Sweet Sorrow

by David Roberts

  He lunged at her and she stepped back. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Colonel Heron.’

  At that moment, Edward stumbled into the garden. He looked like death and Verity started to go over to him but he raised his hand to stop her. His expression was adamantine.

  ‘I have been in your infernal laboratory, Heron . . .’

  ‘He was trying to poison Virginia with that . . .’ Verity pointed to the gas mask lying at their feet. Edward bent over and picked it up.

  ‘He was, was he?’ he snarled. ‘Well then, I think it is his turn now. Try this on, Heron, why don’t you?’ He spoke with the gentle insistence of a knife at the throat. ‘I think it’s your size.’

  Heron looked at him and smiled calmly. ‘You know, Corinth, it was Gates who gave me the idea – that ridiculous detective story of his in which a worthless creature has his head cut off. I don’t remember what he called it but at the beginning he quoted a line or two from Shelley – his detective was named Shelley, if you remember – “I met Murder on the way – he had a mask like Castlereagh – very smooth he looked, yet grim; seven bloodhounds followed him . . .”’

  He took the gas mask from Edward and pressed it to his face, not bothering with the straps. Then he pulled a little catch and a horrible smell made them all step back a pace. Heron started to choke and, as he did so, he stumbled and fell to the ground still holding the mask to his face.

  Edward and Verity stared down at him and watched him die.

  At last, when he was quite dead, Edward took Verity’s hand and said, ‘You are safe – that is all that matters.’

  As he spoke, they heard the bell of a police car. Inspector Trewen came round the house at a brisk trot but stopped when he saw Heron’s body.

  ‘I’m afraid you are too late, Inspector,’ Edward said coolly. ‘Your murderer has just taken his own life. Before he died, he quoted the poet Shelley and so shall I. “Last came Anarchy: he rode on a white horse, splashed with blood; he was pale even to the lips, like Death in the Apocalypse.” I don’t know about you, Inspector, but I have always preferred Shakespeare to either Byron or Shelley.’

  19

  Tommie came down from London to take Paul’s funeral. The whole village turned out and there were several reporters standing at the back making notes. Paul had not been a popular vicar – he was too austere for that – but he had been respected, and his death had been so unexpected and dramatic there was a fascination about it which Edward considered morbid if understandable.

  The night before the funeral, Edward and Verity had invited Jean and Ada to the Old Vicarage to meet their new sister. They had decided that Ada should never know that her father’s murderer was her uncle. It was too much for anyone to have to deal with. Heron was dead and it could be assumed that Inspector Trewen would not waste time looking for stronger motives for his hatred of Byron than the reason he had provided at the time of his arrest. If Trewen ever did find out that Byron’s first wife had been Heron’s sister, Ada would be thousands miles away.

  Mary Brand had explained that she was planning to take Jean and Ada back to America.

  ‘I have a five-year contract with a new film company called Mayflower Pictures. I wasn’t looking forward to having to tell Byron that I was moving to Hollywood with or without him. Now I don’t have to.’

  Edward and Verity had explained to both girls that Catherine was Paul Fisher’s niece and Byron’s unacknowledged daughter. It had been touching to see the three of them get to know one another.

  ‘Perhaps, Catherine, when you have finished with Cambridge, you might like to come and visit us?’ Mary suggested.

  ‘Yes, please do,’ the girls echoed her. ‘We could be a proper family at last.’

  ‘I’d like that very much,’ Catherine said, ‘but, of course, it all depends on the war.’

  There had been one difficult moment when Ada had attempted to defend her father but Catherine had begged her to say nothing more.

  ‘Let’s leave the past to bury the past,’ she implored her. ‘Our father was not a good man – it would be stupid to pretend that he was – but, like it or not, he was our father. It’s up to us now to make the best of our lives. We can’t alter the past but we can make something worthwhile of our future. I am very happy to know that I have sisters like you and I hope we can be friends. I’ve always wanted a family and now I have one. It makes me very happy.’

  What with the visit to Cambridge and Heron’s death, Edward had not had time to get to know Mary Brand but, sitting next to her at dinner, he discovered that she was an intelligent and imaginative woman, surprisingly unshocked to find another of her late husband’s progeny suddenly thrust upon her. She was very different from the silly, selfish actress he had expected. He had vaguely imagined she would be a brassy, red-haired, green-eyed Irish temptress like Maureen O’Hara, the star of Jamaica Inn, and was at first rather disappointed to find her ‘ordinary’. Though her hair was auburn and her eyes green, she turned out to be a demure, soberly dressed woman who would hardly turn heads in the streets. Verity suggested later, when they were discussing her, that she must have one of those faces which the camera loved and a personality which came alive on the screen.

  By the end of the evening, Edward had got to like her and was relieved to find that he had no misgivings about leaving Ada in her care. He saw the girl frequently look towards her stepmother for approval and reassurance and sensed that, with Byron gone, the three might develop a new relationship uncomplicated by his need always to take centre stage and play off one of his women against the other.

  When the party broke up, Verity kissed Jean and Ada and said how much she hoped they would keep in touch.

  ‘If you don’t become an actress, Jean, I think you could make a very good journalist. And, Ada, promise not to undervalue yourself. Remember, I had no qualifications and was only half as clever as you but I never let it stand in my way. Most people will take you at your own estimation so make sure it’s always that much higher than, in your heart of hearts, you think it should be. Then, one day, you’ll wake up and find you are the person you’d like to be. Oh dear, am I making sense?’

  Ada kissed her and said, ‘You have been so kind to us. May we write to you? It would be so thrilling to hear about your adventures.’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Jean added. ‘I’m not sure we could have survived without you and Edward.’

  ‘We’ve loved getting to know you both, and we’ll certainly keep in touch with Catherine. I’d like to get to know Cambridge properly and Edward always enjoys going back to old haunts, don’t you, Edward?’

  Edward agreed and asked Catherine if she would treat him like an honorary godfather and come and stay at the Old Vicarage from time to time.

  ‘I may be lonely,’ he joked, ‘with Verity careering about the world getting into all sorts of scrapes.’

  Hugging Catherine, Verity riposted, ‘Sorry to disappoint you but I’m not going to take unnecessary risks. I’ve decided to play safe. I just want to enjoy a ripe old age without feeling I have let myself down.’

  ‘I don’t believe that!’ Catherine exclaimed. ‘You promise you won’t forget me, will you?’

  ‘Of course not! We’ll often see you and, as Edward says, you must come and stay at the Old Vicarage. It will stop him getting middle-aged and pompous.’

  Even Catherine’s Aunt Gladys melted to the extent of thanking Edward and Verity for trying to help her brother.

  ‘He meant to be a good man,’ she said defensively, ‘but the world was too wicked for him.’

  Unexpectedly, Mary Brand leant forward and kissed Edward on the cheek before she left and, for a moment, Verity was jealous.

  ‘When are you going back to Hollywood?’ she inquired, innocently.

  ‘Next week, I’m afraid, on the Queen Mary. I can’t be away from Hollywood too long. One is so quickly forgotten.’

  Before going up to bed, Edward and Verity let Basil out in the garden and made a fuss of him as he settled
back in his basket. He had still not entirely recovered from the poisoned gas and Edward doubted whether he ever would. He seemed to find it hard to get his breath, particularly on one of his favourite walks on the downs. He would start chasing a rabbit but then give it up and pretend he couldn’t be bothered, coughing almost like a human. It was stupid, Verity knew, possibly even wicked and she would not confess it even to Edward, but she minded much more that Heron had hurt Basil than that he had killed Byron and Frieda.

  As they were getting ready for bed, she said, ‘So Trewen was right after all when he arrested Heron at the scene of the crime. Perhaps, by interfering, we merely obstructed the course of justice?’

  ‘I don’t accept that. It’s a very serious matter, charging someone with murder. They deserve to be properly defended and condemned only when the case against them is proved beyond all reasonable doubt.’

  ‘But Frieda might still be alive if the police hadn’t released Heron after you told them the sword couldn’t have been the murder weapon.’

  ‘They would have had to release him anyway because the case against him was so thin. I don’t believe I was wrong to raise the point with Trewen.’

  Verity sensed that Edward was on the defensive and changed the subject. ‘I’m still puzzled by what Heron and Lewis Cathcart were doing that day I saw them together at Lyons Corner House.’

  ‘You think Cathcart was in on the plot to murder Frieda?’

  ‘I don’t really care, but one thing is certain – by telling Heron about Byron’s affair with Frieda, he gave him the motive to kill her. I hope I never see Cathcart again.’

  ‘But it seems to have been Colonel Rathbone who showed Heron around Broadcasting House so he knew where the studios were. I wonder whether it was pure chance that he decided to kill Frieda on the evening she had arranged to interview you?’

  ‘So he would have seen the statuette in the studio?’

  ‘Yes, he probably picked it up and noted how heavy it was.’

  ‘But how could he possibly have known that Frieda would be sitting with her back to the door?’

  ‘I don’t think he did. He saw you leave the studio and go into the control room – perhaps he was watching from the Silence Room or lurking in the passage – and then rushed in and killed her. It made it easier that she had her back to him but, even if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t have stopped him. He was a strong man and Frieda would have been taken completely by surprise.’

  ‘But if we had seen him from the control room I would have recognized him and at least been able to try and stop him.’

  ‘It was a risk, but don’t forget that he was wearing a balaclava.’

  ‘And what was it Frieda said just before she died which was captured on the recording – “knotty”?’

  ‘I think she may have cried, “Not me!” but we’ll never know for sure.’

  ‘I can’t forgive him for that,’ Verity said. ‘Frieda may have been manipulative and sexually unprincipled but she did not deserve to die.’

  ‘No one deserves to be beaten or gassed to death,’ Edward said grimly. ‘It’s why we cannot ever do a deal with the Nazis. It’s inhuman – the sort of treatment they mete out to their prisoners. It is pure evil and nothing can excuse it.’

  Verity nodded her agreement.

  ‘Do you remember when we first went to Heron’s house, we thought it smelt stale and unpleasant?’ Edward continued, putting on his pyjamas. ‘That must have been because he was brewing his poison gas in the cellar.’

  Verity shuddered. ‘And the hospital boiler suit we found in the Silence Room . . . He was being treated for cancer so he would have had no difficulty stealing it.’

  ‘And, as churchwarden, he’d have a key to the church so he would have no trouble hiding the bloodied axe in the belfry. You know, V, he had me fooled at the beginning. I really thought he had been framed.’

  ‘And that was exactly what he wanted you to think. I hate the man and I’m glad he’s dead. I never want to think about him again. I still can’t believe that he could cause such grief to his own niece – a girl he should have loved and protected . . . He was wicked.’

  ‘Well, come to bed, my darling, and I’ll try to distract you from brooding about all that beastliness.’

  There were now only a very few days before Verity was due to leave for France. She tried to put behind her the violent deaths of Byron Gates and Frieda Burrowes. There would be more deaths and worse deaths to come, she knew. She had more important things to worry about.

  She spent two days in London at the New Gazette conferring with the editor and trying to get a firm grip on the quickly moving international crisis. Edward found himself alone with Mrs Brendel and Basil for company. He tried to make the best of it but missed Verity even before she had left for Paris. At Leonard’s insistence, he had replaced Heron as ARP representative for the area, which at least kept him occupied, and he embarked on Trollope’s ‘Palliser ’ novels which, he hoped, would last him out the war. Adrian and Charlotte Hassel saw him most days, and Leonard and Virginia almost as frequently, so, as he often told himself, he had nothing to complain about.

  Mark Redel was back home painting, seemingly none the worse for his attempted suicide – indeed, he was rather more cheerful than before. Edward bought the self-portrait and also two of his small landscapes. Better still for his self-esteem, Mark had been approached by another Bond Street gallery interested in representing him. He and Edward forged an unlikely but genuine friendship despite having very little in common. Edward overcame his distaste for pubs and he and Mark met most days for lunch at the Abergavenny Arms where they ate bread and cheese washed down with a pint or two of the local brew.

  Edward desperately wanted to contact the Foreign Office to find out when he was to join HMS Kelly to fetch home the Duke of Windsor but restrained himself. He knew that men of his age were pulling every string they could think of to find a job, in or out of uniform, and making a thorough nuisance of themselves. He also knew that the war would not be a short one – no one thought it would be over by Christmas as they had in 1914. There would be plenty of time to find his place in the great effort that the country would be called upon to make if it was to defeat Nazi Germany.

  At last, the time came for Verity to leave. She had declined a farewell party, thinking it inappropriate, but Leonard and Virginia insisted on hosting a dinner in her honour and to wish her luck. Virginia was still not herself. The murders, Heron’s attempt on her life and the coming war had all combined to make her more than usually nervous and depressed. However, the evening was a success, though Verity was hardly able to eat. Whenever she was excited or nervous, her stomach closed up and she lost her appetite. She longed to smoke but, remembering that the doctors had made it clear that cigarettes would be the worst thing for her health, she had promised Edward she would not.

  Whenever Edward looked at Basil, he silently blessed him for nosing out the horror which Heron had prepared for her, even though it had cost him his own health. With her weak lungs, Verity might easily have succumbed to just a breath or two of poison gas.

  The gas Heron had cooked up in his makeshift laboratory had been identified as a chlorine-based chemical. It was the type which he had seen used to such devastating effect when he had served at the front. The stinking yellow smoke had killed and maimed so many in the trenches. Heavier than air, it lay low over the battlefield of Ypres in 1915, a miasma of death. That Heron had tried to use it on innocent civilians seemed to Edward evidence of the derangement that war always brings in its wake.

  The night before Verity left, they made long lingering love and, satisfied, fell into a deep sleep in each other’s arms. Verity was woken about four by the sound of creaking floorboards. She disentangled herself from Edward who was snoring gently, and immediately thought of the ghost which Leonard had told them haunted the Old Vicarage. She remembered with relief that it was a friendly ghost. She lay rigid as she heard a scratching on the bedroom door and then the crea
k as it was pushed open. She listened to the pad, pad of footsteps across the wooden floor and jumped as she felt a damp nose on her hand. It was Basil, of course. It seemed he could not sleep and had come to his mistress for comfort.

  ‘You know you are not allowed upstairs, Basil,’ she whispered, trying to sound cross. He coughed and immediately she felt conscience-stricken. Basil had saved her life and shortened his own in the process. How dare she be cross with him? She sat up and stroked him – he was so big she could fondle him without moving and waking Edward. ‘Lie down and try to sleep,’ she instructed him. ‘I love you.’

  Basil appeared to understand for he collapsed on the rug with a sigh and almost immediately began to snore. Verity lay awake for a few minutes, soothed by a gentle susurration of snores from man and dog. She was lying between the two living things she loved most in the world and the sound of their breathing comforted her. At last she, too, slept but her dreams were all of missing trains and losing luggage and people. She was up at six to shower and sort through her things for the hundredth time.

  Basil had gone downstairs ahead of her and they breakfasted together, enjoying being alone and having the chance to say goodbye to one another. It was nine before Edward padded into the kitchen, yawning, to make himself a cup of coffee. Seeing Verity and Basil both looking distraught, he quickly came over to hug them.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said meaninglessly. But how could anyone know it would be ‘all right’, he wondered? ‘It’ll be all right,’ he repeated, hoping that somehow his empty words would comfort her.

  Verity had forbidden Edward to drive her to Croydon where she was to catch her flight to Paris. She told him she loved him too much to bear it.

  ‘Best to say our goodbyes here,’ she said, stroking his face. ‘What was that poem you read me yesterday which made me cry? “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.” I’ll get the train and it’ll save a long, painful farewell which will do neither of us any good. I want, as I board that plane, to imagine you with Basil on the downs – the peace, the fresh air and the sound of the wind in the trees. I shall know you will be thinking of me and it will give me the strength to go forward. We have had some happy times together, haven’t we?’