Last Nocturne

by Marjorie Eccles

  The silence continues, broken only by the heavy shifting of Sergeant Cogan from one foot to the other. When it becomes apparent that Julian is going to say nothing more, Lamb takes up his questioning again. ‘When I asked you about the night Miriam Koppel died, you let me believe you were not in Vienna. What did you have to conceal by lying about it?’

  Julian throws out his hands. Then, in a few emotionless words, after the policemen have at last disposed themselves on various chairs around the room and prepared themselves to listen, he tells them how it was.

  It had been an accident, for which no one could blame him. Snow and ice were dangerous enemies, encountered all the time in Vienna. His conscience is clear. Her death could not be laid at his door. The Vienna police had in the end believed it was an accident – and these policemen, too, would be bound to believe it when he had explained.

  ‘You were visiting Mrs Amberley that night?’ Lamb persists.

  ‘Visiting? Not precisely. We had dined out and I escorted her home.’

  The warm, intimate scene in the big upstairs room, Isobel’s eyes lighting up as she smiled, the taste of kümmel, the stove radiating warmth and the wind blowing the snow against the shuttered windows comes back to him like a blow. He closes his eyes.

  ‘Mr Carrington.’

  Julian opens his eyes but looks at no one. He carries on speaking, tonelessly. ‘It was a bad night and when I left Isobel to return to my hotel I was lucky to spot a fiacre driver making his way home and willing to take me. We had barely started when I saw Mrs Koppel, all alone, out at that time of night. On an impulse, I stopped the fiacre, paid off the driver and followed her on foot.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t stop to think. She was an unnatural mother, always foisting her child on Mrs Amberley. It caused a great deal of inconvenience, interfered with her private life, and though Mrs Amberley pretended otherwise, I felt it was unfair. I wanted to talk to the woman about it.’

  He pauses and rubs a hand across his face. ‘Please go on, Mr Carrington.’

  ‘I soon caught her up, at the corner where Silbergasse meets the other street. She was finding it difficult to walk in the snow. The fall had been heavy and though it had stopped for the moment, it was thick and soft, with treacherous ice beneath. I suppose my own footsteps were muffled. At any rate, when I put my hand on her shoulder she spun round and slipped. I tried to keep her upright but she pulled away from me. She was wearing a sort of fur hood and it had fallen half across her face so she probably didn’t see enough to recognise me and thought I was attacking her. She slid out of my grasp and crashed to the ground, hitting her head against one of the street bollards. She lay there without moving, but she wasn’t dead.’

  The fact had registered with him, but he had been more concerned about himself. His breath clouded on the freezing air and he realised he was panting, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was afraid he might be going to have a heart attack. How had he got himself into this situation, not one of his own making? It hadn’t been his fault. No one could blame him, just another accident in the snow. He never knew how long he stood there, immobile. She still didn’t move.

  Just supposing…supposing she was dead?

  The fiacre driver would remember him. Maybe he had seen the woman, maybe not, but the man would surely not forget a fare who had been lucky to find him out on such a night, then had leapt out into the snow again saying he had changed his mind. A madman who had thrown a handful of money at him before disappearing round the dark corner into the lane.

  He was going home tomorrow. He would be over the Channel in two days.

  Then she began whimpering and trying to struggle to her feet and he realised she was still very much alive.

  He had looked coldly down at her. How dare she, this woman, cause him so much aggravation? Now he would have to help her into the house somehow, though how was he to explain what had happened? At that moment the damned dog, Igor, started up his barking and he saw a light had appeared at the door of the house, and another which sprang from an upstairs window in the house opposite.

  ‘I helped her to her feet before I left her. I had to get back to my hotel somehow and I realised how foolish I’d been in leaving the fiacre – what, after all, could I have said to her that would make any difference? When I reached the corner I looked back and she had disappeared.’

  ‘You left an injured woman in the snow on a freezing January night?’

  ‘She wasn’t obviously injured, and I’ve told you, she was on her feet and the door of the house was open. And there were also people coming along the other street.’

  ‘Well, whoever they were they never reached her. She stumbled away in the wrong direction until she fell down and died.’

  Julian always had the Viennese papers delivered to his London address and when they came, he read the reports of her death. Dead, how could she be? She had walked away. He was appalled. As for Bruno Franck’s arrest and his subsequent suicide… He had always known the Franck brothers were unstable, mad even, but not to that extent.

  ‘You say you only put a hand on Mrs Koppel’s shoulder. We have a witness who says otherwise.’

  ‘Benton is dead.’

  ‘How do you know it was Theo Benton who saw you?’

  ‘I didn’t, not then. I saw lights go on further down the street, but that was all. It was only when he started painting those nocturnes…that I realised. He let his imagination run away with him there.’

  ‘There is another witness.’

  ‘A child, and one who was sleepwalking? I repeat, I was not responsible for Miriam Koppel’s death.’

  ‘And Eliot Martagon?’

  An unnerving silence ensues, which Lamb allows to continue, until at last Carrington looks up from his concentrated perusal of his desktop. ‘Not Miriam Koppel. But Eliot…yes, I shot Eliot Martagon.’

  It is an immense relief to say it, like having a painful carbuncle lanced. He looks around his familiar room, his kingdom, at the celadon vase in the alcove, the Corot, and the little nocturne, dim in its corner. In a few, emotionless words he begins to tell how it was.

  It had surprised him that Eliot, normally a sensible man, should be so careless or unheeding as to leave a lethal weapon in such an easily accessible place; even more so when he recalled Eliot’s abhorrence of any sort of firearm. Then he recalled the burglary at the gallery, not too long ago, a daring robbery in broad daylight, and that Ireton had been on the receiving end. Not Eliot, then, who had put the pistol in the drawer, but Ireton.

  Before he realised what he was doing, he had extracted it, withdrawn a sheet of the blotting paper, closed the drawer and carried on as though nothing had happened. Hidden as it had been the gun was unlikely to be missed immediately – and in any case why should its disappearance be connected with him when it was found to be missing? Ireton would soon have forgotten a simple thing like him asking for blotting paper.

  But afterwards, after Eliot was dead, and he discovered the gun was gone, Ireton did eventually remember. He had become a problem. He had put two and two together and begun to make demands. He wanted money to buy the gallery, which was rich, given that Julian, when Eliot had decided to sell, had fully intended buying it for himself when an acceptable price had been negotiated. Julian was reasonably certain there was no proof that he had killed Eliot, but all the same, Ireton and his demands for a loan remained a risk. Something would have to be done about him, but just what, he hadn’t been able to decide.

  Eliot had never been aware of why his friend had shot him. Julian believed he would have enjoyed telling him, seeing his face before he pulled the trigger, but Eliot was not the man to allow himself to be held at gunpoint while listening to reasons why he was going to be killed, never mind allowing the deed to be actually accomplished. His first instinct would have been to knock the gun from Julian’s hand, regardless of the risk. At best, there would have been a struggle, which Julian wanted to avoid at all costs. At worst, it might hav
e been Julian himself who had ended up dead. Surprise had been as much his weapon as the pistol itself. There had been a moment of awareness when Eliot, with his back towards him, had felt the cold metal at his temple and swung round. A blank moment only before Julian pulled the trigger and Eliot fell lifeless over the desk.

  They had walked to Embury Square after dining together at their club, to smoke a cigar and take a digestif, and for Julian to give his opinion on a small painting Eliot had just acquired from Theo Benton. Eliot had let himself in with his key as he normally did, and they had gone into his private lair at the back of the house, where the little painting was lying on the desk. The sight of it had sent the blood rushing to Julian’s temples. A redness swam behind his eyes. Eliot had turned his back to reach for the brandy decanter and Julian pulled out the gun he had carried with him ever since he had discovered it, although without having formed any conscious intention to use it. Indeed, his chief emotion when he had done so, looking down at the man who had once been his friend, was astonishment.

  He was still in his overcoat and had not even removed his gloves, so he had left no fingerprints on the gun but he wiped it with his silk scarf just the same. He reached over the mess on the desk and put it in Eliot’s hand, closing his fingers over the barrel. The painting was unharmed and Julian tucked it under his coat. He left the study without anyone hearing him as he let himself out.

  ‘Why did you kill him?’

  Julian looks at the three policemen and sighs. He has told himself repeatedly that he regrets nothing. Indeed, he feels nothing nowadays. Something died inside him that night so that there is a blankness where feeling should be. He had killed more than Eliot: he had killed his scruples, his capacity for pity or distress, that which makes a man more than an animal.

  But the realisation that he had lost more than a friend came slowly. To carry on hoping for something that is not there is an exercise in frustration. Yet, though his intellect had known this, his stubbornness had prevented him from seeing that by that one action, he had forfeited any chance he might ever have of getting Isobel to marry him.

  ‘Why?’ repeats Lamb. ‘Why did you kill Eliot Martagon?’

  ‘He was my friend,’ he says tonelessly. ‘Yet he took away the woman I love – even though he already had a wife and couldn’t marry her. I still believe that Mrs Amberley would have seen sense in time and married me – had it not been for him.’

  That was it, really, the conclusion, the end, though the road travelled to reach it had started with a mistake. Julian had never before that allowed himself to make mistakes. They were something other people made, by not being scrupulously careful, by failing to calculate every move before acting, by never overreaching oneself. Yet he had made the biggest mistake anyone could have made over the affair of Miriam Koppel.

  He endeavours to make himself sound calm, but he is aware of a prickling of sweat beginning on his forehead. He dares not take his handkerchief out to wipe it. This man, Lamb, notices every move. He adjusts his shirt cuffs and the new, foppish, expanding gold watch bracelet which irritatingly keeps pinching the flesh and the hairs on the back of his wrist. Lamb shoots his hand out, pushes the wide bracelet up on his forearm and reveals the deep scratches there. He gives Julian a long stare.

  ‘All of it, Mr Carrington? Are you sure you have nothing more to add?’

  He has read somewhere that the first time of murder is always the worst, but he believes this to be a theory of someone who has never been forced to commit one. He would like to say this but suddenly he is too immensely weary to try. Half a minute, a minute passes, while Lamb waits for his answer. Aeons of time. There is a pain when he breathes, like a knife. Julian at last gestures towards the papers. ‘It’s all there.’

  ‘You don’t wish to say anything more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well. As you wish, Mr Carrington.’ The three detectives, at a signal from Lamb, stand up. ‘Shall we go?’

  The tall, lean one steps forward, brandishing a pair of handcuffs. Julian suddenly finds words. ‘That won’t be necessary, officer,’ he says, coldly. ‘I have no intention of trying to escape.’

  The sergeant looks around the room, picks up the sheaf of papers from the desk, carefully caps Julian’s fountain pen and hands it to him, then thriftily switches off the lamp as they leave.

  The three men come out of the building, one flanking him on either side, Lamb bringing up the rear. There is a police vehicle waiting, the final indignity. They stand on the pavement. Lamb steps inside the vehicle first. There is a moment when, irresolute, Carrington looks back at the bank’s façade. It is very quiet in the street. No nearby lights, only a gas lamp throwing a weak light further along.

  The man emerging from the shadows and appearing in front of them surprises them all. He walks up to Carrington, face to face, two men of similar build and equal height. It all happens so quickly there is barely time to see the glint of the knife. ‘That’s for my brother,’ says the attacker, ‘and for leaving the mother of my child out in the snow to die, and for Theo.’

  Carrington has time to gasp, ‘Franck!’ before he gurgles and slumps into Cogan’s arms. Before Brownrigg has Viktor Franck’s arms in a lock behind his back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Tell the messenger to be sure Mrs Amberley gets this in person,’ said Guy Martagon, handing the sealed envelope to the waiting footman. ‘There’s no need to wait for a reply.’

  There, it was done, though it would probably mean another rebuff.

  He sprang to his feet and began to pace the room. He had never in any way shirked the heavy responsibilities which had fallen on his shoulders after his father’s death, but the petty irritations, the upheaval, not to mention the anguish, which had followed the arrest of Julian Carrington for his murder were another matter, and tried Guy’s patience far more. The frown which of late had been absent from his brow had begun to manifest itself again. He found it impossible to keep still. Doing his best to comfort his mother and his sister…interviews with the police…dealing with the newshounds who had begun their siege of the house immediately the news had broken… For two pins, had it not been for Grace’s example, he would have felt like leaving the lot of it behind, taking the women and bolting for some hideout in the country. But the way Grace had responded to the challenge had been a timely reminder that the only way to deal with such a situation was to face it and see it through. She refused to be intimidated by the press, and still came and went as she pleased, despite his warnings not to venture alone out of the house into the waiting mob outside. He laughed when he remembered the sight of her poking with her umbrella – and none too gently – an importunate cub of a reporter who was blocking her way and shouting questions at her, so that he lost his balance and toppled ignominiously backwards into the arms of his cronies. She was also dealing diplomatically with the insatiable curiosity of telephoning ‘friends’; answering letters and providing a sympathetic ear into which Mrs Martagon could pour her shocked disbelief, her sense of affront.

  Murder, then, it was. Knowing that was akin to suffering the bereavement all over again, and doubly harrowing when it had been so shockingly revealed that it was Julian Carrington, a man they had known all their lives, a friend of the family, who had shot Eliot. And all because of a woman – Mrs Amberley. Not a crime he would hang for in France, a crime passionel, they called it there, said Lamb, but this wasn’t France, and Carrington was still lying in hospital with the life-threatening injuries he’d received when Viktor Franck had stabbed him, with Franck himself in police custody.

  Yesterday, the chief inspector had requested another meeting at Embury Square, where this time he was accorded the privilege of the drawing room. Rather than a tête-à-tête with Guy, which was what Guy would have preferred, he had wanted them all together – Guy, his mother and Dulcie. Miss Thurley might join them, too, if they so wished.

  ‘How bad is Carrington?’

  ‘He’ll live, Mr Martagon
, but I doubt he’ll ever be fit enough to stand trial. His wounds will heal, but as for anything else…the attack brought on a stroke. He talks after a fashion but mostly makes no sense. But he did confess to us, as you know, as well as having put it all in writing before.’ Lamb hesitated. ‘If it’s of any comfort, there were other reasons why he shot your father, apart from the fact that – had the circumstances been somewhat different, you understand-he had been hoping to marry the – the lady in question, himself. If you’ll forgive the indelicacy, Mrs Martagon.’

  Edwina momentarily froze, hands tight on the arms of her chair. Indelicacy? The word seemed irrelevant. Suddenly, she didn’t know how she felt about anything any more. Her children, both determined to go their own ways – Dulcie with her outlandish, Bohemian ideas; Guy, adamant in his decision to marry Grace Thurley, if she would have him – and observing them together, her eyes newly opened, Edwina saw that of course she would. Her world seemed to be overturning. And then a strange thought visited her, and wouldn’t go away: that maybe life could, after all, deal you a better hand if you sometimes followed your heart rather than your head. Indeed, the secrets and lies which had come to light over the last few days appeared to serve nothing if not to demonstrate this.

  She looked at Guy; she looked at Grace; she looked at Dulcie. Her hands loosed their grip and fell into her lap. Very well, then…

  She was astonished by the sense of relief she felt.

  Guy, meanwhile, was speaking. ‘What was that you said, Mr Lamb? What other reasons?’ he demanded, springing to his feet, then sitting down again almost immediately, this time perching on the arm of the sofa, next to Grace.