by Nicola Upson
‘To finish what he started. Or perhaps I should say to finish what I started all those years ago. I know I’m not in a position to ask for anything from you, but I’d like to end it in my own way.
No one could punish me more than I can punish myself.’
‘Marta, please, you don’t have to do that,’ Josephine said, and tentatively raised the gun.
‘That would be such an easy way out for me, but not for you,’
Marta said, gently lowering Josephine’s hand. ‘It’s impossible to live with someone’s blood on your hands – I should know – so I wouldn’t want you to do it even if you were capable.’ She knelt beside her son and lightly ran her fingers over his cheek. ‘He’s so like his father, you know. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it.’
Quickly she stood up to leave the room but turned back as she got 262
to the door. ‘You can’t possibly justify to someone why you tried to take their life, but I am sorry, Josephine. I really am.’
Then she was gone, and Josephine waited for the front door to close. Keeping her eyes on Elliott Vintner’s son, she moved over to the telephone to call Archie.
As it happened, Scotland Yard arrived rather sooner than Josephine expected in the shape of a bewildered young constable who seemed more frightened of Rafe Vintner than she was; God help them if Vintner had been conscious, she thought. Minutes later, Archie’s car screeched to a halt outside, flanked by an ambu-lance and a marked police vehicle.
‘It really is the Flying Squad, isn’t it?’ she said when he appeared at the door, but Penrose was in no mood to joke.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing coming here alone?’ he yelled at her. ‘Do you realise what could have happened to you?’
‘I’ve spent the last hour trapped in a room by a madman with a gun, so I think I’ve got a fair idea,’ she said sharply, then softened when she saw the panic in his eyes. ‘But nothing did happen to me, Archie. I’m all right – honestly.’
As Vintner was lifted onto a stretcher and taken from the room, Josephine explained exactly what had happened. ‘God, it’s like something out of a Greek tragedy,’ Penrose said when she had finished, and looked at Fallowfield, who was packing away the gun ready to remove it from the scene. ‘We need to circulate Marta Fox’s description immediately. If she leaves London we might never find her.’
Josephine signalled to Fallowfield to wait a moment. ‘Will she hang for what she’s done?’ she asked.
Penrose considered. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t actually killed anyone and, from what you tell me, a good barrister could argue that she wasn’t of sound mind when she agreed to help Vintner. She’s been through so much and, ironically, the fact that she’s been committed to an asylum will work in her favour in court.’
‘Then I think I can tell you where she’ll be, Archie. There’s only 263
one place she’d want to go now. But you have to let me speak to her.’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Never in a million years would I let you go near that woman after what’s happened. She wants you dead, and she nearly got her wish.’
‘If she still wanted to kill me, she could have done it easily just now,’ Josephine argued. ‘She gave me the gun, Archie – there’s no danger for me any more. But there is for her. She’s determined to die, you know, but I might be able to change her mind. Are you really going to stop me trying?’
Penrose hesitated, but Fallowfield backed her up. ‘If anyone can get her to give herself up, Sir, Miss Tey can. And we can stay close by to make sure nothing happens to her.’
‘All right,’ Penrose said, making his mind up. ‘But I’m not going to let you out of my sight this time.’
King’s Cross was not as crowded as it had been when Josephine was last there, but the station still had an air of efficient busyness about it. The stable-yard clock over the entrance chimed six o’clock as she passed underneath it, and she walked quickly over to the huge boards that indicated arrivals and departures. As agreed, she left Penrose and Fallowfield to wait there and turned purposefully towards the trains.
Marta was standing a little way down the platform, between two trains preparing to depart and just yards from where the daughter she never knew had died. Josephine walked towards her, and sat down on a nearby bench. Certain her approach had been noted, she waited for Marta to speak.
‘You were absolutely right, Josephine,’ she said, turning round at last. ‘I didn’t know anything about my daughter, not even her name. What was she like?’
‘She was a joy,’ Josephine said simply. ‘The sort of girl who could lighten your heart without ever realising she’d done it. There was nothing self-conscious about her, you see. She was warm and honest, and she didn’t try to be anything she wasn’t – and that’s so rare. She had an innocence about her – and I do mean innocence 264
rather than naivety. Life had been difficult for her at times; she found not knowing where she’d come from hard to accept, and there were problems in her adoptive family, but a lot of love, too, and she seemed blessed with a talent for happiness. Very few of us can claim that.’ Sadly, she remembered Elspeth’s sudden shyness about her new romance. ‘She was at a crossroads in her life, as well; she’d just found love with Hedley and that seemed to have given her a new confidence, a real excitement about the future.
You would have been pleased, I think, and so would she.’
Marta joined her on the bench. ‘One of the things I loved about Arthur was that he could always find something to be fascinated by. He was so very special, you know. Whenever I was with him, all I knew was joy – and after being married to Elliott, you can imagine what a surprise that was. That talent for happiness you mentioned – that was so much a part of him. I’m glad it lived on through his daughter, if only briefly.’
‘There are a few people in life you feel privileged to have known,’ Josephine said, thinking about Jack. ‘Elspeth was one of them, although she would have laughed at the idea. I’d have loved the chance to get to know her better.’ She looked at Marta.
‘I’d like the chance to get to know her mother better. I can’t be sure, but I suspect Rafe was wrong when he said she wasn’t like you. Before all this happened, I imagine you were rather different.’
Marta nodded. ‘So much so that it feels like another life. I don’t recognise myself any more. The woman Arthur loved hated violence and revenge and mistrust – all those things that men go to war for. She would have found murder abhorrent.’
‘And craved peace and beauty? She sounds very much like the Anne of Bohemia that Vintner wrote about.’ Marta’s sharp glance was not lost on Josephine. ‘You don’t have to explain why you wanted to kill me, Marta,’ she said. ‘You hated me for the same reasons that Elliott Vintner did. But he didn’t write The White Heart, did he? You did. It was your work I was supposed to have stolen, not his.’
‘I shouldn’t have given another writer the new book if I wanted to keep that a secret, should I? Yes, I wrote the novel that made 265
Elliott Vintner’s name. I sent the manuscript to Arthur in one of the consignments that went out from May Gaskell’s war library.
Elliott must have either intercepted it or found it in Arthur’s things after he died. The next time I came across it was in the hospital that my husband sent me to. There it was on somebody’s bed, a published book with Elliott Vintner’s name plastered all over the cover. All that fuss he made and everything he put you through, and it was never his to lay claim to, never his privilege to feel wronged.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I had no proof. The manuscript was long gone and anyway, I had no fight left in me. I was so afraid of him, Josephine. I never wanted to marry him, but outwardly he was the perfect match –
wealthy, a little older than me, an academic – and my parents took it for granted that I’d accept him. I was too young and too naive to argue. He turned out to be very different behind closed door
s, of course.’
‘Did he hurt you?’ Josephine asked.
Marta gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh yes, but not by doing anything as straightforward as hitting me. No, he was far too clever to do anything that I could talk about without being ashamed. He was hateful in bed – truly hateful. He used to pride himself on thinking up new and inventive ways to humiliate me. One day, he found a stash of short stories I’d written, and he was so scornful about his little writer wife. After that, whenever he’d finished with me in bed
– and he was insatiable in his cruelty – he’d make me write about what we’d done and read it out to him. I had to relive the shame of it over and over again. It was his bid for immortality, I think, and he knew it kept him in my head when he couldn’t be inside my body. He used to give me marks out of ten for the prose.’
Josephine was shocked. ‘No wonder you turned to Arthur,’ she said. ‘It’s a miracle you could be with anyone after that.’
‘Yes, but Elliott knew exactly how to destroy me for what I’d done, and the world made it easy for him. Women like me – pregnant with a child that wasn’t my husband’s – were outcasts, fallen and in need of salvation. What’s terrible is that you start to believe 266
it yourself when you’ve been in there for a while, and the people who ran that place went to great lengths to keep you ignorant of the fact that things might be changing a little for the better in the world outside. The worst thing was the way that they stamped on any solidarity between the women; it would have been bearable if we could have helped each other through it, but we were constantly separated and played off against one another, and God help you if you got into what they so charmingly called a “particular friendship”.’ She took a cigarette out of the case in her bag.
Josephine lit it for her and waited as she used the distraction to rein in her emotions. ‘I was lucky, I suppose,’ she continued at last.
‘Some people spent decades there, detained for life. You could always tell which ones they were because they were obsessed with sin and religion; it didn’t matter if they were prostitutes, victims of incest or rape, or just feeble-minded – they’d all been taught to despise themselves.’
‘And you were there until Rafe came to find you? You must have been desperate to get out for years.’
‘Yes and no. Arthur had died and both my children had been taken away from me, so there didn’t seem much to get out for.
Depression is the cruellest of things, you know. It deadens everything – there’s no pleasure left in life, no colour or sensual enjoyment. Just an absence. I don’t think I’d have felt any different if I’d been in a place I loved, seeing things that used to bring me joy every day. In fact, that probably would have been worse, so I welcomed being somewhere that turned me into no one.’ The cigarette had been smoked quickly, and she threw the end down onto the track. ‘Elliott took everything from me – my children, my book, my creativity in every sense of the word.’
‘And your talent for happiness.’
Marta nodded. ‘Exactly. It’s hard to put into words how that felt. I remember being with Arthur in Cambridge just after Elliott had gone to war. He took me to a museum, just along the road from where he worked at the Botanic Gardens, because it had a collection of paintings that he loved. There was a whole wall of Impressionists and we stood for ages looking at an extraordinary 267
Renoir landscape – it was so sensual that I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Next to it were two smaller paintings of women, one dancing and one playing a guitar. I was surprised at how awful they were by comparison – you could hardly believe they were by the same artist – but Arthur said that, if anything, he liked them better because they’d been painted late in Renoir’s life when his hands were crippled with arthritis, and he thought there was something very noble about someone being so determined to create beauty in spite of the pain. I’ve never forgotten that, and I suppose it’s how I felt, emotionally. I knew there was still so much that was beautiful in the world and I wanted so badly to write about it but, after Arthur died and I lost everything, I just couldn’t. Books and art –
they should all have a beauty about them, even if they begin with a scream, but it was as though someone had put a pen in my hand and frozen it. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes, it does,’ Josephine said. ‘More than you could know.’
Marta looked questioningly at her but there was no time to go into her own darkness as well as Marta’s; even from this distance, she imagined she could feel Archie’s growing impatience.
‘Then Rafe turned up and suddenly there was a glimmer of hope,’ Marta continued. ‘How does that speech of Lydia’s go in your play? “When joy is killed it dies forever, but happiness one can grow again.” I always loved that line because it’s exactly how I felt.
I knew the joy had gone with Arthur, but I thought if I could get my children back, I might at least be able to rediscover the happiness. I would have done anything to make up for those lost years.’ She fell silent and Josephine resisted the temptation to prompt her, sensing there was more to come. ‘I knew that what he was suggesting was evil, of course I did, but at the time I didn’t care. And yes, I did hate you but never because I thought you’d stolen my work. It was more complicated than that. You see, the only thing that kept me alive in that place was the thought that I might one day be able to have revenge on Elliott, to hurt him so badly for what he’d done to me.
But you beat me to it. You won that court case and drove him to take his own life before I could make him suffer, and you’ve no idea how much I resented you for that.’
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Josephine did not contradict her, but asked instead, ‘Did you really intend to kill Aubrey?’
‘Yes, at first. I had no idea he was related to Arthur, of course.
I was in such a state on Friday. When you turned up at the taxi with Lydia, I realised what a mistake I’d made in pointing out the wrong person. I went to see Rafe at Wyndham’s as soon as Lydia was on stage, and when he told me he’d gone through with it I was horrified. Then he said that Aubrey suspected something and was on to us, and I panicked. I knew I’d never be with my children again if we were caught, and that was all I wanted. Rafe assured me that we could salvage things if we acted quickly, and at first I went along with what he suggested. But when the moment came I just couldn’t go through with it. Aubrey didn’t know anything, though, did he? Rafe just used that to get me to do his dirty work.’
‘He knew something, Marta,’ Josephine said quietly. ‘But not who you were or what you’d done.’ Marta listened in disbelief as she repeated Alice Simmons’s account of Arthur’s murder and Walter’s pact with Vintner, and Josephine wished that it had not fallen to her to shatter this woman’s world all over again. ‘So Vintner’s suicide had nothing to do with Richard of Bordeaux or the court case,’ she added. ‘He killed himself because he was about to be exposed as a murderer. Arthur’s murderer.’
Marta was silent for a long time, then said, ‘So that’s what Lydia was talking about last night. I sat there listening to her discuss a murder and had no idea it was Arthur. Did Rafe know his father was a killer?’
‘I think so, yes. Archie’s convinced that this has all been about protecting his father’s reputation. Bernard Aubrey had been looking for proof for nearly twenty years to get justice for his nephew and he finally had what he needed. It was all to come out on Elspeth’s eighteenth birthday.’
The platform was beginning to fill with passengers waiting to board the two departing trains, some bound for the Midlands, others further north, but Marta seemed oblivious to everyone but the dead. ‘So many lies,’ she said at last, so softly that Josephine 269
had to lean closer to hear her above the bustle. ‘So many people who just couldn’t let the dust settle and turn their back on the evil.
Arthur would have been horrified to know what he and I set in motion all those years ago. We’ve all magnified Elliott’s violence in our own way. If I’
d refused to help Rafe or if Aubrey had been strong enough to let it go, Elspeth would still be alive.’
‘He couldn’t let it go – he wasn’t that sort of man. Bernard had a very clear sense of right and wrong, and it wouldn’t have occurred to him that bringing Elliott Vintner to justice would open more wounds than it healed. He always felt responsible for Arthur’s death, and he loved his sister and her son. According to his wife, Bernard planted irises in his memory all year round.’
Marta had, Josephine thought, remained remarkably composed throughout the exchange but this simple act of homage broke her in a way that more shocking revelations had failed to do. Josephine waited, unable to do anything but hold her until the tears had sub-sided. ‘It was the first flower he planted for me,’ Marta explained, turning her face away in embarrassment as she noticed a porter further down the platform staring at the two women in astonishment.
‘He put it all round the summer house because its name meant “eye of heaven” and it was supposed to be the Egyptian symbol of elo-quence; it was to help me with my writing, he said. And he made me promise to include a flower with the letter whenever I wrote to him in France, because Iris was Zeus’ messenger and he was sure she’d get it there safely.’ She smiled sadly. ‘She failed me with The White Heart, though. It was my love letter to him, and I don’t even know if he read it or not. It’s silly, but sometimes that makes me more miserable than anything.’
‘Then take this. At least it will answer one of your questions.’
Josephine took a sheaf of papers out of her bag and handed them to Marta, who looked down in astonishment. ‘While I was waiting for the police, I looked through the holdall that Rafe was carrying and found this. He must have got them from his father. It’s not the whole manuscript, but most of it’s there and there are some notes in the margins. I’m afraid I was curious enough to read some of them – only a few, but enough to know that whoever wrote them 270
