The relief was great. Whatever the professor had come about, it wasn’t to expose a vital clue in the mystery of Harriet Crozier’s death.
‘I happened to read your article in the Three Towns Echo with which my hostess kindly provided me this morning. An interesting little piece, if I may say so. Now I expect you’ll understand to what all this preamble is tending.’
Stephen nodded. ‘Good Lord, yes. You mean about Tace being my grandfather?’
‘Yes, indeed, Mr Whalby. Frankly, I’m fascinated. Though Mr Fowler wouldn’t care for me to say so, I’m intrigued.’ Schuyler began to talk of his knowledge of Tace, his researches into every aspect of the novelist’s life. Without making too much of it, he must consider himself one of the world’s leading authorities on Tace’s life and works, and yet…
‘The descent,’ said Stephen, ‘was, I’m afraid, on the wrong side of the blanket.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Oh, Lord. I mean my mother was actually, well, illegitimate.’
‘What a most interesting expression,’ Schuyler said. He seemed very much struck. ‘The wrong side of the blanket. Yes, one sees how it must have originated. I must look it up in my host’s copy of Brewer’s. But, Mr Whalby, your mother being a natural daughter of Tace’s, what an astonishing thing this is. I must confess to being astounded. One thinks of Tace’s strict morality, you know, that almost prudish rectitude of his. I confess to a certain dismay in finding my hero — shall we say blemished by hypocrisy? No longer quite immaculate. Though still sans peur, no longer sans reproche. May I inquire the date of your mother’s birth?’
‘May 1925,’ said Stephen. ‘May, the twenty-fifth.’
‘Well, more and more fascinating. The previous summer and autumn, of course, were those spent by your grandfather carrying out the famous lecture tour of the United States. I maybe have to check on my dates here …’ The professor opened the book and leafed through chapter eleven. ‘Ah, yes. The tour, as I should have been able to recollect without aid, began in the June of 1924 and concluded in some triumph for Tace through November. Your grandmother was perhaps an American lady? Or was she a companion Tace took with him — in great secrecy, I must say — on his travels?’
Stephen was silent. He took the book out of Schuyler’s hands and read the dates. The print danced a little before his eyes. It was a matter of the greatest interest to Tace scholars, Schuyler was saying. If at some not too distant date he could trouble Stephen for chapter and verse, for a history of his grandmother, for any memoir of his own he could provide. They must discuss the whole subject. Any life of Tace, in view of this disclosure, would necessarily require amendment …
Stephen said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to excuse me now. I have to go out.’
‘Of course.’ Schuyler jumped up. He was all apology, all consideration. ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is. Let me leave the book with you. We shall meet again. You can’t imagine how excited I feel at the new prospects this discovery opens out, Mr Whalby.’
Stephen saw him out and closed the door. The sight of the book back again on the chestnut leaf table started him laughing, though he wasn’t amused. He didn’t know why he should laugh so hysterically when, in the space of ten minutes, a major motive for his continued existence had collapsed.
After a while he sat down on the settee and tried to read the relevant part of chapter eleven. He found it impossible to take it in. Somehow he didn’t think he would ever read much again. Reading had had something to do with being Tace’s grandson, not the descendant of Arthur Naulls. He felt thirsty and when he went into the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water he stared almost without comprehension at the bowl of broken eggs, the whisk, the slices of bread on a plate. Had he been going to eat something? Eating seemed as remote and bizarre an exercise as reading.
He went upstairs. It wasn’t possible to go out because Peter was going to phone. The sun was setting, staining a sky that was the wispy grey of wood smoke. Earlier and earlier it set, the autumn would soon be here. He saw the Newmans’ front door open and his mother-in-law come out, cross the road. The doorbell rang. Probably she wanted to pack up Lyn’s things. He ignored the bell and went into his study where he began typing a letter to Hilderbridge Rural District Council, informing them that as from the end of the month he wished to terminate his tenancy of 23 Tace Way, Chesney Moorside …
The doorbell rang again. He went down to answer it, knowing he would have to let her in some time. His caller wasn’t Mrs Newman but Trevor Simpson. What was wrong with the car that Stephen was selling it so cheaply?
Once Stephen would have been indignant at that remark but tonight he didn’t care. He shrugged. There was nothing wrong with the car, it had never given him a day’s trouble.
‘As a matter of fact, I’m getting out,’ he said. ‘I’m off to fresh woods and pastures new, making a clean sweep. There’s nothing to keep me here. I’m giving up the house and I shan’t need a car. You interested?’
Trevor was. He lifted up the bonnet, then sat in the driver’s seat. Stephen made no objection when he said he would like to take it out on a test run but he wouldn’t go with him. He had to wait in for Peter to phone. The letter was finished, signed and inside an envelope by the time Trevor came back, satisfied with his bargain. He would give Stephen a cheque for five hundred pounds and bring the balance on Monday.
‘Good Lord, there’s no hurry,’ Stephen said expansively. ‘The car’s yours. I shan’t let it go to anyone else, I shan’t gazump you.’
Trevor gave him a knowing look and as he was leaving said, ‘You can’t run away from your own id, you know, Steve.’
It was dusk now, nearly dark. Peter wouldn’t phone tonight, he would wait until tomorrow. From his study Stephen fetched the bust of Tace and from the living room, where the professor had left it, Harriet Crozier’s copy of Muse of Fire.
He stepped out into the twilit garden. The sky was a deep violet colour. He had read somewhere why it is that the stars give no light but he couldn’t remember why. The heavens were thick with stars and it was true enough they gave no light but appeared only as puncture holes in a dark velvet bag. He opened the cupboard by the back door where Lyn had kept the garden tools and got out a spade.
There were probably flowers growing in the border here. He saw them as a grey mass, a fuzzy fungoid growth, and he stabbed the spade in among them haphazardly. His fancy was playing tricks with him, for when he looked up he thought for a moment a face had looked back at him out of the gloom behind the kitchen window. He turned away and continued to dig. When he had dug a pit some three feet long and two feet deep, he laid the book inside it and then the bust of Tace.
For a long while he paused, leaning on his spade and staring down into the little pit, and then, slowly, he thrust his hand into his pockets, drew out all Harriet Crozier’s small possessions and dropped them item by item into the grave with Tace and the book. The topsoil and the plants went back like earth falling on a coffin.
Stephen cleaned off the spade, restored it to the cupboard and went back into the house. He could have sworn he hadn’t left lights on upstairs and in the hall. It took him a moment or two to realize what had happened while he was in the garden but he did realize when he walked into his bedroom. The wardrobe doors stood open and all Lyn’s remaining clothes were gone. Mrs Newman had been in to fetch them.