Play to the End (39 page)

It was nearly noon when I reached the Sea Air. Brian and most of the cast and crew of Lodger in the Throat would be on the train to London by now. It was safe to make my own exit from Brighton, to beat my solitary retreat. I went straight down to the basement to say goodbye to Eunice and settle up. That would be it, I reckoned. I'd be on my own then.

How wrong can you be? Eunice had a visitor. More accurately, I had a visitor.

He was perched at the breakfast bar in her kitchen, a mug of tea cradled in one hand, a grin plastered across his face. Blazered, cavalry-twilled and cravat ted Sydney Porteous was lurking in wait for me.

"There you are, Toby," he said, winking. "Eunice had me half-believing you were going to stand me up."

"What are you doing here, Syd?"

"Our lunch date. Don't you remember?"

Sunday lunch at Audrey's, with Syd. Yes, I did remember, albeit hazily, though why I'd agreed I certainly couldn't recall. "I'm sorry.

I'm going to have to cry off."

"On account of these desperate goings-on Eunice has been telling me about? Understandable reaction, Toby, entirely understandable. But let me urge you to reconsider. Not only because of Aud's legendary roast spuds, but because I reckon a spot of company could be just the ticket, given the doleful circs. You need taking out of yourself. And you can trust me to do the taking out."

"I don't think so."

"Syd's right, Toby," Eunice put in. "Go and have lunch."

"Do you two know each other?" I asked, the conviviality of the atmosphere finally registering with me.

"Syd and I were in the same year at Elm Grove Primary," Eunice trilled.

"Until the old man hit the jackpot and enrolled me at Brighton College," said Syd. "Who knows what might have happened if we hadn't been split up?" He rolled his eyes.

"Sorry, Syd. It's still no go. I've got to get back to London."

"Why the big hurry?"

"It's .. . complicated. I just.. . have to go."

"You won't regret staying on for a few hours, believe me."

"Even so .. ."

"Truth is, Toby, you have to stay."

"Sorry?"

"You can't leave. Not yet."

"What?"

"You see .. ." Syd cleared his throat and grew suddenly serious.

"There's something I need to tell you. And you do need to hear it."

I couldn't decide whether Syd was bluffing or not. In the end, it seemed easier to let him reveal the answer in his own good time. We loaded ourselves into his undersized and underpowered Fiat and set off towards Woodingdean, where I was given to understand Audrey Spencer lived and was even then labouring for our benefit over a hot stove.

"Bloody awful what happened yesterday, Toby," Syd said, much of his bonhomie gone now we'd left the Sea Air. "Worse for you than anyone, of course, but a real choker for anyone who knew the people involved, even so."

"How did you hear about it?"

"Gav was on to me last night with the gory details. Coldblooded bastard, that bloke. No love lost between him and Roger, it's true, but you'd think Delia's death would knock him back. It certainly knocked me back. Not Gav, though. All he seemed bothered about was his inheritance."

"Inheritance?"

"Roger's estate. Gav is sole surviving heir. Unless Roger bequeathed the lot to Battersea Dogs' Home. Which I doubt, worse luck. You'd have thought Gav had won the Lottery the way he was going on."

"As you say. Cold-blooded. Like his nephew."

"You ought to know I had a chin wag with Ray Braddock this morning. He told me what happened out at Beachy Head. I had a word with a copper I know as well. Seems you're a lucky man, Toby."

"I don't feel lucky."

"Derek saved your life." Syd glanced round at me. "That's how I read it."

"You read it right." Something in the tone of Syd's voice and the look on his face when he mentioned Derek was strange, familiar, almost...

affectionate. "You talk as if you knew him."

"I did."

Syd slowed abruptly. We were driving along the open northern side of the Racecourse now. He flicked the indicator, pulled into a gateway and stopped. The passing traffic rocked the car as it sped by. Drizzle began to mist the windscreen. I said nothing.

"I've got you out here under false pretences, Toby. There's no lunch waiting for us at Aud's. She's too upset to eat, let alone cook."

"Why is she upset?"

"Because she knew Derek too."

"How come?"

"She's a psychic, Toby. A medium."

"Audrey Spencer is a medium?"

"Yup."

"A practising medium?"

"Now. And seven years ago. When Sir Walter Colborn consulted her."

"My God."

"Not sure if God comes into it, Toby. Heaven. Hell. Purgatory.

That's all down to your choice of religion, if you want to choose one.

I'm strictly Church of Agnostics myself. But the spirit world? It's out there somewhere. Aud's convinced me of that. Her .. . powers .. .

don't brook many quibbles, take my word for it."

"You're saying she really put Sir Walter in touch with his dead wife?"

"I didn't know Aud then. But she's no con artist, that's for quite sure and absolutely certain. She believed it. Wally believed it.

Well, you know that, don't you? You've heard the tape."

"Yes. I've heard it. But I didn't recognize the woman's voice on it as Audrey's."

"You wouldn't. She sounds different ... in her trances. Halfway between herself and .. . whoever she's contacted."

"Hold on." A thought had struck me. "You must have known about the tape hidden at Viaduct Road all along."

"I gave Derek my word I'd keep out of his ... campaign. Bumping into you at the Cricketers was a pure-as-the-driven-snow coincidence. Seeing where it might lead didn't mean I'd broken my promise as long as I didn't blow the whistle on Derek."

"Audrey gave him the tape?"

"Wally left her in no doubt that he meant to do right by the Colbonite workers who were ill and the families of those who'd already died, as per Ann's urgings from beyond the grave. When he went to his own grave so soon after, Aud smelt a rat. She didn't do anything about it at first. But as the cancer cases kept mounting and Roger aren't-I-a-smart-arse Colborn kept popping up in Sussex Life society spreads, she .. . decided to act. She contacted Derek Oswin and told him what she knew. She records all her seances. Once Derek had listened to the tape of the one she'd held for Wally, there was no holding him. He went after Roger ... in his surprisingly effective way."

"You should have told me."

"I'm a man of my word, Toby. Hard though you may find that to believe. My hands were tied."

"You should have stepped in. Before everything ... got out of control."

"I would have done, if I'd known what was going to happen. Just as you would have done, I guess."

"Don't Audrey's powers extend to foreseeing the consequences of interfering in people's lives, then?"

"No." Syd smiled at me ruefully. "Since you ask, they don't."

We sat in silence for a moment. Such anger as I felt faded as quickly as it had flared. It seemed we both had regrets aplenty.

"How's Jenny?" Syd asked eventually.

"Much as you'd expect."

"Taken it hard, has she?"

"What do you think?"

"I think she's taken it hard. Aud's pretty cut up too. You ought to be prepared for that."

"I thought lunch was off."

"It is. But meeting isn't. She wants to see you."

"Any particular reason?"

"Oh yes." Syd started the car and squinted into the wing mirror. "A very particular reason."

A modern semi-detached house in a Woodingdean cul-de-sac isn't exactly the locus operandi I'd have imagined for a medium, genuine or otherwise. There were certainly no occupational trappings on view when Syd and I arrived. Audrey Spencer was waiting for us in her neatly decorated home, the sparkle in her eyes I remembered from our previous meeting replaced by welling tears, some of which she transferred to my cheek in the course of a welcoming hug.

"There are no words to describe how I feel, Toby," she said, leading me into the lounge. "Nor you either, I dare say. What a terrible, terrible thing to have happened."

"Toby reckons we should have levelled with him sooner, darling," said Syd.

"It's useless to think such things," Audrey responded, sinking into a sofa. "Yet it's impossible not to." She waved me into an armchair on the other side of the fireplace and gazed across at me. "You can be no harder on me than I've been on myself, Toby. Blame me if you like. I don't mind."

"I blame all of us," I said, truly enough.

"Well, there's sense in that," said Syd, settling on the sofa beside Audrey and closing his sausage-fingered paw round her clutched hands and the damp tissue squeezed between them. "But blaming isn't undoing, if you know what I mean."

"I wanted to punish Roger Colborn for thwarting the good intentions Ann had inspired in Walter," said Audrey. "It's not often my calling has such an obviously beneficial effect. To see it frustrated as it was rankled with me. Through Derek I saw a way to do something about it."

"You succeeded," I said. "Roger was certainly punished."

"Yes. But for Derek to die as well .. . and poor Mrs. Sheringham ..

." Sobs overcame her. Syd released her hands so that she could staunch her tears with the tissue while he wrapped an arm round her shoulders and whispered some soothing endearment in her ear. "I'm sorry, Toby. Please forgive me. I feel things ... perhaps a little more deeply than I should."

"Don't worry. It's all right."

"You should tell him now, darling," Syd prompted. "About the tape."

We'd come, then, to Audrey's very particular reason. Syd swivelled round to pluck some replacement tissues for her from a box on a shelf behind the sofa. She dried her eyes and blew her nose.

"Well, Toby, the thing is this. None of us may have foreseen these dreadful events. But it seems .. . Derek had some inkling .. . that it might all go terribly wrong."

"How do you know that?"

"I ... sense certain things, Toby. It's part of my calling. Or my curse, depending how you look at it. Anyway, this morning I ... played the tape of the seance I conducted for Walter. Derek copied the original and returned it to me several months ago. Something made me

.. . play it to the end. And there I found .. . waiting for me ... for us ... a message .. . from Derek."

"What did it say?"

"Hear for yourself." She picked up a remote that had been lying, unnoticed by me, on the arm of the sofa, aimed it at a hi-fi stack in the corner of the room and pressed a button.

There was a click from the tape player, followed, after a pause of a few seconds, by Derek's voice.

"I don't know whether you'll ever hear this. Perhaps I'm being too clever by half. Dad often said I was. And Dad was right about most things. Not everything, though. He shouldn't have accepted Roger Colborn's offer. He shouldn't have agreed to kill Sir Walter. The fact that he did it for my sake only makes it worse. But he was ill.

He wasn't thinking straight. I forgive him. Roger Colborn wasn 't ill, though. He knew exactly what he was doing. I don't forgive him.

And I won't, until he's paid for what he did. I've thought of a way to make him pay now. It involves Toby Flood, the actor. He's coming to Brighton in December to perform in a play. His estranged wife, Jennifer, lives with Roger Colborn. That's the connection I propose to exploit. I'll tell you about it soon. But not all about it. There are risks, you see. More than I'll let you know of. They'll be worth running, though. I hope to do more than punish Roger Colborn. I hope to make him see the error of his ways. And to atone for them. I also hope to persuade him to acknowledge me as his brother. Because that's what we are. Brothers. And brothers shouldn 't be apart. They should be together. Which is what I think Roger and I can be, at the end of this, if all goes well. But if it doesn't go well, I want you to know that it's my fault. Not yours, Mrs. Spencer, or Mr. Porteous's, or even Mr. Flood's. But mine. I accept full responsibility for the consequences of my actions. Dad would have said that's what growing up is all about. Thanks for helping me understand what I have to do, Mrs.

Spencer. And just in case I need to say it: goodbye."

"Derek exonerates us, Toby," said Audrey, after the tape had run to the end and clicked off. "One and all."

I looked across at her. "But can we exonerate ourselves?" "I don't know. I only know he'd want us to. And therefore ... perhaps we should."

"Will you try to contact him?" I asked Audrey a little while later, as I stood in the open doorway of her house. Syd was already sitting in his car, waiting for me, with the engine running. I'd left the obvious question late. But not too late.

"Of course," she replied. "But the dead speak or not as they please. I don't contact them. They contact me. I'll try. But the question is: will he? He may have said ... all he has to say."

"Do you think he really knew what was going to happen?"

"Yes. But without necessarily knowing that he knew. They died together, didn't they, he and Roger? Together. Not apart."

It was true. I'd seen them fall. I knew. Derek had been acknowledged by his brother. In the end.

Neither Syd nor I felt the need to say much as we drove back to the Sea Air. Syd's loquacity had reached its limit long since. And my thoughts could no longer be expressed in words.

It was a relief in a way to find that Eunice wasn't at home. I fetched my bag from my room, left the key, a farewell note and a cheque on the hall table, then let myself out.