Rough Cider

TWENTY

Pressure. I’d tried ignoring it, turning my back on it, meeting it halfway, laughing in its face, arguing with it, defying it, but still it closed in, unstoppable. Now it had got to me.

I needed the gun.

From Bath I drove fast along the Wiltshire roads, main beam probing the evening mist, wipers working intermittently. I kept checking the mirror, because I had a suspicion that I was being tailed. One set of headlamps stayed consistently fifty yards behind me whatever speed I was doing, and at times I was going flat out.

The victim of my own imagination?

No. The threat of pursuit was real. I was suspected of murder. Doubly suspected. First Alice had pointed the finger at me. Now Inspector Voss.

You may think I was overreacting to Alice’s charge of shooting Cliff Morton in 1943, that it was too absurd to take seriously. But I’d learned enough about that young woman in the last five days to regard her as dangerous. She kept nothing to herself. It was a sure bet that she’d mouthed her suspicions to Digby Watmore by now. With the press on to me, as well as the police, what chance would I have?

Two murders down to me. Put them together and News on Sunday would have a field day. I’d be in the same league as Heath and Christie.

Each time I drove through a stretch lit by street lamps I slowed and tried to identify the car trailing me. Difficult, because he kept his distance, and the mist lingered right into Berkshire, but by degrees I reached a few conclusions. A large black limousine with a wide axis and low lines, possibly a Jaguar, driven by a man, no passengers.

At Thatcham I stopped for petrol. While the girl was unfastening the cap I stepped quickly into the road to see what my faithful follower would do. Nowhere in sight. Yet two minutes after I got on the road again, I checked the mirror, and he was back with me.

On familiar territory, where the A34O forks left to Pangbourne, I slipped the leash by turning sharp left a short way up the road towards Englefield Park, then left again by the lake and back to the A4. I believe he overshot at the first turn.

I switched my thoughts to more useful activity. I’d arranged with Danny Leftwich to pick up the Colt.45 at the range on Wednesday morning, only I couldn’t wait that long. He should have finished cleaning it by now. So I drove past Reading on the A4 almost as far as Sonning and then branched right to seek out Danny’s sixteenth-century cottage by the golf course. I’d played bridge there several times the previous winter.

My lights first picked out the hump of his Volkswagen above a low stone wall, then the squat structure of the thatched cottage. Smoke, coiling into the night sky from one of the two chimneys, encouraged me; the unlit interior didn’t. I stopped by the wall, followed the winding route between soggy lavender bushes to the front door, touched the bellpush, heard it chime two notes, and waited hopefully. A dog barked. Nothing else.

No point in trying the bell again. Between the chimes and the barking, most of Sonning must have heard that Danny Leftwich had a visitor. I should have guessed that a man of Danny’s energy didn’t spend his nights indoors in front of the TV. Looking around, I spotted a brick-built garage or workshop at the end of the garden.

One thing was clear: He didn’t expend much of that energy in the garden. It was a job finding the crazy paving in the long grass. Worth it, though. When I rapped the door, Danny’s voice piped up at once, “Who is it?”

I told him.

He called, “Hold on, Theo. I’ll be right with you.”

I waited over a minute, then the door opened and I got a whiff of the chemicals and understood why the delay had been necessary. The building was a photographic darkroom. I had to bend my head to avoid touching a set of still wet prints pegged to plastic lines.

“Not bad, hm?” he said as I glanced at them.

They were nude shots. One shot, to be accurate, a blowup in black and white, printed ten times over. So-called glamour photography. A girl bending slightly forward, head turned to look over her shoulder at the camera, as if in a relay race, except that her bottom was too plump for a runner, and her pouting expression suggested it wasn’t a baton she was looking out for.

“Something new in cottage industries,” I commented.

“My spinning wheel’s got woodworm,” said Danny.

“I suppose you’ve got an outlet for these?”

There was a glint of mischief from Danny as he said, “Rikky Patel.”

I winced in disbelief. Rikky was another of our bridge team, an unfailingly solemn senior technician in the biology department.

“Rikky goes in for this?”

He enjoyed the idea for a moment and then explained, “Rikky’s uncle is a publisher. The Indian subcontinent is a fabulous market for soft porn.” He poured the contents of a developing tray into a beaker. “Come for your gun? I thought we said Wednesday.”

“Is it ready? You’re a pal.”

Danny wiped his hands and led me out and through the lavender to the cottage. The Colt was lying on a cloth on the kitchen table among a collection of bristle brushes, screwdrivers, jags, alien keys, cocktail sticks, and tins of gun oil. He picked it up and operated the slide. “I haven’t adjusted the sights. I was hoping to test-fire it.”

“I know,” I told him. “Something has come up. Did you by any chance get hold of some…”

“New cartridges? Sure. They’ll cost you a bit.”

I paid him generously, and nothing was said about the use I expected to make of them. “As a matter of interest,” I asked him, “the Colt is a pretty heavy weapon, isn’t it? I mean, the recoil is something to reckon with.”

“It has that reputation,” he agreed.

“Do you reckon a boy of nine could handle it with any accuracy?”

He frowned.

“I know it’s against the law,” I said, “but just supposing it happened.”

He gave me a puzzled look and said, “Theo, you already told me you fired the thing two-handed when you were a boy.”

Stupid, I thought. Of course I mentioned it last time. Too much on my mind.

I told him, “That was just messing about in a field, shooting at a tin can.”

He gave a shrug and we left it at that.

Although it was spotting with rain, he insisted on coming out to the car with me. Before I switched on, he made it obvious that there was something he wanted to mention. He bent his head confidentially to the window.

To be frank, I was slightly annoyed. I thought I’d made it plain that I wouldn’t land him in trouble with the law. He’d done me a favor, I’d paid him handsomely, and the matter was closed. So before he got a word out, I said forcefully, “Great to have friends you can trust, Danny. Thanks, mate.” I started up.

But he insisted on saying something else. He had to shout above the MG’s engine note. “She’s a bit sensitive about the posing. You won’t let on that you know about it, will you?”

I said without understanding, “Of course not.”

I was back on the A4 more than a mile from the cottage when it dawned on me. That’s how preoccupied I was with my own predicament. I had to make a profound mental effort to visualize the naked girl in the photograph. When I did, I whistled, not so much at the shock of identity as at Danny’s enterprising genius. She was familiar, but in another setting, seated at her typewriter in a white blouse and pleated skirt, the elegant secretary of the history department, Carol Dangerfield.

Bully for you, Carol, I thought. Don’t worry, I can keep a secret.

With the gun in my pocket and an empty road behind me, I felt better than I had all day. It lasted only as long as it took me to drive home.

The black Jaguar that had followed me from Bath was parked in my driveway. I thought about slamming the car into reverse and leaving him to it. I thought about the newspapers. I thought about the police. In the end I drew up beside the Jaguar, switched off, took out the gun and the box of cartridges Danny had given me, slotted six of them into the magazine, and pressed it home. Then I heard the crunch of shoes on gravel. I thrust the Colt into my jacket pocket a split second before the car door was grabbed and swung open.

“Out, jerk.”

I knew the voice. Didn’t need to look any higher than the stubby hand gripping the two-foot length of lead piping from my garage.

“What’s this about?” I asked Harry Ashenfelter as my heart pumped in double time.

“Give me that.”

I handed my walking stick to him, and he slung it far into the darkness of the garden.

“Now get out.”

I said, “You’re crazy.”

He swung the piping high and cracked it down on the bonnet of the car. Chips of red paint hit the windscreen.

I said, “You’ll pay for that.”

He lifted it again.

This time I did as he’d ordered, using my arms and good leg to achieve the vertical. Propped against the car, I faced him. “Now what?”

He jerked his head in the direction of the house.

I said, “Difficult.”

“Brother, I don’t care if you have to crawl on your belly.”

It didn’t come to that. By lolloping along the side of the car, I shunted myself from the MG to the Jaguar and then, with a couple of hops, to the storm porch. Felt for my key and let myself in.

Harry was close behind, me, making sure I didn’t slam the door on him. I switched on the hall light and kept my momentum going as far as the living room. Sank into an armchair and in the same movement slipped the Colt automatic from my coat pocket and wedged it handily between my right thigh and the side of the chair, twisting my body so that he was unsighted.

He switched on the main light and pulled the cord on the curtains. He was crimson with emotion or anger or sadistic anticipation. He crossed the room and stood over me, holding the pipe horizontally against my neck and forcing my jaw upwards. “Now, punk,” he said, giving me a faceful of his sour breath, “you better tell me why you set fire to my home and murdered my wife.”

His priorities were instructive, but I thought it prudent not to comment. I couldn’t speak, anyway, with the piping jammed against my larynx. I made a strangled sound, and he eased the pressure enough for me to say, “I had nothing to do with the fire, for God’s sake. I gave the police a full account of my movements.”

“Crap,” said Harry.

“True! I was on the road when the fire started.”

“How’d you know when it started?”

“From the police. Listen, Harry, I had no reason to harm Sally. I had an appointment to meet her this afternoon. I was waiting in the Pump Room over an hour.”

“Making sure you were seen, huh?”

“Balls.”

He rocked my head back with the bar and jammed a knee into my stomach. With the reflex I practically decapitated myself. I vomited. He drew back and cuffed me with the back of his right hand. I doubled up, groaning.

He said close to my ear, “So help me, creep, I’m going to have the truth out of you.”

I asked for water.

He hit me across the face again. My lip split, and warm blood oozed down my chin.

He shouted, “Sit up!”

I did as he commanded, pressing my shoulders against the back of the chair.

Harry had boobed. He’d stepped back to admire his work. And now he saw a Colt. 45 leveled at his chest. His hands tightened on the lead piping.

“Drop it,” I said. “This is in good nick, and loaded.”

His face twitched and turned gray, but he obeyed.

I said, “Back against he wall, facing me.”

I had a clear line of fire from the chair.

I said as evenly as circumstances allowed, “Maybe now I can get some sense out of you. Apparently, you believe I started the fire. Why?”

Silence. He was drained of aggression.

“Lost your voice? Touch of laryngitis?”

He wetted his lips nervously. Panic had manifestly set in.

By contrast, I was back to my sarcastic best. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those jumpy types who can’t look into the barrel of a gun and talk rationally.”

“Don’t shoot,” he finally managed to say, adding limply, “You’ll regret it.”

“Come off it, Harry. I’ve got a right to defend myself from a thug like you.”

“With a murder weapon?” he said frenziedly. “I know that gun. It’s a U.S. Army automatic, the one the police never found after Morton was shot. Tell me it isn’t.”

Honest, as usual, I shrugged and said nothing.

Harry was back in business as a communicator. He started talking fast on a high, hysterical note. “I know about you, Sinclair. You’re in real trouble now. You must be out of your mind. I guess you flipped when Alice turned up out of nowhere wanting to dig up the past. It was all buried and forgotten, tidy and grassed over. You live in style now, this smart place in the country, a good job in the university. No one here knows about your past.”

“What past?”

“Like blowing Morton’s brains out with that thing in your hand.”

I stared back at him with supreme indifference. I’d listened to the buildup, in no doubt about what was coming. Harry Ashenfelter was just one more self-appointed amateur detective out to shock.

“You killed the guy,” he said superfluously, his big scene in ruins around him, “and you let my buddy swing for it.” Sensing the need to tone it down, he put up a quivering hand. “Okay, you were just a kid at the time. Under pressure. All that. I give you all that. You could get help, you know. You need a good lawyer.”

I sighed. He was pathetic.

He said with all the concern he could register in that lumpy, combative face, “Did you know Sally was actually sorry for you? She told me you got Barbara Lockwood all wrong.”

I reminded him wearily, “I heard this from you on Sunday. It doesn’t mean I shot Cliff Morton.”

Harry showed no sign of having heard. He was too keyed-up to draw any kind of deduction. The words were gushing from him on the Scheherazade principle, in a breathless bid to stop me from pulling the trigger. “Sally and I did some serious talking since. She told me things I didn’t know. Nobody knew but Sally. Jesus Christ, is it any wonder she was an alcoholic?”

“What things did she tell you?”

“About Barbara. Barbara’s secrets.”

My mouth suddenly felt drained. Trying to sound unconcerned, I said, “Oh, yes?”

“Listen to this, Sinclair. Barbara was nuts on Morton. She really loved the guy. She was carrying his baby.”

Pulses started throbbing in my head. It isn’t easy after twenty years to accept that you were totally wrong about someone you would have gone to the wall for. I’d heard this from Alice, but she couldn’t have known for certain. She’d guessed about Barbara and Morton, and I hadn’t believed her. Deep down I’d felt sure that Sally would expose it as a cruel defamation.

But it wasn’t. Barbara, my Barbara, had misled me. She’d used me to promote the lie that she wanted Duke. I was forced to accept it now.

I said in a dry, distant voice, “Barbara told Sally this?”

“Sure.” Harry locked one of his forefingers over the other and said, “Those two girls were like this. Barbara confided to Sal that she let Cliff Morton make it with her whenever he wanted. But old man Lockwood and his lady didn’t care for Morton at all. He was bad news.”

“That part is true,” I admitted. “What else?”

“They ordered Barbara to stop seeing the guy. This was after George Lockwood caught them together.”

“In the orchard?”

“Right. Barbara was shattered. The poor kid was pregnant, and on top of that, Morton’s call-up papers had just arrived. Then Morton came up with a plan. He wasn’t a total jerk. He offered to marry the girl. He figured he could dodge the call-up by taking Barbara to Ireland. Neutral territory. She could marry him there and have the baby.” Harry paused for breath, studying my reception of the story. I must have looked poleaxed. “This is on the level, Sinclair.”

“Is that all?”

He wound himself up again. “Hell, no. There’s more. They had to get new identities. Morton knew a guy in the Town Hall who said he would fix it in a matter of days if the money was right. Then they’d find a boatman along the Bristol Channel willing to ship them to Ireland. Meantime, Morton needed a place to lay up. So Barbara came up with a suggestion. She said he could hide in one of the barns on the farm. She’d keep him supplied with food. And that’s what happened.”

I screwed up my face in disbelief. “He was there on the farm?”

“Right up to the day you shot him.”

I was so stunned by the information that I allowed the remark to stand. Harry had got the dumb, undivided attention he wanted.

“Barbara was smart. She encouraged her parents to think she was seeing Duke, and they didn’t mind too much. In their eyes anyone was better than Morton, even a GI.” A nervous grin streaked across his lips. “People generally locked up their daughters when the Yanks hit town. Not the Lockwoods. Barbara put it around that she had something going with Duke. As you know, she went out with him a couple of times. And she used you to stoke up the story.”

And I’d repeated it at Duke’s trial. My skin prickled. “Did Sally tell you that or are you embroidering?”

“She had it from Barbara. Gospel truth. You got to believe it.”

I did. I knew, sickeningly, resoundingly, that it was true.?d been pitchforked into a living hell. My discredited evidence had helped to hang an innocent man.

At last Harry had dried up. The next move was up to me, and I was in no shape for action. He sensed the softening in my resolve, or just the wish to be rid of him and work things out for myself, because his eyes traveled upwards from the gun. He was assessing his chances of getting oµt alive.

Stalemate.

I wouldn’t shoot him in Cold blood, but it wasn’t safe to lower the gun. He couldn’t move and neither could I, without my stick. I couldn’t even escort him to his car and send him on his way.

Rashly, through my tormented emotions, I grasped at reason. Harry believed?d shot Morton and killed Sally.

I said, “Do me the favor of answering one straightforward question. If Morton was Barbara’s lover, why would I have shot him?”

“Jealousy.”

“For Christ’s sake. I was in short trousers.”

“I was there. Remember?” said Harry, picking up confidence by the second. “You had a crush on the girl, right? Puppy love. I saw it. Sally saw it. Barbara used it. Her fatal mistake. Never mess with a kid’s emotions.”

I said heatedly, bitterly, “What am I supposed to have done? Shot Morton in a jealous passion and cut up the body? At nine years old? Who are you kidding?”

Harry was sounding more in control than I. “No,” he said evenly. “Duke disposed of the body. He took pity on you.”

“What?”

“He was like a father to you. He’d do anything to get you off the hook. He drove back to the farm that night, hacked off the head and put it in the cider barrel, and then transported the rest someplace else, miles away.”

I was practically speechless. “He didn’t tell you that.”

“No. But it has to be true. It was typical of the guy. He adored kids.”

“It doesn’t have to be true at all.”

Harry was determined to complete the explanation. “When they finally caught up with him, he refused to put the finger on you. Stupid and brave. That was Duke Donovan.”

“And you think I kept silent at the trial?” I shouted at him as my anger erupted. “Allowed them to hang the man who’s supposed to have saved me? What kind of vicious bastard do you take me for? If I could have thought of anything to stop them hanging Duke, I’d have spoken up.”

“The guy was innocent,” said Harry. “I told you he was innocent.”

“I know. It breaks my heart. It’s monstrous. Hideous. But I didn’t know at the time. For twenty years I swallowed the story that he was guilty. I’m bloody certain now that he wasn’t, and I’m going to find the killer. I don’t know for sure who it was, but I know where to go.”

A pause.

“The farm?”

I nodded and made a superhuman effort to sound rational.

“Do you know why I’m so certain?”

“Sally?”

“Yes. She was killed because of what she would have told me.

“You think whoever murdered Morton also…”

“Right.”

We faced each other in a tense, thoughtful silence, each wiser yet with our impasse, unresolved. I could have said more. I elected not to. What I’d expressed was spontaneous, impassioned, and enough.

Finally, Harry took the initiative. He said, “Okay, my friend, call me crazy, but I believe you. If I’m right that you didn’t kill Morton or Sally, I don’t have to worry. You won’t shoot me. So All tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to walk right out of here, get in my car, and drive away. Understand?”

I gave a nod.

He wanted extra assurance. “You’re not planning to stop me? In that case, would you lower the gun?”

This, in essence, was what the superpowers had debated ever since Hiroshima. There had to be some trust between us. Disarmament was the only sane way forward. I glanced down and put my good foot on the lead piping he’d threatened me with. I stared at Harry. Then I slowly planted the gun on my lap and placed my hands on the arms of the chair.

Harry dipped his head in recognition, took a couple of tentative sideways steps, and started across the room towards the door. I followed him with my eyes, making no move.

A sitting duck.

It happened at speed, though I see it now in slow motion.

He was practically behind me and through the door when his right hand grabbed something off the top of the filing cabinet there.

A multicolored glass paperweight about the size of a cricket ball but twice as heavy.

An arc of light at the edge of my vision. The thing in his hand streaking towards my head.

The crunch.

Nothing.