Closed Circle (34 page)

"What condition?"

"Allow Papa to remain in hiding. That's the only way I can make him agree to surrender the records. You tell the press we found them among his papers. You let the world believe he really is dead."

"You want him to get away with it?"

"He's only one man, Guy."

"He's also their leader. The worst of them by far."

"Their leader, yes. At least initially. In recent years, probably not. Otherwise, his financial problems would never have become so acute. As to his being the worst, well, if Faraday's a fair sample, how can you be sure?"

"Still a murderer many times over. And you want to spare him."

She gazed at me in silence for a moment, then said: "It's my price. And it's non-negotiable. Take it or leave it."

"If I leave it?"

"Then I've already spelt out the consequences."

"And what about Max? What about his reputation? His memory?"

"After this comes out, nobody will believe he murdered my father. Faraday and the people hiding behind him will take the blame. As in a sense they should."

"But it's not the truth, is it?"

"It's more of the truth than you'll ever succeed in dragging into the open."

Diana was right. I had set out to exploit her exclusion from the secret her father and aunt had shared and I had succeeded. But it was success at a price. Instead of capitulation, she had presented me with a choice. The Concentric Alliance or Fabian Charnwood. I could not have both. And, without her help, it was questionable if I could have either. "Where is he?" I said levelly.

"Do you accept my terms?"

"Just tell me where he is."

"Not until we reach an agreement."

"Yes, then, damn it. I accept your terms. But does Vita?"

"She accepts this is the only way to stop you going to the police."

"Good." I raised my eyebrows expectantly. "Well?"

"He's in Dublin."

"Dublin?"

"Yes. Not Zurich or Trieste or anywhere else likely to have crossed his creditors' minds. But somewhere sufficiently anti-British to ensure a degree of official obstructiveness if the Surrey Constabulary or anyone else in this country starts making enquiries."

"Where in Dublin?"

"I don't know. Neither does Aunt Vita. We have a post office box number we can write to in emergencies. He checks it daily. My proposal is this. You and I travel to Dublin. We deliver a letter asking him to meet me as a matter of extreme urgency. At that meeting, I tell him what you want, making it clear that, unless he co-operates, you'll go to Faraday and set the forces of the Concentric Alliance on his trail. As I see it, they pose a far greater threat to him than the police. He'll have to agree. He'll have no alternative."

Nor any alternative, I realized, but to tell his daughter the whole truth at last. She meant to demand a long overdue explanation of why her mother had died. And he would have to give her one. He would have to give both of us what we wanted.

"Why are you hesitating, Guy? Isn't this better than what you came here for?"

"Perhaps."

"A chance to set history right. An opportunity just for once to make the guilty suffer more than the innocent. A way to make them pay."

"They'll stop us if they can."

"They won't have the chance. They won't realize the threat we pose to them until it's too late."

And afterwards? I wanted to ask. Would there not come a time when we too were made to pay? I knew what she would say. I heard the answer in my own head, in one of the phrases she had used. Just for once. How alluring such a prospect was. To bring the roof down around their heads. To name the false captains and the fraudulent kings. To bring them all to book. Just for once, to rise above fear and frailty. Just for once, to act without counting the cost or reckoning the gain.

"What do you say, Guy?"

"I say: when do we leave?"

The ghost of a smile flickered at the edges of her lips. "As soon as possible. Here ..." She pulled a copy of Bradshaw from a nearby shelf, placed it on the table behind us, thumbed through the index, then turned up the appropriate page. "Let's see. There's a train from Euston to Holyhead at eight thirty in the morning, connecting with a ferry to Kingstown. We can be in Dublin by six o'clock. And we can have a letter in the post office, awaiting my father's collection, first thing the following morning."

Tomorrow, then?"

"Yes. And I think we should leave this house immediately. I don't want to be here when Quincy returns. Let Aunt Vita tell him we've gone to visit your family. Let her tell him whatever she likes. You can be sure it won't be the truth."

I was sure, given how fondly Quincy had spoken of his sister. But mention of his name reminded me that he was, even as we talked, negotiating with Gregory on Diana and Vita's behalf. Should I alert him to what I meant to do? No. The fewer who knew the better. Besides, I would have what I wanted long before he parted with any money. And then he would not need to part with a single cent.

"Very well," I said. "It's agreed."

"Good." Diana moved towards the door. "In that case, I'll go and '

"Before you do!" I grasped her forearm and turned her slowly back to face me. "One thing, Diana. One point I want clearly understood. This is an alliance of necessity. And a temporary one at that. If you try to double-cross me, I will go to the police. The fact that we were once lovers won't stop me."

"I never thought it would."

"And in case you were thinking of trying to I stopped, regretting the gibe before I had even uttered it. She widened her eyes, daring me to continue. But she must have known I would not. Any claim to moral superiority on my part deserved to be scorned.

"We don't have to admire or respect each other to do this, Guy," she said coolly. "We just have to observe a truce. Once it's served its purpose .. ."

"Yes?" I wondered how far her foresight stretched. As far as the possibility that I might wait until the whole world knew about the Concentric Alliance then reveal Charnwood's hiding-place? Or further into some fresh treachery of her own? "What happens then, Diana?"

But she did not answer. Slowly, she detached my hand from her arm and pushed back a strand of hair from her brow. "I must pack a bag," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's no time to be lost."

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Diana said nothing during the drive to London and I did not press her to. For the moment, it seemed, we had both said enough. In the darkness and the silence, Max rode with us like a tangible memory, my mind sowing his face among the reflections thrown back from the wind-screen and his words among the notes of the engine. "You reckoned I was mad to do it, Guy, didn't you? And maybe I was. But no madder than you are to do this. Watch her, old man. Watch her like a hawk. She did for me with her smiles and her blushes and her soft words. Don't let her do for you as well." I glanced round at her and pondered the warning. She was staring straight ahead, thinking perhaps of her mother as I thought of my friend. We had a truce. We had a shared purpose. There was nothing to worry about. And yet... "I thought the same, old man. Nothing to worry about. But there was, wasn't there? There always is."

We spent the night at the Euston Hotel, breakfasted early and left aboard the Irish Mail at half past eight. We were calmer now, less angry with ourselves and each other. A truce was after all a truce. While it lasted, I would have to trust her and she would have to trust me. But for that to be possible, she would first have to tell me the whole truth about the conspiracy her father had conceived the conspiracy in which she and Vita had played their willing parts. As the train slid out of Euston station and it became apparent there would be nobody else in our compartment, I lowered the corridor blinds and sat down opposite her.

However drab the setting, however damning the evidence, however much I loathed her, Diana Charnwood was still the most beautiful woman I had ever known. The fur collar gathered at her throat made her look like some Russian princess. The cool directness of her gaze suggested she might, if she chose, explain everything yet apologize for nothing. She should have begged for my forgiveness. But, if anything was certain, it was that she never would.

"Well?" I said, leaning forward to light her cigarette. "No second thoughts? No misgivings about what we're going to do?"

"None. Once I take a decision, it's taken for good."

"Or ill?"

She did not answer, but drew on her cigarette and returned my sarcastic smile with icy faintness.

"Your father must have been grateful for your decisiveness when you agreed to help him fake his death." Still she said nothing. "When was that, by the way? When did he first put the idea to you?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me. I'd like to understand every step that led to Max's death. We've a long journey ahead of us. So, there's plenty of time for you to make me understand. Isn't there?"

"Yes. There is." She looked out of the window, half-closing her eyes, though whether in resignation or concentration I could not tell. "If you're sure you want to know."

"I'm sure."

"Very well." She took one more draw on her cigarette. "By the beginning of this year, it was obvious to Papa that Charnwood Investments wasn't going to survive. It came as a shock when he told us. I'd always taken our prosperity for granted. Suddenly, my whole pampered existence as you described it was under threat. To make matters worse, Papa was afraid some of his clients would take drastic steps if they lost their money. He said they were dangerous people who'd stop at nothing. I didn't entirely believe him. I thought what he really feared was the shame and disgrace of bankruptcy. Now, I realize he was quite right. Maybe Aunt Vita realized that from the start. But I can't claim to have done so. There are no extenuating circumstances in my case. I wanted what I'd always had fast cars, fine wine, fashionable clothes, luxury hotels and handsome men; the best of everything. Well, according to Papa, I would soon have to accustom myself to a very different life, one of penny-pinching and making-do. It made me angry just to think of it, as I suppose he knew it would. It made me grab the chance of avoiding such a future when he offered it to me. It made me willing to stop at nothing.

"Papa's scheme was to divert as much capital as remained in Charnwood Investments into secret accounts held under an assumed name; vanish in the most effective manner possible by appearing to be murdered; lie low until the fuss caused by his insolvency had died down; then establish a new life in South America or the Far East, where in due course Aunt Vita and I could join him. When I asked how such a scheme could actually be put into effect, he had the answer ready. He'd been planning it for some time. He'd seen the crisis coming and had prepared for it." She shrugged. The art of good business, I suppose you could say."

"Had he already found Light foot then?"

"Oh yes. I had, in a sense. Aunt Vita took me to a variety show in Eastbourne as a treat for my sixteenth birthday, just after Easter, 1919. Hildebrand Light foot was on the bill. His resemblance to my father was astonishing, as I told Papa when we got home. He showed little interest and, twelve years later, I'd forgotten all about it. But he hadn't. He'd traced Light foot and seen the resemblance for himself. They weren't identical, of course, but the similarity was close enough for what Papa had in mind. Light foot led an itinerant existence, moving from one seaside lodging-house to another. He had no family. And he was pressed for cash. He was ideal in every way. Papa put it to him that, in his line of business, he occasionally needed an alibi. Would Light foot be willing to supply such an alibi by exploiting their physical likeness for a substantial fee, of course? Naturally, Light foot agreed.

"When Papa explained how we could make the world believe he was dead by killing Light foot in his place, I felt sure it would work. Why not, after all? What was there to go wrong? Nothing, so far as I could see. As for Light foot, I tried to think of him less as a person than an anonymous stranger whose extinction was a regrettable necessity." She paused. "Disgusted, are you, Guy?"

Determined neither to condemn nor excuse till I had heard it all, I said nothing, merely raised my eyebrows in a silent invitation for her to continue.

She cleared her throat. "I still believe nothing would have gone wrong but for Papa's insistence that we had to supply a murderer as well as a victim, that his creditors wouldn't be deceived by a motiveless killing. But he knew them better than I did. And it was bound to be easier for Aunt Vita and me if the police had an obvious culprit to pursue. So, I agreed. I even suggested how to find one."

"By exploiting your legendary ability to attract and fascinate men?"

"Yes," she replied with complete seriousness. "Exactly."

"Like you did with the fiance who killed himself?"

"Peter was a fool. But men are, you know." She paused. "Present company excepted, of course."

"Did the trip to America have any other purpose?"

"No. An Atlantic crossing struck me as the quickest and surest method of finding the right sort of man. But the voyage out was a disappointment. It wasn't until we came back that I chanced on just the type I was looking for. And since you did ask, I'd have chosen Max ahead of you every time. Beneath the cynical exterior, I could detect a romantic heart yearning to be lost and possibly broken. Beneath yours, there was a heart rather too much like my own. Besides, Max looked as if he could commit murder if driven to it, whereas you .. ."

"Yes, Diana? Whereas I what?"

She looked away. "It doesn't matter. Max fell for me. More completely than I'd dared to hope. He said he'd been waiting for me all his life without realizing it. He said I was his salvation. Instead of which, he was mine."

"And no more to you than that? No more than a pawn for your father to sacrifice?"

"His devotion flattered me. Sometimes, it even moved me. But it didn't stop me doing what needed to be done." She paused, as if waiting for me to react. But my anger was well under control now. Even my expression gave nothing away. "You were my only reservation," she continued. "I was afraid your friendship with Max might complicate matters. But Papa soon put my mind at rest. He regarded you as a positive asset, especially when he made enquiries and found out just how dubious a past you and Max had shared."