Aiding and Abetting

Muriel Spark

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781782117643
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Aiding and Abetting is Muriel Spark's mordant and witty satirical take on the true crime genre, a novel of fraudsters, imposters, murderers and aiders and abetters.In Paris, a psychiatrist finds herself treating two elderly gentlemen who both claim to be the notorious British fugitive Lord Lucan. But who, if either, is the real Lord Lucan? Can she discover the truth before her own dark secret is revealed?

IX

ON THE ROAD TO CAITHNESS Joe and Lacey respectively marvelled how they seemed to have ‘known each other all our lives’.

‘You make me feel young again,’ he said.

She liked the sound of that. She was hardly expecting to track down the elusive, the perhaps non-existent Earl; not really. It was the prospect of a chase that excited her, this promising and enjoyable beginning. They were on their way, now, to a house they had merely heard of, right in the far north of Scotland. It was assumed that Benny Rolfe, whose house it was, would very likely be away. He was in any case hardly ever there. It would be all the more convenient perhaps to question the housekeeper and the houseman who Joe knew lived there in perpetuity. If someone like Lucan had been to see Benny, those people would know. Of course they wouldn’t talk. Not really talk. But there were ways of talking and talking, and something somehow might trickle through. ‘Of course we mustn’t ask direct questions,’ said Joe.

‘Oh, it would be fatal, I agree. ’

The great lovely steep hills were all around them. The feeling of northern nature, a whole geography minding very much its own business, cautious, alien, cold and haughty, began here. The sky rolled darkly amid patches of white light. On they drove, north, north.

Yes, there was a light high up there in the turret. The bell, which was an old-fashioned pull-bell which pealed hysterically throughout the house, brought no response for the first ten minutes of their wait in the drive, in the dark.

Joe fetched a torch from his car and started prowling around, while Lacey stood hugging her coat around her, staring up at the light in the Gothic tower. Suddenly she heard a shuffle, and in a moment the door opened to a flood of light.

Joe reappeared very quickly.

‘Yes?’ said a man’s voice.

‘This is the residence of Mr Benny Rolfe, isn’t it?’

‘This is Adanbrae Keep. It was you that rang up?’ the speaker said. He was a middle-aged, red-haired and bearded man wearing a handyman’s apron. ‘I thought you’d come early, gave you up. Well, you know Benny isn’t here. Come in, if you will. Come in and sit yourselves down. ’

The hall of Adanbrae Keep was welcoming enough, with new-looking chintzes. The man put a click-light to the fire which started to blaze up obediently.

‘Benny’s in France,’ he said. ‘Sit yourselves down. Would you like a cup of tea? My name’s Gordon. ’

‘Yes,’ said Joe.

‘Oh, please,’ said Lacey.

‘Are you all alone here?’ said Joe.

‘No, no. There’s the stable man, Pat Reilly, there’s my garden boy, Jimmie – he’s gone off to lend a hand at the golf tavern and make himself a bit extra, there’s Mrs Kerr, she is in her room, but she won’t be in bed yet, if you’d like to meet her I could get her. I’ll just put on the kettle. ’

‘I’d like to see Mrs Kerr,’ said Lacey when he had left the hall.

Joe said, ‘We’ve no right to trouble them. Benny wouldn’t like it. He’d think us awfully rude. It’s all right just to call in, but we mustn’t seem to snoop, or probe, or anything like that. ’

‘I’d like to probe,’ said Lacey.

Just then, down the main staircase came a short dark woman of about forty with a wide lipsticked smile. ‘I’m Betty Kerr,’ she said. ‘I heard you arrive. We just about gave you up. Are you staying anywhere around here?’

She had a pink roller, probably overlooked, still in her hair. She sat down on one of the chintz chairs. Joe told her the hotel they had booked for the night, of which she expressed approval.

‘We thought we would just look in,’ said Lacey, ‘as Mr Rolfe isn’t available, we tried everywhere, but we only wanted to sort of trace someone who might have been here recently. An old friend of Dr Murray’s – that’s my companion here – that we want to get in touch with. ’

‘What name?’ said Betty Kerr.

In came Gordon the Red bearing a tray of tea-cups with the pot and jug.

‘Lucan,’ said Joe.

‘No, I don’t know of a Lucan,’ said Betty Kerr. She poured out the tea and handed it out to the couple. This was an event, plainly, and she liked it. ‘Did he play golf? There was a gentleman here playing golf. But no, he wasn’t a Lucan. A wee man with a bag of old clubs like forty years ago. Gordon had to clean his mashie with emery paper. ’

‘No, the old university friend I’m trying to contact is tall. ’

Gordon was hovering around. ‘That could be the gentleman who was to dinner about three weeks ago. He spent the night here. He was “John” to Benny, I seem to remember. Just a minute, I’ll look at the book. ’

The visitors’ book on its lectern stood near a closed door which led to the drawing-room. Joe went over to it with Gordon, and they looked at the open page. ‘Nobody here; he didn’t sign at all, the man I’m thinking of,’ said Gordon. ‘There’s very few visitors, so it would be on this page. ’

Joe, by way of curiosity, turned back a few pages, but although he recognized a few of the names, nothing corresponding to Lucan was there. ‘Anyway, Lucan’s second name was John and generally applied to him when he was a student. It means nothing, though, John by itself could be anybody. ’

‘A tall man with white hair, in his sixties, squarish face,’ said Gordon helpfully. ‘In good form, I would say. I didn’t take much notice. ’

They had returned to the fireplace. Joe realized that the description would fit Lucan as he might be today.

It was plain to both Joe and Lacey that they had probed enough. They had neither of them desired to go blatantly behind Benny’s back. Joe had already told Lacey he intended to drop Benny a line explaining his search for Lucan. ‘After all, it’s a legitimate search,’ he had remarked to Lacey.

Now he said, ‘Well, thank you, Gordon, and you, too, Mrs Kerr. ’

‘I hope,’ said Lacey, ‘we haven’t disturbed you. ’

‘Mind how you go. Take your time,’ said Betty Kerr. ‘You could have stayed for a meal, but we don’t have much in the house. Not like when that gentleman was here. Smoked salmon and lamb cutlets two days running. ’

‘Smoked salmon and lamb chops . . . ’

‘That’s right. Benny ordered them specially for him. His preference. ’

Next morning on their way still further north Joe was truly optimistic. They had already celebrated the final words of the Adanbrae Keep domestics, but Joe could not keep off the subject. It was like winning a bet at long odds.

‘ “Smoked salmon and lamb chops served two meals running . . .” Benny knows Lucan’s preferences. What a fool Lucan is to allow himself to be trapped by that characteristic of his; that eccentric taste for smoked salmon and cutlets day in, day out for years on end. It had to be Lucan. ’

‘Or someone like him, who has studied his ways from the press accounts,’ said astute Lacey. ‘And Benny Rolfe would expect him to have had his face fixed. ’

The landscape was bleak and flat, below a pearly sky. They seemed to be driving into the sky. St Columba’s monastery, lately established, was some way out of a silent, almost deserted but well-kept stone village.

A young bespectacled lay brother bade them wait a minute. Joe had telephoned in advance. Sure enough, Father Ambrose appeared as if by magic with his black habit floating wide around him. You could not see if he was thin or fat. He had the shape of a billowing pyramid with his small white-haired head at the apex as if some enemy had hoisted it there as a trophy of war. From under his habit protruded an enormous pair of dark-blue track shoes on which he lumbered towards them. As he careered along the cold cloister he read what was evidently his Office of the day; his lips moved; plainly, he didn’t believe in wasting time and did believe in letting the world know it. When he came abreast of Lacey and Joe he snapped shut his book and beamed at them.

‘Joe,’ he said.

‘Ambrose, how are you? And how goes it in your new abode? This is Lacey, daughter of Maria Twickenham. Remember Maria?’

‘Well, well. How do you do? How’s Maria?’

They followed him into a polished parlour; it smelt keenly of cleanliness.

It will be seen that the above description of Ambrose applies to a man very convinced of himself. Calling or no calling, Ambrose had arranged his life so that there was no challenge, no fear of any but the most shallow pitfalls. He could hardly err, there was no scope for it. He was good at raising funds.

‘You want to know about Lucan,’ said Ambrose.

‘Yes, we’re looking for him. ’

‘People have been looking for him this quarter-century. I brought down the press-cuttings for you. I’ll have to go shortly but you can stay and look through them.’ He had lumbered over to an open glass-fronted cabinet and now placed a very thick package on the table before them. In the meantime the young lay brother came in with a tray of milky coffee with dry sweet biscuits. He placed them on the table and withdrew, almost disintegrated, so shadowy was he.

Exactly above the parlour where Joe and Lacey set about their perusal of the press-cuttings was a bedroom, a simple monk’s cell, eight by seven feet with a mullioned window open to the vast northern plain in which St Columba’s monastery had been put up, not very long ago.

There was a tap on the door and without waiting for a reply the tapper, Ambrose, floated silently in. His finger was laid on his lips.

‘Say nothing,’ said Ambrose. ‘Make no sound. Lucan, you have to go. ’

‘Why, what’s wrong?’

‘Lower your voice. A couple of people are intensely looking for you. I say intensely. They’re here in the monastery, in the parlour just underneath. ’

‘Here? Oh, my God, have they got a warrant?’

‘They’re not the police, Lucan, they are worse. They are Joe Murray with the daughter of, guess who? – Maria Twickenham. Her name’s Lacey. Yes, Maria’s daughter and the image of her mother. They have apparently nothing to do but hunt you down. Lacey is writing a book about you, of course. ’

‘Maria’s daughter. Oh, my God. ’

Ambrose placed his finger once more to his lips. ‘Silence is your only hope.’ He explained that he was keeping the couple occupied with a large file of press-cuttings.

‘About me?’

‘Of course about you. I don’t want them to suspect anything. I gave them my whole collection to look at. ’

‘That will help them, Ambrose. ’

‘Meantime, though, you can be on your way. ’

‘Where to?’

‘Keep to the east, Lucan, and I’ll direct them south-west somehow. You’ll find a bed-and-breakfast at Kirkwall. They’ll never think of tracing you to that little hole. ’

Some twenty minutes later the lay brother was observed by Lacey escorting a black-robed monk with a bulging hold-all to a light-coloured station-wagon. They shook hands and the car departed. Lacey looked back at her copy of the London paper which held a not-very-revealing article about Lucan. She said, suddenly, ‘You know, this would be a good place for Lucan to hide. Are you getting anything out of these cuttings? I’m not, I seem to have seen them all. ’

‘They’re fairly new to me,’ said Joe. ‘I wouldn’t mind another half-hour’s go at them, if that’s all right by you, Lacey, dear. ’

‘Yes of course it’s all right.’ She felt how strongly he was attracted by her, and began to consider to herself that the idea of a love affair between them might not be a bad idea, even if it was only an idea.

The door opened and in wafted Ambrose.

‘How are you getting on?’ He fingered one of the press-cutting piles. ‘How strange it must be,’ he said, ‘to be Lucan, if he is still alive. From what I knew of him his thoughts will be entirely on evading capture, all the time; every day, every move, every contact with the world, all his acquaintances – all, all, revolving around that one proposition, that he must avoid capture. ’

‘He must be haunted by what he did,’ said Lacey.

‘Not him,’ said Joe.

Ambrose joined in with a conviction that almost betrayed him. ‘Oh no, he doesn’t think of the murder,’ he said. ‘Wherever he is, whoever he is now, he thinks of nothing but escape. ’

‘Do you see him ever?’ said Joe.

‘Not for sure. He has pretenders. ’

‘Not much of a cause to pretend to,’ said Lacey.

‘Now, what . . .’ said Ambrose. He seated himself as comfortably as he could at the central table, which was at present covered with newspaper pages and cuttings. ‘What, Lacey, brings you to this manhunt?’

‘I’m going to write a book. ’

‘And you think you’ll find him where everyone else has failed? – the journalists, the police and others – who knows? There have been sightings, no findings, for a quarter-century. ’

‘What a fascinating subject it is,’ said Joe. ‘I want to help Lacey all I can. ’

‘Would you tip off the police if you found him?’ said Ambrose.

‘Yes,’ said Lacey. ‘No,’ said Joe, simultaneously.

They laughed. ‘I think he must have had a lot of hardships,’ Joe said. ‘He made a blunder. ’

‘Oh, but he fully intended to kill his wife,’ said Lacey. ‘The intention was there. Which one he killed is basically irrelevant. He had been talking about murdering his wife. ’

‘People talk, they talk,’ said Ambrose. ‘It was a dreadful, frightful affair, there’s no doubt about that. ’

‘Why is it,’ said Lacey, ‘that most people – those who didn’t know him as well as his friends and acquaintances – didn’t at all believe he would take his own life? He was driving round the very night of the murder seeing friends of his and phoning his mother, and he also wrote some letters to his friends. Instructions about his overdrafts, garbled explanations, a declaration that he was going to lie low, but no good-byes, no hint that he might end his life, and no remorse, not a word of sorrow about the death of young Sandra, poor young Sandra. Yes, if I located him tomorrow I would tip off the police. ’

‘And you, Ambrose?’ said Joe.

‘Oh, in my trade you know how it is,’ said the priest, and left it at that.

They were on their way south, gladly leaving behind them the flatlands of the north, the pearl-grey skies full of watery foreboding and squawking seafowl.

Lacey had with her a pile of press-cuttings – there would be about thirty – which Ambrose had arranged to be photocopied for her. He had been anxious to get rid of the couple, had not even offered to show them round the fairly new monastery.

‘The man we are looking for is stupid but cunning, not clever,’ she said.

‘That’s very true. One would think you’d known him, Lacey, as I did. He was stupid and boring. You had to draw him out. Sometimes, if you succeeded in drawing him out, he could be quite amusing though. ’

‘But not clever. ’

‘Oh no, not clever. He had a flair for gambling. Always lost in the end but he had a physical presence, so that a gaming house would find him an asset, egging on the novices and so on. ’

‘Are you sure you’d recognize him?’ said Lacey.

‘No. I don’t think I would. At least, not face-on because I’d bet that he’s had facial surgery. But you know, I might recognize him from the back. His shape, his movements, the way he walked. Now, if you find him, what are you going to do?’

‘Arrange an interview. ’

‘He’d never agr...