Absolute Truths (10 page)

No one knew why Aysgarth, a clergyman riddled with ambition,
had jeopardised his career in 1945 in order to marry an eccentric
society woman whose one talent was to offend the maximum
amount of people in the minimum amount of time at any social gathering burdened by her presence, but Lyle had long since
decided that he had been temporarily unhinged by sex. However,
I had never been satisfied by this prosaic explanation because I
had never been able to regard Dido as sexually attractive. She had
a flat chest and legs like matchsticks; it was fortunate that she was
now too old to risk following the current fashion of revealing the
knees. Her bumpy nose, broken as the result of a hunting accident
in her youth, was set in a face where other irregular features con
jured up images of nutcrackers and hatchets. But having catalogued her bad points, let me hastily add that she dressed in excellent taste
and always looked exceedingly smart. Let me also add, to do her
justice, that her brain, although untrained by a formal education
in a school, was razor-sharp. Finally I must praise her loyalty to her husband and admire the fact that even in the most adverse circumstances her devotion to him had never wavered.

‘
Charles my dear!’ she exclaimed, sweeping over the threshold
before I could even open my mouth to invite her in. ‘Do forgive
me for dropping in on you without warning, but as soon as I
heard the ghastly news about Desmond Wilton — that peculiar
woman Miss Baines phoned me to say she found the body — well,
no, to be strictly accurate I must confess it was Tommy Fitzgerald
she phoned — you know she’s his charlady — but I happened to be
calling on Tommy at the time to discuss the arrangements for
feeding the visiting choir after the
St Matthew Passion,
and as he
was making tea when the phone rang I answered it — the phone,
I mean — and of course Miss Baines recognised my voice because
I sorted out her varicose veins with the hospital after they tried to
tell her there was a two-year waiting list —’

‘Come into the study, Dido. Can I offer you a drink?’

‘
No, no, quite unnecessary, thank you — was that Michael’s car
I saw parked in the drive?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact —’

‘
I can’t imagine why young men like sports cars, so draughty in
winter, but Michael’s only twenty-four, isn’t he — or is it twenty-five? — and still has quite a lot of growing up to do, I daresay, particularly in regard to women — and quite frankly, Charles, if I may be absolutely candid — and as you know, I’m famed for my
candour — if one of my stepsons was mixed up with a foreign
drug-addict I’d put my foot down in the firmest possible way —
but of course you’re trying to be Christian, aren’t you, which is always so terribly difficult, just as Browning says in the poem.
Well, as I was saying —’

‘
Do sit down, Dido.’

‘
No, I won’t stay, Charles, I mustn’t interrupt your family gath
ering for more than a minute, but I felt I simply had to tell you,
as soon as I heard the news about poor dear Desmond, that I have
it on the best authority from a very good friend in London that
she saw Desmond at Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night last
month, and of course you know what that means, don’t you,
because no respectable person would normally be seen dead in
Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night.’

‘In that case what was your friend doing there?’

‘She’d just left a theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue.’

‘
Maybe Desmond was also emerging from an evening at the
theatre.’

‘
Not with a young man in black leather, my dear. And my friend, who only wears glasses for reading and who met Desmond years
ago when she did charity work for his East End mission — my
friend tells me they were less than fifty yards from the public
lavatories.’

‘My dear Dido!’

‘
I’m only speaking with the welfare of the Church in mind,
Charles, and of course we all know Desmond was thrown out of
the London diocese after being convicted of soliciting in a public lavatory —’

‘He was not convicted. He was arrested along with the drunk
who took a swipe at him, but he wasn’t charged and the incident
isn’t generally known. I don’t know who could have told you about
it, but —’

‘Oh my dear, we all know, I can’t think how you convinced
yourself that you could ever keep
that
kind of fact a secret, and to
be absolutely candid, Charles, I can’t imagine how you ever dared
take him on, particularly since you’re so rabid on the subject of homosexuals —’

I tried to repudiate this slander but there was no chance. Dido
had merely paused to draw a quick breath and had no intention
of being interrupted.

‘
– but of course I do realise how soft you are on clergymen
who have had nervous breakdowns, and the softness is your way
of compensating, isn’t it, for that utterly
ruthless line
you take on
immorality – no, no, don’t think I’m criticising you, my dear, quite the reverse, thank God at least one bishop takes a strong stand
against immorality, that’s what I say! I’ve no time for all this silly permissiveness, and I said right from the beginning that Bishop
John Robinson was up the creek when he spouted all that rubbish
about a New Morality and gave silly young girls the scope to wreck
their lives and go down the drain – and talking of going down
the drain, I do hope poor dear Desmond can be eased into retire
ment as soon as possible, because choirboys will be the next step,
won’t it, and then you’ll wish you’d acted as soon as you knew he’d been seen in Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night with a
young man dressed in black leather. And talking of black leather –’

The door of the study opened and in walked Lyle.

‘
Dido!’ she exclaimed. ‘I heard your voice as I came out of the kitchen – how sweet of you to call, but you must excuse Charles
now because Michael’s paid us a surprise visit and they’re dying
to talk to each other.’

Almost panting with relief I escaped into the hall only to realise
that the last person I wanted to face at that moment was Michael.
I was still inwardly shuddering as the result of Dido’s reference to
a ‘foreign drug-addict’, for I had long lived in fear that Michael,
moving in Marina Markhampton’s fast London set, would dabble
in drugs and wreck his respectable future with the BBC. I won
dered what evidence Dido had for labelling Dinkie a drug-addict,
but unfortunately I could not reassure myself with the thought that
this was another remark generated by Dido’s taste for exaggeration.
Dido could well know more about Dinkie than I did. Her two
eldest stepsons – the sons of Aysgarth’s first marriage – also
belonged to Marina Markhampton’s set, and although they were
both now married they often visited their father’s home and could well have talked frankly about Marina’s less presentable friends.

I was still trying to convince myself that Michael was no more
likely than Christian or Norman Aysgarth to dabble in drugs,
when
the
doorbell rang yet again. Hardly daring to respond I eased the
door open six inches and peered out to identify my next visitor.
It was Malcolm.

‘
Thank God!’ I said sincerely, and scooped him across the
threshold.

‘
What happened with the police?’

‘
It’s all tight, everything’s under control. Heavens, Charles, you
look shattered! What’s going on here?’

‘
Oh, nothing special, just all hell breaking loose. Quick, come into the kitchen before you get buttonholed by Dido Aysgarth –
she’s just told me that Desmond’s been seen near the Piccadilly Circus public lavatories on a Saturday night in the company of a
young man dressed in black leather.’

That woman’s round the bend!’

‘
I only wish I could be as certain of that as you
are.
Drink?’

‘
Make it a double.’

We withdrew rapidly to the kitchen where I took a new bottle
of scotch from the crate on the larder floor and extracted two
glasses from a cupboard.

‘
Charles, you don’t believe this ridiculous story of Dido’s, do
you?’

‘
I’m trying my hardest not to, but you know what a nose she
has for scandal. She even told me everyone knew about the disaster
which ended Desmond’s career in the London diocese.’

‘
Who’s "everyone"?’

‘
I dread to think. The Dean and Chapter?’

‘
At most, I’d say. No one knows in that parish, Charles – if they
did, I’d have had people coming to me to express their anxiety.
And how on earth could the story have reached the Dean and
Chapter? Do you think some gossipy monk at the Fordite HQ
spilled the beans to Tommy Fitzgerald during one of his retreats?’

‘
I’m sure no Fordite would ever have been so indiscreet. Much
more likely that someone in the Bishop of London’s office talked
and the word got back to Aysgarth through his former colleagues
at Westminster Abbey and Church House. After all, apart from the Fordite monks only the Bishop’s office knew — the Bishop
nipped the scandal in the bud.’

‘
It was a brilliant piece of nipping. If he hadn’t been sitting
next to the Police Commissioner at that Mansion House dinner —’

‘
Talking of the police, how did you tame Parker and Locke?’

‘
Oh, that was no problem at all! I became very earnest and
confidential, swore Desmond was a most devout Anglo-Catholic
and assured them that I’d be among the first to know if he hadn’t
always lived a blameless life. (Well, I was, wasn’t I?) Of course
Parker and Locke believed me — the great advantage of telling the
truth is that one’s so much more likely to sound convincing.’

‘
But did the police then decide it was a motiveless crime?’

‘
Yes, they started speculating that the attacker was a Langley
Bottom lout stoned on LSD.’

‘Surely LSD hasn’t reached Starbridge!’

‘
Oh, nothing’s sacred nowadays! Anyway I fed that theory to
the hack from the
Starbridge Evening News
who turned up at the
hospital just as I was leaving and he was thrilled, said he’d do an
exposé on the Starbridge drug scene —’

‘But there
is
no Starbridge drug scene!’

There will be tomorrow. Anyway, I’d just finished making the
hack’s day when the chaplain turned up — apparently he’d been
collared on one of the wards by some bereaved relatives and by
the time he’d sorted them out —’

‘I wondered where he’d got to. Did you tell him to watch Desmond?’

‘
Like a hawk, yes, and he said he’d arrange for the nurse on
duty to contact him
as
soon
as
Desmond recovers consciousness,
but luckily they’ve left a woman police constable at the bedside,
not that thug Sergeant Locke, so at least Desmond won’t be brow
beaten
as
soon
as
he opens his eyes. At that point I finally managed
to tear myself away from the hospital and rush to Langley Bottom,
but the housekeeper had gone home so I was unable to get into the vicarage. Did you manage to get in earlier, and if so — good
heavens, Charles, what is it, what have I said?’

‘
Ye gods and little fishes!’ I shouted, leaping to my feet. ‘I’ve
Ieft that
unlocked box
in the
drawing-room with Michael and
Dinkier
As if on cue Lyle entered the kitchen with the box itself in her
hands.