Eden in Winter (3 page)

‘Hello, Jack,’ Adam said with tenuous calm. ‘Is there anything in particular you’d care to say?’

Jack’s face was worn, his eyes sombre. ‘That I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I always loved you, Adam. For years my reason for staying was to watch you grow.’

Abruptly, Adam felt his self-control strip away. ‘As Benjamin Blaine’s son?’ he asked with incredulity. ‘You and my mother trapped me in a love–hate relationship with a man who resented me for reasons I couldn’t know. Then you pitted me against him in that last racing season. Do you have a fucking clue what came from that? Or do you give a damn?’

Though shaken, Jack refused to look away. ‘I never thought you’d leave this place – leave us all behind,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I still don’t know why you did.’

‘The reasons are my own, and you’ve got no right to know them.’ Adam caught himself, voice still husky with emotion. ‘There were times, growing up, when I wished you were my father. Now I wish you’d been as strong as the man who pretended I was his son. But for better or worse, I absorbed Ben’s will, his nerve, and his talent for survival. Along the way, I learned to trust absolutely no one – a useful trait in a family like ours.’ Adam paused, then finished with weary
fatalism, ‘On balance, I suppose, I’d rather have you as a father. Yet, right now, I look at you and Mother, and all I want is to vanish off the face of the earth. But I can’t, because the two of you have created a mess I plan to straighten out.’

Jack cocked his head. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘We’re starting where you and Ben left off,’ Adam responded coldly. ‘Tell me how you killed him, Jack.’

Jack hunched a little, hands jammed in his pockets. ‘So now you’re the avenging angel, or perhaps the hanging judge. Whatever you’ve done in all those foreign countries, and whoever you’ve done it for, you seem to have developed the soul for that.’

‘No doubt. But not without help.’

Jack seemed to flinch. ‘Maybe I deserve that. So yes, I’ll tell you what happened that night. But before you judge me, listen.’

Taut, Adam waited for George Hanley’s next question.

With an air of casual interest, the prosecutor asked, ‘Did you know that your brother had executed a new will, leaving almost everything to Carla Pacelli?’

Jack folded his hands in front of him. ‘I did not.’

That much was true, Adam understood – Jack had believed that a new will was a threat, not an existing fact. Had Jack known the truth, Benjamin Blaine might still be alive. But Hanley raised his eyebrows. ‘Then for what reason,’ he enquired, ‘did you go looking for your brother?’

Jack seemed to steel himself, as though against the distasteful necessity of revealing family intimacies. ‘Clarice had called me, obviously upset. Ben had been drinking, she said – not an unusual event. Even so, it seemed that he had been unusually abusive.’

‘Was Mrs Blaine more specific?’

‘She was too distraught to be entirely coherent. But as I understood her, he was flaunting his relationship with Carla
Pacelli – taunting her with it, in fact. I’m very fond of my sister-in-law, always have been. I thought Ben had subjected her to enough.’

Sitting beside Adam, his mother bowed her head, a silent portrait of gratitude and shame. ‘In Mrs Blaine’s account,’ Hanley asked, ‘had her husband mentioned that Ms Pacelli was pregnant with his child?’

Jack shook his head. ‘No. But Clarice’s humiliation – public and private – had gone on long enough. I knew my brother too well to truly believe that I’d persuade him. Still, I could damned well try.’

Delivering this answer, in Adam’s mind Jack evoked James Stewart in a classic movie from the 1940s – a decent man befuddled by circumstance, but resolved to wage an uphill fight for goodness. With willed detachment, Adam replayed Jack’s lies in his head, listening for what another man would have taken for sincerity. In this moment, Jack was too good at it for comfort.

Perhaps sensing this, Hanley paused. ‘Why don’t you just tell me, in your own words, what happened that night?’

An open-ended question, Adam saw at once – verbal rope for Jack to hang himself with. For a superstitious instant, he imagined Jack repeating what he had told him that night. The truth, at last.

*

Jack had found his brother sitting slumped on the rock, his eyes bloodshot, his gaze unfocused. With terrible effort, Ben sat straighter. ‘I’m taking a rest,’ he said tiredly. ‘I can only assume she called you.’

Jack knelt by him, staring into his face. ‘You can’t do this to her,’ he told Ben. ‘Not after all these years.’

Ben’s face darkened, and then he bit off a burst of laughter. ‘So I should leave everything to Clarice? That way you could move into my house, claim my wife, and take the fruits of all I’ve done. You may have lived for that, Jack. But, by God, I did not.’ Ben lowered his voice. ‘I’ve found someone who loves me, a woman with grace and grit who’ll give me a son that’s actually mine. They’re what my life comes down to, and where my money is going. You and Clarice can do what you please.’

Filled with anger, Jack leaned forward, his face inches from Ben’s. ‘This is her home, Ben. You can’t take that from her.’

Ben smiled a little. ‘I already have,’ he answered calmly. ‘I gave you a home of your own, Jack – our parents’ crackerbox. Ask Clarice if she wants to live there with you. But I suppose you learned her answer long ago. All these years, she preferred to live with me than in the mediocrity which is your birthright—’

Filled with hatred, Jack grabbed his shirt. ‘She can file for divorce, and challenge the agreement you forced on her.’

Despite the violence of Jack’s actions, Ben’s face revealed nothing but mild interest. ‘Not a bad idea,’ he remarked. ‘That’s what I’d have done in her place, many moons ago.’ He paused, gathering strength. ‘Unfortunately for you both, I’m dying. A terrible surprise, I know. Especially because she can’t divorce me fast enough. So, unless she wins a will contest, which my lawyer and I believe she can’t, she’ll have nothing but the deathless love you’ve imagined sharing. She’ll be looking for a rich man by Thanksgiving.’

Overcome by rage, Jack wrenched him upright, ripping a button off Ben’s shirt. In two steps he held his brother over the edge of the cliff, staring into the face he had always
loathed. ‘I can kill you now,’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘I’ve wanted to for years.’

Ben stared at him with contempt. ‘So has Adam. But even he couldn’t, and I don’t think you have the guts for it. He got all that from me.’

Jack thrust his brother backwards, his grip all that kept Ben from falling over the precipice. Ben looked back at him, speaking with his last reserves of will. ‘You’re a loser, Jack. And you’re about to lose again.’

Jack held Ben’s face an inch from his. ‘Do you think I can’t do this, Ben?’

Smiling with disdain, Ben spat into his face.

Jack felt the spittle on his cheek. A surge of insanity seized his body and soul. He stared into his brother’s adamantine eyes, then felt his hands let go.

Frozen in time, Ben filled a space above the void. Then he hurtled toward the rocks. For an instant, Jack swore that his feeble cry turned into laughter. Then a distant thud echoed in the dark, marking the death of his brother.

*

‘I was stunned.’ Jack spoke to Hanley in a monotone that seemed to echo the shock he described. ‘I stood there on the edge of the cliff, staring down toward the bottom. But it was night, and I couldn’t see. Ben had simply disappeared.

‘I found the ladder he built down the cliff side and lowered myself to the beach. In the darkness, the eighty feet felt even longer. By the time I reached the bottom, and found him lying near some rocks, I had no doubt he was dead. A terrible accident.’

Adam kept watching George Hanley.

*

Facing Jack, Adam had felt his skin crawl. ‘You held him over a cliff,’ he had managed to say, ‘then let him fall. Murder, plain and simple.’

Jack’s voice shook. ‘He’d been spitting in my face ever since he learned to walk. For that one instant, I could do what I’d imagined all my life.’

‘And save my mother from penury in the bargain. Or so you thought.’ Adam heard the horror in his voice mingling with despair. ‘Instead, you helped him commit suicide and lock in the new will, putting yourself at risk. No wonder he died laughing.’

Jack closed his eyes. Watching him, Adam was overcome by the tragedy of all that he had learned, the incalculable damage to so many lives. ‘What does my mother know?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. When I came back to the house, I told her I couldn’t find him. By morning, I’d figured out a plan. Incinerate the boots I’d worn, then stumble across his body on the beach, as though his death were an accident.’ Jack paused, touching his eyes. ‘It almost worked.’

‘Not for Teddy,’ Adam retorted. ‘They’re about to charge him with killing Ben.’

Jack stiffened. ‘How can
that
be? And how do you know?’

‘Doesn’t matter. The point is that I also know you’re a murderer. But if I turn you in to the police, they may think my mother’s an accomplice. On the other hand, there’s Teddy to consider. I can’t let him take the fall for you.’

Jack straightened. ‘Do you think
I
can? After I tell Clarice what happened, I’m going to the police.’

‘Don’t overdo it, Jack. There’s been heartache enough, most of it Ben’s doing.’ Adam paused, finding a calmer tone. ‘You
are
my father, after all. So I’d prefer that you not pay for getting Teddy off the hook. And given that you’re a reasonably accomplished liar, why not make that work for you?’

‘What the hell are you saying?’

‘You’ll have to improve your story, merging it with Teddy’s. In my version, Ben never threatened my mother with disinheritance. Because he was drunk and abusive, you decided to confront him in your role as her protector.’ Adam looked into his father’s eyes. ‘You found him here, and asked him to stop mistreating her. A quarrel ensued. Suddenly he took a swing at you and lost his balance, the victim of alcohol and disequilibrium caused by his brain tumour. When you reached for him, it was too late.’

Jack stared at the place where Ben had fallen. At last he said, ‘Still more lies, after so many. Do you think they’d believe me now?’

‘Not really. They’ll also think you’re protecting Teddy. But I’ve become familiar with what the police know, and don’t know. They have no witnesses to the murder. And Teddy’s account will cover all the physical evidence, leaving them with nothing to refute your latest story.’ Reading Jack’s doubt, he added, ‘Granted, telling it will take some nerve. But once you do, it creates reasonable doubt in Teddy’s favour, and he’ll do the same for you. George Hanley is nothing if not practical. He’ll see the wisdom in letting go of the death of a dying man.’

Jack studied him, then shook his head. In a tone of sadness, he asked, ‘When did you become so cold-blooded, I wonder?’

‘The day I left here. All I’ve done since is refine my talents.’ Adam paused, struggling with emotions he refused to show.
‘But that’s for another time – if ever. This family has one more thing it needs to settle.’

*

‘Tragic,’ Hanley said, repeating Jack’s word as Judge Carr scrutinized the witness. ‘Yet you didn’t report finding him until morning.’

For an instant, Jack closed his eyes. ‘As I said, I was in shock …’

‘So much so that you didn’t tell the police what had happened that night.’

‘I did not.’

‘In fact,’ Hanley said with sudden sharpness, ‘you told the police that you didn’t know how your brother had died.’

‘True.’

‘That was a lie, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Hanley gave a curt nod. ‘On the other hand, there’s no physical evidence you were there at all. Unless it’s a partial boot print we’ve been unable to match to anyone. Did you take the boots you wore and get rid of them?’

‘Of course not.’

Glancing at his mother, Adam saw her jawline tighten, an almost imperceptible clue to her inner turmoil. Under his breath, Teddy murmured, ‘Jesus.’

‘Jack will be all right,’ Adam assured him. He said this calmly, concealing the tension he felt as the author of a cover-up – which, in protecting Teddy, jeopardized his mother, father, and himself.

‘And yet,’ Hanley bored in, ‘two weeks after your brother’s death, you concealed your supposed eyewitness knowledge of the circumstances.’

Jack grimaced. ‘I was protecting myself,’ he said – only the second truth, however incomplete, he had spoken in several minutes. ‘I was afraid that the police might think I’d killed Ben; everyone knew how deeply we disliked each other. Instead, it became apparent that they suspected Teddy. That’s when I came forward.’ He looked down, then fixed Hanley with a look of shamed candour. ‘I should’ve told the truth to begin with. Instead, through silence, I put my nephew in danger.’

This was another line that Adam himself had crafted. Rehearsal had helped; his father’s delivery had improved, though he was not yet as good a liar as Adam had become to survive his secret life abroad.

*

‘You can practise your story on my mother,’ Adam had told Jack on the way to the house.

As the first light came through the window, he had watched her face as she listened to Jack’s carefully crafted falsehoods. In rapid sequence, her expressions betrayed surprise, bewilderment, anger, horror, and, at length, deep anxiety. Unless she and Jack were extraordinarily accomplished actors, Adam concluded to his relief, their unrehearsed interaction suggested that Clarice knew nothing about Ben’s death. That Jack had planted another lie at the heart of their relationship was the price of saving him.

Clarice took Jack’s hand, shedding the pretence of years. Worriedly, she asked, ‘Do you really have to tell them?’

‘He does,’ Adam broke in flatly. ‘What the police have on Teddy could convict him of a murder he didn’t commit.’

Clarice turned to him. ‘How can you possibly know all that?’

‘Just trust me that I do.’ He paused, then said, ‘Like you, Teddy lied to the police about your phone call. That was your idea, wasn’t it?’

Slowly, Clarice nodded.

‘I assume you were trying to protect him,’ Adam continued, ‘and not just yourself and Jack. But I
know
that Teddy was protecting you.’ Turning to Jack, he finished, ‘I’m sure that Avi Gold would represent you, and work with Teddy’s lawyer. That’ll help everyone keep their lines straight.’