Uncle Tony.
His mobile phone rang. He checked the screen. Sarah Glyde lunged at a bodkin on the table and he thrust the blade at her; catching the bodkin, he sent it skittering over the wood. She crashed against the French doors and slumped to the floor.
He put his fingers to his lips and answered the phone, the blade poised. If it were him he would still shout for help.
‘Is that Jack Harmon?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Jackie here at Clean Slate. I’m sorry to bother you so late. Stella’s not picking up on her mobile or at home. She said she was going to see you – is she there?’ The words filled his ear. Jack tapped the table with the point of the blade, making nicks in the wood.
‘She’s not,’ he replied pleasantly.
‘I left her a message. It’s not like Stella not to return calls. If you know where she is…’
‘What’s the message?’
Sarah Glyde was quaking, hugging her knees. She looked defeated; he knew the signs. Now that she was penitent, he imagined soothing her. It was his Achilles heel that he wanted to take care of his Hosts.
‘A man called Colin rang. He may be a plasterer. I’m relying on guesswork because the line was terrible. I think now he said “teeth” and I’ve been going over it and I think it must be a dentist. It might be a referral. We have one dentist on our books, as you know, but he’s called Ivan, so it’s not him. Never mind, I suppose it can wait until the morning.’
Afterwards Jack slipped the telephone into his pocket. Signs were all around him, like a game of Patience falling into place.
‘What was your brother’s name?’
‘Antony.’
‘Do you ever call him Tony?’ The answer was nudging him before she spoke. He too was shaking.
‘No.’ She was staring past Jack and he looked quickly around but there was no one there. ‘Some people do, it depends when they knew him.’
‘Tony Glyde?’
‘Antony was my mother’s son from her first husband who died in a plane he was piloting back from France. It went down in the sea off Shoreham. His name was Challoner. He was a dentist too. Really Antony’s my half-brother.’
The words were lost in a rush of white sound. A woman with a dog vanishing amongst the trees.
‘…I want to call him Flyte but that’s the Waugh novel, and anyway that was the second husband…’
The room reeled, the clay heads tipped crazily in urgent conference, skulls crashing. Someone was shouting. His throat hurt because it was his own voice.
‘No. No. No.’
The wall was cold on his forehead. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Is he buried in a village called Bishopstone?’ Jack walked towards the heads. Sarah Glyde encircled them with her arms. She was not fearful for herself.
‘How did you know?’
‘Does he… do you, have a brother called Ivan?’
‘That’s Antony’s third name. Simon Antony Ivan Challoner. Bit of a mouthful – in the family we’ve always called him Antony. At work he prefers Ivan. What about him?’
‘I clean for him,’ Jack muttered. For once he could not marshal facts.
‘He told me he didn’t have a cleaner.’
‘You saw him on the day of the murder.’ Jack was trying to keep to the point. ‘What’s the address of Challoner’s surgery?’ He knew the answer.
‘Two hundred and forty-two Kew Gardens Terrace.’
Two hundred and forty-two. His set number the day Stella boarded his train and the number on the last page of the A–Z. Nothing is a waste of time; everything leads somewhere.
‘I had an eleven o’ clock appointment with Antony. I did tell the police. He wasn’t working; he never does on Mondays. He gave me a filling. I remember because he caught my gum and made it bleed. Peculiar slip for he never makes mistakes.’
‘The time was wrong.’
‘What time?’
‘What happened when you got there?’
Sarah Glyde addressed his mother’s sculpture. ‘He didn’t answer the door, but I had his key so I let myself in and sat in the waiting room. It’s silly, but I didn’t feel I could go upstairs to his flat. He’s a private man. He used to hate it if I went into his room when we were young – as you know I still can’t. I read a magazine.’
‘How long for?’
‘It felt like an age. I was about to go when he arrived. So maybe about forty-five minutes? It wasn’t like him to be late either.’
‘Why was he late? Did he say?’
‘Neither of us mentioned it. I supposed it was my fault. I’m absent-minded. Antony never gets appointments wrong. As I said, he never makes mistakes.’ The last words were spoken with less conviction.
‘We now know that the murder could have happened at least three-quarters of an hour earlier.’
Jack gripped the table to stop himself from falling. Neither of them had noticed that he had put down the knife.
‘How was your brother?’
The light in the bulb burned out with a ping. Moonlight gave the studio the appearance of a negative image.
‘He was flustered and irritable and forgot to give me an injection.’
They did not move; statues both.
‘Where is Ivan Challoner now?’
Imperceptibly she shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
The calor gas heater ticked as it cooled. The clay heads were silhouetted in the glass of the French doors. Mother and son faced each other in wordless communion as they never could in life. The knife was on the table between them. The quiet in the deserted studio was broken by the call of geese flying over the water, wings beating the night air. Their honking died to nothing as the birds headed towards the wetlands out at Barnes.
Beyond the garden wall the ebbing tide of the River Thames and traffic on the Great West Road marked the passing of time.
61
Monday, 24 January 2011
Ivan lit the candle and placed it on the dressing table where she could see it. The flame flared and steadied, triplicated in the three-way mirror and the room came to life. She was watching. He loved how she observed him, her expression unchanging, taking him in. In her presence his simplest action was witnessed. The flame nearly went out; shadows jumped and danced on the walls. The room was busy, but she had eyes only for him.
There was a draught; he had promised to locate it and block it up. She felt the cold. The house was old; there were cracks in the skirtings and gaps in the floorboards; seams ran through the plastered ceilings and sashes were swollen so that windows did not shut properly. She minded less than him about the state of the house; she agreed it would be disruptive to have workmen crawling all about the place. However, this was the room in which she spent her time and he had promised to keep it perfect. Tonight he would tell her about Stella Darnell and she would have good advice to give him.
No one had ever said no to Ivan before and he did not like it.
He risked another look and found he was right: her eyes were boring into his back, undressing him, caressing him. These days he rarely felt desire; he felt it now.
As this was her room, so the house was his special place. He had shown her his boyhood carvings in the tree, helping her so that she could climb up to the next branch and sit in the hollow. She had been more agile than him; he had not dared climb, telling her he was frightened of heights. She had laughed. She was not laughing at him, he told himself. Unlike Stella she had jumped at the chance to come.
She would not betray him.
When she had asked for his news, he had been reticent. Oh, where to begin, he had prevaricated, instead going to make her a cup of tea. Now he was putting off talking about Stella Darnell, repositioning the make-up on her dressing table, which in a minute would annoy her. Not yet; her smile was genuine. He had wanted her from the first moment he had seen her, he told her again.