The Wheel of Fortune (174 page)

GODWIN:
I came round the bend onto the southern flank. At that point the ground rises, but when you reach the top of the slope you can see a long way. The Worm isn’t straight and there were parts which remained hidden but I could see down to the Devil’s Bridge in the distance and beyond it to the Outer Head.

CORONER:
Did you see your cousin?

GODWIN:
Yes, and as soon as I saw him I realized I’d misjudged the situation because quite obviously he wanted to be cut off by the tide. He was on the Middle Head, not far from the Devil’s Bridge. It was difficult to estimate distances in that empty landscape but he seemed even farther away from me than before.

CORONER:
Why was this, do you think?

GODWIN:
I’d dithered on the Shipway. Several times I’d stopped to debate with myself whether to go on or not.

CORONER:
I see. Very well, he was a long way away and clearly it was going to be impossible for you to catch him up. What was your reaction when you realized this?

GODWIN:
I dithered again. I was extremely worried about him but at the same time my heart sank at the prospect of spending the night on the Worm. It was a mild evening but temperatures can fall rapidly on a spring night and the pullover I was wearing was a thin one.

CORONER:
I see. So—

GODWIN: SO
with considerable reluctance I turned back. Later, of course, I wished I’d gone on, but at the time it seemed the sensible thing to do.

CORONER:
I’m sure we all know how easy it is to be wise after the event. Now, Mr. Godwin, there’s one aspect of your evidence which I’d be grateful if you would clarify for me. You say you were worried about the deceased and certainly your behavior would indicate grave anxiety. But were you actually on close terms with your cousin? There seems to be some sort of discrepancy here.

GODWIN:
I’m glad you’ve brought that up, sir, because I was hoping I’d have the chance to set the record straight and explain exactly what was going on in my mind. My cousin and I were not close. In fact our mutual dislike was notorious. But that was precisely why I became so concerned when I witnessed his bizarre behavior and started wondering if he was planning suicide. I knew that if Kester died in obscure circumstances there were people who’d say I’d killed him, and I foresaw a scandal of catastrophic dimensions. In those circumstances I felt I couldn’t rest until I knew he was safely home again and that was why, when I returned to the cottage, I felt driven to stay there to wait for him.

CORONER:
But after your return to the cottage, you would have realized surely that Mr. Morgan was in a position to give you an alibi.

GODWIN:
Oh yes, I knew the police would work everything out correctly but I wasn’t worried about the police—I was worried about my enemies who would fasten on the fact that Kester and I went out to the Worm together and only one of us came back. Let me explain further by saying I’ve always had a horror of virulent gossip. When I was a child, my father was the center of a scandal—a scandal of quite a different nature, I admit; but I knew what it was to suffer daily as the result of gossip and I didn’t want my children going through what I went through.

CORONER:
I understand. Yes, that certainly clarifies your state of mind. Thank you, Mr. Godwin. Very well, let’s proceed. You returned across the Shipway—

GODWIN:
Yes, and by the time I reached the mainland the Shipway was beginning to go under. I was feeling done in, but I didn’t rest—I decided to push on back to the cottage where I knew Kester had something to drink. When I arrived I found my stepbrother Dafydd Morgan changing the washer in the kitchen. I told him what had happened. We sat in the living room for a while as I drank some Scotch. He suggested I come back with him to Oxmoon but I felt I couldn’t. He left. I didn’t notice the time. Then I sat up hour after hour in the living room. I did doze around two but I woke at dawn and resumed the wait. He never came. Finally I was so concerned that I went back to Oxmoon to consult Dafydd and together we went to the Coastguard.

CORONER:
Yes. Now, Mr. Godwin, when you were waiting all those hours, did you stumble across any clue about why your cousin had asked to see you?

GODWIN:
No, sir, I didn’t.

CORONER:
What then is your final explanation of that note he wrote you? It seems to me very odd that he should ask you over for a drink when you weren’t on good terms.

GODWIN:
Oh, not at all, sir, not a bit of it. Kester was doing the done thing, I understood that at once. We might have been on bad terms but of course we considered we had a duty to maintain a reasonably civilized standard of behavior towards each other. After all, we were, both gentlemen.

CORONER:
Of course, of course, but nevertheless—

GODWIN:
I’d lent Kester my cottage, sir. I’d done him a favor and so of course I knew he’d feel obliged to offer me the courtesy of a drink in return.

CORONER:
Yes, but did he actually ask you to visit him that evening?

GODWIN:
No, it was just a casual invitation but I knew I’d have to accept it so I thought I’d go and get it over as soon as possible.

CORONER: SO
it was entirely a courtesy—there was no specific business he wanted to discuss?

GODWIN: AS
far as I know, sir, that’s true. But since we never met it’s impossible for me to be entirely certain.

CORONER:
Quite. Now just one last question on this point: why did you throw away your cousin’s note?

GODWIN:
It never occurred to me not to. It was just a casual line of invitation. I read it and chucked it into the wastepaper basket, just as I would a circular. My desk was much too cluttered with important correspondence to encourage me to keep trivialities.

CORONER:
Yes, of course. But how do you explain the fact that the note didn’t turn up when the police sifted the Oxmoon rubbish?

GODWIN:
Obviously one of the servants tipped the wastepaper from that basket into the kitchen range instead of putting it out into the paper-salvage dustbin, and afterwards whoever it was didn’t like to own up. I’d given innumerable lectures to my servants, sir, on the subject of our patriotic duty not to waste paper.

CORONER:
Yes, I must confess I’ve had similar problems with my own servants about that in the past. … Now, Mr. Godwin, we’ll turn back, if we may, to your journey out across the Shipway from the mainland to the Inner Head, because there’s one point I’d like to get absolutely clear. Are you quite sure that your cousin was unaware you were following him?

GODWIN:
I’d swear he never looked back.

CORONER:
You never wondered, for example, if he might be under the impression you were chasing him?

GODWIN:
That did occur to me, of course—when I was racking my brains to make sense of his behavior I did ask myself if he was simply running away, but all I can tell you is that he gave no sign of panicking. He made no attempt, for instance, to quicken his pace and I’m quite positive he never looked back over his shoulder.

CORONER:
What did you make of this?

GODWIN:
I was wholly puzzled. That was one of the reasons why I kept following him. He was moving like a man in a dream. It was all most bizarre.

CORONER:
Bearing in mind the extremely spectacular nature of the scenery, isn’t it very unlikely that he never paused to look around him?

GODWIN:
Very unlikely, yes, but I was watching him very closely and although the lie of the rocks on the Shipway occasionally prevented me from seeing him, I never once saw him look back when he was within my field of vision.

CORONER:
Most bizarre, yes; very strange behavior indeed. I can quite see why you were perturbed. Very well, Mr. Godwin—thank you, you’ve been most helpful.

VII

NOTES ON MY FATHER’S EVIDENCE AT THE INQUEST:
It seems even more of a
tour de force
than I remembered. I suppose now I’m older I can better understand how brilliantly plausible he must have been, talking of doing the done thing and adopting a martyred air about his servants. This was
1952
and despite the war, class and privilege were still capable of dazzling everyone in sight.

He certainly had an answer for everything, and what answers they were! Each one fitted so smoothly into his story and sounded so rational, so right. Is there any part of his evidence that could be a lie? Yes, of course, but how does one start to separate fact from fiction when they’re woven together with such skill as that? Lance said that the really consummate liars of this world always use the truth as far as they possibly can, but he was talking about Kester, spinning yams for Declan. It seems unfair to suspect my father of being a consummate liar just because he was so brilliantly plausible in the witness box, but I know why that thought’s crossing my mind
—
and not just crossing my mind; it’s scaring me shitless. Now that I’m seeing my father as the hero of this story the ultimate nightmare would be if I proved that my father was the one telling lies while Declan was the one telling the truth. I’m a long way now from those days when I could dismiss Declan’s stories out of hand and refuse to think about them. I now see more clearly than ever that if I’m to have any peace of mind I’ve got to explode his murder theory
—
but to explode it I must first understand why he reached his conclusions.

And this is where my father’s evidence is unexpectedly helpful. I’d forgotten how positive he was that Kester had never looked back, but of course in the light of that testimony I can now see why Declan became so convinced that my father could have beaten the tide by achieving a quick murder on the Inner Head. If Kester really didn’t know my father was behind him then he might well have sat down and enjoyed the scenery once he reached that southern flank. It was a clear evening. Perhaps North Devon and Lundy Island would have been visible. In fact I can easily see Kester sitting
d
own to recover from the Shipway, enjoy the sunset and savor the stupendous view. If he thought he was quite alone this would be the natural thing to do.

I still think my father would have been hard-pressed to kill him and get back over the Shipway in time, but I have to concede it’s technically possible. I’ll have to go out to the Worm, there’s no getting away from it. I’ll have to stage a reconstruction just as Declan and Rory did.

Bearing Declan’s theory in mind, the big question now becomes this: Is it really possible that Kester never looked back? I remember Evan thinking this was so unlikely that he had no trouble constructing his own theory on the premise that my father had been mistaken. And Evan’s not alone here; the coroner thought it was unlikely; my father thought it was unlikely;
I
think it’s unlikely. But why on earth should my father lie on this point? In fact it would help his story more if he said Kester was looking back repeatedly and behaving like a man on the run
—
then my father could have said, “It became obvious that I hadn’t a hope of catching him up,” and his decision to turn back would have seemed more logical than ever.

If my father was mixing fact and fiction, this seems to have been one of the occasions when he thought to himself: “The truth here can’t hurt me; it supports my story that Kester was behaving oddly, so why not sling it in and give the jury food for thought?”

But if my father is indeed telling the truth about this, what does it mean? Why did Kester never look back? Can one really explain his behavior, as Evan did, by saying he was on a creative high?

VERDICT:
The coroner was right. My father was right. The entire incident’s very bizarre.

VIII

It was five o’clock. Since I’d skipped lunch, I knew I should eat so I found a café by Victoria Station and ordered baked beans on toast and a glass of milk. It was quarter to six when I left the city and quarter to seven when I reached the car park on top of the cliffs at Rhossili. The rush-hour traffic had been heavy and the journey had taken longer than usual.

Rhossili Bay lay ahead of me, a vast arc of sand below the cliffs and the unspoiled Downs. The sea, reflecting the sky, had a grayish cast. Leaving the car park, I walked past the hotel to the end of the road and moved down the track to the three cottages that belonged to the Coastguard.

One of the coastguards was pottering around his garden. In answer to my inquiry he told me that low water would be around twelve thirty in the afternoon on the following day, and the Shipway would be passable at ten.

I walked out to the tip of the headland and twenty minutes later I was standing on the edge of the cliffs that faced the Worm. The Shipway was a whirlpool of waves shot with angry flecks of foam. The three humps of the Inner, Middle and Outer Heads, ringed with white water, rose from the sea like a monster; I could clearly see how the Worm had earned its name which had once meant “the Dragon,” and as I stood there, Saint George on a cliff top, I felt as if I were contemplating the ordeal that would make me a legend. All I needed now to complete the myth was the maiden and in less than an hour’s time Gwyneth Llewellyn was due to keep her appointment with me in Penhale churchyard.

Not even Saint George could have asked for more.

I retraced my steps to the car.

IX

The lych-gate creaked beneath my hand. I walked up the path to the church. Here was old, old age indeed, weathered stones, ancient glass, enduring slate—all representing a profound peace which mocked the vapid transience of twentieth-century values. This church had seen many fashions come and go and had outlived all of them. The ideology it represented was a closed book to me but I respected its permanence.