The Little Walls by Winston Graham
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Contents
Winston Graham
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Winston Graham
The Little Walls
Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was published in 1933. His first ‘Poldark’ novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.
Aside from the Poldark series, Graham’s most successful work was Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham’s other books were filmed, including The Walking Stick, Night Without Stars and Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.
Dedication
For Jean
Chapter One
When my brother committed suicide I was in California so I wasn’t at either the inquest or the funeral. It was nearly two weeks before I could get away, and I then flew back and made straight for his home near Dorking, where the telegram had come from. But when I got there the house was closed and a neighbour said Grace was staying with my eldest brother Arnold in Wolverhampton. So I spent a night in London and drove up by car the following day.
I could guess the sort of shock it had been for Grace, so I thought I would see Arnold first. His letter, the only one, had been scrappy and muddled, showing up if anything needed to his own confusion of mind, and it had told me precious little more than the original cable. Nor had the American papers had a lot to say. They avoided committing themselves as to the causes of has death, because apparently no verdict or conclusion had yet been reached by the police. But what had happened, so far as I could make it out, was that Grevil, on his way home from the Far East, had stopped off for a few days in Holland, and had apparently thrown himself into a canal in one of the back streets of Amsterdam. It made as much sense to me as if I’d been told he had hanged himself with his bootlace in his own back kitchen.
I drove the car to the works and round to the side entrance, noticing the new building nearly completed in Green Street, and drew up under the old sign which said: ‘‘Humphrey Turner & Sons, Engineers.’’ That hadn’t been repainted, and I was glad, because it looked better the way it was. It seemed more than ever a pity now that I’d never really known Humphrey Turner, who was my father.
In the main office there were two or three girls, but no one was typing and I could hear Arnold’s heavy voice from behind the frosted door. Dictation stopped when a girl gave my name in, and after a minute I was shown up.
Arnold had always been the fleshy type, but there had been a robustness about his weight. Now it looked flabby for the first time. I knew what I felt for Grevil, but I hadn’t known what Arnold felt. Perhaps he hadn’t known himself until now. Or perhaps, I thought as he began to tell me of it, he was upset because of the stigma that it left.
‘‘… A terrible thing. Still a young man, with so much of his achievement still before him. In spite of some slight waywardness of purpose, his whole record … It’s impossible to imagine how he must have felt, what he must have thought …’’
‘‘I only saw the American papers.’’
‘‘The English didn’t leave any doubt. There wasn’t really much doubt, you know, from what the Dutch police told me.’’
‘‘You went over, then?’’
‘‘Yes … Grace went with me. We—flew him home. The funeral was on the ninth.’’
‘‘How is she?’’
‘‘Better now.’’
‘‘And Peggy?’’
‘‘Back at school. It’s been a terrible time for us all.’’ He looked at me a bit resentfully; in the family I had always been the young one who got out of things. ‘‘ We should have been glad of your help then. Of course there is still a lot to settle up.’’
‘‘There’s a lot to explain,’’ I said, on my feet again because I couldn’t sit calmly to discuss what had happened as if it were something which could be pigeonholed already and put behind us.
‘‘There’s a lot that will probably never be explained.’’
‘‘Had he been ill?’’
‘‘I gather he had a bout of fever. But it was well over, and one expects that.’’
I said: ‘‘What sort of reason is there? A man like Grevil—the last person. I heard from him about two months ago; he wrote from Java. He was coming home from there, I suppose?’’
‘‘A man like Grevil,’’ said Arnold, getting up too and sitting on the edge of the desk. He picked up the cigarette-box and held it out to me, but I shook my head. ‘‘A man like Grevil. That’s just what I thought when I first heard. It’s queer the same sentence should occur to us both,’’
‘‘It’s likely to occur to most people who knew him.’’
After a silence Arnold said cautiously: ‘‘Of course one can’t evade the fact that a brilliant man, with the gifts that Grevil had … Such people live at a higher pressure than the ordinary man. Father did. They all do.’’
They all do. An uncomfortable epitaph, and one that I still rejected. One that it seemed to me it was important we should all reject. ‘‘ Grevil was finely balanced if you like. But he’d much the clearest mind of the three of us.’’
Arnold blew his nose and then lifted his head and peered over his handkerchief at me. It was the old, unwinking stare. ‘‘Events appear to prove you wrong, Philip. He may have been less well than we know. And his assistant was away sick nearly all the time. You know how he drove himself. Something at the end …’’
I s
‘‘It was rather difficult for us over there—though of course interpreters were provided. A woman said she’d seen Grevil jump into the canal. Under questioning she qualified it a little, said he might have stumbled; but one could see what she thought Then—of course then there was an unfortunate letter found on him. That was what clinched it.’’
‘‘A suicide letter?’’
‘‘No. One from some woman. Telling him she was finished with him.’’
Arnold put away his handkerchief. I don’t know if I looked as unbelieving as I felt. ‘‘Does Grace know about, this?’’
‘‘She had to. But it wasn’t mentioned publicly and it did not get into the press. The Dutch authorities couldn’t have been kinder, and it was entirely due to them that we received so many facilities. Of course they very much esteemed Grevil—not only for his archaeological work but because of the friendship that grew up between him and members of the Dutch Royal Family during the war. He was due to go to dinner with Count Louis Joachim, the evening after he died.’’
I said slowly: ‘‘Well, I just can’t swallow this part at all.’’
‘‘I don’t see how we can get away from it, Philip.’’
‘‘He was happy enough with Grace, surely. I’ve always thought so. Who is this woman? Did she give evidence?’’
‘‘She hasn’t been traced yet. It was only a Christian name on the letter. The notepaper was that of the hotel where Grevil was staying.’’
I thought it out. Is one more tolerant of one’s own morals than other people’s? Not tolerant. It wasn’t tolerance I lacked here, but understanding.
Arnold said: ‘‘I think now you’re here I’ll run you home to lunch. Grace is staying with us, you know. Or you can run me, if that’s easier. It’s nearly twelve, and I don’t think I could settle to work after your visit.’’
We went downstairs and got into my car.
He said: ‘‘ How’s your work going?’’
‘‘All right.’’
‘‘You still like it?’’
‘‘Yes, it’s all right.’’
‘‘Are you in California permanently?’’
‘‘For a year or so. I should have flown back as soon as your first cable came, but things were in a balance and I simply couldn’t drop them.’’
‘‘How long can you stay?’’
‘‘About a week. You look prosperous here.’’
‘‘Fair. Supply and delivery dates are our greatest problem. One loses contracts. Only last week a Belgian firm … Of course, the death—the sudden and unexpected death—of one of the family gives one to think rather seriously about the future of the business.’’
‘‘Well, yes; but you’re young enough yourself.’’
‘‘Even though Grevil was not an active member of the firm—certainly not the head and founder the way Father was—it still has an unsettling effect. It would be nice to see a greater distance ahead.’’
I knew what he meant and he knew what I meant and so we said no more on the way home. Lunch was difficult. Grace welcomed me, as she always had done, but you could see that my turning up now had only brought things back to her in their first rawness. We carefully said nothing about it at the table, and afterwards Arnold went back to the works and Mary made a lame excuse and left us together. Then we talked about California for a bit until I broke off in the middle of a sentence and said:
‘‘Grace, I wish I’d been on hand—nearer home anyway—when all this happened. You know what I felt for Grevil, and the cable was pretty hard to believe when it came.’’
Grace’s face had that over-clear emotionless look that I think comes sometimes to people when they’ve lived for a long time with a bad thing and have at last seen the worst of it.
‘‘I knew how you’d feel. Arnold wanted to send you a guarded message, but I thought you would prefer …
We began to talk of it then. After a bit it seemed to have a better effect on her. She’d been frozen up too long.
Grevil had left England in November, as I knew, and had been in Java ever since. By arrangement with the Dutch and Indonesian governments he had gone out to make new diggings at Sangiran, where excavations been interrupted by the war, and also at Trinil, where the original Java man was found; and at the end of last month he’d flown back to Holland, where most of his archæological finds were to be deposited with the Rijksmuseum. He had been in Amsterdam only two days when he died. Grace had had a cable from Jakarta just before he left, and had been more or less expecting him home any time. Then the English police had called to tell Arnold what had happened.
When she finished I didn’t speak but picked up a snap of Grevil in a little silver frame and looked at it. He just looked tall and ascetic, and all the qualtities I remembered didn’t show at all.
‘‘Arnold told you about the letter?’’ she said.
‘‘What letter?’’
‘‘From the woman.’’
‘‘Yes, he did say something … I didn’t altogether accept it.’’
‘‘Didn’t you?’’
‘‘Not as it was told to me. I haven’t seen it—I don’t know what it said—but some things fit into people’s characters as you know them, and some don’t. That doesn’t fit into Grevil’s as I imagine I knew him.’’
‘‘No,’’ she said.
‘‘So if he did commit suicide I don’t think he did it for that reason.’’
‘‘Why do you say, if he did commit suicide?’’
‘‘Well, are you convinced?’’
She got up and took the snapshot out of my hand. ‘‘What else is there to think?’’
‘‘Are you more inclined to believe it because of what happened twenty-three years ago?’’
She flushed. ‘‘No. Why should I be?’’
‘‘Weaknesses run in families. Like talents.’’
‘‘Not necessarily.’’
‘‘Not necessarily. That’s what I want to think.’’
‘‘That’s what you must think. I was saying so to Arnold.’’
‘‘Did you ever believe Grevil was the sort of man who would take his own life?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘And this woman. Do you know anything about her?’’
‘‘Not yet. Grevil’s friends and callers at the hotel weren’t much noticed, and the police have very little to go on. There was certainly no one in the hotel.’’
‘‘What was the name she signed?’’
‘‘Leonie. L-E-O-N-I-E I don’t know if it’s Dutch.’’
‘‘Arnold said he hadn’t been too well in Java.’’
‘‘He said nothing in his letters except that he’d been confined to his tent for a couple of days. Of course his health was never of much concern to him.’’
‘‘Does he sound depressed in any of the later letters?’’
‘‘No. You can read them if you like.’’
I said: ‘‘ But if he’d only been in Amsterdam two days, how could he be in that deep with any woman?’’
‘‘He’d known her before—must have from her letter. He’d been over to Holland two or three times recently—making arrangements for this trip, meeting various friends. I don’t know how long he’s known her——’’
‘‘Or I suppose she could have been on the plane.’’
‘‘No. The passenger list was checked. All the women passengers were traced. There was a friend of his on the plane called Buckingham, a man he met in Indonesia—but no woman.’’
‘‘And what does Buckingham say?’’
‘‘They haven’t found him yet either. He’d left Holland before the police began to inquire.’’
I went to the window and looked out at the garden. One or two of the trees were promising green, and a .recent shower had silvered the early tulips.
She said: ‘‘I expect you feel I’m being disloyal to him in believing in this woman at all.’’
‘‘No. But I think you’ve more reasons for beleving it than you’ve told me.’’
She looked confused. ‘‘I wish I hadn’t said that now. You see, I haven’t any other reasons at all, this time. Nothing more than the unexplained letter.’’
It took a second or so for the sting to begin to work. ‘‘You mean there have been other times?’’
‘‘One other.’’
‘‘I’m sorry.’’
‘‘It was years ago, and I’ve never told anyone else. The last thing I want to do is to say anything that will make you think differently about Grevil.’’
‘‘This has all made me think differently about Grevil,’’ I said; ‘‘but if you’re afraid it might make me think less well of him, then it won’t. Because if you’re fond of a person you don’t judge them; and anyway I’m the last one to be able to do that. But was it important, this other occasion?’’
‘‘To me. At the time, yes.’’
‘‘For long?’’
‘‘I don’t think it was important to him for long. When I knew that, it made the difference. After a while, after it had been over for a time, it didn’t mean anything or come between us any more. We were just as happy as we had ever been.’’
‘‘I see.’’
‘‘I hope you do see. Philip. Because of there having been one women—though it was eight years ago—it’s easier to believe there was one now. I certainly didn’t know it; I hadn’t a ghost of suspicion; and in any case it doesn’t make me see the suicide as an understtandable thing. I’d rather he’d taken six women … But it happened, didn’t it. It has happened. We can’t make it disappear by refusing to believe it—not any of it. However hard we try, there’s no escape.’’
That night I sat in my bedroom for a long time with a packet of cigarettes. Thinking about it and thinking about it on the way over, I’d kidded myself that when I actually got here and was able to hear all the facts-and talk everything out with Arnold and Grace; then the pain and the tension inside me—the first deriving from his death, the second from the manner of his death—would ease up. So far not so.