The Silver Falcon (16 page)

The dining room was restful, decorated in a William Morris pattern paper, all soft greens and blues; the walls were hung with pictures and drawings of superb quality. He didn't mention his father during the meal, and Isabel didn't press him. They talked about her house, and he seemed relaxed and in a teasing mood. She noticed how the women in the room were looking at him. It was a splendidly handsome face, almost classical in its regularity, but with a firm, sexual mouth. The food and wine were excellent, the whole atmosphere luxurious and seductive. He leaned close to her and their bodies touched. The coffee came.

‘Richard,' she reminded him with an effort. She didn't want him to press against her, and yet she hadn't moved away. ‘Tell me about Charles.'

‘You're a determined lady, aren't you? I said that to you in Barbados, when we went sailing, and you nearly drowned yourself. All right. Why do I hate my father?'

He was looking ahead of him, his hands cradled round a brandy glass. The skin round his eyes was drawn tight.

‘He wasn't my father,' he said. ‘I'm a bastard.' Isabel breathed sharply, audibly, with shock. He didn't move. He went on, talking in the same quiet tone, not looking at her. ‘He told me that when I was fourteen. Up to then I thought he just hated boys. I wouldn't admit he hated me. I remember when it happened; it's not a scene I've been able to forget. He was bullying my mother and she was crying. As usual. I was a big kid for my age and I squared up to him. I called him a bastard. He used to beat the hell out of me when I was small; he hit me then, right across the face. “You're the bastard! You hear me – you're the bastard! You're no son of mine – ”'

‘Oh my God,' Isabel said. He didn't seem to hear.

‘My mother tried to explain it to me, right there, with him standing over both of us. She was so scared, she hardly made sense. Something about making a mistake with someone and doing this terrible wrong to my father. She called him that. I put my arm round her; I remember feeling her tremble. I took her out of the room and upstairs.'

‘I can't believe it,' Isabel said slowly. ‘I can't believe he could have been so cruel. It's just not the Charles I knew – it's not the same person!'

‘You never did know him,' Richard said. ‘And you never hurt his pride. You came into his life when he was an old man and you gave him the ego-boost he needed. He didn't have to pretend with you. You walked into the set-up ready-made. Big Charles Schriber, the great sportsman, the popular millionaire, respected by all. He wasn't like that when my mother married him. She had the money. He used it to make himself a success. And he used her to make the social scene. The Ducketts were an old Carolina family; he was the son of a German immigrant, self-made all the way. Christ knows why she ever married him, but she must have thought she was in love. Her family never accepted him; she was cut off there too. And then she slipped up and had me, and he had her on her knees from then on. He was sterile, you see. That was the irony. So there couldn't be a real Schriber to make up for me.'

‘He could have divorced her,' Isabel said at last. ‘She could have left him, taken you with her.'

‘He wouldn't let my mother go in a million years,' he said. ‘He wouldn't stand before his little world at Freemont and admit he wasn't up to keeping a beautiful young wife happy. He'd have killed her before he let anyone know the truth. But there was nothing he could do about me. Nothing.'

‘I don't know what to say,' she said slowly. ‘Oh, Richard, how horrible. How cruel – cruel on all of you. And I feel so sorry for your mother – He must have suffered too, to behave like that.'

‘I hope so,' he said slowly. ‘Not because of how he treated me, but because of what he did to her. You saw that portrait. She looked just like that. She was quite beautiful, sweet and kind with it. She could have been so happy with a different man. Even with him if he'd ever forgiven her. But he never did. So let's cut the family saga short and just say that when she died I took my inheritance and left for Europe. Where I've had one hell of a ball ever since.'

‘You blame him for her suicide,' Isabel said. ‘That's really why you hate him.'

‘Yes,' the tight little smile was back again. ‘Yes, I think you could say that.' He turned and the smile became warm.

‘Tears in the eyes,' he said. ‘I shouldn't have told you. What good does it do? Come on,' his tone was gentle. ‘Forget it. I'm going to sign the bill and take you over the road to Annabel's. I haven't danced with you yet. It would be good for both of us.'

The night club, under the same ownership as the drinking club, was smart but less exclusive. It was very dark and the noise was brutal. She hadn't wanted to go with him; she felt shaken and miserable. He took her straight onto the small, dark dance floor and held her in his arms.

The rock beat changed to a slow rhythm. He was pressing her very close against him, and he whispered to her. ‘Stop thinking about him. Just relax with me, Isabel. He's gone. You don't belong to him any more.'

She closed her eyes and put her arms round his neck. She didn't notice that the man with the slicked-down hair and the American clothes who had been at Marks Club, had taken a table at the back wall, facing the dance floor. He had put his glasses away. There weren't any lenses in them anyway. The brunette, hired for the evening from an escort agency, sipped a whisky and tried not to yawn. She kept wondering what the hell this particular dummy wanted company for. He hardly talked and he didn't dance. She supposed, wearily, that the inevitable proposition would follow when they went home. MacNeil paid her no attention. Following Isabel was easy; bluffing his way into that exclusive club had been extremely difficult. Luckily he had London contacts and they had supplied him with a list of members of all the best places. He had got in by saying he was meeting a man on the club's list for drinks. The same ruse worked with the night club. The name he mentioned was very well known. He watched Richard and Isabel circling the floor. They weren't dancing. If he was going to follow them back he had to get rid of the woman. He paid her, added a handsome tip, and sent her off to find a taxi home. Then he settled back into the dark corner, ordered himself another Scotch, and waited.

There was an hour to spare before Andrew Graham's evening surgery began. He had done his afternoon round of patients, most of them old friends, spent the usual twenty minutes examining, chatting and prescribing and accepted a drink towards the end. He was tired. Medicine bored him; he sometimes wondered whether some of his patients, like Agnes Hilton for instance, fiftyish and hypochondriac, had any idea what it cost him in nervous tension to listen to their symptoms and commiserate over their non-existent ailments. But he couldn't afford to retire. He had three children, the last two still at college and the youngest starting high school. Joan and he had made a mistake in planning their family late. He was tied to his practice for another five years at least. Not that the Grahams were poor; although his wife liked to talk as if they were. He had a little private money, and a savings account of which she knew nothing, the result of careful betting and inside tips from friends. It was paying for the services of MacNeil at that moment. No, they weren't poor, but there was an element of frugality about their lives which didn't accord with their social status. As a young student he had been full of zeal for medicine; his father's gambling hadn't seemed to matter so much then. It was in the later years, when his practice was becoming a routine and much of his initial fervour had been dissipated in late-night calls and trivial illnesses, that he started regretting the money that had been lost on horses, cards and the backgammon table.

He had dropped his bag on a chair in his inner surgery, and asked his receptionist to bring him coffee from the dispenser outside. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and he wished he was at home, wandering round the garden. He sipped his coffee, and flipped the page of his appointment book. Agnes Hilton's name sprang at him and he groaned. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The telephone on his desk rang. It was his receptionist.

‘There's a personal call for you from England, Doctor. Will you take it?' He was instantly alert. He swung up straight in his chair.

‘Yes – yes, put it through.'

He heard MacNeil's voice on the other end of the line. It was not very clear and there was a maddening echo that boomed across, repeating every word. He kept his voice low, he didn't want the receptionist to hear.…

He let MacNeil talk. ‘It's only a matter of time,' he heard MacNeil say. He didn't answer for a moment, and the detective started to shout down the line, thinking they were cut off. The echo doubled everything.

‘I'm here,' he said hastily. ‘Just hold on a minute. What makes you so sure?'

‘Why don't you come over and see for yourself?' was the answer. ‘It'll make the gossip columns at this rate. I've got a suggestion to make,' the detective went on. ‘Why don't you take a trip over – we could have a meaningful discussion.'

‘Just a minute –' Graham said. ‘I haven't money to throw around like that. What good would it do?' Now the pause came from MacNeil.

‘I think you should come,' he said. He sounded slow, decisive, as if he wanted to impress his view on Andrew Graham. ‘I think you should make some excuse back home and take the trip. ‘I think things are moving over here. Take down my number and think it over. Let me know.'

The echo repeated it. Let me know. He wrote down a telephone number.

‘You got that?' MacNeil checked the figure again. ‘Okay. Be in touch.' The connection went clear. Andrew stayed very still. It's only a matter of time. It'll make the gossip columns next.… He was surprised by the surge of his own anger. His hand shook as he reached for the coffee cup and put it down again. The coffee was tepid and bitter. Isabel had fooled them all. Including Charles. She wasn't content with grabbing everything, getting a dying man to change his will and leave her every cent. She had to add this final insult to the injury she did her husband's memory.…

His buzzer nagged at him from the desk. He snapped the switch and the receptionist's metallic voice announced that Mrs Agnes Hilton was waiting outside in reception. Andrew swore under his breath.

He said to send her in.

When Mrs Hilton, suffering from a dizzy feeling and a backache, walked into the surgery he was on his feet, ready to shake hands. Smiling and reassuring. So kind. He knew she wasn't in the best of health. But she did notice, in spite of her absorption in her symptoms, that he looked quite sallow in the face, and when they shook hands, he was trembling. She hoped the doctor himself wasn't going to be ill.

7

MacNeil was wrong when he reported to Andrew Graham that Isabel and Richard were lovers. They drove back to the Savoy, and Richard asked her if he could come up.

They had hardly spoken in the night club; they spent most of the time dancing on the dark, crowded little floor. In the car he had put his arm round her; ‘I want to talk to you, Isabel. Let's get things straight between us.' She had brought him up to the suite with her, and MacNeil had seen them go.

Isabel hadn't known what was going to happen when they walked into the sitting room together; she only knew that ever since she met him, she had been relying on the barrier of his relationship to Charles. Now that had gone. She was face to face with Richard Schriber as a man, not as a stepson. A man who had been making love to her to music. And at the core of it all was a sense of sickness, of pity and shame and confusion because of what he had told her. She had hidden from it in his arms, but it was with her now.

‘When I left Beaumont after the funeral,' Richard said, ‘I came back here. I put the place behind me. And I'll be honest with you, Isabel, I tried to put you behind me too. It didn't work. For the first time in my life I really missed a woman. There were plenty around, but they didn't help. You don't want me to say this, do you?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I'd rather you didn't.'

‘Because you want to run away,' he said. ‘And I'm damned if I'm going to let you.'

Isabel sat down. ‘I'm fond of you,' she began. ‘But it's no more than that.…'

‘Don't lie to yourself,' he said. ‘I've held you in my arms; I know. I want to go to bed with you, Isabel. I want to wipe the memory of him right out of your mind; I told you before, he's got his hooks into you, even from the grave. And there's a part of you that knows it and wants to run away. And not to someone like Tim Ryan either. To me. And now you can, because there isn't any blood relationship. What would you feel if I said I was in love with you?'

He came to her and she got up; she couldn't stop herself going into his arms, and when he kissed her she resisted for only a moment.

‘Love me,' he whispered. ‘Break free of him. Don't you see – leaving you the money and the horses was just his way of holding on to you after he'd gone.…'

It was seductive and insistent; his lips were brushing her eyes, her mouth, her forehead, his hand smoothing her breast.

‘Stop all this Derby nonsense,' he murmured. ‘Send the Falcon back to Beaumont, sell him, do what you like. But cut the cord with Charles. It's the only way you'll belong to yourself.'

Her eyes were closed; he was holding her very close; he kissed her again. She had a sudden memory flash, as if she were back in the bedroom at Beaumont, listening to Charles's warning before he died.…

‘And then come away with me,' he said. ‘We can travel. Take three months just seeing places. I've never been to India.… You can have all the time in the world to make up your mind.'

And the dying man holding her hand, fighting for breath. ‘Richard will try to stop you … don't ever trust him.…'