The Vivero Letter

DESMOND BAGLEY

The Vivero Letter

ONE

I made good time on the way to the West Country; the road was clear and there was only an occasional car coming in the other direction to blind me with headlights. Outside Honiton I pulled off the road, killed the engine and lit a cigarette. I didn’t want to arrive at the farm at an indecently early hour, and besides, I had things to think about.

They say that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. It’s a dubious proposition from the logical standpoint, but I certainly hadn’t disproved it empirically. Not that I had intended to eavesdrop – it was one of those accidental things you get yourself into with no graceful exit – so I just stood and listened and heard things said about myself that I would rather not have heard.

It had happened the day before at a party, one of the usual semi-impromptu lash-ups which happen in swinging London. Sheila knew a man who knew the man who was organizing it and wanted to go, so we went. The house was in that part of Golders Green which prefers to be called Hampstead and our host was a with-it whiz kid who worked for a record company and did a bit of motor racing on the side. His conversation was divided about fifty-fifty between Marshal MacLuhan waffle and Brand’s Hatchery, all very wearing on the eardrums. I didn’t know him personally and neither did Sheila – it was that kind of party.

One left one’s coat in the usual bedroom and then drifted into the chatter, desperately trying to make human contact while clutching a glass of warm whisky. Most of the people were complete strangers, although they seemed to know each other, which made it difficult for the lone intruder. I tried to make sense of the elliptical verbal shorthand which passes for conversation on these occasions, and pretty soon got bored. Sheila seemed to be doing all right, though, and I could see this was going to be a long session, so I sighed and got myself another drink.

Halfway through the evening I ran out of cigarettes and remembered that I had a packet in my coat so I went up to the bedroom to get it. Someone had moved the coats from the bed and I found them dumped on the floor behind a large avant-garde screen. I was rooting about trying to find mine when someone else came into the room. A female voice said, ‘That man you’re with is pretty dim, isn’t he?’

I recognized the voice as belonging to Helen Someone-or-other, a blonde who was being squired by a life-and-soul-of-the-party type. I dug into my coat pocket and found the cigarettes, then paused as I heard Sheila say, ‘Yes, he is.’

Helen said, ‘I don’t know why you bother with him.’

‘I don’t know, either,’ said Sheila. She laughed. ‘But he’s a male body, handy to have about. A girl needs someone to take her around.’

‘You could have chosen someone more lively,’ said Helen. ‘This one’s a zombie. What does he do?’

‘Oh, he’s some kind of an accountant. He doesn’t talk about it much. A grey little man in a grey little job – I’ll drop him when I find someone more interesting.’

I stayed very still in a ridiculous half crouch behind that screen. I certainly couldn’t walk out into full view after hearing that. There was a subdued clatter from the dressing-table as the girls primped themselves. They chattered about hair styles for a couple of minutes, then Helen said, ‘What happened to Jimmy What’s-his-name?’

Sheila giggled. ‘Oh, he was too wolfish – not at all safe to be with. Exciting, really, but his firm sent him abroad last month.’

‘I shouldn’t think you find this one too exciting.’

‘Oh, Jemmy’s all right,’ said Sheila casually. ‘I don’t have to worry about my virtue with him. It’s very restful for a change.’

‘He’s not a queer, is he?’ asked Helen.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Sheila. Her voice was doubtful. ‘He’s never appeared to be that way.’

‘You never can tell; a lot of them are good at disguise. That’s a nice shade of lipstick – what is it?’

They tailed off into feminine inconsequentialities while I sweated behind the screen. It seemed to be an hour before they left, although it probably wasn’t more than five minutes, and when I heard the door bang I stood up cautiously and came out from under cover and went downstairs to rejoin the party.

I stuck it out until Sheila decided to call it a night and then took her home. I was in half a mind to demonstrate to her in the only possible way that I wasn’t a queer, but I tossed the idea away. Rape isn’t my way of having a good time. I dropped her at the flat she shared with two other girls and bade her a cordial good night. I would have to be very hard up for company before I saw her again.

A grey little man in a grey little job.

Was that how I really appeared to others? I had never thought about it much. As long as there are figures used in business there’ll be accountants to shuffle them around, and it had never struck me as being a particularly grey job, especially after computers came in. I didn’t talk about my work because it really isn’t the subject for light conversation with a girl. Chit-chat about the relative merits of computer languages such as COBOL and ALGOL doesn’t have the glamour of what John Lennon said at the last recording session.

So much for the job, but what about me? Was I dowdy and subfusc? Grey and uninteresting?

It could very well be that I was – to other people. I had never been one for wearing my heart on my sleeve, and maybe, judging by the peculiar mores of our times, I was a square. I didn’t particularly like the ‘swinging’ aspect of mid-sixties England; it was cheap, frenetic and sometimes downright nasty, and I could do without it. Perhaps I was Johnny-out-of-step.

I had met Sheila a month before, a casual introduction. Looking back at that conversation in the bedroom it must have been when Jimmy What’s-his-name had departed from her life that she had latched on to me as a temporary substitute. For various reasons, the principal one having to do with the proverb of the burnt child fearing the fire, I had not got into the habit of jumping into bed indiscriminately with female companions of short acquaintance, and if that was what Sheila had expected, or even wanted, she had picked the wrong boy. It’s a hell of a society in which a halfway continent man is immediately suspected of homosexuality.

Perhaps I was stupid to take the catty chatter of empty-headed women so much to heart, but to see ourselves as others see us is a salutary experience and tends to make one take a good look from the outside. Which is what I did while sitting in the car outside Honiton.

A thumbnail sketch: Jeremy Wheale, of good yeoman stock and strong family roots. Went to university – but redbrick – emerging with a first-class pass in mathematics and economics. Now, aged 31, an accountant specializing in computer work and with good prospects for the future. Character: introverted and somewhat withdrawn but not overly so. When aged 25 had flammatory affaire which wrung out emotions; now cautious in dealings with women. Hobbies: indoors – recreational mathematics and fencing, outdoors – scuba diving. Cash assets to present minute: £102/18/4 in current bank account; stocks and shares to the market value of £940. Other assets: one overage Ford Cortina in which sitting brooding; one hi-fi outfit of superlative quality; one set of scuba gear in boot of car. Liabilities: only himself.

And what was wrong with that? Come to think of it – what was right with that? Maybe Sheila had been correct when she had described me as a grey man but only in a circumscribed way. She expected Sean Connery disguised as James Bond and what she got was me – just a good, old-fashioned, grey, average type.

But she had done one thing; she had made me take a good look at myself and what I saw wasn’t reassuring. Looking into the future as far as I could, all I could see was myself putting increasingly complicated figures into increasingly complicated computers at the behest of the men who made the boodle. A drab prospect – not to mention that overworked word ‘grey’. Perhaps I was getting into a rut and adopting middle-aged attitudes before my time.

I tossed the stub of the third cigarette from the window and started the car. There didn’t seem to be much I could do about it, and I was quite happy and contented with my lot.

Although not perhaps as happy and contented as I was before Sheila had distilled her poison.

From Honiton to the farm, just short of Totnes, is a run of about an hour and a half if you do it early in the morning to avoid the holiday traffic on the Exeter by-pass, and dead on the minute I stopped, as I always did, on the little patch of ground by Cutter’s Corner where the land fell away into the valley and where there was a break in the high hedge. I got out of the car and leaned comfortably on the fence.

I had been born in the valley thirty-one years earlier, in the farmhouse which lay snugly on the valley floor looking more like a natural growth than a man-made object. It had been built by a Wheale and Wheales had lived in it for over four hundred years. It was a tradition among us that the eldest son inherited the farm and the younger sons went to sea. I had put a crimp in the tradition by going into business, but my brother, Bob, held on to Hay Tree Farm and kept the land in good shape. I didn’t envy Bob the farm because he was a better farmer than I ever would have been. I have no affinity with cattle and sheep and the job would have driven me round the twist. The most I had to do with it now was to put Bob right on his bookkeeping and proffer advice on his investments.

I was a sport among the Wheales. A long line of fox-hunting, pheasant-murdering, yeoman farmers had produced Bob and me. Bob followed the line; he farmed the land well, rode like a madman to hounds, was pretty good in a point-to-point and liked nothing better than a day’s rough shooting. I was the oddity who didn’t like massacring rabbits with an airgun as a boy, still less with a shotgun as a grown man. My parents, when they were alive, looked on me with some perplexity and I must have troubled their uncomplicated minds; I was not a natural boy and got into no mischief – instead I developed a most un-Whealeish tendency to book reading and the ability to make figures jump through hoops. There was much doubtful shaking of heads and an inclination to say ‘Whatever will become of the lad?’

I lit a cigarette and a plume of smoke drifted away on the crisp morning air, then grinned as I saw no smoke coming from any of the farm chimneys. Bob would be sleeping late, something he did when he’d made a night of it at the Kingsbridge Inn or the Cott Inn, his favourite pubs. That was a cheerful practice that might end when he married. I was glad he was getting married at last; I’d been a bit worried because Hay Tree Farm without a Wheale would be unthinkable and if Bob died unmarried there was only me left, and I certainly didn’t want to take up farming.

I got into the car, drove on a little way, then turned on to the farm road. Bob had had it graded and resurfaced, something he’d been talking about for years. I coasted along, past the big oak tree which, family legend said, had been planted by my great-grandfather, and around the corner which led straight into the farmyard.

Then I stamped on the brake pedal hard because someone was lying in the middle of the road.

I got out of the car and looked down at him. He was lying prone with one arm outflung and when I knelt and touched his hand it was stone cold. I went cold, too, as I looked at the back of his head. Carefully I tried to pull his head up but the body was stiff with rigor mortis and I had to roll him right over to see his face. The breath came from me with a sigh as I saw it was a perfect stranger.

He had died hard but quickly. The expression on his face showed that he had died hard; the lips writhed back from the teeth in a tortured grimace and the eyes were open and stared over my shoulder at the morning sky. Underneath him was a great pool of half-dried blood and his chest was covered with it. No one could have lost that much blood slowly – it must have gushed out in a sudden burst, bringing a quick death.

I stood up and looked around. Everything was very quiet and all I heard was the fluting of an unseasonable blackbird and the grating of gravel as I shifted my feet sounded unnaturally loud. From the house came the mournful howl of a dog and then a shriller barking from close by, and a young sheepdog flung round the corner of the house and yapped at me excitedly. He was not very old, not more than nine months, and I reckoned he was one of old Jess’s pups.

I held out my hand and snapped my fingers. The aggressive barking changed to a delighted yelp and the young dog wagged his tail vehemently and came forward in an ingratiating sideways trot. From the house another dog howled and the sound made the hairs on my neck prickle.

I walked into the farmyard and saw immediately that the kitchen door was ajar. Gently, I pushed it open, and called, ‘Bob!’

The curtains were drawn at the windows and the light was off, so the room was gloomy. There was a stir of movement and the sound of an ugly growl. I pushed the door open wide to let in the light and saw old Jess stalking towards me with her teeth bared in a snarl. ‘All right, Jess,’ I said softly. ‘It’s all right, old girl.’

She stopped dead and looked at me consideringly, then let her lips cover her teeth. I slapped the side of my leg. ‘Come here, Jess.’

But she wouldn’t come. Instead, she whined disconsolately and turned away to vanish behind the big kitchen table. I followed her and found her standing drooping over the body of Bob.

His hand was cold, but not dead cold, and there was a faint flutter of a pulse beat at his wrist. Fresh blood oozed from the ugly wound in his chest and soaked the front of his shirt. I knew enough about serious injuries not to attempt to move him; instead, I ran upstairs, stripped the blankets from his bed and brought them down to cover him and keep him warm.

Then I went to the telephone and dialled 999. ‘This is Jemmy Wheale of Hay Tree Farm. There’s been a shooting on the farm; one man dead and another seriously wounded. I want a doctor, an ambulance and the police – in that order.’

II

An hour later I was talking to Dave Goosan. The doctor and the ambulance had come and gone, and Bob was in hospital. He was in a bad way and Dr Grierson had dissuaded me from going with him. ‘It’s no use, Jemmy. You’d only get in the way and make a nuisance of yourself. You know we’ll do the best we can.’

I nodded. ‘What are his chances?’ I asked.

Grierson shook his head. ‘Not good. But I’ll be able to tell better when I’ve had a closer look at him.’

So I was talking to Dave Goosan who was a policeman. The last time I had met him he was a detective sergeant; now he was a detective inspector. I went to school with his young brother, Harry, who was also in the force. Police work was the Goosans’ family business.

‘This is bad, Jemmy,’ he said. ‘It’s too much for me. They’re sending over a superintendent from Newton Abbot. I haven’t the rank to handle a murder case.’

I stared at him. ‘Who has been murdered?’

He flung out his arm to indicate the farmyard, then became confused. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to say your brother had murdered anyone. But there’s been a killing, anyway.’

We were in the living-room and through the window I could see the activity in the yard. The body was still there, though covered with a plastic sheet. There were a dozen coppers, some in plain clothes and others in uniform, a few seemed to be doing nothing but chat, but the others were giving the yard a thorough going over.

I said, ‘Who was he, Dave?’

‘We don’t know.’ He frowned. ‘Now, tell me the story all over again – right from the beginning. We’ve got to get this right, Jemmy, or the super will blow hell out of me. This is the first killing I’ve worked on.’ He looked worried.

So I told my story again, how I had come to the farm, found the dead man and then Bob. When I had finished Dave said, ‘You just rolled the body over – no more than that?’

‘I thought it was Bob,’ I said. The build was the same and so was the haircut.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Dave. ‘He might be an American. His clothes are American, anyway. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing.’

He sighed. ‘Ah, well, we’ll find out all about him sooner or later. He was killed by a blast from a shotgun at close range. Grierson says he thinks the aorta was cut through – that’s why he bled like that. Your brother’s shotgun had both barrels fired.’

‘So Bob shot him,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t make it murder.’

‘Of course it doesn’t. We’ve reconstructed pretty well what happened and it seems to be a case of self defence. The man was a thief; we know that much.’

I looked up. ‘What did he steal?’

Dave jerked his head. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you. But just walk where I walk and don’t go straying about.’

I followed him out into the yard, keeping close to his heels as he made a circuitous approach to the wall of the kitchen. He stopped and said, ‘Have you ever seen that before?’

I looked to where he indicated and saw the tray that had always stood on the top shelf of the dresser in the kitchen ever since I can remember. My mother used to take it down and polish it once in a while, but it was only really used on highdays and feast days. At Christmas it used to be put in the middle of the dining-table and was heaped with fruit.

‘Do you mean to tell me he got killed trying to pinch a brass tray? That he nearly killed Bob because of that thing?’

I bent down to pick it up and Dave grabbed me hastily. ‘Don’t touch it.’ He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t know. That’s not brass, Jemmy; it’s gold!’

I gaped at him, then closed my mouth before the flies got in.

‘But it’s always been a brass tray,’ I said inanely.

‘So Bob thought,’ agreed Dave. ‘It happened this way. The museum in Totnes was putting on a special show of local bygones and Bob was asked if he’d lend the tray. I believe it’s been in the family for a long time.’

I nodded. ‘I can remember my grandfather telling me that his grandfather had mentioned it.’

‘Well, that’s going back a while. Anyway, Bob lent it to the museum and it was put on show with the other stuff. Then someone said it was gold, and by God, it was! The people at the museum got worried about it and asked Dave to take it back. It wasn’t insured, you see, and there was a flap on about it might be stolen. It had been reported in the papers complete with photographs, and any wide boy could open the Totnes museum with a hairpin.’

‘I didn’t see the newspaper reports.’

‘It didn’t make the national press,’ said Dave. ‘Just the local papers. Anyway, Bob took it back. Tell me, did he know you were coming down this weekend?’

I nodded. ‘I phoned him on Thursday. I’d worked out a scheme for the farm that I thought he might be interested in.’

‘That might explain it. This discovery only happened about ten days ago. He might have wanted to surprise you with it.’

I looked down at the tray. ‘He did,’ I said bitterly.

‘It must be very valuable just for the gold in it,’ said Dave. ‘Well worth the attention of a thief. And the experts say there’s something special about it to add to the value, but I’m no antiquarian so I can’t tell you what it is.’ He rubbed the back of his head. There’s one thing about all this that really worries me, though. Come and look at this – and don’t touch it.’

He led me across the yard to the other side of the body where a piece of opaque plastic cloth covered something lumpy on the ground. ‘This is what did the damage to your brother.’

He lifted the plastic and I saw a weapon – an antique horse pistol. ‘Who’d want to use a thing like that?’ I said.

‘Nasty, isn’t it?’

I bent down and looked closer and found I was wrong. It wasn’t a horse pistol but a shotgun with the barrels cut very short and the butt cut off to leave only the hand grip. Dave said, ‘What thief in his right mind would go on a job carrying a weapon like that? Just to be found in possession would send him inside for a year. Another thing – there were two of them.’

‘Guns?’

‘No – men. Two, at least. There was a car parked up the farm road. We found tracks in the mud and oil droppings. From what the weather’s been doing we know the car turned in the road after ten o’clock last night. Grierson reckons that this man was shot before midnight, so it’s a hundred quid to a pinch of snuff that the car and the man are connected. It can’t have driven itself away, so that brings another man into the picture.’