The Office of the Dead (26 page)

We heard the tramp of feet on the stairs. They took away the mattress and the bedding as well as the body. They also removed some of Mr Treevor’s possessions. They gave David a receipt. Janet wanted to say goodbye to her father, but David wouldn’t let her. He said there would be other opportunities. He meant when the mortuary had cleaned him up.

‘I’m trying to remember him now as he used to be,’ Janet said carefully, like a child repeating a lesson. ‘Before Mummy died.’

Then it was time for me to collect Rosie. David offered me the use of the car but I refused, because it was garaged at the Theological College and fetching it would have meant one of us having to walk through the Close. Besides, I thought it would be better for Rosie if everything that could be normal was normal.

I met no one I knew on my way to school with Angel. None of the mothers and grandmothers at the school gate talked to me, though one or two of them gave me curious looks. They did that anyway. When Rosie came out I gave her the doll.

‘I’ve done the shawl,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s pink. I’ve got it in my satchel. Where’s Mummy?’

‘She’s having a rest at home.’

‘But it’s daytime.’

‘You know she hasn’t been very well recently. And of course she’s very sad at present because of Grandpa.’

‘Grandpa’s in heaven,’ Rosie announced, with a hint of a question mark trailing at the end of the sentence.

‘Yes, that’s what Daddy said.’

She took my hand because it was less effort for her if I towed her up the hill to the town. ‘Angel says, perhaps he went to hell.’

‘Why would he go there?’

‘If you do bad things, you go to hell.’

‘Did Grandpa do bad things?’

Rosie conferred silently with her doll. ‘Angel doesn’t know. What’s for tea?’

‘That’s something
I
don’t know. I expect we’ll find something.’

We didn’t talk for the rest of the way. There was a men’s outfitters with a large plate-glass window in the High Street, and as usual Rosie lingered as we passed to admire her reflection. The proprietor was fetching a rack of ties from the window display for a customer standing a yard or two behind him. It was the dean. For an instant his eyes met mine and then he turned away to examine a glass-fronted cabinet containing cufflinks and tiepins.

We went into the Close by the Sacristan’s Gate. Mr Gotobed was shooing a group of schoolboys off the sacred grass around the east end of the cathedral, the skirts of his cassock fluttering in the breeze. He turned as he heard our footsteps on the gravel, abandoned the children and walked quickly and clumsily towards us.

‘Mrs Appleyard.’

I smiled at him.

‘Mother and me were sorry to hear about Mr Treevor. She asked me to send her condolences.’

‘Thank you. I’ll tell the Byfields.’

His eyes were full of yearning. I told him Rosie needed her tea and that I had to rush.

When we got home, Rosie went up to see her mother. There was a knock on the garden door. A small man with no chin and a very large Adam’s apple was standing on the doorstep. He waved at me. When I opened the door he edged forward, smiling, and I automatically stepped back into the hall.

‘Rosington Observer
, miss. I’m Jim Filey. I called about the sad fatality.’

‘I see.’

‘I gather there’ll have to be an inquest. Very distressing for the family, I’m sure.’ He pulled out a notebook. ‘And you are?’

It was the way he stared at me that made up my mind. He was younger than me and acting like a hard-bitten newshound. I didn’t like anything about him, from his over-greased hair to the fussy little patterns on his gleaming black brogues.

‘My name’s none of your business.’ I began to close the door. ‘I’ll say goodbye.’

‘Here, miss, wait. Is it true Mr Treevor cut his throat?’

‘I’d like you to go, Mr Filey.’

But he was no longer looking at me. He was looking over my shoulder, into the hall.

‘Get out,’ David said very quietly.

I stepped aside from the doorway. David moved towards Filey. For an instant I thought that he was going to hit the reporter. Filey took a couple of steps backwards. David shut the door and locked it. Filey scowled at us through the glass and then walked rapidly down the garden to the gate.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘He was beginning to be a pest.’

‘You shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of thing.’

He had calmed down now. The whole episode had lasted less than a minute. What really shook me was not that nasty little reporter but what I’d glimpsed in David. There was so much rage in him. Perhaps that was why he needed to believe in God, to find something greater than himself that would contain and repress whatever was swirling around inside him and trying to find a way out.

I said, ‘This may be a sign of things to come.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Surely not?’

I’d lowered my voice to a whisper, as had he. ‘This is going to get in the newspapers.’

‘You may be right. I’d better phone my mother.’

He returned to the study to phone Granny Byfield. I went downstairs to the kitchen. I to someone who didn’t belong in Rosington, who wasn’t part of the little world of the Close. That wasn’t the whole truth – I wanted to talk to
Henry.

In the kitchen I opened the larder door and wondered what to do for Rosie’s tea. At least we had the Hudsons’ casserole for supper. All at once the idea of living in Henry’s prep school seemed wonderfully attractive. At least there would be staff to take care of the cooking and cleaning, the washing and ironing.

I turned round to put a loaf of bread on the table. For a moment I thought Mr Treevor was sitting in the Windsor chair at the end of the table. Suddenly the knowledge that he would never be there again, demanding a second helping before some of us had even started our first, made my eyes fill with tears.

On Wednesday morning our first visitor was Mrs Forbury. She came through the gate to the Close, glancing over her shoulder like a thief as she slipped into the garden.

‘It’s the Queen Touchy,’ I told Janet, who was lying on the sofa in the drawing room. ‘I’ll send her away.’

‘No, don’t,’ Janet said. ‘It’s kind of her to come.’

You can never predict how people are going to react. When Mrs Forbury saw Janet lying there in her dressing gown, she bustled over to her, put her arms around her and gave her a hug. Janet hugged her back and started to cry.

‘There, there,’ said the Queen Touchy. ‘There, there.’

‘Would you like some coffee?’ I said.

Mrs Forbury looked over Janet’s head at me. ‘I’d better not, thank you. I mustn’t stay long. I just popped in on impulse, you see, and Dennis wouldn’t know where to find me if – if he happened to want me.’

In other words, she hadn’t told her husband she was coming here. She didn’t stay long. She slipped out of the house as furtively as she’d come in. When she said goodbye, Janet clung to her hand. At the time I couldn’t understand it, but now I think that Janet and Mrs Forbury were joined together by dead babies.

‘It
was
kind of her,’ Janet said when I came back.

I nodded offhandedly, miffed that I had been temporarily dislodged from my position as Comforter-in-Chief.

‘I must do a bit of shopping this morning,’ I said. ‘You remember that Henry’s coming?’

‘David will stay with me. You go out to lunch with him by yourself. It’ll do you good.’

‘But what about you?’

‘I’ll find something. I’m not very hungry.’

‘But Janet –’

‘I’m not ill. I wish you wouldn’t mother me.’

The doorbell rang again.

I went into the hall. Inspector Humphries and Sergeant Pate were standing with their backs to the house, apparently admiring the sun-filled garden. When I opened the door they turned together to face me in a movement so synchronized it might have been choreographed.

‘Good morning, Mrs Appleyard,’ Humphries mumbled, his lips scarcely moving. ‘Is Mr Byfield in?’

‘I’m afraid you’ve missed him. He’s at the Theological College.’

‘May we come in?’

I stood back to let the two men into the house.

‘Who is it?’ Janet called from the drawing room.

‘The police.’

Humphries moved so that he could see Janet on the sofa through the doorway of the drawing room. ‘Mind if I have a word, Mrs Byfield?’

The policemen sat down one on either side of the fireplace. I perched on the arm of the sofa. Pate took out a notebook and fiddled with the piece of elastic which held it together.

Humphries cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to have a look in Mr Treevor’s room again, Mrs Byfield. And perhaps elsewhere in the house.’

‘All right.’

I said, ‘Is there something in particular you’re looking for?’

‘One or two things we’d like to dear up,’ he said, still looking at Janet.

‘Such as?’ Janet asked.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather talk to your husband about this,’ Humphries said.

‘Why?’

‘Well, there are some things that aren’t suitable for ladies, really.’ He stirred in his chair. ‘No need to make things worse than they are, is there?’

‘Mr Treevor was my father,’ Janet said. ‘I want you to talk to
me.’

I saw Pate wince, as though expecting an explosion. Humphries ran his fingers through his baby-soft hair. But he didn’t clam up. Quite the contrary.

‘Very well, Mrs Byfield, I’ll tell you what I would have told your husband. There’s some doubts about the circumstances of your father’s death. You know what a pathologist is?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘He had a look at the body last night. Now, when someone cuts their throat, you normally get a dean cut and they arch their heads back, which means the carotid arteries slip back. And that means that the knife misses them, so there’s less blood than you’d expect. Follow me so far?’

For a moment the scene in Mr Treevor’s room flashed in vivid technicolour behind my eyes.

‘There was quite a lot of cuts on your father’s throat, and a lot of blood. The bedclothes were in a mess, too, which suggests he struggled. Tell me, Mrs Byfield, was your father right-handed or left-handed?’

‘Right-handed,’ she muttered, and Sergeant Pate had to ask her to repeat her answer.

‘If a right-handed person is cutting his throat, Mrs Byfield, he usually does it from left to right. Understand? But the cuts on your father’s throat were from right to left. So. Perhaps you can see now why I wanted to talk to your husband, and why we’d like to have a look around a little more, and ask a few questions.’

I stood up. ‘This is absurd,’ I said. ‘You know Mr Treevor wasn’t a well man. As Dr Flaxman will tell you, he was going senile. He wasn’t acting normally. Nothing he’s done in the last few months could be called
normal
. So it hardly seems strange that the way he killed himself was rather unusual.’

Inspector Humphries had stood up as well. With his head hunched forward on his shoulders, he looked like a bird of prey in an ill-fitting suit. ‘Unusual, Mrs Appleyard? Oh yes,
very
unusual. For example, this is the first suicide I’ve seen where the perpetrator killed himself, then got up and washed the knife, left it on the floor at least a yard away from the bed, climbed back into bed and carried on with being dead.’ He sucked air between his teeth. ‘Very unusual indeed, I’d say. Wouldn’t you agree, Sergeant?’

Janet shifted her body on the sofa. ‘What would you say if I asked you to leave?’

‘I’d say that was your right, Mrs Byfield, but if you do it won’t take me long to come back with a search warrant. And if this goes any further, your refusal will look very bad. Whatever happens there will have to be an inquest, you know. It will probably be adjourned so we can make further enquiries.’

Janet sighed. ‘You can look round, if you want.’

‘Good.’

‘Do you want me to go with them?’ I said to her.

Janet shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Neither of us spoke for a moment when Humphries and Pate left the room. We heard their heavy footsteps on the stairs and the key turning in the lock of Mr Treevor’s room.

‘Why was he so unpleasant to you?’ I asked.

She looked at me for a long moment. ‘Why should he be nice?’ she said at last. ‘They’ll look everywhere.’

‘Everywhere?’

‘Of course they will. It’s their job.’

I wanted to laugh. What would they make of the bottle of gin in my bedside cupboard, not to mention the sprig of lavender resting on a cheque for ten thousand pounds?

‘Janet, you don’t think–’

‘I don’t know what to think.’ She swung her legs off the sofa. ‘I’d better ring David.’

There was another ring at the doorbell.

It was a boy with a telegram addressed to David and Janet. Janet tore open the envelope, read the message and passed it to me.

ARRIVING 12.38 TRAIN. MOTHER.

‘Damn it,’ Janet said, running her fingers through her hair. ‘I thought this might happen.’

‘It must be the train Henry’s on. Ask David to bring round the car, and I’ll meet them both if you want.’

‘We’ll have to make up a bed for her, and then there’s supper.’

At least David’s mother had given us something to do, something to distract us from the heavy feet moving about upstairs, and what the presence of the police officers might mean to all of us. While Janet phoned David, I explained what had happened to Inspector Humphries and made up the bed for old Mrs Byfield in the little room next to Rosie’s. Mrs Byfield was a demanding visitor, and Janet asked me to make sure there was a hot-water bottle to air the bed, and on the bedside table a carafe of water, a glass and a tin of biscuits in case she should feel peckish in the night. She might be chilly at night, so extra blankets had to be found and a fire had to be laid.

While I was doing this, David came home, and I heard his raised voice first in the hall and later in Mr Treevor’s room. I was glad to see him, because we soon had other distractions in the shape of two more journalists, whom David turned away, and the bishop’s chaplain. I stood on the landing and eavesdropped on his conversation with David in the hall below.

‘I say,’ said Gervase Haselbury-Finch, ‘this is awful. The bishop sent me round to say how sorry he is. He says you and Mrs Byfield are much in his mind at present. And in his prayers, naturally.’

‘How very kind of him,’ said David in a voice that suggested the opposite. ‘Do thank him.’

‘Um – I should say – the chief constable telephoned him this morning.’

‘Really?’

‘I gather there are one or two things that the police will have to dear up about Mr Treevor’s death. He – the bishop, that is – would very much appreciate it if you could keep him informed.’

‘I’m sure he would,’ said David.

‘There are wider issues to be considered.’ Haselbury-Finch was almost gabbling by now. ‘The bishop feels that the matter could be a sensitive one for the diocese, even for the church as a whole.’

‘Thank him for his advice, Gervase. In the meantime, I have got rather a lot to do.’

‘Eh? Oh yes, I see. You must be awfully busy. I’ll say goodbye then.’

The garden door opened and dosed. I went downstairs and found David lighting a cigarette.

‘I heard that,’ I said.

‘I could have strangled him,’ David said, and to my surprise smiled at me. ‘Not poor Gervase. The bishop.’

‘I’d better go down to the station.’ I studied my reflection in the hall mirror. I would have to go as I was. There was no time to repair make-up or brush hair.

‘I’ll see if I can get rid of the policemen before my mother comes. I’m sorry you’re being dragged into this. Just drop my mother off here and then go and have lunch with Henry. Try and forget all about it.’

‘Not so easy.’

‘No.’

We seemed to have blundered into a world where the ordinary rules were temporarily suspended. So I said, ‘What do you think really happened to Mr Treevor?’

David rubbed his forehead. ‘God knows. It simply doesn’t make sense.’

Our eyes met. I felt sick. It was as if we were all in a lift going down a shaft, and the cables had snapped and we were falling, and all we could do was pretend we were calm and wait for the crash at the bottom.

David let me out of the back door into the High Street. The car was parked in the marketplace. I drove down River Hill and cut through Bridge Street to the station. I was a few minutes late and when I got there I found Mrs Byfield asking a porter to be more careful with her suitcases while Henry was pretending to be absorbed in a poster advertising the Norfolk Broads.

Henry pecked my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry. How are David and Janet?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘There were journalists on the train.’

I smiled at Granny Byfield. To look at her was to get an impression of what David would look like when he was old. I introduced myself, and then Henry. She had met us at David and Janet’s wedding but we had not lingered in her memory. I drove them back to the Dark Hostelry. Henry tried to make conversation – he’d have tried to talk to a Trappist monk – but Mrs Byfield kept him in his place with monosyllabic replies and the occasional glare.

We parked in the marketplace. Mrs Byfield gazed out of the window while she waited for Henry to fetch the suitcases from the boot and me to open the door for her. Her hip was painful and I had to help her out.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen that woman before,’ she said, leaning heavily on my arm. ‘Do you know her?’

I was just in time to see a small woman wearing a dark-blue headscarf going into the Sacristan’s Gate.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘I never forget a face,’ announced Mrs Byfield. ‘I probably met her when I’ve stayed here before.’

‘Damn,’ I murmured.

‘I
beg
your pardon.’

Jim Filey was leaning on the back doorbell of the Dark Hostelry. There was another man with him, a camera and flash slung round his neck.

Henry followed my gaze. ‘Trouble?’

‘What is it?’ demanded Mrs Byfield.

‘There’s a journalist and a photographer outside the house.’

At that moment the door opened and I glimpsed David’s face. The flash went off.

‘Intolerable,’ Mrs Byfield said. ‘It shouldn’t be allowed.’ She limped down the pavement towards the Dark Hostelry, with Henry and me trailing behind her. She tapped Filey on the arm with her stick. ‘Excuse me, young man. You’re blocking our way.’

Filey swung round. So did the photographer, raising his camera. There was another flash.

‘Come in, Mother,’ David said. ‘These gentlemen are just leaving.’