Someone Lying, Someone Dying

by Burke, John

  There was only one woman it could possibly be. But Nell, stalling, said absurdly: “No, I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “You look for your friend.”

  “She’s here, then?” Nell glanced back at the door. “If she’s ill … had an accident … get a doctor…”

  “I think you do not leave.” A knife gleamed from the woman’s hand like a long, wicked claw. “We stay here. And I tell you who I am, so you know why things will be as they must be.”

  Trays were slid on to the flimsy tables in front of them. Brigid moved her book to one side.

  “Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee,” said Brigid although they had already drunk two large cups at the airport. Her face was dry, her hands sticky.

  She knew the key passages of the book off by heart. As the minutes ticked by and the plane vibrated and occasionally tilted gently, the sentences became clamorous in her head.

  The style of writing was florid and melodramatic, but this suited the subject all too well. Sicily had always been an island of violence and flamboyant postures. For centuries it had been the custom for the widow of a murdered man to swear vengeance on the killer. If she had sons, they must work with her to wipe out the stain. If she was alone, it was still her duty to pit herself against the murderer and his entire family. At the time the book was written, vendetta had been an accepted practice. In the supposedly enlightened nineteen-sixties it might be carried on rather more covertly, but Brigid thought it unlikely that enlightenment had gone as far as to ban it altogether. The younger folk might long to flee to the emancipation of the cities and to other countries, and some might succeed; but those who had to stay behind would come in time to accept the customs of their parents as surely as any young couple in a Streatham semi-detached. The code of family convention was one thing in Streatham, another in Sicily; but just as immutable and inescapable.

  Brigid sipped her coffee and turned a page of the book.

  “Men of respect” — that was the phrase. Men of respect and women of honour.

  Serafina had believed that her husband had deserted her. He had embezzled his own firm’s money and vanished. She had returned to her home town in full widow’s panoply and remained there until the revelation came that Walter Blythe had been murdered. Then it became her duty to return to England and settle this deadly account.

  Yet how had she been able to live in such high style in Manciano? It fitted the story she had told the townspeople, but not the story as it now stood. Nobody had suspected that she was not what she claimed to be: the rich widow of the English businessman who had met her on holiday, married her and set her up in England, and left her all his money when he died. What was one to suspect now?

  The money…

  Had there been something between her and the Johnson partner, Brigid’s grandfather? Had he, the supposed embezzler in the latest version of the story, paid her off to keep her quiet?

  And if so, where did this much vaunted Sicilian family honour come into it? There was no mention in the book Brigid had been reading of people allowing themselves to be bought off. If a Johnson had killed Serafina’s husband and Serafina knew it, then or now, it was her bounden duty to harry the Johnsons.

  Brigid shivered in spite of the enervating heat of the plane.

  But there had been no sign of the Johnsons being attacked at any time, past or present. The Hemmings, yes; and Peter … Pietro.

  Could it … no, she mustn’t think it, yet kept thinking it … could Peter have been killed by Mrs Hemming?

  Her cup was empty. The stewardess came past with the coffee-pot raised. Brigid shook her head and sat back, closing her eyes.

  It was difficult to get things in the right order. This was a disability they had suffered when talking to the girl in Manciano. To fill in details of events before she was born, the girl had brought her father into the discussion. He had been a hindrance rather than a help. He was suspicious of strangers and their motives, and in his presence the girl herself became vague and incoherent, seeming to fear that by some sixth sense he might understand the English words and cut her short in mid-sentence. Her disjointed phrases and implications came in a thickening accent which made them even harder to interpret.

  But she was pathetically eager to keep on the good side of the visitors. Twice she asked if she could visit them in England, if she came to England; if they could tell her how to come to England and to be allowed to stay there.

  Serafina — this at any rate was clear — had played her arrogant role in Manciano for as long as anyone could remember. Feared and respected in the community, she had been taken at her own valuation. Then news of the discovery of Walter Blythe’s corpse was brought by Pietro, complete with newspapers and illustrated magazines — Pietro, the spoilt grandson, the compulsive talker, the opportunist. It was known that there had been furious arguments between his grandmother and himself, perhaps because he had been the one to publicise the juicy news in Manciano, or perhaps because he was demanding money for himself and telling her how to get it.

  Then Pietro went away again. Had they come to some arrangement: had she sent him as her emissary to claim money from the Johnsons, not wishing to reveal her own existence? But, wondered Brigid, if she had been too proud to accept money from the Johnsons half a century ago, why was she prepared to take it now?

  Because in those far-off days she hadn’t known that her husband had been murdered by a Johnson.

  That might fit. But if Pietro-Peter had been her emissary, why had she suddenly set off for England herself, a little later, and killed him … killed her own grandson?

  If it had really been Serafina who killed him. If…

  Brigid opened her eyes as the stewardess removed the tray, and saw that Martin was looking sideways at her with a rueful, affectionate smile.

  He said: “Rather a short honeymoon.”

  “Do you think we’re being stupid?”

  “We’d be stupid not to go back. We’d never have been easy in our minds if we’d stayed.”

  The engine note changed. Brigid thought gladly that they must be almost there, then saw from her watch that they couldn’t be. She yawned, and found that her ears had been blocked up.

  Still trying to sort out the questions which had been buzzing behind her closed eyes, she offered one or two to Martin, not very hopefully.

  “Why did Serafina make a set for you or your mother rather than for us, the Johnsons? Did she know something that we don’t?”

  “If she did, she still knows it — and we still don’t.”

  “And all that money. Living it up richly all those years. Suppose … just suppose … that it was Walter Blythe who really did embezzle the money, and not my grandfather at all. Perhaps he had to: perhaps your grandmother was blackmailing him, or something. And Serafina found out, and he had to pay her off as well. So…”

  “So?”

  “Oh, dear. It’s getting in such a tangle. I feel as though I’m doing a lot of complicated knitting in my head, and it’s all got snarled up.”

  They sat in silence for a while. The plane hung infuriatingly in space, making no discernible progress. Brigid braced her feet against the floor, urging it on.

  Martin put his hand over hers.

  “We’re probably worrying needlessly. Building up a great big drama out of nothing.”

  “Nothing?” cried Brigid so loudly that the head of a man drowsing in the seat in front of her jerked in protest. “One corpse in the old house, one corpse under the pier … and that woman prowling around Lurgate, and you call it nothing?”

  At the airport Martin plunged into arrangements for hiring a self-drive car. The advertisements made it sound simple and enticing, but in reality the formalities produced an exasperating delay.

  Brigid filled in the time by making two telephone calls.

  Alarm mounted when she got no reply to the first one. The ringing tone went on and on in her parents’ house. She knew the extension in the bedroom couldn’t fa
il to wake her mother and father if they were in.

  If they were in … and alive.

  On and on it went, and there was no reassuring answer.

  She tried the flat. Mrs Hemming might take some time to get to the phone, but if it rang for long enough she would surely, grumbling, reach it.

  Brigid let it ring and ring. Nothing here, either.

  Martin came back. “Honestly, I thought they were going to ask to inspect my birthmarks and take my fingerprints. Get through all right?”

  “No,” said Brigid. “Not to either of them.”

  “Perhaps they’re…” But there was no easy, ready-made explanation. He said: “Come on, then.”

  They drove out into the pallid dawn, racing down the long miles towards Lurgate.

  The floor of the linen room was hard and cold. A candle stuck upright from the bare boards between Nell and Serafina. Its flame did not waver. The linen room had no window, and its door fitted too well to allow any draughts in. It was all of a piece with Mrs Hemming’s devotion to the ultimate respectability of silence: neither she nor her guests must be distracted by the chatter and laughter of maids thumping about in here.

  Serafina said: “I am sorry you had to walk in here, Mrs Johnson. So very sorry. Because of course it is not possible you walk out again. You understand?”

  Squatting uncomfortably on the bleak floor, Nell watched the blade of the knife winking wickedly in the candlelight. “You can’t keep me here for ever.”

  “It will not be for ever. In the morning there will be an end.”

  “You don’t imagine I’m just going to sit here and let myself be blown up? As soon as the workmen arrive…”

  “They will hear nothing. You scream, they do not hear.”

  “There’s not just me. Mrs Hemming…”

  “They will not hear her.”

  A cold more savage than the night chill bit into Nell’s bones. She said: “What have you done to her? Is she … alive?”

  “It is fitting,” said Serafina complacently, “that she perish in the ruins of her home.”

  “You’re mad.”

  In the miserable glow, the face hardened into the set ferocity of a mask from a totem pole.

  “I have done what had to be done. You will not go alone. I stay with you. The duty is done, and I am happy to go with you.”

  “If I’m going to die anyway” — it sounded terrible and incredible, put into words, and Nell tried to keep her voice from shaking — “I may as well fight it out with you. Now or later.”

  “I am old,” said Serafina, “but I am still strong. Strong enough to deal with Pietro as he deserved.”

  “So it was you. You killed your own grandson.”

  “Better so. There is nobody else who must carry the weight of it. Pietro defied me. He stole from me. I have told you, I am Serafina Blythe, and from me my grandson he stole all what was left of my life. My life with Walter Blythe. He steal my possessions and bring them to England so he make the easy money. That was Pietro. It could not be permitted.”

  “You came after him all that way just to … well, to…”

  “I follow him, yes. We meet in the street. I remember these streets. There are changes, but not so many. I know where to go. I meet him, and he is afraid to see me. If he had come to me then and begged forgiveness, perhaps I spare him. But he ran away, and when we meet again he is drunk.”

  “That must have been after he took money from my husband.” Nell laughed mirthlessly. “Celebrating!”

  “I tell him what the end must be. He cries and he argues. But there is nothing he can do. He is weak. It was the English blood in him,” said Serafina. “All he can do is to cry. And then to taunt me.” Her features became more and more those of a destructive spirit, to be placated only by sacrifice. “He say the vile things, he spit the wicked things in my face.”

  “What things?”

  “This I do not permit. And the money — I will not permit that. The Johnsons, they are nothing to me. They were never anything. I have told you. I am sorry you are here and I cannot let you go. But it is not right I should be dishonoured by my grandson. I do not permit Pietro to take money from you falsely.”

  “Falsely?” Nell almost let it pass, weaving its ragged way in and out of the other threads of nightmare. Then, grasping it, she said: “Do you mean Pietro had no right to the money — that he wasn’t Walter’s grandson?”

  “He was Walter’s grandson,” said Serafina fiercely.

  “Then … Why were you so upset about the money? Didn’t you feel you were entitled to come forward and claim some of it? You and he — the last surviving members of the family. What was false about the claim?”

  Serafina’s hooded eyes stared down into the candle flame. It swayed gently and bent away from her as though she had breathed a suffocating breath on it.

  There was nothing to lose now. Nell lashed out with words like weapons; words barbed and excoriating.

  “You say he taunted you. What did he say? What did he know about you that made you so angry? Only the truth,” she cried, “can make people angry enough to kill.”

  “He is dead now. The debt is paid.”

  “What did he say that you didn’t want to hear?”

  “Soon it will all be ended.”

  Nell saw a blaze of scorching truth at the end of the dark dream. She said:

  “It was you!”

  “I killed Pietro. I have said this. I do not deny it.”

  “I’m not talking about Pietro.” Nell leaned forward. There was the faintest warmth from the flame, some way below her chin. “You wouldn’t accept money from the Johnsons, would you? Wouldn’t accept it ever. Didn’t take it in the past when Walter had disappeared, and didn’t accept my husband’s offer when Walter showed up again. Your honour, your pride, or whatever this thing of yours is — it wouldn’t let you touch a penny, would it? Why? Because you weren’t entitled to it,” Nell went recklessly on. “Because you knew from the start that Walter hadn’t walked out on you, and because you knew then and now that it wasn’t a Johnson who’d had anything to do with the mess-up. It wasn’t a Johnson who killed Walter. You knew that. And how could you have known it?”

  When she paused, the silence seemed to thicken and close in on her. The knife lay loosely across Serafina’s palm. Nell wondered whether she dared risk a sudden leap; but there was no strength in her legs.

  “You could only be so sure,” said Nell, “if you’d killed Walter yourself. And you did, didn’t you? It was you who killed Walter Blythe.”

  Serafina said very softly: “Why should I kill my husband?”

  “Because he wasn’t your husband. How long did it take you to find that out? How long to realise that Walter had led you up the garden path — that he’d gone through some marriage ritual which had no legal or religious validity at all?”

  Serafina’s face looked for the first time human and pitiful. But her grip on the knife tightened. She eased it into a new position of readiness.

  She said: “When men lie to their women, they must die.”

  “Mrs Hemming was telling the truth. Walter Blythe really was married to her mother. He deserted her, but she found him and they came together again. Literally together again — so that she became pregnant.”

  “A daughter!” snarled Serafina. “I had a son.”

  “But you didn’t know about that in time, did you? Walter was already on the rebound, back to his Welsh girl again.”

  “She was cheap.” Again Serafina’s breath lashed the flame into an agitated dance. “A nothing, a silly little nothing. But Walter was so weak. It was all there again, all the weakness and the wrong, in Pietro.”

  “The money,” Nell hazarded, “the money he embezzled…”

  Of course. She didn’t even need to catechise Serafina. The whole thing had been organised so that Walter could run off with his Eiluned. Walter was a great runner, surrendering to his impulses and dodging his responsibilities. By now he must have been
regretting Serafina’s existence. He ought not to have set her up so pretentiously in Lurgate as his beautiful tempestuous showpiece of a wife. Her Sicilian temperament, so intoxicating at first, must surely have clashed with everything else in the workaday life of an English seaside town. And for all that Latin passion, she had given him no children. He found his real wife to his liking once more, and was delighted when she told him she was expecting a child.

  Aloud she said: “He didn’t tell you he was legally married to somebody else and wanted to go back to her? Didn’t offer some sort of … er … settlement to you?”

  Serafina laughed contemptuously. “Walter? I tell you, he was weak. So afraid.”

  Nell was not sure that she blamed him.

  So Walter must have coaxed Eiluned into being patient while he sorted out his problems. On all the evidence he must have been a great coaxer, a sly and persuasive talker — a fixer, as ever there was. And it was easier to get round Eiluned than round Serafina. With Serafina, the only safe thing to do was disappear once and for all.

  But Serafina found out. Serafina killed Walter, buried him, collected the loot he had been hoping to run off with, and returned to respectable retirement in her home town. For years she had walked a tightrope without fear, keeping her audience spellbound by her own unfaltering control. It must have been a shock when she learned that Walter’s corpse had risen from the ground; and worse, perhaps, to read the guesses and distortions in the papers which now reached Manciano, to hear the mockery in the town as her pretensions crumbled, and not to be able ever to answer with the truth.

  “That’s why you killed Pietro,” Nell mused. “Not just because of abstract justice or the family code of ethics or what have you. His taunts were the worst of the lot. He’d guessed, hadn’t he? By the time you reached Lurgate he had worked it all out. From what Mrs Hemming came out with he deduced that you were never really, legally married to Walter. And from there on it wasn’t hard to see that you must have been Walter’s killer. Where else could your money have come from? It had to be you. And he laughed at you…”