I knew that Rachel would be watching for me to arrive home. And for once I was looking forward to having somebody to talk to who’d understand. Talking to Rachel had helped enormously to get things clear in my mind.
So I put the coffee on as soon as I got home to Maybank and left the side door ajar. Then I noticed that the light was flashing on the answerphone. As Rachel stepped through the door with a tentative smile, I was listening to the news from the Old Vicarage nursing home that Godfrey Wheeldon had died the night before, of a stroke.
‘It was very sudden,’ said the disembodied voice on the phone, a person who had identified herself as the chief care officer. ‘But we were concerned that Mr Wheeldon seemed very agitated after he had a visitor yesterday.’ The caller hesitated, and became more cautious, as if measuring exactly what she said. ‘If you happen to know who his visitor was, we’d be very grateful if you could let us know. For some reason, we don’t seem to have kept a record of his name and address, which is our usual procedure.’ It sounded from her tone as though someone would be in trouble for that. ‘And we’d like to let him know about Mr Wheeldon.’ There was a crackly pause, and I thought the message had finished. ‘We wondered if his visitor had brought him bad news. He really was very agitated.’
Rachel went pale when she heard. ‘Poor old man. He sounded very nice from what you told me about him.’
‘He certainly didn’t deserve this.’
‘Do you think somebody did bring him bad news?’
‘Bad news? No, I think somebody went there to frighten him. Maybe they threatened him. But it seems as though they succeeded in frightening him to death. But who was it?’
‘Somebody clever enough to avoid leaving his name and address. Did you have to sign in a visitors’ book when you went?’
‘Of course. That’s how they found me to tell me about Godfrey.’
‘Let’s think logically,’ said Rachel. ‘There must have been somebody else who knew about Godfrey.’
‘Who? Who?’ I demanded.
‘Well, Caroline Longden knew her father had visited him. Didn’t you say she’d phoned the Old Vicarage to tell him Samuel had died?’
I stopped pacing abruptly. ‘You’re right.’
‘But it wasn’t Caroline. It was a man. Could she have sent somebody?’
‘Damn right she could.’ I glared at the wall, my mind working furiously. ‘Or he could have gone on his own initiative. That would be more in character. He’s the sort of bastard that would terrorise an old man and not think twice about it.’
‘I take it you’ve got somebody specific in mind?’
‘You bet. A bloke called Simon Monks. I’m going to love it if I can nail him.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Caroline’s fiancé. The slimiest object you’ve ever seen. I wonder... I wonder if she’s told him about the money.’
‘Which money?’
‘The money that she’s not going to inherit. When they got engaged, he must have thought she was a real catch, an heiress with a wealthy, elderly father. The truth would come as a bit of a shock to him. He must have thought that as soon as Samuel died—’
I stopped dead again.
‘Chris?’ said Rachel. ‘Are you all right?’
But I didn’t hear her. I was seeing a scene in my mind, a familiar scene that I’d lived through many times since that day I sat in the Earl of Lichfield and watched Samuel walk away to his death. I was seeing a car hurtling down the ramp from the multi-storey car park into the junction of Castle Dyke, ploughing down a frail old man and leaving him lying broken in the road.
But now there was a difference. Now I saw a face behind the windscreen of the car. I was picturing the face of Simon Monks. A man who just couldn’t wait for Samuel Longden to die.
46
Unearthing the past had become an obsession, just as Great-Uncle Samuel had known it would. Had he trusted in my Buckley blood to ensure the past would get its hooks into me so effectively? If so, he’d judged me well.
For a man like me, who had believed he looked only to the future, it was a bitter, unsettling reversal of the natural order. It felt as if the ghosts of my ancestors were conspiring to destroy me. I wondered if there was something in Samuel’s ‘genetic memory’ that amounted to a death wish, an urge for self-destruction. Could William and Josiah Buckley have brought about their own ends? Did Great-Uncle Samuel walk into the path of that car by pursuing his single-minded obsession with an ancient feud? Did his desire for revenge bring about his own extinction?
And now it was my turn. Even from the grave, Samuel had led me, step by step, towards the point where I had no alternatives left. There was nothing left to do now, except to face directly the source of the danger that had already threatened me. If Monks was involved in the deaths of Samuel Longden and Godfrey Wheeldon, I felt sure there was another hand that had guided events.
As I left the house next morning, I found a visitor on my doorstep.
‘Mrs Wentworth. What a surprise. Come in.’
‘Oh no, I can’t stop. I’ve just brought you this.’ She thrust a package towards me, a buff padded envelope. ‘Mr Wheeldon insisted you should have it.’
‘Godfrey? You spoke to him?’
‘He rang me on Sunday. Very pleased with himself, he was. He said he’d been doing a bit of detective work of his own to track me down. He decided that he didn’t want the envelope to go to Caroline, but that you should have it. So I agreed to bring it round for you, in case it was something valuable. Things can get lost in the post. He sounded quite a nice old man.’
I took the envelope from her. ‘He’s dead, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh no.’
For a moment, I thought she was going to faint on the doorstep. ‘But I only spoke to him the day before yesterday,’ she said. ‘How can that be?’
‘When was it he rang?’
‘In the morning some time. About ten or half past, thereabouts. He sounded fine. In very good spirits, I’d say.’
‘He died on Sunday night. A stroke, they think. He’d suffered one before, but this was a bad one.’
‘Well, perhaps it was to be expected then. The poor old man.’
‘Did he mention anything else when he rang?’
‘Not really. He just said he’d been thinking about the envelope since you visited him. He didn’t want anyone else to have it. I suppose he meant Caroline, but that was the way he put it — he didn’t want anyone else to have it. He was quite emphatic on the point. And then he laughed and said something about not being able to escape any more. I don’t know what he meant by that. Perhaps he had a presentiment, do you think? But he sounded remarkably cheerful about it, if he did.’
‘I think he was the sort of man who kept his spirits up, no matter what.’
‘That’s good. Well, I’ll leave you to it, now I’ve done what I promised.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Wentworth. It’s much appreciated.’
‘Not at all.’ She hesitated before she turned to walk back to the road. ‘Poor old Mr Wheeldon. It can happen suddenly with old people, can’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very suddenly indeed.’
I looked at the envelope in my hand with a horrible suspicion. Given all that had happened, I couldn’t help wondering if Godfrey Wheeldon’s death was more than the natural consequence of old age that Mrs Wentworth imagined.
Had someone tried to shut Godfrey up before he could pass on information to me? If so, they’d been too late, it seemed. The old man had beaten them in the end.
I’d rung Leo Parker’s number first to make sure he’d be home before I made my way out of Lichfield. The tiny village of Hints lay south of the A5, opposite the radio mast and gravel pits of Hints Hill. I had to stop in the village and ask for directions to Leasow Court. Then I found myself driving through a ford and heading southwards on a single-track road that wound its way towards the A38 and the site of Canwell Priory.