“Sit down there,” said Fiona, pointing to a chair by the kitchen table as she closed the door behind us. “And roll up your trouser leg.”
For the next few minutes, she busied herself with soap, water, Dettol and sticking plaster in a fashion I guessed her two sons would easily recognize, repeating phrases like “Such a very stupid thing to do” under her breath as she cleaned me up. The dog wandered in from the scullery, regarded us mournfully, and wandered back out. Then Fiona pronounced the job done and turned briskly to more serious matters.
“You shouldn’t have come, Toby, you really shouldn’t. Have you any idea how big a shock this has been to Jenny?”
“Yesterday didn’t exactly pan out as I’d expected either.”
“But you haven’t lost a fiancé, have you? Or a close friend. Delia’s death seems to have affected her almost as deeply as Roger’s. And it’s hard for her at the moment not to blame you for both.”
“Me?”
“She loved Roger, Toby. Learning he was capable of murder doesn’t alter that overnight.”
“More than capable. Guilty.”
“Yes. I know. He was a monster. A bigger one than I ever suspected. But, let’s face it, if you hadn’t—”
The door sprang open and Jenny walked into the room. She was in a dressing-gown and slippers, her hair scraped back, her face pale, almost grey, but for the moist redness round her bloodshot eyes. She’d been crying and was clearly still on the verge of tears. And she was trembling, her fingers shaking as she smoothed the collar of her robe, her lips quivering as she looked at me and tried to speak.
Fiona and I both stood up. Fiona moved towards her. But Jenny held up a hand, signalling that she needed a little distance, a little space in which to compose herself.
“I thought you were sleeping,” said Fiona.
“I heard the door,” Jenny responded after a few seconds’ delay, like someone communicating via an interpreter. “And Toby’s voice.”
“I had to come,” I said, willing Jenny to hold my gaze over her sister’s shoulder.
“I suppose you did.”
“Can we talk?”
“Would you be able…to drive Toby back into Brighton, Fiona?”
“Of course,” Fiona replied.
“Good. Just…give us a few minutes…would you?”
“OK. I…” Fiona glanced round at me, then back at Jenny. “OK.”
She slipped out of the room then, closing the door gently behind her. I heard myself swallow nervously in the silence that followed. Then the dog pattered back into the room and ambled to Jenny’s side, where he nosed at her hand.
“He misses his master,” she said neutrally, almost observationally.
“How are you—”
“Don’t. Please don’t.” Her voice cracked. She took a deep breath. Then another. “Just listen to me, Toby. Please. The police told me everything. I know it all. What Roger did to his father. Both his fathers. And to Delia. And to Derek Oswin. What he tried to do to you as well. I never…saw that side of him. It seems I never…grasped his true nature. I’ve been a fool. An utter fool. Maybe I should thank you for forcing me to understand that.”
“I never meant it to turn out like this.”
“Of course not. Who would? But if you’d waited till I got back…If you’d only…bided your time…nobody need have died yesterday, need they? That’s what I can’t help thinking, you see. Delia, Derek Oswin, Roger. They’d all be alive. With plenty to face up to, it’s true. With a great deal to answer for, in Roger’s case. But they’d be alive. Living and breathing. However dreadful it would be, at least we could talk about it, Roger and I. At least—” She stifled a sob. “I blame myself. For involving you. For letting you…back into my life. I should have known better. I really should. You kill everything you touch.”
Grief and anger and a measure of shame were mixed in what she’d said. I knew that. The one victim she hadn’t mentioned—our son—had been added implicitly to the list. Fiona was right. I’d come too soon. And Jenny was right too. I hadn’t known when to bide my time. I never had. There was nothing I could say in answer to the charge. I stared at her with a tenderness I couldn’t express. I forgave her. For not forgiving me.
“I can’t think about the future now,” she went on. “There’s just…too much to contemplate. John—Delia’s husband—is distraught. The police will be back. And the press will be onto the case. It’s all…horrible. Too horrible for words. That’s why I can’t bear there to be any between us, Toby. Words, I mean. I just…can’t do it.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes and looked at me. “Please go. We’ll talk. Of course we will. We’ll have to. But not here. Not now. Not…any time soon. You understand?”
I didn’t speak. I didn’t even nod. But she took some fractional narrowing of my gaze as a kind of confirmation. I didn’t agree. I didn’t accept. Yet, nevertheless…I understood.
“Please go.”
Nothing was said during the drive into Brighton. Fiona, never one to waste her words, didn’t bother to point out how big a mistake my visit to Wickhurst Manor had been. It was as she’d tried to warn me it would be. It was too soon. And it was probably too late as well.
“Shall I wait outside while you pick up your luggage, then run you up to the station?” Fiona asked as we headed down Grand Parade towards the Sea Air. She’d broken her lengthy silence, I noticed, only for the most practical of reasons.
“Thanks,” I replied. Then I remembered what the numbing anguish of my parting from Jenny had blotted out. I wasn’t yet free to go—even if I wanted to. “Actually, no. Drop me at the hospital. There’s someone I have to see.”
Ian Maple was in a room of his own, off a ward deep in the rabbit warren of the Royal Sussex. His right leg wasn’t in a plaster cast, as I’d expected. Instead, the section between the knee and the ankle was held fast in an armature of wires and pins. That apart—which was a lot to disregard—he looked well. And his greeting was somewhat warmer than I’d expected.
“I wondered if I’d see you before you left,” he said by way of lightly ironic opener.
“I must have caused you a lot of anxiety by holding out on the police,” I responded, lowering myself onto a bedside chair. “I am sorry.”
“I guessed you had good reason.”
“I thought I did, certainly.”
“I’m not sure they ever seriously thought I was in business with Sobotka, anyway. They just couldn’t see the big picture, that’s all.”
“They see it now.”
“Yeah. Three dead, including Roger Colborn.” Ian shook his head. “I wanted to make someone pay for what happened to Denis. But this…is too much.”
“Jenny blames me for the way it’s turned out.”
“You didn’t force Colborn to murder his aunt. Or Derek Oswin. You couldn’t have predicted how the guy would react under pressure.”
“No. But I’ll tell you something, Ian. I was determined to find out.”
“And now you have.”
“Yes.” I looked past him. “Now I have.” My gaze wandered to his braced and cradled leg. “What do the doctors say about that?”
“That it’ll mend. Slowly. I might need another operation. I’ll definitely need a lot of physiotherapy. I’ll be off work…for months.” What was his work? I realized I’d never bothered to ask. “I’ll have to go to Denis’s funeral in a wheelchair.”
“When will it be?”
“Thursday. Golders Green Crematorium.”
“I’ll see you there.”
“Yeah. Time enough to worry about the future after that, hey?”
“Oh yes.” I nodded. “Plenty of time.”
I headed down to Marine Parade after leaving the hospital and walked slowly west towards Madeira Place through the cold, dank morning. The sea and the sky were two merged planes of grey, the horizon as murkily indefinable as the future. The pier, where I met Jenny a week ago, loomed ahead of me, just as our meeting, and the foolish
hopes I’d vested in it, faded behind me into the past. It was time to leave. But I had nowhere to go.
It was nearly noon when I reached the Sea Air. Brian and most of the cast and crew of Lodger in the Throat would be on the train to London by now. It was safe to make my own exit from Brighton, to beat my solitary retreat. I went straight down to the basement to say goodbye to Eunice and settle up. That would be it, I reckoned. I’d be on my own then.
How wrong can you be? Eunice had a visitor. More accurately, I had a visitor.
He was perched at the breakfast bar in her kitchen, a mug of tea cradled in one hand, a grin plastered across his face. Blazered, cavalry-twilled and cravatted, Sydney Porteous was lurking in wait for me.
“There you are, Tobe,” he said, winking. “Eunice had me half-believing you were going to stand me up.”
“What are you doing here, Syd?”
“Our lunch date. Don’t you remember?”
Sunday lunch at Audrey’s, with Syd. Yes, I did remember, albeit hazily, though why I’d agreed I certainly couldn’t recall. “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to cry off.”
“On account of these desperate goings-on Eunice has been telling me about? Understandable reaction, Tobe, entirely understandable. But let me urge you to reconsider. Not only because of Aud’s legendary roast spuds, but because I reckon a spot of company could be just the ticket, given the doleful circs. You need taking out of yourself. And you can trust me to do the taking out.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Syd’s right, Toby,” Eunice put in. “Go and have lunch.”
“Do you two know each other?” I asked, the conviviality of the atmosphere finally registering with me.
“Syd and I were in the same year at Elm Grove Primary,” Eunice trilled.
“Until the old man hit the jackpot and enrolled me at Brighton College,” said Syd. “Who knows what might have happened if we hadn’t been split up?” He rolled his eyes.
“Sorry, Syd. It’s still no go. I’ve got to get back to London.”
“Why the big hurry?”
“It’s…complicated. I just…have to go.”
“You won’t regret staying on for a few hours, believe me.”
“Even so…”
“Truth is, Tobe, you have to stay.”
“Sorry?”
“You can’t leave. Not yet.”
“What?”
“You see…” Syd cleared his throat and grew suddenly serious. “There’s something I need to tell you. And you do need to hear it.”
I couldn’t decide whether Syd was bluffing or not. In the end, it seemed easier to let him reveal the answer in his own good time. We loaded ourselves into his undersized and under-powered Fiat and set off towards Woodingdean, where I was given to understand Audrey Spencer lived and was even then labouring for our benefit over a hot stove.
“Bloody awful what happened yesterday, Tobe,” Syd said, much of his bonhomie gone now we’d left the Sea Air. “Worse for you than anyone, of course, but a real choker for anyone who knew the people involved, even so.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“Gav was on to me last night with the gory details. Cold-blooded bastard, that bloke. No love lost between him and Roger, it’s true, but you’d think Delia’s death would knock him back. It certainly knocked me back. Not Gav, though. All he seemed bothered about was his inheritance.”
“Inheritance?”
“Roger’s estate. Gav is sole surviving heir. Unless Roger bequeathed the lot to Battersea Dogs’ Home. Which I doubt, worse luck. You’d have thought Gav had won the Lottery the way he was going on.”
“As you say. Cold-blooded. Like his nephew.”
“You ought to know I had a chinwag with Ray Braddock this morning. He told me what happened out at Beachy Head. I had a word with a copper I know as well. Seems you’re a lucky man, Tobe.”
“I don’t feel lucky.”
“Derek saved your life.” Syd glanced round at me. “That’s how I read it.”
“You read it right.” Something in the tone of Syd’s voice and the look on his face when he mentioned Derek was strange, familiar, almost…affectionate. “You talk as if you knew him.”
“I did.”
Syd slowed abruptly. We were driving along the open northern side of the Racecourse now. He flicked the indicator, pulled into a gateway and stopped. The passing traffic rocked the car as it sped by. Drizzle began to mist the windscreen. I said nothing.
“I’ve got you out here under false pretences, Tobe. There’s no lunch waiting for us at Aud’s. She’s too upset to eat, let alone cook.”
“Why is she upset?”
“Because she knew Derek too.”
“How come?”
“She’s a psychic, Tobe. A medium.”
“Audrey Spencer is a medium?”
“Yup.”
“A practising medium?”
“Now. And seven years ago. When Sir Walter Colborn consulted her.”
“My God.”
“Not sure if God comes into it, Tobe. Heaven. Hell. Purgatory. That’s all down to your choice of religion, if you want to choose one. I’m strictly Church of Agnostics myself. But the spirit world? It’s out there somewhere. Aud’s convinced me of that. Her…powers…don’t brook many quibbles, take my word for it.”
“You’re saying she really put Sir Walter in touch with his dead wife?”
“I didn’t know Aud then. But she’s no con artist, that’s for quite sure and absolutely certain. She believed it. Wally believed it. Well, you know that, don’t you? You’ve heard the tape.”
“Yes. I’ve heard it. But I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice on it as Audrey’s.”
“You wouldn’t. She sounds different…in her trances. Halfway between herself and…whoever she’s contacted.”
“Hold on.” A thought had struck me. “You must have known about the tape hidden at Viaduct Road all along.”
“I gave Derek my word I’d keep out of his…campaign. Bumping into you at the Cricketers was a pure-as-the-driven-snow coincidence. Seeing where it might lead didn’t mean I’d broken my promise—as long as I didn’t blow the whistle on Derek.”
“Audrey gave him the tape?”
“Wally left her in no doubt that he meant to do right by the Colbonite workers who were ill and the families of those who’d already died, as per Ann’s urgings from beyond the grave. When he went to his own grave so soon after, Aud smelt a rat. She didn’t do anything about it at first. But as the cancer cases kept mounting and Roger aren’t-I-a-smart-arse Colborn kept popping up in Sussex Life society spreads, she…decided to act. She contacted Derek Oswin and told him what she knew. She records all her séances. Once Derek had listened to the tape of the one she’d held for Wally, there was no holding him. He went after Roger…in his surprisingly effective way.”
“You should have told me.”
“I’m a man of my word, Tobe. Hard though you may find that to believe. My hands were tied.”
“You should have stepped in. Before everything…got out of control.”
“I would have done, if I’d known what was going to happen. Just as you would have done, I guess.”
“Don’t Audrey’s powers extend to foreseeing the consequences of interfering in people’s lives, then?”
“No.” Syd smiled at me ruefully. “Since you ask, they don’t.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Such anger as I felt faded as quickly as it had flared. It seemed we both had regrets aplenty.
“How’s Jenny?” Syd asked eventually.
“Much as you’d expect.”
“Taken it hard, has she?”
“What do you think?”
“I think she’s taken it hard. Aud’s pretty cut up too. You ought to be prepared for that.”
“I thought lunch was off.”
“It is. But meeting isn’t. She wants to see you.”
“Any particular reason?”
�
��Oh yes.” Syd started the car and squinted into the wing mirror. “A very particular reason.”
A modern semi-detached house in a Woodingdean cul-de-sac isn’t exactly the locus operandi I’d have imagined for a medium, genuine or otherwise. There were certainly no occupational trappings on view when Syd and I arrived. Audrey Spencer was waiting for us in her neatly decorated home, the sparkle in her eyes I remembered from our previous meeting replaced by welling tears, some of which she transferred to my cheek in the course of a welcoming hug.
“There are no words to describe how I feel, Toby,” she said, leading me into the lounge. “Nor you either, I dare say. What a terrible, terrible thing to have happened.”
“Tobe reckons we should have levelled with him sooner, darling,” said Syd.
“It’s useless to think such things,” Audrey responded, sinking into a sofa. “Yet it’s impossible not to.” She waved me into an armchair on the other side of the fireplace and gazed across at me. “You can be no harder on me than I’ve been on myself, Toby. Blame me if you like. I don’t mind.”
“I blame all of us,” I said, truly enough.
“Well, there’s sense in that,” said Syd, settling on the sofa beside Audrey and closing his sausage-fingered paw round her clutched hands and the damp tissue squeezed between them. “But blaming isn’t undoing, if you know what I mean.”
“I wanted to punish Roger Colborn for thwarting the good intentions Ann had inspired in Walter,” said Audrey. “It’s not often my calling has such an obviously beneficial effect. To see it frustrated as it was rankled with me. Through Derek I saw a way to do something about it.”
“You succeeded,” I said. “Roger was certainly punished.”
“Yes. But for Derek to die as well…and poor Mrs. Sheringham…” Sobs overcame her. Syd released her hands so that she could staunch her tears with the tissue while he wrapped an arm round her shoulders and whispered some soothing endearment in her ear. “I’m sorry, Toby. Please forgive me. I feel things…perhaps a little more deeply than I should.”
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