The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “Here’s what I think happened: I believe Kester drowned on the Shipway. From Harry’s evidence it was obvious to me that Kester was wandering around in a haze of creative euphoria, and in those circumstances I think it’s highly possible that he got mixed up about the tides—for instance, perhaps his watch stopped and having lost all track of time he misjudged the state of the Shipway. After all, the Shipway’s deceptive, isn’t it? It’s not easy to tell when it’s about to go under. It doesn’t sink uniformly. It’s quite possible for a man to start out thinking he’s quite safe and then realize in the middle that he’s made a fatal mistake—why, think of Owain Bryn-Davies back in the Eighteen Eighties.

  “Okay, so much for Kester; if one bears in mind that he was on the brink of a new novel this stroll out to the Worm in a creative haze, though eccentric, would have been entirely in character. But the real mystery, Hal, isn’t Kester’s behavior that evening; it’s your father’s. Why did he follow Kester out there? Obviously he wanted to talk to him and I’m afraid I don’t for one moment believe that Kester had invited him to the cottage earlier for a drink. They just weren’t on those terms, not by that time. Besides, if Kester had really invited him for a drink, why issue the invitation in a note that afterwards conveniently couldn’t be found? Why not ring up? I realize the cottage had no phone but there was a call box close at hand in the village.

  “I think Harry invented that note. The postman and the parlormaid could only recall that there were several letters which arrived by the afternoon post, so their testimony doesn’t help, but it strikes me that Harry had to invent that note to explain why he went to Rhossili that evening—it would be the only way of explaining the inexplicable. There was no logical reason why either of them should have wanted to see the other at that particular time. Kester was happy, sunk deep in a creative stupor. Why should he have wanted to upset himself by inviting Harry to see him? And why should Harry have put himself on the rack by paying him a visit?

  “Yes, that’s certainly a mystery, and the plot thickens, doesn’t it, when you remember that Harry didn’t just sit waiting for Kester at the cottage. He went out to look for him and when he found him he staggered all the way after him across the Shipway. It was the most extraordinary thing to do. I admit Harry explained it all very convincingly at the inquest by talking of his anxiety and concern, but I still think the whole thing was bloody odd. Harry was a brilliant witness, of course. He had the coroner eating out of his hand and certainly I believed him at the time, but … well, that’s what being a brilliant witness is all about, isn’t it? Everyone believes you at the time and it’s only afterwards that people start to wonder. And talking of witnesses …

  “Yes, I knew you’d want to ask me about Declan. Well, as far as the murder theory goes, I think that just has to be nonsense. Harry might well have been capable of killing Kester, but I’m quite sure he didn’t do it. I think if he was going to kill Kester he would have done it more efficiently—after all he was a trained killer. I can see him bashing Kester over the head and then disposing of the body in such a way that it would never be discovered, but I have great trouble seeing him pushing Kester into the sea after pursuing him out to the Worm’s Head in view of two independent witnesses.

  “So I’d dismiss the charge of murder, but the charge of extortion is certainly much more plausible. I have no trouble at all in thinking Harry capable of taking Oxmoon by extortion but I do have trouble seeing how he did it. I don’t believe all that rubbish about Thomas. Kester was a man of peace. He wouldn’t have taken part in a drunken brawl, so how could he have killed Thomas by accident? And even if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have been fool enough to ask Harry to help him cover up a crime. Harry may well have extorted Oxmoon, but if he did we’ll never know how it was done.

  “The biggest argument against extortion is that I can’t see Kester ever sitting back and accepting it. But on the other hand one could argue that he’d found life without Oxmoon unexpectedly carefree and that he was prepared to let matters ride until he’d finished his new book. I’m quite sure in my own mind, Hal, that Kester returned to Rhossili purely and simply to write. But if extortion did exist and Harry had a guilty conscience it’s quite possible he might have put a different construction on Kester’s behavior and that, of course, would explain why Harry was so determined to see Kester that night: sheer paranoia would have induced him to think Kester had returned to Gower to reclaim Oxmoon and Harry would have felt driven to seek a showdown. No wonder Kester kept going once he reached the Inner Head that evening! Yes, I know Harry said at the inquest that Kester was apparently unaware that he was being followed, but what Harry was really saying was that he never saw Kester look back. But of course Kester must have looked back and of course he must have seen Harry—and that was why he kept going. … No, this needn’t necessarily mean he was frightened of Harry. The most likely explanation is that he just didn’t want an interview with anyone, least of all his paranoid cousin, when all his characters were trekking through his head in glorious Technicolor.

  “So we come back to my theory of an accident. I don’t really believe Kester planned to be marooned on the Worm that night, no matter how deep he was in his creative haze. Nor do I believe that he would have toiled all the way out to the Worm if he’d known he had so little time to enjoy the view on the other side of the Shipway. I’m sure something was wrong with his watch and he was misled about the time. My theory is that he kept going along the Worm to avoid Harry but when Harry turned back he turned back too. They were visible to each other, remember, when Harry came round the bend onto the southern flank of the Inner Head and saw Kester far away by the Devil’s Bridge; if Harry saw Kester, then Kester could have seen him.

  “So what happens? Harry turns back and recrosses the Shipway but by the time he reaches the mainland again the Shipway’s about to go under. He looks back and sees to his horror that Kester, in a muddle about the tides, is leaving the Inner Head and setting out across the Shipway. Then Harry does nothing. There are no witnesses. He doesn’t call the Coastguard. He just watches Kester drown—and then he panics. He knows there are witnesses who saw him going out to the Worm earlier. He knows his hatred of Kester is notorious. He knows the police are bound to look at him askance once they realize Kester died in mysterious circumstances. So he rushes off and cooks up an alibi with Dafydd—the one person in the world who’d do anything for him—and it works. He’s exonerated at the inquest. But then his guilt—the guilt that he did nothing to save Kester—eventually surfaces and crucifies him. Harry’s mental collapse is really only explicable, isn’t it, if he’d either killed Kester or else believed he’d failed to save him from death, and that is the one theory of accident which covers this point—indeed, I’d go so far as to say that my theory is the only possible explanation of the tragedy, the only explanation that fits all the facts. So there you are, Hal. Take my advice, call it an accident—and for your own sake, let the matter rest …”

  X

  As he stopped talking I rose to my feet and we stood facing each other in that shadowy room.

  “Is that what you want?” I said. “You want me to let the case rest?”

  “Yes. It would be better. Let it be.”

  I sat down again abruptly. “Okay,” I said. “Cards on the table. Now, just what the hell do you really think was going on?”

  There was a long, long silence. Then Evan too sat down again and said, “You’re bound to think I’m some sort of mystic crackpot.”

  “Try me.”

  “I think you should refrain from investigating forces which even today we don’t really understand.”

  “Come again.”

  “I’m talking about evil. It was present between those two men. Individually I believe they were no worse than anyone else, but they were a catalyst to each other, and whenever they met evil was generated.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “As I say, such things are very imperfectly understood even today—perhaps e
specially today when people have this touching faith that everything can be explained in scientific terms. But in my opinion, what we have here is a spiritual malaise which can’t be explained scientifically; I believe Harry and Kester were locked together in a metaphysical nightmare which ended in their deaths—physical death for Kester, spiritual death for Harry. They were like two sides of a schizophrenic personality. It was as if they shared a common soul.”

  “Fine. What does all that ultimately mean?”

  “It means that how Kester died doesn’t matter. It means that you should stop right here and go no further. There are worlds existing which any sane man should be afraid to enter, and the world which your father shared with Kester was one of them.”

  “Let’s try and translate that into basic rational English. Are you trying to say that the solution to this mystery is so unnerving that I’m bound to go mad myself if I find out?”

  “I’m saying that both those men staked a claim to you in the past. I’m saying that they could still tear you apart. I’m saying that unless you stop now you could wind up right in the middle of their metaphysical nightmare.”

  “And how would you, a clergyman, deal with a metaphysical nightmare?”

  “I would pray for an act of redemption.”

  I got up, wanting to terminate the conversation not only because I was unnerved that the word “redemption” had surfaced again but because I was having a hard time deciding what to say next. I respected him as a man and believed that the world of the spirit was as real to him as the world of the mind was to Pam, but I felt I was temperamentally unsuited to both theology and psychology and I believed I should be interested only in concrete facts. Yet here was this highly intelligent man propounding a thesis to which I somehow had to find a courteous reply.

  Finally I said, “You’ve got a lot of courage to say that to me when my skepticism must have been so very obvious. I admire your guts. Thank you for being honest.” I moved to the door.

  “I haven’t reached you, have I?”

  “Oh yes, you have, but not quite in the way you intended. I’m now more determined than ever to get to the bottom of all this.”

  “Then all I can do is pray for you.”

  “Sure. Do anything that’ll stop you worrying about me. But I don’t believe in metaphysical nightmares, Evan, and I don’t believe there’s anything here which can’t be explained rationally. I’m going on.”

  XI

  NOTES ON EVAN:

  His accident theory is flawless but the only problem is that there isn’t a shred of proof to support it. I was particularly interested in his somewhat cynical attitude to my father’s alibi. It’s quite true that Dafydd would do anything for my father. The way to prove Evan’s theory would be to bust that alibi because if my father stayed to watch Kester drown he’d have arrived back at the cottage much later than he said he did and the odds are he would have missed Dafydd altogether. It wouldn’t have taken Dafydd long to change the washer on that tap.

  NOTE: Why did this alibi prove so unbustable? Was there an independent witness who could swear Dafydd was at the cottage when he said he was? I can’t remember so it’s more vital than ever that I recheck his evidence in the inquest report.

  The suicide theory would appear to be in shreds, although ideally I’d like another witness to confirm that Kester was euphoric only hours before he died. But if he was on a big creative high I can’t believe he’d abort it by jumping into the sea.

  The extortion is still a puzzle, and before I really start believing Declan’s story I’d like another piece of evidence that would link Thomas’s death squarely with some form of neurotic or peculiar behavior on Kester’s part. This is because I agree with Evan that Kester was a man of peace, and if he was indeed driven to commit a crime and cover it up, then the circumstances must have been very bizarre indeed.

  And talking of the bizarre brings me to Evan’s metaphysical bullshit. I want to dismiss it, but there does appear to be a weird dimension to this story and that dimension keeps on surfacing. From Gerry I got the impression that my father and Kester were like mirror images—and that’s certainly weird since I know they were utterly dissimilar. Then Lance said they were both mad in an occult sense which he was too fey to define further, and now Evan says they were possessed by something which he doesn’t quite have the nerve to call the Devil. I don’t believe any of this, of course, but nevertheless it’s hard not to form the opinion that my father and Kester were on some very way-out trip indeed. But what were they tripping out on? Mutual paranoia would certainly be a more rational explanation than evil spirits, but why should the paranoia have existed? Probably only someone like Pam could dream up an answer to that one; but I don’t want to get involved with psychiatry any more than I want to get involved with religion.

  VERDICT: Evan was helpful and—before he degenerated into mysticism—very credible, but ultimately he was baffling. Did I really get to the bottom of what he believed? Two sides, he said, of a schizophrenic personality. Weird. But I don’t believe in that kind of claptrap. I’m a rationalist.

  Soldier on.

  XII

  When I reached home it was after midnight but as I drove into the stable yard I saw there was a light still burning in my father’s room. I switched off the engine. I thought I saw the curtain shift but I was some yards away and it was impossible to be sure. As I watched the light went out.

  I wondered what he was thinking.

  XIII

  Waking at seven I brewed some coffee and reread my notes. I had lost the habit of eating breakfast; my years on the road as a singer had meant that morning was a dead time for me, and I had grown used to combining breakfast and lunch in a noontime meal.

  When the coffee was finished I drew up a shopping list which included more mousetraps. The mouse population of Oxmoon was spirited. Small wonder that Pam’s cat was looking so sleek. I toyed with the idea of borrowing it for a night or two.

  The shops opened at nine and after collecting the items I needed in Penhale I drove on to Llangennith to see my mother’s half-sister Eleanor.

  Stourham Hall had been converted into holiday flats which supplemented Eleanor’s income during the summer months. Probably it needed little supplementing as the pig farm was prosperous and my grandfather Oswald Stourham had left money to both his daughters, but Eleanor was a businesswoman and never let an opportunity to make money pass her by. At this time she was in her sixties, gray-haired and heavily lined, but I still found her much as she had always been. I looked at her and saw the Nineteen Thirties, a vanished world where people said “Jolly good!” and asked “Who’s for tennis?” and played huge black discs of Noël Coward songs on something they called a gramophone.

  “How simply splendid!” said Eleanor, ushering me into the living room of her flat on the ground floor of the Hall. “I wondered when you’d turn up—I saw Pam at the W.I. meeting last night and she said you’d come to Oxmoon to meditate. Glad you’ve cut your hair. Your father must be thrilled. How is the poor old stick? Pam said he was a bit better but of course one can’t believe a word these psychiatrists say.”

  I knew Eleanor was fond of me; her own son had emigrated to Australia, and after that she had taken a deeper interest in her four nephews, so in deference to her affection I took time to chat with her over a cup of coffee. Twenty minutes elapsed before I allowed myself to broach the purpose of my visit.

  “Aunt Eleanor, would you mind talking of the past?”

  But old people love talking of the past. I had noticed by this time that when people reach the end of their lives they automatically turn back to the beginning as often as possible as if the present had become unimportant and only the past was real.

  I embarked on my set speech. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Kester—”

  But no explanations were needed. Eleanor at once launched herself into her reminiscences.

  “Ghastly Kester!” she exclaimed. “Oh sorry, old boy, he was rather a c
hum of yours, wasn’t he, but honestly! What a creature! Of course, you were too young, poor little chap, to understand a thing, but if you want my opinion—”

  “Yes, I do. Very much. Do you think he committed suicide?”

  “God knows, my dear; I was too glad he was dead to care. Oh yes! There’s someone who got what was coming to him, no doubt about that! No doubt about it at all. …”

  XIV

  “Kester was morally responsible for Tom’s death,” said Eleanor fiercely. “Tom slaved for years to run that estate for a ridiculously small salary, and yet Kester sacked him for no good reason and without a word of thanks! No wonder Tom got drunk and smashed himself up in his car! Too bad he didn’t smash up Kester! Of course I implored him not to at the time because I didn’t want him ending up in jail, but if I could have foreseen how that day would end …

  “Yes, old boy, it really did end with Tom crashing his car. Of course Declan Kinsella’s allegations later were absolutely riveting, but there wasn’t a word of truth in them, unfortunately. Why am I so certain? Heavens above, I should have thought it was obvious the story was a complete fairy tale! In fact it would take an ex-terrorist like Declan to dream up a story of a faked car crash. God knows what goes on in Ireland but two Welshmen brought up to be English gentlemen just don’t stoop to that kind of uncivilized behavior—and even if they did, the story’s still incredible because if Kester had somehow killed Tom, why would he have appealed to Harry for help and why on earth would Harry have helped him? You answer me that! Well, you can’t, of course, those two questions are unanswerable. No, Declan invented that story to put your father on the rack, no doubt about that at all; but let me tell you this, old boy: if Kester had killed Tom, it wouldn’t have been by accident! He’d have murdered him!