An Inquiry Into Love and Death Page 2

  “Jillian, are you all right?”

  I folded the paper, tossed it in my valise, and resumed packing. “Mother says they’re not coming home. I already knew that from the solicitor.”

  “So you really must go yourself.” Caroline took a cigarette case from her pocket and extracted one. “I don’t know whether to be sorry for you or horribly jealous.”

  “Jealous? I have to see a body, Caro. Then I have to pack up his dusty old things. I’ll be working nights for weeks after to make up for it, if I make it up at all. This will practically ruin my term. What is there to be jealous of?”

  “But you get to go do something,” she said, as she watched me stuff in yet another pair of stockings. “I get to stay in a girls-only boardinghouse and listen to Mary Spatsby complain for the hundredth time that she’s homesick for her old nanny, while I try to study twelfth-century ethics.” She lit her cigarette and inhaled shallowly, arranging it between two fingers for best effect.

  “Mary Spatsby is everyone’s burden to bear,” I said. “You must try to be noble about it.”

  “What was your uncle doing by the seaside?”

  I shut the valise, closed the latches, and quickly thought up an answer. “He was researching some sort of project.”

  “Mysterious.” She righted her tilting cigarette in her fingers and took another careful drag. She seemed to accept the scenario without question. Like me, Caroline came from a long line of academics, and everyone was always researching something. “You must tell me everything when you get back. Will there be men?”

  I sighed. “There won’t be men.”

  “There must be men. There are men everywhere in England, or so I hear, except here at Somerville. If you even spot a milkman or a vicar, I want every detail.”

  I shook my head. I said friendly good-byes to Caro and the other girls, my voice casual—oh, just an uncle I barely knew, that’s all. But as I sat on the omnibus that ran to the outskirts of town, my shoulders sagged. I had not allowed myself to think too much about Toby, dying alone in a strange place, falling from a cliff.

  Or jumping.

  I stared out the window as Oxford receded, until I could see only the roofs of the chapels and libraries punctuated with spires, and the green squares filled with undergraduates chatting in the cold autumn sunshine were gone from view.

  I thought of that man in the straw boater, his kind, attentive gaze. What had happened?

  I got off the omnibus at the edge of town and walked half a mile to a small coaching inn. The landlord here, seeing an opportunity, had dismantled the stalls in half his barn and cleared it out. For a fee, the empty half now housed motorcars—including mine.

  The remaining horses whickered curiously as I pulled the canvas storage sheet from the motor and folded it. An aged groom smoked a cigarette and leaned against the wall, staring at me through pouched eyes with a look that dared me to ask him for help. I gave him a look back and said nothing.

  The car was called an Alvis, though I knew nothing about motorcars and did not know what that meant. It had been a gift from my father; he’d taught me to drive it one warm morning in early summer, the two of us jolting over the roads, my mother watching from the front stoop, declaring herself fit for a nervous breakdown, though she’d laughed and sipped a gin as she said it.

  I knew no other girls who had been taught how to drive. Even among the unconventional set at Oxford, it was a rather dashing skill for a girl to have. The car—and the lessons—had been a reward for gaining admission to Somerville, with disregard for the fact that motorcars were not allowed within Oxford proper, and therefore I’d have no place to use it. That was typical thinking of my parents. The world conformed to them, not the other way ’round. I now wondered whether there had been guilt in the extravagant gesture, as they’d gone to Paris a month later.

  So I had parked the Alvis and left it. I stared at it now, as it gleamed in the dim light of the barn, with trepidation and not a little fear. I’d never driven anywhere but the roads around my parents’ house, and I’d never driven alone.

  I was leaving the familiar confines of Oxford behind, and the fear mixed deep in my stomach with sour, shamed excitement. I loved life at school—the quiet, the perfect alignment of the hours of each day. I was truly grieved by the death of my uncle. And yet, a small voice inside me admitted that I wanted to, as Caro had said, do something.

  I stowed my valise and heavy books I’d carried, and took a deep breath. There was nothing for it, then, but to go. I removed my hat and tied on a scarf, as my earlobe-length hair tended to curl when given its way, and the wind would have a heyday with it. I pulled on a pair of driving gloves and looked at the groom again. To my surprise, he gave me a nod.

  I got in the motorcar and drove away.

  Two

  The roadster was sleek and picked up speed quickly. I had a long drive ahead.

  The town of Rothewell wasn’t in my Baedeker’s, but the maps provided by Mr. Reed showed it somewhere on the north coast of Devonshire. I made my painstaking way past Bristol as the familiar countryside vanished, stopping every hour to recheck my way. This was nothing like sitting back in a train compartment, waiting to get off at your destination. In adverts, I’d seen drawings of drivers flying down the road, carefree and easy. Instead I gripped the wheel, my back aching, straining my eyes at rare road signs as I passed fields of grazing sheep and tidy hedgerows.

  At first, other motorcars passed me or came the other way—men in overcoats and goggles, a smart-looking fellow and his pretty blond girlfriend, a few rowdy boys waving at me and shouting quips I couldn’t hear—but as I got closer to the seacoast and turned along its quiet roads, the other cars all but disappeared, leaving me the lanes to myself.

  Somewhere in the fourth hour, along the coast toward Exmoor, it began to rain, a light sprinkling through the heavy, wet air of the sea, and I was glad I had pulled the roof up during one of my many stops. By then I would gladly have pulled over to wait out the weather, or even to spend the night, but I wanted to make Barnstaple if I could, and there was no hotel to be seen. I trundled on as the roads got wetter, trying my best to see through the roadster’s windscreen.

  By dark my hands were shaking and my head throbbed with pain. I no longer felt adventurous. I longed for my familiar rooms at Oxford, but of course I couldn’t go back. I had reached Barnstaple at last, and in the morning it would be time to see the magistrate.

  • • •

  Barnstaple was pretty enough, though of course not as beautiful as Oxford to my eye. I found an old hotel near the River Taw (EXCEPTIONAL ACCOMMODATION—MODERN CONS INSTALLED—REASONABLE RATES), which seemed to house a small but eclectic mix of tourists, couples, and traveling businessmen. If I was an unusual sort of guest as a woman traveling alone, no one had the bad grace to remark on it, and I was too tired to care. I had gone straight to my room and slept fitfully despite my exhaustion, visions of the rainy road and memories of Toby flitting behind my closed eyes.

  Now, in the bright, chilled sunshine of the following morning, I sat in the magistrate’s office on the second floor of a centuries-old building in the center of town, wearing my most formal skirt and jacket, itchy stockings, and high heels, trying not to twist my gloves to ruin in my damp hands.

  “Rothewell, you see, is far too small to have a magistrate or a coroner in residence, so your uncle’s case was brought here,” said the magistrate, whose name was Mr. Hindhead. He was about fiftyish, sported thinning blond hair, and was ensconced from head to toe in soft, pillowy fat. “The coroner has examined the body. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, for the second time in two days sitting before a man who sat behind a desk and attempted to explain the world to me. “Is there to be . . . an autopsy, then?”

  He shook his head. “No, my dear, unless of course you request one. But even so . . .” He sighed, as if burdened. “The corone
r has already ruled, you see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that is, he examined your uncle’s body. You just missed him—he was here last night. As the circumstances were a little unusual, the coroner has to rule one way or the other, and if he sees evidence of foul play, we call in the police and go from there.” Mr. Hindhead pulled a small tin from his desk drawer and extracted a mint from it, which he popped between his thin lips. “But the coroner’s already been, my dear, and he’s ruled it an accident.”

  “An accident? You mean my uncle fell?”

  “Yes, so it would seem. Though I assure you”—he waved a placating hand at me, as if I’d managed to move—“there was no evidence of drunkenness.”

  The thought of my uncle Toby drunk was so jarring that it took me a moment to refocus. “I don’t understand. Are you saying I’m not needed here?”

  “Yes, Miss Leigh, you are, but only for the formality of the identification. It’s just the last bit of paperwork, and then your family can put this tragedy behind you. In a way it’s good news, you see. No lingering. It’s bad enough for a girl alone. I’ve never seen such a thing. You haven’t a cousin, a brother-in-law, anyone who could have come? Well. You mustn’t worry about the rest of it, calling the undertaker’s man or such. Mr. Leigh’s solicitor will take care of all of that.”

  I swallowed. I hadn’t thought about arranging the cremation. I would call Mr. Reed as soon as I could find a telephone. “I see. Well.” I swallowed again. “All right, then.”

  Mr. Hindhead summoned a constable, and we left the office for a warren of hallways and stairs. I followed, numb, not noting where we were going, thinking of Toby slipping over a cliff’s edge. What had he been doing? Taking a walk, perhaps? Searching for something? Was it something to do with his profession? I pictured him going too far to the land’s edge, not noting how close he was, and that endless moment when his feet slipped from under him. . . .

  The old building housing the magistrate’s office seemed to be connected via corridor to another, larger building. I realized we had come to a paneled hall in a basement. Mr. Hindhead stopped in front of a set of thick double doors. He set his hand on the knob of one and turned to me, his face serious.

  “Miss Leigh. Are you ready?”

  I managed to nod.

  “Very well, then. Constable Jenkins, you are witness. We’ll do this quickly.”

  He pushed open the door. I could see nothing within but a bare floor, a few shelves, the corner of a table. I didn’t realize I had not moved until I felt the constable touch my elbow. I glanced up into his ruddy face and he nodded at me, his eyes pitying me from over the large brush of his mustache.

  I stepped forward. The table held a body under a thick canvas sheet. I forced my legs to take me closer, and Mr. Hindhead folded back the canvas.

  I had been picturing Toby in my mind on that day at the beach, years ago. He’d been young then, and if never exactly handsome, he’d had the buoyancy of youth about him in the morning sunlight, a shy, fleeting smile, and eyes that lit on me with pleasure. Even the last time I’d seen him, some eight years ago, he’d been trim, clean-shaven, well-groomed, if weighed down by some sadness I didn’t understand. He’d barely looked at me then, and his visit had been brief, something I’d taken no note of, as I’d had no idea he would disappear from my life.

  He looked older, now, than his forty-three years. His mouth was pulled into a grim line, his cheeks and brows slack as if with despair. Death, I realized, had aged him. Down the left side of his face was a swath of angry purple-red contusions, and his nose was set crookedly in his face. His brown hair was uncombed, matted with something dark. His shoulders, under the sheet, were bare. I had never seen my uncle in anything other than a shirt, collar, waistcoat, and tie.

  Wrong. This is wrong.

  “Miss Leigh,” said Mr. Hindhead. “Do you identify this man as your uncle, Tobias Leigh?”

  “I do,” I said.

  The magistrate nodded, and Constable Jenkins moved forward and pulled the sheet back over my uncle’s face. I lifted my eyes and saw Mr. Hindhead watching me from across the table.

  “A girl alone,” he said, and shook his head. “Such a shame. I’ll order up some tea. It’s almost over, my dear. It’s almost over.”

  • • •

  By afternoon it began to rain again and I was driving through a landscape of thick woods, the leaves brittle on the trees in the long afternoon light, some of the branches beginning to lose their foliage altogether. As I stopped at a crossing and waited for a farmer to move his cow from the road—he was most apologetic, and the cow most reluctant—I heard a sharp pattering over my head. I leaned out the window and looked up to see rain dripping from the undersides of the canopy of leaves, woven over the road, the branches bowing under the lowered wet sky.

  I hadn’t wept for Toby. I couldn’t. My eyes burned and my throat was choked closed, but nothing would come. Instead I had moved through the hours mechanically, somehow doing what needed doing—nodding when the magistrate spoke, placing the call through to the solicitor, checking out of the inn—as my brain gratefully surrendered to a thick fog. I barely remembered driving from Barnstaple and could not recall any of the scenery I’d passed since.

  Now, as I looked up at the leafy canopy and felt cool rain on my face, I began to awaken. I realized I was lost. Most of the day had slipped away from me as I took wrong turn after wrong turn on the roads. I had not rechecked the maps. I had simply driven, the memory of Toby’s battered face the only thing I could see before my eyes.

  But Rothewell was on the sea, and even in my blindness I had pointed the car in that direction. I could hear the sea now, a low roar complementing the light patter of rain. I could smell salt in the air. There is something about the smell of the sea that has an effect on every human living, and always will. My sluggish mind began to move.

  I leaned into the passenger seat and pulled up the map, wondering how far off course I was. The map was nearly useless; how to know whether the narrow inked line on a piece of paper corresponded with the two-track lane of mud I was currently following? I turned it this way and that as the cow and its owner made their way off the road. I should try to keep the sea to my right, I thought. That was the best way to stay in the right direction. I was pleased with this thought until I realized, too late, that I could have asked the farmer for directions.

  An hour later, the rain was coming down harder, and dusk fell. I was tired. I came to a crossroads and pulled over.

  I got out of the Alvis, pulled up my coat collar, and looked around me. The road each way was deserted. It had been so long since I had seen another car, I might have been transported to fairyland, or backward in time. The air was purplish gray, the only sound the rush of raindrops in the trees overhead and the crunch of my shoes on the gravel. Somewhere far off, a lark called. I could no longer hear the sound of the sea over the rain.

  I huddled deeper into my coat. Here, in this desolate spot, the thoughts I’d been pushing away began to overtake me. Toby had come this way. He hadn’t been researching a project, as I’d told Caroline, and he hadn’t been on holiday. It was time to admit to myself what Toby had done for a living, and that it frightened me.

  Toby had hunted ghosts.

  Your uncle was working on one of his unusual projects.

  Ghosts—the pursuit of them, the study of them—had been my uncle’s profession. He’d made a living being called upon by the haunted and the desperate. He’d traveled all over the country, chasing specters of the dead. Toby’s foolishness, my father had called it—for my father, the scientist, most certainly did not believe in the afterlife. Have a little sympathy for your brother, had been my mother’s words to my father. After all, he truly believes he can see them.

  Toby was dead himself now, where I had left him in that silent basement room. Again I felt the nagging tug tha
t something was wrong. Perhaps it was the shock I’d sustained, or the violence I’d seen done to my uncle’s body, but I couldn’t shake my unease.

  A drunk man would have slipped from a cliff, perhaps, or a man outside in a blinding storm. But Toby hadn’t been in Rothewell to take the air or to exercise himself with constitutionals. If he had been on Rothewell’s cliffs, I couldn’t help but think it had been for a purpose connected with his lifelong search for the dead.

  What ghost had he followed to this place?

  I closed my eyes, listened to the rain, felt my nose grow cold in the chill air. I hadn’t known much about Toby’s profession. I’d never asked him about it. I’d never really wanted to think about it, in truth. I saw now that all my life, I’d separated the gruesome idea of Toby’s ghost hunting from the kind man I knew, as if they were two different people. And now, in this horrible situation, I was following him to his final case.

  I opened my eyes again, and my glance caught something by the side of the road. I approached it, pushing aside some underbrush with my damp, gloved fingers, and revealed a sign, long neglected and fallen over. I pulled it upright and cleared it off.

  ROTHEWELL, it said.

  This was the way, then. I held the sign a moment longer, its dirt crumbling over my sleeve.

  Something rustled in the tall brush behind me. I dropped the sign and whirled, peering into the gloom. The brambles and dead honeysuckle bobbed where something had brushed by, but no other sound came. It had been only a rabbit, perhaps, or a mole, running from a predator.

  Still, my back prickled as I walked back to the motorcar, and as I drove off as quickly as I could, I imagined something silent watching me from far back in the trees.

  Three

  Rothewell showed itself in drifting silence as I emerged from the woods. First came a worn track, the edges of which were overgrown with bushes and the dead heads of wild flowering shrubs. A few lonely cottages peered from within the greenery. Behind these cottages was only a shocking wall of white-gray sky, as if the structures were positioned on the edge of the earth. As I crawled the motorcar along the bumpy road, I saw that I was in fact on a high ridge. Far ahead, I could see that the road fell away and twisted, dotted with more houses as it made its complex way down toward the sea.