Symposium (16 page)

This,
Margaret knew already. But she was able, through this girl, sister of May, to
fill in a great many gaps that Uncle Magnus’s information had left open wide.
With her assistant, Margaret was casual, even scornful: a sure way of eliciting
more insistent information. ‘Look,’ said Margaret, ‘I’m not here to study or
consider the habits or the characters of the sons of the owners of paintings
that the company is going to buy, maybe. And it’s a big maybe. All I want to
know is what Hilda Damien paid for the picture.’

It was
not all Margaret wanted to know. The son, apparently, had arranged the original
deal, two years ago at least.

‘Is he
married?’ Margaret demanded of her helper, as if it was all in the day’s work.

‘No.
He’s living with a girl.’ Margaret’s assistant could not contain herself from
this moment on. ‘They’ve been living together a year or two, but it’s no good.
They have fearful rows. It’s a love-hate relationship.’

‘She
loves his money but hates him?’ Margaret suggested vaguely, meanwhile sorting
out something in her handbag.

‘Really,
he has no money. The mother doesn’t give him any, nothing at all. He has to
live on his pay. Sometimes they’re quite hard up. His girlfriend has to
contribute to the expenses. I think she’s going to quit. In fact May says she’s
going to quit. There’s something odd about him, besides. Something childish — oh,
God save us from that sort.’

Margaret
found the college where William was employed on research. She knew the day
when, finally, his girl flounced out, with two suitcases in the vestibule of
the flats, waiting for a taxi, getting the driver to heave them into the taxi,
and up there at the parted curtain of the window watching them drive away, was
William. The girl didn’t come back. Margaret waited three weeks.

‘The
Damien boy and his fiancée have had a bust-up,’ was one of the statements in a
shiny gossip column.

Margaret
now followed him all over the place, and she wound up in Marks & Spencer’s
fruit section.

‘Be
careful,’ she said, ‘those grapefruits look a little bruised.’

He
looked at her, then he looked at the grapefruit and then he looked at her
again. ‘So they are, thanks,’ he said. He was enchanted by the red-haired
beauty with her sexy prominent teeth, who stood beside him, so ready to edge
away. She thought him all right to look at provided he didn’t put on more
weight.

They
were married within four months.

Margaret
went to visit Magnus shortly after her return from her honeymoon.

‘Did
you see in the paper about little Werther Stanhope, that he shot himself?’ said
Magnus.

‘You
predicted Warren McDiarmid,’ she said, kicking off her bright blue shoes, part
of her bridal trousseau; they weren’t very comfortable. She wore a bright pink
dress which Magnus had told her was just right for her colouring. ‘Warren McDiarmid’,
he now said, ‘or Werther Stanhope, what difference does it make? All right, I
slightly erred. So far. Perhaps McDiarmid’s day of reckoning will come, it is
bound to come. You know, if you had married Stanhope instead of Damien you
would at this moment be a wealthy widow instead of a wife of a poor man with a
rich mother. However, you’ve done not badly, so far. How do you propose to rid
yourself of Hilda Damien?’

‘I will
bide my time,’ said Margaret.

‘Perhaps
your evil eye will be enough,’ said Magnus. ‘Only think about it, concentrate enough,
and something will happen to her.’

‘I
don’t think you understand how I feel,’ she said. ‘I want to actively liquidate
the woman. Compared with the evil eye, what I have in mind is just healthy
criminality. Fortunately I don’t like her.’

‘Providers
are often disliked, often despised.’

‘She
isn’t even a provider. Very limited and such a know-all. Comparatively stingy,
too.’

‘Here
in Scotland,’ said Magnus, ‘people are more capable of perpetrating good or
evil than anywhere else. I don’t know why it is, but so it is. That gives you
an advantage. For myself let me remind you of Judith and what she did to Holofernes.
Pass me the Bible.’

Margaret
got ready to go. ‘It needs more planning than you think,’ she said.

Magnus
was reading: ‘And approached to his bed, and took hold of the hair of his head —’

‘Plans.
We should make plans,’ said Margaret.

‘And
she smote twice upon his neck with all her might, and she took away his head
from him.’

‘Hilda’s
coming next week. We have a dinner party on Thursday, then Friday night or
Saturday morning I want to drive her up to St Andrews with William. Maybe you
could come to Blackie House for the Sunday? We could take her for a walk in the
woods, Uncle Magnus.’

‘Where
is she staying in London?’

‘The
Ritz.’

‘To be
perfectly honest,’ said Magnus, laying aside his holy book, ‘I don’t want
personal trouble. We’ve had enough bloodshed, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Between
the two of us’, Margaret said, ‘we could arrange an accident.’

‘Impossible,’
said Magnus. ‘No guarantee, ever, of success. Too risky.’

‘All
those suspicions have fallen on me,’ said Margaret. ‘Why shouldn’t I really do
it? I’m tired of being made to feel guilty for no reason. I would like to feel
guilty for a real case of guilt.’

‘Generally
speaking,’ said Magnus, ‘guilty people do not feel guilty. They feel exalted,
triumphant, amused at themselves.’

‘That’s
fine. I’d like that.’

‘Like
it or not,’ Magnus said, ‘destiny might do it for you.’

She
said, ‘You’d better think of something before Sunday the 21st or I’ll never
come here and visit you again. That’s final. Do you think I enjoy coming here?’
She slipped on her blue shoes, grabbed her coat and went out. She put her head
round the door a moment later. ‘The ground is slippery with all this rain. Push
her in the pond.
You
know how it’s done,’ she said, and left.

Magnus
took a swig of his drink and looked out of the window where there was a
marvellous purple and orange sunset. A male nurse came into the room to settle
Magnus into his bed. ‘All that’, said Magnus, indicating the view, ‘can be read
about in detail in various novels by Sir Walter Scott. Nobody can do sunsets
like Scott.’

‘That’s
a fact,’ said the nurse.

ANNABEL
said to Roland, ‘I’m so glad that man has left.’ She was referring
to Roland’s flatmate, the journalist, who had departed to live with his
girl-friend.

‘It
makes a difference economically,’ Roland said. ‘Otherwise I like being alone.
One can think.’

‘There
is something for you to think about,’ Annabel said. He was just recovered from
his ‘flu and had invited Annabel to supper at his flat. He had decided to
prepare the supper himself, Annabel was not to do anything. The shopping had
already been done by his household helper who came three times a week, and now
Roland paddled, drink in hand, in and out of the sitting-room where Annabel
was relaxing with her vodka martini. She told Roland how she had remembered
the television show where she had seen the image of Margaret which corresponded
to the press photograph. ‘She was in a convent, and there were some shots of
her going along Victoria Street on a motorbike, and some others in a hospital
where she was sick-visiting. I arranged a re-run.’

‘Are
you sure it’s the same one? What name?’

‘They
didn’t give her name. Let me see that photograph and I’ll tell you if it’s the
same girl.’

Roland
produced the photograph and left Annabel while he went to see to his stove. A
thought dawned on him. He turned down the gas and came back. ‘Annabel,’ he
said. ‘That nun programme — I remember it. I saw a bit of it and it was
hilarious. But do you know there was a sequel. One of the nuns was murdered,
there in the convent or in the convent-yard, whatever they call it; nobody was
arrested. They couldn’t find the murderer. An elderly nun, very dotty,
confessed but nobody believed her. I remember well. They thought it was a man,
a strangler. I remember they said if he was left-handed he approached from
behind, right-handed he came from the front. They knew by the marks on her
neck.’

‘But
that’s another murder that the Murchie girl’s been mixed up in. If it is the
Murchie girl.’

‘I can
find out if it’s her,’ said Roland.

‘So can
I. But from the photograph I’m almost sure it’s the same one. What was she
doing in the convent?’

‘Repenting,’
said Roland.

‘She’s
a nut case, obviously,’ said Annabel.

‘What
makes you think so?’

‘Just
something about the circumstances and something about her.’

‘Well,
we’ll see for ourselves on Thursday at Hurley’s dinner.’

They
sat down to eat. Lamb chops, peas, and salad. Claret. ‘We should tell Hurley,’
said Roland.

‘You’ve
been dying to tell Hurley since you found out about the first homicide. Don’t
you think he probably knows already?’

‘No, I
don’t.’

She let
a pause go by. ‘Neither do I,’ said Annabel. ‘But what difference does it make?
Presumably her husband, young Damien, knows all about her.’

‘I
wonder,’ said Roland very blandly, at the same time pouring wine into their
glasses. ‘Perhaps he knows hardly anything about her.’

‘In
that case,’ Annabel said, ‘you absolutely must keep your big mouth shut,
Roland. It would be positively bitchy of you to spread stories about the girl’s
past. And we are presuming that the nun and Margaret Murchie are the same girl.’

‘I can
check,’ Roland said.

‘So can
I. But not a word to Hurley, remember, ‘Annabel said. ‘It would look bad. You
shouldn’t give a gossipy impression, really, Roland; try not to.‘

The
next morning Annabel checked the BBC files. Yes, the Margaret Murchie of the
murdered grandmother was the same as one of the girls in the fatal nunnery.

Roland
rang her to tell her the same fact and to add more fruits of his simple
investigation: an interview with Eunice in a women’s glossy paper referred to
Margaret’s misfortune at being subject to questioning in two previous cases
while she was still at school, one, where a girl was drowned in a pond under
her very eyes and the other, where a schoolmistress she was having tea with
went to the ladies’ room and disappeared for ever. ‘There’s something about
Margaret,’ Eunice was reported as saying. ‘I’m really sorry for her, as you
can’t help feeling it, but you don’t want your children to get caught up in
it.’ She refused to be more precise. (‘Are your children afraid of Margaret?’ —
‘No, darling Mark is only a baby.’)

Flora
and Bert were interviewed together. Bert cautioned the interviewer about the
laws of libel and the limits of the law which he himself spoke within. The
facts, he said, were isolated from each other. Margaret was not the only
witness to the unfortunate occurrences. Flora said, ‘My sister is naturally
very down to earth. As you know the earth is magnetic. So Margaret attracts
people like the press and the television. Her hair is naturally red. There is nothing
at all to prove anything against her. I hate it when the police come here to
interrogate us. We have nothing to hide.’

Roland
read these paragraphs out to Annabel. It occurred to Annabel he was
over-excited. She could understand his being amused or appalled in some ways,
but she didn’t like that tone of garden-fence gossip, that catty spite that
would take hold of him occasionally. ‘Roland, do keep it to yourself,’ she
said. ‘You do know what I mean. It could only do you harm for you to go round
repeating all this.’

‘But
isn’t it
awful?’
he said.

‘It’s a
mystery, nothing really to do with us.’ She made the excuse that someone else
was waiting to talk to her on the line; then thought about Roland with a sort
of despair.

After
that, she began to think over the story of Margaret Murchie. On an impulse she
rang the studio, which was in the same building as her office, where the film
was being made about an artist with Hurley Reed as adviser. He was expected
later in the morning. Annabel left a message to call her back. Annabel had
always been rather tactful and ready to render good services to all around her.
But of late, with the boredom of daily life, the absence of a steady
man-friend, and above all her helpless devotion to Roland, she had become easily
exasperated. She longed deeply to tell Hurley Reed all she had found out about
Margaret Murchie. hoping mainly that he didn’t know already but in any case
that they could discuss it. Anything was better than nothing. And the rain was
pouring down mercilessly outside the window.