The Night Book

by Richard Madeley

She stopped his lips with her fingers, the same fingers she had placed on Cameron’s brow. Seb’s mouth felt extraordinarily warm by comparison, and his breath moistened her fingertips.

  ‘I’m fine, Seb. Pretty much still in shock, but basically I’m fine, honestly. I’m not going to pretend to be the grieving widow, certainly not with you. You know how I felt about Cameron. I hated him. I still do. The fact that he’s dead doesn’t change that one bit.’

  Seb took her by the hand.

  ‘Come and sit down over here. Look, they’ve brought us some tea. Would you like some?’

  ‘I’d kill for it.’ Perhaps I already have, Meriel reflected.

  How much was she going to tell him? She needed time to think.

  When he’d finished pouring the tea, Seb put his hand on her knee.

  ‘What happened? Can you talk about it?’

  Meriel came to a decision. She simply must buy herself some time.

  ‘Well . . . a little. I don’t think I’m ready to go through it all again just yet. The police went over and over and over it with me yesterday. I realise they had to, obviously, but I’m drained. You’ll need to give me a few days to recover my balance.’

  He reached for her hand and brought it up to his lips, kissing her fingers one by one.

  ‘Of course, of course . . . Look, I know something of what you went through. I was at the police press conference this morning. I—’

  ‘I know. I was listening. Just the sound of your voice brought me some comfort, some sanity. But you sounded very shocked. Did you honestly have no idea who it was who had drowned?’

  ‘No. When they said your husband’s name I almost fell off my chair. It never crossed my mind it would be him.’

  Seb paused. ‘Don’t answer this if you don’t want to, Meriel, but . . . did what happened yesterday have anything at all to do with . . . well, us? You know . . . your decision to leave him?’

  Meriel was beginning to realise that Seb had an uncanny knack of cutting straight to the heart of things.

  She hesitated, before saying: ‘I will tell you everything about what happened yesterday, I promise, although, as I say, I need some time. But yes, I did tell Cameron that I was going to leave him. I said I wanted to leave that very evening.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  She chose her words with care. ‘Well . . . he wasn’t happy about it. He . . . he told me he’d make any divorce extremely difficult, and very public. Threatened me, I suppose. Then he went for his swim. He told me to think it over. I told him to go to hell. Something of a prophecy, you might say.’

  Seb stared at her. ‘Did you tell the police any of this? That you’d had a row?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  She drank some of her tea.

  ‘It was the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen, Seb. So sudden, too. One second he was paddling around the boat, giving me nasty little sarcastic waves, the next he’d just vanished. I have no idea why. He never normally went below the surface; he didn’t like getting water in his ears, he said.

  ‘And then suddenly he was back again, all . . . all . . . oh God, Seb, it was dreadful. I threw him a lifebelt but he was . . . he was . . .’

  Seb moved closer to her on the sofa and gently cupped her face in his hands.

  ‘Shhh, now. Don’t say any more. You’ve been through enough. Including just now, for God’s sake, here at the hospital.’

  Meriel shook her head. ‘That was all right, actually. I was quite surprised. I’ve never seen a dead body before. I was expecting it to be ghastly, but it felt almost . . . normal. But it’s strange, even though I saw him die, right there in front of me, I can’t quite believe he’s gone. All morning while I was getting ready at the house I kept wondering if it was all some kind of weird dream, and that he would suddenly come back in through the front door. Seeing him lying there just now was a bit like waking up to reality. I’m actually glad I agreed to come and identify the body. It feels like a full stop.’

  Suddenly she stared at him.

  ‘Talking of reality . . . why are you really here, Seb? Did the station send you, to offer me support, as that woman said?’

  He pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands before answering her.

  ‘Up to a point. Which is another way of saying “not exactly”. It’s a bit more self-serving than that, I’m afraid.’

  Seb told her about his conversation with Bob Merryman.

  When he had finished, Meriel calmly drank what was left of her tea.

  ‘That’s the business you’re in, I suppose,’ she said at last, putting the cup down. ‘At least it means you could be here and we could see each other. Don’t feel guilty about it. But what do you think I should do?’

  ‘What, in terms of making some sort of statement for broadcast?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll do whatever you think is best.’

  Seb nodded. ‘In that case, I’ll be straight with you. Make a statement. The office can transcribe it and release it to the press – on the understanding that you’re left strictly alone from then on. No doorstepping you at Cathedral Crag, nothing like that. We’ll broadcast an edited version so that the one we give the papers has extra exclusive material to keep them quiet. It should get them off your back, for now at least.’

  He touched her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. It’s shabby stuff, Meriel, I know, but I’m afraid it’s just the way these things work.’

  To his surprise, she kissed him.

  ‘Thank you. For being straight with me. Anyway, if I have to say something I’d rather it was to you than anyone else.’

  He sighed. ‘Yeah, bloody Bob bloody Merryman said as much, damn him. It makes me feel so cynical, though, Meriel. All I want to do is scoop you up and take care of you.’

  She smiled at him. ‘There’s time enough for that . . . although we’ll have to be careful for a while, won’t we?’

  He nodded. ‘We will. Bob had something to say about that, too.’

  She looked startled.

  ‘What? But he can’t possibly know that we—’

  Seb interrupted her. ‘Don’t worry; he doesn’t know anything. No one does. But Bob’s nobody’s fool. He clocked us getting to know each other at River House on Saturday. I told him nothing happened and that we left separately, but he just said something about “that old trick” and warned me off. Said if the press finds out we’ll both be sorry. I’m afraid he has a point.’

  ‘You’re not saying we can’t see each other! I couldn’t bear that!’

  ‘Of course not. It’s simply as you said – we’ll have to be careful, at least for the time being. We’ll work something out, I promise.’

  He gathered her into his arms again, and kissed her comprehensively.

  ‘I’m yours forever, beautiful Meriel. Never doubt it.’

  Meriel’s statement went down well generally, with both press and public. It was brief and dignified. She did not go into detail about what had happened on the lake, but spoke of her shock and her difficulty in coming to terms with her husband’s sudden death.

  At Seb’s suggestion she raised the question of an outright swimming ban in the Lake District until the heatwave ended, pointing out that such a measure would have probably saved Cameron’s life.

  She paid tribute to her husband’s career and business success, his dynamism and his dedication to their eleven-year marriage.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to say that she loved him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Muriel and Seb had managed to see each other several times since the drowning. Sometimes she would come to his flat in Warwick Road, always after dark but wearing enormous Sophia Loren-style sunglasses all the same, which she jammed onto her nose as soon as she’d parked her Mercedes in a nearby side-street.

  They usually watched late-night television together, cuddled up on the sofa after Seb had cooked them supper in his little kitchen, before going to bed. Their lovemaking, they both agreed (in a kind of astonished mut
ual gratitude), just got better and better.

  If he was due on the breakfast show production team, Meriel would leave the flat with him in the late-August pre-dawn, and drive straight back to her house above Derwent Water.

  On the evenings Seb was on the late shift, putting the following morning’s programme together, he usually finished soon after midnight. His car would be pulling into the drive of Cathedral Crag before one in the morning.

  Neither of them felt any guilt about sleeping together at Warwick Road, but both experienced a certain awkwardness at first about sharing a bed in Cathedral Crag. Especially Seb.

  ‘I know this is going to sound weird, but somehow I feel as if I’m being disrespectful,’ he told her after the first time they had made love in her bedroom. ‘I know you never slept with Cameron in here but we are under his roof, aren’t we? And his funeral doesn’t even take place until next week. I feel like . . . well, I feel like he’s watching us, almost, here in his house. It’s spooky.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Meriel told him. ‘It’s almost as if his spirit is still here, isn’t it? I feel it too. I’ve heard people say that when someone dies, it takes a while for their presence to fade from the fabric of the place they once lived in. But I’m damned if I’ll feel guilty because, well look, Seb, we have to see each other, don’t we? And I can’t keep coming to Warwick Road, it’s too risky. We’re lucky no one in the flats above yours has spotted me before now, arriving or leaving.

  ‘It’s much more private here – Cathedral Crag is completely secluded and I’m the only one in the house. But listen; I’ll make you a promise. As soon as the funeral’s over and the will’s been sorted out, I’ll put this place on the market. So this is only for the time being. But yes, you’re right – Cameron was never in here.’

  Apart from when he was searching through my bloody things, she thought to herself.

  Her own searches – for the photocopies of her diary – had proved fruitless. Meriel was certain she’d gone through every drawer and cupboard in the place. She’d looked under table-tops and chairs, indeed any surface that might have something craftily taped to its underside. She had shaken open book after book and looked inside every vase and pot in the place, but she had drawn a comprehensive blank.

  There were two safes in the house, one in the master bedroom where Cameron had, of late, slept alone, and the other in a small attic room. Both were hidden behind sliding wooden panels and both were opened by stout steel keys. Meriel knew where they were kept; inside an innocent, dusty china vase that stood on a little table in one of the smaller spare bedrooms.

  But the safes didn’t contain anything beyond the obvious – some UK currency, French francs and US dollars; hers and Cameron’s passports, a few documents relating to investments, and a copy of the joint will they had drawn up early on in their marriage. The original was now with lawyers and they had told Meriel that she would be granted probate shortly. She stood to inherit everything.

  She was surprised that Cameron had made no attempts to control her from beyond the grave, in the form of a will that bristled with restrictive codicils and conditions. Perhaps he would have eventually got around to that, in time – when he was older, or if he had become terminally ill. But he hadn’t expected to die any time soon. The will was unaltered.

  The day of the funeral arrived and Meriel felt nothing but an enormous sense of relief. She just wanted the thing over and done with.

  She’d deliberately kept it a low-key affair. Both Cameron’s parents were dead and he had no siblings, so the only mourners had been Meriel herself and a handful of her husband’s business associates. After the briefest possible ceremony at the county crematorium, Cameron had been consigned to the flames. A few press photographers had hung around the crematorium gates, but all the cars had swept past them at speed and Meriel made sure her own limousine had blacked-out windows. None of the pictures had made any of the morning papers.

  Much later that same day, Meriel slipped into Seb’s flat. She had her own key now and she let herself in.

  After they wordlessly embraced, she kicked her shoes off and sank down with him on the sofa, gratefully sipping the enormous brandy he handed to her.

  ‘Christ, I need this. What a day.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘You know, I used to think I’d married Ebenezer Scrooge. But now I reckon he was more like Jacob Marley.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well . . . there was no one today to mourn Cameron, just as Dickens wrote that there was no one to mourn Marley. Oh, a few of Cameron’s commercial contacts showed up but I’m sure they were only there to do a bit of business . . . again, exactly as Scrooge did at Marley’s funeral.

  ‘I, of course, the unloved and unloving wife, was there to go through the motions . . . but that was it. Honestly, Seb, it was so sad. What a horrible way for a person to end up – utterly alone. Spiritually, I mean. Not a soul in the world who gives a damn about you. I almost felt sorry for him. In fact, I’d rather not talk about it any more, if you don’t mind. It’s too depressing.’

  Next morning Meriel made another exhaustive search of Cathedral Crag for the hidden photocopies. Again, she drew a blank. She knew they had to be somewhere in the house, but she’d completely run out of ideas. She could only hope inspiration would strike her at some point. If she ended up selling Cathedral Crag before finding them, she’d simply have to trust that they would remain hidden indefinitely. Anyway, there was nothing more that she could do, and she told herself she had more pressing concerns.

  Such as the inquest.

  Dr Timothy Young arrived in his little office behind the courtroom before nine that morning; earlier than usual for him on the day of an inquest. He didn’t want any surprises unfolding in front of a massed media today. Not in his courtroom; not if he could help it.

  He wanted to go over the case notes one more time before opening the hearing into Cameron Bruton’s sudden death. This inquest was going to be crammed with newspaper, radio and television reporters. The previous evening John, his clerk, had installed a temporary row of plastic chairs in front of the venerable polished oak press bench.

  Now the coroner carefully sifted through the various witness statements, until he came to the wife’s account of what had happened on the day of the drowning.

  He carefully read through the neatly typed paragraphs. This must be the third or fourth time he’d done so, he reflected. So what was it? What was niggling him, nagging at the edges of his consciousness like a restless question mark?

  He shook his head. However hard he tried, he just couldn’t put his finger on it. The woman’s statement seemed clear and logical enough. There were no gaps or contradictions that he could see.

  And yet . . . and yet . . . a lifetime’s experience in medicine and then the law was whispering to him, telling him something was out of joint. But what?

  The coroner sighed and pushed the documents away. Perhaps whatever it was that troubled him would somehow crystallise later, when the widow – he noticed she had signed her witness statement in her maiden name of Kidd, and dammit, that was somehow odd, too – presented her evidence from the witness box.

  Meanwhile, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that there was another itch he wanted to scratch and it was nothing whatsoever to do with the facts of this case. He had a thoroughly unprofessional impulse to simply set eyes on this woman. By all accounts she was a beauty.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his clerk tapping on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  John Armstrong entered carrying a small tray with two mugs of steaming coffee and a little silver jug of hot milk.

  ‘Just time for a bevvy, sir, before we start. You said you wanted to open proceedings at nine-thirty sharp.’

  The coroner nodded. ‘Yes, I know that’s a bit ahead of our normal start time but I’d like to wrap this case up by close of play today, John. I think there’s a ri
sk of it turning into something of a media circus and I’d really rather it didn’t carry over into another day, in this case Tuesday – it’s the bank holiday weekend tomorrow let’s not forget.’

  His clerk gave a short laugh. ‘You’re right about it being a circus, sir. It’s packed to the rafters already. Most of Fleet Street’s finest are here, squabbling over who sits where. I’ve had to intervene twice now to restore order.’

  He added milk and sugar to their coffees. ‘Mind you, it’s even worse out there on the pavement – I’ve never seen so many photographers, and there must be at least three TV camera crews. I had to order them all back from the entrance. They’re a bolshie lot and I was obliged to get quite salty with them, as my old man would’ve said, before they’d shift.’

  Dr Young grinned. He didn’t think even the most hard-boiled news reporter would be impervious to the salty quality of Armstrong’s tongue.

  ‘What about the witnesses?’ he asked, stirring his coffee. ‘All present and correct?’

  ‘Yes sir, all here, safe and sound. The couple who were on the tourist boat, the police officers on the launch, and that GP who happened to be passing and who pronounced the gentleman dead. The widow too – she’s just arrived. My word, I must say that Miss Kidd’s quite a looker, if you’ll pardon my saying so. No wonder we’ve got so many press photographers here. They’re like bees round a honeypot. She looks more like a film star than an agony aunt.’

  The coroner nodded, sipping his coffee.

  ‘Yes. So I’ve been told.’

  Seb had managed to grab one of the chairs that now formed the temporary front row of the press bench. It was insufferably hot in here; outside the sun continued to burn unblinkingly from a cloudless sky. The little dais where the witnesses would sit had been provided with a small electric fan and a jug of iced water, as had the coroner’s raised desk. The rest of them were simply going to have to sweat it out.

  Seb had been with Meriel at Cathedral Crag the night before. She had been awake for most of it, full of anxiety about today’s hearing. She had told him almost everything that had happened that fatal day on Ullswater – all except the part about the Rolex, and her calculated delay in throwing Cameron the lifebelt.