Nick Charnley was easy to get hold of, as over the years since their holidays in Cornwall he and Grant had kept in regular touch and had, for the past twenty-five years, enjoyed an annual golf trip with six other friends to various resorts in Europe. Nick was a born organizer. The eight had become a band of brothers. The banter on the tours would never descend to analysing dark events of the past, which remained as a place of neither reference nor residence.
Grant had now decided to interrogate his old friend. Nick had long enjoyed an entrepreneurial career; his latest business venture was called Sobbers for Rent, which supplied professional grievers to simulate bereavement at funerals. The grievers were ordered by mourners who wanted to increase the numbers present to create a bigger show for their departed. The brochure featured on the cover a full church with the entire congregation in tears – doubtless prompted to cry at an appropriate moment. ‘I give them notes on the life of the departed and underline when and where to blub,’ Nick would brag. He also ran a funeral service for families to pay their respects to deceased pets. He really has no shame, thought Grant, chuckling to himself.
Nick’s previous business had been an outfitters for funeral directors, and he had spotted a gap in the market. Clearly the son had inherited some of the father’s cheeky-chappie and entrepreneurial genes. Nick suggested they meet outside the Grace Gates at Lord’s Cricket Ground, as he had also inherited his father’s love of cricket; he had two tickets for the first day of the first Test Match of the summer, on a cold day in mid-May.
As the start of play at eleven approached, there was a constant buzz of conversation and loud hellos as friends reunited for a day at the Test. Grant was sure the volume would diminish markedly when play commenced; in the event it did, for about the first three balls of the day’s play. Then the chattering and popping of champagne corks continued unabated for some twenty minutes, with batsmen shouldering arms or nicking the odd single off a thick edge, together with the occasional ‘play and miss’. All of a sudden the stumps were severely shattered, and the unfortunate batsman, who was employed to play professional cricket at the highest level, walked disconsolately back to the pavilion. This came as a shock to the chattering classes, and the sudden silence stunned the crowd into a numbed state for all of about forty seconds. But soon the new batsman was indulging in the same shouldering of arms and the occasional ‘play and miss’, nicking the odd single, even a two, as the crowd cheered a misfield that provided the trigger for everyone to recharge their drinks – and away they went again. Against this backdrop Grant and Nick finally got down to the subject of the mysterious poisoning of the porter in 1972.
‘Nick, I have never asked you this before, but were you aware that the father of one of us kids confessed something about Tom Youlen’s poisoning on his deathbed?’
Nick was initially silent and then distracted by the sight of a ball swung hard and high towards where they were sitting, bouncing once before clearing the ropes. ‘What have you heard?’
‘Only that one of them passed on some pertinent information.’
‘I know my dad used to think it was nothing to do with anyone at the hotel, and he thought Tom’s nephew was dodgy. But there was also that strange business with Clive Holford and his father Ken. When we learnt the truth that Bob Silver had been misjudged and had helped Clive get on in life, he was no longer suspected of being implicated. Anyway, what do you think happened?’
Grant chose his words carefully. ‘As I understand it, they all had a motive: Ted Jessops with his past uncovered, Bob Silver suspected of a gay affair, Richard Hughes-Webb with his experiments with toxic substances in the Zennor cottage that Tom looked after, Paul Galvin with his failed property business in Penzance and – to be frank – your father with his cash being stolen at Tom’s cottage. I gather all of them are no longer with us.’
‘Would you like an asparagus roll?’ Nick asked, as he started attacking the picnic basket he had brought along. At this time, thirty minutes before the lunch break, the batsmen were finally taking command and the spectators’ attention was, at last, firmly on the cricket.
In the forty-minute interval that followed, Grant returned to the subject. ‘And another thing, that strange business of Hector Wallace being washed up on the shore. Some people might think the events are connected.’
‘No chance. Hector was a hopeless case, and I gather he was very depressed at the end of the holiday, thinking he wouldn’t be back.’
‘OK, so who poisoned Tom?’ Having polished off a bottle of champagne and now having got two-thirds of the way through a bottle of Chablis, Grant was growing bolder, his cheeks reddened by the alcohol. ‘Someone must have heard something.’
His direct approach finally drew a clear response. ‘All my dad said about it was that Ivan Youlen was a bad lot – and something about a message in a bottle he found when jogging on Carbis Bay.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Dunno. I think Jenny knew something about it.’
Grant concluded he would get no further with Nick on this matter, and he resolved to see Jenny in Manchester. He had always found Nick a loquacious and gregarious character, but for some reason he was rather closed up on this occasion. He was probably intent on trying to forget a holiday that had disastrous consequences for his parents and family life in general. Grant could relate to this, as the events that summer had fairly dire consequences for his own family. None the less, he wondered whether Nick had something to hide.
The following day Grant took the train from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, where a smiling Jenny Poskett (née Charnley) met him at the station. Forty years had failed to dim her looks and bright smile, her age only slightly betrayed by the grey roots of her hair. She drove them to a city-centre hotel where Grant had booked lunch. Grant discovered that life had been stable and seemingly happy after Jenny had married Nigel Poskett, an estate agent who was both popular and well respected for the considerable amount of charity auctioneering in which he was involved locally. Their two children were now through university and embarking on their own careers. However, over the course of lunch Grant detected some emptiness in Jenny’s life. After exchanges about families and events since they had last met, some of which Grant had heard from Nick over the years, they moved through the gears before discussing the holiday of 1972.
‘You know, I used to envy you, Grant.’ This took him by surprise. ‘Not just you but all the others, all the other families who went to Cornwall with us each year.’ He was dumb-founded. Surely she remembered the upset of Hughes-Webb’s affair with his mother? Even if she hadn’t known of the fallout that resulted he thought the affair itself was common knowledge. ‘Most people seemed so stable. I know there was the odd scene and Danny’s dad was a moody so-and-so and Justyn’s old man kept disappearing, but everyone else remained together.’
Funny sort of happy families, thought Grant, but he refrained from comment; he saw little point and wondered where this was all heading.
‘You see, it was only my folks who split up, from what I remember, and it was really shit, Grant.’
Now he got it. Her parents’ divorce was at the core of all this.
‘Mum never forgave Dad for losing the cash at Tom’s cottage and lying to her about it.’
Grant had a vision of a herd of cattle charging at the unfortunate Arnie when the Duchess finally discovered his duplicity.
‘It all came to a head one night when they came back from the village cricket club’s annual do. Dad was half cut and nagging Mum for once, accusing her of being frigid and ignoring his needs.’
Grant shifted uneasily in his chair. Playing agony aunt wasn’t really in his nature, but he was keen to show sympathy and was genuinely sorry for Jenny and her brother.
‘Then it all kicked off, and Dad, partly to emphasize his unhappiness in the marriage, confessed to losing the cash in Zennor, and Mum went ballistic. She turfed him out on to the street, almost kicking him down the stairs. I heard him stumble, and I saw him from out of my bedroom window. I’ll never forget the look on his face as he stood on the pavement.’
Grant stood up, ready to put a comforting arm around Jenny, but she waved him away. ‘It’s OK, thanks. It was a long time ago.’ She regained some composure, blowing her nose repeatedly on a solitary paper tissue.
‘I’m so sorry, Jenny. It must have been very upsetting for you, what happened and also actually witnessing it.’
‘Thanks, it wasn’t a wagonload of laughs, that’s for sure. And it got worse. Dad shacked up with a local barmaid – “Big Tits Wendy”, as Nick so delicately called her.’
Grant struggled to resist laughing, biting his lower lip hard. He had heard his friend Nick on this subject before. Clearly the brother had coped rather better than the sister. ‘What happened next?’
‘Pretty sad and squalid. Dad had a massive heart attack, which occurred – according to our very discreet GP – while he was on the job, as you chaps would say. I so didn’t want to know that detail.’
Grant was quick to express further sympathy, struggling again to suppress laughter as he recalled Nick once saying, ‘Dad always had a smile on his face, even when he snuffed it – wey-hey!’ Clearly the siblings had very different takes on Arnie’s unusual demise. However, Grant was genuinely very sorry about Arnie’s premature death, and he quickly got a grip. After a polite pause, he asked the question that most preoccupied him. ‘You know Tom’s poisoning was never fully explained, and rumour has it that someone heard something from their father on his deathbed. Was that you?’
‘For God’s sake, you dickhead. It was me who told you this, after Nick’s twenty-first birthday party back in 1975! I’m hardly likely to keep that news to myself.’
‘Oh yes, sorry. I’d forgotten. I was probably drunk at the time, and I just had this vague memory that someone had said it.’
‘Nice you could remember, Grant. We were in bed together at the time. It shows how much I meant to you!’
‘I’m so sorry …’
‘No, you’re not. You were fickle as hell …’ Jenny was outraged.
‘And you weren’t?’ countered Grant, raising his own voice. He recalled his hurt at her promiscuousness at that time. ‘You had slept with Robert Vernon and Justyn Silver, too …’
She stood up to go. Grant was furious with himself for the clumsy attack he’d mounted, bringing up stuff he knew should have been left well alone, particularly so soon after she had poured her heart out. Realizing his mission in Manchester was fast unravelling, he hurried to placate her and persuade her to return to the table. ‘I apologize. I really do. Please let bygones be bygones. It was all a long time ago, and life has worked out pretty well for you with Nigel.’
Jenny still looked wounded but shrugged as if to say ‘Whatever.’
Grant was now desperate to avoid any of their personal business, which he greatly regretted getting dragged into. He returned to the purpose of their meeting, as far as he was concerned. ‘So who do you think heard something? One of the Galvins, Hughes-Webbs, Jessops or Silvers?’
‘Try them all,’ she replied without much enthusiasm.
‘So who told you someone had said something to one of our group?’
‘My father, on his deathbed,’ she said slowly and very deliberately, with a trace of triumph in her voice.
Grant was taken aback, shaken by this information, but a glance at his watch alerted him that he needed to conclude the conversation and head for his train.
After they had said their goodbyes at the station he realized he hadn’t inquired about the message in the bottle. He looked hurriedly for Jenny and saw her car fast disappearing out of view. He cursed himself for missing so obvious a line of inquiry and resolved to ask her about it another time. However, his mind was now made up that the deathbed story could only have come from Ted Jessops, as he predeceased Arnie Charnley by three years and the other three, Galvin, Silver and Hughes-Webb, were all fit and well at the time.
In a moment of self-reflection Grant wondered if he was simply chasing shadows. He doubted whether any of the contemporaries he was tracking down cared much about it at all. He consoled himself that at least he would find out from Caroline Jessops the truth of the deathbed story. However, he would much rather find out the whole truth as quickly as possible so that he could move on. But the feeling persisted that there were dark secrets to unearth. He already felt some unease at the responses he had got from Nick and Jenny, although the marriage breakdown and subsequent divorce of the Charnley parents didn’t shock him especially. Sad as it had been for the family, it was just a sideshow in the greater scheme of things.