Before the Poison

by Peter Robinson

  I had known from the start that Heather was trying to set me up with Charlotte, but the odd thing was that it became clear as the evening went on that the real attraction was between Heather and me. Even Charlotte could see that. Derek, I’m not too sure about. Husbands can be remarkably thick sometimes, and my feeling was that Derek was thicker than most. Besides, the impression I got was that he saw only himself.

  I had to disappear into the kitchen a while later to plate the desserts, and I hadn’t been there more than a minute or two before I heard the door from the dining area swing open and shut behind me.

  ‘I thought I’d keep you company,’ Heather said. ‘They’re talking about the stock market.’ She made a face and leaned back against the fridge. One long strand of hair trailed over the front of her dress. She’d brought her drink with her, and she sipped some wine. ‘Do you like Charlotte?’

  ‘She’s very nice,’ I said.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘She’s very nice.’

  ‘You . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand you. This thing about Grace Fox. She isn’t real, you know. She isn’t a real, warm, living human being. She doesn’t need anything from you. There’s nothing you can do for her.’

  I had to get some ice cream from the freezer, and when Heather saw me coming closer, she held her ground and looked me in the eye. I could tell from her body language, the way she seemed to move, to open for me, that I could have taken her in my arms at that moment and kissed her. Our lips were that close, and I think she wanted me to. I think we both wanted it. I could smell the wine and game on her breath and feel her heat, the sparks jumping between us, the sap stirring. I was that close.

  You could say I bottled out, but her husband was in the dining room, and I was still a grieving widower. I’m no saint, but I’m not that much of a bastard, either. Heather obviously didn’t agree. When she saw that nothing was going to happen, she slipped away sidewards and headed out of the kitchen in a huff, towards the toilet, I guessed, without a word or a backward glance, slamming the door behind her.

  Back in the dining room with cheese and dessert, I noted that the atmosphere had changed, and I could tell that Heather was angry and embarrassed. She accepted a generous measure of cognac, as did Derek, though Charlotte turned it down, preferring coffee. Everyone was full, so most of the cheese remained uneaten. No matter; it would do tomorrow, along with the last sliver of pie. We heard the rain start pattering against the windows.

  Heather checked her watch. ‘Is that really the time?’ She knocked back the rest of her cognac and turned to her husband. ‘We really must be going. We’ve kept Chris up far too late already.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps he has a tryst with his ghost?’ said Derek.

  Everyone ignored that.

  They picked up their coats in the hall. Derek tottered a little, putting his on. I offered umbrellas, but nobody wanted one, the car they had all come in being just outside the gate, and the garden path sheltered by trees. Besides, it wasn’t raining very hard. Heather stumbled slightly as she headed down the uneven path, and I heard her and Derek start arguing about who was going to drive. Sensibly, Charlotte stepped in and took the keys from Derek. I waved as she drove them away and breathed a sigh of relief. That was one group I wouldn’t be hosting again in a long time. Then I shut the door behind me and leaned against the wood.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have turned Heather down. God knows, it had been a long time since I had felt a woman’s body warm and soft against me, and it wasn’t that I had no interest in her. But where would that kiss have led? A hotel room? An invitation to come with me to London and Paris? Afternoon delights here at Kilnsgate House? Either way it would mean deception, secrecy, guilt. The usual machinery of infidelity. No, I told myself firmly. I had done the right thing. If I was going to find another woman, I was going to find her on my own, and she wouldn’t be married to someone else. Magnetic attraction happens all the time – it’s a fact of nature, pheromones, or whatever – but it can be resisted, and resist it I would. The last thing I needed right now was to be stuck in the middle of someone’s marital problems.

  I thought about Heather’s taunt. Was I really in love with a ghost? Maybe I was, but it wasn’t Grace Fox’s, though perhaps somewhere in my mind I was mixing up Grace with Laura. After all, I had so little of meaning in my life – at least until this interminable cloud of grief passed and let the light in again – that my piano sonata and my ‘investigation’ of Grace Fox’s story had become the mainstays of my existence. Heather was jealous, I concluded. Simple as that. Jealous of a ghost.

  Perhaps it was the booze, but that night I had the most terrible dream I had experienced so far in Kilnsgate. When I awoke with a start at about half past two, my heart was hammering in my chest and I was covered in sweat, but I couldn’t remember what I had dreamed about that was so frightening. I lay for a moment, deep-breathing, trying to orient myself before getting up. I knew there was no point lying there. I had to do something, make some tea, watch a movie, anything.

  As I finally stumbled towards the stairs, I noticed that the door to the bedroom opposite mine, the guest room, was slightly ajar. I could have sworn I had closed it after my tour of the house, and I hadn’t been back there since. Puzzled, I wandered over and gave it a gentle push.

  I couldn’t be certain that I saw it, but just for a moment I thought I glimpsed a figure reflected in the wardrobe mirror. I knew it couldn’t be me because the angle was all wrong. It wasn’t a frightening figure; in fact, I had the impression that it was a beautiful woman in a long satin nightgown. She was standing still, as if deep in thought, or shock, staring at something, then suddenly she dashed away, simply disappeared.

  It was all over in a split second, and when I tried to piece it all together afterwards, I decided it must have been a carry-over from my dream. There were shadows in the old house. The curtains weren’t closed, so perhaps I had seen the reflection of a tree branch silhouetted by the moonlight? I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it unnerved me enough to make me switch the landing lights on before I ventured downstairs.

  I certainly didn’t want any more alcohol, so I settled on a cup of cocoa, a habit I had got into with Laura when we went to our cabin in Mammoth for the skiing in winter. Though there was no snow outside, the wind was howling, and the cocoa smelled and tasted good. I settled down in my viewing chair, tried to put the strange reflection out of my mind and started watching Diana Dors and a young George Baker in Tread Softly Stranger. The music was dreadful, melodramatic and instrusive, but the satanic industrial landscape more than made up for it.

  On Sunday, I drove into town just before lunchtime, bought three hefty newspapers, then headed up to the Shoulder of Mutton and enjoyed my roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in the cosy dining room. The place was filled with bric-a-brac on the shelves and in recesses around the walls: an old black telephone, a pair of binoculars, ancient spectacles beside a worn leather case, a possing stick just like the one my grandmother used to use, empty bottles of Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaujolais Nouveau 1999 and various other wines, and a painting of a Vins de Bourgogne shop and a Château d’Yqem poster. The rough stone walls were covered in framed prints and local landscapes for sale. A large group took up several tables pulled together, about three generations, by the looks of them, celebrating a grandparent’s birthday. The children were well behaved, but some of the older folks got a bit rambunctious after a couple of pints.

  I worked at the Sunday Times crossword and tried not to think too much about the previous evening’s social disaster, or the bad dream and its aftermath. It was possible that the former would all be forgotten when Heather sobered up this morning. But somehow, I didn’t think so. She would avoid me from now on, which might be difficult to do in such a small community. I wondered what Charlotte thought of it all, whether she would say anything, either to Heather or to me. She must have noticed the tension. Only time would tell.<
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  Squalls had blown in from the North Sea by the time I got home, so I spent the afternoon sprawled on the sofa in the living room reading the newspapers, Mahler’s Eighth on the iPod dock. It sounded a bit thin, and I thought I should invest in a decent stereo system. Mahler has plenty of meat on his bones, and he cries out for powerful amps and big speakers.

  Mother rang at about four to ask whether I was settling in all right. I told her I was and asked her when she was planning on visiting me. The only place she was going before the weather got better, she told me in no uncertain terms, was to Graham and Siobhan’s for Christmas. An old woman like her, she said, had to be careful. Just one nasty fall could put her out of action for ever. I told her she was as tough as old shoe leather, but she would have none of it.

  I read through the music, film and book reviews then nodded off over my still-unfinished crossword. When I awoke, I found myself, out of the blue, in a deep depression. It happened sometimes. I felt listless, hollow, sad and self-pitying. Moving around did no good; it didn’t matter which room I went into, I still felt the same. I knew from experience that there was nothing to do but weather it out, which took me the best part of the following two days.

  During that time, I didn’t care about my piano sonata, I didn’t care about Grace Fox, I didn’t care about eating or drinking, and I certainly didn’t care about Heather or Charlotte or Derek. All I cared about was my own all-consuming, all-enveloping sense of loss, guilt and misery, the years I felt I’d been cheated out of by Laura’s death.

  Even at the best of times, I couldn’t come to terms with losing Laura, with the three years of illness, the cycles of hope, remission and relapse, desperation and misery, and in the end, her death, as if it had been inevitable from the start. I couldn’t rationalise it the way some people did. I envied others their religion; I had nothing like that to make me feel better. I didn’t believe that we would be reunited one day and that Laura was waiting for me in heaven. I had no feeling whatsoever of any greater purpose or plan in what had happened, of any meaning in it, let alone any way it might be for the best, or that it had happened for a reason. I couldn’t even feel, as many of my friends suggested I should, that I ought to feel blessed to have known her for as long as I had, to be grateful for the wonderful years we had together, the good times. Grateful to whom? God? And why?

  Many was the day I had wished I could let go of my pain and anger, but I couldn’t. I grabbed on to memories like a drowning man would grab a log wrapped in barbed wire just to stay afloat, to stay alive, and the barbs skewered into me and fuelled my rage and pain.

  But now I didn’t even have my rage and pain, just a numb sort of nothingness.

  In retrospect, I don’t know what I did with my time. Probably nothing at all. I suppose I wallowed in self-pity. I saw the future, when I saw one at all, as a huge gaping emptiness, days to be got through rather than lived, survived rather than enjoyed. I could have been anywhere – Santa Monica, Bournemouth, Leeds, London, Paris. Location didn’t matter. The only relief was sleep, which came fitfully and at odd times. There were no dreams to console or distract me. If the strange night noises continued through all this, I didn’t hear them.

  And then, on Tuesday morning, it was gone almost as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun. There may have been a catalyst. In my desperation, I put on Doctor Zhivago, which for many reasons is my favourite movie of all time. I thought it might at least relieve the despair for three hours or so.

  The scene where Komarovsky takes Larissa to a posh restaurant while the revolution is brewing in the snowy streets outside has always been one of my favourites because it reminds me of the first time I ever saw Laura, and even this time my numb mind was drawn in by the images, the music and silence, the colours, the contrasts. And the memory.

  I was in Milwaukee to talk at a convention, and I was staying at the lovely old Pfister Hotel, sitting in the lobby bar – all polished wood and brass – enjoying a pre-dinner whisky and a cigarette – you could smoke in such places back then, and I did – watching the heavy snowflakes drift down outside, when this vision suddenly spun through the revolving doors and floated towards me.

  She was wearing a full-length fur coat and matching hat, and when she took the hat off and shook her hair, a few snowflakes fell on her face and started to melt. I wanted to lick them off. Her smooth cheeks were flushed red from the cold, and her eyes were bright blue. As her blonde waves tumbled free around her shoulders, I found myself, without even realising what I was doing, uttering, ‘Lara.’ I thought I had said it under my breath, but immediately she looked in my direction, smiled and said, ‘No, it’s Laura, actually.’ Then she disappeared around the corner towards the elevators. Wrong movie.

  I saw her again later that evening, after I’d been to a boozy dinner with fellow conventioneers, and I felt sufficiently emboldened to approach her. I can hold my liquor as a rule, so I don’t think I made an ass of myself – at least she agreed to have lunch with me the following day – but it was months before she finally admitted to me that she had known exactly what I meant when I said, ‘Lara.’ Doctor Zhivago was one of her favourite movies, too, and she remembered the scene, the combination of old-world luxury, dancing, polished oak, etched glass, brass and the falling snow, then the blood, the horses, the glinting blades, the furs.

  Somehow or other, the memory of that Milwaukee winter’s night drove away the black dog. I won’t say that I immediately started jumping for joy, but bit by bit, as when your arm’s gone to sleep, or you get a cramp in your foot, life slowly started to come back into me.

  First I felt hunger, so I ate some bread and cheese, then I realised I needed a shave and a shower, and after that I had a burning desire to get out of the house, go for a walk. By the time I’d been up to the racecourse and back, I was ready to take on the world. Not that the world knew or cared. Instead, I spent about three hours at the piano and sketched out a part of the adagio that had been troubling me for a week or more, a long, sad, slowly unravelling melodic line in B flat, and for the first time I didn’t hate what I’d written when I played it back.

  That was enough for one day, I thought, exhausted. I opened a bottle of wine and contemplated the contents of the fridge for dinner. There wasn’t much. Just a little leftover game pie. Take it slowly, I told myself. Step by step.

  The next thing was to ring Bernie Wilkins in London. If anybody could help me to find Sam Porter, Bernie could.

  6

  Famous Trials: Grace Elizabeth Fox, April 1953, by Sir Charles Hamilton Morley

  The dinner was supposed to be a joyous celebration of the new year, 1953, and of the prospect of a new position for Dr. Fox at a hospital near Salisbury, a prospect that would mean moving out of Kilnsgate House and all the way south to Wiltshire. As was their custom, Grace and Ernest Fox had invited two of their closest friends to dinner on Thursday, 1st January: county Schools Inspector Jeremy Lambert and his wife Alice. This was something they had done every New Year’s Day since the war ended. Sometimes another couple, the Lynleys, joined them, but this year they were on holiday in Italy. Hetty Larkin, Grace’s regular maidservant, had agreed to handle the cooking and cleaning-up duties, as usual. Though rationing was still very much in force, those who dwelt in the country had a distinct advantage over town and city folk, and no doubt Ernest’s contacts with the Dales farmers from before the war years and beyond ensured that his larder was always full, and that fresh meat, fruit, butter and vegetables were plentiful.

  A plain Yorkshire lass from plain Yorkshire stock, Hetty Larkin was not an adventurous cook, but she was reliable, and that evening she produced a simple but excellent meal – a menu suggested by Grace Fox herself – of roast beef, mashed potatoes, roast parsnips and Brussels sprouts, along with a dessert of rhubarb pie and custard. Dr. Fox was known to keep an excellent wine cellar, and a significant quantity of claret was enjoyed by the two men, in particular.

  As was usually the case at such gatherings, young
Randolph was given a light meal early and packed off to his room. Already, at the age of seven, a keen reader, Randolph there spent some time reading William and the Tramp, which he had bought with his Christmas book token from his Aunt Felicity on a trip to Leeds with his father the previous day, then the boy fell fast asleep.

  Downstairs in the music room, Grace serenaded her guests with the third Schubert Impromptu before dinner was served, and then the group adjourned to the dining room before a blazing fire. Alice was first to notice that it was snowing outside, but nobody thought any more of this as they sat down to dine, snow hardly being a rare winter occurrence in the Yorkshire Dales. Conversation ranged over such events of the previous year as the king’s death and the new queen, whose coronation was due later in the year, the recent atomic bomb tests in Australia, and Sir Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest.

  According to Alice, Grace chatted animatedly about her favourite films of the year, The African Queen and Singin’ in the Rain, and enthused over Barbara Pym’s latest novel Excellent Women, while Ernest explained the importance of the first mechanical heart to Jeremy. In other words, it was a perfectly ordinary evening in a perfectly ordinary English household. There were no arguments witnessed between Grace and Ernest Fox, though Alice Lambert did mention later on that there seemed to be more than the usual tension and distance between them. Otherwise, all seemed harmonious and in keeping with the spirit of the season. The new job was only vaguely alluded to, and according to Alice Lambert, Grace Fox showed no reaction at its mention.

  During the trial, however, the prosecution managed to get Hetty Larkin to admit to having heard Dr. and Mrs. Fox arguing twice during the course of the week leading up to the dinner. On the first occasion, a Tuesday evening, Hetty thought she had heard Mrs. Fox tell her husband that she ‘couldn’t let him do it’, which the prosecuting counsel swiftly interpreted to mean she couldn’t let him leave Yorkshire for Wiltshire. Later, on Thursday afternoon, Dr. Fox had seemed angry about a letter he insisted was private, that his wife had somehow tampered with.