Authors: Tom Sharpe
The more Esmond thought about it, the better he liked his power and position and the more he liked his plan. He’d go through with the marriage and once that was over he’d put the boot into Belinda. To add
to his innocence and her guilt, she had stolen the car and had then insisted it was buried in the coal mine. And Myrtle had collaborated, by ordering Esmond and Old Samuel to carry out the crime.
With a degree of confidence in himself he had never felt before, Esmond crept close to the wall surrounding the yard and made his way unseen until he was under the kitchen window where he could hear what was being said inside.
Over the past few days the Hall had seen the arrival of a number of men and women carrying enormous amounts of luggage which Old Samuel had had to carry up to various of the Hall’s bedrooms. None of the new arrivals had much time for Esmond, however, and in fact each time he came into a room the heated discussions they seemed to be engaged in with Belinda and Myrtle came to an abrupt halt. Everyone then looked at him with barely concealed anger until he felt so uncomfortable he had to leave the room.
From his position under the wall Esmond at last began to understand just what the quarrels were about. It seemed that Belinda was claiming that she was next in line to inherit Grope Hall from Myrtle and to be the matriarch of the Grope family, but that these relations, or at least the women relations, were disputing it.
Things had definitely reached crisis point and as Esmond listened he found it difficult to distinguish who exactly was speaking amid all the shrieking.
But from the sound of it he guessed that Belinda had won her argument.
‘I wouldn’t come back here if you paid me,’ yelled one nameless outraged Grope. ‘The place is miles from anywhere and there isn’t even any central heating.’
‘Quite right,’ fumed another. ‘The thought of living in this hole was so awful I married the first man I met in Potters Bar when I got off the train south. Anyone who imagines I’m going to land up here is out of her mind.’
‘But the house ought to be mine!’ cried another. ‘I spent every childhood here and I’ve always loved it. All it wants is a bit of love and care and a wife and mother at the helm to look after it.’
‘In that case,’ Belinda said waspishly, ‘perhaps you’ll stay around and act as my best woman when I get married to Joe on Friday?’
Esmond’s gasp on hearing this almost gave his hiding place away. Friday! Gawd, he was going to be a married man by the end of the week.
Fortunately the noise he made was hidden by the sound of the assortment of angry Gropes banging the door loudly behind them as they left the Hall for good.
Belinda enjoyed her triumph for a moment before going to look for Old Samuel to see if he knew where the nearest Reverend Grope had his parish. Although she had spoken in anger now she came to think of it there wasn’t any reason that she shouldn’t get married sooner rather than later.
‘The Reverend Grope?’ Samuel said, looking puzzled. ‘That would be Theodore but I don’t know that he’s got a parish any more. He had a church in some village up Corebate way but he’s getting on so I don’t know if he’s still there. You could try the post office and they might find out for you.’
Belinda smiled to herself. If the reverend was getting on in years it might suit her purpose very well. Perhaps she could persuade him that the banns had long since been read and that there was nothing at all unusual in the age gap between the bride and her groom.
At the mental hospital Vera Wiley was still in an isolated room to save the other patients from her hysterical screams while also providing the psychiatrists who had been called in to examine her the privacy they supposed they would need. They were quickly disillusioned. There was no need for privacy, discretion or even further questions. Although four expert shrinks came separately to make their own assessment of her they went as a group to give their diagnosis to the superintendent.
‘The woman is totally insane,’ they said in unison.
‘I thought so myself. Can you explain the cause? I mean, what’s made her go off her head. She’s a mature woman and she’s been running a house and brought
up a son. Suddenly she flips her lid in this extraordinary fashion. Do you reckon she’s taken to drugs or something of that sort?’
‘All we know is that she suffers from the most ghastly hallucinations and is in a state of terror. She is utterly convinced her husband is a murderer who has killed her son.’
‘We’ve checked on Mr Wiley but can find no trace of him,’ said the superintendent. ‘And in fact if anyone’s been murdered, I’m more inclined to think he has. After all, he seems to have been a thoroughly respectable bank manager up until his disappearance and it’s not as if there’s any money missing from the bank.’
In the end the psychiatrists unanimously recommended that Mrs Wiley had to stay in the mental hospital and remain there for the rest of her life.
‘And would you mind checking on her brother Albert Ponson while you’re about it?’ the superintendent asked. ‘To my way of thinking he’s insane too. He’s certainly a long-time crook but it seems to me that he must have an extreme persecution complex. Come up to his bungalow after you’ve interviewed him and see what I mean for yourselves.’
After they had viewed the remains of the fortress and been shown the DIY slaughterhouse, the psychiatrists shared his opinion. Albert’s future was definitely the same as his sister’s, though in a different mental hospital of course.
In his room in the Catalan hotel, Horace Wiley was having a wonderful time. He had made love in a few hours more times than he had in his entire married life, and while he was now so exhausted he could no longer achieve yet another orgasm, he still had an erection and could fondle his lover’s buttocks and kiss her breasts to his heart’s delight.
Eventually, and with some reluctance, he broke off to go downstairs to the dining room with Elsie. Lunch was a splendid affair since after all his lovemaking Horace found that he had a huge appetite. He devoured a large plateful of Iberian ham and followed it with an enormous pork cutlet and finally a double ice cream and three coffees. Feeling pleasantly full,
Horace and Elsie left the dining room and returned to his bedroom. Horace had just undressed and was about to climb onto the bed with the thought that this was heaven when he slumped to the floor with a terrible thump. Elsie jumped out and knelt beside him to feel his pulse. To her horror she couldn’t find one in his wrist or neck. Horace Wiley was dead.
Ten minutes later Elsie had dressed and, having checked that there was no one in the corridor, was about to scurry off to her own room when she realised the bed was in a desperately crumpled state that would indicate all too obviously what had caused his heart failure. It looked exactly as though two people had been making the lethal love on it that Horace and Elsie had. So many people had seen them at lunch together that it seemed certain that she would be implicated.
Elsie relocked the door using a handkerchief and made the bed before turning back to Horace. If she could get him back onto the bed, preferably with his clothes on, the situation would be far safer for her. In fact, considering the enormously fatty lunch he’d had, his death might seem perfectly natural.
But Elsie’s attempt to get Horace back into his trousers and shirt failed hopelessly. He was far too heavy. Exhausted by her efforts, she sat down on a chair to get her breath back and only now started to feel the frightful effect of his sudden death.
She was distracted from her grief, however, when
she spotted Horace’s briefcase which he’d bought in Barcelona under the clothes cupboard where he had evidently hidden it. Crossing the room she pulled it out and found that it was unlocked. Curiosity got the better of Elsie and she opened the briefcase and examined its contents.
In fact, the only item inside the case was a large brown envelope with a number of what felt like soft-backed notebooks in it. Elsie prised the staples off the end of the envelope and slid the contents out. As she had suspected from feeling the envelope they weren’t notebooks but passports, quite a number of them in fact, and a driver’s licence.
Elsie examined the driver’s licence and opened the passports one at a time, studying the names and the photographs. She recognised her dead lover on the licence immediately as Horace Wiley without the beard. The man with the beard was an Austrian called Hans Bosmann and the passport wouldn’t have been much use in six months’ time because it would be out of date.
But why would Horace have told her that his name was Bert and why did he have all these obviously false passports? Being a sensible woman Elsie refused to read any British newspapers printed in Spain, even
The Times
and the
Telegraph
, because she wasn’t the least bit interested in politics. She read only
La Vanguardia
and
El Pais
, which stuck for most of the time to what was going on in Spain and local affairs.
All the same, the name Wiley seemed somehow familiar and now that she came to think of it she was sure that it had cropped up when she had heard English bathers mention something called the Wiley Mystery. Perhaps the licence she held had something to do with the mystery.
For a moment Elsie thought of leaving the licence with the body before deciding against it. After all, Bert – or Horace as she now knew – was the first man for a long time to have given her so much sexual satisfaction. As she unlocked the bedroom door and dashed up to her own room, she took the licence with her. The passports she left behind.
Horace Wiley had wanted to remain anonymous in life and being dead he would remain so.
Old Samuel’s suggestion that Belinda try the parish in a village near Corebate for a priest who could and would conduct her marriage to Esmond had paid off. Of the Reverend Theodore Grope there was no trace and in fact rumour had it that he had shuffled off somewhere and that he was so ancient that somewhere might be off this mortal coil altogether. But fortunately there was a new incumbent in place and one who seemed to believe her when she told him that everything was in order for the forthcoming nuptials.
Nevertheless, Belinda had had to put up a considerable sum of money ostensibly for the restoration of the village church which was badly in need of repairs.
In the end she had paid happily. In the absence of Theodore she had been worried about getting a parson to come to Grope Hall but the Rev. Horston who was obviously new to the district was happy to do so.
Belinda had also found a smart suit that fitted Esmond well enough. The suit had belonged to a young Grope who had been called up during the war. It was said that he went into the army quite willingly to escape from the boredom of life at the Hall, but it was also said that the poor man had been blown to bits at El Alamein which can’t have been quite the escape he was anticipating. Belinda had had to buy Esmond a new pair of shoes and a wedding ring but in the circumstances didn’t much begrudge the expense.
With these preparations in hand she set about training her fiancé on the ritual of the marriage. She was astonished how easy it was. Esmond no longer seemed in the least surprised at the prospect. On the contrary, he seemed to be truly delighted to be getting married to her.
‘Which only goes to show how young and attractive I must seem to him. And what a delightful boy he is,’ she thought to herself misguidedly. ‘He doesn’t even mind being called Mr Grope.’ She herself had started using a distant cousin’s maiden name but soon would be Mrs Grope and in control of the Hall and the estate.
Next morning, Esmond got up incredibly early and
went to talk to Old Samuel whom by now he both liked and trusted. He found him sitting outside his cabin over the wall at the top of the hill where it was well out of sight of the Hall.
‘I’ve come to ask you a question,’ he said, and sat down on the grass nearby.
‘Go ahead. Ask away.’
‘Why do they call you Old? You’re not old.’
Samuel nodded and lit an ancient pipe.
‘You’re an observant young fellow, you are. There’s no doubt about that,’ he said with a grin, not liking to point out that Esmond had asked him this when they first met and actually almost every day since. In fact, he wondered if the young fellow had some kind of brain damage which would explain why he’d stuck around so long. On the other hand, he was starting to like and trust Esmond and so he explained as he had to Belinda that in fact his real name was Jeremy and that, yes, he was only in his mid-thirties.
‘You’re a good sort, young Joe,’ Old Samuel finished up with. ‘And blokes like you have been in short supply around here these past few years. Old Myrtle can die in peace now that she knows the estate is in Belinda’s hands. Now it’s Belinda’s turn to worry about the female line.’
‘Is that why I’m going to be married?’
‘I reckon so,’ said Old Samuel. ‘Mind you, your future wife is a good-looker which is more than can be said for most of the Grope women. All the same,
I’d watch how you go. You never know what the Gropes are up to. She mightn’t have much use for you once you’ve done your duty, so to speak.’
Esmond smiled. ‘I think I’ll be all right. I’ve a few plans of my own, and if I succeed, so will you. You and me are a good team, Old Samuel. And I’d like to call you Young Jeremy from now on if it’s all the same to you.’
Samuel smiled back and reached out to shake Esmond’s hand.
‘Of course it is. Only not in the missus’ hearing maybe? You’re a good friend, Joe, and for my part I’m going to do my best to watch out for you,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you down if I can help it.’
Esmond climbed over the wall on the furthest side of the field from Samuel’s cabin and ran down to where he couldn’t be seen from the Hall to spend a little while thinking about this new friendship – perhaps his first ever true friendship even if he couldn’t call Young Jeremy by his proper name in public just yet. All that was going to change, though, once he took his rightful place as the owner and boss of the Grope estate.
Before long he heard Belinda calling for him in the distance so he ran back to the house and, avoiding the kitchen, climbed up the stone staircase to the bedroom where he pretended to be just getting dressed when Belinda came in.