Death of a God (19 page)

The heavy lids with their thick lashes of light brown came down, squeezed tight against the cheeks. When she raised them, the tears were gone, the eyes with their dazzling whites as bright as ever.

‘Fortunately, it was soon after that that he started going with Francesca, which took his mind off everything else.'

‘His first girl-friend?'

‘Let's say, the only one I knew about. I can't tell you how pleased I was. Not just because she was a darling, which she was – pretty as a picture in a demure, delicate way, a real little convent girl – but because she was so good for Loy. He blossomed, that's the only word for it. Sometimes, when I'd see them out in the street together, when they hadn't seen me first, I wouldn't know whether to laugh or to cry – Loy so manly and protective, she so sweet, a little nun, just beginning to awaken to the possibilities of what life might hold for a woman –' Mrs Felsenstein was silent a moment. Then finished: ‘I should have cried, shouldn't I?'

Jurnet proffered inadequately, ‘None of us can foretell the future.'

The woman hugged herself, tight; as if she felt the need of somebody's arms about her, if only her own. Said: ‘Falcone. Francesca Falcone. Does the name mean anything to you?'

‘There's a Mrs Annie Falcone runs the Red Shirt in Bergate –'

‘Francesca was her daughter – the last girl you'd expect to have a mother running a pub. I shouldn't say that, should I? – I'm sure it's a perfectly respectable profession – but the Red Shirt does have a certain reputation here in the town –'

‘Not much you can tell me about the Red Shirt,' said Jurnet in a closed, official voice.

‘I shouldn't say a word against Mrs Falcone. She looked after Francesca beautifully. I gathered she was never allowed anywhere near the business part of the premises. The living quarters were on top, but the way in was through a courtyard round the side – the girl never needed to come through the bar, or anything like that. Until she met Loy I don't believe she ever went out anywhere except to school or to Mass.'

‘How did she come to meet your son?'

‘Loy never said. I can only guess. They go in for a lot of live entertainment at the Red Shirt, don't they? Topless, and all that. And of course there are always groups singing there – new boys doing it for the beer, Loy said, in hopes of being talent-spotted by someone from London. It's the same today, except that I'm told the toplessness stretches further down than it used to. If you go past the Red Shirt at night, as I'm sure you know, Inspector, there's always a crowd of boys, most of them too young to be allowed in, milling about outside –'

‘So long as that's where they are.' It was the copper speaking.

‘I'm sure that's where Loy was. I imagine that's how he first saw Francesca, coming home from somewhere, and turning out of Bergate into the courtyard –'

‘Sounds likely. And was Mrs Falcone, do you know, as pleased about Loy as you were about Francesca?'

‘I don't know. I never met her till afterwards.'

‘Afterwards?' Jurnet rummaged in his memory and drew a blank.

‘After the girl was dead.'

Suddenly, Jurnet remembered. Giving no hint of it, he asked, ‘What happened?'

‘She and Loy had arranged to meet on Yarrow Bridge. They often met there – it's just down the hill from Bergate, but well away from the pub, and I suppose it seemed a romantic spot, the bridge so old, the rosy red brick, and the river flowing below. Loy told me they used to squeeze themselves into one of those little niches there are on either side – you know? – and talk; perhaps kiss when nobody was passing. I'm sure it was all very innocent.

‘The evening it happened, Francesca got to the bridge first. It was July, still light, and Loy, when he came along, saw her waiting there on the upstream side as he came down the hill. The bridge was deserted, nobody in sight. He called out to her, but she didn't seem to hear him because – or so he thought – something in the river had caught her attention and she was leaning over the bridge wall in order to get a better look. Those niches have a step up, so she was quite a bit above the brickwork. Loy called out to her again, partly in greeting, partly because he thought it looked dangerous and he wanted her to come away. Instead, she leaned over even further – as if, Loy told us, whatever it was she was looking at was disappearing under the bridge and she wanted to keep it in sight as long as possible. The next moment, to his horror, she had overbalanced and gone over the side, and she could only swim a couple of lengths, if that. The Virgo Fidelis didn't have a pool of its own then, and didn't like taking their girls to the public baths. Loy scrambled down the slope to the river, kicked off his trainers, dived in, and brought her to land.'

‘Good for Loy.'

Mrs Felsenstein shook her head. ‘Bad for him. Worse for Francesca. Either falling, or when she was struggling in the water, she must have hit her head against one of the bridge buttresses, and she didn't seem to know what she was doing. The currents round the piers there are very tricky – more than one boat has crashed into them, as you probably know – and Loy had a terrible time. Francesca was fighting and screaming – it's a wonder she didn't drag him under with her. When he was back home again and I saw him naked, I was shocked by the way his chest was a mass of bruises where she had pummelled him. But he held on like grim death. He wouldn't let her go.

‘By then, other people had come down to the river, and were getting ready to go in after them: but suddenly Francesca went limp, and Loy was able to get to the bank without help. The people there pulled them both out, and they gave Francesca the kiss of life until the ambulance came. It was only later, at the inquest, that we heard she must have been dead already when they took her out of the water. That blow on the head had killed her.'

‘What about Loy?'

‘They wanted to take him to hospital as well – he was in a terrible state, as you can imagine. But – one of the ambulance men told me about it later – when he heard that Francesca was dead, he let out a great shout, and he got up and ran away, just as he was, in his bare feet and dripping wet. They tried to stop him, they thought he'd gone out of his mind – which I suppose he had, poor boy – but he ran like a deer, they couldn't catch him, even though, by the time he arrived back home, the soles of his feet were slashed to ribbons.'

Mrs Felsenstein concluded with sombre satisfaction, ‘He came home. It was his first thought. I stripped off his clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, put him to bed just as he was, with a couple of hot-water bottles. Leo went for the doctor, but by the time he came Loy was asleep, a sleep so deep I wouldn't let the doctor disturb him. He slept for nearly twenty-four hours, and when he woke up he was a different boy.'

‘Different? How do you mean?'

‘It's not easy to explain.' Mrs Felsenstein wrinkled her brow, pushed her hair back from her forehead. ‘To say he'd grown up is too simple. It was the first time he'd had anything to do with death – and when it's the death of somebody you love! Also, he obviously had a terrible feeling of guilt: that if he'd only put out that little extra effort he might have saved her – from which it wasn't too much of a step, I suppose, to convincing himself that, to all intents and purposes, he was the one who'd killed her. It was Leo who, with infinite love and patience, finally got him to see that he had nothing to reproach himself with. Quite the contrary.'

‘You still haven't said in what way he'd changed.'

The woman answered slowly, testing each word to make sure it could bear the weight of her meaning.

‘In a way that completely astonished us. He became – harder's the best description I can think of. Dominant: even domineering. From being so quiet and retiring, he became the leader among the boys he knew, and among others he'd had nothing to do with before who suddenly seemed attracted into his orbit. Not that he became loud or pushy; just that, when he spoke, they sprang to attention. It was quite remarkable how they all deferred to him, and even more so how Loy seemed to take it all for granted. Leo said it was like Tamino in
The Magic Flute
. He had passed through a soul-searing ordeal, and emerged tempered steel.'

Falteringly: ‘I wouldn't want you to think that overnight he turned into a stranger. When the letter came from the Royal Humane Society to say they were going to give him a certificate for his courageous attempt to rescue Francesca, he tore it up and threw the pieces into the grate. It was summer, there wasn't any fire, and he went and got matches, and didn't move away from the hearth until it was burnt, to the last scrap. And when Mrs Falcone called round to thank him personally, he slammed upstairs, and wouldn't come down until she'd gone.'

Jurnet commented, ‘Knowing Annie Falcone, I'm surprised she let a little thing like that stop her. I'd have expected her to be up the stairs after him.'

‘Is she like that? She looked like that,' Mrs Felsenstein admitted. ‘Very handsome, but overpowering, with her blonde hair, and her clothes, and her shoes with such high heels. What a cat I sound! I'm so dowdy myself, I'm just not used to women who dress like that.' The woman shook her head, correcting herself with that devastating honesty which Jurnet had decided went with her eyes. ‘But I don't really think, at the time, I noticed anything about her, except her face. It seemed to have suffered a stroke worse than actual paralysis, a dreadful stoniness which left the features still able to move, but had frozen all the emotions behind them. I remember she sat there on the couch with her skirt very short, her knees showing, and a great big handbag on her lap – alligator, very grand, like a small Gladstone bag – and she kept snapping and unsnapping the fastener on the top. After telling me why she'd come she hardly said anything – just sat there snapping and unsnapping that bag. I don't suppose she even knew she was doing it. It was the only sound in the room. I don't know why, it sounded more terrible than silence.'

‘What about you? Didn't you say anything?'

‘I tried to. I let her know how much I'd loved Francesca, how happy I'd been for Loy to have her for a friend: how even her short life had made the world a better place. After a while, she snapped her handbag shut, got up from the couch and said, ‘‘Tell your son I'll say thank you some other time,'' and went. At the door she turned and kissed me, so I can only hope I'd given her some comfort. Her lips were very cold, I remember, and when Loy came downstairs again, after she'd finally left, he looked at me, burst out laughing, and told me to go and wash my face. She'd left a great smear of lipstick on my cheek.'

‘Did Loy find himself another girl-friend?'

At the sink again, Mrs Felsenstein turned on the tap and began to wash up the coffee mugs.

‘From here on,' she said, ‘I'm afraid you'll have to ask those others you were talking about. It wasn't long after Mrs Falcone called that Loy left home.'

‘Some kind of family bust-up?'

‘Oh, nothing like that! I told you, he'd changed, knew what he wanted to do, and how to go about it. To Leo's regret, he'd never shown much interest in school – all his reports said how well he could do if he would only try, but he never did – and he left as soon as he could, and moved in with a couple of boys – well, it was a squat, really.' With an indulgent smile: ‘I remember Leo saying, if he wanted to live in a derelict house he'd only to move next door, but that wasn't the point, was it? The whole idea – and very natural, please don't think we didn't understand – was to get away from home, stand on his own feet. After a while, he moved on to Havenlea, and from there to London and a lot of other places.' The woman looked at Jurnet with a pride touched with sad humour. ‘The rest, as they say, is history.'

‘But he never lost touch?'

‘I told you. We were a very loving family.'

‘That money he was always on at you to take. How much was it, at any one time?'

‘It varied. £50. £150. That last time, when Mr Scarlett came round with the tickets, it was over £3000.'

‘Never as much as £13,000?'

Mrs Felsenstein stared at the detective in astonishment.

‘What on earth would we do with £13,000?'

‘Just asking.' Jurnet asked further, ‘That last time he came to see you, on the Tuesday evening, was he as affectionate as ever? Everything the same between you?'

‘Everything the same.'

Mara Felsenstein put the mugs back on the shelf. Her back was to the detective: he could see her shoulders shaking.

‘Loy!' she sobbed. ‘Loy!'

‘Have you eaten?' the Superintendent asked Jurnet with that mixture of irritation and concern which seemed at the roots of their relationship. ‘That lean and hungry look you were lucky enough to be born with looks even leaner and hungrier than usual. Do you just forget to eat, Ben, or is it some private bargain you make with that Old Testament God of yours? An ongoing Day of Atonement, not a morsel of food to touch your lips until the moment He sees fit to deliver your quarry into your hand?'

‘Actually –' Jurnet gave away nothing of his gratification that his superior officer actually cared about his physical well-being – ‘I was holding back on purpose. I've got a table booked at the Nelson.'

It was a lie, and Jurnet fancied the Superintendent knew it as well as he did.

‘They do a good roast beef and Yorkshire at the Nelson,' said the Superintendent, making his scepticism explicit. ‘Also a gooseberry fool which, whatever else I am, I am not. Starve yourself, by all means, if that's what you have in mind, just so long as you don't peg out before you catch whoever killed Loy Tanner.' He turned on his subordinate a look from which all goodwill had been expunged. ‘We don't seem to be getting on all that fast.'