Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

Tea with the Bantocks in a sitting-room smelling of beeswax and air freshener was a salutary if depressing experience. Muriel was a twitteringly attentive hostess full of apologies for her housekeeping kit of tennis shirt and tracksuit bottoms. She was also an alarmingly affectionate wife, given to squeezing Henley’s knee in mid-conversation and casting him long and loving looks. Henley, meanwhile, coped with the antagonism he must have detected in me by pretending we were the most civilized of rival theorists, who’d simply agreed to disagree. It was as if the angry letter I’d sent him after the publication of Fakes and Ale and his sarcastic reply to it had never been written.

It might have been different if Whistler’s Cot had still resembled Oscar Bantock’s home in anything more than the dimensions of its rooms. But it didn’t. Everything from those years had been swept away. Along with any ghosts that might have lingered. In the studio, where Oscar had lain dead beneath his easels, a pool table stood, flanked by conservatory chairs. The walls around us, where his pictures had hung thick and vibrantly, were filled with insipid hunting prints and reproduction maps of Olde Herefordshire. While in the bedroom… I didn’t like to ask. But even there, I felt sure, the process would have been the same. It was exorcism by disinfection. And its effectiveness was undeniable.

“ Fakes and Ale will be coming out in paperback next spring,” Henley announced through a mouthful of custard cream. “We’re very pleased, of course.” For some reason he seemed to think I’d also be pleased. “And the hardback should do well over Christmas, I think, don’t you, Muriel?”

“Oh yes, dear.”

“What happens,” I couldn’t stop myself saying, “if it’s overtaken by events?”

Henley frowned. “How do you mean?”

“Well, the book follows a certain line about the murders, doesn’t it? Ties them in with your uncle’s art fraud. What would you do if that was shown to be incorrect?”

“But it’s not incorrect, Mr. Timariot. It’s clearly what happened.”

“Mr. Maitland went into it very thoroughly,” said Muriel in a tone of deep awe.

“No doubt he did. But it doesn’t amount to proof positive, does it?”

“Not legally, perhaps,” said Henley. “But we can’t expect it to, can we? Not at this late date.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You never know what might come to light.”

My persistence was beginning to worry Henley-as it was meant to. “You have… something specific in mind?”

“No, no. Just… stray thoughts. For instance… have you ever wondered whether there might have been something between Oscar and Lady Paxton?”

It was a question designed as much to mislead as to goad. I never expected any useful information to come my way as a result. But, as so often, my expectations were to be confounded. “No need to wonder,” said Henley with a chortle. “I can absolutely rule it out.”

“But your uncle’s reputation as a ladies’ man surely-”

“Led me to assume something of the kind long ago. But when I was rash enough to hint at it to Uncle Oscar, he nearly boxed my ears for my trouble. ‘She’s far too good for me, boy,’ I remember him saying. ‘And far too good a patron to risk losing for half a chance of some slap and tickle.’ ”

“Well, you wouldn’t expect him to admit it, would you?”

“Oh, but I would. Uncle Oscar never stopped boasting about his conquests. If Lady Paxton had been one of them, I’d have heard about it, you can be sure.”

“It was purely a business relationship, then?”

“I didn’t say that. He relied on her support. What she asked for in return may not have been so businesslike. I believe she brought Naylor here that night. So do Barnaby Maitland and Nick Seymour, for that matter. The question is: why? In its way, it’s an ideal place… for what she seems to have planned. And perhaps the night of the murders wasn’t the first time she’d done it. Perhaps Uncle Oscar regularly absented himself when she required him to. He may have thought it was a price worth paying.”

Yes. That was what they would say. It was what Seymour had implied in his TV programme. And it fitted the facts. Better than Seymour or Henley yet knew.

“Unless you think that theory too might be… overtaken by events?”

“No,” I said, resisting the impulse to tell him that very soon it would not be overtaken but vindicated by events. Events that would nevertheless scupper the paperback edition of Fakes and Ale . But it seemed only fair not to forewarn him of his modest share in the disaster to come. After all, he’d done as much as I had to bring it about. “I shouldn’t think so,” I concluded with a smile. “Like you say, it’s probably too late for anything of the kind.”

“More tea, Mr. Timariot?” asked Muriel.

“Thank you, but no. I think it’s probably too late for that as well.”

“Off so soon?” said Henley as I rose from my chair.

“I’m afraid I must be.”

“But you haven’t explained yet what brought you here.”

“Goodbye,” I said, smiling broadly and ignoring Henley’s remark too brazenly for him to protest. “It’s been a pleasure.”

The showers blew themselves out as I drove east. Hergest Ridge and its surrounding peaks fell away behind in the rear-view mirror. The truth drew back to watch me from its hidden vantage-ground. The stranger merged with the twilight. His unseen face dissolved into the dusk. And only my reflection looked back at me. I travelled alone. But in company.

I reached Bristol at nightfall, diverted to Clifton and found Sarah at home. It was a relief to have someone to share my unguarded thoughts with. A friend to see and set them in proportion. I was beginning to curse Bella for starting me down this road. The road back into a mystery I’d walked away from. But couldn’t escape.

“It seems Howard Marsden harboured an unrequited passion for your mother for many years,” I explained. “She and Sophie both knew that. It’s what Sophie most keenly resented: the fact that it was unrequited.”

“Hence her eagerness to blacken Mummy’s character.” Sarah shook her head in dismal recognition of Sophie’s motives. “What a sad petty-minded woman she must be. To think I’ve known her all these years without realizing that. I can’t help feeling sorry for Howard. She must make his life hell.”

“Yes,” I said, careful not to imply I had any specific knowledge of the subject. “I think she may do.”

“But you believe her about this… other man… in Mummy’s life?”

“It sounded like the truth. The question is…”

“Who was he?”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah rose and crossed to the mantelpiece, returning with the framed photograph of her and Rowena with their mother. “Taken on her fortieth birthday. She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“She certainly was.” Louise Paxton smiled delphically at me from the faintly blurred snapshot. Her beauty was preserved in the developer’s emulsion, but something else was lost. Like the sepia smear left by a moving figure on an early Victorian photograph, the secret of her soul had bequeathed an unfocused ambiguity to her gaze, a perpetual uncertainty about what or who beyond the camera she was really looking at.

“The further into the past her death slips,” said Sarah, “the more mysterious her life seems to become. I’ve wondered if this man, whoever he was, deserted her at the last moment. Didn’t turn up where he was supposed to be. Left her in the lurch. I’ve wondered if that’s why she encouraged Naylor. But unless you find him, we’ll never know, will we?”