I didn’t sleep much that night. I lay in bed wondering what I’d have done if I’d learned the truth while Nicky was still alive. I wanted to believe I’d have told him everything and given him the proof he craved of his father’s innocence. But would I? Would I really, when there was so much at stake? I was far angrier with Dad for covering up Gran’s responsibility for Michael Lanyon’s conviction than I was for his murder of Edmund Tully. I found that quite forgivable. I was almost glad he’d done it; glad the man who should have hanged in 1947
had gone on to meet a violent death and been buried in unhallowed ground. But murder was murder. To reveal one part of the truth was to reveal all. Maybe, even if Nicky could have heard me, I’d have stayed silent.
It was to reject that notion, to distance myself from what my own flesh and blood had done to his flesh and blood, that I left the hotel before dawn next morning and drove out to Idless. I watched a cloud-streaked sunrise over the enfolding green hills that rolled away beyond Bishop’s Wood towards St. Austell and ran it all over in my mind until I was sure what I had to do.
Then I rang Emma from the telephone box in the village. She sounded as if she wasn’t properly awake. But what I said soon roused her into alertness.
“Can you take the day off work and come down to Cornwall?”
“What? Just like that?”
“It’s important. Just about as important as it could be.”
“Well, I suppose I could go sick, but ‘
“Do it. Believe me, Emma, it’s vital you come.”
“All right, then.” Her voice altered. “I will.”
“There’s a train from Paddington at seven forty. Can you be on it?”
“Just about.”
“Buy a single to St. Erth. I’ll meet you there.” “St. Erth? Why not Truro?”
“You’ll understand when you get there. I promise you, Emma, pretty soon you’ll understand everything.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I’m glad you told me,” said Emma, squinting out towards the Atlantic rollers crashing against Chapel Rock. “I’m glad you felt you could.”
We were at Perranporth, late that cool October afternoon, a chill wind whipping in off the sea as we sat on the low perimeter wall between the car park and the promenade and watched the tide sliding in across the sand. The sky was grey and turbulent, but the past was a slate washed clean of secrets. She knew now. And through her knowing I’d made my peace with Nicky. “Thanks, Chris.” She laid her hand on mine. “It means a lot to me.”
“It isn’t a pretty story.” I reflected, as much to myself as to her.
The station car park at St. Erth; the muddy rides of Bishop’s Wood; the manicured gardens at Penmount Crematorium: we’d visited them all in the last few hours as I’d set out for her the dismal facts of her family’s tragedy. “But you had a right to hear it.” And she’d heard it all. I’d made sure of that. Her father’s innocence and my father’s guilt were clear between us. There was nothing left to hide. “Now you know the truth, Emma. What you do with it… is up to you.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know. You’d probably have grown up the pampered daughter of rich and doting parents but for us Napiers. We cheated you and Nicky, and we helped Tully murder your father. We’ve got a lot to answer for.”
“None of it was your fault.”
“But I gained by it. Gran was trying to look after the interests of the next generation, however misguidedly. I was part of her excuse.”
“What she did she did for her own reasons. If she was still alive, I’d want to make her suffer. I admit that. Tully too. Especially Tully.
But they’re both dead. It’s too late to go looking for revenge. Your father and brother-in-law are guilty of doing away with a man I’d have happily killed myself in the same circumstances. Am I supposed to hate them for that?”
“You could hate them for stealing your inheritance. We’re talking about millions of pounds, Emma.”
“Are we? Well, if the life I’ve led has taught me anything, it’s that there are some things more important than money.”
“Even so, it’s rightfully yours.”
“But to get it I’d have to persuade the courts to pardon my father. And they’re not going to, are they? There’s too much for them to untangle.
And too much embarrassment waiting for them if they try. Thanks all the same, Chris, but I think I’ll pass on that.”
“Maybe there’s an easier way.”
“How do you work that out?”
“It came to me while I was waiting for you at St. Erth. I mean, it lets everyone off lightly I realize, but…”
“What?” She turned to look at me.
“My father’s seventy-six years old. He can’t live for ever. I imagine I’ll inherit rather a lot of money when he dies.”
“So?”
“You’d be welcome to it. Every penny.”
“What?”
“I don’t want it. I’m not sure I ever did, really. And now I know I’m not entitled to it, well, why shouldn’t you have it?”
“You’re crazy.”
“We could have a legal document drawn up, transferring title to any bequest I receive from him to you, if that would set your mind at rest.”
“My mind doesn’t need setting at rest.” She stared at me incredulously, almost angrily. “You say you don’t want the money.
Well, frankly, I’m pretty hurt that you think I want it either.”
“But it belongs to you.”
“I’ll say this just once more, Chris. I don’t want it.” Her anger softened. She looked back out to sea. “Do you know something? I’ve never been to Cornwall before in my life. I’ve never dared to. I’m glad you forced me into it.”
“It’s where you should have been born.”
“That’s what Nicky used to say. He promised to bring me down here for a holiday when I left school. To show me all the places he remembered from his childhood. I think he hoped we could move down here together when I was too old for Considine to stop me. But by then…” She shrugged. “We could have stayed with Auntie Ethel at Nanceworthal to start with, I suppose. It might have worked out.”
“You still could,” I ventured. “She’d be overjoyed to discover I was cut off by the gentle pressure of Emma’s fingers against my lips.
“Don’t say it,” she murmured. “It’s too soon for that.” Her hand fell away.
“You could still come down here. For a holiday. Stay somewhere like this. I’ll pay.”
“We’re back to money again.”
“Only because I have some and you don’t. I’d like to show you Cornwall. Like Nicky wanted to, I suppose. It’s something I could do
-for both of you.”
She looked at me long and thoughtfully before she said, “It’s certainly tempting.”
“It’s quiet down here in the autumn. And beautiful too.”
“I am owed a week off.”
“Take it, then.”
“When?”
“After the inquest?”
She frowned. “You’re giving evidence at that, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t say anything about… all of this, will you? I mean, even if the idea crossed your mind … of bringing it into the open … I wouldn’t want you to. It’s simply not worth it. Besides, no-one would believe you.”
“No,” I concluded ruefully. “I don’t suppose they would.”
“What will you say to your father?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to hear his explanations and evasions. He had a chance to tell me the truth himself, but he chose to lie instead. As far as I’m concerned that pretty well finishes it between us.”
Our eyes met and she shrugged apologetically. “Sorry.” “Don’t be. I’m not.” “Really?”
“Well, not as sorry as I’d be if you didn’t let me treat you to a holiday as soon as the inquest’s behind us. What do you say?”
<
br /> “Maybe,” was what Emma eventually said, halfway back up the A303 to London that evening. I had to settle for a definite “Yes’ to Sunday lunch in Pangbourne the following weekend and the promise that she’d make up her mind about Cornwall by then.
I’d happily have driven her all the way to Battersea, but she insisted on finishing the journey by train. Her reluctance to accept help was easily explicable in psychological terms. She’d been taught from an early age that gifts came with strings attached, strings that could cut as well as bind. But it also lent her an air of mystery I was beginning to find attractive. I’d done what she asked of me out of a sense of obligation to Nicky, and now she asked no more of me. The end of our strangely vicarious relationship was in sight, but I didn’t want it to arrive.
As for the truth about her father, entangled as it was with the truth about mine, like her I could see no alternative but to let it lie. Dad would be wondering if I’d honour my pledge to him: I’m not going to give up. For the moment, I was content to let him go on wondering.
Eventually he’d conclude he’d read me right after all. But one day, I promised myself, he’d have a rude awakening.
All this, of course, assumed I was free to decide what was or wasn’t revealed. But that was a dangerous assumption, as Emma pointed out to me after lunch on Sunday, when I took her for a drive and showed her what was left of the workshop.
“You still have no idea who Pauline Lucas is?”
“None.”
“Or what she wants?”
“Not a clue. I thought she was involved with Tully, you see. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but nothing else seemed to fit. Now… I just don’t know.” I grinned perversely. “I think that’s why I need a holiday.”
Emma grinned back at me, but gave no other hint of her intentions until we returned to Harrowcroft. She asked if I’d salvaged anything from the wreckage of the workshop and I pointed to a box load of tools, some of them still fire-blackened, standing in the garage.
“This is all there was left?” she asked, stooping to take a look.
“All that was serviceable.”
“She did a thorough job, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then I think you’re right.” She straightened up and smiled. “You do need a holiday. How about Cornwall at the end of the month?”
And so it was settled. She’d take the week of the inquest off and find a small hotel or guest house to stay in somewhere a safe distance from Truro. I’d stay at Tredower House and spend the days with her exploring the Land’s End and Lizard areas. It would be her first real break from London in years and it was clear the prospect excited her, try as she might to disguise the fact. It excited me too, for a jumble of reasons I wasn’t ready to analyse. Her life in the shadows had left her so unsure of herself that she seemed younger than she really was, innocent and vulnerable, in need as I saw it of brotherly protection.
Only I wasn’t her brother. And I didn’t aspire to be. But I didn’t want her to walk out of my life either.
It was possible, I was soon to be reminded, that I needed protection more than Emma did. I’d hardly stepped indoors that evening after driving her into Reading to catch her train when the telephone rang and I found myself talking to the woman who seemed to have decided to become my tormentor.
“Pauline Lucas here, Mr. Napier. I got your message.”
“What message?”
“The one you left with Frankie at the Zenith Club. I gather you’ve been looking for me.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Nothing you do surprises me.”
“What do you want?”
“To meet.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“I mean it. Interested?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course. But if you want to speak to me face-to-face, go to Baker Street tube station at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Wait on the westbound platform of the Circle Line. Stand by the fire extinguisher cupboard halfway along.”
“Hold on. Why ‘
“If you’re not in that exact position at that exact time, you won’t see me.” She paused for a second before adding, “But if you are, you will.” Then she put down the telephone.
Baker Street at the start of a Monday evening rush hour was a crowded warren of stairs and platforms, the convergences of four different Underground lines producing a bewildering tangle of interconnecting passageways. I stood where I’d been told to, watching the trains as they rattled in and out, scanning the jumbled faces of the commuters as they surged on or off and glancing up at the footbridge linking the westbound and eastbound platforms. I waited patiently, knowing Pauline Lucas would keep her word in her own way and wondering what that way would be, aware of the people coming and going around me and the minutes till five o’clock steadily ticking away. I’d arrived early, naturally. But she, just as naturally, hadn’t.
A train pulled in just before five and pulled out again, leaving me momentarily alone, though almost immediately more passengers started flooding down the stairs to join me. I looked up at the clock and saw it register the hour. “Where are you?” I murmured under my breath. I looked further along towards the footbridge and the tunnel mouth beyond and let my gaze track back along the eastbound platform.
And there she was, exactly opposite me, smiling faintly and cocking her head as our eyes met. She was wearing a pale raincoat and looked like any other working woman returning home from the office, except there was no trace of the end-of-day dishevelment most of the commuters around her displayed.
“Hello, Mr. Napier,” she said, her voice carrying across the gap between us. “Nice to see you again.”
“Is this what you meant by face to face?” I complained. On most Underground stations I’d have been looking at a concave wall full of advertisements. Here the platforms faced each other and she could speak to me secure in the knowledge that she was out of my reach.
Behind her was a cut-through to the rest of the station. If I tried to cross the bridge to her side, she’d have time to slip away through the crowds to one of the other lines. She could dictate our parting as well as our meeting.
“I’m here, aren’t I? You can see me. And I’m listening.” So were several people around us, roused from their Evening Standards by the strangeness of the spectacle. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”
“I’d like an explanation.”
“Of your family’s recent misfortunes? Why should you think you’re entitled to one? After all, they were scarcely undeserved, were they?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean. You just can’t bring yourself to admit it.”
“Does this have something to do with Nicky?”
“Who’s Nicky? A friend of yours?”
“He was, yes.”
“Why the past tense?”
“Because he’s dead.”
“Really? How did he die?”
“I think you know.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“He killed himself.”
“Did he?” She glanced down the line, hearing, as I could, the approach of an eastbound train. Then she looked across at me again. “Perhaps you should take better care of your friends, Mr. Napier.”
“Who are you?”
But the train arrived before she could answer, even supposing she meant to. The doors hissed open and my view of her became a chaos of milling figures. I dodged back and forth, trying and failing to catch a glimpse of her. Then the train moved out and I saw her again, still standing in the same place.
“How does it feel?” she asked as soon as it was quiet enough to be heard. To suffer and yet not to know why?”
“How do you think? I worked hard to make something of my business.”
“Just like your sister worked hard to make something of her marriage.
And your parents to make something of their home.” She nodded
. “Oh, I believe you. I wanted each of you to miss what I took away.”
“Why do you hate my family?”
“I don’t. Not any more. It’s over. You haven’t suffered enough, but then you couldn’t, could you? That wouldn’t be possible without To my astonishment, her voice faltered and she looked suddenly distressed.
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