TWENTY-EIGHT

Max and I were to have dinner that night at my father’s house and it was going to be a jolly ménage-à-quatre because Ada was coming too. I hoped, but did not expect, the evening would be easy-going and relaxed, without any embarrassment on the part of anyone. When Dad had suggested it to us yesterday morning, neither of us had been able to raise a particular intense level of enthusiasm but, equally, neither of us wanted to let him down. As Max had pointed out, it would at least provide an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about my impending stepmother and – more importantly to me – about her apparently testosterone-fuelled son. This was our thinking as we feigned joy-filled acceptance.

As Max was called out at the last moment to attend to a sick gerbil, we agreed that we would make our separate ways to Pollard’s Hill, the leafy suburban glade in which Dad lived, as she would be about half an hour late. I rang the doorbell, looking up at the sky and wondering if the storm clouds meant anything, both meteorologically and metaphorically. It was Ada who answered the door, a happenstance that I found unsettling whilst telling myself sternly that I was being silly; she was going to be married to Dad all too soon, and then she would be greeting visitors on a regular basis and a very proper thing it would be, too. Unfortunately, until the nuptials were all done and dusted, it struck me as slightly forward. She had a glass of sherry in her hand as she said through her nose, ‘Ah, Lance. How lovely to see you.’

She proffered her cheek for me to kiss and that sense that I was in the presence of someone who had not only found a safe berth but one who had, in very short order, changed the sheets, redecorated the walls and had taken charge of all the keys. I bent down and conformed to social norms by returning her gesture. ‘Come in,’ she said.

We went to the kitchen where the scents of Dad’s cooking were working some serious magic on my cerebral hunger centres. He was wearing a plastic-coated apron on which was a cartoon of a curvy, topless female body; looking at Dad’s hirsute visage above this made me feel slightly giddy, much as a member of the audience of Victorian freak shows would probably have felt, because fundamental laws of biology seemed to be broken by the spectacle. ‘Hello, Lance,’ he greeted me over a loud sizzle of frying onions. ‘Tired?’

‘Not bad. It was quite an easy night. Hardly anything until early this morning.’

‘Lucky chap.’ He turned to Ada, who had taken a seat at the kitchen table, nice and close to a bottle of sherry. ‘Lance was on call for the police last night.’

‘Did you have anything to do with Mr Gillman?’ she asked excitedly.

That, as far as I was concerned, was a moot point; maybe I had and maybe I hadn’t. It was difficult to be exact on the point, since I didn’t know who Mr Gillman was. I conveyed this lack of intelligence to the assembled company. ‘He was a teacher,’ she explained. ‘Apparently he’s been done in, just like those lesbians.’ It didn’t take much in the way of perspicacity to spot that, from the way she pronounced the last word, she was not of a socially liberal persuasion.

‘Oh, the art teacher . . .’

She looked at me scornfully. ‘Art teacher? Where did you get that idea?’

I glanced at Dad, but he was clearly at a tricky stage in the cooking, since he was looking at the onions with a degree of concentration I have previously only seen on the faces of neurosurgeons when they’re hacking around in someone’s basal ganglia. ‘I can’t think,’ I said to her.

‘No, Jeremy Gillman was a biology teacher,’ she explained, clearly concluding that I was a simpleton.

Whilst this came as a surprise – given the man’s flamboyant, not to say criminally mistaken, dress sense – there was the oddity of the frog in his mouth, which suddenly seemed to make ominous sense, given what had been happening to the teaching staff of Bensham Manor. ‘Was he really?’ I asked.

Dad came out of his trance over the onions, saying as he opened a tin of tomatoes, ‘Ada says that there’s been a right kerfuffle at the school.’ He stirred the cooking, turned the gas down a notch and went to the fridge to fetch two beers – a refill for him, a new one for me. I looked at the label suspiciously, afraid for my intestines; Dolly’s Toe-Curler was its appellation, although I doubt it was in any way contrôlée. There was a colour cartoon of a buxom long-haired, big-lipped blonde on the label, leading me to suspect that I was not about to follow in the footsteps of Escoffier.

‘How strong is this stuff?’ I asked, sniffing the bouquet and getting hints of creosote and rose fertilizer.

‘Not sure,’ said my father airily, which was his way of dealing with – that is to say, ignoring – that which did not bother him. I vowed to go careful for the sake of the pedestrians I would encounter on my way home. Ada had helped herself to another dollop of Harvey’s Bristol Cream and was impatient to tell me what she had to say.

‘The police turned up at about eight thirty, just as a group of the children were assembling for their Cycling Proficiency course. They made a right fuss and caused no end of trouble for Mr Silsby. The girls and I had a really good view because the back of the kitchens look out over the front playground.’ The use of the term ‘girls’ was, I had no doubt, a tad euphemistic in its implication that the average age of the Bensham Manor kitchen staff was only just beyond adolescence. ‘He was marching around trying to keep the children in order whilst being chased by that funny little policeman.’ I knew what she meant by her use of the adjective ‘funny’, but I still thought it slightly ill-chosen. She continued, ‘Poor Mr Silsby’s been having a torrid time of it recently, what with losing teachers left, right and centre, and I’m sure he didn’t need this.’

‘Did he get on with Mr Gillman?’

‘Ah,’ Dad exclaimed. ‘That’s exactly my line of thinking. I asked you that, didn’t I, Ada?’

‘You did, Ben.’ There was a sense of conspiracy between them which, in its way, was quite comforting.

‘And what’s the answer?’

‘Well,’ she said, her voice dropping in volume, ‘there have been rumours . . .’

I waited, but did so in vain. At last I enquired, ‘About what?’

‘People used to say that there was a lot of animosity between them.’

‘Does anyone know why?’

She did not answer this question, saying instead, ‘Mind you, he doesn’t get on with many people. Bit of a marionette, is Mr Silsby.’ I opened my mouth to correct this malapropism, but then decided against it out of a sense of diplomacy; Dad didn’t seem to have heard it. She sailed on, by now clearly well lubricated by sherry. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t stop what was going on between Miss Mangon and Miss Jeffries.’

‘Did they make it so obvious?’

Salaciousness came from every pore of Ada, like too thickly applied cosmetic. ‘Well, no one knew for sure, but it was pretty obvious.’ Dad added some minced meat to the onions and said over his shoulder, ‘Ada says they were like a right old married couple, especially lately. There was a lot of arguing in corridors, all that sort of thing.’

‘At the end, they could hardly talk to each other; it was most embarrassing.’ The idea of Ada being embarrassed was difficult for me to envisage, but discretion was the better part of my valour.

The doorbell sounded. I went in answer to it, assuming it to be Max, and I was not disappointed. She was very upset and had clearly been crying. ‘Max? What’s wrong?’ I bent to kiss her, but she barely made contact with me. ‘What’s wrong?’ I repeated.

She shook her head. ‘I still don’t believe it.’

‘Believe what?’

It took her a moment to pull herself back from tears. I waited, trying to be as patient as possible. I just knew that it had something to do with Tristan.

‘When I got into the surgery, there was a letter waiting for me.’

‘Who from?’ I knew the answer, but asked anyway.

She ignored the question. In fact, she was crying again. I was the epitome of tolerance and cuddled her whilst she sobbed. Eventually she calmed down enough to fish in her handbag and pull out a piece of paper. It was lined and had been torn from a notebook; it was written in ballpoint and the pen had leaked here and there. It was from Albert Stewart and addressed to ‘the girl vet’. It was short and the writing was irregular and untidy, making it difficult to read, but it didn’t take too long to decipher.

I killed your rabbit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it, but was overcome because of Major’s death. I thought you were responsible. I’m sorry.

I breathed out slowly; in my head the words ‘oh, shit’ were sounding.

Max said, ‘How could he do that?’

I explained tiredly, ‘He’s a very disturbed man, Max. Not entirely right in the head.’

‘You can say that again,’ she hissed through angry tears.

‘What will you do?’

‘Nothing yet. We’ve got our dinner to enjoy.’

‘Are you sure? I could say you’re not feeling well. It wouldn’t be far beyond the truth.’

She shook her head firmly. ‘No. We can’t let your father down.’

I sighed. ‘If you say so.’

‘I do,’ she insisted, at which point we were called impatiently through to the kitchen by Dad and we had to play our parts in the occasion.