Bones of the Buried (45 page)

‘That was big of her,’ Verity said sourly.

Edward ignored her. ‘Elizabeth had heard Stephen say how sorry he was that he had contributed to Oliver’s anguish, that he had been bored and selfish as a young man and regretted he
had been seduced by Dora Pale. He had a conscience.’

‘Hmf! Very cosy. I suppose they all wept and forgave each other . . . ugh!’

‘I think he wanted to talk to me about it and about Mike Nadall’s amateurish attempt to blackmail him. Elizabeth thinks Pride is right and the bank was finished and Stephen was all
but bankrupt . . . and that he was desperately trying to find ways of paying the investors back. Even if it meant dealing with the Nazis, and even though his conscience told him it was
wrong.’

Verity snorted. ‘I don’t believe a word of that. He was just a capitalist exploiter who was about to get his come-uppance.’

Edward was silent. He thought Verity was, consciously or unconsciously, trying to lead him away from accusing David of . . . anything. She had decided that Tom Sutton, whom she had never liked,
was to be the villain of the piece. After a moment he said, ‘One thing I can’t forgive him for is banging you over the head.’

‘Oh, that was my fault. I shouldn’t have waved my hand around. You’re sure that was Tom?’

‘Yes, whether he killed Godfrey Tilney or not – and whatever he says, he’s still our prime suspect. He left the ring – Elizabeth’s ring – the ring with which
Max had married her mother – in the cave as a sign that Oliver had been avenged.’

‘Ugh! How macabre.’ Verity shivered. ‘Whatever you say in his defence, Tom was a twisted, unhappy man.’

Like David, Edward was tempted to add but restrained himself. Instead he said, ‘I don’t defend him. Don’t forget that he got someone to put something unpleasant in Harry
Bragg’s food hoping to kill the both of us.’

‘How is Harry, by the way?’

‘He’s quite recovered. He has the nerve to pretend he wasn’t
that
ill and that I got the wind up and nearly crashed his “old gel”.’

He saw he was failing to amuse her so he became serious. ‘You really think there’s going to be an uprising? A civil war?’

‘I know so. David’s never wrong about that sort of thing . . . politics.’

‘Well then, aren’t you pleased? It will be your chance to make your name.’

‘Yes, and that’s what I hate about myself. I feel like a hyena or a jackal, whichever it is, waiting to feed off someone else’s misery.’

‘You shouldn’t feel that, V,’ he said gently. ‘You’ve spent months trying to alert the world – Britain in particular – to what’s happening over
here – that something should be done to prevent civil war. In article after article, you’ve argued that if the democracies do nothing it will send out the wrong message – that
there is no will to fight Fascism.’

‘Yes,’ Verity agreed, looking a little less miserable, ‘and I’m right. I know I am. If only France and Britain had given their whole-hearted support to the government . .
.’

‘You think it’s too late?’

‘David says it is.’

‘You’ve seen a lot of him?’ he asked causally.

‘No. He blows in when I least expect it and then he’s off again for weeks at a time. He’s terribly important in the Party here, you know. The President relies on
him.’

Verity looked at him with naive pride in the man she still clearly loved. Edward hadn’t the heart to be angry, or even jealous, but he was sad and apprehensive. He didn’t know if it
was prejudice or instinct, but he believed what Sutton had told him. He believed David Griffiths-Jones had killed Tilney – because he needed to, because the Party thought it necessary. One
thing was certain: he could never
tell
Verity that he believed her lover to be a murderer. She had to arrive at that conclusion herself. If Edward accused David, she would see it –
however unreasonably – as an attack upon herself. He had to let her find out for herself what kind of man it was she loved. And that meant – it made him sick at heart to admit it
– allowing her to go off with this man into God-only-knew-what danger. It wasn’t that he thought Griffiths-Jones might hurt her. He wasn’t that sort of a brute. He was a
cold-blooded killer of anyone who came between him and what he was trying to achieve. ‘The ends justify the means’ – that was what he would say. In any case, reluctantly, he had
to admit that, as far as Griffiths-Jones was capable of loving anyone, he probably loved Verity and, more importantly, she was useful to him and to the Party.

He took a deep breath. ‘Do you want to know the rest? About Tilney?’

‘Yes . . . yes, of course I do. Tell me – you knew the ring I was waving around was something to do with Sutton before your Eton shindig?’

‘I
guessed
because, of course, I hadn’t seen it.’

‘Then what?’

‘Well, when we found Tilney in the cave, I could see the body wasn’t yet stiff – rigor mortis hadn’t fully set in.’

‘How could you have been so . . . so objective?’ Verity said, shuddering. She was silent as she thought back to that day. Finding him like that had saved David’s life but it
was still a horrible sight – Tilney dead in his chair with the flies buzzing in and out of the hole in his head like bees round a hive. ‘What else?’ she said at last.

‘Well, we had been with Belasco quite a lot of the time when he might have otherwise been up in the mountains. Anyway, I can’t see what possible motive he could have for killing
Tilney.’

‘I remember you saying he had been shot with a small gun – a woman’s pistol – like the one Sutton used on you.’

‘Yes, and he had been shot at such close range. It must have been someone he knew quite well, or was even expecting.’

‘Perhaps the murderer stole up on him while he was asleep – you know, like Claudius in
Hamlet
.’

‘Possibly, but you may remember that Tilney’s pipe was close by his body. You don’t fall asleep when you’re smoking a pipe – at least I doubt it.’

‘The murderer could have been a woman – at least in theory.’

‘Yes, I wondered if Rosalía had done away with him but her grief was real enough.’

‘But why did she agree to take us to his hideout?’

Edward paused. ‘Sutton says she is – and was – a member of the Party and under orders.’

‘Orders?’

‘Orders to take us to him and so provide David with his alibi.’ He looked anxiously at Verity to see if she realised what this meant.

‘I don’t believe anything Tom Sutton says . . . not any more . . . not without evidence. Rosalía has been a good friend and I don’t believe she would ever have put us in
danger.’ She paused, and then said firmly, ‘Who are our other suspects?’

‘Maurice Tate for one. We know he hated Tilney. He had tried to blackmail him about his homosexuality. But I found out that Maurice was rehearsing the play when he ought to have been in
the mountains killing Tilney. There were plenty of witnesses.’

‘What about Hester? You’ve ruled her out?’ Verity said brutally.

Edward tried to answer her as objectively as he could. ‘Yes, I did. I thought for a moment that she might have had a motive.’

‘What motive?’

‘Well, not a motive exactly, but she is Jewish and I had it in mind that a Jew might want to avenge the destruction of a Jewish family but I became convinced she knew nothing about Max or
Oliver Federstein. That was a burden Elizabeth had to carry.’

‘Revenge for a death so many years ago? It does seem . . . I was going to say “unbelievable”.’

‘Suicide’s not an accident, V, and you know that Elizabeth felt bound to carry out her stepfather’s last wish. And you also know why Tom Sutton identified so closely with
Oliver. There are always reasons behind a suicide. A suicide which, in this case, led to a father’s despair . . . bitter wounds, bitter guilt! I guessed it must be something like that when
the horrible little man – Mike Nadall – told us the rest of the story of which Miss Harvey had told me the first part.’

‘Revenge is a dish best taken cold,’ Verity mused. ‘It’s a strange story but then English public schools are such strange institutions. I mean . . . does any boy come out
at the end of his schooling at one of these places undamaged? I only ask out of curiosity.’

‘We learn to run the empire,’ Edward said in mock seriousness.

‘Pooh! You can’t even run the country let alone the empire and, when we come to power, you know what will be the first thing to go?’

‘The public schools?’

‘Yes, of course, but I really meant the empire. It’s an anachronism. The masses are kept down by . . .’

‘Quite,’ said Edward hurriedly.

‘It’s lucky, isn’t it, that David was in gaol when Tilney was murdered?’

‘Very fortunate,’ said Edward solemnly. It’s certainly where he ought to be, he added, but not aloud.

‘He had a motive after all. Tilney didn’t approve of him buying arms for the government from . . . wherever he could.’

‘From Fascists,’ said Edward, rubbing it in.

‘The corrupt may be corrupted,’ she responded sententiously.

‘That’s what David says, is it?’ Verity scowled at him. ‘Please don’t tell me the ends justify the means,’ he said. She scowled even harder.

‘As I understand it – and this is David’s story as far as he’s prepared to tell it to me – Tilney needed to “disappear”. He wanted his enemies to think
he was dead while he did what he had to do for the Party. Afterwards, he was supposed to come back to Madrid, explain breezily that he had been away visiting friends and hadn’t heard all the
hoo-ha and David would use his “get-out-of-gaol-free” card.’

‘Right, but he didn’t come back because he wanted David dead at the hands of the Republic?’ Edward suggested provocatively.

‘He didn’t because he had been killed by Sutton,’ Verity corrected him.

‘It’s odd that, isn’t it? Why did Sutton leave it so long before killing Tilney?’

‘That’s easy! He didn’t know Tilney was still alive until he heard that David had asked you to go up the mountain and find him. As a spy, he must have known where Tilney had
his base camp – and he went there to kill him before you could find him alive – to fulfil his “quest”.’

‘Yes, that must be it,’ Edward agreed. ‘He thought Tilney was dead so it must have been a nasty shock to discover he had tricked him and was just pretending.’

‘Do you think Tilney was aware that Sutton was after him?’

‘Probably. Sutton said he had hinted that he knew Oliver Federstein’s story. He wanted to see Tilney sweat.’

Verity brooded for a minute and then said, ‘Let’s talk about Stephen Thayer. It’s queer Tom was so easily persuaded by Elizabeth not to kill him, isn’t it? It
doesn’t ring true to me.’

‘Well, it’s hard to say. He may have wanted to concentrate on politics and the impending revolution. He had orders from the Party which probably didn’t include taking time off
to go back to London and murder someone. After all, he didn’t have a particularly strong motive. I mean, no one has accused Stephen of . . . of liking boys. In fact, it looks as if he did
everything he could to protect Oliver from Hoden.’

‘He might have had a motive. What if he was jealous of Elizabeth’s friendship with Stephen? Perhaps he thought it was something more than that? Maybe he thought she had betrayed
him.’

Edward considered this. Then he said, ‘It’s just as likely Sutton had got sick of the “quest”. Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder. Maybe he
didn’t feel as intensely about Elizabeth as he had in Kenya. We don’t know.’

‘Maybe Elizabeth did ask him to give it up and stop the killing . . .’

‘And he refused? If he did kill Stephen, I don’t think he meant to. The fact that the killer didn’t use a gun suggests he – or she – hadn’t brought one. I
think the killer tried to reason with Stephen – perhaps get an apology out of him. As I imagine it, they talked for some time before something happened which made him – let’s call
the killer “him” – pick up the nearest heavy object and hit him over the head. Perhaps even then he didn’t mean to kill him.’

‘Why did Thayer turn his back on him? He must have known he was talking to someone who was a threat – even mad?’

‘We can only guess, but Stephen wasn’t lacking in courage. Let’s say it was Sutton. Stephen tells him how much he regrets Oliver’s death, how he did what he could to
protect him from Hoden’s bullying. He offers him a cigar and they smoke together – Stephen thinks he can relax. He takes Sutton’s glass to “top it up”. He turns with
the tumbler in his hand and says something which enrages him.’

‘Hold on. No drinks. Sergeant Willis said there was no evidence that Thayer had offered anyone a drink.’

‘No, you’re right. We’ll never know exactly what happened but Stephen could be very arrogant.’

‘Was he anti-Semitic? I mean, you said that might have been Hester’s motive for murdering Tilney, in revenge for his having persecuted Oliver because he was Jewish. Maybe
that’s also a motive for Stephen’s murder. Perhaps, just when he thought he had calmed his visitor, he let on somehow that he was doing deals with the Nazis and that caused . . . the
explosion.’

‘He wasn’t particularly anti-Semitic – just the usual.’

‘ “Just the usual”,’ Verity repeated bitterly.

‘Sorry?’

‘You said, “just the usual” – the usual anti-Semitism.’

‘Yes,’ Edward said, ‘I did, didn’t I. I’m afraid it’s true, though. I’m not saying anyone approves of the way the Nazis are treating their Jews but . .
.’

‘ “
Their
Jews”! Edward, sometimes I think I hardly know you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said and was silent.

‘It’s convenient that Sutton’s disappeared, isn’t it?’ she said at last. ‘Could we prove anything against him?’

‘No. We have to face it: Sutton has nothing to fear from the British police. Pride is only investigating Stephen Thayer’s death, not Hoden’s, not Tilney’s. And unless he
has turned up something we don’t know about, the only hard evidence we have is that the photographs of Thayer’s body show that the killer dropped a fountain pen and a matchbox from
Chicote’s beside the body. You wouldn’t hang a dog on that.’

‘They might hold him for spying?’ Verity thought for a moment. ‘It’s a problem for any Communist Party member if they work for the British government. Is it better to try
and influence policy from inside or does there come a moment when one has to choose between betraying one’s country or one’s principles? Thank God, it’s not a dilemma David or I
face.’