The Riddle of the River Read online

  ‘Go on then – what is it?’ she insisted, tantalised.

  ‘I manage Heffers bookshop. You probably go there from time to time, don’t you? I quite enjoy it, as a matter of fact. Books are much more in my line than machines, I’ll admit. And it does give me my independence, after all. I live in the rooms over the shop – no one knows about my comings and goings!’ He smiled at his father indulgently.

  ‘Rooms over a shop?’ cried Gwen, shocked. ‘But – but – you’ll give all that up, won’t you, when you become the Archer heir? You’re like a sort of gentleman Cinderella.’

  ‘You’re stupid, Gwen,’ shouted the smallest of the boys rudely. ‘Cinderella Minderella!’

  ‘Oh, be quiet,’ she answered back with no less rudeness. ‘Brothers!’ she added with a flash of contempt, then turned back to Mr Archer for sympathy. ‘Do you have any?’ she asked him.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied, with what seemed to me to be a slight shade of reluctance. ‘I do have a brother.’

  ‘Is he as awful as mine?’ she said. ‘Must he work for his living also? What does he do?’

  ‘He isn’t at all awful,’ said Julian. ‘He’s an invalid and a scholar. He stays at home and writes books, very long ones, each of which takes a huge number of years.’

  ‘Oh – that’s too easy,’ she said with some disappointment. ‘I thought you Archers were all obliged to have real working lives. If he’s a scholar, then why can’t you all be scholars?’ She glanced over at her father with the air of someone who knows all about scholars and is not excited by them.

  ‘My brother is an exception,’ explained the young man. ‘He cannot get around without his invalid chair; he hardly goes out. So the trustees made an exception for him. He has an allowance.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Why is he an invalid? What happened to him?’

  ‘We don’t really know,’ he said. ‘Either it’s because he fell down the stairs when he was a baby, or because of an illness he had when he was one. But he grew that way; he’s always been like that. Off I had to go to school, while he stayed home being pampered by Mother!’ He smiled.

  ‘Lucky you – I’d love to go off to school!’ exclaimed Gwen. ‘With me it’s the opposite. The boys get to go, and I have to stay home and have a governess. And she teaches me to sew,’ she added in a tone of disgust.

  ‘Too bad,’ he said sympathetically, while her mother frowned and tried to make signs for her to stop at once, which young Gwen superbly ignored. ‘You sound like a young lady prepared to attack one of the Professions yourself. Which is it to be?’

  ‘I mean to be an artist,’ she said firmly. ‘I like to draw.’

  Between boating and family history, my relations with the two Mr Archers were, by the end of the meal, of the most cordial; in fact, on the part of the elder Mr Archer, they may well have been somewhat more than cordial. It was what I had wished for and tried to obtain, yet it made me uncomfortable. Throughout the evening, I had displayed a keen interest in everything he had to say on every subject. I had admired his multiple experiences as a man of the world. I had showered the sunniest smiles upon him, and fed his ego to the best of my ability. But as I did so, my dislike of the man continually grew; he reminded me of a predator seeking for tender flesh. I hid this feeling, happily accepted an invitation to tea, and threw myself eagerly into plans to join a group of his friends to travel over to Ireland to attend the Kingstown Regatta on the 20th. He seemed devoured by the need for attention, and I believed I need only manage to be alone with him to persuade him to talk about Ivy. And, determining to accomplish this at the first opportunity, I arranged to visit him ‘for a look at the famous Chippendale gardens’ no later than tomorrow.

  I looked at Mr Archer, observing how his eyebrows met over his beaky nose, and the odd, carnivorous-looking teeth. Inspector Doherty had been formal, yet how could I not wonder? Was Ivy Elliott in love with Julian Archer? Was the father, whose mistress she was, aware of the fact? Would that be a motive for murder?

  But, I reminded myself with annoyance, motive or not, Mr Archer’s alibi is unshakeable. He did not murder her.

  Yet I really cannot, cannot bring myself to like him.

  1896

  A mother and her son, alone in London. No husband in sight, no family in the city, and suitcases that, if one were to examine their contents closely, contained plenty to excite surprise and suspicion. Respectability was the first priority, and for this very reason, Bayswater became their first home. Rooms to let in Bayswater were searched for and found, and found in the Talbot Road; very bourgeois rooms in a very bourgeois house, rooms filled with china dogs and shepherdesses, with Chinese fans decorated with tiny coloured ostrich feathers, with glass-beaded chandeliers, and at all the windows and over the doors, thick heavy velvet curtains. Those curtains were their shelter and their protection. They drew them closed, shutting out the damp grey London weather, and set to work. Guglielmo unpacked his suitcase, the one with the apparatus, and began setting pieces on the shiny dining table. His mother took paper and pen, and began writing the letters that would introduce her son into the wider world.

  Wednesday, July 13th, 1898

  Tea with Mr Geoffrey Archer of Chippendale House, Cherry Hinton, was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my entire life.

  It all began decently enough. A trim little maid brought in a carefully prepared, well-laden tea-tray, and Mr Archer told her to go, and to make sure that no one entered the drawing room on any pretext unless explicitly called for. He then invited me to pour, and asked for four sugars. This was exactly what I had been hoping for and counting on, for to tell the complete truth, fearing that the situation might get out of hand, I had taken the precaution of bringing a small dose of laudanum with me from home; Arthur takes some now and again when his mathematical ponderings keep him awake. This I managed to slip quietly into his cup, after which I stirred it carefully and handed it to him with an engaging smile.

  There were small iced cakes and biscuits, and the teacups were of egg-shell thin porcelain, white with a fine gold border. I admired how the light glowed through them, and Mr Archer told me that they had been in the family for four generations and virtually none of the pieces had ever been broken. I led the talk to his family, and displayed the greatest interest in the mad Spaniardess and her son. It was easy to see that Mr Archer took pride in his ancestry. This was understandable, for the story was quite fascinating, and the quantity of old diaries and papers preserved through the generations quite unusual.

  ‘Day by day for twenty years, the old gentleman wrote down his son’s misdeeds,’ he told me. ‘I should like to show you the book, but the trustees insist upon its being kept in the bank, of all places, together with a number of other family heirlooms. My wife was allowed to keep her jewellery in the house when she was alive, but she passed away many years ago, and the trustees took back the entire collection and put it in the bank vault as well. Do you realise that the entire house is inventoried regularly?’

  ‘Goodness,’ I said sympathetically, ‘you can’t call your soul your own.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It’s the price we Archers pay for having a colourful ancestor behind us. If I wish to make any significant purchase, I must submit it to their approval. They are not unreasonable, of course. I was allowed to offer some most beautiful gifts to my wife. However, they were all then inscribed in the estate book and I am no longer allowed to sell or dispose of them freely.’

  ‘James Oliver must have been a dreadful spendthrift,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he was a spendthrift and worse. It’s hard to imagine a misdemeanour, or even a crime that he didn’t at least participate in.’

  ‘Not any crime?’ I said, opening my eyes very wide. ‘Surely he was not – a murderer!’

  ‘Not openly, otherwise his life would have terminated at the end of a rope, rather than in his bed, as it did – a nasty old man, I’ve no doubt, with a miserable wife and a large number of legitimate and illegi
timate children. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he were the one responsible for a certain number of rather peculiar deaths that his father noted down in the diary. You see, his father kept him on such a tight rein financially that in order to satisfy his depraved tastes, he simply had to get money elsewhere.’

  ‘How did he do it?’ I asked, hoping to lead him on. For apart from its historical interest, I felt that Mr Archer took an intense though secret delight in identifying himself with his amoral forebear, and I felt I was coming closer to his real nature.

  ‘Women were his weakness,’ he told me, his wolfish smile appearing. ‘He couldn’t seem to see a girl or woman who didn’t stimulate some ancient reflex of possession within him. Yet he was no Apollo, unfortunately. Women were repelled by him, and that led him into an infinity of trouble.’

  ‘How do you know what he looked like?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Why, there’s a portrait of him in the study. Every Archer heir is painted. Come, I’ll show it to you.’

  He took my arm, and I allowed him to do so, although his touch displeased me strongly, and the pressure of his fingers through my sleeve struck me as being firmer than absolutely necessary. We crossed the room, went through a plush-covered door, and found ourselves in the study, a large room equipped with a burnished oak desk covered with glass, upon which were a lamp, an inkstand and other articles for office-work. The panelled walls were divided by oaken mouldings into sections, and in each section hung a portrait.

  ‘That’s James’ father,’ he said, and I found myself staring into the eyes of a bust portrait, darkened with age, of a gentleman with an enormous quantity of facial hair and the kind of look of fanatical intensity that I have always imagined on the faces of Protestant preachers such as John Knox, inflamed with exacerbated morality.

  ‘And there’s James,’ went on Mr Archer, now pointing to a full-length portrait. I stared at it; it showed little or no resemblance to the present Mr Archer, but much inheritance from the Spanish mother. Black hair and sharply marked black eyebrows in the shape of an inverted V; black eyes with an intense gaze, as though to a specific point or goal, and thin lips pressed together, surmounted by a moustache not very different in shape and style from the eyebrows. While not positively ugly, the face was rendered disagreeable by an insufficiently pronounced chin. Such chins are usually associated with weakness of character, but in this case the weakness appeared to have taken the form of an incapacity to resist yielding to lust or whim rather than a problem of indecisiveness. In his hand he held a whip, the cord dangling negligently from the handle, and at his hip was a short dagger.

  ‘Yes, women were his downfall,’ Mr Archer mused, gazing upon his ancestor. ‘He couldn’t see one but he had to have her. He was the terror of the countryside. A dozen times or more, his father found himself confronted with peasant families of the neighbourhood whose daughter’s life and future had been destroyed by his son. He remarks once, bitterly enough, that he was turning into a matchmaker among the farming families of the area, for once James had finished with them, the girls were only fit for marrying old widowers or invalids, and even that was possible only thanks to the dowry the old man provided out of a feeling of moral rectitude. The entire area around here lived in terror of James; if he found out that a young man was courting the girl he had his eyes on at the moment, he’d go out and flog him within an inch of his life. Every month a scandal broke out during the time he was growing up. Yes, he had a streak of evil in him, all right.’

  These words were pronounced in a tone of such intense satisfaction that I glanced up at him; the egotistic smile on his lips revealed his thoughts as though his head were made of glass. This was all to the good, I supposed, in view of the fact that my purpose here was to make him talk about Ivy.

  ‘Where is your portrait?’ I asked flatteringly. He was pleased at the question, and led me to a vividly coloured painting in which he, as quite a young man, posed in hunting costume with one foot on a stool, a hound at his feet and – a whip in his hand.

  ‘Is the whip a family heirloom as well?’ I asked, pointing to it.

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘Not an heirloom, but a family symbol. Archer men like to dominate.’

  My dislike of the man was intensifying by the minute, but for some inexplicable psychological reason, this feeling gave me the strength to play my role all the better. I fluttered my eyelids to signify admiration of masculine domination. I have always possessed a certain talent for acting, but it is something I feel to be a bit shameful and unworthy, like a talent for lying. Not good…but occasionally extremely useful.

  ‘I recognise that one,’ I said, noticing the portrait hanging next to Mr Archer’s. It was a painting of Julian Archer, also a full-length portrait, in an interesting pose. The subject was standing with his two hands on a table, leaning a little forward, and looking straight into the viewer’s eyes with a twinkle of amusement. It was an excellent painting. I was making some comment to the sitter’s father about the likeness between them, when my eyes were momentarily arrested by another bust portrait hanging nearby, showing a pale, rather long face, markedly different in aspect and expression from all the surrounding portraits, sorrowful, melancholy, burdened, perhaps, with the weight of the Archer evil. I was about to ask who he was, when Mr Archer yawned prodigiously, covering his mouth politely with his hand and turning away from me, and I perceived that the draught was beginning to take effect, and began to feel in a hurry to lead the conversation to the point where I wanted it.

  ‘I have a nice little flat in London, where I go whenever I need a little change of air,’ he remarked, moving back in the direction of the sitting room and glancing at me significantly. ‘I travel to the Continent quite regularly as well.’

  ‘Oh, how exciting!’ I said. ‘Do you go to Paris and Rome? The women must be so beautiful there.’

  He smiled vainly. ‘Women are beautiful everywhere,’ he said, ‘but different everywhere. Every flavour is worth trying. The fresh, home-grown product is just as delicious as the hothouse import.’

  The already plain meaning of this sentence became much plainer as he placed his hands on my shoulders and bent his face down to mine with an intention that was perfectly clear. Thoughts rushed through my mind. He repelled me. I did not want his touch. But if I played my game carefully enough, I should tempt him sufficiently to keep him talking, and defend myself enough to keep out of danger. I knew that my whole strategy with this man was a risky one – how long could it be before he discovered that I was a married woman with children, living in a cottage not so very far from his own manor? If I wanted to find out anything from him, it would have to be in a very short time.

  His lips were already on mine. I repressed a shudder, and allowed him a judiciously calculated moment before twisting away with a purposely artificial look of shock.

  ‘Oh, Mr Archer,’ I gasped, ‘how can you?’ I sent him a look which meant, as clearly as I could make it, that he might obtain what he desired from me, but that he should have to fight for it. That self-satisfied little smile played over his lips again. He relished the combat.

  ‘Why, you can’t do that, Mr Archer!’ I cried. ‘You mustn’t!’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because you don’t love me – do you?’

  ‘I do,’ he replied, entering into the game at once. ‘I’m in love with you, upon my word, Miss Duncan. It’s struck me all of a heap.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I pouted, stepping back from him, and moving through the door into the sitting room, I scooped up my fan which I had left on the sofa, and fluttered it. ‘It’s too quick.’

  ‘Love at first sight is the Archer way,’ he purred.

  ‘Then you must be in love once a week,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we Archers have susceptible hearts. You heard what I told you about James.’

  ‘Goodness, I hope you’re not too much like him!’ I cried.

  ‘Oh, no. I’ve inherited that fiery streak
, but I respect women,’ he said. ‘I’m dearly fond of the creatures, and would never mistreat them.’ He sat down on the sofa next to me, and put his hand on my knee. I took it off.

  ‘You must tell me about everyone you’ve been in love with before me,’ I said.

  He burst out laughing.

  ‘No, I can’t do that! There are far too many!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you wicked man,’ I flirted, feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself, and behaving all the more brazenly in compensation. ‘Tell me about the last girl you loved before me, then.’

  ‘You don’t want to know about other girls,’ he coaxed, leaning into me.

  ‘No, I do, I do. Where is she now? Why aren’t you in love with her any more? I shall be fearfully jealous if you don’t tell me it’s all over with her,’ I said with mock severity, ‘and if you don’t explain to me exactly why you don’t love her any more, I’ll be frightened that you’ll treat me the same way.’

  ‘Oh, you silly creature,’ he said. ‘There was a very lovely young girl, but…she is dead.’ And for a moment he looked extremely sorry.

  ‘Dead!’ I leapt away from him, feigning a great fear. ‘Why – that’s just like your ancestor James! Why did she die? How did she die? Of love?’

  He rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. The laudanum was definitely having its effect.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know exactly. She was here for a party, and she said goodbye and left, and later I heard that she was dead. I really know nothing about it. But I do miss her. She was a good girl, and very pretty, though not in the same way as you are. But then – no two women are alike,’ and he once again proceeded to resemble a wolf.

  I nestled up to him with the outer shell of my body, while the inner portions shrank away in disgust. A tense, awkward giggle escaped me as I imagined myself observed at the present moment, and suddenly remembered some pages from Dumas’ little book which had caused me to laugh uncontrollably by asserting that the lovers of the loose women known as lorettes are all uniformly known as ‘les Arthurs’. I am not a lorette – in spite of my behaviour with Mr Archer I am most definitely not a lorette – but my beloved is certainly an Arthur. And Ivy? Ivy was a lorette…a flower with as many lovers as petals.