Closed Circle (35 page)

"Why should our past have been an asset?"

"Because it suggested you could easily be recruited as Papa's informant. And because we knew that, if Max refused to be bought off, it could only be because he really was infatuated with me and wouldn't hesitate when you suggested we elope. I was to tell the police after the event that Papa had admitted being alerted to our plans by you in exchange for a large amount of money. It would have satisfied them on every point and had the additional advantage of making Max distrust any help or advice you offered after his arrest."

"What stopped you?"

"Your presence in Dorking that night. It hardly seemed consistent with what I'd intended to say."

"Human nature isn't always consistent."

"No. I suppose that's why so many things went wrong. Because of human nature. Papa had told Light foot he would be needed in the early hours of the morning to deliver a bribe to a tax inspector, while Papa would actually be hundreds of miles away at a week-end house party in Yorkshire, thus supplying a perfect alibi should the tax inspector turn out to be trying to trap him. Light foot had accepted the explanation readily enough. Given how much he was being paid, he wasn't likely to quibble. I met him at the front gate shortly after one o'clock, made sure he left his car well down the road, handed him the envelope containing the bribe and escorted him up through the woods towards the point where he was supposed to meet the man. Dressed as he was and clean-shaven, he really did look like my father, at least by torch-light. And I could hear him practising Papa's tone of voice under his breath as we went along. That upset me, believe it or not. Knowing he would never need to speak the lines he'd carefully learnt.

"Papa was waiting in the woods just short of the stile. He hit him from behind, knocking him unconscious. We emptied his pockets, re-filling them with Papa's wallet, watch, handkerchief and so on. Then ..." For the first time, something that might have been remorse caught in her throat. But she soon conquered it. "Then I retreated down the path while Papa delivered the fatal blows. It didn't take long, but... there was a great deal of blood. He was shaking like a leaf afterwards. I don't think either of us expected it to be so horrible."

"The first time your father had killed with his own hands, I suppose."

A fleeting glare was her only response. She continued as if I had not interrupted. "We parted there. Papa went round to the front gate and left in Light foot's car which, as a matter of fact, he'd paid for. I went back to the house, collected Aunt Vita and set off again at a quarter past two. I thought Max would already have fled by then, having discovered the body, taken it for my father and realized he'd be accused of murdering him. But human nature intervened again. The love I'd so successfully inspired must have made him press on towards the house, then hide when he heard us approaching, not knowing who we might be.

"Aunt Vita was flagging and I stopped to let her recover her breath. That's when I said a stupid thing. "Stay here if you like, Aunty. I'll take a look at the body, then come back." "No, no," she replied. "We should behave as if we don't know what we're going to find." We hardly spoke above whispers. Neither of us thought for a moment there would be anybody close enough to hear. And we were nervous. I suppose that's why Aunt Vita couldn't help asking, "Where do you suppose Max is?" "Long gone," I answered. And then she said, "I almost feel sorry for him, you know. Betrayed by his friend as well as his fiancee." Those were her very words. They must have struck Max like a dagger to the heart. He burst out of the undergrowth just ahead of us and fled back along the path. We called after him, but he didn't stop. He'd heard enough to know we were all against him. Even you."

"So, that's why he took the car without waiting for me. Why he wrote to his father, accusing you and me of betraying him. Why finding us together in Venice must have seemed the final confirmation of his very worst suspicions."

"Yes, Guy. I'm afraid so."

If I had taken the right path that night... If I had followed Max, instead of the sound of Vita's voice.. . If I had never left the car at all.. . There were so many ways the sequence of events could have been altered. But not the result. That remained the same, however I approached it; the same for ever.

"Then you appeared. Another surprise, adding to our confusion. But we coped rather well, don't you think?"

"Oh yes," I said, the bitterness of what Max must have thought of me infecting my words. "It was a virtuoso performance."

"Aunt Vita redeemed herself by persuading you to escort me back to the house. Once we'd lured you away from the body, we were safe. Papa had sacked his valet, Barker, months before and none of the other servants were likely to stir. Even if they had,

they'd have been taken in as easily as you were. It was convincing. Especially to the creditors of Charnwood Investments. As far as they were concerned, my father was dead."

"Perhaps you should have had him cremated."

"We considered it. But Papa thought it might arouse suspicion. I didn't realize until later, of course, just how suspicious some of his investors were, even before the murder. They must have got wind of his financial difficulties. Papa had warned Aunt Vita that Faraday was working for them and hence for the Concentric Alliance. Naturally, she couldn't tell me why we had to tread so carefully, why we had to avoid offending him at all costs. I thought our troubles were over after the funeral and the inquest. But they weren't, were they? They were really only just beginning. And Venice wasn't far enough away to put them behind us. Even there, we were watched. By you, among others." She smiled at me. "Are you going to deny it, Guy? Are you going to pretend you weren't paid to come after us, that you didn't start an affair with me in order to find out how much I knew?"

Two can play at that game. Can you pretend you didn't encourage me for the same reason?"

"Perhaps I did."

"Or because you were afraid Max had also come after you?"

"No. That isn't true." She stared at me and I at her. She sounded sincere, but so she had all too often before. There was no way to be certain. I wanted to believe her, if only because it made it easier to sustain our truce. If she had set out to trap Max by seducing me, why go on with our affair after his death? Why, unless, buried within the coils of our similar natures, there was some stubborn affinity we could never disown? "You must believe me, Guy. I never meant to kill him."

"You meant to see him tried for murder and possibly hanged."

"I'd have spoken up for him in court. I'd have said what a terrible provocation finding my father waiting for him rather than me must have been. I wouldn't have let them hang him."

"Just rot in gaol for the rest of his life?"

"I hoped he'd never be caught. I hoped he'd have the good sense to run and keep on running. Hurting Max was never my intention."

"Merely a regrettable necessity, like standing by while your father murdered Light foot?"

"Well? Haven't you done some things that don't bear much scrutiny? Fraud. Theft. Blackmail. Papa told me all about you, Guy. You're in no position to preach."

"I never aided and abetted murder."

"No. But the Concentric Alliance did. It aided and abetted millions of murders. They're why we're going to Dublin. Remember that."

"I'm not about to forget." The bargain we had struck remained a good one. The truce we had concluded remained valid. "Watch her, old man. Watch her like a hawk." Yes, Max. I intended to. But I also intended to do what we had set out to do. She and I were together in this for the moment.

Suddenly, the door slid open and the ticket-collector entered, swathed in the humility he no doubt reserved for first-class carriages. "Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam. Tickets, please." I handed them over and, as he clipped them, he smiled and said, "Going through to Dublin, sir?"

"Yes."

"Have a pleasant trip."

As the door slid shut behind him, Diana's eyes met mine. "It won't be a pleasant trip," she murmured. "But let's hope it's a successful one."

I had the vague impression that the Irish Free State was still racked by civil war, as it had been in the early twenties, but Diana assured me peace and civic order had long since prevailed. Charnwood had chosen a placid looking-glass version of England in which to hide, a backwater where none would think to find him save those who knew he was there.

It was already dark when the ferry docked at Kingstown or Dun Laoghaire, as it had apparently been re-named since independence. I saw little of the port, or of Dublin, come to that, through the gas-lit drizzle. We went straight from Westland Row station to the Shelbourne Hotel, where we booked in as Miss Wood and Mr. Morton, travellers from London. When we met again, over dinner in the sparsely populated restaurant, Diana showed me her letter to her father. It was as short and sweet a lie as she could ever have put her name to. But it seemed just what was required to draw Charnwood out. There was no need for me to suggest the slightest amendment. In the arts of deception, she knew no peer.

Shelbourne Hotel,

St. Stephen's Green,

DUBLIN.

6th November 1931

Dear Papa,

I must see you as soon as possible. I am in the most dreadful difficulties and need your advice as never before. Do not worry. Nobody knows I have come to Dublin. Please telephone or write to me at this address where I am registered under the name of Wood without delay, saying where and when we can meet. I will come anywhere you choose at any time you choose. But I must see you.

Your ever loving daughter, Diana.

The city was grey and quiet when we left the hotel early the following morning and walked up to the General Post Office in O'Connell Street. I recognized its pillared frontage from newspaper photographs at the time of the Easter Rising, when it had served as the rebels' headquarters. It seemed surpassingly odd to enter and find, instead of a sand-bagged nest of Fenians, patient Dubliners queuing at polished counters beneath a roof echoing not to gun-fire but the staccato impact of date-stamps on ink-pads and pass-books.

"We'd like this to reach the box-holder today if possible," said Diana, handing the letter to a clerk at one of the windows.

He glanced at the envelope, which bore the magical number but no name, then said: "It'll go to the sorting office today right enough, madam, but I can't say when the holder will collect it, now can I?"

"Where is the sorting office?" I put in.

"The main one's in Sheriff Street, sir. But there are boxes at all the sub-offices as well."

"Surely you can tell from the number which office it'll go to."

"Indeed I can, sir. But I can't tell you. Strictly confidential, do you see? That's the object of the exercise."

"Why on earth did you ask him such a question?" hissed Diana as we left. "Were you trying to make him suspicious?" "Of course not."

"I told you. Papa checks the box daily. We'll have a reply soon enough."

"What if we don't?" A possible answer was already forming in my mind. There had been a twinkle in the clerk's eye suggesting even strictly confidential information could be obtained at a price.

"We will," declared Diana. "I know my father. He won't let me down." As we emerged onto the pavement, she turned right and began walking fast in the direction of the hotel.

"He already has," I murmured. But she did not hear. Nor did I intend her to. For I shared her confidence that she would hear from Charnwood. Whether she meant to tell me when she did so was, however, quite another matter. And I was determined to be prepared for every eventuality.

It was possible, we both admitted over a late breakfast back at the Shelbourne, that the letter would not reach the appropriate sorting office in time to be collected by Charnwood that day. It was Saturday and the onset of the week-end was against us. The only certain reward for our promptness was to know it definitely would be waiting for him on Monday. But Monday, with so much resting on his response, seemed an agonizingly long way off.

"Have you really no idea where he is?" I asked in my frustration.

"None," Diana replied. "He said he would contact us when the time was ripe. Until then, the less we knew, the less likely we were to let something slip."

"What about the bank accounts he siphoned the money into? Are they here?"

"Presumably. But I'm only guessing. We were to suggest they might be in Switzerland if we thought we needed to."

"To draw attention away from Ireland?"

"I suppose so. But, wherever they are, they'll be well hidden."

"Like the man himself."

"Yes. But Guy She reached across the table and fleetingly touched my hand. It was no more than the lightest of pats, but carried with it a sort of electric memory of the pleasure her slender fingers had given and taken. "He will respond. I have no doubt of it."

"And meanwhile?"

"We wait. As best we can."

The week-end slowly elapsed. We accompanied each other on aimless walks round the mist-wrapped city, never going far from the Shelbourne in case a message arrived. We took meals together in the hotel restaurant, maintaining an outward show of ease and harmony, while in the secrecy of our own thoughts.. . But our relationship was false on too many levels for certainty about what we felt. Platonic friends; breathless lovers; venomous foes; dispassionate allies: we had played every part and lost ourselves in none of them. What was there left, then, but the recognition of two dissemblers? What was there left but the blankness beneath the masks?

Yet, still and all, we were united in our attempt to topple the Concentric Alliance. When I told Diana all I had learned from Duggan when I listed the evidence and led her along the long-extinguished powder-trail from the guns of August to her father's door I saw in her eyes the certainty growing that what he had done was unforgivable.

The Shelbourne stood on the northern side of a broad square, the centre of which comprised a public park. There, among the falling leaves, the laughing family groups and the ducks begging for bread, Diana turned to me as Sunday afternoon was wearing towards dusk and said without preamble: "He's ruined both of us, hasn't he, Guy? But for the war, we might have become admirable people. Instead, what are we?" She gave a resigned smile. "A confidence trickster and a spoilt bitch."