I twisted around to look over my shoulder at Cyril Aubrey. He stood there in the doorway shaking his shaggy head, his face furrowed with genuine distress. Then he stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. As I turned back to the shelves before I lost my balance, my glance swept over the tape recorder hanging from one hand, and an idea came to me. I slipped my finger furtively across the top of it and rewound the tape just a little, not enough to erase his Edgar imitation, then pressed the Record button. Faintly, I heard the little wheels start turning inside.
“When Eric said you and the child had been in this room,” he went on, speaking quickly, in a sort of controlled panic, “I thought it unlikely that you had found anything. But then I saw the tape player had been moved on the shelf. I should, of course, have erased that tape long ago, but I’m afraid my vanity won out. I did some acting in my youth, you know, and was rather proud of my performance as Edgar, especially the 999 call, although my summons to Peter was fairly credible as well. A useful lesson in the sin of pride—”
“That’s not much of a sin compared to two murders!” I exclaimed.
“Please, let me explain all that!” he burst out in anguish. “You mustn’t think I killed Edgar and Perdita just for myself—But come down, won’t you? I don’t want to hurt you! If you’ll permit me to tell you why I killed them, perhaps we can agree to let it go no further.”
“I don’t think so!” I said indignantly. “Not when you tried to put my son-in-law in prison for your crime.”
“I quite hated doing that, but he was the obvious suspect. Everyone knew his dislike for Stone, and so that evening, with all the faculty watching, I had only to reveal Edgar’s behavior toward Emily and offer him an excuse to threaten Peter’s job, to suggest quite a superfluity of motives. But afterward—I did repent me when I saw the effect on you, on Emily, on all our friends. Quite a different thing, developing a foolproof plan in theory, from watching it play out in reality. Alas, I did not employ the principles of my philosophy when I chose a man with many friends. Do come down, won’t you? I can explain so much better face-to-face.”
The tape had run out. I was sure it contained enough of that explanation to convict him, along with the Edgar imitation and the Ur-Hamlet. I knew I had to get past him and out of there with all the pieces of the puzzle. So I began loosening a large leather-bound book, obscured by the lower part of my body, as I tried to divert his attention.
“How could you be sure Edgar’s manuscript was genuine? Did you get it tested?” I asked innocently.
“Oh, no—I couldn’t let anyone examine it, or the game would have been up! But I do have some expertise in these matters—my Kyd letter, after all, fooled everyone—and it appears genuine to me. At any rate, how could I take the chance that it was? He was a sadistic man, you know. He actually quoted from the Ur-Hamlet that night in front of everyone—‘Roscius, when once he spoke a speech in Rome’—a threat to expose me, because I protested his conduct toward Perdita. Yes, he deserved killing. Perhaps you are nervous about descending the ladder, Catherine. Come, give me your hand and I’ll help you to—”
As he came near, I pulled the big book out and, looking over my shoulder, threw it at him as hard as I could. Of course it missed by inches and fell splayed open on the carpet.
Cyril cried out and knelt beside it, smoothing the pages tenderly. He clutched it to his chest and looked up at me with bewildered indignation.
“This is a first-edition Marlowe!” He struggled to his feet and laid it carefully on the desk. “I must insist that you come away from my books, if you are inclined to fling them about like that!”
I gave up and climbed down the ladder, but when he reached for the Ur-Hamlet I quickly swung it, and the tape recorder, behind my back.
“Cyril, you simply can’t commit murder without paying for it,” I explained patiently.
“You can tell the police all these reasons you had, but you’ve got to take the responsibility.”
“No, no,” he implored, the panic in his voice now unbridled. “You don’t understand, I can’t do that to Ann and the boys! I can’t let them know those things—their respect is everything to me. Look, you think I forged the Kyd letter for my own aggrandizement, don’t you? Not so, far otherwise. The admiration of my peers was gratifying, certainly—but what I really meant to do was to give Graham and Eric the money they needed to set up their philanthropic venture. They are born teachers and longed to bring learning to children in the poorest countries. But they weren’t able to raise enough, and actually spoke of giving up their dream. So I forged the letter, and money started flowing in, for the book, for speaking engagements, for the headship. It was the happiest time of my life when I could give them the funds they needed and see the project become reality. Their gratitude was so precious to me—and only look at all the good they’ve done!”
“Cyril, whatever your intentions, forgery is a crime, and murder is—”
“Are you familiar with the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham?”
“Who?” The sudden change of subject threw me off balance. “Well—no.”
“John Stuart Mill?” He cocked his head to one side, an eager professorial smile taking the place of his former anguished expression.
“No, but what I mean—”
“I thought as much. Utilitarianism, my dear lady! A system of ethics which I embrace wholeheartedly. The rightness of an act, you see, depends entirely upon its consequences, and one may decide that by measuring its contribution to ‘the greatest good of the greatest number.’ It was all formulated in Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislation, in 1789. And you see, the world is a better place as a result of my little forgery. Uncounted numbers of children who would be trapped in poverty and ignorance will improve their lot, and quite possibly that of their people, because of what I did.”
“You lied, Cyril. You led the scholarly world to believe something that wasn’t true.”
“I say again, fie on it,” he replied, raising his chin defiantly. “Is not human welfare vastly more important than an esoteric point of scholarship?”
It was hard to argue with that. I actually felt myself moving, unwillingly, toward his point of view. Then I remembered that this had gone further than scholarly deception.
“Maybe so. But we’re also talking about murder.”
He collapsed, as if that last word had been a spike, puncturing the balloon of philosophical justification he’d puffed up. His hand shook, pushing his hair back from his sweaty forehead, and his candid brown eyes again pleaded with me for understanding.
“Murder—yes, the knife going in, and in, and the smell of his blood—it was more horrible than I can say! But it had to be done, don’t you see? Edgar Stone would have played cat-and-mouse with me for a while, forcing me into retirement, destroying what I’ve built at Mercy, but he would eventually have exposed me to the world, to my family, as a forger.”
“I can see that,” I said, clinging with determination to the main point, although I couldn’t repress a twinge of sympathy. “But you didn’t have to kill poor Perdita. And you can’t tell me you didn’t plan her killing—you must have doctored that page from one of her letters, and that’s premeditation.”
“Let me tell you about a modern development of Bentham’s school of thought,” he said desperately. “Utilitarian bioethics—it takes the original philosophy to its logical end, you see. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the criterion of good, then euthanising the hopelessly unhappy is a net positive value, isn’t it? Perdita’s death not only kept my secret safe, it also reduced the sum total of misery in the world! I had created a situation, in Peter’s arrest, that had brought unhappiness to an unforeseen number of good people. This was completely at odds with my philosophy! And there was Perdita, with no hope of happiness, and for whom no one but Geoffrey would grieve very much.”
“We don’t have the right to make those decisions for other people!”
“Do we not? Any
utilitarian would disagree, my dear Catherine. She didn’t fight for her life, you know, nor even plead for it. When I came to her house that evening, carrying the ‘suicide’ note and the razor in my pocket, she was outside, waiting for a cab to take her to the railway station. She was determined to go to Tyneford, wouldn’t let me into the house where I could have taken the Ur-Hamlet once the deed was done. Not knowing about that key hidden in the flowerpot, I realized I should have to come back with her own house key, to search for the incriminating volume. I knew that Edgar had concealed it in a different cover, so I had no idea of its appearance, nor where he kept it. I looked for it after killing him, until Tyler’s car pulled up and I had to make a hasty exit through the rear door. So I persuaded Perdita to let me drive her to Tyneford. Of course she was shattered when we reached the old house. Her last refuge lay in ruins around her. She wept and would not be comforted, declaring that there was nothing left, nowhere to go, nothing to hope for. I knew then that my decision had been correct. I promised that if she would trust me, I would give her peace. She looked into my eyes while I released her blood, and I saw no fear in her eyes, only a sort of numb relief. It was, in the end, a last favor for an old friend—Ah, Catherine, if you had known her twenty years ago!”
I was amazed to see that his eyes were brimming with tears.
“You didn’t have the right,” I said stubbornly.
He heaved a deep sigh. “I abhor the thought of ever killing again—it is a monstrous maze with no way out! Blood leads on to blood, I’ve learnt the truth of that. Just tell me you will keep my secret, Catherine. Let the dead be blamed, let it all be forgotten.”
Quin had given me an argument very like that, I mused, only based in cynical self-interest rather than cloudy philosophical rationalizations. Without realizing it, I shook my head.
“Oh, God,” he moaned. He stepped behind his desk and opened a drawer, and in the next moment I was looking down the barrel of a revolver.
“You must understand, I’ve not come so far only to be ruined now,” he said wretchedly. “I cannot let you take those things away from here. ‘I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ I understand perfectly what Macbeth meant, although tedious is not the most apposite word—agonizing would be more true, in my experience. And of course, some scholars believe steeped is the correct reading, rather than stepped, although personally I have always felt—”
“Cyril, this isn’t some academic panel discussion!” I burst out. “This is my life you’re playing with! Put that thing down before it goes off.”
“I do know how to use it,” he said, “more or less—although it’s never been out of the drawer before, as I mentioned no burglar has yet threatened my book collection. But I don’t want to employ it, Catherine, and I will not, if I can only believe you will keep my secrets!”
“Okay,” I lied, “I will, Cyril. I’ll take all the evidence and hide it, and say nothing.”
He scrutinized me for a few minutes, and then an expression of great sadness came into his eyes. “You have no talent for deception, Catherine. Your face betrays your real intent. I’d thought you could understand, once I explained, but I see that I was mistaken. ‘False hearts speak fair to those they intend most mischief.’ ” He waited expectantly, as if I were one of his colleagues, always ready for their game of one-upmanship.
“What? I don’t know! Shakespeare?”
“Certainly not,” he said with a disappointed sigh. “Duchess of Malfi.” He started fooling with the hammer of the gun, apparently unsure which way to pull it.
“You won’t shoot me, Cyril,” I said. “How would you explain a dead lady in the library when your family comes home?”
“I could—conceal your remains in the scullery, and remove them by night?” he suggested uncertainly.
“But the blood would still be here—and it would get all over your precious books, wouldn’t it?”
That stopped him. “I shall—I shall just have to take you elsewhere, then! Come along, we must hurry—the back garden will be unobserved.”
Then the door behind him swung open. Both of us gasped in shock, and Cyril spun around to see what was happening. Quin stood there, looking quite dumb-founded.
I jumped toward the desk, picked up the first-edition Marlowe, and slammed it with all my strength into the back of Cyril’s head. He staggered and fell forward, dropping the gun. Quin snatched it up and trained it on him. Cyril lay staring at him in a befuddled way.
“Stay still,” Quin warned him. “I know my way around a gun.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Cyril said groggily, obediently stiffening his whole body. “I didn’t mean to—I tried not to—I mean to say, your lady was in no—” He gave up, realizing finally that his excuses were not going to influence either of us.
Quin looked over at me. His eyes held a sort of grim resignation and no longer the hope I had seen when I’d sat down opposite him in the Eagle and Child.
“You followed me,” I said.
He nodded. “After I stewed for a while. I finally decided I couldn’t let you come alone, just in case you were right. And I guess you were.”
As I started to pick up the telephone on the desk, sounds floated from outside the house—car doors slamming, footsteps and laughter. A feeling of impending doom came over me.
“Oh God,” I said, “it’s his family.”
Cyril sat up, throwing me a glance of acute supplication. Then he drew his knees up, laid his face against them, and started to cry in great shuddering sobs that shook his whole body.
“You’ll have to call 999,” I told Quin, pushing the phone toward him. “I’ll give the police the evidence when they get here—this book, and a tape in this machine.” I set them on the desk, far from Cyril, and then took a deep, unsteady breath. “I’ve got to go out and tell Ann and the boys, before they walk in on this.”
When I’d almost reached the door he said, quietly, “Kit.” I turned impatiently. He stood holding the phone in one hand, gazing at me intently, and he said in a low voice, “Just—I’m sorry.”
“You know, that’s the first time you’ve ever said it,” I answered. “But it doesn’t matter now. You just saved my life, and that’s enough to make us quits.”
I turned and hurried out to face Cyril Aubrey’s family.
Epilogue
Farewell, love, and all thy laws forever, Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
—Thomas Wyatt
So that’s that.”
I put the letter back into its envelope, folded it in quarters, and dropped it on the grass.
“What’s what?” Fiona asked.
I leaned back in my lawn chair and looked at the cloudless blue sky through the leaves of my apple tree. I could just make out the robin’s nest in the crotch of a branch, and the mother bird sitting still as a decoy on her eggs. I would be here to see the babies, to watch them learn to fly and to keep the cat away until they could look out for themselves. Contentment filled me to the brim.
“It’s a letter from an old friend in New York—Ellie. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned her to you? Anyway, she says Quin and Janet got married.” I smiled to show her everything was okay, but she still looked at me with concern. “They’ve gone to Mexico on their honeymoon. She’s definitely going to have a better time there than she had here!”
“Not—problematic?” Fiona asked.
I reached over and patted her hand reassuringly. “Not a bit,” I said. “You should have stopped worrying about that weeks ago.”
I glanced quickly through the rest of my mail. Walter, the postman, was just disappearing down the road on his red bicycle, jingling his bell at Mick Jenkins’s old dog as it slowly crossed in front of him.
There was an envelope with the return address of Dan Vincent, an American widower I’d met at the time of our village murder. It was the second letter I’d had from him since he’d gone back to New Jersey. I’d had a hard t
ime thinking of anything to tell him about when I answered the first one, but that certainly wouldn’t be a problem this time! Such a nice man, and obviously lonely, I mused as I dropped it on the grass with the bills, to be opened later. I hoped he would find a nice, compatible Jersey girl pretty soon, and start a new life.
It was late June, and Cyril Aubrey was locked up, awaiting trial and certain conviction, having been unable to convert the police to Utilitarianism. Ann was sticking by him, and her many friends, as well as her sons, were sticking by her. I’d always feel bad for them, but I didn’t see how I could have acted any differently.
Peter had been unanimously chosen to replace Cyril as head and had already hired two young tutors with provocative new approaches to Elizabethan drama. Geoffrey, still inconsolable, had taken a long sabbatical, traveling on the Continent with an old friend. Everybody hoped that when he came back he would finally be resigned to a world without Perdita.
The hardest part of the aftermath for me had been Emily’s disappointed face when I told her why Quin and Janet had left on schedule for the States. But by now she had, as she put it, “reconciled her abandonment issues”—in plain English, faced the fact that her parents were divorced for good.
“Well,” said Alice, “I really wonder if Enid could have been wrong about the new neighbors? The afternoon is getting on, with no sign of them.”
The welcoming committee had settled in my front garden a couple of hours before, Alice and Fiona on the rustic bench I had bought last week at Debenham’s, John and I on the two lawn chairs that had been left in the shed by the previous owners, Audrey and Jilly on the stone wall, and little Diana napping in her carry-cot on the ground. Enid Cobb had told me yesterday, in her unshakably positive style, that today was the day the new people would be moving into the house across the road. It had turned out quite attractive, fitting into the village as well as a modern house could, with its whitewashed stucco walls, casement windows, and steeply pitched slate roof. Fiona and I had stood on tiptoe to peek into the first-floor windows, quite covetous of the big eat-in kitchen with a countertop stove and wall oven instead of an Aga, and a ceramic tile floor with patterns of plants baked into each tile. We had concluded the new neighbors were a lot better fixed financially than either of us were.
Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow Page 21