Something Wicked (33 page)

‘Her morale is good,’ Edward responded rather defensively, as though it was his fault that Verity had so nearly been a murder victim.

‘I’m not blaming you, Corinth,’ Dr Bladon offered magnanimously. ‘It’s the nature of the beast, if you will excuse the expression. Miss Browne is a remarkable woman – courageous and determined. If disease is – as some doctors think – partly in the mind, then she will beat it. And your help is absolutely indispensable. I mean it,’ he added gravely, seeing Edward’s shrug of self-deprecation. ‘You are her rock and her foundation. She loves you and she wants to marry you and get on with her job. Those are the two ambitions which drive her.’ Edward was somewhat taken aback by his frankness. ‘She told me so herself during one of our little chats,’ he explained.

Verity was taking everything with her as, whatever happened, there was no going back to the clinic. She had rested for almost three months – it had been the most difficult thing she had ever undertaken – and, if that hadn’t done the trick and her disease was still ‘eating her up’, as she envisaged it, she knew she would have to take another road.

It was good to be driving through the countryside. Although it was early autumn, summer lingered on and the leaves were still on the trees. Fenton had been left to bring the heavy baggage by train so they were unencumbered. They decided not to hurry and about midday stopped at a village pub. Edward ordered a pint of the local brew while Verity had ginger beer. The landlord provided bread and cheese which they ate in the garden under apple trees laden with fruit and buzzing with wasps.

They avoided discussing Verity’s medical prognosis and talked instead about their friends and, inevitably, about the growing international crisis.

‘There’s talk of the Prime Minister going to meet Hitler to try and sort things out once and for all,’ Edward said.

‘I hope he doesn’t go,’ Verity remarked. ‘Hitler will bamboozle the old man. He’s the sort of ordinary Englishman who can’t understand that the lunatics have taken over and are running the world like an asylum.’

‘It’s the last hope for peace although I confess I’m very torn. On the one hand, any agreement Mr Chamberlain makes with Hitler will involve betraying the Czechs. On the other hand, if Hitler agrees to something now and then reneges – as he undoubtedly would – then I think people will at last understand what we are up against.’

‘They ought to have understood that two years ago!’ Verity protested.

‘True – but we have to be realistic. The great majority of our countrymen are not interested in foreign affairs. They think foreigners are all as bad as each other and that we ought to stay out of any European quarrel. If they remember any history from their schooldays, it is Pitt paying other people to fight the French.’

‘But in the end we had to create an army to fight Napoleon.’

‘That’s true but we – as a nation – didn’t like it. The Royal Navy . . . that was what we liked to spend our money on. Our ships – “wooden walls” – that keep us free from Continental disease.’

‘But now aeroplanes have made ships vulnerable.’

‘Aeroplanes and submarines.’

‘But do you think that, in the end, the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus will understand that we have no alternative except to fight?’

‘I’m sure of it, V. As a nation, we are slow to anger. We have to have it proved to us that there is no alternative. Any prime minister who goes to war without just cause and without taking the people with him would never be forgiven.’

‘And will we win?’

‘If the Americans come in on our side and the Russians keep out of it – then we might win.’

‘And if the Americans don’t come in on our side?’

‘Then, I don’t see how we can win.’

They sat in silence, thinking about the horror that was to come.

‘And Harry . . .’ Verity said at last. ‘There are a few things I still don’t understand.’

‘I don’t have all the answers but ask away.’

‘Well, I can see he was a womanizer and totally unscrupulous but what made him a murderer?’

‘Boredom . . . and perhaps an arrogance born of never having properly loved anyone and everything coming too easily. To be Victorian about it, he wasn’t brought up properly. No one loved him enough as a child to show him the difference between right and wrong.’

‘You think that’s it – not having enough love as a child?’ Verity said disbelievingly.

‘I don’t know, I’m not Sigmund Freud. Maybe something in his brain was missing. To put it scientifically, perhaps he had a screw loose.’

Verity giggled. ‘Oh God! I’m sorry. It’s not a laughing matter.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Edward said grimly. ‘I shall never forget what he did to poor Eric Silver. He was never afraid – that was part of the problem. If you don’t fear the consequences of what you do, then you think you can do anything.’

‘I think I see what you mean. So he convinced himself that Christobel Redfern – another man’s wife – was the love of his life?’

‘Yes, and when he killed her in that car accident in Kenya, he transferred the blame to me. He was unable to take responsibility for his own actions.’

‘But why kill Herold?’

‘Because of Gwyneth’s death on the Eiger which was either the result of Herold’s incompetence or bad luck or because Herold had discovered about her affair with Harry. Harry convinced himself that she had loved him and was on the point of running away with him. Maybe she was. I don’t know . . . nobody does.’

‘You think Herold might have killed his wife if he had found out that she was about to run off with Harry?’

‘It’s possible but would he have written the book about her?’

‘He might have, to tell the story he wanted the world to believe – that
he
wanted to believe. It was an act of homage to a loyal, loving wife – not to a woman who was about to leave him.’

‘I told you, V, I don’t have all the answers.’

‘And then he fell for Isabella, Hermione Totteridge’s niece. Why did he always have to go after other men’s wives?’

‘Who can say? It must have been part of his character. He always wanted the toy that belonged to the other child and taking it made him feel powerful.’

‘So you think he seduced Isabella and then killed her husband in the belief that she would be grateful.’

‘Yes, but she was heartbroken and consumed with guilt. Once Peter Lamming was dead, she realized how much she had loved him. So she rejected Harry and returned to England to devote herself to her husband’s memory.’

‘It might explain the excessive mourning and her need for a gravestone even though there was no body beneath it.’

‘I believe so, V. Harry followed her to England after she wrote to tell him that she had confessed to Hermione what had really happened to Lamming. Foolishly, she mentioned that her aunt had urged her to go to the police.’

‘How do you know what she said to Hermione? Are you just guessing?’

‘I can’t be sure but Violet Booth told me that Isabella returned from a visit to Henley in much better spirits and said Hermione had been helpful. How did she put it? – That Isabella had seemed to have got “a lot off her chest”.’

‘But she soon relapsed?’

‘Yes, I think because she couldn’t bring herself to go to the police. After all, what could they have done? Unsubstantiated accusations about someone in Kenya who was alleged to have committed a crime on the other side of the world . . .? They would have put her down as a hysteric.’

‘But Harry didn’t kill her?’

‘No, although I’m sure he thought she had betrayed him, but, before he arrived in England, she died, as the Victorians say, of a broken heart. At least that’s what Dr Booth believes and I agree with him. She lost the will to live and when she got appendicitis – something any normal person could have recovered from – she turned her face to the wall, as they say.’

‘Why didn’t she tell the Booths what had happened to Peter? After all, she was closer to them than Hermione. They had brought her up.’

‘I don’t know. Possibly because she didn’t want to burden them. Perhaps she thought Hermione was tougher or something may have prompted her to talk about it even though she had meant to keep things to herself.’

‘Do you think it might have been a photograph in Hermione’s album?’

‘Yes, V. It might have been the photograph of her and Peter on their wedding day.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because before Harry killed Hermione they had been talking about Peter Lamming and she showed him the photograph. He ripped it out of her album and in a fury, I imagine, killed her using the poison she happened to be experimenting with. I found the photograph by chance at Turton House when I was looking at one of Harry and Christobel Redfern. I opened the frame and found the photograph of Lamming and his new bride.’

‘Are you sure it was the one from Hermione’s album?’

‘Yes. I took it to Treacher. He got the album off Violet Booth and the experts confirmed it. There was no doubt that was where it had come from. I was almost certain then that Harry had killed the old lady but I couldn’t prove it. I also sent Treacher a letter I had had from Harry and the graphologist decided that it was written by the same person who had penned those notes they found on the bodies of his victims – though of course he had tried to disguise his handwriting ’

‘Do you think Harry discovered you had taken the photograph?’

‘It could account for what he did to you. If he knew I had discovered the link between him and Hermione Totteridge, he would have known that he had to act quickly.’

Verity thought about this. ‘And he killed General Lowther because he had mowed down Isabella’s parents in a motor accident? That sounds a bit farfetched. Why should he do that?’

‘Harry told me he had a thing about people who used cars as weapons – as he put it. First Christobel Redfern and then Isabella’s parents died in motor accidents. I remember Jack Amery’s driving was so bad that it sent him up the wall. He came to England to take revenge on everyone he thought had ruined his life. He convinced himself that he could have married Isabella but she ran away from him and then died of grief for her husband.’

‘But I still don’t understand how he could have been certain that General Lowther would drink the cyanide in a glass of Clos des Mouches.’

‘He didn’t. It was a coincidence.’

‘A coincidence! You mean all that stuff about insects was wrong?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I did precisely what I always tell myself not to do. I selected a few “facts” and constructed a theory round them. To be fair to myself, Eric Silver suggested it first and initially I thought it sounded a bit fanciful. When he was murdered, I decided it must be correct. It didn’t help that Harry had overheard Silver tell me his theory and was able to play up to it. He quoted the appropriate lines about rotting carcasses and, in a stroke of what he would no doubt have called genius, left my family motto on Silver’s body.’

‘And that motto happens to feature flies?’

‘That’s right, V.’

‘So the theory led you to Harry even though it was wrong?’

‘He led me by the nose. I kept telling myself he was too obvious a suspect.’

‘He was taunting you?’

‘Yes. He thought he would be able to kill me before I put the final piece in the jigsaw – but he left it too late, thank God. Mrs Booth worked it all out and got to him just before he got to me.’

‘Golly!’

‘Golly indeed. There’s a French saying someone told me once: “
L’homme pense. Le dieu rit
.”’

‘Though in this case
le diable rit
,’ Verity said grimly. ‘But the important thing is that he didn’t kill you,’ she added, putting her hand on Edward’s knee.

‘There was a time when I expected him to but then I was lulled into a false sense of security. You remember when our friend Major Stille appeared while Harry and I were searching Jack Amery’s house? He would have killed me if Harry hadn’t knocked him unconscious and saved my life.’

‘Why didn’t he let Stille kill you?’

‘He wasn’t ready for me to die. He wanted to play with me for a little longer. It amused him to confuse me. That photograph he found in Amery’s house showing Amery with Peter Lamming in Kenya had no particular significance but he wanted me to think it had. But, in the end, he wanted me to work out who had murdered Miss Totteridge and James Herold and persuaded General Lowther to kill himself. Only then would he kill me. It was meant to be a sort of
coup de grâce
. He couldn’t quite decide how to punish me and then it came to him. As I told you, he believed I had deprived him of the woman he loved – a complete fantasy, of course. He was just trying to transfer his guilt to me.’

‘So he decided it would be poetic justice to take me away from you?’

‘Yes, V, and he was right. I nearly went mad when I discovered that he had abducted you.’

Verity shivered as she remembered her ordeal. ‘And when Violet Booth killed him – I mean, when her gun went off in the struggle – you had no idea where I was and realized you would never be able to force Harry to tell you?’

‘It was the worst moment of my life. Fortunately, Dr Booth and I worked out where you might be. I blame myself for failing to notice that horrible dungeon when I went to Temple Island before but Roderick Black knew about it, thank God.’

‘I still think Eric Silver’s was the most horrible murder.’

‘I can never forgive Harry for that. I think he must have been following me for some time while he tried to decide what would be the most painful way of killing me. Don’t forget that he had already written to invite me to stay but I hadn’t replied. He saw me go into the dentist and, on a whim, followed me. By coincidence – a coincidence he could never have foreseen – he got into the building and heard Silver tell me about his three dead patients. Then he had a brainwave. He would make it impossible for me not to investigate their murders by killing Silver and leaving my family motto on his body.’

‘It worked.’

‘It did, V,’ Edward agreed. ‘His only mistake was to “play” me for too long. He thought he could tease and confuse me indefinitely, as though I was a salmon on his line.’