‘But surely—’ I was thinking hard. If James had laid the pictures down on the vestry table in the dark, while he fumbled for the main switch, he might just possibly have picked the register up in error, and carried it away. It seemed unlikely, but I made a mental note to telephone him as soon as I could. It was obvious that the Vicar was very worried; the thing must be put back without delay. ‘But surely, it won’t have been stolen, Vicar. Who would want it? It’ll turn up soon, you’ll see.’
‘Quite, quite. I comfort myself with the thought. I am not seriously worried,’ said the Vicar, looking very worried indeed. ‘It seems clear that someone must have wanted to consult it, and seeing it here, has simply borrowed it. It will be returned in time, surely. The fault is mine, and only mine. When I left the volumes in the vestry, it never entered my head that anyone besides myself would be interested enough to abstract one of them. Indeed, I still may be mistaken; I shall be going to One Ash tomorrow afternoon, and will make sure . . . Ah Rob, good morning. Were you looking for me?’
‘Good morning, Vicar. Mrs Henderson said to tell you that a young couple called from Hangman’s End about a licence.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said the Vicar, ‘and I did want to get the plants finished this morning.’
‘I’ll do them,’ I said. ‘That is, if you’ll trust me after breaking that shoot.’
‘Of course, but you must have plenty to do.’
‘I’d like to finish them,’ I said. ‘Good morning, Rob.’
‘Good morning.’
‘Are the Underhills at home today?’ I asked him.
‘They’re going out later. But Mrs Underhill said if I saw you to say you were welcome at the house any time. She tried to phone you this morning, but you’d gone out.’
‘Oh, thanks. I’m going to take a look in the library, Vicar. I thought I’d look through the family section.’
‘Oh, yes. Well any time you want me, you know where to find me. Rob, what have you done to your hand?’
‘Nothing. Hit it with a hammer, that’s all.’
‘Was that you mending the fishing cat last night?’ I asked him.
‘Fishing cat?’
‘The cat statue at the Overflow. It’s broken off. Had you seen it?’
‘Oh, that, yes. The metal’s rotten. I left it be. It’s not much use wasting time on that kind of thing.’ It was an echo of what my cousin had said last night, but without the bitterness; Rob spoke with an indifference verging on the surly. He was already making for the door. ‘I was wedging the sluice gates shut, that’s what you heard. Looked as if they’d been tampered with, but then the whole thing’s rotten anyway.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘Safe enough. The High Sluice can take care of anything the river likes to send down, and the Overflow’s there to keep the moat level steady.’
He was at the door, opening it. I got quickly to my feet. ‘I’m going over to the Court again. May I have your keys now, please, Rob?’
‘You know where they’re kept. Help yourself.’ The greenhouse door shut behind him.
‘His hand must be hurting him more than he’ll admit,’ said the Vicar. ‘He’s not usually rude. I hope it’s nothing serious. Well, I must go, I suppose. If you really will finish the tomatoes for me—?’
‘Of course I will.’
Alone in the greenhouse I went back to the plants. The silence of the glasshouse, the stillness of the air and the monotony of the task, were somehow soothing. God knows I had plenty to think about, but I thought about none of it, not then. I shut myself off from it as the glass shut me from the air outside, content to let my mind stay closed and blank, and to work automatically along the rows of plants.
What slipped it into my mind I do not know, but it was suddenly there, clear as if spoken . . . No, not as if spoken; as clear as if it were written up between me and the garden, scrawled on the steamed glass.
William Ashley, 1774–1835.
It might be pure chance that a parish record of William Ashley’s time had vanished, but also it might not. And anything to do with William Ashley was of interest to me, at least until I had managed to interpret my father’s cryptic words.
I was on the last row of tomato plants. I finished the job as quickly as I could, then let myself out into the air, and hurried towards the Court.
Ashley, 1835.
‘You have the key safely?’
‘Aye. See? But I’ll not need it.’
‘Never be too sure. You know what they say about a maze?’
‘No. What, then?’
‘That a compass won’t work there. While we’re here, we’re in a world without bearings and directions. Even if you could see the weather-vane, it would be no help. We’re outside the world.’
‘Sounds like we’re dead, surely?’
‘Hush, oh, hush. It just means that once we’re here, at the centre, no one can touch us.’
‘Till we go out again.’
‘Even then. Nothing can touch us now.’
13
And what obscured in this fair volume lies Find written . . .
Romeo and Juliet, I, iii
No ghost had ever walked in the Ashley library, but now, as I let myself quietly into the still, spacious room, it seemed haunted, probably only by the frail parchment ghosts of the books that had vanished from the shelves. It was so empty that it echoed. Somehow, I thought, a library looked worse than an ordinary room that had been stripped of its furniture. The books had been the brain of the room, its soul, its raison d’être. I shut the door quietly behind me, as if afraid of disturbing those pale ghosts, then, ashamed of the impulse even as I gave way to it, turned the key. Quietly as a ghost myself, I walked the length of the room to the locked cases which housed William Ashley’s books, and Nicholas’ sad little collection, pushed the library ladder up close, then climbed up and unlocked the grille.
William’s book . . . ? I might as well start with Scholar Ashley’s own verses. I took out A New Romeo to His Juliet, sat down on the top step of the ladder, and opened the book.
There was the bookplate with the maze, and the rampant wildcat with its grim motto – how touchable had Julia Ashley been, I wondered briefly – and opposite this the dedicatory letter with its extravagances which, for once, and how pathetically, sounded no more than true.
To the peerless and beautiful Mistress Julia Ashley, my wife . . .
I read it through. It was much the usual letter, fulsome to our ears and circumlocutory, but through it came very clearly the idolatry he had felt for her. The touch at the end was pure pathos.
May we never reach that end, but if we do, let it be together, that we may never from our palace of dim night depart again.
Your
Romeo
I turned the pages slowly. The work was privately printed and very prettily produced; it was doubtful if William Ashley could ever have found more than a local immortality, but to me, another Ashley, the book was fascinating. A great many of the verses were about the Court. One or two of the shorter ones I knew already; they had been printed elsewhere, and we had been set to learn them as children. Each poem had, as head and tail piece, some small and rather pretty engraving, and these I found fascinating. There was a picture of the main bridge, more or less exactly as it was today; a distant view of the Court minus the Victorian gables and a chimney or two; a view of the orchard beautifully kept and improbably heavy with fruit; one of the maze, trim and neat and little more than shoulder high, with a detailed drawing of a pavilion perched for the artist’s convenience on a high platform that had certainly never been there.
The poem below this picture was called The Maze:
In this fantastickal and Cretan maze
No Theseus to find the centre strays;
This gentler Monster lurked within these Groves
What time the Romans trod their secret ways.
No Cretan Bull guards the abode of love,
But where the gentle waters, straying, mo
ve,
See! Dionysus’ creature here enskied
To greet our ’raptured gaze . . .
And so on. It was bad verse; so bad and so meaningless that, conversely, I thought there must be meaning there. William Ashley’s poems were usually transparent as glass, his conceits more than simple, only lamely imitating the stately periods he admired. ‘Secret ways’, I thought. It was surely only the usual conceit about a maze, the Greek myth of Theseus and the clue. Then why ‘Romans’? Well, it probably hardly mattered. But the maze was William Ashley’s private refuge, and the pavilion was built for his Juliet. And past the maze went the Overflow. I read on.
Time passed slowly. Somehow the silence of the library, which should have helped me to concentrate, oppressed and distracted me. The clear north light showing up the half empty shelves, the stuffy smell of a locked room, the waiting echo of emptiness, seemed to symbolise the vacuum inside my mind, the shut gate, the lack of presence . . . Try as I would, the parable of the swept and garnished house kept coming back to me. ‘Possession’, in any context, was a forceful, not to say frightening, word.
The thought came between me and the book, so persistently that I knew I could not go on reading here. I decided to take the books back to the cottage, make myself some lunch, then telephone Herr Gothard and find what James had said to him last night. After that I would settle down once more to my reading. I carried the New Romeo down the steps and laid it on a table, then climbed back to lock the grille.
A title in one of the Shakespeare shelves caught my eye, and the name Juliet in gilt on tooled tan leather. The real thing. Any comparison with Scholar Ashley’s transports would be unfair in the extreme, but some impulse, sparked off perhaps by the thought of the star-crossed lovers and my own divided house, made me take the small volume out. Then I locked the grille, let myself out of the library, and locked that, too, behind me.
There was very little delay on the line.
Herr Gothard was at home. Yes, Herr Gothard would speak with me . . .
‘Bryony? How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thank you, Herr Gothard. Can you hear me all right?’
‘Perfectly. Now, how can I help you?’
‘I’m awfully sorry to trouble you again,’ I said, ‘but there were one or two things I wanted to ask you. I, er, I understand that my cousin James was to telephone you last night?’
‘That is so. He did telephone me. He has not been in touch with you about this?’
‘I’ve been out all day. I wondered what news you had had for him.’
‘Ah.’ He sounded faintly surprised that I should have telephoned Germany rather than Bristol, but he went on with his usual calm courtesy. ‘I’m afraid there has not been much progress here. There is no sign as yet of the car which did the damage, but the police are still making inquiries.’
‘Yes, I see. Thank you. Did he – did my cousin ask you anything else?’
‘No, only questions about the accident – had they found the car, were there any more clues to who had done it, all the same questions. I am sorry I have nothing more to tell you. And yourself? You are well?’
‘Oh, yes, perfectly, thanks. There was one thing I wanted to ask you, though. Do you remember, among Daddy’s things that you gave me, a silver ballpoint pen?’
‘Ye-es . . . Ach, yes, of course I do! It had his initials on it, yes?’
‘That’s the one. Where was it found, do you know?’
‘Beside him on the road.’
‘That’s definite, is it? It wasn’t found in his pocket?’
‘No. I remember that. It was found later, when the police went back to search the place.’
‘Herr Gothard,’ I asked, ‘do you ever remember seeing him use it?’
There was a pause while he thought. ‘No. I cannot say that I do. Why? Is it important?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Look, Herr Gothard, something has turned up here . . . If I send you a photograph, would you please show it to the police and ask if anyone in Wackensberg or Bad Tölz remembers seeing such a man? And surely they could find out if he hired a car, and all that sort of thing?’
‘Certainly.’ I heard the sudden interest, and perhaps even enlightenment, quicken his voice. He had guessed, had Walther, why I had rung him in Germany rather than James in Bristol. ‘Why is this, Bryony? Does this mean that you have found some evidence yourself which points to someone? How definite is it?’
‘I don’t know. Something happened yesterday, and it made me wonder . . . I can’t say any more now. But, Herr Gothard—’
‘Yes?’
‘Please don’t say anything about this to anybody but the police, will you? I mean, if anyone else should telephone from England—’
‘I understand.’ And now I was sure that he did. His voice across the wire sounded troubled, even grim. ‘You can trust me. I shall say nothing until it is time.’
‘Thank you. I’ll send the photograph straight away.’
‘Please do. I shall do all I can.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’
I cradled the receiver, then came round sharply in my chair at the sound of a step on the flagged path outside.
‘Hi, Bryony,’ said my cousin Emory.
I felt myself go white. He stopped short, and said contritely: ‘I’m sorry. Did I frighten you? I thought you must have heard me coming.’
‘Not a sound.’ I forced a smile. ‘Well, hullo. It’s lovely to see you.’
‘Is it? You looked as if you were seeing a ghost, one of the nastier sort.’
‘Oh dear, did I?’ I got to my feet with a gesture of welcome. ‘Come in, Emory, do.’
He bent his head under the lintel and came into the little room, and took my hands and kissed me, just as James had done in the schoolroom at the Court.
‘You know, it is a bit like seeing a ghost.’ I said it apologetically. ‘I guess I must have stopped being used to you and James. And for heaven’s sake, he was wearing that same shirt and tie when he was ringing for you yesterday, I’ll swear he was. Don’t tell me you wear the same clothes now? That really is taking it a bit far!’
I was talking perhaps a shade too fast, all the time casting back in my mind for what I had been saying on the telephone as he approached the cottage door. How much could he have heard? What might he have made of it? Certainly he seemed quite easy and natural, the old charming Emory I remembered, and none the worse for what the romantic novelists would have called a hint of steel under it all, but which I, who had known him too well since boyhood, had occasionally described as ‘bloody overweening Twinmanship’.
He laughed. ‘Yes, and you had him taped in two seconds flat, I gather. Not that he was trying to ring the changes with you; it never worked, and neither Twin nor I have ever wasted time on things that don’t work . . . Well, it’s lovely to see you again. I wish it could have been a happier homecoming for you.’
I ushered him into one of the chairs by the hearth, and sat down myself where I had been before, beside the round table where William Ashley’s books were lying. Emory leaned back in the armchair, took out cigarettes and offered them. I shook my head. He lit one for himself, and blew out a cloud of smoke.
‘James rang Herr Gothard last night.’
‘Yes, he said he would.’ I made it sound as non-committal as I could. He had of course seen me telephoning as he approached the cottage door. I knew I had used Walther’s name towards the end of the conversation. How near had Emory been then? And when I referred to the photograph? If he had heard me, he would think it strange that I didn’t tell him straight away that I had called Walther myself. Stalling for time, I asked him: ‘Would you like some coffee? Or tea, perhaps?’
‘No, thanks.’ His voice gave nothing away, either of surprise or suspicion. ‘He would have told you about it himself, but the call came through rather late, so he didn’t try to get you till morning. You must have been out?’
‘Yes, I had to go out fairly early.’ I tr
ied a safe tack. ‘Had Herr Gothard anything special to tell him?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ said Emory. ‘That is, he said there hadn’t been any progress, and followed it up with all the usual bromides – the police are still on the job, and so on.’
‘Yes, well, I would think that a hit-and-run accident is about the most difficult thing there is to trace, wouldn’t you? And in a tourist area, in the tourist season, just about impossible.’
He nodded. A pause, while he drew on his cigarette, inhaling deeply. I found myself beginning to relax. I was sure that he had heard nothing. He looked perfectly normal, calm and unbent, with just the right hint of trouble showing in his face. My cousin Emory, the alter ego of my secret friend, who, whatever James had done, must know all about it, too.
He was saying gently: ‘You do realise, Bryony, that we may never know?’
My gaze met his, with, I hoped, exactly the same gentle concern and lack of guile. It felt strange to be deceiving my cousin, even though only by omission. What made it strange was, I knew, that he was so like James . . . ‘Of course. To tell you the truth, I can’t find it in me to agonise much about that.’ I turned, abruptly, to the real truth. ‘All that matters is that my father’s dead, and, since I can’t imagine that anyone would have wanted to kill him deliberately, I don’t see that it helps much to run yapping after the fool who caused an accident.’ I looked straight at him. ‘Do you think it could have been anything but an accident?’
‘I? No, of course it couldn’t.’
‘Then you’d agree with me?’
‘What about?’
‘I mean, do you feel you can’t relax or try to forget it until the police in Bavaria find out every last detail of what happened?’
He blew a smoke ring, and leaned his head back to watch it rise. With this new dreadful suspicion sharpening its rat’s-teeth on the edges of my mind, I wondered if he couldn’t meet my eye. He spoke to the ceiling. ‘It may sound an awful thing to say, but if it’s going to take a long time, and cost a lot of money, no.’ He met my eyes then. ‘That may not sound pretty, but I’m paying you the compliment of the truth.’