Dead end! thought Ian. Just when he had thought he was there, too. But ... it had happened before, and it would happen again. And maybe Reg Buller would still come up with something, from 'up north', where someone might have been careless — now that he knew, anyway, that there really was something to be careless about with the real Marilyn Francis, who didn't exist in Somerset House, or anywhere else except here, in the Elstree Guest House, and in the sad recollections of Gary and his 'old Mrs Smith'.
'Well . . .' He smiled at her sadly, and sat up in his chair.
When one lost, one cut one's losses gracefully. And, in any case, he hadn't wholly lost. 'Well, I'm most grateful to you, Mrs Champeney-Smythe — for your time, and your help.' On impulse he decided to give her more than that, as he stood up. 'I'm glad . . . Miss Francis had such a happy time, before . . . before the tragedy occurred.'
She stared at him without replying, as though she hadn't heard what he had said. Then she turned away, looking again dummy2
towards the table with its incongruous collection of souvenirs.
He coughed politely. 'Mrs Champeney-Smythe — ?'
She pointed. 'There is something. You can't have it. But you can look at it, Mr Robertson. They belonged to her.'
He looked at all of it, already defeated: wooden mouse, or brass frog? China tank or spindly glass horse (minus its tail)?
Old ginger beer bottle, advertising 'Burbank', a 'High Class Chemist' of Oxford? Unless Marilyn had left a message in the bottle, it was all rubbish. But he had to humour her. 'Which object do you mean?'
'Not the table — ' The thin finger stabbed irritably towards the table ' — the bookcase, Mr Robertson, the bookcase.'
There was indeed a bookcase behind the table, its mathematically aligned contents also part of the room's ornamentation: she had been looking at that all the time, not the bric-a-brac.
'Which books, Mrs Champeney-Smythe?' ' We would read our books, until it was time to go to bed' , he remembered. So what would Marilyn Francis's literary tastes run to?
'At the end there — at the end!' It seemed to irritate her that he needed direction.
There was a set of Dickens (which didn't look as though it had ever been opened) and a run of diminutive New University Society classics in red-and-gold bindings — and a wealth of better-read washed-out yellow Reprint Society dummy2
volumes which Basil Champeney-Smythe had surely collected, and which customarily stood out on the shelves of a thousand second-hand bookshops . . . The Robe, The Black Narcissus, Bryant and Pepys, Churchill's My Early Life . . .
But he didn't even know which shelf, which end: should he be looking for The Life of General Custer — ? Or even A History of the Repeating Rifle? ?
'The fairy books — I told you — at the end, there!'
'The — ?' What — ? Then he saw them — one old, and hardback, the other new, and paperback —
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Counties, by W. Y. Evans Wentz —
Who had ever heard of 'W. Y. Evans Wentz', for heaven's sake! Well . . . evidently the Oxford University Press, for a start! And a Penguin book — A Dictionary of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures, by Katherine Briggs —
He opened the Penguin. The right date, anyway: first published, 1976 — and in Penguin, 1977 . . . And, on the flyleaf, 'F.F. '78' — but who the hell was 'F.F.' — ?
He looked questioningly at Mrs Champeney-Smythe, then down again at the dictionary of fairies, which had fallen open in his hands at the point where the paperback binding had fallen apart with use, at page 175 — ' Fin Bheara' — was underlined.
And who the hell was ' Fin Bheara' — ?
He felt a cold hand on his backbone: Fin Bheara, alias dummy2
Finvarra, was apparently more than just the Fairy King of Ulster, which was 'Mad Dog' O'Leary's old stamping ground, but also maybe King of the Dead (and therefore a recipient of many of 'Mad Dog's' customers — ?) —
This foolish diversion of his concentration angered him.
'Who is "F.F.", Mrs Champeney-Smythe?'
'You are looking at the wrong book, Mr Robertson.' She closed her eyes as she spoke.
The paperback almost came apart in his hands as he juggled clumsily with Marilyn Francis's only known possessions to bring the stout OUP hardback to the top —
'Robbie, with love — Frances — 16.7.72'
'Who — ?' He realized that there was more than an inscription, there was a folded piece of paper —
It was a bookseller's bill, with a name and an address —
He looked back one last time into Lower Buckland churchyard, in which the second of his future book's bodies lay. But, unlike Jenny's lovely heroic Philip Masson, his own lovely, heroic 'Marilyn Francis' would at least remain decently undisturbed. For she was buried properly —
FRANCES
his loving wife
1948-1978
dummy2
— alongside her
ROBERT GAUVAIN FITZGIBBON
Captain, 39th (Royal Ulster) Lancers 1946-1974
Meanwhile, the Village Green was still as comfortingly empty as it had been when he had first arrived. Maybe it was just because it was the betwixt-and-between time of early evening, with the threat of rain from the low clouds which touched the trees on each side of the valley, which kept the inhabitants in their houses. But he might as well have been in Fin Bheara's country, in which Captain and Mrs Fitzgibbon now lived as of right. For the only living souls he'd seen so far were the old village-shopkeeper-cum-postmistress (who looked as though she already had one foot in Fin's kingdom, although she had given him useful information) and (quite fortuitously, but more useful still; and who might be said to have some connection with Fin's business) the village priest.
But the emptiness was reassuring, nevertheless.
So now he had his bearings again: he had parked the car prudently out of sight down that turning, just in case. So the post office must be down that lane, just to his left. And there should be a phone near that —
He had been lucky today, it had to be admitted. Lucky with the start Reg had given him, directing him to dummy2
Rickmansworth . . . and lucky, in a way, at Rickmansworth, during each of his three interviews. But luck was not such a wild card as most people liked to think, it was quite often the just reward for effort, with the Lord helping those who helped themselves. But those roadworks had been pure luck; and he would in any case have sought out the priest next.
Meeting him like that, right in the churchyard, had saved him time, undoubtedly, but —
And there was the phone-box. He should have noticed it first time round. And now, because he was lucky today, it wouldn't be vandalized. (Or anyway, phones didn't get vandalized in places like Lower Buckland.) (Tracing Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon wouldn't be too difficult, at least up to a point: it was the sort of thing John Tully and Reg Buller did well and quickly, with their wealth of varied experience.)
He was barely half an hour late phoning Jenny, which by her standards was nothing. So she'd still be in (and today, anyway, he was lucky). It wasn't vandalized. And he had plenty of change — (Tracing Captain Robert Gauvain Fitzgibbon, of the 39th Lancers, would be even easier: Captain Fitzgibbon, in life and death, would be a matter of record, public and military. Not, in this context, that he would be worth more than a passing reference or two or maybe a footnote, if his family was an interesting one; or — )