by Hazel Holt
“No, no,” I said, “I’m fine. It’s just—I must go now else I’ll never get lunch on time.”
At the far end of the room Delia was still singing: “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
I got into my car and drove down to the seafront. As I sat there, staring at the expanse of unmarked sand, left wet by the retreating tide, I allowed myself to think the unthinkable thoughts that Rosemary’s chance remark had prompted. I had a picture of David shaking sweeteners into his coffee. It was all too possible ...
Motive? There was that in abundance. The sale of the house was his last chance to save his own beloved home and to build a new and promising career. Only Francis (and Nana?) stood between him and what he so desperately wanted. Means? He had spoken of visiting his old friend, kept under sedation. There would be medication around ... Opportunity? Well, Francis went out of the room twice while David was there; it would have been easy to put the tablets into the indigestion mixture. The strong peppermint flavor would have disguised any unusual taste. It would have been so easy. The police had suspected him immediately: he was the obvious suspect. It was not inconceivable that the obvious suspect might be the right one.
Far in the distance a man and a woman were walking across the sand, tiny figures, abstract entities, hardly identifiable as human beings. Only as they came nearer was it possible to see them as actual people, to realize that they had feelings and emotions, were capable of thought and action. Delia’s song was going echoing in my mind. “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” But life isn’t a dream. Life’s not a walking shadow. Life is real, life is earnest, life is an incurable disease ...
The figures on the beach came up the steps and onto the promenade and I recognized them as an elderly couple I knew from the Music Society. They saw me in the car and waved in greeting. Automatically I waved back. David was my dear friend. I had known him all my life. I would trust him with my life. He was the kindest, gentlest, most generous of creatures, incapable of hurting a living soul. There was no way he could commit even a minor crime against another human being. And yet ... If the motive was strong enough, who could be sure that they would not find the temptation too great?
My mind was going around in circles, getting nowhere. Because I knew I didn’t want it to arrive at a conclusion. I started up the car and drove home.
David came into the hall the moment he heard my key in the lock. His face was troubled as he moved toward me and took my hand in his.
“Sheila dear, the most terrible thing has happened. Adrian’s tried to kill himself. He’s in hospital now—they don’t know if they can save him.”
Chapter 20
Oh God,” I said, “what have I done!”
“Darling, what do you mean? This is nothing to do with you.”
“Yes, yes.” I broke away from him in agitation. “I confronted Adrian about Judy and the child and I asked him about Francis’s finances. Don’t you see? He must have known that I’d go on digging, that I’d find out that he killed his father!”
As I spoke, I realized that Adrian’s act, terrible as it was and implying a dreadful crime, had released me from my agonizing speculations about David’s possible guilt. There could only be one explanation for Adrian’s attempted suicide. I tried to pull myself together.
“I’m sorry, David, I was being hysterical. It’s just that I’m so afraid I might have pushed him too far.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. Look, sit down. Do you want a cup of anything? A drink?”
I shook my head. “Oh, poor Joan! This on top of Francis’s death! Did she phone? How did you hear?”
“Mary rang. She was just going back to the hospital, Joan’s still there, of course. They found him—well, Joan found him, I’m afraid, this morning. He must have taken the tablets last night.”
“Tablets? What tablets?”
“Aspirin, I think, some sort of massive overdose.”
“Aspirin?”
“Yes, why?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“Well, they got him to hospital and pumped him out. But they may have been too late, he’s still unconscious.”
“Oh God,” I said wearily, “this is a wretched business.”
David leaned forward in his chair. “You think Adrian killed Francis in case he found out about this girl and the baby and made life hell for all of them?”
“Yes, I do. And I believe there’s something fishy about those shares and all Francis’s business dealings, and if there is then Adrian must have been involved—Francis would have worked through him, don’t you think? And Adrian wouldn’t have dared to protest. Now that Francis is dead all that’s got to come out, so Adrian’s firm is going to find out that he’s been doing shady deals for his father. And that means he’d lose his job—might even be prosecuted.” I sighed. “No wonder that overdose must have seemed the only way out.”
“Poor boy,” David said gently.
“And no wonder,” I continued, “that he told Judy to forget he ever existed. He didn’t want her to be dragged into all this. Oh dear, no one else knew of her existence in his life, there was nothing to connect her to him, and then I turned up! It may have been the one thing that pushed him over the edge!”
“No!” David said firmly. “You’re not to think like that. If he was going to kill himself he’d have done it anyway, it was nothing to do with you. If he’d killed his father! Well!”
“You may be right, I don’t know. It’s just that I feel so guilty.” I got up from my chair and began to walk about the room. “I wish we knew how Adrian is. I suppose it’s no use phoning the hospital?”
“They’ll only say he’s comfortable or something. Anyway, I expect Mary will ring when there’s any news,” David said soothingly.
I suddenly thought of something. “I wonder if he left a note?” I asked.
David shook his head. “Mary didn’t say, but then she didn’t say much at all—just the bare facts.”
“I expect she was too upset to go into any details.” I stood by the window watching the white clouds drifting slowly across a brilliantly blue sky. “It’s a really beautiful day,” I said. “That seems to make it worse, somehow.”
“ ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun,’ ” David quoted softly. He got up and came over to the window and we both stood there in silence for a moment.
“I think I would like a cup of coffee after all,” I said. “How about you?”
“Good idea.”
Moving about the kitchen making the coffee helped a little and I was grateful too when Foss, coming in through the cat door and bellowing for food, diverted my mind. He jumped up onto the worktop as I was cutting up some cooked chicken, impatiently trying to scoop a piece from under the knife with his paw.
“All right, all right,” I said, “I’m being as quick as I can.”
Urged on by his strident cries, I put the saucer of food down on the floor and went back into the sitting room with the coffee.
“Here we are then.” I handed David his cup and he put it down on a small table while he fished in a pocket for his tube of sweeteners.
“You are being good about those things,” I said, thinking how a short time ago they had taken on such a sinister aspect. “Have I weaned you off sugar entirely?”
David shook a couple of small tablets into his cup. “Absolutely,” he said smugly. “Even in the face of temptation!”
“Oh?”
“Yes, that day when I had tea with Francis, he put a couple of lumps of sugar in the cup of tea he poured for me, but even then I didn’t succumb!”
“What did you do?”
David looked complacent. “Ah well, Francis had to go out of the room to see someone just after he’d poured the tea—before he’d had time to put sugar in his own cup—so I just changed the cups around and put sweeteners in the one he’d poured for himself and had that.”
‘You did what!”
David looked at me i
n surprise. “What’s the matter?”
“Don’t you realize what you’ve just said!” I almost shouted.
“What? What do you mean? What’s all the excitement about?”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “When Francis came back—he drank the tea? The cup he’d put sugar in?”
“Yes. Yes, he did. Of course he didn’t know it was that cup—he put another couple of lumps in. It must have been very sweet, even for Francis.”
“Of course! That would have hidden any taste! David, why on earth didn’t you mention all this before?”
What taste? Mention what? Sheila, darling, have you gone completely mad or have I?”
“Think about it,” I said. “It wasn’t Francis who was supposed to die.” David looked at me in bewilderment. “Who, then?”
“You, you idiot!”
“But who’d want to ... Oh my God!”
“Exactly.”
“You mean, Francis put morphine in my tea to try and kill me?”
“It must have been liquid morphine on those particular lumps of sugar,” I said, trying to work it out. “Quite easy to manage, he could have put them to one side before you arrived so that he knew which ones they were. It all falls into place! Naturally, if Francis had been the intended victim, then the glass of medicine would have been the obvious place to put the poison, which is why we all focused on that and didn’t think of the tea! And, of course, all the tea things had been washed up before anything happened to make people suspicious.”
“I wish,” David said irritably, “you’d stop theorizing as if this was just an academic exercise! Damn it, I’ve only just taken in the fact that someone’s tried to kill me. Believe me, it’s a shaker!”
“Oh, David, I’m sorry. But you do see ... Anyway, if only you’d told us straight away about switching the cups then we’d have known immediately what had happened and you’d have been spared all this police suspicion!”
David shrugged. “I’d completely forgotten it until you went on about the sweeteners. I mean, it was something so trivial, and we all took it for granted that it was Francis who was meant to be killed.” He paused and then shook his head in bewilderment. “But why should Francis want to kill me? I mean, we didn’t get on, but there are limits!”
“Well, he’d obviously got into really deep water financially, perhaps not just his own money, but cathedral funds as well. I think he needed all the money from the sale of the house, not just his share.”
“Good God.”
“It was his last resource, you see. He’d used everything else—probably all Joan’s money as well. He must have been desperate. Think of it! To have his fraudulent dealings exposed—no longer to be a dean, probably no longer a clergyman either! Francis, who gloried so much in his position, was so scornful of all lesser mortals! And to be spread all over the tabloids, too, like that poor wretched bishop. He couldn’t have borne the humiliation.”
“But why didn’t he just ask me?” David said. “I’d have helped somehow.”
I smiled pityingly. “Can you imagine Francis admitting—to you of all people—that he’d failed in his financial dealings? The one thing he was supposed to be so brilliant at! And, anyway, Francis didn’t understand generosity. It would be quite beyond his comprehension that anyone could be capable of that sort of unselfishness.”
“But murder! It’s unbelievable!”
“You were right,” I said, “when you said it was like a Jacobean tragedy. Fratricide is particularly Websterian, and by poison too!”
“But then,” David said, “what about Adrian? Why the overdose?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure he knew about the money, so perhaps he suspected about the murder too.”
“Oh God.”
“So that when Francis died, he knew his suspicions had been right but that something had gone terribly wrong. No wonder he broke down like that.”
“But look,” David said, “if Francis was going to poison me that teatime, surely he’d have been the main suspect?”
“Not really. I think he must have got the dose of morphine wrong. I imagine the idea was that you’d come back here and die quietly in your sleep. Death from natural causes. Besides, what possible motive could the dean of Culminster have for killing his brother?”
David sighed. “I’m sure you’re right, but I still can’t take it in.”
“Come to think of it, if Francis had judged the amount of morphine correctly then he would have died in his sleep instead of being discovered in a coma and rushed to hospital, and it’s just possible that no one would have thought of murder.
David sat back in his chair. “So what are we going to do? Tell the police?”
“I think we must, don’t you?”
“I don’t like the idea of being the one to, well, bring disgrace on Francis ...”
“David! This is no time to be quixotic! He tried to kill you, for God’s sake! Anyway, I have a feeling that other people in the cathedral are beginning to get suspicious about the money. I’m afraid there’s no way of saving his good name now—even to spare Joan and Mary.”
“I know what you mean, darling,” David said reluctantly, “it’s just that I wish I didn’t have to be the one to do it.”
I got up to clear away the coffee cups and as I was taking them out to the kitchen the phone rang. It was Mary.
“Just to let you know that Adrian’s all right and they’re letting us take him home.”
“Thank God! Oh Mary, I’m so glad!” I paused. “Do you know,” I asked tentatively, “what happened?”
“Why he did it, you mean? No, not really. He didn’t leave any sort of note and he’s still very weak, so we can’t talk to him about it yet.”
“No, of course. Give my love to your mother. How is she?”
“Still very shaken, but very relieved—you can imagine.”
“Yes, well, if there’s anything we can do ...”
“Well, actually there is. I don’t know why, but Adrian’s insisting on seeing you and David right away. We tried to make him wait until he’s stronger but he got so agitated ... He said it was a matter of life and death. Does any of it make sense to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think it does. Look, I’ve just got a phone call to make and then we’ll be over right away.”
Adrian was sitting up in bed looking pale and drawn, which was not surprising, but also quite calm, which was. David and I sat down on the chairs that Mary had put on either side of the bed. David looked at me inquiringly and I began.
“We’re so glad you’re all right, Adrian. I’d never have forgiven myself if anything had happened.” He made a movement to speak and I continued quickly. “We know about your father. We know about his financial difficulties. We know that he tried to kill David. It isn’t a secret you have to keep any longer.”
Adrian gave a great shuddering sob and buried his face in his hands.
“It’s all right, Adrian,” I said gently. “It’s all over.”
He looked up imploringly at David. “I didn’t know he was going to kill you—it was, well, just some of the things he said, about settling things and the situation changing, that made me wonder. Part of me couldn’t believe that he’d do such a thing, but part of me ... Oh God, I should have said something! You could have died. But I was so afraid of him! When he died I couldn’t think what had happened, how it had happened, I was so relieved, but so guilty at feeling relieved. You can’t imagine! I was free of him at last, but with this terrible secret. How can you ever forgive me?”
David laid his hand on Adrian’s. “It’s all right. I understand,” he said.
Adrian went on, the words tumbling out now as if he couldn’t tell the whole story fast enough. “It wasn’t only that. I’ve let them down, too, Mother and Mary. The money’s gone. Father made me break Mother’s trust so that he could get at the money—now that’s all gone, too. And that’s not the worst! There’s money from the cathedral funds—I don’t know how muc
h, I never knew what he was doing there—there’ll be the most terrible scandal!”
“Yes, we guessed that,” I said. “That was why he needed all the money from the house sale, wasn’t it? That’s why he needed to kill David?”
“That wasn’t the only reason,” Adrian said. He paused and then brought out the words painfully. “He’d signed the contract to sell to this developer—he forged your signature, Uncle David.”
“But”—David looked bewildered—“he told me that the time wasn’t right to sell.”
“That was to keep you away from the whole business until he ...”
“Until he could get rid of me?”
“Yes. I suppose that was when I realized what he meant to do.”
“That was the step too far,” I said. “There was no going back after that.”
“I didn’t feel I could bear to live with myself,” Adrian said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and emotion. “There seemed to be no way out. And then there was Judy and Robbie—I couldn’t bear Judy to know what I’d done. I wanted to give them a clean break so that they could get on with their lives without my awful ... without what I’d done overshadowing them.”
“It was very wrong of you to try and take your own life,” I said. “Judy is strong, she has the right to know and to make her own decision.”
“But I must tell the police,” Adrian said vehemently, “and the cathedral authorities—the treasurer is suspicious, I think. I may be prosecuted. I can’t ask her to forgive all this.”
The door opened and Mary put her head around.
“The visitor you told me about, Sheila, has arrived. Shall I show her in?”
I nodded and looked at David and we both got up and went toward the door as Judy came in. She went over to the bed, looked down at Adrian and said, “You really are a complete bloody fool!” Then she put her arms around him and laid her cheek against his hair, stroking it as he cried as if his heart would break.