Stephanie by Winston Graham
Supposing he briefed some brilliant counsel who got him off on a technicality, his life could not even then be resumed as he had known it. Embezzlement, with a three-year stretch? People would soon forget or overlook. Evading tax? Of course. Being a drug baron? Not quite ever.
Anyway, was he even prepared to take the chance? There was plenty of time to return home.
He went on.
He had thought a lot about Stephanie Locke over the last weeks. He remembered her open, appealing face, the wisps of fair hair falling over her forehead as she talked. But she just talked too much. That day he had focused his eyes on her pretty mouth and thought – it says too much. There were some women like that – and often they were pretty women – however much they might say they were going to be discreet, they never were. It was not in their nature to be.
Erasmus, of course, was in favour of immediate action, and drastic. The arranged motor smash – or a kidnapping and the body discovered a week later in some pond. They had discussed it all one night, three of them, eight hours of coffee and talk and talk and coffee, with intermittent exchanges with Hong Kong. Errol Colton had been in favour – if he had been in favour of anything – of the arranged car smash. It had finally been vetoed because of its haphazard result and the likely injury to the other driver. Kidnapping would be followed by an unending and unrelenting police inquiry. Then they had sent for Arun Jiva.
What had gone wrong? Nothing in the execution. Except for the suppression or theft of the suicide note, nothing had gone wrong. The present crisis was nearly all due to the persistence and interference of the girl’s ex-paratroop and crippled father. Better by far if he had himself become the object of an arranged accident in Corfu – if only in retaliation for the destruction of Colton and Apostoleris. Erasmus would be livid that it had not been fixed up.
But by then most of the damage had already been done – and Locke had done it.
Brune drove through a sleeping Swindon and got on to the M4, heading for the Severn Bridge. Time passed, headlights glimmering; still plenty of traffic on this road; but there were no queues at the bridge, as so often in daylight. He drove into Wales.
There would be no trouble in his getting out of the country. Although he had lived his life without apprehension, he had long ago prepared for the worst and then put it so far back in his mind as to be almost forgotten. A flat in Cardiff, a small car garaged underneath with the battery on a time-clock charger; suitcases, ample changes of clothing, valid passport in another name, hair dye, spectacles, sufficient particulars of another life, plenty of money in five different currencies.
So now a flight tomorrow morning from Cardiff to Dublin. Then Dublin to Zurich.
When he was knighted he had almost decided to close the flat. It was all too much cloak and dagger for the establishment figure, the rich scholarly philanthropist. Only a lack of decision had prevented him doing this. Fortunately now. Fortunately perhaps. He still could not quite believe he would make this move.
He drew in off the motorway at a service station and rang his home. The bell went on some time before it was answered. Then a strange voice came on, just giving the telephone number. All his staff were taught to answer ‘Sir Peter Brune’s residence’. He hung up without speaking. Even in the two hours since he last rang something had happened, events had moved on. He got back into his car, lit another cigar, smoked half of it in silence.
He thought over the address that was likely to be given about him at the Encaenia in two weeks’ time, the summary of his life, the rolling Latin phrases.
‘Of Anglo-Welsh parentage, educated in Cardiff, Lampeter, Oxford … brilliant Greek scholar, books on Euripides and Aristophanes …’
The Chancellor of Oxford University would pronounce the admission. ‘ Perceptive philosopher’ (How did it go? Philosopherum sollertissime), ‘scholar and philanthropist, benefactor of the University and of many deserving charities throughout the land, I admit you by my own authority and that of the whole University to the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.’
He was, he knew, by choice and by temperament a gentleman. He had been born to be what he eventually made himself. To achieve that end he had overstepped the limits of what was loosely termed a civilised society. While mankind – or that part of it which made the laws – considered certain acts criminal, he was out of bounds. Now, through a hideous succession of ill events and ill judgments, his behaviour would become public knowledge. Au poteau, in fact.
A schoolmaster had once said to him: ‘Brune, I believe you could talk yourself out of anything.’ So now. He would go back and talk himself out of this. It was not in his nature to run away.
He slowed to a crawling pace as he reached the outskirts of Cardiff. He had been born and brought up here. He knew it more intimately – and with the intimacy of youth – than any other city. Handsome as the town was, with much of the capital city about it – thanks, he supposed, chiefly to Lord Bute, who had made a fortune out of coal – it held too many bitter memories for him ever to want to return to it. To be brought up a rich man’s son and to become a bankrupt’s son; to have so strong and deep-rooted an attachment for his mother that after her death he had not been able to form a stable relationship with any other woman; to feel himself always to be more Welsh than English yet to be unable to come to terms with his chosen countrymen; to be about to go to Eton but instead to be sent to Cardiff High School, where his educated near-English voice had been a liability; to know himself to be much cleverer than most people yet to be unable to make the impression he wanted; to be used to money as a boy but to be brutally short of it as a teenager; all these sensations merged into an amalgam long associated with this town. When he had moved out of it and turned to the making of easy money, a new life had begun.
As he came into the city he saw Llandaff Cathedral on his left, and turned into the parking bay above it. There was a light on in the cathedral, a dim light perhaps left permanently on. Was the place locked, he wondered, or had vandals not yet crossed the Severn Bridge?
His mother had been a convinced Christian, his father a casual atheist; in this respect he took after his father; but he had been to the cathedral almost every Sunday and could still recite most of the relevant parts of the Prayer Book. Some of it he also knew in Welsh.
Still in his dinner jacket and black tie, he got out and went down the uneven path to the church door. How often he had trod this way.
The cathedral was lit as if with pilot lights, but there were sufficient of them to see the whole of the great Gothic edifice including – for one could not miss it – the Majestas, Epstein’s brilliant but brutally incongruous sculpture in aluminium and concrete which straddled the nave.
He walked down and took a seat in its shadow. These were the seats he and his mother had occupied Sunday after Sunday all those years ago. He knew exactly what he was going to do now. No hole-in-the-corner escape, no panic flights across the Irish Sea and a long life in exile in Singapore or Hong Kong. He would return and face it out. It was all suspicion. There was not a scrap of firm evidence the police could bring against him. Even the little he had said to Nari Prasad could be explained away.
All right, people would talk. The whole of Oxford University was a gigantic gossip shop. They would talk behind his back; but suppose he upped his contribution to the University to the million mark for this year? Who would refuse it on the tendentious grounds that it was tainted money? What of America? Half of the great universities of the past had been built and endowed by gangsters, men making fortunes out of the early railways, out of a corner in metals, out of a ruthless extermination of their rivals. Before they knew where they were, Oxford would be celebrating the opening of a whole new medical laboratory financed by him, or even a new college. Money in the end would solve anything. He would return to Postgate tonight and smilingly put himself into the clutches of the Lilliputians.
A clock somewhere in the cathedral struck three. He was the only person, it seemed, in the en
He stirred restlessly, and the clock struck four. In another hour it would be daylight. Time he was going. Time to return to the poised, sardonic, competent, rich and richly gifted man to whom a Doctorate of Civil Law would shortly be awarded. A few policemen, a little scandal, what did that matter?
He took out a phial from his jacket pocket and held it up in the dim yellow light. The phial was filled with a light purplish liquid, about an ounce in all. Half was a lethal dose. He drank it all. The taste was bitter but he knew the effects were quite painless.
He moved into the seat his mother had always occupied and composed himself for sleep.
Epilogue
Evelyn Gaveston was a week late returning home, but she did so in the end, wispy-haired and flat-shoed, and clutching a large handbag in which was concealed a hamster bought in New York and smuggled through the customs. Henry, whose business it was to keep the law, at least in small things, despaired, and banished the animal to a back room for their first luncheon party.
James Locke and Mary Aldershot were among the guests, as were Teresa – looking plump and roseate – and Tom; but since there were twelve at table not much private conversation was possible. This was Evelyn’s aim. Everyone steered clear of subjects such as suicides, drug taking and college scandals. Indeed, as most of her guests were from distant parts of the country, the tragedies of the last two months did not loom so large. Obviously they had all heard – or rather read – and so would exercise tact in the subjects opened, but with much less effort and constraint than if it had been a local gathering.
Tom and Teresa left fairly early, since they wanted to get back to London before the traffic built up. As they left Teresa kissed her father warmly on the lips.
He squeezed her hand. ‘When?’
‘Next Thursday or Friday, they expect.’
‘I’ll be thinking of you.’ He kissed her again.
‘Daddy,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Be of good heart.’
Some of the others drifted away during the next half-hour, but two sisters, maiden ladies of great wealth and little learning, stayed on and on, so Henry invited James to come out of doors and view hisSciadopitys verticillata, which he had got some reluctant students to guy for him last weekend.
The two old friends moved off together, one pushing the other in an unmotorised wheelchair specially kept for James’s visits. They inspected the wayward tree, and James told Henry he simply had to make up his mind. The tree quite clearly needed the support to keep it steady in wind; the ground it was planted in was a moderate clay which should give it a substantial grip; but something was wrong, roots remained too near the surface, spreading rather than digging deeper. It would need this sort of support for at least another ten years, he said, and in that time you’d have to watch that the ropes didn’t slip or rot. A simple choice between maintaining a distinguished invalid or cutting it down and rooting it up.
‘I’ll give it a year,’ said Henry. ‘I’ll give it one more year.’
‘You’re wasting your time. If the guying offends you you may as well root it up now.’
Henry grunted and looked his old friend over, studiously. ‘When are you marrying Mary?’
James shifted in his chair. ‘Not yet, certainly. Of course not yet.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘While this suspicion hangs over me I can’t do anything. Maybe in a year or two.’
‘Then you’re wasting your time. This suspicion, as you call it, is going to hang over you for the rest of your blooming life. The police don’t altogether ever lose interest in a murder, they put it on a back burner and there it’ll stay, waiting for something to turn up and set it all alight again.’
‘All the more reason –’
‘But so what? It’s another hazard in life, that’s all, to add to those that exist already. You or I might have a coronary tomorrow – or a stroke or what you will. There’s always things waiting round the corner that you close your eyes to and hope to dodge. This is just another, and the chances are you’ll dodge it. If it would make you happier to marry – and I think it would – and I’m sure Mary would like it, don’t dither about, take it on board without any more hesitations. D’you know what old George Hoskins said to me the other day?’
‘I couldn’t guess.’
‘He said, “When you get to seventy-five any pleasure you have after that is like having a picnic in a graveyard.” He was always a miserable old bugger but he had a point. So what are you? – a bit younger than I am – not yet sixty-six? With luck we shall have a few interesting and constructive and enjoyable years before we reach George Hoskins’ eminence.’
James crossed his ankles, which for once had been comfortable today.
‘What’s happened to that Indian – Nari Prasad?’
‘Oh, they found him in the ambulance – as I told you – a bit knocked about, but he’s all right. The police have got him in protective custody until after the trial.’
‘And then they’ll ship him back to India?’
‘I don’t think so. Some sort of a bargain was struck. He’ll get a new name, a chance for a fresh start.’
‘In England?’
‘If they said that. Chief thing is for him to go to some place where he can merge into the landscape.’
‘When is the trial?’
‘Oh not yet. Trouble is, of course, most of the main villains are out of reach. You topped two, and the head of it all topped himself.’
‘The tumour will grow again.’
‘Of course. But it’ll leave a huge gap that’ll take time to fill. John Peron is the biggest fish we’ve caught, but there are a dozen others. The drug squad are delighted.’
It was a warm day, and the scent of new-mown grass wafted in the breeze.
‘But the case of Stephanie’s death can’t be reopened?’
‘Depends on Arun Jiva. He’ll be closely questioned for a long time. On the face of it it seems unlikely he will ever say enough, but one never knows. He has a tremendous arrogance, and he might be cleverly led on.’
James frowned. ‘Did your students cut this lawn?’
‘Yes. Chap called Harrington. Reading PPE. Quite a good job, but he left the machine in rather a mess.’
‘Most things are left in rather a mess,’ James said. ‘I hope I’m not a specially vindictive man, but I’d like somebody to be tried for the murder of Stephanie. Not just to see him get a few more years in prison but to clear her name.’
‘I think Death by Misadventure has been pretty well accepted by everyone now. What did you do with the suicide note?’
‘Burned it. But Anne Vincent might talk.’
‘She won’t. I had a long session with her.’
After a silence James said: ‘ The stigma remains. A girl who killed herself because she’d been rejected by her lover. Or a girl who drank so much that she didn’t realise she’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills.’
There was not much Henry could say, so he said nothing. There was another long silence.
Eventually James said: ‘Well, I suppose Brune’s self-disposal lifted the problem of the Encaenia out of Alistair’s lap. And out of the Chancellor’s too.’
‘It was a near thing.’
‘If Errol had taken up with some other girl none of this would have happened.’
‘Indeed. Which could devoutly have been wished.’
‘Probably Brune would have received his doctorate and the University some further big donations. And no one the wiser. And perhaps no one the worse.’
‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Nemesis followed him,’ Henry said.
‘What?’
‘Nemesis. With you in the title role.’
‘I would have been happy not to have played it.’
‘Of course.’
In the distance four ladies were walking in the garden: the two rich spinsters and Evelyn and Mary.
Henry said suddenly: ‘Colton and Apostoleris were rubbish – better out of the way. But I would have liked to hear what Peter Brune had to say for himself, how he could have explained everything –anything – apart from what little he said at that last dinner party. A personal friend I’ve known for upwards of a quarter of a century … Fortunately I never talk to anyone on security matters … Although no one has accused Brune of being connected with terrorism, one never knows where one criminality ends and another begins.’ He stooped to pluck up a thistle which seemed to have grown overnight. ‘But we have talked often of college problems and the like – life in London, charitable ramps, police discipline, Welsh miners, grubby politicians, Middle East madness; you know, the sort of things we talk about. He’s even advised me on investments, usually very well. I would have trusted him as much as I have trusted you. Yet he has, it seems, not only been head of this organisation but instigated – or condoned – Stephanie’s death. That is the most horrifying thing of all.’
‘I too would have liked to talk to him,’ James said.
Henry looked down at his invalid friend. ‘Perhaps it’s as well you did not.’
A pack of clouds obscured the sun. They had drifted up unnoticed like an unexpected frown. The four ladies were approaching. Evelyn, wearing a shapeless frock, hair lifting in the breeze, was talking animatedly and making Mary laugh. A shaft of sun pursued the women with deliberation like an arc light on a stage.