‘A dangerous man, Michael. A desperate man.’ Findlay emerged from the kitchen and handed me a cracked bone-china cup filled with steaming tea. ‘Not a vicious man, by any means. Capable of strong feelings and great personal loyalty, I would have said. But a man embittered; destroyed by circumstance. He had never managed to settle; had drifted around the country for years, taking factory jobs, casual jobs, edging closer and closer to the world where private enterprise starts shading into crime. Getting by pretty well on a combination of versatility and personal charm. Because he was indeed charming: and handsome, in a chiselled sort of way. His eyes were like blue velvet, I remember, and he had the longest and most luxuriant of eyelashes: not unlike your own, if you’ll permit me a small compliment.’
I looked away, bashful.
‘I might almost have been tempted to try my luck, but his inclinations lay only too clearly in the opposite direction. A breeder, through and through. He claimed to have conquered a few hearts in his time, and it was easy enough to believe. To sum up, a charismatic rogue: not by any means an uncommon type, in the post-war period, although he had more excuse than most for going to the bad.’
‘And what did you tell him, exactly?’
‘Well, first of all I told him that I was acting on behalf of the family of the late Godfrey Winshaw. That in itself had an extraordinary effect. He immediately became very passionate and animated. It was clear that Godfrey had inspired him with feelings of the most devoted friendship.’
‘As he seems to have done with everybody: Tabitha being the most extreme example.’
‘Quite. So this naturally brought us on to the subject of the plane crash, and raised the tricky question of whether I should tell him about Tabitha and her eccentric theory. As things turned out, it could scarcely be avoided, because Farringdon himself was in no doubt about the matter. He was convinced that the Germans had been tipped off. He said that their plane had been intercepted well before it reached its destination, and well before it could have been picked up by radar, in normal circumstances. Somehow or other, the enemy had been forewarned of their mission.’ Findlay drained his teacup and stared thoughtfully at the leaves, as if they could offer a reading of the past. ‘I could tell at once that there hadn’t been a single day in the last eighteen years of this man’s life when he hadn’t thought about this incident, puzzled over it, agonized and baffled. Wondering who the traitor might have been. Wondering what he would do to the villain if fate ever sent him his way.’ He put the cup down and shook his head. ‘A dangerous man, Michael. A desperate man.’
Findlay stood by the window and drew the heavy, slightly moth-eaten curtains, after taking a final look outside at an evening which had now turned rainy and cold.
‘It’s getting very late,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d care to stay the night, and we could continue this story in the morning. Sadly this is a small flat and there is only the one bed, but –’
‘It’s only twenty to nine,’ I pointed out.
Findlay smiled apologetically and sat down opposite me with a crestfallen air. ‘It’s no use, I know. You see through the wiles of a lonely and pathetic old man. I disgust you, of course. Try not to make it obvious, Michael. That’s all that I ask.’
‘It’s not that at all –’
‘Please, no kind words. You’ve come to carry out a simple business transaction, I realize that. Information is all that you want from me. Once you have it, I can be discarded, like a used rag.’
‘Far from it, I —’
‘To resume.’ He waved me into silence with an imperious hand. ‘I had no intention of letting the odious lawyer share in my glory, and so on my return to Yorkshire I requested an immediate interview with Tabitha in person: which was duly arranged. The asylum could only be reached, I discovered, by means of a long drive over the moors, and my first sight of it filled me with gloom and trepidation. Probably there is only one more bleak and desolate spot in the entire area. I refer, of course, to Winshaw Towers itself.
‘I was shown into Tabitha’s private apartment, which was at the top of one of the highest towers in the building. My impression, I can assure you, was not one of talking to a madwoman. Certainly her room seemed to be in a severe state of disarray. It was scarcely possible to move for all the piles of magazines, all those dreadful titles to do with aviation and bomber jets and military history. But the woman herself seemed to be quitecompos mentis. To be brief, I told her of my discovery, and she reacted quite calmly. She said that she needed a little time to digest the information, and asked if I would mind amusing myself for half an hour or so, by walking in the grounds. At the end of this period I came back to her room and she handed me a letter, addressed to Mr Farringdon. That was that. I didn’t inquire after its contents; merely put it in the post when I got back to town.
‘I got to know that journey pretty welclass="underline" I must have done it four or five times after that, because very soon after I had posted the letter, Farringdon himself arrived in Scarborough. This would have been in September. It seemed that Tabitha had asked to see him, and that I had been trusted with the task of escorting him out to the Institute. They had several long interviews over the next few days. Whatever they discussed, it was kept a close secret, even from myself. Each time, I waited on a bench in the gardens, overlooking the moors, and read some pages of Proust – I think I must have got through most of the first two volumes – and every day when we drove home, my passenger would sit in grim and impenetrable silence, or chat idly about some wholly unrelated topic. It wasn’t until our very last visit that I was readmitted into Tabitha’s presence, and for once it was Farringdon who had to suffer this inglorious banishment.
‘ “Mr Onyx,” she said, “you have shown yourself to be a man of integrity. The time has come when I must trust you with some secrets regarding my family which I feel sure you will keep to yourself.” I can’t do the voice, I’m afraid. Mimicry has never been one of my talents. “In a few days’ time, thanks to the good offices of my brother Mortimer, I shall be released from this confinement for the first time in nearly twenty years.” I remember congratulating her in some awkward phrase or other, but she was having none of that. “It will only be temporary, I’m sure. My brother Lawrence persists in the most implacable opposition to any suggestion that I should be set completely at liberty. That is because he is a liar and a murderer.” “Strong words,” I said. “Nothing but the truth,” she answered. “You see, I have written evidence of his perfidy, and it is now my intention to put this evidence into your hands for safe-keeping.” I asked her what form this evidence took, and she told me about the note, whose nature, I believe, is already well known to you. It was her hope that this note was still to be found in the guest room where she had always stayed when visiting Winshaw Towers, in the pocket of a cardigan which she had last seen in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. She proposed to retrieve it as soon as possible and pass it over to me: and to this end we agreed to meet on the afternoon of Mortimer’s birthday party, at the very edge of the grounds, near a spot which was consecrated, believe it or not, for the burial of various dogs which had had the misfortune to live out their miserable lives as part of the Winshaw family.’
‘Of course – and Tabitha met you there, all right, but you were interrupted by Mortimer, and he thought that she was jabbering away to herself in the bushes.’
‘Precisely. Luckily he didn’t notice my presence, although the scent of this cheap but rather exotic perfume to which I’ve always been partial – excessively partial, it has been argued – could hardly fail to escape his attention. In any case, it made no difference, because Tabitha and I had already concluded our business – without any success at all, I’m afraid to say. The note was nowhere to be found in her room, and she hadn’t had the time to look for it anywhere else. Besides, the house is enormous. It might have taken days, even weeks. However’ – and here he favoured me with a rather frosty smile – ‘it appears that you succeeded where even I, the fabled, the infamous, the redoubtable Findlay Onyx drew the most unequivocal of blanks. I wonder if you’d care to tell me how you managed it.’