Carole was surprised that writing books of that kind made enough money for the three-storey Hampstead pile in which the author lived. But then she didn’t know much about the world of publishing.
It was clearly his novels Sebastian Trent wished to pontificate on. Carole now understood why he had shooed away the details of what she wanted to ask him about. He would have said the same, whatever the questions. She and Jude were being treated to the authorial overview of his own work, and it was clearly a routine that he’d wheeled out many times before. No doubt his audiences in Malaysia in 1987 had been treated to something very similar.
His manner was that of a skilled lecturer or interviewee. The timing was practised, the jokes honed and the whole presented with that particular brand of self-depreciation which masks huge arrogance.
Carole recognized that they had a problem. Getting Sebastian Trent off his literary tramlines was not going to be easy.
“I am interested,” he continued, “not in the mere meanings of words but in their resonance. In some ways, I suppose, I could be called a semioticist, except that I’m not solely interested in the adumbration of covert references which get attached to words. I am also concerned by their sounds, the anomalies of homonyms, the latent misunderstandings inherent in assonantal rhymes, the misleading potential of the word half-heard. This is what gives such a rich texture to my writing. And this is why I feel readers only get the full experience on a second reading of my novels. Take, for instance, the Tuscan idyll sequence in my – ”
“I’m sorry,” said Jude, “but this isn’t what we came here to talk about.”
Sebastian Trent was so taken aback to be stopped in mid-flow that he could only mouth helplessly. This was the first time in his authorial experience that he’d been interrupted. Listeners usually hung with rapt attention on his every insight and
Carole grinned inwardly. Now she knew why her instinct had told her to bring Jude along.
“The reason we came,” her Mend went on with an engagingly innocent smile, “was to talk about a trip you made for the British Council to Malaysia in 1987.”
“Oh.” The supremely articulate Sebastian Trent was still so much in shock that he was reduced to a monosyllable.
“Now, as we understand it, Sebastian, you were in Malaysia in October of that year…”
He gave a bewildered nod.
“You spent most of your time in Kuala Lumpur, but also travelled to Ipoh and Penang.”
He couldn’t deny that either.
“And while you were out there your British Council host was Graham Forbes.”
Another nod.
Carole wondered how long this could go on. It was wonderful while it lasted, but surely at some point Sebastian Trent was going to ask why he was being grilled in this way. She didn’t have to wait long.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but what is this all about?”
“Oh, didn’t Carole say on the phone?” asked Jude coolly.
No, thought Carole, she’s not going to throw this over to me, is she? She needn’t have worried.
Glibly, Jude continued, “We’re trying to contact Graham Forbes’s wife, Sheila.”
He didn’t ask why. Having apparently come to terms with the fact that they weren’t after his pearls of literary wisdom, Sebastian Trent now seemed keen only to send them on their way. “Presumably you contact her through Graham. He’s retired now, but I think I’ve got an address for him. Somewhere in Sussex, I seem to remember.”
Carole came in to do her bit. “You didn’t know that he’d remarried?”
“No.” Sebastian Trent didn’t sound particularly interested in the information. Graham Forbes may have been his host in Kuala Lumpur, but no closeness seemed to have developed between them.
“He remarried someone called Irene. Chinese woman. I wondered if you’d met her while you were out in Malaysia.”
He shrugged. “I met a lot of people. And obviously, because I was giving lectures and things, they’d remember me a lot better than I’d remember them. I’d have made much more of an impression. Anyway, we are talking thirteen years ago. I can’t be expected to remember all the names now, can I?”
“No,” Carole persisted, “but you might have noticed if Graham Forbes was making a particular fuss of Irene, if he was treating her like a girlfriend…?”
“Well, he’d be unlikely to do that in public, wouldn’t he? Whatever their private relationship might have been.”
“What do you mean?”
“Men don’t usually flaunt their girlfriends when their wives are present.”
It was Carole’s turn to be struck dumb. So it was left to Jude to clarify the situation. “Sheila Forbes was in Kuala Lumpur with her husband while you were out there?”
“Yes. We even travelled from Heathrow on the same plane.”
“Really? On the morning of Monday 19 October 1987?” asked Carole.
“I can’t remember the exact date, but if you say that’s when it was, I’m sure you’re right. I remember it was the Monday after that terrible storm, because my wife had to go off down to Hampshire to assess the damage to our country place.”
A country place too, thought Carole. There must be really serious money in writing experimental literary fiction.
“Did you know you’d be travelling out with Graham Forbes?”
“No. But he recognized me of course at Heathrow and introduced himself and his wife.”
“Ah.” Carole felt her whole edifice of conjecture tumbling around her ears.
“And at the other end, did you travel from the airport into Kuala Lumpur together?” asked Jude.
“I can’t remember after all this time.” He tapped his chin testily, trying to dredge up the recollection. “Oh, I think what actually happened was that Mrs Forbes went off in a taxi and Graham Forbes came with me in the British Council car to show me my hotel. The Ming Palace, as I recall. Yes, I remember now. There was a new driver, only just started that day. He didn’t know the way to the hotel.”
“And did you see a lot of Sheila Forbes while you were in Kuala Lumpur?”
“Not a lot, no.”
“But you did see her?”
“I must have done. I can’t honestly remember.”
“Did you get much impression of her personality?”
He shrugged. “She seemed quiet, not very interesting.” Sebastian Trent gave the impression he didn’t find many other people very interesting.
“But you couldn’t judge whether she and her husband were getting on well?”
“No, I couldn’t judge that.” He was beginning to find the interrogation irksome. “For heaven’s sake. Look, Graham Forbes was simply the British Council representative in Kuala Lumpur who made the arrangements for my tour. I didn’t get to know him and I certainly didn’t get to know his wife.”
And that was it, really. Sebastian Trent had nothing else to tell them. And though he could no doubt have been prompted by the proper cue to continue his dissertation on the genius of Sebastian Trent, Carole and Jude felt too shattered by his revelations to want to do anything other than leave as soon as possible.
In the large hallway, they met the author’s wife coming in. She was instantly recognizable as the star of one of the country’s most popular and dumbed-down television soaps.
So that was how a writer of recherche literary novels could afford a mansion in Hampstead and a country place in Hampshire.
? Death on the Downs ?
Thirty-One
They travelled back together from Victoria to Fethering on a train that was crowded and filthy and rattled through endless stations, getting a little further behind schedule with each one. The market for public transport to that part of West Sussex has always been a finite one, so no effort has ever been made to
