooms.’
‘That’s right – you’d heard him in his room, hadn’t you, speaking in German?’ It was all starting to become clear. ‘Could he have been talking into a radio set, do you think?’
‘Certainly he could.’
Michael leapt up. ‘Which room was it?’
‘It’s at the far end of the corridor. The one where young Roderick has been staying.’
He ran out into the corridor and went to find Phoebe, knowing that she had the only key. But she was no longer in bed. Gripped by a sickening anxiety, Michael swung around only to find that she was now standing in the doorway behind him, a grim expression on her face.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get into Roddy’s room.’
‘Too late. I’ve just come from mere.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘Come and have a look.’
It was not a pleasant sight. Roddy was lying on top of the bed, naked and motionless. He had been covered from head to foot in gold paint, and must have been dead for two or three hours.
‘Suffocation, I assume,’ said Phoebe. ‘Painted to death: I suppose we should have guessed it.’ She frowned. ‘Isn’t that from a film as well?’
‘Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger,’ said Michael. ‘Mortimer’s certainly been doing his homework.’
‘I still don’t see how he could have got in. The key’s been in my trouser pocket all night. Unless he’s got another copy, of course.’
‘This used to be Lawrence’s bedroom,’ said Michael. ‘Which means there’s a secret door somewhere, and a passage which leads downstairs. Come on, let’s see if we can find it.’
They circled the room, knocking on each of the panels to see if any of them gave off a hollow sound. When this produced no result, Michael unlocked the double-doored wardrobe which had been built into one of the walls, and peered inside.
‘Hello, what’s this?’ he shouted.
Phoebe ran over. ‘Have you found it?’
‘Well, I’ve found something.’
He reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a pair of garments – a jacket and trousers, in navy blue. On closer inspection they turned out to comprise the uniform of a police sergeant.
‘What did I tell you? That wasn’t a policeman at all. And look, here’s the rest.’
He handed Phoebe a peaked cap, and as he did so, a small glass vial was disclosed on the shelf behind it.
‘Potassium chloride,’ he read slowly, examining the label. ‘Have you ever heard of this?’
‘It’s a poison,’ said Phoebe. ‘Mortimer used to keep it in his medicine chest. Only the last time I saw it, it was full.’
She pointed at the level of the liquid, which now filled only about a quarter of the bottle.
‘Is it deadly?’
Phoebe nodded. ‘I remember now – the day he sent me away, just before I left, he was asking me where the syringes were. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Perhaps this might have something to do with it.’
‘Could be.’
‘Hang on, then – I’ll go and check if they’re still there.’
She hurried off in the direction of her former employer’s sick chamber, where it took very little time to establish that at least one syringe had gone missing from its case. But when she returned to inform Michael of this news, a surprise awaited her. Roddy’s naked corpse was still lying on the bed, but otherwise the room was empty. Michael himself had vanished.
&n
bsp; ∗
It had been instinct, more than anything else, which had drawn him to the elaborately gilt-framed mirror on the bedroom wall. A mirror was a doorway to the underworld: Michael had learned this by now, and so it was the work of only a few moments to slide his fingers behind the frame and ease it away from the wall. The mirror swung open on a stiff hinge, revealing a black, rectangular cavity; and as soon as he stepped through into the darkness, it closed behind him widiout a sound. When Michael tried to push it open again he could obtain no purchase, and he knew that, for the time being, the only way to go was forward. He could see and hear nothing; but there was a stale, musty smell in the air, and the bare-bricked walls to either side of him were dry and flaking. Very tentatively, he put one foot in front of the other, and immediately realized that he was standing at the top of a staircase; but he had descended only three steps when the floor beneath him levelled out, and he could sense that he had now entered upon a wider space. He took six paces to his right, and found himself touching a wall: this time it was smooth and plastered. He started edging around this wall, and after taking two changes of direction and bumping into something heavy – a table, perhaps – his hands touched upon the very thing that he had been praying for: a light switch. And, miraculously, it worked.
Michael was standing in a very narrow but high-ceilinged chamber, apparently built into the thickness of the wall. Besides the short staircase he had just descended, there was also a tiny doorway leading off to the left. Standing against one of the walls, but large enough to take up most of the available space, was a desk; and placed on top of it, a heavy, unwieldy set of radio apparatus. The desk and the radio were thick with dust, and in the four or five decades (so Michael hazarded) since they had last been touched, whole dynasties of spiders had been busy weaving blanket upon blanket of fine, powdery webs. The room was windowless; but a thin trail of aerial wire could be seen running up the wall and through a hole in the ceiling, presumably to emerge on the roof of the house itself.
‘So this is where you did it, you cunning devil,’ Michael muttered. ‘A regular litde back room boy!’
