A Grave Man (36 page)

15

The copper beech which shaded the lawn and hung over the river had turned a glorious red before shedding its leaves in the October winds. Mersham Castle was beautiful but melancholy, as though it knew what was to come and feared it. Edward, who loved the place more deeply than words could express, found his mood matched by the changing seasons. Although his health had improved and his wound healed, his spirits were at a low ebb. The Duchess was worried about him but the distractions she offered were rejected. One cold and wet Thursday in late October, she sat on his bed while he ate his breakfast and, with some trepidation, informed him that Maggie Cardew had expressed a wish to see him.

‘I have her letter here if you would like to read it. She says she is writing to me rather than you because she has already sent you two letters which you have ignored. Is that true, Ned?’

Edward wrinkled his face and pushed away his eggs and bacon. ‘I’m afraid it is, Connie. The truth is I don’t know what to say to her. Her brother is in prison waiting to be hanged and I was responsible. What can I say to her that would not add insult to injury?’

‘I think you owe it to her.’

‘Do I?
Do
I, Connie?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘I think I have paid my dues.’

‘It’s up to you, of course, but the poor girl is all alone since her mother died and though Lord Weaver has been very kind to her, she has no real friend.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said grumpily. ‘I say, Connie, I’ve been meaning to . . . to tell you how grateful I am to you for taking me in and nursing me and so on. You’ve been an absolute brick and I truly think Gerald is the luckiest man alive.’

The Duchess smiled and got up from his bed to hide her pleasure. In her most secret imaginings, she had sometimes fantasized about what it might be like to be married to the younger brother. Of course, Gerald was a dear and, in a certain light, he was almost handsome and it was something to be a duchess but . . . but he was dull and, whatever else Ned was, it wasn’t dull! She wrapped her silk dressing-gown round her more closely and asked, ’You’ll be here for Christmas, won’t you? Frank’s coming.’

‘With that awful American girl?’

‘Oh, she’s not that bad,’ the Duchess said gaily. ‘As a matter of fact, I think things may have cooled between them. She took him to some meeting about eugenics and Frank made a bit of an ass of himself – so he says – and rather laid into some women who were spouting nonsense about breeding. He’ll tell you the details but there’s a certain
froideur
there.’

‘Ah! I knew the boy had sense.’

‘Is Fenton all right – staying here for so long, I mean?’

‘He’s loving it. He seems to have “formed an attachment” – his words – with Mary. Have you noticed?’

‘Mary? My Mary? What a sly boots! No, I haven’t noticed. I must be going blind in my old age.’

She considered for a moment. Mary Harris was her personal maid and it would be inconvenient, to say the least, if she married and left her service. She ticked herself off for being selfish. Why shouldn’t the girl be married? She was pretty enough. Connie remembered the time, when Frank was back from Eton for the holidays, she had caught him kissing Mary in the buttery and had had to threaten him with his father.

‘So, that’s settled – you’ll stay at Mersham for Christmas?’

‘I would like that very much. Then I shall return to London and resume my normal life,’ Edward said pleasantly. ‘I’m still hoping for that Foreign Office job I was telling you about.’

‘Have you written to Vansittart?’

‘No, should I?’

‘I just wondered. They may have appointed someone else by now to run that department of industrial espionage or whatever it’s called. Surely they couldn’t hold it open for you indefinitely?’

‘Sh! That’s top secret!’ he said with exaggerated emphasis. ‘I ought not to have told you anything about it. Anyway, the Foreign Office is much too grand to indulge in espionage.’

‘I hope not. It would be so like us to play by the rules of a game no one else is playing.’

Edward laughed. ‘Connie, my dear, you make me feel better. I wish I had married you instead of letting Gerald have you. You’re much too good for him.’

This was so close to what she had been thinking that she hurriedly turned her face to the window. ‘What nonsense you talk, Ned. Gerald is a dear and you’re a ne’er-do-well who people try to kill. Why would I want you?’

‘Of course, I was only joking,’ he said, disappointingly.

In revenge, she asked, ‘Have you heard anything from Verity?’

His face fell and she wished she had not brought it up.

‘I had a postcard. She and Adam are in Vienna. She’s says her German is getting quite good. She thought she might come back to London for a few days at Christmas.’

‘Well, tell her she would be very welcome here.’ Connie spoke with as much enthusiasm as she could manage.

‘Do you mean that?’ Edward’s eyes brightened.

‘Of course.’

‘Then, I’ll write and tell her. I don’t think she has anywhere else to go. Her father’s still in New York and her friends, the Hassels, are spending Christmas in Paris. Adrian says he is sure this will be the last Christmas of peacetime and he wants to enjoy it in his favourite city.’

Connie nodded. ‘It will be good to see her.’

In fact, she found it hard to forgive Verity for treating her brother-in-law with such – in her view – callous disregard. She wanted to slap the girl. To make Ned unhappy was a mortal sin in her religion. In the beginning, she had not wanted him to marry Verity – the Duke could not stand her – but, when she saw how much in love he was, she had decided to do all she could to get them up the aisle. She could not understand what Verity was up to. She genuinely cared for Edward – of that Connie was certain – but she would not commit herself to him. She had some foolish objection to the whole idea of marriage. The Duke was deeply shocked by the immorality of the modern woman, among whose ranks he included Verity. And now, Connie gathered, she was living in sin, as people called it – indeed as
she
called it – with a young German aristocrat. She shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps she was getting old but . . .

‘Now leave me, Connie. I shall bathe and then go for my constitutional. The doctor said I must walk for an hour every day when it’s not too cold. I feel stale and out of condition. It’s going to be a hell of a job getting fit again but I’m determined to do it.’

‘And Maggie Cardew?’

‘Look, Connie, if she wants to come, that’s all right with me but it may end in tears.’

Edward was as nervous as he had been before sitting his finals but, when Maggie came into the drawing-room, he was immediately calm. He got up from the chair, in which he had been pretending to read
The Times
, and took her by the hand. Then, as she smiled at him, he kissed her.

‘You would never know, would you?’ she said, touching her cheek.

‘What? Oh, the scar! It’s amazing. Do you know, I had quite forgotten about it. But, yes, now you mention it . . .’ He looked at her. ‘It is perfect. Montillo may have a lot to answer for but no one can deny that he is a very clever surgeon. You’ve heard nothing from him, I suppose?’

‘I think he is in Germany but he may have changed his name. I haven’t tried to get in touch.’ She hesitated. ‘You really believe he is a monster?’

‘I do,’ he said gravely. ‘He is absolutely determined to pursue his ideas of racial purity and he believes the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good. It’s what Verity and I can never agree on. She believes that Communism is the one true faith and, if people have to go to the wall in order to create the perfect socialist society, then so be it. From all I have seen in Spain and elsewhere, I am absolutely certain that any philosophy which is prepared to sacrifice even one person for the greater good is a tyranny.’

‘Forgive me! I didn’t mean to get on my high horse. I was so sorry to hear about your mother. I wanted to write to you but it was during that awful trial and I didn’t know what to say. To think, when we met that day at Cranmer Court, I was to bring such trouble down upon you all. I almost wish we had never met.’

‘I am sorry you feel that, Edward, because I don’t. You didn’t bring trouble on us. Teddy brought about his own downfall. Let’s be honest about it.’

‘You told me you thought he was spending too much time at the casino but did you know he had serious financial problems?’

‘I knew he gambled but not that he was so heavily in debt. I really believe that, when Simon Castlewood and Montillo encouraged him to invest in the Institute, they were trying to help. They all thought they were going to make a fortune.’

‘What’s happened to it now? Do you know? The Clinic was closed down, of course.’

‘The Institute was sold to a French businessman and is still making women beautiful, as far as I know. I don’t think many people made the connection between the Institute and the Clinic. Anyway, the rich – and the French rich in particular – are not very scrupulous. They don’t become rich by being tenderhearted. Or am I being cynical?’

‘No, I’m sure you are right.’ He took her hand. ‘Maggie, it’s so good to see you. I mean it. I just couldn’t believe you would want to see
me
. How is Edmund?’

‘Surprisingly well. No, not well exactly – but at peace. He’s very calm. Sometimes I wish he was a little less calm, to tell the truth. I’m glad for him but his calmness can be a little unnerving. Poor Maud! What a miserable life she led – to be bullied by her father to give up the love of her life and then to be murdered when she had found someone else to love.’

‘But she killed her father,’ Edward said slowly. ‘She knew she had done a very evil thing – whatever the provocation. Tell me, there is one thing which has never been properly explained. Why did Edmund lay her body in the stream? Was he trying to wash away the evidence?’

‘I asked him that. He said she had committed a mortal sin when she murdered her father and he merely helped her make atonement. He laid her in the water so it could wash her clean of sin. I think he convinced himself that he was sacrificing her, not murdering her.’

‘You think he is mad then?’

‘I don’t know. He seems quite rational but what’s happening inside here,’ she tapped her forehead, ‘it’s impossible to say.’

‘I’m sorry. It must be very painful for you.’

‘No, I think about it all the time and it does me good to talk about it. One thing to be thankful for is that at least Maud did not live to see Graham Harvey try to kill you.’

‘He didn’t try to kill me, as you know. He didn’t even try to kill the Duke!’

‘Has the Duke visited you on your sickbed?’ she inquired ironically.

‘No. He sent me a nice note and he was planning to visit me in hospital but when he found he
hadn’t
been the object of an assassination attempt, Fruity Metcalfe says he was quite put out. Insulted, don’t y’know. He felt he had been made a fool of. I did try to tell him that the bullet wasn’t aimed at him the moment it happened but I couldn’t get the words out. No, I don’t expect to hear from him again.’

‘Why did Harvey take his own life?’

‘He left a letter for me. He thought he had failed in everything. He hadn’t been able to protect the woman he loved, and he hadn’t even been able to avenge her. I got in the way. He couldn’t write the book he had researched for so long and – unlike Verity – he hadn’t gone to Spain to fight for his beliefs. He said he had had enough of failure and did not want to live in a world dominated by Nazi Germany. So he hanged himself. It’s a wretched business. I often think that if Verity or I had been able to talk to him, we might have stopped him.’

‘And Verity?’ Maggie was smiling and Edward smiled back.

‘She’s given me my marching orders,’ he said, trying not to sound bitter. ‘She’s madly in love with Adam von Trott and is enjoying Vienna. She likes to be in the front line and, in her view, Vienna is the front line. She believes – and I do, too – that Hitler will walk into Austria in the next month or two and we will not do a thing to stop him. And that will encourage him to walk through the rest of Europe.’

‘Is she safe there?’

‘Not very but she’s not interested in being safe. She wants to report history as it’s being made. She says she is uneasy with the title of foreign correspondent. She says she is a reporter – nothing more.’

‘But you’ve not seen her?’

‘She may be coming home for Christmas,’ he said without much hope.

‘And will you . . . ?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said quickly. ‘That’s all over. But what about you?’

‘Nothing. If I go to a party, I know everyone is looking at me and saying, “There’s the sister of the murderer.” It’s worse than when I had a real scar!’ She laughed but without humour.

‘We all bear scars. But could we see each other in London? I will soon be well enough to come up for the day and it’s time I got back to a normal routine.’

‘Are you sure? You are not just being kind? I’d hate you to be sorry for me.’

‘I’m not sorry for you, as I told you – it seems so long ago – at that awful cricket match at Swifts Hill. I would like to take you out to dinner and perhaps we could go on to a nightclub. Aren’t we allowed any pleasure? I don’t think it will be long before we are plunged into darkness so we should take what pleasure we can while we can.’

She looked embarrassed. ‘I wanted to ask you . . . The Castlewoods throw a party on New Year’s Eve. They’ve done it every year since they built Swifts Hill. They have invited me and . . . I wondered if you would come with me.’ Her words were hurried and it had obviously been difficult for her to ask.

‘Of course,’ Edward said at once. ‘It would be an honour. Will they mind me coming, though? The last time I saw Simon Castlewood in France we didn’t part on friendly terms.’

‘Ginny particularly wanted me to ask you – and Verity if she were in the country. She’s grateful to you for stopping Simon and his Foundation from going too far. I mean, it did go too far, of course . . . You’ve forgiven me for refusing to help you gather evidence against Dominic? I couldn’t do it after all he had done for me.’