A Murder in Mayfair (9 page)

That stopped me in my tracks.

“That really
is
interesting.”

I paused, irresolute, in the lobby, conscious that PC Marrit was watching me. What was I to do, and who could I get to do it for me? Finally I went along to the Commons Library, and talked to a young woman called Sarah Sharp, who had done work for me in the past.

“Could you turn up for me any material—obituaries, say, at least to start with—on the Marquis of Aylesbury?”

A brief expression of surprise wafted over her face, to be replaced at once by professional impassivity

“Easily, I should think. Which one?”

“Eh?”

“Well, it's bound to be an old title. Is it a specific Marquis, with a number?”

“I haven't the faintest idea. Sorry to be so dim. Could we say any Marquis of Aylesbury who has died in the last twenty or thirty years?”

“No problem. When would you like it?”

“On my way back from the Ministry—say three- or four-ish?”

“I'll have it put out for you.”

I can't say my mind was on my work at the Ministry that day. Until then I had been able to compartmentalize, to keep my private wonderings and my public actions quite separate. Now the one kept intruding on the other. Matthew Martindale. The Christian name of the son of Lord John Revill, the surname of
his mother's family who had taken him from the Upper Brook Street home after she was murdered. It needed no great exercise of the imagination to see that they could have decided to hide the children's identities under their own name: not just the murder but the hue and cry about their father's disappearance would mean that their own name would have been a perpetual embarrassment, even a torment, to the children. Public schools, I am told, can be the cruelest places in the world.

So Matthew Martindale had come the day before on business to the Palace of Westminster. What could that business be? Anything, of course. I knew nothing about his life. He could be a stately home owner—perhaps of that manor house Hadleigh Grange, to which he and his sister had been taken—particularly if his grandparents had had no sons. He could have been lobbying the government or his MP. Stately home owners were always in the news, especially so at the moment, for grandees had been doing a cunning little dodge of getting tax concessions for themselves by claiming to open their piles to the public, but in fact doing it for one afternoon a year, keeping very quiet even about that, and at all other times keeping the Great Unwashed strictly at bay.

Speculation was useless. It was also inevitable. I was wasting my time at the Ministry, and the civil servants' time, too. At three I packed my papers into my official box and left.

When I got to the House of Commons Library Sarah Sharp was waiting for me. She gestured toward a place at which yellowing copies of newspapers were piled. I nodded my thanks to Sarah and went over. There were copies of
The Times, The Daily Telegraph,
and
The Guardian.
The Marquis of Aylesbury, then, was not one of those grandees of interest mainly to the tabloid press—not, in other words, a man of scandalous life or ludicrous opinions. Lord John had been, at least in that one terrible action of his life, the black sheep, the rotten apple.

I took up
The Times
from the top of the pile. I looked at the guide on the front page—features were placed differently then. The date on the masthead was April 29, 1967. During the Wilson government, then, that had taken over—after the brief interregnum of Lord Home, that deceptively vague but crafty aristocrat—from Macmillan's government. I turned to the obituary page.

There, looking out at me, was myself.

No, not myself. Myself when much older. Hair gray, face lined, chin and neck becoming scrawny. But thick, strongly defined eyebrows, jutting chin, prominent straight nose with flaring nostrils, high forehead. This was the Seventh Marquis of Aylesbury, father of Lord John Revill.

I raised my head, thoroughly unnerved, and wiped my sweating face. I saw, looking at me, Sarah Sharp, my librarian friend who had collected the material. She was clearly fascinated by my reaction, showing she had been before me looking at the obituaries. I had an uneasy sense that my secret was no longer contained in the little world of my friends and acquaintances.

J
im,” I said, coming up behind a man hunched over a computer in the Labor Party headquarters in Walworth Road and putting my hand on his shoulder.

That “Jim” was a piece of politician's fake mateyness, I'm afraid. You adopt all the techniques Americans use for remembering people's names. It goes down awfully well with constituents, less well, perhaps, with toilers at the political coal-face. Jim was perfectly aware that I hardly knew him, had met him no more than once or twice, and would not expect him to be on first-name terms with me. He looked up at me, hardly bothering to hide his surprise.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Shouldn't you be in Tuscany?”

“No, I hate crowds,” I said. “Jim, you've got all the candidates of all the parties over the last few years on that computer of yours, haven't you? Local as well as national?”

“Sure.”

“Could you do something for me?” He nodded. He had realized I wanted something from him. “I'd like you to check whether someone called Matthew Martindale has ever been involved in politics at any level.”

“No problem.” He fiddled with boxes of discs and within a couple of minutes came up with the name on his screen.

“Ah, so he has been,” I said with satisfaction. Jim peered at a meager line or two of information under the name.

“Hmmm. Not really what you'd call politically active,” he said, with a professional's contempt for dilettante politicians. “He stood as a Tory for Wellingborough Council in 1988. The beginning of the turnaround—turndown, rather—in Tory fortunes. He didn't get elected. And that's about it. Not exactly a heavyweight political figure.”

“No, hardly,” I said thoughtfully. “What was he doing visiting the Houses of Parliament? I wonder. He's been here recently.” Understandably Jim shrugged.

“Could be anything, surely. What's the interest?”

“Political-cum-personal,” I said gnomically. “Is that absolutely all you've got on him?”

“All except his address. He hasn't stood for anything again.”

“And what's the address?”

“The Dower House, Chatstock St. Mary, near Wellingborough, Northants.” He considered. “A nice address that. The sort of address people write to
The Times
from.”

I noted it down, thanked him, and turned away.

“Oh, and by the way, it's Jack,” he said to my departing and mortified back.

“House of Commons first, then the Ministry,” I told my driver.

In the Commons Library I managed for myself rather than seeking help. I had wondered in the car whether I was creating too many hostages to fortune by roping in so many people to answer my queries. If they didn't get my drift at once, as the librarian had done, they would certainly be puzzled. Anyway, it was easy enough to find the
Landed Gentry.
It was probably required reading for Tory MPs twenty or thirty years ago, in the
days before the composition of the party had changed and it had become
arriviste
rather than vested.

I found what I wanted easily enough. Sir George Martindale of Hadleigh Grange had died in 1980, and the baronetcy had passed to his son Edward. Sir Edward's seat was still Hadleigh Grange. He was married with two children, both sons. His sister Veronica was recorded as having married Lord John Revill. “D. 1962,” it said tactfully but bleakly. Her children were recorded as Matthew and Caroline, with no mention of a change of surname.

I resolutely put the matter from my mind during work. I had spoken sternly to myself, made it clear to the conscious part of my brain that I was a (junior) minister first, a person second. Any investigation of my origins was strictly for my free time. Nevertheless as soon as I was home and listening to music on the CD player or watching television with half my attention, the subject insisted on taking over.

I knew I was going to have to talk to Matthew Martindale.

But what sort of meeting was it going to be? Was it going to be “structured,” even confrontational? I knew of course what I wanted to ask him about, at least the basic things, but had no right to confront him, no grievance to lay at his door, no reason to demand answers as a sort of compensation for wrongs. He, like me, was someone who at an early stage of his life had been caught up in events beyond his influence or comprehension.

I decided that the meeting should be improvisational—an encounter of two men who surprisingly find they might be related, might have interests in common. That way, I thought, I could pay him a visit without any heavy burden of preparation.

I drove up to Northamptonshire the following Saturday. There was only one pub in the village of Chatstock St. Mary, and it was doing a nice little trade when I dropped in there at
lunchtime. I ordered a ham sandwich, and as I waited for it I remained with my pint at the bar.

“Is the big house I came past on the road from Wellingborough the Dower House?” I asked the landlord.

He was big and slow, and he nodded his head ponderously.

“That's right. Fine old place. Built long ago—before the Martindales took over at Hadleigh Grange.”

“And how long ago was that?”

That puzzled him. He'd been retailing local lore not personal knowledge.

“Don't rightly know. History's not my strong point. But well over a hundred year, folk say. They're big people around here, the Martindales.”

“And it's Matthew Martindale in the Dower House now, isn't it? I think I knew him at school.”

“Could be. He went away to boarding school, like they do, but I don't mind where. I wondered whether you might be related. You favor him.”

“Could be, I suppose. We might have a common great-grandparent or something.”

“Oh aye. Nobody knows their own relatives these days, do they? Now then, I saw Mrs. Martindale with the children an hour or so ago. They were off to Northampton to see one of those films kids always think they have to see in the school holidays. Brainwashed, that's what they are. So you could find Matthew up at the House, or maybe up at the Grange. He's estate manager for Sir Edward, and he's not a nine-to-five sort of chap.”

So he'd understood what I wanted without my asking. I rather regretted my lie about being at school with Matthew. The landlord was obviously sharper than he looked. Lying is something you can all too easily slip into, allow to become a habit, assuming that practice makes perfect.

Slightly abashed I took the sandwich which had been put on the bar and my drink to a table by a window. To cover my aloneness I took out of my pocket some of the photocopies I'd taken in the library of the obituaries of the Marquises of Aylesbury.

The ones of the old Marquis I had studied several times. The ones of his son I'd barely looked at. They were almost derisorily short, and even so they seemed to be searching around for anything to say. He had been born in 1924, had succeeded to the title in 1967, was elder brother to Lord John Revill, who had disappeared in 1962 after the murder of his wife. He had, one gathered, been a collector of nineteenth-century paintings. And that, essentially, was that. Two of the obituaries contained the classic sentence “He never married.” None speculated about the future of the Marquisate. If events had followed their natural course it would have gone to Lord John. He would probably have seemed, by comparison with his brother, a figure of towering stature.

I downed the rest of my pint and walked out into the sun. I decided to leave my car in the pub car park and walk. There were no long distances in Chatstock St. Mary. Five minutes later I found myself standing on the doorstep of the Dower House. It was redbrick, early nineteenth century, covered in Virginia creeper, and altogether a desirable residence that was also warm and welcoming. I suspected the garden was full of interesting plants, but I was too ignorant to be certain—I only knew they were not things I was familiar with.

I rang the bell.

The house was substantially built and I heard no footsteps from inside. The door opened without warning and I was looking straight at a high forehead, near-black hair, jutting chin, and flashing nostrils. He had been starting to ask my business
but his jaw dropped and no sound came out. It was a couple of seconds before he began to regain his poise.

“Ah. This is a bit of a stunner. I won't pretend I don't know who you are. How did you find me?” I was about to reply when he stood aside. “You'd better come in. The family's at the cinema, so this is a good time. I suppose you want to talk?”

He led the way down a broad, elegant hallway to a long and airy sitting room furnished in traditional style—some stylish eighteenth-century small tables and bulky, enveloping armchairs and sofa. The pictures, without being valuable, looked as if they had been around in one or other of his families for some time. He went straight to the sideboard.

“I think I need a slug of whiskey. Could you use the same?”

“A small slug.”

There passed a glance of understanding, almost of complicity, between the two of us. He handed me a glass, then downed his own small measure, set his glass back on the sideboard, and sat down. I did the same, and sat waiting for him to begin.

“I don't usually drink during the day,” he said. “Exceptional circumstances . . .”

“I realize it has come as a surprise. But you say you know who I am.”

“Saw you in the paper the day you got your government job. And your age—they were highlighting the young ones, with pictures. I expect you saw it. Wouldn't normally see the
Evening Standard,
but I was in London to meet my sister back from New Zealand. I'm afraid I hadn't registered you before.”