The Gardens of the Dead (9 page)

‘Really?
What did she say?’

“‘Leave
it to Anselm.”‘

Anselm
frowned and repeated Elizabeth’s last words with incredulity. ‘What the hell
does that mean?’

‘She
hadn’t a notion. Presumably you’ll find out after you’ve visited Mrs Bradshaw
and read the letter.’ The Prior rose, indicating that the interview was over. ‘Inspector
Cartwright would like you to call her in due course.

The cry
of Larkwood’s owl began to fade as it flew west over Saint Leonard’s Field,
leaving behind a charged silence, a sense that something strange occupied the
night sky above the monastery.

Anselm went to his cell
and threw open the window The night was cool and sharp, softened by the smell
of apples. The community had been peeling them before compline, and the skins
were in sacks by the kitchen door.

Leave
it to Anselm.
Was that wise, Elizabeth? What did I
say that made you choose me? Or is it something I’ve done?

Anselm
breathed in deeply wondering why he’d put the key back in his wig tin.
Generously, the Prior had not enquired. Perhaps it was that word ‘murder’, and
the hopeless search for a rhyme. Whatever the cause, Anselm was altogether sure
that the consequent delay would complicate things considerably Elizabeth had
foreseen many things, but Anselm’s hesitation wasn’t one of them.

PART TWO

the story of a box

1

The door opened and Mr
Wyecliffe’s face emerged out of a warm gloom. His brown oval suit seemed to
join his beard and run up his cheeks, stopping just below the small eyes. ‘Sorry,
the light bulb’s just blown. There’s sufficient illumination, however, in my
quarters.’ He led Nick to a sort of hole composed of shelves and files. The air
was stale and still and seemed to have a colour, as though they were immersed
in a yellowish solution carrying a hint of blue from far, far away. Upon a
large, chipped bureau stood a yellow plastic air freshener that kept watch over
piles of paper in disarray.

‘I
thought it best we speak outside office hours.’ He blinked and nodded with a
single movement. ‘Can’t say much, mind. Client confidentiality’ He slumped in a
chair behind his desk and said, ‘It was a first-class funeral, if you take my
meaning. Very nice reception. Lovely house. Nice to see the clients invited.
But I am sorry. Dreadful business, if you ask me.’

‘Your clients?’
asked Nick.

‘Quite
a few One of them ate the ham sandwiches.’ He spoke as though he were tempting
the outrage of a magistrate.

Nick
said, ‘You specialise in criminal law?’

‘Not
really,’ he reminisced, scratching an ear as he leaned back. ‘I’ve followed the
personal injury market. And family work, of course. I’d always done that. Care,
divorce, custody. Always lots to do in that neck of the woods.’ His narrow eyes
seemed to glaze. ‘I sent your mother more dog’s breakfasts than I care to
admit. But she had a knack with parents not disposed to cooperate with expert
assistance.’ He blinked in the gloom, regarding the air freshener. ‘But why do
you want to know about the Riley case? It was a long time ago… Best
forgotten, I should think.’ He almost winked.

‘Maybe
you’re right,’ said Nick. ‘But I found the papers among my mother’s personal
things. She kept them for nearly ten years. I wondered if you might be able to
tell me why’

Mr
Wyecliffe’s eyes enlarged like ink on blotting paper. ‘I’ll do my best.’ He
picked up a glass ball containing a log cabin, two fir trees and three reindeer
yoked to a sleigh. He shook it and a blizzard swirled against a cobalt sky It
was the only movement in the room. ‘Was there anything with the brief?’

‘Why?’

‘Sorry.
Silly question. That’s why I keep out of court.’ He watched the flakes of snow
sinking. ‘Maybe I should begin before the trial… You don’t mind if I put the
odd question do you?’ His eyebrows seemed to nod.

‘Not at
all.’

‘That’s
fine.’ As if startled by a recollection, he went to a side room. A cupboard
door clipped open and then shut. He came back with some envelopes and threw
them into a large plastic bin the size of a laundry basket. ‘My out-tray,’ he
explained. ‘Where was I? Ah, yes… It’s probably best to start after your
mother took silk. You’ll appreciate, I wasn’t in the criminal field that often,
so what I know was picked up from here and there.’ Nick saw him at the funeral
reception, eyeing the plates, picking at this and that. ‘She’d built a
reputation as a prosecutor and was always booked up. But defendants wanted her
as well: word gets round. Villains talk while they’re on remand. They play
bridge and discuss the relative merits of counsel. So, you see, it wasn’t
surprising to have a client who came in asking for your mother. But with Mr
Riley it was slightly different.’

‘Why?’

‘He’d
never been in trouble with the police.’

Evening
had come and the room was weakly lit by a single central light. A dinted shade
hung askew, like a hat on a stand-up comic.

‘You
mean that Mr Riley asked for my mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he
say why he wanted her?’

‘Not
right off the bat.’

‘Did
you ask?’

‘Yes.’

Annoyance
raised Nick’s voice. ‘Well, what did he say?’

‘That
he’d heard she was good; so good that she could win without even opening her
mouth.’

‘Who’d
said that?’

‘He
didn’t say’

‘Did
you ask how he’d heard of her?’

‘No.’
Mr Wyecliffe raised his hands, like he was offering a platter. ‘Mr Riley had
considered a newspaper article about women at the Bar. He picked your mother because
he’d read she could see right inside the guilty. Such an aptitude, he said,
would be invaluable for the exposure of his detractors.’

‘What’s
that got to do with her not having to open her mouth?’

‘An
astute question, if I may say so,’ complimented Mr Wyecliffe, ‘for that telling
phrase wasn’t in the article.’

Coldly
and with apprehension, Nick considered his interrogator. This mound of hair
and cloth had been angling for an understanding of the trial ever since he’d
cleaned up the plates at St John’s Wood.

Mr
Wyecliffe reached for his glass ball and gave it another shake, stirring up the
snow The flakes swirled and began to fall slowly Nick said, ‘Please can we open
the window?’

‘Sorry.
It’s been painted shut.’

The air
was still and warm and quietly beating.

‘Where
was I?’ asked Mr Wyecliffe pleasantly ‘Oh yes. I arranged a conference and sent
the papers off Your mother rang up the next day to say the case didn’t need a
silk and suggested I use Mr Duffy instead. But the client wouldn’t agree. So I
booked them both — at your mother’s insistence. Speaking of the monk — well, he
wasn’t a monk then — do you know him?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Any
idea why she might have selected him?’

‘No.
Why?’

‘If I
might speak confidentially… He was good if you wanted a trumpet on a sinking
ship, but to stay afloat.., there were others. As it happens, I was wrong. He
blew the other side out of the water with one question.’

‘Something
about calling himself George rather than David.’

‘Yes.’
Mr Wyecliffe twisted the air freshener on its axis. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Mr
Duffy told me.’

The
solicitor hitched a shoulder and coughed. ‘I trust my nautical metaphor can
remain between ourselves.’

‘It
can.’

‘Most
grateful.’ Mr Wyecliffe scratched his beard. ‘All very peculiar really because
the name business came from me — well, I brought it to the attention of
instructed counsel — but your mother didn’t like it all.., discouraged it, in
fact. I’ve often wondered why because it turned out to be our best point. Are
you leaving already?’

Nick said,
‘Perhaps I might buy you a drink?’

A most
agreeable proposal.’

Mr
Wyecliffe opened a drawer on his desk and pulled out a blue notebook. ‘Funny,
really… if you think about it’ — he rattled the drawer shut, toppling the
air freshener — ‘given Mr Duffy’s last question, we did win without your mother
having to open her mouth. Even Mr Riley was stunned.’

Nick
made for the corridor. Dimly, through a grey pane, he could see the lights of
Cheapside.

2

Before coming to London
Anselm had suffered a bruising — and inevitable — encounter with the cellarer.

‘Are
you familiar with the Inland Revenue and its peculiar habits?’

‘Yes,’
said Anselm humbly He had presented himself after lauds to obtain the required
funds for the trip.

‘I
thought so.’ Cyril was in his office beneath an arcade — an ordered place
without ornament, save for colour—coded box files: blue for apples (on the
right), and green for plums (on the left). Each carried a date. His one arm was
on the table like a cosh. He was large and square. His nose was red and his
eyes were yellow He had a cold. ‘They require accurate records supported by
all relevant documentation.’

‘They
do.’

‘Can
you give me an example?’

A
receipt.’

Cyril
sneezed, slamming his nose with a huge polka dot handkerchief After rattling a
box out of sight, he counted out a precise sum to cover anticipated rail and
Underground tickets.

‘God
bless you, Cyril.’

‘Don’t
mention it.’

When Anselm came to London
he usually stayed with the Augustinians in Hoxton. Sometimes, however, as on
this occasion, he booked a guest room at Gray’s Inn, his former legal home.
The practice kept fresh his associations with the Bar; and it afforded an
opportunity to see Roddy his old head of chambers. Having studied the Riley
papers on the train, Anselm trudged up the narrow wooden stairs to his former
place of work. It was evening.

Roddy
had just purchased what he called a long blue smoking jacket. He sat with his
legs extended, looking like a waterbed in a sari. After some chat about
hypnotism as a means of trouncing addictions, Anselm said, ‘Do you remember the
Riley trial?’

‘It was
the only case you ever did with Elizabeth.’

‘Yes,
how did you know?’

‘She
remarked upon it recently’ He reached for a large carved pipe. Austrian,’ he
said proudly ‘Made of bone.’

Anselm
hesitated, letting his mind whirr and clank. When it stopped he perceived that
Roddy already knew of the trial and its significance for Elizabeth. With this
in mind, Anselm explained about the key, the red valise and the letter to be
read after he’d met Mrs Bradshaw Throughout Roddy packed tobacco into the bowl
of his pipe, prodding it occasionally with his thumb or a knife. Gradually
creases gathered across his forehead, revealing agitation and surprise, as if
he’d missed something he ought to have foreseen. Anselm’s conclusion snapped
into place: Elizabeth’s confidence had not been given to Roddy beyond the
trial. It was staggering — for Anselm and for Roddy: she’d held something back
from the man who’d nursed her career like a father.

‘It’s
been a very long time, Anselm, I’ve forgotten what happened.’ Roddy lit a
match as if it were the opening of a ceremony ‘Tell me about Riley… that
ruined instrument.’

‘Frank Wyecliffe
sent the papers down to chambers for a conference,’ said Anselm. ‘Three
teenagers said they’d met Riley at Liverpool Street Station. He’d offered them
somewhere to stay free of charge. His story was that when he’d come to London,
no one had been there to help him, that he’d spent months in a burnt-out bank
near Paddington, that he wouldn’t wish that on anyone else, that people needed
a break. They could think about rent once they were earning, and not before. So
they moved into this house at Quilling Road in the East End. All he wanted was
the contact details of someone they trusted with their lives — in case they did
a runner. Then he gave them a key and he left them alone.’

While
Anselm spoke Roddy struck matches, stroking them over the bowl.

‘Every
now and then he’d come round and ask them how they were getting on, whether
they’d found work yet,’ said Anselm. ‘Then, gradually things changed. They’d
see him at the end of the street, milling around. Same thing at night. He’d
just be standing there, rubbing his hands to keep warm. Then he’d be gone. And
later, when he came to the house, asking how the search for work was going, he
never said anything about having been in the area the week before. That was how
it went on: they’d see him outside, near a street lamp, but then he’d be gone,
turning up a few days later, and always at the same spot, as if he was waiting
— sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night. Eventually they went out to ask
him what was going on.’