“I couldn’t say.”
She was into one of her speculative phases. “They must have had some sympathy for my daddy. After all, it was their daughter who was raped. They may have kept silent so as not to incriminate him.”
“Possibly.”
“After the skull was found, Farmer Lockwood was under suspicion himself.”
“Yes.”
“And then it shifted to Daddy.” She studied me intently through the glasses.
I suggested gently, “It might be easier to accept if you thought of him as Duke.”
Sharply she replied, “I’ll think of him exactly as I want.
I’m not ashamed to call him Daddy.”
I didn’t react.
Alice hadn’t finished. “We were talking about the Lock-woods. They knew Barbara was raped, right? They got that from you, and they saw the pitiful state she was in.”
I nodded.
“But they didn’t call the police.”
“Apparently not.”
“Why not, Theo? It’s a criminal offense, for heaven’s sake.”
I hesitated. To be truthful, it was a point that I’d never considered before. She’d forced me into speculation. “Plenty of rapes never get reported. Maybe they thought it was kinder to Barbara to spare her the medical examination and all the questions.”
“Maybe.” She pushed her plate aside. “But there is another explanation, isn’t there? They knew Cliff Morton was already dead.”
ELEVEN
Torrential rain on the canopy roof of an MG convertible is a sure conversation-stopper. It pelted down after lunch, all the way out to Christian Gifford. In these conditions I didn’t do badly to find the village without a false turn, but I then had a problem locating the lane to the farm. I’d expected to use the schoolhouse or Miss Mum- ford’s store to get my bearings. Both had gone. A row of new houses in that clinically smooth, beige-colored material that masquerades as Bath stone now dominated the center of the village. At the end of the row was a shop called Quick-serve with a stack of wire baskets outside.
The pub across the street, the Jolly Gardener, was apparently unchanged, though as a nine-year-old in 1943, I hadn’t taken much note of it. All I could recall was that Barbara’s friend Sally Sh?smith had been the publican’s daughter. I stopped the car and went over to get some directions. The name on the lintel was no longer Sh? smith.
The barmaid, familiar only in the sense that she called me darling, obligingly came to the door with me and pointed the way. I didn’t inquire whether the Lockwoods still owned the farm. I wasn’t pressing for a reunion.
Even when we started up the lane, it was different. Where I seemed to remember the apple orchard were three large greenhouses. A gleaming silo soared above the hedgerow ahead. No trees at all.
I slowed the car and swiveled my head.
“Sure it’s the right place?” asked Alice.
“Far from sure,” I admitted as I swung the car onto a mud track pitted with tractor ruts, “only I don’t see anywhere else.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly
“We’ve found it?” asked Alice in a stage whisper.
I murmured something affirmative and steered the car across the cobbled yard and parked beside a tractor.
Alice flexed and clenched her hands. “I feel kind of nervous.”
“Changed your mind?”
“Are you kidding?” She opened the car door and stepped out.
No one came out to ask who we were. We stood in the center of the yard with the rain lashing our faces. I waved my stick towards the honey-colored building adjacent to the farmhouse. “The cider house. Want to go in?”
“Sure.”
I should have had the sense to realize that Gifford Farm ceased producing cider in 1945. In the local pubs jokers with a macabre turn of humor probably still talked about the days when you could get a drink with a good head.
The cider-making equipment had gone. The building had become a store for animal feed, and the acrid smell stopped us in our tracks. We stood in the open doorway.
“This used to be the meeting place,” I informed Alice, nostalgic as if I’d worked there all my life. “On a day like this we’d all be in here, complaining about the weather. Sunday morning, it was like a pub, with neighbors calling in for a pint.”
“My daddy was in here sometimes?” asked Alice.
“He parked the jeep right here, where we’re standing.”
She bit her lip and turned away. “Would you show me the barn where it happened.”
I pointed to the small, gray building set back from the rest. “Sure you can face it?”
“Try me.”
She took my free hand to trace a course between the puddles. She needed some creature comfort, and so did I.
Out in the yard, the rain obliterated the farm smells, so when I pushed open the barn door, the sweet pungence of hay was overpoweringly evocative. The place was still used for its original purpose, and the familiar dryness penetrated my throat and nostrils.
Holding my emotions in check, I told Alice, “It’s just as I remember it. The smell. The way the bales are stored. Everything.”
“It’s darker than I expected.”
“We’ll soon take care of that.” I let go of her hand and took out my Ronson.
“Be careful.”
“There.” I held the flame high, showing her the loft floor.
A rustle startled her and she grabbed my arm. “Mouse, I expect.” I felt a surge of bravado. “Want to go up? There’s a ladder.”
She hesitated. “Would you go first?”
“Of course.”
I was glad I’d come. Here I was, inside the place I’d so often returned to in my nightmares. I propped my stick against a bale, pocketed the lighter, groped for the ladder, and hauled myself up. Hard work, but I wanted keenly to prove something to myself, and, I suppose, to Alice.
Flat to the floor, I leaned over and provided light again. She mounted the ladder fast and held on to my arm after I helped her. She was trembling.
Without my stick I had to put a hand on her shoulder to get upright. She automatically curved her arm around my waist. Disability can bring compensations.
I told her, “If you wonder how I got up here as a boy, I had two good legs then. The polio struck later.”
There were fewer bales than formerly, and they were differently stacked, but I parked myself on one and tried to visualize the scene that November afternoon in 1943. I moved the lighter towards the angle of the roof where I’d found the gap to see through, and then over the area where Barbara and Cliff Morton had been lying.
