Original Sin (34 page)

On Saturday 16 October Jean-Philippe Etienne took his morning walk as usual at nine o’clock. Neither the time nor the route varied whatever the season or the weather. He would walk along the narrow ridge of rock between the marshes and the ploughed fields on which the Roman fort of Othona was said to have stood, past the Anglo-Celtic chapel of St. Peter-on-the-Wall round the headland to the Blackwater estuary. It was rare for him to meet anyone on his morning perambulation, even in summer when a visitor to the chapel or a birdwatcher might be abroad early, but if he did he would say a courteous good morning, but no more. The locals knew that he had come to Othona House for solitude and had no wish to violate it. He accepted no incoming telephone calls, received no visitors. But this morning at half past ten a visitor would come who could not be refused.

Now in the strengthening light he looked across the calm straits of the estuary to the lights on Mersea Island and thought about this unknown Commander Dalgliesh. The message he had sent to the police by Claudia had been unambiguous; he
had no information to offer about his son’s death, no theories to propose, no possible explanations of the mystery to put forward, no suspect he could name. His own view was that Gerard had died by accident, however odd or suspicious some of the circumstances. Accidental death seemed likelier than any other explanation, certainly far likelier than murder. Murder. The heavy consonants of horror thudded in his mind, evoking nothing but repugnance and disbelief.

And now, standing as still as if petrified on the narrow strip of gritty beach where the minuscule waves spent themselves in a thin smudge of dirty foam, and watching the lamps across the water die one by one as the day brightened, he paid his son the reluctant tribute of memory. Most of the memories were troubling, but since they besieged his mind and could not be repelled it was perhaps better that they should be accepted, made sense of and disciplined. Gerard had grown to adolescence with one central assurance: he was the son of a hero. That was important to a boy, to any boy, but particularly one as proud as he. He might resent his father, feel himself inadequately loved, undervalued, neglected, but he could do without the love if he had the pride, pride in the name and in what that name stood for. It had always been important to him to know that the man whose genes he carried had been tested as had few of his generation and had not been found wanting. The decades were passing and memories fading, but a man could still be judged by what he had done in those turbulent years of war. Jean-Philippe’s reputation was secure, inviolable. The reputation of other heroes of the Resistance had been sullied by the revelations of later years, but never his. The medals that he never now wore had been honestly earned.

Jean-Philippe had watched the effect of that knowledge on Gerard: the compelling need for his father’s approbation and
respect, the need to compete, to justify himself in his father’s eyes. Wasn’t that what climbing the Matterhorn when he was twenty-one had been all about? He had never before shown any interest in mountaineering. The exploit had been time-consuming and expensive. He had employed the best Zermatt guide who, reasonably, had decreed a period of some months’ hard training before the climb was attempted and had laid down his strict conditions. The party would turn back before the final assault on the summit if he judged Gerard a danger to himself or to others. But they hadn’t turned back. The mountain had been conquered. That was something Jean-Philippe hadn’t achieved.

And then there was the Peverell Press. Here in his last years Jean-Philippe knew that he had been little more than a passenger, tolerated, undisturbed, no trouble to anyone. Gerard, when power passed into his hands, would transform Peverell Press. And Jean-Philippe had given him that power. He had transferred twenty of his shares in the firm to Gerard, and fifteen to Claudia. Gerard had only to keep the support of his sister to be sure of majority control. And why not? The Peverells had had their day; it was time for the Etiennes to take over.

And still Gerard had come, month after month, to give his account as if he were a steward reporting to his master. He asked for no advice, no approbation. It wasn’t for advice or approbation that he came. Sometimes it seemed to Jean-Philippe that the journey was a form of reparation, a penance voluntarily imposed, a filial duty undertaken now when the old man was past caring and letting slip from his stiffened hands those frail cords which bound him to family, to the firm, to life. He had listened, had occasionally commented, but had never brought himself to say: “I don’t want to hear. I’m no longer concerned. You can sell Innocent House, move to Docklands, sell the
firm, burn the archives. The last of my interest in Peverell Press was cast from me when I dropped those grains of crushed bone into the Thames. I am as dead to your busy concerns as is Henry Peverell. We are both now beyond caring. Don’t think because I can speak to you, still perform some of the functions of a man, that I am alive.” He would sit immobile, and from time to time stretch out a shaking hand for his tumbler of wine, the glass, with its heavy base, so much easier now to manage than a wine glass. His son’s voice had come from a distance.

“It’s difficult to know whether to buy or rent. In principle I’m for buying. The rents are ridiculously low but they won’t be when the leases run out. On the other hand it makes sense to take a short lease for the next five years and free the capital for acquisitions and development. Publishing is about books not property. For the past hundred years Peverell Press have squandered resources on maintaining Innocent House as if the house was the firm. Lose the house and you lose the Press. Bricks and mortar elevated to a symbol, even on the writing paper.”

Jean-Philippe had said: “Stone and marble.” To Gerard’s quick enquiring frown he added, “Stone and marble, not bricks and mortar.”

“The rear façade is brick. The house is an architectural bastard. People say how brilliantly Charles Fowler wedded late Georgian elegance to fifteenth-century Venetian Gothic, but he’d have done better not to try. Hector Skolling is welcome to Innocent House.”

“Frances will be unhappy.”

He had said it for something to say. He was untouched by Frances’s unhappiness. The wine was strong in his mouth. It was good that he could still taste the robust reds.

Gerard had said: “She’ll get over it. All the Peverells feel compelled to love Innocent House, but I doubt if she greatly cares.” Following the association of ideas, he added: “You saw the announcement of my engagement in last Monday’s
Times
?”

“No. I no longer bother with newspapers. The
Spectator
has a summary of the week’s main news. That half-page is sufficient to reassure me that the world goes on much as it always has. I hope you’ll be happy in your marriage. I was.”

“Yes, I always thought that you and Mother seemed to hit it off rather well.”

Jean-Philippe could smell his embarrassment. The comment in its gross inadequacy had hung between them like a wisp of acrid smoke. Jean-Philippe said quietly: “I wasn’t thinking of your mother.”

And now, gazing across the stretch of quiet water it seemed to him that only in those turbulent and confused days of war had he been truly alive. He had been young, passionately in love, exhilarated by constant danger, stimulated by the ardours of leadership, exalted by a simple and unquestioning patriotism which for him had become a religion. Among the confused loyalties of Vichy France his own had been clear and absolute. Nothing since had touched the wonder, the excitement, the glamour of those years. Never again had he lived every day with such intensity. Even after Chantal had been killed, his resolution hadn’t faltered although he was confused by the realization that he blamed the Maquis as much as the occupying Germans for her death. He had never believed that the most effective resistance lay in armed action or in the murder of German soldiers. And then in 1944 had come liberation and triumph, and with it a reaction so unexpected and so strong that it left him demoralized, almost apathetic. Only then, in the moment of triumph, had he space and time to
grieve for Chantal. He felt like a man emptied of all capacity for emotion except for this overwhelming grief which in its sad futility seemed part of a greater, a universal grieving.

He had had little stomach for revenge and had watched with sick disgust the shaving of the heads of women accused of “sentimental relations with the enemy,” the vendettas, the purges by the Maquis, the summary justice which executed thirty people in the Puy-de-Dôme without formal trial. He was glad, as was most of the population, when the due process of law was established, but he took no satisfaction in the proceedings or in the verdicts. He had no sympathy for those collaborators who had betrayed the Resistance, or who had tortured or murdered. But in those ambiguous years many collaborators with the Vichy regime had done what they believed right for France, and if the Axis powers had won, perhaps it would have been right for France. Some were decent men who had chosen the wrong side for motives not wholly ignoble, others were weak, some motivated by a hatred of communism, others seduced by fascism’s insidious glamour. He could hate none of them. Even his own fame, his own heroism, his own innocence, became repugnant to him.

He had needed to get away from France and had come to London. His grandmother had been English. He spoke the language faultlessly and was familiar with the peculiarities of English customs, all of which helped to soothe his self-imposed banishment. But he hadn’t come to England out of any special affection for the country or its people. The countryside was beautiful, but then he had had France. It had been necessary to leave and England was the obvious choice. It was in London at a party—he couldn’t now remember which or where—that he had been introduced to Henry Peverell’s cousin Margaret. She was pretty, sensitive and appealingly childlike, and had
fallen romantically in love with him, in love with his heroism, with his nationality, even with his accent. He had found her uncritical adulation flattering, and it was difficult not to respond with at least affection and a protective warmth for what he saw as her vulnerability. But he had never loved her. He had only loved one human being. With Chantal had died his capacity for any feeling warmer than affection.

But he had married her, taken her for four years to Toronto, and when that self-imposed banishment grew irksome they had returned to London, now with two babies. At Henry’s invitation he had joined the Peverell Press, invested his considerable capital in the firm, taken his shares and spent the rest of his working life in that extravagant folly on a northern alien river. He supposed that he had been reasonably content. He knew people thought him rather dull; that didn’t surprise him, he bored himself. The marriage had endured. He had made his wife Margaret Peverell as happy as she was capable of being. He suspected that the Peverell women weren’t capable of much happiness. She had desperately wanted children and he had dutifully provided her with the son and daughter for which she had hoped. That was how, then and now, he thought of parenthood; the giving of something necessary for his wife’s happiness if not for his own and for which, having provided it as he might a ring, a necklace or a new car, he need take no further responsibility since responsibility was handed over with the gift.

And now Gerard was dead and this unknown policeman was coming to tell him that his son had been murdered.

Kate and Daniel’s appointment to see Rupert Farlow had been fixed for ten o’clock. They knew it would be almost impossible to park in Hillgate Village so left the car at Notting Hill Gate Police Station and walked up the gentle hill under the high limes of Holland Park Avenue. Kate thought how strange it was to be back so soon in this familiar part of London. She had left her flat only three days earlier but it seemed that she had moved away from the area in imagination as well as in fact and that now, coming up to Notting Hill Gate, she saw the raucous urban conglomeration through the eyes of a stranger. But nothing, of course, had changed; the discordant undistinguished 1930s architecture, the plethora of street signs, the railings which made her feel like a herded animal, the long concrete flower beds with their straggling and dust-grimed evergreens, the shopfronts spilling their names in rivers of garish light red, green and yellow, the ceaseless grind of the traffic. There was even the same beggar outside the supermarket with his large Alsatian slumped on a rug at his feet, murmuring to passers-by his appeal for change to buy a sandwich.
Behind this busyness lay Hillgate Village in its stuccoed multicoloured calm.

As they passed the beggar and stood waiting to cross at the traffic lights, Daniel said: “We’ve got a few like that where I live. I’d be tempted to pop into the supermarket and buy him a sandwich if I wasn’t afraid of provoking a breach of the peace and if he and the dog didn’t already look overfed. Do you ever give?”

“Not to his kind, and not often. Sometimes. I disapprove of myself but I do it. Never more than a quid.”

“To be spent on drink and drugs.”

“A gift should be unconditional. Even a quid. Even to a beggar. And OK, I do know that it’s conniving at an offence.”

They had crossed the road at the traffic lights when abruptly he spoke again.

“I ought to go to my cousin’s bar mitzvah next Saturday.”

“Then go, that is if it’s important.”

“AD won’t welcome an application for leave. You know how he is once we’re on a case.”

“It doesn’t take all day, does it? Ask him. He was very decent when Robbins wanted that day off after his uncle died.”

“That was for a Christian funeral not a Jewish bar mitzvah.”

“What other kind of bar mitzvah is there? And don’t be unfair. He isn’t like that and you know it. Like I said, if it’s important ask, if it isn’t don’t.”

“Important to whom?”

“How do I know? To the boy I suppose.”

“I hardly know him. I doubt whether he’ll care much either way. But we’re a small family, he’s only got the two cousins. I suppose he’d like me to be there. My aunt would probably prefer me not to be. That way she’ll be given another grievance against my mother.”