A Grave Man

by David Roberts

  ‘I hope not. It would be so like us to play by the rules of a game no one else is playing.’

  Edward laughed. ‘Connie, my dear, you make me feel better. I wish I had married you instead of letting Gerald have you. You’re much too good for him.’

  This was so close to what she had been thinking that she hurriedly turned her face to the window. ‘What nonsense you talk, Ned. Gerald is a dear and you’re a ne’er-do-well who people try to kill. Why would I want you?’

  ‘Of course, I was only joking,’ he said, disappointingly.

  In revenge, she asked, ‘Have you heard anything from Verity?’

  His face fell and she wished she had not brought it up.

  ‘I had a postcard. She and Adam are in Vienna. She’s says her German is getting quite good. She thought she might come back to London for a few days at Christmas.’

  ‘Well, tell her she would be very welcome here.’ Connie spoke with as much enthusiasm as she could manage.

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Edward’s eyes brightened.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then, I’ll write and tell her. I don’t think she has anywhere else to go. Her father’s still in New York and her friends, the Hassels, are spending Christmas in Paris. Adrian says he is sure this will be the last Christmas of peacetime and he wants to enjoy it in his favourite city.’

  Connie nodded. ‘It will be good to see her.’

  In fact, she found it hard to forgive Verity for treating her brother-in-law with such – in her view – callous disregard. She wanted to slap the girl. To make Ned unhappy was a mortal sin in her religion. In the beginning, she had not wanted him to marry Verity – the Duke could not stand her – but, when she saw how much in love he was, she had decided to do all she could to get them up the aisle. She could not understand what Verity was up to. She genuinely cared for Edward – of that Connie was certain – but she would not commit herself to him. She had some foolish objection to the whole idea of marriage. The Duke was deeply shocked by the immorality of the modern woman, among whose ranks he included Verity. And now, Connie gathered, she was living in sin, as people called it – indeed as she called it – with a young German aristocrat. She shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps she was getting old but . . .

  ‘Now leave me, Connie. I shall bathe and then go for my constitutional. The doctor said I must walk for an hour every day when it’s not too cold. I feel stale and out of condition. It’s going to be a hell of a job getting fit again but I’m determined to do it.’

  ‘And Maggie Cardew?’

  ‘Look, Connie, if she wants to come, that’s all right with me but it may end in tears.’

  Edward was as nervous as he had been before sitting his finals but, when Maggie came into the drawing-room, he was immediately calm. He got up from the chair, in which he had been pretending to read The Times, and took her by the hand. Then, as she smiled at him, he kissed her.

  ‘You would never know, would you?’ she said, touching her cheek.

  ‘What? Oh, the scar! It’s amazing. Do you know, I had quite forgotten about it. But, yes, now you mention it . . .’ He looked at her. ‘It is perfect. Montillo may have a lot to answer for but no one can deny that he is a very clever surgeon. You’ve heard nothing from him, I suppose?’

  ‘I think he is in Germany but he may have changed his name. I haven’t tried to get in touch.’ She hesitated. ‘You really believe he is a monster?’

  ‘I do,’ he said gravely. ‘He is absolutely determined to pursue his ideas of racial purity and he believes the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good. It’s what Verity and I can never agree on. She believes that Communism is the one true faith and, if people have to go to the wall in order to create the perfect socialist society, then so be it. From all I have seen in Spain and elsewhere, I am absolutely certain that any philosophy which is prepared to sacrifice even one person for the greater good is a tyranny.’

  ‘Forgive me! I didn’t mean to get on my high horse. I was so sorry to hear about your mother. I wanted to write to you but it was during that awful trial and I didn’t know what to say. To think, when we met that day at Cranmer Court, I was to bring such trouble down upon you all. I almost wish we had never met.’

  ‘I am sorry you feel that, Edward, because I don’t. You didn’t bring trouble on us. Teddy brought about his own downfall. Let’s be honest about it.’

  ‘You told me you thought he was spending too much time at the casino but did you know he had serious financial problems?’

  ‘I knew he gambled but not that he was so heavily in debt. I really believe that, when Simon Castlewood and Montillo encouraged him to invest in the Institute, they were trying to help. They all thought they were going to make a fortune.’

  ‘What’s happened to it now? Do you know? The Clinic was closed down, of course.’

  ‘The Institute was sold to a French businessman and is still making women beautiful, as far as I know. I don’t think many people made the connection between the Institute and the Clinic. Anyway, the rich – and the French rich in particular – are not very scrupulous. They don’t become rich by being tenderhearted. Or am I being cynical?’

  ‘No, I’m sure you are right.’ He took her hand. ‘Maggie, it’s so good to see you. I mean it. I just couldn’t believe you would want to see me. How is Edmund?’

  ‘Surprisingly well. No, not well exactly – but at peace. He’s very calm. Sometimes I wish he was a little less calm, to tell the truth. I’m glad for him but his calmness can be a little unnerving. Poor Maud! What a miserable life she led – to be bullied by her father to give up the love of her life and then to be murdered when she had found someone else to love.’

  ‘But she killed her father,’ Edward said slowly. ‘She knew she had done a very evil thing – whatever the provocation. Tell me, there is one thing which has never been properly explained. Why did Edmund lay her body in the stream? Was he trying to wash away the evidence?’

  ‘I asked him that. He said she had committed a mortal sin when she murdered her father and he merely helped her make atonement. He laid her in the water so it could wash her clean of sin. I think he convinced himself that he was sacrificing her, not murdering her.’

  ‘You think he is mad then?’

  ‘I don’t know. He seems quite rational but what’s happening inside here,’ she tapped her forehead, ‘it’s impossible to say.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It must be very painful for you.’

  ‘No, I think about it all the time and it does me good to talk about it. One thing to be thankful for is that at least Maud did not live to see Graham Harvey try to kill you.’

  ‘He didn’t try to kill me, as you know. He didn’t even try to kill the Duke!’

  ‘Has the Duke visited you on your sickbed?’ she inquired ironically.

  ‘No. He sent me a nice note and he was planning to visit me in hospital but when he found he hadn’t been the object of an assassination attempt, Fruity Metcalfe says he was quite put out. Insulted, don’t y’know. He felt he had been made a fool of. I did try to tell him that the bullet wasn’t aimed at him the moment it happened but I couldn’t get the words out. No, I don’t expect to hear from him again.’

  ‘Why did Harvey take his own life?’

  ‘He left a letter for me. He thought he had failed in everything. He hadn’t been able to protect the woman he loved, and he hadn’t even been able to avenge her. I got in the way. He couldn’t write the book he had researched for so long and – unlike Verity – he hadn’t gone to Spain to fight for his beliefs. He said he had had enough of failure and did not want to live in a world dominated by Nazi Germany. So he hanged himself. It’s a wretched business. I often think that if Verity or I had been able to talk to him, we might have stopped him.’

  ‘And Verity?’ Maggie was smiling and Edward smiled back.

  ‘She’s given me my marching orders,’ he said, trying not to sound bitter. ‘She’s madly in love with Adam von Trott and is enjoy
ing Vienna. She likes to be in the front line and, in her view, Vienna is the front line. She believes – and I do, too – that Hitler will walk into Austria in the next month or two and we will not do a thing to stop him. And that will encourage him to walk through the rest of Europe.’

  ‘Is she safe there?’

  ‘Not very but she’s not interested in being safe. She wants to report history as it’s being made. She says she is uneasy with the title of foreign correspondent. She says she is a reporter – nothing more.’

  ‘But you’ve not seen her?’

  ‘She may be coming home for Christmas,’ he said without much hope.

  ‘And will you . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said quickly. ‘That’s all over. But what about you?’

  ‘Nothing. If I go to a party, I know everyone is looking at me and saying, “There’s the sister of the murderer.” It’s worse than when I had a real scar!’ She laughed but without humour.

  ‘We all bear scars. But could we see each other in London? I will soon be well enough to come up for the day and it’s time I got back to a normal routine.’

  ‘Are you sure? You are not just being kind? I’d hate you to be sorry for me.’

  ‘I’m not sorry for you, as I told you – it seems so long ago – at that awful cricket match at Swifts Hill. I would like to take you out to dinner and perhaps we could go on to a nightclub. Aren’t we allowed any pleasure? I don’t think it will be long before we are plunged into darkness so we should take what pleasure we can while we can.’

  She looked embarrassed. ‘I wanted to ask you . . . The Castlewoods throw a party on New Year’s Eve. They’ve done it every year since they built Swifts Hill. They have invited me and . . . I wondered if you would come with me.’ Her words were hurried and it had obviously been difficult for her to ask.

  ‘Of course,’ Edward said at once. ‘It would be an honour. Will they mind me coming, though? The last time I saw Simon Castlewood in France we didn’t part on friendly terms.’

  ‘Ginny particularly wanted me to ask you – and Verity if she were in the country. She’s grateful to you for stopping Simon and his Foundation from going too far. I mean, it did go too far, of course . . . You’ve forgiven me for refusing to help you gather evidence against Dominic? I couldn’t do it after all he had done for me.’

  ‘No, of course you couldn’t. In any case, the evidence Harvey gathered and von Trott’s testimony on how involved Himmler was with the Foundation were enough for the powers-that-be to close it down. Harvey was successful in that at least, though he did not live to see it. Sir Simon was fortunate not to have been prosecuted. I think in the end they thought he was just a crackpot, not an out-and-out villain. Montillo’s a different matter, of course, but he’ll never be brought to justice.’

  ‘At least Miss – I mean Mrs – Berners got her husband out. That was a miracle.’

  ‘A miracle worked by von Trott. He truly is a remarkable man. I just hope he’ll survive. He’s walking such a tightrope. Himmler must hold him responsible for the Castlewood Foundation folding and with it the expedition to Tibet.’

  ‘Oh no. That’s going ahead. I read it in The Times.’

  ‘The Nazis must have funded it themselves, then. But I’m seriously worried that Himmler will think – not without reason – that Adam made a fool of him and he’s not a man to forgive that.’

  ‘And now Adam’s with a Communist journalist,’ Maggie added. ‘I can understand why you are worried about them. When Verity comes home at Christmas, you must make her see the danger she’s in.’

  ‘She knows very well the danger she’s in but that won’t stop her. She’s steel all the way through,’ Edward said grimly.

  ‘Well, that’s settled then. We’ll go the ball, like Cinderella. Every time I receive an invitation, I think I should accept because there may never be another one. You really believe there will be war?’

  ‘It’s inevitable. It’s just a case of when. Our beloved Prime Minister gives ground to Hitler time after time in a vain attempt to appease him but you can’t appease a ravening wolf. His hunger is never satisfied. If Hitler told his followers he had had enough and he would be making no more territorial demands, he wouldn’t last six months. He has to feed his flock with blood or they will tear him apart.’

  Maggie shivered.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

  ‘I’m not frightened.’

  ‘And you really aren’t bitter about my part in Edmund’s . . .’

  ‘No, it would be quite unjust. It wasn’t you who stabbed Maud to death.’

  ‘If only I had listened to her properly before I went in to bat that day, your brother would have had no reason to kill her. I would have known what she knew.’

  ‘We cannot live on “ifs”.’

  ‘What if your brother . . . if Edmund hears that we are seeing each other? Won’t he be . . .?’

  ‘Teddy went a long way to ruining my life so I don’t see how he can complain if I have a little happiness. But I have decided not to tell him.’

  ‘Well then,’ Edward said, ‘that’s settled. I feel happier now than I have for a long time. There’s the gong for lunch. You will stay, won’t you? Connie is longing to meet you. It was she who said we should . . . ’

  ‘I would like that very much,’ Maggie said rising. ‘And then I want you to show me around the castle – if you have the time,’ she added gravely.

  As it turned out, Verity did not make it back to England for Christmas, accepting instead an invitation from Adam’s parents to spend the holiday at the family schloss in Solz. Edward was almost fully recovered and his convalescence had been helped by the close friendship which had developed between him and Maggie. They had not become lovers but somehow it did not seem to matter to him. He preferred this easy-going marriage of minds to the ‘big-dipper’ relationship he had with Verity. He had heard nothing from her for almost three months – not even a Christmas card though that hardly surprised him as she did not believe in Christmas which she had once likened to eating marshmallow drowned in Golden Syrup.

  The only cloud over his growing friendship with Maggie was Edmund Cardew. She visited him in Wormwood Scrubs on a regular basis but she had still not told him she was seeing Edward. She said it would do no good and might bring on the melancholia to which he seemed – understandably – prone. His final appeal was being considered by the Home Secretary, Samuel Hoare, but there seemed little chance of a reprieve. Maggie said that, perversely, he was more cheerful now that the waiting was almost over but was this just a façade? He had told her he wasn’t sure he could survive long in prison without hope of ever being released and that hanging might, after all, be preferable. She reported that he was very thin and haggard.

  The strain on Maggie was beginning to tell and Edward was worried about her. Sometimes she was depressed and lethargic while at other times bright-eyed and determinedly gay, which was almost worse. He asked her whether she really wanted to go to the Castlewoods’ New Year’s Eve party and she was angry with him.

  ‘Of course we must go,’ she said. ‘I want to show them that we’re all right.’

  He nodded but remained uneasy right up to the moment when they arrived at Swifts Hill and were announced by Lampton. He, at least, seemed genuinely pleased to see them. Maggie was looking better than Edward had ever seen her in a new Balmain ball gown, shimmering white silk which clung to her body until it reached her ankles where it flowed outwards. As she danced, no longer self-conscious about her damaged face, he felt proud to have her in his arms. He could not but be aware that all eyes were on them.

  Shortly before midnight he found himself sitting with Isolde Swann watching Roddy dance with Maggie. She whispered in his ear that she was pregnant and he congratulated her. He was glad to find her happy and relieved that she was to have the child in the Middlesex Hospital, not in the South of France. Sir Simon touched Edward on the shoulder and asked if he could have a word. Curiou
s but a little apprehensive that he was to be thrown out of the house, Edward followed him into his study. Edward relaxed when he was offered a whisky and a cigar. Sir Simon was obviously not going to berate him.

  ‘Forgive me for tearing you away from the party,’ he said. ‘Maggie is lovely, isn’t she? I’m so pleased to see that you have become such friends. She needs friends with her brother in so much peril.’ Edward said nothing, waiting to hear what Sir Simon really wanted to tell him. ‘I wanted to explain . . . to convince you that I was quite unaware of what Montillo was doing at the Clinic. When you warned me, I couldn’t believe what you were telling me. I thought I was funding serious research into heredity that would help babies born with diseases and defects inherited from parents or grandparents. I want you to believe that I was ignorant of his . . . experiments. I was absolutely horrified when I was told what the police had found down there. I know I ought to have known. I can’t even pretend that I wasn’t warned. Natalie said she thought something was wrong but I did not believe her either. I have been a fool but I . . .’

  ‘You are right, Sir Simon, you ought to have known,’ Edward said coldly, unwilling to make it easy for him.

  ‘I have withdrawn all funding of medical research.’ He hesitated and added, ‘You know the police found evidence that Dominic was taking money from Himmler himself to . . . to carry out his beastly experiments? Of course you do.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, I wanted to say how grateful I am that you and Miss Browne exposed what was going on under my nose without my knowledge. You do believe me, don’t you?’ He rose from his chair and paced about the room.

  Edward did not know if he believed him or not but decided he would give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘And I want to recompense Maggie for the money her brother lost in the Institute. Do you think she will take it?’

  ‘I really cannot say. You must ask her yourself.’ Edward’s voice was ice cold.

  They returned to the great hall, ablaze with lights and decorated from the floor to its magnificent roof. Edward parted from his host with relief. As the minutes ticked away and 1937 with all its horrors limped into history, he held Maggie in his arms. When the new year was welcomed with shouts and hurrahs, he kissed her and she kissed him back. Inevitably, he asked himself what 1938 would bring. He had no answers. He tried to banish his fears but they kept crowding in on him. He had just heard from a friend in the Foreign Office that Nanking had been destroyed by the Japanese and the Chinese inhabitants tortured, raped and slaughtered with unparalleled cruelty. It made him sick to the stomach to think of it and he was glad when Maggie asked if he would mind taking her back to London. As they were collecting their cloaks, Sir Simon appeared and asked to have a final dance with Maggie. She could not refuse but Edward watched with a sense of foreboding as he whisked her back on to the dance floor. They had barely completed a circle of the floor before he heard a shriek and Maggie ran towards him. Behind her he saw Sir Simon standing with his hand to his cheek.