Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

‘Damn right she could.’ I glared at the wall, my mind working furiously. ‘Or he could have gone on his own initiative. That would be more in character. He’s the sort of bastard that would terrorise an old man and not think twice about it.’

‘I take it you’ve got somebody specific in mind?’

‘You bet. A bloke called Simon Monks. I’m going to love it if I can nail him.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Caroline’s fiancé. The slimiest object you’ve ever seen. I wonder... I wonder if she’s told him about the money.’

‘Which money?’

‘The money that she’s not going to inherit. When they got engaged, he must have thought she was a real catch, an heiress with a wealthy, elderly father. The truth would come as a bit of a shock to him. He must have thought that as soon as Samuel died—’

I stopped dead again.

‘Chris?’ said Rachel. ‘Are you all right?’

But I didn’t hear her. I was seeing a scene in my mind, a familiar scene that I’d lived through many times since that day I sat in the Earl of Lichfield and watched Samuel walk away to his death. I was seeing a car hurtling down the ramp from the multi-storey car park into the junction of Castle Dyke, ploughing down a frail old man and leaving him lying broken in the road.

But now there was a difference. Now I saw a face behind the windscreen of the car. I was picturing the face of Simon Monks. A man who just couldn’t wait for Samuel Longden to die.

Unearthing the past had become an obsession, just as Great-Uncle Samuel had known it would. Had he trusted in my Buckley blood to ensure the past would get its hooks into me so effectively? If so, he’d judged me well.

For a man like me, who had believed he looked only to the future, it was a bitter, unsettling reversal of the natural order. It felt as if the ghosts of my ancestors were conspiring to destroy me. I wondered if there was something in Samuel’s ‘genetic memory’ that amounted to a death wish, an urge for self-destruction. Could William and Josiah Buckley have brought about their own ends? Did Great-Uncle Samuel walk into the path of that car by pursuing his single-minded obsession with an ancient feud? Did his desire for revenge bring about his own extinction?

And now it was my turn. Even from the grave, Samuel had led me, step by step, towards the point where I had no alternatives left. There was nothing left to do now, except to face directly the source of the danger that had already threatened me. If Monks was involved in the deaths of Samuel Longden and Godfrey Wheeldon, I felt sure there was another hand that had guided events.

As I left the house next morning, I found a visitor on my doorstep.

‘Mrs Wentworth. What a surprise. Come in.’

‘Oh no, I can’t stop. I’ve just brought you this.’ She thrust a package towards me, a buff padded envelope. ‘Mr Wheeldon insisted you should have it.’

‘Godfrey? You spoke to him?’

‘He rang me on Sunday. Very pleased with himself, he was. He said he’d been doing a bit of detective work of his own to track me down. He decided that he didn’t want the envelope to go to Caroline, but that you should have it. So I agreed to bring it round for you, in case it was something valuable. Things can get lost in the post. He sounded quite a nice old man.’

I took the envelope from her. ‘He’s dead, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh no.’

For a moment, I thought she was going to faint on the doorstep. ‘But I only spoke to him the day before yesterday,’ she said. ‘How can that be?’

‘When was it he rang?’

‘In the morning some time. About ten or half past, thereabouts. He sounded fine. In very good spirits, I’d say.’

‘He died on Sunday night. A stroke, they think. He’d suffered one before, but this was a bad one.’

‘Well, perhaps it was to be expected then. The poor old man.’

‘Did he mention anything else when he rang?’

‘Not really. He just said he’d been thinking about the envelope since you visited him. He didn’t want anyone else to have it. I suppose he meant Caroline, but that was the way he put it — he didn’t want anyone else to have it. He was quite emphatic on the point. And then he laughed and said something about not being able to escape any more. I don’t know what he meant by that. Perhaps he had a presentiment, do you think? But he sounded remarkably cheerful about it, if he did.’

‘I think he was the sort of man who kept his spirits up, no matter what.’

‘That’s good. Well, I’ll leave you to it, now I’ve done what I promised.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Wentworth. It’s much appreciated.’

‘Not at all.’ She hesitated before she turned to walk back to the road. ‘Poor old Mr Wheeldon. It can happen suddenly with old people, can’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very suddenly indeed.’

I looked at the envelope in my hand with a horrible suspicion. Given all that had happened, I couldn’t help wondering if Godfrey Wheeldon’s death was more than the natural consequence of old age that Mrs Wentworth imagined.

Had someone tried to shut Godfrey up before he could pass on information to me? If so, they’d been too late, it seemed. The old man had beaten them in the end.

I’d rung Leo Parker’s number first to make sure he’d be home before I made my way out of Lichfield. The tiny village of Hints lay south of the A5, opposite the radio mast and gravel pits of Hints Hill. I had to stop in the village and ask for directions to Leasow Court. Then I found myself driving through a ford and heading southwards on a single-track road that wound its way towards the A38 and the site of Canwell Priory.

Leasow Court was behind a set of tall wrought-iron gates which stood open on a raked gravel drive and curved lawns, providing a clear view of a house you couldn’t help but admire. It had the perfect proportions of a classical Georgian facade, with a fanlighted front door and small-paned sash windows, and its walls were a subtle shade of cream. Part of an old stable block had been converted to garages, and a BMW stood on the gravel near a terraced paved with York stone.

The immediate sense of affluence was so striking that I was surprised when Leo Parker answered the door himself. He was dressed in a business suit and gave the impression of being ready to go out as soon as he’d dealt with a bit of incidental detail.

‘I don’t have much time,’ he said straightaway. ‘Come through to the office.’

I took my time following him down the hallway, determined not to be put at a disadvantage. Through an open door I caught a glimpse of a huge drawing room with a Turkish carpet, an Adam fireplace and some beautiful old furniture. There were dozens of watercolours and prints on the walls, and on a table near the doorway stood a tall Chinese vase.

Parker waited impatiently to lead me into a handsome study ruined by a row of grey metal filing cabinets and a vast mahogany desk, which he sat down behind. He took off his watch and laid it in front of him as an unsubtle hint that he was a busy man and I was an intrusion on his day.

‘You said you had some information about my stepmother. Is this something that Samuel Longden discovered?’

‘In fact, I came to ask you a question.’

‘Oh? And that is?’

‘What will it take for you to leave us alone?’

‘Could you explain that?’

‘Too many innocent people have suffered,’ I said. ‘People who have nothing to do with all this. Nothing to do with you and me, and what’s between us. Frank Chaplin, for example. He isn’t a Buckley. And poor bloody Godfrey Wheeldon was nothing to do with it. Neither of them was ever any part of your stupid feud.’

Parker clenched and flexed his fingers as his eyes widened. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’