The Wheel of Fortune (150 page)

“But you can’t move against me,” said Kester. “You daren’t. You’re in this with me up to the neck.”

“True. But that still leaves my head above water, and you’ll never be able to convince yourself that there’s really nothing I can do to you. But if you make my son your heir—”

“You’ll kill me and move in here with Hal!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, if I did that I’d wind up on the gallows because the police would immediately find out I was a trained killer with a motive the size of an elephant. Now pull yourself together, Kester, and think.
Think.
I’m offering you the only available olive branch of peace. For Christ’s sake grab it before the men in the white coats arrive to lock us both up in the nearest asylum.”

Kester chose that moment to go to pieces. He shuddered with dry sobs and whispered, “Oh God, oh Christ, what have I done.”

“Shut up.” I shook him. “It’s the future not the past that matters now.” One of my father’s well-worn catchphrases slipped into my mind. “Hold fast!” I urged, and Kester, in an eerie echo of the upbringing we had shared, automatically responded: “Stand firm. Soldier on.”

This sort of talk eventually doused the hysterics. He mopped himself up and said, “Very well, I’ll do as you say. I’m fond of Hal. But if I die before he’s twenty-one, don’t expect my will to appoint you to be a trustee. I’m going to make very sure you never get your hands on my Oxmoon.”

“Your privilege, old chap. Suit yourself.”

We sat there hating each other, two men locked up in a steadily shrinking cell, and the next moment we again saw the double image and sensed the terror that had no name.

“Erika told me once,” said Kester in a shaking voice, “that the Germans have a peculiarly vile legend about
Doppelgänger.
They say—”

“Shut up. I don’t want to know.” I stood up. “We’re not
Doppelgänger
,” I said. “I absolutely refuse to sink to your over-emotional melodramatic level. The plain truth of the matter is that we’re just two cousins with a fatal amount in common.” I began to walk away from him. “Send me a copy of your new will,” I said over my shoulder, “and send it soon. My reserves of patience are very far from endless, I assure you, and I feel I now need a prompt gesture of good faith to soothe my nerves.”

“I’ll see Fairfax tomorrow.”

We said nothing else. He remained slumped on the bench, I went on walking away across the lawn, and seconds later I was driving erratically back to Penhale.

Did I really think our mutual interest in Hal would keep the peace between us? No. But at least I’d bought myself a little time so that I could work out how to lock Kester up in the nearest madhouse.

Of course he was a certifiable lunatic.

V

I was now in the most unenviable position because although I knew Kester was crazy I couldn’t prove it without disclosing my own role in Thomas’s murder. I was not only an accessory after the fact. I was guilty of that offense which I believe is called ‘misprision of a felony,’ the concealment of a serious crime. There was also the possibility that if I openly accused Kester of murder he would deny it and cook up a new plot in which I’d killed Thomas with the golf club and threatened to kill Kester as well unless he helped me cover up the crime. And in addition to all these hair-raising dilemmas, at least one member of my family thought I was paranoid about Kester and would be certain to believe Kester’s story in preference to mine. To use a cricketing metaphor, I was on the stickiest of sticky wickets and no matter how hard I tried to hook my way out of trouble I ran a heavy risk of being clean-bowled.

There was only one person who would believe me, but how could I ever explain to my father why I hadn’t drawn the line immediately I found Thomas’s body and summoned the police no matter what the possible consequences to myself? Useless to say that I thought I was being framed for a murder I hadn’t committed. He would reply that the police would have sorted out the muddle—as indeed they would have done, once they had uncovered Kester’s mistake with the poker. Then I would have been proved innocent and Kester certifiable and that would have been that. But as it was … I was in my usual big mess. And what was worse, I couldn’t see my way out; I couldn’t see how the mess could be terminated. Every instinct suggested that Kester would take another swipe at me in the future; I knew too damned much for his peace of mind so I had to get him locked up, had to, but how?
How?

Obviously it would help if I convinced my family that I was a sane rational man instead of a paranoid neurotic; but this exercise in public relations would take time, and meanwhile Kester might murder me. I wasted many hours picturing my own murder, but at last I pulled myself together sufficiently to perceive two important and reassuring truths. The first was that I suspected Kester had frightened himself so much by his bizarre behavior that it would be some time before he had the nerve to start plotting his next novel. And the second was that I sensed he would be reluctant to move against me while my father was alive. He might want to, but I thought sheer terror of being exposed to my father as my murderer if anything went wrong would be a powerful deterrent to him. If Kester grew desperate I knew he’d say “To hell with Uncle John!” and take a swipe at me. But if I handled him with kid gloves and kept desperation at bay I thought my father’s powerful influence might prevail for a long time.

So the immediate problem was How did I handle Kester with kid gloves? I’d made a good start by behaving as if all saintly Cousin Harry wanted in compensation was Oxmoon for his son, but the trouble was that Kester was going to have difficulty in believing indefinitely in the myth of saintly Cousin Harry. He knew very well that I wanted his money, his house, his way of life—the whole damn lot. I knew he knew. I certainly knew
I
knew. We might periodically make valiant efforts to cover up the truth by talking of mirror images and
Doppelgängers,
but this retreat into metaphysical claptrap was prompted by our secret knowledge that we were locked up in a situation which was so absolutely not the done thing that there was no way we could refer to it except by elaborate circumlocution. But if one thrust the metaphysical claptrap aside the stark truth was that I wanted his life, always had, and he was prepared to kill me to keep it.

For years this potential holocaust had been kept in control because neither Kester nor I had been able to conceive of a situation in which I could legally take over his life. (My father’s presence of course made all thought of an illegal takeover out of the question.) But I’d never given up hope, had I? How clear my past actions now seemed in retrospect! I’d come back to Penhale. I’d stayed on at the Manor. I’d invented all those plausible half-true excuses for refusing to leave. And all the time the unacknowledged truth was that Oxmoon had been pulling me like a magnet, glittering Oxmoon, the symbol of the life of which I’d been deprived; the unacknowledged truth was that I had felt compelled to stay close to Oxmoon, my Oxmoon, in the hope that one day, dispossessed exile that I was, I’d have the chance to go home.

And now, against all the odds, my chance could be coming. If Kester were locked up, certified insane, the court would have to appoint someone to run the estate, and what better candidate could be found than that hardworking farmer Harry Godwin whose son was Kester’s heir? Who could be more suitable?

And it would all be perfectly legal. I wouldn’t even have to bump Kester off—not, of course, that I’d ever be stupid enough to kill the sod, but one does occasionally have these idiotic thoughts when one’s under stress. If I could get Kester locked up, Oxmoon was mine. But that truth brought me back to Square One again. How the devil could I get him locked up without ruining myself, causing a first-class scandal and killing my father with grief and shame?

I couldn’t, that was the short answer. All I could do was wait for Kester to go round the bend again to provide my family with incontrovertible proof of his insanity.

In other words I had to play a waiting game, but unfortunately my nerves—those rusting nerves of steel—decided they couldn’t tolerate waiting games, and I became ill. Up at Oxmoon Kester, demonstrating the splendid recuperative powers he had inherited from Aunt Ginevra, was soon in the pink of health once more, hiring a passable new agent, continuing to hold his eccentric children’s tea parties and entertaining his family in the Godwin tradition every Christmas and Easter. Kester, as Teddy put it, was doing just fine—and why not? He’d committed murder and got away with it. What a triumph! Having avenged Anna in the most positive way imaginable, he had annihilated the burden of his guilt and was now clearly set to embark on the prime of life by giving a matchless performance of the sane law-abiding landowner thoroughly devoted to his loving and loyal family.

Meanwhile down at shabby old Penhale Manor, poor old Harry, poor old sod, was racked with insomnia and plagued with eczema as he was obliged to admire his cousin’s splendid recovery and watch Oxmoon receding once more into the distance. I felt fate had dealt me the roughest hand I’d yet encountered, and in my anger and frustration my eczema grew worse. Finally it became so bad that I felt obliged to have sex fully dressed, and that was the end; I asked Warburton if he could refer me to a skin specialist.

The skin specialist said the trouble was nervous in origin. Stale news. He then stupefied me by suggesting that I saw a psychiatrist.

“Never!” I was incensed.

“Very well.” He was unperturbed. “I’ll give you some drugs but they won’t cure you; they’ll just alleviate the symptoms. If you want a cure you must look elsewhere.”

I didn’t believe him. Then to my horror I found that the drugs had little effect. Meanwhile I was still having sex with my clothes on. Swallowing my pride I crawled back to him and agreed to be dispatched to a psychiatrist.

By this time it was early in 1951 and I was still recovering from the great family Christmas of 1950. The very sight of Kester sitting at the head of the table in my grandfather’s chair and beaming at everyone in sight had made all the sores break open on my back. Thomas had now been dead for seventeen months, and Kester was as far from a lunatic asylum as the King at Buckingham Palace.

So much for my daydreams of taking over Oxmoon. So much for all those longings which could never be fulfilled. I was so angry that I didn’t get a wink of sleep for two nights, and by the time I arrived at Dr. Mallinson’s house in Swansea for my appointment I was so thoroughly depressed that I didn’t even feel humiliated that I’d wound up in psychiatric hands.

A receptionist took my name and showed me into a waiting room where I stared like a zombie at
Punch
but after five minutes a woman in a white coat looked in and said, “Mr. Godwin? Would you come this way, please?” and I followed her into a light austere room which contained a sparse arrangement of modern furniture. There was a couch which I instantly decided to ignore. Heading for the easy chair by the desk I glanced around expectantly. “Where’s Dr. Mallinson?” I said to the woman in the white coat.

She said, “I’m Dr. Mallinson. Do sit down, Mr. Godwin.”

It was the last straw. I was outraged. I stared at her. She was very thin and flat-chested and she had dust-colored hair tightly permed and she might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty. She gave me a cool look from eyes the color of iron bars.

I said furiously, “I’m not talking to a woman!”

“Very well,” she said tranquilly without much interest. “We’ll just sit in silence.”

“If I’d known you were a woman I’d never have come! I don’t need a psychiatrist anyway, and I certainly don’t need a woman psychiatrist!”

“Really.” She had a well-bred, thoroughly English accent and looked as if she ought to be living in Surrey among the pearls-and-twin-set brigade. As I shook with rage she sat down behind her desk and idly began to sharpen a pencil.

“As far as I’m concerned women are good for one thing and one thing only!” I shouted, maddened by this intolerable calm. “All they’re fit for is lying on their backs with their legs apart!”

“I see,” said Dr. Mallinson, and made a neat hieroglyphic on her note pad with her newly sharpened pencil.

I suddenly realized I was behaving like a lunatic. My God, suppose I was the one who ended up in an asylum! My blood ran cold.

“I’m so sorry,” I said in a rush. “I do apologize. I must be going crazy.”

“Well, if you are,” said Dr. Mallinson with a deadpan humor, “you’ve come to the right place.”

I gave a nervous laugh. She smiled serenely. The next thing I knew was that I had subsided into the easy chair and was facing her across her immaculate desk.

“If I were to tell you,” I said, “that someone wants to kill me and that the strain’s driving me round the bend, would you certify me?”

“Not today,” said Dr. Mallinson kindly.

“Don’t I look sufficiently wild-eyed?”

“You do look a little anxious, certainly. But mainly you just look tired. Have you been having trouble sleeping?”

I found this perception thoroughly unnerving. “Well …”

“When did you last have a holiday?”

“I don’t have holidays. Don’t believe in them. I’d rather stay at home.”

“Because you were away for a long time in the war?”

This time I was so unnerved by her perception that I could only stare at her speechlessly.

“Well, in that case,” she said, taking my silence as an assent, “it’s quite natural that you should want to stay at home, but nevertheless why don’t you at least try taking a rest by going away for a few days? It may do no good at all, of course, but I can’t see any harm in giving it a try.”

I said feebly, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“Not even to London? There’s always something to do there, and you look as if you might be an artistic type. You could go to galleries … and the theater … and I believe there are some simply splendid concerts coming on at the Albert Hall.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. I gazed at her. Then I tried to say, “Artistic type? Nonsense, I’m a man of action!” but the words that came out were “I love music.”