‘Well – I’ve made a sort of tentative beginning. I know the way I want to write it. I mean the form. I hope you won’t mind.’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘I want to write it the way it happened. You know; about my coming to see you, and our starting the Richard thing quite casually and not knowing what we were getting into, and how we stuck to things that actually happened and not what someone reported afterwards about it, and how we looked for the break in the normal pattern that would indicate where the mischief was, like bubbles coming up from a diver way below, and that sort of thing.’
‘I think it’s a grand idea.’
‘You do?’
‘I do indeed.’
‘Well, that’s fine, then. I’ll get on with it. I’m going to do some research on Henry, just as garnish. I’d like to be able to put their actual records side by side, you see. So that people can compare them for themselves. Did you know that Henry invented the Star Chamber?’
‘Was it Henry? I’d forgotten that. Morton’s Fork and the Star Chamber. The classic sample of sharp practice, and the classic sample of tyranny. You’re not going to have any difficulty in differentiating the rival portraits, are you! Morton’s Fork and the Star Chamber make a nice contrast to the granting of the right to bail, and the prevention of the intimidation of juries.’
‘Was that Richard’s Parliament? Golly, what a lot of reading I have to do. Atlanta’s not speaking to me. She hates your marrow. She says I’m about as much use to a girl as a last year’s Vogue. But honestly, Mr Grant, this is the first time in my life that anything exciting has happened to me. Important, I mean. Not exciting meaning exciting. Atlanta’s exciting. She’s all the excitement I ever want. But neither of us is important, the way I mean important – if you can understand what I mean.’
‘Yes, I understand. You’ve found something worth doing.’
‘That’s it. I’ve found something worth doing. And it’s me that’s going to do it; that’s what’s wonderful about it. Me. Mrs Carradine’s little boy. I come over here with Atlanta, with no idea about anything but using that research gag as an alibi. I walk into the B.M. to get me some dope to keep Pop quiet, and I walk out with a mission. Doesn’t that shake you!’ He eyed Grant in a considering way. ‘You’re quite sure, Mr Grant, that you don’t want to write this book yourself? After all, it’s quite a thing to do.’
‘I shall never write a book,’ Grant said firmly. ‘Not even My Twenty Years at the Yard.’
‘What! Not even your autobiography?’
‘Not even my autobiography. It is my considered opinion that far too many books are written as it is.’
‘But this is one that must be written,’ Carradine said, looking slightly hurt.
‘Of course it is. This one must be written. Tell me: there’s something I forgot to ask you. How soon after that double pardon did Tyrrel get that appointment in France? How soon after his supposed service to Henry in July 1486 did he become Constable of the Castle of Guisnes?’
Carradine stopped looking hurt and looked as malicious as it was possible for his kind woolly-lamb face to look.
‘I was wondering when you were going to ask that,’ he said. ‘I was going to throw it at you on my way out if you forgot to ask. The answer is: almost right away.’
‘So. Another appropriate little pebble in the mosaic. I wonder whether the constableship just happened to be vacant, or whether it was a French appointment because Henry wanted him out of England.’
‘I bet it was the other way about, and it was Tyrrel who wanted to get out of England. If I were being ruled by Henry VII, I’d sure prefer to be ruled by remote control. Especially if I had done a secret job for Henry that might make it convenient for Henry if I didn’t live to too venerable an age.’
‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. He didn’t only go abroad, he stayed abroad – as we have already observed. Interesting.’
‘He wasn’t the only one who stayed abroad. John Dighton did too. I couldn’t find out who all the people who were supposed to be involved in the murder actually were. All the Tudor accounts are different, I suppose you know. Indeed most of them are so different that they contradict each other flat. Henry’s pet historian, Polydore Virgil, says the deed was done when Richard was at York. According to the sainted More it was during an earlier trip altogether, when Richard was at Warwick. And the personnel changes with each account. So that it’s difficult to sort them out. I don’t know who Will Slater was – Black Will to you, and another piece of onomatopoeia – or Miles Forrest. But there was a John Dighton. Grafton says he lived for long at Calais “no less disdained than pointed at” and died there in great misery. How they relished a good moral, didn’t they. The Victorians had nothing on them.’
‘If Dighton was destitute it doesn’t look as if he had done any job for Henry. What was he by trade?’
‘Well, if it’s the same John Dighton, he was a priest, and he was anything but destitute. He was living very comfortably on the proceeds of a sinecure. Henry gave a John Dighton the living of Fulbeck, near Grantham – that’s in Lincolnshire – on the 2nd of May, 1487.’
‘Well, well,’ Grant said, drawling. ‘1487. And he, too, lives abroad and in comfort.’
‘Uh-huh. Lovely, isn’t it?’
‘It’s beautiful. And does anyone explain how the much-pointed-at Dighton wasn’t hauled home by the scruff of his neck to hang for regicide?’
‘Oh, no. Nothing like that. Tudor historians didn’t any of them think from B to C.’
Grant laughed. ‘I see you’re being educated.’
‘Sure. I’m not only learning history. I’m sitting at the feet of Scotland Yard on the subject of the human mind. Well, that will be about all for now. If you feel strong enough I’ll read you the first two chapters of the book next time I come.’ He paused and said: ‘Would you mind, Mr Grant, if I dedicated it to you?’
‘I think you had better dedicate it to Carradine The Third,’ Grant said lightly.
But Carradine apparently did not feel it to be a light matter.
‘I don’t use soft soap as a dedication,’ he said, with a hint of stiffness.
‘Oh, not soft soap,’ Grant said in haste. ‘A matter of policy merely.’
‘I’d never have started on this thing if it hadn’t been for you, Mr Grant,’ Carradine said, standing in the middle of the floor all formal and emotional and American and surrounded by the sweeping folds of his topcoat, ‘and I should like to make due acknowledgement of my indebtedness.’
‘I should be delighted, of course,’ murmured Grant, and the royal figure in the middle of the floor relaxed to boyhood again and the awkward moment was over. Carradine went away joyous and light-footed as he had come, looking thirty pounds heavier and twelve inches more round the chest than he had done three weeks ago.
And Grant took out the new knowledge that had been given him, and hung it on the opposite wall, and stared at it.
16
She had been shut away from the world; that indestructibly virtuous beauty with the gilt hair.
Why gilt, he wondered for the first time. Silver-gilt probably; she had been radiantly fair. A pity that the word blonde had degenerated to the point where it had almost a secondary meaning.