Brendan turned to me. ‘When Annie was trying to get through to me, I was phoning Castle Tyrell. As I finished the call I heard the crash.’
Annie had begun to weep noisily; she held the hem of her apron to her eyes, and rocked back and forth. ‘And haven’t I held my tongue about who was responsible, and not able to go to confession since? I’d not want to bring scandal and grief to Lady Maude, she that was good to me family in the past. If I’d said what I knew about Mr. Connor, sure there would have been murder to account for.’
Connor spun round to face. ‘Now listen to her! She knows nothing more than what she told you. The rest is fancy …’
Praeger stirred himself. ‘Annie ‒ I thank you. You have been a brave woman, and you have done your duty. Lady Maude is well served. Will you wait now outside for a time …? You have no more to worry about. You have done your duty.’
The apron came away from her eyes momentarily while she looked at Praeger. ‘Thank you, sir.’ Her head bent again, but she was reassured by his words about duty. They had their effect on Annie; to a younger woman they would have had little meaning. We waited until the door had closed behind her.
Connor spoke first. ‘Well, now we’ve been through the whole bloody wretched business again, and what has it proved? No more than it did last time, or will ever. It didn’t prove, either, that I was responsible for what happened last night.’
‘We prove nothing,’ Praeger said, shrugging. ‘We do not try. When Maura came with her story of what she believe happened last night, I knew that it was also necessary that she be told what else happened on the night Lotti died. She has become too closely involved now to be denied the whole story.’
They all looked at me as if they expected some kind of answer, some decision. There was none. I felt myself shaking.
‘You let Lotti go …’ I said to Connor.
His hand cleaved the air with a gesture of denial. ‘Why does everyone assume that it was I who let her go? Until the moment Annie stood there in front of me in the room shaking me and telling me there’d been some accident, I hadn’t the least idea that there was any danger to Lotti. I didn’t know the bridge was down! You ‒ all of you ‒ seem conveniently blind to the fact that Annie keeps saying she told Lady Maude. She just assumes that Lady Maude gave me the message and that, knowing it, I let Lotti go. The truth is I didn’t even see Lady Maude at that time. I left Lotti’s room and went through the bathroom to my own room. I was letting her go, because nothing would have held Lotti, and I was sickened by the spectacle we were making of ourselves. But I wasn’t letting her go to her death. You all keep passing over the fact that it was Lady Maude who was told about the bridge ‒ not I. Why am I guilty? ‒ why not she?’
Praeger answered him. ‘Lotti had just flaunted her infidelity before you ‒ held up to scorn everything you thought worthwhile …’
‘Mr. Praeger, no one kills these days because of infidelity. I knew I had lost Lotti … she would go. It hardly even mattered that the immediate cause was Brendan, because he was even less able to handle her than I was. I knew it wouldn’t be with him she would finally go. I had lost her ‒ killing her wasn’t necessary.’
Praeger sighed; he passed his hand wearily over the folds of flesh at his jowls. ‘I did not want to go through all of this again. But I cannot have Maura listen to the argument, and not hear its answer. Let us not forget that money was involved here, and money has a way of changing everything it touches. Lotti was my only child, and I am a rich man. I put no bones upon it. You were not only losing a wife, but the chance of a fortune.’
‘Then why ‒ if you want to put no bones on it ‒ why would I kill the goose that laid the golden egg? I’m not stupid, Mr. Praeger. I’m not stupid even when I’m angry and hurt and sick as I was then.’
‘Because ‒’ Praeger’s finger wagged in a sudden gesture of Teutonic authoritativeness. ‘Because you did not know then that none of the money belonged to Lotti in her own right. If she had simply left you ‒ divorced you ‒ you had no claim. As the husband of a dead woman ‒ a rich woman, you thought ‒ you had a very strong claim.’
Connor seemed to struggled for the words to frame his reply. There was something in that slowness, in the faint sigh which preceded it that conveyed the impression that he did not expect Praeger either to understand or believe him, that Praeger could never understand any value except money. ‘Mr. Praeger …’ he began. And then again, ‘Mr. Praeger ‒ yes, I like money. Yes, I would like money so that the glassworks could amount to something. Yes, I’m ambitious ‒ six times as ambitious as most men you’ll ever encounter. But no ‒ I have never wanted money badly enough to kill for it. As I’ve said freely to Maura, there is a long step between the wish and the deed.’
It was appallingly effective. He told half-truths so well. I didn’t believe him, but I was almost compelled to believe him. How could anyone as reasonable as this, as cognisant of his own failings, also possess the capacity for such violence? But I couldn’t let myself be swayed once again.
‘Then if not you,’ I said, ‘why Lady Maude? Why should she possibly want Lotti dead?’
He treated me to almost the same look, the same gesture of weary patience that had accompanied his answers to Praeger. ‘You know Lady Maude,’ he said. ‘Now you know her. It isn’t difficult, surely, to imagine what it was like for her to have Lotti in this house. It often occurred to me that Lotti must have been the strongest competition Lady Maude had encountered since she was a young girl. Don’t you see it? ‒ the household began to revolve about Lotti, all the plans were Lotti’s, the money appeared ‒’ he mocked Praeger with his emphasis on the word, ‘to be Lotti’s. Lady Maude saw the control slipping from her hands, and she couldn’t endure it. If any of you could have known what additional loads of furniture came in those months Lotti lived here. Lady Maude went to auctions she would never have dreamed of attending before as beneath her notice ‒ and paid far more than she had ever paid before for pretty worthless things. All the bills came to the glassworks for settlement, of course, and I had somehow to pay them. It was her way of asserting herself, and a way to inflict annoyance on Lotti and myself. Can you imagine how Lotti reacted the day she came home and found Lady Maude moving a new load of furniture into the room she had just redecorated for herself? And the row that went on before we were able to get it out again? Can you imagine what Lotti said when Lady Maude threatened to sell off the farm rather than let Lotti have it for pasture for her horses? Lotti wasn’t exactly tactful about whose money would be spent on Meremount and the glassworks ‒ whose money would provide a future for the Sheridans. And she wasn’t very tactful, either,’ here a nod to Praeger, ‘about whose money had bought the Tyrells’ past. Lotti was a constant thorn in Lady Maude’s side. Too many people were coming to Lotti for their orders and passing over Lady Maude. It had never happened to her before in her life. Even Annie ‒ yes, even devoted Annie upset her because she just couldn’t stop talking about and quoting Lotti ‒’
‘One does not kill for such reasons,’ Praeger interrupted.
Connor turned swiftly. ‘What? ‒ one only kills for money, Mr. Praeger? Is that it? Well, don’t forget that if I was ignorant of Lotti’s financial position, so was Lady Maude. Can you think that she might have seen a future at Meremount, without Lotti, but with Praeger money? She knew, of course, that if I had money, it would have gone into the glassworks. She had tested me for a long time, and she could be very sure of that. Perhaps, in her sick brain, she even thought that with money within her control it would be possible to have Tyrell back again. You yourself, Mr. Praeger, have often described the nature of her mania. Don’t you think that it’s possible for an old woman, lost in her dreams of the past, to let slip into death someone who seems to thwart those dreams? Brendan said ‒ didn’t he? ‒ that I had to do no deed that night, but only let it happen. Why couldn’t it have been Lady Maude who let it happen?’
If only he didn’t make it so plausible, I thought. Al
l the uncertainties came creeping in upon me, urging me to listen and to believe. ‘Has anyone ever asked Lady Maude that question?’ I spoke to them all.
‘Ach! ‒ ask Lady Maude?’ Praeger dismissed the idea. ‘She answers nothing she does not want to answer. Naturally that question was asked. After Lotti was killed I sat in this room and I asked all these questions. But other people’s laws and other people’s rules are not for her. She declined to answer me ‒ should I have tried to force her to answer a coroner? ‒ and finally a judge and a jury? One or other of these two people let Lotti go to her death that night ‒ either deliberately, because they withheld the information, or accidentally, because she left too quickly. I seriously doubted that the law would have given me a more satisfactory answer than the open one I found for myself that day. So between us all we made our contract of silence. We have lived with it, in our various ways, ever since. Nothing is changed, except that now you also are included.
‘I know ‒’ He held up his hand to forestall my protest. ‘I know you did not ask for it. But then who does ask for whatever happens to them in life? Not often are we permitted to choose.’
He began to stir himself, as if he were preparing to leave. ‘And now, what have we accomplished this time? Not very much. The same doubts, the same lack of answers to the same questions. Maura thinks that Connor tried to end Lady Maude’s life last night And all we can say to her is “Beware ‒ he may have taken another life”. Beyond that we do not go. Things will not be arranged in a tidy way for us, no matter what we ‒’
The door opened. Praeger was the only one facing it, and it was he who first saw her. The sight brought him, struggling, to his feet.
‘Lady Maude!’
She was oddly regal in the faded purple dressing-gown and the worn embroidered slippers, the silver braid like a coronet above her handsome, wasted face. It was surprising, again, to see how tall she was. Even bent somewhat over the stick she held, she over-shadowed Annie who stood beside her, her arm extended as if she had just aided her down the stairs. Annie looked fearfully at Praeger, and it was she who spoke before anyone else could.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Praeger. Didn’t her ladyship send Bridget to bring me up to ask who was down here so early ‒ she heard the cars and all the commotion, and when she saw that I was upset anall …’
‘Annie, be silent!’
‘I’m sorry, m’lady, but I promised Mr. Praeger ‒ well, sir, she would have it all out of me about what was going on down here.’
‘Annie, you have no business making promises to anyone but me. Now be silent and leave us ‒’
‘Oh, m’lady, and you hardly able to stand …’
‘‒ at once!’
Annie backed away. There was supreme confidence in her servant’s long habit of obedience in the way Lady Maude stood with her back to the hall, looking in turn at all of us, not speaking, until the click of the dining-room door announced to us that Annie was gone. Somehow, the waiting had held us all, too, because it wasn’t until then that Praeger spoke again.
‘Lady Maude, please ‒ a seat. You have been in bed …’
‘Herr Praeger, I am not accustomed to being offered a seat in my own home. This house is still mine, regardless of what rights you think your money bought you here ‒ you and your daughter.’
Praeger gave a half-bow. ‘A courtesy gesture only, Lady Maude. I assure you I assumed no proprietary rights.’
‘And none were ever granted.’ The tone was clipped and sure. ‘And now,’ the hand holding the cane was raised and its sweep indicated all of us, though the other hand, to compensate, had to come up to grasp the door frame, ‘I have to ask what all of you are doing here. I do not recall having invited you.’
‘This was not intended as a social visit, Lady Maude.’ It was wrong to leave it all to Praeger, I thought, but they had been protagonists before any of us had known Lady Maude or Meremount. They squared off as natural fighters, though I knew at once that Praeger himself was not entirely free of the old woman’s dominance. ‘We have come here because …’ His words faded out. He did not want to begin on it again; there were no new answers to be had from her; she did not hear questions she did not want to answer; her rules were her own, her standards set by her own measures. ‘There were some questions …’
‘Questions? You have no questions for me, Herr Praeger ‒ or for anyone else in my household. There is nothing to answer. You have come, as you did last time, to make impertinent charges, to accuse, to slander ‒ to lie.’
‘No, Lady Maude ‒ you mistake me. My visit had nothing to do with you. It was for Maura ‒’
‘Maura! ‒ my granddaughter, Herr Praeger. She is already your creature, isn’t she? Coming when you say, doing as she is bidden. You are a despoiler, Herr Praeger ‒ you despoil and devour, you believe you can buy whatever your greedy gaze falls upon. Corruption follows you ‒ you and your kind. You and your daughter have brought more harm to this house than your money can ever repay. But money is your only coin. You have no other way to repay. I know why you come here ‒ to steal my granddaughter, to torment my servant, to make her believe tales which her simple mind could never have devised, to make her repeat them so that my granddaughter is turned against me ‒’
‘Lady Maude, this time you go too far! This time you have said more than courtesy can endure! What your servant spoke ‒ this morning and on the night my Lotti died ‒ was the truth she saw with her own eyes. She herself was witness to it.’
‘Lies! All of it lies! Your daughter died because she deserved to die. The fruits of her corruption were already sprouting in these two young men standing here. Before she would have been finished with us all here, this house would have been a muck-heap. It was better that she died, but the damage was done, and the corruption did not die with her.
‘Here is another ‒’ the stick was raised and pointed at me, ‘that the corruption has reached through these same two men, and through yourself, Herr Praeger. Somehow you have won her to your side, so that she believes the lies you have fabricated. She has sold herself for flattery and promises and, for all I know, bribes. The vulgar rich have their way, and it shames me that any Tyrell could be so seduced. When she came to me I thought my long wait was ended, that now there would be someone to whom I could entrust what was left. She was my own flesh and blood, but now I see that between all of you you have made a stranger of her.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘That is the lie! All the years that I have been a stranger were your doing, Lady Maude ‒ they need not have been. You had twenty-three years to make a granddaughter of me. You chose not to do it.’
‘Your mother betrayed me. Do you think I wanted you while her influence was there to destroy and corrupt what good I would do? Yes, corrupt ‒ Blanche was no better than this other one, your daughter, Herr Praeger. Blanche betrayed me and the whole future of the Tyrells for a man. Then this other one came and not only betrayed what was good here, but tried to steal it from me. And now my granddaughter ‒ but she already belonged to your kind. She hardly had to hear the lies before she believed … I was wrong to hope. I was wrong to think that because she was a Tyrell she would be different from her mother, different from all the stupid, corrupt, selfish young women who inhabit the world these days.’
She brought both hands to rest on the stick. It was a man’s cane, long, but still not too long for her height, surmounted by the silver head of a lion. The leonine head and the old woman seemed to belong together, fierce and proud, and dying hard.
‘Well, I will hope no more. I have received my last betrayal. Where there is no hope, there is at last peace.’
Her old frame gathered in to itself, as if she were tensing every muscle so that she might stand alone.
‘I will have each of you out of here ‒ all of you! You, Connor, and you, Maura, also. Out of my sight and my life. You have no claims on me, no rights but those I granted you. Now I withdraw them. You gave me nothing. I owe you nothing. That is all.’
&n
bsp; She drew herself up and I saw the wilful effort to straighten fully, to resume the erectness of her youth; she turned her back and carefully made her way to the foot of the stairs. None of us moved or spoke. There was a terrible sadness in the sight of her slow ascent of the stairs, and yet it was a wonderful sight, also. I thought, as I stood there, not daring to go to her help, knowing that I would instantly meet her scorn and contempt, her final rejection, that this would be the last sight I would have of her, this demented old woman, living as an aristocrat still when the whole code ‒ all that she lived by and for ‒ had been eroded to nothing by the wash of this century. I felt, also, a sadness for myself, a vague sense of loss, but yet it was a loss of something I had never known. She had been right. I had given her nothing; she owed me nothing. The loss was on her side, too. As we watched her move higher until all but the hem of the purple robe and the ancient embroidered slippers with their tiny frayed silken heels had vanished, I thought that if that letter from Blanche, twenty-three years ago, had not been dismissed, both of us, Lady Maude and myself, might have had a better balance sheet to show at this moment.
Perhaps she relaxed her effort a little when she reached the topmost step and knew she was out of our sight; perhaps the effort itself had been quite beyond her strength; perhaps, though, it was the final weakening of one of the sharp little heels on the old slippers that twisted her ankle and sent her plunging; it could have been the hazard all of us in that house had suffered from ‒ the stacks of small objects piled on the stairs and landing. When she fell a whole cascade of them came down with her ‒ vases, stools, lanterns, a chiming dock, a lacquer tray. The noise was deafening, and we never knew if she cried out.
The heap of her body at the bottom of the stairs was grotesque and without dignity. Absurdly, a lady’s fan of yellowed, tattered lace lay across her chest where it had fallen like some totally frivolous comment. Connor was with her first, kneeling beside her, bending to her, touching her face.
Edge of Glass Page 24
