Possession (52 page)

A kind of desperation overcame Maud. The bulk of Leonora lay on her sofa in her living-room, between her and her books. She noticed a kind of rigorous aching of her limbs, from tense confinement, which was reminiscent of the last terrible days of Fergus Wolff. She wanted to hear her own voice, saying something simple and to the point. She tried to think whom she wanted to speak to, and came up with Roland Michell, that other devotee of white and solitary beds. She did not look at her watch—it was late, but not so very late, not for scholars. She would let it ring, just a few times, and then, if he didn’t answer, ring off quickly, so that if seriously disturbed he would never know by whom. She picked up the telephone by her bed and dialled the London number. She would tell him what? Not about Sabine de Kercoz, but just that there was something to tell. That she was not alone.

Two rings, three, four. The phone was lifted. A listening silence at the other end.

“Roland?”

“He’s asleep.
Have you any idea what time it is?”

“I’m sorry. I’m ringing from abroad.”

“That is Maud Bailey, isn’t it?”

Maud was silent.

“Isn’t it, isn’t it, Maud Bailey? Why don’t you leave us alone?”

Maud held the phone silently, listening to the angry voice. She looked up and saw Leonora in the doorway, gleaming black curls and red silk.

“I came to say I’m sorry and have you got anything for a headache?”

Maud put the phone down.

“Don’t let me interrupt you.”

“There was nothing to interrupt.”

The next day, Maud telephoned Blackadder, which was a tactical error.

“Professor Blackadder?”

“Yes.”

“This is Maud Bailey, from the Lincoln Resource Centre for Women’s Studies.”

“Oh yes.”

“I am trying to get in touch with Roland Michell, rather urgently.”

“I don’t know why you should apply to
me
, Dr Bailey. I never see him these days.”

“I thought he—”

“He’s been away recently. He’s been in poor health since he came back. Or so I assume, since I don’t see him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t see why you should be. I take it you are not responsible for his—ailing state?”

“Perhaps, if you see him, you would tell him I called.”

“If I do, I will. Is there any other message?”

“Could you ask him to call me.”

“About what, Dr Bailey?”

“Tell him Professor Stern is here, from Tallahassee.”

“If I remember, if I see him, I’ll tell him that.”

“Thank you.”

Maud and Leonora, coming out of a shop in Lincoln, were almost killed by a large car, reversing at great and silent speed. They were carrying hobby-horses, with velvet heads on solid broomsticks, beautifully made with flowing silken manes and wicked embroidered eyes. Leonora wanted them for various godchildren and said
they looked English and magical. The driver of the reversing car, seeing the two women through smoke-blue glass, thought they looked bizarrely cultish, in flowing skirts and scarfed heads, brandishing their totemic beasts. He made an economical contemptuous gesture at the gutter. Leonora raised her hobby-horse and addressed him, jingling its bells, as slob, prick and maniac. Insulated from her imprecations, he completed his manoeuvre, distressing a push-chair, a grandmother, two cyclists, an errand-boy and a Cortina, which had to reverse behind him the length of the street. Leonora copied down his number plate which was
ANK
666. Neither Maud nor Leonora had met Mortimer Cropper. Their power-circle was different—different conferences, different libraries. Maud therefore felt no shadow of threat or apprehension as the Mercedes slid away through the narrow old streets for which it had not been designed.

If Cropper had known one of his cult-figures was Maud Bailey, he would not have stopped; he had registered Leonora’s American voice without much interest. He was on another quest. In a short time the Mercedes was having difficulty with a hay-wain in the twisting little wold roads near Bag-Enderby. He faced out the haywagon, making it pull precariously into a hedge. He kept his window closed and his aseptic leather interior air-conditioned.

The entrance to the drive to Seal Court was festooned with notices—old and greenish, new and red on white,
PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT
.
NO TRESPASSERS
.
DANGEROUS DOG
.
PROTECTED PROPERTY
.
ANY ACCIDENTS YOUR OWN RISK
. Cropper drove in. In his experience signboard verbosity was a substitute for, not an indicator of, mantraps. He drove along the beech drive and into the courtyard, where he stopped, engine humming, and considered his next move.

Sir George, with his shotgun, was seen to peer from the kitchen window and then to emerge from the door. Cropper sat in his car.

“Lost your way?”

Cropper wound down his grey window, and saw crumbling stones instead of steely film set. He looked about with a practised eye. Battlements eroded. Doors hung askew. Weeds in the stable-yard.

“Sir George Bailey?”

“Uh-huh. Can I help you?”

Cropper emerged from his car and turned off the engine.

“May I give you my card? Professor Mortimer Cropper, of the Stant Collection, in Robert Dale Owen University, in Harmony City, New Mexico.”

“Some mistake.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve come a long way, just to ask for a few moments of your time.”

“I’m a busy man. My wife’s ill. What do you want?”

Cropper moved towards him and thought of asking if he could come in; Sir George raised his gun a little. Cropper stopped in the yard. He wore a loose and elegant black silk and wool jacket over charcoal grey flannels and a cream silk shirt. He was thin, he was sinewy; he bore a faint resemblance to the film Virginians, poised like cats in corrals, ready to jump this way or that, or to draw.

“I am, I think I may safely say, the leading expert in the world on Randolph Henry Ash. Sources have led me to believe that you may be in possession of some documentation by him—say a letter, say a draft of something—”

“Sources?”

“Roundabout sources. These things always become known, sooner or later. Now, Sir George, I represent—I curate—the largest collection of the manuscript writings of R. H. Ash in the world—”

“Look, Professor, I’m not interested. I don’t know anything about this Ash and I don’t propose to start—”

“My sources—”

“And
I don’t like English things being bought up by foreigners.”

“A document to do, perhaps, with your illustrious ancestress, Christabel LaMotte?”

“Not illustrious. Not my ancestress. Inaccurate on both counts. Go away.”

“If I could just come in for a moment or two and discuss the matter—simply to know for scholarly purposes what you might or might not have—”

“I don’t want any more scholars in this house. I don’t want any interference. I have work to do.”

“You don’t deny that you have something—”

“I don’t say anything. It’s none of your business. Get off my land. Poor little fairy poet. Leave her alone.”

Sir George took a stolid step or two forwards. Cropper elegantly raised his elegant hands; his crocodile-skin belt shifted a little like a gun-belt on his lean hips.

“Don’t shoot. I’ll go. I never trouble the truly reluctant. Let me say this to you, though. Have you any idea of how much such a piece of writing—if it existed—would be worth?”

“Worth?”

“In money. In money, Sir George.”

A blank.

“For instance one letter from Ash—simply fixing a sitting with a portrait-painter—recently went for £500 at Sotheby’s. Went to me, of course. It is our rather too frank boast that we don’t have a library precept from the university budget, Sir George, we simply have a cheque book. Now if you had
more than one
letter—or a poem—”

“Go on then—”

“Say twelve long letters—or twenty little ones with not much in—you’d be handsomely into six figures and maybe more. Six figures in pounds sterling. I observe your splendid home needs a lot of upkeep.”

“Letters by the fairy poet?”

“By Randolph Henry Ash.”

Sir George’s red brow creased with thought.

“And if you had these letters you’d take ’em off—”

“And preserve them in Harmony City and make them accessible to all scholars of all nations. They would join their fellows in perfect conditions—air pressure, humidity, light—our conditions of keeping and viewing are the best in the world.”

“English things should stay in England in my view.”

“Understandable. An admirable sentiment. But in these days of microfilm and photocopying—how relevant is sentiment?”

Sir George made one or two convulsive movements with the shotgun, perhaps a product of thought. Cropper, his keen eyes on Sir George’s, kept his hands rather absurdly in the air, and smiled, a darkly vulpine smile, not anxious, but watchful.

“If you tell me, Sir George, that I am wholly mistaken in supposing you have discovered any significant new manuscripts—any manuscripts at all—you must simply say so and I shall leave instantly. Though I hope you will take my card—it may be that a closer look at any old letters of Christabel LaMotte’s—any old diaries, any old account books—may turn up something by Ash. If you are in any doubt about the nature of any manuscript at all, I should be only too happy to give an opinion—an unprejudiced opinion—as to its provenance and worth. And worth.”

“I don’t know.” Sir George retreated into bull-faced squireish idiocy; Cropper could see his eyes calculating, and in that moment knew for certain that there was something, and that Sir George could lay his hands on it.

“May I hand you my card without being blasted?”

“I suppose so. I suppose you can. Mind you, I don’t say it’s any use, I don’t say …”

“You say nothing. You are unprejudiced. I understand perfectly.”

The Mercedes slipped back through Lincoln faster than it had come out. Cropper considered, and rejected, the idea of calling on Maud Bailey at this point. He thought about Christabel LaMotte. Somewhere in the Stant Collection—for which he had a loving and near-photographic recall, once activated—was something about Christabel LaMotte. What was it?

Maud was crossing Lincoln Market Square between the stalls. She was bumped into, with a heavy thud, by Sir George, in an unexpected suit, tight and greenish-brown. He put out a hand and seized her sleeve.

“Do you know,” he cried loudly, “young woman, do you know
how much an electric wheelchair might cost? Or a stairlift, perhaps you can price that?”

“No,” said Maud.

“Perhaps you should find out. I’ve just been to see my solicitor, who has a low opinion of you, Maud Bailey, a low opinion.”

“I’m not sure what—”

“Don’t look so mimsy and mild. Six figures or more, that’s what he said, that sly cowboy in his Merc. And you said never a word of that, oh no, butter wouldn’t melt in your cold little mouth, would it?”

“You mean, the letters …”

“Norfolk Baileys have never given a damn about Seal Court. The old Sir George built it to spite them and in my opinion they’d be pleased to see it crack up as it will do pretty soon. But an
electric wheelchair
, young woman, you should have thought of that.”