Let’s give him credit for some artifice. He didn’t admit to his identity immediately, though it may have been due to sheer obtuseness. “Lockwood? What’s your business with they?”
I said to Alice, “You see? We’ll get nowhere.” I really hoped we could beat a retreat without introductions, but she was digging in.
She explained to him, “They were the people who owned this place in World War Two, right? Are you the present owner by any chance?”
“Could be,” conceded Bernard.
I’d had enough. I switched to the attack. “Come off it. You’re Bernard Lockwood. Where are your parents, in the house?”
His hand tightened around the butt of the shotgun.
Alice turned to me in amazement. “This is Bernard?” She said it the American way, stressing the second syllable.
I was watching Bernard’s spare hand. He’d taken two orange-colored cartridges from his pocket. I didn’t have long to get my message across. I took a steadying breath and told him, “I was the boy evacuated here. The young lady is a friend. I promised to show her the place and, if possible, look up your parents.”
Before Bernard could respond, Alice rashly chimed in, “My name is Alice Ashenfelter and my daddy was the man convicted of the murder here.”
I could have belted her.
Muscles were bunching on Bernard’s jawline. He frowned, grappling with what he had heard, trying to make the connection. His brown eyes darted between me and Alice. Finally, he abandoned the attempt and said through his teeth, “What’s past is over. You’d best get on your way.”
Curiously the words didn’t carry the force represented by the gun. I risked an appeal to his better nature. “Come on, man. We’ve driven out specially from Reading. Your parents were good to me in the war. The least I can do is present my compliments.”
“I’ll pass ‘em on for ‘ee.”
“Are they inside?”
I’d pushed too far. He snapped the cartridges into the gun, locked it in the firing position, and leveled it at my chest.
“Get in the car and go.”
Keeping my eyes on him, I said to Alice, “It’s hopeless.”
She evidently disagreed. “Mr. Lockwood, we came here in good faith-”
“Good faith be buggered!” Bernard cut in savagely.
“Bloody liars, the pair of you.”
Alice protested in a high, accusing note. “That’s unfair. I’ve gone out of my way to be honest with you·”
Bernard sneered. “Honest? And you tell me you’re the killer’s daughter? And your name is Ashenfelter? You’re no more Ashenfelter than I am, young lady. Name of the killer was Donovan.”
I started to say, “That’s easy to explain-” but Bernard talked over me.
“Ashenfelter was his friend, the littl’un. The other GI. What did he call himself? Harry.”
Alice gave a gasp and grabbed my arm. “That can’t be true. Theo, it can’t be true!” She’d gone deathly white.
Myriad possibilities raged in my brain. For Alice’s sake I said, “Sheer coincidence. Don’t let it get to you.”
She blurted out a rush of words: “Duke Donovan was my real daddy. Henry Ashenfelter was the man my mother married in 1947, when I was a kid. I was given his name. If he was Duke’s friend Harry, I figure he came back from the war and married my mom.”
Bernard looked unimpressed. “Good try, miss. Not good enough. Ashenfelter married Sally Shoesmith.”
I said, “Barbara’s friend?”
“You’d remember if you were here. They were courting like cats in heat.”
“And they actually married?”
“Live in Bath like a lord and lady, don’t they? Publican’s daughter, that’s all she were, and now you need a bloody visiting card to speak to her.” He grinned slyly. “Not that you’d get much sense out of her, from what I’ve heard.”
“Is something the matter with Sally, then?”
He spat again, aiming it at my shoes. “Clear off. Bloody liars.”
Alice said in a choking voice, “Theo, let’s go.”
I took a step backwards, nodding to Bernard.
He lowered the gun.
We drove away without another word.
TWELVE
A lice sighed and said, “I just don’t understand.” She said it again, twice, before we reached the end of the lane.
I pulled off the road outside the Jolly Gardener, switched off, and turned to look at her. Until that moment I hadn’t appreciated what a soaking we’d both taken. Her hair was so saturated that you’d never have known she was normally a blonde.
She blinked. The drops of moisture on her cheeks might have rolled off her head, but I wasn’t certain. The edges of her eyes and mouth were creased with worry. She tried to form a word and didn’t succeed. She was obviously deeply troubled.
I wasn’t a picture of serenity myself. Yd never met a woman who triggered such conflicting responses in me.
I took her hand. She was cold, as much from shock, I decided, as exposure. I told her with gentle authority, “There’s a log fire in the pub. I’m taking you in there to dry out.”
It was near closing time and the barmaid was clearing the empties, but she seemed genuinely pleased to see us. I don’t think she was run off her feet. The clientele consisted of two motionless old men perched on stools at opposite ends of the bar. Without consulting Alice I ordered two double brandies and carried them to the fireplace. The barmaid-did I mention that she was a pretty, dark-haired woman in her thirties? — followed me over, fussed sympathetically about our sodden clothes, and set to work with the poker to coax more activity from the fire. She wanted to know if we’d found the farm and I thanked her. If she was expecting some gossip about the Lockwoods, she was disappointed. Instead I asked if we could borrow a towel for Alice’s hair.
There’s a lot to be said for real flames and the smell of charred wood. It was a wide, stone-built fireplace with an iron pot-crane, a pair of dusty bellows, and a paved hearth. We flopped gratefully into a well-scuffed leather settee already occupied by two black-and-white cats. Alice removed her glasses, uncoiled her plait, and leaned forward, letting the damp hair get the benefit of the heat.
The barmaid returned and handed the towel to me with a wink and a firm instruction not to handle the young lady too roughly. It would have been churlish after that to pass the towel to Alice, so without discussing it I applied myself to die task and gradually restored some of the softness to her hair.
Presently she took out a comb and worked silently on the job of easing out the tangles. I sat back, sipping the brandy, and spoke the words of reason I’d been rehearsing as I used the towel. “Don’t you think you’re getting sidetracked? Does it really matter a tinker’s cuss about Harry? He’s unimportant.”
She stopped the combing and lowered her eyelids in a way that made me wish I’d phrased it more sensitively. I was treating her like one of my second-year students who’d messed up an essay on the feudal system. Without her glasses and with her hair unfastened like this-you’re right, girls, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist-she was an extremely appealing woman.
I made another stab. “Alice, I can see you’re going to suffer until you make sense of what we’ve heard. I’m not pressing, but if it would help to talk it over…”
She lifted her face and said, “Please, Theo.”
You can put it down to the firelight, or the brandy, or the clear blue trust in her eyes, but if there was a moment in our association when it promised to become a relationship, this, for me, was it. I wanted her.
There was a short hiatus before I marshaled my thoughts sufficiently to say, “All right. Let’s compare notes on Harry the GI and your stepfather. See if we’re talking about the same guy. Harry must have been slightly older than Duke, say about twenty-five in 1943. He’d put in a few more years of service and made a sergeant’s rank, then lost his stripes over some disciplinary thing.”
“The age is spot on,” Alice confirmed. “Henry was twenty-nine when he married Mom.”