Cool Repentance

by Antonia Fraser

  One of the people who helped to piece together what had happened was Christabel Herrick's widower, Julian Cartwright. Jemima learnt the details of his statement and some of the other macabre circumstances of the last few months from Gregory Rowan: Julian Cartwright had not wished to say goodbye to Jemima Shore. Secluded at Lark Manor with his daughters, supported by Ketty and the Blagges, Julian Cartwright presented the same face of dignified silence to the world as he had done when Christabel eloped with Barry Blagge.

  Gregory Rowan told Jemima of Christabel's last note to Julian - three words only: Darling, forgive me. 'He showed it to me afterwards: it was on her special writing-paper, that very pale azure paper she loved, in her huge sprawling handwriting, blue ink too. Even when the police had finished with it, it still smelt of her special scent, lily of the valley...'

  It was the discovery of this note lying in his study, with the pistol gone from its drawer, which had sent Julian on his last frantic expedition to rescue Christabel. She must have left it some time during the afternoon, when the family returned to Lark from the Royal Stag, Christabel ostensibly needing to take refuge from the loud confusion of the police melee at the hotel; she must have descended from her darkened bedroom with its thick white curtains blotting out the view of the sea, the sea where Christabel had drowned Filly Lennox not so long ago. Christabel was cunning: Christabel remembered where Julian kept the key to his private drawer. Christabel was also mad and left behind one last plea for her husband's forgiveness.

  If Julian had not taken the girls over to see Gregory, so that there should be no sudden noise in the house while Christabel rested, he might have found the note earlier. And then he might have been in time to stop Christabel ... stop Christabel putting the pistol to her head just as he entered the dressing-room ... one last translucent unblinking sea-blue regard and then one lethal shot which instantly destroyed both Christabel and all the beauty she had once had in her husband's eyes.

  Jemima asked Gregory: 'Will he ever recover, can he ever recover?'

  'Wasn't what he'd already gone through almost worse? Because it was perpetual secret fearful anticipation. The unacknowledged dread of her suicide, or at least that she would do herself some injury. There was some odd incident with her garden scissors at Easter, just after she first came back. We don't quite know what happened. Maybe she tried to stab herself and drew back. She was in two minds - literally, I suppose - up till the very end. One afternoon, I'd come over to Lark and suddenly heard her scream. Julian heard it too and came rushing in from the courtyard garden. He thinks she may have planned to take an overdose then, she'd been rummaging in the various bathroom drawers upstairs, thinking she was alone, and at the last minute somebody disturbed her. Ketty. Pussyfooting about with no shoes on - and seething with jealous resentment -because Julian had said there was to be no noise in the house while Christabel was resting.'

  'But the murders?' cried Jemima. 'Did he have no inkling that Christabel was responsible - because if so ...' She left the sentence ominously trailing.

  Gregory considered. 'Filly - no, definitely not. True, it was Christabel who originally suggested the picnic, the picnic where she fully intended to shine with all her old sparkle, captivate everyone left right and centre, only to find herself upstaged by Filly - but then Filly's death was not premeditated, and afterwards, in the light of the tragedy, everyone forgot who had proposed going to the beach en masse. It was Christabel too who suggested going back to the Royal Stag to continue Blanche's birthday celebrations upstairs - "Mrs Tennant will do anything for me, darling" - I remember it so clearly, Julian's objections, Christabel overruling them. Now that was premeditated.

  'So was her "rest",' he went on. 'To give herself the opportunity she needed to get to the theatre and do in the wretched Nat; just as she originally asked for her shawl to get the key out of him, make sure it would be available for her. She was lucky there, of course - she could hardly have known that Mr Blagge would return to the theatre and divert all suspicion to himself; as it was, she narrowly missed running into him.'

  'The man in the shadows,' quoted Jemima. 'The one in whose existence the police declined to believe.' In her mind's eye she saw Christabel that night, Christabel deftly picking up Blanche's discarded jacket and hat, maybe even suggesting herself with a casual word that Blanche would look prettier without them for Christabel was always commenting on Blanche's clothes. Christabel the professional disguising herself swiftly and effectively - if not from the prying eyes of that other professional Old Nicola. Christabel watching Nat leave the theatre by the front door for his breath of air. Christabel deftly picking up the key of the Stage Door deposited for the second time by Mr Blagge, and after the murder throwing it far away or perhaps burying it in the woods, as she buried the responsibility for what she had done. Christabel still dressed in Blanche's checked jacket and Annie Hall hat pulled down over the mauve scarf which masked her fair hair; Christabel melting back into the shrubberies and trees round the Watchtower; Christabel who had just ... but this time Jemima did not share her thoughts with Gregory.

  'And the second night in the Royal Stag,' pursued Gregory, 'the night she needed to spend there to shut up Old Nicola once and for all - that was premeditated too. Even so, the plan might have gone wrong if she'd had to share a bedroom with Julian. But then - she knew her Julian. He was a gentleman. He would sleep in the sitting-room on a sofa, wouldn't he, rather than disturb Christabel's precious rest on the eve of a First Night. She knew where Mrs Tennant kept the pass-keys; in fact she knew a great deal about the Royal Stag. In the old days, she and I—' Gregory coughed. 'Well, we needn't go into that now. Suffice it to say that she knew where Old Nicola was sleeping. And that everything was always easy for Christabel where Julian was concerned. She had only to ask and he granted it for her.' For the first time Gregory sounded more angry than distraught.

  'So in answer to your question,' he continued, 'no, Julian had no real inkling of what Christabel had done. Julian was a man with an obsession, and his obsession was Christabel. He could see that she might destroy herself but he could not see anything or anyone beyond that'

  'So he won't recover. He can't.'

  'My dear Jemima Shore Investigator!' Gregory had picked up a series of flat stones and was skidding them enthusiastically across the surface of the sea. But now the tide was going out quite rapidly across the flat sands. There was no danger today of a sudden wave engulfing Gregory's tennis shoes or Jemima's red sandals whose high heels were already slightly scuffed by the Larmouth pebbles. 'My dear Jemima, how little you know about the nature of obsession. Maybe there should be an investigative programme on the subject. You might find it interesting - 'Obsession and After' - how's that for a title?'

  'Compulsive viewing.'

  'No, Julian will recover,' Gregory went on as if she had not spoken. 'First Christabel had to come back, then she had to be gone for good, both things being essential to his recovery. Perhaps he'll even marry Ketty one day. Stranger things have happened. Life will be easier for him that way. He's had his great love, hasn't he? He'll settle for a comfortable life and Ketty and the Blagges between them will make him very comfortable indeed.'

  'And his daughters too?'

  'Ah, not so. Julian will be even more comfortable because his daughters won't be anywhere near Lark. Rina's going to try for Oxbridge in the autumn, which she should have done in the first place, and - wait for it -Blanche is going to Central School!'

  'Blanche - an actress!' Jemima was amazed. 'I don't believe it. Think of her disastrous audition as Nina—'

  'Ah, but Christabel was alive then.' Gregory could now speak her name quite calmly. 'Christabel who was determined her daughters should not rival her by following her onto the stage. Blanche always messed up anything to do with her mother hence The Seagull fiasco but when Ketty and I visited her at school, she did jolly well - so long as her mother wasn't in the audience. That's why Ketty tried to get her the part of Nina secretly, without her mother
knowing. No, the Cartwright girls are going to be perfectly all right.

  Major Cartwright was also going to be perfectly all right. For it turned out that he had had the brilliant foresight to insure the Larminster Festival specifically against the collapse, illness, breakdown or any other form of non-appearance of its star, Christabel Herrick, leading to cancellation of the Festival. No one could deny that Christabel's death constituted one form of non-appearance and it was equally undeniable that the entire Larminster Festival had had to be cancelled following the tragic events of the First Night. At least the Festival would not be showing a financial loss.

  'May actually make more money. May be better off than if we'd sold all the seats,' the Major told Jemima with gruff satisfaction. 'Confounded Festival generally runs at a loss. Been spared altogether this time.' It was clear that the Major felt that he had been spared more than just financial loss - several long evenings at the theatre had also been averted, when it would have been necessary, in the Major's own heroic phrase, to grin and bear it.

  Jemima dared to ask him why he had taken this prescient course. 'Unstable woman, my nephew's wife,' replied the Major. 'Drank too much. Eyes far too wide apart as well. Saw a good deal of that kind of thing in the war.'

  On the other hand, the Major had not exactly turned out to be the Substantial Older Man of Cherry's dreams. That is to say, on their parting, the Major had asked for Cherry's London telephone number: but he seemed to have in mind the sort of gastronomic forays which had so much enlivened Cherry's Bridset life (as well as threatening her nubile figure with dangerous new proportions) rather than installing her as the chatelaine of Larksgrange.

  'Used to know a little woman just like you in the Blitz,' he told Cherry in what for him passed for a sentimental speech. 'Like to tell you about her one day. What do you think of this place near the old Berkeley Hotel - Langan's Brasserie?'

  'It's very trendy,' answered Cherry cautiously.

  'Oh I know that, damn it,' the Major sounded impatient. 'Have to take the rough with the smooth. But is the food any good?'

  As Gregory stood beside Jemima on the beach, where the tide had now slithered out so far that he could no longer throw stones across the sea, he too, like the Major, brought up the subject of the future.

  'Maybe I'll come up to London more often. Lark is over for me. I have to find another hermitage - perhaps I'll find a hermitage convenient for the capital if such a thing exists. A commuter's hermitage. I might ask you out to dinner, Jemima Shore Investigator. Would you accept?'

  Jemima thought of their conversation in Gregory's cottage and gave her famous smile, the lovely wide deliberate one which made people of both sexes think she was a sweet person and fall in love with her on television. 'I warn you,' she said. 'Vulnerable I may be, but emotionally insecure I am not. Not in the slightest. And I've no intention of starting now.'

  'Oh don't apologize,' Gregory gave a grand wave of the hand. 'I was thinking of changing my type anyway. Keeping up with the times. Isn't it supposed to be good for one's art? You would know about that sort of thing.'

  He took her hand and found she was clutching a sea-shell. She had found it in the pocket of her red jacket. It was the souvenir cockleshell which Cherry had presented to her that first Sunday morning by the sea.

  Gregory bent and kissed the hand which held the shell.

  'Would you accept?' he repeated. 'I might ask you to more than that. Do you like France?'

  'Pre-revolutionary Paris?' enquired Jemima. She was still smiling but by now it was the unforced smile familiar to her friends.

  'Yes, if you like. Other things might follow. We could discuss that.'

  'Paris anyway,' said Jemima Shore.