34

I wish I hadn’t gone to London, not on Friday.

The shouting started a little after six o’clock. I was in that uncomfortable state between sleep and waking and at first I thought it came from my dream. I was with Simon Martlesham on the Hesperides and there were icebergs ahead and he and everyone else said we were going to sink. And I kept saying but it’s July so there can’t be any icebergs.

I snapped into consciousness. I’d slept badly all night. Too excited, I supposed, and too curious. There was also the question of Henry. I was half looking forward to seeing him and half reluctant.

After a second or two, I realized the shouting wasn’t in the dream. I scrambled out of bed and struggled into my dressing gown. At this stage I couldn’t make out the words, or even who was shouting. I opened my door and went on to the landing.

‘You disgusting old man.’ David’s voice. ‘Get into your room and stay there.’

A keening sound like the wind in the chimney. Mr Treevor?

Running feet, bare soles thudding on the linoleum, then Janet saying, ‘What is it, what is it?’

I paused at the head of the stairs. She wouldn’t want me down there, not now.

‘What’s he done?’ she said.

‘God knows,’ David snarled. ‘He was in bed with Rosie. Cuddling her.’

‘He was probably just lonely or cold. You know how fond of –’

‘There’s nothing to discuss. He has to go.’

The keening rose in volume.

‘David, I –’

‘It’s a question of what’s best for him as well as for everyone else in this house. In the long run it’s kinder to everybody if he goes into a home.’

‘What’s happening?’ moaned Mr Treevor.

‘Shut up and get in your room,’ roared David.

The door slammed.

‘You can’t do this,’ Janet said.

‘Can’t I?’ David said. ‘Why not?’

I slipped back into my room and shut the door very quietly. I climbed into bed, lit a cigarette and told myself that Janet loved David. If I was really Janet’s friend, I couldn’t come between her and him, however well-meaning I felt my intervention was. Two’s company in a marriage. The Hairy Widow had taught me that.

I don’t know what David actually saw. I never dared ask him then or later. The possibility that there might have been some sort of sexual contact between Mr Treevor and Rosie didn’t even occur to me, not until years later. I thought he’d just been monkeying about in some way and that his actions showed that he’d sunk still further into his second childhood. But if this had happened now, over forty years later, I would automatically have placed a sexual interpretation on it. Whether I would have been right to do so is another matter. I just don’t know what was going on in Rosie’s bedroom.

. All I know is that I heard David shouting and that hindsight can play tricks on you just as any other kind of vision can.

So I pretended I’d heard nothing. It was the action of a coward, a well-mannered guest and even a loyal friend. I was all three of those, though not usually at the same time. I stayed in bed until my alarm went off. When I went downstairs, only Janet and Rosie were in the kitchen.

‘Sleep well?’ Janet asked.

‘Like a log, thanks. And you?’

‘Not bad.’ Janet patted her tummy. ‘Felt a bit queasy but it didn’t come to anything. Unlike yesterday. I don’t know if that’s progress or not.’

‘David not down?’

‘He was up early. He went to do some work at the college. He’s going to see the diocesan architect today.’

‘It’s a very worrying time,’ I said.

‘I expect something will come up. David’s already put out a few feelers.’

Breakfast went on as usual. Janet took a tray up to Mr Treevor. She asked if I needed sandwiches for London and sent her love to Henry. She carefully avoided saying anything I could have interpreted as a hope that he and I would get back together again. And I carefully avoided mentioning the shouting. Our friendship was about what we didn’t say as well as what we did.

‘There’s no real urgency about going to London,’ I said as I was washing up. ‘Perhaps I should go next week. It’s not a bad day and I could give you a hand in the garden.’

‘The garden can wait. You go to London and enjoy yourself. Have you told Canon Hudson, by the way?’

‘No, not yet. I’ll phone after breakfast. But I do wonder if I should mow the lawn instead.’

Janet looked up through the basement window of the kitchen. If you leaned forward far enough you could see a rectangle of sky above the roofs of the houses on the other side of the High Street. ‘Anyway, I think it might rain. There’s really no point in your staying.’

‘Let me take Rosie to school before I go. There’s plenty of time.’

She agreed to that, saying that she was a little tired. Now I wonder if she knew me better than I knew myself, and she allowed me to walk Rosie to school to soothe my conscience.

When I got back I phoned Simon Martlesham and arranged to meet him in the Blue Dahlia at two thirty. His clipped voice showed no sign of surprise. He bit back emotions as well as words. When he asked why I wanted to see him, I said I’d found something to do with his sister, something which would interest him. And then I put the phone down. I know it was melodramatic of me, but I felt that Simon Martlesham had been making a fool out of me, and now it was my turn.

I borrowed a music case from Janet to carry the photograph and the two books, The Tongues of Angels and The Voice of Angels. On the train to London I read the poems again, but the more I read them the less I understood them. At one point I persuaded myself that ‘The Office of the Dead’ was a punning title, meaning both a funeral service for the dead and the job the dead did for the living. But if Francis was not only mentally unbalanced but also taking opium, it was quite possible that the poem was never anything more than nonsense.

The train journey passed quickly. Travelling to London already seemed like a habit, and an enjoyable one at that. Whatever I decided to do about Henry, I had established that a life outside Rosington was a possibility.

Henry was waiting at the barrier, which surprised me a little because punctuality was not one of his virtues. He took my arm and insisted on carrying the music case.

‘What do you want to do?’ he asked. ‘A cup of coffee?’

‘I’d like to go to the Church Empire Society, please.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ We stopped to allow a porter wheeling a barrow to go by. ‘What on earth’s that?’

‘The organization that sent Simon Martlesham to Toronto, with a little help from Francis Youlgreave. And according to him, his sister went into one of the society’s orphanages.’

‘Can’t we phone them up?’

I had looked up the Church Empire Society in David’s copy of Crockford’s Clerical Directory. There was an address in Westminster, but no telephone number.

‘I think a personal visit would be better.’ I smiled at him. ‘I thought you’d enjoy being a relative trying to trace your long-lost uncle and aunt.’

He smiled back. ‘And who will you be?’

‘I’ll be your little wifey, of course. Reluctantly indulging my husband’s whims.’

‘I’d like that.’

Once again our eyes met. This time neither of us smiled.

We took a taxi from the station. On the way I told Henry what I knew about Simon and Nancy Martlesham’s emigration.

As we were coming down to Blackfriars, Henry said, ‘I went to Senate House yesterday afternoon.’

‘What senate?’

‘It’s the University of London Library in Bloomsbury. I thought I’d see if I could track down anything about Isabella of Roth. No luck.’

‘I’m not surprised. She was probably one of Francis’s inventions.’

‘But I did find something that might be relevant in English Precursors of Protestantism in the Later Middle Ages’ He looked smugly down his nose at me. ‘Murtagh-Smith and Babcock, London 1898. Perhaps I should give up teaching and become a scholar instead.’

‘What was the name of the first author?’

His smile faded. ‘Murtagh-Smith. Ring a bell?’

‘He was the principal of the Theological College in Youlgreave’s time. Anyway, what did he have to say?’

‘Not a lot that helped, I’m afraid. But apparently at the end of the fourteenth century, the Lollard Movement was trying to reform the Church. They had lots of revolutionary ideas – they thought people should read the Bible in their own language and that warfare was unchristian. Oh, and they didn’t like the Pope, either. They thought every Christian had the right to work out what they really believed by reading the Bible and meditating on it. According to Murtagh-Smith and his friend, the Peasants’ Revolt was partly to do with the Lollards. The government didn’t like them, naturally, and in 1401 they passed the first English law to allow the burning of heretics.’

‘Well, it fits so far. But were the Lollards in favour of women priests?’

‘I doubt it. But they didn’t approve of clerical celibacy.’ He grinned at me. ‘They claimed it led to unnatural lusts. But this is the point. Murtagh-Smith says that several people were burned at the stake for preaching Lollard heresies in Rosington.’

‘When?’

‘In 1402.’

‘Same date. But nothing about women priests?’

He shook his head. ‘Perhaps that was another of Francis’s little ideas. Just a little modification of history. After all, that’s what poetic licence is all about, isn’t it?’ Suddenly he changed the subject. ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to go to this society? What are you trying to prove?’

‘That Simon Martlesham was lying.’

‘He might have made a mistake. Anyway, what’s the point in turning over stones? It’s not going to help anyone now, is it?’

I didn’t answer. I stared out of the window. We were on the Victoria Embankment now, with Big Ben rearing up ahead. How could I explain to Henry that when everything was wrong in my life Francis had thrown me a line, a thread of curiosity. More than that – I felt about Francis as I’d felt about Janet, all those years ago at Hillgard House. He was weak, and I wanted to protect him.

‘Sorry,’ said the new, reformed Henry. ‘I don’t want to be nosy. It’s none of my business.’

The Church Empire Society occupied a shabby little house in a street off Horseferry Road. There were two dustbins and a bicycle in what had once been a front garden. I rang the bell and a moment later it was answered by a tall tweedy lady, very thin, with a sharp nose and chin set between cheeks that bulged, as though crammed with illicit sweets.

Henry raised his hat. ‘Good morning. So sorry to bother you. But I wonder if you could help us.’

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Henry and I were a team again, just as we had been with his clients. I didn’t have to do much because Henry did most of the talking – I was cast in the role of the grumpy wife, who thought it stupid that her husband should waste so much time chasing after a family black sheep. So he had a double claim on the tweedy lady’s sympathy.

She was the sole permanent employee of the society and her name was Miss Hermione Findhorn. Her office occupied the front room on the ground floor. It must have been about twelve feet square and there was barely room for two people, let alone three. This was because the office, and as far as I could see the whole house, was filled with outsized paintings and pieces of furniture.

‘I’m frightfully sorry, Mr Appleyard,’ Miss Findhorn said in a voice which seemed to emerge from her nose. ‘The problem is, we were bombed. We used to have a rather larger house in Horseferry Road. We managed to save quite a lot, as you can see.’ She waved a chapped hand with bitten fingernails around the room, around the house. ‘But alas, our records were stored in the attics and we recovered none of them.’

Henry persevered. Miss Findhorn said it was perfectly possible that the society had arranged for the passage of two orphan children to Toronto in 1904. In those days, they trained young people for useful trades. They had in fact maintained an orphanage in Toronto. Unfortunately that had been closed in the 1920s. But they’d managed to save the scrapbooks which in those days the society maintained to record its achievements. Miss Findhorn produced a tall, leather-bound volume covering 1904. She and Henry turned the pages. I knew from the way Henry was standing that he had found nothing, that this was a waste of time. Then he stiffened, and pointed to a clipping. I craned my head to see what he was looking at. A name leapt up at me.

Sir Charles Youlgreave Bt.

‘There was someone of that name in Rosington,’ Henry said casually. ‘Canon Youlgreave, I think it was. I wonder if there’s a connection.’

‘Quite possibly,’ said Miss Findhorn, angling her glasses so she could read the newsprint. ‘Sir Charles was on our Committee of Management. Usually members sit for three years, and I think in those days they often took a personal interest in the young people they helped. Perhaps Canon Youlgreave suggested your uncle and aunt as suitable candidates.’

‘Very likely,’ Henry said.

We said goodbye and found another taxi in Horseferry Road. Henry suggested lunch at the Ritz, but I wouldn’t let him. In the end we went to a chop house off the Strand, a dark, low-ceilinged place divided up into wooden booths so you could be private if you wanted to be. We got there before one, so we found a quiet table without difficulty.

‘Are you still wasting money at Brown’s Hotel?’ I asked.

‘I’m leaving today.’ Henry offered me a cigarette. ‘I’m going to find a nice little private hotel with a landlady who’ll mother me.’ He leaned forward with his lighter. ‘You’re wearing your wedding ring today.’

It was part of my social camouflage in Rosington. I said, ‘I needed it for Miss Findhorn. After all, we were supposed to be man and wife.’

‘We still are. Have you paid in that cheque yet?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know if I want to.’

‘But it’s ten thousand pounds. Where is it?’

‘In my bedside cupboard.’ With a sprig of lavender on top to make it smell better.

‘Listen, Wendy, it’ll be safer if you have it. Then I can’t spend it. And it’s only fair.’

‘I thought you were going to buy a share of that school.’

‘I am. It’s all going ahead. I promise. But if I’ve got this extra money, I’ll just waste it.’

I smiled at him. ‘I’ll see.’

‘You’ve changed.’

‘And why do you think that is?’

Suddenly we were on the verge of a quarrel neither of us wanted. He must have sensed it as well because he threw a question about Janet and David at me. Soon I was telling him about the Dark Hostelry, about the collapse of David’s hopes for the Theological College and about the odd behaviour of Mr Treevor.

Later I showed him the two books, Tongues and Voice, and also the photograph. Henry read ‘The Office of the Dead’ while demolishing a helping of steak-and-kidney pudding.

‘In a way, it’s like Christianity gone mad.’ He sat back and wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘You eat the body and blood, and in return you get eternal life.’ He glanced down at the open book. ‘Or the secret of youth or something. Hard to know exactly what he does mean.’ He turned over a page. ‘And what’s all this stuff about the angel sitting at his shoulder telling him what to write? It makes it sound as if he’s got his own personal Angel of the Lord. He must have been completely round the bend.’

‘I don’t know. He was obviously a bit eccentric –’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘But you can’t deny he did a lot of good. Some of his ideas were just a little ahead of his time.’

‘And ours,’ Henry said. ‘I can imagine how David feels about women priests.’

‘What worries me is the girl.’ I pointed to the little figure beside Francis. ‘What happened to her? Why should Martlesham lie about it?’

‘There’s probably a perfectly innocent explanation. Anyway, he might have made a mistake.’

‘About something like that, his own sister coming with him to Canada?’

‘It happened over fifty years ago, Wendy. And he’s had a stroke since then, remember.’

Henry ordered more beer and by common consent we talked about other things, mainly about his plans for Veedon Hall. We both skated round my role in these, if any. At ten past two we went back to the Strand and took a taxi to the Blue Dahlia Café.

As we drew up outside, Henry touched my arm. ‘Look!’

I followed the direction of his pointing finger. There were several people walking down Fetter Passage but I recognized none of them.

‘Right at the end,’ Henry said. ‘Just turning the corner.’

‘Who?’

‘I’m sure it was Munro.’

‘What do you think?’ Henry said as we stood on the pavement after paying off the taxi. ‘Martlesham’s got Munro to follow us after we leave him?’

I shook my head. ‘More likely he’s been following us already.’

‘But how?’

‘If Martlesham told him I was coming to see him this afternoon, all Munro needed to do was go to Liverpool Street and keep an eye on trains from Rosington.’

Fetter Passage was very quiet after the bustle of Holborn. But was someone watching us, Munro or a colleague? I glanced up at the windows above the café, wondering which belonged to Martlesham’s flat.

Henry said, ‘In that case he’ll know about the Church Empire Society.’

‘And what about if he was in the chop house? If he was in the booth next to ours, he might have heard something.’

‘Nothing we can do about it now.’ He looked up and down the terrace. ‘Bit of a dump.’

‘But not as bad as Swan Alley.’

I opened the door of the café. The ribbons swayed like seaweed across the archway at the rear of the room. We had arrived in the dead time between lunch and tea and there were few customers. The sad-faced woman was cutting bread at the counter. She didn’t look up as we came in.

‘I’ve come to see Mr Martlesham,’ I said to her.

‘I tell the boss you’re here.’

Without meeting my eyes, she put down the knife and shuffled through the archway. A moment later, she parted the ribbons again and beckoned us.

Beyond the archway was a small room used for serving food. Immediately opposite us was an open door leading to a kitchen. She gestured to another door on our left.

‘Knock,’ she commanded.

I tapped on the door and I heard Martlesham telling us to come in.

The room was equipped as an office with what looked like cast-off War Department furniture. Martlesham was sitting behind the desk and facing us. Behind him was an open window looking into a sunny yard full of bicycles and dustbins. He didn’t get up, but stared past me at Henry.

‘Who’s this?’

‘My husband, Henry Appleyard. Henry, this is Mr Martlesham.’

Henry smiled and extended his hand across the desk. Martlesham shook it for the shortest possible time.

‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up. Please sit down.’

I chose a hard chair in front of the desk. I felt as though he was interviewing me. I said, ‘Do you own the café?’

‘I own the whole terrace.’ He sounded bored with his possession.

I heard Henry suck in his breath beside me.

‘It must mean a lot of work for you,’ I said, not because it was an intelligent thing to say but because it was the first thing that came into my mind.

‘Not really. I have someone to take care of the details. It’s a long-term investment, really.’

‘You’re planning to develop the site?’ Henry said.

‘Yes. Everyone’s on short tenancies except for a couple of leaseholders at the far end of the terrace. I’m waiting for them to die or move.’ He gave us a twisted smile. ‘And they’re probably waiting for me to do the same.’

A fleck of ash marred the brilliantly white surface of his left-hand shirt cuff. He put down his cigarette and carefully brushed it off. There was a freshly ironed handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket and his hands had been manicured. I wondered who looked after his appearance now Vera was dead. Perhaps he had planned Fetter Passage to be a nest egg for their shared old age. For the first time it struck me that Vera’s death might have had something to do with his hiring Munro. Perhaps he’d wanted to find out if he still had a family. It isn’t easy to be lonely. I knew all about that.

‘What did you want to see me about?’

‘About Nancy,’ I said. ‘I wondered if she might have any memories of Canon Youlgreave.’

He shrugged. ‘Quite possibly. But you’d have to find her.’

‘So you don’t have an address?’

He shook his head. ‘I told you, she was adopted almost as soon as we got to Toronto. The couple who took her were moving down to the States, and the lady at the orphanage said it would be better for her if she didn’t have any contact with her old life.’

‘That must have been terrible for both of you.’

His heavy lids drooped over dark eyes. ‘Better than Swan Alley, Mrs Appleyard, I tell you that. She was going to a good home, with good people. I had a job, somewhere to live, prospects. They didn’t give us much time to think about it, anyway. After the Hesperides docked, I saw her maybe twice in the next six weeks. Then that was that.’

‘That’s a pity,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Because if you had an address for her, she might have been able to explain this.’ I lifted Janet’s music case on to the desk and took out the photograph. I put it in front of him, on his unblemished green blotter. ‘But perhaps you can explain it instead.’

Slowly he put on a pair of glasses. For what seemed like several minutes he stared down at the photograph. His expression didn’t change. Henry fumbled in his pocket and a moment later lit a cigarette. As if the flare of the match was a signal, Martlesham raised his head and transferred his stare to me.

‘Well?’

‘I wondered if you recognized it.’

‘The place? No, I don’t.’

‘It’s Rosington Theological College. The lawn at the back.’

‘Very possibly. I never went there. Wasn’t it that redbrick place near the Porta?’

‘Do you recognize anybody?’

‘There’s Canon Youlgreave, of course. And that man there, the old clergyman, wasn’t he another canon? Some of the ladies look familiar but I wouldn’t be able to put a name to them, not now.’

‘What about the children?’

For the first time there was a hint of anger in those dark eyes. ‘Why are you asking me all this?’

‘Look at the girl next to Canon Youlgreave,’ I said.

He glanced down, then back to me. He said nothing.

‘Is that your sister?’

‘Could be.’ He spoke as though I were grinding the words out of him one by one. ‘Hard to tell.’

‘She’s dressed up, Mr Martlesham. Looks like a pair of wings. Does that ring any bells?’

‘Maybe they were doing some kind of play. Canon Youlgreave was always involved in anything artistic, you see, being a poet. Maybe not a play. Might have been dancing, or something, and they needed a little girl.’

‘According to the writing on the back, it is your sister.’

He looked at me as if I’d stung him. Then, clumsily with his one good hand, he turned the photograph over. He read the row of names on the back.

‘So you knew it was Nancy all along, Mrs Appleyard.’ He glared at me and I was suddenly glad that Henry was in the room. ‘Why come and pester me about it?’

‘Because of the date at the top.’ I watched him looking at it. Then I went on, ‘Your birthday was on the seventeenth of July. According to you, you and your sister were in the middle of the Atlantic on the Hesperides on that day. So what’s she doing with a pair of wings on the lawn of the Theological College over two weeks later?’

Martlesham took off his glasses, folded them and put them away in their case. Only then did he look at me. ‘I must have made a mistake about the date.’

‘We can easily check that,’ said Henry suddenly. ‘The date of the sailing would have been in the newspapers.’

Martlesham ignored him. ‘Or whoever wrote the names on the back made a mistake. Simple as that. Or they put the wrong date.’

‘I don’t think that’s very likely, Mr Martlesham. You thought that was Nancy and there are plenty of people in Rosington we can ask, people who will remember her as she was then. There’s Mrs Elstree, for one. And I expect we can check when the principal’s garden party was. If we need to.’

Martlesham sighed and reached for his cigarette case. He said in a low voice, almost as if talking to himself, ‘I could ask you to leave.’

‘And then your private investigator could follow us and see what we did next.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Harold Munro, ex-detective sergeant, Metropolitan Police.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Who else would bother to hire him?’

‘How should I know?’ He tapped a cigarette on the case and put it in his mouth. ‘Anyway, what’s he been doing?’

‘He’s paid several visits to Rosington in the last few weeks. He’s stolen cuttings about Francis Youlgreave from the backfile of the Rosington Observer. He borrowed a copy of one of Youlgreave’s books from the public library. He tried to question a number of people, including Mrs Elstree, and nearly frightened one old lady to death. He’s been seen watching the Dark Hostelry, it’s even possible he’s been inside the house. He followed me after I met you here on Monday and he’s got an office in Holborn. My husband saw him ten minutes ago at the other end of Fetter Passage.’

‘Very mysterious, Mrs Appleyard. Sounds like a job for the police, especially if you think this man’s broken into the Dark Hostelry.’

I picked up the photograph and returned it to the music case. His hand twitched as I picked it up, and for a moment I wondered if he would try to stop me taking it.

‘What would you think, Mr Martlesham?’ Henry said. ‘If you were in our position.’

‘I’d think it was time to stop poking my nose in other people’s business.’

‘You haven’t any children, have you?’

Martlesham shook his head.

‘And your wife has just died, Wendy tells me,’ Henry went on. ‘It would be very natural if you wanted to trace members of your family.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Martlesham said. ‘What would be the point?’

‘I would have thought the answer to that was obvious,’ Henry said gently. ‘It’s not much fun being by yourself.’

Martlesham fiddled with his lighter. Then he looked at me and sighed. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. I don’t want to trace Nancy now for the same reason that I didn’t want to trace her when I came to England in 1917. I don’t want to embarrass her. That’s the long and the short of it.’

‘Embarrass?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

His mouth twisted. ‘The last thing she said to me was, “You sold me. I hate you.”’

‘At the orphanage?’ I said.

‘There never was any orphanage, Mrs Appleyard. And she didn’t come to Canada, either. She stayed here. That’s why she’s in that photo.’

He lit the cigarette at last and puffed furiously. Smoke billowed across the desk, pushed by the draught from the window. I sniffed.

Virginia tobacco, not Turkish.