Possession (79 page)

“And then I thought I should cough, or something, in case they noticed me standing in the shadow. So I took a lot of steps backward and
advanced more noisily
, so to speak.”

“I believe he is capable of grave robbery,” said Blackadder, tight-lipped.

“I know he is,” said Leonora Stern. “There are all sorts of rumors, in the States. Things that have disappeared from glass cabinets in little local collections, you know, curios of particular interest, Edgar Allan Poe’s pawned tie-pin, a note from Melville to Hawthorne, that sort of thing. A friend of mine had almost persuaded a descendant of a friend of Margaret Fuller’s to sell a letter about her meeting with English writers in Florence, before her fatal voyage—
full
of feminist interest—and Cropper turned up, and offered a blank cheque, and was refused. So the next day, when they went to look for the MS, it had gone. It was never traced. But
we
think he’s like those mythical millionaires who pay thieves to get them
the
Mona Lisa and
the
Potato Eaters—”

“He feels they
are
really his, perhaps,” said Roland, “because he loves them most.”

“A kind way of putting it,” said Blackadder, turning the original Ash letter in his hand. “So we are to assume a private, inaccessible inner cabinet of curios that he turns over, and breathes in at the dead of night, things no one ever sees—”

“So the rumour goes,” said Leonora. “You know how it is with rumors. They waft, they burgeon. But I think this one has some foundation. I know for a fact that the Fuller story is true.”

“How are we to stop him?” said Blackadder. “Tell the police? Complain to Robert Dale Owen University? Confront him? He’d brush off the last two, and the first is a bit ridiculous—they’ve not got the men to mount guard at a grave for the next few months. If we put him off now, he’ll just give up graciously and try later. We can’t get him deported.”

Euan said, “I’ve rung his hotel, and Hildebrand’s house in the country, and found out a few things. I pretended to be their lawyer, in a hurry with important information, and got told where they really were. Which is, the Rowan Tree pub, on the North Downs, near, but not very near, Hodershall. Both of them. That’s very significant.”

“We should alert Drax, the vicar,” said Blackadder. “Though that’s not much use, he hates
all
Ash scholars and poetic trippers.”

“
I
think,” said Euan, “this may sound melodramatic and toujours Mr Campion, but I do really think, that we have to catch him in the act and take whatever—it—is
from
him.”

A pleased rumour ran around the room. Beatrice said, “We can catch him in the act before he desecrates the grave.”

“In theory, in theory,” said Euan. “In practice, we may need to safeguard whatever there is, if there is anything.”

“Do you think he thinks,” asked Val, “that the end of the story is there in that box? Because there’s no reason why it should be. There could be anything or nothing, in that box.”

“We know that. He knows that. But these letters have made us all look—in some ways—a little silly, in our summing-up of lives on the evidence we had. None of Ash’s post-1859 poems is uncontaminated by this affair—we shall need to reassess
everything
—the reasons for his animus against the spiritualists is a case in point.”

“And LaMotte,” said Leonora, “has always been cited as a lesbian-feminist poet. Which she was, but not exclusively, it appears.”

“And
Melusina,”
said Maud, “appears very different if the early
landscapes are seen as partly Yorkshire. I’ve been rereading. No use of the word ‘ash’ may be presumed to be innocent.”

Euan said, “How are we going to foil the body-snatchers, which I take to be the main purpose of our meeting?”

Blackadder said doubtfully, “I suppose I could invoke Lord Ash.”

“I have a better idea. I think we set spies and
watch him.”

“How?”

“I think if Dr Nest is right he must be going to dig
soon
. And I think if two of us stay in the same pub—two he doesn’t know at all—we can alert the others—or if necessary confront him alone, follow him to the churchyard, stop his car with a legal-looking piece of paper—we shall have to play it by ear. Val and I could go. I’ve got a bit of holiday. And you, I believe, Professor Blackadder, have an order preventing the export of Ash’s papers until the Heritage Advisory Board has decided what to do—”

“If he could be stopped from disturbing their rest,” said Beatrice.

“I do wonder,” said Blackadder, “what is or was in that box.”

“And for whom it was put there,” said Maud.

“She leads you on and baffles you,” said Beatrice. “She wants you to know and not to know. She took care to write down that the box was there. And she buried it.”

Val and Euan left first, hand in hand. Roland looked at Maud, who was immediately engaged by Leonora in an intense conversation and a series of demonstratively forgiving hugs. He found himself leaving with Blackadder. They walked along the pavement together.

“I’ve behaved badly. I’m sorry.”

“It’s understandable, I believe.”

“I felt possessed. I had to know.”

“Did ye hear about the posts ye’ve been offered?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ve got mebbe a week’s grace. I’ve spoken to them all. Sung your praises.”

“That was kind.”

“Your work is good. I liked that piece ‘Line by Line.’ A thorough
piece of work. I’ve got funding for a full-time research fellowship, on Ash. If you’re interested. A spin-off, I believe you’d call it, from the screen appearance I made. A Scottish philanthropic trust run by a lawyer who turns out to be obsessed with Ash.”

“I can’t decide what to do. I’m not even sure I want to stay in academic life.”

“Well, as I said, you’ve got a week. Drop by, if you feel like discussing the pros and cons.”

“Thanks, I’ll think a bit, and then I will.”

T
he Rowan Tree Inn stands about a mile outside Hodershall, in the shelter of a curve of the North Downs. It was built of flint and slate in the eighteenth century, and is long and low, under a mossy slate roof. It fronts a meandering road, now modernised and widened, which cuts across largely bare downland; across the road, a further mile up a long grassy track, is the Hodershall Parish Church, built in the twelfth century, squat and stony, also under a slate roof, with an unassuming tower and a weathercock in the shape of a flying dragon. These two buildings stand apart from Hodershall village, behind the arm of the down. The Rowan Tree has twelve bedrooms, five along the main road front, and seven more in a modern annexe, built in the same local stones, behind the original building. It has an orchard, with tables and wooden swings for summer visitors. It is mentioned in all the Good Food guides.

On October fifteenth it had few visitors. The weather was warm for the time of year—the trees still had their leaves—but very wet. Five of the bedrooms were taken, two of them by Mortimer Cropper and Hildebrand Ash. Cropper had the best bedroom, over the solidly handsome front door, looking out to the track to the church. Hildebrand Ash was next to him. They had been there a week, and
had gone for long tramps along the Downs in all weathers, well protected with high boots, waxed jackets and portable parkas. Mortimer Cropper said, once or twice in the bar, which was panelled and dark, with shining gold hints of brass and dark green shades on its discreet lights, that he was thinking of buying a home in the district, a place in which to settle and write for part of the year. He visited various house agents and looked at various estates. He was knowledgeable about forestry and interested in organic farming.

On the fourteenth, Ash and Cropper went into Leatherhead and visited the offices of Densher and Winterbourne. They stopped at a garden centre on their way out of the town and purchased—for cash—various heavy-duty spades and forks and a pickaxe, which they stowed in the boot of the Mercedes. On the afternoon of the fourteenth, they took a walk to the church, which was, as usual, locked against vandals, and wandered round the churchyard, looking at the gravestones. There was a notice at the entrance to the little graveyard, which was fenced with crumbling iron railings; the notice informed them that this parish, the parish of St Thomas, was part of a group of three parishes, of which the Reverend Percy Drax was vicar. Holy Eucharist and Morning Prayer were held there on the first Sunday of every month; Evensong on the last.

“I don’t know this Drax,” said Hildebrand Ash.

“A most unpleasant person,” said Mortimer Cropper. “The Schenectady Poetry Fellowship made a presentation to this church of an inkwell Ash had used on his American tour, and some of his books he had signed for American admirers, with his photograph pasted in. They presented a glass case as well, to display the treasures; Mr Drax has sited it in a
most obscure
corner and covered it with a dusty baize pall and absolutely no external indication of its nature, so that it is entirely missed by the casual visitor.…”

“Who can’t get in anyway,” said Hildebrand Ash.

“Precisely. And this Drax is very hostile to being asked for keys by Ash scholars and admirers who wish to pay their respects. He says—he has written to me in letters—that the church is God’s
house, not Randolph Henry Ash’s mausoleum.
I
see no contradiction.”

“You could buy the things back.”

“I could. I have offered substantial donations to him even for the loan of the objects. The books are already represented in the Stant Collection, but the inkwell is unique. He replies that unfortunately it is not in the terms of the gift that the objects may be disposed of. He is not interested in ways of altering the terms of the gift. He is positively surly.”

“We could take them too,” said Hildebrand. “While we were at it.”

He laughed, and Mortimer Cropper frowned.

“I am not a common thief,” he said severely. “It is only that box—whose contents we may only guess at—the thought of it decaying in the ground until such time as we acquire the legal right to exhume it—the thought of
perhaps never knowing—”

“The value—”

“The value is partly the value
I
set on it.”

“Which is high,” said Hildebrand, with a question.

“Which is high even if it contains nothing,” said Cropper. “For my peace of mind. But it will
not
contain nothing. I know.”

They took a turn or two about the churchyard. Everything was quiet, English and dripping. The graves were mostly nineteenth-century with some earlier and a few later. The grave of Randolph and Ellen was at one edge of the churchyard, in the shelter of a kind of grassy knoll, or mound, on which grew an ancient cedar and an even older yew, screening the quiet corner from the eyes of anyone on the path to the church door. The railings were just beyond the grave and beyond them a field, closely cropped, of down grass, containing a few stolid sheep and a little stream, bisecting it. Someone had already been digging; green turfs were neatly stacked against the rails. Hildebrand counted thirteen.

“One for the head and a double row for the length of the … I could do that. I can cut turfs, I take an interest in our lawn. Are you thinking of trying to leave it so it looks undisturbed?”

Cropper thought. “We could try that. Put it all back real neatly and stow it with old leaves and things, and hope it grows back before anyone notices who might think twice. We should try that.”

“We could set up a diversion. Leave a trail of false clues so it looked as if we were Satanists, practising a black mass or something.” Hildebrand gave another snort and long high chuckle of solitary laughter. Cropper looked at his heavy pink face and felt twinges of fastidious distaste. He was going to have to spend much more of his time than would be pleasant in this banal creature’s company.

“Our best hope is that nobody notices. Anything else is
bad
—if anyone notices at all that the grave has been disturbed, they will also notice our presence here quite likely. And put two and two together. Then we just fake it out. If we find the box and take it away, no one can
prove
it ever existed, even if they dig again and have a look. Which they won’t. Drax won’t let them. But our best hope—I repeat—is to be unobtrusive.”

On their way out of the churchyard they passed two other visitors, a man and a woman, green-clad in quilted jackets and Wellingtons against the pervasive rain, blending into the background in an English way. They were examining the sculpted heads of laughing cherubs or baby angels on two tall leaning stones; the little creatures rested their dimpled feet on footstool skulls. “Morning,” said Hildebrand, in his country English voice, and “Morning” they replied, in the same tone. Nobody met anyone else’s eye; it was very English.