Hand in Glove (14 page)

R O B E R T G O D D A R D

“So he was.”

“Then where’s the room for doubt?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps there isn’t any. Let’s wait and see what Frank Griffith has to say.”

“If anything, you mean.”

“Yes.
If
.”

Charlotte fell asleep that night rehearsing in her head all the ifs and buts and maybes Beatrix’s death had led her into. If Fairfax-Vane was innocent, as his brother claimed . . . But how could he be . . . ? Maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth . . . If he was, Beatrix had been murdered for an altogether different reason than they thought . . .

But what reason . . . ? Maybe, just maybe, Frank Griffith knew the answer . . .

Early the following afternoon, Derek Fairfax faced his brother across a bare table in the grim and echoing visiting room at Lewes Prison.

Colin was nearing the end of his fourth week in custody and had visibly deteriorated since Derek had last seen him. There were dark bags under his eyes and his face had lost its normal high colour and acquired instead a grey and clammy pallor. More worrying still was the faint but detectable tremor in his hand as he rubbed at his unshaven chin.

“You don’t look well, Colin.”

“I might perk up if you brought me some good news.”

“I only wish I could. But so far my letters have been ignored.”

Colin snorted. “Bloody letters! Of course they’ve been ignored.”

“Well, if you’ve a better idea . . .”

“Maybe I have. Give it up, Derek. I’ll be committed for trial next week. Just let it happen. Wash your hands of the whole thing.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“Unless you already have. Is that it?” Colin’s tone had altered now, self-pity giving way to sarcasm. “Perhaps you’re just stringing me along. Telling me you’re straining every sinew on my behalf when in reality you’re sitting back and rubbing your hands with glee at the thought of being rid of me for good and all. Well, don’t worry.

You’ll get your wish. Ten or more years in this or some other hell-hole will be the finish of me, no question.”

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“Colin, for God’s—”

“Why not come out and say it? You don’t much care whether I’m guilty or innocent. Either way, you think I deserve what I’ve got coming. Just like everybody else.”

Derek knew hardship and frustration were what had driven Colin to throw such accusations in his face. But the knowledge did not make them any easier to bear. “This is ridiculous,” he protested. “I’m doing everything I can to help you.”

“Is that a fact? Well, you could have fooled me.” Colin leaned forward across the table, fixing Derek with his bloodshot eyes. “Or perhaps it’s just that help from you is indistinguishable from hindrance.”

Derek flinched. “Is that what you really think?”

“Yes. It really is.”

In Wales, Charlotte’s day passed listlessly, with no word from Frank Griffith. By the evening, she and Emerson had agreed they could leave matters in his hands no longer. They would return to Hendre Gorfelen next day, invited or not. Emerson’s argument was that if Griffith intended to co-operate, they would already have heard from him. If not, they had nothing to lose.

Charlotte was less certain. Griffith was not a man to be rushed or crowded. He had laid down the terms on which he might be approached. To disregard them was to court failure. Yet they could not wait indefinitely. Somehow, at some time, the issue had to be forced.

And so it was, but not by them. When Charlotte returned to her room after dinner, the telephone rang before she had even closed the door.

“Hello?”

“Miss Ladram?”

“Mr Griffith. I thought you’d never call.”

“So did I. But we were both wrong, weren’t we? Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Can you be here at seven o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“Seven o’clock?”

“Too early for you, is it?”

“No. Not at all. We’ll be there, Mr Griffith, rest assured.”

“You misunderstand. I mean just you, Miss Ladram. Not Doctor McKitrick. I’ll talk to you alone—or not at all.”

“But—”

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“I’m not open to argument. Take it or leave it.” He paused, then added: “Should I expect you?”

Charlotte hesitated only momentarily before answering. “Yes, Mr Griffith. You should.”

C

H

A

P

T

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NINETEEN

Driving alone through the green and empty heart of Wales early that summer Sunday, Charlotte felt as if the world had been newly made and revealed to her. The colours of sky and grass were clarified, the sounds of birdlife and running water magnified, till nothing beyond the hills where Frank Griffith had found and made his home seemed real any longer.

At Hendre Gorfelen, the dog sat waiting in the yard, snapping at stray flies that floated in the sunshine. It pricked up its ears when Charlotte drove into sight and barked twice, but did not stir even when she climbed from the car and walked towards the house.

The door opened before she reached it and Frank Griffith stepped out to meet her. He was bare-headed, his grey hair thin and crew-cut, and he was smoking a pipe, holding it oddly by the stem a little short of the bowl. His shirt and trousers were ironed and pressed, as if in honour of her visit, and she felt quite touched by the smartness of his appearance. But he was not smiling. Indeed, looking at him, she could scarcely imagine a smile crossing his lined and wary face.

“You came, then,” he said neutrally.

“Surely you knew I would.”

He nodded. “And McKitrick?”

“I’m alone, as you can see.”

“Good.”

“Why didn’t you want me to bring Emerson?”

“Because I don’t trust him.”

“But you do trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

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“Because Beatrix said I could. Quite a compliment, isn’t it?”

“Yes . . . I . . .”

“How did you know she helped me buy Hendre Gorfelen?”

“It was just a guess. She helped Lulu Harrington in a similar way.”

“And others too, no doubt. She was a fine woman. And a foul-weather friend: the best kind.”

“She came here every year?”

“Yes. Every year since I bought the place. Since
we
bought it, I should say. That was in 1953. How she explained her trips before the arrangement with Lulu I don’t know.” He glanced up at the sky, then said: “It’s going to be a grand day. Will you step up to the top with me?

You’ll enjoy the view, I think.”

Instructing the dog to stay where it was, he led Charlotte up a narrow path adjoining the entrance to the yard. It wound up between stone walls to a stile in the corner of a steeply sloping field, where sheep were busily grazing. Griffith set off across the field at an angle, setting a pace Charlotte found difficult to match. “Did you . . . farm before you . . . came here, Mr Griffith?” she panted.

“No. I’m a Swansea boy, born and bred. The first time I came to the mountains was on a steelworks outing. I knew then it was where I wanted to end up. Never thought I would, though. Never would have, come to that, but for Beatrix. It was a better cure for what ailed me than a dozen doctors had prescribed.”

“And what . . . did ail you?”

“People. People and what they do to each other.”

“Is that why . . . you didn’t want anybody . . . to know you were here?”

“In part. Beatrix understood. I don’t expect you to.”

“How did you . . . first meet her?”

They arrived at another stile on the farther side of the field. Here Griffith stopped and waited for Charlotte to catch her breath. The land fell away sharply behind them, a tumbling succession of stone-walled fields dotted with sheep and interspersed with thickly wooded coombes, all bathed in sharp morning sunlight. The mountainous horizon to the west created the illusion that this landscape was limitless, that nothing save ever-rolling hills lay between it and infinity.

Griffith re-lit his pipe and gazed about him, Charlotte’s question apparently forgotten.

“It’s a lovely spot,” she ventured.

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“It is that.”

“I was asking . . . wondering, that is . . .”

“When I came home from Spain in December 1938, I called on your mother to tell her how her husband had died. I’d written to her previously, enclosing his few papers and possessions, but it seemed only right to pay my respects in person. I’d admired Tristram Abberley long before I met him, on account of his poems. A copy of
The Brow of the Hill
was one of the few items of luggage I took to Spain. To find myself fighting alongside him was a great honour. So, naturally, I did what I could for him after his death. I visited your mother. And then I visited Beatrix. She insisted I stay with her at that little cottage in Rye for a week or more while she fed me up and listened to me talking about her brother. God knows what the neighbours thought.” He paused, then added: “Not that there
was
anything for them to think.”

Was that true? Charlotte wondered. Had she stumbled on an old and secret love affair? Beatrix had always seemed immune to such emotions, but she had also been adept at concealing what she really thought or felt. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Mr Griffith.”

“No? I rather thought I did.” He sucked at his pipe for a moment, then said: “Well, let that pass. When I left Rye just before Christmas, 1938, I never expected to see Beatrix again. She urged me to keep in touch—to let her know if I ever needed any help—but I no more took her offer seriously than I envisaged having to take her up on it. I intended to go back to Swansea, find work and forget everything about Spain.”

“Was fighting there such a disillusioning experience?”

“Fighting anywhere’s a disillusioning experience. But that’s no bad thing. The illusion is to believe it can be enough merely to fight.

I see that now. Now I’m too old for it to matter. I went to Spain because I was as short of money as I was of patience with a rotten, raddled system. Marked down because I was self-educated, well-read and not about to say “thank you very much” when a cigar-sucking manager told me I had to take a pay cut in the interests of the company’s shareholders. Betrayed by so-called socialists like Ramsay MacDonald.

Punished for the ultimate sin of not knowing my place. To men like me, communism represented the best—the only—hope for the future. A stand had to be taken. Against capitalism. Against fascism.

Against the entire class system. That’s why I went to Spain. And that’s

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why I was sickened by what I found there. Because it was no more a crusade than any other war. Because settling old scores and winning internecine squabbles mattered more to the Republican rag-bag of an army than ensuring the defeat of fascism. Which is why, of course, it wasn’t defeated. And why my faith in my fellow man finally was.

They gave us a farewell parade in Barcelona. And, when we reached Victoria station, they cheered us to the rafters. But they were nowhere to be seen when I returned to Swansea. Cold shoulders and dark looks were the only welcome I had there—from family and from friends. I was an embarrassment to one and all. I’d not only been stupid enough to go to Spain, I’d been inconsiderate enough to come back alive.”

“What did you do?”

“Survived as best I could. Served in the Army during the Second World War. Did my little bit to kill off fascism, in Germany and Italy if not in Spain. Afterwards, I drifted. I must have had a dozen different jobs in a dozen different towns before . . .” He tapped his forehead.

“Before something snapped here and I fetched up in a mental hospital, trying to glue it back together again. I mentioned Beatrix’s offer to one of the doctors, apparently. I can’t remember doing it. But he wrote to her on my behalf and she responded. She became a regular visitor. And eventually she became a friend. The farm was her idea for when I was well enough to leave hospital. And it was a good one.

Out here, I don’t have to listen to lies or breathe polluted air or swallow my principles. Sheep don’t pretend to be clever, you see. They’re just grateful for the life they lead for as long as they lead it. And so am I.”

“Was it you or Beatrix who wanted to keep your friendship a secret?”

“It was both of us. Beatrix because she didn’t want her family to think her gullible or sentimental. And I because I didn’t want people like Emerson McKitrick beating a path to my door looking for tit-bits of knowledge about Tristram Abberley’s last days.”

“What did Beatrix do here?” Charlotte hesitated as the impu-dence of the question dawned on her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“She tramped the hills. She cooked meals for me. We reminisced.

We laughed. We quarrelled. We spent time together.”

“Every June—for more than thirty years?”

“Yes.”

“And was this year different in any way?”

Griffith’s gaze narrowed. “In retrospect I see it was. She was 96

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distracted, often to the point of irritability. I blamed old age, which only irritated her the more.” The ghost of a smile crossed his lips.

“She said nothing about fearing for her life. If she had— Well, let’s just say I had no inkling of any such thing.”

“How did you hear of her death?”

“By her own hand. The letter Lulu sent me made it clear its despatch meant she had died suddenly and unnaturally—as I subsequently confirmed.”

Charlotte could hear her own heart beating rapidly as she asked:

“What was in the letter?”

“A note from Beatrix and a sealed package. The note told me what I’ve just told you—and asked me to burn the package without opening it. She said it contained letters from Tristram—”

“From Tristram? Then Emerson’s right. She did keep them.”

“Presumably.”

“
Presumably
? Surely you didn’t—”

“Burn it?” He looked directly at her. “What else do you think I did? It was Beatrix’s last request. I owe her the peace I enjoy here.

How could—” He turned away and his voice faltered. “How could I not do as I was asked?”

Charlotte stared at him for a moment, then up into the sky above their heads, where a bird of prey was circling slowly in the void. Had Beatrix stood here a few short weeks ago, she wondered, and planned all this? A paper-chase in which the prize could never be found. Blank pages for Ursula. An unopened package for Frank Griffith to burn.

And who knew what else besides? “Were you aware she left three other letters with Lulu?”

“I was not.”

“One to Ursula, Maurice’s wife.”

“I know who she is.”

“Well, would you like to know what her letter contained?”

“No.”

“Not even to satisfy your curiosity?”

“I’m not curious.” He looked back at her. “I know and understand as much as Beatrix wanted me to. That’s enough.”

“But why should she want you to destroy her brother’s letters?”

“If I could tell you why, there’d have been no point to her request, would there? Can’t you simply accept that she had the right to decide how they should be disposed of ?”

Faced with such a direct challenge to her inquisitiveness,