Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow (22 page)

“Cyril, you simply can’t commit murder without paying for it,” I explained patiently.

“You can tell the police all these reasons you had, but you’ve got to take the responsibility.”

“No, no,” he implored, the panic in his voice now unbridled. “You don’t understand, I can’t do that to Ann and the boys! I can’t let them know those things—their respect is everything to me. Look, you think I forged the Kyd letter for my own aggrandizement, don’t you? Not so, far otherwise. The admiration of my peers was gratifying, certainly—but what I really meant to do was to give Graham and Eric the money they needed to set up their philanthropic venture. They are born teachers and longed to bring learning to children in the poorest countries. But they weren’t able to raise enough, and actually spoke of giving up their dream. So I forged the letter, and money started flowing in, for the book, for speaking engagements, for the headship. It was the happiest time of my life when I could give them the funds they needed and see the project become reality. Their gratitude was so precious to me—and only look at all the good they’ve done!”

“Cyril, whatever your intentions, forgery is a crime, and murder is—”

“Are you familiar with the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham?”

“Who?” The sudden change of subject threw me off balance. “Well—no.”

“John Stuart Mill?” He cocked his head to one side, an eager professorial smile taking the place of his former anguished expression.

“No, but what I mean—”

“I thought as much. Utilitarianism, my dear lady! A system of ethics which I embrace wholeheartedly. The rightness of an act, you see, depends entirely upon its consequences, and one may decide that by measuring its contribution to ‘the greatest good of the greatest number.’ It was all formulated in Bentham’s
Principles of Morals and Legislation,
in 1789. And you see, the world
is
a better place as a result of my little forgery. Uncounted numbers of children who would be trapped in poverty and ignorance will improve their lot, and quite possibly that of their people, because of what I did.”

“You lied, Cyril. You led the scholarly world to believe something that wasn’t true.”

“I say again, fie on it,” he replied, raising his chin defiantly. “Is not human welfare vastly more important than an esoteric point of scholarship?”

It was hard to argue with that. I actually felt myself moving, unwillingly, toward his point of view. Then I remembered that this had gone further than scholarly deception.

“Maybe so. But we’re also talking about murder.”

He collapsed, as if that last word had been a spike, puncturing the balloon of philosophical justification he’d puffed up. His hand shook, pushing his hair back from his sweaty forehead, and his candid brown eyes again pleaded with me for understanding.

“Murder—yes, the knife going in, and in, and the smell of his blood—it was more horrible than I can say! But it had to be done, don’t you see? Edgar Stone would have played cat-and-mouse with me for a while, forcing me into retirement, destroying what I’ve built at Mercy, but he would eventually have exposed me to the world, to my family, as a forger.”

“I can see that,” I said, clinging with determination to the main point, although I couldn’t repress a twinge of sympathy. “But you didn’t have to kill poor Perdita. And you can’t tell me you didn’t plan her killing—you must have doctored that page from one of her letters, and that’s premeditation.”

“Let me tell you about a modern development of Bentham’s school of thought,” he said desperately. “Utilitarian bioethics—it takes the original philosophy to its logical end, you see. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the criterion of good, then euthanising the hopelessly unhappy is a net positive value, isn’t it? Perdita’s death not only kept my secret safe, it also reduced the sum total of misery in the world! I had created a situation, in Peter’s arrest, that had brought unhappiness to an unforeseen number of good people. This was completely at odds with my philosophy! And there was Perdita, with no hope of happiness, and for whom no one but Geoffrey would grieve very much.”

“We don’t have the right to make those decisions for other people!”

“Do we not? Any utilitarian would disagree, my dear Catherine. She didn’t fight for her life, you know, nor even plead for it. When I came to her house that evening, carrying the ‘suicide’ note and the razor in my pocket, she was outside, waiting for a cab to take her to the railway station. She was determined to go to Tyneford, wouldn’t let me into the house where I could have taken the
Ur-Hamlet
once the deed was done. Not knowing about that key hidden in the flowerpot, I realized I should have to come back with her own house key, to search for the incriminating volume. I knew that Edgar had concealed it in a different cover, so I had no idea of its appearance, nor where he kept it. I looked for it after killing him, until Tyler’s car pulled up and I had to make a hasty exit through the rear door. So I persuaded Perdita to let me drive her to Tyneford. Of course she was shattered when we reached the old house. Her last refuge lay in ruins around her. She wept and would not be comforted, declaring that there was nothing left, nowhere to go, nothing to hope for. I knew then that my decision had been correct. I promised that if she would trust me, I would give her peace. She looked into my eyes while I released her blood, and I saw no fear in her eyes, only a sort of numb relief. It was, in the end, a last favor for an old friend—Ah, Catherine, if you had known her twenty years ago!”

I was amazed to see that his eyes were brimming with tears.

“You didn’t have the right,” I said stubbornly.

He heaved a deep sigh. “I
abhor
the thought of ever killing again—it is a monstrous maze with no way out! Blood leads on to blood, I’ve learnt the truth of that. Just tell me you will keep my secret, Catherine. Let the dead be blamed, let it all be forgotten.”

Quin had given me an argument very like that, I mused, only based in cynical self-interest rather than cloudy philosophical rationalizations. Without realizing it, I shook my head.

“Oh, God,” he moaned. He stepped behind his desk and opened a drawer, and in the next moment I was looking down the barrel of a revolver.

“You must understand, I’ve not come so far only to be ruined now,” he said wretchedly. “I cannot let you take those things away from here. ‘I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ I understand perfectly what Macbeth meant, although
tedious
is not the most apposite word—
agonizing
would be more true, in my experience. And of course, some scholars believe
steeped
is the correct reading, rather than
stepped,
although personally I have always felt—”

“Cyril, this isn’t some academic panel discussion!” I burst out. “This is my
life
you’re playing with! Put that thing down before it goes off.”

“I do know how to use it,” he said, “more or less—although it’s never been out of the drawer before, as I mentioned no burglar has yet threatened my book collection. But I don’t
want
to employ it, Catherine, and I will not, if I can only believe you will keep my secrets!”

“Okay,” I lied, “I will, Cyril. I’ll take all the evidence and hide it, and say nothing.”

He scrutinized me for a few minutes, and then an expression of great sadness came into his eyes. “You have no talent for deception, Catherine. Your face betrays your real intent. I’d thought you could understand, once I explained, but I see that I was mistaken. ‘False hearts speak fair to those they intend most mischief.’ ” He waited expectantly, as if I were one of his colleagues, always ready for their game of one-upmanship.

“What? I don’t know! Shakespeare?”

“Certainly not,” he said with a disappointed sigh.
“Duchess of Malfi.”
He started fooling with the hammer of the gun, apparently unsure which way to pull it.

“You won’t shoot me, Cyril,” I said. “How would you explain a dead lady in the library when your family comes home?”

“I could—conceal your remains in the scullery, and remove them by night?” he suggested uncertainly.

“But the blood would still be here—and it would get all over your precious books, wouldn’t it?”

That stopped him. “I shall—I shall just have to take you elsewhere, then! Come along, we must hurry—the back garden will be unobserved.”

Then the door behind him swung open. Both of us gasped in shock, and Cyril spun around to see what was happening. Quin stood there, looking quite dumb-founded.

I jumped toward the desk, picked up the first-edition Marlowe, and slammed it with all my strength into the back of Cyril’s head. He staggered and fell forward, dropping the gun. Quin snatched it up and trained it on him. Cyril lay staring at him in a befuddled way.

“Stay still,” Quin warned him. “I know my way around a gun.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Cyril said groggily, obediently stiffening his whole body. “I didn’t mean to—I tried not to—I mean to say, your lady was in no—” He gave up, realizing finally that his excuses were not going to influence either of us.

Quin looked over at me. His eyes held a sort of grim resignation and no longer the hope I had seen when I’d sat down opposite him in the Eagle and Child.

“You followed me,” I said.

He nodded. “After I stewed for a while. I finally decided I couldn’t let you come alone, just in case you were right. And I guess you were.”

As I started to pick up the telephone on the desk, sounds floated from outside the house—car doors slamming, footsteps and laughter. A feeling of impending doom came over me.

“Oh God,” I said, “it’s his family.”

Cyril sat up, throwing me a glance of acute supplication. Then he drew his knees up, laid his face against them, and started to cry in great shuddering sobs that shook his whole body.

“You’ll have to call 999,” I told Quin, pushing the phone toward him. “I’ll give the police the evidence when they get here—this book, and a tape in this machine.” I set them on the desk, far from Cyril, and then took a deep, unsteady breath. “I’ve got to go out and tell Ann and the boys, before they walk in on this.”

When I’d almost reached the door he said, quietly, “Kit.” I turned impatiently. He stood holding the phone in one hand, gazing at me intently, and he said in a low voice, “Just—I’m sorry.”

“You know, that’s the first time you’ve ever said it,” I answered. “But it doesn’t matter now. You just saved my life, and that’s enough to make us quits.”

I turned and hurried out to face Cyril Aubrey’s family.

S
o that’s that.”

I put the letter back into its envelope, folded it in quarters, and dropped it on the grass.

“What’s what?” Fiona asked.

I leaned back in my lawn chair and looked at the cloudless blue sky through the leaves of my apple tree. I could just make out the robin’s nest in the crotch of a branch, and the mother bird sitting still as a decoy on her eggs. I would be here to see the babies, to watch them learn to fly and to keep the cat away until they could look out for themselves. Contentment filled me to the brim.

“It’s a letter from an old friend in New York—Ellie. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned her to you? Anyway, she says Quin and Janet got married.” I smiled to show her everything was okay, but she still looked at me with concern. “They’ve gone to Mexico on their honeymoon. She’s definitely going to have a better time there than she had here!”

“Not—problematic?” Fiona asked.

I reached over and patted her hand reassuringly. “Not a bit,” I said. “You should have stopped worrying about that weeks ago.”

I glanced quickly through the rest of my mail. Walter, the postman, was just disappearing down the road on his red bicycle, jingling his bell at Mick Jenkins’s old dog as it slowly crossed in front of him.

There was an envelope with the return address of Dan Vincent, an American widower I’d met at the time of our village murder. It was the second letter I’d had from him since he’d gone back to New Jersey. I’d had a hard time thinking of anything to tell him about when I answered the first one, but that certainly wouldn’t be a problem this time! Such a nice man, and obviously lonely, I mused as I dropped it on the grass with the bills, to be opened later. I hoped he would find a nice, compatible Jersey girl pretty soon, and start a new life.

It was late June, and Cyril Aubrey was locked up, awaiting trial and certain conviction, having been unable to convert the police to Utilitarianism. Ann was sticking by him, and her many friends, as well as her sons, were sticking by her. I’d always feel bad for them, but I didn’t see how I could have acted any differently.

Peter had been unanimously chosen to replace Cyril as head and had already hired two young tutors with provocative new approaches to Elizabethan drama. Geoffrey, still inconsolable, had taken a long sabbatical, traveling on the Continent with an old friend. Everybody hoped that when he came back he would finally be resigned to a world without Perdita.

The hardest part of the aftermath for me had been Emily’s disappointed face when I told her why Quin and Janet had left on schedule for the States. But by now she had, as she put it, “reconciled her abandonment issues”—in plain English, faced the fact that her parents were divorced for good.

“Well,” said Alice, “I really wonder if Enid could have been wrong about the new neighbors? The afternoon is getting on, with no sign of them.”

The welcoming committee had settled in my front garden a couple of hours before, Alice and Fiona on the rustic bench I had bought last week at Debenham’s, John and I on the two lawn chairs that had been left in the shed by the previous owners, Audrey and Jilly on the stone wall, and little Diana napping in her carry-cot on the ground. Enid Cobb had told me yesterday, in her unshakably positive style, that today was the day the new people would be moving into the house across the road. It had turned out quite attractive, fitting into the village as well as a modern house could, with its whitewashed stucco walls, casement windows, and steeply pitched slate roof. Fiona and I had stood on tiptoe to peek into the first-floor windows, quite covetous of the big eat-in kitchen with a countertop stove and wall oven instead of an Aga, and a ceramic tile floor with patterns of plants baked into each tile. We had concluded the new neighbors were a lot better fixed financially than either of us were.

“Has Enid ever been known to be wrong?” John asked drily.

“If she has,” Fiona answered, “nobody would dare to remember. Jilly—oh, do take those things out of your ears!” she added irritably, raising her voice. Jilly removed the earphones that attached her to her Walkman, and Audrey did the same.

“Extraordinary, the way young people today seem to require a musical background to every activity,” said Alice.

“If you care to call that music,” Fiona snorted.

“Lumme, Fiona, it’s Radiohead!” Audrey exclaimed, as if the evocation of Oxford’s homegrown rock stars should end all argument.

Fiona rolled her eyes. “I was going to ask you, Jilly, if that carpenter of yours had told you anything about the new people coming today.”

“Who, Bert?” She blushed, and Audrey grinned and nudged her with her elbow. Jilly had taken up with one of the young workmen while the house was being built across the road. “No, we never talked about that.” The two girls looked at each other and giggled, putting the earphones back into their ears.

“Nor about anything else much, I’d wager,” Fiona said shrewdly. “I hope that girl’s got a mite more sense than Audrey had. But there’s not much sign of it, is there?”

Audrey’s pregnancy was not concealed by maternity clothes and was pretty obvious now. I had to admit, I didn’t appreciate the current fashion for letting the abdomen swell under nothing but a skintight T-shirt. At least she didn’t wear just a halter top, as I’d seen pregnant celebrities doing in magazines.

A black Cortina pulled over to the shoulder of the road, next to my wall, and Reverend Ivey’s pale, ascetic face smiled out of the open window.

“Good afternoon,” he called. “Most sensible of all of you, to take advantage of such a beautiful day! My radio tells me a storm is expected tomorrow. Oh dear, how awkward I am, bringing bad news into your little party, I do apologize—”

“Not at all, vicar,” I responded. “Come and join us.”

“I only stopped to tell you that the headstone is to be delivered tomorrow,” he said diffidently. The village had finally got up a collection for a nice granite headstone, with inscription, for George Crocker’s grave. “I thought you might want to come and see it erected. And I have another announcement, as well. May I indeed join you?”

“Do, please,” I called to him.

“We’re awaiting the arrival of the new inhabitants,” Alice said, waving her arm toward the house.

“Ah, they arrive today? I should be here to meet them, shouldn’t I?” he asked, as if seeking our advice. “Yes, yes, if you’re sure I won’t be imposing, it would certainly be appropriate for me to welcome them to the village.”

Poor man, nobody had thought to tell him they were coming. He got out of his car, soliciting our opinions on whether it was safely parked, and once reassured he dithered over to join us. I had to stifle a smile at the way he abruptly averted his eyes when they strayed to Audrey’s belly, and how pink his face became. John went into the house and brought out a kitchen chair for him.

“Extraordinarily kind of you!” said the vicar. “It
is
good to see you, Sergeant Bennett, a very rare treat indeed.”

John looked slightly uncomfortable, and the rest of us smiled at one another, because he almost never went to church. Apparently Mr. Ivey noticed, and he started apologizing again.

“Oh, I am most awfully sorry, I was not referring to—I mean to say, it is purely a matter of conscience whether one attends services or not, that is, free will is a most important—”

“It’s all right, vicar,” John said with a smile.

“What I referred to, of course, was your very demanding vocation, which allows you so little time at home. In point of fact, I’m particularly glad to have a chance to talk with you, because I’ve been anxious to learn one result of your latest coup—I mean the Aubrey case.”

“Not exactly a coup,” John said ruefully. “Actually, we fixed on the wrong suspect
twice
.”

“Ah, but you did bring the right one to justice at last,” the vicar went on regardless.

“But how about your other announcement?” I reminded him. “First tell us that.”

“Ah, yes. That one is most gratifying. My son, Tom, and his beloved, Gemma, have asked me to conduct their wedding, at the end of this month. Of course you are all invited!”

Congratulations and best wishes rose all around. Jilly and Audrey took out their earphones belatedly and the news had to be repeated for them.

Then John said, “Very well, vicar, what’s this question you have about the Aubrey case? Don’t know if I can answer it, mind, but I’ll do my best for you.”

“Well, I’ve been wondering whether there are any plans to place the
Ur-Hamlet
on public view? Quite understandable that the police should want to use it as evidence at the trial, but it would be a rare treat actually to see such an important piece of our literary history before it is consigned to a museum.”

“Well, vicar,” said John, settling back and taking his pipe from his pocket, “I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you there.”

“Good heavens, it has not been lost again!”

“No, we’ve still got it. The problem is, when we turned it over to a well-known expert in disputed manuscripts, it took her less than a day to pronounce it a fake.”

“A fake?” I sat up and stared, appalled. “You mean two people died, Peter almost lost his freedom, and I could have been shot—over a forged manuscript?”

“Afraid so.” He had finished packing the pipe bowl with tobacco and paused to light it. When he took it from his lips he couldn’t repress a wry grin. “Mind you, very skillfully done. Only detectable by the most sophisticated technology. Must have taken Edgar Stone years.”

“Then the author of the real work is still unknown,” said the vicar, shaking his head sadly. “Perhaps it may always be so.”

“Well, I’ll be darned.” I sank back again, smiling too at the irony of it.

“Any more questions?” John asked, after another draw at his pipe.

“You know,” I said, “I was always suspicious of Perdita’s story about sleeping through the murder. Did you ever learn what she was really doing?”

“Oh, she was asleep, all right. Cecil Aubrey slipped a sleeping draught into her sherry at the party. He didn’t want her interfering with his carefully worked-out—”

“It’s them!” Jilly exclaimed, pointing toward the new house. John broke off his explanation, and we all gazed avidly at a dark green car, the kind the British call an “estate car,” longer than the usual sedan. It was just pulling up in front of the place, and we all rose and hurried down to my gate, led by the vicar.

There was a woman in the driver’s seat, a man beside her, and what looked like a couple of teenagers in the back. A moving van was coming down the road, pulling up behind the car. The woman got out and saw us, and her face broke into an irresistible smile.

She was plump and big-bosomed, in a bright blue dress with a pattern of large red flowers. Obviously she wasn’t worried about hiding her amplitude. Her hair was a brassy shade of blonde, in those big fat curls you have to set every night on rollers. Her blue eyes sparkled with delight.

“Hello, then!” she called in a north-country accent. “You lot the welcome committee?”

She started out to meet us halfway across the road, limping heavily on her right leg. But the man from the passenger seat now emerged, with some difficulty. The young man and woman each held one of his arms and almost lifted him out. He was dark-haired and white-faced, quite emaciated, and the look in his black eyes as they darted to the blonde woman gave me the shivers.

He yelled at her, quite savagely, “Get yer arse back here! Yer meant to be finding me med’cines, not lollygaggin’ in the road with some strangers!”

“Dear me!” said the vicar.

The woman’s smile shrank and her happy expression turned fearful. We stopped on the shoulder of the road, and three of the newcomers looked over with embarrassment. The teenaged girl threw us a little pinched smile. She was very pretty, slight and graceful with long dark hair hanging nearly to her waist.

Jilly called over to her, “Need any help, then?” and the girl shook her head silently.

The young man resembled her, the same brown eyes and full lips, but otherwise they were a contrast. He looked none too clean, there was a growth of stubble on his jaw, his hair was dragged back in a tail tied with a string. But he called to us, “Thanks for the thought, but Dad’s not been very well the past week or two and we—”

“Sorry,” the woman broke in abruptly. “Me husband’s fallen ill, as Michael says. After we’re settled in—”

She stopped and shrugged helplessly at us, then limped back to open the trunk of the car. After a few minutes of rummaging she emerged with a handful of pill bottles. The young people had supported the man up the brick path and into the house by then. The blonde woman threw us a last smile and a wave and followed them inside while the movers started unloading sofas and chairs.

“Well, that was interesting!” said Fiona as we moved back to my garden. “Do you think we’ll ever get as far as introducing ourselves?”

“The poor man
is
ill,” Alice said charitably.

“How unfortunate for them,” the vicar said, “to have built in a village without a doctor! Of course, they weren’t to know a family member would fall ill. The gentleman did look very weak, didn’t he?”