Villa Niobe Paphos.
Republic of Cyprus.
20th August.
Dear Kenneth,
I can’t tell you how pleased I am you can come to Venice. Not just because of having you to cast an expert eye over Aunt Prissie’s antiques, you know — though it’s marvellous of you to do that for me and I feel a bit guilty about taking you away from more important things — but far more just because I’m looking forward so much to you being there. I don’t know anyone at all in Venice — and even if I did, there couldn’t be anyone like you to go and look at things with.
You’ll be getting there a week before me, so you’ll have all that time to rummage round the Palazzo Artemisio — if it really is something you’ll enjoy doing — and see if there’s a lost Titian in the broom cupboard or anything like that. You’d rather stay in a hotel, I expect, until I arrive — you’d be a bit miserable staying on your own in the Palazzo with no one but the housekeeper — you must let me pay the bill, of course, and all your other expenses. I hope you’re not going to be difficult about it — I want to set up as a patron of the arts, you know, and earn myself a footnote in your biography, so please don’t go all Scots and uppity on me.
My boat docks in Venice on the morning of the 9th — that’s a Friday — and that’ll be the end of your peaceful rummaging. You must come and stay with me at the Palazzo, and I’ll drag you all round Venice, making you tell me about painting and architecture.
The only boring thing I have to do is to talk to all these lawyers — well, two of them. I knew I’d have to talk to the Italian one, who looked after things for Aunt Prissie — but my trustee in London is insisting on sending an English one as well. My trustee thinks that I “don’t appreciate the adverse fiscal consequences of the present situation.” So he wants to instruct Counsel — that’s another sort of lawyer, it seems, who uses even longer words than a solicitor — to come and explain them to me. He’s making such a fuss, I’m going to have to let him — and I’ll have to invite the poor man to stay at the Palazzo — it would be a bit mean not to, wouldn’t it? So I’m afraid he’ll be popping up all over the place, talking about fiscal consequences. It’s all a complete waste of time, because what they want me to do is leave Cyprus, if you please — seriously, just sell the Villa and the farm and clear out. Leave Cyprus indeed — as if I would! Aren’t lawyers ridiculous?
Anyway, I shall tell them that my friend Kenneth Dunfermline, the distinguished sculptor, is personally designing a most beautiful fountain especially for the Villa Niobe, so I can’t possibly leave. And they’ll be so impressed, they’ll go away and leave us in peace.
You don’t seem to understand, Ken, that it really is quite something for me to have made friends with someone like you — you’re so completely different from anyone else I know. And I could so easily not have met you at all — if you hadn’t decided to come to Cyprus last year, or even if you’d decided to stop for lunch in some different village. The really extraordinary thing, though, is that you put up with me at all, considering how hopelessly ignorant I am about painting and sculpture and everything, and can’t talk about anything except Cyprus politics and how the olives are doing — it’s simply astonishing that I don’t bore you to tears.
Well, I shan’t talk about anything like that in Venice — just look at paintings and read a lot of Byron and ask you silly questions about art. Will you find me a nuisance? Yes, I expect so, and be too soft-hearted to tell me.
Till the 9th, then—
Yours
Richard
Palazzo Artemisio.
Saturday 10th September.
It’s appallingly dangerous writing to you, but I’ve got to — I must know what’s happening, Ken. Except from you, I’ve no way at all of finding out anything that’s happened since I went into the canal last night from the balcony of the Cytherea. I’m like a prisoner in this place — I daren’t go out in case I meet someone who knows me. I’ve told the housekeeper I’m ill — I really am ill, too, no pretence about it.
For pity’s sake, Ken, can’t you understand that I never thought you were serious? I thought it was all a sort of joke — well, not a joke, exactly, but make-believe, a sort of game. Yes, all right, it was a pretty morbid game and I joined in and played it too, practising his signature, and so on — but I never thought you meant it, I never thought you really meant to kill him.
Most of the things you did that you said were part of it, like going to Cyprus and finding him and making friends with him — I thought you were really doing them for quite ordinary, sensible reasons, because it did make sense, after all, to find someone with plenty of money who liked your work and could commission you to do things.
So that morning when he was due to arrive in Venice — yesterday, I suppose, it doesn’t seem possible — I just expected, when I went back to our room — I swear, Ken, I just expected to find you talking to him and showing him the drawings of the fountain and him saying how good they were. And I thought you’d introduce me to him and we’d probably like each other and all be friends. It’s so much what I expected and I can imagine it so clearly, there are moments I can make myself believe it’s what really happened, and that the other thing’s just a nightmare.
Only not for long, because I know the nightmare is what really happened — going back and finding you’d killed him. I feel sick when I think about it. You say you did it for me, because you love me — but I don’t understand that; if you really cared about me you couldn’t want me to go through such a horrible experience.
When we came downstairs again, I was in such a panic I hardly knew what I was doing. All through lunch I kept wondering what would happen if someone went into our room and found him. You hadn’t really hidden him, you know, Ken, not properly — think of all those chambermaids — just suppose one of them had wanted to clean the room — she’d have moved the beds, wouldn’t she?
So I knew, when you’d gone, that I’d have to do it the way you said — go back to that room and stay there until it was dark. On my own for six hours with a dead man, thinking about what had happened. And I couldn’t do it — I just couldn’t, Ken, I don’t know how you could expect me to.
So I took Julia back with me. You’ll be angry with me, I suppose — and God knows it sounds a grotesque thing to have done, making love to someone on one bed with a man lying dead under the other — but I couldn’t help it. I went on making love to her all afternoon, because it was the only way of not thinking about anything, and if I started thinking I couldn’t bear it.
I kept telling myself that I mustn’t fall asleep, but the terrifying thing is that I actually did; I can hardly believe it. I woke up and Julia wasn’t there and the shadows were longer and for about half a minute I felt happy, really terribly happy, because I thought I’d dreamed it all and now I’d woken up and everything was all right. Well, that passed pretty quickly.
The worst thing was putting him back on the bed. He was nearly too heavy for me — you hadn’t thought about that at all, had you, Ken? And you’d said he wouldn’t bleed much, because of the wound being straight to his heart — but he did, he’d bled quite a lot, and I had to clean the place on the floor where he’d been lying. And in spite of all the planning, you didn’t manage to give me much time, did you? I was still waiting for it to get properly dark when I heard you in the corridor — so I had to risk it and go straight into the canal.
After that, I suppose you’d say it all went quite well — I was horribly frightened and I’ll stink of the canal forever — but I didn’t drown and I didn’t run into any sharp obstacles and I didn’t lose my little bundle of clothes. I came out of the canal at the place you showed me — though God knows I never thought then that I’d really be doing it — and dried myself and dressed. I got to the Palazzo without anyone seeing me and presented myself to the housekeeper as Richard Tiverton. She didn’t suspect anything, but she was very worried by me looking so ill — I was feeling very sick and couldn’t stop shivering. And you say you did it because you loved me.
Now there are going to be all these lawyers — I’m terrified about it, especially the English one — suppose it’s someone who knows me? Even if he does, I suppose he might not recognize me — I’m looking so frightful, I can’t bear to see myself in the glass. Well, I’ve got to see them anyway, there’s no way out of it.
After that I’ll be able to leave Venice. I’ll go at night by water-taxi to somewhere on the Lagoon and have a car ready to drive South somewhere. I expect I can get the Italian lawyer to arrange all that for me — now that I’m so rich, I suppose he’ll be happy to indulge my eccentricities. I’ll say I’ve accepted their advice about leaving Cyprus — that’ll explain my not going back there. And they know about Richard hating England, so they won’t expect me to go there, either. That means I can avoid the two really dangerous places without anyone thinking there’s anything odd about it.
But there isn’t anywhere that’s really safe, is there? The world’s a small place nowadays. I shan’t be able to walk down a street in Paris or go to a party in San Francisco or eat in a restaurant in Melbourne and be absolutely sure of not meeting someone who says, “Why, it’s Ned Watson, isn’t it?” Or “But you’re not Richard Tiverton.” So I’ll have to be one of those reclusive millionaires, won’t I? Staying indoors by myself all the time and not seeing anyone. The only person I can safely have anything to do with will be you, won’t it, Ken? You’ll have me all to yourself for ever and ever just as you’ve always wanted — how terribly clever of you. My clever friend Kenneth, who turns stone into people and people into stone.
I can’t leave Venice until I’ve heard from you, of course. Don’t ring me, not unless it’s urgent — the telephone’s terribly public and someone might overhear something. But write as soon as you can, for God’s sake.
I know we agreed that if I wrote to you I’d write as Richard. But after a letter like this, there doesn’t seem much point in saying I’m anyone but
Yours, whether I like it or not,
Ned
The studio. Night. I don’t know what day it is. I haven’t been out since I got home. Your letter came today. I’m sorry you’re ill. It’s true, I didn’t think properly how bad it would be for you. I’m sorry. I thought I’d worked everything out right, but I’ve got it wrong somehow and it’s too late to change it.
But I don’t understand about it not being serious. It was always serious, Ned. Ever since you said you wished you were him, I knew I had to do it for you. I saw it was the only way of you having the kind of life you ought to have and I knew I ought to give it to you. Because if there was something I wouldn’t do to give it to you it would mean I didn’t love you enough. And I did, Ned, because you were so beautiful.
It all seemed to be going right to begin with. I found Richard and he looked enough like you. Not really like you, not beautiful like you, but enough. And it was easy making friends with him, he liked me. I liked him, too, but I saw he had all the things you ought to have and I ought to give them to you. So I only had to wait for the right time and place.
And even afterwards, I still felt I’d done everything right and it was all working out properly. I felt sort of dizzy, but very clear at the same time, as if I were watching myself from outside doing all the things I had to do. I went on feeling like that all the time I was in Verona. I talked to the American girl, the one with nice clothes, all about Byzantine art. The way I used to talk to Richard — he liked me telling him about things like that.
But when I went back it all began to go wrong, because you were lying there and I remembered you were dead and I didn’t know what to do anymore. I’m sorry, I’m getting confused, I mean that’s how it seemed, I haven’t slept much, I’ve been working on the fountain.
I remembered I mustn’t let them see your face, I couldn’t remember why, but I knew it was important. So I held you and people came and wanted to take you away but I wouldn’t let them, not all alone without me.
You sound as if you don’t want me anymore. I don’t mind really, it doesn’t seem to matter now.
But you mustn’t say I don’t really love you, because I do, I really do love you, Richard.
RICHARD TIVERTON PALAZZO ARTEMISIO VENICE. PLEASE RING ME NOON EXACTLY ITALIAN TIME TOMORROW FRIDAY. IMPORTANT.
KENNETH
“And what troubles the Vice-Quaestor,” said Timothy, “is, of course, the matter of the telegram. The one from Kenneth asking Ned to ring him.” Timothy’s gaze was directed towards a point on the panelling of the Corkscrew some eighteen inches or so above my head: the tone, though not the syntax of his remark, suggested that he intended a question.
It was the following Tuesday. The Vice-Quaestor had felt matters sufficiently clarified to allow Julia, Timothy and Marylou to leave Venice. Julia’s restoration to Lincoln’s Inn was thought an occasion sufficiently auspicious to justify our lunching again in the Corkscrew. Selena had telephoned Marylou, inviting her to join us.
The arrangement required me to disregard yet again, for longer than I could have wished, the tender call of Scholarship. I felt it right, however, to make the sacrifice. It seemed fair and proper that all those involved in the affair should be given a full explanation of the process of reasoning by which I had arrived at the truth: I have no patience with obscurity.
I had not been able to enter immediately on my exposition. We had begun with an account by Julia
of her experiences as a suspect. At the stage at which Julia thought it appropriate, for reasons obscure to me, to start quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Selena reminded her that her Opinion on Schedule 7 of the Finance Act, at present being typed and promised by half past one, would require her signature.
Heeding the call of her professional responsibilities, Julia had said that it was very kind of us all to have gone to so much trouble on her behalf and we must allow her to pay for the next bottle of Nierstein. Then, pausing only to take from her handbag and give to Selena a sufficient sum for that purpose, retrieve from the floor the various articles involuntarily extracted from her handbag at the same time, and apologize to the man at the adjoining table for having spilt over him the remnants of her prawn salad, she had left us.
I was still not able to embark on my explanation. Timothy was urged by Ragwort to describe in greater detail the events of the previous Friday. He spoke with some feeling of the difficulties he had experienced in soothing the Vice-Quaestor and persuading him that neither Julia, Marylou nor himself could assist further with his enquiries.
It was at the end of this that he made his remark, tonally, as I have mentioned, though not syntactically, a question, about the Vice-Quaestor’s mental disquiet on the matter of the telegram from Kenneth.
“Because of course,” continued Timothy, “if Kenneth had not sent such a telegram, Ned would not have been talking to him on the telephone at the moment when Marylou recognized him and the Vice-Quaestor could have arranged for the police in London to arrest Kenneth before he knew anything was amiss. As it was — well, the Vice-Quaestor is not entirely pleased. He thinks it a very remarkable coincidence.”
“Timothy,” I said, “were you now to learn that this was other than a remarkable coincidence, would you feel obliged to inform the Vice-Quaestor?” Lowering his gaze to a point only six inches above my head, Timothy answered that he would not.
“In that case, my dear Timothy,” I said, “I shall be quite candid with you. It was I who sent the telegram.”
“Yes,” said Timothy, “I thought you did. It was taking a grave responsibility, wasn’t it, to leave Dunfermline with that choice?”
“It would have been a graver one, surely,” I said, “to leave him without one. Still, you will no doubt wish me to explain how I first came to suspect—”
“Well, not at the moment, actually,” said Timothy, drawing back his chair and rising from the table. “I am instructed to advise in conference, as a matter of some urgency, on the devolution of the Tiverton Trust Fund, in the event, which must now occur, of the settlor having no descendant living on 19th December of this year. My solicitor is arriving at two o’clock — I really must leave you.”
I am very fond of Timothy and would never deny that he is, in some ways, a young man of some ability; but I have often felt, and did so now, that he lacks the intellectual curiosity which is the mark of the truly first-class mind.
“What I find curious,” said Ragwort, “is the fact that they thought of this plan before Kenneth and Richard had even met. How did they know that Richard even existed? He had no friends in England.”
“The Tiverton trust,” I answered, “was managed in England. Given the magnitude of the funds, there would no doubt have been considerable correspondence over the years between the trustees and the Inland Revenue. It doesn’t seem very unlikely that Ned, being employed by that Department, should have at some time discovered that a young man of about the same age as himself, resident in Cyprus, was the heir to an estate in excess of a million pounds. So one day, I suppose, when Ned can’t afford some small luxury he fancies, ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘I wish I were Richard Tiverton.’”
“It was very wrong of him,” said Ragwort, “to have mentioned it at all. Any information given to the Inland Revenue is supposed to be in the strictest confidence.”
“Yes, Ragwort,” I said, “his behaviour, in that respect at any rate, was certainly most culpable. But you would no doubt like me to explain—”
“Could we make it some other time?” said Ragwort. “It’s most interesting, but I really must go. I have an appointment before the Master at two-thirty. And after telling him that it’s urgent enough to be heard in the Long Vacation, I’d better not be late for it. You will all excuse me, won’t you?”
It was all a little provoking. Still, looking on the bright side, it left more Nierstein for those of us who remained.
“I say, Hilary,” said Cantrip, when he had measured out equitably the contents of the bottle, “what was it you were rabbiting on about on Thursday, last time we were in here, about the significance of Ned being nervous on the Friday morning? Or were you just having one of your loopy spells?”
“Cantrip,” I said calmly, “I would be grateful if you would remember, for the first and last time, that I am not subject to what you term loopy spells, by which curious expression you mean, I suppose, intermittent bouts of insanity. It was the signs of nervousness displayed by Ned on Friday morning which would have enabled me, had I not allowed my mind to be distracted by irrelevant matters, to say immediately how the crime was done and who committed it.”
“Well,” said Selena, “we know now that he had just become an accessory to murder. Enough, I imagine, to make anyone nervous. I cannot see, however, that an attack of nervousness is uniquely referable to such a cause.”
“My dear Selena,” I said, “have you forgotten that he had cut himself shaving?”
“No,” said Selena, “but I don’t see anything very odd about that.”
“I do. Very odd indeed. Consider — what impression do you have from Julia’s letters of the young man’s appearance? Leaving out the rhetoric?”
“Well,” said Selena, “that he was thin and had a good profile. And a nice complexion. And very fair hair.”
“Precisely so. And at nine o’clock on the morning of the murder Julia had seen him on the terrace of the Cytherea looking very much at his best and having evidently completed a full toilette. Can you really imagine, Selena, that a young man of his colouring and complexion would find it necessary to resort again to his razor before lunch-time?”
“Why, Professor Tamar,” said Marylou, “that’s really brilliant.”
“It’s kind of you to say so; but to one trained in the techniques of Scholarship, it’s really very simple. But what followed from it?”
“I say,” said Cantrip, “sorry to interrupt, but what did Ragwort say he was doing this afternoon?”
“He’s got a Master’s appointment,” said Selena. “I thought he said this morning that it was something to do with that case you’ve got against each other about the washing-line. But as you’re still here, I assume—”
“Strewth,” said Cantrip, leaping from his chair. “The blighter, he might have reminded me.” By the time the door of the Corkscrew swung to behind him, he was no more than a blur of black and white on the other side of High Holborn, moving fast towards the Law Courts.
“Do please go on, Professor Tamar,” said Marylou. “I think it’s simply fascinating.” She is a delightful girl.
“Once I realized that the razor-cut must have been a fake, my mind turned immediately to the idea of an impersonation. At some stage later in the day, Ned was to impersonate someone who had sustained such an injury, or such a person was to impersonate him. But later in the day Ned had been a corpse. I was drawn irresistibly to the conclusion that the corpse was, as it were, an involuntary impostor. It was clear, Marylou, from your own account of the discovery of the crime, that Kenneth had not allowed anyone who knew Ned to look closely at the body. But he must have known, of course, that there would be a medical examination and that even such a trifling wound would probably be noticed. If none of those who had last seen Ned remembered him having suffered anything of the kind, it was possible that the police might begin to entertain some doubt, however small, about the identity of the corpse.”
“That’s really brilliant,” said Marylou again.
“I should, as I say, have seen it all much earlier, without knowing the medical evidence. That, of course, was conclusive. Julia is admittedly unobservant—”
“It’s not exactly,” said Selena, “that she’s unobservant. It’s just that she doesn’t always notice what’s happening.”
“I think,” said Marylou, “that it’s because Julia is a very intelligent woman and has her mind on other things.”
“Quite so,” I said. “Well, I allow that Julia, with her mind on higher things, might not have noticed on waking that her room was littered with corpses. But if she had retired to bed with a young man at about half past two and he had been dead by three, I cannot think that the events occurring in the meantime would have roused her to such immoderate enthusiasm as was displayed in her last letter from Venice.”
“And when,” asked Selena, “did you decide that the corpse was Richard Tiverton?”
“There, I confess, my reasoning was more speculative. But there seemed no reason to go to such lengths simply to fake Ned’s death. Almost certainly, the purpose of the crime must have been to enable Ned to take over the identity of someone else — the identity of the corpse. And what kind of identity was it likely to be? Well, a man, certainly, probably English, and about the same age as Ned. But the main thing was that the alternative identity must be more attractive than his own — one naturally thought of money. We were looking, therefore, for a young man of substantial fortune, almost certainly in Venice for the first time. There may, I concede, be several people answering that description; but we already knew of one and it seemed worth pursuing. It was all quite speculative, however, until we established the connection between Kenneth and Richard Tiverton. Then I was sure.”
“Well,” said Selena, finishing her glass, “I suppose you had some evidence for your theory, Hilary. I can’t say I’d have cared to go into Court on it. I really must go now. I’ve promised Henry that my Opinion on the Settled Land Act will be ready by four o’clock.”
After exchanging with Marylou expressions of pleasure in having met and hopes of meeting again, she left us.
“Professor Tamar,” said Marylou, “I’d be really honoured, if you don’t think it’s impertinent, if you’d permit me to buy another bottle of wine.” When an invitation is couched in such terms, one can hardly refuse. I allowed her to order another bottle.
“There is just one point,” she said, rather timidly, as we settled to drinking it in the short time available under English licensing laws. “I mean, I liked going back to Venice on my own and it was a very valid and wonderful experience for me. But wasn’t there anyone nearer who could have recognized Ned?”
“Graziella,” I replied, “was on holiday — I didn’t know how difficult it might be to find her. Nor did I know which members of the staff of the Cytherea had seen enough of Ned to identify him with confidence — time was short and we could not afford mistakes.”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand that. But Julia was staying just across the Lagoon and surely—?”
“My dear Marylou, I hope you will not feel that I have spared Julia’s feelings at the expense of yours. But Julia, in her own way, had been quite fond of Ned. And if she had identified him, she would no doubt have Felt responsible for the consequent events. It would, I think, have distressed her considerably — Julia, as you will have gathered, is a sentimental woman.”