‘Come come, Michael, you romanticize,’ said Findlay, chuckling incredulously. ‘You were only a young boy at the time. How can your memory possibly distinguish one such day from any other?’
‘I remember it vividly. It was my ninth birthday, and my parents took me to Weston-super-Mare, and it rained in the afternoon so we went to the cinema.’ This information didn’t appear to mean much to Findlay, and since we were now both in danger of sinking into a nostalgic torpor, I decided that a rapid change of tone was called for. ‘Anyway — what do you want to do about this note? Hang on to it?’
He read the message again and then handed it over. ‘No, Michael. This is of no further use to me. I’ve committed it to memory, in any case.’
‘Aren’t you going to perform tests on it, or something? Look for invisible ink?’
‘What colourful ideas you entertain when it comes to the detective’s art,’ said Findlay. ‘My own procedures seem very prosaic in comparison. I must be a disappointment to you.’
His sarcasm was mischievous rather than icy, so I tried to enter into the spirit.
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I was brought up on a diet of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. I even used to write detective stories once, when I was very little. I was rather hoping that you’d give it a cool, expert glance, and then look at me through half-closed lids and say something impressive like, “Singular, Mr Owen. Very singular”.’
He smiled. ‘Well, all is not lost, Michael. We still have work we can do together, avenues to explore, and besides …’ He tailed off suddenly, and a transient gleam seemed to flicker in his eye. ‘… and besides … You know, you may actually have a point there.’
‘I may? What point?’
‘Well it is singular, isn’t it? That’s the strange thing about it.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’
‘The word “biscuit”, Michael. Surely it ought to be in the plural. One biscuit, to be taken with some cheese and a stick of celery? It doesn’t sound very substantial, does it, even for a snack?’
I cast around for an explanation, and said rather lamely: ‘Well, this was during the war. Perhaps with rationing, and so on …’
Findlay shook his head. ‘Something tells me,’ he said, ‘that wartime economies would not have impinged very seriously on the Winshaw ménage. They have never struck me as being among nature’s belt-tighteners. No, this is beginning to look more interesting than I’d supposed. A little further thought may be called for.’
‘And there’s another mystery, too, don’t forget.’
Findlay waited for me to explain.
‘Don’t you remember? All that business about Tabitha thinking that she could hear German voices coming from Lawrence’s bedroom, and how she locked him in there but it turned out that he’d been in the billiard room all along.’
‘Well, of course, there’s a perfectly plausible explanation for that. But we’d have to visit the house itself to put it to the test. In the meantime, I thought we might try approaching the problem from the other end.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that there’s one part of this story, one component, which sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. One player who sits so uneasily with the others that you wonder whether he hasn’t wandered in from a different drama altogether. My reference, Michael, is to yourself.’
‘Me? What have I got to do with it? I just drifted into this whole business. It could have been anybody.’
‘It could have been anybody, naturally. But it wasn’t. It was you. Now there may even be a reason for this, and it may be possible to find out what it is. Tell me, Michael, don’t you think it’s about time that you met Tabitha Winshaw? She may not be around for much longer, after all.’
‘I know, I’ve been putting it off. Also I’ve always had the sense, somehow, that the publishers have wanted to discourage it.’
‘Ah, yes, your inscrutable publishers. Quite an outfit, I must say. I was most impressed by their offices, or what I could see of them, on my brief and unofficial visit. I even helped myself to one of their brochures, you’ll be shocked to hear.’ Reaching over to his desk, he brandished a glossy, expensively printed catalogue and flicked through its pages. ‘The list is certainly eclectic,’ he murmured. ‘Take this, for instance: Dropping in on Jerry: A Light-Hearted Account of the Dresden Bombings, by Wing Commander “Bullseye” Fortescue, V.C. Sounds hysterical, I must say. This one caught my eye: A Lutheran Approach to the Films of Martin and Lewis. Or, better still, The A-Z of Plinths, by the Reverend J. W. Pottage—“an invaluable reference companion”, it says here, “to his earlier groundbreaking work”. Well, well. Quite a cornucopia, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said. ‘I get sent a parcel of the things for Christmas every year.’
‘Well, that in itself is rather generous, don’t you think? There seems to be no shortage of money in their line of business. This fellow who runs it — McGanny, isn’t it? — must be something of a shrewd operator. I’ve a feeling that it might be worth looking a little more closely into his affairs.’
I was disappointed by this proposed line of inquiry, and couldn’t hold back from saying so. ‘How’s that going to help us find out what Lawrence was up to in 194z?’
‘Perhaps it won’t, Michael. But perhaps that isn’t the real mystery in any case.’
‘What are you suggesting, exactly?’
Findlay got up from his armchair and sat beside me. ‘I’m suggesting,’ he said, laying a claw-like hand on my thigh, ‘that the real mystery is you. And I intend to get to the bottom of it.’
Kenneth said: ‘Miss, you don’t happen to know where my bedroom is, do you?’
Shirley shook her head sadly and said: ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
Kenneth said: ‘Oh,’ and paused. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go now.’
I thought about Findlay’s description of me: ‘one player who sits so uneasily with the others that you wonder whether he hasn’t wandered in from a different drama altogether’. It seemed oddly perceptive, suddenly exact about the way I tended to feel when contemplating the Winshaws. This evening, for instance …
Shirley hesitated, a resolve forming within her: ‘No. Hang on.’ She gestured with her hand, urgently. ‘Turn your back a minute.’
Kenneth turned, and found himself staring into a mirror in which he could see his own reflection, and beyond that, Shirley’s. Her back was to him, and she was wriggling out of her slip, pulling it over her head.
… leaving Findlay’s flat, catching the Number 19 bus, feeling the characteristic lowering of the spirits as I returned to South West London; arriving home. All this mundanity, my too familiar surroundings, made his narrative and the mad, gothic horrors towards which it gestured seem like a grotesque fantasy …
He said: ‘J— just a minute, miss.’
Kenneth hastily lowered the mirror, which was on a hinge.
Shirley turned to him and said: ‘You’re sweet.’ She finished pulling her slip over her head, and started to unfasten her bra.
… Did they have the same worries that I had, these absurd people? Did they have the sort of feelings I would even understand? It wasn’t enough to say that they came from a different walk of life. It was more extreme, more final than that: they belonged to a different genre of existence altogether. One which actually horrified me …
Shirley disappeared behind Kenneth’s head.
Kenneth said: ‘Well, a — a handsome face isn’t everything, you know.’