Open Writing

When they were designing Kentish's house, some time in the middle of the last century, every time they ran out of ideas they stuck on another turret or added another tall chimney.

The result was the sort of place where they hatch up plots to catch Sleeping Beauty: a fake feudal masterpiece that was either bad taste or a good joke, or maybe even both.

It was high on a hill called The Crest, where in similar Victorian excesses the middle classes lamented soaring school fees and rates over their wine.

We sat at a table whose mahogany surface gleamed deep yellow from the one light between us. It was one of those rooms where the carpets hung on the walls and a pewter elephant turned out to be a wine cooler.

Kentish lived there alone, except for his housekeeper. If I'd been looking for company there, I think I might have taken one of those twin-engined Swedish models. He'd got an elderly woman called Mrs Bull who displaced about as much air as St Pancras station, but not quite so elegantly. She might not have looked so nifty bent over the ironing table but she did produce a game pie that would have made the angels sing.

Kentish drank tea, and without milk too, in case anyone thought he was living high. After ransacking the house, he found a decanter of whisky and poured me one big enough to bath a labrador.
'Is that about right?' he inquired, unknowingly.

'Not absolutely, but I'm not finicky,' I said.

When we left the church, Dawn had disappeared into the streets lined with broken glass. Apparently she lived there.

Kentish invited me home for supper. He made no reference to Dawn's story. Instead, he told me his own. It came when he was apologising for not knowing how much whisky to give me. He didn't drink. Both he and Dawn were victims of men who did.

He looked almost like a ventriloquist's doll, straight-backed in a winged armchair, and I had to lean forward to catch his soft voice.

His father had been the senior partner with Walsh. He'd been a celebrity in the town: a bon viveur, gushing charm. In his forties he'd run away with his secretary. The family crashed. Kentish had to be taken away from his boarding school in Sussex. Within a year his mother died of cancer, brought on, they thought, by the shock of it all. That was when Kentish had taken a job in London to pay his younger sister's school fees.

'It took me a long time to climb back,' he said. 'This is the house we lived in as a family and I was determined to get it back. I managed to get back into the family firm too, thanks to the generosity of Mr Walsh. But of course it's all rather sad, pathetic I suppose. There is no family here any more. Only myself and the good Mrs Bull. More whisky, Mr Hussy? I'm awfully sorry if I'm boring you.'

It was fascinating. He'd rebuilt his own past.

'So you sit here, not drinking, not smoking ...'

'And without female company,' Kentish added, with a shadowy smile. 'That is what you were wondering I imagine. No, good heavens, no, I don't mind you asking, Mr Hussy. You see, my father was a very public man. His charm was a curse to him. He was driven by it. He had to amuse, to entertain. He had to drink, he had to flirt. In the end, it caused only great pain.'

He took off his pebble glasses, examined them against the light, and put them back again.

Before he did so, he nipped the bridge of his nose. He was afraid of crying.

'It's a common enough story, I suppose. I expect you think I took it very badly, Mr Hussy, and that I should have shaken it off without so much fuss.'

'Not necessarily. But why did it hurt so much?'

'Because my father made me hate him. I spent much of my formative years hating my own father, and that is a souring process. These violent emotions are such a waste of energy, don't you think.

Anyway, the consequence is that I live a monastic life in our old family house. In case you were wondering, I am not a homosexual, Mr. Hussy. Monastic is the word. I am simply an abstainer from what you probably regard as life's pleasures.'

His large eyes were on me. I didn't think I could deny that with much sincerity.

'To me, sex is the most base of all our primitive reflexes. We're not proud of the instinct to kill, and we all have that, as you must know better than most. So why should we be so proud of the instinct to mate? Look what it does. Look at Striker—and that poor girl.'

The door opened and Mrs Bull rocked in.

'The little girl rang, sir.'

'Ah, Maria?'

'Yes, sir. To say she was back home in London and thank you.'

'Good. Thank you Mrs Bull.' He turned back to me. 'Not an entirely loveless life, you see, Mr Hussy. Maria has no father. Her mother was a business associate of mine in what I like to call my shady youth. She's abroad much of the time so I keep an eye on Maria. She lacks for nothing, including love.'

'And Dawn?'

'How very rude of me! Here I am talking about myself when of course you want to know about Dawn. I really am so sorry ...'

'Don't be. Like you, I like to know the man I'm dealing with.'

He put down his porcelain cup and shuffled forward so he sat on the edge of his chair.

'I've defended her father a few times. He's a drunkard and she's suffered for it. The sins of the fathers is the expression, I believe. But then you're not a religious man, I don't suppose. Never mind. Ah yes, Dawn. She's an intelligent girl who has to get by as best she can, and now this happens to her. But you tell me, what did you think of her story?'

He sat back, waiting. I took a big bite out of my whisky.

'Well, I see what you mean about Striker's death being no accident.'

The light shifted on his glasses as he nodded.

'You and the rest of the middle-class Mafia round here decided to fake the inquest to protect the girl? Is that it?'

'That's it exactly, Mr Hussy. We didn't have to involve the doctor in our little conspiracy. He assumed it was a normal car crash. As everyone did until you arrived.'

'So what about the head injury?'

He leaned forward and drummed a tune with his fingers on the table.

'Yes, of course, you would want to know about that. It's rather difficult to be too specific, but it does appear that Striker started the car and more or less flung himself and the car over the cliff. He'd be bouncing around in the front seats, which accounts for his unconventional injuries.'

'The idea is to save the girl any more agony?'

He slumped back, almost vanishing in the darkness of the big chair.

'That's a nice way to put it, Mr Hussy. To save her agony, yes, and in a way to save Striker's name. We were very fond of him round here, even if he did go off the rails a little.'

I stood up and stretched. That was the story then. Striker had committed suicide out of shame. There was no funny stuff, beyond a mildly faked inquest. Tiger wasn't at the heart of some international conspiracy. All that had happened was a poke without permission and a cover-up.

Still, I didn't see why I should abandon it too easily.

'Why was Walsh so desperate to hush it up then? He tried to bribe me.'

Kentish sighed. 'He's a good man, but so foolish. Perhaps it's hard for you to imagine, Mr Hussy, a travelled experienced man like yourself, but in a small backwater like this, reputation means a lot. It is a great honour to be Coroner. He'd be devastated if it was taken away from him.'

'I suppose so. Now you want to make me part of the conspiracy and turn a blind eye on it? That the idea?'

I tried to make it sound crude. I wanted to see if he winced. He didn't. He pointed across the room to a telephone on a marble table.

With a tiny tremor in his voice, he said, 'If you have any reservations, Mr Hussy, please ring the Home Office now. They usually have a duty officer on at night. All I am suggesting is that you follow your own conscience. I have followed mine, but yours may not necessarily point you in the same direction.'

I told him I'd sleep on it.

On the way out, down a long panelled corridor, a door stood open. Through it, I could see a handsome antique desk. At least it had been a handsome desk. Now it was split in two, over the kneehole.

I was standing looking at it when Kentish caught me up.

'Your housekeeper doesn't know her own strength,' I said.

'Some workmen dropped it,' he said, closing the door.

Outside, the night was still warm and we stood for a moment on the step. A half moon hung in the sky. Over the tops of the evergreens, the town's lights were dotted below.

'Poor Striker,' he said, more to himself than to me. 'Men are so often destroyed by their own weaknesses.' Then he raised his voice. 'You were the third called Joe in your family, weren't you, Mr Hussy?'

It was a fair guess in a family of Irish descent.

'Is that the best the spirits can do?'

I turned and looked into his magnified eyes. They were still, unblinking. He didn't answer me directly.

'There are a lot of troubled spirits around you, Mr Hussy. You are very near to darkness and death, and they are telling you to move nearer to the light.'

'That's all very well,' I said, 'but the money's better in the dark.'