Death by Sheer Torture

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Oh, Lawrence,’ giggled Kate. ‘You didn’t, did you? You are naughty!’

  Lawrence—all eyes on him, thirsty for sensation—suddenly seemed to lose his passivity. He forced himself out of his rug and forward in his chair; he fixed me with a malevolent eye and began to raise his right arm. His quivering finger pointed at me, and he bellowed:

  ‘You—you damned—’ but his arm refused to go higher, and he looked at it in horror—‘liar! AAAAAHHHH.’

  The shriek was hideous, like a stuck pig, and the arm, which had seemed paralysed, clutched his heart as he let out breathless, agonized yelps, choking, spluttering, going hideously purple, like The Death of Chatterton.

  ‘Oh, Perry,’ howled Kate, genuinely concerned. ‘Look what you’ve done. He’s had a stroke.’

  But before she could get to him, Tim was through the oak door, his men following, and he had Lawrence down on the floor, applying artificial respiration. Providentially—or rather, at my suggestion—they had a stretcher ready, and an ambulance outside. Within minutes, and still hard at the first aid, they were trundling him out of the room and pushing him head first into the ambulance at the door. I had stood aside while all this was going on, as if in unconcern. In fact, I (at least) was breathing normally, for the first time for half an hour. The plan had worked. I was going to be safe.

  I was conscious, as the sound of the ambulance faded down the drive and along the road to Thornwick, that everybody was looking at me, and hardly in a spirit of friendship.

  ‘That,’ said Pete, ‘was too bloody thick for words.’

  ‘Was it?’ I said. ‘When we had come to that conclusion, he would have had to be faced with it. If it had been done tête-à-tête, him and Hamnet, I imagine the result would have been the same.’

  ‘You mean that he would have had a stroke?’ asked Sybilla.

  ‘I mean there would have been an appearance of that,’ I said.

  There was a long, long silence, as everybody tried to take in the significance of that. As for Lawrence as murderer, they all accepted it without difficulty: I suspected, with no evidence for my suspicion, that for many of them it was not too great a surprise. Who could tell what these odd people knew about each other, but preferred to conceal? Perhaps some of them were glad it was not someone nearer and dearer. Lawrence was hardly adept at making himself loved. But then, which of them was? Sybilla seemed to take the first word by some order of precedence.

  ‘Poor, poor dear Lawrence,’ she breathed, in a spirit of benediction. ‘So it was Lawrence after all.’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ I said. ‘Lawrence couldn’t switch off the light, because, as you all know, he could barely raise his hands as far as his mouth. He could manœuvre his chair around the ground floor of the house, and around Kate’s wing, which had the lift, but he couldn’t go upstairs to the rest of the house, or into the garden. Scissors were much easier for a half-paralysed man to manage than a knife—he would have had to hold the cord in one hand and cut with the other: I doubt if he had the coordination, and it would have taken too much time. I said earlier there were perhaps other children in the house, besides the Squealies. Let’s be charitable and assume that Lawrence did this when he was not in full control of his faculties. As far as the outside world is concerned, he did it in a fit of senile malice.’

  ‘He wasn’t so jolly senile,’ said Aunt Kate.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Kate,’ said Sybilla sharply.

  ‘As I say, we have to take the line that he was, whatever our suspicions, and whatever we feel about the supposed stroke we have just witnessed. Uncle Lawrence will by now be in hospital. After that he will no doubt be put into some kind of institution, and the police doctors and psychiatrists will get on to him. I suspect that nobody will actually want to put him on trial. Who knows? Perhaps he will retreat into that other, shadow world of his.’

  ‘Poor old man,’ said Jan.

  ‘Is that the end of the story, Daddy?’ piped up an unregarded Daniel.

  ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘Not quite.’

  ‘The motive,’ said Mordred. ‘If it wasn’t a senile fit—and of course I don’t believe that for a moment—then why did he do it?’

  ‘Look here, Perry,’ said Peter, stirring his flabby bulk uneasily. ‘I get your point. My old dad did it, and I’m not denying it. Had half a suspicion that might be the case. Can’t we leave it at that?’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘You’re trying to avoid why he did it. I think I know why you’re trying to avoid it—I think it’s because, by means we need not go into, you actually know. But if we leave it at that, you’re all going to be asking questions for the rest of your lives. Was it some senile grudge of no importance, or was there something behind it? And if there was something behind it, are the rest of us safe? So I think you ought to know that there was something behind it: whether or not the killing was done when he was in his right mind, he had a motive. And at this point I’m going to have to ask you, all of you, to swear to keep what I’m about to tell you to yourselves. It’s to be regarded as absolutely and permanently secret. Do you all swear to that?’

  They all nodded their heads enthusiastically, greedily. Peter, I thought, nodded more enthusiastically and greedily than the rest. He realized I had no desire to rob him of his little kingdom.

  ‘Then, if you all agree that what is coming goes no further than this room, I’ll tell you. My mother, in the last years of her life, was on a cruise —’

  ‘Oh, Perry,’ howled Chris. ‘You’ve found out. Do you have to tell everyone?’

  ‘My sister,’ I said, in my most elder-brotherly kind of way, ‘who has not been as frank and open with me during this case as I should have liked, already knows what I’m about to tell you. Yes, Chris, I do have to tell them. This is murder, and if I don’t, suspicion and distrust will go on festering for the rest of your lives. And apart from that, telling them is a form of protection for you. Right, then. My mother, on the round-the-world cruise she took in nineteen fifty seven, met a woman who claimed to be, and undoubtedly was, the first Mrs Lawrence Trethowan.’

  ‘Peregrine!’ shrilled Sybilla. ‘You don’t mean it! Not the appalling Florrie! The Gibson girl!’

  She looked around her in theatrical amazement. Pete looked furious; the rest were still taking it in.

  ‘Jolly pretty little thing, wasn’t she?’ said Kate.

  ‘I think she had worked in the theatre,’ I said diplomatically. ‘When my mother met her she owned or ran a hat shop in Sydney. The vital point, as you must all see, is that she was still alive in the ’fifties, not dead in the ’thirties as Lawrence had given out. And he had given it out, of course, because he was unable to divorce her. As perhaps you know, she was a Catholic. If she gave him no cause, and if she refused to divorce him, the marriage was virtually indissoluble. He was still legally married to her, as my mother realized, and for all I know he still may be. His second marriage was bigamous.’

  ‘Oh, I say,’ said Morrie, ‘but that means —’

  ‘You don’t have to spell it out, for Christ’s sake,’ said Peter.

  ‘No, let’s not spell it out. But that’s the reason why we all must keep it secret. Anyway, the rest can be told fairly quickly. My mother communicated this to me in a letter, to be sent to me on my twenty-first birthday. It was no doubt sent here by her lawyers, and appropriated by my father. I have no doubt it put him in a terrible quandary. On the one hand it made him Lawrence’s legal heir, under the terms of Great-Grandfather’s entail. On the other hand, he could not reasonably expect to enjoy the exalted position of head of the Trethowan family for long. Then it would inevitably descend to me. That he could not bear the thought of. He hated, absolutely hated me. I realize that now. So he compromised by screwing money out of Lawrence. He had been doing this, I imagine, since nineteen sixty-nine, the year I became twenty-one.’

  ‘Ah—hence the stinginess!’ said Kate.

  ‘Precisely. Lawrence wanted to leave the estate as intact a
s possible to Peter, and via Peter to the eldest of the Squealies, whom he loved.’

  ‘They have names!’ said Maria-Luisa, suddenly, in English.

  ‘Quite right. I beg your pardon. To . . . Pietro, is it? Mario? Pietro, yes. Lawrence did not dare to make over the estate to Peter in his lifetime, in case it aroused questions about the death of his first wife. That’s why he’d gone to great lengths to keep his second divorce quiet and scandal-free. And all the time my father was slowly—not outrageously, but surely—milking him of money. And Lawrence knew that after he died, Peter would be milked in the same way. That wasn’t the only drain on the estate: over the past few years his son had been filching pictures from the house and selling them off.’

  ‘Come off it, Perry,’ said Peter, with a cunning expression on his face. ‘That was done with his consent. To keep paying off your damned father.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘Plausible. Perhaps we can leave it at that. We could prove it one way or the other by getting an expert to look at the signature on the authorization to sell which you gave to the Newstead Abbey people. Shall we do that? No? Well, personally I suspect that he did not authorize that or any other sale, but he did consent to cover up for you afterwards. That, as I said, is a minor matter. What does seem to be clear is that my father, in the last few weeks, began to make his demands more pressing. Why? Well, I don’t know, but I wonder whether it wasn’t just for fun. Just as the tortures got more and more extreme, so Lawrence had to wriggle more, otherwise my papa didn’t get his kick. And Lawrence took the necessary steps and killed him in the only way he could think of. He simulated an “off-day” —’

  ‘I said he was often spoofing,’ said Kate.

  ‘—got out from Kate’s wing in the lift, got easily over to the Gothic wing, used the scissors he had secreted earlier, hid them also on the ground floor, near the wing which had no connection with him or his, and went back to Kate’s.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound as if he was having a senile fit to me,’ said Kate.

  ‘As far as we are concerned, that is the explanation we must press,’ I said patiently. ‘Ultimately it will be up to the police doctors, and the psychiatrists. If Uncle Lawrence is the man I take him for, he will make mincemeat of the psychiatrists. I would think it in the highest degree unlikely that he will ever come to trial. What is important is that we all, now we have heard the truth, put it absolutely out of our minds. I need hardly say I have no intention of acting on this information. Everything will remain as it was, and Pete will take over when Lawrence dies—or, as I suspect, rather before.’ I looked round at him. Peter was expressing no great gratitude, but he did look relieved. ‘Well, that’s all I have to say. I’m sorry it took so long. Now I need a drink, and I expect you do too.’

  I drew my fist across my forehead. It was wet as hell, and my clean shirt was nastily damp. But all that mattered was that I had got through it. I had managed it. Lawrence was on his way to some kind of clink, and I was out of the wood. Soon Jan and Daniel and I would be out of the snake-pit and on our way to Newcastle.

  But then suddenly things took a terrible turn. So far, I had been in control, immaculately in control. Now the situation developed an impetus, took a direction, which was none of my choosing. The end of the nightmare had been in sight: suddenly the scenario changed and a totally new nightmare took over, of terrifying dimensions.

  ‘Hold!’ said Sybilla.

  Sybilla must be the only person in the world today who can say ‘Hold!’ and not mean to get a laugh. I was on my way to the drinks tray, but I stopped in my tracks. Was she begrudging me a glass of their lousy sherry?

  ‘Perry, my dear boy,’ said Sybilla, fluttering a bit of magenta drape in my direction. ‘I know I speak for all of us when I say we understand and appreciate the nobility of your gesture of renunciation. The generosity and selflessness of it staggers one, simply takes away the breath! It is a gesture in the true Trethowan tradition. But it will not do, dear boy!’

  ‘Aunt Sybilla, it is not a selfless —’

  ‘It simply will not do! I know that in what I am about to say I speak for Kate —’

  ‘Oh, rather!’ said Kate. ‘For once!’

  ‘—and naturally Mordred will agree with me too. I know I speak for them when I say that right must be done. Grandfather Josiah’s intentions were made perfectly plain: the house and the associated properties, shares and money went to the legitimate heir in the male line. (His view of women was regrettable, but of its time.) His feelings, were he to find out that the house and the large sums of money and land that go with it had descended to someone born on the wrong side of the blanket, are not to be thought of. He was brought up a Presbyterian! The moral standards required of his domestic servants were strict even for those times. I can only say that for all of us, you, Perry—on Lawrence’s demise, or incapacity, which, as you say, seems only too likely—will be, must be, head of the family.’

  ‘You’re pretty quick to give away my property,’ said Peter resentfully.

  ‘I should have thought it would be clear even to one of your intellectual capacity that one thing the property is not, is yours,’ said Sybilla, with more than her usual asperity.

  ‘Aunt Sybilla!’ cried Cristobel. ‘Peter has always been brought up to regard himself as heir.’ She was rewarded by a look of venomous suspicion from Maria-Luisa.

  ‘Then he should have acted as such,’ said Sybilla. ‘Peter has never been committed to the family, as a family. I fear that Peter has never been committed to anyone but himself. Hard words, especially of a Trethowan, but how true! I know that Kate and I and Mordred have been fearful of our future, when Lawrence should pass on. Our very living here might have been threatened! He might have demanded rent! It is quite clear that we owe no loyalty to Peter.’

  ‘Pete’s a robber,’ said Kate.

  ‘Indeed, if I understand you right, Peregrine, Peter has in fact known of this for some time, and kept it quiet.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so. But —’

  ‘How unworthy!’ pronounced Sybilla, with dire finality. ‘Now you, Perry—I can only say that as soon as you came into this room the other day, I marked you down as a man of real sensitivity. Of truly refined feeling. And of deep family feeling.’

  I almost laughed out loud at the blatant mendacity of the woman. ‘Aunt Sybilla,’ I said. ‘I think this conversation should be nipped in the bud straight away. I simply could never agree to take on the responsibilities that owning Harpenden would entail. I have no desire to. You forget that my commitment to the family is even less than Peter’s. I have had nothing whatever to do with it for fourteen years.’

  ‘That is quite irrelevant, my dear boy! The result of an unfortunate misunderstanding. One has only to look at you, standing here now, to sense in you the qualities of a Trethowan. I’m sure you, Jan dear, will bear me out that Peregrine is, and thinks of himself as, a true Trethowan, and is proud of it!’

  ‘Perry’s always been very taken up with his family,’ said Jan. ‘He thinks of you a lot.’

  The treachery of it! The blank treachery! I threw Jan a glance of impending thunder.

  ‘There!’ said Sybilla triumphantly. ‘Nor, Peregrine, can you think only of yourself in this. There are the interests of your dear little boy to consider. It’s unthinkable that he be deprived of what is undoubtedly his by right.’ (At this point a squawk came from Maria-Luisa.) ‘By right!’ repeated Sybilla magisterially. ‘You must think what is best for Daniel.’

  ‘I do not think that inheriting large wads of money is necessarily the best thing that can happen to a man,’ I said. ‘Quite the reverse. Nor do I think I want Daniel saddled with a ridiculous white elephant of a house.’

  It was the wrong thing to say altogether. ‘I like it here,’ said Daniel stoutly. ‘I think it’s scrumptious here!’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Sybilla. ‘You would confine the poor child to a tiny little flat in—where is it?’

  ‘Maida Vale
.’

  ‘Maida Vale. Goodness me, I remember it being built. It was where London businessmen kept their fancy women! And very suitable it was too, no doubt, for such a purpose. But it is hardly an ideal place for a growing child. When one thinks too of Jan, it is surely obvious what an eminently gracious chatelaine of Harpenden she would make. Your father, my dear, you said was —?’

  ‘A house-painter,’ said Jan.

  Aunt Sybilla was unperturbed. ‘I have always maintained that what the Trethowans needed was an infusion of working-class blood.’.

  ‘Uncle Lawrence did his best,’ I said, ‘but you didn’t seem exactly delighted.’

  Sybilla ignored me. ‘Then surely we can regard it all as settled. We cannot allow you, as a result of a truly Quixotic whim, of some absurd notion of chivalry, to rob yourself and your lovely little boy of your rightful heritage.’

  I drew my fingers round my shirt collar, and felt them wet from the sweat. This was coming altogether too close. ‘This is truly nonsensical, Aunt Syb,’ I said. ‘I’m a working man, I love my job. I have no intention of giving it up to take over a useless fortune I haven’t earned, and a monstrous house I’ve always loathed. I hope to do something a little more useful with my life.’

  ‘Maintaining the heritage of the Trethowans is hardly useless,’ said Sybilla. ‘And it is a job you are eminently suited for. It has been clear to us, Perry, since you arrived, clear to Mordred, and to Kate, and to me —’

  ‘You’d make a lovely head of the family,’ said Kate. ‘And fancy Jan’s father being a house-painter!’

  ‘As I was saying, Kate dear, we have watched you, Perry, since your return among us. We have seen you . . . expand! It is clear that your job, admirable and useful in its rather prosaic way, does not stretch your capacities.’

  ‘I always understood you found my size horribly unspiritual,’ I said.

  ‘Let us not take amiss words spoken in the heat of the moment. I have in fact always had a penchant for large men. We must remember that Grandfather Josiah was himself a fine, large man.’