Drowned Lives

46

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.’

But I continued my prepared speech. ‘And my Great-Uncle Samuel. That was your big mistake. Whatever he knew about you and Lindley Simpson, he wasn’t putting the information away for future use. The fact is, he just wasn’t interested. It was irrelevant to him. It had no bearing on his book, you see. I suppose you thought the book was an excuse for doing some digging, exposing all those old skeletons. And you thought I’d taken over from him — another troublemaker from the Buckley family. But you don’t seem to be able to grasp that my great-uncle was genuinely only interested in the book. He never kept anything that didn’t relate to the story of William and Josiah Buckley.’

‘But there were letters he had—’

‘There’s no trace of them. It seems he didn’t keep them, so your secrets would have been safe. If only he hadn’t died.’

That seemed to get through to him. And it was true, too. If Samuel hadn’t been killed, I wouldn’t have gone through everything I’d experienced since, and I wouldn’t be here now.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Leo. ‘He was a Buckley, like you. The Buckleys have always hated our family. Always. And I don’t believe Samuel was any different. Not if he had Buckley blood.’

‘So what did you do? I don’t believe you’d have run him over yourself. I can see you’re not the type to get blood on your own hands. Who did you hire? Simon Monks?’ I watched his face carefully for a reaction, but there was none. ‘That would be a wonderful irony, wouldn’t it? A typical Parker masterstroke — you’d have it in your power to destroy Caroline too. Are you hoping that I’ll do the job for you? Well, I’ll do whatever I must to achieve what Great-Uncle Samuel wanted — to bring the Parkers down.’

I stood up to leave, feeling my limbs trembling with the anger that had built up in me. I’d almost given him enough to be thinking about for now. But not quite.

‘Perhaps my family had good reason to hate yours,’ I said. ‘Did you ever think about that? One thing I’ve discovered is what Mary did to Samuel and George. I don’t care about all the rest, William and Josiah and all that. That’s ancient history. But what Mary did was enough. And now all you’re concerned about is protecting her reputation. I believe you’ll go to any lengths to do it. My Great-Uncle Samuel knew that, too. And I intend to prove exactly how the Parkers were involved in his death.’

Parker heard me out impassively as I blurted out this claim. I’d intended to make it my exit line, to leave him stunned by the strength of my anger, puncture his complacency and leave him in no doubt that I was a man to be afraid of.

But before I could reach the door of the study, he spoke calmly.

‘Christopher, there’s something you need to know. When you’ve heard it, you might think differently.’

There was authority in his words, but an odd compassion too, which completely disarmed me. Immediately I weakened and subsided into the chair, feeling suddenly apprehensive. Too many people had told me there were things I needed to know, and it invariably preceded some awful secret that had been kept from me. Something that I needed to know, but didn’t want to.

‘I suspect, from what you’ve been saying,’ he said, ‘that you still don’t know the reason for the estrangement in your family, the rift between Samuel and his brother George. Perhaps it’s time you were enlightened.’

I waited submissively. How could I possibly admit that he was right? My pride wouldn’t let me accept for one moment that a man like Leo Parker could be in possession of knowledge about my own family that had been denied to me. In fact, I had to suppress a ridiculous surge of gratitude that he was willing to share this information with me. With just one sentence, he had me eating out of his hand.

He looked at his watch. ‘I really am out of time. I must walk down to the stables to look at a horse. But if you want to hear the truth and you promise simply to listen, you can come with me.’

I trailed after him down the passage and into a utility room with a quarry-tiled floor, where he put on wellingtons and a waxed jacket over his suit, instantly transforming himself into a gentleman farmer. He picked up a stick and we went out through a back door onto a gravel path that led towards the stable block.

Parker didn’t specify where he’d got the information he based his story on. He didn’t need to. It was obvious that his family had never made it a secret in the way mine had. As he spoke, his words raised tears of frustration at the fact that I’d been reduced to relying on a stranger for details of my own history. Because it was my history. It was where I’d come from.