Cat Among the Herrings (9 page)

Ethelred had gone off to the library again, muttering that even if I was his guest that didn’t mean that he had to provide beer and skittles 24/7. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said what I did about his friend. But Tom’s behaviour had been both deceitful and suspicious.

‘I know what Josie told me,’ said Ethelred. ‘But that doesn’t mean Tom was to blame. I mean, why shouldn’t Sophie want to go out with him? Sometimes these things just happen …’

‘With your friend’s fiancée?’

‘Sometimes. Yes.’

‘Why,’ I asked, ‘did he more or less deny knowing Sophie?’

‘I’m not sure he denied it … he just wasn’t quite certain who I meant …’

‘But of course. Why should he recall anyone called
Sophie Tate? He’d only gone out with her for … how long?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘A few months.’

‘A few months? Well, there you are, then. Let’s say a hundred and fifty shags, tops. You’d have difficulty in remembering that, wouldn’t you?’

‘You are being very unfair on Tom,’ he said. ‘I probably just didn’t make it clear who I meant.’

After Ethelred had left I made myself some coffee and had a biscuit or two. Then I checked, unsuccessfully, to see if I could find out where he’d hidden the other two packets. I do not, I must stress, approve of duplicity of any sort, especially when it comes to chocolate. So, I searched everywhere I could think of, but without success. The question then was this: should I try to put all that stuff back in whichever cupboard it came from or should I tell Ethelred that he had very thorough mice? I wrote a brief thank-you note, signed with a mousey paw print, and placed it in the middle of the mess in the kitchen. Ethelred would find it on his return and whether he believed it was up to him. Then I set off myself. I had a busy morning ahead of me. Ethelred had said roughly where Sophie was staying. I’d only need to ring two or three doorbells – say half a dozen absolute max.

‘I thought Ethelred wasn’t going to investigate Robin’s death?’

‘He changed his mind,’ I said. ‘He had to go into Chichester today, but he asked me to drop round and clarify a few things.’

‘OK. He didn’t seem that bothered when I spoke to him. His interest did not go beyond curiosity.’

‘No, he is absolutely going to do it. He said you knew Tom Gittings.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Nice boy.’

‘I suppose so – he’s just a bit confused about what he really wants,’ said Sophie.

‘Rather like Ethelred, of course,’ I said.

‘But slightly more toned, and twenty years younger.’

‘Thirty years younger.’

‘I was being kind.’

‘I wouldn’t bother. So what happened between you and Tom? And between you and Robin, of course.’

‘Well, as I told Ethelred, I used to come down here quite a lot. My grandparents had a house on West Strand in the old days so, once I graduated from buckets and spades, I pretty much grew up sailing and windsurfing. I met Robin sailing. He was maybe fifteen years older than me – a vast yawning gap when you’re ten, but less so when you’re twenty-five. Still, he was always heaps better than me at sailing and the rest of it, so I idolised him a bit. For a long time he didn’t take much interest in me, then one summer about three years ago he did. I was flattered. I knew his reputation, but I started to go out with him. I was working in an HR department in London then, so we saw each other mainly at weekends. I moved to consultancy so that I could spend more time down here. Robin had the annex of Greylands House as his own place, so I was able to more or less move in. Then Robin proposed. I suppose at forty he’d decided that even he needed to settle down. And as I say,
I’d worshipped at his shrine for a while. So, I said yes …’

‘And Tom?’

‘I’d sort of idolised him too, but in a different way – he’s more or less my age. For a while he was rather like an annoying big brother. Of course, with his looks he could get any girl in the village – which meant he could pretend he wasn’t interested in any of us. So, he was just a friend. Then, out of nowhere, we started to get thrown together. We’d get invited to dinner with Tom’s father, then Robin would get hauled off to look at some new bit of sailing kit or something, leaving Tom and me to our own devices. Or Robin would get invited at short notice, by some friend of Tom’s family, on a boys’ sailing weekend – and Tom would be available to take me off to Chichester Festival Theatre, for which he just happened to have a spare ticket.’

‘You’re saying that Tom somehow rigged things?’

‘At the time it all seemed quite natural, but with hindsight … Yes, there were too many coincidences. And I think his father actively encouraged it.’

‘And this was all while you were engaged to Robin?’

‘Yes. In fact it started round about the time we got engaged. By the time of the engagement party I’d already slept with Tom once. Then at the party itself … well, making it official brought it home to me what I was doing. Robin was a lot older than I was. I was just starting my career, whereas his career as an actor was drifting away. I can’t say my parents really approved … I mean they liked Robin because everyone did, but there were hints I should find somebody more my own age. And then there were the drugs. I mean I’ve never been into that sort of thing … Robin kept telling me he was quitting … But they
don’t, do they? They tell you that all the time. The trouble is that cocaine’s a genie that won’t go back in the bottle. Even so, I still might have stuck with him … gone along with it all … but suddenly there was Tom.’

‘So you chose Tom?’

‘At first, I dithered. Two men I really liked, both after me. I wasn’t having such a bad time, after all. I reckoned I could handle it.’

‘But, in the end, you dumped Robin?’ I asked.

‘That would have been the decent thing to do – to have been honest with him – but my sins caught up with me before I could do it. There was this anonymous note informing Robin what his fiancée was doing behind his back. He confronted me. I didn’t try to deny it. In a way, I deserved to be denounced as a scarlet woman. And I thought I’d be going out with Tom anyway, so
tant pis
. It simplified things.’

‘And you did go out with Tom …’

‘For a while. Then that sort of fizzled out too, which served me right. It was as if Tom was only interested as long as he was screwing his mate’s girlfriend. Once that was over he seemed to lose concentration. We split up round about the same time as Robin started going out with somebody else.’

‘The one whose nose he flattened?’

‘That’s right. Martina.’

‘And you now regret not sticking with Robin?’

‘God, no! I was well out of that one. He’s the sort of man girls reckon they can reform and turn into Mr Darcy, but you’re onto a loser every time with the Robins of this world. He never did kick his cocaine habit.’

‘Right up to the end?’

‘Obviously. He was drugged to the eyeballs on his final trip.’

‘His last sailing trip?’

‘Absolutely. I’m not counting any travelling he did after he died.’

‘Ethelred said there was no trace of alcohol …’

‘And he was right. No alcohol at all – just a whole heap of drugs.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Some cocaine, like I say. And Rohypnol.’

‘Rohypnol? The date rape one?’

‘It’s not unusual, apparently, for cocaine users to take Rohypnol too – it’s good for coming down after a cocaine binge, or so I read somewhere. But it would explain why Robin lost control of the boat and went overboard.’

‘Tom said nothing to Ethelred about any of that.’

‘Tom’s report on the
Observer
also charitably made no mention of it – his final act of friendship or contrition or something.’

‘A good friend, then.’

‘But a lousy reporter. The drugs were relevant to a lot of things. It doesn’t surprise me that some people think it might be murder. But with what was flowing round in his bloodstream, most people would have fallen overboard, even tied up in the marina without a wave in sight.’

‘Doesn’t the life jacket keep your head above water?’

‘Depends on the model. Robin was wearing a life preserver – less bulky but designed for somebody who can swim and is close to the shore. Not so good out at sea and in a drug-induced coma.’

‘How do you know all this if it wasn’t in the paper?’

‘I went to the inquest.’

‘Why?’

‘Curiosity.’

Then a thought occurred to me.

‘So, you’d have seen Tom there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he’d have seen you?’

‘I imagine so.’

It didn’t seem worth asking whether they talked to each other. Sometimes you just get a feeling for the way things went.

‘In that case, when you said you were down here by coincidence …’ I said.

‘I was lying. To myself more than anybody. It’s a harmless habit, unlike cocaine. And not illegal. I went to the inquest. I knew roughly when the funeral would be.
Voila!
Here I am. And anyway …’ Sophie paused and looked at me.

‘Anyway?’ I asked.

‘Anyway … the sun is shining and I may as well go out and enjoy it. Unless you and Ethelred have any more questions?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

I had no reason at all to feel guilty. Absolutely none. It was true that I had told neither Tom nor Elsie that I was planning to do this, but I had every right to be driving up this gravel track. Tom’s father might, in theory at least, be able to shed more light on the hanging of Lancelot Pagham. I had as much cause to be here as in Chichester Library. And I might also chat to him, in passing, about the death of Robin Pagham. It would be odd, surely, to visit him and not offer my condolences on the death of his friend?

Colonel Derek Gittings opened the door a careful couple of inches.

‘I was just passing,’ I said.

‘Were you?’

It was not a good start. A lean, weather-beaten face looked back at me. The hair was grey and sparse but the eyebrows were bushy and black – the eyes themselves pale,
cold blue. He wore a cream shirt, checked with brown and green and an old moss-coloured cardigan. A foot, in a tartan carpet slipper, was poised ready to give added weight if he needed to shut the door in my face.

‘I’m Ethelred Tressider,’ I said. ‘We met at the film club … in the village … and then …’

‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘And what you write. Not quite senile yet. Tom said you were researching some family history.’

‘Yes,’ I said with relief. ‘I wondered if you had a few minutes?’

‘Now?’

‘I could come back.’

‘Yes, so you probably would bloody well come back, wouldn’t you? It may as well be now.’

The door opened a little wider and I entered. The hallway had last been papered many years ago, probably when Tom’s mother was still alive, with a complex William Morris print – stylised vines snaked their way backwards and forwards. The colours had faded, other than the browns and ochres. By the door, the paper was grubby and worn, as members of the family had brushed past over many years. One or two brighter squares of paper showed where pictures had been taken down and never put up again. On the coat stand several waterproofs had been abandoned – all in need of a clean – and a shapeless deerstalker hung precariously by its strap. There was a faint smell of cabbage. I could not recall when I had last cooked cabbage or even looked for it in the shops.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I wondered—’

‘You’d better come into the study,’ said Colonel Gittings. ‘Or do you actually like standing there?’

‘Not especially,’ I said.

‘Nor do I,’ he said. ‘So, let’s not.’

It felt like the first time we had met. I had expressed the view that
Butch Cassidy
had been a good choice of film for the evening. He had replied: ‘If you like that sort of thing’. Which left me classified amongst those who enjoyed that sort of film, with the many other weaknesses of mind and body that such people undoubtedly possessed. Then he had turned to speak to somebody else before I could think of a reply, clever or otherwise. The following day I was still trying to work out what I should have said.

‘The study … yes, perfect,’ I said, on this occasion.

He motioned me towards the door, as if he had been trying to get me out of the hall for hours and had only just succeeded. His study, too, was very William Morris, but brighter – here birds clutching strawberries dotted the green fronds. I wondered whether after all, the design of the hallway had been the colonel’s.

‘It was my wife’s sitting room,’ he said, noticing my interest in the decor. ‘When she was alive. Nothing to do with me.’

‘I like the wallpaper,’ I said.

‘You can have it, if you can get it off the wall.’

‘I’m not sure I could do that.’

‘I’m bloody sure you can’t. So, if you’re not here for the wallpaper, what
is
it that you want?’

He motioned me towards a chair that had seen better days and which was covered with an old blanket. I suspected that after sitting in it I would be picking dog hairs off my clothes for days.

‘Tom told me about the murder of John Gittings,’ I said.

‘God knows what possessed him to do that. Ancient history. Best forgotten. I only know what you can read in the local history books, anyway. They’re all in the library in Chichester. Might have one of the books on those shelves there, but I couldn’t say exactly where.’

He indicated the wooden bookshelves that dominated one wall of the study, though how he hoped to find anything in the confusion of books, newspapers and folders he had stacked on them, I had no idea. His desk, too, was a confused jumble. Three dirty mugs sat on heaps of assorted letters and circulars advertising stairlifts and funeral plans. We get a lot of those round here but most of us recycle them promptly. His surroundings were as little cared for as his clothes, as comfortable in a way as the old red slippers he wore. In the distant days when he was a young subaltern he would doubtless have had to maintain himself and his kit in immaculate order. Later he would have had a batman to press his trousers to a knife-like sharpness. Was he sending out a message that all that was in the past? On the wall there was some sort of regimental plaque and a formal group photograph of twenty or so officers and men in uniform, the glossy paper slightly wrinkled now and faded from exposure to the sun.

‘Northern Ireland,’ he said, again following my gaze. ‘That would have been our second tour of duty. Six of them didn’t live to do a third. Landmine.’

‘Northern Ireland must have been tough.’

‘Really? You think so? What would you know about it, then?’

‘Nothing. Just what I’ve read and seen on television.’

‘Or at the film club,’ he said.

‘Maybe.’ I smiled but his face remained stony. It wasn’t a joke.

‘Iraq was worse,’ he said. ‘The Falklands were fine. Stroll in the park. For my lot, anyway. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the
Sheffield
.’

I tried to remember what had happened to the
Sheffield
. Exocet missile? The conversation was drifting and I suspected it would be like Colonel Gittings to terminate our meeting abruptly and impatiently.

‘So, what can I tell you?’

‘I’ve read the newspaper reports on the 1848 murder,’ I said. ‘It was what happened later that I’m beginning to find interesting.’

‘How much later?’

‘After the murder, the fortunes of the Paghams took a turn for the better,’ I said.

‘I suppose so. They did all right for themselves.’

‘Whereas …’ I wondered whether to continue that sentence. Most things seemed to annoy him.

‘Whereas we’ve come down in the world?’ he enquired. ‘It’s all relative. We’ve still got more than most – this house and a bit of land.’

‘Including the Herring Field,’ I said.

Colonel Gittings looked at me suspiciously. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Including that.’

‘I’d heard Robin was planning to build a wind farm on it,’ I said. ‘Is that right?’

‘I might have said I’d let him have the land,’ he said.

‘Even though everyone in the village would oppose  it?’

‘Not everyone. Just bloody fools like that Whitelace
man. This isn’t some rural theme park. We all have to make money somehow.’

‘But why that?’

‘That’s my bloody business, don’t you think? I let you in here because you said you wanted to ask questions about the past, not to discuss my personal finances.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘But you were good friends with Robin?’

‘Yes. I still don’t see how any of this fits in with your research.’

‘Tom implied that the murder of John Gittings led to hostility between the two families.’

‘Did he?’

‘So that’s wrong?’

‘Maybe in the past. I honestly can’t remember what my grandfather may have said or felt about it. I was always on good enough terms with Robin. As you pointed out, we contemplated doing business together. I’d go so far as to say he was one of my very best friends. I was devastated when I heard he’d drowned. Stupid bloody way to go. Just like him, of course. Stupid bloody man. But …’

He paused and looked into the distance.

‘Where were you the day he drowned?’ I asked.

‘Here in the village. Where else would I be?’

Then, I don’t know why, I added: ‘And Tom?’

‘Weald and Downland Museum. All day.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘Of course. When something like that happens, you don’t forget details like where you were when you heard. Or where other people were. Tom went there with that Sophie woman.’

‘Sophie Tate?’

‘That’s right.’

‘She was in Sussex the day Robin died?’

‘Yes. She was with Tom. They were both at the museum. All day.’ He glowered at me. ‘You are here under false pretences, Mr Tressider. Don’t think Tom hasn’t told me that Catarina has asked you to investigate Robin’s death. I know what you are implying.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t intended to get onto that. It was just that you started talking about Tom and Sophie …’

‘Oh – and it’s all my fault is it?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated.

‘Are you? Well, if you’ve no more questions about me or my finances, Mr Tressider, I have some work to do.’

He picked up a circular on mobility scooters, which quite clearly had higher priority than I did.

‘No more questions,’ I said. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’