by Nicola Upson
‘I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you‚ but I didn’t know how to find you.’ He thought back to that cold, dreary day in February, when Josephine’s sister had telephoned him at Scotland Yard to give him the news, and the hours he had spent calling American hotels, trying to find Marta as a distraction from his own grief. ‘She was the only person who knew where you were.’
‘I’m not blaming you, Archie. It shouldn’t have been down to you.’
‘It was a shock to everyone. Johnny sent his dresser out for an evening paper during the interval and read about it then.’ Even that announcement was more modest than it should have been, Archie thought; how typical of Josephine to die when the nation was too busy mourning the King to take much notice.
‘I’m not John fucking Terry, though, am I? She must have known what that would do to me, and I can’t believe she didn’t care. I won’t believe that.’ Marta stood up and walked over to one of the arches that looked out over the estuary. ‘I miss her, Archie.’ It was a commonplace expression of grief, but its simple truth broke Marta’s resolve in a way that all her anger and bitterness had failed to do, and he held her as she cried. ‘I’ve spent half my life missing her, for God’s sake. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it gets worse every day.’
‘I know.’
‘Of course you do.’ She touched his cheek affectionately, an acknowledgement of the unique bond between them which a shared love had created. ‘Did she tell you she was dying?’
It was the question Archie had been waiting for‚ and he was glad to be able to answer it truthfully. ‘No, she didn’t tell me.’ He had guessed, though, and Josephine had not denied it, but she had begged him not to tell anyone‚ and he did as she asked. It was too late now for regrets, and he refused to add to Marta’s pain by being honest with her. ‘You know how she hated self-pity.’
‘It’s easy to see the signs when you look back, though, isn’t it? She’d make a joke about wanting to lie on the sofa all day, or go to Tagley and be too breathless to use the water pump. Then there was that time when we all went to the Guineas‚ and she missed a day because she was too tired. Nothing would normally have kept her away from a racetrack. But she always had an excuse‚ and it was always so damned convincing.’
‘Nothing kept her away from going to Suffolk with you,’ he reminded her. He remembered how determined Josephine had been to spend that time with Marta and how happy she had been afterwards.
‘She always loved it there.’
‘Because she associated it with you.’ Marta was quiet for a long time. ‘If we knew how many last times went on in our lives when we weren’t looking, we’d go insane,’ he said gently, guessing what she was thinking.
‘Am I that transparent?’ She smiled. ‘I wanted to go again a few weeks later, but she kept putting me off. She blamed it on work‚ and I knew she was trying to get a book finished, but she usually wrote them so quickly. I couldn’t understand why she was being so bloody diligent all of a sudden.’
The words were sad rather than bitter. Archie watched her face as her hand idly traced the shape of one of the scallop shells which lined the inside of the building and wondered‚ if Josephine could have seen Marta’s pain two years after her death, would she have made different decisions? ‘If she had told you, what would you have done?’ he asked.
‘Stayed with her. Looked after her.’
‘And could you have promised to be strong, to put your own sadness to one side for her sake?’ He knew that Marta was too honest to lie, to herself or to him. ‘She didn’t want you to watch her die‚ and she couldn’t carry your grief on top of everything else. It would have been too much. Selfish or noble – it’s always a fine line.’
‘And she was right,’ Marta admitted. ‘I would have made her feel guilty for dying.’
‘We all do that to the people we love.’
‘You said she died at her sister’s?’
‘Yes. She came south before Christmas and stayed at her club, then went on to Surrey.’
‘She had no time, did she? No time to make a life for herself. Her father had only been gone sixteen months when she died. Why couldn’t she have had his bloody genes and not her mother’s?’
‘You can’t think like that – it’s not fair to Josephine. Of course she had a life. What else do you call the time she spent with you, everything she achieved with her work . . .’ The other people she loved, he had been about to say, but he brushed his most intimate memories to one side, unable yet to cope with them. ‘Don’t pity her, Marta. Leave that to people who don’t know any better. She didn’t put her life on hold while she was waiting, and so much has happened in the last twenty years. You have to believe that counts. I have to believe it.’
She nodded, and his words seemed to temper her regret a little. ‘I destroyed all her letters, Archie. Every single one of them.’
He looked at her in astonishment. ‘Why?’
‘Because I was angry with her. I got drunk one night and I sat in front of the fire and burned them one by one. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t believe what I’d done. Now there’s nothing left. Nothing to speak for what we had.’
‘There’s the drawing you gave her. She wanted you to have it. I told you I’d take care of it until you were ready; perhaps now you are.’
Marta nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like to have it, but it’s not the same.’ He smiled‚ and she looked at him questioningly. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s a letter attached to it. It’s taped to the back. I didn’t notice it at first.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because it would have gone the same way as all the rest, wouldn’t it? Whatever Josephine has to say to you, you haven’t been in the mood to listen.’
Her tears acknowledged the point, and it was a while before she could speak. ‘Thank you, Archie,’ she said eventually. ‘Have you read it?’
‘Of course I haven’t read it!’
‘I’d have read yours.’
He laughed and stood up. ‘Shall we go and get a drink?’
They took the gentler route down to the hotel and sat out on the terrace. ‘I never have been brave enough to ask you about Josephine’s funeral,’ Marta said.
‘Just be glad you couldn’t get back to England in time.’ He thought about that morning – the perfunctory service, the shell-shocked congregation, the sight of Josephine’s coffin sliding back into the wall without a single flower on it because that was what she had asked for – and decided to shield Marta from the desperate bleakness of it all. ‘There was something surreal about it, as though all the different compartments of her life had come together for the first and last time – her family, her Scottish friends, the theatre contingent; all of us strangers to each other and thinking we knew her best. I met her youngest sister afterwards, and it was as though we were talking about a completely different person.’ He closed his eyes, glad to feel the sun on his face. ‘I know she hated everything to do with mourning and didn’t have any great faith in an afterlife, but I kept wondering if that was really the best we could do. All the beautiful places she loved, and there we stood in Streatham bloody Crematorium.’
‘Ovens in the suburb,’ Marta said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve been reading A Shilling for Candles while I’ve been here. It seemed appropriate, bearing in mind why we all came to Portmeirion in the first place. That’s how Grant describes Christine Clay’s funeral.’ She smiled at him. ‘One of the many things that didn’t make it to Mr Hitchcock’s movie. Do you remember how bewildered she was when she saw it?’
‘I know how she felt. I’ve got a few issues with Hitchcock myself at the moment.’
‘Oh? What do you mean?’ She listened, astonished, while he told her about his elusive visitor and David Franks’s crimes. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I haven’t made my mind up yet. Franks killed the missing child, too. Do you remember? Leyton Turnbull’s son. The
little boy who was supposedly abducted by Franks’s father?’
Marta nodded. ‘Of course I remember. I thought at the time how terrible it must have been for his mother.’ Her face clouded over. ‘It’s unbearable to lose a child in any way, but never to know what really happened . . . I don’t know how you would live with that. What did she say when you told her?’
‘She hardly reacted at all.’
‘You mean she knew already?’
That hadn’t been what he meant, but the more he thought about it, the more possible it seemed. ‘I was going to suggest that she resented Taran because of the way he was conceived and her hatred for his father.’
‘Children aren’t tainted in that way, Archie. You love them no matter what. My husband forced me to have sex with him because it was his marital right, just like Gwyneth Draycott’s did, but I would have gone to Hell and back for my son. Well, I did go to Hell and back for him – you know that better than anyone.’
‘So why would she have protected Franks all these years?’
‘Hadn’t you better go and ask her?’
‘I can’t intrude with a question like that.’
‘Don’t you trust your instincts any more? Can you bear not knowing?’ His silence gave Marta her answer. She finished her drink and stood up. ‘I’ll walk you to your car.’ They crossed the square and left the village by the tollgate. ‘Won’t you be glad to retire and leave people to their own misery?’ Marta asked.
‘To be honest, retirement frightens me to death.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t know what the point will be. Does that sound ridiculous?’
‘A little selfish, perhaps, but I think you have enough strong women in your life to set you straight.’
They reached his car and he bent to kiss her. ‘Are you sure you want to stay here tonight? You wouldn’t rather come back to London with me?’
‘No, I want to stay. It’s important.’ He nodded, understanding what she meant. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I’m back, though, and come and collect the picture. Good luck with your last case.’ His smile must have been unconvincing, because she looked at him with concern and said‚ ‘Remember The Singing Sands, Archie?’
‘I can’t bring myself to read it,’ he admitted.
‘You should. There’s a section where Grant thinks of a list of things to do when he retires.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, messing about in boats. Running a sheep farm.’ He started to laugh‚ but she cut him off. ‘And finding time to share his life, to love and be loved.’
He glanced over to the back seat, where the book was lying with a pile of papers. ‘And does he retire?’
Marta smiled. ‘He’s not real, Archie. It’s not a real life he’s wasting.’ She reached into the car and put the book on the seat next to him. ‘Perhaps I’ve read your letter after all. Go and sort your case out, and then go home.’
3
The journey back through Minffordd and across the toll road seemed to take twice as long. Penrose half expected Gwyneth Draycott’s door to remain obstinately closed when he knocked again, but she answered almost immediately. ‘Mrs Draycott, what I was actually going to say earlier was that you didn’t seem very surprised by what I had to say about David Franks.’
The rest of his carefully chosen opening speech was lost in her response. ‘Thank God you’ve come back,’ she said, pulling him into the house. ‘I was wrong to send you away.’
Penrose saw the panic in her eyes and said calmly‚ ‘You knew that David Franks had killed your son, didn’t you?’
‘Not my son.’ He stared at her in confusion. ‘I lied to you last time. It’s Gwyneth who’s ill upstairs. I was only trying to protect her – the habit of a lifetime, I suppose – but she wants to see you.’
‘So you’re Gwyneth’s sister?’
‘Not by blood, no, but we were brought up together. I’m Rhiannon.’
‘Rhiannon Erley?’
‘I don’t use that name any more, but yes.’ Penrose found it hard to see why Henry Draycott’s lover would be caring for his wife; he opened his mouth to ask, but she interrupted him. ‘I’ll answer all your questions later, but please come and see Gwyneth first. She had a fit while you were here last time‚ and I don’t know how much more her body can take.’
‘A fit?’
‘Yes. Gwyneth is epileptic. She’s very weak now because I can’t get her to eat anything‚ and I don’t think she has much time left. She wants to tell you the truth while she still can.’
As he followed her upstairs, Penrose reconsidered Franks’s statement in the context of what he had just been told: the assertion that Taran was a child forever hurting himself, submitting to a force stronger than he was; Gwyneth’s certainty that the danger was ‘somewhere hidden away inside’; a sexual assault which had had such significant consequences – all of these suggested that Taran had shared his mother’s illness. He pieced them together with what the local police had said at the time about Gwyneth’s family and the suggestion that her son had been better off out of it, and an idea began to form in his mind, one he was reluctant to believe.
The room he was taken to was at the front of the house with a fine view of the island and Portmeirion beyond. It was tastefully furnished but sparse, and dominated by an elaborate dressing table. Penrose’s attention was drawn to the collection of photographs that covered its surface. As he stood in the doorway, waiting for an invitation to go to Gwyneth’s bedside, he studied the pictorial record of David Franks’s life: images of a teenager in America and a young man in London, and pictures of him with Hitchcock and Alma, one in front of a Tudor country house of white stucco and timber, the other on the set of Blackmail; several showed him as an older man, either behind a film camera or in the company of an attractive woman, and Penrose wondered if he was looking at any of Franks’s victims. Of the twenty or thirty photographs, only one seemed to picture Franks with a member of his family: not Bella or his father, but a blonde little boy of around two, presumably the cousin whom he had killed; from its background, Penrose guessed that it had been taken in the dog cemetery.
Rhiannon noticed him looking at it and beckoned him over to the bed. The window was wide open, allowing a pleasant breeze to blow in off the estuary, but still the room was stale and heavy with the unmistakable smell of sickness. Gwyneth Draycott was lying with her back to him, staring out across the water, and he could see how thin she was from the frail form beneath the sheets. ‘I knew someone would come eventually,’ she said. Her words were barely more than a whisper‚ and Penrose moved closer to make it easier for her. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I began to think it would be too late.’ He waited while Rhiannon held some water to her lips; when she continued, her voice was stronger. ‘David did what he did because I begged him to. You must understand that. He killed Taran for me because I didn’t want my little boy to suffer any more. It was a terrible thing to ask him to do, but he agreed because he loved me and he knew I would never be able to do it myself. I know it was wrong but it was an act of mercy.’
Penrose tried to concentrate on her grief-stricken face, but all he could see was the film his mind had made of Taran’s final moments. Her version of her son’s death was so far from the stark truth of Franks’s confession that he was reluctant to let her continue, but he knew how important it was to her. ‘Tell me what happened, Mrs Draycott.’
‘Henry was already gone by the time I found out I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘God forgive me, but I tried everything I could think of to get rid of the baby before it was born. I knew what the risks were‚ and I didn’t want a child of mine to suffer like my brother had, but he – or she, for all I knew – had other ideas. I suppose that heartened me, in a way – to think that the baby might turn out to be tough. I called him Taran because I wanted him to be strong, and he was so beautiful when he was born that it was hard to believe there could be anything wrong. Nothing happened for the first few months, and I began t
o let myself hope: perhaps Taran had his father’s genes. It wasn’t something I’d have wanted for him, but it was the lesser of two evils, better than inheriting this sickness from me.’
‘Were you looking after him on your own?’ Penrose asked, imagining what the strain of watching and waiting must have been like with no one to confide in.
‘No. I shut this place up and moved into the old mansion house with Grace during the last weeks of my pregnancy,’ she explained. ‘I’d never had much time for any of the other Draycotts. They were always a bit above themselves‚ and they didn’t take kindly to Henry walking out with a girl from town, but Grace was a good woman, quiet and kind. She kept herself to herself, and that suited me. She invited me to bring the child up in her house during the early years, where there was help around if I needed it.’
‘Because she knew what the situation was with your illness?’
‘Because she thought her brother had abandoned his wife and child,’ she said, and Penrose was interested in her phrasing of the sentence. ‘That’s not fair, mind. She did it out of genuine kindness, not because her conscience troubled her, and I confided in her eventually because I knew she wouldn’t judge.’ She paused to take another sip of water. ‘It was a good arrangement for her, too, I think. They were difficult years for everyone, but Grace felt things very deeply‚ and war saddened her. She hated the reality of what we’re all capable of. It was easy for us both to hide away from our worries over there and pretend they didn’t exist. They were happy times at first, peaceful – just the three of us, with David and his father spending the summers there and some of the Gypsies passing through now and again. Life was very straightforward.’
‘And then Taran’s epilepsy began to show itself?’ Penrose asked, gently moving her on. He had known as soon as he saw Gwyneth that Rhiannon had not been exaggerating the seriousness of her illness, and the reliving of her past would only put her under more strain. The woman in front of him had already decided to give up on life, and she was simply waiting for her body to concede defeat; selfishly, Penrose wanted to be able to piece together the whole story at last, while she was still strong enough to give her version.