Element of Doubt

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘What did the letter say?’

  ‘That she killed my son,’ said Beatrix Haywood simply.

  Thanet nodded.

  ‘You guessed?’ she said sharply.

  ‘Shall we say I put two and two together? Though I confess I wouldn’t have put it in quite those terms.’

  ‘How else could you put it?’ Little by little she was recovering. She was already looking more composed and now she sat up in her chair, straightening her shoulders, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. ‘She was a bad woman, an evil, wicked woman, and Jocelyn would be alive today if he hadn’t got tangled up with her.’

  ‘Could you tell me what the letter said, exactly?’

  ‘You can have a look at it, if you like.’

  Daphne sat up with a jerk. ‘You told me you’d destroyed it!’

  Beatrix shook her head sadly. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I was going to, but … It’s the only letter I’ve ever had from him.’

  ‘But it wasn’t even written to you, it was written to Nerine!’

  ‘It’s no good, Daphne, I just couldn’t do it.’ She reached into her pocket, took out an envelope and handed it, almost reverently, to Thanet.

  It was addressed to Miss Nerine Linacre, and had an old fourpenny stamp on it. Thanet extracted the single, folded sheet of paper inside. It was covered with myriad creases as though someone – Beatrix? Daphne? – had savagely scrumpled it up and then smoothed it out again. The handwriting was sprawling, unformed, immature.

  Wed. March 20th ’69

  My darling Nerine,

  I’ve been so worried about you. Every time I’ve called or phoned for the last couple of days, you’ve been out, and you were so upset the last time I saw you … Please, try not to be. I hope you’re not still angry with me for suggesting an abortion, I was only thinking of you and honestly, truly, I’m glad you feel the way you do.

  I’m writing because we really must talk before Daphne comes home on Friday. We have to decide what – and when – to tell her about us. Because we do have to tell her, don’t we, now that we’ll be getting married as soon as possible? I promise I shall try to be the best husband and father in the world.

  Please, my darling, get in touch with me soon. A day when I don’t hear your voice is a day wasted, and life without you would not be worth living. If I don’t hear from you before then I’ll call round at 7.30 tomorrow (Thursday) evening.

  All my love, for ever and ever,

  Jocelyn

  Thanet handed the letter to Lineham, then asked the question which had been puzzling him ever since he first worked out what had happened.

  ‘I wonder why she didn’t have an abortion.’ He couldn’t see Nerine refusing the easy way out on moral grounds.

  Daphne gave a cynical laugh. ‘That’s easy. She was scared stiff. One of her schoolfriends got pregnant when she was sixteen, had an abortion and died. She always swore she’d never take the same risk herself.’

  ‘I see …’

  ‘But you can see now what happened, can’t you?’ Beatrix Haywood leant forward in her chair in her eagerness to make sure he understood. ‘Daphne and I have worked it all out While Roland was away in Australia and Daphne was in hospital Nerine got bored and thought she’d amuse herself with Jocelyn. Then she discovered she was pregnant. She would have had no intention of tying herself for life to a struggling artist, so she took the obvious way out and when Roland got back and proposed to her again, she accepted. No doubt that’s why Jocelyn couldn’t get hold of her, she was out with Roland. And when Jocelyn’s letter arrived she didn’t even bother to open it, just shoved it in her pocket and forgot about it.

  ‘So, when Jocelyn turned up to see her on the Thursday evening, the day before Daphne was due back from hospital, he was greeted by the news that she and Roland were engaged.’

  Thanet remembered the scene as it had been so graphically described by Mrs Glass who, in her innocence, had misinterpreted the whole incident: Jocelyn’s arrival with the red roses meant for Nerine, not Daphne; and Nerine’s cruel welcome: ‘Oh, Jocelyn. Come along in and have a glass of champagne. Roland and I are celebrating our engagement.’ Then the hand held out to display the ring, and Jocelyn’s reaction: a white face and ‘No, thanks. I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

  ‘It was on the way home that he was killed.’ Mrs Haywood’s face was pinched. ‘His car ran into a tree and exploded. He was burnt to death.’ Her fists clenched in vicarious pain.

  ‘You think he did it deliberately?’

  She shook her head. ‘Suicide, accident, it makes no difference. She was responsible, as surely as if she had been at the wheel herself. A pity she wasn’t.’

  Lineham handed the letter back to Thanet, who folded it carefully and put it back into the envelope.

  ‘So after finding this and realising its significance, you went to see Nerine?’

  ‘Not immediately. By that time she was in the middle of the row with Lavinia. I obviously couldn’t tackle her then and there, so I waited until everything had quieted down and Marilyn and Lavinia had gone downstairs. Then I went along to Nerine’s sitting room.

  “Oh, it’s you, Beatrix. Have you finished upstairs yet … What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I have.”

  “What is this, some kind of joke? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “If you read this, you’ll find out. Even if it is eighteen years too late.”

  “What on earth are you talking about? What is it? It’s addressed to me … It’s from … from Jocelyn. Where did you get this? How dare you read my private correspondence!”

  “Never mind where. You never even opened it, did you, at the time?”

  “So what? Surely I have the right to open or not open letters that are addressed to me? Look, I’ve had enough of this. I see no reason why I should be interrogated in my own sitting room. I’d like you to leave, now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, but I do mind. I mind very much. I have no intention of leaving until this is sorted out.”

  “Until what’s sorted out? I really don’t know what you’re going on about, Beatrix.”

  “Don’t you? Don’t you really? Look at the date on that letter.”

  “Oh, very well. Right, I’ve looked. So what?”

  “So it was written the day before Jocelyn died. And the Thursday he was referring to was the day before Daphne was due home from hospital.”

  “So?”

  “It was also the day you and Roland got engaged, I believe?”

  “What about it?”

  “And the day Jocelyn had his accident.”

  “I really don’t …”

  “The day my son was burnt to death.”

  “You’re not suggesting … Oh, now look, wait a minute. I think you’re getting things a bit out of proportion here. I know Jocelyn and I had a bit of a fling …”

  “A bit of a fling? A bit of a fling? A fling that ended in one person’s death and another person’s birth. You call that a bit of a fling?”

  “Well, what else was it? I certainly wasn’t serious, Joss knew that …”

  “Don’t call him Joss. His name was Jocelyn, and he was never called anything else.”

  “Well he was by me. I’ll call him what I damn well like. For God’s sake, Beatrix, he’s been dead for eighteen years.”

  “Yes. And I’ve only just learned that, but for you, he’d be alive today.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am. Deadly serious. Jocelyn had a serious nature too, he took after me. And when he said life wouldn’t be worth living without you, he meant it.”

  “So you’re suggesting … My God, you are, aren’t you? You’re suggesting that it wasn’t an accident at all. That it was suicide. That Jocelyn killed himself because of me … You’re crazy, d’you know that? Crazy. Getting worked up like this over something that happened nearly twenty years ago. Just look at you! Honestly, Beatrix, if
you could only see your face …”

  ‘Then she began to laugh,’ said Mrs Haywood grimly. ‘She just went on and on, louder and louder, till tears ran down her face, she couldn’t stop. We were out on the balcony. She’d stalked out there earlier, when she asked me to leave, and I’d followed her. She was laughing so much she had to cling on to the rail for support, and she sort of doubled up over it, so that the upper part of her body was hanging over. She went on and on laughing until my head felt as though it was going to explode.’ Beatrix put her hands over her ears as if to shut out the sound of it, echoing down the days. ‘I can still hear it, now,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t stand it. I took hold of her shoulders and shouted at her to stop, but she wouldn’t. So I … I bent down, swung up her legs and … gave her a little push.’

  She shook her head wonderingly. ‘That’s all it took, just one little push.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The village of Biddenden, with its broad cobbled pavements and black-and-white timbered weavers’ cottages, is one of the most picturesque in Kent. The sign which hangs outside ‘Ye Maydes’, Thanet and Joan’s favourite restaurant, perpetuates the memory of Eliza and Mary Chalkhurst, a celebrated pair of Siamese twins, unique in that they survived, joined at the hip, well into middle age – a notion over which Thanet’s imagination always turned somersaults. How was it possible to live in such indissoluble intimacy with another person? he wondered. Never to be able to take even the smallest independent action without the full consent and cooperation of somebody else …?

  ‘Just one little push?’ said Joan as they parked opposite ‘Ye Maydes’ and got out of the car. ‘Mrs Haywood is deceiving herself, surely. It would take a lot more than that to tip a grown woman over a rail three foot six high.’

  ‘Not necessarily. She says that Nerine was “doubled up over the rail” in a bout of hysterical laughter. The rail could therefore have acted as a fulcrum, and very little force indeed would have been necessary, to tip the balance one way or the other. Think of a see-saw.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘Good evening Mr Thanet, Mrs Thanet.’

  Mrs Daniels, the owner, came forward to greet them as they stepped into the heavily beamed exterior and turned left into the little bar, where in winter a log fire always burned in the huge inglenook fireplace.

  Supplied with drinks they settled down to serious study of the menu and, orders given, Joan sank back into her chair with a sigh of contentment. ‘I love celebrations,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’ And on this occasion there was more than one reason to celebrate. It was an immense relief to have brought out into the open and satisfactorily resolved the issue which for years had been festering away beneath the surface of their marriage.

  After they had chatted for a while Joan said, ‘Anyway, there are a million things I want to ask you.’

  This was their first opportunity to talk at length. Thanet had no desire to spend the evening discussing the Tarrant case, but he didn’t want to disappoint Joan. He resigned himself to their usual ‘post mortem’.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, before we get bogged down in complicated explanations, just tell me first what you think frightened old Mrs Tarrant so much?’

  ‘Almost certainly she went along to Nerine’s sitting room, wandered out onto the balcony and saw Nerine lying on the terrace below, very obviously dead.’

  Joan grimaced. ‘Poor old thing. I suppose it’s one of the few occasions when she can be grateful for her erratic powers of recall.’

  ‘True.’

  Joan sipped at her drink and grinned. ‘Now comes the tricky bit. I want you to explain how you managed to put two and two together and come up with four.’

  ‘Tricky is the word. The answer is, I didn’t, at first. In fact, to begin with, I began to wonder if I ever would. There seemed to be so many people with legitimate reasons for quarrelling with Nerine – her husband, both the Speeds, her mother-in-law, Marilyn Barnes …’

  ‘You say, “quarrelling with”, not “killing”. You thought from the beginning, then, that it wasn’t a premeditated murder.’

  ‘Yes. It did look very much like an unplanned attack. Anyway, it was you who eventually put me on the right track.’

  Joan’s eyebrows went up. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. And talking about you … Did I tell you how beautiful you are looking this evening?’

  Joan was wearing a dress in misty greens scattered with wild flowers – buttercups, ox-eyed daisies and cornflowers. It conjured up visions of long, lazy summer afternoons in the country. Thanet said so.

  She smiled back at him and squeezed his hand. ‘Romantic!’

  ‘Have I ever denied it?’

  Mrs Daniels approached. ‘Your table is ready now, when you are.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They were shown to a table for two near the window and Joan gazed about with satisfaction at the red-and-white colour scheme which contrasted so effectively with the abundance of dark beams. ‘I love this place.’

  ‘It’s the nicest we’ve ever found, I agree.’

  Their first course arrived: a fanned avocado topped with Atlantic prawns marinaded in a blue-cheese dressing, for Joan. And for Thanet, melt-in-the-mouth deep-fried bread-crumbed slivers of veal served with three different dips: horseradish, tomato and garlic, and chive. For a while there was complete silence punctuated only by murmurs of appreciation.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Joan eventually, ‘what did you mean, when you said that it was me who put you on the right track?’

  ‘Well, you remember when I got home on Saturday, you’d been looking at photographs? There was one that I picked up, of Ben and myself in the garden … I didn’t realise at the time, but it was that photograph that started to make things come together.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, there were two particular photographs amongest those I’d seen at High Gables … One of them, a wedding photograph of Nerine and Roland Tarrant, was in Nerine Tarrant’s sitting room. The second, which was really rather similar to the one of Ben and me, was in her mother-in-law’s room, a photograph of Roland Tarrant and Damon in the garden, on Damon’s first birthday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, the first had been taken in the spring, because the daffodils were out, the second in the autumn. And when I got Lineham to check Damon’s date of birth we learnt that he had been born only six months after his parents’ marriage, and there’d been no whispers of his being a premature baby. I knew that Roland Tarrant had been away in Australia from soon after Christmas until the middle of March that year, so the conclusion was obvious: someone else was Damon’s father.’

  ‘Jocelyn Haywood, her sister’s fiancé.’

  ‘That’s right. Daphne was in hospital, remember, and Nerine didn’t seem to have had any other man in tow at the time. I checked with Mrs Glass – the woman who more or less brought Nerine and Daphne up. She’s an amazing old dear. Still icing wedding cakes at the age of eighty-one!’

  Joan laughed. ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s a curious mixture of wisdom and naivety – she seemed to understand the girls very well indeed, but when it came to their relationships with men … She confirmed that Jocelyn had been around a lot while Daphne was in hospital, but put it down to the fact that he was lonely – that he had no family down here and with Daphne away naturally turned to Nerine for company.’

  ‘I gather you think that Jocelyn meant no more to Nerine than someone to amuse herself with, at a time when she was at a loose end.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Though that makes her sound very coldblooded, and I don’t think she was. I think that she just had a driving need to feel important to somebody – anybody, to reassure herself of her own worth.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say she was a nymphomaniac, then?’

  ‘Oh, no, definitely not, though I daresay a lot of people thought she was. No, I’m inclined to agree with her husband, who saw her as so damaged by the sudden and total with
drawal of love she suffered as a small child, that she spent the rest of her life looking for it, without being able to commit herself completely to any one person for fear of being hurt again. He told me he’d always hoped that one day she would wake up and see that she could find all she wanted or needed right there in her own home, in him. He really did love her, you know, darling. He was prepared to put up with anything as long as she stayed with him, convinced that in the end she’d come to her senses and find him waiting.’

  ‘Poor man. He must be absolutely shattered by all this.’

  Thanet had a brief, vivid image of Tarrant, sweat running down his body, attacking the dead tree with an axe in a vain attempt to exorcise the demons of pain and loss which were his constant companions. ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why nobody else, at the time, seemed to have realised that he couldn’t have been Damon’s father.’

  ‘Oh, I think they must have. But Nerine’s father wouldn’t have cared enough to make much of a fuss about it, as long as his daughter was respectably married, and Roland Tarrant certainly wouldn’t have let the fact that Nerine was pregnant by another man deter him from marrying her. He would have taken Nerine on any terms. And his mother … Well, I think Lavinia Tarrant would have been glad to see Roland get the woman he wanted, but bitterly resentful of the fact that he had been cheated. Not that she seems to have held it against Damon, she seems very fond of him, but I suspect that she might well rather have enjoyed being a thorn in Nerine’s flesh. Those little forays to create chaos in Nerine’s private territory, for instance, I’m not sure they were as innocent as Marilyn chose to make out … No, the one person who would have been deeply hurt by the knowledge was Daphne, and I think she was too upset by Jocelyn’s death to give any thought to the matter. I imagine she simply took it for granted that Roland was the father. I don’t suppose she ever knew that Roland was away in Australia for quite so long. The latter part of his absence coincided with her stay in hospital and for much of that time she was very ill indeed, almost died from that perforated appendix, I gather … Anyway, to get back to what we were saying, I think looking at that photograph of Ben and me set me off. I remember waking up the next morning knowing that something had clicked, and not being able to put my finger on it. That came later on in the day.’