Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“Bert Fredricks?”

“We call him Uncle Albert.”

“He is still alive then? How is he?”

“Physically fine. He’s living in an old people’s home near Hastings, where he’s very well looked after. But his memory isn’t too good, particularly recent stuff. I can’t go into the next bit, but he became very anxious to visit somebody called Mrs. Matson, who lives up in Derbyshire. She’s the widow of Colonel Matson, who was—”

“I have met the Matsons.”

“Well I drove him up about six weeks ago, and he sorted out what he’d come to see her about. She’s paralysed, by the way—bedridden—but there’s nothing wrong with her intellect. They looked at a lot of old photographs together—Uncle Albert’s memory is pretty good for that sort of thing—and he enjoyed himself. But there were a couple of times when he got very agitated, when Mrs. Matson tried to question him about something—it was two things, actually, and I don’t know if they were connected. He didn’t exactly refuse to tell her, but he pretended to have lost his memory, which he won’t normally ever admit to.”

“You thought he was lying?”

“Yes. So did Mrs. Matson, I’m pretty sure. This thing was extremely important to her—I don’t know why—but she could see how upset he was so she didn’t press him. Now, when I’d first been talking to Uncle Albert about making this trip, one of the things Mrs. Matson wanted to know about had actually come up in passing, and Uncle Albert told me he’d been there and so knew about it. He’d added, ‘Ask Terry Voss.’ So after we’d said goodbye to Mrs. Matson I slipped back into her room and told her, and she asked me to find out anything I could. That’s why I wrote to you.”

There was a pause.

“Tell me, Mrs. Pilcher, had you met Mrs. Matson before?”

“No.”

“What is your general attitude to your husband’s great-uncle?”

“I like him a lot. I think he’s a wonderful old man.”

“And yet you went back and told this almost complete stranger something that he had been anxious to conceal. Why did you do that?”

Ms. Cowan’s tone had become marginally less formal since the mention of Uncle Albert’s name, and didn’t now change, but Jenny felt there was something not exactly brutal, but almost inhuman, in having the question asked so instantly and inescapably.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I didn’t think about it at the time. It just seemed the right thing to do. But I did on the way home, quite a lot. The answer is that I felt Mrs. Matson had done something for me—she didn’t know, and I don’t want to tell you what it was—it’s very personal—but I felt I owed her something. That’s why I wrote to you too—I mean, after I’d had time to think it out.”

“And, other things being equal, truth is in itself to be preferred to falsehood?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t think about that. Yes, I suppose so. But they weren’t. Equal, I meant.”

“They seldom are. Well, Mrs. Pilcher, I shall need to think about this. I have not much more time now. But I should very much like to talk to your Uncle Albert. You say he’s at Hastings. Where are you? That’s a Maidstone number, isn’t it? I was wondering whether we could all three somehow meet.”

“That would be great.”

“I’m afraid that it’s not that I necessarily wish to help you or Mrs. Matson. Perhaps I had better explain my interest. Terry was my mother’s brother. He was very important to me. The times when he was in prison were the bleakest periods of my childhood. You are not perhaps aware that my uncle was a professional thief.”

“No. I’m sorry. He was just a name.”

“That is why I was so cautious when you wrote to express your interest. Well, now. From what you tell me, Bert is reasonably mobile. I’m afraid my own time is extremely taken up. I’m supposed to have Thursday afternoons free, but they seldom are. Let me see …”

“I and my husband could collect Uncle Albert and bring him to you, if that would help, but it would have to be at a weekend. I shall be working again from Monday on.”

“Unfortunately parish priests tend to be busiest at weekends … ah, yes, I could arrange to have an hour and a half free this coming Sunday, before evensong. I could offer you tea.”

“That sounds great. I’ll have to check with my husband, and the nursing home, but I should think it will be all right. Can I let you know?”

“Of course. I’ll pencil it in. Provisionally then, four o’clock, Sunday the 24th. Do you need directions?”

“Not if I can find it on the map.”

“We will assume you can. The vicarage is opposite the church, and clearly designated as such. I hope that none of you is allergic to cats.”

“Hell … Oh, sorry. I’m afraid my husband is. I may have to come without him. I’ll let you know.”

Jeff decided not to risk the cats, with the hay fever season almost on him.

“I’m sorry about that,” said Ms. Cowan, when Jenny telephoned. “But I’m greatly looking forward to meeting Bert Fredricks after all these years. About your other problem I’m not so sure. We may in any case have some difficulty in discussing it in his presence, if he’s so unwilling to talk about it.”

“Suppose I wrote telling you in confidence as much as I know. It isn’t a lot. The main thing this time is to give you a chance to make up your mind whether you want to help at all.”

“That might be very useful. I’m glad you see it that way. Till Sunday then.”

2

The village—almost a small town—was in that tangle of lanes with which the Kentish Weald is reticulated between the roaring thoroughfares to the coast. It was self-consciously kempt, with old, small-windowed houses, weatherboarded and tile-hung, all in near-perfect condition—this not to catch the tourist’s eye and camera, but for the gratification of the inhabitants who had chosen to live in this half-artificial version of the English dream, and had the money to maintain it. The main street curved up a hill—little more than a mound—to a church and churchyard at the top, building and tombstones of the same dark sandstone. The church looked genuinely mediaeval, and was probably fascinating, but Jenny found churches oppressive. She responded much more willingly to the houses of the living.

A woman answered the vicarage door. Several cats wove purring round her ankles. She was about fifty, tall and angular, with a narrow pale face framed by a helmet of dense, shining white hair. She wore silver pendant earrings, a dog collar and a dark grey suit, with the frilled white cuffs of her shirt just visible. The effect, obviously deliberate, was strikingly black and white.

Her smile was thin but not sour.

“Come in,” she said. “The kettle is just coming to the boil. Mind your head, Mr. Fredricks—the ceilings are desperately low. You too, Mrs. Pilcher—in fact you’ll find the doorways are more of a trap for you, because you aren’t used to ducking. This way. I shan’t be a moment.”

She showed them into a dark room with a lattice-paned window and a beamed ceiling so low that Uncle Albert couldn’t stand erect.

“What’s going on?” he said. “What’s this woman doing, got up like that?”

“She’s the parson here. They have woman parsons now, you know.”

“It’s not right. Not in the Bible—bet you it’s not. So what does she want with us, then?”

“She wants to talk to you about Terry Voss. She’s his niece. You remember Terry Voss?”

“Terry? I should think I do. What does she know about Terry, then?”

Jenny guessed from his tone what he meant.

“She knows he was in prison quite often. But she was very fond of him. That’s why she wanted to meet you.”