Peter Lovesey - Rough Cider

Alice had listened in rapt concentration. She was standing with her two hands on my stick, holding it forward like a divining rod. “I want to get this straight,” she told Harry. “Were these Duke’s exact words: There’s nothing we can do. Leave it. Get in the jeep’?”

“Jeez, it was a long time ago,” pleaded Harry.

“Think.”

“I’m ninety percent sure. He may have thrown in a stronger word.”

“But the rest stands?”

“Sure.”

She paused for thought, staring up the the stuccoed ceiling: Presently she nodded at Harry. “And then?”

“We drove off.”

“Where to?”

Harry’s face showed the strain as he wrestled with a memory. A new set of creases branched out from his eyes and mouth. “I told you Duke was at the wheel. At the crossroads he turned in the Shepton Mallet direction and put his foot on the gas. He didn’t give a thought to Sally. She was in the backseat with me. She says to me where the heck are we going? I can’t go to the party after what happened to my friend. So I stuck my hand on Duke’s shoulder and asked him to stop.”

“And did he?”

“Not before we were halfway to Shepton Mallet, and then he refused to turn the jeep.”

“Why?”

Harry sighed. “How do I know? I can’t say what had gotten into him. He started giving me the needle. He said what’s with you two? You got it made. You don’t really need Barbara or me to have a good time. Make hay. Have a ball.”

“Couldn’t he see that Sally was upset?”

“I just couldn’t get through to him.”

“Could Sally?”

“Sal? She was too scared to speak. She had rape on her mind, I guess.”

“So what happened?”

“When it was obvious we were at a stalemate, he told me to take over the jeep. I could drive Sally home if I wanted, but not with him on board. He’d rather walk to Shepton Mallet.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “And did he?”

Harry gave a nod. “Wasn’t much over three miles. I turned the jeep and drove Sally home. End of story.”

Alice preferred to reach her own conclusion. “Was it really the end? Didn’t you see Duke again that evening?”

“If I had, we wouldn’t have spoken.”

“What time did you get back?”

“I couldn’t say. I had a beer in the Jolly Gardener, and then I drove around for a while, looking for a pickup. Just wasn’t my night.”

“Was this before midnight?” Alice persisted.

“Yeah.”

“And was anything said when you saw Duke next?”

“About what happened? Nothing. Frost.”

“You fell out?”

“That’s the size of it. We didn’t speak for weeks.”

“Not even after Barbara committed suicide?”

“Not even then. Much later, after we’d both been posted to Colchester, I mentioned it. Duke knew about Barbara. He said it was really sad.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing. It was a sensitive topic.”

“I understand,” said Alice in a way that signaled a respite for Harry. She picked her fruit juice off the table and took a sip.

Remarkably, considering how drained he looked, Harry was unwilling to leave it at that. He appeared to sense that some self-justifying statement was still necessary. After he’d taken out a colored handkerchief and wiped his brow, he added, “You know, when I first heard about the murder, and Duke taking the rap, I didn’t believe it. I can’t describe the feeling. Coming on top of the war, which to a GI was totally unreal until you got in the firing line, it was way over my head. Took me weeks to come to terms with it-I mean, just accepting that Duke had been hanged. He was no killer.”

Harry stopped to blow his nose. He was visibly affected by what he’d been saying. He resumed. “Finally I read a book on the case, The Somerset Skull, by some English journalist.”

“Barrington Miller,” I said with contempt. “A real scis-sors-and-paste job.”

“True,” said Harry, “but it had the essential facts on the trial, and it told me the prosecution was garbage. Sexual jealousy? No chance. He never had sex with the girl. If she was pregnant, believe me, it was some other guy, I told you how it was between Duke and Barbara.”

“ ‘Zilch’ I think, was how you described it,” I said, observing neutrality. Alice was silent, drawing breath, perhaps, for a heart-to-heart with Sally.

“Take that U.S. Army major in court to speak for Duke’s character” Harry said with a sharp note of censure. “It was character assassination. They couldn’t get over the fact that he heisted a.45 and used a jeep for private trips. They didn’t say he was a loyal husband, one of the gentlest, most civilized soldiers in the army.” He stopped to wipe his nose again. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. I just want to explain my position. After reading all this crap I had to decide what to do about it. I was back in the States by this time. What could I do to put the injustice right? Send a letter to the London Times? Write to the Lord Chief Justice? Whatever I did, I couldn’t bring Duke back to life. Alice, honey, do you know what I did?”

“Found my mother,” said Alice flatly.

“Precisely. Help the living. Elly was in a pitiful state. No job, no pension, and a child to raise. And bitterly ashamed of what Duke had done. I put her right on that for a start. Then I married her. I won’t say it was much of a marriage, but I got her through a bad time. We came to an understanding about Duke-not to make waves, not to write to The Times, not even to mention him. You know why? For your sake, sweetheart. I respected your mother’s wishes.” With that off his chest Harry got to his feet and said, “Whose glass is empty?”

Alice had listened impassively. Now she brushed aside Harry’s diversionary gesture. “If it’s all the same to you, we’d like to meet your wife again.”

“No problem,” claimed Harry. He fairly scuttled through the door.

Alice handed me back my stick. “I have a feeing that Mrs. Ashenfelter II might respond better to you.”

But as it turned out, Sally was in no shape to respond to anyone. Harry came back grim-faced and announced, “No dice. Sally’s out cold. She took a chisel to the cocktail cabinet, and she’s been through a bottle and a half of vodka.”

We wanted to eat. A straightforward matter? Not in Bath on a Sunday evening in October 1964. All the restaurants were dark, and the hotels didn’t want to know us. “Sorry, residents only” should be translated into Latin and incorporated in the city’s coat of arms. We finally gained grudging admittance to a dingy basement in Great Pulteney Street that doubled as the dining room and lounge of a small private hotel called the Annual Cure. Top marks for local color, but not, I think, for attracting customers. We were the only diners.

Alice was still brooding on our visit to the Ashenfelters, so I picked up the gravy-stained menu. It was written without much regard to spelling.

“If you fancy something out of the ordinary, I see they serve farmhouse girll,” I commented too loudly, because the manager was standing unseen at my shoulder.

“You don’t like?” he asked. “You go somewhere else.” I believe he was mid-European.

I pointed out the error, wishing I hadn’t spoken.

He snatched the menu from me, penciled in a correction, pushed it back, and said with acid, “Schoolteacher?”

“Something like that.”

We both settled on plaice and french flies without going into the orthography. Alice asked for the rest room, the ladies’, and the lavatory before she was understood and directed upstairs.

As she pushed back her chair I murmured something about a search party but failed to amuse her. Mentally, she hadn’t caught up yet. I doubt whether our shabby surroundings had made any impression on her at all.