‘I’d love some,’ said Strike. Sod the diet.
Once everyone had been served, and Phillipa had sat down again, Strike said,
‘Well, I’m very grateful for this chance to talk to you. I understand this can’t be easy.’
‘We’ve been assured you’re not a sleaze hound,’ said Nicholas.
‘Good to know,’ said Strike drily.
‘No offence,’ said Nicholas, though his manner was that of a man who didn’t particularly mind being offensive and might even pride herself on it, ‘but we thought it important to check you out.’
‘Do we have your assurance we’re not going to be dragged into the tabloids?’ said Phillipa.
‘You do seem to make a habit of popping up there,’ said Nicholas.
Strike could have pointed out that he’d never given the press an interview, that most of the journalistic interest he’d aroused had been due to solving criminal cases, and that it was hardly within his control whether the press became interested in his investigation. Instead he said,
‘At the moment, the risk of press interest is slight to non-existent.’
‘But you think it might all be dragged up?’ Phillipa pressed him. ‘Because our children don’t know anything about all this. They think their uncle died of natural causes.’
‘It was so long ago now, Pips,’ said Mrs Graves. Strike thought she seemed a little nervous of her daughter and son-in-law. ‘It’s been twenty-three years. Allie would have been fifty-two now,’ she added quietly, to nobody.
‘If we can stop another family going through what we did,’ said Colonel Graves loudly, ‘we’ll be delighted. One has an obligation,’ he said, with a look at his son-in-law that, in spite of his cloudy eyes, was pointed. Turning stiffly in his chair to address Strike he said, ‘What d’yeh want to know?’
‘Well,’ said Strike, ‘I’d like to start with Alexander, if that’s all right.’
‘We always called him Allie, in the family,’ said the colonel.
‘How did he become interested in the church?’
‘Long story,’ said Colonel Graves. ‘He was ill, yeh see – but we didn’t realise f’ra long time. What did they call it?’ he asked his wife, but it was his daughter who answered.
‘Manic depression, but they’ve probably got another fancy word for it, these days.’
Phillipa’s tone suggested scepticism of the psychiatric profession and all its ways.
‘When he was younger,’ said Mrs Graves tremulously, ‘we just thought he was naughty.’
‘Problems all through school,’ said Colonel Graves, nodding ruminatively. ‘Expelled from Rugby, in the end.’
‘Why was that?’ asked Strike.
‘Drugs,’ said Colonel Graves gloomily. ‘I was stationed out in Germany at the time. We brought him out to join us. Put him into the international school to do his A-levels, but he didn’t like it. Huge rows. Missed his friends. “Why’s Pips allowed to stay in England?” I said, “Pips hasn’t been caught smoking marriage-huana in her dorm, that’s why.” I was hopin’,’ said the colonel, ‘bein’ around the military, y’know – might show him another way. I’d always hoped… but there y’are.’
‘His granny volunteered to have Allie stay with her, in Kent,’ said Mrs Graves. ‘She always loved Allie. He was to finish his A-levels at the local college, but next thing we heard, he’d taken orf. Granny was out of her mind with worry. I flew back to England to help look for him and found him staying with one of his old schoolfriends, in London.’
‘Tom Bantling,’ said Colonel Graves, nodding lugubriously. ‘Both of ’em holed up in a basement, doin’ drugs all day. Tom sorted himself out in the end, mind you,’ he added with a sigh. ‘OBE now… trouble was, y’see, by the time Baba found him, Allie had turned eighteen. One couldn’t make him come home, or do anything he didn’t want to.’
‘How was he supporting himself?’ asked Strike.
‘He had some money his other grandmother left him,’ said Mrs Graves. ‘She left some to you, too, didn’t she, darling?’ she added to Phillipa. ‘You used yours to buy Bugle Boy, didn’t you?’
Mrs Graves gestured towards a bow-fronted cabinet on which many silver-framed photographs stood. After a second’s confusion Strike realised his attention was being directed to one of the largest pictures, which featured a stout, beaming teenaged Phillipa in full hunting garb, sitting on top of a gigantic grey horse, presumably Bugle Boy, hounds milling behind them. Her hair, which was dark in the photograph, was tied back in what looked like the same velvet bow she was wearing today.
‘So Allie had enough money to live on without working?’ Strike said.
‘Yerse, until he burned through it all,’ said Colonel Graves, ‘which he did in about twelve months. Then he signed on for the whatchamacallit – dole. I decided to leave th’army. Didn’t want to leave Baba hyar on her own, tryin’ to sort him out. It was startin’ to be obvious there was something very wrong.’
‘He was showing definite signs of mental illness by then, was he?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Graves, ‘he was getting very paranoid and strange. Funny ideas about the government. But the awful thing is, one didn’t really think of it as mental illness at the time, because he’d always been a bit—’
‘Told us he was getting messages from God,’ said Colonel Graves. ‘Thought it was the drugs. We thought, if only he’d just stop smoking that bloody marriage-huana… he fell out with Tom Bantling, and after that he stayed on other people’s sofas until they got annoyed and kicked him out. Tried to keep tabs on him, but sometimes we didn’t know where he was.’
‘Then he got himself into awful trouble, in a pub. Nick was with him, weren’t you?’ Mrs Graves said to her son-in-law. ‘They were at school together,’ she explained to Strike.
‘I was trying to talk sense into him,’ said Nicholas, ‘when some fella bumped inter him, an’ he lashed out with a beer glass. Cut the chap’s face. Stitches. He was charged.’
‘Quite right, too,’ barked the colonel. ‘Couldn’t argue with that. We got him a lawyer, personal friend of ours, and Danvers fixed up a psychiatrist.’
‘Allie only agreed because he was terrified of prison,’ said Mrs Graves. ‘That was a real fear of his, being locked up. I think that’s why he never liked boarding school.’
Phillipa gave the slightest of eye rolls, unnoticed by her parents, though not by Strike.
‘So the psychiatrist fella diagnosed this manic what-have-you,’ said Colonel Graves, ‘and put him on pills.’
‘And he said Allie mustn’t smoke pot any more,’ said Mrs Graves. ‘We got Allie cleaned up for court, got him a haircut and so on, and he looked marvellous in his suit. And the judge was really very nice and basically said he thought Allie would do best with community service. And at the time,’ sighed Mrs Graves, ‘we thought him getting arrested was a blessing in disguise, didn’t we, Archie? Not that we wanted some poor chap to be hurt, of course.’
‘And he came back here to live, did he?’ Strike asked.
‘’Sright,’ said Colonel Graves.
‘And his mental state improved?’
‘Yes, it was much better,’ said Mrs Graves. ‘And you loved having him home, didn’t you, Pips?’
‘Hm,’ said Phillipa.
‘It was like having him back to how he was when he was a little boy,’ said Mrs Graves. ‘He was really awfully sweet and funny…’
Tears swam in her eyes.
‘’Pologise,’ she whispered, fumbling in her sleeve for a handkerchief.
Colonel Graves assumed the stolid, wooden expression of the average upper-class Englishman when confronted with a show of open emotion. Nicholas took refuge in sweeping cake crumbs off his jeans. Phillipa merely stared stonily at the teapot.