Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

Harding tailed Tozer up the steps and into the flat. Tozer set the shopping down in the hall, hung up his cap and led the way into the lounge. Harding had forgotten just how stark and cheerless the man’s domestic environment was. As before, the current issue of The Cornishman , already well thumbed, lay on the table. Penzance-Born Tycoon Murderedblared the headline, above a photograph of Barney Tozer, smiling, wineglass in hand, at some local function several years previously.

“Have they got it right?” Humphrey Tozer asked. He had made no move to remove his coat, which somehow did not surprise Harding in view of the deathly chill gripping the flat. “You were there? You saw the Winter girl shoot Barney?”

“You mean Hayley Foxton?” Harding asked, neatly skating round the issue of the murderer’s identity.

“You know who I mean.”

“I was there, all right. But tell me, why won’t you go to Monte Carlo?”

“I don’t travel. Carol knows that. She’s arranged the funeral there to spite me.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“What would you know about it?”

“Well, I-”

“Barney should be laid to rest in Cornish soil. Like our father and his father before him. Like Uncle Gabriel, come to that. The Tozers belong in Penzance. They belong to Penzance. No good comes of them leaving it. I told Barney so when he moved to Monte Carlo. Tax exile, they call him. Well, exile is right enough. In death as well as in life, if Carol has her way.”

“Look, it’s-”

“Say what you came to say.” Humphrey Tozer’s expression was grim, set and unyielding. “I don’t suppose you’re any keener to be here than I am to have you.”

“Very well. I’ve come about the ring.”

“What about it?”

“You stole it.”

Something flickered in Tozer’s gaze. Surprise, perhaps. Or guilt. Whatever it was he soon mastered it. “ I stole it?”

“You were seen leaving Heartsease the night of the theft.”

“Was I?”

“Do you deny it?”

“I don’t have to. If I was seen, this… witness… would have reported me to the police. They haven’t. That says it all.”

“Do you deny stealing the ring?”

“Yes.”

“You may as well admit it. Like you say the witness hasn’t contacted the police. And he isn’t going to. This is between you and me. I just want to know. Why did you take it?”

“You accused me of stealing it a moment ago. Now it’s take. Which d’you mean?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Oh yes.” Tozer’s mouth twitched in what might have been his version of a sardonic smile. “You can’t steal what’s already yours.”

“So, you did take it.”

“I’m admitting nothing. All I’m saying is this: Uncle Gabriel stole the ring from our father, whose it was by right as the first-born. So, it wasn’t his to sell to the highest bidder, even if that bidder had turned out to be Barney.”

“What would that have mattered once the ring was in your hands? As it would have been straight after the auction.”

“D’you think I was born yesterday?” Tozer took a step towards Harding, who caught a whiff of the strange, bitter smell that clung to the man. The slight tremor of his head had become marginally more pronounced at the same time. “As soon as you turned up here, I knew what Barney’s game was. Buy the ring and keep it for himself. You’d have made off with it, of course. He’d have said you’d stolen it. But you’d have delivered it to him later, in secret. Barney always thought he could outwit me. How wrong he was.”

“That’s ridiculous. Barney didn’t want the ring.”

“How would you know what he did or didn’t want? He devoted his life to taking things other people deserved more than he did. The ring was no exception. I knew how it would be. As soon as I showed an interest in it, he’d take it from me, like he’d taken so many other things in the past. Well, not this time.”

“You’re wrong. He didn’t care about the ring.”

“I know that.” Tozer looked contemptuously at Harding. “Don’t you understand? He never cared about anything. Until somebody else wanted it. Grandfather used to show us the starburst box and very occasionally open it, though we were never allowed to touch the ring. His father had had the box made specially to hold it. He told us the ring had belonged to an ancestor of ours in the eighteenth century conferred on him in recognition of some great service he’d done the nation. It was never to leave the family Grandfather said, or Penzance. How Uncle Gabriel could have thought of letting it be sold to a stranger-perhaps even a foreigner-is beyond me. He wanted it for himself. And then he wanted to put it out of our reach. My reach, that is. I’ve reflected on it since Barney’s death. I’ve begun to see how my black-hearted uncle thought it all through. He knew I was the ring’s rightful keeper as the eldest of the next generation. I respected what it stood for. But he didn’t. He scorned our family name. And he knew I hadn’t the means to buy the ring at auction. So, he gave me a choice. See it bought by some dealer or other, or alert Barney and watch him snatch it from under my nose.”

“The ring was stolen from Sir Clowdisley Shovell’s body on St. Mary’s after the wreck of the Association in 1707. It never rightfully belonged to any ancestor of yours.”

But Tozer’s confidence in his version of history was un-dented. “I’ll take my grandfather’s word for what’s rightful and what isn’t over the word of one of my treacherous younger brother’s errand-boys every time.”

It was too late now, far too late, to weigh the rights and wrongs of sibling rivalry between Humphrey and Barney Tozer. As far as Harding could glean, Humph regarded the ring as a symbol of every advantage Barney had somehow stolen from him. Besides, it was his and his alone, according to an ingrained concept of primogeniture which his uncle had tried to subvert and which his paranoid nature inclined him to believe Barney had also been planning to circumvent. In the end, it hardly mattered. His reasons for stealing the ring were locked within his very particular view of the world. Harding had clung to the hope that those reasons would somehow reveal the greater truth he was still seeking. But his hope was failing fast.

“What great service did your grandfather say your ancestor performed?”

“Honour needs not the naming of the occasion.”

“What?”

“Whenever Barney badgered him with his questions, Grandfather would say, ‘Honour needs not the naming of the occasion.’”

“And how did he answer your questions?”

“I knew better than to ask any.”

Of course. Humph knew better. “Did Kerry Foxton ever discuss your ancestor with you?”

Tozer frowned deeply, his contempt turning to apparently genuine incredulity. “Kerry Foxton?”

“Barney might have told her about him.”

“Why should she be interested even if he did?”

“I don’t know. But I think she may have been.”

“You think what you like. I never exchanged a single word with Kerry Foxton. About anything.”

“Maybe she found out what your ancestor did to get hold of that ring.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe. You can make a noose of your maybes and hang yourself with it for all I care.” Anger was simmering in Humphrey Tozer now. He had said as much as he could be induced to say. A wall was coming down between them. “I’m not answering any more of your questions.”

“Where’s the ring? In a safe-deposit box at the bank? Or here?”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’m not answering any more of your questions. ”