Hand in Glove (17 page)

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could check if their encounter had yet exceeded its allotted span. “Is all this . . . this inefficiency . . . because of your brother, may I ask?”

Derek flushed. “Ah. You know about that, do you?”

“Of course I know, man. Everybody knows. You didn’t seriously expect to keep it dark, did you?”

“Well . . . No. No, I suppose not.”

“You have my sympathy. It can’t be pleasant to find your brother’s a criminal.”

“He . . . um . . . hasn’t been convicted yet, actually.”

“No. But he will be, won’t he? At least, so I’m told.”

“Told? By whom?”

Fithyan frowned. “Not by anybody specifically. It’s just . . . common knowledge.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Now, Derek, what it comes to is this. We can’t afford passengers at Fithyan & Co. We all have to
compete
and
perform
.” He stressed the two words as if by emphasis alone he could do both himself. “We realize members of staff are bound to have personal problems from time to time. We’re not heartless or unfeeling. But we can’t allow those problems to affect the company’s reputation. You appreciate that, I’m sure.”

“Of course.”

“Very well. So, can I assume you’ll be putting this . . . preoccupation . . . this . . . this embarrassment . . . behind you?”

“Yes.” Derek tried to inject some eagerness into his response.

“Yes. I honestly think you can.”

Fithyan smiled clammily. “Splendid, splendid.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Sorry I’ve had to wield the big stick, Derek. It’s for your own good, really it is.”

“Yes. I know.”

“After all, none of us is our brother’s keeper, as the poet said.”

“It wasn’t a poet, actually. It’s in the Bible. As a question. Am I . . .

my brother’s keeper?”

Fithyan’s grin crumpled into puzzlement, then became a glare.

“Really? Well, whatever, the point is made.” And their interview, his expression declared, was at an end.

Derek returned to his office as to a haven. There he could close a door against the world, at least for a while, and ponder the disarray to 112

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which his life had lately been reduced. Through no fault of his own, of course. Through no fault of Colin’s either. Yet it had happened.

And Fithyan had served notice that it could not remain so for much longer.

Derek subsided into the chair behind his desk and noticed three messages left for him on separate pieces of paper, all in the huge childlike hand of his secretary, Carol.
Please ring Mr Hamlyn , VAT

Office. Please ring Ann Nicholson , Radway Ceramics. Please ring
. . .

Maurice Abberley, Ladram Avionics
. Derek gaped at the words for several seconds before he found it possible to believe that they were what he thought. Maurice Abberley had contacted him. Of his own volition. Of his own choosing. Why—and especially why now—

Derek could not imagine. Neither did he try. Obedient to the instinct of the moment, he picked up the telephone and tapped out the number.

A blandly polite receptionist; then a honey-toned secretary; and then, with bewildering suddenness, Derek found himself talking to Maurice Abberley in person.

“Mr Fairfax. Thanks for calling back.” He sounded neutral, almost affable, as if he were conversing with a business acquaintance.

“Mr Abberley, I . . . I was somewhat . . .”

“Surprised to hear from me? I thought you might be. I suppose you wrote to me more in hope than expectation.”

“Er . . . Yes . . .”

“Some recent developments have made me think you may have a point, however. About your brother being less guilty than he appears, I mean. Perhaps not guilty at all, if it comes to it.”

“Really? Well, I’m—”

“Why don’t we meet and talk about it, Mr Fairfax? Compare notes, so to speak.”

“Yes. Yes, I’d like to.”

“I have to fly to New York on Thursday. So, how would tomorrow suit you?”

Another absence from Fithyan & Co. so soon after a reprimand would be to invite serious trouble, as Derek well knew. Yet how could he refuse? This was the Abberley family’s first gesture that could not be called implacably hostile. “Yes. Tomorrow would be fine. When and where?”

“Four o’clock. Here at my office.”

“Fine. I’ll be there.”

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Derek put the telephone down and leaned back slowly in his chair, too confused by the turn of events to summon a reaction. Just as he had despaired of being able to pursue the mystery of why Maurice’s former chauffeur should have been in Rye a few days after Colin’s visit to Jackdaw Cottage, a way of doing so had obligingly presented itself.

Just as he had virtually agreed to abandon his brother to his fate, it had become impossible not to make one last effort on his behalf. The ironies and contradictions persisted. And he was helpless to resolve them.

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TWENTY-FOUR

Jack Brereton had been a wastrel and a parasite all his life. He had tried to deflect criticism for this by remaining perpetually good-humoured, with jokes, anecdotes and racing tips forever on tap.

And he had succeeded, for his sister, Mary Ladram, had always been generous to him, ensuring his later years were not dogged by poverty and its close companion, squalor. He had worked with Ronnie Ladram in his younger days, but, since Maurice had eased him out of the business, had become a full-time idler. He rented a small flat in Earl’s Court, which served as an ideal base for his daily wanderings between pubs, clubs, casinos, betting shops and a stubbornly loyal handful of blowzy girlfriends. If not the black sheep of the family, he was certainly its grubby and disreputable old ram. He seldom left London and Charlotte, when she went there, never visited him. Yet he had expressed no surprise at her request to bring Emerson McKitrick to see him. It had merely confirmed his opinion of himself as somebody everybody wanted to meet, however often they tried to deny it.

Even if Jack’s flat had been large enough for cat-swinging, which it was not, his standards of housekeeping would have ruled out the entertainment of guests. Accordingly, he escorted Charlotte and Emerson round the corner to one of his homes from home, a tiny mews pub full of polished wood and smoked glass, where he was greeted with sarcastic familiarity. Installed in a corner with a double 114

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scotch and a packet of Senior Service cigarettes, he proved as talkative as Charlotte had anticipated. The difficulty, indeed, was confining him to what they were interested in, for his reminiscences tended to jumble together different people, places and times with little sense of sequence or relevance.

“Tristram was hero-material, all right, no question about it. Not my type, though. Give me Compton and Edrich any day. We lived in Knightsbridge then. Handy for the park, if not for much else.

Tristram took me up to Speakers’ Corner sometimes. He liked listening to the fanatics ranting about the millennium and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not my idea of fun, I can tell you.”

“About his death, Uncle Jack . . .”

“Mmm? Oh, I can’t remember much. A letter from the British Consul in Tarragona broke the news. His belongings followed later.

Mary was pretty cut up, as you’d expect. Can’t say I was. Beatrix came up from Rye to comfort her. Beatrix herself took it on the chin. Well, that’s the sort she was. They don’t make them like her any more. Just as well, perhaps, eh? I remember her giving what-for to a gypsy once who tried to curse her because she wouldn’t buy any lavender. My God, but that was a set-to. You should have—”

“What about Frank Griffith?” put in Emerson. “Recall anything of his visit? It would have been December of ’thirty-eight.”

“No sense quoting dates at me, old son. As far as I’m concerned, they come boxed at Christmas and no other way. There
was
some grim-faced Taff who turned up on the doorstep one day, it’s true. But he wasn’t the only one. When he came, whether it was before or after the Spaniard—”

“What Spaniard?”

“Haven’t I ever told you about him, Charlie? Not exactly the Spaniard who blighted my life, but he looked like he’d blighted a good few others. About seven foot tall, thin as a shadow, with a hooked nose you could open a soup-tin on. Mary was frightened of him and I don’t blame her. He put the wind up me too. He wasn’t what you’d call the playful kind. Beatrix did most of the talking, as I—”

“Beatrix was there as well?”

“Of course. This was at Jackdaw Cottage. We spent a few weeks there during the summer holiday. The summer before the war, it must have been, because we were installed there for the duration come 1940.”

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“Can we be clear?” said Emerson. “Frank Griffith visited you and your sister in Knightsbridge in December nineteen thirty-eight?”

“If you say so, old son. Winter it certainly was. And Tristram hadn’t been a year dead.”

“Then a Spaniard came to see you while you were staying in Rye in the summer of nineteen thirty-nine?”

“That’s it.”

“What did he want?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I made myself scarce. He
seemed
to have known Tristram. Fought with him, perhaps. On the other hand, well, he was nothing like your Welsh friend. In fact, he was so
unlike
him—so arrogant, so icily courteous—you could easily have taken him for somebody who’d fought
against
Tristram. It struck me there was a touch of the Nazi to him.”

“You mean he was a Fascist?”

“Could have been. No Commie, that’s for certain. But I don’t really know. He was closeted with Mary and Beatrix for an hour or more. Neither said much about it afterwards. I think they were just glad to see the back of him. So was I. The temperature dropped by about six degrees while he was on the premises.”

“What was his name?”

“If he gave it, I wasn’t listening. Aren’t they all called Gomez?”

“Not Ortiz, by any chance?” asked Charlotte. “Vicente Ortiz?”

She noticed Emerson glance sharply at her and instantly regretted the enquiry. The man Jack had described did not sound anything like Frank Griffith’s
“cross-patch little anarchist from Barcelona.”

“Don’t think so. In fact, definitely not.”

“What sort of age?” asked Emerson.

“Oh, fortyish I suppose. I’d have said sixty at the time, but you know how any adult looks ancient to your average twelve-year-old boy. I asked Mary later if he was some admirer Beatrix had picked up on her travels. She wasn’t amused. Fetched me such a clip round the—”

“What travels?”

“Didn’t I mention them? No, I suppose I wouldn’t have. Well, Beatrix was never a stay-at-home, was she? Except during the war, when she had no choice. She’d been to the French Riviera—or it could have been the Swiss Alps—or it could have been both—for a good couple of months that spring.”

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“The spring of nineteen thirty-nine?”

“Yes. That’s right. When she announced she was off, I was hoping she’d insist we all go with her. A jaunt to lay Tristram’s ghost, so to speak. I wouldn’t have minded missing school. And Mary might have met some handsome Frog to take her out of herself. But no. It was never suggested. Beatrix went alone. And we stayed put, with little Maurice screaming fit to burst his lungs every night and Mary mooning about and staring soulfully at Tristram’s photograph. Not a jolly time, I can tell you. In fact, I counted it as pretty mean of Beatrix to swan off on her own and leave us to stew. I suppose it was unfair of me, because she never was mean, was she? No doubt she had her reasons.”

But what were they? Charlotte wondered. An aimless sojourn among the flesh-pots was so uncharacteristic of Beatrix as to be completely implausible. With the example of her annual fortnights with Lulu in mind, it was easier to imagine a different destination and a secret purpose. Glancing at Emerson, she could see that the same thought had crossed his mind.

“She always did have, didn’t she?” Jack continued. “A law unto herself and a mystery to everybody else, our Beatrix. You know, I’ve often suspected she objected to publishing Tristram’s Spanish poems.

May even have delayed it happening. Mary said she’d never thought of doing anything with them until the early ’fifties and I don’t suppose there’d have been much of a market for them during or immediately after the war, though God knows we could have used
any
income, however meagre. His other two collections were out of print and we were all living in that flat in Maidstone where you were born, Charlie. Mary, Squadron Leader Ronnie, Maurice, me and you, of course. The Sardine family, Ronnie used to call us. A real card, he was.

But money slipped through his fingers like sand, so I don’t know why it took them so long to think of pushing out
Spanish Lines
. I’d have suggested it myself years before if I’d known the poems existed, but Mary never said a dicky bird to me about them. She’d been pretty protective where Tristram’s effects were concerned and I’d had my head bitten off too many times to pry, I can tell you. Besides, I had to watch my step after Ronnie taxied on to the scene. He might have persuaded Mary they should chuck me out and make me shift for myself. I couldn’t have—”

“Why do you think Beatrix should have objected to publication, Uncle Jack?”

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“Can’t begin to imagine. Not sure she did. But, if she didn’t, why wait so long?”

“Mother always said that, until she met Dad, she’d have found it too painful to rake over Tristram’s memory.”

Jack sniffed and toyed with his whisky. “Maybe,” he muttered.

“You don’t buy that?” said Emerson.

Jack shook his head. “Can’t say I do. You see, there were umpteen family conferences about it before it was ever announced, even to me.

Pow-wows behind closed doors between Mary, Ronnie and Beatrix.

My impression—hardly more, I grant you—was that Beatrix had the ultimate say-so, that she could have vetoed the whole idea—and very nearly did.”

“I don’t understand,” said Charlotte. “Surely, as Tristram’s widow, Mother had the right to do as she pleased with any poems he sent her.”

“Nail on the head,” said Jack, winking and pointing an unsteady forefinger at her. “My point exactly. What did it have to do with Beatrix? Why did they need her consent? Not just want her to agree, I mean, but absolutely have to persuade her. I’ve often wondered.”

“Didn’t you ever ask?” said Emerson.

“You bet, old son, but little good it did me. They closed ranks.

Reckoned I was making something out of nothing. Maybe I was.

We’ll never know now, will we? Not now they’ve all gone to a better place. One where I don’t anticipate ever meeting them.” Jack grinned at his own joke. When neither Charlotte nor Emerson could summon even the weakest of smiles, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

“Please yourself.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Jack,” said Charlotte. “We’re grateful for all this information. Unfortunately, it’s inconclusive. It leaves us—”

“At another dead end,” put in Emerson.

“Never promised it wouldn’t, did I?” protested Jack. “And talking of dead ends, my scotch reached one a thirsty few minutes ago. Any chance of a refill?”

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TWENTY-FIVE

Ladram Aviation began its commercial existence in a Nissen hut on a disused RAF station halfway between Maidstone and Tonbridge. Its corporate successor, Ladram Avionics, was run from a trapezohedron of blue glass and tempered steel amidst the reservoirs and dual carriageways of south Middlesex. Here, shortly before four o’clock on a still and muggy afternoon, Derek Fairfax arrived for his appointment with Maurice Abberley. Less than an hour before, he had abruptly abandoned an auditing commitment in Sevenoaks knowing that David Fithyan, when he heard what he had done, would be enraged. But, to Derek’s surprise, Fithyan’s likely reaction meant nothing to him. Nothing, at all events, whilst Maurice Abberley’s motives in asking to meet him remained so tantalizingly uncertain.

The interior of Ladram Avionics was as plush and sleekly modern as the exterior suggested it would be. Most of the staff looked as if they modelled in their spare time and the furnishings were ergonom-ically futuristic. A lift nearly as large as Derek’s office at Fithyan & Co. bore him smoothly and swiftly to the top floor, where Maurice’s pneumatic secretary was waiting to greet him.

The chairman and managing director’s office, to which she led him, was a suitably vast expanse of deep-piled carpet, with the letters L and A elaborately interwoven in the pattern. One entire wall was of tinted glass, through which the serpentine tangle of London’s road network looked as remote and serene as the canals of Mars. Maurice’s crescent-shaped desk was positioned so that this Olympian perspec-tive met his gaze every time he glanced up, as he now did at Derek’s entry.

“Glad you could come, Mr Fairfax,” he said, striding across the room with hand outstretched and smile conjured from nowhere.

“And so punctual too. I like that.” He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit and monogrammed tie and his voice seemed to fill the empty spaces of the room. Everything about him—his tone, his appearance,