Hand In Glove Part 27

I'm glad he hasn't faced me with it. I'm glad he hasn't requested an autograph or told me "False G.o.ds" is his favourite poem of the century. Because I don't know what I'd say if he did, I really don't.

The old lie is redundant here, you see, just like every other preconception. It won't serve. It's not enough. It's less than men like Frank Griffith deserve. I'd gag on the words. I'd choke on the lie I've spent ten years perfecting. I simply couldn't do it.

Pray he doesn't speak, Sis. Pray for my sake and for yours.

Because, if he does, I'll have to tell him the truth. I'll have to tell him who really wrote the poems, every one, every verse.

My dear unworldly neglected sister, who wants neither credit nor fame. Not me. Not the bronzed and burnished simu-lacrum of a poet they call Tristram Abberley. But you. The overlooked twenty-four carat reality of rhyme and reason.

Don't worry too much. It'll probably never happen. He won't speak and neither will I. Our secret's safe. I'll go on 158 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

pretending to be what you can never be and what I can't help being thought: a soldier and a poet.

I'll write again as soon as I can.

Much love, Tristram.

CHAPTER.

SEVEN.

Well?" Frank Griffith looked at each of them in turn, a measure of defiance restored to his gaze. "Don't you have anything to say? You wanted to know Tristram's secret.

Now you do."

Derek frowned. "He wasn't really a poet at all?"

Charlotte heard the remark clearly enough, but it seemed to echo, as if reaching her along a speaking-tube from a distant room. At every turn, it seemed, her hopes were to be dashed, her a.s.sumptions overturned. Emerson McKitrick was not to be trusted. Ursula was not to be relied upon. And everything Beatrix had ever said about her late and lionized brother was to be disbelieved. "Beatrix wrote the poems?" she murmured. "All of them?"

"Every one," Frank replied, his voice grim and insistent, as if he had decided to spare her no single fragment of the truth now she had demanded to be told it. "Tristram's mind was alive with ideas and images, but he lacked the facility to translate them into poetic form.

Beatrix, on the other hand, was uninspired but technically brilliant.

Together, they made a poet. Apart, they were merely a dreamer and his down-to-earth sister."

"When did you find out?"

"When I reached Tarragona in March of 'thirty-eight and found him dying. He told me then. It was his deathbed confession. He didn't want a priest to absolve him. He wanted me-one of his readers."

"And did you absolve him?"

"As far as I could. I was shocked, of course, but I didn't feel H A N D I N G L O V E.

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betrayed. I'd grown to know and like him for the man he was rather than the poet he wasn't. The poems were just words, whereas he was flesh and blood. The fact he hadn't written them couldn't blot out our friends.h.i.+p or diminish the memory of him I was determined to hold.

Tristram Abberley was a good man. Even then, I understood that was more important than being a good poet."

"But why? Why did they do it?"

"It started as a joke, while Tristram was at Oxford. They submit-ted 'Blindfold' for inclusion in the anthology Auden edited as an experiment, to see whether it would be praised or derided. Beatrix had deliberately guyed the style of Auden's circle and had predicted the poem would be well received by them so long as they thought it was the work of one of their own kind. Well, she was right. It attracted more favourable attention than either of them had antic.i.p.ated. The t.i.tle was part of the joke. ' Bind the cloth tightly, lest you see too brightly.'

'Who faces the men? Who holds the pen?' There were hints and double meanings in virtually every line, but n.o.body noticed them, or understood them if they did. The experiment was a complete success."

"Which they decided to repeat?"

"No. It was meant to end there, as a joke they could relish and share. And so it would have, but for the rift between them and their father. When they were turned out of the family home without a penny in the winter of 'thirty-two, Beatrix thought poetry was worth trying as a way of keeping the wolf from the door. Tristram's reputation at Oxford was all they had to capitalize on, so they put together The Brow of the Hill under his name. From then on, it was too late to turn back. n.o.body wanted to hear that Beatrix wrote the poems when Tristram fitted the bill so much better. And he enjoyed the attention he received, whereas Beatrix wanted none of it. She wrote the second collection under protest. They were no longer short of money. It was only Tristram's standing in the literary world which required him to go on producing poetry. Reluctantly, Beatrix obliged."

"Did my mother know?"

"Not while Tristram was alive. And he asked me not to tell her after he was dead. In the end, it was Beatrix who broke the news, years later, at the time of Spanish Lines."

Charlotte's reactions were lagging behind her understanding.

Suddenly, she realized the publication of Tristram's posthumous collection must have rested not on one lie, but on several. "There were no poems sent back to my mother from Spain, were there?"

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"No. Of course not."

"Then . . ."

"Money's important. Only those who have never been without it will tell you otherwise. Well, in post-war Britain it was in short supply. Your father's company was floundering and Tristram's poetry was bringing in virtually nothing by then. Beatrix conceived the idea of Spanish Lines as a way of helping her relatives. And me. It wasn't as good as the earlier stuff. Beatrix recognized that. Without her brother's inspiration, what she produced was mechanical, somehow heartless. It's a pity he couldn't have known that. Known, I mean, that he really was a poet, or at least part of one. But Spanish Lines achieved its purpose. It revived Tristram's reputation just when it seemed to be in irreversible decline. The earlier collections were reprinted. People started talking about him again, reading his work, making a cult of the poet who had died in Spain. With the proceeds, Ladram Aviation was put back on its feet, at least for a while. And Beatrix bought Hendre Gorfelen for me. So, you see, I'm party to the conspiracy."

The anxious family conferences Uncle Jack had reported made sense now. As did the delay in publis.h.i.+ng Spanish Lines. Charlotte thought of her mother's explanation that she had found it too painful at first to consider publication and flinched with the shock of realizing she had lied. There had been nothing to publish-until Beatrix had written it. How far did the lies run? she wondered. How many had been told her in the course of her life? "Who knew, Frank? You, Beatrix and my mother, obviously. But who else?"

"Your father. n.o.body else. Not then."

"But since?"

"I don't know. None of us had anything to gain from sharing the secret with an outsider. Your father and mother didn't even know I was in on it. As far as they were concerned, it was between them and Beatrix."

Charlotte nodded, wrestling within herself to a.s.semble and identify the consequences of what Frank had said. They would all have kept the secret. That was clear. Which meant Beatrix would never have told Emerson McKitrick about the letters. So, who had told him?

Her mother? It hardly seemed likely, but who else was there? When she looked up, she found Frank's eyes trained upon her, guessing it seemed the direction of her thoughts.

"McKitrick was lying. I knew that as soon as I heard his story.

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Beatrix wouldn't even have given him the train times to London. He was put up to it, by somebody who knew the letters existed but not where they were, who needed to find them but who couldn't afford to let others know why."

"Who also broke into Jackdaw Cottage," put in Derek, "and murdered Beatrix in search of the letters?"

"I think so," said Frank.

Charlotte glanced first at Derek, then at Frank. Was it possible, she wondered, that they had already reached the conclusion she was approaching now with reluctance and distaste? The person they were referring to could only have learned about the letters from Ronnie or Mary Ladram. And he could only have recruited Emerson McKitrick to do his dirty work if he had visited the United States between the time of Beatrix's death and Emerson's arrival in England. "You mean Maurice, don't you?" she asked hesitantly.

"Well," said Frank, "he is the only candidate, isn't he? Your mother might have felt he was ent.i.tled to know the truth about his father."

"Yes, but-" Charlotte's instinct was to defend Maurice, but she needed time to consider whether her instinct was correct. Was Maurice capable of such acts? If he was, what was his motive? If he had none, who else did? If Maurice was ruled out, who was ruled in?

No sooner had she formed the questions in her mind than they dis-solved into one determined a.s.sertion. "I refuse to believe my brother may be a murderer."

"Half-brother," Derek corrected her.

She turned and glared at him. "What difference does that make?"

"Perhaps you don't know him as well as you think."

"As well as you know your brother, you mean?"

"Yes, I suppose you could-"

"Maurice is a more honourable man than your brother, Mr Fairfax. Take my word for it. I've known him all my life. He's kind, intelligent, hard-working and thoroughly admirable."

"Charlotte," said Frank, "all I'm trying to-"

"What possible reason could he have for doing what you've suggested? Why should he want to expose his father as a fraud? Why should he be prepared to murder his aunt in order to discredit the whole family? It's preposterous, absurd, unthinkable."

Charlotte blushed at the vehemence of her outburst and Derek and Frank seemed at first too taken aback by it to speak. Those few 162 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

occupants of the ward capable of doing so looked across at her and stared. Then Frank said calmly: "I know. It's all the things you say.

But Beatrix was murdered. And I am lying here with a gashed head.

And the letters are missing. Those events aren't imaginary. They won't go away. How do you explain them?"

"I can't."

"No. And neither can I. But maybe Maurice can."

CHAPTER.

EIGHT.

As soon as she had reached Ockham House, Charlotte telephoned Ladram Avionics. To her immense relief, Maurice's secretary had not yet left for the weekend.

"What can I do for you, Miss Ladram?"

"It's about Maurice's current visit to the United States."

"Oh, yes?"

"When's he due back?"

"Wednesday."

"In the morning?"

"His flight's due into Heathrow at . . . let me see . . . nine-thirty. I believe he's coming straight on here."

"Thank you." So, only four days separated her from the rea.s.surance she was sure Maurice would give her. How she felt for him at the moment. Betrayed by Ursula. Traduced by Frank Griffith. And unaware of it all, unable to defend himself in any way. "I am correct in thinking, aren't I," she continued, "that he flew to New York yesterday?"

"Of course. Didn't you know?"

"It's a question of timing. Somebody . . . somebody we both know . . . thought they caught sight of him . . . in London . . . last night."

"Quite impossible, Miss Ladram. Mr Abberley flew out on Concorde yesterday morning at ten-thirty. I booked the seat myself."

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"A mistake, then, obviously." A wave of relief swept over Charlotte. The idea that Maurice had stolen the letters from Hendre Gorfelen had always been far-fetched. Now it was also a practical im-possibility. "Thank you for the information. Goodbye."

She put the telephone down, walked into the lounge and poured herself a large gin and tonic, then added more gin. The first gulp took some of the pain away, the second some sharpness of memory.

Emerson's flowers still stood in brilliant blossom in several vases round the room, but, if she tried hard enough, she could blot out most of the words he had used and virtually all of the sounds she had heard. But not everything. Even if she emptied the bottle, the burning sense of her own gullibility would remain, the horrid squirming truth of his last gibe. "Shall I tell you what really disgusts you, Charlie?"

"No," she mumbled into her gla.s.s. "Please don't."

The doorbell rang, magnified by the silence of the house, startling Charlotte so that she spilled some of her drink on the sleeve of her blouse and had to bite back a sudden inclination to cry. She put the gla.s.s down and hurried into the hall, hoping, whoever her visitor was, to be alone again soon.

It was Derek Fairfax. He was smiling uncertainly. "Miss Ladram," he began, "I'm sorry to . . . sorry if this is . . ."

"What do you want?"

"Could I come in?"

"Why?"