Peter Lovesey - Rough Cider

I couldn’t trust myself to answer, so I said, “I’ve never been to Shepton Mallet.”

“Don’t bother,” said Harry, and moved on. “So I was a private soldier, and naturally I linked up with my buddy, Duke. We’d borrow a jeep and go for rides. There was a lot of sympathy for me in the MT section.”

“And Duke?” I put in quickly. “What was his standing?”

“A regular guy. Popular. Good musician. Wrote his own songs. Anyone who could entertain us was made, believe me.

I nodded. “Barbara told me about the Columbus Day concert at the base. She was highly impressed with Duke’s singing.”

“Is that a fact? Yeah, I guess he could have made it as a songwriter. Country and western more than pop. He was working on a way of using the Somerset dialect in his songs. The way they talked down here amused him.”

“I know. I used to collect words and phrases for him. He made lists.”

Harry drew on his cigar and looked at me with a shade more respect. “That’s right. He did. Matter of fact, Duke and his lists of words came in handy when I was dating Sally.”

“You couldn’t understand her?”

He pulled a face. “Christ, no, she wasn’t a total hick. What I mean is, she was strictly brought up. Her parents didn’t like her walking out with a GI, but a foursome was okay, so I persuaded Duke to make up the numbers with Barbara.” He grinned complacently. “I told him it was a great way to get more Somerset words, and he bought it.”

I grinned back. “Never.”

“Straight up. I’m not kidding.”

This simply didn’t square with what I knew about Barbara. She’d walked up the lane almost every evening that autumn, telling her parents she was meeting Sally, when she was actually meeting Duke. She’d looked into my room sometimes at the end of an evening, flushed with love, her lips swollen from kissing. I knew, and I’d been punished for keeping her secret. I wouldn’t have endured a beating from Mrs. Lockwood for nothing.

I told Harry, “Maybe he was kidding you”

Harry conceded a little. “Sure, he was doing me a favor. He was a great buddy.”

I spelled it out for him. “Duke and Barbara were lovers.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath from Alice.

Harry said, “No chance.”

“For Christ’s sake, she was expecting his child!”

Alice made a shrill, protesting cry. I avoided looking at her. I wanted this between Harry and me.

Harry slung his half-smoked cigar into the fireplace and stepped towards my chair, jowls quivery, red-faced with outrage. “Stand up and say that.”

I replied through the fumes, “Read the postmortem report. She was two months’ pregnant.”

He grabbed my sweater and tried to haul me upwards, but I gripped his forearm and resisted. My arms and shoulders are strong. I use them more than most people.

We might have stayed locked for some time if Alice hadn’t snatched up my stick and jabbed it hard into Harry’s ribs. He let go and staggered back, knocking over a glass-topped table and my drink as he went.

Alice was a revelation, eyes flashing behind the gold frames. She told her stepfather, “Quit it, will you?”

Massaging his side, Harry said thickly, “He insulted my buddy.”

Alice glared at him and said, “Loyalty isn’t your strong suit, Harry.” Then, to my surprise and extreme annoyance, she wheeled on me and said, “Quit bugging him with stupid crap like that. We came here to listen, not start a fight. This is my show, and I’m not letting anyone foul it up.”

It was a kick in the teeth. All my animosity came surging back. For this headstrong, father-fixated girl I’d sacrificed my weekend, missing my sleep, seen off the press, driven all the way to Somerset, faced a hostile farmer with a shotgun, and ruined a set of clothes.

I could have pointed out that if I’d left her to do the talking, we’d still be standing on the doorstep.

Instead I controlled my anger. I gave her the look of a man who has run through his fund of sympathy. “Your show? Run it the way you want.”

Let’s give her credit: She didn’t falter. The flurry of action had taken the edge off her nerves. She tossed her hair back from her forehead, tucked the walking stick under her arm like a drill sergeant, and told Harry, “Pick up the table.”

He obeyed without a murmur.

“Why don’t you sit down?” When her suggestion had been acted on, Alice gave Harry a cool, unfilial look. “You said you could have put the court right on a few things. This is your chance.?m going to take you through the crucial days of 1943.”

With an air of authority that wouldn’t have disgraced a learned counsel examining a witness, she drew Harry’s story from him: how he and Duke had met me in Mrs. Mumford’s and driven out to Gifford Farm; how they’d met Barbara and offered to help gather the apples.

“Why?” asked Alice.

Harry’s eyebrows lifted, but he gave no answer. All the bounce had gone out of him.

“Why did you offer to help?”

‘Two bored GIs looking for free drinks and friendship, I guess.”

“So, was Barbara the attraction?”

“Sure, she was pretty. She had the whitest skin you ever saw. Rosy cheeks. Fine black hair. She was a sweet kid but kind of remote.” To this touching eulogy he added the footnote, “I didn’t expect to score with her.”

“Did Duke?” asked Alice. If proof were wanted of her self-control, it was here in the way she put the question, as if the daddy she’d never mentioned before without a tremor in her voice was suddenly a cipher.

Harry shook his head. “He was a married man.”

“So were hundreds of other GIs who went with English girls,” said Alice. “You can be frank with me.”

“All the time he was over here, Duke never looked at a woman.”

She said in the same reasonable tone, “That’s not true, is it? He escorted Barbara to the Columbus Day concert.”

None of Alice’s composure rubbed off on Harry. His voice rose to a protesting squeak. “He did it to help me out.” Then his words came in a rush. “This was twenty years ago. Nice girls moved in pairs, safety in numbers from studs like me, understand? I couldn’t date Sally without finding someone for her friend. So Duke came along. He drove the jeep, hands on the wheel, Barbara beside him clutching her handbag. They didn’t even talk much. All the action happened in the rear seat.”

“And after that evening?”

Harry looked vacant.

“Didn’t they meet secretly?” Alice asked.

“Where was this, for God’s sake?”

“In the lanes around the farm. Barbara would go for evening walks. Duke would be waiting with the jeep.”

“Sweetheart, who gave you this crap?”

Alice didn’t answer. She didn’t even look in my direction.

Harry said, “Listen, Duke spent most evenings writing to Elly. Take it from me, if he’d been going out nights in the jeep, I’d have known. Jesus, I’d have been with him.”

“Maybe he didn’t tell you.”

“Nuts.”

Still unruffled, Alice said, “Let’s backtrack, shall we? You did some shooting on the farm with Mr. Lockwood and his son?”

Harry nodded. “Joke. The only gun we could lay our hands on was a.45. That’s a pistol, an automatic. We shot nothing. And before you ask, Barbara wasn’t in the party.”

“But on another occasion you took her with you.”

“That was different. Duke had promised to give the boy a turn with the.45.” Harry’s eyes fastened on me. “Am 1 right?”

I confirmed it.

He continued, “Barbara just tagged along, as I recall. We took a few shots at an oilcan.”

“And afterwards?”