Take No Farewell - Retail (38 page)

Silence seized them all, even those who could not have recognized me, a silence that bristled with hostility. The painted likeness of old George Caswell seemed to curl his lip at me from the far wall. Then Victor snapped shut his valise, set it down before him and walked slowly towards me.

He was frowning, struggling as much as me, I sensed, to order thoughts and words. He looked thinner and greyer than when we had last met. His brow seemed more prominent and there was the suggestion of a stoop about his shoulders, as if he were weighed down by numberless anxieties. I could almost have felt sorry for him – if I had not come so sure of his guilt on several scores.

‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ I said, addressing the others as much as him. ‘But your refusal to see me at Clouds Frome left me with little choice.’

Victor stopped at the corner of the table and stared at me, his face a-quiver with competing emotions. Anger was prominent, of course, and astonishment at my effrontery. There was embarrassment as well, an uncertainty about how to respond in front of witnesses. And somewhere, buried deep, there was fear. I saw it glimmer briefly before he nerved himself to snuff it out. ‘What do you want?’ he murmured.

‘The truth. I know some of it already. How you forced Lizzie Thaxter to act as your spy and drove her to suicide. How you bribed Ashley Thornton to hire me as architect for
the
Hotel Thornton. I know all of that. And now I want to know the rest.’

‘This is absurd.’

‘Do you deny any of it?’

‘I deny all of it.’

‘Well, perhaps this will change your mind.’ I plucked Lizzie’s letter from my pocket and waved it under his nose. ‘Lizzie wrote this to her brother in prison a few hours before she hanged herself. It proves she was your spy, that she hated you for what you made her do and that she killed herself rather than continue.’

‘Impossible!’ He made a grab at the letter, but I was too quick for him, slipping it back into my pocket before it could come to any harm. Victor stepped back a pace and glanced round at his colleagues, as if appealing to them to side with him. ‘This is all complete nonsense,’ he blustered. ‘The letter’s a fake, nothing more.’

‘It’s no fake.’

Victor looked back at me. Some of his confidence seemed suddenly restored. ‘What am I supposed to have wanted Lizzie Thaxter to spy
on
, prey?’

‘Your wife.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Do you want me to spell it out?’

‘Since I have no idea what you’re talking about, you’ll have to.’

‘You were afraid she was going to leave you for me. And you were right.’

‘Strange she didn’t, then.’

‘Only the Thornton commission stopped us. Only the commission
you
arranged.’

‘I arranged nothing. And you haven’t a shred of evidence to suggest otherwise.’ He looked past me at Mortimer. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

At last, Mortimer stepped between us. ‘I must ask you to leave immediately, Mr Staddon. You’re not welcome here.’

‘I haven’t finished yet.’

‘You refuse to leave?’

‘I refuse to let your brother evade my questions.’

‘Then I have no choice. Miss Palmer! Telephone the police at once, please. Tell them we require their services for the removal of an intruder.’

I looked at Victor. Colour was returning to his face, a sneer beginning to hover about his mouth. Then I looked at the other occupants of the room. Those who were not mystified were indignant. All were frowning ominously. Even Hermione seemed taken aback by my recklessness. I felt my nerve and my confidence ebbing, sensed the rapid fading of the initiative I had seized. ‘The police station, please,’ I heard Miss Palmer say to the operator. ‘Yes. This is an emergency.’ Soon, I knew, my chance would be gone.

‘Wait a moment!’ I cried, striding towards the group gathered at the end of the table. ‘Mr Peto! There’s something I want to ask you.’

Grenville Peto and I had always disliked each other. I remembered him from the time of the robbery at his mill as a sour, grudging, pompous little man and the intervening years had only confirmed my assessment. Built like a barrel of lard, with a swollen neck overlapping his collar and a pair of pale eyes set in a round, florid face, he glared up at me with all the vanity and arrogance that only thirty years of unfettered power in a small town can breed.

‘Victor claims he had no more idea than anyone else that his niece and sister-in-law were calling for tea on the ninth of September last, doesn’t he, Mr Peto?’

‘I … What of it?’

‘You telephoned him that afternoon, didn’t you, after the ladies had left your house and before they reached Clouds Frome?’

‘No. I certainly did not.’

‘You telephoned him and that’s how he knew they’d be there, knew he’d have the innocent victims his plan required.’

‘I made no call!’

‘Yes you did. What I want to know is why you’ve concealed it till now.’

‘I’ve concealed nothing. This is outrageous.’

‘You’re mad, Staddon,’ put in Victor. ‘You must be to make an accusation like that.’

‘You deny it?’

‘Absolutely.’ Victor glanced at his brother, as if to reassure him on the point. ‘I took no such call. From Grenville or anyone else.’

‘You’re lying! And I can prove it.’ I turned towards the door, determined to call Spencer in to back me up. But he was nowhere to be seen. In the outer room there was only Miss Palmer, putting the telephone down as I watched and moving to Mortimer’s side.

‘They’ll be here in a few minutes, Mr Caswell.’

‘Thank you, Miss Palmer. Go down to the yard door and direct them from there, would you?’

All heads turned to look at me as Miss Palmer hurried out, all eyes swivelled to stare me down. Suddenly, I knew. Spencer would deny ever talking to me. Even if he did not, he would deny telling me about the telephone call. And the worst of it was that his denials counted for nothing, one way or the other. Every one of those around me – save Hermione – would support Victor whether they believed him or not. The tentacles of his power and influence bound them just as they had once bound me. And my freedom from their coils was only entrapment in something worse – the certainty of my own helplessness. I reached for Lizzie Thaxter’s letter, then hesitated. If it could not be used in court, because of the damage it would do to Consuela’s reputation, it could not be used here either. I lowered my hand to my side and looked from one to the other of them. Nothing gave. Nothing yielded. Nothing hinted at concession. Peto glared. Those to either side of him frowned. Quarton looked away. And Hermione touched my arm.

‘If you leave now, Mr Staddon,’ she said softly, ‘a great deal
of
unpleasantness will be avoided.’ I looked down at her. ‘And perhaps a great deal of harm as well.’

Hermione’s meaning was as clear as it was incontrovertible. I had mishandled my confrontation with Victor from the first. I should have waited until he was alone, should have remembered that witnesses would strengthen his resolve, not weaken it. Above all, I should have realized that to know what he had done was not enough. I had to prove it beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt. And that I could not do.

‘You’ll be helping nobody,’ said Hermione, ‘by waiting to be arrested.’

I nodded. Already, Mortimer was standing by the window, gazing down expectantly into the yard. My cause was lost and everyone in the room knew it. To remain was to pile folly on humiliation. Clenching my fists and looking neither to right nor left, I started for the door.

It was several hours before I returned to my hotel. I had filled the time trudging aimlessly around Hereford’s dark and wintry streets, hoping physical exhaustion would blot out the stinging awareness of my own stupidity. But at the Green Dragon there awaited merely another reminder of it. The clerk informed me, with as straight a face as he could preserve, that heavy demand for their accommodation meant they would have to ask me to leave in the morning. I did not argue. Whether the Caswells or the police had urged them to take such action hardly seemed to matter. For once, my inclination coincided with theirs.

I rose early the following morning and settled my bill immediately after breakfast. To my surprise, the clerk handed me a note that had been delivered for me late the previous night. To my even greater surprise, it was from Arthur Quarton, asking me to call on him at his offices in Castle Street before I left Hereford in order to discuss ‘a matter of extreme importance’. For a moment, I was tempted to ignore
the
summons, to drive back to London and forget the whole pack of them. But only for a moment.

Quarton, Marjoribanks & Co. occupied Georgian premises of an elegance befitting one of the oldest and most reputable legal practices in Hereford. The comfortable waiting-room, the neat walled garden beyond its windows and the pleasing prospect it commanded of the cathedral tower were all a far cry from Windrush’s hand-to-mouth existence.

Quarton did not keep me waiting long. He fetched me himself and ushered me into his adjoining office, a large but strangely welcoming room full of over-sized furniture and disorderly bundles of files. The door and floorboards creaked, the leather upholstery squeaked, the fire sang like a kettle and Quarton added a breathless wheeze to the orchestra of trifles. Bald, rotund and bespectacled, he wore a baggy tweed suit and a curiously contented smile. He positively beamed at me across his desk and would have succeeded, in any other circumstances, in putting me instantly at my ease.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Quarton? If it concerns yesterday’s altercation …’

‘It does, Mr Staddon, though not perhaps in the way you envisage.’

‘The Green Dragon has suddenly discovered it can no longer accommodate me. Have I Victor to thank for that?’

‘Yes. I believe you have.’ Seeing that I was, for the moment, silenced by such candour, he continued: ‘I should tell you, Mr Staddon, that I asked you to call here on Mr Caswell’s behalf, but not with his knowledge. I am acting, as it were, on my own initiative.’

‘To what end?’

‘You showed Mr Caswell a letter yesterday and claimed it was written by Lizzie Thaxter to her brother in prison shortly before her suicide.’

‘So it was.’

‘May I see it?’

‘Very well.’ I took it from my pocket and placed it on the desk between us, turned so that he could read the name, address and postmark. I kept my hand on it, nervous lest some trick were being planned. But Quarton merely leaned forward and peered over his glasses at it, making no move to pick it up.

‘As I thought,’ he murmured after a moment. ‘A fake.’

‘How can you possibly say that?’

‘Quite simply. Because I have one as well.’ He pulled open a drawer of his desk, slipped something out and placed it in front of me. It was another letter, addressed in the same hand, sent in the same size and style of envelope. I turned them both round to face me. The writing, even the ink, was identical.
P. A. Thaxter, Esq., co H. M. Prison, Gloucester
. And the postmark was exactly the same.
Hereford, 7.30 p.m., 19 July 1911
. With trembling fingers, I removed the second letter from its envelope and unfolded it.
My dearest brother, I am sorry, but I will not be coming to see you tomorrow, as I said I would. I have thought …
Lizzie’s words, in Lizzie’s writing, were there before me, damned by duplication. I looked up at Quarton.

‘What does this mean?’

‘It means we’ve both bought something which is not what the seller claimed it was. The source of your copy was, I take it, Mr Thomas Malahide?’

‘Yes.’

‘We should not be unduly surprised, I suppose. The leopard cannot change his spots. In Malahide’s case, crime and deception are probably instinctive.’

‘How … When did you come by this?’

‘Malahide came here shortly before Christmas. He told me what he no doubt told you: that Peter Thaxter had entrusted his sister’s last letter to him, that he had forgotten about it until Mrs Caswell’s trial was mentioned in the newspapers, that he now thought we would be willing to pay rather than have such a letter quoted in the press. I assume you were as worried by the damage it might do Mrs Caswell’s reputation
as
I was by the picture it might paint of Mr Caswell. Like you, I capitulated. The letter – and a substantial sum of money – changed hands. And Malahide left, well satisfied with his day’s work.’

‘How long have you known it was a fake?’

‘Since having it examined by an expert, who pointed out what I should have noticed myself. The stamp, Mr Staddon. Look at the stamp.’

I peered at it and saw nothing remarkable. Quarton returned my frown with a grin.

‘We have not always paid a penny halfpenny for the privilege of posting a letter, have we?’

Then, like Quarton, I saw what I should have seen before. ‘Good God,’ I murmured. ‘It’s the wrong denomination.’

‘Exactly. It would only have cost Lizzie Thaxter a penny to send that – if it were genuine.’

‘What have you done about this?’

‘Nothing. I have no way of tracing Malahide. I’ve wondered, of course, whether the contents are genuine – whether he copied a real letter, I mean, in order to maximize his profit by selling it to several people, or simply made the thing up based on information given to him by Peter Thaxter. On the whole, I’m inclined to think the former. The wording is altogether too much like what the girl would actually have written for Malahide to have concocted. But it’s definitely a feminine hand, so he must have an accomplice. Perhaps
she
has the imagination to have composed it. I doubt we shall ever know. Having defrauded us – and perhaps others – he’s unlikely to give a clue to his whereabouts by selling the letter to the press. At least, I hope so.’

So Malahide had deceived me. Somehow, it came as no surprise. It explained his persistence after my failure to keep our first appointment. No doubt he had congratulated himself on his cleverness. No doubt he had toasted Quarton and me – and anyone else who had fallen for his story – for the fools he had made of us. But, if so, he had done so too soon.

‘Why are you smiling, Mr Staddon?’