by Sarah Rayne
‘Was she?’
‘Murder is cruel and bad.’
‘Oh Edmund,’ said the unfamiliar voice from the pillow. ‘I know all about murder.’ A pause. ‘I’m a murderer,’ he said. ‘I was the one who murdered Conrad Kline that day at Ashwood.’
The silence that closed down was so complete that for a moment Edmund almost believed his father had died and pulled him down into death with him.
After what might have been moments or hours, he said, ‘Dad, listen. Lucretia von Wolff killed Conrad Kline.’
‘Lucretia didn’t kill Kline.’ The strength came back into the weak voice. ‘Listen to me, Edmund. I was nineteen when it all happened, and she was – I don’t know how old she was. Thirty-eight. Forty, perhaps. It didn’t matter. It was my first time with a woman – they’d laugh at that today, wouldn’t they: nineteen and a virgin, but it’s quite true. And I was clumsy and fumbling and mad with excitement, but I thought I had found the heaven that the religious talk about.’
I’m hating this more than I can ever remember hating anything in my entire life, thought Edmund. I don’t want to hear any of this.
‘It went on for three weeks. I would have died for her, killed for her. And then, that last day, Kline caught us together. He stood in the doorway of her dressing-room – I can see him now, standing there, insolent devil that he was. He said, “Oh, Lucretia, are you at that game again?” And he sounded so – so indulgent. So loving. As if he was reproving a wayward child. I said, “It’s not a game – we love one another,” and he laughed. He took me into some other room – a wardrobe store, it was – and he said, “You ridiculous boy, she’ll ruin your life. Let her go. Find some nice English girl instead. Someone of your own age.”’
He broke off, struggling for breath, and Edmund said, ‘You don’t need to tell me this—’
‘I told him she loved me,’ said the harsh voice. ‘But he said, “She doesn’t love you. It’s a diversion for her.” I snatched up a knife or a dagger – something they had used on the film set earlier – and I attacked him. I just kept on stabbing him – I had to wipe out the words, you see. “She doesn’t love you,” he had said, and I had to get rid of those words, so I brought the knife down on his face – on his mouth – over and over again. There was so much blood – you can’t imagine how much blood there is when you stab someone, Edmund. And it smells – it fills up a whole room within seconds, and it’s like the taste of tin in your mouth.
‘I ran away then. Kline’s blood was everywhere, it was all over me, and I didn’t know what to do next. But I knew I had got to save myself. They would have hanged me, Edmund, they really would—’ Once again the hands came out, clutching, seeking reassurance. ‘I ran out of Ashwood as if the Four Furies were chasing me, and I ran until I reached the road and somehow – I don’t remember it all – but somehow I got back to the house where I was living in Ashwood village. I locked myself in, and later I pretended I knew nothing about the murders; I pretended I had left Ashwood an hour before it all happened.’
He pulled Edmund closer. ‘But all these years I’ve wondered if someone did know and if someone had seen. I could never be sure, that was the thing.’ He turned his head away. ‘I was mad that day, and I think I’ve been mad ever since, Edmund. But if I’m really mad, I shouldn’t still be hurting, should I, not after all this time, thirty years since she died…’ His voice became fainter, not physically, but somehow spiritually, as if he was moving further away from the world.
Edmund had no idea what he should say. He kept hold of the thin hands. The echoes swirled and eddied all around the room.
Then his father said, very softly, ‘I think I’m going to die very soon, Edmund.’
‘No—’
‘Yes, I think so. I shall go down into oblivion and peace. Or will it be down into a tempestuous darkness, where hell’s demons dwell? People don’t know until they get there. But I’ll know quite soon, because I’m going to die tonight, aren’t I?’
Edmund stared down at the bed, watching the sanity come and go in the thin face, conscious of a dreadful pity. He could just remember the bright-haired, bright-minded man of his early childhood, and he could remember his father’s lively intelligence and imaginative mind, and the feeling of security he had given Edmund. When Edmund’s mother had died when he was tiny, his father had said, ‘I’ll always be with you, Edmund. You won’t need anyone else, because whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll be there.’
‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’ his father was saying. ‘You won’t ever tell anyone.’
‘No,’ said Edmund slowly. ‘No, I won’t tell anyone. No one outside this room will ever know that you’re a murderer.’
The shadows seemed to creep closer, and to reach out to claw the words and take them into their darkness, and then return them.
You’re-a-murderer…You’re-a-murderer…
‘You’ll be quite safe,’ said Edmund in the same soft voice, and it was only then that the clutching hands loosened their grip, and Crispin Fane fell back on the pillows, exhausted.
Shortly after midnight Crispin seemed to slip into an uneasy slumber, and after a few moments Edmund went out of the room. He had not eaten or drunk anything since midday; he would make himself a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
There was hardly any food in the house, so whatever the doctor had said, he would have to go out tomorrow. He was just grating some rather stale cheese when the floorboards creaked overhead, and he went back out to the stairs. He was halfway up when he saw his father’s outline, pitifully frail in the thin pyjamas, making a slow, fumbling way across the landing. There was a moment when the overhead light turned Crispin Fane’s hair to the shining red-gold it had been in Edmund’s childhood. He waited, and saw his father go into the bathroom at the far end, and close the door.
Nothing wrong with that, said Edmund’s mind. If he feels well enough to walk to the loo on his own, that’s perfectly all right. He went back down to the kitchen, and heard the taps running in the old-fashioned bathroom that his father had never bothered to modernize. After a few moments the tank began to refill. The pipes were slow, clanking things, and the tank always took quite a long time to fill up; when Edmund was very small he used to lie awake listening to it, wondering how the water knew when it had reached the top and had to stop. Sometimes the rushing of the water seemed to go on and on.
It went on and on tonight, almost drowning the single chime from the old carriage clock that had belonged to Edmund’s mother. One a.m. The smallest of the small hours. The murdered walk, his father had said. If that was true, this was surely the hour when they would do so. Who would they be, those murdered ones? The long-ago Conrad Kline, killed by a jealous boy? Mariana Trent and Bruce, screaming as the flames burned their flesh, with the appalling stench of burning human flesh, like meat cooking in an oven filling up the night…But I never meant that to happen, cried Edmund in silent anguish. Yes, but it happened all the same. It was your fault. And that makes you a murderer…
Crispin had been a murderer, as well. He had killed Conrad Kline. But what about the other man – Leo Dreyer? Who had killed him? Had it been Lucretia after all?
The slopping water filling up the tank had died away, and in the silence the ticking of the carriage clock seemed unnaturally loud. Tick-tick…The murdered walk…Crispin had said that, as well. Tick-tick…They walk, they walk…Burned alive or stabbed in the face, they always walk…
He carried his sandwich and the mug of coffee upstairs. His father’s room was still empty, the bedclothes pushed back. Edmund set down the plate and the mug, and went along the landing.
The bathroom door was not locked, but when he called out to know if his father was all right, there was no response. I don’t want to go any further with this, thought Edmund. I truly don’t. But I’ll have to. I’ve called out to him – that’s a reasonable thing to do, isn’t it? He took a deep breath, and opened the door.
The bathroom was full
of pale thick vapour, as it always was if someone took a long hot bath and forgot to open the window, and for a moment Edmund could only make out the shapes of the washbasin and the deep old bath and the cloudiness of the misted mirrors. But here and there the mists were tinged with red, like clouds reflecting a vivid sunset.
It was a large bathroom by modern standards: the house had been built at a time when space was not at a premium, and one of the bedrooms had been converted some time before Edmund was born. For a moment he could not see any sign of his father, but then the mistiness cleared a little as the cooler air from the open door began to disperse it. The pulsing fear that had been beating inside him changed key, and began to drum against his temples.
Because there was someone lying in the bath.
There was someone lying absolutely still in the bath, the head turned to the door as if watching for someone or something it would never see again. For the space of six heartbeats the lisping trickle of water still dribbling into the tank whispered all round the room, seeming to mock the confused panic in Edmund’s mind. S-s-someone lying in the bath…S-someone with blood-dabbled hands, and blood-smeared che-s-s-t, and someone who’s grinning through gaping bloodied lips-s-s…
Someone who had deliberately run a hot bath, and then had got into it and was grinning with macabre triumph at having cheated the world. The tiles around the bath were splattered with blood, and there was blood on the damp tiled floor. The razor lay on the tiles.
How am I supposed to interpret what I’m seeing? thought Edmund. I must concentrate, I must work out exactly what I’m looking at, because they’ll want to know – police and doctors, they’ll all want to know. So what am I seeing? I’m seeing that he’s smiling – that’s the first thing. But his mouth’s in the wrong place.
His mind finally snapped out of the frozen paralysis, so that he could think logically again. His father was not smiling, of course. His lips had a blueish tinge and they were slightly open. They were expressionless, giving nothing away. It was the other lips directly underneath, the lips of the deep, gaping wound across his throat that curved into that dreadful grin, and that glistened wetly with blood…
He’s cut his throat, thought Edmund. That’s what’s happened. He found the old-fashioned razor and then he got into a hot bath, and he slashed the razor across his throat. That’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing someone who no longer wanted to live.
A dozen different emotions were scalding his entire body, but at last he walked across the damp tiles. The hot tap was still dribbling into the bath; moving like an automaton he turned it off, and then reached into the still-warm water for one of the flaccid hands, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. And Crispin’s skin was unmistakably lifeless. Dead meat. But I’ve got to make sure, thought Edmund. How about a heartbeat? It was unexpectedly distasteful to reach into the warm water to touch the bloodied chest, but it was necessary. Don’t think, said his mind, just do it. You’ve got to make certain beyond all doubt that he’s dead. If you phone an ambulance now, that’s what they’ll tell you to do. The flat of your hand against the left side of his chest. A bit higher. That’s about right. And if there’s the least sign of anything beating—
But there was nothing at all, and at last Edmund stepped back from the bath, suddenly realizing that he was shaking violently, and that despite the warm damp bathroom he was icily cold. He leaned back against the wall, wrapping his arms around his body as if it might bring back some warmth, staring down at the thing that had been his father. For several moments he fought to remain in control, because he must not give way to nerves or confusion, he must not…And looked at logically, there was nothing in here that could possible hurt him or threaten him.
Or was there?
The trembling had stopped and he was just gathering himself together to go downstairs to the phone, to summon ambulances or doctors, or whoever else might need to come out to deal with a dead man in the middle of the night. It was then that he caught a flicker of movement on the rim of his vision, and he spun round at once, his heart leaping up into his throat. Someone here? Someone hiding in the tiny bathroom, standing in the pale mistiness watching him? He remembered what his father had said earlier. ‘Listen,’ he had said. ‘It sounds like someone creeping up the stairs.’ Edmund felt the blood start to pulsate inside his head again.
And then he realized that what he had seen was his own reflection in the big oak-framed mirror above the washbasin. A small nervous laugh escaped his lips, releasing some of the throbbing tension. Only his own reflection.
Or was it? He peered through the wisps of vapour. The surface of the mirror was still patchily misted, but wasn’t it a subtly different Edmund who stood there; an Edmund who was somehow more definite, more vivid? An Edmund whose hair seemed almost to catch an unseen shaft of light, so that it gleamed faintly red…
Edmund moved one hand experimentally, and the other Edmund moved his hand also, but not quite in synchronization, more as if he was sketching a half mocking, half amused salute from the depths of the glass.
I’ll always be with you, Edmund…
The memory made Edmund’s lips twist in a brief acknowledgement that was almost a smile. At once the image in the mirror gave the same near-smile as well, and this time there was no doubt about it; this time the smile was definitely not his own. It was the smile of a young man who once upon a time had possessed sufficient charm to attract a wicked, mischievous lady – a lady with skin like porcelain and hair like polished silk…A young man who had killed and escaped the consequences of killing…A young man with hair the colour of honey with the sun in it, and a smile filled with charm…
Crispin. Crispin standing in the mirror’s smoky depths, looking out at him. Speaking to Edmund inside his mind.
I’ll always be with you, said Crispin’s voice, just as it had done when Edmund was very small. Remember that, Edmund…You won’t need anyone else, because whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll always be there to help you…
After a long, long time Edmund remembered that there was still a world beyond the house, and things that must be done, and somehow he got to the phone to dial the GP’s night service. An impersonal voice answered and Edmund said, in a perfectly calm tone, that his father had just died, and that he was on his own and he had no idea what he should do but he thought he had better start with his father’s doctor.
Yes, he was quite sure that life was extinct, he said. No, there was no possibility of survival whatsoever. So could the doctor – or one of his partners – come out as quickly as possible? Yes, he understood that it might take a little time to locate whoever was on call. No, of course he would not leave the house in the meantime. He wondered if the owner of the voice suspected him of preparing to zap off into the night to whoop it up somewhere while rigor mortis set in on his father’s corpse.
But he listened to the explanation about calling 999, and then said coldly that in view of the fact that his father was undoubtedly dead there did not seem much point in summoning the emergency services who might be better employed elsewhere, to say nothing of waking the entire neighbourhood with sirens and flashing lights. What he needed, he said, was a doctor and an undertaker, and he did not mind in which order. The voice appeared to find this an inappropriate remark, and said primly that an on-call doctor would be there as soon as possible.
Edmund had to wait three hours for a very young, very rumpled-looking duty doctor to arrive. He spent the hours sitting on the landing floor, with the bathroom door propped open, watching his father’s body, trying not to wonder what he would do if that the dreadful head with the two sets of gaping lips – one pallid, the other blood-caked – suddenly turned towards the door.
While he waited the carriage clock downstairs ticked away the minutes and then the hours. Tick-tick…Always-be-with-you-Edmund…Tick-tick…The-murdered-ones-walk-Edmund…
The murdered ones. Conrad Kline. Leo Dreyer. Mariana and Bruce Trent.
Edmund listened to the ticking rhythmi
c voices for a long time, and very slowly he began to understand that Crispin – the real Crispin who had been young and good-looking and full of confidence – was filling him up, and he knew that Crispin would stay with him no matter what he, Edmund, did. He could hear Crispin’s voice inside the ticking clock, and inside the goblin-chuckling of the rain as it ran down the gutters. We’re both murderers, Edmund…We’ve both killed someone…So I’ll stay with you, Edmund…I’ll make sure you’re safe…
Shortly before dawn Crispin’s body finally began to stiffen, slipping down in the cold water so that it washed against the sides of the bath, adding its slopping voice to that of the ticking clock. The murdered walk, Edmund…I’ll always be with you, Edmund…Always be with you…Whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll always be there to help you…
After the fire Lucy had not minded living with her father’s family, who were kind and generous, and who made her part of them. There were holidays with Aunt Deborah, who talked to Lucy about Mariana, which Lucy liked. Looking back, she thought she had eventually managed to have a reasonably happy childhood, although she had been glad when she was old enough to leave home and work in London and have her own flat.
But the trouble with memories was that even though you fought them as hard as you could, they were sometimes too strong for you; they could lie quietly in a corner of your mind – sometimes for years and years – and then pounce on you. Lucy knew very well that there were some memories that were dangerous and painful, and that must be kept out at all costs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Alice had always known that the past was something that might be dangerous, and she had always known, as well, that the ghosts of that past might one day be responsible for destroying the careful, false edifice she had built up. It would only take one wrong move, or one unexpected moment of recognition, and the baroness’s career would be over.
