Before the Poison (45 page)

I could see Billy’s lips moving, but I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. It was like looking down on the waves and not hearing them. I had the sensation that my ears were blocked, the way I used to feel every time in a plane at takeoff or landing. Finally, I heard his words as if from a great distance. ‘Are you all right? You’ve turned very pale. Would you like a drop of brandy or something?’

I shook my head. I was still vaguely aware that I had to get back to my hotel somehow, and the last thing I wanted was to get lost in Khayelitsha or fall foul of the South African police over a drink-driving charge. ‘No,’ I managed. ‘I’m all right. Just a bit of jet lag, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea or something.’

‘I gave up tea years ago, but I can do you a decent cup of coffee.’

‘Thanks. Just black. No sugar.’

While he went to make it, I stood by the window staring down at the silent waves, the rocks, the beach, cars speeding by on the main coast road. It all suddenly seemed so alien, and the searing ache of missing Laura cramped my heart so hard I thought I was going to collapse. Was this what my life had become? The pursuit of an illusion? Ghosts and whispers and shadows. It was as close to fainting as I had ever come. I was wrong. Wrong about Grace. Wrong about everything. What would I say to Louise? To Heather? To Wilf? To Sam? I began to feel as if Grace herself had somehow let me down, taken me in with her heroic, enigmatic beauty and silence.

Billy came back with the coffee. ‘You certainly seem to have had a bit of a shock,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sit down again? Do you want to know the real story? I guarantee you’ll find it even more interesting than the one you made up.’

I found that hard to believe, but I took the coffee and sat. ‘Yes. I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t usually behave so foolishly. You must think I’m crazy.’

‘Not at all. I don’t know if it will help, but let me tell you the truth. Let me tell you why I really went to talk to Grace Fox that day.’

‘Have you ever heard of an establishment called Porton Down?’

Indeed I had, many times over the years, and I had also seen it mentioned quite recently, in Grace’s war journal. ‘Yes,’ I said, frowning.

‘Well, then,’ said Billy, ‘you’ll know it’s not exactly on a par with Watership Down. It’s a collection of ugly buildings near Salisbury, owned by the military, by the Ministry of Defence, actually. Been around since about 1916, probably at first as a response to the Germans using chemical warfare in the First World War, mustard gas and the like. A top-secret scientific research establishment. It kept pace with the times. It was the secret everybody knew, though nobody outside really knew what went on in there, not even the government, if we’re to believe what they say. But it’s also the sort of place most people have heard of, these days, and most know it’s a pretty sinister establishment connected with chemical warfare, nerve gas, anthrax and the like, and not without a few skeletons in its cupboards. The sort of secret we’d rather have swept under the carpet. The sort of things other countries do, and we react with moral outrage.’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ I told him. ‘And Grace mentioned it in her journal.’

Billy gave me a sharp glance. ‘Did she now? She never told me that.’

I told him about the visit to the mysterious chateau with Meers and Maddox and Dorothy and the corporals. ‘It’s not surprising she didn’t say anything to you, though,’ I added. ‘Apparently she didn’t talk about her war service at all. If you read the journal, you can understand why.’

‘My God,’ said Billy. ‘I never knew. Poor Grace.’ He looked at me with new understanding. ‘So when I mentioned it to her . . .’

‘It would have rung a bell, yes. A loud one. According to the journal, the whole incident distressed her. But I still don’t understand.’

Billy got up and walked over to the window, stared down at the ocean for a while in silence, then came back. His expression was grim. ‘I never knew, believe me. I had no idea what she did during the war, that she’d come across such things.’

‘Like I said, she never talked about it. She was a Queen Alexandra’s nurse. Served in Singapore when it fell and in Europe right up to the end.’

‘How terrible it must have been for her. She had such a sweet nature when I knew her. I must admit, later she seemed sadder, more distant, but I put that down to the times, to age, and to life with that miserable husband of hers.’

‘You were telling your story. Porton Down.’

‘Yes, sorry. I . . . well, it was a few weeks earlier, actually, around the end of November 1952. Word had got around camp that if you volunteered for a week at this special place – we were told it was a common-cold unit, and they were doing research into curing colds – then you’d be given two bob a day and a three-day pass. I knew I’d be going overseas soon, so I thought I’d volunteer.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was one of the lucky ones. At that time, I found out later, they were mostly researching nerve agents, like VX, biological agents, anthrax and the like, and riot control tactics, like CS gas. Mostly, I just lay around in bed and had various tests, just a lot of needles, really, but one day they took me to another hut, full of little chambers, like showers. But it wasn’t water that came out, it was a stream of gas. I must have passed out, because when I woke up I was back in bed and when I tried to breathe I felt as if my lungs were on fire. My throat was raw, as if I had a coil of barbed wire caught in it, and my face was stinging like I’d been whipped with nettles.’

‘And you say you were lucky?’

‘Oh yes. For that I got my two bob a day and a three-day pass. I had no idea what it was at the time, but looking back, it was probably some form of CS gas, the stuff the French used against the students in the ’68 riots. The effects were temporary, and there was no permanent damage to my respiratory system. Other poor sods weren’t so fortunate. Some got given LSD and felt their bodies crawling with spiders, and ended up in padded cells, or they got injected with bubonic plague, anthrax, smallpox and what have you. Plenty of people who volunteered like I did ended up with chronic bronchitis, various cancers, paralysis, nervous disorders, brain tumours, you name it. Not long after I was there, there were rumours of a man, Ronald Maddison, I found out much later, who was tested with sarin in 1953 and died. They covered it up, of course, until his relatives and friends got a second inquest granted in 2004, which found his death to be unlawful. Sarin was one of the nerve agents we took from the Germans late in the war. They’d been testing that and others like it for years on prisoners in the research hospitals, concentration camps and POW camps. Our scientists didn’t even know they existed at that time. That would probably be what the man Grace mentioned in her journal would have been after.’

‘Meers. Yes. Grace mentioned sarin and tabun. You seem to know quite a bit about it.’

‘I made it my business to find out.’

‘And Grace? How does she fit into all this?’

Billy sighed and turned away. He picked up his glass, noticed it was empty and went to refill it with soda water. I took a refill of wine, too. This afternoon was turning out to be far more traumatic than I had expected. If the worst came to the worst, I’d leave the car parked at Billy’s and get a hotel in Simon’s Town for the night.

‘I told her all about it. See, I saw
him
there. Her husband. Dr Fox. He didn’t recognise me, of course. Wouldn’t have, even if he’d noticed me, which he didn’t. I’d grown up a bit since I was seven. But he hadn’t changed much. I saw him wandering around with one of the head honchos, a reptile of a man called Smeaton, and he seemed quite at home. Very much at home, in fact. He didn’t seem like part of the staff – he never wore a white coat, for one thing – but he knew his way around, like he’d been there before. I only overheard one snippet, but I’m sure Smeaton said to him, “Of course, when you come to work here . . .”’

Suddenly it became clear to me. The new job. A hospital near Salisbury. The wartime absences, the secrecy surrounding Kilnsgate in the early 1940s, barbed wire and sentries, Fox’s qualifications in neurology and microbiology, his neglect of the general practice later. All the little bits and pieces that meant nothing in themselves until the magnet underneath made a pattern of the iron filings. Ernest Fox was deeply involved with whatever went on at Porton Down, had probably been connected ever since his First World War experience with mustard gas, but certainly since the Second World War. It wasn’t the Special Operations Executive at Kilnsgate, or if it was, they were working hand in glove with the Porton Down boffins. Ernest Fox had consulted, worked on special projects, kept it all secret, of course, and finally they had offered him a permanent, full-time position. His reward? Or perhaps they really needed his experience and knowledge. It was the beginning of the Cold War, and chemical warfare research and development were really coming into their own, a hot commodity at Porton Down.

‘So you arranged to talk to Grace?’ I said.

‘Yes. I just thought she should know, that’s all, so I got in touch with her. I didn’t know anything about her lover or her war experiences. I was at Catterick Garrison then, not far away. I must admit, I was surprised at what a profound effect what I had to say had on her, much more than I would have expected. She didn’t lose control or anything, but there were tears in her eyes when she left me. Then two days later she rang me at the barracks and asked to meet again.’

‘You met for a
second
time?’

‘Yes. In Darlington. The day before New Year’s Eve. We met for a cup of tea at a café in town, and she showed me a letter. I think she partly wanted me to verify that it was to do with what I’d told her, and partly to show me I was right.’

‘What was in it?’

‘It was from the Ministry of Defence. I can’t remember all the details, but it seemed very formal. It thanked Ernest for all his work on special projects and research over the years, for a lifetime of dedication and invaluable experience. It made some special mention of Kilnsgate House in 1941, and invited him to become a member of the permanent staff at Porton Down. There was a passing reference to his having already signed the Official Secrets Act, and a reminder that the establishment’s work was still of a highly top-secret nature and that he should not discuss either it, or the job offer, with anyone.’

‘A hospital near Salisbury,’ I said.

‘Come again?’

‘Oh, sorry. It’s what he told everyone, where he was going. The police thought it was Grace’s real motive for poisoning Ernest, because he’d got a job at a hospital near Salisbury, and it meant she would have to leave her lover.’

‘Good God,’ said Billy.

‘What on earth made you tell her in the first place? I mean, you hardly knew her. You’d only spent four months at Kilnsgate nearly fourteen years earlier.’

Billy paused for a moment, then said, ‘I suppose I was young and foolhardy, a bit zealous perhaps, once I found out what was going on. I asked around a bit, picked up a few rumours about the place and what went on there. Mrs Fox had always been good to me. It was a difficult time in my life, the first time away from home, and I remembered her kindness. You do. Like I said, my time at Kilnsgate was a happy time. The sun shone every day. I didn’t want her to have anything to do with what went on at Porton Down. I suppose you could say I was being protective. I also hoped that she might be able to dissuade her husband from working there. I never imagined for a moment there could be such tragic consequences.’

‘You couldn’t know,’ I said. ‘What did Grace say?’

‘She was quiet for a while, deep in thought, then she folded the letter carefully, put it away and thanked me. She gave me a going-away present. She must have got it that very day in Darlington, before we met.’

‘What was it?’

He held up his index finger then disappeared into another room for a few moments, returning with a silver pocket watch and chain, which he handed to me. ‘Go safely wherever you may go’ was inscribed on the back, along with ‘Remember me’ and Grace’s name. There was a dent near the edge on one side. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

Billy smiled. ‘I had it with me in Kenya. Top pocket. It deflected a Mau Mau bullet. Doc told me it would have entered my heart for certain, but I got off lucky. I must admit, it didn’t feel that way at the time. I was laid up for a month with infections and drains and what have you, nearly lost my arm, but even so . . .’

‘Now there’s a story,’ I said. ‘Did Grace say anything more?’

‘Yes. Just before we parted company, she touched my arm and assured me that she would do whatever she could to talk Ernest out of going to work at Porton Down. I assumed she was going to lay down the law to him. You know, once they get their feet dug in, in my experience, certain women usually get their way, and I thought Grace was probably one of them. Seems I was wrong about that, too.’

‘They rowed about it,’ I told him, remembering Hetty Larkin’s testimony, ‘but I don’t think he listened to her. She certainly didn’t get her way.’ The letter that Hetty referred to could only have been the one Billy had just mentioned. Ernest must have discovered it was missing while Grace was in Darlington talking to Billy and showing it to him, and when she got back, he confronted her. She told him what she thought of his plans, that she wasn’t going, and probably that if he had any conscience and humanity left in him, he wouldn’t go either, but he no doubt laughed in her face and brushed aside all her objections.

‘So what I told her destroyed her,’ Billy said.

‘No, Billy,’ I said. ‘What her husband
was
destroyed her. She put up with him for years, made excuses, perhaps even turned a blind eye. But when she had to face the truth, she wasn’t going to go and live in Salisbury with a man who worked at a place like Porton Down. That wasn’t Grace. It was against all her sense of humanity. She’d seen what those people did. Meers. The Germans. That wasn’t the world she subscribed to, the life she wanted.’

‘But I set things in motion.’

‘Ernest himself did that with all the help he gave them over the years. No doubt he invited them to commandeer Kilnsgate House for a while during the war, too, and Grace may have known something about that. Or maybe it started earlier. He treated mustard gas victims in the first war. Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. One way or another, you were only a catalyst. I’d guess Grace already had her suspicions that something wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t stupid. And she’d have found out soon enough if they had gone to Salisbury.’