An Expert in Murder (37 page)

259

Now Marta spoke up. Unlike Josephine, however, she was not trying to distract Vintner but to understand him. ‘How could you have so much hate in you for someone you’ve never known?’ she asked. ‘She did nothing to you. She didn’t even know you existed, for God’s sake. That girl – your sister – was just as much a victim in all of this as you are. More so. And yet you took her life away just because your father told you to. What sort of puppet are you?’

‘She was my half-sister, actually. Get it right, Mother. I did have my doubts, I admit, but you soon dispelled those for me. If I was ever remotely tempted to ignore Father and just settle for having a mother again, you put me off that straight away. Do you know how desperate you sounded when I came to see you in that pathetic place and offered to reunite you with your daughter? I thought Father was wrong about what you’d agree to do, but you actually wanted her – your piece of the gardener – so badly that you were prepared to kill. There was a time when I wanted you to love me that much but you never did, so I thought I might as well cut my losses and go ahead with Father’s plan. He did love me, you see, so I thought I’d make one parent proud of me, at least.’

‘Oh, he’d certainly be proud. You’re in a class of your own.’

Marta’s defiance was surely a symptom of shock but it seemed to unsettle Vintner a little. Whatever reaction he had expected from her – horror, despair, grief – it had not been this and, for the first time, Josephine sensed that he had underestimated his mother. His response, though, was to continue to taunt her.

‘So what if I did do it because Father asked me to?’ he shouted.

‘I loved him, and that doesn’t make me a puppet. You destroyed him by what you did all those years ago, and what do you think my childhood was like after that? Believe me, I’m more than happy to do as he asked because his memory is worth protecting. What memories do I have of my mother to look back on? Oh yes, the one of you playing Lady Chatterley and fucking someone who wasn’t fit to lick his boots. So yes, I killed for him and yes, I enjoyed it. I found your apology for a daughter in that railway carriage and I stabbed her with Father’s bayonet. It’s a shame she didn’t know her own father, of course, but I left an iris with her in his memory – I 260

thought you’d appreciate that. Aubrey had one, too, except his was an original. Your gardener kept a flower head in his tobacco tin –

sent by you from our garden, presumably. Father found it on his body when he was dragged out of the dirt, and he kept it in case it came in useful.’

Marta was on her feet by now and Josephine recognised someone who had long ceased to care whether she lived or died.

Vintner took a couple of steps towards her, tightening his hold on the pistol. ‘And I did something in your honour, too, Mother. I shaved her head. That’s what they do in asylums, isn’t it? I would have made a better job of it but I was interrupted. Still, it’s the thought that counts, and it was the least I could do for you. You said you always wondered if she looked like you. Well, she didn’t really so I thought I’d make sure you had something in common.

I’d hate for her to have been a disappointment after all these years.’

‘For God’s sake, you don’t know anything about Elspeth – either of you.’ Josephine’s fear was quite forgotten in her indignation on Elspeth’s behalf. ‘You destroyed everything she had,’ she shouted.

‘Her childhood and her family, her sense of who she was and who she could be, and now even her life. Leave her some respect, at least.’

She had spoken without considering the impact of her words, but they served both to distract Vintner and to break Marta’s self-control. Vintner only turned to Josephine for a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for his mother to hurl herself at him in fury with no thought for the danger she was in. It occurred to Josephine that Marta may have wanted him to fire and put her out of her misery but, if that was indeed the case, she was unlucky. The gun went off as she knocked him off balance but the only casualty was a small alabaster idol, given to Lydia as a present and kept on the mantelpiece. Vintner fell to the floor, dragging Marta down with him, and Josephine scoured the room frantically for something she could use as a weapon, but there was no need; as he went down, Vintner’s head smashed into the corner of the piano stool and he lay still on the carpet, the gun a few inches from his hand.

261

Marta did not move immediately and Josephine began to wonder if she, too, was hurt, but eventually she raised herself onto her knees and looked at her son, then put her hand to his neck. ‘He’s still alive,’ she said, and Josephine stepped across to pick up the pistol, but she was too slow. Marta got there first, and Josephine felt a resurgence of her earlier fear; no matter how much sympathy she had for Marta’s grief, the woman had tried to kill her and here she was with a far more straightforward opportunity. But that was not what Marta had in mind. She stood staring down at her son, the gun levelled at his chest, and Josephine could not even begin to imagine the emotions that ran through her head as she held the life of her child in the balance. For a second or two, she thought Marta was actually going to pull the trigger but, in the end, the battle in her heart came out on the side of mercy. Instead, she held the gun out to Josephine.

‘Here, take this,’ she said wearily. ‘I hope you won’t need it, but just in case. Will you get him some help?’

Josephine took the weapon from her. It was the first time in her life that she had held something whose only purpose was to kill, and she was disconcerted by how natural it seemed, by how comfortably the weight of the gun rested in her hand. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, although she thought she already knew the answer.

‘To finish what he started. Or perhaps I should say to finish what
I
started all those years ago. I know I’m not in a position to ask for anything from you, but I’d like to end it in my own way.

No one could punish me more than I can punish myself.’

‘Marta, please, you don’t have to do that,’ Josephine said, and tentatively raised the gun.

‘That would be such an easy way out for me, but not for you,’

Marta said, gently lowering Josephine’s hand. ‘It’s impossible to live with someone’s blood on your hands – I should know – so I wouldn’t want you to do it even if you were capable.’ She knelt beside her son and lightly ran her fingers over his cheek. ‘He’s so like his father, you know. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it.’

Quickly she stood up to leave the room but turned back as she got 262

to the door. ‘You can’t possibly justify to someone why you tried to take their life, but I am sorry, Josephine. I really am.’

Then she was gone, and Josephine waited for the front door to close. Keeping her eyes on Elliott Vintner’s son, she moved over to the telephone to call Archie.

As it happened, Scotland Yard arrived rather sooner than Josephine expected in the shape of a bewildered young constable who seemed more frightened of Rafe Vintner than she was; God help them if Vintner had been conscious, she thought. Minutes later, Archie’s car screeched to a halt outside, flanked by an ambu-lance and a marked police vehicle.

‘It really is the Flying Squad, isn’t it?’ she said when he appeared at the door, but Penrose was in no mood to joke.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing coming here alone?’ he yelled at her. ‘Do you realise what could have happened to you?’

‘I’ve spent the last hour trapped in a room by a madman with a gun, so I think I’ve got a fair idea,’ she said sharply, then softened when she saw the panic in his eyes. ‘But nothing did happen to me, Archie. I’m all right – honestly.’

As Vintner was lifted onto a stretcher and taken from the room, Josephine explained exactly what had happened. ‘God, it’s like something out of a Greek tragedy,’ Penrose said when she had finished, and looked at Fallowfield, who was packing away the gun ready to remove it from the scene. ‘We need to circulate Marta Fox’s description immediately. If she leaves London we might never find her.’

Josephine signalled to Fallowfield to wait a moment. ‘Will she hang for what she’s done?’ she asked.

Penrose considered. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t actually killed anyone and, from what you tell me, a good barrister could argue that she wasn’t of sound mind when she agreed to help Vintner. She’s been through so much and, ironically, the fact that she’s been committed to an asylum will work in her favour in court.’

‘Then I think I can tell you where she’ll be, Archie. There’s only 263

one place she’d want to go now. But you have to let me speak to her.’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Never in a million years would I let you go near that woman after what’s happened. She wants you dead, and she nearly got her wish.’

‘If she still wanted to kill me, she could have done it easily just now,’ Josephine argued. ‘She gave me the gun, Archie – there’s no danger for me any more. But there is for her. She’s determined to die, you know, but I might be able to change her mind. Are you really going to stop me trying?’

Penrose hesitated, but Fallowfield backed her up. ‘If anyone can get her to give herself up, Sir, Miss Tey can. And we can stay close by to make sure nothing happens to her.’

‘All right,’ Penrose said, making his mind up. ‘But I’m not going to let you out of my sight this time.’

King’s Cross was not as crowded as it had been when Josephine was last there, but the station still had an air of efficient busyness about it. The stable-yard clock over the entrance chimed six o’clock as she passed underneath it, and she walked quickly over to the huge boards that indicated arrivals and departures. As agreed, she left Penrose and Fallowfield to wait there and turned purposefully towards the trains.

Marta was standing a little way down the platform, between two trains preparing to depart and just yards from where the daughter she never knew had died. Josephine walked towards her, and sat down on a nearby bench. Certain her approach had been noted, she waited for Marta to speak.

‘You were absolutely right, Josephine,’ she said, turning round at last. ‘I didn’t know anything about my daughter, not even her name. What was she like?’

‘She was a joy,’ Josephine said simply. ‘The sort of girl who could lighten your heart without ever realising she’d done it. There was nothing self-conscious about her, you see. She was warm and honest, and she didn’t try to be anything she wasn’t – and that’s so rare. She had an innocence about her – and I do mean innocence 264

rather than naivety. Life had been difficult for her at times; she found not knowing where she’d come from hard to accept, and there were problems in her adoptive family, but a lot of love, too, and she seemed blessed with a talent for happiness. Very few of us can claim that.’ Sadly, she remembered Elspeth’s sudden shyness about her new romance. ‘She was at a crossroads in her life, as well; she’d just found love with Hedley and that seemed to have given her a new confidence, a real excitement about the future.

You would have been pleased, I think, and so would she.’

Marta joined her on the bench. ‘One of the things I loved about Arthur was that he could always find something to be fascinated by. He was so very special, you know. Whenever I was with him, all I knew was joy – and after being married to Elliott, you can imagine what a surprise that was. That talent for happiness you mentioned – that was so much a part of him. I’m glad it lived on through his daughter, if only briefly.’

‘There are a few people in life you feel privileged to have known,’ Josephine said, thinking about Jack. ‘Elspeth was one of them, although she would have laughed at the idea. I’d have loved the chance to get to know her better.’ She looked at Marta.

‘I’d like the chance to get to know her mother better. I can’t be sure, but I suspect Rafe was wrong when he said she wasn’t like you. Before all this happened, I imagine you were rather different.’

Marta nodded. ‘So much so that it feels like another life. I don’t recognise myself any more. The woman Arthur loved hated violence and revenge and mistrust – all those things that men go to war for. She would have found murder abhorrent.’

‘And craved peace and beauty? She sounds very much like the Anne of Bohemia that Vintner wrote about.’ Marta’s sharp glance was not lost on Josephine. ‘You don’t have to explain why you wanted to kill me, Marta,’ she said. ‘You hated me for the same reasons that Elliott Vintner did. But he didn’t write
The White
Heart
, did he? You did. It was your work I was supposed to have stolen, not his.’

‘I shouldn’t have given another writer the new book if I wanted to keep that a secret, should I? Yes, I wrote the novel that made 265

Elliott Vintner’s name. I sent the manuscript to Arthur in one of the consignments that went out from May Gaskell’s war library.

Elliott must have either intercepted it or found it in Arthur’s things after he died. The next time I came across it was in the hospital that my husband sent me to. There it was on somebody’s bed, a published book with Elliott Vintner’s name plastered all over the cover. All that fuss he made and everything he put you through, and it was never his to lay claim to, never his privilege to feel wronged.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I had no proof. The manuscript was long gone and anyway, I had no fight left in me. I was so afraid of him, Josephine. I never wanted to marry him, but outwardly he was the perfect match –

wealthy, a little older than me, an academic – and my parents took it for granted that I’d accept him. I was too young and too naive to argue. He turned out to be very different behind closed doors, of course.’

‘Did he hurt you?’ Josephine asked.

Marta gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh yes, but not by doing anything as straightforward as hitting me. No, he was far too clever to do anything that I could talk about without being ashamed. He was hateful in bed – truly hateful. He used to pride himself on thinking up new and inventive ways to humiliate me. One day, he found a stash of short stories I’d written, and he was so scornful about his little writer wife. After that, whenever he’d finished with me in bed