Rough Cider (10 page)
“They didn’t ask.”
“At some stage you must have figured how important it was.”
“Yes.”
“You were scared of speaking up?”
“Certainly,” I admitted. “But that wasn’t the reason. I wanted Duke to be acquitted, even though he was guilty. I wasn’t handing the murder weapon to the prosecution.”
“So you kept it all this time.”
“I had a loose floorboard in my bedroom. It went under there with
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
and some other secrets of my preadolescence.”
Alice eyed the gun thoughtfully. “Are you sure it
was
the murder weapon?”
“It was the only .45 U.S. Army-issue automatic found at the scene of the crime.”
My sarcasm rolled off her. “And it was loaded when you found it?”
“It stayed loaded until I got it home and learned the trick of releasing the magazine. There were five bullets inside, of the same type as the one fired in the barn.”
She gave a nod. “I saw them in the box.”
“That’s it, then,” I said with an air of finality, getting up from the table. ‘There’s nothing else I can tell you.”
I really believed I was about to show her the door. I’d scraped my memory almost bare, and it was a painful activity. I wanted to turn my mind to the present now. Just a quiet Sunday. The newspapers, a stroll down to the pub for a couple of beers at lunchtime, maybe some serious reading later. Next week’s lectures had to be faced. And I’d probably find myself ringing Val when she came off duty, to smooth the ruffled feathers.
Alice stayed where she was, drawing a circle round the gun with her finger. I might have guessed she wouldn’t be easy to shift.
I limped around the kitchen, tidying up, sourly brooding over ways to evict her. I had the feeling that even if I yanked her up from the chair by her plait, she wouldn’t take the hint.
“Want a lift to the station?” I asked.
I don’t remember what answer she gave, if any, because I was distracted by the sight of something through the window: a red Ford Anglia moving slowly up the lane. It stopped at my front gate. Two men were inside. They both stared out. There was some hesitation, as if they were checking the address. Then the driver’s door opened and there emerged a stout figure in a blue raincoat and one of those small green trilbys with a feather in the side. He peered at the house, made up his mind, and stepped splayfooted towards the front door. So much for my quiet Sunday.
C
lose up, he was even more gross. Features obscured in folds of blotchy flesh. Wisps of colorless hair for eyebrows. As so often in fat men, the voice was the compensating factor, fruity as wedding cake, sonorous, confident, with a saving hint of self-mockery.
“What a salubrious place to live, sir.” A quick revelation of baldness under the hat. “Digby Watmore,
News on Sunday,
and before you mention it, not in the least surprised that you never read the offensive rag.”
I shook my head. “There’s a mistake, I think.”
The creases formed a pattern of excessive concern. “Mistakes by the million, sir, I’m the first to concede. But the blame lies with the typesetters, not the reporters. It pains me to see how they multilate my copy, and I speak as a man who can spell diarrhea without the aid of a dictionary.” He waited solemnly for me to react, his small, opaque eyes locked with mine.
Trying to sound tolerant, I said, “Do me a favor. Try somewhere else, will you?”
He didn’t budge. He looked past me and raised the hat again. “How timely! The winsome Miss Ashenfelter, from Waterbury, Connecticut. Tell me, my dear, is this the gentleman?”
“Why, yes.” Alice confirmed it by stepping forward and slipping her hand around my arm. “I finally tracked him down.”
Digby Watmore beamed his congratulations, then ran his eyes appraisingly over me. “So! The little evacuee grown up. Enchanting. It’s a wonderful human-interest story.”
I’d already unhitched my arm from Alice’s. I said firmly, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s no story at all. I don’t know who set this up, but I want you off my property now.”
He put up a pacifying hand. “Rest assured, my friend, we’ll keep your address out of it. I don’t even need a statement.”
“You’re not getting one.”
“Merely a head-and-shoulders shot with Miss Ashenfelter. My photographer is waiting in the limousine.”
“Piss off.”
He stood his ground, unimpressed.
Alice spoke up. “Digby, would you mind if I had a few words in private with Dr. Sinclair?”
He dipped his head into his chins. “I sense that it might be opportune. I shall confer with the cameraman.” He made a wide turn and retreated.
As soon as the door was closed, Alice said, “Okay, I deserve to have my butt kicked.” Back in the kitchen, she stood in front of me, nervously tugging the hem of her sweater. “Theo, you’ve got to forgive me. I was so caught up in all the things you told me that I totally forgot Digby. I really planned to tell you about him.”
I said ungraciously, “Don’t bother. Just pick up your things, walk to the car, and tell him to drive you away. Now.”
She colored deeply. “No.”
It was like dealing with a defiant twelve-year-old, except that she knew I couldn’t enforce my instruction.
While I stood dumbly with my blood pressure rocketing, she added, “Listen, Theo, you don’t suppose I came to England and found you without any help, do you? I went to the newspaper, the one those clippings were from. They were really helpful. They tracked you down to Reading University and gave me an intro to Digby. He’s just a local guy, a free-lance who sends them stories from here.”
“And so incredibly cute,” I said, aping her accent. “A wonderful English eccentric who wants nothing more than a little old photograph. Have you ever read that paper? It wallows in sex and violence. Your chum Digby’s sniffing out a story here. It’s old stuff, but he’ll dust it off and give it a fresh slant.
MURDER QUEST OF GI KILLER’S DAUGHTER. I WATCHED HAYLOFT RAPE, SAYS COLLEGE LECTURER.
Is that what you came to England for?”
Alice countered with her own shaft of sarcasm. “So where would you have preferred me to go for help—
The Times?”
“Clear out, will you? I’ve got things to do.” I picked the plates off the table and carried them to the sink.
There was a long silence.
Then she announced in a flat voice, “If that’s what you really want.” She went through to the living room while I busied myself with the washing-up.
In a moment she returned with the rucksack hoisted, looking immense on her slim back. If you think I had a flicker of concern, you’re right. I couldn’t see how it would fit into Digby’s car.
She told me, “I’m sorry I was such a drag, but thanks for everything, anyway. I can let myself out.”
I nodded. I’d said enough.
Let’s admit that I did feel a twinge of something—guilt, remorse, I don’t know precisely what—as I watched from the window. That heavily burdened figure walking staunchly out of my life was, after all, Duke’s daughter. He’d helped me through the most difficult patch in my life. The fact that he’d killed a man didn’t take anything from his kindness to me. He’d good-naturedly filled the gap in a small boy’s life that a father’s death had left. I’d loved him with the passionate loyalty of a son. And when my evidence had helped to convict him, I’d been sick with grief. Yet here I was, twenty years on, cold-shouldering his daughter.
I turned away, not wanting to look anymore, and slumped in my chair. I reached for the Sunday papers. I heard the click of the front door as she closed it.
Although I had
The Observer
open and was scanning the front page, I wasn’t reading it. Something was troubling me, and it wasn’t just my uneasy conscience. There was a job I’d meant to do and hadn’t. I’d finished clearing the breakfast things, hadn’t I? I lowered the paper and stared at the blank, laminated surface of the kitchen table.
Then I remembered what I should have done: put the gun away. It was no longer there.
Alice.
Thieving bitch.
I grabbed my stick, hopped and hobbled the length of the passage, and flung open the door. She was already through the gate.
“Alice,” I shouted, “you’ve taken something that belongs to me.”
She hesitated.
I yelled her name again. I started after her. I could see Digby opening the car door. Wouldn’t
News on Sunday
just love to have a picture of that gun?
Alice had started walking on again, without even turning round. She reached the front gate and groped for the catch, which was placed low on the post. Tricky, against the weight of the rucksack.
I negotiated that path in about six strides, angling my stick like a ski pole. I reached out and grabbed her arm with my free hand.
I said breathlessly, “I want it back. You’ve no right to take it.”
She turned and gave me a cold-eyed look. “Who are you to talk about rights? It wasn’t yours in the first place.”
I said, “I made you a present of the carving. Isn’t that enough?”
“That was something else,” said Alice. “What are you afraid of, Theo?”
I didn’t answer. Digby had hauled himself out of the Anglia and lumbered over to us.
He asked, “What’s all this? Do you require the services of an arbitrator?”
I warned him, “Keep out of this.” To Alice I said firmly, “Would you come back into the house, please?”
Digby said, “What is the young lady supposed to have done—walked out with the family silver?”
I said, “Sod off.”
Alice was looking thoughtful. She asked me, “Can we do a deal on this?”
The words I’d used on Digby were almost out of my mouth again before I thought better of it. She’d outsmarted me. I wanted the gun back. If she handed it to Digby, my story would be headlined in next week’s issue:
MURDER BOY’S 20-YEAR SECRET.
She had all the top trumps. I was bound to fall in with her offer.
I nodded to Alice and tilted my head towards the house. We left Digby standing openmouthed at the gate.
Inside, she took off the rucksack. I moved forward to reclaim the gun, but she waved me away. “Don’t come any closer, Theo. I have reinforcements out there.”
“What do you mean by a deal?”
“I want you to take me to Somerset and show me the farm where it happened.”
I screwed up my face in disbelief. “Why?”
“I thought you’d have my number by now. I want to find out what really happened at that place.”
“I told it to you last night.”
She shook her head. “Theo, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I find it impossible to believe. I’m not getting at you personally.”
“What’s so incredible about it?”
She sighed. “Let’s just consider the gun. You said you found it in the barn.”
“Correct.”
“So the murderer must have dropped it after he shot Cliff Morton, right? If it was my daddy, why would he do such a stupid thing, for crying out loud? He must have known it was vital evidence, an American Army automatic. Wouldn’t he have taken it away with him, gotten rid of it someplace else?”
I shook my head. “He was afraid the others would see it. He was coming back later, you see, to dispose of the body and clean up the blood. So he tucked the gun out of sight, between two bales of hay.’”
She clicked her tongue in disbelief. “I don’t swallow that, either, but let’s stay with the gun. He didn’t pick it up later, did he?”
“Because I’d already found it.”
“And you secretly kept it: that much I’m forced to go along with.”
I said ironically, “Thanks.”
Alice regarded me with that penetrating gaze of hers. “Theo, has it ever occurred to you that you weren’t actually protecting my daddy by withholding the gun from the police?”
I frowned back.
She went on. “If you’d handed it in, they would have asked the questions I just did. As it is, they assumed he got rid of the murder weapon himself, like the ruthless killer they made him out to be.”
A pulse started drumming in my forehead.
She said, “Disturbing thought, huh?”
I answered hollowly, “It’s another way of looking at it. It didn’t occur to me at the time.”
“Because, like everyone else, you assumed Daddy was guilty.”
“He was.”
She simply looked at me and said nothing.
She’d made her demand. A quixotic trip to Somerset to prove her daddy’s innocence. I suppose I should have seen it in her eyes the first moment she mentioned him. To my mind it was misguided and likely to cause us both unnecessary distress, but I was lumbered. I could see she wouldn’t be argued out of it. The best I could do was get some safeguards into the contract.
I said, “If I agree, it’s between you and me, a private trip.
No press. Right?”
She nodded. “I can handle Digby.”
“No pictures. Nothing.”
“Okay.”
“We go today and come back tonight. We can do it in under two hours.”
“Fine.”
“And whatever the outcome, you’re on your own after this.”
“All right.” She held out her hand. “Is it a deal?”
I said, “When you return the gun.”
She gave a slight smile. “I didn’t take it, Theo. It’s in the box in the filing cabinet where I found it. I put it back there when I went to collect my backpack.”
W
e were on the A4, heading west to Somerset. Surprised? By now you must have got me down as a hard-nosed opportunist, so I won’t blame you for assuming I reneged on the deal after Alice made an idiot of me over the gun. Only I didn’t.
I’d like you to believe it was because, after all, I’m a man of integrity. Duke’s daughter had asked me to show her the place where the tragedy was enacted, and I was uniquely fitted to act as guide. It was a small repayment on my debt of gratitude to Duke.
I’d like you to believe all that, but you’re sharp enough to see that she still had me by the short and curlies while Digby Watmore was in attendance. Who wants to feature in
News on Sunday?
So I remained out of sight while she went out and talked to him. I’m not sure what was said. It took about ten minutes. The photographer got out to say his piece as well and looked decidedly annoyed. But Alice prevailed. Shaking their heads, the two men got back into the car and drove off.
