by M. B. Shaw
‘I’m not very good at it,’ she said, pushing the mixing bowl aside and turning on the kettle.
‘Well, you look delectable in an apron,’ Graham assured her adoringly. ‘That’s the main thing, I always think. I’ll be down in a sec.’
He dragged his suitcase upstairs while Iris made the tea. Forgetting the cookie dough, she shoved two crumpets in the toaster on autopilot and laid the table with spotty Cath Kidston mugs and a flower milk jug she’d bought at Hazelford Stores, going through the motions of domesticity like some deranged Stepford wife.
She’d just put the butter dish and Marmite on the table when a cough from behind made her turn round.
‘Oh my goodness!’ Iris gasped.
Graham was at the foot of the stairs, on one knee. In his left hand, he held open a ring box, lined with plush black velvet. A diamond-and-ruby engagement ring, as elegant and simple as Iris could have dreamed of, sparkled inside like a talisman.
Only a week ago she would have been so happy at this moment. Now it took all her strength to exhale a single word: ‘No.’
Graham’s face fell. ‘I know it’s a shock. And I know it’s too soon, and you’re not even divorced yet. But don’t say no, Iris. I’ve waited my whole life … too long. But I’ve never felt like this. Never met anyone—’
She held up her hand. ‘Stop,’ she said gently. ‘Please stop. I know, Graham.’
He turned his head to one side curiously, like a dog hearing a strange sound.
‘You know?’ He smiled at her fondly. ‘What do you know, my darling?’
Iris opened the drawer of the kitchen dresser and pulled out the photograph of Rachel Truebridge she’d taken from Marcus yesterday. Removing the picture from its frame, she handed it to Graham.
Still on one knee, he looked at it, then at Iris. With a sigh, he closed the ring box. Then, after what felt like hours, he slowly got to his feet.
‘Where was it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘Marcus had it,’ said Iris. ‘He took it out of Dom’s study to try to protect his mother. He didn’t understand its significance.’
‘But you did.’ Graham looked at her then, his expression a mixture of affection, admiration and sadness.
‘Yes,’ said Iris.
They sat down at the tea table, as if this were any other afternoon and they were about to discuss art or politics or the weather, not a brutal murder. The calm atmosphere was surreal, yet at the same time quite normal. Graham was always calm. It was one of the things Iris had been drawn to about him. So different from Ian, whose hot temper had burned her many a time. But cooler tempers could also be more calculated, she reflected now.
‘I looked everywhere for this, you know.’ Graham ran a finger round the edge of the photograph. ‘I turned Dom’s study upside down. I looked in his bedroom, his briefcase, his dressing room. Ariadne thought I was searching for legal papers. She even thanked me for tidying up afterwards. Dom would never have done that.’ He smiled ruefully.
Iris poured the tea, letting him go on. She wanted him to tell her. She wanted him to tell her without being asked.
‘She sent him the picture herself, you know. Rachel. Stupid girl.’ He shook his head, more in sadness than in anger. ‘It was over between them, but she was still obsessed with Dom. She thought she looked good, sexy. She wanted him to see her like that. I don’t think she even noticed I was in the shot, standing right behind her.’
‘But Dom noticed,’ said Iris.
Graham gave a wry smile. ‘Oh yes. Dom noticed. And that was the beginning of the end.’ He sipped his tea contemplatively. ‘I might not have had the balls to go through with it if Dom hadn’t challenged me directly. He pulled me aside on Christmas Eve, after the party, drunk and angry, demanding to know how I knew Rachel, accusing me of sleeping with her, threatening this, that and the other. Bullying, basically, as only he could. I agreed to meet him on Christmas Day to “explain”.’
A dark shadow fell across Graham’s face then, and his features tightened and contracted as the anger and hatred came flooding back.
‘He wanted me to explain.’ He shot Iris a ‘can you believe it?’ look. ‘He knew what he’d done. Knew who he was: a liar and a thief. Everything he was, everything he had: his fame, his wealth, his family, his friends, this beautiful house. All of it was stolen from my brother. And yet the bastard had the gall to summon me to explain my actions, my imagined affair with his mistress – his discarded mistress at that! He truly was the most revolting man.’ Graham looked deep into Iris’s eyes. ‘He deserved to die.’
With an effort, Iris reserved comment. She wanted Graham to go on, needed him to go on, however painful each word might be.
‘When did you first learn about the plagiarism accusations?’ she asked calmly.
‘Late. Very late. About two years ago,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Marcus never told me. He never told anyone. I can only imagine he was too hurt by what Dom did, too shocked and ashamed to confide in us.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘But a couple of years ago I began hearing rumours, from Marcus’s Oxford contemporaries. It started as the odd comment on Marcus’s in memoriam Facebook page. Snide little snippets about Dom, and how much he “owed” to my brother. Nothing was spelled out. At first I dismissed the posts out of hand as straightforward envy. Don’t forget the Wetherbys had always been good to me and my family. We were close friends, and my mother adored Dom till the day she died. But when I mentioned these comments in passing to Dom at dinner one night in London, his reaction was visceral. He was furious, not just with the person who wrote them but with me. I should be “grateful” to him. How “dare” I repeat these comments? Who did I think I was? That sort of thing. We fell out, and that was when I dug deeper.’
‘You went to see Raymond Beatty,’ Iris prompted.
Graham looked at her admiringly. She was as clever as she was beautiful. Was he really going to lose her now, after all this?
‘Yes,’ he said aloud. ‘I always liked Raymond. He was one of the good guys. Of course, he gave me Dom’s version of events, but he gave it in good faith. That was all he knew, after all. He said that when Dom first came to him with a Grimshaw manuscript, he admitted he’d conceived the original idea with a friend. Raymond asked at the time whether the friend might have any claim to the work, but Dom was adamant he’d written the novel alone. Raymond took him at his word. No friend ever came forward claiming co-authorship, so he had no reason not to.
‘But by now I was suspicious. My brother had no history of depression, Iris. No reason to kill himself that any of us knew about. It was true he was unhappy in his first job out of university, but he quickly jacked that in and returned to Oxford for his PhD, and as far as we knew, he was fine. But of course he wasn’t fine.’ Graham’s frown deepened. ‘After I met with Beatty, I went back to Oxford myself and spent almost a month tracking down anyone and everyone who knew and remembered my brother. It was a terrible time.’
His eyes welled with tears. Instinctively, without thinking, Iris placed her hand over his.
‘Marcus was crushed by Dom’s betrayal. They came up with that book together. They wrote the synopsis together, co-wrote the early chapters. They spent weeks and weeks developing the Grimshaw project. But then summer vac came around and Marcus landed a top internship at one of the big consultancy firms. They agreed he would take it and Dom would go travelling and they’d resume the book in the autumn. But instead Dom dashed off a manuscript in secret, shopped it around to publishers and got a deal behind Marcus’s back.
‘They fell out about it of course at the time. But they were lifelong friends and Dom apologised and, I don’t know, they worked it out, I suppose. Marcus was a deeply forgiving person,’ he mumbled bitterly. ‘But of course we weren’t talking big money then. Neither of them imagined for a moment that the book was going to sell the way that it did. When Dom began to make millions and was feted all over the literary world, Marcus asked to be credited. He wasn’t even asking for money
, just a thanks in the book, a dedication or whatever. Something that would tell the world that he, too, had conceived this character, that he had been a part of it.’
‘But Dom said no.’
‘Worse than that,’ Graham seethed. ‘He started acting as if their collaboration had never happened. He made my brother out to be delusional, told him he needed to see a shrink, that he had never been an integral part of the book. That was what pushed Marcus over the edge. Literally. I mean, Dom came to his funeral, Iris! He stood there, next to my parents, and sobbed. He put his arm around me and promised to act like a “big brother”. And he did! And I let him! Because I didn’t know. But he did, the bastard. He knew all along.’
‘That must have been a terrible shock for you. Finding out,’ Iris said understandingly.
Graham laughed, and took another long gulp of tea.
‘You could say that. Yeah. The problem was, I didn’t have any proof. This was long before computers or emails, remember, and whatever paper records my brother might have left were long gone, scattered on the wind. I had no chapters I could show, no synopsis with his name on it, no letters between him and Dom, nothing. I knew I needed to punish Dom, to get justice for Marcus. But I couldn’t see how. So I started digging around for allies, people whom Dom had made an enemy of, who might be able to help me bring him down.’
‘And you found Rachel Truebridge.’
‘And I found Rachel Truebridge.’ Graham smiled again, the storm of his immediate anger passed, for now. ‘Poor Rachel. She was out of her depth from the beginning. Any fool could see that Dom was going to screw her over. But she loved him, and he cared enough for her to confide in her. I don’t know whether it was looming retirement, or the prospect of turning sixty, or all the pain they’d been through with Billy and Lorcan. But he was tormented with nightmares during their time together, and sometimes he would yell out in his sleep. Evidently the bastard was doing some soul-searching, or whatever it is you call it when someone doesn’t have a soul. Introspection, I suppose. Anyway, I suppose he felt guilty, but he told Rachel he’d done something terrible as a young man, something he would always regret. And he hinted there were letters, documents, some sort of tangible proof that he had, something that he’d stolen and hidden, that could expose him as a fraud if anyone were to find them. He was deeply fearful.
‘But he was also deeply spiteful, and as soon as their romance was over, he wasted no time firing Rachel from her job, ruining her life and career just as nonchalantly as he had discarded my poor brother.’
‘So the two of you teamed up?’ asked Iris.
Graham nodded. ‘I suggested she go to the papers. The police would have needed more evidence than we had, but a life can be destroyed by innuendo and scandal. And perhaps, in time, I’d have enough to file a civil suit against Dom at least. Take his house. His savings. Crush him, the way he crushed poor Marcus.’
Iris sat back and exhaled slowly, running a hand through her hair. For the first time since Graham had walked through the door, she allowed her emotions to get the better of her. Looking from him to the ring box that was still sitting forlornly on the table, her eyes welled with tears. For Dom, but also for Marcus Feeney, broken by betrayal. And for Graham, the brother who’d wanted to avenge him. And finally for herself. Because for a moment, a brief, shining, lovely moment, Iris had glimpsed a happy future. No Ian, wounding and belittling her with his rage. No ties. Just her and Graham, together. Married perhaps, although that wasn’t a necessary part of the fantasy. Iris no longer cared much for white dresses and rings. But companionship, friendship, humour, sex. Those things still mattered. Those things she still wanted, passionately. They wouldn’t have children, Iris and Graham, but they’d have each other and their work and Iris’s art and their love, and it would be enough.
It could have been enough.
‘So why didn’t you?’ Iris threw out the question in anger. ‘Why didn’t you sue him or go to the press or … anything? Why did you have to kill him, Graham?’
‘Oh, my Iris.’ Graham looked at her with eyes filled with compassion. ‘It was this, my darling.’ He held up the photograph again. ‘This picture! You were the one who saw it, Iris, who recognised it as the missing piece, and you were right. Rachel and I were working together. She’d already tried to blackmail Dom about the plagiarism, hinting she knew more than he’d told her, but he had no idea I was involved. I’d recently been brought back into the Wetherby fold, you see. Invited to the Christmas Eve party no less. So I was still an insider, with access. Rachel was an outsider, banished for ever. She was never supposed to be at that party, still less to be sending Dom sexy photographs of herself. But she was coming unglued.’
Iris shook her head. She didn’t want to hear about Rachel.
‘I came down to the Mill for that party full of hope and excitement,’ said Graham, correctly sensing Iris’s impatience. ‘I was hoping to find proof of what Dom did to Marcus. I planned to search the house while the party was going on downstairs. If I didn’t find anything, I thought maybe Billy could be persuaded to spill some secrets. Clearly things between him and his parents were very strained. Or perhaps dear, sweet Lorcan might unwittingly help me and give something away. Daddy or Mummy’s “secret places”? Because make no mistake, Ariadne was up to her neck in this too. She was there at Oxford, stood by Dom through it all.
‘Anyway, the point is, Dom eventually spotted me in that damn photograph of Rachel’s and demanded an explanation, and so on Christmas Day we met. He’d already had a set-to with Marcus, about his affair with Rachel, followed by another argument with your horrible husband. I assume about you.’
Iris shrank in her seat. ‘Yes.’
‘So by the time I met him down in the woods, he was in a foul mood, punchy and obnoxious. He got into my car and asked me flat out if I was sleeping with Rachel. Despite the way he’d treated her, he still seemed to view her as his property in some repellent, sexist way. I shut him down, obviously. I confronted him with the truth about what he’d done to my brother. Everything I knew, and Rachel knew, everything I’d learned in Oxford and from his own publisher. I asked him how he’d lived with the guilt for all these years, of knowing he caused Marcus’s suicide. I asked how he could have befriended me, and our parents.’
‘And how did he respond?’
Graham’s expression darkened again. ‘He was all over the place. First, he denied it, if you can believe that. He actually defended himself to me. It was the same self-justifying crap he’d fed to Beatty: yes, he and Marcus had come up with the idea together, but that was all. And ideas were ten a penny in publishing. According to Dom, he’d done all the writing, every word. I can hear his voice now.’
Graham screwed up his eyes against the memory, rubbing balled fists over his ears as if he could somehow eradicate the sound.
‘“Marcus didn’t want to be a writer, Graham. He took a safe consultancy job because he didn’t want to take the risk.”’ Graham did an eerily accurate impression of Dom, right down to the outstretched, innocent arms and ‘what could I do?’ hand gestures. ‘“I took the risk, Graham. I did the work. And then when Grimshaw took off and I began to reap the rewards, Marcus regretted his decision and tried to blame me for it. It was his own regret that pushed him into depression, Graham, not me. You must believe me.”’
‘I knew then that I could do it.’ Unballing his fists, Graham laid his palms on the table, looking at Iris with restored calm. ‘And not just could. I wanted to. I mean, I’d prepared, of course. I always prepare, as you know. As soon as I received my invitation to the Christmas Eve party, I knew that that was my chance. But planning something and dreaming about it is not the same as actually screwing your courage to the sticking point and acting. It was Dom’s own words that night that pushed me over that edge.’
So he was responsible for his own death? Is that your twisted logic? It wasn’t really you? Iris thought. But she remained silent, waiting for him to go on.
‘I h
ad a hip flask of single malt with me, heavily diluted with liquid chloroform,’ Graham continued. ‘And yes, I did pinch it from Ariadne’s creepy sculpting studio. I knew that would implicate her with the police, should Dom’s body ever be found, and should anyone suspect it wasn’t suicide. Although of course I did my best to make it look like it was. But if Ariadne had ended up in prison, I wouldn’t have been sorry. Don’t forget that bitch did everything she could to protect Dom and hide the truth about my brother. She deserved punishment, too.
‘We were still in the car and I told Dom that I knew he felt partly responsible for Marcus’s suicide, whatever he said. Rachel had told me about his nightmares, his regrets. And then, of course, he started snivelling, embarrassing crocodile tears about how Marcus had always been his dearest friend and how he’d never really been able to enjoy the Grimshaw money, knowing Marcus’s pain. How he wished he’d credited him, as he should have, but he was young and ambitious and blah, blah, blah.’
There was a coldness to Graham’s voice now, a thin, ruthless edge that Iris had never heard before.
‘I let him go on. I told him I forgave him. I passed him the hip flask and let him drink. He was so over the top by then that he downed the lot, stupid, maudlin bastard. He was out cold in less than thirty seconds.’
Iris listened, transfixed. Graham, too, seemed to be almost in some kind of trance, reliving the moment, but not for Iris. Not for anybody. The words just continued to flow, like somebody reading a story into a tape recorder.
‘After that I got my kit out of the boot. I’d bought plastic contamination overalls from a company that supplies hospitals up in Edinburgh – bodysuit, gloves and a sort of bath-cap job for your head. They made all the suits for the Ebola crisis, if you remember that? And I had a length of rope and a suitable stone. I took those to the riverbank first. Found a spot that was quiet and hidden by trees but where you could still see the house and dumped them there. The house was important, you see.’ Graham looked at Iris, willing her to understand. ‘The Mill, Dom’s dream, bought at the bargain cost of my brother’s life. I wanted him to die there. And that’s what happened.’ He leaned back and exhaled, smiling. The story had come to an end. A happy end, or at least a neat one. He could switch off the tape and turn back to Iris.