The Wheel of Fortune (165 page)

“How’s business?”

“Good.”

He owned a building firm which specialized in converting cottages into holiday homes, and he had supervised the conversion of the mews. Remembering his legendary talent as a handyman I found myself saying to him automatically: “I wonder if you could give me a hand for a moment? I can’t see how to turn on the bloody water.”

Despite his morose air he set off with me willingly enough, but my father remained by the house. It was probably one of his days when he was afraid to cross the courtyard. When I reached the scullery I looked back at him but he hadn’t moved and his extreme stillness hinted at his tension.

“Could the wheel be in the cellar?” I said to Dafydd.

“No, it’s in the old wet laundry.” He led me straight there and tried to turn the wheel himself but his wrists weren’t strong enough. His years as a prisoner of war had impaired his strength and the wheel was stiff with disuse.

“I’ll do it.” I used some muscle and presently we had water running in the main sink.

“Want me to check the toilet for you?”

“Thanks.”

We withdrew to the lavatory. He stood on the seat to examine the tank but it was filling. Giving a grunt of satisfaction he stepped down. “We’ll flush it in a minute to make sure the cistern’s okay,” he said, so we stood there waiting for the tank to fill.

“I hear you’re giving your father a hard time as usual,” he said suddenly.

“Not at all. I’m trying to make things easier for us both.”

“Bloody funny way of doing it.” He stared bleakly at the stained lavatory bowl.

“I’m glad you find it amusing.”

He didn’t like that but although he gave me a surly look he kept quiet.

“I suppose you share Father’s view that Kester committed suicide.”

“I don’t give a shit how he died. He’s dead, thank God, and that’s all that matters.” The water stopped running. He reached up, grasped the chain and pulled it. Water cascaded through the bowl.

“Why did you hate Kester?”

“He ruined Harry, didn’t he? It was as if he murdered him. You remember the way your father was and look at the way he is now.” He stood on the seat again, peered into the tank and was satisfied. Stepping down he dusted his hands on his trousers and moved outside. “Let it be, Hal; let it rest. Christ, hasn’t that sod caused enough trouble?”

“He’s not a sod to me.”

“Well, he fucking ought to be.” He looked me up and down again. “He stole you,” he said suddenly. “He stole you and turned you against your father. He knew you were the apple of Harry’s eye and he stole you to give Harry hell.”

“Bullshit. I was never the apple of Father’s eye. Besides Kester made a point of not turning me against him.”

“Well, if he didn’t turn you against Harry, why have you been nothing but trouble to Harry ever since Kester died? You answer me that!”

“I was mixed up.”

“Damn right you were—and who the hell do you think did the mixing?” shouted Dafydd, and stumped away across the yard without looking back.

II

Back in the scullery I brewed myself some coffee, ate an apple in lieu of lunch and sat down at the table in front of the notebook I had bought at Woolworth’s. Then I drank two mugs of coffee and thought for a long time.

How was I to approach my investigation? Eventually I decided that my first task was to set down on paper the story as I knew it in order to clarify my mind and separate hard facts from mere speculation. Then with my thoughts in meticulous order I would be better able to work out my future moves.

Pulling my notebook towards me I uncapped my pen and began to write on the waiting page.

III

INVESTIGATION INTO
Kester’s death: summary of the facts:

Kester died on May 8th, 1952. He had returned to Gower from Ireland three days previously (May 5th) and had gone straight to my father’s cottage at Rhossili.

My father and Kester didn’t meet. Richard, who was staying with the Bryn-Davieses at the time, met Kester off the ferry and drove him to Rhossili. I was away at school. During the three days before he died Kester saw the following people in addition to Richard: (I) Evan (2) Bronwen and (3) Gwyneth. Richard, Evan and Bronwen were all interviewed afterwards by the police although only Richard and Evan were called at the inquest. Gwyneth never told anyone but me that she’d seen Kester and at her request I kept quiet about it too. Apparently her parents had begun to be worried about the rumors of his instability and they’d forbidden Gwyneth to see him. She disobeyed. Hence her desire to keep the visit a secret. She didn’t want to get into trouble.

NOTE:
I must reread the detailed account of the inquest. I mustn’t rely on my memory because it’s over ten years since I looked up the report.

On the afternoon of May 8th my father received a note from Kester asking him to drop in for a drink at some time. My father decided to go over straightaway but Kester was out. It was a fine evening. My father then took a stroll to see if he could intercept Kester. He eventually saw him on the Shipway and realized to his astonishment that Kester was on his way out to the Worm. This was bizarre behavior because the tides were wrong; there was time to get across the Shipway and back but hardly any time to enjoy the Worm on arrival. My father was baffled and became alarmed enough to follow him.

NOTE:
So far my father’s testimony can be verified by independent witnesses. Two tourists returning from the Worm testified that Kester and my father were a quarter of an hour apart on the Shipway.

When my father reached the Inner Head he waited, thinking Kester was bound to come back into view at any moment to begin
t
he return journey, but Kester didn’t show up and after a minute my father, unable to stand the suspense, went on down the path and around the bend onto the southern flank of the Inner Head. He then realized that Kester had planned to be cut off by the tide because although Kester was visible he was far away by the Middle Head. My father was then faced with a dilemma. If he went on he’d be marooned on the Worm overnight. If he went back he’d be leaving Kester in what might well have been a thoroughly disturbed state of mind. My father, not unnaturally, was reluctant to be marooned. Telling himself that Kester was being eccentric but not necessarily demented, my father then made the decision to go back.

NOTE:
This is my father’s testimony as I remember it in the report. My father and I have never discussed this privately. The testimony is unsupported by witnesses but supported by his cast-iron alibi which proved conclusively that he did turn back and recross the Shipway.

My father reached the headland shortly after eight that night and the Shipway had begun to go under. Kester was thus left marooned on the Worm. My father returned to the cottage, and when he arrived he found Dafydd replacing a defective washer on one of the kitchen taps; they talked together for a while.

NOTE:
This alibi sounds as if it could have been cooked, but the fact that no one queried it at the time seems to suggest that it’s far too solid to be easily dismissed.

After Dafydd had gone my father decided to wait at the cottage till Kester was able to recross the Shipway at dawn. My father had started to worry again and wonder if he’d been right to abandon him.

Kester didn’t return. Later a search party was organized but there was no one at the Worm. Kester’s body was washed up a week later.

The coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of accidental death, but the general consensus of opinion was that Kester had committed suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed. (It was felt the jury wanted to spare the family the unpleasantness of a suicide verdict.) The possibility of murder was eliminated when the coroner stressed the fact that was clearly brought out in the testimony: that my father couldn’t have caught up with Kester and still got back across the Shipway before the tide rose that evening. As far as I know everyone completely accepted this, and even if the Kinsella brothers didn’t they kept their mouths shut. It wasn’t until the Bryn-Davies lawsuit two years later that Declan stood up in the witness box and called my father a liar, a killer and an extortionist.

COMMENT:
Sooner or later I’m going to have to face up to the evidence of that bloody shit Declan Kinsella.

WARNING:
I must keep my cool.

VERDICT:
Soldier on.

IV

Uncapping a bottle of Coke in an attempt to kill my longing for a cigarette, I reread what I’d written and was satisfied that my words formed the authorized version of the truth. Perhaps this version was indeed the truth. But I knew I shouldn’t forget that the real truth about this particular truth was that no one knew for certain what the real truth was. The coroner’s jury had declared an accidental death, the public at large had diagnosed a suicide, the Kinsella brothers had talked of a murder, but the proven truth had eluded everyone, slipping through the concrete facts like an illusion manipulated by a magician. But in fact was this situation so very unusual? How far was it ever possible to know the whole truth? Human perception was so limited; in a moment of depression I remembered that there were even some philosophers who believed it was impossible for the human mind to grasp reality at all, a belief which would mean that my quest for the real truth would be doomed to sink in a sea of illusion.

Then I pulled myself together. I was a rational man who believed in the reality of hard facts, and I refused to be depressed by philosophical idiocies. As far as I was concerned, establishing the truth by stripping reality of distortion was purely a matter of willpower and determination; all it needed was the right attitude of mind.

Picking up my pen again I once more turned to face the past.

V

KESTER’S DEATH: POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS.

There are four possible explanations for Kester’s death: (1) natural causes (2) accident (3) suicide and
(4)
murder.

Let’s dispose of natural causes: the autopsy revealed that death was by drowning. There was no evidence of heart attack or stroke.

Now let’s take murder, the least likely of the remaining possibilities. If I accept the alibi, then my father could have killed Kester only if Kester had been waiting for him on the Inner Head. This doesn’t seem to have occurred to the coroner,
who
apparently had no trouble accepting my father’s evidence that he and Kester had
r
emained a quarter of an hour apart. Or perhaps it did occur to the coroner but he discounted it.

My inclination is to discount it too: After all, why should Kester loll around on the Inner Head and wait for my father to murder him? If I were being followed by a trained killer who hated my guts, I’d keep going in the hope that he’d turn back. Also, why should my father want to murder Kester anyway when all Kester wanted to do was to write in peace at Rhossili? And finally, even if my father did want to murder him why do it after two witnesses had seen him chasing Kester to the Worm? If my father did kill Kester
—
and I can think of no sane reason why he should
—
then the real mystery here is not how Kester died but why.

VERDICT ON THE MURDER THEORY:
No motive. And almost certainly no opportunity. Murder highly unlikely if not downright impossible.

So we’re left with accident or suicide. I have to admit that suicide’s the most plausible explanation. He’d been mentally disturbed, he’d lost everything that made life meaningful to him, he’d continued to fail as a writer. What I really have to do here, to disprove the suicide theory, is to prove Kester had a powerful motive for staying alive.

VERDICT ON THE SUICIDE THEORY:
It’s possible. But it’s a possibility that I could still explode.

Finally, how likely is it that Kester died by accident? The main argument against it is that Kester was no athlete and therefore he would have taken no physical risks. However there is a chance he could have been whipped away by a freak wave. In any other setting this would be almost too unlikely to consider seriously, but on a tidal causeway like the Shipway such a disaster wouldn’t be improbable at all. Kester might well have tried to recross the Shipway before it was entirely safe
—
in which case the danger of a freak wave would have been very real.

VERDICT ON THE ACCIDENT THEORY:
I think this must have been how Kester met his death but I must keep an open mind until I’ve exploded the suicide theory. This is because there’s no way I can prove he died by accident except by proving he couldn’t have died in any other way.

VI

I uncapped another Coke and again read through what I’d written. So far so good. I had stated the puzzle in its orthodox version and listed the rational explanations. But now my task became more difficult because I had to consider the alternative to the orthodox version, the facts that didn’t tally with this somewhat fragile reality, and here waiting for me, as I knew very well, was the ghost of Declan Kinsella.

Declan had died a year ago of a coronary. In a television news item he had been described as a notable patriot and statesman. Kester’s most powerful champion and the star witness of the Bryn-Davies lawsuit was now permanently beyond my reach.

So was his brother Rory. He’d died of drink back in the Fifties.

Yet I couldn’t ignore the Kinsella brothers. I couldn’t ignore anyone who had called the authorized version a pack of lies. The Kinsella brothers were a dimension of reality and I couldn’t merely dismiss them as a myth, no matter how absurd or unlikely their evidence seemed to be. Declan in particular wove in and out of this saga like a recurring nightmare. The temptation was to diagnose him as a grief-crazed Irishman who was prepared to say anything to avenge his brother’s death, but was it really possible or likely or credible that this “notable patriot and statesman” had told a pack of lies in the witness box in pursuance of what the judge had described as “a peculiarly sordid family feud”?