A Grave Man (13 page)

Then there was Fenton – he missed having his valet bring him his lapsang souchong in the morning, knowing instinctively when he was awake and shamming sleep. The tea would be exactly the right temperature – not too strong, not too weak – and, ten minutes later without fail, Fenton would inform him that his bath was drawn. That, too, would be just the right temperature so that he might be tempted to sing ‘Stormy Weather’, which he did execrably but to his own satisfaction. All through the day there were these little rituals, culminating in a whisky and soda dead on six o’clock which he drank before dressing to go out to the club or to dinner. If he were not in the mood to go out, Fenton would grill him a chop and he would sit in his smoking jacket pretending he was as much an old fogey as his older brother, the Duke of Mersham.

He wondered idly if he could ever bear to live with Verity for any length of time. He loved her. Was it exaggerating to say she obsessed him? But, in many respects, a valet was much to be preferred to a wife – particularly if that wife were as messy as Verity. He stooped and with one finger lifted a pair of her knickers off the floor. He caught a scent of her body and – absurdly – looking round to see if he was being observed, pressed them to his face and breathed deeply. Annoyed with himself and faintly disgusted, he chucked them in a corner. Then it occurred to him that Fenton was due back from Margate the next morning and it wouldn’t do to have him clean up after Verity.

Edward knew some men would laugh at him for minding what his valet thought but he and Fenton had a relationship based on mutual respect for each other’s feelings. He retrieved the knickers and then went round the flat collecting up further evidence of Verity’s residence. He thought, ruefully, that she would never get away with murder. She left too much evidence behind her. He tossed all her stuff into the battered suitcase which, until yesterday, had accompanied her on every journey and then pushed it into a cupboard. Rather to his surprise, Verity, who normally did not care about such things, had looked critically at the case the day before and gone out and bought a smart one into which she had tipped a few necessary garments before catching the train to Swifts Hill with Mrs Cardew.

He paced about smoking, unable to decide what to do. Eventually, he decided he must get out of his rooms or he would suffocate. He went to the telephone in the hall, raised the receiver, hesitated and replaced it on the stand. He returned to the drawing-room and poured himself a gin and tonic though it was still only ten. Glass in hand, he walked indecisively back into the hall and eyed the black Bakelite warily. Finally, he made up his mind and put in a trunk call to Mersham. He had an excuse for bothering his brother and sister-in-law, he told himself. His nephew Frank was due back from New York – might already be back – and he could show avuncular concern without revealing he was simply at a loose end.

The Duke hated the telephone and employed a butler – Edward sometimes thought – solely to answer it for him. So it was with surprise that he heard Gerald’s clipped voice shout, ‘Yes? Who is it?’ The Duke always shouted down the telephone on the grounds that the person he was speaking to was too far away to hear him unless he did. ‘Ned, is that you? Amazing thing, these instruments. I hadn’t even picked up the what-d’you-call-it and there you are.’

From which incoherent babble Edward was made aware that his brother had been just about to ring him. ‘I say, Gerald – what’s the news of young Frank?’

‘Well, that’s exactly what I was telephoning you about. Are you still there?’ There was a sound, which might have been the telephone being shaken, and then the Duke’s voice again even louder. ‘Can you hear me?. You know how I hate these bally things. We are at our wits’ end and . . . and . . .’

‘Hang on a minute, Gerry. Is Frank ill? Where is he?’

‘He’s here at Mersham – arrived two days ago. Of course he’s not ill. Why should he be ill? He’s just been on holiday.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Oh dash it! We don’t know what the problem is. He just lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling . . .’

‘Is he eating?’

‘Not according to his mother. I can’t say I have noticed anything.’

‘Sounds to me he’s in love.’

There was a strangled cry at the other end of the line. ‘Whatd’y’mean?’

‘I’m sorry, Gerry, but it sounds like a bad case of love. I know the symptoms – uninterested in food, lying about mooning . . . Has he said anything to you about a girl?’

‘No. I say, Ned, could you possibly come down for the night and talk to the boy? The thing is, he’s going up to Trinity – at least I think he is. But he keeps on saying he’s going back to America . . . says he is going to be an American. I ask you!’

Edward smiled to himself, remembering his own early passions which at the time had seemed of world-shattering significance. Could he now even recall the names of the girls? He closed his eyes and visualized a black-haired buxom girl who always smelt slightly of bleach – the daughter of a college servant – who had relieved him of his virginity. Now, what had she been called? Something out of a novel by Walter Scott . . . Ah! he had it: Rebecca. He sighed. Wasn’t there something . . . some disturbances called the Rebecca riots? He had written an essay on the subject for his tutor, G.M. Trevelyan. He realized with a start that his brother had ceased wailing at him and was calling for an answer.

‘You still there, Ned? Say, you’ll come . . .’

Mersham Castle – whenever he saw it after an absence – made his heart beat a little faster. He regarded it as his home. It was where he had spent the happiest days of his childhood. He had explored every cranny and, he was sure, knew it more intimately than his elder brother though nobody could love it more than Gerald. He stopped the Lagonda – as he often did – just beyond the gates, turned off the engine, took off his goggles and flying helmet and drank in the evening air. He lit a cigarette and contemplated the house, trying to pin down its allure. It was seven o’clock and the light was softening. The ancient brick had begun to blur at the edges as though it might one day vanish into thin air. He had never found adequate words to describe it and had therefore given up trying. Epithets such as ‘ethereal’, ‘floating’, ‘fairy-tale’, were used by visitors with wearying regularity but none captured the mystery of Mersham Castle, built over three hundred years ago by the Swedish lady-in-waiting to a virgin queen.

He recalled Duncan’s words outside Macbeth’s house – ‘This castle has a pleasant seat, the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.’ And how had Banquo confirmed his king’s commendation? ‘This guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet, does approve.’ He thought that, if ever he were to write a novel, he would call it
This Guest of Summer
. Then he reminded himself that all this had been a forerunner to murder. Duncan had been murdered by his host – an unforgivable sin. Was pleasure always bought at such a cost?

He tossed his cigarette out on to the gravel and restarted the car. To coax and chastise a nephew was surely not such a high price to pay for a night or two in such a place.

‘Ned!’ The Duchess kissed him on the cheek. ‘How good of you to come.’ Edward was very fond of his sister in-law and squeezed her hand affectionately.

‘Connie! How are you? I gather the boy is causing Gerald heartache?’

‘He said you diagnosed love?’

‘I did. If you leave us alone after dinner to play a rack or two . . .’

‘Of course, and he is smoking too much – in his bedroom. He knows it upsets me when he smokes so he tries to hide it from me but he would never make a very good criminal. His sins find him out. Isn’t that
Hamlet
?’

She was trying not to sound worried but Edward knew that Frank mattered more to her than anyone or anything else. He wanted to say that he thought the same about Verity – that she wasn’t adept at concealing her tracks – but restrained himself for fear of provoking embarrassing questions.

At dinner the Duke was silent except for barking an occasional remark at Edward with reference to the imbecility of the Government, the iniquity of death duties, the outrageous behaviour of the Duke of Windsor who, according to
The Times
, was planning to meet Hitler in Berlin, but was perhaps most bitter at the local council which was doing its best to prevent him improving the farm workers’ cottages.

Frank, who had greeted his uncle with a pleasant display of affection, had relapsed into dreamy silence. Edward eyed him speculatively as he made conversation with Connie on anodyne subjects such as the village fête and the new vicar who was said to be ‘high church’.

With dinner at an end, Edward suggested a game of billiards to his nephew before they turned in. He hoped the invitation did not sound too premeditated.

They strolled downstairs to the billiard room, which was cool and restful.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ Frank said, a silver cigarette lighter in his hand. Edward was chalking his cue.

‘Not at all, old chap.’ Edward had given up trying to stop him smoking. After all, who was he to preach? He had smoked his first cigarette on his tenth birthday and had been sick as he leant over to blow out the candles on his cake. As far as he knew, it had not done him any harm in the long run. For fifteen minutes there was only the calming click of ivory ball cannonading with ivory ball to break the silence. Edward was content to let his nephew begin the conversation. Frank was playing with the careless confidence of one who could not mind less if he won or lost and consequently won. Edward, who rather fancied himself at billiards and had won the Club tournament three years in a row, could not hit a thing. Missing an easy pot, he threw down his cue in exasperation and went over to the side table to pour himself a brandy. Still not wanting to ask Frank directly if he were in love and, if so, with whom, he asked how he had got on in New York. The boy had been acting as a dogsbody for Lord Benyon.

‘Bad business – Benyon being killed like that,’ he said. ‘Is it wrong to thank God that you remained in New York and did not accompany him to Germany?’

‘Yes,’ Frank said, showing genuine emotion for the first time, ‘that was horrible. No one seems to know how it happened. Could he have been . . . assassinated, do you think? After all, they tried to kill him on the
Queen Mary
.’

Edward was dubious. ‘They would have had better opportunities and, anyway, they had no motive to kill him, once it became known that Roosevelt would not help us rearm. In any case, they would not have deliberately destroyed the pride of their air force. The Hindenburg was a flying advertisement for German air superiority.’

‘He was very good to me. Taught me a lot. I’ll always be grateful to him. I was sorry not to have been in England for his memorial service.’

‘Nothing happened in New York, then?’

‘How do you mean? I met a lot of good chaps. People introduced me to people – you know how it is.’

‘But you weren’t tempted to stay on?’

‘I’m going up to Cambridge in October, don’t you remember?’ Frank replied virtuously.

‘Yes, of course. I am glad to hear it. You’ll have a good time there. You missed the coronation. Your father looked very fine in his robes.’

‘Yes, I meant to come back but, I don’t know, I kept on putting it off. Missed the boat, you might say.’

There was a silence – rather awkward on Edward’s side but apparently not on Frank’s. To fill the silence, Edward told him a little about his meeting with Churchill – betraying no confidences – and asked him if he had heard the word ‘eugenics’.

To his considerable surprise, Frank seemed excited by his uncle’s casual question. He lost his otherworldliness and seemed energized by the word. He dropped his cigarette in an ashtray, put his cue down on the green baize and came to sit beside him in one of the battered brown-leather armchairs ranged about the room which Edward privately thought were more comfortable than any of the overstuffed chairs in the drawing-room.

‘How funny you should mention eugenics, Uncle. The fact is I met the most ripping girl in New York called Miss Schuster-Slatt. She has studied the whole question of race regeneration and she made me think, I can tell you. She’ll be in Cambridge in the autumn – the fall, they call it – which makes me quite eager to go up, don’t y’know.’

‘Is she reading for a degree or is she . . . ?’

‘She’s reading politics and economics, I think.’

‘Where did you meet her – Miss Schuster-Slatt?’ Edward asked mildly.

‘I was taken by this girl to a meeting of . . . now, what was it called?’

‘Which girl took you to the meeting?’

‘I really can’t remember. Some girl . . . what does it matter which girl?’ There was an arrogance in his tone which made Edward wince. He knew what it was like to be an English ‘lord’ in New York. Everything – and that included women – came just that little bit too easily for the good of one’s character. ‘Now you’ve put it out of my mind. No, I remember. It was called the League for the Encouragement of Matrimonial Fitness.’

Edward wanted to laugh. Instead he inquired, ‘Miss Schuster-Slatt was speaking?’

‘She was – on the sterilization of the unfit.’

‘And you found nothing . . . ugly about that?’

‘No, why should I? Surely it makes perfect sense to strengthen the race by weeding out the weak and the imbecilic.’

Edward recognized that these were Miss Schuster-Slatt’s words, not Frank’s, but it still made him unhappy to hear him parroting them.

‘You’re not a fool, Frank,’ he said sharply. ‘Surely you see what is happening in Germany? That’s just the sort of theory the Nazis use to justify the most terrible injustices. Who decides who is imbecilic? It is our duty to defend the weak – not destroy them.’

Frank seemed not a whit disturbed to find that he had awoken in his uncle something very much like anger. It had the effect of making him dig his heels in.

‘All right, but don’t lose your rag, Uncle. Sadie – Miss Schuster-Slatt – is not advocating murder, for goodness sake. She and her . . . colleagues are only concerned to improve the health of our society.’