As she uttered the words, she saw shock transform itself into the adamant disbelief which so often delayed the onset of grief. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Marta said, shaking her off. ‘You just want to hurt me for what I tried to do to you. That couldn’t possibly be true.’
‘I’m afraid it is, Mother,’ Vintner said, and there was a hardness in his voice which signalled to Josephine that his deadly game was reaching its conclusion. ‘You see, what I haven’t told you is that Father gave me a few instructions before he died. You don’t think that pathetic note he left on his desk was his final word, do you?
That was just something to be read out at the inquest for Tey’s benefit.’ He glanced at her for a second and then turned back to his mother. ‘No – Elliott Vintner was capable of something far more creative than that. The very last thing he wrote was actually a letter to me. I’ve got it here, in fact.’ He rested the pistol on the piano and took a sheet of paper – worn and dirty from repeated handling
– out of the pocket of his corduroy trousers. Josephine recognised the scrawl of dark red ink from correspondence she had had by the same hand. ‘Shall I share it with you?’ He did not wait for an answer but unfolded the paper and started to read. ‘To become an expert in murder cannot be so difficult,’ he began, then paused and looked again at Josephine. ‘You’ll recognise that bit, of course, but guess what? It’s actually true.’
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He continued and Josephine knew that she was watching a performance, as carefully rehearsed as anything he had ever spoken on stage. She listened while the letter was read out, and Rafe Vintner’s voice was replaced in her head by his father’s, that low, confident drawl which had tried and failed to destroy her in court. These words, however, were far deadlier; the argument, more emotionally charged: ‘“We have always been close, Rafe, bound not just by our love for each other but by your mother’s betrayal of us both. If that love means anything to you, you can keep it alive, even after I’m gone, but only if all traces of that betrayal are destroyed. I can tell you how to do that, but you must search within your heart to decide if I’m asking too much. If the answer to that is yes, then forgive me for asking and go on with your life as best you can; if, however, the answer is no, if you share any of the pain and resentment that has led me to ask such a thing of my son, then this is what you must do to protect my name and to lighten the burden which you will carry alone after I’m gone.”’ Rafe Vintner’s voice was filled with emotion as he read on, outlining instructions from a dead man which had sealed the fates of Elspeth Simmons and Bernard Aubrey, and now seemed certain to do the same for Marta and for her. Josephine only had to look at Marta to know that Elliott Vintner’s final wish – that she should be made to suffer beyond all measure before she died – was a fait accompli: she could see that Aubrey’s relationship to Arthur had been as much a revelation to Marta as the identity of the girl on the train, and the combination would surely destroy her. ‘That’s the gist of it, anyway.’
Vintner folded the letter carefully and put it back in his pocket before picking up the gun again. ‘I won’t bore you with the practical details at the end except to say that they were very thorough.’
There was silence in the room and Josephine wondered if his arrogance was such that he expected applause. When Marta eventually spoke, her voice was barely audible but surprisingly steady.
‘So it wasn’t a mistake at all. When we met at the theatre afterwards, you already knew exactly what you’d done.’ It was a statement, not a question, but her son was eager to explain further.
‘Oh yes. I had no intention whatsoever of killing Tey – not then, 258
at least. I was going to pretend I’d misunderstood your description of her, but then you told me to go for the woman in the hat – so it ended up being your mistake. Never in my wildest dreams could I have hoped for that. It’s the ultimate irony, don’t you think? You instructed me to kill your own daughter. How Father would have laughed,’ he said, turning to Josephine, ‘to paraphrase your splendid play.’
‘And then you tricked me into agreeing to kill Aubrey by making me panic,’ Marta continued, ‘knowing all along that, if I did, I’d be killing the last link with Arthur.’
‘Yes. Neat isn’t it? Two down, one to go.’
Josephine knew it was only a matter of time before Vintner carried out his father’s instructions to the letter and added her to the tally as a bonus. Playing for time, and understanding that he was the type to enjoy talking about his cruelty, she said, ‘How could you have known that Elspeth was going to be on that train? Or anywhere near me? We met by chance.’
‘Not exactly. I gather from poor Hedley – he’s a friend of mine, you know – that Bernard Aubrey arranged the tickets as a treat for his soon-to-be-acknowledged great-niece. In fact, Hedley saved me a lot of trouble all round. I knew who Elspeth was and what she was interested in – Father could tell me that much because he’d made it his business to keep an eye on things after he’d given her away. I knew I could arrange to bump into her, either at the theatre or at that ridiculous shop, but I thought I was going to have to seduce her myself to get her where I wanted. As it happened, Hedley did my dirty work for me and there was no need to venture into those murky waters, so I suppose I have to own up to a bit of help there. I couldn’t believe my luck when Hedley came downstairs one night after the show and asked for an autograph for Elspeth Simmons. It only took a bit of gentle encouragement to get them together and, after that, I could always find out where she was. It was embarrassingly easy, really. He was so excited about her coming down this weekend that he never stopped talking about it and how thrilled she’d be that his precious Mr Aubrey had arranged for her to meet her favourite author. It was pathetic.’
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Now Marta spoke up. Unlike Josephine, however, she was not trying to distract Vintner but to understand him. ‘How could you have so much hate in you for someone you’ve never known?’ she asked. ‘She did nothing to you. She didn’t even know you existed, for God’s sake. That girl – your sister – was just as much a victim in all of this as you are. More so. And yet you took her life away just because your father told you to. What sort of puppet are you?’
‘She was my half-sister, actually. Get it right, Mother. I did have my doubts, I admit, but you soon dispelled those for me. If I was ever remotely tempted to ignore Father and just settle for having a mother again, you put me off that straight away. Do you know how desperate you sounded when I came to see you in that pathetic place and offered to reunite you with your daughter? I thought Father was wrong about what you’d agree to do, but you actually wanted her – your piece of the gardener – so badly that you were prepared to kill. There was a time when I wanted you to love me that much but you never did, so I thought I might as well cut my losses and go ahead with Father’s plan. He did love me, you see, so I thought I’d make one parent proud of me, at least.’
‘Oh, he’d certainly be proud. You’re in a class of your own.’
Marta’s defiance was surely a symptom of shock but it seemed to unsettle Vintner a little. Whatever reaction he had expected from her – horror, despair, grief – it had not been this and, for the first time, Josephine sensed that he had underestimated his mother. His response, though, was to continue to taunt her.
‘So what if I did do it because Father asked me to?’ he shouted.
‘I loved him, and that doesn’t make me a puppet. You destroyed him by what you did all those years ago, and what do you think my childhood was like after that? Believe me, I’m more than happy to do as he asked because his memory is worth protecting. What memories do I have of my mother to look back on? Oh yes, the one of you playing Lady Chatterley and fucking someone who wasn’t fit to lick his boots. So yes, I killed for him and yes, I enjoyed it. I found your apology for a daughter in that railway carriage and I stabbed her with Father’s bayonet. It’s a shame she didn’t know her own father, of course, but I left an iris with her in his memory – I 260
thought you’d appreciate that. Aubrey had one, too, except his was an original. Your gardener kept a flower head in his tobacco tin –
sent by you from our garden, presumably. Father found it on his body when he was dragged out of the dirt, and he kept it in case it came in useful.’
Marta was on her feet by now and Josephine recognised someone who had long ceased to care whether she lived or died.
Vintner took a couple of steps towards her, tightening his hold on the pistol. ‘And I did something in your honour, too, Mother. I shaved her head. That’s what they do in asylums, isn’t it? I would have made a better job of it but I was interrupted. Still, it’s the thought that counts, and it was the least I could do for you. You said you always wondered if she looked like you. Well, she didn’t really so I thought I’d make sure you had something in common.
I’d hate for her to have been a disappointment after all these years.’
‘For God’s sake, you don’t know anything about Elspeth – either of you.’ Josephine’s fear was quite forgotten in her indignation on Elspeth’s behalf. ‘You destroyed everything she had,’ she shouted.
‘Her childhood and her family, her sense of who she was and who she could be, and now even her life. Leave her some respect, at least.’
She had spoken without considering the impact of her words, but they served both to distract Vintner and to break Marta’s self-control. Vintner only turned to Josephine for a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for his mother to hurl herself at him in fury with no thought for the danger she was in. It occurred to Josephine that Marta may have wanted him to fire and put her out of her misery but, if that was indeed the case, she was unlucky. The gun went off as she knocked him off balance but the only casualty was a small alabaster idol, given to Lydia as a present and kept on the mantelpiece. Vintner fell to the floor, dragging Marta down with him, and Josephine scoured the room frantically for something she could use as a weapon, but there was no need; as he went down, Vintner’s head smashed into the corner of the piano stool and he lay still on the carpet, the gun a few inches from his hand.
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Marta did not move immediately and Josephine began to wonder if she, too, was hurt, but eventually she raised herself onto her knees and looked at her son, then put her hand to his neck. ‘He’s still alive,’ she said, and Josephine stepped across to pick up the pistol, but she was too slow. Marta got there first, and Josephine felt a resurgence of her earlier fear; no matter how much sympathy she had for Marta’s grief, the woman had tried to kill her and here she was with a far more straightforward opportunity. But that was not what Marta had in mind. She stood staring down at her son, the gun levelled at his chest, and Josephine could not even begin to imagine the emotions that ran through her head as she held the life of her child in the balance. For a second or two, she thought Marta was actually going to pull the trigger but, in the end, the battle in her heart came out on the side of mercy. Instead, she held the gun out to Josephine.
‘Here, take this,’ she said wearily. ‘I hope you won’t need it, but just in case. Will you get him some help?’
Josephine took the weapon from her. It was the first time in her life that she had held something whose only purpose was to kill, and she was disconcerted by how natural it seemed, by how comfortably the weight of the gun rested in her hand. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, although she thought she already knew the answer.
‘To finish what he started. Or perhaps I should say to finish what I started all those years ago. I know I’m not in a position to ask for anything from you, but I’d like to end it in my own way.
No one could punish me more than I can punish myself.’
‘Marta, please, you don’t have to do that,’ Josephine said, and tentatively raised the gun.
‘That would be such an easy way out for me, but not for you,’
Marta said, gently lowering Josephine’s hand. ‘It’s impossible to live with someone’s blood on your hands – I should know – so I wouldn’t want you to do it even if you were capable.’ She knelt beside her son and lightly ran her fingers over his cheek. ‘He’s so like his father, you know. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it.’
Quickly she stood up to leave the room but turned back as she got 262
to the door. ‘You can’t possibly justify to someone why you tried to take their life, but I am sorry, Josephine. I really am.’
Then she was gone, and Josephine waited for the front door to close. Keeping her eyes on Elliott Vintner’s son, she moved over to the telephone to call Archie.
As it happened, Scotland Yard arrived rather sooner than Josephine expected in the shape of a bewildered young constable who seemed more frightened of Rafe Vintner than she was; God help them if Vintner had been conscious, she thought. Minutes later, Archie’s car screeched to a halt outside, flanked by an ambu-lance and a marked police vehicle.
‘It really is the Flying Squad, isn’t it?’ she said when he appeared at the door, but Penrose was in no mood to joke.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing coming here alone?’ he yelled at her. ‘Do you realise what could have happened to you?’
‘I’ve spent the last hour trapped in a room by a madman with a gun, so I think I’ve got a fair idea,’ she said sharply, then softened when she saw the panic in his eyes. ‘But nothing did happen to me, Archie. I’m all right – honestly.’
As Vintner was lifted onto a stretcher and taken from the room, Josephine explained exactly what had happened. ‘God, it’s like something out of a Greek tragedy,’ Penrose said when she had finished, and looked at Fallowfield, who was packing away the gun ready to remove it from the scene. ‘We need to circulate Marta Fox’s description immediately. If she leaves London we might never find her.’
Josephine signalled to Fallowfield to wait a moment. ‘Will she hang for what she’s done?’ she asked.
Penrose considered. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t actually killed anyone and, from what you tell me, a good barrister could argue that she wasn’t of sound mind when she agreed to help Vintner. She’s been through so much and, ironically, the fact that she’s been committed to an asylum will work in her favour in court.’