Authors: Robert Goddard
Vita's grip on Diana's arm tightened. She swelled with what she no doubt believed would be an impressive show of outraged innocence. "Absurd! Preposterous! And deeply offensive!"
To anyone with a shred of decency, yes. But not to you two. I'll tell you what hits you so hard. It's truth. An unfamiliar commodity in your world. An unwelcome and inconvenient intruder. Well, it's here now. Out in the open. And it's not going away."
"I think that's exactly what you should do after such a torrent of hurtful nonsense," Vita asserted. "Go away and let us try to forget what you've said."
"Oh no. You're not going to be allowed to forget a single thing. When I leave here, I'll be going to the police. They'll listen to me. And they'll believe me, Vita. I'll make them. So, don't think you can disregard my words. They'll be ringing in your ears from now till the day your brother is dragged out of hiding. Till all three of you are forced to answer for what you've done."
"The police won't listen to you. They have more sense. Besides, there's not a shred of Vita stopped abruptly and stared at me above clamped lips. Proof was the word she had been about to use. But to have done so would have represented an admission that there was something to prove after all, that my allegations were not as groundless as she had claimed.
"We'll see," I said slowly. "I think I can persuade Hornby to order an exhumation. What will it reveal, do you suppose? I'd say it was odds on there being something some minor overlooked detail to prove who the occupant of that grave really is. Your brother. Or somebody of similar build and appearance. Somebody like him but not quite the same. Which way would you lay your money? There'd be a great deal at stake, remember. You couldn't afford to lose. If you did, you'd have more than the police to worry about. There'd be Faraday and all the merciless people he represents. The people you've helped your brother cheat. His accomplices in a seventeen-year-old conspiracy."
"What conspiracy?" put in Diana, the urgency of her tone implying she really did not understand.
"It's too late to play the innocent," I replied. "Your father must have told you about the Concentric Alliance. Probably a long time ago. After all, the money for your education, your dresses, your whole pampered existence, came from the profits he made out of the war. A pity your mother had to die in the process. But perhaps you offset that against the advantages as easily as he did."
"Don't pay any attention," hissed Vita. "Your mother has nothing to do with this." But in Diana's eyes, as she looked round at her aunt, was a glimmer of doubt. And, for the first time, I began to think she really might not know all of it.
"Hold on, Vita," I said, stepping closer. "Have you and your brother been keeping something from Diana?"
"Of course not."
"That's it, isn't it? She doesn't know about the Concentric Alliance. She really doesn't."
"Neither of us does. We have no idea what you mean by '
"Their symbol struck a chill into your heart. But it didn't affect Diana. I thought she was just a better actress. Now, I'm not so '
"I don't know what you're '
The concentric circles, you lying old bitch! We all saw them. But only you reacted as if you'd also seen a ghost." I turned towards Diana and there, written clearly in her face, was confirmation. She had helped her father escape. But she had not understood what she was helping him escape from. "Listen to me carefully, Diana. What you're about to hear is the gospel truth."
"I want you out of here now!" shrieked Vita, breaking away and bustling to the door. "This very minute." She pulled the door open and stood imperiously beside it, but I did not react. I kept looking directly at Diana, holding her gaze with mine, commanding her to listen.
The Concentric Alliance is a secret international organization of which your father is or was the head. Seventeen years ago, they arranged the assassination in Sarajevo that sparked off the Great War. They made huge profits from subsequent sales of arms and munitions and from other investments they were able to time precisely thanks to knowing when the war would break out because they brought it about. It was your father's idea. It was his brain-child. A greedy infant, as it turned out. One that gobbled millions of lives. Including your mother's. Your father killed her as surely as if he'd fired the torpedo himself. As surely as if he'd held her beneath the waves until he was certain she'd drowned."
"No," she murmured. "It can't be so."
"But it is. You know it is. You can recognize truth when you hear it. Perhaps it explains all sorts of odd little mysteries you've puzzled over. From the day they told you your mother was dead. To the day you watched Vita blanch at the sight of a pair of concentric circles drawn on a sheet of paper."
"Aunty?" said Diana numbly, staring past me. But Vita did not answer. Even her fund of denials was exhausted.
"Now you know how they feel," I persisted. The millions of widows and orphans your father made along with his millions of pounds. Now you have some inkling of the grief and destruction he happily sowed in order to reap ... to reap the privileges you've enjoyed. Adequate compensation for a motherless adolescence, were they? I don't suppose so. But maybe they helped your father persuade you to love him and to come to his aid in his hour of need. What did he tell you? What lie did he invent to cover his tracks?"
"I didn't need to be persuaded to love my father," she retorted, her eyes blazing with sudden anger. "Or to help him when And so we arrived, in the jagged hush of imminent admission, at the end of all pretences. She would not say it aloud. Not yet. But it had been acknowledged between us and could not be renounced. Charnwood's guilt, reverberating in Vita's silence. And Diana's, echoing in the hollowness of the love he had nurtured in her -and of the life he had built for her.
"Where is he, Diana? Tell me. For Max's sake. And your mother's. Tell me where he's hiding. I have a right to know. And you have a duty to tell me."
"Duty?"
"You can't shelter him any longer. You can't believe you should."
"Can't I?"
"No. Not now. You know too much. Give it up. Give him up."
"Diana, you shouldn't But a single glare ended Vita's intervention. Diana turned slowly to look up at her mother's portrait, then slowly back to confront her aunt.
"Papa always confided in you," she said with surprising mildness. "Always you and never me."
"You were too young to '
"To understand?"
Vita closed the door and leant back against it, her knuckles white where they clasped the handle. "Surely, my dear, you see that .. . none of this should be discussed .. . with a third party present. It... It would be.. unwise."
Diana stared at Vita for several long cold seconds. Then she looked at me and said in a voice devoid of all emotion: "Please wait for me in the library, Guy. I want to speak to my aunt in private. I won't keep you longer than necessary."
"I'm not leaving until I have what I came for."
"You've made your position quite clear. Now, please, leave us. I'm not going to run away. And you won't have to come looking for me."
"Be sure I don't."
"You won't. Believe me." She glanced down as she added: "In this if in nothing else."
And so, reluctantly but obediently, I went to the library and waited, as I had on the night of the murder. Then, I had waited to be questioned, puzzling over the preponderance of Great War literature on Charnwood's shelves as I did so. Now, I was expecting answers. And his choice of books made horribly good sense. His preoccupation with the subject was that of a designer with his greatest project. Here, meticulously recorded, were the battles and campaigns he had secretly initiated, the toll of dead men and dismantled nations he had to his credit. The well-stocked library of a civilized man of letters or the bulging ossuary of a vicarious wager of war: they were, in Charnwood's case, the same thing.
What Diana and Vita were saying to each other I could only imagine. Recriminations and reproaches might be flying thick and fast. Indeed, I hoped they were. They were likely to suit my purpose better than anything else. For, contrary to what I had told Vita, I was not at all confident of being able to prove the allegations I had made. The police might not listen to me. An exhumation, even if they agreed to one, might fail to yield conclusive results. But Diana's horror at my revelations concerning the Concentric Alliance had strengthened my hand. It was just the tool I needed to prise her and Vita apart. And from their distrust might flow my victory. Divide et imp era It was a fitting strategy to use against Fabian Charnwood, the arch-divider. But would it be a successful one?
I had waited nearly an hour to find out when the door opened and Diana entered the room. She was grave and calm and pale as marble. And the topaz pendant no longer hung around her neck. But what its absence signified I could not judge.
She closed the door, took a few steps, then stopped and looked straight at me. In her eyes burned neither defiance nor guilt. It was as if she had resolved some struggle with her conscience to her complete satisfaction, rendering my accusations unimportant by comparison. It was as if the time for feminine pretences and subtle evasions was gone, enabling the real Diana Charnwood to show herself at last.
"Well?" I began. "Are you going to tell me where he is?"
"The world believes my father to be buried in Dorking Cemetery. I don't think you'll find it easy to shake that belief."
"You leave me no choice, then."
"But to go to the police?"
"Exactly."
"It would be a mistake, I assure you. They wouldn't take your word against ours. The word of a known scoundrel against that of a respected man's sister and daughter."
"My God, you have a '
She held up a hand to silence me. "And, even if they did, even if they discovered what you claim they would discover, then it would end badly for you."
"Why?"
"Because I would say you were part of the plot. I would say you had helped us at every stage until a lovers' quarrel had made you turn against me. And that I think they would believe."
She meant it. There was no doubt of her sincerity. And, in my own mind, little doubt either of Hornby's eagerness to swallow such a story. It would, after all, make better sense of the circumstances of Max's death than the only account I could give.
"I didn't murder Max, Guy. It truly was an accident. I had no idea he was even in Venice. What happened at the villa that afternoon was .. . from the heart. I don't expect you to believe me. But understand this. If you turn what we did and what it led to into one kind of lie, I'll turn it into another. And, since you seem to think I'm an accomplished liar, you should be in no doubt of how much more persuasive than you the police will find me."
"Persuasiveness won't save you."
"No. But it might save my father. If I said you had murdered him and set out to saddle Max with the blame, then Light foot's part in it might seem simply to be a device you had invented to incriminate me while exonerating yourself. Light foot may or may not be missing, but where is the proof he died in place of my father? The results of an exhumation are unpredictable. As you pointed out to Aunt Vita, there would be a great deal at stake."
So there would. But I could hardly believe Diana was prepared to sacrifice herself to save Charnwood. Not after all I had told her. "Don't the crimes he committed against humanity mean anything to you, Diana? Doesn't your mother's memory matter to you? Don't you understand? He isn't worth saving."
"Don't you understand, Guy? I love my father. I trust She broke off and glanced away. "I trusted him."
"But he didn't trust you."
"So you say. And so Aunt Vita more or less admitted, when I forced her to." Her chin dropped, but my hopes soared. They were divided. "But I want to hear the truth from his own lips before ... before I .. ." She shook her head. "I won't condemn him without a hearing. It's as simple as that."
"For God's sake!"
"Besides, if everything you say is true, justice isn't what would greet him on his emergence from hiding. The Concentric Alliance would pre-empt any police inquiry. They would find him and impose their own punishment. I can't let that happen."
"Why not? Are you going to tell me he doesn't deserve to be punished?"
"No. But that isn't the point." She raised her head and stared at me. "If the Concentric Alliance was responsible for my mother's death, then all its members should be made to answer for it, not just one of them."
"Of course. But we can't '
"Yes we can. I've thought of a way, you see." Some of the calmness had left her now and been replaced by a strange and contagious excitement. "A way to bring them all down. Wouldn't you like to do that, Guy?"
"How?"
"Papa kept some documents in a safe in his study. He took them with him when he left. I didn't know what they were. But Aunt Vita knew. And she's just told me in return for my promise to do everything I can to stop you going to the police. They're the full records of the Concentric Alliance, past and present. Financial transactions. Letters to and from other members. Minutes of secret meetings at which their activities were discussed. Quarterly accounts showing who was paid how much and what for. The names of the guilty men, complete with the evidence against them. The truth, not just about the war, but about every single thing they've ever done."
It shimmered before me in her description: as complete a victory as I could possibly imagine. Was this what she was offering? If so, how did she propose to save Charnwood from the wreck? What was her price? "Your father has all this with him?"
"Of course. He'd never part with it."
"Then what '
"Unless he was forced to. I can lead you to him, Guy. And I can persuade him to hand the records over to you. You could give them to the press. You could even sell them to the press if you wanted to. I think they'd pay handsomely for such a sensational story, don't you? It would be on every front page around the world. And the people my father made rich would be ruined overnight. Don't you see? You can have your revenge and your reward too, if you like." She paused momentarily. "On one condition."