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‘I don’t know why you had to stick yourself in this end of town anyway … It’s too near the centre – what with that bowling alley and that so-called youth club – a lot of mindless do-gooders doing no good at all to them that’s going to the bad anyway, like rotten apples in a barrel
Upshire’s rare excursion into metaphor owed more to the quality of the malt being drunk than an attempt at humour, but again behind the words there had been resentment. ‘Why didn’t you and your new wife take a nice house in a quiet suburb instead of down there in that troublesome spot … It’s no wonder you get things put in your letterbox.’
The inspector probably guessed that it had been Mary’s choice, the large Victorian leftover in a terrace beside the station.
When the railway had first come to Newtown it had not impinged on the original village but discreetly held to the banks of the Lea where the river-barge traffic had once flourished. But the Victorians too were entrepreneurs in terms of their future and soon houses were needed to accommodate those whose business interests might lie in the City of London but whose horizons encompassed a wider land of England beyond the green woods and sleepy hamlets of the home counties. Railways brought trade and prosperity till even the squat little widow of Windsor was moved to approve, and with that blessing of crown and country, villas rose fast along the new steel lines which conveyed not only freight to the Midlands but also ladies eager to sample the delights of shopping in Oxford Street.
George Meredith’s heroine, Diana of the Crossways, complained to one enthusiast: ‘How I hate your railways … Cutting up the land and scarring its countenance for ever, its beauty will never be the same again
If these, not unmodern, sentiments had echoed over the century they had never struck any chord in Newtown, which had gone on grasping at commercial straws, both long and short, right down to the present recession. However, No. 2, Albert Crescent had not been one of the victims of this particular turn of fortune. There had never been money enough to convert it, unlike its neighbours, during the upsurge of the eighties, into a gold brick of plush offices for financial consultants and insurance brokers. Under the heel of circumstance these now had a tarnished look, gilt peeling from gingerbread, while No. 2 still stood in all its decayed splendour, an honourable relic.
‘I like it,’ Mary had said as soon as she saw it. ‘Far better-looking and half the price of those awful boxes on the estate where your friends the Lorimers live, and just look at the length of the back garden … Why, it goes right down to a river …’
‘Once you’ve fought your way through the undergrowth, yes, that’s the Lea, all right. A puddle of slime enriched with beer cans …’
‘You’ve never seen the Liffey,’ said Mary, complacently, ‘nor the East River for that matter. I guess we can clean up a little brook like the Lea. If we buy this house, Lennox, I’ll go half on the purchase price …’
‘You bloody won’t …’ But of course he’d been overruled, despite the fact that when she had stood up at the altar Mary Madeleine Blane had promised to obey.
He should not have been surprised, for this woman he had married – perhaps against his better judgement – was still an unknown quantity. When he asked her to marry him he knew it went against all his reason to do so; had he stopped to think he never would have made such a proposal …
But he had not stopped to think because he was caught up in the age-old folly which had nothing to commend or excuse it, except the fact that he was in love.
She came out from the drawing room when she heard him in the hall. Her kiss of greeting was by no means perfunctory.
‘You told John Upshire?’ she asked. ‘What did he have to say?’
‘Not a lot. You know what policemen are like.’
‘Oh, I do, I do …’ When she smiled, as she did now at the thought behind his words, her plain features lit up like a glint of sun on a cloudy day. ‘They’ve the face on them puts us all in the wrong. Let’s have some coffee, it’s just made.’
‘Does he think it’s me that’s to blame?’ she said later, as they sat by the fireside.
Kemp held nothing back from this new wife of his. ‘He did wonder about the possibility but I soon scotched that one. You and I have seen those letters, it’s me they’re aimed at.’
‘But why now, Lennox? Whoever’s writing them, they’re obsessed with some grievance against you.’
‘Well, I only wish they’d come out in the open with it.’
‘But that’s not the way it is with an obsession. It blocks the light of day for people, like a great wall. And it’s a wall that’s maybe been building up over a long time.’
Kemp looked across at her. She sat holding her coffee cup in both hands, frowning slightly at the effort of putting thoughts into exact words because when she was serious only the right words would do. It was one of the first things he had noticed about her during the short time she acted as his secretary, her way with words. Later, of course, he had realized that such adroit handling of the tools of speech could be put to many uses.
‘That’s why I’m wondering why they’re being sent now,’ Mary went on, ‘because something must have triggered them off, and the only thing I can think of is that you got married. Is there some woman in your life who might resent it?’
‘Whom I have cast aside like a worn-out glove?’ said Kemp, airily. ‘Oh, they must be thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, the women I’ve abandoned … Come off it, Mary, the only woman who has been affected by my marriage is yourself, and if I may say so, you’ve taken it rather well.’
‘You mean I have bettered myself, being rescued from a life of crime and marrying the boss into the bargain? Sounds quite a romantic fiction …’ But he could see she was only laughing at him as he went over and sat on the hearthrug at her feet. She curled her fingers in the tufts of hair on his forehead. ‘You’re getting a bit thin on top,’ she said. ‘I don’t see you as a breaker of hearts, Lennox, but I was serious about the letter-writer maybe being a woman, it’s a way women have …’
‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike … I don’t think that was said of a woman.’
‘Oh, you and your quotations … I’m serious, Lennox. You’ve been involved with women in a lot of your cases, not only the matrimonial ones. There must be someone out there who is bitter.’
‘It wasn’t a woman in the van that skedaddled the other night, and I don’t see a woman pushing firelighters through a door at seven in the morning. Much too obvious.’
‘She would have help, of course. Women don’t often act alone.’
‘You did, Mary Madeleine …’ Kemp could not see the point of never alluding to her past life; it was there before them both and, as he had accepted her, so it had become part of his life also.
‘I had grown used to being alone. It was the only way to survive … then …’
‘And now?’
Her face glowed in the firelight as she looked down at him.
‘Ah, now I’ve found a better way …’
‘No more talk then …’
But when he kissed her eyelids he saw first the fear in her eyes and knew what she was thinking. As he had once been afraid for her life so she was now for his.
Perhaps he should take more seriously what she had been saying, perhaps he should look back over his past cases, ransack his memory to find cause enough for someone to send him such poison through the post. He knew many of the phrases by heart, so often had they been repeated.
‘You’ll get your comeuppance, never fear …’
‘You wrecked lives, Kemp, let’s see yours get wrecked …’
‘I’ll get even if it’s the last thing I do …’
‘Vengeance is mine. I’ve waited long enough …’
Such sentences recurred over and over again in the six letters he had received during the last months, interspersed with more specific threats, a knife in the back, a breaking of bones, death by a variety of methods, all violent, couched in language not easily identifiable. There were misspellings, of course, but they could have been deliberate. ‘Comeuppance’ – not a word in everyday use – had been spelt correctly, as if a dictionary had been used but if so, why make other mistakes? There was a certain literary quality about the style, even semicolons were scattered about, and the grammatical errors looked false. Despite such contrivances the words flowed as if the writer knew very well what he or she was about, and feeling came through almost too well – a spillage of hate bursting its banks.
The letters were typewritten on plain paper torn off the kind of pad available at any stationers. The typing had the pepper-and-salt look made by a two-fingered typist, but that too could be misleading – any expert can imitate an amateur. The machine was manual not electronic, black carbon ribbon, the alignment fairly even with no smudging of the e’s and o’s … Someone who kept the keys clean or did not use that particular typewriter very often?
Except for this kind of muck … Kemp sighed. He would hand the lot over to John Upshire tomorrow and let the police get on with whatever analysis they could make of such unpromising material. He had already made photocopies for himself. He shovelled the letters back into their envelopes, plain brown manilla, all addressed to himself, Mr Lennox Kemp, at his new home. He studied the postmarks, all different, all districts of London from the City to outlying suburbs, the malevolent missives had obviously been simply popped into pillar boxes wherever the writer fancied. None had been posted here in Newtown, but there was local knowledge; references to ‘your posh office’ … ‘I seen your glossy girls go in and out’ … (That had an almost poetic ring to it.) ‘Choke you to death in a gravel pit’ was an obvious pointer to the main industrial activity along this stretch of the River Lea …
Kemp tossed the bundle into his briefcase and put it in the hall ready for the morning.
Mary was down first. She felt the draught halfway up the stairs and saw that the front door was standing wide open. It was a strong old-fashioned door of solid oak but the lock too had been old-fashioned and all too easily shattered, expertly done – and quietly. Where the wood had burned in the previous day’s fire the bolts had not drawn across properly.
Kemp surveyed the damage, and shook his head.
‘We kept open house last night,’ he observed, gloomily.
His briefcase had gone. It was all that had been taken.
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_524f19ea-cdd0-559c-ba15-3c8a3da0b512)
‘So you’ve lost the evidence?’ John Upshire sounded more scornful than sympathetic.
‘Evidence of what? That someone hates my guts? I know what was in those letters – that’s enough for me. But there’s plenty of evidence for your men to get started on – a broken lock, an arson attempt and a stolen briefcase.’
‘All my sergeant’s got is a sackful of ashes … As for the breaking and entering, why’d they only pinch your case? Anything in it apart from the letters?’
‘Luckily, no.’ The inspector was just the man to assuage anger, it was part of his job. But even that habitual stolidity could do little to take away Kemp’s sense of outrage at what he saw as the violation of his home. He had been burgled before, both at his flat and in his office, and had accepted such happenings as part of modern living, but then he had been a single man … What rankled now was that he and Mary had been upstairs in bed, wrapped in sleep or other blessedness. It was as if a stranger had stood and watched them … He shook off such unproductive thoughts. ‘I don’t take so much work home with me since I married, and all our thief got was a pocket calculator and a folder of brochures on – of all things – security systems.’ He laughed. ‘Talk about locking the stable door – Mary and I were just about to have the whole house done.’
‘Well, it looks as if you’d better get on with it. I’ve had a word with the officer on patrol. Constable Barnes was in Station Road about midnight. There was a bit of a fracas at the Victoria pub but he soon cleared that up, and his beat would take him round your crescent in the early hours and he saw no one acting suspiciously – in fact, he saw no one at all though there’s the usual number of cars and vans parked … He wouldn’t have been able to see your front door anyway for all those damned bushes in your garden. Yes, I take your point about the fire, I don’t believe in coincidence either. Someone wants to scare you, they begin by letting you know how easy it is to get at you and your house is the obvious target. That and the letters … Just our luck they managed to pinch them back.’
‘Pure chance,’ said Kemp. ‘There’s no way they could know where they were. I think you’re right, breaking in that door and leaving it open was just a bit of showing off. They never went further than the outer hall, they spotted the case and simply lifted it, probably thought it would cause me embarrassment if I had clients’ files in it. Anyway, apart from the writer, no one knows such letters exist except Mary and myself, and now you.’
‘And I’ve not mentioned them to anyone on the force. I was waiting to get them to put them under the usual analysis. Well, we’ll just have to bide our time and see if you get any more of the same.’
‘I hope not,’ said Kemp, fervently. ‘Such vicious stuff has an unnerving effect on one. You and I can handle break-ins and burglaries, even that knock to my car if it was part of the whole scheme, because it’s men’s hands that wield the chisels or turn the steering wheel … Even pushing fire-lighters through the letterbox makes a loutish kind of sense. Plenty of our minor criminals get a kick out of bashing property – makes them feel bigger than they are. Vandalism grown up. But the letters, that’s something else again, the sheer malice behind them, the anonymity …’
‘Let me see your copies on Saturday evening,’ said John Upshire, briskly. ‘I’m still to come, am I?’
‘Of course you are. Mary’s not the kind to let this business get her down. Nor am I, if it comes to that – which is just as well for I’ve enough obsessed clients without becoming one myself.’
As he returned from the police station to his own office Kemp attempted to switch his attention from personal matters to the more pressing affairs of the practice. Despite recent shake-ups in the profession, Gillorns remained the eminent legal firm in Newtown, with a high reputation for probity and fairness, and Kemp was determined to keep it that way. Having over the past few years gathered round him not so much a team as a coterie of lawyers who worked in their separate fields but could stand together when required, he knew that he was the pivot of the firm, he held it together. Like John Upshire, not all of them had approved of his marriage, perhaps sensing a change in him. Despite their being friends as well as colleagues, he had spoken to none about the letters, for the animosity displayed in them seemed too personal – at least so far. But he knew how easily the reputation of a legal firm can be damaged when the character of any member is impugned, and there had been more than a hint of that behind the writing.
Had Kemp confided in anyone it would have been Tony Lambert of his Trusts department, who had a wise head on young shoulders, but Tony had recently become engaged to a pretty law student from Australia and it did not seem fair to intrude upon his present starry-eyed contentment. Michael Cantley’s insight into the thought processes (where such could be discerned) of Newtown’s up-and-coming young criminals might be of help should the scaring tactics be repeated, but in Kemp’s view the mind of the anonymous writer was of a different generation. Cantley had been with the firm for many years; he might yet have to be consulted if old files were to be exhumed. So might Perry Belchamber who had come over from the Bar and specialized in matrimonial matters; if, in the past, a troubled family had eaten bitter fruit, their children’s teeth could be set on edge …
Kemp couldn’t find the right quotation for that so he dismissed the whole matter of the letters from his mind and concentrated on Friday’s business.
There was no lack of it, despite the recession having trailed its dusty underskirts over all aspects. Instead of houses happily changing hands weekly on the new estates built in the boom years, now the property files were full of repossessions, and anguished cries from the building societies. ‘Ignore them as long as you can,’ Kemp told Charles Copeland, his conveyancing clerk. ‘Where there’s a roof there’s hope … I’d rather be blamed for the law’s delay than have families out on the street.’
It saddened Kemp to handle the failures, the flow of bankruptcies, the winding up of small firms set up in the good times with such high hopes, those who had ventured too far, been too sanguine in their expectations and now found themselves facing a harsher reality.
Surprisingly, the figures for divorce had gone down. There were still the inevitable matrimonial disputes – paired-off humans being what they were – but couples were tending to stand together in adversity, or, as a cynic might have it, they were looking more closely at the financial consequences of splitting up one home and providing for two. A statistician might have an interest in this effect of hard times but there could be little comfort in it for moralists.
One of Kemp’s cases in court that morning brought him up against an old adversary, Nicholas Stoddart, who had been a colleague in the firm some years ago. Stoddart had left Gillorns in a move which was of benefit to both parties. Kemp had discovered in the past of this envious man a shady episode which might never have come to light had Stoddart not attempted to smear someone else, thus showing himself as not only untrustworthy but vindictive also. It was upon this latter ground rather than the misconduct itself – which could be seen as merely an ambitious young lawyer’s attempt to outsmart an opponent – that Kemp had accepted Stoddart’s resignation.
Nick had taken his undoubted talents as a bold litigation man to the City for a while, but now even there the sturdiest of companies were shedding twigs like trees under storm, and Stoddart was back in Newtown. Not that he would have it that way. According to Nick Stoddart, the local firm of Roberts could hardly wait to engage his services.
Watching him now, on his feet before the Bench, Kemp felt a grudging admiration for Nick’s powerful presence and skill in argument. He should have been a barrister, he thought – not for the first time – and indeed, Stoddart’s appearance would have been the better for a wig. As it was, his heavily handsome features seemed to be tacked on to a head too small to hold them and the brow which should have been impressive failed at the low hairline. To make up for this disunity – of which he must have been aware since he had once confessed to Kemp that he practised his important speeches in front of a mirror – Stoddart employed a trenchant style which had put the fear of God into many a hapless witness.
In today’s case there was no need for such histrionics. A mere neighbourhood dispute about barking dogs, bad feelings, bad language and some bad law; in Kemp’s opinion it should never have been brought before the Bench. Getting to his feet and saying so succinctly he caught the nods of approval from the magistrates and heard them dismiss the claim of Nick’s client, with costs against him. Those who had retained Kemp grinned all over their homespun faces, despite their Worships’ admonition for them too to go away and try to get on better with their neighbours.
That was entirely Nick’s fault, thought Kemp, he went at it as if it was a murder trial at the Bailey.
Kemp stuffed the folder into the tattered old satchel he was using in place of the stolen briefcase, and bowed his way from the court. On the stairs he met Stoddart who, not surprisingly, was in a black mood.
‘Damn that office at Roberts,’ he fumed. ‘They never get things right …’
‘Hullo, Nick,’ said Kemp. That’s what you’ve always done when you lose a case, blame someone else. You should have advised your client properly, taken a closer look at the papers instead of indulging your penchant for bully-boy tactics … But Kemp knew better than to voice his thoughts; he didn’t want a brawl on the steps of the court.
‘What sods we’ve got on that bench … Soapy shopkeepers who don’t know their arse from their elbow when it comes to law …’ Stoddart was still splattering blame around like hailstones.
Kemp shrugged. ‘Some you lose, some you win. Don’t take it to heart, Nick, you’ve had victories in your time.’
But Stoddart only glared at him. ‘I can do without your advice, thank you, Kemp …’ He muttered, ‘You … you just watch your own step …’
He swung away across the crowded floor of the entrance hall cannoning into a hapless usher on his way to the door. She was not the only one to stare after him in surprise. Kemp had long since buried his hostility towards Stoddart. There had been a future for the man with Gillorns, he had been well thought of at the London office. Did he still blame Kemp for what had amounted to dismissal? It had all happened years ago and he and Stoddart had met several times since Nick’s return to Newtown, yet until today he had never wondered about any lingering bitterness … Those blasted letters … They were making him look askance at everyone.
On Friday evenings Kemp closed the office early, a custom which pleased the staff mightily, though it was not intended solely for their benefit. But it enabled the partners, the qualified assistants and the articled clerk to reserve a table in a local hostelry for refreshment and an informal chat about the week’s work. There was little enough time for them to meet during office hours, each being in a sense compartmentalized within their own sphere, so it was an opportunity to raise issues, air particular problems and give voice to complaints on a more personal level than was possible within earshot of the clerical staff.
It was from such meetings that Kemp took his soundings as to the health, or otherwise, of his small establishment.
For the most part they were congenial get-togethers; policy decisions might be taken or abandoned, tricky points of law argued where diverse opinions were better than just one; occasionally, as on this evening, they were merely social. Now it was congratulations to Tony Lambert upon his getting engaged.
Glasses were raised to him. ‘Never thought you’d get round to it, Tony … What brought you to the brink?’
Tony pushed at his large spectacles, a habit he had when embarrassed. The gesture tended to draw attention to a certain owl-like solemnity he had, an asset with his elderly clients. ‘I suppose it was meeting someone like Anita,’ he said, simply answering the question.
‘Miss Allardyce …’ Michael Cantley turned to Kemp. ‘You’ve met her?’
‘I’ve seen her about,’ said Kemp. ‘I gather she’s at Guildford studying law.’
‘She comes down here weekends to stay with her brother. He works for the Development Corporation … That’s how we met.’ Tony was flushed and happy. ‘Which reminds me, I hope you’re all coming to our party on Tuesday night out at The Leas – that’s Zachary Allardyce’s place … He and Anita got together on the invitations …’
‘Glad to see you settled at last.’ Kemp meant what he said. He valued his young colleague highly, and knew his circumstances. Tony was a native of Newtown, his parents on the lower end of the local gentry, owning land in the original village. Tony, their only child, had lived with them, succoured them in their old age like a dutiful son, and mourned them when they died within months of each other.
In the past Tony had been seen around with various perfectly proper young women but the relationships had somehow never quite ‘taken’ … He was a serious type, though not a prig, and modest about his considerable intellect. It was said the Allardyce girl was bright … Kemp wondered if it was loneliness after his parents’ death that had brought Tony to take this step towards marriage. At least people can’t say that about me, he thought – I’d been on my own for so long I’d got used to it. He looked across at Tony who smiled back as if they followed the same line of thought.
‘I’m only following your example, Lennox. Taking the plunge doesn’t seem to have done you any harm …’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Sally Stacey, ‘I don’t get the tax figures from Mr Kemp as quickly as I used to. I think his mind’s on other things …’
‘And I had to remind him about a maintenance hearing last week which he forgot,’ said Perry Belchamber. ‘Time was when it was him did all the reminding round here.’
‘You have been distrait …’ Michael Cantley had been happily married for years, and was prepared to make allowances. ‘You did rather take the whole place on your shoulders before this, and now you have your own worries setting up home and all that …’
This was surely the time to tell them … Explain that the reason his mind had not been entirely on business lately had nothing to do with Mary or his marriage. They had the right to know about the letters, these colleagues and friends of his … They would exhibit astonishment, outrage, but he would have their sympathy.
But Franklyn Davey, their young articled clerk, was rather nervously putting a question about a recent case in the Court of Appeal, and as everyone clamoured to give their point of view, the moment passed.
Kemp was to regret its passing …
‘You’ll be sure to bring Mary to Anita’s party next week,’ Tony said to him as the meeting was breaking up. ‘We’ve seen so little of her, and I always liked her when she worked in the office. She might find it a little awkward, of course, seeing us all again in such different circumstances …’
Kemp laughed.
‘I’ve come to the conclusion that my wife can handle any situation, but thanks for the thought. We’ll both be delighted to come …’
Once again he would like to have drawn Tony aside and told him about the threats and the break-in, if it was only to share the burden with someone … Yet he hesitated, unwilling to strike a sour note on the evening of the younger man’s celebration. In the past it had been Tony Lambert who had shared his confidences when Kemp felt it necessary, now the timing for such things was all wrong …
Yet as he walked home through the darkening streets he had a premonition that somehow he had missed a chance which would not be given again. He should have grasped it firmly when it was to his hand, not let it be whisked away in a moment of indecision.
