A Fall from Grace (14 page)

He had complained about patients being railroaded through the system, and in any case these days medicine was a matter of science, not of a close relationship between doctor and patient. That seemed to be all the recent governments' philosophy, anyway. This new function he had taken on as adviser, comforter, shoulder to cry on, gave him all the human contact he had lacked when working on the conveyor belt of his old job. But it's not the sort of human contact I'd want a lot of, thought Charlie.

And Chris was indeed very sharp. He had seen that Charlie was beginning to have doubts about him almost before he was aware of it himself. But the doubts he had were not really about Chris as a person, only fears that he was taking a wrong course—one that would prolong his absence from the medical world.

Felicity came home before he had a chance to get his thoughts in order. She told him about her identification of the body, her interview with Ben Costello and her thoughts on her father's death. She shed a few tears.

“They're tears for
me,
” she said fiercely, “not for him. I'm sorry for myself because I didn't have the dad that so many girls seem to have—warm, supportive, lovable. It's sheer self-pity.”

She told him that Costello had emphasized he could
have nothing to do with the investigation.

“Of
course
I know that,” said Charlie, exasperated. “Does he think I'm a complete airhead? Or that you know nothing, in spite of your being a policeman's wife?”

“I expect he'll be glad to have an important case all to himself if it turns out to be a case at all.”

“I don't doubt he will,” said Charlie. “Any policeman would. But there's nothing in police regulations to stop me talking to people.”

Monday was one of two days in the week when Felicity taught in the English department of Leeds University. It was this work that subsidized her attempts to write the Great Modern English Novel. Charlie was not in the least surprised when, the day after her father's death, she got up and breakfasted early and showed all the usual signs of being about to drive to Headingley. It was all of a piece with refusing to regard herself as bereaved or bereft. Life had already reverted to business as usual, because she felt as usual. She picked up her books, kissed Charlie, and then went out to the car. Charlie, who had the day off after his Sunday stint of duty, pottered around the kitchen and prepared to take Carola off to nursery school.

But he was surprised when at twenty to nine, there was a knock at the door. Who did he know who called at that hour? His surprise was not lessened when he opened the door and saw Harvey Buckworth waiting rather awkwardly on the step. The teacher's nondescript
but well-intentioned face was creased with frowns of concern.

“I say, I'm sorry to trouble you. I heard of your loss, and I just wanted to say, well . . .” He faded away, artistically.

“It's been a big shock,” said Charlie, choosing his words with care.

“It must have been. I'm afraid I haven't read any of his books, but I'll make the effort now. I suppose there will be an obituary in
The Times
that will tell me which are the best ones.”

“Maybe,” said Charlie, skepticism written all over his face. “Probably one of their short obituaries all bundled together with other ones. Whatever they may say in Slepton Edge, he wasn't particularly well known or particularly good.”

“Really? . . . I say, I wonder if I could come in for a moment.”

“Yes,” said Charlie, looking round at his daughter and her mess. “Don't mind Carola. She won't take down your words and use them in evidence against you. I assume this is private.”

“Well . . . delicate, you might say. Something I wouldn't want to go beyond these four walls.”

He wielded a powerful cliché, Charlie thought, for one who was apparently of an artistic nature.

“Sit down,” he said. “Come clean. Tell me all. I'm not a part of the investigation, by the way, for obvious reasons.”

“Investigation? Oh, I suppose there has to be one, doesn't there?”

It was odd. He looked terrified.

“Well, any sudden, unexplained death needs to be looked into. There's nothing particularly frightening in the word ‘investigation.' ” He waited. Harvey Buckworth gave the impression that he was internally squirming, but he said nothing. Charlie suppressed strong feelings of irritation. “Well, come on.”

“Come on?”

“You said this was some kind of delicate matter.”

“Yes, of course . . . Well, it's the drama stream . . . I told you it was under threat . . . that a lot of people don't like what we're doing at Westowram High.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, I wanted to ask you, when you're questioned, to keep the drama students out of it. Don't mention that you've been to see them, don't mention you gave them a warning, don't mention the plays we're doing, or any of the children who are pupils in the stream.”

Charlie sat for a moment, meditating. So much for the feigned surprise at the word “investigation.” He'd come specifically to ask for his prize piglets to be kept out of the show. But why should he have thought they would be in it? Apart, perhaps, from one.

“I came along to see your child stars because of an incident of harassment. I also came quite unofficially. Do you know of any connection between the harassment and the death of my father-in-law?”

“No, no—of course not.”

“Then it's difficult to see why you came to talk to me. Unless you're worried about your Miranda.”

“My—? Oh yes, well . . .”

“Is there talk around the town? Or were you at the carol service?”

“Well, actually both. There was bound to be talk, with a death like that. Nobody has fallen into the quarry for years, except one old woman who had cancer. And the carol service is not really my thing, but I'd trained the Christmas fairies, so—”

“
So
you saw my father-in-law and Anne Michaels.”

“Yes. And I live a little bit farther down the hill, so I'd seen you and your wife coming and going, and I thought—”

“Tell me, was the carol service the first you knew of the connection with Anne?”

“Yes. Oh yes, absolutely the first. Look, it's nearly nine. I've got a class in twenty minutes. I just—well, I hope you'll keep what I said in mind.”

“Oh, I'll keep it in mind,” said Charlie.

Parading slowly through the streets of Slepton on the way to the nursery school, with Carola seriously surveying the parents and children while clutching his hand, Charlie thought over the talk with Harvey Buckworth. He was, clearly, afraid that the threat to his drama stream in Westowram High would be aggravated by the death of Rupert Coggenhoe. The connection of his star female player with the elderly author would do him no good in a tight, prim little community such as Slepton Edge, and might even—the Michaels being obviously dubious already about the drama classes—result in the loss of his Miranda. Still, Anne's connection with Rupert was encouraged by them, and was not to be attributed to any school interference.
And there was no reason, except the exaggerations and hysteria of local gossip, for Harvey to see Rupert's death as anything but an accident. Or was there?

Why did he get the idea that Anne Michaels wasn't the only cause of Harvey Buckworth's evident concern?

Charlie was well enough known at the nursery school to be greeted by many of the parents, some of whom followed up with “I
was
sorry to hear—” “Tell Felicity we were shocked to hear—” and “I've always said there should be a fence up there.” He fended off sympathy as well as he knew how, but he was finding that being hypocritical about an unloved parent was not easy. He knew it was even more difficult for Felicity, and thought most of the sympathizers suspected how relations stood between father and daughter. Carola was just running joyfully into the building when Charlie, turning to leave the play area, saw a face that he recognized. It was a boy, leading a much younger girl by the hand. After a second or two of brain-racking he realized it was the black boy who had played Trinculo in the scenes from
The Tempest.
He went up to him, smiling recognition.

“Hello. I don't think I was told your name.”

“Dwayne. Dwayne Vickery.”

“Not at school today, then?”

“No. Mum thought I'd better not go . . . I'm not feeling too good. Sore throat.”

There was no sign of hoarseness, though. There was an embarrassment about the boy that puzzled Charlie.

“Are you sure that was why your mother didn't want you to go to school?” he asked.

“Sore throat, like I said. I gotta go. They're going in. Good-bye.” And the boy scurried toward the building and safety. Thoughtful, in fact speculative, Charlie walked toward home, hoping that the boy would be collecting his sister in three hours' time.

When he got back home the light on his answer machine was flashing, and he pressed play.

“Hello, Charlie. It's Ben Costello at the Halifax station. Any chance of you coming down and having a routine chat? No sign of a report from the postmortem yet, I'm afraid.”

After a moment's thought Charlie phoned the duty sergeant at Halifax, who turned out to be his friend Peter Harridance, to give the message to Costello that he was on his way.

He didn't have time to swap words with Harridance because Ben Costello was waiting by the desk to lead him through to one of the more informal interview rooms such as Felicity had been taken to the night before. “Just a chat to put me in the picture,” said Ben, and they both sat in chairs that were some way between upright and easy.

“You'll have an idea of what Mrs. Peace told me last night, I expect,” Costello began. “The broad outline, anyway. I don't know if there's anything you want to add?”

Charlie thought long and hard.

“Felicity's the expert. Long exposure through childhood and adolescence until she made her escape. The weeks since we all came to Slepton have been my first long exposure to her father. Speaking as a virtual
outsider I would just say I found him antipathetic.”

“Any particular reason?”

“His complete egotism. The fact that he used people all the time.” He thought, then decided to be honest. “Little things, like his complete lack of interest in Carola and the one on the way. The fact that when it was suggested that he might be sending Christmas cards to the women who'd helped him over his bereavement in Coombe Barton he acted as if he'd be doing them a big favor if he did it at all. He expected everything to be done for him, and refused to give anything in return.”

“Had this resulted in any blowups?”

“No,” said Charlie, rather surprised now he thought about it. “I'm glad about that now, because we don't have to have any guilt feelings. But if he'd lived it would only have been a matter of time.”

“I had the feeling that a blowup was brewing at the carol service.”

“Ah yes, that. We saw how it must have looked. Felicity was worried there was going to be a replay of Coombe Barton. I gather she's told you all about that.”

“Pretty much all.”

“If I may make a suggestion—”

“Can't you talk fucking English?” exploded Costello. “ ‘If I may make a suggestion.' You sound like a fucking bishop . . . Sorry.”

Charlie's eyes narrowed, but he maintained his ostentatious cool.

“No, I'm sorry. I expect it comes from being married to an English graduate steeped in nineteenth-century novels.”

“No, it's me should be apologizing. I've only had three hours' sleep.”

“Anyway, I was going to suggest that Felicity has made a bit too much of Coombe Barton in her own mind. It may have been the sort of little local brouhaha that would have died down in a few weeks because there was really nothing in it.”

“Maybe,” said Costello. “I said ‘pretty much all.' It occurred to me after your wife had gone that she didn't tell me how her father and Anne Michaels came together. Where, how did they meet?”

Charlie's forehead creased.

“Do you know, I hadn't thought of that. Felicity and I haven't talked about it, so I don't suppose she has either. Search me. I know it wasn't like Coombe Barton, where the relationship sprang up when one of the women who acted as his unpaid servants brought her granddaughter up with her one day and it went on from there. The Michaels apparently hadn't met Rupert, and they told Felicity when she met them accidentally at the supermarket that they wouldn't dare approach ‘the great author' to thank him for what he was doing for Anne—turning her away from drama and towards writing, or so they thought. I don't know the Michaels family and it may be worth your while checking up on them.”