Anything For a Quiet Life (27 page)

“No,” said Jonas. “That’s fine. I really am extremely grateful.”

Sabrina, who had been listening on the extension, said, “Well, is that your answer?”

“It’s a possible answer,” said Jonas.

Later that day he reported his findings to Queen who listened, with his face growing longer and longer.

“It now seems possible,” Jonas said, “that Fred – his full name my partner tells me, is Frederick Charles Blamey – could have worked, during the war, as an agent in Belgium. He’s about the right age and speaks fluent French. Also he struck me, when I met him, as a tough, self-reliant sort of person. And now we find that Brigadier Arkinwright, who had a job at SOE headquarters, thought he recognised him.”

“All right. He could have been. It’s not impossible.”

“Then I’ll make another suggestion. That Rainey and Humbolt, who fudged each other’s references, came over at the end of the war as soon as they could pack their bags. Because they knew that once the proper post-war investigations got going they would be revealed as undesirable citizens. Collaborators at least. Possibly more than that. They reckoned that they’d be a lot safer in England.”

“All right,” said Queen, “I can paint the rest of your picture. Blamey, who could have suffered as a result of their actions, gets after them. Waiting, incidentally, for more than thirty years before he went to Alfriston.”

“He was a very patient man,” said Jonas. “Like all successful secret agents and gardeners. And, anyway, what do we know about what he was doing during that time? Rainey and Humbolt might have been the last names on a long list.”

Queen looked at him with something like horror. Finally he drew a deep breath and said, “We started this and I suppose we shall have to go on with it.”

“Then you’ll have to get your exhumation order. If you discover poison and if it’s something which was available to Blamey and if you can dig a convincing motive out of the wartime history, then you’ll have some sort of a case.”

“That’s three ‘ifs’,” said Queen. “I wouldn’t be inclined to bet on our chances.”

Three days later, in response to a summons, Jonas went to see Chief Superintendent Whaley. He found Queen with him.

“It’s no good,” said Jonas. “Jock won’t do it. Particularly with a council election coming up. He says an exhumation would simply antagonise public opinion. It would be seen as pointing a finger at Fred. He was a very well liked man. Mrs McClachan, who is Jock’s niece by marriage, told him that he was not just a good gardener. An inspired one, she said. Before he worked for her she had been trying for years to grow asparagus. No dice. Then Fred came along and got her a bed of it growing
from seed
. A man with such green fingers, she said, couldn’t conceivably have dipped them in anything dubious. You won’t change Jock’s mind now, however hard you try, I assure you.”

As Jonas said this he got the impression that neither of his listeners had any real desire to try.

“Well,” said Whaley, “if he won’t, he won’t. And that’s an end of that.” The relief in his voice was clear.

When this was reported to Sabrina she said, “Saved by asparagus. What an epitaph for a gardener.”

“It’s all very well,” grumbled Jonas. “You make a joke of it. Whaley and Queen are only too glad to wash their hands of the whole thing. But that’s not what I’d call a satisfactory result. I like to know the truth. And now, I suppose, we never shall.”

“‘Never’ is a long time,” said Sabrina. “After all, it only took fifteen years for the facts about the Sylvester Cramm case to come to light. Allow me to give you a quote from your favourite author, Winston Churchill. ‘Truth is an uncomfortable creature to keep in the well against her efforts.’”

And in fact it was not fifteen years, but fifteen months before the truth emerged.

It was on an October day in the year following the death of Dr Rainey that Sabrina came into Jonas’s office with a letter in her hand.

She said, “Blamey is dead. Cancer of the stomach. When he knew he was dying he wrote me this letter which I will show you on the understanding that it remains entirely confidential.”

“Even from Queen and Whaley?”

“Specially from them.”

Jonas said, “Very well,” and picked up the letter, which was written in a surprisingly firm and educated hand. It opened without any preamble.

I am writing you this to repay certain kindnesses you did me last year. Not only selling my house and making my will for me, but showing me that extract from the
New York Herald
, which was, incidentally, reprinted in the British
Medico-Legal Journal
, available in the public library. A most interesting publication, I found. When you showed it to me I realised that you must have a shrewd idea of the truth and that it was time for me to move. Yes, certainly I killed Humbolt, whose real name, as you may have discovered, was Hervé Maxente. Also Dr Rainey who was René Claude. Both of them deserved to die. They took very large sums of money from the Germans for informing them about British agents for whom, supposedly, they were working. I have no doubt the British Government was paying them as well. This double-cross was carried out so skilfully that very few people knew about it. I did, because I got out of a safe house recommended by Maxente by dropping from a second-storey window. Incidentally breaking my leg in the process. Others were not so lucky. Claude was responsible for one of my closest friends being taken. The Germans were determined to get information from him. It took him eight hours to die. I reminded Claude of this when he was dying. The details are not of great importance. I cultivated Amanita Phalloides, the Death Cap fungus, in a bed against the wall at the bottom of the garden. All that was necessary was to add a few slivers to the field mushrooms waiting for that evening stew. It is a remorseless killer which destroys every liver and kidney cell in the human body, but it takes from six to eight hours to work, so I had to make sure that Claude did not go for help. He finally died just before six o’clock and I let myself out and went home. I had to be back at work by my normal hour, as I needed to root out the remaining fungi, which were in a bed I was supposed to be preparing for tomatoes, and burn them. If I had the time and energy [Jonas noticed that the writing had been growing more straggly, but still quite legible], I’d tell you of one or two other interesting episodes in the years since the war.

Then, at the bottom, “Goodbye and again thanks.”

A full minute had elapsed after Jonas had read the letter before he was able to say anything. Fastening on a minor point, he said, “He must have died a rich man. Who gets his money?”

“It all goes to a trust which looks after the dependants of SOE agents.”

“I see,” said Jonas. But that was not what he really wanted to say. In the end he managed to get it out.

“Did it never occur to you,” he said, “that by showing him that cutting, you were warning him that he was suspected?”

“Suspected, possibly. But in no danger when Jock Lovibond accepted my advice against exhumation.”

Jonas looked at her speechlessly. Then, “You
advised
him to oppose it.”

“Certainly.”

“Did you not consider that it was your duty, to the authorities, to the court, to the state, that this matter should be cleared up?”

“As a solicitor,” said Sabrina coldly, “my first duty was to my client.”

In the four years they had been established in Shackleton the lunching arrangements of Jonas and his staff had become, like many other things, a matter of habit. Sabrina took hers at the Central Café, with others of her sex and totem; more talking was done than eating. Jonas went to the Conservative Club and usually managed to get in a rubber of bridge before going back to the office. Claire brought sandwiches and liked, weather permitting, to eat them in the open. So far that year she had been lucky.

It had been an exceptionally mild spring. March was half-over and sunny day had followed sunny day with the wind blowing steadily from the south-west. Her favourite lunch place was the Dingle. This was where the Shackle stream frothed and bubbled its way out to sea over a bed of white stones.

It was a pleasant spot in any weather. The banks of the little valley were gradual on the Shackleton side, more sheer on the far side. The bottom was formed of smooth South Down turf, through which the stream had cut its bed. On the far side, a flight of steps ran up to the only human habitation in sight. This was the cottage of Francis Delamere, a meteorological hermit, who had roosted up there for nearly half a century, observing the weather of the Channel coast.

He discouraged visitors, but Claire remembered being taken up there once with Jonas, who had acted for the old man in a family matter. He had shown them his vast collection of weather maps, graphs and statistical records. A monomaniac, she had concluded, but harmless.

As she was thinking about him she caught sight of a figure moving on the knoll between the cottage and the cliff edge. Certainly not Delamere. Now that her attention had been attracted she made out that someone had set up an easel and was painting. She finished her sandwiches, crossed the rustic bridge over the stream and climbed the steps to inspect his efforts. Some of the amateur artists who frequented Shackleton in summer disliked being watched at work. Others appreciated an audience.

This seemed to be one of the latter sort. He smiled agreeably as Claire came up and stepped back from the easel.

About forty, Claire guessed. A face tanned by the weather, with wrinkles round the eyes as though he spent much of his time staring into the sun. His short pointed beard, cut in the Vandyke fashion, was beginning to show a sprinkling of grey. He had been painting in watercolour, using a simple palette. It was a composition of sea and sky, a chiaroscuro of blues and whites and greys. Claire knew little about painting, but enough to find the picture effective and attractive.

She said, “I suppose it wouldn’t be for sale, by any chance?”

The man said, “You would have to consult Gus Levy about that.”

“Gus—”

“He runs the Wardour Galleries. They handle all my work. You may have heard of them.”

This was said gravely, but there was a hint of laughter behind it and Claire realised that she had been stupid. This was not the sort of painter who set up his easel on the front and sold his pictures to bystanders for a few pounds. She said, “I’m sorry. Yes, I know the Wardour Galleries. They’re in Bond Street, aren’t they?”

“Correct. If you know them, do I take it you’re a Londoner?” He seemed to have abandoned painting for the moment and wanted to talk.

She said, “I used to work in London, yes. That was some years ago. I’ve become a confirmed Shackletonian now.”

“I can’t suppose you’ve retired.”

Definitely he was laughing at her, but she was not annoyed. She said, “My employer, Mr Pickett – he’s a solicitor – moved down here from London a few years ago and I came with him.”

“Not Jonas Pickett?”

“Correct. You know him?”

“I met him when he acted for me in an unpleasant dispute over the lease of my flat. That was one of the reasons I decided to abandon urban life and bought myself a caravan. A great improvement on a flat in West Kensington, let me tell you.”

“As long as the weather stays fine.”

“A modern caravan,” said the man firmly, “is proof against any vagaries of the climate. I can’t imagine why half the populace of our overcrowded, insanitary inner cities don’t take to them. They’d be healthier and happier if they did.”

“If you can spare the time,” said Claire, who found herself liking him more and more, “do please drop in. My name’s Easterbrook, by the way. Claire Easterbrook. We’re at the far corner of Middle Street. I’m sure Jonas would like to see you again.”

“I’ll do that. And since there’s no one here to effect an introduction, I must do it myself. The name is Wroke. Spelled with a ‘W’. Philip Wroke.”

When, on her return to the office, Claire told Sabrina about this encounter she said, “You didn’t really offer to buy the picture, did you?”

“Yes. But I saw that I’d made a mistake.”

“The last time I went to a Summer Exhibition at the Academy,” said Sabrina thoughtfully, “there were three Wroke seascapes on view. The cheapest, I seem to remember, was priced at three thousand guineas.”

“Then,” said Claire, “perhaps it’s just as well that he didn’t take me up on my offer.”

The faintest preliminary ripples of possible trouble had reached Shackleton that morning. The ladies who were lunching together at the Central Café were too engrossed in dissecting the character of the new rector’s wife to bother about it, but the stout estate agent who was partnering Jonas at bridge did say, “I hear they had a spot of bother with a nature camp at Portree. Three no trumps.”

Jonas was too busy trying to analyse this gross overbid to pursue the matter. So it was Sam who got the story first.

He took his midday cheese and beer at the Fisherman’s Arms. He was welcomed by the company in the saloon bar, partly from the dignity of his connection with the law (“Crafty old bastard that Pickett”), partly for his Rabelaisian wit and partly, no doubt, from the consciousness that this ex-fairground boxer and strongman could have slung any one of them out of the door with one hand tied behind his back.

On this occasion he was making no attempt to hold the floor. He was prepared to drink his beer and listen, for the conversation had taken an interesting turn.

“Heard about it from my cousin over at Poole,” said a gnome-like man who mowed the golf club greens. “Seems they nipped in at Portree. Small place, just this side of Walden.”

“When you say they nipped in” – this was a tall fisherman – “you mean they didn’t ask no one? They was just trespassing.”

“Difficult to talk about trespass, when you don’t know who the land belongs to.”

“All the land belongs to someone,” said the landlord.

“I beg to contradict you,” said a thin man whose glasses and manner of speaking had earned him the honorary title of Professor, but who, in fact, kept a live bait store. “The land below high-water mark belongs to no one.”