Someone Lying, Someone Dying Read online

  “Maybe they’ve discovered some Roman remains,” Martin suggested.

  The remains which the workmen had discovered belonged in fact to a much more recent period of history. Interred in a corner of the cellar was the fully-clothed corpse of a man dressed in clothes of Edwardian cut. The burial had elements of an ancient religious rite about it, since what was left of the body was accompanied by two suitcases packed with further clothes and personal belongings, as though for use on the man’s journey through the next world. They were, however, less impressive than the rich contents of a Egyptian tomb: the only items of any grandeur were a pair of silver-backed hairbrushes and two pairs of gold cuff-links.

  All over long ago, Nell had said as she looked at the shell of the Blythe house. She had chosen an unfortunate time for her pronouncement.

  The deductions of the forensic experts and the identifiable contents of the suitcase left little doubt that the corpse was that of Walter Blythe, who had vanished in 1913. It was presumed then that he had fled the country. Certainly somebody appeared to have packed his bags for him; but he had not left. He had died — and it had not been a natural death. It seemed reasonable to suppose that whoever had been responsible for laying him in such an unorthodox grave had also been responsible for savagely battering in his skull.

  The door and telephone bells had been ringing in violent spasms for a day and a half. Nell, Arthur, Brigid and the maid shared out defence duties in their besieged fortress. The maid answered the door, got rid of such reporters and busybodies as she could, and called for Brigid when the assault grew too insistent. Nell dealt with the telephone, saying firmly that her husband was busy, could not be disturbed, and had no statement to make. Only when the caller grew abusive did she pass him on to Arthur. They all four used non-committal phrases like blunt weapons, intent only on keeping attackers at a proper distance; but by the end of the first day Nell began to feel that it would not take her long to abandon a purely defensive role and grow vicious.

  Murder by person or persons unknown: that had been the coroner’s unsurprising verdict. It left the people of Lurgate and the Press plenty of scope for speculation. Two reporters from national dailies and one from a lurid Sunday newspaper came to stay at local hotels. From the intensity of their attack on the Johnson household it was easy to deduce that they had been given only a day or two in which to produce dramatic stories. The current international crisis was no more exciting than the last one had been, and there was space to spare for a juicy mystery, even if it did stem from a killing more than fifty years ago. There was in fact more room for conjecture and less likelihood of any awkward legal actions than if the murder had been a contemporary one. But results had to be quick and colourful or the whole thing would be dropped.

  “If we sit tight,” said Arthur, “it’ll blow over. Stand by to repel boarders, and wait for sundown.”

  He sounded reassuring but Nell saw that he was hard hit. The reporters would go away when they saw that there was nothing to be gained by staying. This was no big story and could never be inflated into one. The Easter road deaths would be along very shortly, and at least twice in the coming month the Prime Minister could be relied on to do or say something stupid enough to warrant a front-page spread. But locally the matter would not be so easily forgotten. A large number of the telephone calls had been from devoted friends who wouldn’t dream of mentioning the murder but who somehow steered the conversation that way and sympathetically wondered what Arthur Johnson was going to do.

  What was there for him to do? Nell wanted to shout at them, to din into their stupid heads that Arthur had not even been born when Walter Blythe died. It had nothing to do with him; couldn’t possibly be supposed to affect him in any way: yet it did affect him and they both knew it and neither of them knew what they could do about it.

  By the late afternoon of the second day friends and reporters had slackened in their attentions. Brigid wanted to go for a walk and meet Martin on his way back from the research centre, and Nell agreed they ought to be able to cope without her. When she crossed the hall with Brigid she felt that she was escorting her through enemy lines. A volley of fire might meet them as they opened the front door. Her nerves prickled and her arms were stinging as though she had been out in a harsh sun or had drunk too much coffee. It was absurd, but she was ready to believe that Brigid was liable to walk into an ambush. She would be captured and held until she talked.

  And there was nothing to talk about. That was what was most frustrating of all. There was nothing they could say.

  “Don’t worry.” Brigid squeezed her arm. “I’ll be quite safe. Nobody’s committed any crime — not in this generation anyway.”

  Nell winced. “You think what everyone else thinks, then?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Mummy, I didn’t…”

  “It’s all right. I just feel all of a twitch. It’ll pass. You run along.”

  Brigid’s hand was reaching for the knob, but it stayed poised and uncertain. Light from the tall window beside the door divided her face, leaving half of it in worried shadow. She was wearing a plum-coloured sweater and black slacks, with a plum-and-blue band to keep her hair back. The light glowed in her crisp brown curls — an overlapping and interweaving of hair which Nell envied but which exasperated Brigid because there was no way of disciplining the curls into any other style. She touched the door but did not turn the knob. Her fingers were long like her mother’s; she had her father’s deep, warm eyes. In the past there had been the inevitable dispute as to which side of the family she ‘belonged’ to. Arthur and Nell were only too glad to concede that she was Brigid in her own right.

  She said anxiously: “You’re sure you’ll be all right? If you want me to stay, I can easily ring Martin.”

  “He’ll be on his way by now. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  “He’ll guess why I’ve been held up. Either he’ll come round or he’ll phone.” She was aching to go and meet Martin, but Nell knew that one word would have been enough to bring her hand away from that door. It was good to be so sure of her.

  In a few weeks’ time all that Brigid was would belong to Martin Hemming. It was impossible not to think of it in those terms. Martin was going to take her away from them. Nell hoped he was good enough for Brigid. It was an old-fashioned, outmoded, ridiculous way of thinking. The phrase itself was embarrassingly out of date. Yet all she could hope was that Martin was good enough for her daughter.

  She had never been sure of Martin. It was not that she accused him, even in her own mind, of scheming to marry money: his feelings for Brigid were too obviously sincere. But had they been so at the start? His mother was a fanatic about her only son and, doting on him since his father’s death, could have nudged him towards Brigid. Quite a catch.

  Brigid said tentatively: “Well, if you’re sure…”

  “Of course I’m sure. Go on, now.”

  Brigid opened the door just as the bell rang. It shocked them both on to the defensive. Nell advanced a few determined steps. If another reporter was waiting outside she had every intention of driving him away by physical force if necessary.

  Slowly Brigid pulled the door right back.

  They both sighed explosively.

  On the step stood Henry Kersfield, Arthur’s solicitor. Beside him was an elderly man with a chalky face and puffy loops of flesh under his eyes. At the sight of Nell he half bowed with a creaky, old-world courtliness.

  “Hello, Nell. Here we are. Bang on time. Right on the dot.” Kersfield liked to spit his remarks out in short bursts. Nell suspected that his favourite Mitty-ish fantasy was one in which he had been transformed into a famous barrister who demolished one witness after another with swift, unerring barbs. Conversation with him was difficult because his decisiveness made every least little comment sound harsh and final. “All ready for the post mortem? If I may put it that way. All set.”

  “Arthur’s expecting you?”

  “He didn’t tell you? Phoned me an
hour ago.”

  Lucky we hadn’t got outposts stationed to shoot you down, thought Nell. Aloud she said: “It’s been rather a day. Do come in.”

  The two men came in as Brigid began to slide round the door and out of the house. Kersfield slapped her amiably on the shoulder in passing.

  “Meeting the victim? Condemned couple eating a hearty supper — candlelight, soft music? Make the most of it.”

  “We’re going for a walk,” said Brigid.

  “He’s taking you on a mystery tour? Watch it, my dear.”

  “I’ve already decided where we’re going.”

  “You have? Wearing the trousers already!”

  Brigid went down the drive. Nell closed the door by inches, watching. Nobody sprang out of the bushes and gave chase.

  She turned back to their guests.

  “Need a strong young man to stand up to that girl of yours,” said Kersfield breezily.

  Last week Nell had worried about just that point. Now there were other things to worry about. She looked at the older man. Kersfield took his cue.

  “Don’t think you know Mr Farnham, Nell. Mr Farnham — Mrs Johnson.”

  The old man’s hand was leathery and incredibly cold.

  “Farnham?” Nell smiled, and waited for the sound of the name to strike a resonance. Then she got it. “Oh. You’re the Mr Farnham of Farnham, Farnham and Kersfield.”

  “The middle one.” The pouchy eyes blinked heavily at her. “I expect you thought I was dead.”

  “Oh, I…”

  “Sometimes I’m not sure I’m not.”

  Arthur came out of his study and approached them. Kersfield made the introductions again.

  “Mr Farnham handled a lot of your father’s work in his time. And Blythe’s. Knew them both well. It struck me he could fill in any details. Though I’ve got most of them taped. Between us we can settle it all tonight, I think. Right?”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” said Nell, turning away.

  “No, you won’t,” said Arthur quietly. He smiled at his visitors. “No secrets from my wife. She’d insist on my telling her all about it afterwards, so she may as well sit in with us. That way I’ll save my breath.”

  His flippancy hid neither a command nor an appeal for support. In twenty-five years of marriage the two of them had shared everything and he simply wanted her to share this.

  They went into the study.

  Arthur pulled chairs to the front of his desk. He would have been uncomfortable sitting behind the desk like a tycoon presiding over a meeting.

  This was not really a study. It was the equivalent of a boy’s den. Here Arthur liked to relax from time to time with his treasures. Here he could slacken off his characteristic briskness and efficiency; could be most at ease. The fact that Nell could come in and out as she pleased was the most loving compliment he could have paid her.

  There were plans and photographs of historic buildings all over the walls. A litter of sketches curled over the flat top of the map cabinet. It was understood that this room was never to be tidied. Systematic and meticulous elsewhere, in this room Arthur was in his mental shirt-sleeves.

  His father had expected him to carry on the family tradition in the firm and loyally he had done so. There were times when he felt constricted in Lurgate and longed to break out and work on new schemes in new places. Instead, he applied himself all the more doggedly to his own neighbourhood, preserving what was good in the old Lurgate and helping to create what was new and necessary. Preservation was as important as replacement. He became an acknowledged expert who could be summoned to the far side of the county if there was news of some historic building in danger, some threat by slap-dash planners to fine architecture which was not sufficiently protected from vandals — vandals, he would emphasise, in the same profession as himself. He gave advice on preservation and careful reconstruction free and freely.

  This side of the house was in shadow. Arthur switched on his desk lamp. The bald front of his head shone in the light. This high bald crown, fringed at the back with a boyishly dishevelled mop of jet-black hair, was sunburnt or at least weather-beaten most of the year. Apart from his liking for this scrap-book of a room, he was not an indoor man. He wanted to be where the work was being done, and most of his life was spent in the open.

  He offered a cigarette box around and said: “You’ve gone into it thoroughly?”

  “Sleepless night, Arthur. Pretty well sleepless. Closed the doors, kept everybody out, and dug up the lot. Dislodged a lot of dust, let me tell you. I never thought,” said Kersfield, “we’d have to dig up the name of Blythe again.”

  It was not, thought Nell, the happiest way of putting it.

  The firm of Blythe and Johnson, building contractors, had been established in the first decade of the century. Walter Blythe, the older of the two partners, was a volatile, exuberant man who saw how to exploit opportunities when they existed and how to create opportunities where none had existed before. Victor Johnson was more thoughtful and more meticulous: his friend provided the steam but it was Victor who kept things on the rails and kept them moving along those rails.

  Lurgate in 1905 was a small town whose main livelihood came from fishing. But prosperity was leading more and more people to take holidays by the sea. The fashionable resorts were faced with the rivalry of smaller towns not too far from London yet not too close to the city. The railways spun a web over Kent and Sussex. The three hills on which Lurgate was built were little more than hummocks but they provided a picturesque background and, by huddling round the sandy bay, protected it from wind on all save the most blustery winter days. The place was, as a later generation might put it, ripe for development.

  Blythe and Johnson built a terrace of tall houses facing the sea. A couple were taken at once by well-to-do gentlemen with large families and ailing wives for whom sea air had been prescribed. The others became good-class boarding-houses. Blythe and Johnson built hotels, shops to cater to the summer influx of visitors, and whole streets of small houses up and over the hills. The fishing quarter of the town became a picturesque feature for the visitors but continued as a working entity. The fishermen dourly watched the white buildings go up until they formed a rampart commanding the sea from every available acre of ground, and the native community became in fact more tightly knit than ever before. Holidaymakers were foreigners. You might make more money taking these folk on trips round the headland out to sea than you could from fishing, but you never really mixed with them or accepted them. Come the first cold breezes of the autumn and they were away. Then the new streets looked bare and useless but the old town was still the old town.

  Blythe and Johnson prospered. The two men worked well as a team. “Though I wouldn’t have said they had the same ideas at all,” observed old Mr Farnham. “Walter Blythe was always one for putting on a big show. He had to have the biggest house — had it built for himself when the firm really ought to have been concentrating on selling to other people. And when motor-cars came in of course he had to have one and smell up the countryside with it. A fair terror he was. Oh, and his wife — she had to be special, too. He couldn’t just marry a local girl. He had to do something spectacular. One year he came back from holiday and announced he was going to marry a foreign girl, and a few weeks later she arrived and they had a big splash.”

  “Foreign?” Nell smiled despite herself. “You mean the girl came from more than five miles outside Lurgate?”

  “Oh, further than that. She was really foreign. Very dark. Very beautiful, I suppose. But she wasn’t well liked. She thought far too much of herself, and of course Walter Blythe encouraged her. The folk here didn’t have much time for her.”

  “Poor girl.”

  “Victor Johnson, now — your father, Mr Johnson — he was a worker. He drove his men and he was a real scourge to any sub-contractors they had to take on. But he drove himself, too. We always reckoned that Blythe had the great ideas but it was up to Johnson to make them work. And when we
saw Blythe driving round the countryside, and sometimes out with some girl he had no business to be out with, some of us said Johnson made the money so that Blythe could spend it.”

  “My father was a strict man,” Arthur nodded. “He wanted things done straight. He was generous enough, but he hated waste.”

  “We often wondered if there’d come a time when he’d have to put his foot down.”

  “And did there?”

  “Well…” Mr Farnham coughed apologetically. “It does look like it, doesn’t it?”

  Arthur appeared hot and tired although it was cool in this room. Nell wanted to move her chair closer to his and sit beside him. He was wretched and she wanted to be near him.

  Henry Kersfield took over, dry and analytical, from Mr Farnham. He wished it to be understood that he was dealing with blunt facts rather than reminiscence and vague generalisation.

  In 1913 Walter Blythe disappeared. He went overnight, without warning. His partner, Victor Johnson, expressed surprise. So did the dark, imperious Mrs Blythe. Her husband had said nothing to her about going on a trip. Yet she confirmed that he had taken plenty of luggage.

  “Nobody cared for her,” Mr Farnham broke in, “but you had to be sorry for her. She was too proud for her own good; but that pride of hers must have had a nasty blow when she was left like that.”

  “Your father,” Kersfield said to Arthur, “called the firm’s accountant in. They went through the books together and announced that ten thousand pounds were missing. It was a lot of money in those days. It was certainly a lot so far as Blythe and Johnson were concerned. The supposition at the time was that Blythe had converted the embezzled money to negotiable securities. Could even have loaded himself with sovereigns — quite feasible then. Anyway, the money was gone, Blythe was gone. Off to South America, everybody thought.”

  “Why South America?” asked Nell.

  Mr Farnham smiled nostalgically. “It was always South America in those days.” The firm was almost crippled by the loss. Victor Johnson grimly refused to be beaten. It was known to everyone in Lurgate that he devoted every minute of his waking life to building things up again. Blythe and Johnson became Johnson and Son. Victor died in his middle fifties and Nell remembered very little about him: she had married Arthur in 1941, when both of them had been in the Services, and met Arthur’s father once on a ten days’ leave and once on a forty-eight-hour pass. His wife had died years before and his only interests in life were the firm and his son — interests which blended and became inextricably one. To Nell he was brusque but charming, but he was already a sick, tired man and she did not know him long enough to be taken into his confidence on anything that mattered to him.