Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow

by Patricia Harwin

  “Quin, something really important has happened,” I began quickly.

  “I know,” he answered. “Something neither of us expected.”

  “You see, this morning I was—”

  “No,” he said. “Let me tell you first. Then you can tell me.”

  I really had meant to be very firm, but sitting there, looking at his face and hearing his voice, was totally different from sitting in Keble Chapel making theoretical plans. Now I didn’t want to stop him.

  “I came to England to offer you any help you needed, to try to get us acting like adults again. That’s the real reason I came, Kit, not just for a visit with Emily. It was a hell of a job to get Janet to let me come, and it turns out she was right about everything. Emily didn’t want her around, she knew that would happen, and when I saw you again—”

  “Take your order, then?” a chipper young man in an apron demanded, leaning in the door.

  Quin scowled at him and said shortly, “Lager.”

  “Pint, sir?” the waiter asked, and Quin nodded, blowing out an angry sigh. “And the lady?”

  “What do you have that’s not alcoholic?” I asked him. “I need my wits about me.”

  “What about a nice squash?”

  “Squash?” I pictured a glass of liquefied zucchini, and it must have shown in my expression, because the waiter laughed.

  “Quite tasty, actually, lot like a lemonade.”

  “For God’s sake, bring her a squash!” Quin exploded. Obviously he was at least as tightly wound as I was.

  When the waiter had gone I said tartly, “I didn’t come to hear about her!”

  “You’re wrong about her, you know. It’s not an act, she really loves me.”

  I swallowed the question I wanted to ask, the one about his feelings for her, and took refuge in sarcasm.

  “ ‘Whatever love means,’ ” I quoted. “Prince Charles, announcement of engagement.”

  “I don’t want to get into one of these go-arounds with you about what things ‘mean’! We’ve already agreed I’m no good at that stuff.” He leaned toward me, his blue eyes full of intensity. “Listen, I lied just now. It’s not true I only wanted to get on a more adult footing with you. I told myself that was it, but—I missed you, Kit. I worried about you.”

  He leaned back, releasing his tension in another of his noisy sighs as the waiter set our drinks down. I took a sip of my lemony soda, he took a long swallow of his beer, and we sat in silence for a few moments. Outside, a sidewalk grate clanked periodically as passersby stepped on it. Emily had told me a few days before he’d said he missed me. It had made me angry then, but it didn’t now.

  Finally he said, with a touch of impatience, “So didn’t you miss me at all?”

  “Back in New York I thought I’d go crazy from missing you. And after I got here—yes, I thought about you, and our past, a whole lot more than I’d expected to. I’d thought once I was far away it would be easy to forget, but it wasn’t. It took me weeks to cure myself of thinking about you, and now—Oh, it’s not fair! What do you want, Quin? Are you planning to move all your women into a big house together, like BrighamYoung?”

  “No,” he said, smiling for the first time. “One at a time’s enough to deal with.”

  He reached across the table and took my hand, and I felt the same shock in the pit of my stomach as when he’d held and kissed me.

  “Now,” he said softly, “you tell me.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I want you to help me break into Cyril Aubrey’s house.”

  He drew back and dropped my hand, looking stunned. “To do what?”

  “Okay, I’ll explain,” I hurried on. “This morning, when I went to look for Archie, I found this tape recorder in the study, and the tape was of Aubrey practicing Edgar’s voice saying what he said on the 999 tape. You know, that Peter was about to kill him? So Cyril Aubrey made that call! Which means he killed Edgar, and he must have killed Perdita too, because I know she didn’t commit suicide from the way the I in her note was written, so we’ve got to get that tape and take it to the police.” I stopped to get my breath.

  He just stared at me for another minute.

  Then his face flushed and he burst out, “What is this? I came here to talk about us, you and me, whether we can start over—not about another cockamamie murder theory you’ve cooked up!”

  I started to respond angrily too, then forced myself to quiet down, to be conciliatory.

  “Just help me, Quin, the way you did before, and then we’ll talk about us. I know we need to, but this has to be done right away, before he—”

  “You’re going off half-cocked again, the way you’ve done as long as I’ve known you! Look.” He leaned across the table again, gazing at me earnestly. “Peter’s free, Emily’s got him back, so she’s happy again, and that’s all I ever cared about. It’s over. Perdita Stone killed her husband and herself, nice neat package, all wrapped up and bought by everybody. Forget about it.”

  “No, you don’t understand—it’s unjust to Perdita to leave it like this. If Cyril Aubrey really killed them he has to bear the responsibility!”

  “I don’t give a damn about that. It’s better for everybody if a dead woman gets the blame. If Aubrey did it he had a rational motive, he’s not some serial killer. It’d be painful for a lot of people if he went down, and a big black eye for the police, which I can tell you they wouldn’t appreciate. You don’t understand, baby—nobody cares who really killed the Stones.”

  I drew back, as if to avoid touching a live wire laid across the table between us.

  “I care,” I almost whispered.

  He leaned back with an exasperated sigh. “God, I’d forgotten that absolutism, that right-and-wrong garbage you were always full of. Like you never got over what they told you in Sunday school. Used to drive me crazy.”

  I let silence fall between us for a few minutes. Clank.

  “Yes, I remember,” I said slowly.

  “There’s no absolute right and wrong, Kit. Never was, never will be, and people who believe there is don’t make it to the top—not in the real world.”

  “What about justice?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. “Justice is an effect of the wallet. If you can afford Quin Freeman, you’ll probably walk, even if you’re the guiltiest guy alive. If you have to settle for the public defender you’ll probably go down, though you’re innocent as a newborn baby.”

  “That used to bother you.”

  “I used to be a kid. I grew up.”

  I saw in my mind’s eye the shaggy young fellow I’d first met in front of the Capitol Building, his eyes shining with conviction. I remembered him shouting “Sellouts!” at some of the most powerful figures in the government, and I heard him telling me in a Greenwich Village coffeeshop about the poor and ignorant people trapped in the legal system who someday would not need to be afraid, because of him.

  “You know,” I said, “that day on the train, you said when Emily left there wasn’t much between us anymore. I didn’t see it then, but now I do. It was because over the years you’d ‘grown up,’ if that’s what you want to call it, and I hadn’t.” A strange new feeling was taking over inside me, a sort of lightness, as if, minute by minute, something heavy was being lifted off my shoulders. “I’m sixty years old, and I haven’t grown up yet.”

  A puzzled anger kindled in his eyes. “Yeah, don’t I know it! And if I hadn’t been there to take care of you, to rein you in when you’d go haring off on one of your impulses, how much trouble would you have gotten yourself into?”

  “Probably about as much as I’ve been getting into since you left.” Now there was a bubble of laughter bouncing around in my chest, just waiting to burst.

  “Exactly. And I don’t want to think about you getting in trouble. You’ve always needed me to protect you, because you’ve never understood what the world’s really like.”

  The laughter burst out, startling both of us. “You know, you had m
e convinced of that for most of my life! Dumb old me, needing all that protection from somebody who’d long ago sold his soul for money and prestige.”

  “Look, I’m not ashamed of my work! I’m damn proud of the career I’ve built and the money I’ve made. And I did it all without my wife giving me so much as an occasional pat on the back!”

  “You’re right, you’re absolutely right. When you’d talk about how cleverly you got some rich client off it made me uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t let myself think about it. I never was that supportive little woman you wanted. And now that I’ve had a taste of life on my own terms, I’m even worse!”

  That burden I’d been carrying for so long was quite gone now. I’d never felt such relief and delight except on the delivery table, forty pounds lighter and about to turn the page on an exciting new chapter in my story.

  I could see in his eyes he realized something had changed.

  “Kit, calm down!” came the familiar order. “This is a perfect example of what I just said, you’re jumping to another crazy conclusion. I know we’ve got problems, but we can work them out. I want you back in spite of all that.”

  “No, you don’t want me, Quin,” I said. “You want what we had in the old days—before you grew up.”

  “Damn it, I know what I want! Okay, you’re so hung up on the truth, let’s hear you tell it. This is about that Geoffrey guy, isn’t it? All that high-minded talk isn’t worth a damn, you just don’t want to admit you’re involved with another man!”

  I couldn’t contain another burst of laughter.

  “Oh, Quin, it’s not Geoffrey! I don’t want to do the whole thing over with a different man. I’ve lived that life, and now I want something else. I want my freedom.”

  “It’s the first time you’ve ever talked like that,” he said scornfully.

  “Because I’ve been learning since I came to the village, although I didn’t know it. I’ve been learning to be myself, with no apologies. And I like it.”

  As I stood up and edged out from behind the table he said furiously, “All right, I’ll go to Aubrey’s with you, if that’s what started you on this tantrum! But this time I’m not going to let you do anything illegal—”

  I had already started for the door.

  “No, I don’t want you to come with me, Quin. I can do it alone. Let’s make this good-bye. Go tell Janet she doesn’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Kit, come back here!” he bellowed.

  I stopped at the door and shook my head. “No,” I said, “I’m not coming back,” and I left him sitting there.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There are a many ways that conduct to seeming honour, and some of them very dirty ones.

  —John Webster, Duchess of Malfi

  I hurried back to Keble Road to get my car, feeling the way an ex-con must feel when the prison gate slams shut behind him. I was unreasonably happy, unduly relieved, and irrationally confident. I could get into Aubrey’s and make away with that evidence without anybody’s help.

  It had been a narrow escape, but if Quin hadn’t come and pushed me to the brink, I knew I’d have gone on in my new life always regretting the old one and wasting my energy on bitterness. I could really begin to live on my own terms now. If I hadn’t gone to the Bird and Baby today, if I’d hidden and let him leave without that confrontation, I would never have understood the lessons Far Wychwood had been teaching me.

  Magdalen Bridge being closed to traffic this morning while revelers still packed the streets, I had to get out my Oxford A to Z map book and work out an alternate route to the Aubreys’ street. I could hardly concentrate, so many different ideas were pulsing in my brain, but finally had to admit there was no way except the long way, north on the Banbury Road and then a big loop around to the south again.

  Driving past the unaesthetic modern university buildings concentrated north of the historic area, my thoughts traveled from what had just happened, to what was waiting for me. I was sure there was still enough time to grab the tape player before the Aubreys came home. I could have it in John Bennett’s hands before Cyril missed it. Without that evidence, there was no way anybody would believe he had murdered two people. I could hardly believe it myself.

  Why would a man like Cyril Aubrey kill two of his oldest friends? A romantic triangle? Impossible to believe he’d betray Ann, he just wasn’t the kind. But of course, that’s what I’d believed about Quin, wasn’t it? I shook my head, making the right turn onto Marston Ferry Road. No, there was no doubt about the Aubreys’ devotion to each other, and no one had ever linked Cyril with Perdita. Maybe he’d just felt sorry for her and wanted to free her from Edgar’s mistreatment—but in that case, why would he kill her too?

  All right, there were other common motives—how about blackmail? Edgar might have known something that could harm Cyril or his precious family. That would explain the conferral of the headship on the one man least suited to the position. Cyril had to have known what Edgar Stone was, if the rest of the faculty did. The more I thought about it, the more false his attempts to justify his choice had sounded. And Stone had loved exercising power over people—no doubt he would have resented a man who held power over him. I could even imagine how he might have burned with jealousy watching Aubrey’s two handsome, intelligent sons, roughly the same age as his Simon, grow up and make their mark in the world. To force Cyril to bow before him, to wrench from him control over the whole faculty, that would have been Edgar Stone’s idea of real merrymaking.

  Maybe Perdita found out about all that, somehow put two and two together and realized Cyril had killed her husband? Then he’d have to eliminate her as well. I couldn’t see him as a cold-blooded executioner, but whatever desperate act Edgar might have driven him to, it was still hard to comprehend how he could murder Perdita or frame Peter.

  The Aubreys’ little street was very quiet—everybody would be at the festivities, of course. There were no lights in the house by the river, although the beautiful morning had turned cloudy. A swan was floating past, making an upside-down image in the dark water as I drew up to the curb. The garage door was open and the car gone. Obviously there was nobody home, but I almost tiptoed, approaching the front door. I remembered what I’d heard Ann say at the dinner party, and sure enough, after a quick search, found the key hidden in a niche between the mailbox and the wall of the house.

  I unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer, further exhilarated by my newly discovered talent for housebreaking.

  I hurried down the hallway to the study. There was the tape player, right where Archie had left it, askew on the topmost shelf. My heart pounded with excitement as I pushed the ladder over and started climbing, not even feeling my usual queasiness about high places—not today!

  I had the tape player in my hand and was repositioning my feet to start backing down, when I saw something familiar on the next shelf below. It was the spine of an old book, split down the middle, its green coloring scraped away in places so the brown leather beneath showed through. A distinctive pattern of gold sunbursts ran down the middle.

  That book belonged in another library. I knew I had seen it somewhere else, but I couldn’t remember where. I pried it loose with my free hand. The pages tried to fall out, but I held them down with my thumb. Awkwardly, I turned the cover back and saw the title page.

  Marching across the sheet of brittle vellum on a slight downward slant, those roughly printed letters told me the whole reason for the murders, although it took me a few minutes to realize it:

  Gradually, a memory seeped into my mind—the Senior Common Room, the murmur of literate conversation, Peter telling me about the Ur-Hamlet mentioned by theatergoers before Shakespeare’s earliest known play was performed, and believed never to have been published. What had he said—the Hamlet we know wasn’t written until 1600 or so? I was pretty sure of that, and I knew Peter’s first words on introducing me had been about Cyril Aubrey’s great coup, the finding of a letter that proved Thomas Kyd had
written the Ur-Hamlet. The best seller in which he’d revealed his find had brought him acclaim in the academic world, and the headship with all its money and perks.

  I turned back the title page. Beneath “Act I, scene I” was not the familiar opening I expected, the guards on the parapet discussing the ghost, but one set in the queen’s chamber, the prince arguing with his mother about her hasty marriage. This was a whole different Hamlet, I realized with a little chill down the backbone. I was holding in my hands proof that Cyril Aubrey’s whole career was a sham.

  He must have forged the Kyd letter—as a scholar he would know all about Elizabethan documents, the composition of ink, the style of penmanship. Paper of the time wouldn’t be hard to find, for an expert in the field. Had he done it for the sake of reputation, I wondered, or money?

  And now I remembered where I had seen the green book before. Perdita had grabbed it from her shelves, that day she told Geoffrey and me she was going to sell Edgar’s books. She’d been planning to call in rare-book dealers, and they would definitely have recognized the significance of this one. Cyril would have been exposed and discredited.

  Edgar Stone must somehow have found the Ur-Hamlet and used it to blackmail his way into the head-ship. Any normal person would have revealed such a find right away for the fame and fortune it would bring, but Edgar was far from normal—judging by what I knew of him, he would prefer to enjoy his petty tyrannies first. There would be time enough to reveal his discovery to the world once he got bored with watching his colleagues suffer.

  Cyril must have known that. So he had silenced Edgar permanently, then done away with Perdita to keep her from selling the precious volume that would reveal his lie to the world. Why couldn’t he just have stolen it from her, I wondered miserably, why did he have to kill her as well? And framing Peter, now that was absolutely—

  “Fie on it, ah, fie!” said a voice behind me. “How all occasions do conspire against me! If only we hadn’t encountered Graham’s old schoolmaster, I should have been here an hour since and had that tape erased. Oh, dear—I see you’ve found the incriminating manuscript, as well! We are caught in a conundrum indeed, Mrs.—er, Catherine. Are we not?”