The Death Chamber (57 page)

The money was the last sad, shameful link to those twin evils, Nick O’Kane and Neville Fremlin, and Walter thought if it was the price he had to pay for Denzil McNulty’s silence, he
would pay it and feel better for it.

He looked at McNulty very steadily, and said, ‘Would a Deed of Gift meet the case?’

‘It would.’

‘To the Caradoc Society?’

‘What else?’

What else, indeed, thought Walter. The man’s a fanatic, but I suppose there’s a symmetry about handing over Nick’s money to him – to his Society. Lewis’s Society.
He could not decide if the fact that Lewis Caradoc’s name headed the Society made any difference. Probably it did not.

He said to McNulty, ‘It must be understood that there will never be anything more between us. This is a once and for all payment. You can threaten me until hell freezes but you won’t
get anything else – not money, not favours, not blind eyes turned to bizarre death experiments – nothing.’

‘I understand.’

I’m severing the link for good, thought Walter, going about the unfamiliar process of transferring his father’s money to the Caradoc Society. There’s a symbolism in this.
I’m repudiating everything about my father. He need never appear in my life or my thoughts or my memories again. And one day McNulty will get his come-uppance, I’ll keep believing
that.

Once in France, his whole energy devoted to the appalling injuries inflicted by war, Walter thought less and less about the past. He did not dare think about the future –
he had no idea if he would live to see it, and he had no idea if the people he worked alongside – the other doctors, the chaplains and nurses – would see it either. He would have been
sorry to see any of them killed – they were loyal hardworking comrades – but there were one or two he would have been devastated to lose. One or two. One. One in particular . . . She
had grey eyes rimmed with black, and when she was moved by something they became very clear and shining.

‘I have a vision,’ he said to her. ‘And it’s of you and I having dinner in London on my next leave. A civilized dinner – a good restaurant. Good food and perfumed
air and wine.’

‘And candlelight,’ she said, smiling, so that the grey eyes shone. ‘I’d like candlelight.’

‘I’ll arrange the candlelight as well,’ said Walter. ‘I’ll light up the whole of London with candles if you’d like it.’

‘I don’t need the whole of London,’ she said. ‘Just you, Walter.’

‘We’ll survive to eat that dinner, Catherine.’

‘Oh yes.’

He was to think, a long time afterwards, that at least the image he had of Catherine to carry with him through the years after her death was the image she would have liked.

He had taken her to the Hungaria – Sir Lewis, appealed to for somewhere to eat in war-torn London where the food and service were still reliable, had recommended it and had even known the
head waiter. Walter was given a quiet corner table and attentive service. In the candlelight Catherine’s eyes had had the clear glowing look of deep happiness.

They had talked and talked, because there might not be time for them to talk in the future and because this was only a seventy-two hour leave for Walter who was being posted to North Africa. And
then after dinner, because there might never be time in the future and there might not be a future for either of them, they had gone back to the flat Catherine shared with two other nurses, who
were away, and there had been candlelight again, this time in the little bedroom overlooking a quiet London square.

‘We’re making memories,’ she said to him in the rose and gold dawn, shortly before he left. ‘They’ll last a long time, these memories.’

The memories were made up of shining grey eyes and candlelight and wine . . . of the scents and sounds of midnight filtering through a partly open bedroom window, with thin curtains moving
slightly in a soft summer wind . . .

It turned out that all Walter would have of Catherine would be those memories because a year later, when he was still in Tobruk, news had come that her Red Cross post in London had been bombed,
and a letter came saying so sorry to report, so dreadfully sorry to tell him Catherine Kerr had been among those killed.

CHAPTER FORTY

Vincent had played and re-played the police interview, and he was confident they had accepted his word. In any case, he had nothing to be worried about. No one knew what he had
done at Calvary that night.

No one knew, either, what he had done over forty years ago, on that afternoon in the bleak cell where they had taken Mother.

August 1958

She had submitted to the cruel jealousies and plots of the men in court – the men who had hated her and wanted her to be punished.

‘I have had to suffer jealousy for most of my life,’ she had said to him in the horrid grey room where they had kept her throughout the trial. ‘And now, because a stupid old
man tumbled off a cliff, I have to suffer this. He was an impostor, Vincent, you do know that, don’t you? A man who had known me in my sad youth, that was who he was. A man who would have
liked to have his revenge on me. Well, they shall not know about any of that, I can promise you. What happened to me all those years ago is nothing to do with anyone and I believe I have distanced
myself from those years. I believe I can keep that sad part of my life closed. Remember, Vincent, if anyone asks you, that you know nothing about my girlhood. No matter what it costs, you must
never know anything.’

Vincent had promised, but in fact he had been asked very little by the police and he had not been called to give evidence in court. If he had, he would have protested Mother’s innocence. A
friendship with the man they said she had killed, he would have said. An innocent friendship, embarked on out of the goodness of Mother’s heart. She had a kindliness for old, lonely
bachelors. Where was the harm? As Mother said to him, if the silly bumbling old fool must needs fall off the cliff it was nothing to do with her.

But the cold-eyed men in the court and the envious women on the jury had thought it was very much to do with Mother and they had said she must be put in prison.

Prison! Vincent had been horrified and filled with panic. Prison for the gentle unaware woman who had always wanted to surround herself with beautiful things – who had liked roses and
porcelain figurines and silk dresses. Iron bars and locked doors and communal showers with concrete floors. Squalid lavatory arrangements in a cell shared by two or three women. Mother would never
endure it. Vincent would never allow her to endure it.

No matter what it cost.

In the end she had to endure it for three months, which was the length of time it took for bewildering things such as visiting orders to be arranged, and arrangements to be
made to travel to Holloway itself. Vincent managed to find rooms to rent in a narrow, mean, house fairly near the gaol. The house smelt of cooking and cigarette smoke and of the people who lived in
the basement and who seemed to live on fiercely spicy curries. Vincent put up with it because Mother would be putting up with far worse than this.

He put all the things from the Southend house – the house they had shared – into storage, taking only his clothes and a few books and private papers. But there was one other thing he
took, and that was the packet of digitalis tablets that had belonged to the Bournemouth major. They were quite old and they might not work, but they could be tried. If they did not work, Vincent
would think of something else.

They did work. The entire plan worked very well.

Visiting took place in a big ugly room, where you had to sit opposite one another at a small table. Mother wore a shapeless apron, which enabled the warders to see she was not being given drugs
by her visitor and sliding them into a pocket. Under the apron she wore her normal clothes: a cream silk blouse and a brown skirt. Vincent saw the jealous looks of the other women.

‘Spiteful,’ said Mother. ‘They are a spiteful lot of women, Vincent. I expect you can see that for yourself.’

Vincent saw it very clearly. He saw, as well, how things were arranged on visiting days, and that cups of tea were available for the visitors, but that there was particular vigilance for those
who drank them.

‘Drugs,’ said Mother, shuddering. ‘That’s what they watch for.’

But they did not particularly watch Vincent, and before the third visit he carefully crushed up the digitalis tablets. It was easier than he had dared hope to conceal the powder in his
handkerchief and sprinkle it in the tea his mother drank. Vincent had said a cup of tea would be welcome after his journey here, and Mother agreed to have one as well, to be companionable.

‘Dreadful tea,’ she said. ‘Always so strong. Quite bitter.’

The strong, bitter tea, had an almost immediate effect. She frowned, and then put a hand up to her throat as if it was suddenly difficult to breathe. Vincent glanced over his shoulder to see if
they were being watched. Yes, the nearest of the warders had turned to see if anything was wrong.

Mother half rose from the table, clawing at the air. The colour drained from her face leaving it pinched and grey. She fell forward, gasping, and within four minutes she was dead.

There was an inquest, of course, but although the digitalis was found, an open verdict was recorded. It was fairly clear to Vincent, sitting haggard-faced in the public gallery, that the coroner
thought it was a case of suicide, and that Mother had managed to come by the digitalis in some underhand way. It was also clear that there was pressure from higher up for the coroner not to record
a verdict of suicide. Suicides in prisons were not liked; they meant internal investigations, possibly sackings, trouble and bad publicity. Far easier all round to let it be thought the prisoner
had mistaken an ordinary dosage or had mixed up some innocent pills with that of another inmate. Sympathy was extended rather perfunctorily to the family of the deceased.

Vincent, thankfully leaving the sleazy rooms near the prison, making arrangements to get Mother’s things out of storage and buy a nice little house of his own, was glad to know he had been
able to release her. Four minutes was very quick. He would think of an appropriate inscription to go on her headstone. She would have wanted a suitable epitaph.

November 1958

‘They’ve managed to hush it up very well,’ said Lewis Caradoc to Walter. ‘Just a small paragraph in the newspaper.’

Walter said slowly, ‘And so the woman really responsible for all those murders – the woman who was your daughter and who caused my father to go down as one of the century’s
most cold-blooded killers – died ingloriously in a prison cell in Holloway Gaol.’

‘She did. But the thing to remember above all the rest,’ said Lewis, ‘is that your father was innocent. He was
innocent
, Walter. He believed Elizabeth was worthy of a
second chance, and he died in her place.’

‘One day,’ his father had said, ‘you might understand me a little better.’ He wanted me to know, thought Walter. He hoped that one day I would find out.

He looked at Lewis. ‘Was it for Elizabeth he died, or because of what he did in 1916? I think I might find myself grappling with that one for a long time.’

‘I don’t know the answer to that,’ Lewis said. ‘Perhaps he didn’t know himself by then. But myself I think it was for 1916. Elizabeth said he talked about rough
justice, and quoted the words of some Irish poet to her – she hadn’t bothered to remember the words, but I know what that would have been and so do you.’

Walter said, half to himself,

‘Yes, of course I know. He quoted it to me when I was very small. I think it was that kind of emotion that drove him.’

‘He was a dreamer and a visionary,’ said Lewis. ‘Even though his dream was misguided and people died because of it. But later on he saw what he had done and he tried to make
amends. Don’t forget he studied pharmacy – he must have been in his thirties by then, Walter, and it couldn’t have been an easy path to take. Maybe he saw it as carving out a new
life and as a way of helping people. It’s a branch of medicine, after all.’

‘I told him I wanted to be a doctor,’ said Walter. ‘On that last day of his life – on what I thought was the last day.’

‘It may have had something to do with his own decision. You’ll never know that, but it’s possible. It’s something to hold on to. That and his innocence. You could perhaps
mount some kind of campaign to get his name cleared.’

‘Could I? But it would rake up so many things.’ Walter did not say, And it would drag out all the facts about Elizabeth, but he knew they both thought it. He knew it was why Lewis
and Huxley Small had agreed not to report the conversation they had held with her that day. She would be in prison for most of her life in any case, Lewis had said. ‘If we requested a review
of the sentence – presented the new evidence – they might change the twenty-five years to the death sentence. And I can’t do it to her, Walter. She’s a monster, but I still
can’t do it to her.’