“Yes,” agreed Cordelia with a nervous laugh. “Rather like Mrs. Rochester roaming about the house at night and setting fire to things.”
“I’ll tell you what confused me,” said Meredith, stopping at the door. He had a vague feeling that they were trying to get rid of him, but he was probably mistaken, and he did want to clear this niggling little uncertainty up. “When you took me up to see the old gentleman, I heard him making his will, as he thinks, and I heard him leave something or other to his sister. Then I learned that Benedict Cotterel was an only child. That’s what struck me as funny—as hard to understand.”
Roderick knew how Caroline, even as she lived a lie, and had for years, hated actually to utter one. He weighed in quickly with the lie he had prepared.
“You forget my father is a writer, Inspector. He doesn’t only have his own past, he has the past of the characters he has lived with, lived in. It’s a bit pathetic, really, almost grotesque, but sometimes, even now, he becomes characters from his own books—leaves things to other characters in those books.”
“Well!” marveled Meredith, smiling in relief at a niggling worry clarified. “That explains it! That’s something I never would have thought of.”
“It’s not unlike Myra,” contributed Cordelia in a rather unsure voice. “She sometimes became the character she was preparing to act. I welcomed it as a rule; they were often pleasanter than her real self.”
Meredith had got to the front door and went happily through it, taking out his car keys.
“I feel like a real bumpkin not to have thought of that. Especially as I’ve investigated the death of a writer before. That was a crime writer, though. Perhaps they don’t go so deep. Well, thank you for all your help. You’ll be glad to be seeing the last of me, I imagine. But I’m used to folk feeling that.”
He raised his hand cheerily in farewell and drove his car down the gravel lane toward the gate. He could not have felt the long released breath as he drove away.
“Well,” said Cordelia awkwardly, “I’ll be going to meet Pat—”
“No!” said Caroline. “We can’t simply leave it there, and I don’t believe you want to.”
“You’re wrong. I do want to. It’s really not important to me anymore,” said Cordelia, an edge of panic coming into her voice. “I don’t want to quarrel with you. I don’t want a scene—I’ve had enough of scenes to last a lifetime. I know that’s not my father upstairs. That’s all that matters.”
“Did it never occur to you to wonder who the old man up there was?”
“Not really. I just knew it wasn’t Ben.”
Caroline led her back into the living room, and Roderick shut the door. Cordelia remained standing, still reluctant, and pulling nervily at her handkerchief, as she had done when they had first met.
“I don’t want a scene, either,” said Caroline quietly. “There’s no reason why there should be one. I just want you to understand what happened, how it came about. How did you find out? Did you listen to the tapes?”
“No,” said Cordelia bluntly. “It was his feet.”
“His feet?”
“I went up one day, very quietly, to have another look at my father. You were out on a drive with Becky. He was asleep, but his bedclothes were all disarranged. I went to tuck him in, and I saw he had large feet. The day before I’d read an interview with him, stored downstairs, which had described him as a ‘spry little mannikin’ with elegant size-six shoes. The man upstairs was not large, but his feet were certainly size nine or ten. Feet don’t grow with old age.”
“No,” said Roderick. “Things shrink, but nothing grows.”
“I slipped off the tape and took it down to the tape recorder in the study. It was very pathetic. I didn’t recognize any of the things he was leaving—not from this house, not from what I’d read of his life. Ben never owned a yacht. It just wasn’t his sort of thing—was it?”
“Not at all,” said Roderick.
“And the names of the people he was leaving things to—I didn’t recognize any of them.”
“You might have recognized one,” said Caroline quietly. “My maiden name was Quantick.”
“Oh—”
Cordelia put her hand to her mouth in sudden understanding.
“Not that he leaves anything to us. He feels, poor lamb, some sort of vague resentment, as if we were responsible for the way he is now. So he leaves things to old friends, family—most of them people long since dead.”
“Then he’s—is he your father?”
“Yes. Rupert Quantick, my father . . . It’s a difficult story to tell, to make clear how we fell into this . . . deception. And of course we have never told it before. My father wasn’t at all like us—or, for that matter, like Ben. He was a businessman, entrepreneur—very much a man of the world: hearty, gregarious, loving all the good things of life.”
“Too much so,” said Roderick.
“Yes. He was also, I’m afraid, not very honest. He loved making money, and he wasn’t too scrupulous about how he came by it.”
“In fact, I think he liked a dishonest buck better than an honest one,” put in Roderick. “There are people like that. There is more zest to the dishonest buck, more spice.”
“He lived his life, he always said, on the windy side of the law,” resumed Caroline. “He loved dodges, slightly crooked wheezes, little fiddles that beat the tax man. They led on, inevitably, to bigger things. Then suddenly the law caught up with him. It was one summer, ten years ago, when we were visiting him in the South of France. He had a villa there, in a little village near Cimènes, and his yacht was moored in the harbor. Maybe it was his life-style that gave him away. Anyway, we could see he was worried. He kept phoning back to England; he couldn’t concentrate, didn’t want to go sailing or to play golf or any of the things he usually enjoyed.”
“We guessed quite soon that what was worrying him was the police,” said Roderick. “We’d always feared they’d catch up with him in the end. It was difficult to say what worried us most: the prospect of his going to jail or his inability to concentrate. In the midst of all his worries he would suddenly seem to lose track of things entirely. We even once found him sobbing—an inconceivable thing. He was bewildered by what was happening to him. Anyway, he was so unlike his usual hearty, outgoing self that we were worried, especially as it seemed to get worse rather than better. And then suddenly we realized what it was: the onset of senility.”
“Ben was coming to stay for a couple of days. He’d been walking in the Dolomites—a region he’d always loved and which he’d just written a book about. We were looking forward to it, because we didn’t see him often. He’d just bought this house, to be near us, he said. But Ben was congenitally restless, and we didn’t believe he’d use it much.”
“He came,” said Roderick, “and he seemed in excellent form. Probably he’d overstrained himself in his walking, but if so, it certainly didn’t show. In fact, his spryness showed up the change in Caroline’s father. Sometimes Rupert seemed aware of his predicament. We had a splendid meal, and he kept saying, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry . . .’ We didn’t know how to respond, because we didn’t know if he was thinking about a possible jail sentence or his own failing powers. Most of the time he rambled and became pathetic, and finally we put him to bed with a couple of sleeping pills.”
“Later, just as we were putting out the light, we heard a cry. It was from Ben’s room. He’d had a heart attack, a severe one. I got him to bed while Roderick rang the doctor in Cimènes. He was very quick, but not quick enough. Ben died as he came into the room.”
“It was devastating—totally unexpected, and coming on top of everything else . . .”
“Otherwise, Roderick would have realized,” insisted Caroline. “The doctor said one or two odd things: ‘Votre père est bien respecté à Cimènes’—things like that. Roderick thought he was just being a little flowery—and in fact Ben was well thought of as a writer in France. Then, as he was leaving the house, p
romising to send up the death certificate for us to fill in the personal details, he said: ‘C’était un bon garçon, Monsieur Quantick.’ Roderick didn’t twig immediately . . .”
“It was the way he said it: Contick.”
“—and by the time he did twig, the doctor had got into his car and driven away.”
“Then we realized: Caroline’s father had been on his books, but he had never actually been to see him. The doctor was young and had recently taken over the practice. He knew of Rupert Quantick, the rich Englishman, and where he lived, but he’d never met him. When the certificate came up next day, it certified the death of Rupert Quantick.”
“It was one of those times—a time of decision. Becky was somehow upset by the death, some sense she has of disaster; Father woke up rambling worse than ever, and then someone rang up from my father’s firm in Birmingham to say he’d heard the Fraud Squad would be flying out to Nice before the end of the week and would be coming to Cimènes to interview him.”
“It seemed like pure impulse at the time,” said Roderick. “I said: ‘They’ll be wasting their time. Caroline’s father died last night.’
“The rest followed like a dream. We filled up the missing entries on the death certificate with Rupert Quantick’s details, and we buried Ben as him. There were just us and Becky at the funeral. Then we drove Rupert home to England. There was no problem at all. There were the four of us in the car, one a handicapped child, one a sick old man. The passport official just flicked through Ben’s passport, glanced into the car—one old man is very like another—and that was that.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Caroline. “Babies and old people are very much alike.”
“So we brought him here, and without realizing it, he began his life as Benedict Cotterel,” said Roderick. “We knew, of course, that he wouldn’t be able to cope on his own. We moved in and sold our cottage. At first he could go out sometimes into the garden, play a little with Becky. But before long even that became impossible. We took over the administration of his affairs—Ben’s affairs—and he took to his bed and lived permanently in some other, some half-real, world. Then it was safe to have help looking after him.”
“His, my father’s, little business empire collapsed, and all his assets were seized to pay his debts. His yacht, his early Wedgwood, his silver, his pictures . . .”
“The Gainsborough that turned out not to be a Gainsborough at all,” put in Roderick wryly.
“So typical of Dad. I was glad that I didn’t profit at all by his ‘death.’ There’s a sort of ironic humor, I suppose, in hearing him leave all those things to friends and relatives—things that are long gone. When he dies, he will die as Benedict Cotterel, and then this house will come to Isobel, and most of the rest will come to us.”
“Wasn’t Isobel a problem?” asked Cordelia.
“We thought she would be,” said Roderick. “Our hearts were in our mouths the first time she said she was coming. Then we realized she hadn’t seen him since the late fifties. And in fact she always refuses to go upstairs and see him. She’s just interested in keeping an eye on ‘her’ property.”
“The doctor here was no danger,” said Caroline. “Ben had bought the house, but he’d never lived here. The doctor has treated him throughout as Ben Cotterel. He feels rather proud of having such a distinguished patient.”
“When he dies, he will be buried as Benedict Cotterel. Big funeral, no doubt—all the great and good in the literary world, representatives of the Arts Council, Margaret Drabble . . .”
“The old Rupert Quantick, my father as I knew him as a child, would have thought that a tremendous joke,” said Caroline.
“Then Isobel can have this place, we’ll find ourselves a smaller house, and life will go on as before.”
“You won’t reveal the truth, then?”
“We’ve talked about it. I don’t suppose anything very dreadful would happen to us. But I think we’ll only do it, if at all, when Becky is dead. There will be an immense fuss, and she responds very badly to any disruption in her routine.” Caroline paused. “I’ve hated living this lie, but somehow it’s around our necks now, like the albatross. Maybe it would be best just to leave a statement with our wills.”
“I’m sorry I thought you’d done it to prolong the royalties,” said Cordelia awkwardly. “Even though I did think it was Becky you were concerned about.”
“The royalties will last out all our times,” said Roderick quietly. “The doctors say Becky can’t live much beyond thirty-five. What we fear most is that we should both die first. I’m afraid that would devastate her, however much money there was around to pay for her looking-after.”
“There’s Pat coming from his swim,” said Cordelia hurriedly. Through the window, in the last light, they could see the beanpole figure with the towel over his shoulders. Cordelia hurried to the front door and hailed him, and they stood together, he with his arm around her shoulders, under the outside light, looking oddly fragile, yet indissolubly united.
“We plan to move on the day after tomorrow,” said Cordelia.
“We shall miss you,” said Caroline truthfully. “You won’t be doing any more research?”
“No . . . The book’s a washout. . . . You may as well know that I’m pregnant. I realized a few days ago, just before Mother was killed. When I spent the night in the station cells, I kept saying to myself: ‘God might do this to me, but He wouldn’t do it to my baby.’ It kept me going. And He didn’t! But I think now it’s time to forget. I don’t want to stain the beginning of a life with all the grievances and misery of my past. Turn around and start again—that’s the best plan.”
“I think you’re very wise.”
“Maybe I’ll publish the account of Myra’s acting career. An unblemished record of artistic success.”
“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” said Roderick.
“Yes. Though that saying doesn’t make much sense in modern times, does it? It’s only after their death that you can say how rotten they were.” She flashed at them her brilliant smile, and Caroline realized that she had hardly seen it since Cordelia had heard the news that her mother was coming to Maudsley. “I’m not going to start sentimentalizing Mother, you see,” she went on. “But don’t worry, I won’t change my mind about the book. Someone, some day, will write the truth about her, but it won’t be me. From me there will be nothing but praise, endless applause. Happy ending!”
She and Pat, closely entwined, began their walk down the lawn to their tent. Then she turned and called back to them: “But I don’t promise that one day, when I’m much older, I won’t want to write about Ben!”
Roderick and Caroline turned off the light and went back into the house.
“That will be four people, now, who know,” said Roderick.
“Yes. But I don’t worry about Pat. I can’t think of anyone less likely to volunteer other people’s secrets. Apart from the talk about Myra’s death, I really don’t think I’ve heard him say more than a couple of hundred words since he came here. Still, he’ll be a good father.”
“Very good,” said Roderick. “Happy ending.”
He went into the kitchen to prepare Becky’s good-night Ovaltine, and Caroline went into the living room, switched off the television, and began getting her ready for bed.
• • •
Upstairs, in the large bedroom that looked out to sea, the old man, unusually, had awakened. Poised unsurely between the vague dreams of his night and the vague dreams of his day, he extricated his old hand from the bedclothes and directed it shakily toward the tape recorder by his bed. When the reassuring whirring sound started, he cleared his throat.
“To my dear sister Dorothy Quantick, I leave my Gainsborough portrait of Sir Samuel . . . of Sir Samuel Etterick . . . To my dear friend William Harrison, I bequeath . . . I bequeath . . .”
The voice faded into nothing, the old man’s eyes closed, and he sank once more into sleep.
On the bedside table
the machine whirred on.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Skeleton in the Grass
The Cherry Blossom Corpse
Bodies
Political Suicide
Fête Fatale
Out of the Blackout
Corpse in a Gilded Cage
School for Murder
The Case of the Missing Brontë
A Little Local Murder
Death and the Princess
Death by Sheer Torture
Death in a Cold Climate
Death of a Perfect Mother
Death of a Literary Widow
Death of a Mystery Writer
About the Author
Robert Barnard (1936-2013) was awarded the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Nero Wolfe Award, as well as the Agatha and Macavity awards. An eight-time Edgar nominee, he was a member of Britain’s distinguished Detection Club, and, in May 2003, he received the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement in mystery writing. His most recent novel, Charitable Body, was published by Scribner in 2012.
We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.
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Copyright © 1988 by Robert Barnard
First American Edition, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photcopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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