The Unburied
Authors: Charles Palliser
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This title is part of The Murder Room, our series dedicated to making available out-of-print or hard-to-find titles by classic crime writers.
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From the genteel amateur private eyes of the Golden Age and the femmes fatales of pulp fiction, to the morally ambiguous hard-boiled detectives of mid twentieth-century America and their descendants who walk our twenty-first century streets, The Murder Room has it all.
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Where Criminal Minds Meet
Charles Palliser
Contents
Map of Thurchester Cathedral and the Upper Close
Few books in recent times have created as much controversy as
The Thurchester Mystery
when it was published three years ago. I have sat many times in the houses of friends in the town and watched families, bitterly divided by conflicting theories, quarrel fiercely about it. My opinion has, inevitably, been sought but I have always refused to be drawn. Although the case appeared at the time to have been resolved, rumours continued to circulate and the allegations against even the most respectable individuals involved became more and more grotesque as the decades passed. With the publication of the present work, however, all argument should end for the account which forms the bulk of the book now in your hands has offered an entirely new perspective on Miss Napier’s discoveries.
The circumstances in which the Courtine Account became available are described in my ‘Afterword’, where I also explain the reasons why, before that document could be unsealed, I had to undertake a journey to Geneva. That was eight months ago – the earliest moment at which the situation on the Continent made it possible to travel again – albeit with great difficulty. My journey was slow and uncomfortable and it was not until two days after leaving my house that I reached my destination.
The taxi from the station brought me to a big house on the shore of the lake surrounded by a park dotted with gloomy pine-trees – looking all the more ominous as the sky darkened at the approach of a storm. In my rusty French I instructed the driver to wait.
Although the servant who opened the door made it clear that she recognized my name, I was not sure if I would be admitted. I had written a few days earlier from England to say that I would come at precisely that hour and hoped it would be convenient, but I had not given time for a reply. I was optimistic, however, for my letter had been written in terms carefully calculated to gain me admission.
The servant showed me into the hall and asked me to take a seat and then vanished. The house was cold and I reflected that fuel was in short supply here as in England. It occurred to me that that must be why some of the trees in the park had been felled. As I gazed out at the desolate scene, the light slowly ebbed from the sky over the grey expanse of water. I waited for forty minutes and had almost abandoned hope when the woman reappeared and led me through a door and up an imposing flight of stairs. She ushered me into a huge room at the end of which was a vast window whose curtains were drawn back to display the louring sky and the dark surface of the lake. To one side of the window stood a black grand piano – its lid lowered. On the other side – placed to achieve the greatest dramatic effect – a figure was seated in a high-backed chair. I moved forward like an audience taking its seat and as if on cue there was a flash of lightning across the sky.
The servant lighted a lamp beside her mistress and picked up a tray on which were the remains of tea. The old lady waved me to a seat and for a moment or two I was able to study her features while she watched the servant at work: the high nose and bright blue eyes set in an intelligent and mistrustful face. When the servant had withdrawn I began to make conversation, saying that it was gracious of her to admit me, a stranger.
She interrupted me as if I had not been speaking: ‘Have you and I ever met?’
Her voice was surprisingly firm for a woman in her early nineties, and also remarkably deep – though I had expected that. Her question put me on the spot. I had hoped to coax and flatter her into saying what I wanted to hear, but I now saw that I would have to adopt a different strategy.
‘No, not exactly. But I saw you once, many years ago.’
‘Under what circumstances?’
‘It was in Thurchester.’
She looked at me with close scrutiny and I saw no sign of unease. ‘You are mistaken. That is quite impossible.’
‘I saw you the day you gave the performance of your life.’
She smiled thinly. ‘I know that wretched little theatre in the High Street. I once knew it very well indeed. But I never appeared there myself.’
‘I did not say I saw you there.’
She gazed at me narrowly: ‘You must have been born twenty years after I gave up the stage.’
‘The stage, yes.’ Seeing her expression of surprise I added: ‘You will understand when I give you what I have brought.’
My heart was pounding as I said the words. I so much wanted proof. I needed her to say something that would convince me that she was the woman I had been seeking. I don’t mean legal proof for I had that already. The succession of property transactions and changes of residence from country to country, which I had managed to follow through the decades, had already satisfied the relevant requirements. But that had not appeased my need to know that it really was she. I had to hear from her lips something that would connect the woman before me with that figure which, though only briefly glimpsed, had come to haunt my memory.
It was clear that she did not like that remark and, as if to bring our encounter to a speedy conclusion, she said: ‘You stated in your letter that you have property of mine.’
‘Which I wished to place personally in the rightful owner’s hands in order to vindicate an ancient injustice.’
She nodded. ‘Those were your words. What is it? Do you expect to be paid for it?’
‘Not with money. And I have no intention of bargaining. The property belongs to you.’ I realized that, more precipitately than I should have, I had reached the main point of my journey. I hesitated a moment and then added: ‘To you and your son.’
Her head jerked up involuntarily and she looked at me for the first time with naked interest and, it seemed to me, anger. A moment later the mask was back in place. I went on as matter-of-factly as I could: ‘I have tried to find him since I would have preferred not to have bothered you with this matter. I have made extensive efforts to contact him but my endeavours have been unavailing. If you tell me how to reach him, I will cease to trouble you and conclude my business with your heir.’
‘My heir?’ She uttered the words in what seemed to me a tone of mocking raillery.
‘I assume that your son is your heir?’
‘I am not responsible for your assumptions.’
‘Whether he is your heir or not, this matter concerns him as much as yourself.’ When she made no response I put the brutal question: ‘Will you tell me if he is still alive?’
I could discern no reaction. After a moment she said: ‘Kindly give me whatever it is you say is mine.’
I rose from my seat and pulled an envelope from my pocket with a certain theatricality of my own, and held it out to her.
She seized it and tore it open. There is a common belief that the very old have reached a stage in which they are gradually detaching themselves from the world of self and emotions and greed. I saw no evidence that she was withdrawing from life and on the contrary, as I watched her eagerly ripping open the envelope, I felt that I had achieved at least part of my purpose: I understood things about motives and scruples that I had not grasped before.
‘What are these? What does this mean?’
She dropped the contents of the package contemptuously onto a small table beside her chair.
‘They are the keys to a mystery,’ I could not prevent myself from replying. ‘Won’t you take them?’
‘I have no idea of what you are referring to.’
‘You don’t recognize them?’
‘Why should I?’
‘They are the keys to a house in Thurchester. A house you know very well.’ She turned her gaze upon me with mild curiosity, but that was all the emotion she showed. I tried to prompt her: ‘I rescued them as they were about to be lost for ever.’ When she still failed to speak I added: ‘That day I mean the day which changed your life as dramatically as it affected mine – I followed you from the back-door of the house. You didn’t notice me or if you did, you thought me no danger.’
When I finished speaking she did not answer. For perhaps a minute we sat in silence. Then she tugged at a bell-pull beside her chair. Almost immediately the servant, who must have been waiting outside the door, entered. The old lady said in good French: ‘This gentleman is leaving. Will you show him out.’
‘Does your servant understand English?’ I asked. She made no response and merely stared out of the window. ‘I need to find your son. What name does he use?’
Now at last she turned to look at me and it was with an expression of such blank and incurious hostility that I knew my questions would never be answered.
I stood up.
‘Your journey has been unprofitable,’ the old lady said. ‘But you cannot blame me for that.’
‘It has not been without profit. It was enlightenment more than anything that I sought.’
She gave no sign that my remark interested her.
I went on: ‘Meeting you has enabled me to comprehend things that have puzzled me for more than four decades.’
I made my way towards the door and had almost reached it when she called out: ‘Mr Barthram. You have forgotten your keys.’
I turned and walked towards her. ‘I have not forgotten them. I assure you, I have never forgotten them for a single day of my life. They are yours and it is with an indescribable sense of relief that I leave them with you.’ I halted about ten paces away. ‘Do you remember the name Perkins?’ She remained impassive.
I did not realize how menacing I must have seemed until the servant said in a terrified voice: ‘Shall I go for Pierre, Madame?’
The old lady impatiently gestured to her to be silent without taking her eyes from me.
‘Do you ever think about a young man called Eddy Perkins?’ I repeated.
To my astonishment, she smiled. ‘I imagine that you do. Why has it taken you so long?’ She nodded at the little table. ‘If you had made more timely use of these, the whole thing would have been understood even by the most obtuse. Were you too timid?’
‘I was a child,’ I answered.
‘When I was a child I was frightened of nothing. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that if I was frightened, it didn’t inhibit me from doing what I wanted. That’s the difference, isn’t it, between those who go through their lives merely repeating their lines and those who invent their role as they act it?’