Sorry for the Dead

by Nicola Upson

  “But the bitch deserved it. You don’t know what she did. What her father did …”

  “What?” Harriet released her, suddenly aware that people were beginning to throw curious glances their way. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I don’t want you to say another word about this until we’re home. Do you understand me?” Vera nodded. “Not another word.”

  They boarded the six-thirty train to Lewes in silence. It was a beautiful evening, but the familiar return to the Downs from the city gave Harriet none of its customary pleasure, and the fading of the suburbs into open countryside simply brought closer the moment when she would have to face this latest, unexpected crisis. She studied Vera’s face, with all its competing emotions, as they traveled, and noticed that each mile of the journey seemed to quell the fear a little more and foster defiance in its place, paving the way for an anger that flared whenever the family was threatened. They waited for a taxi at Lewes Station, and Harriet prayed that the driver would be a stranger to them; the last thing she trusted herself with at the moment was small talk. “Is Peter at home?” she asked, her voice unnaturally tight. Suddenly she didn’t want Vera under her roof; whatever conversation they were about to have, and no matter how devastated it left them, Harriet needed to be able to get away to think.

  “No, he’s out with Tom. He won’t be back until later.”

  “Good. We’ll talk there.”

  She paid the driver at the door and followed Vera into the house. It was unnaturally quiet, as if it too were waiting for an explanation, but the stillness seemed to trigger the storm that had been building during the journey, and Vera rounded on Harriet almost as soon as the front door was closed. “I won’t apologize for hurting that bitch,” she said, no longer on the defensive. “My mother wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for her. She hated both of you—you know she did. She set out to destroy everything you’d worked for simply because she despised what you stood for, and you dared to stand up to her. She should have been the one who died all those years ago, not Dorothy. All I was doing was putting things right.”

  Harriet stared at her, frightened by her fury and wondering if she had actually gone insane. “How can this be putting things right?” she asked. “The violence has to stop, Vera. You can’t fight hatred with more of the same. Think about what you’ve done—if they find out it was you and everything comes out, George’s memory will be worth nothing. She’ll have died for nothing, not to mention the danger you’ve put yourself in.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “Well, you should care. You’re a mother yourself now, for God’s sake, and your children were brought into the world with love. You’ve had the chances that George never had, and yet you risk it all—Peter, your family, me. How could you be so selfish?”

  “What about the chances I never had? The chance to get to know my mother. The chance that she might actually tell me she loved me.”

  All the guilt that Harriet had tried to suppress over the years surfaced with a force that took her completely by surprise. This was her fault, she saw that now. The halfway house that she had offered Vera by bringing her into their home as an outsider had proved more destructive in the end than turning her out into the cold; at least that would have been honest. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know how much it hurt you, but that’s no excuse for what you did today. None of that was Charity’s fault.”

  “But it was her father’s.”

  “What?”

  “Charity’s father, William Lomax. He’s the one who raped George. He was a friend of the family. It was his fault that my mother hated me.”

  Harriet looked at her, trying to understand her reasoning. “No, Vera. Listen to me …”

  “It must be him. I’ve worked it all out. Charity was always going on about how her father didn’t want her at the college and how he was going to come and take her away. He wrote to you about that, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That’s obviously why he hated you both and why he wanted to get her out of there—he was worried she might find out what he’d done. It all makes sense, but I didn’t understand at the time—not until he died, and there were articles about him in the papers. I’ve got them here somewhere. Wait a minute, and I’ll show them to you.” She went through to the kitchen and took a box file out of one of the cupboards, and Harriet watched her as she searched through a pile of news clippings and other papers. “The Lomax family lived in Oxfordshire, which made me wonder, but then I found out from his obituary that he was in the navy, so I looked him up, and he served with George’s father.”

  “Vera, please—stop it.” Harriet went across to her and gently took her hands. “George told me who raped her. It was a man called Roger Bentinck. She only ever brought herself to say his name once, but I’ll never forget it. How could I? He hurt the woman I loved.”

  “No, that can’t be right.” Vera looked up from the papers, and Harriet saw her own desperation staring back at her. “I tracked it all down to make sure. He must be the one.” The horror of her mistake made her more vehement than ever, and she turned on Harriet. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Stop saying that, and stop pitying me. That’s all you do—all you’ve ever done.” Harriet opened her mouth to object, but she knew there was a grain of truth in Vera’s claim. “Have you ever stopped for a moment to wonder what it’s like to be me? How it must feel to know that your mother hated you so much that she killed herself rather than face the truth?”

  “That’s not why she did it.”

  “All that time at the college you let people make fun of me, let them think I had some sort of crush on George, when you knew perfectly well that I had a right to her love. By the time you’d finished, I hated myself as much as she did.”

  “George didn’t hate you, Vera. She didn’t know who you were, so why would you think—”

  “But she did know.”

  She screamed the words, and Harriet’s heart went cold. “What do you mean?”

  “George knew exactly who I was. I told her the day she died. I was reading to her in the garden, and she asked why I’d always been so kind to her. I told her I loved her, and she misunderstood at first, so I had to tell her everything. I’ll never forget her reaction.”

  Vera’s face clouded over, and Harriet tried to remember a time when she had ever seen someone look so sad. “What was it?”

  “Disbelief. Disgust. I tried to make it right, but she sent me away. I went back a few hours later to try again to make my peace with her, but by then it was too late.” Vera began searching through the newspapers again, as if only that could distract her from her memories. Eventually she found the obituary she was looking for, and Harriet took it from her, wondering how she could have missed this obsessive streak in someone she loved. Why hadn’t she spotted it and stamped it out before it could cause such heartache? “This proves nothing,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “Your father’s name was Roger Bentinck, and he had nothing to do with Charity Lomax or her family. Charity hated George and me because she was prejudiced and spoilt and ambitious. She hated us because that’s what some people do—they hate, and they try to destroy. But she didn’t succeed—not until now, anyway. She didn’t deserve what you’ve done to her.” Vera’s lack of remorse angered Harriet, and she took her by the shoulders and forced her to pay attention. “What if Charity dies—have you thought about that? They’ll come for us again, and this time they’ll work it out—all of it. Josephine already thinks it was me—I could see it in her face. She’s protected me once, but she won’t do it again, and this time she’ll give George away too. It’s you who’s destroyed everything, not Charity.” She sat down, defeated by the impossibility of her situation, and suddenly only one thing mattered. “Did you tell George that I knew who you were?”

  Vera hesitated, then nodded. “She asked me. I had to tell her.”

  So that was what George
couldn’t live with: not her depression or her guilt over Dorothy’s murder, and not the reminder of the worst night of her life, but the knowledge that her lover had betrayed her. Harriet had never been able to bear the idea of George dying alone, but only now did she realize how truly isolated she must have felt, stripped of the one thing she believed in and trusted: their loyalty to each other above everything else. “Get out,” she shouted, no longer trusting herself to be in the same room as Vera. “Get out of my sight. I can’t even bear to look at you.”

  Vera ran upstairs and Harriet heard her sobbing in the room above. She pulled the box file toward her and started to sift through it, finding things that went back much earlier than the clippings on Charity’s father. There were press announcements on anything to do with George—the founding of the college, her victories in various gardening shows, even the slightest mention of her name—and she realized that Vera’s quest to know her mother had begun long before she came to Charleston. There were drawings of George on pages torn from Peter’s sketchbooks, done in the early days when Vera had asked him to teach her, and a bundle of photographs that Harriet had taken during the college years and thought were lost. She flicked through them now, noticing for the first time how often Vera appeared next to George, how desperately she had tried to be like her in the way she dressed, in the stances she took, and the way she held a spade, as if the earth were an enemy to be conquered. The collection was a tinderbox of suppressed love and desperation, and it had only been a matter of time before it forced its way out into the open. Harriet’s anger disappeared in an instant, leaving guilt and regret in its place, and she was about to go upstairs to make her peace when she saw something in George’s handwriting.She opened the folded page, wondering why George had written to Vera, then saw that the letter was actually addressed to her. A single glance was enough to tell her that she had never seen it before, and she read on in disbelief, bewildered to think that Vera could have kept something so important hidden from her.

  My darling Harry,

  It breaks my heart to leave you, but I’ve always known that this moment might come, and so—in your heart—have you. Forgive me for doing this alone when we’ve faced so much together, but I can’t go on now, knowing what I know, knowing that your love for me has driven you to such extremes over the years. You shouldn’t have to live in fear and deceit, and it comforts me to know that some good will have come of my death if I can finally free you of those shadows. At least by leaving the world now, while I’m still able to decide for myself, I can protect you like I’ve always wanted to, and my peace comes from knowing at last that you’ll be safe after I’m gone.

  We’ve circled round the truth of that terrible night, and I’m sorry for lacking the courage to let you say the words that might have eased your conscience, but I couldn‘t bear to hear them. You killed a girl for me, and for our love, and I’ve always blamed myself for that; they were my dreams that you were trying to salvage, as you once reminded me. You’ve carried that burden so bravely all these years, but now it’s my turn. We’ve spent the last part of our lives looking continually over our shoulders, waiting for our past to catch up with us, living in fear of the day we would be asked to prove our innocence. I know you would never let me lie for you while you had breath in your body to deny it, so I’m leaving you no choice, and I gladly give my life to save yours. Destroy this letter and give the confession you find with it to the police. Don’t worry about my memory or my name. The only person who matters knows the truth.

  For too long I’ve been helpless and dependent on your strength, and you know that was more than I could bear when we have always been equals, always lived as one. Our love has meant the world to me from the moment you came into my life. You have brought me joy, passion and understanding, comfort at the darkest times, and courage when I needed it most. And we will be together again, Harry, even though you doubt that now. A love like ours can survive anything.

  George

  Harriet read the letter again, taking in the full implications of George’s last words: that she had been innocent of Dorothy’s murder; that they had each wrongly believed the other to be guilty; that someone else must be to blame—and that even at the end, after her betrayal over Vera, George had still loved Harriet enough to die for her. She put her head in her hands and wept for her lover, knowing that—in spite of George’s faith, a faith which she didn’t share—there would never be a chance to correct all the misunderstandings between them, to prove herself worthy of what George had done. Eventually, when there were no tears left, she lifted her head and saw Vera standing quietly at the kitchen door. “You found this with George’s body?” she asked, just to be sure. “There were two notes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you keep it from me?”

  “I didn’t want you to know that George thought you were capable of murder.”

  “There are far worse things. I thought George had killed Dorothy. I thought she was a coward. I thought our love wasn’t even worth a mention on the day she left this world. This would have made all the difference.”

  She held the letter up, amazed by how calm she suddenly felt, and Vera seemed to notice the change in her. “I’m sorry,” she insisted. “I didn’t know what to do, and I was so upset when I found her. The only thing that seemed right was to make sure that her final wish was carried out. She wanted that destroyed and the other one left in its place.”

  “I know what she wanted. And yet you didn’t destroy it. You kept it. Why, Vera? Why would you keep something that wrongly incriminated me for murder? To protect your mother’s name if you needed to? Or was it a safeguard in case someone discovered the truth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You killed Dorothy, didn’t you?” Until she said it, she hadn’t actually believed it to be true, but once the words were out in the open, she wondered how she could have failed to see it before. “George obviously didn’t, and I know it wasn’t me, so who else could it have been?” Vera had been so calm and collected that night, she remembered now. She had lied to the police without turning a hair, played up the ill feeling between the Norwood sisters, and—most significantly of all—she had been at the hub of all the comings and goings, with the knowledge and the opportunity to set up the death in the greenhouse and cover her tracks. Even so, to the last second Harriet hoped that she was wrong; she longed for Vera to deny it or simply to lie—anything to save her from the truth and all the dilemmas which that would bring—but she didn’t.

  “I did it for you and George,” she said, so matter-of-factly that she might have been talking about fetching a pint of milk. “I heard you talking in the kitchen when you still believed that Dorothy was causing all the trouble. You said you wanted to stop her from destroying everything, and I knew that if the college failed, I’d have to leave you. I did it to save our family, and I thought one day I’d be able to explain that to George. I thought it might make her love me.”

  Her voice broke with the final admission, and she threw her arms around Harriet, but Harriet couldn’t bring herself to return the embrace or offer comfort of any sort. She stood stock-still with her hands by her sides, waiting for the moment to pass, and eventually Vera gave up hope and moved away. “I have to go,” Harriet said.

  “But you can’t leave me like this. We have to talk. You’re the only one who understands.”

  “I can’t be near you at the moment. Peter will be home soon.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  The fear in her voice was obvious, but Harriet ignored the question. “No one has a right to be loved, Vera—not by birth or by any other act of chance. Love has to be earned, just like trust, and I think we’ve both fallen short on that score, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Josephine went to Suffolk for a few days after the obligations to her book were fulfilled, and she was grateful for the peace that greeted her there while she waited for Marta to return from an assignment in Wales. It was
hard to believe that she had owned Larkspur Cottage for more than a decade now, and it grew more important each year—a place where she could be herself, neither Josephine Tey nor Gordon Daviot, with all the expectations that each name conjured, someone who answered to no one and who loved as she pleased. The restrictions on travel during the war had made it difficult for her to come south as often as she would have liked, but she had made up for it since, and Marta had begun to spend more time here too, even when Josephine couldn’t join her. Her presence showed in the garden, in the beautifully planted borders and profusion of flowers that surprised and delighted Josephine with each new season. It wasn’t quite the life together that she had once envied in Harriet and George, but it was more than she had ever dared to hope for, and she cherished it.

  The typical April day was neither warm nor cold, and the afternoon light seemed especially designed to sharpen the youthful greens of a new spring. The wind had a softness that rippled the water on the pond, creating choppy seas for the moorhens that gathered there, but leaving everything else untroubled, and Josephine went for a walk through the fields, then returned to the garden until the ringing of the telephone called her inside. It was Archie, and she could tell by the tone of his voice that he had rung with bad news. “You asked me to keep you up to date on Charity Lomax,” he said. “I’m afraid she died this morning. She never regained consciousness, which is probably the only blessing.”