Part 22 (1/2)
”So am I.”
”Then what-”
Another kiss silenced her. ”Then it doesn't matter, does it?” he murmured. ”We'll keep Frank Griffith's secret. You and I. Together.”
”Together?”
”Don't you want to take one of those emotional risks we were talking about?”
”Yes.” She lowered her head against his shoulder. ”I do.”
CHAPTER.
TWENTY-SEVEN.
At seven o'clock the following morning, Derek telephoned Fithyan & Co. and recorded an apology for his absence on the answering machine. Any risk of having to explain himself to David Fithyan was thereby avoided, or at any rate postponed. Two hours later, he was in Llandovery, seeking directions to Hendre Gorfelen. By half past nine, he was driving along the curving hillside track towards the farm. Within a few minutes, he had arrived.
He stopped the car in front of the house and wound down the window. He could hear a distant bleat of lambs and, closer to hand, a susurrous movement of tree-tops in the breeze, but no sound to suggest Frank Griffith was nearby. He climbed from the car and looked around, relieved no dog had yet hurled itself from a barn. None of the windows of the house were open. This, and the fact that anybody inside would have heard him arrive, convinced Derek n.o.body was at home. Nevertheless, he walked up to the door and knocked. There was no response.
H A N D I N G L O V E.
127.
He retraced his steps to the car and sat back in the driving seat.
Although Griffith might be away for some time, he would eventually return, whereas to scour the hills in search of him carried no guarantee of success. There was nothing for it, then, but to sit tight.
Derek sighed and closed the window. Idly, he reached across to the glove compartment and took out his copy of Tristram Abberley: A Critical Biography. In the index, Griffith, Frank warranted just one entry. Derek turned to it and ran his eye down the page until he came to Griffith's name.
When Abberley died, semi-conscious and probably too delirious to be in much pain, in the early hours of Sunday 27th March, a sergeant from his own platoon, Frank Griffith, was loyally in attendance. It was the same man who, shortly after the poet's perfunctory funeral in Tarragona Cemetery, delivered his papers to the British Consul for onward transmission to his widow. It was a simple and no doubt unconsidered act, yet, had Griffith not carried it out, the whole corpus of Abberley's Spanish poetry might easily have been lost.
As it was, the belief commonly held for many years after Abberley's death, that he had written no poems at all whilst in Spain, was shown to be a fallacy when, in 1952- A sudden rap on the gla.s.s reverberated in Derek's ear. He started so violently that the book slipped from his grasp. When he turned, it was to see a face staring in at him, a lined and expressionless face which, even though Maurice Abberley's description had been second-hand, he recognized instantly.
”Good morning,” he ventured, as he wound down the window.
”Frank Griffith?”
”And you would be?”
”Derek Fairfax.” He opened the door an inch or so, which was all Griffith's position made possible. ”Let me . . . er . . . introduce myself.”
Now, late enough to have made some kind of point, Griffith stepped back, allowing Derek to climb out. ”You may have heard of my brother, Colin Fairfax.” He grinned uneasily. ”Also known as Fairfax-Vane.”
”You're right. I may have.” There was nothing in Griffith's gaze to encourage communication of any kind, let alone discourse. ”What do you want?”
128.
R O B E R T G O D D A R D.
”I understand . . . Well, that is . . . Perhaps we could discuss this indoors.”
”We could not.” He glanced into the car and Derek wondered if he could see what he had been reading.
”I'm told you have some letters, Mr Griffith, sent to Beatrix Abberley from Spain in the 'thirties by her brother, the poet Tristram Abberley.”
”Told by whom?”
”I . . . I'd rather not say.”
”Then maybe I'd rather not answer your questions.”
”I'm here to appeal to you on my brother's behalf. I wouldn't be prying-or even curious-but for the position he's in. He may go to prison for something he didn't do. Perhaps for a long time. He's not a young man. I-”
A touch of Griffith's stick on Derek's shoulder silenced him. ”If the letters you referred to existed-if I had them-what difference could they possibly make to whether your brother is convicted or not?”
”I don't know. But Beatrix Abberley was anxious to make sure they didn't fall into the wrong hands, wasn't she? If we could find out why-”
”What would you say if I told you I'd burned the letters-with-out reading them?”
”I wouldn't believe you.”
Griffith's eyebrows twitched up, his first facial reaction of any kind. ”I can't help your brother, Mr Fairfax.”
”Can't or won't?”
”Is there a difference?”
”I think so. All I'm asking you to do is show me the letters-or tell me what they contain that could make his sister a target for murder.”
”You're asking more than you know.”
”You admit you know what's in them, then?”
”I admit nothing.”
”Are you prepared to stand idly by and let an innocent man be sent to prison?”
Griffith did not reply. Instead, he wedged his stick in the handle of the car door and pushed it wide open. ”This is my farm. I'd like you to leave it.”
H A N D I N G L O V E.
129.