The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  Kester raised an eyebrow, and looked sardonic. “Steady on, Harry! It’s only in an Agatha Christie novel that the villain slips cyanide into the champagne!”

  “I somehow got the impression you had a pile of mud waiting and Thomas and I were both due to have our noses rubbed in it.”

  “If I didn’t know you better I’d say you were suffering from persecution mania! Have another drink.”

  “No, thanks. So there was no mud waiting for me?”

  “No, but how intriguing! What frightful secret do you have locked up in your pristine past? Obviously you can’t be nervous without cause!”

  “I thought you might have found out that I was sent down from Oxford for lechery, drunkenness and general academic failure.”

  “No!” said Kester, genuinely astonished. “Were you? Well, I’ll be, damned!”

  I set down my glass. “Well, now that we’ve got all that straightened out—”

  “Oh, don’t rush off. I’ve got another favor to ask you—a very minor favor this time, you’ll be relieved to hear. You play golf, don’t you?”

  “Not since I was up at Oxford. No time. Why?”

  “But you do at least know one club from another which is more than I do.”

  I conceded a familiarity with golf clubs.

  “Good. I’ll tell you the problem: Owen Bryn-Davies—little Owen—is taking the game up and Elizabeth asked me what had happened to Uncle Lion’s clubs. Well, I eventually excavated them from the attics, but I suspect some of the clubs are missing, and I was wondering if the remainder would be of any use to a twelve-year-old boy. Would you mind taking a look? The clubs are in the billiard room.”

  This seemed a refreshingly harmless request. I consented.

  In the billiard room the table was covered with a dust sheet and the blinds were drawn, but when Kester switched on the lights I saw the battered old golf bag standing by the fireplace. As I moved over to it I automatically kept Kester in my field of vision although when I realized what I was doing I was unnerved. What a neurotic reaction! It was almost as if I expected him to carve me up with a club! Had to pull myself together.

  “He’ll need five clubs to start with,” I said briskly as Kester drifted away from me to draw up one of the blinds. “I suggest a spoon, a mid-iron, a mashie, a mashie-niblick and a putter. Now, let’s take a look at what we’ve got here. … Ah, I see a mashie he could use.” I adopted a golfer’s stance with my back to the fireplace and tried a practice swing. “That’s odd,” I said surprised. I tried another. “Wait a minute, are these ordinary clubs? They seem abnormally long. Uncle Lion was a tall man, wasn’t he?”

  “Vast. In the family photos he’s even taller, than my father, and my father was six feet two.”

  “I suspect these clubs were specially made for him. Tell Elizabeth to take them to the professional at Father’s golf club and ask his advice. It’s possible they may be of no use to Owen at all.”

  “What a bore—all right, I will. Thanks, Harry.”

  Abandoning the clubs we strolled languidly back to the hall. I had to will myself not to hurry.

  “Thanks for the drink, old chap. Sorry I can’t help you with Terrible Thomas. Wish you the best of luck there.”

  “Thanks—my God, I’ll need it.”

  Was it significant that he didn’t attempt to shake hands? I didn’t know. I was preoccupied with the knowledge that I was about to turn my back on him in order to run down the steps to my car.

  I turned my back and ran. Nothing happened. But what on earth had I expected? A knife in the back? I was going crazy—off my rocker, as Dafydd would have said so succinctly.

  I started the engine, stalled it, restarted it and let out the clutch too fast. The car lurched forward and almost stalled again. Yes, there was no doubt about it, my nerves were shot to pieces, but why? No idea.

  I drove back to Penhale, and all the time I was aware of the vibrations of violence pulsing subtly across the surface of my mind. I thought: I picked up something there, something most people would have missed. And I shuddered. Then I thought of Dafydd saying, “You have a nose for danger,” and I shuddered more convulsively than ever. But I went on driving to Llangennith. I thought Thomas deserved a warning that he was about to be fired, and I certainly wasn’t going to stop him if he immediately roared over to Oxmoon before Kester had had the chance to summon the guard of solicitors.

  I reached Stourham Hall. I told Thomas. And that, of course, as I realized later, was exactly what Kester had wanted me to do.

  VIII

  “I’ll kill the swine,” said Thomas.

  “Don’t be a bloody fool. Eleanor, help me convince him it’s not worth going to jail for assault.”

  “Harry’s right, Tom,” said Eleanor. “Go over to Oxmoon and make a scene by all means, but for God’s sake don’t start bashing him to pulp. Think how thrilled he’d be if you ended up in jail with your life wrecked.”

  “Bloody hell!” yelled Thomas, but he saw the logic. In frustration he said to me, “Let’s go and get drunk.”

  But I got out of that one. My girlfriend Norah, the incumbent of the useful flat overlooking the Mumbles lighthouse, was coming to dinner at the Manor for the first time. She had said more than once how much she wanted to meet the boys.

  “Watch out,” said Eleanor, temporarily diverted from her husband’s problems by this disclosure. “Once she’s met the boys and told you what darling little cherubs they are she’ll expect you to propose on the spot.”

  “Oh no, she’s a career girl, she’s not interested in marriage,” I said but panic assailed me again. Danger seemed to be lurking everywhere that day.

  Leaving Thomas still fulminating against Kester I retired to the Manor but I was late and when I arrived I saw Norah’s car was already parked in the drive. Hastening to the drawing room I found her holding her own well against the united curiosity of the four boys.

  “Norah, I’m so sorry, I was unavoidably detained. …” I kissed her more to soothe my nerves than to demonstrate affection but at once saw Hal looking at me with hostile dark eyes as his sharp little brain made two and two equal a disloyal-to-Mummy four. Fortunately Charles and Jack were too ingenuous to notice and Humphrey was too young to understand, but even so I was rattled. I spilled the gin.

  “Darling, relax! Why are you in such a state?”

  Silly woman. I decided I was tired of her. But I’d miss her flat. I’d become very fond of that view of the Mumbles lighthouse.

  “Is anything wrong, darling?” she persisted after the children had been dispatched and we were dining alone.

  “It’s nothing. Just the usual old family problems.”

  I saw then that I couldn’t talk to her. Despite my irritation I was fond of her. In a vague way I even liked her. But when all was said and done I was unable to do anything with her except fuck. I tried to cheer myself up by reflecting that this was a very sizable exception, but I was depressed beyond measure and lonely beyond belief.

  “You don’t mind if we don’t use my bedroom, do you?” I said later as I locked the door of the drawing room. “Everyone’s upstairs now, so it’s safer down here.”

  “Darling, I’d do it with you in the kitchen sink if you felt so inclined!”

  I suddenly realized that even my liking for her had become past history. How was I ever going to get an erection? But I could and did. Extraordinary. Obviously stupid women were an infallible guarantee of sexual success, and no doubt if I ever went to bed with a really clever woman I’d be impotent, but I’d never been to bed with a really clever woman, never fancied it, never dared go to bed with any woman I might respect. I might have ended up liking her too much, I might have ended up loving her, I might even have wound up the victim of a grand passion, and my God, think of all the misery and suffering that would inevitably have caused—

  “Darling, what’s this simply heavenly music on the wireless?”

  “Vivaldi.” I knew she didn’t give a damn.

>   “Oh, it’s so—”

  “Shut up. Do you want to come or not?”

  The telephone rang. I cursed, determined not to answer it, but it went on and on, ruining the Vivaldi which was just reaching its best bars.

  “Hell!” I finished in a fury, pulled out, staggered across the room and grabbed the receiver. “Yes, who’s this?”

  A shuddering, voice whispered: “It’s me.”

  “Kester!” I could have murdered him. “For Christ’s sake, what is it now?”

  “Harry, this is an emergency. It’s Thomas. You’ve got to come, got to—”

  “Oh my God—”

  “Harry, please—”

  “But—”

  “Please!” shouted Kester hysterically, and hung up.

  I was so shocked that I just stood there with the receiver in my hand until the postmistress came on the line. “Are you waiting to speak to me, Mr. Godwin?” she asked curiously, and I answered without thinking, “No.” But as soon as I said that I changed my mind. “I mean yes. Dial Oxmoon for me, could you please, Mrs. Williams?”

  The line clicked and whirred. Kester answered in the middle of the first ring. “Harry?”

  “Yes.” I listened but the postmistress was evidently holding her breath with the consummate skill of a practiced eavesdropper. “All right,” I said, “tell Thomas I’m coming. That should calm him down.” I hung up and turned to Norah. “I’m sorry but something frightful’s going on at Oxmoon—Thomas is drunk as usual—and I’ll have to rush up there before he murders Kester.”

  “Darling,” said Norah, whom I had regaled in the past with stories of my feuding relations, “what a family!”

  I seized the chance to get rid of her by adding: “I hate to say it but I see no point in you waiting here for me because God only knows how long this’ll take.”

  That successfully terminated our evening together. I rushed to Oxmoon.

  It was dark when I drove raggedly up the drive, and when Kester opened the front door the light was behind him so that at first I couldn’t see his face. But when I did see it I felt as if I’d dropped six floors in a broken lift.

  “What the devil—”

  “Oh, thank God,” he sobbed. “Thank God you’ve come.” Tears streamed down his face and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “Where is he?”

  “In the billiard room—we had a fight—oh, God—”

  I was running. I ran across the hall down the passage to the billiard room and Kester stumbled after me, poor old Kester, poor old sod, sniveling, sobbing, steeped in melodramatic emotion. But I felt I could deal with this. We seemed to have fallen back into our oldest roles: poor old Kester had got into a mess as usual and now Cousin Harry, that elderly version of Wonder Boy, was going to sweep along like the war hero he was and clean everything up.

  If I’d stopped to think I’d have seen the script flowing effortlessly from Kester’s fertile pen, but I didn’t stop to think. I rushed headlong into the billiard room and there was Thomas, not just temporarily knocked out, as I’d anticipated, but lying full length in front of the fireplace with his head bashed in. I saw at once he was dead as a doornail.

  IX

  “I didn’t mean to do it—it was self-defense—I was running away from him, I ran in here and tried to shut the door but he was too quick, he burst in but he slipped and fell—he was roaring drunk, and then I don’t know, I hit him on the head but I didn’t mean to kill him, J just wanted to knock him out—”

  “Shut up.”

  Silence fell. Without his voice ranting in my ears I could finally hear myself think. But the trouble was that I couldn’t think clearly. I was too shocked. I found myself functioning automatically, every move made with a view to survival. I kept Kester in my field of vision. I knelt by the body. I made myself examine the wound on the head. I was acting on instinct, almost suffocated by the danger which had grazed my nerves so searingly during my earlier visit to Oxmoon.

  Then I saw it. Beyond the shattered head, lying in the fireplace, was Kester’s weapon. It was the golf club I had handled that morning.

  Comprehension exploded in my brain. My fingerprints were on that bloodstained mashie. No matter what Kester told the police—and he might even try to protect poor old Cousin Harry by repeating his story that he’d killed in self-defense—he’d be safe because of course he’d used gloves to kill Thomas and only my fingerprints would be on that club. I saw at once how the situation would appear to the police. For nearly two years there had been bad blood between me and Thomas; Kester had manipulated us both into such a state of public antagonism that all Penhale would testify that we’d been sworn enemies, and once the police found out I was a trained killer their minds could leap to only one deduction.

  But I had an alibi. Of course I had an alibi. Or did I? No, I didn’t. I could be killing Thomas this very minute—that was why Kester had lured me to Oxmoon, and that was why he had been so careful not to say on the phone that Thomas was dead. “Tell Thomas I’m coming,” I’d said, giving the eavesdropping postmistress the clear impression that he was still alive. “Thomas is drunk as usual,” I’d said to Norah. Two witnesses would testify that Thomas had been alive when I left the Manor, and the medical evidence, as always, wouldn’t prove the exact moment of death. There would be at least half an hour’s uncertainty and that would finish me, that and the fingerprints on the bloodstained club.

  “Oh God, Harry,” sobbed Kester, descending skillfully towards hysteria again. “We’d better call the police, hadn’t we? No choice. We must call the police, do the done thing …”

  My whole life was on the line. I didn’t hesitate. Looking up at him I waited till he had the guts to look back at me and then I said to him between my teeth: “Fuck the done thing.”

  7

  I

  THAT WAS THE TURNING POINT in our lives.

  He stared, shocked to the core as I sliced his neat writer’s plot to ribbons, the tears of genuine horror flowing down his cheeks as he discovered the difference between his attractive hygienic fantasies and this messy grisly reality. In the end all he could do was stammer, “But you can’t do that!” as if I were under some moral obligation not to deviate from his script.

  “Oh yes I can,” I said. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped my prints from the club.

  “But surely …” He gulped. “Surely we’ll have to tell the police—Christ, we’ve got to draw the line somewhere—”

  “Why, yes, of course. I’m all for drawing lines. But I draw the line a little later than most people,” I said, standing up, my fingers still masked by my handkerchief as I held out the club to him. “Here—take this.”

  He shied away. “No!”

  “Take it! Or by God I’ll use it to smash you to bloody pulp!”

  He took the club. It was a reflex action of mindless fright but he took the club in his bare hands and I instinctively moved out of his reach in case he developed any wild ideas. But he didn’t. He’d realized the time for wildness had come and gone. With his fingerprints alone now on the club he had just as much at stake as I had in clearing up the mess.

  “That’s better,” I said. “Now just you listen to me. I’m still not involved in this. No one saw me arrive here. I could drive away now, stage a breakdown in the village and no one could prove I’d ever been at Oxmoon tonight. My fingerprints have been removed from that club. I’ve put myself absolutely beyond your reach.”

  Kester tried to speak and failed.

  “That club,” I said, “now has your fingerprints on it. Even if you wipe them off, Eleanor and I both know Thomas wanted to beat you up for sacking him. I think a leading K.C. would get you acquitted of murder but I doubt if he could get you off a manslaughter charge, and one thing I want to make absolutely clear is that you can’t fob this crime off on me. Not only can you never prove I was here—you can’t prove I had any real motive. My father can testify I’ve been on reasonable terms with Thomas since the invitation to your lunch party a
rrived.”

  For a second Kester’s eyes were expressionless and I knew there was something I’d missed. Then I realized he was certain to have provided me with a first-class motive. The mutual hostility had been a mere useful preliminary. The real motive lay elsewhere.

  “Well?” I said swiftly, not wanting to reveal I’d guessed the worst. “What do you say? Are you going to cooperate with me in clearing up this mess?”

  That confused him. I could see him trying to comprehend my volte-face, asking himself why I should be washing my hands of the crime at one moment and then offering to clear it up at the next. “If you’re so confident you can sever all connection with this,” he stammered at last, “why should you want to help me?”

  “Family solidarity, old chap,” I said. “What else?”

  He stared at me. Horrific vistas opened up into the future. He stared at Thomas’s corpse. Another horrific vista. He stared down at the club in his hands. No escape from the horror. It was everywhere. I leaned lightly forward on the balls of my feet in case he panicked and took a swipe at me against his better judgment, but his will to survive had gained the upper hand and he finally brought his panic under control.

  “Wait,” he said feverishly. “I’ve got to think.”

  “No, old chap. You’ve got to act. All right, forget the horseshit about family solidarity. The truth is I don’t trust you to clean this up without making some bloody awful mess and dragging me into it from a different angle. I’m not leaving until we’ve disposed of the body in such a way that neither of us can be blamed for the killing.”

  There was a pause.

  “Come on, Kester, wake up and face reality.”

  He woke up and faced it. “All right,” he said, taking a deep breath. “What do we do?”

  “I need some gloves immediately: You’ll need some later. Where do we find them?”

  He took me to the cloakroom.

  “All right, leave your pair on the hall table. Now—the servants. You did check, of course—”