She reached out and touched the corduroy jacket. As her fingers closed around the sleeve, she had the most extraordinary sensation. It felt as though she was touching something that belonged to her, a piece of clothing she valued and which she knew well. Before she could properly grasp what she was doing, she had slipped the jacket off its hanger and draped it around her shoulders.
She turned round and stared at herself in the wall mirror. The jacket was much too big for her; it belonged to a large man. At the elbows were worn leather patches. The smell of disuse clung to the ribbed fabric.
She was still standing there, her eyes on her reflected image, now feeling puzzled and even a little impatient with herself, when she heard voices coming from outside the window down below. The next moment, someone was banging the door knocker against the front door with considerable force.
The knocker was applied to the wood again as she walked swiftly down the central staircase. She opened the door to find a red-faced man with kindly eyes just about to lower a massive fist against the door once more. By his side was a lanky boy in his late teens. The family resemblance between man and boy was strong. If they were surprised to find her barefoot, dressed in pyjamas and a shabby jacket at this time of the day, they did not show it.
‘Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.’ The elderly man thrust an enormous, work-coarsened hand out at her. ‘Mr Edwards told me the caretakers had arrived and I thought we should stop by and introduce ourselves. I didn’t want you to be alarmed when you see strange men in the garden. I’m Christopher Mason and this is my grandson, David.’ The boy smiled, showing a set of healthy white teeth.
The gardeners. Of course, it was Friday. She couldn’t believe an entire week had already passed since her arrival. For a moment she felt resentful at this intrusion. Solitude was a seductive drug.
‘Mr Edwards did warn you about us?’ Mason was obviously worried by her silence.
‘Yes, he did. I’m sorry. Is there anything you need?’ Her eyes fell on the bunch of keys still lying on the console table where Edwards had left it. ‘Do you need the keys?’
‘No, no. We have the key to the workroom.’ He patted his pocket. ‘We’ll get started, then.’ He nodded at her and the two of them, their boots clattering loudly, walked down the steps together. Grandfather and grandson had the same set to their shoulders, they even had the same determined stride. She watched as they disappeared around the corner of the house and a little later the sound of a lawnmower filled the air.
She took a shower, and as the warm soapy water slid over her body, she found herself thinking of the wardrobe in the room at the end of the passage. The white T-shirts were yellowed with age and she had noticed a cobweb of great antiquity in one of the shoes. Why hadn’t the clothes simply been packed up and taken away?
She pulled on a pair of jeans and an old denim shirt. If she was serious about her idea of photographing the house, it was high time she cleaned up the darkroom and unpacked her cameras. In the kitchen downstairs she searched for dusters and cleaning rags. Armed with Fairy Liquid and a bottle of evil-smelling disinfectant, she opened the narrow door of the darkroom and started to attack the grime and dirt of years.
After an hour of sneezing and battling her way through the dust, she stopped and returned to the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. She hesitated for a moment and then placed an additional two mugs on the tray next to her own.
Mason was on his knees in front of a flowerbed, weeding. When he saw her coming toward him he straightened and smiled. She held the tray for him and watched as he poured milk and added a generous amount of sugar to both mugs. He placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharp and loud. From the other side of the lawn his grandson looked up and waved in acknowledgement.
Mason took a sip from his mug and glanced at her. ‘Lonely place this, for a young lady to live.’
She smiled. There was something comforting about his slow, courteous voice, his kind, clear blue eyes. ‘I like the quiet. And besides, I’m supposed to have a husband to protect me.’
‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded gravely. ‘Will he be here soon?’
She looked him straight in the face. ‘No.’
He nodded again and she could see he had worked it out. He took another sip of tea. ‘Everyone to his own business, that’s what I always say.’
For a moment it was quiet between them, then she asked, ‘How long have you worked here at Paradine Park?’
‘Almost thirty years.’
‘Thirty years?’
‘It’s a long time,’ he agreed.
‘So you knew the original owners, the Buchanans?’
‘Yes, so I did.’ But she had the impression that his voice had suddenly grown just the slightest bit wary.
‘The little boys must miss the garden. Although it’s been nine years since the family moved out, hasn’t it? By this time, the boys must be just about grown.’
He looked at her and his voice sounded puzzled. ‘Just about grown?’
‘There’s a painting of the family in the drawing room. The boys in that painting are nine, ten maybe.’
‘Oh.’ His face cleared in sudden understanding. ‘I know the painting you mean. But that was painted long ago. Just after I started working here.’
‘Really—that painting is thirty years old?’ Somehow this information was playing havoc with her perception of time. She had pictured a young family. But those two boys must be close to forty by now.
‘Mr and Mrs Buchanan. Are they still alive?’
‘The governor passed away many years ago. Cancer.’
‘And his wife?’
Again that slight reserve in his voice. ‘She died nine years ago.’
‘She blew her brains out.’ David Mason’s voice held the cheerful, callous disregard for violent death of which only the young are capable. He had joined them and, as he picked up his mug of tea, he nodded his thanks.
She stared at him, taken aback. His grandfather frowned a warning but the boy did not seem to notice. ‘Everyone says she took her own life because she couldn’t stand it any more.’ He dropped his voice to a melodramatic whisper. ‘You know, the terrible knowledge that her son is a vicious murderer and all.’
His grandfather spoke repressively. ‘You shouldn’t listen to gossip, David.’
‘It’s not gossip. It’s the truth.’ The young voice was defensive.
Justine looked from one to the other. ‘Well, come on then. You can’t leave me in suspense. Tell me what happened.’
The older Mason said, ‘It’s an old story now. A tragedy.’ He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. ‘The two brothers never got on. Not ever. Not even as children. I watched both of them grow up—become men—and there was bad blood between them. And, with Adam, there was bound to be trouble. You could tell.’
‘You mean the person he murdered was his brother!’
The old man nodded silently.
‘Why?’
‘No one knows. He fled after the murder. Nine years—and they haven’t been able to track him down. But they know he’s the one. He stabbed Richard to death and they found the weapon next to the body with his fingerprints on it. He must have panicked to just leave it behind like that.’
‘How could they test for his fingerprints if he had already fled?’
Mason sighed again. ‘Adam had been in trouble with the law before. He was always hot-tempered, Adam was. Got into a fight and threw a punch. Just about broke the other fellow’s jaw. That’s when he was fingerprinted.’
‘The murder happened right there.’ David pointed. ‘You see, there, next to the sundial. Just think, to stab your own brother to death and with your family sleeping inside the house like that, yards away.’
She looked in the direction he was pointing. The grass growing around the sundial was a dark shade of green and several trees of white wisteria formed a romantic walkway. Now, at the end of summer, the wisteria was faded, but at its best it must look enchanting.
; ‘There were no witnesses?’
‘No.’ David shook his head. ‘No one saw it happen.’
Mason continued. ‘Adam killed two people that day, not just one. The whole thing broke Mrs Buchanan’s heart, it did. Richard was her favourite and he was the spitting image of his mum. The same fair colouring. Possibly it’s true what David said. She simply couldn’t carry on with Richard gone.’
David said ghoulishly, ‘They say when she shot herself the wall above the bed was splattered with blood. And that after they washed it off, the stains would appear again, sort of ghostlike. Sorry,’ he added quickly as his grandfather looked at him with deep disapproval.
‘So if everyone is… gone, who was the owner of the house? Before it was sold to the American couple, I mean.’
‘That would be Miss Harriet, the sister. When old Mr Buchanan died, Adam as the firstborn son took over. Mrs Louisa and Richard continued to live here at Paradine Park, of course, along with Miss Harriet, but Adam was the one in charge. So with the two brothers gone—and after Mrs Buchanan’s suicide—Miss Harriet was the only one left. She lives in London now. She never married.’
Justine remembered the youthful face of the girl sitting next to her mother in the painting. How strange to think that young woman would be well into middle age by now.
David spoke again. ‘She’s not been back here at Paradine Park in nine years—not since it all happened. Why it took her so long to make up her mind to sell the place is a mystery. Costs a fortune to keep it up, I’m sure.’
‘It’s all water under the bridge now.’ The old man placed his mug on the tray with a determined gesture that showed he wanted the subject closed. ‘No use dwelling on such things.’ He turned around and picked up his garden shears. ‘They were good people, the Buchanans. And Adam—he was not an easy man, but he was straight with you. I always respected that.’ For a moment he hesitated, his gaze fixed in the distance. ‘But then, you never really know someone, do you? And even in a lovely family like that, I suppose you can have an accident waiting to happen. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.’
• • •
MASON HAD SAID the murdered brother had the same colouring as his mother. So the boy with the fair hair and pale eyes must be Richard. And he had been his mother’s favourite, and the artist had captured this moment in which she had placed her hand affectionately on her son’s shoulder.
And therefore Adam must be the boy whose dark eyes had been following her ever since she entered the room. Such a very young face, with such a hard, obstinate mouth. An accident waiting to happen, Mason had said. She understood exactly what he meant. She knew all about bad seed.
It was late. If she wanted to get an early start tomorrow she should go to bed. At the doorway she stopped to look over her shoulder. The painted faces watched her and their eyes told her nothing. Except for his eyes. His eyes were burning.
She flipped the light switch and the room went dark.
Her footsteps sounded flat and strangely without echo as she walked across the marble floor of the entrance hall. For the first time since her arrival, she tested the front door to make sure it was locked. But as she turned the key, the thought came to her that maybe she should not be guarding against a threat from the outside, but a threat from within. She was willingly locking herself up in this house with its memories of emotions fierce and anguished—emotions so potent, so toxic they had driven a man to murder and a woman to madness. Maybe rage and sorrow were still clinging to the walls and sifting from the ceiling; invisible poison.
Earlier today she had walked through the house in search of the master bedroom. Many of the rooms were roughly the same size and without furniture to guide her, it was impossible to tell which was the one in which Louisa Buchanan had taken her own life. There were no bullet marks on the wall. No ghostly bloodstains staining the plasterwork. Just empty room after empty room.
The house felt cold. She moved away from the front door and as she started up the staircase she drew the corduroy jacket she was wearing close around her body. Why she still felt compelled to wear this jacket, she did not know. A stale smell clung to the fabric and around the collar was the stain of old sweat. But somehow she was reluctant to be without it. She found comfort in the long sleeves reaching past her wrists, in the jacket’s musty warmth.
She reached the top floor but continued past the door of the nursery until she had reached the very end of the passage. She stopped next to the large arched window and pushed her face close to the cold windowpane. From here she had a direct view of the sundial and the wisteria walkway.
As her eyes attempted to probe the darkness, a cloud moved away from the face of the moon and the blackness outside became bathed in ghostly light. And now the garden was layered with shadows: lesser shadows thrown by the tracery of the leaves; shadows dark as ink at the base of the dial, deeper still at the roots of the trees.
The sundial was so close to the house. Had anyone heard them as they struggled? Or maybe there had been no struggle, only stealth and treachery, a knife in the back and wet blood on the scented grass.
She shivered and once more she smoothed the thick folds of the jacket against her body. And the weight of the jacket on her shoulders and the silky feel of the frayed lining against her bare arms was as comforting as a lover’s embrace.
But later, as she was removing her clothes one by one, spreading the jacket across the back of the bedroom chair, a small white tab sewn into a side seam caught her eye. She picked up the jacket once more and brought it close to the light. And the embroidered letters read: Adam W. Buchanan.
FOUR
THE BUCHANANS. He remembered the family well. There was the father, unimaginative Alistair Buchanan, and sturdy Harriet, the daughter. Those two had never interested him. But then there were also fair-haired Richard and his mother, the lovely Louisa. Richard Buchanan had charm, there was true artistry in the way he seduced those with whom he came into contact. Such cunning was always fascinating. The mother, too, was a seductive personality.
But it was the older, brooding heir who had been truly worthy of attention.
The Watcher slipped through the curlicued black gates and started to walk up the avenue of trees. Even now, after all these years, Paradine Park still had the power to set his senses tingling.
In his own life he had experienced two life-changing events. The first one had been his father’s death. The second was Richard Buchanan’s murder. It was the reason he became the Watcher.
On the night of the murder he had found himself, quite by chance, in the gardens of Paradine Park. Except that it probably wasn’t chance that had led his footsteps there on that lovely spring evening. Everything in life had purpose; nothing was random. It was destined that he witness Adam Buchanan’s fall from grace. When he had set out on his walk, he did not consciously have Paradine Park as his destination in mind. Nevertheless, he had walked there without hesitation, arriving just in time to witness the argument between the two brothers.
The struggle.
Death.
Why had he not tried to intervene? If he had stepped out of the shadows, the situation would have been diffused immediately. Richard Buchanan would still be alive. His brother would be master of Paradine Park instead of a fugitive.
And why had he not tried to stop Adam from getting away? In the years to come he would relive the moment over and over again. Adam on his knees next to Richard’s body. The sheen of sweat on Adam’s forehead. His features dramatised by the light of the moon, the hollows of his eyes, the angles and planes of his face as stark as a mask. And for one breathtaking moment Adam had looked straight at him. He was convinced the man must have spotted him. But then he turned away.
Of course, he was no match for Adam physically and would scarcely have been able to overpower him. But he could have raised the alarm. Or followed Adam to find out where he was going.
But he did not. He watched.
His failure to act was not because of
shock or fear. It was a deliberate choice on his part to let Adam go on his way unhindered. Without Buchanan even knowing about it, the course of his future was being determined by a watcher in the shadows.
What power. What heady power to impact so strongly on another man’s destiny. The fascination of that moment would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Madness and passion. Violence and death. Samuel Beckett said: ‘All men are born mad. Some remain so.’ The Watcher was interested in madness. Henry David Thoreau believed most men to lead lives of quiet desperation. The Watcher was interested in desperation. And the Paradine Park murder was the Book made flesh. Fratricide was the original sin as far as he was concerned. Tasting the fruit from the tree of good and evil was an act of disobedience—the first instance when man realised his potential for free will. But Cain’s murder of his brother was an act evil by its very nature. The Paradine Park murder had suddenly laid bare the mechanisms of the process. Up till that day he had pondered the human capacity for succumbing to evil in an abstract, intellectual way. But Richard Buchanan’s death was like tearing away the skin, prying open the rib cage and watching the bloody heart pumping. He had always been a watcher at heart. But the murder was the one single event that had propelled him into action. It was only after watching Adam Buchanan kill his brother that he had started playing the game.
And what a game it was.
The game was of his own making and he set the rules. Of course, like all the best games, it needed two to play, even though the second player was rarely aware of the game. But the second player was key. And that was why the Watcher did not invite just anyone to play. Over the years he had chosen seven players only.
He would enter their homes when they were away and go through their most private possessions. Diaries, drawers, household waste. Sometimes he would even dare to stay inside the house when his subject was at home.
Writ in Water Page 66
