A Species of Revenge (28 page)

He'd walked away, just as he'd walked away from Ensor and his own wife. He'd gone into the wood with Patti, and emerged a few minutes later, without a soul having witnessed his entry or exit from the wood.

‘I'm sorry I did it, I never would have killed her if I'd thought about it,' he said, beginning to weep again.

‘And you wouldn't have killed Philip Ensor either, if you'd thought about it?'

‘That was different. We were fighting. I knocked him down once and he got up. I picked a stone up and hit him with it. I left him lying in a puddle – I thought it would cool him off. How was I to know he'd die?'

‘Tell me exactly what you were fighting about – how he came to be in Lavenstock that night.'

‘He'd been threatening me. I'd had a letter from his wife, Judith, telling me what was going on. I found it hard to believe – I'd always thought Philip a decent sort, we'd always got on well, but he was hardly the sort a woman would die for.' Seeming not to have noticed his unfortunate choice of words, he went on, ‘We'd been going through a bad patch, Lisa and I ... she wanted me to get another job where I could spend more time with her and the children, for one thing. But I never thought things were that bad. It was hard to stomach the idea of her and Philip. I wrote her some rather strong letters, telling her she must give him up.'

‘You mean threatening letters, don't you?'

‘What do you think? She'd been playing around while I was in the thick of it in Bosnia. I wasn't exactly happy about that. I told her she'd better come to her senses, or else. She wrote and told Ensor – those letters, I suppose,' he said, gesturing to the pile on the table, ‘telling him that I'd threatened to kill her. The baby was his, you know. He was abroad when she died, but when he came back and heard about it, he threatened to take the letters to the police, unless ...' He couldn't finish the sentence but Mayo finished it for him.

‘Unless you paid him back the money you owed him. Your wife mentioned the debt, several times, in her letters.'

‘Yes, she would. She didn't like me not paying it back. I don't think he was bothered about it, he had a good job and never squandered his money – but I'd have paid it back if I could. Wouldn't you hate the idea of owing money to a man who'd been sleeping with your wife? When he began to pester me, I paid some of it back, but eventually I told him that was it. I'd no more to give him.'

‘What was his reaction to that?'

‘He said he had a proposition to put to me. He'd found out about my move to Lavenstock and demanded I met him that night, which I did.'

‘Where?'

‘Where? Oh, I didn't want him inside the hotel where Sarah might see us, so I arranged to meet him outside, in the car park. He was late.'

‘He didn't park in the hotel car park.'

‘No, it's not very big and there was a function on that night, and all the spaces round about were taken up, too. He said he'd had to shove his car up some back alley. He wasn't the sort to let things upset him, usually, but I think it had annoyed him that he couldn't find anywhere. At any rate, he became abusive with me over – over Lisa's death. I thought he meant to kill me, but I pushed him down and ran off – anywhere, I didn't know that road led to the allotments – but he followed me and – well, I've told you what happened then.'

There was silence when he'd finished.

‘Thank you, Mr Voss. We'll take a break, and then go through all this once again. And I'd advise you to change your mind about getting a solicitor.'

Down a short, steep drive leading off the country lane, there is the house, a small, irregular brick-and-timber Elizabethan manor, tucked into a fold of the hill. Sarah sits curled in the window-seat, reading a letter.

The first time she saw Fitz's house was nearly three months ago, shortly after Dermot's arrest, on a warm October day. The front door and several windows had been wide open, and the sounds of a violin concerto floated across the garden.

‘That's Mrs Mac's radio,' Fitz explained. ‘She's tuned in to Classic FM all day.' But she'd evidently heard the car, and had come into the hall to greet them, a raw-boned, ginger-haired Scots woman with a soft, sibilant Highland accent. ‘Och, I was not expecting you so soon! I'll be having your tea ready in half an hour,' she said. ‘Maybe the wee girls would like to help me make some drop scones while you two make yourselves comfortable?' and bore the children away.

‘She doesn't usually come over all stage-Scottish like that,' Fitz said. ‘She's either embarrassed or wants you to get a good impression.'

‘I'm impressed, all right,' Sarah said, following him as he led the way from the wide, stone-flagged hall into a pleasant room with a big stone fireplace where now a huge log fire burns. The room was slightly shabby, the slipcovers faded, some of the rugs on the wide polished boards threadbare, but the furniture was old and beautiful and everything bore witness to Mrs McLaren's meticulous Scottish housekeeping, right down to the squarely placed cushions and the single pot plant on a mat, dead centre of a shining, gate-legged oak table. ‘It's a lovely, lovely house,' Sarah said.

Fitz's shoulders relaxed. ‘I've been hoping you'd say that. I didn't know how you'd react. It was a small farm at one time, with quite

a bit of land round it when my parents bought it, but now there's only the house.'

‘And the garden,' Sarah had said, looking out of the low-silled, latticed windows on to a stone-flagged terrace with a garden beyond, glowing with dahlias, asters and chrysanthemums, beech trees at the bottom just turning gold. ‘That's beautiful.'

‘I'll take you round later, though it's no thanks to me it looks the way it does. My father moved into a cottage in the village with no garden to speak of when I married, so he's very happy to look after this. It was my mother who laid it out and we just try to keep it as she did.' He gave a gusty sigh. ‘Like the rest of the house, I'm afraid. Nobody's done anything to it for years. Elspeth and I were always going to do it up, but somehow we never did.' He could mention her name now, not yet easily, not entirely without pain, but without too much awkwardness. ‘You can do what you want with it, when we're married.'

That was in October, and Sarah Wilmot is now Sarah Fitzallan. She looks up from her letter at the now familiar room. The changes she's made have been small – a few lamps and some of Fitz's skyscapes that she's persuaded him to let her hang, huge jars of leaves and berries, new loose covers, supplied by Lois French, but it's made all the difference ... It has a heart, it's a home now, for her and Fitz, Lucy and Allie.

‘A ready-made family, Fitz,' she'd reminded him, gently. ‘It's a lot to be taking on.' A lifetime's commitment, maybe.

Dermot had been kept in custody, awaiting trial. Superintendent Mayo refused to speculate about what would happen when the trial came to court. He'd had nasty surprises from juries before. Dermot refused to plead guilty, and the police might fail to secure a murder conviction – but whatever happened, there were huge difficulties regarding the children's future, and though there was no question for Sarah about where their immediate future lay, she could see Fitz might not feel the same about it. ‘If it's a problem – ‘

‘That's a bonus, not a problem,' he'd interrupted firmly. Straight down the line, Fitz. He'd had it all worked out, he wasn't under any illusions that it was all going to be plain sailing, but he'd accepted what it would mean and it hadn't made any difference. Why had she thought it would? If anybody could cope, it was Fitz.

‘I love both of them dearly,' he told her gruffly, ‘but if they were the most horrible brats in Christendom, I'd still love them for your sake.'

‘Fitz,' she'd said, laughing, close to tears, ‘that's almost a romantic thing to say!'

‘What I mean is – ‘But what he'd meant to say had been interrupted by the arrival of tea.

‘I made them, I made the drop scones all by myself!' Lucy said, presenting a plate of rather odd-sized and misshapen scones, liberally spread with butter.

‘No, you didn't! Angel and me helped,' said Allie.

‘I put the batter on the griddle from the spoon!'

‘I turned them over!'

‘That's why they're such a yukky shape!' countered Lucy, getting in the last word, as usual.

‘Well, it doesn't matter who did what, they're delicious,' Sarah said, placatingly. ‘You'd better show me how to make them before Mrs Mac goes back to Scotland.'

It's now two months since Mrs Mac departed to live with her sister in Arisaig, the garden is winter-bare, the children are looking for cones from the Scots pine, to take to school and gild for Christmas decorations. Allie stands under the tree, looking up, reminding Sarah unbearably of the day she'd stood under the sequoia, the day of the welcome party at Simla, and the notes of ‘Alice Where Art Thou?' sounding through the house.

‘Do you think the children would like to have the Polyphon?' Hope had asked, when she was clearing out the house. Then, painfully, seeing Sarah's face, ‘No, better not.'

Allie had talked constantly at first about the wonderful day when she was unexpectedly taken out of school by Hope, when they had the long ride in the car and she was given all sorts of treats and Hope was so kind to her. Everyone was so interested in what she had to tell them, but after a while they stopped questioning her and by now it's only a memory. Any scars left are Hope's.

Haltingly, at intervals, Hope had forced herself to tell Sarah everything, about Francis, and Sven, and the child which had never been born, and the unsatisfied longings which had built up over the years. The events surrounding Patti's death had brought it all back, and suddenly there had been a confusion in her head, a compulsion to take Allie away, to have her just to herself. The madness hadn't lasted long. If Fitz hadn't appeared that night, she would have brought Allie back the next day, she swore that.

Sarah believed her. The letter which she now rereads is from Hope. She has taken up a live-in teaching post at a school near Shrewsbury. It isn't far from her cottage on the Long Mynd, where she spends most weekends. Imogen is back in Brussels, Simla is empty, and up for sale. The Baverstocks have bought Edwina Lodge. ‘Thank you for the invitation to spend Christmas with you,' Hope writes, ‘but I've already arranged to spend the holiday in Madeira, with a colleague from school.'

The tragedy has brought the two women together in a tenuous friendship, one that Sarah has deliberately worked on. Both of them have lost someone they loved very much as a direct consequence of what happened. Sarah has lost Lisa, and Hope has lost her brother, and this has formed a bond between them. Predictably, Hope found it nearly impossible to express her feelings about this, but Sarah, sensing the necessity for Hope to untangle her emotions about Francis, and what had caused him to take his life, wouldn't give up.

The inquest on Francis recorded a verdict of suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed. By what, it was not stated. But later, when the first shock had worn off and, encouraged by Sarah, Hope was able to talk about it, she admitted, ‘I know that it was Patti being killed that tipped him over the edge, being questioned about it. He knew that Dermot had recognized him that day at the party and felt it was bound to begin again ... the gossip, the persecution. That was what ruined his career, the first time. It was groundless, and cruel... I was his twin, as close to him as his own self, and I know. There was never any room for anyone, or anything else, between us. Believe me, I know what he was capable of, what he himself was, and wasn't. It nearly broke him, the first time. He'd eventually made something of his life, but he couldn't have stood up to it a second time.'

‘You might like to know,' she writes now, ‘that I sent Francis's book to his publishers, and I heard this week that they've accepted it for publication. They think it's the best thing he's ever done.'

Sarah smiles and uncurls herself from the window seat. She goes into the room at the back of the house that Fitz now uses as a studio. It's empty but for the paraphernalia of painting. The completed picture of Allie is on the easel. The drawing, to be more accurate, in pastels.

Allie is shown kneeling on the floor, drawing, caught as she looks up at the painter with a glancing smile, her expression one of perfect trust.

It's the best thing Fitz has ever done, too.