The Wheel of Fortune (155 page)

“They’ll never believe you,” said Kester calmly.

“Oh yes, they will—you’re going to corroborate my story!”

“I bloody well will not!”

“All right, I
will
go to the police if you don’t confess to the family! Damn it, I’ll even go to jail if I have to in order to put you behind bars for good!”

“Don’t make me laugh! How are you going to convince the police? You haven’t a shred of evidence!”

“Oh yes I have!”

“You’re bluffing—I don’t believe you—”

“I dug up the poker.”

Dead silence. It was very cold. The house had a bleached frozen look.

“The poker that only you could have used,” I said. “The poker that has Thomas’s blood on it. The poker that can send you to Broadmoor.”

Kester slid his tongue quickly around his lips. He was very pale.

“All right,” I said when no reply was forthcoming. “Let’s approach this problem from a new angle. I won’t go to the police and I won’t go to the family either—but only if you do exactly as I say. If you don’t I won’t rest till I see you hanged or committed for life. It’s as simple as that. I don’t care if I ruin myself to do it, but I’m absolutely determined that you’re going to pay.”

Another long silence. Kester took his hands out of his pockets and rested them lightly on the bonnet of the car. Obviously he was trying to drum up a fresh plot, but panic was overwhelming the creative genius. When he looked at me at last I saw the fear in his eyes.

“What do you want?”

“What do you think?”

His nerve snapped. He became hysterical. “I’ll never give it up, never, never, never—”

“Right,” I said, opening the door of the car as if I intended to leave him. “I’m summoning the family and if they don’t believe me I’m off to the police.”

“Wait!” he screamed at me.

I waited but he was speechless with terror and rage.

“Go and live in Dublin with Declan,” I said. “We’ll tell the family the estate was too much for you as usual and that you’re having another nervous breakdown. That would ring true enough, wouldn’t it? In the words of that favorite phrase of yours, you’d appear to be acting in character.”

I thought he was going to pass out but he didn’t. He just leaned forward, the palms of his hands flat on the bonnet, and closed his eyes. At last he opened them and said, “You’d never dare do this if Uncle John were alive.”

“And you’d never have dared steal my land. But he’s dead, isn’t he? He’s dead and the rules of the game have changed and by God, I’m going to have what’s always been owing to me. You’ve forfeited it. It’s mine.”

“Never!”

“Suit yourself. Enjoy Broadmoor.” I again pretended I was about to leave.

The conversation continued in this fashion for about five minutes but of course he gave way in the end. He had to. He was now wholly convinced I’d stop at nothing to put him behind bars.

“All right,” he whispered at last. “All right.” He forced himself to look at me again. His eyes were a very pale clear blue. “Perhaps …” It was hard for him to get his words out but he managed in the end. “Perhaps I can turn this disaster to my advantage. I’d certainly have more time to write if I … if I gave up …” But he couldn’t say the word “Oxmoon.” “… if I went away, and as you know, writing’s all I really care about. And so long as Hal gets everything in the end … I suppose you wouldn’t consider—”

“No. You’re not going to give Oxmoon directly to Hal. You’re going to give it to me. You’re going to instruct Fairfax to draw up the deed of gift and you’re going to do it straightaway.”

More hysterics followed. We sparred away for a little longer but it was just postponing the inevitable and finally he said, “All right, I’ll sign the deed, stage a nervous breakdown and go off to Dublin. But you mark my words,
you’re
the one who’s going to end up in an asylum. You’re violent, dangerous and thoroughly unstable.”

“Speak for yourself!”

We stared, each man seeing himself in the other, and at once the air thickened with horror—the horror that had no name. Kester’s pallor assumed a waxen tinge, and all the while I watched his color fade I knew I saw myself in the glass darkly and I felt the distortions rippling across my mind.

We shuddered. For one long moment we remained paralyzed with revulsion but at last he turned his back on me, bolted inside the house and slammed the door. As Dafydd came running I slumped against the car.

“Are you okay?”

“Fit as a fiddle.” I nearly passed out. God knows how I got myself together. “Here, take the wheel, would you, I’m shot to pieces.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the main road. Park the car by the bridle path that leads up onto Penhale Down. I want to go into the grounds through the back entrance.”

“What the hell are we up to now?”

“We’re going to dig up a poker.”

V

All Dafydd said when I had the poker in my hands was “Thomas?”

We stood there beneath the trees. The light was yellowish, indicative of extreme winter weather. In Humphrey de Mohun’s ruined tower all the jackdaws were silent.

“So you guessed,” I said.

“Yes, but I got it wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you were the one who’d killed him. And all the time it was bloody Kester, wasn’t it?”

When I’d recovered I said incredulously, “You thought I was a murderer and yet you stood by me and kept your mouth shut?”

“Of course,” said Dafydd surprised. “You’ve been more of a brother to me than any of those little bastards my mother produced for your father, and besides … in the war, in that camp … one got used to the ordinary rules not applying.”

We stood there, brothers yet not brothers, related yet not related, and I knew we both felt as if we’d been born of the same parents.

“I won’t forget this, Dafydd.”

“See that you don’t—because I’d do anything for you, Harry, remember that. Anything at all.”

VI

“So you see,” I declared to my family in the language my father had made famous to us all, “it was the right thing—indeed the only thing—to do.” And as I sat down at the head of the table in the dining room at Oxmoon, I gripped the arms of my grandfather’s great carved chair to reassure myself that justice had finally prevailed.

I was presiding at a conference. The deed of gift had been signed. Kester had withdrawn to Dublin. Oxmoon was mine, but this was the exact moment when I couldn’t afford any celebration. I had to be sober and subdued, hardworking Harry Godwin who had come to his poor sickly cousin’s rescue and was now entirely preoccupied with doing the done thing. Accordingly I had decided that I should entertain my family at Easter in my future home and explain to them what was going on—or what I wanted them to think was going on. I needed to keep them informed. I needed them to believe I was an honest, truthful, thoroughly decent chap. It was imperative that everyone should think my actions had been justified.

I hadn’t yet moved my belongings from Penhale Manor because I thought haste would be a gesture of bad taste in the circumstances, so Oxmoon was exactly as Kester had left it. It had even occurred to me that it was like living in a shrine to his memory. But of course I’d make plenty of changes later when the family had settled down and my takeover had been accepted.

The family had assembled in response to my invitation; the lawyers on both sides had agreed to attend the conference to bear witness to the legality of my occupation; everything in fact had been going meticulously according to plan when after breakfast on the day of the conference my seedy brother-in-law Rory Kinsella, had sidled up to me and announced that his brother Declan had crossed the Irish Sea to represent Kester’s interests and would be arriving at Oxmoon in half an hour.

I manifested courteous delight and cornered Gerry. “That crook Declan Kinsella’s about to turn up. We’re in for a rough ride.”

“I don’t see why,” said Gerry mildly. “Kester signed that deed of gift of his own free will while of sound mind. What can Declan do?”

Naturally I hadn’t revealed to my lawyers that Kester’s free will had been tempered by my friendly persuasion. Only Dafydd knew that. I had decided that if Dafydd could keep quiet about murder he could keep quiet about anything so I had confided in him.

Abandoning Gerry I headed for the telephone. “Dafydd?” I said when my housekeeper had summoned him from the garden of the Manor. “Get over here. Trouble’s brewing.” And when he arrived ten minutes later on his motorbike I told him of Declan’s imminent arrival. “That gangster’s capable of anything,” I said. “I think he’ll try and blast me right out of the water.”

“But how can he? Who’s going to believe Irish scum like that?”

This was true. I began to feel better. But not much better. I grabbed his arm. “I want you with me at this conference. You don’t have to say anything, just be there.”

“What, me? With all those gentlemen? I’m not even wearing a tie!”

“Fuck the tie. I want all the allies I can get.”

At this point Kester’s lawyers arrived, old Freddy Fairfax looking as if he should be in a Bath chair, and that smooth Wykehamist Carmichael. They were both effusive towards me; no doubt they believed that if they licked my boots hard enough their firm would retain the business generated by the Oxmoon estate. What a hope.

I had just shown them into the dining room where my own solicitor Roland Davison was waiting with the male members of the family, when the parlormaid told me Declan had arrived, and assuming my most charming smile I returned to the hall to welcome him.

I had only met him twice, once after Aunt Ginevra’s death and once at my father’s funeral, but on both occasions he had struck me as being quite the most sinister man I’d ever met. He was now in his early fifties, a tall fat man with receding gray hair and soft dark eyes which looked as if they could watch a mass execution without blinking. He spoke with a bizarre English accent, like someone who had learned a foreign language long ago but was unaware how much it had changed. This peculiar trait should have made him sound absurd but it didn’t; it merely made him sound more sinister than ever.

“Hullo, Declan—what a delightful surprise! How’s Kester?”

But Declan had the politician’s trick of ignoring the questions he had no wish to answer. He gave me a small subtle smile, murmured, “Hullo, old fellow. Terrible weather, what?” and cruised casually past my outstretched hand towards the sound of voices in the dining room.

My back started to itch. I spent five futile seconds listening to my heart throbbing and then I followed him across the hall.

The maids were serving coffee as I reentered the dining room. Various members of the family asked after Kester and Declan said with a sigh that poor Kester was deeply, deeply depressed. Everyone looked sad and worried and no one looked sadder and more worried than I did, but fortunately Gerry came to my rescue by asking Declan what he thought of the British political situation. Declan said he supposed Attlee would soon be disemboweled by either Bevan on the left or Churchill on the right and this might or might not be a bad thing. After this masterpiece of political noncommitment had been delivered, I put the cigarette box in circulation and suggested that we all sat down. Declan ignored the box and lit a very large cigar. Perhaps he thought he was being British. He looked like a comrade of Al Capone.

“Well, gentlemen …” I had remained on my feet, and once everyone was settled I willed myself to ignore Declan and embark on my carefully prepared speech. I felt less nervous once I’d started. By the time I reached the point where I declared Kester had welcomed the opportunity to solve his problems once and for all by leaving Oxmoon in safe hands, I even believed wholeheartedly in what I was saying.

“… and so you see,” I said, reaching my peroration, “it was the right thing—indeed the only thing—to do.”

I paused. Nobody spoke. When I was seated again I glanced around the table. I had Edmund on my right and beyond him were his two sons, Richard, who’d been Kester’s jester, and Geoffrey, who worked in a London publishing house and presumably knew everything there was to know about unstable writers. I sensed that Geoffrey was more of an Armstrong than a Godwin; he always seemed to keep to the edge of the family circle as if he were perpetually trying to escape, and I decided I could rely on him to remain neutral.

My glance traveled on down the table, flicked past the Kinsella brothers, ignored Kester’s lawyers and alighted on Owen Bryn-Davies whom I’d invited in deference to Elizabeth. I thought Owen would be aggrieved to hear Kester had disinherited his son in favor of Hal. Or did he suspect I’d forced Kester’s hand? Hard to tell. He was looking inscrutable. I glanced on past Roland Davison to my three half-brothers. Gerry I could count on. Evan, looking insufferably virtuous in his clerical collar, would be for Kester but I didn’t think he’d have the guts to make trouble. Lance, mild as always, merely looked as if he wished he were a hundred miles away. No trouble in that quarter. Next to Lance and on my immediate left was Dafydd, surly in his work clothes; all the gentlemen around the table were busy pretending he was invisible.

“So that’s the situation,” I said. “I don’t know if anyone wishes to comment, but I wanted you all to know that I’m more than willing to discuss this tragic change in Kester’s fortunes in an honest and straightforward way … Edmund—you’re the senior member of the family now. Would you care to give us your views?”

Edmund sighed. “Yes, well, it’s all very sad, certainly, because we know how much Oxmoon meant to Kester, but if he can’t cope and Harry can … and since Hal’s going to be the heir … well, there we are, aren’t we, I daresay it’s all for the best.”

“Richard,” I said before anyone could comment, “let’s hear from you.”

“Oh, I agree,” said Richard glumly. “It’s a rotten shame, poor old Kester, but I did see him before he left for Ireland and there’s no doubt the poor chap’s at the end of his tether. I’ve never seen him so low.”

“Geoffrey?” I said, anxious to keep the ball rolling at a brisk pace.

“Oh, you take it on, Harry, give Kester a bit of peace. Besides, I should think the place is a white elephant nowadays, isn’t it? I’m only surprised it’s survived the Labour government.”