A Deep Deceit

by Hilary Bonner

  I was not as short on courage as I had once been. I took a step forward and probably would have hit him but for the man from Dyno-Rod who emerged with perhaps fortuitous timing from Rose Cottage and, apparently oblivious to the conflict between Will and me, stepped between us and began to speak.

  ‘Damned if I knows where it’s coming from, mate, I’ve checked the drains right through and I can’t find ought wrong . . .’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Will, turning his attention abruptly away from me. ‘But you’re going to have to keep looking because I just can’t put up with the stink in there.’

  The Dyno-Rod man retreated back into the cottage, shaking his head and scratching it at the same time.

  Will turned back to face me. ‘Did you and Carl have any trouble with the drains?’ he asked conversationally.

  My anger welled up again. ‘Will, I don’t give a fuck about your fucking drains,’ I stormed. ‘But I’ll tell you this.’ I jabbed a finger firmly in his chest. ‘If you are following me around again, if I ever see you, if you ever come near me, then I’m warning you, I’m just not responsible for what I might do to you. I have had enough, do you hear me?’

  I wasn’t entirely certain, but I didn’t believe I had ever used the word ‘fuck’ in anger before. I thought I was being pretty menacing. Will appeared to think so too. He looked stunned rigid, which had indeed been my intention. In spite of my angry reaction when he had first told me he had been responsible for all the threats, he obviously still thought of me as meek and mild Suzanne. Maybe he had put that out of his mind. He was the sort of man who went in for selective memory. After all, it came hand in hand with obsession.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, backing off with both hands held high in compliance. But I was so angry he didn’t move quickly enough for me. I pushed him out of the way and he must have been off balance because he fell heavily on to one knee.

  ‘I’m sorry, you just don’t understand,’ he whimpered pathetically.

  I brushed past him, only narrowly overcoming the urge to kick him in the teeth.

  I spent Sunday reading and being lazy. The afternoon was gloriously sunny and, braving the holidaymakers who were out in force, I went for a short walk along the beach. The sun felt warm on my back. I took off my shoes and walked barefooted, the way I used to with Carl, relishing the feel of the gritty sand between my toes. The afternoon light was almost blindingly bright. It was a true St Ives day. By the time I got home and made myself some supper to eat in front of the TV I was enjoying quite a sense of well-being.

  I must be getting tougher, I thought, because the confrontation with Will had not disturbed me nearly as much as it once would have done. I was more outraged than upset that he had chosen to move into the little cottage that had been my home with Carl.

  I had no doubt his motivation was all part of his obsession with me and this was further indication that it was far from over. But I felt strangely confident that I could deal with it now. I had seen the shock with which he responded to my outburst and had a feeling he had realised that not only was I no longer a pushover but neither any more was I the Suzanne he claimed to have such strong feelings for. Maybe he would leave me alone. If he didn’t then I would simply report him to DS Perry and insist that this time she took formal action. He had already been cautioned once, I had been informed, when I had first told DC Carter who had been persecuting Carl and me. The law was getting harder on stalkers and quite right too. I knew well enough the damage they could do.

  Still tired, in spite of my lazy day, I went to bed early and felt much brighter and more alert when I woke on Monday morning. I made an instant decision that I would no longer take the long route to work. I would walk straight past Rose Cottage whenever it suited me. I certainly was not prepared to avoid anywhere in town in order not to meet up with Will Jones.

  Feeling quite sprightly and rejuvenated, I began the walk down the hill to the archive centre almost light-heartedly. It was a lot easier going down than climbing back up, for one thing.

  As I approached Rose Cottage I noticed there was a uniformed policeman standing outside. My first thought was that I hadn’t even reported Will Jones yet. Then I became aware of quite a buzz of activity around the cottage. On the corner I could see DS Perry’s car and beyond that a police squad car. As I approached, out through the front door stepped a man clad from head to toe in a white paper suit. And through the open door opened, I fancied I got a whiff of the bad drain smell Will Jones had complained of.

  Suddenly it hit me – I knew. My legs started to move of their own volition and I practically threw myself past the sentry policeman into the front room of Rose Cottage. He made a desultory attempt to stop me but, propelled by the horror of my awful realisation, I was too quick for him.

  I heard myself scream ‘Carl, Carl’ as I headed for the little kitchen, which I could see was the centre of activity.

  DS Perry was standing in the doorway. ‘Suzanne don’t,’ she cried, alarm in her eyes.

  I pushed past her too. My desolation gave me both power and purpose.

  I charged by another white-suited character. The flagstone trapdoor to the little cellar was cast aside as I had somehow known it would be. Just as I reached it somebody grabbed me in a kind of rugby tackle around the legs but I flung myself on to my belly, half taking whoever it was with me, so that I could see clearly down into the cellar. In fact, I allowed virtually the whole of my top half to drop through the trap. The rest of me would have followed were it not for the grip on my legs.

  The cellar was brightly lit by police arc lamps. My face was just a couple of feet away from the alarmed upturned features of another paper suit, this time a woman. She was on her knees examining something spreadeagled on the floor. The stench was awful here. The something on the floor took form. It was a man. A man with virtually no face. The man with no face of my nightmares, except I knew with devastating clarity who this was. And it was not anyone who had ever wanted to hurt me, just to protect me. The decay of his flesh, the puffy black nothingness of him did not detract from my instant recognition.

  ‘Carl, Carl, Carl,’ I screamed at the top of my voice. I was quite hysterical. Utterly beyond reason. Terrible grief, total horror overwhelmed me.

  I felt myself being half pulled, half dragged up out of the hole in the ground away from the putrid remains of the only man I had ever loved. I was half carried into the dining room and helped into a chair. DS Perry was beside me making soothing noises. My eyes were blinded with tears. I brushed them aside as best I could with the back of my hand and tried to focus on her. All I could see, lurking behind her, white-faced, was Will Jones.

  The madness came over me once more, and with it came the power and the purpose. I threw myself forward again, hurtling at him. ‘You murdering bastard,’ I screamed. ‘You filthy, murdering scum. You killed him. You killed Carl.’

  This time strong arms were quickly round me, restraining me, but not before I had managed to reach out with one hand and rake my fingernails down Will Jones’s cheek. The blood spurted instantly from a row of slashes in his flesh. Will cowered away from me and let out a little whimper like an injured puppy dog.

  DS Perry was on one side of me and DC Carter on the other. But I couldn’t stop myself struggling. I wanted somebody to pay for Carl’s death. And I was quite certain that Will Jones must have been responsible. He wanted me for himself, after all.

  DS Perry began to talk to me very clearly and slowly, staring directly into my eyes, her hands cupping my face. ‘Look at me, Suzanne, and listen,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Will Jones. He didn’t kill Carl.’ She spoke quietly but with authority.

  I tried to calm myself.

  ‘Just tell me,’ I whispered hoarsely, my anger, all my energy, spent. ‘Tell me who did?’

  Julie Perry continued to stare into my eyes. ‘Look, we’ve only just found him. We have a lot of checking to do. But, well, we don’t think anybody killed him.’

 
I shook my head in an attempt to clear the fog that seemed to have engulfed it. I didn’t say anything, merely looked at her enquiringly, more than that, pleadingly.

  ‘There’s a letter he managed to write while he was down there,’ she went on. ‘I’ll give it to you as soon as forensic have finished with it. I think you might find it comforting. It’s for you . . .’

  I interrupted her. ‘Suicide,’ I cried. ‘Oh no, oh no.’

  Had Carl really taken his own life, here in the little house where we had been so happy? If so, then I had to accept that my rejection of him must have been at least partly responsible.

  ‘No, not that either . . .’ she began, then paused.

  Briefly I was relieved. But only briefly. Carl was still dead.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Please go on. What happened? How did he die?’

  ‘The letter makes it clear that Carl came back here, just as everyone originally thought he would, looking for you. We think he climbed in through the kitchen window, probably the very night after he escaped from the court at Penzance. The cellar was open, wasn’t it? DC Carter remembers leaving it that way. Perhaps Carl tripped over the flagstone cover. Maybe he dropped straight in. Either way, we know that he fell into the hole, hit his head, and knocked himself unconscious and broke both his ankles – the doctor’s already been able to tell us his ankles are broken and that’s why he couldn’t get himself out of the place.’

  She gestured vaguely at the woman in the white paper suit now standing at the back of the room. An awful realisation was beginning to take form inside my head.

  ‘Then someone put the flagstone back,’ Julie Perry continued. ‘He’s been there ever since. The place is pretty well sealed when its covered in, which is why no smell got out for so long. But he probably died of dehydration. It only takes a few days. It was just a terrible accident, Suzanne . . .’

  She was still talking, but I wasn’t listening any longer. I wasn’t hysterical any more either. I felt very cold and very alone.

  ‘He must have been lying down there when I put the flagstone back,’ I heard myself whisper. ‘I did it. I shut him in there.

  ‘I killed Carl . . .’

  Epilogue

  Still when I think back to that awful day I feel the horror and the sense of guilt, and above all the terrible shock, as if it were yesterday. I have, in fact, learned to cope by thinking about it as little as possible. There is in any case nothing I can do now to change any of it.

  And I have learned to accept that I was not to blame. I have had to do that in order to carry on with my life, which I have managed to do to a degree which continues to surprise me.

  The letter Carl left behind was both comforting and painful. He had written as best he could with the bits of old crayon ends and used sketch pads that had been stored in the cellar, scribbling over the sketches he habitually made when he planned out his paintings. It was not easy to read – he had, after all, been badly injured and was forced to write in the dark with only very inadequate materials. The letter was in several colours. Carl had obviously used each crayon end in turn until they became totally blunted and his writing, usually so neat, was scrawled and barely legible.

  My darling Suzanne [he wrote]

  I came here to find you, to tell you how much I loved you and how sorry I am for all that happened. I know I shouldn’t have run away. I seem to have spent all my life running, but when the opportunity presented itself I couldn’t resist it. I was afraid I would never see you again. Now I am even more afraid of that.

  I hope you can read this, my darling. There is no light in the cellar. I fell straight into it when I climbed through the kitchen window. You wouldn’t think I would make a mistake like that, would you? After all, I was the one who opened up the old cellar in the first place. I suppose I didn’t even consider that it might be open.

  I cannot believe now that I locked you away like I did, tied you up. Sometimes I get so frightened for those I care about that I lose all control. I wanted so badly to keep you safe. Maybe it’s time I tried to explain to you some things about me, some things about my past. They might help you understand me even if you never forgive me . . .

  He then attempted to write down many of the things I had learned about him in America, telling me, when it was already too late, the kind of truth about himself that might have made possible a relationship that I now saw had never had a proper chance of any real normality. At least half of the letter was impossible to read. Not only was Carl having to write over his own old sketches, but also he must sometimes have been trying to use completely blunt crayons without realising that they had no lead centre left. In places all that appeared on top of the drawings already on a page was a scratchy imprint.

  There was a mention of Robert Foster and the way in which he died, but sadly I couldn’t decipher it. I just had to accept that I would never know for certain whether Carl had really believed I had killed Robert.

  I made a decision about that even as I read the letter for the first time. I decided I would believe in Carl again. Absolutely. I had to in order to make any sense of our life together and of our love. From that moment on I accepted in my mind that, confronted not for the first time in his life with the awful spectacle of a dead body covered with blood, Carl had made the same tragic mistake as I had. He had honestly believed I had killed my husband. To believe that was, I was sure, the only way forward for me.

  The image of Carl trapped down there, struggling to explain himself, still intent on declaring his love for me, made me shudder. There were odd phrases that stood out, cut into me almost as if I were being stabbed by the knife that for so long I believed I had used on Robert.

  I thought you would have found me by now, my darling. I keep calling out to you, but my voice is not very strong any more and I have not heard a sound from upstairs. Maybe you are not there? I don’t know how long I have lain here. My head hurts. I think I knocked myself out and I could have been here for some time before I came to. I have no sense of time. If I could stand up maybe I could move the trapdoor, but I think both my ankles are broken. I have tried to pull myself upright, but I am too weak and in too much pain.

  The letter made it clear enough that Carl must indeed have knocked himself unconscious when he fell into the cellar, and did not recover consciousness until after I had replaced the flagstone and sealed him in what was to become his tomb.

  That, of course, was the bit that would always haunt me.

  It also seemed that he wrote the letter over a period of several days, the last days of his life, in fact. Maybe he did not have the strength to write very much at a time. He must have been in a great deal of pain from those broken ankles and growing weaker hour by hour. I imagined him crawling across the stone floor to find the sketch pads and the crayons – he would have known exactly where they were, of course, although it would have been pitch-black down there, because even in the cellar Carl had stored things in a scrupulously ordered way – and then struggling to write down his last thoughts.

  The final paragraph still makes me cry every time I read it.

  My mouth is very dry. I cannot call out any more. I am sure now that the house is empty. I think I keep lapsing into unconsciousness. I doubt I can survive much longer. All I can think of is you, Suzanne, and how I have let you down. I long for the chance to hold you in my arms one last time and beg your forgiveness. I am pretty sure now that chance is never going to come . . .

  There was no proper goodbye. That was where the letter ended. Maybe Carl had fallen into his final unconsciousness then. Or perhaps he had never found the strength to write any more. I was sure that was not the ending he would have planned for his last message to me. But it was the only ending there was.

  I keep the letter tied in ribbon in the drawer of my bedside table. I try not to look at it very often. There is no point. I have cried all the tears I can muster for Carl and for our life together. I have grieved as much as I am able.

  We buried Carl in St Iv
es on a wet Monday morning. The rain fell softly but relentlessly all day and somehow that seemed appropriate. It tasted of salt, as it always does in St Ives, and reminded me of rain-soaked walks along empty winter beaches arm-in-arm with the man I was finally saying farewell to. His body now lies in an English churchyard in the little seaside town where I think he experienced, with me, as much happiness as he was ever capable of.

  Frank Harvey came over from America and we sat together in a pew at the front of the parish church along with Mariette and her mum.

  I was surprised by how many local people turned up. I had not realised they would care, particularly after knowing what Carl had done. But they had like him, of course. You couldn’t help liking Carl. Or loving him . . .

  Our neighbour Mrs Jackson, old Don Nash, Pete Trevellian from the Inn Plaice, Mrs Scroggins from the library, Steve the handsome fishmonger, my two colleagues at the Archive Centre, and several of the bar staff and regulars from our favourite pubs were all there. DS Perry turned up, which I had somehow expected, but so did DC Carter and PC Rob Partridge, which I had not. The biggest surprise was Fenella Austen, who not only attended the funeral but sought me out later at the graveside.

  ‘He was right, you know. I was jealous of him, of you both,’ she said.

  I turned to her in surprise.

  ‘No, not his work. I’m long past that.’ She gave a small, rueful smile. ‘The way he was with you, more than anything. I’ve never had that with a man. He was flawed, but then who isn’t? It’s a wonderful thing to be loved the way you were, Suzanne, and don’t you forget it. Not many of us get that lucky.’

  She had tossed her head in familiar fashion, sending a waft of smoke-laden whiskey fumes across the churchyard, and set off over the wet grass. But after a few steps she stopped abruptly and swung round to face me again. She was wearing a big shiny black cape instead of a raincoat. It billowed out behind her as she moved, making her appearance quite dramatic. ‘Another thing,’ she instructed in that familiarly centurion way of hers, one arm stretched out before her, finger pointed towards me. ‘Don’t let this ruin your life. That’s the last thing Carl would have wanted. Rise above it, Suzanne. Have a good life. Be happy. You owe him that. After all, it’s all he ever wanted for you, isn’t it?’ I studied her retreating back in amazement.