Almost Love (6 page)

“And when you arrived?”

“The state of the house wasn’t too bad at all. I’d been prepared for some real squalor, but there was only surface untidiness. I put that down to the companion’s influence. Jane something.”

“Jane Halliwell. Do you know her?”

“No. Claudia said that she was some sort of academic, though not, I think, an archaeologist. I forget her subject: current affairs or something like it. Anyway, she doesn’t do it any more. She’s given it up to look after Claudia. If you didn’t know Claudia, you might think the woman was on the make.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, Claudia’s not short of a bob or two, you know. Aside from what she’s made from her lectures and writing, her father left her quite a lot of money. He was a barrister, I think. However, I’d say that Claudia’s much too astute to be taken in by a confidence trickster; but what I mainly meant was that no-one would take Claudia on unless they really cared for her. The task would be too daunting!”

Tim grinned.

“So – tell me what happened when you first arrived. Did you ring the doorbell?”

“I didn’t need to. It was a sunny day and the door was wide open. Actually, Claudia had told me that it would be; I forgot that until just now. It didn’t surprise me; I think she’s a little claustrophobic. Years of living outside. And she’s probably not as steady on her pins as she was, so not having to answer the door would have been easier for her, and possibly less embarrassing. She’s very proud. She’d told me to go straight in, so I did. I just knocked once on her sitting-room door, for form’s sake, and went in.”

“Had you been to the cottage before?”

“No. Claudia’s been living there for only a few years. The last time I saw her she still had the town house in Stamford.”

“How did you know which was the door to the sitting-room?”

Oliver shrugged.

“There were only three doors leading out of the hall. I just chose the one on the left. If it had been the wrong one, I would have tried the others.”

“So you went straight into the room and she was already there? Did you notice anything unusual about the hall, on your way in?”

“Yes, I went straight in, and no, I didn’t. Did I miss something? I’m usually quite observant.”

“Not as far as I know. I was just checking – since the door had been left open.” The police had not included information about the spray of blood on the hall wall in the news bulletins that they had issued. Tim debated confiding in Oliver Sparham and immediately rejected the idea. The fewer people who knew about it the better, at least until they had established whose blood it was. Besides, there was no point in distressing him unnecessarily.

Oliver Sparham paused, and then continued.

“It struck me as being quite dark in there, especially at first, because I’d just walked out of bright sunlight. But I saw her immediately. She was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace. She has a very distinctive profile: a massive, square face, with thick hair cut short, almost like a man’s old-fashioned short back and sides, and a very short neck. But you’ll have seen the photographs.”

Tim nodded.

“Her head was drooped forward a little, but she lifted it with a jerk when she heard the click of the latch on the door. I suppose she had been dozing. I remember thinking that there was not much wrong with her hearing. She had a stick propped against the chair and grabbed it. I could see that she was struggling to get to her feet, so I told her to stay where she was. I must say that it was a shock, seeing her so immobile.”

“You told her to stay where she was? Were those the exact words that you used?”

“No, of course not. I said, ‘Dear Claudia, please don’t get up for me.’ Then I went across to take both of her hands and I bent down to kiss her.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Something quite clichéd, I think: ‘Oliver, it’s been too long’, or something like that.”

“And how did she seem?”

“Quite different from how I remembered her from the last occasion on which we’d met, yet just the same, if that doesn’t sound too ridiculous. She was as physically robust as ever in appearance – one would say ‘overweight’, if one wished to be unkind – but she seemed frail, somehow. I don’t mean her obvious difficulty with walking. It was more of a mental weakness. She wasn’t as certain as she’d always been whenever I’d been with her before. The Claudia I know has always dealt in absolutes. She was famous, as you’re probably aware, for sticking to her opinions and defending them against all comers. Not that we discussed much to do with work, either hers or mine, but I sensed a hesitancy in her, a diffidence, that I would never have expected to encounter. It was as if she no longer trusted herself. And yet there was that underlying anger that I’ve also mentioned. Am I making sense?”

“Not especially, though I think I do understand the contradictions that you are trying to convey. What exactly did you talk about? The surface conversation, I mean.”

“She asked me about the conference. I felt a bit embarrassed, to be honest: to have had an eminent archaeologist on our doorstep and not to have invited her even to part of it, seemed to me to have been a breach of etiquette. But I have to admit that I didn’t suggest it to Alex when she was putting the programme together and she is almost certainly too young to have known anything of Claudia beyond what she may have read in a few outdated textbooks when she was a student. By the time that Alex went to university, Claudia was well on her way to being marginalised – though not by everyone, of course. She had and still has – will always have, in all probability – her supporters.”

“Ah, now that does interest me. I’ve heard this said several times now: that her views have become ‘marginalised’. What exactly does that mean?”

“I don’t know how interested you are in archaeology, Detective Inspector, but the best way I can describe it is as a never-ending jigsaw puzzle. If you’re lucky, you find a few pieces that fit together. More frequently, you find one or two tantalising pieces that seem to belong together, yet present so many contradictions that you’re not sure. Perhaps worst of all, you may find some pieces of a puzzle that someone else has already tried to assemble – it may have been half a century ago, or even several generations since – and you are either seduced by their theories, thus reducing your ability to work out your own independently, or you’re utterly convinced that they are wrong and develop a new theory which flies in the face of all that they have said. Then you are bedevilled by the fact that their version is the accepted one, and the one that appears in all the books. And then there is the curse of history, of documentary evidence, patchy though it often is as far as archaeology is concerned. As I’m sure you are aware, not all documentary evidence provides a correct, unvarnished version of the truth; it is more likely to be the version that its author was anxious to sell to posterity.”

“As it happens, I do understand what you’re talking about, even if I operate from the other side of the fence: I studied history at university. It is, as Churchill pointed out, usually written by the victors.”

“Yes – or by the ‘church victorious’.”

“Indeed. But how does Claudia McRae – who was elevated to the title of Dame Claudia, after all, and whom one might therefore assume to have been received into the ranks of the Establishment at some point – fit in with all of this? She was hardly an outsider by the end of her career, was she?”

“Not in the sense that you mean. But you have to take into account the period at which Claudia became an archaeologist and how archaeology has since developed, as a discipline and as a science, during her working life. Claudia was remarkable for breaking into what until then had largely been a man’s world, for developing a theory that enabled archaeological classification to run side by side with what we know of the development of languages and even for helping to build that seductive bridge between archaeology and history which eludes most archaeologists, by offering a means through which its links with history can be explored.”

“But? I’m sure that there is a but in all of this?”

“But Claudia is of her time, nevertheless. Although she was not a plunderer in the material sense, she belongs more to the era of Lord Caernarvon and Howard Carter than to the school of academically-educated archaeologists, myself included, who came to the subject in the 50s, 60s and 70s or later. Claudia has had little formal education and certainly never studied at a university. That doesn’t mean that she isn’t intelligent; she has a formidable intelligence, but hers is not a trained mind. By this I mean that she has not been schooled to think in the same way as the last two generations of archaeologists have been taught. I should perhaps add here, for better or for worse. What I am trying to say is that although Claudia developed some fascinating theories – such ingenious ones, indeed, that they took the world by storm – she cut corners in a way that probably did not strike her as being intellectually dishonest. She did not exactly fabricate evidence, but she did tend to ignore things that did not fit in with the pieces of the jigsaw that she had discovered; and she was fiercely protective of her ideas once they had been published. If anyone challenged them, she took it as a personal affront. Claudia is a prima donna. She doesn’t want to be involved in collaborative effort, however prestigious it may be; she has to be the celebrity, the person at the head of it all. As she has grown older, she has seen it as her right to exist as a living legend, immune to any kind of questioning or scrutiny.”

“Do you think that the attitude that you describe could have created real enemies? People who would dislike her enough to want to hurt her?”

“Not physically hurt her, no. Marginalise her, certainly. But Claudia has effectively marginalised herself. As I’ve said, she’s not a team player and she has not attended conferences and symposia for a very long time. Archaeologists are notorious for not writing up accounts of their fieldwork, so if you take yourself off the lecture circuit, you quickly lose touch with what is going on.”

“Though you say she was interested in the conference that’s happening here?”

“In a sort of way. She knows a lot of the people who are here, myself and Edmund included. And she was curious about Alex, the secretary of the Archaeological Society and our conference organiser, as you know – but mainly I suspect because she doesn’t know her. If she was interested in seeing the conference programme itself, she didn’t say so.”

“What else did you talk about?”

“Most of the conversation was about people that we both know, but it progressed in a very desultory sort of way. She seemed confused. She muddled me with Edmund several times. And she kept on closing her eyes. She offered me tea on at least three separate occasions; the third time, I got up and made it myself, and some for her, too. That may have been her intention all along, perhaps, but I don’t think so: it was more as if she were running through the social niceties because she remembered them, but without any idea of how to carry them through; a bit as if she were drugged. She could have been taking some kind of medication, I suppose.”

“Did she at any point indicate that she intended to leave the cottage?”

“Not at all. She was anticipating Jane Halliwell’s return this weekend. She was really looking forward to it. I asked if anyone was helping her in the meantime and she said that her nephew was ‘keeping an eye out’, whatever that means.”

“She didn’t say anything else about her nephew?”

“No.”

“Does anything at all out of the ordinary spring to mind? Did she talk of anyone else, or receive any calls while you were there?”

“No; no-one; and no. My whole time there could barely have exceeded forty minutes. I couldn’t stay longer. I’d promised Alex that I’d get to the hotel by late afternoon to help here with various things and I’d already left the office much later than I’d intended.”

“How did you part?”

“I kissed her again and she gave me a quick peck in return. Claudia was never very tactile or emotionally demonstrative. I said that I would keep in touch better than I had in recent years and make sure that I saw her again this year. She just nodded. Nothing seemed to exercise her mind especially, except having the front door left open. She particularly asked me not to close it. She became quite agitated at the thought that I might forget.”

“I see. I assume that you did leave it open?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you came straight here to the hotel afterwards?”

“Yes.”

“At what time did you arrive here?”

“If that monstrosity of a clock in the courtyard is correct, it was at exactly 5 p.m. The clock was striking as I parked the car.”

“Thank you. Is there anything else at all that you can think of that might help us to find Dame Claudia?”

“Not offhand. If there were anything, of course I should tell you. I’d like to see her safely restored to her friend and nephew as much as you would.”

“I have no doubt of that, Mr Sparham. May I give you my card? If anything else should cross your mind that you think might be even remotely useful, please let me know.”

Chapter Six

Alex’s day had taken on a surreal hue. First of all she had awoken barely able to recollect the events of the night before, grateful not to find Edmund lying beside her in the bed; then she had had to prepare for the main day of the conference with a debilitating hangover, which she had just about managed to overcome when she had had to calm Oliver down enough to persuade him not to abandon his role as chairman; finally, there had been the whole Claudia McRae business. It was true that the morning’s programme had run reasonably smoothly, but there had been a listlessness, almost a mass depression, hanging over the proceedings. All of the delegates were in a subdued mood following the news of Dame Claudia’s disappearance, so that the morning had gone like clockwork in more ways than one: according to plan, but mechanically, as if everyone were merely going through the motions. Finally, just before lunch, Oliver’s policeman had arrived. Now lunchtime itself was upon her and she knew that she was going to have to face up to Edmund.

She had caught his eye across the ‘cabaret-style’ tables once or twice that morning. The first time he had looked away quickly, clearly embarrassed. The second time he had beamed at her an imploring smile, his blue eyes as open and bashful as an errant schoolboy’s.

Even more bizarrely, ‘boy’ was how he actually referred to himself when they each forced themselves to talk. It was during the ten minutes or so between the last session and lunch, a mini-networking break which most of the delegates used for one single purpose only. Indefatigable topers as they were, three quarters of them had hurried or drifted towards the bar, an extended arrangement set up especially for the conference which ran the full extent of the main residents’ lounge. She spotted Edmund sitting at one of the tables farthest from the bar, peering into his laptop. Quietly she moved across the room and sat down next to him.

He looked up as if startled, though she was pretty certain that he had been aware of her as soon as she entered the room. He flashed her another sheepish grin and then stared back into the depths of the computer screen again, as if his life depended on what he saw there.

“‘Never apologise, never explain,’ as my mother used to say,” he whispered, his voice almost too low for her to hear. “Nevertheless, I am sorry,” he added, “and I want you to know that I am not a bad boy.”

Alex shrugged in a way that she recognised as theatrical.

“We should forget about it,” she said. “Put it down to the fact that we’d both had too much to drink.”

Edmund bristled.

“I wasn’t that far gone,” he said. She didn’t know whether he was defending his ability to take his liquor, or whether he did really . . . what? . . . ‘fancy’ her? Sincerely wish to have an affair with her? Or an even more serious relationship? Or was this just his way of beating a retreat with as much dignity as he could scrape together?

She looked across at his computer.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Writing my annual report. An interminable process, always, but it’s been particularly bad this year. It’s riddled with politics – not so much about what we have achieved, but what we
could
have achieved if we’d had more money. But I’ve got to include plenty about what we
have
done, as well: this government’s not so much interested in checking that value for money has been delivered as in clawing money back, but if it has any suspicion that the former is in doubt, it will have no compunction in swooping down on the modest funds that we’re allowed. Why do you ask?” he added.

Alex smiled inwardly. It was obvious that she was making small-talk, trying to get them over the awkwardness of the night before.

“No reason. I just wondered why you had to spend every spare moment of the conference working. What’s that?” she added, as his screen-saver flashed on.

“It’s a motor-bike; one which I am almost certainly going to buy.”

“A motor-bike!”

“You don’t need to sound quite so surprised. I rode one when I was young.”

“Sorry! But that
is
why I’m surprised. People do ride them when they’re young. Then they have children . . .”

“Grow up, you mean? Or alternatively die on them, in some cases.” He chuckled sardonically. “You’re right, of course. It’s just a silly whim and I’m not going to try to defend it. It’s something that I want to do, though, and that I
am
going to do,” he added defensively, as if rehearsing what he would say to someone who might try to stop him.

“What does your wife think?”

“Krystyna? She isn’t very happy about it, but mainly because of the expense. I’ve told her that I will pay for it by backing horses, though, which has mollified her a little.”

“Backing horses?” said Alex, trying not to sound astonished. She was really shocked this time. She knew it was prim of her, but it was the way that she had been brought up. Backing horses was sinful, according to her parents: the way of the devil. No good could come of it. She began to see Edmund in a new light. Beneath that respectable, boring exterior there was evidently an edgy degeneracy, a desire to flirt with seediness, that made him seem almost dangerous. She was half-appalled, half-fascinated.

“I see that you’re scandalised,” he said. “For that, I do apologise.”

She felt foolish.

“I’m not scandalised,” she said, “but I need to adjust my ingrained prejudices slightly. My family were Methodists: swearing, drinking, smoking and gambling were all regarded as the handiwork of the Devil. Gambling, especially. I was taught that it was a pernicious habit and bound to lead to misery.”

“Well, that’s not far wrong, actually,” said Edmund reflectively. “Krystyna would certainly agree with you.”

Suddenly Alex felt queasy. She didn’t want to know any more about Edmund’s louche hobbies. She changed the subject.

“I didn’t know that your wife’s name was Christina,” she said. “I always thought that it was Christine. It’s a beautiful name: poetic. It reminds me of Christina Rossetti.”

“It’s not spelt like that, unfortunately. Krystyna is Polish. Her name is spelt with a ‘k’ and two ‘y’s.

“Quite exotic, then.”

“Perhaps, though you probably wouldn’t think her so if you met her. There are three of them, actually: Krystyna and her sister Birte, and a brother, Tomas. And they have an aged mother, Jelena, who is still alive. The two girls are very exercised about Jelena’s welfare. They try to rope Tomas in, but he is an evasive character: they give him tasks to carry out and, if he doesn’t want to do them, he simply disappears. They’re not an odd family, exactly, but they find it hard to fit in. Living in this country, I mean.”

“I see,” said Alex, though she was finding this conversation increasingly perplexing. Talking to Edmund was like peeling away the layers of an onion: he was dull, then amorous, importunate, then conciliatory, then ‘wicked’ and, finally, a man who spoke of his wife in a curiously detached way, as if she were a rather unsatisfactory specimen that he had been asked to dissect. He did not heed the edge that had crept in to Alex’s voice.

“It’s not her fault, of course,” he continued. “It’s the clash of cultures. It’s not so much that she can’t cope, as that she feels compromised. You can see it sometimes when there’s a conversation going on. You look at her, and she’s genuinely puzzled, as if she’s contributing to the dialogue, but not part of it, if you understand me. As if she’s saying what she thinks she ought to say, for form’s sake.”

Alex nodded. She could understand what he was saying now. What remained difficult, alienating, even, was his apparent detachment from his marriage. She supposed that this conversation – it was in truth more of a monologue – could have been prompted by a not particularly subtle attempt by Edmund to indicate that he was still available, to demonstrate that he was willing to pick up from where they had left off last night. But instinct told her that this was not correct. His next comment, murmured sotto voce to himself, confirmed her in this belief. It was more as if he were trying to work out the place that he had reached in life, to comprehend how he had arrived at where he now found himself.

“She is a very pretty woman. She was beautiful in her day. We were both in our thirties when we met, both thinking it was time we married. And she wanted children. Why she couldn’t find someone else to give them to her, I’ll never quite be sure.”

“Are you going in to lunch?”

Alex flinched, startled, while Edmund, still lost in whatever reverie he had just conjured up, looked up vacantly, his blue eyes clouded with some less than satisfactory thought. It was Oliver, leaning in to them across the wings of Alex’s lounge bar chair.

“Oh, Oliver, you made me jump!” she said, as lightly as she could. “Has your policeman gone?”

“Which policeman?” asked Edmund truculently. “Why are the police here?”

“Yes, he’s gone,” said Oliver. “Nothing to concern yourself about, Edmund. He only came because I happened to call in on Claudia yesterday on my way here. I thought that the police should know that I had visited her, as it was so close to the time at which she disappeared. But I daresay I wasn’t much help really.”

“Oh, God, yes – Claudia. I’d almost forgotten the reason for the lingering malaise that seems to have taken over this conference,” said Edmund spitefully.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” said Oliver, looking at Alex’s stricken face. “It has an excellent programme. It has delivered all that was expected of it so far. It’s just that the delegates are understandably melancholy about Claudia. Most of us have met her, after all, and some of us – like you and me – know her very well. When did you last see her, incidentally?”

“Oh, how should I know?” asked Edmund crossly. He packed up his computer, shoving it and its power supply untidily into his holdall, got up and headed for the French windows which led to the terrace outside. He stumped off, trailing his gammy leg slightly.

Oliver sighed.

“Curmudgeonly as always, I see, but at least he’s running true to form. Shall we go into lunch?”