Peter Lovesey - Rough Cider

I knew the voice. Didn’t need to look any higher than the stubby hand gripping the two-foot length of lead piping from my garage.

“What’s this about?” I asked Harry Ashenfelter as my heart pumped in double time.

“Give me that.”

I handed my walking stick to him, and he slung it far into the darkness of the garden.

“Now get out.”

I said, “You’re crazy.”

He swung the piping high and cracked it down on the bonnet of the car. Chips of red paint hit the windscreen.

I said, “You’ll pay for that.”

He lifted it again.

This time I did as he’d ordered, using my arms and good leg to achieve the vertical. Propped against the car, I faced him. “Now what?”

He jerked his head in the direction of the house.

I said, “Difficult.”

“Brother, I don’t care if you have to crawl on your belly.”

It didn’t come to that. By lolloping along the side of the car, I shunted myself from the MG to the Jaguar and then, with a couple of hops, to the storm porch. Felt for my key and let myself in.

Harry was close behind, me, making sure I didn’t slam the door on him. I switched on the hall light and kept my momentum going as far as the living room. Sank into an armchair and in the same movement slipped the Colt automatic from my coat pocket and wedged it handily between my right thigh and the side of the chair, twisting my body so that he was unsighted.

He switched on the main light and pulled the cord on the curtains. He was crimson with emotion or anger or sadistic anticipation. He crossed the room and stood over me, holding the pipe horizontally against my neck and forcing my jaw upwards. “Now, punk,” he said, giving me a faceful of his sour breath, “you better tell me why you set fire to my home and murdered my wife.”

His priorities were instructive, but I thought it prudent not to comment. I couldn’t speak, anyway, with the piping jammed against my larynx. I made a strangled sound, and he eased the pressure enough for me to say, “I had nothing to do with the fire, for God’s sake. I gave the police a full account of my movements.”

“Crap,” said Harry.

“True! I was on the road when the fire started.”

“How’d you know when it started?”

“From the police. Listen, Harry, I had no reason to harm Sally. I had an appointment to meet her this afternoon. I was waiting in the Pump Room over an hour.”

“Making sure you were seen, huh?”

“Balls.”

He rocked my head back with the bar and jammed a knee into my stomach. With the reflex I practically decapitated myself. I vomited. He drew back and cuffed me with the back of his right hand. I doubled up, groaning.

He said close to my ear, “So help me, creep, I’m going to have the truth out of you.”

I asked for water.

He hit me across the face again. My lip split, and warm blood oozed down my chin.

He shouted, “Sit up!”

I did as he commanded, pressing my shoulders against the back of the chair.

Harry had boobed. He’d stepped back to admire his work. And now he saw a Colt. 45 leveled at his chest. His hands tightened on the lead piping.

“Drop it,” I said. “This is in good nick, and loaded.”

His face twitched and turned gray, but he obeyed.

I said, “Back against he wall, facing me.”

I had a clear line of fire from the chair.

I said as evenly as circumstances allowed, “Maybe now I can get some sense out of you. Apparently, you believe I started the fire. Why?”

Silence. He was drained of aggression.

“Lost your voice? Touch of laryngitis?”

He wetted his lips nervously. Panic had manifestly set in.

By contrast, I was back to my sarcastic best. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those jumpy types who can’t look into the barrel of a gun and talk rationally.”

“Don’t shoot,” he finally managed to say, adding limply, “You’ll regret it.”

“Come off it, Harry. I’ve got a right to defend myself from a thug like you.”

“With a murder weapon?” he said frenziedly. “I know that gun. It’s a U.S. Army automatic, the one the police never found after Morton was shot. Tell me it isn’t.”

Honest, as usual, I shrugged and said nothing.

Harry was back in business as a communicator. He started talking fast on a high, hysterical note. “I know about you, Sinclair. You’re in real trouble now. You must be out of your mind. I guess you flipped when Alice turned up out of nowhere wanting to dig up the past. It was all buried and forgotten, tidy and grassed over. You live in style now, this smart place in the country, a good job in the university. No one here knows about your past.”

“What past?”

“Like blowing Morton’s brains out with that thing in your hand.”

I stared back at him with supreme indifference. I’d listened to the buildup, in no doubt about what was coming. Harry Ashenfelter was just one more self-appointed amateur detective out to shock.

“You killed the guy,” he said superfluously, his big scene in ruins around him, “and you let my buddy swing for it.” Sensing the need to tone it down, he put up a quivering hand. “Okay, you were just a kid at the time. Under pressure. All that. I give you all that. You could get help, you know. You need a good lawyer.”

I sighed. He was pathetic.

He said with all the concern he could register in that lumpy, combative face, “Did you know Sally was actually sorry for you? She told me you got Barbara Lockwood all wrong.”

I reminded him wearily, “I heard this from you on Sunday. It doesn’t mean I shot Cliff Morton.”

Harry showed no sign of having heard. He was too keyed-up to draw any kind of deduction. The words were gushing from him on the Scheherazade principle, in a breathless bid to stop me from pulling the trigger. “Sally and I did some serious talking since. She told me things I didn’t know. Nobody knew but Sally. Jesus Christ, is it any wonder she was an alcoholic?”

“What things did she tell you?”

“About Barbara. Barbara’s secrets.”

My mouth suddenly felt drained. Trying to sound unconcerned, I said, “Oh, yes?”

“Listen to this, Sinclair. Barbara was nuts on Morton. She really loved the guy. She was carrying his baby.”

Pulses started throbbing in my head. It isn’t easy after twenty years to accept that you were totally wrong about someone you would have gone to the wall for. I’d heard this from Alice, but she couldn’t have known for certain. She’d guessed about Barbara and Morton, and I hadn’t believed her. Deep down I’d felt sure that Sally would expose it as a cruel defamation.

But it wasn’t. Barbara, my Barbara, had misled me. She’d used me to promote the lie that she wanted Duke. I was forced to accept it now.

I said in a dry, distant voice, “Barbara told Sally this?”

“Sure.” Harry locked one of his forefingers over the other and said, “Those two girls were like this. Barbara confided to Sal that she let Cliff Morton make it with her whenever he wanted. But old man Lockwood and his lady didn’t care for Morton at all. He was bad news.”

“That part is true,” I admitted. “What else?”

“They ordered Barbara to stop seeing the guy. This was after George Lockwood caught them together.”

“In the orchard?”

“Right. Barbara was shattered. The poor kid was pregnant, and on top of that, Morton’s call-up papers had just arrived. Then Morton came up with a plan. He wasn’t a total jerk. He offered to marry the girl. He figured he could dodge the call-up by taking Barbara to Ireland. Neutral territory. She could marry him there and have the baby.” Harry paused for breath, studying my reception of the story. I must have looked poleaxed. “This is on the level, Sinclair.”