Death in Disguise Page 37

  ‘We were on our way in any case by then, Mrs Gamelin.’

  ‘Oh—is that true?’

  ‘Quite true.’

  ‘Then I don’t feel so…I heard glass breaking. Is he all right? Tim?’

  There was a deeply awkward pause. Heather went across to Felicity and said, ‘Why don’t I make you a nice cup of Acorna? With plenty of honey.’

  Troy wondered if that was the boiled sludge offered to him the night of the murder. If so it was more likely to finish Felicity off than revive her. And that would never do because they’d need her for the trial. What a marvellous piece of luck! And she was telling the truth; it had shown on Carter’s face though he’d been quick to collect himself. A nice little caution now, a neat arrest and they’d be home and dry. The chief had got up, was about to say something, but before he could do so May spoke up again.

  ‘What you said earlier about the Master’s death makes me wonder if I should have been more explicit at my first interview.’

  ‘In what respect, Miss Cuttle?’

  ‘Well of course I did see everything, you know.’ The ground opened around Barnaby’s feet. I am not hearing this, he observed silently, and there’s an end to it.

  ‘It’s all in my statement.’ The only one he had hardly bothered to go over, recalling it as a load of supernatural claptrap, signifying nothing. ‘A silver dart? Flying overhead?’

  Oh Jesus! Oh bloody hell. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Cry of course. What else? With another life gone. The chief inspector had a sudden searing sense of shame. He recalled Joyce’s fierce accusation that he never listened and his own earlier attempts to stop Troy exploring the conman theory. It seemed no one could be right but himself. Fortunately the sergeant had gone ahead anyway but if he had not…

  My arteries are hardening, thought Barnaby. And I don’t like it. He realised May was addressing him.

  ‘I’m afraid I felt at the time,’ she said, ‘that you were simply not ready for more detailed esoteric knowledge. But perhaps I was mistaken.’

  Yes, perhaps you were, you dozy old bat, thought Troy, noting his chief’s look of crumbling devastation. The sergeant’s reaction was not entirely sympathetic. He had been on the receiving end of the instruction always to keep an open mind too often not to feel a sting of satisfaction. There was also the undeniable fact that this discovery slightly eased Troy’s own guilt. His sole defence, should Barnaby notice the fifteen-minute discrepancy between the time logged for the Blackpool information and his sergeant’s phone call to Arbury Crescent, would have been of the truculent ‘How was I to know?’ nature. Which was of course no defence at all. Now there’d been a preemptive strike. For if the chief had been more attentive to May Cuttle’s statement not only the boy, but also a great deal of time and money would have been saved as well.

  The caution was completed. Troy buttoned his jacket and moved forwards, prepared for trouble. But there was none and five minutes later all three men were in the car and on the way to the station.

  Troy drove. Barnaby sat in the back, Andrew Carter sullenly at his side. He had vehemently denied Felicity’s story, saying that she’d probably been hallucinating. Anyone could see she was brain-damaged by years of booze and drugs.

  ‘We’ll test the bar for prints.’

  ‘Test away. I’ve already told you I made a grab at it when we were on the roof. Plus I carried it down to my room the time before.’

  ‘If that’s all you did, that’s all they’ll find.’

  Barnaby watched Carter’s face as he spoke. All he saw was a smirk of bravado. The man leaned back, crossing one leg high at right angles across the other knee. As he tugged at his sneakered foot the soft hide of his jacket hitched up and Barnaby saw the glowing circle of light on his wrist.

  ‘Where d’you get that?’

  ‘Present. My nearly-but-not-quite fiancée.’

  ‘She’s had a lucky escape.’

  ‘Me, too. She was as neurotic as hell. Always rapping on about her inner life. Can I smoke?’

  ‘Not at the moment. Tell me—just as a matter of interest—did you know she was living at the Windhorse before you arrived?’

  Carter paused as if mulling over the possible consequences of a truthful reply, then said: ‘Yes. My uncle wrote to me. He recognised her.’

  ‘From an engraving in the Buddhist scriptures no doubt?’

  ‘It’s no crime to look out for a rich wife. If it was, half the male population would be inside tomorrow.’

  ‘You ever been inside?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You said you were “working” the arcades. That’s thieves’ cant.’

  ‘A slip of the tongue.’

  But in the weeks leading up to the trial more and more information on both the Carters came to light. Faced with facts that made his previous protestations frankly untenable, Andrew Carter, on the hottest legal advice the sale of his watch could buy, decided to plead guilty to the murder of Ian Craigie.

  Filling in the background, he admitted that his uncle, after watching a television programme from America showing an overweight guru with a fleet of Rollers supplied by adoring underlings, had visited his old sparring partner in Albany prison and sold him the idea that they should pool resources and set up just such an establishment in this country. This they had done and much was made at the trial of the deliberate annexation of Carter’s contribution after his death, leaving the accused, as lawful next of kin, virtually destitute.

  Andrew Carter—thin, hollow in cheek and eye—touchingly, perjuringly, described how, on the night of the murder, he had finally been driven to reveal his true identity and begged for even a small amount of money to set against the share that was rightfully and morally his, but all to no avail. Craigie, he told the court, just laughed in his face.

  Defence counsel, the brilliant Gerard Malloy-Malloy, in a dazzling closing speech, dwelt at length on the character of the deceased confidence trickster. He revealed such a string of heartless swindling farragos and deceits that the wonder in everyone’s mind was not that someone had killed Craigie, but why on earth it hadn’t been accomplished years ago.

  Carter’s plea of ‘Not Guilty’ to the murder of Timothy Justin Riley was upheld. Felicity’s history of instability and drug dependence, plus the fact that she had taken a sleeping draught a bare hour before supposedly seeing Carter lure Riley from his room, made her appear an unreliable witness. Counsel reduced her to tearful hesitancies in no time. All the smeary mass of prints proved was that both men had handled the bar.

  Evidence was offered as to the dangerously aggressive and violent behaviour of Riley. He had caused the death of the accused’s uncle and had also made an attempt on the life of the accused which was only foiled by the quickest thinking. (Here the piece of metal was produced.)

  No one but Andrew Carter ever knew the real reason why Tim had to die. Troy had hit on it whilst tossing ideas about, but the supposition had been one of many not to be pursued. The fact was that, caught up unwillingly in the rush down to May, Tim had indeed been distressed at being separated from his beloved Master and was making his way back when the knife had been thrown. He had seen the action, looked back, seen the murderer. And been seen in his turn.

  Carter was sentenced to eight years in prison, of which he served six and a half. Having left the residue from the sale of his watch in the hands of a shrewd investment analyst, by the time he was paroled the amount had substantially increased. A few weeks later, wearing most of it round his waist in a money-belt, he skipped the country.

  He travelled around Europe for some months—living high, spending and gambling until some serious unpleasantness in Marseilles involving a marked deck in a poker game caused him to move on. He flew to America then, choosing to land at San Diego, attracted by the idea of the sunshine state. He hired a car there and drove up the coast. Unfortunately, just outside Sausalito, he was waylaid, savagely beaten and robbed of all he possessed by a couple of mafiosi
disguised as New Age shamans.

  Epilogue

  Sylvie Gamelin left the Manor a few days after the case was solved, refusing her mother’s offer of the keys to the London house and moving instead into an anonymous hotel in Victoria. Here, for over a month she stayed in her room, resting, coming out just to eat at the in-house restaurant and, once, to visit the family solicitor.

  The revelations about Ian Craigie (as she now could not help thinking of him) had shocked her deeply. Accepting that his conversion—which had taken place before they met—was genuine, Sylvie still could not regard his teachings with the uncritical admiration of former times. This seemed to double the sense of loss she felt at his death and also add confusion, so that she felt unable to grieve cleanly.

  The lengthy breathing space at the hotel helped sort these feelings out and she began gradually to appreciate that the veracity of the insights received were independent of her teacher’s moral character. And to know that her experiences during meditation were not a matter of self-indulgent conjuration. They were true, if mysterious, encouragements that she was right in her decision to seek a way of life that included some sort of spiritual discipline.

  It was during this period that a letter, forwarded from the Windhorse, arrived from Willoughby Greatorex asking her to come and see him. She went with some reluctance, expecting a firm avuncular lecture on the future disposition of her trust fund only to find that the matter in question was the reading of her father’s Will. Guy had left all of which he died possessed to his daughter. Although Sylvie always knew this to be his intention, she was still dismayed when it turned out to be so. Before she left, Sir Willoughby handed her a large manila envelope—saying that it was her father’s wish that she should have it. He did not know what it contained.

  Back in her room, Sylvie put the envelope at the back of her wardrobe and tried to forget about it. She did not need further reminders of her father. One of the things that occupied her most during this period of solitary introspection was the knowledge that, although innocent of the murder of which she had so vehemently accused him, Guy had died knowing that she believed in his guilt. And, whilst her feelings towards him in a general sense had not changed, she bitterly regretted this single misapprehension. Several times, sitting quietly and trying to get some sort of sense and order into her thoughts, she had tried to ‘reach’ him by closing her eyes and concentrating so intensely on his image that her head began to swim. All this mental activity, however, was in vain. Guy remained resolutely unreachable and so, presumably, unaware of his daughter’s remorse.

  Eventually she opened the envelope, tipping the contents out on to the bed. She had half expected to find share certificates or insurance policies and was nonplussed at the sheets of folded paper, photographs, ticket stubs and programmes that tumbled all over the duvet. She picked up the topmost piece of paper and smoothed it out.

  It was a school report; Christmas term 1983. There were a lot more. Every one, in fact, from that year until she left. Plus paintings, maps and scientific drawings and a lace-edged collar lumpily embroidered ‘S.G.’ that had mysteriously vanished soon after she brought it home. There was some sheet music and one piece, ‘The Robin’s Return,’ had been vividly inscribed by felt-tipped pens. A lock of hair twisted into a rubber band. She remembered when it had been waist-length she had insisted on having it cut, simply because her father said he loved it long. She found some ticket halves attached to a postcard of a gorilla on which was written Our Day At The Zoo.

  She sat working through the pile, not always reading, sometimes giving things scarcely a look. But gradually, and at last, she came to know the extent of his loneliness and pain. Absorbing it, she let it mingle with her own. At the very bottom of the collection was a smaller sealed envelope with her name on. It held a letter which begged her forgiveness. The writer understood that his protestations of affection were unwelcome but perhaps, now that he was no longer present in person, they could safely be accepted in the sincere and loving spirit in which they had always been offered. He wished only for her happiness. She had been the single undeserved joy in his life. He was, always, her devoted father.

  Sylvie held the letter for a long time. She sat completely still until the room grew quite dark, making of her profile an inky silhouette against the sodium-orange glow from the streetlights. She felt disturbed and regretful to the point of anguish. She thought back across the years of their estrangement and, in the light of the letter and the poignant heap of mementoes, no longer saw his observance and pursuit of her as spiteful and oppressive. She remembered him hovering in the doorway opposite her apartment, trying to hide when she came out, herself screaming abuse across the street.

  Now she thought, what had he done after all that was so terrible? Neglected her, as no doubt thousands of busy parents did their children and then tried to make up for it, grossly overplaying his hand as he did in every other area of his life because he couldn’t help it. It seemed to Sylvie, the single piece of paper quivering in her hand, amazing that she had been able so easily and continuously to harden her heart against him.

  The Master had said, ‘Try to know each other in that which is eternal.’ She had not tried to know her father at all, and now the letter was all she had and to lament over the omission all that she could do.

  These perceptions made her so miserable that she was driven from the hotel to walk the surrounding streets. Around and about she strode through piles of damp yellow leaves, hardly taking note of passers-by and her surroundings, briefly resting sometimes on a bench before striding on fiercely. She would walk until exhausted then return to her hotel and sleep. Once she found a public garden and whiled away a whole afternoon concealed amongst the shrubs, trying to empty her mind and attend only to her breathing as she had been taught—but with little success. Regret, that most suffocating and sterile of emotions, consumed her in a way that drained the present of light and warmth, rendering a peaceful future seemingly impossible.

  She had passed 58 Eccleston Square several times before realising that it was the home of the Buddhist Society. And several more before she rang the bell and pushed open the shining black door. But after the first visit she came nearly every afternoon, usually spending her time in the library, reading a little but mainly just resting in the silence. At first she avoided looking at the carved rupa which reminded her of the grotesque fracas that had taken place at the Manor House. But, as her visits continued, and she began to feel increasingly at home if not at peace, this recollection occurred less often.

  She started to attend the Saturday meditation class and joined a weekly discussion group which was addressed on one occasion by Thannisara, a Buddhist nun. Attracted by the Bhikkuni’s air of collected contained attention, her grace and warm regard, plus the fact that she laughed a lot, Sylvie went to stay for a few days at Amaravati—a Buddhist monastery near Great Gaddesden to which the Venerable Sister was attached.

  After several such retreats she bought a small cottage nearby and gradually, in the role of lay helper rather than embryonic nun, began to spend a great deal of her time at Amaravati. She worked in the kitchens or the garden and on Open Days and family retreats she especially enjoyed helping to look after the children. Gradually her inner and outer life meshed more and more closely and harmoniously with that of the community, and she was content that this should be so.

  Once a week she met and talked with Sister Thannisara. During these times, as if the woman’s presence gave some special dispensation. Sylvie would either stumble through pain-filled and self-accusatory recitations or lash out and blame others—anyone and everyone—for her present unhappiness. She would go over and over the same ground until gradually the words became null and void, like ashes in the mouth.

  Guilt slowly seeped away and her mind, instead of feeling like a suppurating wound, each day became a little clearer, a little more purged of dead matter. She began to consider the idea of visiting her mother. But she hardly thought of Andrew Carter du
ring this time of healing, and, by the end of the first six months, he had quite faded from her mind.

  Coming to Ken and Heather, what is there to say that the reader (provided he or she owns a television set) will not already know? Perhaps only the briefest details regarding the manner of the couple’s departure will suffice. This took place the morning after Tim Riley died.

  The Beavers appeared—or rather presented themselves—at breakfast, standing on the satin-smooth stone floor with heads sacrificially bent, shoulders bowed, hands pressed together as if linked by invisible chains. Calais could have been engraved upon their hearts. They said they had not been able to sleep since their surrender to cupidity and so painful was their distress that they now had no alternative but to remove themselves from the Manor House for good.

  The others argued back. Forgiveness was plainly on the cards, no strings attached. Ken cried, ‘Oh! Coals of fire,’ but still would not be moved. They packed their few belongings and within the hour were gone, walking and hobbling down the gravel drive with even Ken’s plaster cast looking ashamed of itself. They did not look back.

  The following weekend the News of the World (having rung up during the evening meditation on the terrace and doubled the whack of the Daily Pitch) carried part one of their exclusive story. Nothing was left out, though much was included that was fictional.

  Much was made of Heather’s visits to Venus. Also, of the assistance given on her daily round of common tasks by various elohim and other spritely little scarperers. All this being presented under the heading ELEMENTALLY, MY DEAR WATSON. Two weeks later they were invited to appear on Wogan where, no doubt, the intention was to have a little gentle fun at their expense. If so, the experiment misfired for half way through the programme Ken suddenly went into a trance, channelling Hilarion and the Crystalline Hordes with such dynamic authority that the switchboards were immediately jammed by callers wanting to book appointments. And when the first message came through from the other side (it was Cosmo Lang, late Archbishop of Canterbury, wishing to apologise for his part in suppressing the Church Report On Spiritualism And Communication), the studio went wild.