by Jessie Keane
137
Ruby must have slept. When she next looked at the clock it said nearly one in the afternoon. She couldn’t hear the guns any more. She got up, splashed water on her face, and stepped outside into the hall. Rob looked up at her.
‘They’ve finished shooting then?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘The mist is getting heavier. The birds won’t fly in this weather.’
Ruby crossed the hall and looked out of the window. The morning had dawned bright and clear, but now she could see Rob was right, a solid bank of grey cloud was settling overhead. There was no wind stirring the trees. Autumn was creeping in, moving by stealth.
‘Take a break, Rob. You must be stiff as a board, sitting there,’ said Ruby, starting down the stairs.
He stood up. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Just down to the kitchen to get a drink, I’ll be back in a second.’
‘OK. Don’t stray further than that though.’
‘I won’t.’
Ruby was almost at the bottom of the stairs when Vi came in the front door in a raincoat. She tossed it aside and smiled when she saw Ruby there.
‘Been having a walk in the grounds,’ she said. ‘Starting to rain now, that misty horrible stuff that sinks right into you. Where are you off to?’
‘The kitchen, for a cup of tea.’
‘Come into the drawing room, I’ll get some brought up.’
Moments later, Daisy came down and joined them. She looked flushed. ‘Rob was looking for you,’ she told Ruby. ‘I told him I saw you coming in here. He’s outside the door now.’
‘Have you seen Vanessa?’ asked Ruby as the three of them huddled around the fire, drinking their tea and eating biscuits.
Daisy shook her head. ‘Think she’s in her room. I haven’t spoken to her. Don’t even know what to say to her really. I suppose I could say, I think I understand why I was always such a disappointment to you now.’
‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ said Vi.
‘Oh, I was.’ Daisy seemed about to speak, then she paused.
‘It’s all right,’ said Ruby. ‘Vi knows.’
Daisy relaxed. ‘She hasn’t even tried to talk to me, you know. Not once, all day. Neither has Pa, but he’s just pissed off because things haven’t gone exactly as he planned, for once. He’s probably shitting himself for fear any of this about you being my mother will get near the papers. And I bet Simon’s told him it’s all over between us. Actually, you know what? I think Mother’s relieved it’s all come to light at last. Oh God, I’m still calling her Mother . . .’
Now they could hear cars coming up the drive.
‘That’s it, shooting’s over for the day,’ sighed Vi.
‘Good,’ said Daisy. ‘I hate the noise of the guns. And the poor birds falling to earth, dead,’ she added with a shudder.
They went out to the front of the house. About fifty brace of pheasant were being laid out on the lawn, ready for a photo. All the men with guns were lining up behind the birds, ready for the snap to be taken. Anthony did the honours with his Leica. The flash illuminated the gloom of the afternoon.
‘Come on, you lot,’ said Vi, ‘let’s go inside and get warmed up.’
138
Brandy, coffee, sandwiches and pies had been laid out on the table in the main hall, and the fire there had been lit. Having done her duty, Vi left her husband Lord Albemarle to entertain his male guests. Vanessa still hadn’t put in an appearance, so Vi escorted all the other women into the drawing room with Daisy and Ruby.
The afternoon wound on.
It wasn’t until everyone was in their rooms dressing for dinner much later that Rob tapped on Ruby’s door. She was in her dressing gown. She’d done her hair and make-up and was just laying out her black velvet dress on the bed. Michael was in the shower.
Ruby opened the door. Rob was standing there, beside a white and distraught-looking Vanessa. Her pale eyes fastened on Ruby.
‘Vanessa?’ she said, surprised.
‘Is he with you?’ demanded Vanessa, thin-lipped and quivering.
‘What?’
‘Cornelius. I haven’t seen him since the men came back.’
‘He’s not with me. Of course he’s not.’
Michael was stepping out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist. Ruby glanced back at him.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Vanessa. She can’t find Cornelius. You haven’t seen him?’
‘Didn’t he come back with Anthony in the Jeep?’
‘I didn’t see him down in the hall with the others,’ said Rob.
‘Neither did I,’ said Michael. ‘Rob, go and tap on Anthony’s door, see if he knows where he’s got to.’
Rob went off along the hall. An uneasy silence fell as Vanessa stood there, staring at Ruby.
They heard Rob talking to Anthony, then Vi came to Ruby’s door, looked at Vanessa, looked at Ruby and Michael.
‘Cornelius came back with Anthony, didn’t he?’ asked Michael.
‘No. He didn’t. Wasn’t he in with you?’ asked Vi.
Michael shook his head. Rob came back along the hall and said: ‘Did anyone see him come back from the shoot? Was he out on the lawn when Anthony was taking the picture?’ he asked Vi.
Vi stared around at them all. ‘No. I don’t think he was.’
‘Then where is he?’ said Vanessa.
They all looked across the hall to the windows. Outside, it was nearly dark and the rain was starting to come down harder.
139
Within half an hour they had checked with the shooting party and their companions and the household staff: no one had seen Cornelius since they’d all returned to the house. He hadn’t come back in anyone’s car. Maybe he’d walked back? It seemed unlikely. But it was possible. So they checked all over the house. Cornelius wasn’t there, or outside in the grounds immediately around it.
By the time that was done, it was full dark. Anthony summoned his gamekeeper, who had come up to the house and was now contacting all the beaters. No one had seen Cornelius return from the shoot. Some of them had seen him shooting, yes: but since then, nothing.
‘He’s still out there then,’ said Michael.
The elderly Anthony was looking very upset. ‘This is dreadful,’ he said. ‘I feel responsible. I hope no harm has come to him.’
‘Of course it hasn’t,’ said Vi briskly. ‘The silly sod’s just wandered off and missed his ride, that’s all. He’s probably stumbling around in the undergrowth trying to find his way back to the house right now. Don’t worry,Vanessa, I’m sure he’s perfectly all right.’
All the men put on their coats, took as many torches as they could find, and set off to look for him in the cars. When they got near to where the beaters had flushed the prey from the woods, they left the cars with the headlights still ablaze and set out on foot, spreading out in twos and threes. The rain was coming down harder, pelting their heads.
Rob and Michael were in the woods now, brambles tearing at their clothes, but the trees gave some shelter from the rain.
‘What’s that?’ asked Michael, pointing along the torchlight’s wavering beam.
Rob looked. ‘Shit!’ he said loudly.
It was blood.
140
‘Over here!’ shouted Rob, and they could hear the others coming, crashing through the undergrowth.
Rob and Michael crept forward. It was blood. A big thick smear of it, spread over the ground like a slug’s trail, saved from dissolving in the rain by the overhanging trees. Rob directed the torch’s beam on it, and followed it.
The two men moved forward, neither saying a word. The trail went on for twenty yards. Soon the others joined them, put their torch beams on it too. It glowed cherry-red, startling against the tired-looking greenery.
‘Fuck!’ said the gamekeeper, a robust, red-faced countryman who had kept them laughing all day. Now he looked as if he was about to cry with dismay.
The trail had ended
.
There was a large man’s body sprawled out on the ground. He had crawled a long way, weakened by blood loss, trying to get help until finally his strength had run out. His right leg was gone, shot away above the knee. All that remained of it was a powder-blackened jagged gaping wound. They could clearly see the stump of the bone in the torchlight, the pulverized crimson muscle surrounding it.
It was Cornelius.
The gamekeeper surged forward, fell to his knees beside the body. He put a hand to the big, bullish neck. ‘He’s alive,’ he said, and took off his scarf. ‘Somebody help me here.’
Rob went and helped the keeper tie the tourniquet on the leg. Cornelius groaned faintly.
‘He’ll die out here in the cold and wet, we have to get him back to the house,’ said the keeper.
The men surged forward and hefted Cornelius upright. He was big, it was a hell of a job. Somehow, gasping and straining, they got him back to the Jeep and laid him out in the back. Then they all got in their cars, and sped back up to the house.
141
Ruby couldn’t believe what she was seeing when they carried Cornelius into the hall. Pandemonium broke out. Vanessa collapsed in hysterics. Daisy looked like she was about to be sick. The men shoved past the women and heaved him on into the drawing room, leaving spatters of blood all over the marble flooring of the hall and wet globs of it on the drawing-room carpets. Someone was on the phone, summoning an ambulance.
Ruby stood silent and appalled as her ex-lover was carried past her. The hot metallic scent of blood filled her nostrils and she gagged, clapping a hand over her mouth. Vanessa’s tortured shrieks seemed to scour her brain out like a knife. Daisy reached out for Vanessa and held her tight. All the other women were standing around the hall with shocked expressions. Their husbands and boyfriends were talking in hushed tones, explaining what had happened.
‘It must have been an accident. He shot himself and then tried to crawl to get help.’
‘How could it be an accident? He wasn’t a fool. Cornelius knew how to carry a gun, keep it broken.’
‘It was lucky we found him. Another hour out there, he’d have been a goner.’
‘You’re not suggesting someone shot him, for God’s sake? That’s ridiculous.’
Then there was a commotion from inside the drawing room.
‘Shit!’ yelled someone in there. ‘His heart’s stopped.’
Vanessa tore herself from Daisy’s encircling arms. Ruby and Vi ran after her as she hared into the room. They stopped in the doorway, stricken with horror at what they were seeing. Rob was pounding Cornelius’s chest with hands that were slippery with blood. Then he was bending, pinching the nose, breathing hard into his mouth. Then again the pounding, each thump reverberating in all their heads. Then the breathing. Then back to the chest. Then the breathing again.
Vanessa was silent now, standing feet away from her husband, unable to help him, tears rolling down her face.
Finally, Rob stopped what he was doing. He turned, looked at Michael, at Anthony.
‘No good,’ he said.
Vanessa sank to the floor in a dead faint.
142
The police found Cornelius’s gun near the edge of the woods. It had been discharged, but then so had all the guns. A detective inspector arrived early next morning and everyone was interviewed after a miserable sleepless night, one at a time, to give their account of events. When Michael and Ruby had been questioned, they went out into the grounds for some air.
The weather was brighter now, and a robin was singing up near the house wall as they walked, wrapped up against the early-morning chill. Ruby felt sad and sickened. Once she’d loved Cornelius so much, but he had trampled on that love and ruined it. Hatred had taken its place. On her part and, more violently, on his.
But now she was truly free for the first time in her life. She wouldn’t need to be frightened any more, wondering where the next assault would come from. Cornelius was dead. And with him, any threat he once posed.
‘This is bad for Daisy, losing her dad like this,’ said Michael as they walked, leaving tracks in the dew on the grass.
‘I know.’
‘The police seem to think it was accidental, though.’
Ruby stopped walking. ‘Do they?’
‘Yeah. So the DI said.’
Ruby looked at him. ‘Cornelius has been shooting for years.’
‘So he can’t make a mistake? Come on, Ruby. Anyone can.’
‘Is that what it was meant to look like? A mistake?’
Michael looked at her in consternation. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Michael, did you do it? Please tell me.’ Ruby’s eyes were suddenly filled with tears. This had been tormenting her ever since they’d carried Cornelius into the hall yesterday. ‘I’m going mad here. You were so angry with him, at what he’d had done to me. I’m afraid you killed him. In that slow, horrible way. I think you shot his leg away and let him bleed to death.’
Michael eyed her thoughtfully.
‘You know what?’ he said at last. ‘That’s what he deserved. I really believe that. He was a callous, pompous bastard full of his own self-importance. But no, Ruby, I didn’t kill him.’
‘Do you swear?’
‘Honey. On my life. On yours, if you like. I didn’t kill Cornelius.’
Michael was telling the truth. He hadn’t finished off Cornelius, much as he would have liked to. There were other things he couldn’t, wouldn’t ever, tell her. Like he was never going to tell her that her brother Charlie’s ‘accident’ hadn’t been an accident at all. Ruby was never going to know that. But maybe she deserved to know just a little more about this.
‘I did see him after he was shot,’ he admitted.
Her eyes widened in horror. ‘Oh, Michael, you didn’t.’
‘I was on the next stand to him and I saw him go off into the woods – for a piss, I thought. He took his gun with him. I heard a shot – I heard lots of shots – but I thought one came from that direction. No one was near to us, so I went to have a look.’
‘And you saw him?’
‘Yeah. I did. Crawling along the ground, bleeding.’
‘And you didn’t help him.’
‘Help him?’ Michael let out a mirthless laugh. ‘Ruby. I didn’t kill him, OK? But you know what? I really wanted to whack that bastard, for all he’s done to you. He knocked you up when you were young and stupid and sucked in by his charming ways. Then he dumped you and took Daisy off you. He never gave a shit about what happened to Kit because of the colour of his skin. And because you tried to befriend Daisy, he started waging war on you.’ Fire flared in Michael’s eyes. ‘So no, Ruby. In answer to your question. I didn’t help him.’
Ruby was silent, thinking of Cornelius alone and weakening, crying for help that never came. And Michael, watching him drag himself along through the woods. Not helping, as Cornelius’s life slipped away.
‘But there was something else,’ said Michael.
Ruby snapped back to the present. ‘What?’
‘I saw someone moving away through the woods. He turned and stared me full in the face. He wasn’t one of the beaters, he wasn’t the gamekeeper or one of the guests.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Young. Dark-haired. He looked straight at me, and then he walked away, out of the woods, and disappeared. If I saw him again, I’d recognize him.’
‘Did you tell the police that?’
Michael shrugged. ‘No. And I’m not going to.’
‘Don’t you think you should?’ asked Ruby.
Michael stared at her face. He leaned forward, kissed her lips.
‘No,’ he said against her mouth. ‘Justice has been done. That’s good enough for me.’
143
Andrew Dorley was waiting at the station in Oxford for the train back to Leicester when he saw the papers on the newsstand announcing the shocking sudden death of the celebrated Tory peer Baron Bray. With shaking hands he pi
cked one up, dropped the coins on the counter. Found a seat and slumped down upon it. Read the front-page news.
Cornelius Bray had died of gunshot wounds on a shooting weekend. The police were making their enquiries, but at the moment the cause of death appeared to be accidental. Andrew folded up the paper and sat there, patiently waiting for his train, ignoring the crowds, the booming noise of the tannoy.
‘Oh – Christ,’ he muttered, then he put a hand to his mouth, stifling a sudden, almost unstoppable laugh. He thought of his little brother Sebastian, and hoped that he would one day see him again. He didn’t hold out much hope, though.
He thought of his mother, on pills for severe depression ever since Sebby left home, the awfulness of her failed suicide attempt. And his father, who had tried so hard to find Sebby. Dad had come back from London with a broken jaw and cracked ribs; black and blue all over from a savage beating administered by someone who said he wasn’t to pester Lord Bray any more. Dad had never been the same, not since the day he’d walked back through the door. His kidneys had been damaged beyond repair and finally, just a few months ago, Dad had died.
After that, Andrew had been on a mission of vengeance, tracking Bray’s movements. Sebby seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth and he knew that somehow Bray was involved in that. So he’d watched him, and followed him. Maybe he had Sebby locked away somewhere, who knew?
He’d followed Cornelius Bray to the shooting party in Oxfordshire. Approached him in the woods. There had been a scuffle when Andrew had demanded answers. Bray had dropped his gun.
‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with, boy,’ Bray had snapped at him when he had asked about Sebby. But he had seen the guilty panic in Bray’s eyes as he bent to retrieve his weapon.
There had been a moment when Andrew could, should, have snatched up the gun. But he didn’t. ‘You bastard,’ he burst out. ‘You know something, don’t you? Just tell me where he is. Tell me what’s happened to him.’