Authors: Jonathan Coe
CHAPTER SIX
The Crowning Touch
‘HE should sleep now,’ said Phoebe, as Roddy lay back on the pillow, his breathing gradually taking on a slower, more regular rhythm. She gently took the glass from his hand, set it down on the bedside table, and put the bottle of pills away in her bag.
Hilary regarded her brother dispassionately. ‘He always was a squeamish little thing,’ she said. ‘Still, I’ve never seen him perform in quite that way before. Will he be all right, do you think?’
‘I expect he’s just in shock. A few hours’ rest ought to take care of it.’
‘Well, we could all do with that.’ Hilary glanced around the room, and went to check that the window was securely fastened. ‘I suppose he’ll be safe in here, will he? There’s not much point leaving him sleeping like a baby if our resident maniac is just going to sneak in and bump him off the minute our backs are turned.’
They decided that the best thing would be to lock him in. Phoebe didn’t think that he would wake before morning, and even if he did, the temporary inconvenience of being held captive was surely of little importance when set beside his personal safety.
‘I think I’d better keep the key,’ said Phoebe, slipping it into the pocket of her jeans as they set off down the corridor together.
‘Why’s that?’
‘I would have thought it was obvious. Michael and I were tied up when Thomas was killed. That puts us in the clear, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Hilary curtly, after a moment’s thought. ‘In any case, my congratulations go to whoever’s behind this whole set-up. They haven’t missed a trick. Disconnecting all the phones, for instance. I think I could forgive just about everything apart from that.’
‘Preventing us from calling the police, you mean?’
‘Worse than that – I can’t even use my modem. First time in six years I’ve missed a copy deadline. I’d got an absolute corker for them, too. All about the Labour Party peaceniks and how the Iraqis would have run rings around them. Ah well.’ She sighed. ‘It’ll just have to wait.’
They made their way back to the sitting room, where Tabitha was once again installed by the fire, now preoccupied not with her knitting but with the perusal of a bulky paperback which on closer inspection turned out to be Volume Four of
The Air Pilot’s Manual.
She looked up when Hilary and Phoebe came in, and said: ‘Why, there you are! I was beginning to think you were never coming back.’
‘What about Michael and Mr Sloane?’ Phoebe asked. ‘Are they still outside?’
‘I suppose they must be,’ said Tabitha. ‘Really, you know, I find it hard to keep track of all your comings and goings.’
‘And there’s been no sign of Dorothy, I suppose?’ Hilary ventured.
‘The only person I’ve seen,’ said the old woman, ‘was your father. He stopped by a few minutes ago. We had a lovely little chat.’
Phoebe and Hilary exchanged worried looks. Hilary knelt down beside her aunt and began to speak very slowly and distinctly.
‘Aunty, Mortimer isn’t with us any more. He died, the day before yesterday. That’s why we’re all here, remember? We came for the reading of his will.’
Tabitha frowned. ‘No, I think you must be quite mistaken, dear. I’m certain it was Morty. I must say, I didn’t think he was looking his best – he was very tired and out of breath, and he did have blood all over his clothes, now I come to think of it – but he wasn’t dead. Not a bit of it. Not at all like Henry, or Mark, or Thomas.’ She smiled at the last name, and shook her head fondly. ‘Now
that's
what I call dead.’
There were footsteps outside the room, and Michael returned, with Pyles and Mr Sloane in tow. Hilary rose from her kneeling position and took Michael aside to acquaint him with the latest turn of events.
‘Loony alert,’ she said, in a loud whisper. ‘The old biddy’s completely lost it this time.’
‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘Says she’s just been talking to my father.’
‘I see.’ Michael paced the room for a few moments, sunk in thought. Then he looked up. ‘Well – who’s to say she’s not telling the truth? I mean, did anyone actually
see
Mortimer die?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Phoebe. ‘As I said, I wasn’t here when it happened. I’d gone back to Leeds for a couple of days.’
‘And was that your idea?’
‘Not really. He more or less forced it upon me. Told me I was looking under the weather and insisted that I took a break.’
‘And what about you, Pyles – did you ever see Mortimer’s body?’
‘No,’ said the butler, scratching his head. ‘Dr Quince – Dr Quince the younger, that is – simply came down that morning and informed me that the master had passed away. And then he very kindly offered to make all the arrangements with the funeral director himself. I wasn’t involved at all.’
‘But my father couldn’t be running around here killing people,’ Hilary protested. ‘He was confined to a wheelchair, for God’s sake.’
‘That was the impression he liked to give,’ said Phoebe. ‘But I saw him get up and walk once or twice, when he thought nobody was looking. He wasn’t nearly as ill as he liked to make out.’
‘I cannot find it in me to believe,’ the solicitor maintained, ‘that Mr Winshaw himself is still alive, somewhere in this house, and is responsible for all these dreadful murders.’
‘But it’s the only possible solution,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve known it all along.’
Hilary raised her eyebrows.
‘That’s a rather extraordinary statement,’ she said. ‘Since when have you known it, exactly?’
‘Well … since Henry was killed,’ said Michael; and then thought again. ‘No, before then: since I arrived here. No, before that, even: since Mr Sloane turned up at my flat yesterday. Or – oh, I don’t know: since I was first approached by Tabitha and started writing this wretched book about you all. I can’t say. I really can’t say. Perhaps it’s even longer than that. Perhaps it goes all the way back to my birthday.’
‘Your birthday?’ said Hilary. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Michael sat down and put his head in his hands. He spoke wearily, without emotion.
‘Years ago, on my ninth birthday, I was taken to see a film. It was set in a house rather like this one, and it was about a family, rather like yours. I was an over-sensitive little boy and I should never have been allowed to see it, but because it was supposed to be a comedy my parents thought it would be all right. It wasn’t their fault. They could never have known the effect it was going to have. I know it sounds hard to believe, but it was … well, easily the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d never seen anything like it before. And then half-way through – less than half-way through, probably – my mother made us get up and leave. She said we had to go home. And so we left: we left and I never found out what happened in the end. All I could do was wonder about it, for years afterwards.’
‘Enchanting though I find these childhood reminiscences,’ Hilary interrupted, ‘I can’t help thinking you’ve chosen an odd time to share them with us.’
‘I’ve seen the film since then, you understand,’ said Michael, apparently not having heard her. ‘I’ve got it on video. I know how the story works out: that’s how I know that Mortimer’s still alive. But that isn’t the point. It was never enough, being able to see it whenever I wanted: because I wasn’t just
watching
it, that day. I was
living
it: that’s the feeling I thought would never come back, the one I’ve been waiting to recapture. And now it’s happening. It’s started. All you people’ – he gestured at the circle of attentive faces – ‘you’re all characters in my film, you see. Whether you realize it or not, that’s what you are.’
‘Just like Alice, and the Red King’s dream,’ Tabitha chipped in.
‘Exactly.’
‘If I may make a suggestion, Michael,’ said Hilary, in a sweet tone of voice which rapidly turned sour, ‘why don’t you and Aunt Tabitha retire to a quiet corner together, for a private meeting of Nutters Anonymous, while the rest of us apply our minds to the trifling little question of how we’re going to get through the rest of the night without being slashed to ribbons?’
‘Hear hear,’ said Mr Sloane.
‘We all seem to be forgetting, apart from anything else, that according to the local police there’s an escaped killer in the area. Forgive me for being so prosaic, but I can’t help thinking that this has slightly more bearing on our predicament than Mr Owen’s admittedly diverting fairy stories.’
‘That business with the policeman was all a red herring,’ said Michael.
‘What’s this? Another theory? Why, the man’s a perfect magician! What’s it to be this time, Michael – Plan Nine from Outer Space? Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolf Man?’
‘Mr Sloane and I have been out to check the driveway,’ Michael said. ‘It’s covered with mud, so any tyre tracks would show up quite clearly. But you can still see my footprints: they’re the most recent marks on the drive. There’s been no police car here since I arrived.’
Hilary seemed momentarily chastened. ‘Well you saw this policeman, and so did Mark and Dorothy. Are you saying he was an impostor?’
‘I think it was Mortimer himself. I only ever met your father once, so I can’t be sure.
They
, of course, hadn’t seen him for years. But it’s what happens in the film. The man who’s supposed to be dead turns up and pretends to be a policeman, to throw them off the scent.’
‘I don’t know about anybody else, but my head’s beginning to spin with all this theorizing,’ said Mr Sloane, breaking the uneasy silence which followed this exchange. ‘I propose that we all go to our rooms, lock the doors, and stay put until the storm blows over. Explanations can wait until the morning.’
‘What a splendid idea,’ said Tabitha. ‘I’m quite worn out, I must say. I wonder if someone would be so good as to fill me a hot-water bottle, before they retire? This house seems so frightfully chilly tonight.’
Phoebe said that she would take care of it, while Michael, Pyles and Mr Sloane decided to make one final search of the house, to see if there was any sign of Dorothy.
‘We still haven’t talked about your book, Michael,’ Tabitha reminded him, just as he was about to leave. ‘Now you won’t disappoint me tomorrow, will you? I’ve been looking forward to it for so long. So very, very long. It will be just like talking to your father again.’
Michael stopped in his tracks when she said this. He wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly.
‘You’re very like him, you know. Just as I expected. The same eyes. Exactly the same eyes.’
‘Come on,’ said Mr Sloane, pulling at Michael’s sleeve. He added in a whisper: ‘She’s not all there, poor soul. Take no notice. We don’t want to confuse her even further.’
Hilary was left alone with her aunt. She stood for a while in front of the fire, biting her nail and doing her best to make sense of Michael’s latest baffling suggestion.
‘Aunty,’ she said, after a minute or two. ‘Are you quite
sure
it was my father you were talking to in here?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Tabitha. She closed her book and put it away in her knitting bag. ‘You know, it’s very confusing, with everyone saying that he’s dead one minute and alive the next. But there is a way you could prove it beyond question, isn’t there?’
‘Really? How would I do that?’
‘Why, you could go down to the crypt, of course, and see if his body’s in the coffin or not.’
Hilary had never wanted for courage, and she thought that this plan was well worth putting into action; but the journey involved was not one to relish. She was determined to complete it as quickly as possible, and so didn’t stop to fetch her raincoat before unbolting the front door and throwing herself into the heart of the howling storm, which had been continuing now for two hours or more. Barely able to see through the thick sheets of rain, almost thrown off her feet by the buffeting wind, she struggled across the forecourt and made for the bulky outline of the family chapel, which stood in a small glade near the head of the densely wooded driveway. All around her the trees groaned, creaked and rustled as the gale came and went in a series of wild and unpredictable gusts. Very much to her surprise, the door to the chapel was open, and there was a light flickering inside. Two candles burned on the altar. They had been recently lit, even though the chapel itself appeared to be deserted. Shivering violently – half with the cold, half with apprehension – she hurried across the aisle and pushed open a small, oak-framed door which gave upon a steep flight of stone steps. These were the steps which led down to the family vaults, where generation after generation of Winshaws had been interred, and where one vacant but elaborately inscribed tomb bore witness to the memory of Godfrey, the wartime hero, whose body they had never been able to recover from enemy soil.
Hilary descended the steps in complete darkness, but on reaching the entrance to the vault itself, she could see a thin band of light coming from beneath the door. Fearfully, hesitantly, she eased it open: and saw –
– and saw an empty coffin raised on a dais in the middle of the chamber, its lid removed, and beside it her father, Mortimer Winshaw, standing at a rakish angle and smiling warmly in her direction.
‘Come in, daughter dearest,’ he said. ‘Come in, and all will be explained.’
As Hilary stepped forward and opened the door to its fullest extent, she heard a sudden whirr above her head. Glancing upwards with a short scream, she had the briefest impression of a bulky parcel falling towards her on the end of a rope: a parcel compounded – although she was never to know it – of all the newspapers for which she had written a column over the last six years. But before she could guess what had hit her, Hilary was dead: crushed by the weight of her own opinion, and knocked to the ground, as senseless as any reader who had ever been numbed into submission by her raging torrent of overpaid words.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Five Golden Hours
ALL was quiet at Winshaw Towers. Outside, the wind was beginning to die down, and the rain had dwindled to a soft patter against the windowpanes. Within, there was no sound save the reproachful creaking of the stairs as Michael made his way back to the upper floor, his final inspection of the house completed.
Whether from simple fatigue, or confusion at the dizzying events of the last few hours, Michael once again let the labyrinthine corridors get the better of him, and as he walked into what he had assumed was his bedroom, the first thing he saw was a large and unfamiliar item of furniture: a mahogany wardrobe, with a full-length mirror fixed to its open door. Phoebe had her back to the mirror and was reflected in it, bending over and about to step out of her jeans.
‘What are you doing in my room?’ said Michael, blinking in confusion.
She turned round with a start, and said: ‘This isn’t your room.’ She gestured at the hairbrushes and make-up laid out on the dressing table. ‘I mean, those aren’t your things, are they?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Michael. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t seem to get the hang of this place at all. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘That’s all right.’ Phoebe pulled her trousers back up and sat on the bed. ‘Perhaps it’s about time we had a talk anyway.’
He needed no further invitation to come inside.
‘I’ve been wanting to speak to you properly all evening,’ he said. ‘But the opportunity just never seemed to arise.’
Phoebe appeared to regard this as an understatement.
‘I know,’ she said, with a slightly cutting edge to her voice. ‘There’s something terribly distracting about mass murder, isn’t there?’
There was an awkward pause, before Michael blurted out: ‘Well what are you
doing
here, for Heaven’s sake? How did you come to be involved in all this?’
‘Through Roddy, of course. I met him just over a year ago: he offered to show some of my work at the gallery, and like a fool I believed him, and then like an even bigger fool I went to bed with him, and then as soon as he’d got what he wanted he dropped me like a stone. But while I was up here I met Mortimer. Don’t ask me why, but he took a liking to me and offered me this job.’
‘And you accepted? Why?’
‘Why do you think? Because I needed the money. And don’t look so disapproving about it: why did
you
agree to take on this book, for that matter? Artistic integrity?’
It was a fair point.
‘Mind if I sit here?’ said Michael, indicating the space beside her on the bed.
Phoebe shook her head. She looked tired, and ran a hand through her hair.
‘How’ve you been, anyway?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been looking out for your novels.’
‘I never wrote any more. I dried up.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Still painting?’
‘On and off. I can’t really see much future in it at the moment. Not while the Roddy Winshaws of this world continue to rule the roost.’
‘Well, there’ll be one less of them by tomorrow morning, at this rate.’ Not wanting to dwell on this macabre prospect, Michael added: ‘You mustn’t give up, though. You were good. Anyone could see that.’
‘Anyone?’ Phoebe echoed.
‘Do you remember that time,’ said Michael, not noticing her question, ‘when I came into your room and saw the painting you were working on?’ He began to chuckle. ‘And I thought it was a still life, when it was really a picture of Orpheus in the underworld or something?’
‘Yes,’ said Phoebe, quietly. ‘I remember.’
Michael had a flash of inspiration. ‘Could I buy that painting? It would be so nice to have – just as a sort of … keepsake.’
‘I’m afraid I destroyed it. Soon afterwards.’
Phoebe got up and sat at the dressing table, where she began brushing her hair.
‘You don’t mean – not because of what I said, surely?’
She didn’t answer.
‘I mean, it was just a silly mistake.’
‘Some people bruise easily, Michael.’ She turned around. Her face was flushed. ‘I don’t, any more. But I was young at the time. And not very sure of myself. Anyway, it’s all forgotten now. It was a long time ago.’
‘Yes, but I had no idea. Really I didn’t.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ said Phoebe, and then tried to rescue the mood by asking: ‘Have I changed much since then?’
‘Hardly at all. I would have recognized you anywhere.’
She decided not to point out that he had noticeably failed to recognize her at the Narcissus Gallery’s private view a couple of months ago. ‘Do you ever hear from Joan?’
‘Yes, I saw her. Saw her just recently, as it happens. She married Graham.’
‘That figures.’ Phoebe rejoined him on the bed. ‘And they’re both well, are they?’
‘Fine, yes, fine. I mean, Graham was almost dead when I last saw him, but I should think he’s recovered by now.’
This required a certain amount of explanation, so Michael told her all that he knew about Graham’s documentary and Mark’s abortive assassination attempt.
‘So now
he’s
fallen foul of the Winshaws, too,’ said Phoebe. ‘They seem to get everywhere, this family, don’t they?’
‘Of course they do. That’s the whole point about them.’
She thought a little more about his story, and asked: ‘What were you doing in this hospital over New Year?’
‘I was visiting someone. A friend. She got taken ill unexpectedly.’
Phoebe detected an abrupt change of tone. ‘You mean – like a girlfriend?’
‘Something like a girlfriend, I suppose.’
He lapsed into silence, and she suddenly felt that her questions had been intrusive and unnecessary.
‘I’m sorry, I – didn’t mean to pry … I mean, it’s none of my business –’
‘No, that’s all right. Really.’
He forced a brief smile.
‘She died, didn’t she?’ said Phoebe.
Michael nodded.
‘I’m so sorry.’ She put her hand on his knee for a few, embarrassed moments; then withdrew it. ‘Do you want – I mean, would it help to talk about it?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not really.’ He squeezed her hand, to show that her gesture had not gone unnoticed. ‘It’s silly, really, I’d only known her for a few months. We never even slept together. But somehow or other, I managed to … invest in her, quite heavily.’ He rubbed his eyes, adding: ‘Makes her sound like a public company, doesn’t it? I’m starting to talk like Thomas.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘The same thing that gets everybody, in the end: a combination of circumstances. She had a lymphoma, which could have been treated, but certain people chose to arrange things so that it didn’t happen. I’d been meaning to have a word with Henry about it, while I was up here, but … there’s no point, now, is there. Nothing … more to be …’ His words dried up and he stared into space for what seemed a very long time. Finally he said one more word, very softly, but with emphasis: ‘Shit.’ Then he keeled over and lay curled up on the bed in a foetal position, with his back towards Phoebe.
After a while she touched him on the shoulder, and said: ‘Michael, why don’t you stay here tonight? I don’t fancy spending the night alone, and we’d be company for each other.’
Michael said: ‘OK. Thank you.’ He didn’t move.
‘You’d better get undressed.’
Michael undressed down to his underwear, slipped between the sheets of the double bed and fell asleep almost instantly; just finding the time to murmur: ‘Joan asked me to stay in her bedroom once. I ran away. I don’t know why.’
‘She was very fond of you, I think,’ said Phoebe.
‘I’ve been so stupid.’
Phoebe put on her nightshirt and got into bed beside him. She turned off the lamp. They lay back to back, with an inch or two of space between them.
Michael dreamed about Fiona, as he had done every night for the last two weeks. He dreamed that he was still sitting beside her hospital bed, holding her hand and talking. She was listening to him and smiling back. Then he dreamed that he had woken up to the realization that she was dead, and started to dream that he was crying. He dreamed that he was reaching out in the bed and touching a warm female body. He dreamed that Phoebe had turned towards him and put her arms around him and was stroking his hair. He dreamed that he was kissing her on the lips and that she was returning his kiss, her mouth open, her lips soft and warm. He dreamed the warm smell of her hair and the warm smoothness of her skin as his fingers touched the small of her back beneath her nightshirt. He tried to remember when he had last had this dream, this dream of waking up and finding that he was in bed with a beautiful woman, waking up in the joyful awareness that she was touching him, that he was touching her, that they were dovetailed, entangled, coiled like dreamy snakes. This dream where it seemed that every part of his body was being touched by every part of her body, that from now on the entire world was to be apprehended only through touch, so that in the musty warmth of the bed, the curtained darkness of the bedroom, they could not but find themselves starting to writhe gently, every movement, every tiny adjustment creating new waves of pleasure. Michael was dreading the moment when the dream would end: when he would wake up for the last time and find himself alone in bed, or when he would be overtaken by a still deeper sleep and fall into another dream of emptiness and loss. But it didn’t happen. Their love was long, slow and sleepy, and although there were times when they did nothing but lie together, drowsily entwined, these intervals of huddled stillness were all part of a single movement, perpetual and effortless, during which they slid rhythmically in and out of sleep, rocked back and forth between dreaming and waking, and had no knowledge of the passing of time until Michael heard the grandfather clock in the hallway strike five, and turned his head to see Phoebe’s eyes smiling at him in the dark.
‘Kenneth,’ he said, ‘you’ll never know what you missed.’
‘My name isn’t Kenneth,’ said Phoebe. She laughed as she rummaged around in the tousled sheets for her nightshirt, then struggled into it. ‘Don’t tell me you were thinking about someone called Kenneth all that time. Although I suppose it would at least explain why you and Joan never got it together.’
She climbed out of bed and made for the door. Michael sat up, his mind still foggy with sleep, and said in an abstracted way: ‘Where are you going to go now?’
‘To the lavatory, I thought, if I have your permission.’
‘No, I meant – whenever. You know, as soon as all this is over.’
Phoebe shrugged. ‘I don’t know: back to Leeds, maybe. I can hardly stay here, at any rate.’
‘Come and live with me in London.’
She didn’t say anything to this at first, and Michael couldn’t see how she had reacted.
‘I’m serious,’ he added.
‘I know you are.’
‘I mean, I know you must like me. Otherwise –’
‘I don’t really think this is the time. And it certainly isn’t the place.’ She opened the door. He could hear her pause before leaving. ‘Slow down, Michael,’ she said: not unkindly. ‘We’re neither of us ready to make plans.’
A few minutes later she returned and climbed back into bed. They held hands beneath the sheets.
‘I knew you’d ask me to stay the night in here,’ Michael said, surfacing from some private train of thought.
‘Women usually find you irresistible, do they?’
‘No, but it happens in the film, you see. Almost exactly this situation. That was when I had to leave the cinema. And now that it’s actually happened, it’s almost as if … a spell’s been broken.’
‘All sounds very fatalistic to me. I suppose I had no choice in the matter, then?’
‘There
is
a film, you know,’ Michael insisted. ‘I wasn’t making it up, whatever Hilary may have thought.’
‘I believe you,’ said Phoebe. ‘Anyway, I’d heard about it before.’
‘You had? When?’
‘Joan mentioned it once: don’t you remember? That night when she made us all play Cluedo, and there was a terrible storm.’
All at once the memory came back to Michael in vivid detail. The four of them clustered around the table in Joan’s sitting room … Graham laughing at him because of the misprint in his review … And the feeling he’d had – a premonition, you might call it – when he’d found out that his character, Professor Plum, was the murderer, and it had no longer been possible to think of himself as detached, disinterested … To find yourself suddenly at the centre of things …
Then he remembered Tabitha’s last, enigmatic words, and light dawned.
‘I thought I was supposed to be writing this story,’ he said, ‘but I’m not. At least not any more. I’m part of it.’
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.