The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m not letting that bastard get away with this, Gerry. I’m just not going to let him ruin me.”

  “Well, I’m with you all the way, Harry, but for God’s sake calm down and don’t do anything crazy. …”

  I calmed down and allowed him to lead me to his boss. I already knew Davison slightly; he was a golfing crony of my father’s and an influential man in Swansea. When I explained my dilemma he was sympathetic but I had a layman’s distrust of a clever lawyer who scents a gold mine so I merely instructed him to make the preliminary inquiries that would prove or disprove the theories Gerry and I had constructed. Once the facts were established I could then start praying for the miracle which could preserve me from disaster.

  Still seething with rage I returned to Penhale, and as I drove up to the Manor Dafydd came out to meet me. One glance at his face told me something was wrong.

  “Christ, what’s happened now?”

  “Bloody Kester’s men have rounded up your sheep from Penhale Down and dumped them at the Home Farm.”

  “My God! How dare that sod clear my land before he’s proved his title to it! I’ll get an injunction, I’ll—no damn it, I’ll bloody well go straight over to Oxmoon and shake him till his teeth rattle!”

  “Steady, Harry, don’t go off your rocker!”

  I suddenly remembered what had happened to Thomas, the last person who had roared off to Oxmoon to shake Kester till his teeth rattled.

  “You’re coming with me,” I said to Dafydd. “Go on—get in the car. I want a witness in case that bastard tries to kill me.”

  “Harry—”

  “Get in!” I shouted in a frenzy, and the next moment we were heading at breakneck speed for Oxmoon and the most crucial scene of my life.

  IV

  It was a cold March day, more like midwinter than spring, and the rain whipped sporadically across Rhossili Downs from the sea. Oxmoon looked bleak. Some of the blinds were drawn on the ground-floor windows, as if to suggest that the house was closed while its owner enjoyed a warmer climate elsewhere. The whole place appeared to be waiting patiently for something. Or for someone.

  No one answered the front doorbell yet I felt sure we were being watched. Retreating to the car again I stared at the upstairs windows but there was no one in sight.

  “Not all the servants can have the day off,” muttered Dafydd. “Why doesn’t someone come to the door?”

  “He’s obviously given instructions that I’m not to be admitted. He wants me to bust my way in as I did after Anna died—and then he can use violence to eject me.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Flush him out.” I swung back to face the house, and this time I thought I saw the curtain move on the upstairs-landing window. “Kester!” I shouted. “I’m staying here till you show yourself!”

  We waited but nothing happened.

  “He’s trying to egg you into losing your temper,” said Dafydd.

  “If he thinks I’ll ever give him the chance to kill me in self-defense he’ll have to think again.”

  We went on waiting but the deadlock persisted. Finally I had an idea.

  “Dafydd, take yourself out of his range of vision and let’s see what happens when he thinks I’m on my own. Go and stand over there by the wall of the ballroom.”

  Dafydd took himself off. That did the trick. Kester wanted to know what he was up to. Above the porch the curtain twitched and the next moment the window was flung up.

  Kester leaned over the sill. When he had satisfied himself that Dafydd was up to no mischief he called out abruptly to me: “All right, what do you want?”

  The question was so incredible that it took me a moment to reply. He had grabbed my land, threatened me with ruin and now he was asking why I wanted to see him! How I maintained my self-control I’ve no idea.

  But I did maintain it. I stood there, fists clenched, and shouted up at him: “I’ve come for what’s mine!”

  Mine, mine, mine …

  The word echoed in my mind. I’d come for what was mine. It had, taken me thirty-two years but I’d got there in the end. I’d come for what was mine—not just the Martinscombe lands but the life that might have been and the inheritance I should have had. I’d come for my true self, the self that had been denied me. I’d come for Oxmoon.

  “You’d better negotiate through your solicitors,” called Kester unperturbed. “In the eyes of the law—”

  “Fuck the law!”

  That rattled him. “Oh, don’t be so childish, Harry! There’s nothing you can do here and you know it!”

  “Wrong!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll see you sodding hanged for that murder I know you committed!”

  Silence. Utter silence. Then a cold wind blew in from the Downs and moaned softly in the woods. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the beech trees shivering.

  “That’s a bluff,” said Kester. He was leaning forward to check that Dafydd was out of earshot. “You know it’s a bluff.”

  “Then call it!”

  But he couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t. We went on standing where we were, he upstairs looking down, I in the drive looking up, but I felt the balance of power shift between us and suddenly I knew I had the whip hand.

  “Wait,” said Kester reluctantly. “I’m coming down.”

  Closing the window he disappeared.

  Dafydd rejoined me. “What do I do?”

  “Go back and stand where you were. It doesn’t matter if you can’t hear. I just want a witness in case he tries to kill me—no, don’t say I’m off my rocker. This man’s more dangerous than anyone’s begun to believe.”

  Dafydd looked startled but withdrew without further comment and after a long interval Kester emerged from the house. He was wearing a coat and muffler; his hands were buried deep in his pockets and he shivered as another gust of wind blew in from the sea.

  I kept the car between us and we faced each other across the bonnet.

  “The land’s mine,” said Kester. “Sorry and all that, but it is. I’ve been conducting some investigations—”

  “I’ll bet you have. You remembered Father’s extraordinary embarrassment when he found he’d inherited the property from Uncle Robert.”

  “Well, it was odd, wasn’t it? And if Uncle John was acting in character something was clearly involved which wasn’t the done thing. So I got hold of old Fairfax—”

  “—and I suppose the two of you began to ransack all the Oxmoon deed boxes for the record of the deed of gift in 1919.”

  “Yes, poor old Freddy was in an awful state. You see, his firm weren’t the Oxmoon solicitors in 1919 but he’d made the classic mistake of taking the word of a gentleman when my father swore to him there’d been a deed of gift. By doing this my father got hold of the Martinscombe deeds which he needed in order to register the title—poor old Freddy just assumed that the deeds had been left among the Oxmoon papers by an oversight of the previous solicitors Owens, Wood after the deed of gift had been executed.”

  “Poor old Freddy ought to be bloody shot. Why didn’t he check then and there that the deed of gift existed?”

  “Because it never occurred to him that my father was behaving like a villain. And there are an enormous number of documents relating to the Oxmoon estate and no inventory—”

  “Okay, Fairfax made the fatal error of trusting your father and no record of a deed of gift turned up. But what makes you so sure—”

  “Well, as soon as we established there was no evidence of a deed of gift we turned to your father’s papers—this was just after his death and poor old Freddy had custody of them all. And there we found the Martinscombe deeds—all with a Land Registry endorsement to show they’d been registered, and of course Freddy at once saw what had happened. Then he got in touch with my father’s former solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn—”

  “And the whole mess started to unravel. Christ! What the bloody hell drove Robert to
such machinations?”

  “I gather the problem was Milly Straker. Grandfather was absolutely under her thumb and unwilling to cooperate with his sons on any matter concerning the estate.”

  “But for Robert to stoop to fraud—”

  “Would he have seen it as fraud? I suspect the world looks very different when one’s near death, and probably he saw his act merely as a necessity, a step that had to be taken to protect his wife and child from Straker’s acquisitive streak.”

  “I still don’t see how he got away with it. Surely as soon as Grandfather heard about Robert’s will—”

  “But don’t you see, he would never have heard exactly what was in it! My father used different solicitors; my grandfather wasn’t a beneficiary; Uncle John, who was, thought the best thing to do was to keep quiet and my mother certainly wasn’t talking. Obviously she and Uncle John discussed it—in fact I can remember them doing so—but equally obviously they never discussed it with anyone who would have relayed the news to Grandfather who by that time was living in seclusion anyway and wasn’t on close terms with his family. And don’t forget that the property was left to Uncle John with the proviso that my mother and I should remain at Little Oxmoon until I came into my inheritance, so there was no change in the status quo while Grandfather was alive, nothing that would have openly indicated what my father had done. The fact is his move was primarily a defensive measure; it would have been revealed in Grandfather’s lifetime only if Grandfather had become mad enough to give Milly Straker carte blanche with the estate—in which case the fraud could have provided my mother with a valuable shield because in those circumstances Grandfather would almost certainly have been judged too incompetent to give evidence in court about what had really happened back in 1919. However that nightmare never actually surfaced so Grandfather went to his grave in ignorance and the fraud was never put to the test.”

  “But why the hell didn’t my father draw the line?”

  “Obviously my father manipulated Uncle John with consummate skill. Uncle John thought he was safeguarding me and my mother against the wicked predator Milly Straker. What could be more heroic?”

  I groaned. Kester laughed and looked compassionate. I wanted to smash him to pulp.

  “So you see, Harry, you really don’t have a leg to stand on, do you? Now, look—let’s try and be sensible about this. Don’t you honestly feel that it would be better for both our sakes if you left Gower? I know this move of mine will put you in a financial jam, but if you now agree to leave I’m prepared to give you financial assistance to help you start again elsewhere—”

  “You don’t want to give me financial assistance. You want to kill me. I know too much.”

  “Well, of course you do, but you can’t prove any of it, can you, so I’m safe. All the same, we’ve wound up in an unbearable position so if you could see sense and take yourself off—”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “But Harry—”

  “You snatch my land—yes, my land, it’s morally if not legally mine—you force me out of my home, you boot me into bloody exile—and do you really think I’m going to smile, turn the other cheek like a saint and go meekly off into the blue so that you can live happily ever after? You must be mad!”

  “I realize it’s tough for you, but—”

  “Tough? Tough! It’s bloody unjust and I’m not standing for it! I’ve had just about enough of you getting away with murder! I think it’s time you started to pay!”

  Kester turned a shade paler. “Don’t be idiotic! If I pay you pay—you were an accessory after the fact, you helped conceal the crime—”

  “Oh, I shan’t go to the police! I shall go to the family! I shall tell them exactly how you murdered Thomas and once they realize you ought to be locked up they’ll back me when I get a committal order to shove you into a bloody asylum!”

  “They’ll never believe you,” said Kester calmly.

  “Oh yes, they will—you’re going to corroborate my story!”

  “I bloody well will not!”

  “All right, I will go to the police if you don’t confess to the family! Damn it, I’ll even go to jail if I have to in order to put you behind bars for good!”

  “Don’t make me laugh! How are you going to convince the police? You haven’t a shred of evidence!”

  “Oh yes I have!”

  “You’re bluffing—I don’t believe you—”

  “I dug up the poker.”

  Dead silence. It was very cold. The house had a bleached frozen look.

  “The poker that only you could have used,” I said. “The poker that has Thomas’s blood on it. The poker that can send you to Broadmoor.”

  Kester slid his tongue quickly around his lips. He was very pale.

  “All right,” I said when no reply was forthcoming. “Let’s approach this problem from a new angle. I won’t go to the police and I won’t go to the family either—but only if you do exactly as I say. If you don’t I won’t rest till I see you hanged or committed for life. It’s as simple as that. I don’t care if I ruin myself to do it, but I’m absolutely determined that you’re going to pay.”

  Another long silence. Kester took his hands out of his pockets and rested them lightly on the bonnet of the car. Obviously he was trying to drum up a fresh plot, but panic was overwhelming the creative genius. When he looked at me at last I saw the fear in his eyes.

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you think?”

  His nerve snapped. He became hysterical. “I’ll never give it up, never, never, never—”

  “Right,” I said, opening the door of the car as if I intended to leave him. “I’m summoning the family and if they don’t believe me I’m off to the police.”

  “Wait!” he screamed at me.

  I waited but he was speechless with terror and rage.

  “Go and live in Dublin with Declan,” I said. “We’ll tell the family the estate was too much for you as usual and that you’re having another nervous breakdown. That would ring true enough, wouldn’t it? In the words of that favorite phrase of yours, you’d appear to be acting in character.”

  I thought he was going to pass out but he didn’t. He just leaned forward, the palms of his hands flat on the bonnet, and closed his eyes. At last he opened them and said, “You’d never dare do this if Uncle John were alive.”

  “And you’d never have dared steal my land. But he’s dead, isn’t he? He’s dead and the rules of the game have changed and by God, I’m going to have what’s always been owing to me. You’ve forfeited it. It’s mine.”

  “Never!”

  “Suit yourself. Enjoy Broadmoor.” I again pretended I was about to leave.

  The conversation continued in this fashion for about five minutes but of course he gave way in the end. He had to. He was now wholly convinced I’d stop at nothing to put him behind bars.

  “All right,” he whispered at last. “All right.” He forced himself to look at me again. His eyes were a very pale clear blue. “Perhaps …” It was hard for him to get his words out but he managed in the end. “Perhaps I can turn this disaster to my advantage. I’d certainly have more time to write if I … if I gave up …” But he couldn’t say the word “Oxmoon.” “… if I went away, and as you know, writing’s all I really care about. And so long as Hal gets everything in the end … I suppose you wouldn’t consider—”

  “No. You’re not going to give Oxmoon directly to Hal. You’re going to give it to me. You’re going to instruct Fairfax to draw up the deed of gift and you’re going to do it straightaway.”

  More hysterics followed. We sparred away for a little longer but it was just postponing the inevitable and finally he said, “All right, I’ll sign the deed, stage a nervous breakdown and go off to Dublin. But you mark my words, you’re the one who’s going to end up in an asylum. You’re violent, dangerous and thoroughly unstable.”

  “Speak for yourself!”

  We stared, each man seeing h
imself in the other, and at once the air thickened with horror—the horror that had no name. Kester’s pallor assumed a waxen tinge, and all the while I watched his color fade I knew I saw myself in the glass darkly and I felt the distortions rippling across my mind.

  We shuddered. For one long moment we remained paralyzed with revulsion but at last he turned his back on me, bolted inside the house and slammed the door. As Dafydd came running I slumped against the car.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fit as a fiddle.” I nearly passed out. God knows how I got myself together. “Here, take the wheel, would you, I’m shot to pieces.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the main road. Park the car by the bridle path that leads up onto Penhale Down. I want to go into the grounds through the back entrance.”

  “What the hell are we up to now?”

  “We’re going to dig up a poker.”

  V

  All Dafydd said when I had the poker in my hands was “Thomas?”

  We stood there beneath the trees. The light was yellowish, indicative of extreme winter weather. In Humphrey de Mohun’s ruined tower all the jackdaws were silent.

  “So you guessed,” I said.

  “Yes, but I got it wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you were the one who’d killed him. And all the time it was bloody Kester, wasn’t it?”

  When I’d recovered I said incredulously, “You thought I was a murderer and yet you stood by me and kept your mouth shut?”

  “Of course,” said Dafydd surprised. “You’ve been more of a brother to me than any of those little bastards my mother produced for your father, and besides … in the war, in that camp … one got used to the ordinary rules not applying.”

  We stood there, brothers yet not brothers, related yet not related, and I knew we both felt as if we’d been born of the same parents.