Original Sin (56 page)

He said, willing her to understand: “There is something else. It’s rather good really. It’s Simon. He’s sent for his solicitor. He’s going to make a will leaving me the whole of the business and the property. Well, there’s no one else to leave
it to, is there? He’s got no relations. He knows he’ll never get to the sun now, so I might as well have it. He’d rather me than the government.”

“I see,” she said. And she did see. She was no longer necessary. The money she had inherited from Gerard was no longer required. She said, keeping her voice calm, “If the police seriously suspect you, and I very much doubt whether they do, not seeing each other isn’t going to make any difference. If anything it will look more suspicious. That’s exactly how two guilty people would behave. But you’re right. We won’t see each other again, not ever if I can help it. You don’t need me and I certainly don’t need you. You have a certain farouche charm and a mild entertainment value, but you’re hardly the world’s greatest lover, are you?”

She was surprised that she could walk to the door without faltering, but she had a little difficulty with the bolts. She found that he was close behind her. He said, his voice almost pleading: “But you can see how it looked. You asked me to go on the river with you. You said it was important.”

“It was important. I was going to speak to Gerard after the partners’ meeting, remember? I thought I might have something good to tell you.”

“And then you asked me for an alibi. You asked me to say that we were together until two o’clock. You rang from the archives room as soon as you were alone with the body. You just had time. And it was the first thing you thought about. You told me what to say. You forced me to lie.”

“And you’ve told the police that, of course.”

“You could see how it looked to them, how it will look to anyone. You took the launch back on your own. You were alone at Innocent House with Gerard. You’ve inherited his flat, his shares, his life-assurance money.”

She felt the strength of the door against her back. She turned to face him and she saw the dawning of fear in his eyes as she spoke.

“So aren’t you afraid to be with me? Aren’t you terrified to be here alone with me? I’ve already killed two people, why should I worry about a third? Perhaps I’m a homicidal maniac, you can’t be sure, can you? God, Declan! Do you really believe I killed Gerard, a man worth ten of you, just to buy you this place and that pathetic collection of junk which you acquire to try and convince yourself that your life has a meaning, that you’re a man?”

She couldn’t remember opening the door, but she heard it close firmly behind her. The night seemed to her very cold and she found that she was shivering violently. So it has ended, she thought, ended in bitterness, acrimony, cheap sexual insult, humiliation. But then, doesn’t it always? She pushed her hands deep into her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders into her collar walked briskly to where she had parked the car.

It was early Monday evening and Daniel was working alone in the archives room. He wasn’t sure what had brought him back to these close-packed, musty-smelling shelves unless it was to perform a self-imposed penance. It seemed that he couldn’t even for a moment put out of his mind his blunder over Esmé Carling’s alibi. It wasn’t only Daisy Reed who had deceived him; Esmé Carling had too, and she, he could have pressed more strongly. Dalgliesh hadn’t referred again to the mistake, but it wasn’t one he was likely to forget. Daniel didn’t know which was worse, AD’s forbearance or Kate’s tact.

He worked on, taking each pile of about ten files into the little archives room. It was warm enough; he had been provided with a small electric fire. But the room wasn’t comfortable. Without the fire, the cold struck with an immediate chill which was almost unnatural; with it the room soon became unpleasantly warm. He wasn’t superstitious. He had no sense that the ghosts of the unquiet dead were the watchers of his solitary, methodical search. The room was bleak,
soulless, commonplace, evoking only a vague unease born paradoxically not of horror’s contagion but of its absence.

He had taken out the next tranche of files on a top shelf when he saw behind them a small parcel of brown paper done up with old string. Taking it to the table, he struggled with the knots and finally got it undone. It was an old leather-covered Prayer Book measuring about six inches by four with the initials F.P. engraved in gold on the cover. The Prayer Book had obviously been well used; the initials were almost indecipherable. He opened it at the first brown stiff page and saw in crude writing the superscription: “Printed by John Baskett, Printers to the Kings most Excellent Majesty and the Assigns of Thomas Newcomb, and Henry Hills, Deceas’d. 1716.
Cum Privilegio.”
He turned the pages with some interest. There were thin red lines down each margin and the middle of the page. He knew little of the Anglican Prayer Book but he turned the stiff brown pages with some interest, noting that there was a special “Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving to be used yearly upon the Fifth of November, for the happy Deliverance of King James I and Parliament from the most Traitorous and Bloody intended Massacre by Gunpowder.” He doubted whether this was still part of the Anglican liturgy.

It was then that the sheet of paper fell out of the back of the book. It was folded once, whiter than the pages of the Prayer Book but as thick. There was no superscription. The message was written in black ink, the hand uncertain, but the words were as plain as the day they were penned:

I, Francis Peverell, write this with my own hand on the Fourth of September 1850 at Innocent House, in my last agony. The disease that has laid its hold on me for the past eighteen months
will soon have finished its work, and by the grace of God I shall be free. My hand has written those words “by the grace of God,” and I shall not delete them. I have neither strength nor time for rewriting. But the most that I can expect from God is the grace of extinction. I have no hope of Heaven and no fear of the pains of Hell, having suffered my Hell here on earth for the last fifteen years. I have refused all palliatives for my present agony. I have not touched the laudanum of oblivion. Her death was more merciful than mine. This, my confession, can bring no relief to mind or body since I have not sought absolution nor confessed my sin to a living soul. Nor have I made restitution. What restitution can a man make for the murder of his wife?

I write these words because justice to her memory demands that the truth be told. Yet I still cannot bring myself to make public confession, nor to lift from her memory the stain of suicide. I killed her because I needed her money to finish the work on Innocent House. I had spent what she brought as a marriage-portion but there were funds tied up and denied to me that would come to me on her death. She loved me but she would not pass them over. She saw my love of the house as an obsession and a sin. She thought that I cared more for Innocent House than for her or for our children, and she was right
.

The deed could not have been more easy. She was a reserved woman whose shyness and disinclination for company meant that she had no intimate acquaintances. All her family were dead. She was known by the servants to be unhappy and, in preparation for her death, I confided to certain of my colleagues and friends that I was worried about her health and spirits. On the twenty-fourth of September on a calm autumnal night I called her up to the third floor telling her I had something to show her. We were alone in the house, except for the servants. She came out to me where I stood on the balcony
.
She was a slight woman and it was only a second’s work to lift her bodily and cast her to her death. Then, without hurrying, I went swiftly downstairs to the library and was there, sitting quietly reading, when they brought me the terrible news. I was never suspected. Why should I be? They would not suspect a respected man of murdering his wife
.

I have lived for Innocent House and killed for it but, since her death, the house has given me no joy. I leave this confession to be handed in each generation to the eldest son. I implore all who read it to keep my secret. It will come first to my son, Francis Henry, and then in time to his son, and to all my descendants. I have nothing to hope for in this world or the next, and no message to give. I write because it is necessary before I die that I tell the truth
.

At the bottom he had signed his name and the date.

After reading the confession, Daniel sat still for a full two minutes, considering. He wondered why these words, speaking to him over a century and a half, should have affected him so powerfully. He felt that he had no right to read them, that the proper course was to replace the paper in the Prayer Book, rewrap the book and place it back on the shelf. But he supposed that he ought at least to let Dalgliesh know what he had found. Was this confession the reason why Henry Peverell had been so unwilling to have the archives examined? He must have known of its existence. Was he shown it when he came of age, or had it been mislaid before then and become part of family folklore, whispered about but never actually acknowledged? Had Frances Peverell been shown it when she came of age, or had the words “eldest son” always been taken literally? But it surely had no relevance to Gerard Etienne’s murder. This was a Peverell tragedy, a Peverell shame, as old as the
paper on which it was confessed. He could understand that the family would want it kept secret. It would be disagreeable whenever the house was admired to have to confess that it had been built with money obtained by murder. After a little thought he replaced the paper, carefully reparcelled the Prayer Book and left it on one side.

There were footsteps, light but definite, approaching through the archives room. And now, for a second, remembering that murdered wife, he was touched with a slight shiver of superstitious awe. Then sense reasserted itself. These were the footsteps of a living woman and he knew whose.

Claudia Etienne stood in the doorway. She said without preamble: “Will you be long?”

“Not very long. Perhaps an extra hour, maybe less.”

“I shall be leaving at half past six. I’m turning off the lights except on the stairs. Will you turn those off when you leave and set the alarm?”

“Of course.”

He opened the nearer file and appeared to be studying it. He didn’t want to talk to her. It would be unwise now to be drawn into any conversation without the presence of a third party.

She said: “I’m sorry I lied about my alibi for Gerard’s death. It was partly fear, mostly the wish to avoid complications. But I didn’t kill him, none of us did.” He didn’t reply, nor did he look at her. She said, with a note of desperation: “How long is this going to go on? Can’t you tell me? Haven’t you any idea? The coroner hasn’t even released my brother’s body for cremation. Can’t you understand what that’s doing to me?”

Then he looked up at her. If he had been capable of pity for her, seeing her face, he would have felt it then. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t discuss it now.”

Without another word she turned abruptly and left. He waited till the footsteps had faded then went out and locked the door of the archives room. He should have remembered that Dalgliesh wanted it kept secure at all times.

At 6.25 Claudia locked away the files she had been working on and went upstairs to wash and fetch her coat. The house was ablaze with light. Since Gerard’s death she had hated working alone in the darkness. Now chandeliers, wall sconces, the great globes at the foot of the stairs, illumined the splendour of painted ceilings, the intricacies of carved wood and the pillars of coloured marble. Inspector Aaron could turn the lights off on the way down. She wished she hadn’t given way to the impulse to go to the little archives room. She had hoped that, seeing him alone, she might have extracted some information about the progress of the inquiry, some idea when it was likely to end. The thought had been folly, the result humiliation. She wasn’t a person to him. He didn’t see her as a human being, a woman who was alone, afraid, burdened with unexpected and onerous responsibilities. To him, to Dalgliesh, to Kate Miskin she was only one, and perhaps the chief, of their suspects. She wondered whether every murder investigation dehumanized all those caught up in it.

Most of the staff parked their cars behind the locked gate in Innocent Passage. Claudia was the only one who used the
garage. She was very fond of her Porsche 911. It was now seven years old, but she wanted no replacement and disliked leaving it ungaraged. She unlocked the door of number 10, moved across the passage and opened the door into the garage. Putting up a hand to the light she pressed it down. There was no response; obviously the bulb had gone. And then, as she stood there irresolute, she was aware of the sound of gentle breathing, the knowledge, immediate and terrifying, that someone was standing there in the darkness. And at that moment the noose of leather came down over her head and tightened round her neck. She was jerked violently backwards, and felt the crack of the concrete momentarily stunning her and then its scrape against the back of her skull.

It was a long strap. She tried to reach out to struggle with whoever was holding it, but there was no strength in her arms, and every time she tried to move the noose tightened and her mind swam through an agony of pain and terror into brief unconsciousness. She thrashed feebly on its end like a hooked and dying fish, her feet scrabbling ineffectively for a hold on the rough concrete.

And then she heard his voice. “Lie still, Claudia. Lie still and listen. Nothing will happen while you lie still.”

She ceased her struggles and at once the dreadful throttling eased. His voice was speaking quietly, persuasively. She heard what he said and her numbed brain at last understood. He was telling her that she had to die, and why.

She wanted to shout out that it was a terrible mistake, that it wasn’t true, but her voice was throttled and she knew that only by lying totally motionless could she stay alive. He was explaining now that it would look like suicide. The strap would be tied to the fixed wheel of the car, the engine would be left running. She would be dead by then but it was necessary to
him that the garage should be full of a fatal gas. He explained this to her patiently, almost kindly, as if it were important to him that she should understand. He told her that she had no alibi for either of the murders now. The police would think she had killed herself from fear of arrest or remorse.