by Lorna Gray
“How exactly did Jamie die, John?” My voice was still possessed by that light unearthly tone; my body felt remote and alien as if I was merely an onlooker to a play and it seemed so numb as I took another step nearer that I actually had to question whether it was me that was moving at all. I gave my mind a shake and concentrated hard on keeping the creeping chill of shock at bay. “How did he die?”
Reminding myself that I knew how to breathe, I kept my gaze steady in a passable parody of a stare as John blinked and opened and closed his mouth a few times. He managed to sound relatively calm, however, when he answered, “How on earth should I know? I wasn’t there, was I?”
“Oh, but you were, John.” Behind him I saw Matthew stir slightly and felt my stomach tighten into an unhappy knot as his hand gave a tiny quiver. Get up, please. Please just get up I urged silently, wondering how long I might be able to sustain this madcap confession before someone thought to stop it.
It very nearly happened in the next moment when the Colonel climbed out of his daze at last. “Don’t be idiotic, girl,” he snapped. “John was in a meeting with Bates, our accountant.”
I said weakly, “And does your accountant happen to work at 42 Norfolk Street, Gloucester?”
The Colonel looked utterly blank; although I was sure I saw a jolt run through John’s body. Beyond him, Matthew’s hand tightened to a ball upon the close-cropped grass but the Colonel was speaking again and I had to drag my attention hastily back to the old man’s face.
“But Bates isn’t from Gloucester. His office is in Cirencester; the Market Place, Cirencester. What on earth is the foolish girl wittering on about? John?”
John turned to him with a hapless shrug that reasserted control and dismissed me in an instant, “I don’t know, Father. Perhaps she’s taken a knock to the head. Croft’s attack must have addled her brains, poor thing.” He turned to me again and gave a sympathetic smile before speaking very slowly as if he were speaking to a child, or an idiot. “I’ve told you this once before, Ellie, if you recall. I was in a meeting all that afternoon – with Bates – and it has been investigated perfectly thoroughly. Your friend the Inspector told me so.”
“Oh?” I asked politely. My voice was tight and very high. “Well, do you know what the Inspector said to me? No? He told me that he had two witnesses; that he had taken two statements – one from a Davey Turford and one from Simon – and that they were the only people who were at the scene. But what did you tell me?”
“What?” he asked patiently. “What did I tell you?” And passed a conspiratorial wink to his father.
“It took me a while to remember, but then I had a long time to think in that lorry, didn’t I?” A gust buffeted me and I had to wait a moment while my lungs snatched for another breath. But then I managed to finish. “I think I quote accurately when I say that you told me you ‘saw Jamie’s body and it was savage’. Just when exactly did you see him, John?”
John stilled and I felt the sudden tug as Matthew’s consciousness focused on me for the first time.
“Eleanor …”
The sound was nothing more than a hoarse whisper cracked with strain but I could not look at him, I didn’t dare. I kept my whole being focused on John. I said, “And before you say that you saw his body as it was being taken away by the undertaker, I’ll remind you that you specifically told me that no one was allowed near the site once the police had arrived.” John snapped his mouth shut again into a tight angry line and, mercilessly, I forced my point home. “So when exactly was it that you saw Jamie’s body? Can you answer that, John?”
He couldn’t. He just stood there, staring at me while his father paled and swayed a little.
For an age nobody moved. We stood motionless while rain stung our faces and somewhere a gate shuddered and slammed shut like a pistol-shot. John was staring at me as though I were something very nasty indeed.
Sir William was the first to speak. “You promised me it was Croft. You promised me!”
“Well of course I did,” John snapped impatiently and the barrel of the gun flashed in the light from the window as at last he tore his eyes from my face and turned them towards his uncle. Sir William was eyeing the weapon warily as John approached the foot of the steps. “I knew you were too much of a stickler for the rules to let that one pass, no matter how much your pocket might benefit.”
“John…what have you done?” The Colonel’s voice was so weak that it didn’t carry beyond a whisper. Rain flung itself across the paving slabs between us like a shower of hard pellets.
Oblivious, John leant against a stone pedestal. “Just a little bit of work in the art business, nothing special.” He idly brushed the mossy grime from his sleeve. “A gentleman of my acquaintance had taken possession of some artwork in need of a new home but lacked the means of disposing of it properly. I was only too pleased to relieve him of it – it was an excellent arrangement, and will prove very lucrative.” He looked up and gave his father a little smile. “Richard can keep his end up with the other officers now, Father.”
“But I…I don’t understand.”
“It really is very simple, you know.” John spoke cruelly. “Our family is bankrupt. The Langton name is worth absolutely nothing. You and your other son swan about like royalty while I spend every second scrabbling about trying desperately to stop the ceaseless haemorrhaging of money. I certainly wasn’t going to pass up a perfectly harmless business opportunity.”
“But it wasn’t harmless, John. A man died!”
Sir William broke in. “I lent you my barn, I covered for you!” Where before excitement had drawn his features into betraying an altered form of hunger, now he looked horribly like he was going to be sick. “I didn’t sign up for that.” His hand wafted whitely in the direction of the man who was still lying there half collapsed in the growing cascade of the steps. As we watched, Matthew slowly dropped his forehead to rest upon his clenched hand and took another very deep breath.
But the Colonel flinched and turned jerkily to his brother. “You knew?”
John laughed. “Of course he knew, Father. Who do you think provided the perfect alibi for my men while they guarded the hoard? He’s been paying their wages!” He laughed again, although no one else found it remotely amusing.
There was a distant murmur that might have been a car but it was swallowed in a savage whiplash of air that smacked across the terrace. I glanced urgently at Matthew but he was gingerly pressing a hand to his temple and didn’t see.
“And what about your alibi? What about Bates?” The Colonel looked like he would have liked very much to have sat down.
John shrugged, indifferent. “It wasn’t hard to leave him – I just had to arrange for the housekeeper to fuss around him with a light tea. All he thought was that I had taken a business call in your office. A rather lengthy telephone call it is true, but he didn’t question it and I had quite long enough to take my chance and slip away for a little while.”
“To see Jamie…” The Colonel was staring sightlessly.
“The stupid fool didn’t have a single honest bone in his body.” John did not appear to appreciate the irony of this statement; “That was your mistake, Uncle, for treating him like your pet charity case and allowing him to settle there. All he had to do was keep his head turned the other way but the idiot man got greedy and actually tried to auction one of the paintings. Perfectly predictably, it was recognised and the damned fool very nearly brought the police down on all our heads.”
I glanced at Matthew again but he was watching John carefully as he eased himself slowly up onto his knees.
“I went to see him.” A hapless smile. “Jamie had actually called me you see, he actually came clean as if he expected me to give him a pat on the back and have a good laugh about it for old time’s sake, but it finally seemed to dawn on him that he was in rather a lot more trouble than that. And then he told me he’d talked to that one. I only wanted to scare him.” He looked up to his father and the tragedy of it was, I could see t
hat he was telling the truth. “It didn’t occur to me that he would actually die. But somehow it got out of hand. It only took a moment; he barely even struggled.” There was a terrible silence, then John added, “Of course he was supposed to be caught in the act so to speak and neatly tidy up the loose ends, but you got away, didn’t you? Like a worm you wriggled free.”
He rounded on Matthew and spoke sneeringly, “And just where have you been hiding all this time? Down a rabbit hole?”
Matthew returned his glare impassively. But then, in an incriminating lapse of concentration, his gaze unconsciously flicked beyond the other man. In an instant he realised what he had done and looked hastily away again but it was too late. John’s eyes widened as he slowly twisted to face me.
“You? You…you lied to me?”
I flinched under the force of his revulsion before swallowing and finding my voice. I said quietly, “You’re not the only one who has discovered a talent for stretching the truth.”
John stared at me for a moment through the blurring sheet of driven rain; a long, silent stare that drove a chill to my core before, with a particularly unpleasant smile, he suddenly thrust himself away from the stone pillar. Mud splashed under his feet as he started up the steps; I felt my heart painfully miss a beat as I unwillingly took a step backwards. I found myself pressing back against the cold hard wall of the house and shrank there, quivering, but he didn’t come any closer. He had stopped just below his father who was staring at him as if he had never met him before. I felt an unexpected pang of pity for the old man.
“I did it for you, you know,” John said quietly. “It was always for you. I just wanted you to be proud of me. Only you never are, are you? You’re always running off after your other son.”
The Colonel stiffened. “Why do you persist in dragging his name into this? He spent half of the past year in and out of hospital. Richard’s injuries very nearly ended his career!”
John nodded slowly but then his lips curled into a malevolent leer. “And that would have made two of us. I knew you’d never be able to bring yourself to thank me. Why should you when I’ve only single-handedly dragged the Manor and therefore my dear brother’s inheritance out of the hands of the debt-collectors.” The Colonel squared his shoulders at this insolent speech but John ploughed on regardless. “Did you really think I was going to stand his steward for the next ten years while he drifts about planning wars and good marriages just so that you can hand it all to him on a plate when you finally get round to meeting your maker? I don’t believe it was particularly wrong of me to want a little independence of my own, a little nest-egg to set me up in the world. You can’t do anything for me can you? The younger son who never made anything of himself – why, you all but disowned me years ago!”
“His inheritance?”
The question stopped the tirade in its tracks. I saw a spasm flicker across John’s face as he re-ran his father’s words in his head and began to work out the connotations, and the possibility of a mistake. He floundered. “I …”
Unwittingly, my eyes moved beyond to where Matthew was still kneeling in the drowning grass. He was staring up at John with wearied concentration but he must have felt my gaze touch upon him because he blinked and suddenly his eyes flicked to mine in a little glance that seemed to communicate all the force of his mind in one intense, heating second. But then his gaze returned watchfully to John’s pale face and I felt anew the icy chill of apprehension.
The Colonel was staring down at his son with something of the grit appropriate for a military veteran, although the purple tinge was noticeable absent, and it made him look very ancient indeed. “So you’ve decided to take matters into your own hands, have you? And now there’s a second death; how do you plan to justify that?”
There was a tense little pause before Sir William said weakly, “But he said Croft killed him.”
“Are you really that idiotic?” The Colonel rounded on him nastily, a trace of colour beating a return to his haggard cheeks. “He said Croft’s gun killed Hicks – that gun in fact – not the man himself. Your age-old enmity towards that family has made you a pawn in his hands throughout this ridiculous scheme; and you’re still falling for it. Do you honestly still believe that there is more than one murderer amongst us?”
Murderer. There was an ugly silence in the wake of that. No one had been brave enough to voice it before.
Then John said quite calmly, “He’s right, you know. I thought you’d already guessed.”
“But why?” Sir William’s voice wavered, distraught and utterly confused. “Hicks was a good man. My good man. Why did you have to kill him?”
John gave one of his charming smiles but his eyes were sombre. “It’s all Croft’s fault, you know. You have to understand that I never meant for Jamie Donald to die, but once he had I thought it would all work out well enough when this man here conveniently set about incriminating himself. But the days dragged on and I realised that in spite of my best efforts, he was not dancing to quite the right tune. Then, just to crown it all, I found that our damned idiot Inspector was beginning to tire of the hunt and I knew it might not be long before he started to question the line I’ve been feeding him so carefully. It was perfectly obvious that something had to be done; what else was I supposed to do? Just sit by and watch all my hard work dwindle away to nothing?”
In the brief hush I searched in vain for the wished-for car but nothing penetrated the chaos of the shuddering landscape. I turned my eyes back to the group again and caught a glance from Matthew. It was meant as a question and we shared a brief flash of grim urgency which touched his face to shadows. He readied himself to rise but even I could see the numb weakness of his limbs.
John was smiling again. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I wanted to leave irrefutable evidence that Croft was the culprit and what better way to do it than to use his own gun? It may perhaps smack a little of desperation, but Hicks knew too much anyway and now that he’s dead, there is no one left who can lead the trail to me.”
Sir William made an odd noise that was a sort of cross between a choke and a squeal. “To you? To you? No, but there is a trail that leads to me, isn’t there, John? Good God, did you plan that too, just in case Croft isn’t enough? Is that why the police are suddenly reviewing my alibis? Because they think I did it?!”
His voice had risen to hysteria and John gave a sharp laugh. “Don’t turn squeamish on me now, Uncle. I’ve engineered conclusive evidence that Croft is their man; the police won’t even think to question it. We just need to keep our nerve and follow it though, and by this time next month we’ll be rich men. Rich! Why, even as we speak, the artwork is gently sailing its way to America ready to mark a change for all our lives.”
Behind him, there was a blur of wet turf as Matthew made an attempt to stand but his foot slipped uselessly from beneath him and he had to throw out a hand to catch himself. It looked like it must have hurt. My tangle of creepers crackled beneath my hand.
“If we finish it now, really finish it I mean; if we put Croft down once and for all, no one will ever know. Heavens, given the family he comes from, it’ll practically be an act of mercy.” John waved a hand carelessly in Matthew’s general direction as if to illustrate his point. “The girl will keep quiet – she and I have an understanding that will see to that – you'll work your usual charm and the police will be satisfied, the case will be closed and no one need ever realise just how close the Langton family came to the brink of ruin.”
I almost laughed at this easy assumption of complicity; I had never known before what it was to truly hate. Then, above the steady pounding of my heart, I heard the sound of a car, a faint whisper of a motor carrying on a shriek of wind, and this time I was certain I saw a brief flare of headlights touch upon the heavy streaks above us. A fresh burst of hope brought a comforting breath of warmth to my frozen limbs and it lingered even as I drew my gaze back to meet the next stage of John’s ugly persuasive argument.
&n
bsp; “All we have to do is dispose of him. Give one final push now and by this time next week our ocean liner will have docked at Boston, the auctioneers will have met it and our artwork will be waiting to make the Langton family a truly staggering amount of money.”
Warmth dissolved into horror as John’s expression suddenly cleared to decisive action. With a wide unashamed grin, he turned sharply on his heel to march back down the steps; the gun glinted alive and hungry in his hand as he came to a halt at the edge of the lawn. Matthew must have been making one last concerted effort to stand because his hand was braced upon his thigh but even as he readied himself to make the final thrust, he looked up. The long black barrel lowered slightly in a tiny adjustment to its aim.
“No, John.”
For a moment I thought it was my voice that had cut desperately across the scene but it wasn’t. I found myself suddenly standing next to the Colonel where my frantic feet must have carried me and I watched dumbly as, with a gentleness that must have hurt terribly, the old man fixed his son with an expression that was entirely devoid of its usual hauteur. His hand was trembling slightly by his side as he spoke again “I forbid it.”
John hesitated. I thought I saw him suppress a little shudder. The storm buffeted him, tugging at him and challenging his stillness. Then he turned again and looked up at his father with what can only have been stupefaction.
“You forbid it?” This change of tack had shaken him, I could clearly see.
But the Colonel’s pride must have stepped in again at the sneer that was purely a front, because instead of maintaining this new sense of caring reason, the Colonel squared his shoulders and fixed his son with a new frowning stare. His posture now regained its parade-ground stature and when he spoke, it was with his habitual bullying force. “I do. I will not permit you to do this. Put the gun down and come here.”
John actually swayed. I thought for a brief moment that he might obey but then the gun twitched angrily and I was suddenly very afraid indeed that John might shoot his own father. If the Colonel feared the same, he didn’t betray it; he just stood stiff and tall while the gale snatched at his clothing, and stared down at his son in an unimaginable battle of wills.