Seven Steps to Murder

by Benjamin Ford

  I possessed – so she said – my mother’s luminous eyes, and as she grew to know me over the coming months, also my mother’s mannerisms and more of her personality traits than Julia felt I should, considering that I hadn’t been anywhere near my mother for most of my life.

  She told me in great detail about how much Annie and Albert had loved one another, and how terribly distraught Annie had been at Albert’s death. She said that something snapped inside my mother’s mind when she learned of her beloved husband’s death, right at the end of the war. It was a sentiment Julia felt compelled to echo in her continued belief that there was something not quite right about the reports concerning Albert’s death.

  Julia wouldn’t hear a bad word said about Annie, and the more she spoke of my mother, the more I began to understand that my mother had been forcibly kept from me – first by Herbert Waterfield, and then by his brother, Annie’s second husband.

  They would both pay for this.

  Through Julia I came to know of Julian Simmons. My mother – according to Julia – had frequently made light of the fact that Albert’s commanding officer during the war had practically the same name as her old school-friend. Julia felt he might know more about what happened to my father.

  By this point, my plans had started to half form in my mind, and since I didn’t want anyone else to know my connection with Albert and Annie, I persuaded Julia’s daughter – with whom I’d started to fall in love – to go and speak with him.

  I don’t know how she managed it, and I never asked – alcohol, a flash of ankle (or perhaps a little more) – but she unearthed more than I could have ever dared imagine. Through Julian, Anne – Julia’s daughter had been named in honour of her best friend – managed to get in touch with Ahmed Rashid, but he was a little less forthcoming with information.

  Between them, there was enough detail forming to form a picture of what had occurred during those last few days of the war.

  What pity I felt for the situation Rashid and Simmons found themselves in was overwhelmed by fury for their inaction in the events that led to my father’s murder.

  I felt anger and resentment towards Cuthbert Waterfield, the man whom I felt had kept my mother from me all these years.

  I felt resentment towards Grandmamma for making no attempt to reconcile with my mother, and so also keeping us apart.

  My hatred for Herbert Waterfield was the strongest of all – the man who had cold-bloodedly killed my father.

  Anne tried her best to calm me. She proclaimed her love for me – a love that we consummated on her mother’s bed one afternoon, only to be interrupted when Julia returned home early.

  Any compassion she’d felt towards me vanished in an instant. Julia vehemently denounced the love Anne and I had for one another and forbade us from seeing one another again. Julia called the police when Anne and I ran away, although the police of course did nothing, since Anne and I were both of age. We were married in Gretna Green, just like my mother and Cuthbert.

  In her jealous maternal outrage, Julia disowned her daughter.

  It was like history repeating itself all over again.

  Anne and I fled Scotland, making our way to London with every intention of reconciling with my mother. Whether she liked it or not, Annie Waterfield was my mother; she had a daughter-in-law, and now a grandchild on the way.

  We arrived too late outside the Waterfield residence, just as my mother’s body was brought out. Dr Runcible followed the stretcher, and naturally those of us that were there wanted to know what had happened.

  When I learned that my mother had died and that the doctor had done all he could to resuscitate her, I knew the old quack had just been grossly incompetent. He should have been able to save her.

  My desolation was complete. All I had now was my beloved Anne, pregnant with my child.

  -5-

  I must have wept and wailed for weeks afterwards. It was foolish of course: to weep for a mother I had never known; a mother I had initially despised. But those feelings were fading fast. I think in truth those feelings began to disappear after my first encounter with Julia Hardcastle – Julia Symonds that was. I might have hated my mother-in-law at that moment, but I had much to thank her for.

  And when I’d finally come to terms with my grief at my mother’s death, my wife and I returned once more to Scotland, not to see her mother, but to return to the house where I’d spent my unhappy childhood.

  With Christmas fast approaching, and the birth of my first child imminent, just as the snows came that year, so too came that delivery – addressed to my late Grandmamma – of the journals of Annie Cunningham.

  Since Grandmamma was no longer with us, I opened the package, reading with interest the carefully scribed letter from Mrs Annabel Draper.

  -6-

  Dear Mrs Cunningham,

  Firstly, might I say how very sorry I am for the loss of your daughter.

  I know that you and your daughter parted bitterly, but Annie always spoke of you in glowing terms, albeit infrequently, and I feel certain from the things she told me that she fervently hoped to one day reconcile with you.

  It saddens me greatly that she didn’t get the chance to do so.

  I first came across her journals a number of years ago, quite by chance. It was clear to me that she kept their existence hidden from her husband, Mr Cuthbert Waterfield. She found me reading them one day, and although I thought she would be furious, I think she was relieved that someone else knew of the terrible things she endured.

  You will understand when you read them, and I pray that you will not judge me too harshly for not telling you of them before now. I promised darling Annie that I would send them only upon her death, and true to my word I also promised I would speak to no-one of her terrible heartache.

  She had few regrets in her life, but one was not retrieving her son at an early age from your charge, and another was for having ever become involved with Herbert Waterfield. Were it not for him, she would surely have met some other deserving man following poor Albert’s death, and she would have had more children, which of course would have meant that Wilberforce would have had siblings with whom to grow up.

  Of course, had that been the case, I most likely would never have had the opportunity to meet Annie, and to write to tell you what a wonderful daughter you had.

  I hope you find some cold comfort from the words in Annie’s journals, and hope you put them to good use. The very last entry is one I put in myself.

  Forever your friend,

  Annabel Draper

  -7-

  Naturally I was curious about the journals. I knew so little about my mother, and what I knew was hearsay. So to actually read my mother’s innermost thoughts and feelings was bewitching and exciting.

  And downright depressing.

  I grew to hate Herbert Waterfield with a vengeance by the time I reached the end, and I hated Cuthbert who was damned by my mother’s own words. Were it not for his fervent insistence that he had no desire to be a father, that leaving a legacy to children was not in his plans for the future, then I feel certain my mother would have come for me.

  I admired Mrs Draper’s belief in her promise to my mother, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling an increased anger at the woman who could so easily have stepped in and brought mother and son together. And of course there was her final entry in my mother’s last journal. The one in which she writes of seeing Herbert coming out from Annie’s room in a very suspicious manner just a couple of hours before my mother’s death. From this, I can only surmise that she believed Herbert had administered some kind of poison which ended my mother’s life.

  I am certain that had we met under proper circumstances, Cuthbert would have taken me to his heart – but sadly I was never afforded that opportunity.

  I loathed Major Julian Simmons and Ahmed Rashid for playing their part in keeping the truth surrounding my father’s death a secret. On the one hand I could understand their reticence, given the
ir own personal circumstances, but damn it – a man had been murdered: my father!

  I despised Dr Runcible for being so inept that he couldn’t save my mother.

  I hated my mother-in-law, Julia Hardcastle, for the way she so callously cut herself off from her daughter, and her new grandson named Albert – after my father.

  Through all this, I had my beloved Anne, who had borne me my son and heir.

  My heir who, through what I’ve read in my mother’s journals about the way the Waterfield family legacy was inherited and passed on down to the next generation, could possibly inherit everything.

  I made my plans for revenge. I knew I could tell no-one, least of all Anne. She’d try to stop me – and probably quite rightly.

  I was planning revenge, for all the wrongs that had been done to Annie and to Albert, and to me, and at the end of it all, my son would be very wealthy indeed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I stare dispassionately down at Waterfield as he struggles for breath, prostrate upon his bed. I feel no remorse for what I have done. In his dying eyes, I can see both loathing and regret.

  But it’s too late now for regret.

  “You lured each of us here with the intention of killing us?” gasps Waterfield.

  I nod with barely concealed pride. “It wasn’t difficult. It was really quite fortuitous of Mother to find the old copy of Country Life, don’t you think? The one from a decade ago, in which she saw the advertisement for this very house. I sent the copy to her, with the advertisement highlighted. I thought then that she and I would finally be reconciled, and I thought that this house would make a perfect place to live, where as a family we could be away from all the horrors of her past.

  “I sent it to her anonymously the week before she died, with the intention of bringing the subject up when I finally got to meet her. Of course, that never happened because I left it too late.”

  I sigh deeply with regret. If I’d only had the courage to take the magazine to her in person then her death might have been prevented.

  “You can imagine my delight after I learned you had chosen to buy the property yourself. When I conceived the idea for my revenge on you all, it made things so much easier because I knew I could destroy the steps leading up to the house and strand us all here, and then pick you all off one by one.”

  “But you’ll be found here,” croaks Waterfield with a misplaced hint of triumph. “There’s no way off this rock!”

  I laugh at his stupidity. Does he really think I haven’t planned things to the very last detail?

  “Oh but there is, Cuthbert.” I see his dimmed eyes light up suddenly, and I know what stray thought has passed through his mind. “Oh don’t be so ridiculous. I know you’re thinking of the imaginary secret tunnel. I put that idea into everyone’s heads so that they’d all be scrabbling around looking for it, making it easier to eradicate another victim.”

  I move to prop him up on the bed in a more comfortable position.

  “Mrs Hardcastle was easy to get rid of. I was relieved that she seemed to want nothing to do with me – it made it easier to pretend we didn’t know one another. She had to die of course, even though she did ask how her daughter was. It was too little, too late. When she tried to steal your fabulous Fabergé egg during that first night, I caught her on the steps and we struggled, and then she fell. Or did I push? It’s so difficult to decide. I’d already planned to destroy the steps with a secreted sledgehammer and a number of partially sawn through struts. It was as easy as that – although not without risk to myself. In fact, over the weekend I’ve taken a lot of risks.”

  “But my Fabergé egg is still downstairs. I saw it earlier. I’d have noticed if it was missing.”

  I cannot help but laugh. Amid all the death and mayhem I have caused, he’s more concerned with his precious Fabergé egg.

  “Naturally it’s still there, because I put it back where it belonged. It was my mother’s after all. I wasn’t about to let my light-fingered mother-in-law steal it, any more than I was about to let it be smashed upon the rocks below. And I couldn’t risk you noticing it was missing or you’d have insisted upon a complete search of all our rooms, and you might have found me out.

  “But I digress. I brought a selection of poisons with me. My wife works in a dispensary, so it was relatively easy to get hold of them when she and her colleagues were celebrating her last day of work before leaving to have our baby. Poisoning the food was easy, although it was pot luck really who would eat what and die quickly or slowly, and some of the knives were coated with curare – though not, it would appear, the one with which I cut you.

  “I procured Herbert’s service revolver from his house a few months ago. I knew he wouldn’t report it stolen at his house was also filled with ill-gotten gains. I took a great risk, shooting Rashid when I did. I had the gun on me all the time, not knowing whether I might use it or not, but then Rashid started blubbing because he thought I was going to expose his secret to everyone, and he started speaking of Julia’s death and I thought he must have seen me, so I shot him, hoping no-one was watching, and tossed the gun across the floor. Quite handy that Herbert appeared at the top of the stairs, so it was easy enough to point the finger at him.

  “Herbert must have cut himself on one of the curare coated knives, which had the added bonus of paralyzing him. When I went into his room and pronounced him dead, he was actually still alive – just. I positioned myself quite carefully to prevent anyone in the doorway seeing what I was doing, and I stabbed him. I didn’t need to use much force as he was completely unable to defend himself, and I fancy that as I stood over him, he actually recognized who I am.

  “Runcible had a slow acting poison running through his bloodstream. He felt the full force of it quicker than anticipated due to his weak heart, and then of course poor old Major Simmons: he really should have laid off the whisky.

  “And Mrs Draper died with a good old fashioned knife to the heart.

  “Which leaves just you and me. You’re not looking too good, I must say, Uncle Cuthbert. I don’t think you’re long for this world now.”

  “You won’t get away with this, Wilberforce. You’ll be traced here. Your fingerprints are everywhere. There are the invites that were sent out.”

  I laugh once more. “Really, Uncle, you mustn’t concern yourself with such things. I’ve been very careful about what I touch in this house whilst I’ve been here, and I have wiped my fingerprints as I’ve gone. As for the invites – I sent them all with a Post Restante address. Naturally I didn’t send one to myself, so there’s no reply from me. I didn’t know how many or how few people would show up. How gratifying that they all came!”

  “How do you intend to get hold of the family fortune?”

  “Easy really. My father’s name is on my birth certificate. It’ll be easy enough to prove that I really am the son of Albert Waterfield and Annie Cunningham. No-one in your family knew of my existence, but plenty in Scotland did, and they knew who my parents were.”

  I lean in close as Waterfield draws his last breath. “Now I don’t want you to take any of this personally: I’m just taking back for my son what should have rightfully been his!”

  With those words, Cuthbert Waterfield dies, and I am alone at last in this accursed house.

  I stand slowly, walk around the room and pick up the photo of my mother that rests on Waterfield’s bedside table. How foolish I have been to harbour such animosity towards my mother all these years. I should have seen through Grandmamma’s cruelty so many years ago, but I was blinded by my love for her.

  I have only two regrets in my life.

  The first is that I never got to know my mother.

  The second is that my grandmother died of natural causes.

  If I’d known about all her lies and deception, she would have been first on my list. Who knows how the events of the past few days might have played out had I reconciled with my mother earlier.

  Perhaps none of them would hav
e died – I cannot say.

  Grandmamma made such a terrible mistake, making me believe her lies were in fact the truth, although Herbert made the biggest mistake of all by killing my father, and then later, also killing my mother.

  There’s still an uncertainty that it was he who killed Annie, but all the facts indicate his guilt, and with his history of cold blooded murder – not to mention violence towards her – I feel certain the guilt lies squarely with Herbert, and so he deserved to die for his sins.

  The others played their part too, and so I feel no guilt at my actions. What was the old adage I frequently heard Grandmamma saying: What goes around comes around.

  I walk the rooms and hallways of West Cliff House admiring my handiwork. I am proud of my cleverness. I have left not a single clue: I have been careful in the extreme to ensure there are no fingerprints. I cannot believe that no-one saw me wiping everything I touched.

  I freeze momentarily, fancying that I can hear voices from somewhere up above, but I know that it’s my overactive imagination.

  I came to this house with a heavy heart, knowing what I must do before the weekend is out.

  I leave the house with barely any weight lifted.

  I know what I must now do, and it doesn’t make me happy. I have made certain that my plans will be rewarded with my son inheriting the Waterfield fortune. I have made certain my darling Anne knows nothing of what has transpired here this weekend. As far as she is aware I have been visiting friends; I didn’t tell her which friends, and she didn’t ask.

  I know there is only one way off this rock.

  I return up the stairs to Waterfield’s bedroom, barely casting a glance at his deceased body as I cross to the French doors. I open them and step out onto the balcony, refreshed by the cold rain.

  Carefully, I clamber up onto the edge of the stone balustrade, staring down at the rocks dizzyingly far below, upon which the ferocious waves crash and spray foam.