“That’s where you’re wrong, old boy. Liz nailed you on that one three years ago. Found one of your partners in crime, you see?”
He was being entirely serious, even though he was as drunk as a judge. I gave him a rueful smile, as though I was playing along with his ideas. “How did she find me out?”
“She hired some private detective. Some slimy type she met at Newbury. Don’t know much about him, to be honest. Never met the fellow. Liz keeps herself to herself, you see.” He was beginning to make less sense as the whisky fractured his memories.
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
“That’s what I said! I was told it was none of my business. Mind you, she went to that jumped-up little businessman, Buzzafuck or whatever he’s called.”
“Buzzacott?”
“He gave her money! I’m sure of it! Two of his henchmen came round with an attache case. It’s my belief” – here he slumped down on to the arm of a sofa and pointed an unsteady finger at me – “that Liz wanted to wait till your mother was dead. No need to share the loot, what?”
“So why hasn’t she found the picture now?”
“Damned if I know. Perhaps you hid it too well?” He chuckled conspiratorially, and I smiled back. “So where is it, John?”
I spread innocent hands. “Beats me, Peter.”
He drained the whisky. “You can tell me.”
“Why did Buzzacott give her money?”
He walked unsteadily to the sideboard and poured himself another whisky. “To pay for the private detective chap, of course.”
Garrard. Maybe I was jumping to a conclusion, but somehow I reckoned the private detective had to be Garrard, which meant that, quite unknowingly, Sir Leon had bankrolled the bastard who had half killed his stepdaughter.
But if Elizabeth had stolen the painting, why would she need a private detective? Or perhaps there never had been a private detective. Perhaps that was just Elizabeth’s story, part of the necessary deception that I was guilty. And perhaps Buzzacott’s payments were a sweetener to make sure that Elizabeth did eventually sell him the painting. Whatever, the little bastard had clearly been backing both horses, Elizabeth and me. Or perhaps Peter’s drunken maunderings added up to sweet nothing.
“What I reckon” – Peter turned back to me – “is that you sold the painting to someone, Liz has found you out, and you’re protecting whoever it is.”
“It isn’t like that, Peter.”
“Then for God’s sake tell me the truth!” He was angry suddenly. “No one tells me a bloody thing!”
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “if you tell me which of the caravans you planned to put Georgina in.”
He stared at me with pretended outrage for a few seconds, then laughed. “You’re a fly one, John, I’ll give you that! Too fly for your own good, eh?”
I smiled, then glanced through the big window to where the bats flickered dark in the newly fallen night. “Was there a fellow named Garrard in your regiment, Peter?”
“Don’t remember him. What sort of fellow was he?”
“Thin, dark. Joined the Paras.”
He shook his head. “Never heard of him. Why?”
“Because he tried to kill me, that’s why.”
That answer was a mistake because Peter immediately thought I’d accused him of being an accomplice to attempted murder, and his face flushed with a sudden and dangerous anger. “Get the hell out of here!”
I held up a placatory hand. “Peter!” I said chidingly.
“I said get out!” He snatched up the gun. “I’ll use it! I bloody well used it on some Mormons last year!”
I left him. He didn’t follow me. I half expected him to fire a volley over my head, but he just stayed with his misery and the whisky decanter.
I limped to the village, but the last bus had already left. I knew I’d be lucky to reach the station in time for the last Exeter train, but I began to walk anyway. I’d left the walking stick in Peter’s back yard, and my ankle was hurting. I tried to hitch a lift, but it was over an hour before anyone took pity on my hobbling. I was too late for the train so I asked the driver to drop me near the motorway. I stood on the access road for what seemed like hours and, though I left my thumb stuck out, no one stopped. I probably looked too scruffy. The headlights flicked past me and I tried to make sense of Peter’s alcohol-sodden memories.
Elizabeth had probably been taking money from Buzzacott, and that money had been extracted on the promise that she had located one of my accomplices. That meant, I was certain, that Elizabeth had begun to cover her tracks very early in the game. She had spent at least three years spreading tales of my guilt so that, when she did produce the painting, no one would accuse her of stealing it. Yet, as I stood in the darkness beside the road, I realised just how little Peter had revealed. Perhaps, I hoped, one of the lovers whose letters lay hidden in the trunk was concealing the painting, and perhaps Harry could get a search warrant and go through the bundled letters, but it seemed like a very long shot. My day, I thought, had yielded nothing except an engagement ring.
I began to wonder if I should have to sleep rough, but finally a lorry driver took pity on me. He was carrying steel reinforcing rods to Plymouth, so took me all the way to Devon and dropped me off at the Kingsbridge turning.
It was two in the morning. I walked for another hour, but my ankle was making me sob with the pain. There was no traffic, thus no chance of a lift, so in the end I climbed a gate into a field, kicked a protesting sheep to its feet, then lay down on the warm dry patch of earth I’d uncovered. I slept badly for three hours, and woke shivering and wet to a limpid dawn. It occurred to me that I really was homeless; just another tramp on the southern summer roads. The first Earl of Stowey had ridden down these valleys with a retinue of steel-helmed men, and now the twenty-eighth Earl stumbled unshaven and filthy out of a sheep run.
I walked till I found a public telephone in a village. I phoned Charlie. I hesitated because it was early and I didn’t want to wake Yvonne, but she had said Charlie would probably be at home so I took the risk.
Charlie answered. I had woken him up, but he didn’t mind. Indeed, he seemed immensely relieved to hear my voice.
I shared his relief. “For Christ’s sake come and get me, Charlie. I’m all in.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Hitch-hiking. Sleeping rough.”
“For Christ’s sake, Johnny, they’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“Who has? Harry Abbott?”
“Buzzacott. He started phoning yesterday afternoon. He’s desperate for you!”
“Why!”
“He wouldn’t tell me, mate, I’m not a bleeding earl. Christ Almighty, look at the time! Where the hell are you?”
I told him.
“Hang on there, Johnny, I’ll be with you in half an hour.”
So I hung on, and Charlie was as good as his word. I wondered how on earth I’d survive without a friend like him, then collapsed into his Japanese four-by-four and fell fast asleep.
Charlie woke Yvonne and demanded breakfast. She came downstairs in dressing gown and slippers, offered me one disgusted look, then banged the frying pan about the stove in noisy protest.
“I’m sorry to be a nuisance, Yvonne,” I said humbly.
She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. I was about as welcome as a skunk.
“He’s only a bloody earl,” Charlie said in an attempt to placate her with humour, “and he’s been sleeping rough!”
“So have I.” Yvonne slapped a packet of bacon on to the counter.
Charlie gave me a wry look, then took me out to his kennels where we fed his terriers. He kept some of his dogs for ratting, and others, trained to bite less hard, for rabbiting. “Don’t get married,” he told me as he tossed raw meat into the troughs. It was a comment that didn’t require a response, so I made none. Charlie fondled one of his favourite dogs, then stared at the early morning mist shrouding the Salcombe lakes. “I don’t know if it matters,”
