Before the Poison (19 page)

Graham looked at me. ‘Tired, little brother?’

‘Not particularly,’ I said.

He stood up. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s you and me have a serious nightcap and a bit of man talk.’

Siobhan rolled her eyes, gave us each a peck on the cheek and said goodnight.

I followed Graham into the living room.

Graham selected a bottle of cognac and a couple of crystal glasses from his well-stocked liquor cabinet, then he put a couple more logs on the fire and slipped in a Cecilia Bartoli CD. Graham might love his music, but he hasn’t quite caught up with the iPod generation yet.

‘So,’ he said, pouring a couple of large shots before we settled down in our respective armchairs. ‘Are you still chasing your ghosts?’

‘I don’t think I ever was,’ I said. ‘But if you mean am I still interested in the Grace Fox case, then the answer’s yes. Perhaps even more so now than ever.’

‘Why would that be?’

I told him all about my conversation with Sam Porter and the conclusions I had drawn about Grace’s innocence. I also mentioned the noises in Kilnsgate and the piano I thought I’d heard. Graham might dismiss these as the products of an overheated imagination, but at least he wouldn’t laugh at me.

‘Well, I don’t suppose
he
would be biased at all, would he?’ Graham said. ‘Plus the fact that he must be about ninety by now, and he’s probably gaga.’

‘Very funny. He may be biased. But that’s beside the point. You’d expect someone in his position to defend the woman he loves no matter what. I understand that, too. But Sam’s level headed enough, and there’s nothing wrong with his memory as far as I can tell. And, by the way, he’s seventy-eight.’

Graham whistled between his teeth. ‘Wow. A toyboy.’

‘He certainly was sixty years ago. But no matter what you call him, his feelings for Grace were genuine enough.’

‘Don’t be so defensive, little brother. I wasn’t saying they weren’t. So you think she was innocent, too?’

‘All I can say is that the more I get to know her, the less I can envisage her murdering her husband. I know it sounds vague, but . . . there it is. And Sam has no reason to lie. Especially not now, so long after the events.’

‘How about to protect his old lover’s memory? Or he may believe he’s telling the truth. It’s amazing the things you can convince yourself are true over the years if you repeat them to yourself often enough. I was in New York when Woodstock happened, you know, and I used to tell the girls back in England that I’d been there. Impressed the hell out of them all the way to the bedroom. I hadn’t, of course, but in the end I even sort of half-believed it myself. I could see and hear Hendrix playing the “Star Spangled Banner” in my sleep. Maybe Sam Porter has convinced himself over the years that Grace Fox was pure as the driven snow?’

‘I don’t think so. Grace had her problems. But she was certainly no slut. Or a murderess.’

Graham paused and sipped some cognac. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there’s one big question you’re raising by refusing to believe the official version.’

‘I think I know where you’re going.’

‘If Grace didn’t do it, then who did?’

‘I don’t see why anyone had to have done it. I don’t know all the details yet, but I don’t see why it couldn’t have been natural causes. She tried to save him, but she was too late.’

‘Clearly the police and the pathologist didn’t think so.’

‘Because they were only looking for evidence to make a case against Grace. What if they were wrong?’

‘But what if it
was
murder? Who could have done it but Grace?’

‘Well, the Foxes had some friends over for dinner that night. I don’t know how many. There was also a maidservant.’

‘So you’re saying there
are
other suspects?’

‘I’m saying there could be, that’s all. If it wasn’t natural causes.’

‘Did any of them have a motive?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’

‘So what do you think
really
happened?’

‘A miscarriage of justice. I think that after the landlady’s accusation, the police started to look for evidence to fit their theory. It’s hardly unusual, that sort of blinkered approach. Remember, it was only
after
she came forward that any suspicions at all were raised. Before that, everyone was quite happy to accept the verdict of a heart attack.’

‘But let’s face it, Chris, in real life, if there’s a murder, ninety-nine per cent of the time it was done by someone close to the victim. The husband or the wife. The police know that. They probably even knew it in 1953. Here,’ Graham said, getting up and bringing the bottle over. ‘Have a drop more.’ I held out my glass. He poured me more than a drop, then some for himself, and sat down again. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, Chris. Maybe I’m just playing devil’s advocate. But don’t you think you ought to be careful not to get obsessed by this?’

‘Do
you
think I’m obsessed?’

‘You’re certainly letting your imagination run away with you on very little basis in fact, but then you always did. These things that go bump in the night. The piano. I’ve often thought that you have a degree or two more sensitivity to the twilight zone than most of us do. Ever since you were a child.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t you remember what happened when you were four?’

‘Obviously not.’

He pointed to my hand, to the long scar in the soft flesh between my thumb and forefinger. ‘Don’t you remember where you got that?’

I looked at the curving white line. As far as I knew, I had always had it. ‘No,’ I said, feeling a little apprehensive, as if I were on the verge of a revelation from which there was no return. ‘I take it you remember. Care to tell me about it?’

A log shifted in the grate. Graham put another one on, and it started to crackle and spit smoke. Shadows cast by the flames flickered over the walls. The curtains were open, and I could see stars in the clear night sky.

‘You were four,’ Graham began, ‘and we were on our summer holidays, staying at a bed and board in Scarborough. It was a large house behind the seafront on the North Beach.’

‘We always stayed on the North Beach,’ I said. ‘Mum and Dad thought it was far more genteel, remember? We wanted to be near the amusements and the shops, but they said the South Beach was too common.’

‘That was later, when you were a bit older, but yes, we always stayed on the North Beach. You liked the open-air swimming pool and Peasholme Park well enough.’

‘I don’t remember it at all.’

‘As I said, you were only four.’

‘What did I do, fill the bath to overflowing?’

Graham chuckled. My childhood misadventures were well known in the family, though fortunately they hadn’t followed me into adulthood. Well, not many of them. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, as I said, we were staying at a guest house in Scarborough. Breakfast and evening meal, six o’clock on the dot or you went hungry. I suppose I’d have been eleven. Anyway, we had a room of our own, two single beds, adjoining Mum and Dad’s. They always kept the door ajar at night so they could keep a check on us. You slept like a log, and I hid under the sheets with a torch reading Sherlock Holmes. There was no telly, but they had a wireless in the lounge, and sometimes Mum and Dad would send you off to bed and let me stay up a bit later to listen to
Appointment with Fear
or
Riders of the Range
.

‘There was a huge wardrobe in our room. Oak or something. Very heavy and very old. The floors of the room were uneven, so if you didn’t turn the key, the wardrobe door would swing open slowly with a creaking sound. It used to scare the living daylights out of you. Inside the door was a full-sized mirror. You didn’t like that wardrobe at all, even when it was secured. Am I ringing any bells?’

‘I don’t remember any of it,’ I said, puzzled by Graham’s story. Was this four-year-old boy scared of a wardrobe really me? I began to feel that familiar chill of recognition, as if I not only knew what was coming but had experienced something similar recently, in the guest bedroom at Kilnsgate. It wasn’t quite déjà vu, but that was what it felt like, in a strange way. ‘Yes, but you know what it’s like when you’re kids,’ I argued. ‘You imagine monsters under the bed, in the cupboards, at the bottom of the garden, God knows where.’

‘Yes. Well, one day – it had been a hot one, I remember – and we’d been on the beach all afternoon. It was crowded. You were playing with your bucket and spade, building sandcastles, making friends with some of the other kids, going for a paddle occasionally – all under Dad’s eagle eye, of course – and I . . . well, I don’t know, really. I’d probably been reading a western or something, wishing I was off with my mates having adventures. But the point is, you were especially tired when we got back to the guest house. You could hardly stay awake through dinner. Mum and Dad packed you off to bed early, and we spent a while in the lounge listening to the wireless, Dad reading his paper. There weren’t many other guests, and most of them seemed to have wandered off to the pub, except for one old lady who sat nodding off in the armchair. And the woman who ran the place, of course – Mrs Gooch, I think she was called – cleaning up in the kitchen.

‘It must have been shortly after eight o’clock – there was some science-fiction serial I was following on the wireless, I remember – when we all heard this almighty crash and the sound of breaking glass and someone screaming –
you
screaming – from upstairs. Dad was first to his feet, I think, shortly followed by me. We dashed up the stairs two, three at a time, probably both of us with the same thought in our heads – the wardrobe had somehow come open or fallen over and some terrible accident had resulted, that maybe you were hurt.

‘Anyway, we ran into the room, me just behind Dad, and there you were, just standing there looking terrified, blood streaming from your hand. The curtains were closed, but they were made of thin material and it was still light outside, so the room wasn’t in complete darkness. The wardrobe door was swinging open and the mirror lay smashed in pieces all over the floor, as if someone had slammed the door shut too hard.’

‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘Was it me?’

‘You said it was an accident. We worked out that you must have been asleep and heard it creaking open, or had a bad dream or something, and got out of bed to shut it, but you slammed it too hard and the mirror broke.’

‘And?’

‘Well, nobody could think of any other explanation, though it must have been one hell of a push. I mean, you
were
only a little kid. We bandaged your hand and Dad took you to the hospital, where they stitched you up. Then Dad came back and calmed Mrs Gooch down – he knew he’d have to pay for the mirror, of course – and I think you slept in their room that night. Things were a bit frosty over breakfast the next couple of days, then we went home.’

‘I don’t remember any of this. And I don’t see—’

Graham held his hand up. ‘Wait. I haven’t finished yet.’

I felt a strange kind of tightness in my chest. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I sensed that it was going to change things, make me feel differently about myself. I almost wanted to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t. Cecilia Bartoli was singing
Panis Angelicus
, and I took a deep breath and let the music calm me down.

Graham went on. ‘We also shared a room back home in Armley, remember? I think I was twelve or thirteen before we moved to the new estate and got a room each. Anyway, the first night back after the holiday, you couldn’t sleep. Your tossing and turning kept me awake. I asked what was wrong. That was when you told me what happened in Scarborough. You said that you got up to go to the toilet – I think you’d had far too much pop that afternoon – and you noticed that the door to the wardrobe was open. As you passed it to go out to the landing, you caught a glimpse of a reflection. There was something odd about it, you said, so you stepped back and stood in front of the mirror to see.
It wasn’t you
. That’s what you told me. You couldn’t see your own reflection but that of a young woman, and she seemed to be floating there, reaching out to you, calling you in, as if she wanted to tell you something. Drag you into the wardrobe mirror with her. That was when you slammed the door, out of pure terror, and the mirror smashed.’

I held my breath. A log shifted on the fire. Cecilia sang on.

‘You look pale, little brother. Have another sip of your cognac.’

I did as Graham suggested. I was starting to feel a little drunk.

‘I wasn’t trying to scare you,’ he went on. ‘I was only trying to tell you how you’ve always been over-imaginative, morbidly sensitive, that’s all, the same as with this Grace Fox business.’

‘Yeah, like you’re saying I see dead people. Is that it?’

Graham laughed. ‘Not quite. Maybe you’re sensitive to traces. I don’t know.’

‘Sounds like a load of bollocks to me, big brother,’ I said, with rather more bravado than I felt. ‘Did I tell you what she looked like, this woman?’

‘No. Just that she seemed young and sad. I think you might have mentioned that she was wearing a long nightie. Don’t worry, you weren’t having visions or premonitions of Grace Fox. That’s not why I’m telling you all this.’

‘Then why? What
did
you make of it?’

‘Well, naturally, I thought you’d awoken from a bad dream involving this young woman in distress, got out of bed half asleep, that somehow the door had come open and you saw your own reflection, maybe thought it was the monster coming out of the wardrobe, and you panicked.’

‘That would seem to be the logical conclusion,’ I said slowly, swirling the rest of my cognac in the large glass.

‘And that’s probably exactly what happened,’ Graham went on. ‘Except . . .’

I felt a sense of panic. ‘Except what?’

‘No, that’s probably exactly how it happened.’

‘Tell me,’ I pleaded. ‘You can’t lead me this far and then leave me stranded.’

‘It was just something I overheard Dad say later. I don’t think I was supposed to hear it.’

‘What?’

‘Well, the incident gave Mrs Gooch a hell of a shock. It wasn’t just the money. That’s basically what she was telling Dad the next day. But she had a daughter, and that used to be her room before her mother turned the place into a bed and board.’