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Authors: J. M. Gregson
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whether those two events might be connected.’
‘I don’t think they are,’ Craven still did not look up. His words carried no certainty: they had the automatic, illogical defiance of an adolescent losing an argument.
‘They may not be. It is part of our business to seek connections between facts. The solutions to murder inquiries normally emerge when we find the connections which bear on the particular death. Working as we are in this case so long after the murder, it is more than usually difficult to unearth those facts which are likely to be significant.’ He spoke like a tutor taking an undergraduate through an intricate point of theory. ‘Who else in the group of people around your father knew that you were exploring the possibilities of the site of Tall Timbers?’
Now at last Craven looked up. It was a quick, fearful glance into his questioner’s eyes, where he discovered nothing. He had no idea how much Lambert knew; having been caught out once, he opted for honesty. ‘I didn’t tell them, but they found out.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes. Planning applications are published in the small print of the local rag. I don’t know who told whom, but someone spotted it and told the others.’
‘And it wasn’t popular?’
Craven gave a smile in which there was no mirth. ‘That’s an understatement. When I came into the house for my weekly visit, all hell broke loose around me.’
‘What was your father’s reaction?’
‘Does that really matter? The old man’s dead; can’t we let him rest in peace?’ The ludicrousness of that conventional sentiment in the face of an exhumation struck him too late; he signified with a small, hopeless shrug of the shoulders that his rhetoric needed no answer. ‘Dad hated the idea that I wouldn’t take over Tall Timbers when he was gone, though I think he knew enough to suspect I never would. The thought that it might actually be demolished to make way for new building hadn’t even occurred to him. He took it badly.’
In his misery, David Craven felt a need to explain, when he might have been better to say no more. ‘Dad came from humble origins. His father was a professional cricketer—like H. G. Wells’s father,’ he added inconsequentially. ‘I believe Gran ddad, who was dead before I was born, played with Jack Hobbs and Frank Woolley.’ For a moment, Bert Hook, a sterling club seamer himself for many a year, saw David Craven as a boy on the playing fields of some Greyfriars replica, pleading for a little vicarious glory among his peers, recounting this accident of antecedence which surfaced even now as he strove for sympathy. ‘He worked hard to educate Dad as a surveyor. Dad grew up in a terraced Victorian cottage in Bristol: his mother took in washing when times were hard during the winter. To him, Tall Timbers was a proof that he had made it in life, a guarantee of prosperity. He lived in the house long enough to grow to love it; he couldn’t understand that his son should not feel that way about it.’
‘So he was annoyed.’ Lambert pulled him gently back to the present. ‘Did he threaten to do anything about his annoyance?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our information from Alfred Arkwright is that he planned to change his will.’
‘He did. And not in my favour. Under the terms of the new will, I believe Tall Timbers would no longer have come to me.’
It was so open an admission, and the speaker looked so wretched, that it sounded for a moment like the prelude to a full confession. But Craven said no more. He had about him now the sort of relief that sits eventually upon people who have been discovered in deceit and forced to abandon it.
If he was indeed guilty of that ancient, primitive horror, the murder of a father by his firstborn son, they were not going to hear it from his own lips.
6
It was a relief to leave Craven’s office and the raw red building which held it. It was not a persuasive advertisement for the
‘I don’t think they are,’ Craven still did not look up. His words carried no certainty: they had the automatic, illogical defiance of an adolescent losing an argument.
‘They may not be. It is part of our business to seek connections between facts. The solutions to murder inquiries normally emerge when we find the connections which bear on the particular death. Working as we are in this case so long after the murder, it is more than usually difficult to unearth those facts which are likely to be significant.’ He spoke like a tutor taking an undergraduate through an intricate point of theory. ‘Who else in the group of people around your father knew that you were exploring the possibilities of the site of Tall Timbers?’
Now at last Craven looked up. It was a quick, fearful glance into his questioner’s eyes, where he discovered nothing. He had no idea how much Lambert knew; having been caught out once, he opted for honesty. ‘I didn’t tell them, but they found out.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes. Planning applications are published in the small print of the local rag. I don’t know who told whom, but someone spotted it and told the others.’
‘And it wasn’t popular?’
Craven gave a smile in which there was no mirth. ‘That’s an understatement. When I came into the house for my weekly visit, all hell broke loose around me.’
‘What was your father’s reaction?’
‘Does that really matter? The old man’s dead; can’t we let him rest in peace?’ The ludicrousness of that conventional sentiment in the face of an exhumation struck him too late; he signified with a small, hopeless shrug of the shoulders that his rhetoric needed no answer. ‘Dad hated the idea that I wouldn’t take over Tall Timbers when he was gone, though I think he knew enough to suspect I never would. The thought that it might actually be demolished to make way for new building hadn’t even occurred to him. He took it badly.’
In his misery, David Craven felt a need to explain, when he might have been better to say no more. ‘Dad came from humble origins. His father was a professional cricketer—like H. G. Wells’s father,’ he added inconsequentially. ‘I believe Gran ddad, who was dead before I was born, played with Jack Hobbs and Frank Woolley.’ For a moment, Bert Hook, a sterling club seamer himself for many a year, saw David Craven as a boy on the playing fields of some Greyfriars replica, pleading for a little vicarious glory among his peers, recounting this accident of antecedence which surfaced even now as he strove for sympathy. ‘He worked hard to educate Dad as a surveyor. Dad grew up in a terraced Victorian cottage in Bristol: his mother took in washing when times were hard during the winter. To him, Tall Timbers was a proof that he had made it in life, a guarantee of prosperity. He lived in the house long enough to grow to love it; he couldn’t understand that his son should not feel that way about it.’
‘So he was annoyed.’ Lambert pulled him gently back to the present. ‘Did he threaten to do anything about his annoyance?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our information from Alfred Arkwright is that he planned to change his will.’
‘He did. And not in my favour. Under the terms of the new will, I believe Tall Timbers would no longer have come to me.’
It was so open an admission, and the speaker looked so wretched, that it sounded for a moment like the prelude to a full confession. But Craven said no more. He had about him now the sort of relief that sits eventually upon people who have been discovered in deceit and forced to abandon it.
If he was indeed guilty of that ancient, primitive horror, the murder of a father by his firstborn son, they were not going to hear it from his own lips.
6
It was a relief to leave Craven’s office and the raw red building which held it. It was not a persuasive advertisement for the
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