‘And he told you about the grave in Solihull?’
‘Yes.’
A dry chuckle. ‘I might have known even chance would turn against me.’
‘You weren’t Gordon Dysart’s son?’
‘They adopted me, Harry, when their only child, Alan, died of polio. They adopted me and gave me his name. They made of me a likeness of a little boy who had died. And they never told me that I was not their true issue, not their rightful heir, not their son at all. A month after I went up to Oxford my father died, bequeathing me his fortune, his house, his business empire … and a sealed letter courtesy of his solicitor informing me of the long overdue truth. I had built, I had planned, I had prepared every detail of what my generation of the Dysarts was to be and suddenly it was rendered pointless. I was not and never could be his son.’
‘Whose son were you?’
‘According to the letter, my father didn’t know. A nameless orphan of unidentified parents. That was all the information he cared to impart. That, now he and my mother were both dead, was all he thought I was due. Except for my inheritance of course, my inexhaustible, inexpungeable inheritance. I was wealthy, able and much envied. Yet in my heart I was reduced to a beggar, a chance beneficiary of a rich man’s charity.’
‘Is this what Everett found out?’
‘Yes. That I wasn’t a Dysart. That I wasn’t what I claimed to be.’
‘And you killed him to stop him telling others?’
‘Ramsey Everett was a swine, Harry, a cruel and vindictive swine. He reckoned I’d do a great deal to avoid the embarrassment his revelations would cause me. He was perpetually in debt through living beyond his means and wanted me to pay off his creditors in return for his silence. I didn’t plan to murder him, I didn’t plan to do anything. It happened in a flash, a burst of anger. And it was so easy. He was standing by the window – low-silled and fully open – reciting the squalid details of what he would make known if I rejected his demands, when I lunged at him and he hurtled backwards into the night with such a surprised look on his face that I don’t think he could believe what had happened until he hit the flagstones.’
Dysart took several quick steps across the room, as if a certain distance was suddenly necessary, a certain remoteness across which to admit all that he had kept hidden for so long. Yet still, as he faced Harry again, there were the overtures of a smile about the lines of his mouth.
‘The rest – the other murders, real and attempted – followed from that one impulsive act. But I needn’t tell you, need I Harry, since Jack already has. You met him in Athens, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so. I thought he’d choose you to confide in. Tell me, did he ask you to pass on any kind of message for me?’
‘Is that why you wanted to see me?’
‘No. There were other more compelling reasons. But I’d still like to know if there was a message.’
‘There was. He asked me to say you’d left him no choice.’
‘No choice? Well, perhaps he’s right. Anything else?’
‘And he forgives you.’
Some spasm that might have been a stifled sob convulsed Dysart. Clapping his hand to his brow, he moved to the fireplace and leaned heavily against the mantelpiece. Then he seemed to regain control of himself. He squared his shoulders and looked back at Harry. ‘I made a pact with Jack never to reveal what we mean to each other and I shan’t break it now.’ With that explanation, he shrugged off his sudden descent into frailty. ‘He told you everything, I suppose: how we set about preventing Willy giving evidence at the inquest into Everett’s death; what we did to frustrate Clare’s attempts at blackmail; what I proposed to do to stop Heather discovering the truth about her sister’s death.’
‘Yes. All of it.’
‘And how I manipulated you into finding Heather on my behalf?’
‘That too.’
‘Bad, isn’t it, Harry? Beneath contempt. Beyond forgiveness. And what you’re wondering is: why did I do it? how could I bring myself to? I killed Everett in the heat of the moment. But sabotaging Willy’s car and booby-trapping the Artemis before tricking Clare into going aboard: they were planned; they were premeditated.’ Dysart shook his head in rueful recollection. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it, what you find out about yourself when you’re forced into a corner? Turning round from the window through which I’d just pushed Everett to his death, confident that I’d got clean away with it, I suddenly saw Willy staring at me from the doorway with a look of genuine horror on his face. I knew then that, one way or another, I’d have to silence him. And I knew as well that I’d stop at nothing to do it. Of course, I believed then that it would end with Willy. Later, I even tried to square my conscience by giving him employment and accommodation here. And I wasted no time in taking steps to ensure there were no records for anyone else to follow where my origins were concerned. Since disposing of the last piece of such evidence – my namesake’s gravestone in Solihull – I’d assumed my secret was completely safe. And so it would have been, if Clare hadn’t tried to use me to realize her political ambitions.’
‘Was she really pregnant by you?’
‘Yes. A foolish lapse. I was tired and depressed at the time and not a little drunk. She chose her moment well, I can’t deny that. But I don’t care to be threatened, Harry. Those who have tried that game with me have lived to regret it.’
‘Was Heather threatening you?’
‘No.’ Dysart sighed. ‘She would have been the first completely innocent victim.’
‘And I was to lead you to her?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry, Harry, but there was no-one else I could trust.’
‘Or use?’
‘That too, perhaps. Fame is a handicap, you see. Once Heather had vanished, I had to assume the worst: that she’d realized what I was planning to do; that she’d gone into hiding, probably with Kingdom’s help, and meant to stay there until she’d gathered enough evidence to move against me. So I couldn’t let her remain hidden. I had to find her before she had a chance to piece together a case. Yet I couldn’t be the one to look for her. I was too well-known, too conspicuous. I needed somebody else to do the looking for me. You already had a good reason of your own to want to find her and you trusted me. What more effective camouflage could there be? You became my surrogate, Harry, my plenipotentiary, my sergeant-at-arms.’
‘Then why set Vigeon on my tail?’
‘Because I had to be sure you weren’t holding anything back. I had to be certain you were telling me as much as you knew. At the same time, I couldn’t risk you losing heart or coming to suspect there wasn’t really anything sinister behind Heather’s disappearance. I know you better than you do yourself, Harry. Nothing could drive you on more effectively than the conviction that somebody was trying to stop you. Hence the messages, the phone calls, the photographs. Hence Vigeon letting you realize he was following you. And hence the heavy-handed warning-off from the police. Not Charlie Mallender’s doing at all – but mine.’
‘What about Zohra Labrooy?’
‘She was a mere auxiliary, useful for keeping you on what I judged to be the right course.’
‘You realize she faces deportation?’
‘Yes. It’s unfortunate, but I can’t do anything to prevent it now. The irony is that her labours on my behalf were in vain. Dr Kingdom turned out to know nothing about any of it. Which makes your achievement in finding Heather all the more remarkable. How did you manage it?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s better left unsaid. But tell me this, Harry: can you follow Jack’s example; can you forgive me?’
‘No. I don’t think I can.’
‘Why not? Because of the murders? Or because I made a fool of you?’
The point lanced home. It was difficult to summon wrath on behalf of dead strangers, easy to do so in search of revenge for injured pride. ‘I can’t forgive you for any of it.’
‘You will. Very shortly, you will.’
‘Why?’
‘Patience, Harry. Patience for a little longer. There’s something you must understand first. This isn’t an excuse, this isn’t special pleading, but it is something closer to the truth of why I did these things than I’ve ever admitted before, even to myself. My birth, my life, my family: they were all built on a lie; the lie that I was what people thought me. Well, I’ve gone on telling that lie ever since. Behaving as somebody in my position should behave. Believing what somebody of my social standing should believe. I’ve grinned and I’ve fawned my way through Oxford, the Royal Navy and Her Majesty’s Government. I’ve succeeded in everything and failed in nothing. And do you know what I’ve learned from all these cheap victories and easy triumphs? That at the centre there’s nothing: a vacuum, a void representing the lie that everybody else lives as well as me. Honour. Loyalty. Integrity. Patriotism. Morality. Merit. They mean nothing. Hypocrisy is our sovereign and pretence the heir apparent. That’s why I’ve no regrets about betraying or disappointing the pack of fools and rogues who are baying for my blood now I’ve been found out. Because what my guilty secret says about their judgement enrages them far more than what it says about my honesty. All that admiration, all that promotion, all that respect I cheated out of them is gagging in their throats, gouging at their inflated opinion of themselves. What they resent more than anything is what my disgrace proves about the palm-greasing back-scratching sham of a society they run.’
‘Is everything a sham then? Even friendship?’
‘No.’ In Dysart’s eyes there was a depth of appeal his harsh words had lacked. ‘Not friendship. Wouldn’t you agree I’d been a good friend to you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And I’d have gone on being one.’
‘What if I’d come to the same conclusion as Heather? What if I’d realized that you’d murdered her sister – as well as Everett?’
Dysart smiled. ‘Even then.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t have arranged another fatal accident, this time for me?’
‘Quite sure, Harry, quite sure.’ A winsome, almost nostalgic look had come to his face. ‘You see, in a curious sense, I did it all for you.’
‘For me?’
‘There’s something I ought to explain to you. Ramsey Everett did rather more than discover I wasn’t Gordon Dysart’s son. He discovered whose son I really was. What I later went to such great lengths to conceal wasn’t the fact that I’d been adopted, but the fact that I was in reality the son of a murderer.’
‘A murderer?’
Again, the sad, reflective smile. ‘Paul and Gwendolen Stobart. They’re just names of course, but they happen to be the names of my real parents. What little I know about them I’ll tell you. Paul Stobart was a London docker more often out of work than in, with a history of drunkenness and violence. Gwendolen, his wife, originated from South Wales. They lived in a terraced house in Bermondsey. My arrival probably strained their finances as well as their tolerance of each other. It seems clear that Paul Stobart often beat his wife and it’s possible she feared for my safety as well as her own. Whatever the exact cause, matters came to a head only a matter of days after my birth. At the height of an argument overheard by neighbours, Gwendolen stabbed and battered her husband to death with a bread-knife and a poker. She then fled, taking me with her. For several months, there was no trace of her. Then a woman who’d recently gassed herself to death in a flat in Cardiff was identified as Gwendolen Stobart. The search was over.’
‘What about the … What about you?’
‘By then I was in an orphanage, with no clue to whose child I was. But Gwendolen Stobart left a note, saying where and when she’d abandoned me, and so the mystery of my identity was resolved. There being no surviving relatives of either parent, it was decided I should stay where I was. And since the Stobarts hadn’t even given me a name or registered my birth when the murder occurred, it was agreed that anonymity was the kindest state to leave me in. It was in that state that the Dysarts found me when seeking a child of the same age and sex as their dead son Alan. Nobody saw fit to tell them the truth about me. Perhaps, by then, there was nobody on hand who knew the truth. Certainly my parents lived and died in happy ignorance of who I really was. It took the tenacity and ingenuity of Ramsey Everett to winkle the facts about me out of the archives. Do you know one of the last things he said to me, Harry? Do you know how he tried to twist the knife? I can still hear his high, piping, sarcastic voice. “I might make your case the centre-piece of my thesis, old man.” Can you imagine being forced to listen to such stuff? “Or perhaps we could put a motion up for debate in the Tyrrell Society on whether the murderous instinct is hereditary.” God in heaven, can you blame me for what I did?’ Twenty years on, the anger Everett had inspired still blazed in Dysart’s face, the violent reaction still quivered beneath the surface of his speech.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Harry, shocked into mildness by Dysart’s vehemence. ‘But what about … what about …’
‘The others?’ Dysart shook his head dismissively. ‘I can’t claim mitigation where they’re concerned. Perhaps Everett had a point when he mentioned heredity. Perhaps it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or perhaps – as I’ve proved – the second murder is easier than the first and the third is easier than the second and the fourth …’ He looked straight at Harry, willing him, it seemed, to believe what he was saying. ‘Jack was right to pull the rug from under me. I had to stop. It had to be ended. And the way he chose was the only way that would work. With Jack gone, there’s nothing left I want or need, nothing I’d be prepared to kill or die for. The game is up. The chase is—’ He broke off abruptly and signalled with his finger against his lips for silence, as if he had heard something Harry had not. He stood stock still for a moment, then moved swiftly to the standard lamp, switched it off, twitched back the lace curtain and peered out of the window.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m not sure. Something outside. A car in the lane, I think.’
‘Is that so—’
‘It’s Willy!’ There was an urgency in Dysart’s voice, a sudden tightening of his grasp on the curtain. ‘I’ve been wondering where he’d taken himself off to. He doesn’t usually stray far.’
Harry craned over Dysart’s shoulder and made out Morpurgo’s crooked, shuffling figure approaching along the path from the gate. He was dressed, as before, in beret and boiler suit, and though the light was too bad to see if he still wore the Breakspear tie around his neck, Harry felt sure that he did. ‘Surely Morpurgo can’t drive,’ he whispered.
‘Just so, Harry, just so. Somebody must have dropped him off.’
‘Won’t he go back to the garage flat?’ For some reason Harry found himself hoping he would do exactly that.
‘It doesn’t look like it. He seems to be coming this way.’ Dysart stepped back from the window. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and speak to him. Don’t come out. Seeing you might alarm him.’
Dysart strode swiftly from the room, leaving Harry alone in the half-light. When he glanced back through the window, Morpurgo was no longer visible. At the same instant, Dysart’s voice carried through the half-open doorway from the hall.
‘Hello, Willy. Where have you been?’
No answer.
‘I was getting worried about you.’
Still no answer.
‘Have you had a visitor?
At last Morpurgo spoke, in his familiar, lisping, faltering monotone. ‘Rex-came-to-see-me.’
‘Rex Cunningham?’ Dysart’s amiability was beginning to ring hollow. ‘What did he want?’
‘He-told-me-things. ‘
‘What things?’
‘About-the-car-crash.’
‘What car crash?’
Silence fell, though to Harry’s straining ears it seemed that he could detect amidst it the actual breathing of the two men: Dysart’s shallow and alert, Morpurgo’s nasal and distorted. What l
ooks or signals, what hints or meanings, might be passing between them he could not guess. Instead, his mind ranged desperately over all he had learned since arriving at Tyler’s Hard less than half an hour ago. ‘I did it all for you.’ What could Dysart mean? What part had Harry played in the sad and twisted record of his life? Suddenly, Morpurgo spoke again and Harry’s attention was wrenched back to the present.
‘It’s-true-isn’t-it?’
‘What is, Willy?’
‘What-Rex-said.’
‘What did he say?’
‘About-the-car-crash.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes-you-do.-I-can-see-you-do.-I-can-see-it-in-your-eyes.’
Another chasm of silence opened, this time unmistakably filled by the panting breaths of two frightened men. Harry moved towards the door, then stopped. He had, after all, no right to intervene. Dysart must be left to answer the accusation as best he could.
‘It’s-true-isn’t-it?’
‘You’ve always been well looked after here, Willy.’
But Morpurgo was not to be deflected. ‘It’s-true-isn’t-it?’ came back the stubborn staccato.
There was a moment of deliberation, then Dysart’s patience seemed to snap. ‘What if it is?’ he sneered. ‘What are you going to do about it, Willy, eh? What in the wide world are you going to do?’
‘You—’ Morpurgo’s voice disintegrated in a choking cry. Suddenly, the front door slammed with a force that shook the house. Through the window Harry could hear Morpurgo crying – great wrenching, heaving sobs that died abruptly in a whimper. Then there was a scatter of gravel and the sound of heavy, lurching footfalls on the path, fading rapidly into silence. He had fled.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Dysart, slipping back into the room with a whimsical smile hovering on his lips.
‘What did Cunningham tell him?’
‘What do you think? At a guess, I’d say a close approximation to the truth. Now Rex knows about Jack and me, he’s quite capable of deducing what happened on the drive to Burford. And capable, it seems, of burdening poor Willy with the knowledge as well.’
Into the Blue Page 50
