Last Nocturne (35 page)

He could see why she had been afraid, what she had read into them, and felt a kind of pity for her. It had been a cruel way to learn about her husband’s love affair and his intentions to leave her, to sail across the Atlantic for a life with this other woman. Even more cruel was to be left with the suspicion that Eliot Martagon might have shot himself because he was implicated in murder. Reading the letters through her eyes he could see that was what she must have thought.

He put the letters carefully away. He wasn’t sure how much help they were going to be, after all.

The post came just as they were about to start breakfast. Isobel hurried to the door when she heard it clatter through the letter-box, fearful there might be another letter lying on the mat that she needed to read in private. There was. Unlike those others, however, this one bore no Viennese postmark, no ten-heller stamps, but she felt the blood drain from her face and her fingertips with the instant recognition of the handwriting of the one person she knew with certainty to be dead.

She went back to the breakfast table, and laid the letter face down next to her cup and saucer and for fully fifteen minutes let it lie there, those familiar, strong downward strokes burning their image through the thick cream envelope.

‘Aren’t you going to open your letter, Tante?’

‘Later, Sophie, it’s nothing important.’

‘How do you know unless you open it?’

‘I know the handwriting.’

The relief when, at last, though still unprepared for whatever it might contain, she summoned up enough strength of will to open it, was almost as painful as the first sight of it had been. Not, after all, a missive from the dead, though the hand was so like his father’s as to be uncanny: a plain, firm, confident hand. The signature was Guy Martagon.

What did he want of her? How had he learnt who she was? Where she lived? Through Julian? She doubted it. Eugenia Dart, then, it had to be, through Dulcie. Eugenia was cheerful, effervescent, good humoured, well intentioned. Sophie liked her, and so did Isobel. But she was not a secret-keeper.

Pouring herself another cup of coffee, she read the few polite lines yet again. She thought, I can’t do it. I must be out when he comes. She saw with panic that he was proposing to call on her that afternoon, unless he heard from her to the contrary, which gave her little time to find excuses not to be at home, and no time to prepare what she must say, either. It was cleverly done. Despite herself, she almost smiled: he was his father’s son.

She read it again and looked up to find Sophie watching her over her glass of milk, with that watchful, secretive, inward look which only occasionally manifested itself nowadays. She couldn’t have seen the handwriting on the envelope, and wouldn’t have recognised it if she had. Was it something in her own demeanour that had communicated itself? It wasn’t inconceivable. Sophie picked things up, plucked feelings and nuances out of the air in a way that was unnerving. Isobel had even tried to discipline her thoughts, so uncanny was her ability to tune in to the vibrations of thought and emotion. A self-composed, intelligent little girl, growing up fast. But a child still, she reminded herself.

She slipped the letter into her pocket and tried to continue with her breakfast. The crisp toast she bit into was like swallowing glass. She abandoned it and went to write a cold little note which she sent to Embury Square by Susan on her way to the shops.

Eliot had arrived swiftly in Vienna after Miriam’s death, plans already lined up for Isobel to pack her bags and go back with him to London, adamant that she should not stay in that house a moment longer. She saw that he was relieved in some way that the solution to their present situation had been taken out of his hands, that despite everything they would in fact be nearer to each other during the remaining few months before the time when they would be together for always. They were within sight of their ultimate goal, although difficulties had arisen over the sale of the gallery. Eliot was by no means a poor man, but he couldn’t afford to sell for less than he had hoped: he would have to provide for his wife and was insistent that she should at least be entitled to maintain her present standard of living.

Isobel made no objections to his proposals for her to leave Vienna. She could hardly bear to stay there now, and it was certainly no place for Sophie, who was still shocked by what had happened – shocked and bewildered, but not, Isobel thought, destroyed. She would recover in time, and more quickly away from terrifying associations, and a man whom Isobel now feared and knew to be dangerous. There was no question of her being put in the care of her grandparents: Isaac Koppel was a fine old man, still hale and hearty, but he was gradually losing his sight, and his wife, Rachel, was a permanent invalid. They hadn’t been young when their daughter was born and the old man would never be able to cope with an ailing wife and a young and difficult child.

Isobel approached Viktor with extreme trepidation, but instead of showing anger, he seemed to wonder why she was asking his permission to take Sophie away with her, as if he had never claimed her as his child, as if she were an irrelevance, which indeed Isobel thought she was to him. The image of him, unshaven, unkempt, pale and unsleeping, almost mad with grief over his brother, and over his dark tormentor, Miriam, haunted – and frightened – her.

London, vast and sprawling. You could live there for years and never meet another person you knew. Yet the threat of discovery hung over them, Eliot and Isobel: that they would be seen together, or Eliot’s visits to her would become known, that gossip and tattle would start, and come to the ears of his wife. He had not yet spoken to Edwina, but he would, soon, he promised.

Then what Isobel most dreaded happened one day…for who should she meet, quite by chance, when she was taking a quiet walk by the lake in St James’s Park, but Eliot himself. He was not alone. He was smiling and at ease, and on his arm was a tall, dark-eyed and rather shy girl of about sixteen who could only have been his daughter, and she saw painfully in that first glimpse of him another Eliot; a man she didn’t know, a man with another life quite apart from her. After that first paralysing moment of recognition for both of them, he made introductions, they had a few minutes’ polite conversation, then they bowed stiffly and parted. It was a bitter moment. She felt as she had never been made to feel before, the usurper, the mistress, the other woman in his life. Guilty.

There was no reason, he said afterwards, for Dulcie to think they were anything other than acquaintances. He was sure she hadn’t suspected anything and Isobel tried to reassure herself that she’d seen nothing in those dark eyes to say the girl had. One day, Eliot said, I hope you’ll be able to meet properly. I know you’ll love her, for my sake – and Dulcie is worth loving.

One day, some nebulous tomorrow. But now, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow there would be no Eliot. It was bad luck to quote
Macbeth
, but her luck had run out a long time ago.

The letters from Viktor began after Eliot’s death, when she was at a very low ebb, a period so pain-filled, broken and fragmented that she could have told no one how much time had passed.

She could still not accept that Eliot had shot himself. Accidentally? No, never! But then she was tormented by the treacherous doubts and sense of betrayal that followed inexorably from that. If he had been honest with her, had he told her outright that he could not summon up the courage to continue with their plans – to abandon his life here, his successful business and his wife and family, to sacrifice his integrity, simply in order to be with her – she would have felt humiliated, her heart would have broken, but in the end she would have gone on living. As she had now, of course she had, although part of her had died with him. Part of her belief in human nature, too, in the power of love, had been destroyed for ever.

She had, mistakenly perhaps, ignored the demands in those letters from Viktor and now he had come to England in person – and not, as Julian had suggested, for the exhibition at the Pontifex, she was sure. He said he simply wanted to talk to Sophie, but this, she felt, must simply be a euphemism for wanting her back with him.

Sophie knew nothing of this, and must not know. She seemed to have survived being uprooted and brought to live in a foreign country as just another move in her rootless existence. Moreover, she had no idea that Viktor might, or might not, be her father, and had never learnt to look on him as anything other than a distant and usually intimidating stranger. Here in London she, Isobel and Susan lived together comfortably enough. There had been no nightmares for months, she no longer walked in her sleep; she wasn’t Sophie-alone any more, but becoming more like an ordinary little girl. It was true that she resisted any attempt to talk about Miriam or the night of her death, and Isobel didn’t force this on her, though she couldn’t help thinking it would have been better had the memory not stayed bottled up inside her. But Susan was convinced she was happier without Miriam. ‘It takes more than an accident of birth to make a mother,’ she insisted. Theo had thought so, too.

Theo. Oh God, so many deaths. Was there never to be an end to it? Isobel knew it was up to her to tell Sophie what had happened to him, and this she dreaded having to do. Sophie had adored Theo. And although he had, since coming back to England, been preoccupied with some new project, he said, some new aspect of his work which appeared both to absorb and worry him, he had found time to come and take her out occasionally – a trip on the river, a visit to the zoo in Regent’s Park, with buns and ice cream afterwards, from which they returned in high spirits.

But since the last occasion, some time ago now, Sophie had seemed withdrawn, not in the old, angry, hurt way but still, too quiet and subdued. Theo had not visited them since, presumably because he was working too hard. Enough to cause him to commit suicide? It made as little sense for him to have taken his life as it had for Eliot, she had thought.

But it wasn’t suicide, was it?

While Julian was escorting her home the previous night after the Elgar concert, she had been immeasurably shocked to learn that Theo’s death was now being regarded as suspicious by the police, and that they seemed to have got hold of some strange idea that what had happened at the house in Silbergasse might have a bearing on his death and were enquiring into his time there. Ridiculous, of course, he said, but her name had come up in that connection. He had tried to put them off, but sooner or later, she must expect them to find her.

‘And Viktor?’ she’d breathed.

‘If Viktor has any sense, he’ll have shaken the dust of England off his feet by now.’

Later that afternoon, the doorbell sounded. Isobel’s hand flew to still the pulse in her throat. Viktor! Or only Guy Martagon, ignoring her refusal to see him? No, it was the police already, as Julian had predicted.

Susan showed them in and they explained why they were there. They sat down and waited until she brought in tea, four cups and saucers, and some of her sugared Shrewsbury biscuits on a plate, which she put between them. Then she sat herself down in the chair opposite Isobel and smiled at the policemen with no evident intention of leaving.

‘This is Miss Susan Oram, my companion. I should like her to stay. Susan and I have no secrets.’

‘I see no reason why not,’ Lamb said. ‘In fact, I should be pleased if you would stay, Miss Oram. As my sergeant has explained, we’re looking into the circumstances of Theo Benton’s death. A murder such as his doesn’t happen out of the blue, for no reason. We can find nothing and no one in his present circumstances to account for it, and we now believe it may have stemmed from certain events in Vienna at the time you both knew him there. We have the facts from the police there, but it would be useful if we could hear what happened from your point of view. Perhaps we can start with you, Mrs Amberley?’

It was, of course, a strictly edited account of events of that night that she gave them, though that wasn’t the version lodged in her head, never to be eradicated. She would not easily forget every single detail of that black twenty-four hours, nor the wreckage at the end of it of so many lives. Although, when she thought of how it had begun, it seemed as though it had been predestined from the beginning to be a terrible day.

That depressing time just after Christmas, it had been. Christmas in Vienna, without Eliot…well, it had passed. Family commitments were important to him at this time, especially as it would be the last Christmas he would spend with his wife and daughter. The New Year had come in and with it the hope that she would see him soon. She had stayed in alone, the eternal role of the mistress, waiting for him to come, throughout the period. January then brought a highly unseasonable spell of rain and sleet, which half-melted the snow and froze it over at night, turning the streets and roads into treacherous seas of slush and ice. The days were bitterly cold and the sky hung heavy with snow clouds. Hard frost came at night but the snow only fell in thin, scattered showers and she longed for a thick blanket, clean and white, to mask the grey ugliness, making Vienna beautiful again.

On that particular morning, as she pulled back the curtains at the big window, she noticed that the lights were lit in the workshop – Viktor working early, no doubt. It was another dark, overcast morning – leafless trees, their branches rimmed with hoar frost and greying, soot-speckled snow, marked with the arrowlike footprints of hungry birds and the yellow stains where Igor had urinated. The bucket over the well tolled like the clap of doom when a strong wind blew. The stark contrast to the lightness and loveliness of summer sunshine and dappled shade, the delicate flowers and scent of the lime and the chestnut brought with it a painful reminder of that evening when Theo had taken her into the studio and shown her Viktor’s paintings, the evening which had ended so dramatically with the entry of the police. He was really going home, Theo, at last, any day now. It seemed as though she was losing all her friends to England – somewhere, despite her English heritage, she had never been, nor was ever likely to go it seemed.