A Rooted Sorrow

Book 32: Murder Room

by P.M. Hubbard

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Mike Hurst, tormented by events that happened five years ago, returns to the cottage he still owns and the location of past revelations. The place hasn't changed, but the people have, and he finds himself involved in a fresh net of personal discoveries, all rooted in the past and bedevilled by it, but all making it more difficult for him to find the solution he has come back to seek ... 'This is a haunting novel for the thoughtful reader by one of Britain's most gifted storytellers' Chicago Tribune

Release date: July 14, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 256

Sample

He recognised the cottage instantly and in detail, but it did not seem at all familiar. It was like a cottage seen in a picture, or perhaps more in a film, where the camera had
tracked all round it and up and down inside it, leaving him still sitting, detached, in front of the screen. The whole place was obviously the place that had been on his mind, almost night and day,
for the last five years, but now that he had come back to it, it was less real than the one he had had on his mind. This immediately raised the question whether he had done any good to come, but he
was committed to it now. He got out, opened the gate and drove the car up the steep curving drive to its garage at the back of the building.

Not its garage really. It was not the same car. The same model, only the colour was different, but it was another car that had stood here five years ago. As he got out, he had a momentary,
breathless conviction that the driver was different, too, a different person. Like the cottage, superficially recognisable, but not really the same. It would be fine if it was true, only it would
make nonsense of the whole thing. He took the key off its nail on the wall of the outside lavatory and unlocked the back door. It swung in freely for a bit, stuck for a moment where the bottom
caught the unevenness of the cement floor and then, when he pushed it over this, swung on faster and came up with a bump against the side of the china cupboard. He had not consciously remembered
any of this, but he did not run into the door when it stuck. On the contrary, his hand was on the handle, ready to give it the extra push when it needed it, lifting it a little, and then to hold it
back so that it did not hit the cupboard hard enough to do any harm. With the door open, he remembered the smell at once.

It was odd what houses smelt of. It could not be the people, or even the things the people did in them, because over the years the people changed, and different people did different things, but
the house, in between, went on smelling the same. You could overlay the smell of a house temporarily with smells of your own, and almost certainly, as with all smells, you could get to overlook it,
but you could not exorcise it altogether, and when you come back, even after quite a short absence, there it was, pleasant or unpleasant according to its associations in your mind, but the same
smell.

It was the smell that got him over his uncertainty and persuaded him that he really was back, the same person back to the same place. He remembered, with a rush, a whole number of things that
had happened when he had smelt that smell before. He had thought about them all at intervals over the years, but not the smell that went with them, and now he had that, he could no longer doubt
that he was the person they had happened to. He stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, looking round. Then he turned and went to get his things out of the car. There was no need to go
through into the other rooms until he had the things to put in them. There was nothing he needed to see. He knew what there was there.

He was going out for almost the last load of stuff from the car when he met Mrs. Basset in the doorway. She must have been watching for the car, as she always had. She could not see it turn in
off the road, because the gate and most of the drive were hidden by the hill, but she could see it go across the front of the cottage. There was just the moment or two between its appearance over
the shoulder of the drive and its disappearance round the back of the house, but if she knew it was coming, she would not miss it. Her cottage faced south at the bottom of the hill just as his
faced south at the top, and like most people who live in cottages, she spent more time looking out at the back than she did looking out at the front. She could find any number of useful things to
do and still not miss the car, once she knew it was coming. It was Mrs. Basset he had spent more time thinking about than anything else, but when he saw her, she was as unfamiliar as the
cottage.

She had in fact changed, but then so she would have. People did change more than places or things, even in five years, even people like Mrs. Basset. He could not have said what the physical
changes in her were, but it was not the physical changes that mattered. It was her state of mind he had had in his head all these years, and her state of mind, as she stood there in the doorway
facing him, was quite unfamiliar. She looked at him with a mild interest, just strong enough to bring her up the hill as soon as she saw the car, but not really amounting to curiosity. There even
seemed to be some amusement in it. Whatever it was, it did not worry her, nor did he. He had expected to worry her, and had expected to feel bad about it, merely as a natural extension of what he
had been feeling all these years. He was disconcerted, but did not have time to feel glad of the change.

She said, ‘Well, Mr. Hurst. I saw the car and thought I’d come up. You got everything you want? You’ll be glad to be back.’

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs. Basset.’ He meant that he had everything he wanted, not that he was glad to be back. He had not meant to be, and could not let himself agree that he was.
‘You’re looking very well,’ he said. She was, too; he could see it now. There was more flesh on her face, and she looked smoother and a better colour. He had remembered her eyes
staring, but now they did not stare.

She said, ‘Oh yes, thank you, I always keep well.’ She seemed surprised that he should have mentioned it, as if it was hardly worth mentioning. ‘You’re looking well
yourself,’ she said.

He said, ‘I’m all right.’ It was the least he could say, but he did not really mean it. It was because so little was well with him that he had come. ‘How’s
Lizz?’ he said.

‘Elizabeth? She’s fine. Works in Frantham now. She’s a secretary at Morris’s, the solicitors. Quite grown up, of course. You’ll see.’

He nodded. ‘She would be, of course.’ He looked at her, but there was still no strain in her face. She waited placidly for what he was going to ask. ‘And Jack?’ he
said.

She said, ‘We don’t hear from Jack.’

He nodded again, but this time he lowered his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Well, I don’t know.’ He looked at her again, and found she was almost smiling. ‘I reckon he’s better away. Better for him, too, I mean. I don’t worry about
him.’ She saw his face change and said, ‘He didn’t really fit in here. It wasn’t the place for him, do you think?’

‘Perhaps not. So long as you don’t worry.’

She shook her head. She was quite certain. ‘I don’t worry,’ she said. She was watching him now. ‘And Miss Garstin’s married,’ she said. ‘Mrs. Richards,
she is, now.’

‘Is she? That’s good.’ He gave her back certainty for certainty, and she accepted it, smiling.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘If there’s nothing —’

‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. It was nice of you to come up. I’ll look in presently.’

‘Any time. You’ll find us all much the same.’ She turned and went off round the house, and after a moment he too went out to the car. So Christabel was married, to someone
called Richards. He did not remember anyone called Richards round here. Maybe they did not live round here, but Mrs. Basset had sounded as if they did, as if Christabel was still part of the place.
Christabel was married, and Lizz was a grown-up secretary called Elizabeth, and Mrs. Basset was a placid, smooth woman, whose eyes no longer stared, and who found nothing to worry about. He would
find them all much the same, she had said, but that could not be right, from what she had said. Had she forgotten or had he?

He took the rest of the things out of the car and put them down on the gravel while he shut the car up. The sun was out now, not at all hot but very bright, and the little wood behind the
cottage was in new leaf. It looked thicker than he remembered it, so grown together that you could hardly get into it. From here the trees did not look very much taller, but he supposed they must
be. There was no wind at all, and even the leaves did not move. There were birds singing among the trees, but he could not see them. It was all very peaceful. He picked the things up off the gravel
and carried them across to the back door and into the kitchen. He left everything where it was and went across to the door into the sitting-room. He did not mind the smell of the house, there was
nothing wrong with it, but the sooner he got the windows open, the better.

The rest of the house was like the kitchen, perfectly predictable, but not really familiar. He stopped trying to put things away and sat down in his usual chair to think. To say he was not the
same as the person who had sat here five years ago was attractive, but it would not really do. He remembered the place and what had happened there, and you cannot remember what has happened to
someone else. He had spent a lot of time remembering. His memory constituted a large part of the continuity of experience that bridged the gap between then and now, and the experience itself was
real enough. It was only that, now that he had finally made himself go back over the bridge, he found this sort of gap at the farther end. The things he remembered, now that he came back to them,
were somehow less real than his memory of them. It was his memory that had brought him back, but it had not landed him quite where he expected.

It followed that there were still decisions to be made. It had taken him five years to decide to come back, and he had assumed that, once he had decided, the rest would follow. Now he was not so
sure. What had looked inevitable to his memory seemed arguable to his present experience. He had not done with his memory, but he must consider the facts. For a start, he must see Christabel. He
got up from the chair. It struck a little cold as he sat in it, and had the smell of the house. He went on with his unpacking.

When he had finished, he went out of the front gate and down the path towards Mrs. Basset’s cottage. He looked at his watch. It was still too early for Lizz to be home from Frantham. He
did not want to see Lizz just yet. Not that she was likely to be important in herself, but she might be a distraction. He went right down the path into the road, and then turned and went into Mrs.
Basset’s front gate. Later in the year the front door would be standing open, but it was not warm enough for that yet. He went up the flagged path and knocked on the door.

A man opened it. He was a big smiling man in his shirtsleeves and seemed very much at home. The man said, ‘Hullo, Mr. Hurst,’ and they smiled at each other. The man knew him and he
knew the man, only he could not for the life of him remember his name or who he was. The man saw his difficulty and did not hold it against him. He said, ‘You don’t remember me. John
Merrow.’

‘Of course. I do remember you, but I couldn’t put a name to you. You live down Furzehill Lane.’

The man still smiled, but he shook his head. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I live here. My lease fell in there, and if it hadn’t been the lease, it would have been the roof. And
Mrs. Basset had the room. Do you want to see her?’

‘Well – yes, but nothing special. She told me to look in.’

‘That’s right.’ He stood back from the door. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’ll call her.’

They went into the front living-room and Merrow opened the door at the bottom of the staircase and called up it. ‘Amy,’ he said, ‘there’s Mr. Hurst here to see
you.’

Mrs. Basset said something he could not catch, and a moment later she came down the stairs, moving lightly for a woman of her age. She shut the door of the staircase behind her and stood there,
looking from one to the other of them and smiling slightly. She said, ‘You remember Mr. Hurst, John?’

Merrow was still smiling, too. He had his hands in his pockets. Everybody was very easy and pleasant. ‘’Course I remember him,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t put a name to
me, but he remembered me, all right. And where I lived.’

He looked at Mrs. Basset and Hurst wondered whether she would find it necessary to explain Merrow’s presence in the house, as he had done, but she did not. ‘That’s right, he
would,’ she said.

‘I tell you one person I can’t remember,’ Hurst said, ‘Richards. You said Christabel – Miss Garstin – had married a Mr. Richards, but I couldn’t place
him. Did I know him?’

Her eyes flicked sideways to Merrow and came back to his again. They were both still smiling. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, you wouldn’t have known him. After your time, he was.
It was Mr. Martin in your time.’

‘Martin?’ he said. ‘I don’t – the only Martin I remember was the parson in Frantham. But —’

‘That’s right. Well, he went – oh, three or four years back, and then Mr. Richards came.’

There was a moment’s complete silence. Then Hurst said, ‘Do you mean Miss Garstin married the parson?’

‘She did, yes.’ There was laughter held in on both sides of him now, waiting to see what he would do before it showed itself.

He did not laugh, because he did . . .