Past Caring (76 page)

His calmness—his apparent determination to enrage me—was baffling. But I was a younger and less calculating man then than I am now. His arrogant defiance inspired in me only violence.

“I’ve thought of it often since and come to admire Strafford for what he did that night: high praise I assure you. He walked out onto the track as if to put the gate between us, but more, I suspect, to lure me to that point. He sensed it was all or nothing, him or me, make or break. He stood little chance, in all conscience, and must have known it. That’s what I admire about him. A loser, yes, but a better man than the cheap fraudster who turned out to be my father.

“At that moment, I hated him and wasn’t about to let him escape a second time. I pursued him across the track. He seized me, attempted to force me down onto the rails. I heard the train whistle and understood what was in his mind. I remember the shock I felt that the miserable schemer I knew my father to be should be capable—even in dire need—of physical courage. Not that it was ever likely to be enough. I had more than enough strength to overpower him—though not without difficulty, for he fought well. But, once I’d broken free of his grasp, I was able to fell him with one good blow and leap clear of the track with the train 472

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nearly upon us, sounding its whistle and braking far too late.

Strafford’s age was against him. He never had a chance.

“I fled the scene. Strafford was done for—that much was certain. I’d planned a different fate for him, but he’d forced the issue and engineered an honourable death. He’d gone down fighting.”

“Fighting to save me,” Elizabeth whispered.

“Maybe. At all events, he’d made of me a murderer. There was nothing for it but to return to Madeira at once and hope that nobody would connect me with his death. Nobody did. And parri-cide didn’t seem an unjust way of avenging my mother. I was content.”

“Until you found the Memoir?”

“Quite so. The irony of acquiring the Quinta when it came onto the market appealed to me. But I had no idea what was waiting for me there. When I read the Memoir, I understood what Strafford had really been trying to achieve. The Memoir told me enough to identify Sir Gerald as my father, but the circumstances of Strafford’s death meant that I could not come here to confront him without the risk of being branded a murderer. Thus, Lady Couchman, your peace of mind was safe.

“But only for a time. Last year, I reflected that Strafford had won you a quarter of a century of unearned complacency. Sir Gerald had—as is the way with such men—died full of cheated years and specious honour. Henry I read of as a rising force in Tory politics. I was wealthy, yes, wealthier than ever, in fact, but not content. I was unknown and forgotten, for all my material success, baulked by Strafford’s sacrifice from making the Couchmans pay for their crime.

“I conceived an elegant solution to the problem. I realized that I was wealthy enough to achieve your downfall through mere proxies. For life had taught me—you might say my father had taught me—that all men can be bought and most come pretty cheap at that. Hired hands could protect my anonymity and do my bidding. That was Martin’s role—to dig out enough evidence in the cause of historical research to bury you all, without my having to lift a finger. And you did a good job, Martin—no question of it.

Until . . . you discovered the Postscript. That was an unexpected difficulty: Strafford’s damnable addiction to posterity. Naturally,

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news of its discovery was disturbing. I had no way of knowing what it might contain to link me with his death, so your references to it were more tantalizing than you knew. There seemed nothing for it but to come at once and brazen it out.

“I tackled Henry first as the weakest link. In his breaking, it became obvious that he had not seen the document, worried though he was about it. There was no harm in telling him the truth when he had even more reason than I to suppress the evidence of it. Once he was dead, the Postscript had only to be destroyed for me to enjoy complete freedom of action. Everybody was very cooperative in bringing that about.”

“You’ve been very clever, Mr. Sellick,” said Elizabeth falteringly.

“Thank you.” He smiled broadly.

“We thought you generous in allowing us to burn it.”

“That’s what I wanted you to think. Timothy encouraged the idea, as I’d instructed him to.”

“And I persuaded Martin not to object.”

“Yes. Of course, you should know, Lady Couchman, that, in not objecting, Martin too was only following instructions.”

Elizabeth looked at me. “Martin?”

“I . . . I don’t know what he means,” I stammered.

Sellick beamed. “Yes he does. He’s still my employee, you see.”

“It’s a lie,” I shouted. “Just another lie.”

Sellick turned towards Elizabeth. “I ask you, Lady Couchman, hasn’t Martin done a highly effective job in creating this situation? You’ve met Miss Randall, another of my . . . employees. She’s a bonus payment I arranged for him along the way. You know how much he hates your family. I’ve only paid him to do what he’s always to do: get back at all of you.”

My eyes followed this to Elizabeth, hunched in her chair, wiz-ened and lost. What could she believe when I wasn’t certain anymore what I believed? She looked up at me and, in her eyes, there was only a terrible doubt. Sellick was right. I couldn’t have brought her to this any better if he’d paid me. So what grounds were there for believing he hadn’t? I stood speechless, condemned by my own failure to be judged a tainted success.

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“If you’ll excuse me,” said Sellick, “I’ll just have something brought in with which to celebrate our agreement. It’s something I promised Martin a long time ago.” He walked slowly from the room. I heard his voice by the front door, addressing the chauffeur.

In the brief silence of his absence, I stumbled through the rebuttals obvious even to me towards an unconvincing denial. “It’s not true, Elizabeth. I’m not working for Sellick anymore. I didn’t know . . .” I stopped in midsentence.

Elizabeth looked up at me. “How can I believe you, Martin?

What is there left for me to hold on to? Is this the real reason you took the gun from me?”

I sank into a chair opposite her. There was no answer to give.

Sellick returned to the room. The chauffeur followed him, carrying a wooden box in his arms. He stood it on the table by the window, then withdrew. Sellick lifted from it a napkin-draped bottle in a wicker wine basket and three claret glasses, which he placed in a line on the table. He took the napkin from the bottle and polished each of the glasses in turn, holding them up to the light as he did so. We watched in a trance.

“Today is my birthday,” he announced at last. “A date your family should never forget, Lady Couchman. To celebrate that—and your agreement to cooperate—I’ve brought this bottle: a very special bottle.” He lifted it from its basket. I recognized it at once: the 1792 madeira he’d promised as a prize for successful completion of my research into the Strafford mystery. “Originally, I’d intended that we should drink this with Alec at Quinta do Porto Novo. But Alec cannot be with us and I don’t suppose we shall ever be going back to Madeira together again. So I’ve brought it here with me in honour of the occasion.” He took a penknife from his pocket and cut away the lead from the top of the bottle. “The flight may not have agreed with it and, after all, such vintages are always unpredictable.” He returned the bottle to its basket and applied a corkscrew to the neck.

Elizabeth looked at me. “What is this, Martin?”

“My prize for completing the assignment: probably the last bottle in the world in 1792 madeira, left by Strafford in his cellar.”

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I looked back at Sellick. He’d drilled the corkscrew in. Now he braced the bottle with his hand against the basket and began to pull the cork. I saw his face frown at the skilled and concentrated effort. “This should not be attempted by a novice,” he rasped. “You could say I have studied hard for this moment.”

Slowly but smoothly, the cork emerged. “I think it may be all right, my friends. I think we may be in a unique position to sample a wine once offered to Napoleon.” He lifted the bottle from the basket with a reverential air.

“I shan’t want any,” said Elizabeth.

“Come, come, Lady Couchman. To refuse such an auspicious wine on such an auspicious occasion would be churlish. Surely the widow of a knight would not behave so? I insist you join me in a glass.”

“I shall not.”

“Lady Couchman,” he said, advancing towards her, the bottle in one hand, a glass in the other, “you should know that, when I insist upon something, I have the means to enforce my wish. In this small matter, as, henceforth, in large, you must obey me.”

I looked at the salivating triumph in his face. Elizabeth had been right after all. Her forced hand in Eve’s book was to be only the start. Now that Sellick had gained the dominance which he deemed his right, he would stop at nothing. Strafford’s wine to celebrate Strafford’s defeat. Elizabeth to toast an anniversary of her husband’s treachery. Me to swallow the bitter vintage of serving him unwittingly but well.

Sellick poured the dark fluid into the glass. It was thick and ruby red. “It is better than I had expected,” he said. “Drink, Lady Couchman. Or should I call you Miss Latimer?”

The fire in Elizabeth’s eyes outblazed the wine as she looked up. “You may do your worst, Mr. Sellick, but I shall not drink.”

“You shall.” I flinched with the shock and suddenness of his act. He swung the glass and pitched the measure of wine towards her. It drenched her face and neck and splashed down her blouse in a crimson douche. She blinked and coughed once, but didn’t move, merely looked, not at Sellick, but at me. Through the wash of madeira that could have been Strafford’s blood, her eyes spoke 476

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of anguish and accusation. They didn’t even flicker when Sellick tossed the glass between us. It smashed into the fireplace, scattering fragments across the hearth.

I stood up. Sellick was walking back to the table, to collect another glass. “I’m sure you’ll drink, Martin. As an historian, albeit a hired one, you’ll relish a Napoleonic vintage.”

Enough. A fractured moment. What had Alec once said? “It’s as simple as a worm turning.” What was an inadequate historian to do—for once in his sham of a life—but struggle towards an intangible concept concealed between all the words written in and about the past? Honour, loyalty, humanity? No, something much simpler: the right thing to do. “To be, for one fleeting moment, less than a fool.” Too hard, Strafford, too hard. Trained to study without conclusion, hired to act for another, never for myself. It was that: a fleeting moment. But for once, for one true, unmet, long-dead friend, for good and all, I turned the tide.

Truth without action was knowledge without honour, was history without Strafford.

It could have been Strafford’s hand—but in reality it was mine—that pulled Couch’s gun from my jacket pocket as Sellick turned from the table. It could have been a hundred better men—but it had to be me—who raised the gun between two trembling hands and trained it on Sellick in his moment of savoured victory. It could have been any one of a dozen ways he chose to unnerve me, but the one he chose was the only one certain to fail. Perhaps he knew that. Perhaps he couldn’t resist one last opportunity to remind me of all the evil I’d happily served—in him and in myself. He took a pace towards me and, as he did so, he smiled. And, as he did so, I pulled the trigger.

I didn’t see Sellick fall, just dropped the gun from my jarred hand and stepped towards him. Supine on the carpet, a dark hole in his forehead, his mouth curved open in a frozen smile. Leo Sellick was dead in front of me, his right arm stretched out and hand curled towards the still rocking, felled bottle of 1792

madeira, its blood-red contents gouting onto the pale carpet. It was the last bottle, which nobody would ever drink.

Why did I do it? That’s all they wanted to know. How could I explain that life had stopped for me in that moment, just as it had for Sellick. I hardly remember what happened, in what sequence, at what time, but somebody phoned for the police, while Elizabeth sat talking to me in the lounge, which I wouldn’t leave so long as Sellick remained. She was pale, but regally calm.

Later—much later—Elizabeth related snatches of what I’d said in that hushed interval between the act and its flood of consequences.

“You know why I did it?”

“Of course. Before they all come, let me say: it’s the finest thing you could ever have done.”

“You believed him. When he said I was still working for him.”

“God forgive me, yes. It was his gift: to make people think the worst of others. An evil gift.”

I remember the police siren gashing the pervasive peace that had followed and forgotten the sudden violence. I remember Elizabeth kissing me on the forehead in stranger and comforting benediction. “You remind me more and more of Edwin. This time, I shan’t forsake you.” I remember the sun going behind a cloud and the covered shape by the window falling into shadow.

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“Why did you do it?”

A rumpled, gravel-voiced inspector sat opposite me, smoking cheap cigarettes. He reminded me—bizarrely—of Marcus Baxter and seemed to say, between his questions:

“You bloody fool, Radford. Do you think this proves a damn thing?”

Only what he actually said again and again was “Why did you do it?” I could see the puzzlement in his face. I wasn’t the usual sneak thief or drunkard, wasn’t even the average rapist or domestic murderer. He didn’t know me, or Sellick, or why I’d killed a man on his birthday with his father’s gun.

Eventually, unsatisfied, he formally charged me, and invited me to make a statement. There was no pressure or coercion. What I wrote was neither denial nor confession. Even as an explanation it didn’t amount to much, because I wasn’t speaking to the police or the courts in it or even the public in whose name I was accused.