‘Anyway, there I was, my business pretty well established in Scarborough, ticking over nicely, money coming in – the only cloud on the horizon, as usual, being the tendency of the local police to pounce on me whenever I got involved in a little bit of harmless naughtiness. Things were getting worse on that front, now I come to think of it, because for some years I’d had the benefit of a mutually satisfying arrangement with a certain detective sergeant, who sadly had just been transferred to the North West. He was a beauty: Herbert, I think his name was … Six foot five of solid muscle and a bottom like a ripened peach …’ He sighed and fell momentarily silent. ‘I’m sorry, I seem to have lost my drift.’
‘Business was ticking over nicely.’
‘Precisely. And then one afternoon … early in 1961, it would have been … this solicitor fellow, Proudfoot, turned up. As soon as he mentioned the name of Tabitha Winshaw, I knew that something special had arrived on my doorstep. Everybody knew about the Winshaws and their mad old sister, you see. It was the stuff of local legend. And now here was this slovenly, rather repulsive character – with whom, I’m pleased to say, my further dealings were kept to a minimum – bearing a message from the woman herself. Word of my reputation had reached her, it seemed, and she had a job for me. Quite a simple, innocuous little job it sounded at first. I’m sorry, are you ticklish?’
‘A little,’ I said. ‘Besides, you should really keep both hands on the wheel while you’re driving.’
‘You’re quite right, of course. Now, you’re aware, I think, that when Godfrey’s plane was shot down, he wasn’t the only person in it? There was a co-pilot. And apparently Tabitha had been brooding about this, and had decided that she wanted to trace this unfortunate man’s family and to make them some sort of financial reparation, by way of atonement, as she saw it, for the treachery carried out by her brother. So my job was to find them.’
‘Which you did?’
‘In those days, Michael, I was at the peak of my powers. Mental and physical. Such a task really presented no challenge to a man of my experience and abilities: it was the work of only a few days. But then I went one better, and managed to present Tabitha with rather more than she’d bargained for. I found the man himself.’
I stared at him in surprise. ‘You mean the co-pilot?’
‘Oh, yes. I found him alive and well and living in Birkenhead, and with a most fascinating story to tell. His name was Farringdon. John Farringdon. And this was the man that Lawrence Winshaw bludgeoned to death in the manner so vividly described in your manuscript.’
It took me a few seconds to take this in. ‘But how did he survive the crash?’
‘Parachuted to safety at the last moment.’
‘Does this mean … did it mean that Godfrey was still alive?’
‘Sadly, no. I did entertain some hopes, for a while. It would have been a tremendous coup on my part. But Mr Farringdon was quite adamant on that point. He himself had seen Godfrey consumed by the flames.’
‘So how on earth did you find this man?’
‘Well, it seems that he’d been picked up by the Germans and was imprisoned for the rest of the war. Then, when it was over, he returned home – anxious to be reunited with his family – but discovered that he had been reported dead, and that his mother had never survived the news. She’d died within a week of hearing it, and his father had remarried little more than a year later. And so he couldn’t bring himself to do it. To render all that grief … senseless. He kept the truth to himself, moved to a new town, took Farringdon as his new name, and began a long, lonely and restless existence, trying to build up some sort of life on these ruined foundations. There was one member of his family, a distant cousin, whom he had to take into his confidence when he needed to retrieve some personal documents; and that was the person who started me off on my search. He never came right out with it, but he wanted me to know, I’m sure. There were one or two carefully dropped hints – enough to send me off to Germany, to pick up the beginnings of the trail.’ He sighed again. ‘Ah, that was a happy time. Tabitha was paying my expenses. It was spring in the Rhine Valley. I struck up an all-too-brief friendship with a cowherd called Fritz: a vision of bronzed loveliness, fresh from the sunkissed slopes of the German Alps. I’ve been a pushover for anything in lederhosen ever since.’ We had reached Islington by now, and he turned off into a side street. ‘You must indulge an old man in his foolish reminiscences, Michael. The best years of my life are behind me, now. Only memories remain.’ He pulled over to the side of the road, about two feet from the kerb, the back end of the car sticking out alarmingly into the flow of traffic. ‘Well, here we are.’
We had arrived outside a small terraced house in one of Islington’s less fashionable byways. Findlay led me inside, up several flights of uncarpeted stairs until we reached the attic floor, where he threw open the door on to a room which caused me to gasp in sudden astonishment: for it was a perfect replica, as far as I could see, of the apartment described by Conan Doyle in The Sign of Four, when Sherlock Holmes first encounters the mysterious Thaddeus Sholto. The richest and glossiest of curtains and tapestries did indeed drape the walls, looped back here and there to expose some richly mounted painting or Oriental vase. The carpet, too, was of amber and black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly into it, as into a bed of moss. There were even two great tiger-skins thrown athwart it, increasing the suggestion of Eastern luxury, and a huge hookah standing upon a mat in the corner. To complete the hommage, a lamp in the fashion of a silver dove was hung from an almost invisible golden wire in the centre of the room: as it burned it filled the air with a subtle and aromatic odour.
‘Welcome to my little nest, Michael,’ said Findlay, shrugging off the raincoat which he had slung across his shoulders. ‘You’ll excuse all this kitsch, this ersatz Orientalism. I was brought up by uncouth parents, in surroundings of meanness and austerity. My life ever since has been an attempt to cast all that aside. But I have never been a wealthy man. What you see here is an expression of my personality. Voluptuousness on a low budget. Spread yourself out on the Ottoman while I go and make us some tea. Does Lapsang suit?’
The Ottoman turned out, on closer inspection, to be an MFI sofa-bed swathed in threadbare pseudo-Turkish blankets, but it was comfortable enough. Findlay’s tiny kitchen led off from the sitting room, so it was easy to continue our conversation as he busied himself with the kettle and the teapot.
‘This is a wonderful flat,’ I said. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘I moved down in the early sixties – almost immediately after my brush with the Winshaws. Partly to escape the attentions of the police, as I said: but there were larger reasons as well. After so many years, the narrowness, the insularity, the petty pride of provincial life had become more than could be borne by a man of my temperament. Oh, but this whole area was different then: it had a bit of style, before the brokers and the management consultants and all the other capitalist lackeys moved in. It used to be Bohemian, vibrant, thrilling. Painters, poets, actors, artists, philosophers, faggots, dykes, dancers; even the odd detective. Orton and Halliwell lived just around the corner, you know. Joe used to come round occasionally, but I can’t say I ever took to the man. It was over before you started with him. There wasn’t a shred of affection in it. Still, it was a terrible end they both came to, you wouldn’t wish that upon anybody. I was able to help the authorities in clearing up one or two small details, as it happens, although my name doesn’t appear in any of the official accounts.’
Interesting though I found these recollections, I was anxious to get back to the matter in hand. ‘You were telling me about Farringdon, the co-pilot,’ I prompted.