The Thirteenth Tale

IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE BANBURY HERALD

The next day I took the train to Banbury, to the offices of the Ban-bury Herald.

It was a young man who showed me the archives. The wordarchive might sound rather impressive to someone who has not had much to do with them, but to me, who has spent her holidays for years in such places, it came as no surprise to be shown into what was essentially a large, windowless basement cupboard.

"A house fire at Angelfield," I explained briefly, "about sixty years ago." The boy showed me the shelf where the holdings for the relevant period were shelved.

"I'll lift the boxes for you, shall I?"

"And the books pages, too, from about forty years ago, but I'm not sure which year."

"Books pages? Didn't know the Herald ever had books pages." And he moved his ladder, retrieved another set of boxes and placed them beside the first one on a long table under a bright light.

"There you are then," he said cheerily, and he left me to it. The Angelfield fire, I learned, was probably caused by an accident. It was not uncommon for people to stockpile fuel at the time, and it was this that had caused the fire to take hold so fiercely. There had been no one in the house but the two nieces of the owner, both of whom escaped and were in hospital. The owner himself was believed to be abroad. {Believed to be… I wondered. I made a quick note of the dates-another six years were to elapse before the ldd.) The column ended with some comments on the architectural significance of the house, and it was noted that it was uninhabitable in its current state.

I copied out the story and scanned headlines in the following issues in case there were updates but, finding nothing, I put the papers away and turned to the other boxes.

"Tell me the truth," he had said. The young man in the old-fashioned suit who had interviewed Vida Winter for the Banbury Herald forty years ago. And she had never forgotten his words.

There was no trace of the interview. There was nothing even that could properly be called a books page. The only literary items at all were occasional book reviews under the heading "You might like to read… " by a reviewer called Miss Jenkinsop. Twice my eye came to rest on Miss Winter's name in these paragraphs. Miss Jenkinsop had clearly read and enjoyed Miss Winter's novels; her praise was enthusiastic and just, if unscholarly in expression, but it was plain she had never met their author and equally plain that she was not the man in the brown suit.

I closed the last newspaper and folded it neatly in its box.

The man in the brown suit was a fiction. A device to snare me. The fly with which a fisherman baits his line to draw the fish in. It was only to be expected. Perhaps it was the confirmation of the existence of George and Mathilde, Charlie and Isabelle that had raised my hopes. They at least were real people; the man in the brown suit was not.

Putting my hat and gloves on, I left the offices of the Banbury Herald and stepped out into the street.

As I walked along the winter streets looking for a café, I remembered the letter Miss Winter had sent me. I remembered the words of the man in the brown suit, and how they had echoed around the rafters of my rooms under the eaves. Yet the man in the brown suit was a figment of her imagination. I should have expected it. She was a spinner of yarns, wasn't she? A storyteller. A fabulist. A liar. And the plea that had so moved me-Tell me the truth-had been uttered by a man who was not even real.

I was at a loss to explain to myself the bitterness of my disappointment.