Possession (71 page)

“Exactly. It isn’t cut and dried. It’s open to be disputed. Sir George could dispute it and probably should. That document isn’t a proper Will, it’s not registered at Somerset House, there are all sorts of loopholes and chinks for contesting it. But my own opinion is, that you should be able to prove your title to the whole collection, his and hers. What is the problem is how we should proceed whilst protecting the interests of Toby here, whose position is ethically very dicey. How may this document come to light without his agency?”

Toby said, “If Sir George disputes your claim you could spend the whole proceeds on legal fees—”

“Like
Bleak House,”
said Val.

“Exactly,” said Euan. “He
might
settle. What we need now is a way for this to come to light without Toby deliberately finding it—I think I’ll have to devise a story which makes him my victim—I could persuade him to show me some of the papers in a trumped-up search—and then spring a surprise on him—”

“Piratical,” said Val, adoring.

“If you would consider my acting for you—”

“You won’t make a lot of money,” said Maud. “If the papers are mine, they will go in the Women’s Resource Centre.”

“Understood. I’m not in it for the money. For the drama, the curiosity, you know? Though I think you should consider that you may
have
to sell—not to Cropper but to the British Library or somewhere acceptable—to pay off Sir George.”

Roland said, “Lady Bailey was good to us. She could do with the wheelchair.”

Maud said, “The Women’s Resource Centre has been
disgracefully
underfunded since its inception—”

“If all those papers were in the British Library, you could have microfilms and funding and a wheelchair—”

Maud looked at him with a fighting look. “If those papers were in the Resource Centre they’d
attract
funding—”

“Maud—”

“George Bailey has been extremely unpleasant to me—and to Leonora—”

“He loves his wife,” said Roland. “And his woods.”

“So he does,” said Toby Byng.

“I don’t think,” said Val, “we should start fighting over what we—you, that is, haven’t got yet. I think we should take it step by step. I think we should drink to Euan, who thought up all this, and think of a next step.”

“I’ve got one or two more ideas,” said Euan. “But they need a bit of thought and research.”

“You think I’m being greedy,” said Maud, when they were at home.

“No, I don’t. How could I?”

“I can feel you disapproving of me.”

“You’re quite mistaken. What right have I to disapprove?”

“That means you do. Do you think I should tell Euan to go away?

“That’s up to you.”

“Roland.”

“It has very little to do with me.”

That was the problem. He felt marginal. Marginal to her family, her feminism, her ease with her social peers. There were a great many circles here, all of which he was outside. He had begun this—what should it be called—this investigation—and had lost everything—whilst handing to Maud the materials with which she could improve her own lot immeasurably—job, future, Christabel, money … he hated eating dinners he could not have paid for. He hated living off Maud.

Maud said, “We can’t quarrel now—after everything we’ve—”

He was about to say they were not quarrelling, when the telephone rang.

The voice was female, trembling, and very agitated.

“I wish to speak to Dr Bailey.”

“This is Maud Bailey, speaking.”

“Yes. Well. Yes. Oh dear. I have thought and thought about whether I should ring you—you may think I am mad, or you may think I am simply bad—or presumptuous—I don’t know—I could only think of you—and I have sat and thought about it all evening and I only see now how
late
it is to be ringing anyone, I must have lost all sense of time, I should perhaps ring back tomorrow, that might be better only it might be too late, well, not perhaps
tomorrow
, but very soon, if I’m right—it was only that you seemed
concerned
, you see, you did seem to
care—”

“Please—who is that speaking?”

“Oh dear, yes. I
never
initiate telephone calls. I am terrified of the telephone. This is Beatrice Nest. On behalf of Ellen Ash. No, not exactly on behalf—except that I do feel—I do feel—that it is for her that I am—”

“What has happened, Dr Nest?”

“I’m sorry. Let me try to settle down and speak clearly. I did try to ring you earlier, Dr Bailey, but there was no answer. I didn’t really expect you to answer this call, either, that is why I am so flustered and taken off my guard. Yes.”

“I do understand.”

“It is about Mortimer Cropper. He has been here—well not here, I’m at home now of course, in Mortlake, but into my room in the Museum, he has been
there
several times, looking very particularly at
certain sections
of the journal—”

“About Blanche Glover’s visit?”

“No, no, about the funeral of Randolph Ash. And today he brought young Hildebrand Ash—well he isn’t so young, he’s quite
old
, and certainly fat, but younger than Lord Ash himself, of course—perhaps you don’t know that Hildebrand Ash will succeed Lord Ash if he dies, when he dies, and he
isn’t well
, James Blackadder
says, he certainly doesn’t answer letters at all—not that I write often, there is no real need, but when I do he doesn’t answer—”

“Dr Nest—”

“I know. Are you
sure
you wouldn’t rather I rang back tomorrow?”

“No. I mean yes. I am sure. I am consumed with curiosity.”

“I overheard them talking to each other. They believed I had gone—well, out of the room. Dr Bailey, I am
absolutely certain
that Professor Cropper means to disturb—to
dig up
—the Ashes. The grave in Hodershall. He and Hildebrand Ash together. He wants to find out what is in the box.”

“What box?” said Maud.

Beatrice Nest, with much circumlocution and breathiness, explained what box.

“He has been saying for years it should be dug up. Lord Ash wouldn’t countenance it, and anyway you have to have a Faculty from the Bishop to disturb an interment, you know, and he could never get one, but he says Hildebrand Ash has a
moral right
to the box and he himself has a—a right—because he—he—has done so much for Randolph Ash—he says he—I heard him say—‘Why not behave like the thieves who took
Impression at Sunrise
, why not take it and think of a plausible way to account for whatever we find later?’—I heard him—”

“Have you spoken to Professor Blackadder?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

“He dislikes me. He dislikes everyone, but he dislikes me more than most. He might say I was mad, or he might think it was
my
fault that Mortimer Cropper had formed this dreadful plan—he hates Cropper too—I don’t think he would listen. I am sick of small humiliations. You talked to me sensibly, you
understood
Ellen Ash, you will see how this must be stopped for her sake.” She continued: “I would have tried to tell Roland Michell, but he’s disappeared. What do you think I should do? What can be done?”

“Roland is here, Dr Nest. Perhaps we should come to London. We can’t really call the police—”

“What could we
possibly
say to them?”

“Exactly. Do you know the Vicar at the Church where the grave is?”

“Mr Drax. He doesn’t like scholars. Or students. Or Randolph Ash, I think.”

“Everybody concerned with this business seems to be very prickly.”

“And Ash himself was such a
generous
man,” said Dr Nest, not refuting this judgment.

“Let us hope he sees off Mortimer Cropper. Perhaps we should go and see him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me consult. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

“Please—Dr Bailey—hurry.”

Maud was excited. She told Roland they must go to London, and suggested that they consult Euan MacIntyre about Cropper’s possible courses of action and how to foil them. Roland said that this was a good plan, which it was, in its way, though it increased his own sense of unreal isolation. He lay awake at night, alone in the white bed, and worried. Something that had been kept secret had gone. He and Maud had felt impelled to keep the “research” secret, and whilst it was secret they had silently shared it and each other. Now it was out in the light of common day he saw it somehow diminished by the excited curiosity of Euan and Toby as much as by the hot desire and rage of Cropper and Blackadder. Euan’s charm and enthusiasm had not only smoothed the resentment and sullenness out of Val’s face but had somehow brought a brightness and recklessness to Maud herself. He fancied she spoke more freely to Euan and Toby than she had done to him. He fancied Val took pleasure in taking over the pursuit. He remembered his earliest
impression of Maud—managerial, arrogant, critical. She had once belonged to Fergus. Their own strange silent games were the product of chance, of a brief artificial solitude, of secrecy. They could not survive in the open. He did not even know if he wanted them to. He looked for his own primary thought, and said to himself that before Maud came he had had Randolph Ash and his words, and now even that, that above all, had been changed and taken from him.

He said nothing of all this to Maud, who appeared to notice nothing.

Euan, consulted the next day, was also excited. They would
all
go to London, he said, and talk to Miss Nest, and have a council of war. Perhaps they could follow Cropper around and catch him
in flagrante delicto
. The law was subtly different as to the disturbance of interments in burial grounds and alternatively cemeteries. Hodershall sounded like an Anglican graveyard that would qualify as a burial ground. He and Val would go in the Porsche and meet up with Roland and Maud. Why didn’t they come to his pad and telephone Dr Nest from there? He had a flat in the Barbican, very comfortable. Toby must stay and mind his deedboxes and Sir George’s interests.

Maud said, “I might stay with my aunt Lettice. She’s an old lady in Cadogan Square. Would you like to come?”