‘Until . . .?’
‘Until he found out that his mother was . . . was “entertaining” Thayer and his friends in the hotel at Bray.’
‘She must have been mad!’
‘She was mad by all accounts. She was a dope fiend and she liked . . . and she liked sex.’ She spat out the word. ‘She was a nymphomaniac.’
‘Oh God! And Oliver found out?’’
‘No, he did not find out. He was told. Hoden, who preferred little boys to vamps, wanted to do something horrible with him and he refused. So Hoden taunted him; told him he was . . . he was a whore and his mother was a whore. Told him everything.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Oh yes! . . . oh yes! But he didn’t believe what had been said about his mother so he ran to the hotel where she was staying and found . . . and found her in bed with Stephen.’
‘And what did he do?’ Edward almost whispered.
‘You know what he did. He went out and drowned himself. He died because the two people he loved best in the world betrayed him. Can you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ he said miserably. ‘I can.’
‘Dora Pale died of her . . . of her vices quite soon after her son committed suicide. Of course, Oliver’s death was hushed up. They said it was an accident. They took the stones out of his pockets and threw them back into the river so no one would know.’
‘But you know. How do you know so much about him? Did you know him?’
‘He was my stepbrother.’
‘Your stepbrother! Then . . .’
‘Yes, Max Federstein married my mother. Max – I always called him Max – you can imagine, was distraught when he heard of Oliver’s death and he didn’t believe it had been an accident. Oliver wasn’t much good at games but he could swim. So Max set a private detective on it and eventually he got the whole story.’
‘But the detail – how could you know about Hoden and . . .?’
‘Because my darling husband told me – just before he died. That’s how.’
‘What did Federstein do when he had the private detective’s report?’
‘He did nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything. Eton was everything he believed in. He didn’t believe in any god but he did believe – poor fool – in the idea of the English gentleman.’
‘He remarried?’
‘Yes, he married his nurse, would you believe it?’ she said sarcastically. ‘After Oliver died he had some sort of nervous breakdown and was ill for about a year.’
‘And you were her daughter?’
‘Yes. My father was a clergyman and, when he died, he left my mother badly off so she went back to nursing.’
‘And she became Max Federstein’s nurse?’
‘They fell in love. Max was utterly dependent on her and my mother loved him for his gentleness and, I imagine, because he had suffered so much. My mother was deeply Christian and compassionate.’
‘And how did you feel about it?’
‘I was suspicious at first, I suppose, but then I came to love Max. He was the most lovely man. He may have been a shrewd businessman but in ordinary life he was . . . oh, hopeless. He was so trusting . . . It was his good fortune to meet my mother and not some gold-digging hussy who would have stripped him of everything and made him miserable.’
‘When did you hear about Oliver?’
‘I think he told my mother almost the first time they met. He was so devastated he couldn’t have kept it to himself. I heard a bit about it from her but not the whole story . . . not until he died.’
‘He died quite soon after he married your mother?’
‘Yes, just a couple of years. He never properly recovered but there was time enough for me to get to know him . . . to get to love him.’
‘And when he died . . .?’ Edward gently prompted her.
‘When he died, he left me a huge amount of money . . .’
‘But I thought you had no money . . . that was why you were nursing.’
‘I never said so! I was brought up to value work. I didn’t have any desire to lead the life of your rich friends. Anyway, there was something else my stepfather left me . . . a letter.’
‘A letter?’
‘It was a long letter about how he loved me and how he wished we could have known each other for longer . . .’ Elizabeth took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. Edward kept silent. ‘He also told me the whole story of Oliver and he included the report written by the private detective. He said that, when I was older, I was to use some of the money to take revenge on my stepbrother’s murderers.’
Edward was deeply shocked. ‘That was a terrible thing for him to have done.’
‘To have left me such a legacy?’
‘To have laid such a burden on you. You ought to have torn up the letter.’
‘And done nothing?’
‘Yes, done nothing. I don’t understand why you felt you had to do what he asked. Surely you knew that violence resolves nothing.’
Elizabeth looked at him in amazement. ‘You don’t understand anything, do you? I loved my stepfather. He was a good man. He had been cheated by his first wife and by the “English gentlemen” he trusted. He had lost his only son – the boy he lived for. Love . . . it’s the most powerful thing in the world. It makes you do things you could never imagine doing in cold blood.’
‘I do know what you mean. I feel about Frank in that way . . .’
‘And Verity . . .?’ she said wryly.
Edward did not answer. He sighed. ‘So what happened?’
‘When my mother died five years ago, I thought I ought to do something about my stepfather’s letter. I decided to find Makepeace Hoden.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Oh, that was no problem. I wrote to the school.’
‘To Eton?’
‘Yes, and they couldn’t have been more helpful. I said I was a friend of his but we had lost touch and I wanted to see him again. They sent me his address by return.’
‘Did you intend to kill him?’
‘I intended to make his life a misery.’
‘But instead he made your life a misery.’
‘Yes. I was a fool. I saw he was looking for a wife. I didn’t ask myself why. I thought that if I could marry him I would have him in my power. You can see how husbands and wives make each other suffer, even when they don’t intend to. Look at my stepfather and Dora Pale.’
‘And he married you just like that?’
‘It turned out he had his own reasons. I thought I was clever but he was cleverer. I discovered much later, when he was doing his best to humiliate me, that before he decided to marry me he had hired a private detective to find out all about me. That was the sort of man he was.’
‘So he knew you were Oliver’s stepsister before he married you?’
‘Yes. There I was thinking I was in control but he had me checkmate all along.’
‘How long after your marriage did you discover he . . . liked boys?’
‘After just a few months he told me he had only married to protect himself.’
‘To protect himself . . .?’
‘Yes. No one could accuse him of being . . . perverted if he had a wife. That was when I started to hate him. Up till then I wanted revenge for my stepfather’s sake and for Oliver’s. It was . . . theoretical . . . abstract.’
‘But now it was flesh and blood?’
‘Yes, now I saw he was using me. I could see with my own eyes what it meant to be a child in that man’s clutches. This was the reality. I didn’t need to use my imagination. I tell you, Edward, I could not bear to let him touch my hand.’
‘Did he mind that you were disgusted by him?’
‘When I discovered what sort of pervert he was – that was when I told him who I was – do you know how he reacted? He laughed. He laughed and laughed and then he sat me down and told me that he had known all about me before we were married.’
‘So you decided to kill him?’
&nb
sp; ‘Yes . . . no. I fell in love. This man . . . he was on that safari. He was helping Johnny, our “white hunter”. He was everything my husband wasn’t. We loved each other the first moment we met. I know it sounds ridiculous but we did. I told him everything. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. He said he . . . don’t laugh, Edward . . . he said he was my knight in shining armour and would kill for my honour . . . to win me.’
Edward had never felt less like laughing. ‘You got your lover to kill for you?’
Elizabeth shivered, despite the heat. ‘It wasn’t like that. I told you . . .’ Her voice tailed off.
‘And your lover . . . did he kill Stephen Thayer and Tilney, and poor old Miss Harvey?’
‘I don’t know! Truly, I don’t know. He said . . . he said he was going to go away . . . after my husband . . . after he died . . . to “cleanse himself”. He said it wasn’t safe for us to be together until everyone had forgotten he had been on the safari when Makepeace was killed. He told me that knights of old, having pledged their troth, would go on a long journey to earn their lady’s hand. I know it sounds like . . . like tosh . . . it is tosh . . . but it didn’t seem like that at the time.’
‘It doesn’t sound like the man I knew.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘You’ve been in Africa. Love under the stars . . .? It didn’t make you feel romantic?’
‘Sounds like bosh to me,’ he said spitefully. ‘Did you give him your stepfather’s letter and the detective’s report?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And the ring.’
‘The ring?’
‘Yes, my mother’s wedding ring . . . Max’s ring. I gave it to him as a kind of pledge.’
Edward looked up at the canopy of green leaves and then across the grass to where the cricketers played, blessedly ignorant of the pain and suffering of one small boy who had also been an Etonian and had been driven to end his life before it had properly begun.
‘What makes you tell me all this now? You didn’t tell me before. You told me lies then.’
‘Not lies – but not the whole truth. But I had to tell you – you see he came to me yesterday while you were in London . . . to claim his reward.’
‘Reward?’
‘He asked me to marry him . . . he gave me my ring back.’
‘The ring he had beaten Verity unconscious to retrieve?’
‘I’m afraid so. And I . . . I didn’t like him any more. He frightened me. He was no longer my saviour as I had thought in Kenya. I now saw him as a ruthless killer. It didn’t seem to be about me any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I felt that he wanted to take revenge . . . to kill . . . not for my sake but his own. I was just the excuse.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I said I couldn’t marry him.’
‘And he was angry?’
‘No, he was deadly calm. He asked why and I said you had . . . you had changed me. I said I didn’t want any more killing . . . any more revenge. I said . . . Well, it doesn’t matter what I said.’
‘And he left you?’
‘He left saying he had been betrayed and that . . . he would kill you. He said you were an interfering bastard and that you had come between him and his happiness.’
‘He knew you were coming here today with me?’
‘Yes, I had told him. He said he would see you here – whatever that means – and if I warned you . . . I too would . . . be in danger.’
‘You’ve been very brave, Elizabeth, and you did the right thing. He’s a murderer – he might think he’s a knight in armour but he’s just a murderer. Hoden may have deserved to die but the others . . . By the way, how did he kill him?’
‘He didn’t tell me how he arranged it . . . we never discussed it. I think he thought it would sully me to know the details.’
‘ “Sully” you! That’s good . . . that’s very good.’
‘Edward, try and remember the hell I was in. He seemed to be the key in the prison door. I truly believed he was sincere.’
Edward felt the anger rising inside him. ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but all that . . . chivalrous stuff – it sticks in my throat. Getting to know me – was that part of it? Did you think I had something to do with Oliver’s death?’
‘I didn’t know. The detective my stepfather hired said that Makepeace, Godfrey Tilney and Stephen Thayer were his chief tormentors but there were probably others . . . friends.’
‘So did you find Stephen’s address in the same way as you discovered Hoden’s – through the school?’
‘I didn’t need to. It was in my husband’s address book. I found it when I was going through his things . . . after he was killed. I arranged to bump into him at a party. We liked each other immediately. We were both lonely people. We saw each other a few times. We were never lovers. I still thought then that I had a lover.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I told him who I was. I told him about how I had married Makepeace Hoden . . .’
‘But not that he had been murdered?’
‘No. I couldn’t tell him that. I wrote to him . . . my lover . . . and told him Stephen was not to blame for Oliver’s death . . . that he regretted his foolishness with Dora Pale . . . and that I believed him.’
‘So you wrote to your Sir Galahad and told him he was not to harm Stephen?’
‘Yes. I told him that the killing had to stop.’
‘And did you get a reply?’
‘No,’ she said in a low voice.
‘And how did you find out I was a friend of Stephen Thayer’s? You were lying when you said it was Hoden who wanted you to talk to me?’
‘No! He did talk about you. So did Stephen.’
‘I was the reason you got a job nursing at the hospital here?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I thought I’d get to know you and find out what sort of person you were. I thought you would probably be horrible, like my husband, but . . . but I liked you from the start . . . from the first time I saw you kneeling at your brother’s bed in the hospital and that confused me.’
Edward blushed. ‘I didn’t realise I was being observed.’
‘I wasn’t spying on you.’
‘Look, Elizabeth, I’m desperately sorry about what happened to your stepbrother and I promise you I knew nothing about it. Perhaps I ought to have known, but I was in a different house and our paths never crossed. I wish they had. Perhaps I might have helped him. Do you believe me?’
‘I do but . . .’
‘You told me you thought Hoden was being blackmailed?’
‘He never said he was but he may well have been. What he was doing was not only wicked but illegal and, as I told you, he was getting reckless. He didn’t seem to mind who knew . . .’
Edward rubbed his forehead vigorously. ‘Miss Harvey!’ he said aloud. He was responsible for her death. Somehow, the man who was here today to kill him – Elizabeth’s lover and her husband’s murderer – must have found out that he had talked to her and been frightened he was getting too close to the truth. He rose, unable to keep still any longer, and began pacing up and down, dragging on his cigarette. He had a growing feeling that he had made a terrible mistake asking Thoroughgood what he knew about the Dora Pale scandal.
Elizabeth watched him sadly. If only they had met in different circumstances. It was all over between them. She knew that. All over, even before it had begun. ‘You don’t think she could have fallen down the stairs by accident?’ she faltered, reading his thoughts.
‘Well, do you?’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve got to find your paramour before he finds us or rather me – and you’re going to help. Come on!’
Looking for a murderer at an Eton festival was rather easier said than done. The boys might be wearing colourful waistcoats but their fathers and uncles were dressed in a uniform from which no deviation was permitted. The black coats, the stiff white collars, the faces of the men half-hidden by top hats – only the presen
ce or absence of facial hair differentiated them.
They marched across the acres of green playing fields until Elizabeth complained that she was about to drop with exhaustion. ‘Can’t we go and get a cup of tea?’
‘I don’t want to attach ourselves to Connie and Gerald just in case your friend takes a pot shot at me and damages someone else by mistake.’
‘But surely he’s not going to do anything like that here?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. I just don’t want to run any risks. It occurs to me that he might want to end his “quest” with something of a flourish.’
‘Stop tugging at me!’
‘I want you near me. I think it might needle him a little if he thinks you and I are . . . close.’
‘Oh, so you want him to kill you? Is that it?’
‘I want him to try. I can’t imagine it will be possible to find enough evidence to charge him with the murders in Spain or Africa, but he left a clue when he murdered Stephen Thayer and I think he knows he did. You see, he killed him on an impulse. He must have confronted him and they talked and, when Thayer turned his back, he killed him with a heavy ornament. He hadn’t come prepared to kill, I’m almost sure of it. In his hurry, he dropped something – something he knows I noticed and which associates him with the killing. I want him to try to kill me though I’d rather he didn’t succeed,’ he added grimly. ‘If I can get him to attack me, I think even Chief Inspector Pride would have to take me seriously.’
‘The police? They’re here?’
‘Yes, I alerted Pride to what I thought might happen today and most grudgingly, I have to say, he agreed to place a few men in the grounds.’
‘And they know who they’re looking for?’
‘They do, Elizabeth. What you told me today only confirms what I already suspected.’
26
At six o’clock, a good-natured but weary throng of parents and boys congregated on the river bank to watch the boats process from the railway bridge down river. As each boat passed the crowd of spectators, the rowers stood up one by one holding their oars upright beside them. Finally the cox rose, still clutching his rudder lines and desperately trying to stop his boat colliding with the one in front, or the river bank.
Bones of the Buried Page 33