Now, however, with our knowledge of the events of July 3rd, 1988, it is logical to look back from the suicide of a desperate woman and the disappearance of her second husband to Geoffrey's death in 1971, and ask whether the person whose sympathies lay with Verity was a young and impressionable Cambridge undergraduate called Peter Fenton. Newmarket is less than 20 miles from Cambridge, and Peter was known to make frequent visits to the family of a friend from his Winchester College days who lived ten doors away from Geoffrey and Verity Standish in Cadogan Square. There is no evidence to rebut Peter and Verity's own claims that their first meeting was at a party at Peter's friend's house in 1978, but it would be curious if their paths hadn't crossed earlier. Certainly, the friend, Harry Grisham, remembers the Standishes being regular guests at his parents' dinner parties.
But, assuming Peter's involvement, what could have happened seventeen years after Geoffrey's murder to drive Verity into killing herself and Peter into vanishing? Did one of them betray the other inadvertently? Had Verity been ignorant of what Peter had done, and learned by accident that she'd married her first husband's murderer? We may never know, but it is a strange coincidence that two days before Peter left for Washington the following advertisement appeared in the personal column of the Times:
"Geoffrey Standish. Will anyone knowing anything about the murder of Geoffrey Standish on the All near Newmarket 10/3/71 please write to Box 431."
Anne Cattrell
*11*
Terry was put out to discover that his clothes were still wet when he finally stumbled out of his bedroom in an old T-shirt and shorts of Deacon's, rubbing his shaven head and yawning sleep away. "I can't go out in your god-awful stuff, Mike. I mean I've got a reputation to consider. Know what I'm saying? You'll have to go shopping on your own while I wait for this lot to dry."
"Okay." Deacon consulted his watch. "I'd better get moving then, or I'll miss the chance to break Hugh's nose."
"You really going to do that?"
"Sure. I was also planning to buy you some new gear for a Christmas present, but if you're not there to try it on-" he shrugged. "I'll get you some reading books instead."
Terry was back, fully dressed, in under three minutes. "Where did you put my coat?"
"I chucked it in the bin downstairs while you were having your bath."
"What you want to do that for?"
"It had Walter's blood all over it." He took a Barbour from a hook on the wall. "You can borrow this till we buy you a new one."
"I can't wear that," said Terry in disgust, refusing to take it. "Jesus, Mike, I'll look like one of those poncy gits who drive around in Range Rovers. Supposing we meet someone I know?"
"Frankly," growled Deacon, "I'm more concerned about meeting someone I know. I haven't worked out yet how to explain why a foulmouthed, shaven-headed thug is-A-staying in my flat and-B-wearing my clothes."
Terry put on the Barbour with bad grace. "Considering how much of my puff you smoked last night you ought to be in a better mood."
Barry lay in bed and listened to his mother's heavy tread on the stairs. He held his breath while she held hers on the other side of his door. "I know you're awake," she said in the strangulated voice that seemed to start somewhere in her fat stomach and squeeze up out of her blubbery mouth. The door handle rattled. "Why have you locked the door?" The voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "If you're playing with yourself again, Barry, I'll find out."
He didn't answer, only stared at the door while his fingers gripped and squeezed her imaginary neck. He fantasized about how easy it would be to kill her and hide her body somewhere out of sight-in the front parlor, perhaps, where it could sit for months on end with no visitors to disturb it. Why should someone so unlovely and unloved be allowed to live? And who would miss her?
Not her son...
Barry fumbled for his glasses and brought his world back into focus. He noticed with alarm that his hands were trembling again.
>
"Why haven't you ever been arrested?" asked Deacon as Terry selected a pair of Levi's, saying they'd be "a doddle to nick." (He made a habit of locating security cameras and staying blind side of them, Deacon noticed.)
"What makes you think I ain't?"
"You'd have been sent back into care."
The boy shook his head. "Not unless I told them the truth about myself, which I ain't never done. Sure I've been arrested, but I was always with old Billy when it happened so he took the rap. He reckoned I'd have trouble with poofs if I went into an adult prison or be sent back to the shirt-lifter if I gave my right age, so it were him what did the time and not me." His gaze shifted restlessly about the shop. "How about a jacket, then? They're on the far side." He set off purposefully.
Deacon followed behind. Were all adolescents so ruthlessly self-centered? He had an unpleasant picture of this terrible child latching on to protectors like a leech in order to suck them dry, and he realized that Lawrence's advice ibout keeping one step ahead was about as useful as pissing p the wind. Any halfway decent man with a sense of moral duty was putty in Terry's hands, he thought.
"I like this one," said Terry, taking a dark work jacket off a coathanger and thrusting his arms into the sleeves. "What d'you think?"
"It's about ten times too big for you."
"I'm still growing."
"I'm damned if I'll be seen walking around with a mobile Barrage balloon."
"You ain't got the first idea of fashion, have you? Everyone wears things big these days." He tried the next size down. "Tight stuff's what guys like you pranced around in n the seventies, along with flares and beads and long hair and that. Billy said it was good to be young then, but I reckon you must've looked like a load of poofs."
Deacon lifted his lip in a snarl. "Well, you've got nothing to worry about then," he said. "You look like a paid-up member of the National Front."
"I ain't got a problem with that." Terry looked pleased with himself.
Barry stood in the doorway and watched the back of his mother's head where she was slumped on a chair in front of the television, her feet propped on a stool. Sparse, bristly hair poked out of her pink scalp and cavernous snores roared from her mouth. The untidy room smelled of her farts, and a sense of injustice overwhelmed him. It was a cruel fate that had taken his father and left him to the mercies of a ... his fingers flexed involuntarily ... PIG!
Terry found a shop that was selling Christmas decorations and posters. He selected a reproduction of Picasso's Woman in a Chemise and insisted Deacon buy it.
"Why that one?'' Deacon asked him.
"She's beautiful."
It was certainly a beautiful painting, but whether or not the woman herself was beautiful depended on taste. It marked the transition between Picasso's blue and rose periods, so the subject had the cold, emaciated melancholy of the earlier period enlivened by the pink and ochre hues of the later. "Personally, I prefer a little more flesh," said Deacon, "but I'm happy to have her on my wall."
"Billy drew her more than anyone else," said Terry surprisingly.
"On the pavements?"
"No, on the bits of paper we used to burn afterwards. He copied her off of a postcard to begin with, but he got so good at it that he could do her out of his head in the end." He traced his finger along the clear lines of the woman's profile and torso. "See, she's real simple to draw. Like Billy said, there's no mess in this picture."
"Unlike the Leonardo?"
"Yeah."
It was true, thought Deacon. Picasso's woman was glorious in her simplicity-and so much more delicate than da Vinci's plumper Madonna. "Maybe you should become an artist, Terry. You seem to have an eye for a good painting."