The Private Patient (35 page)

“Oh, but you are, Commander. With the death of what Sydney Smith described as rational religion and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethicists. We must work out our own salvation with diligence based on what we believe. So tell me, are there any circumstances in which you would break the law to benefit another?”

“Benefit in what way?”

“In any way a benefit can be conferred. To satisfy a need. To protect. To right a wrong.”

Dalgliesh said, “Then, put so crudely, I think the answer must be yes. I could, for example, see myself helping someone I loved to a merciful death if she were being stretched out on Shakespeare's rack of this tough world, and every breath was drawn in agony. I hope I wouldn't need to. But since you're posing the question, yes, I can see myself breaking the law to advantage someone I loved. I'm not so sure about righting a wrong. That supposes I would have the wisdom to decide what is in fact right and what is wrong, and the humility to consider whether any action I could take would make things better or worse. Now I could put a question to you. Forgive me if you find it impertinent. Would the loved person, for you, be Candace Westhall?”

Kershaw got painfully to his feet and, grasping his crutch, moved over to the window and stood for some moments looking out, as if there were a world outside where such a question would never be put, or, if put, would require no answer. Dalgliesh waited. Then Kershaw turned back to him, and Dalgliesh watched while, like someone learning for the first time how to walk, he made his way with uncertain steps back to his chair.

Kershaw said, “I'm going to tell you something that I have never told another human being and never shall. I do that because I believe that with you it will be safe. And perhaps there comes a time at the end of life when a secret becomes a burden which one longs to place on another's shoulders, as if the mere fact that someone else knows it and will share in its keeping somehow lessens the weight. I suppose that's why religious people go to confession. What an extraordinary ritual cleansing that must be. However, that's not open to me and I don't propose to change a lifetime's non-belief for what to me would be a spurious comfort at the end. So I shall tell you. It will impose no burden on you and no distress, and I am speaking to Adam Dalgliesh the poet, not Adam Dalgliesh the detective.”

Dalgliesh said, “At the moment there can be no difference between them.”

“Not in your mind, Commander, but there can be in mine. And there's another reason for speaking—not admirable, but, then, which of them is? I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to talk to a civilised man about something other than the state of my health. The first thing the staff or any visitor asks, and the last, is how I am feeling. That's how I'm defined now, by sickness and mortality. No doubt you find it difficult to be polite when people insist on talking about your poetry.”

“I try to be gracious since they mean to be kind, but I hate it and it isn't easy.”

“So I'll keep off the poetry if you will keep off the state of my liver.”

He laughed, a high but harsh expelling of breath cut short. It sounded more like a cry of pain. Dalgliesh waited without speaking. Kershaw seemed to be gathering his strength, to be settling his skeletal form back more comfortably in his chair.

He said, “Basically it's a commonplace story. It happens everywhere. There's nothing unusual or interesting about it except to the people concerned. Twenty-five years ago when I was thirty-eight and Candace was eighteen, she had my child. I had recently become a partner in the firm, and it was I who took over Peregrine Westhall's concerns. They weren't particularly arduous or interesting, but I did visit often enough to see what was happening in that large stone house in the Cotswolds where the family then lived. The frail pretty wife who made illness a defence against her husband; the silent frightened daughter; the withdrawn young son. I think at the time I fancied myself as someone interested in people, sensitive of human emotions. Perhaps I was. And when I say that Candace was frightened, I'm not suggesting that her father abused or struck her. He had only one weapon, and that the deadliest—his tongue. I doubt whether he ever touched her, certainly not in affection. He was a man who disliked women. Candace was a disappointment to him from the moment of birth. I don't want to give you the impression that he was a deliberately cruel man. I knew him as a distinguished academic. I wasn't frightened of him. I could talk to him; Candace never could. He would have respected her if only she'd stood up to him. He hated subservience. And, of course, it would have helped if she'd been pretty. Doesn't it always with daughters?”

Dalgliesh said, “It's difficult to stand up to someone if you've been frightened of them since early childhood.”

Without apparently hearing the comment, Kershaw went on. “Our relationship—and I am not talking of a love affair—began when I was in Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford and saw Candace. She had come up in the Michaelmas term. She seemed anxious to chat, which was unusual, and I invited her to have coffee with me. Without her father she seemed to come alive. She talked and I listened. We agreed to meet again and it became something of a habit for me to drive to Oxford when she was there and take her for lunch outside the city. We were both energetic walkers and I looked forward to those autumnal meetings and our drives into the Cotswolds. We only had sex once, on an unusually warm afternoon, lying in the wood under a canopy of sunlit trees, when I suppose a combination of beauty and the seclusion of the trees, the warmth, our contentment after what had been a good lunch, led to the first kiss and from that to the inevitable seduction. I think afterwards we both knew it was a mistake. And we were perceptive enough about ourselves to know how it had happened. She'd had a bad week at college and was in need of comfort, and the power to confer comfort is seductive—and I don't mean merely physically. She was feeling sexually inadequate, alienated from her peers, and, whether she realised it or not, was looking for an opportunity to lose her virginity. I was older, kind, fond of her, available, the ideal partner for a first sexual experience, which she both wanted and feared. She could feel safe with me.

“And when, too late for an abortion, she told me about the pregnancy, we both knew that her family must never be told, particularly her father. She said that he despised her and would despise her more, not for the sex itself, which probably wouldn't worry him, but because it had been with the wrong person and she had been a fool in getting pregnant. She could tell me exactly what he would say, and it disgusted and horrified me. I was approaching middle age and unmarried. I had no wish to take responsibility for a child. I see now, when it is too late to put anything right, that we treated the baby as if she was some kind of malignant growth which had to be cut out, or at any rate got rid of, and then could be forgotten. If we're thinking in terms of a sin—and you, so I've heard, are the son of a priest and no doubt family influence still means something—then that was our sin. She kept the pregnancy secret and, when there was a risk of discovery, she went abroad, then came back and had the baby in a London nursing home. It wasn't difficult for me to arrange for private fostering followed by adoption. I was a lawyer; I had the knowledge and the money. And things were less controlled in those days.

“Candace was stoical throughout. If she loved her child, she managed to conceal it. Candace and I didn't see each other after the adoption. I suppose there was no true relationship on which we could build, and even to meet was to invite embarrassment, shame, the memory of inconvenience, of lies told, careers disrupted. Later she made up her time at Oxford. I suppose she read classics in an attempt to win her father's love. All I know is that she didn't succeed. She didn't see Annabel again—even her name was chosen by the prospective foster parents—until she was eighteen, but I think she must have kept in touch, however indirectly, and without ever acknowledging that the child was hers. She obviously discovered to which university Annabel had gained admission and took a job there, although it wasn't a natural choice for a classicist and one with a D.Phil.”

Dalgliesh asked, “Did you see Candace again?”

“Once only, and for the first time after twenty-five years. It was also the last. On Friday the seventh of December, she came back from visiting the old nurse, Grace Holmes, in Canada. Mrs. Holmes is the only surviving witness to Peregrine's will. Candace went out to pay her a sum of money—I think she said ten thousand pounds—to thank her for the help she gave in nursing Peregrine Westhall. The other witness, Elizabeth Barnes, was a retired member of the Westhall household and had been receiving a small pension, which, of course, ended with her death. Candace felt that Grace Holmes shouldn't go unrewarded. She was also anxious to have the nurse's evidence about the date of her father's death. She told me about Robin Boyton's ludicrous allegation that the dead body was concealed in a freezer until twenty-eight days after the grandfather's death had elapsed. Here is the letter Grace Holmes wrote and gave to her. She wanted me to have a copy, perhaps as insurance. If necessary I would pass it on to the head of the firm.”

He lifted the copy of the will and took from beneath it a sheet of writing paper, which he passed to Dalgliesh. The letter was dated Wednesday
5
December
2007
. The writing was large; the letters were round and carefully formed.

Dear Sir,

Miss Candace Westhall has asked me to send you a letter
confirming the date of the death of her father, Dr. Peregrine Westhall. This occurred on 5
March
2007
. He had been getting much worse
during the two preceding days and Dr. Stenhouse saw him on
3
March but did not prescribe any fresh medicines. Professor Westhall
said that he wanted to see the local clergyman, the Reverend
Matheson, and he came at once. He was driven by his sister. I was in
the house at the time but not in the sickroom. I could hear the professor
shouting but not what Mr. Matheson was saying. They did not stay
very long and the Reverend looked distressed when they left. Dr. Westhall died two days later, and I was in the house with his son and
Miss Westhall when he passed away. I was the one who laid him out.

I also witnessed his last will, which was in his own handwriting. This was some time in the summer of 2005, but I don't remember the
date. This was the last will I witnessed, although Professor Westhall
did make others during the preceding weeks, which Elizabeth Barnes
and I witnessed, but which I believe he tore up.

All I have written is true.

Yours sincerely, Grace Holmes

Dalgliesh said, “She was asked to confirm the date of his death, so why, I wonder, the paragraph referring to the will?”

“Since Boyton had raised doubts about the date his uncle died, perhaps she thought it important to mention anything concerned with Peregrine's death which might later be questioned.”

“But the will never was questioned, was it? And why should Candace Westhall feel it necessary to fly to Toronto and see Grace Holmes in person? The financial arrangements didn't need a visit and the other information about the date of death could be given by telephone. And why did she need it? She knew that the Reverend Matheson had seen her father two days before he died. The evidence of Matheson and his sister would be enough.”

“You're suggesting that the ten thousand pounds was a payment for this letter?”

Dalgliesh said, “For the last paragraph in the letter. I think it possible that Candace Westhall wanted to ensure that there would be no risk of disclosure from the only living witness to her father's will. Grace Holmes had helped nurse Peregrine Westhall and knew what his daughter had endured at his hands. I think she would be happy to see justice done in the end to Candace and Marcus. And, of course, she did take the ten thousand pounds. And what was she asked to do? Merely to say she had witnessed a handwritten will and couldn't remember on what date. Do you think for a moment that she will ever be persuaded to change her story, to say more than that? And she didn't witness the previous will. She would know nothing about the injustice to Robin Boyton. She could probably convince herself that she was speaking the truth.”

For nearly a minute they sat in silence; then Dalgliesh said, “If I asked you whether Candace Westhall on that last visit to you discussed the truth about her father's will, would you answer me?”

“No, and I don't suppose you'd expect me to. That's why you won't ask. But I can tell you this, Commander. She was not a woman to burden me with more than I needed to know. She wanted me to have Grace Holmes's letter, but that was the least important part of the visit. She told me that our daughter had died, and how. We had unfinished business. There were things both of us needed to say. I would like to think that when she left me much of the bitterness of the last twenty-five years had seeped away, but that would be a romantic sophism. We had done each other too much damage. I think she died happier because she knew she could trust me. That was all there was between us and all there had ever been, not love but trust.”

But Dalgliesh had one last question. He asked, “When I telephoned and you agreed to meet me, did you tell Candace Westhall that I was coming?”

Kershaw looked him in the face and said quickly, “I telephoned and told her. And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to rest. I'm glad you came, but we won't see each other again. If you'd be good enough to press that bell by the bed, Charles will escort you to the front door.”

He held out his hand. The grasp was still firm but the blaze in the eyes had died. Something had been shut down. With Charles waiting for him at the open door, Dalgliesh turned to take a last look at Kershaw. He was sitting in his chair, staring in silence at the empty grate.