Heirs and Assigns Page 24

  ‘It was the coat,’ he said at last, still in the same monotone. ‘My father’s, the one he used to wear when he came to see me at school, the one he cut such a dash in. Do you remember him at all? A handsome chap, my father. I couldn’t discover what had become of the coat when he died. Then he came here, Murfitt, wearing it, as bold as brass. Kept on coming, insisting he was my father’s son … wanting his share, was how he put it. I told him there was nothing left to share, nothing except the Fairlie name, and he laughed and said that would do. That it was his by rights, anyway – he had his birth certificate and his mother’s marriage lines … and since his date of birth was six months before mine, he should be acknowledged as the rightful Fairlie heir. Even though he’d never even seen the man he said was his father, the man who’d always taken care to visit his mother only when his son was not there, away at school or otherwise. The coat he’d left behind on his last visit had never been claimed because he’d died, suddenly, before he could return for it. Murfitt took it off and showed me – the embroidered red and gold coat of arms and the name Fairlie on the scroll beneath.’

  This was more than Carey had bargained for. She’d been hoping he’d deny the letter, say it was nothing but lies concocted by Murfitt, passed on by Huwie. Reading her thoughts, he went on, ‘I’m trusting you, Carey. I know you, at least, my darling, will understand.’ The proprietary endearment shocked her. She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘It was mine by rights, you see – only a coat, but it mattered to me because it was such an essential part of my father, but Murfitt refused to hand it over. I was by no means prepared to accept what he said: he must be a fraudster who’d got hold of these so-called proofs somehow. I told him I needed time, he couldn’t expect me not to take legal advice as far as proving the validity of his claim went – my mother died when I was a baby, I never knew what the relations between her and my father had been, though he was a man attracted to women … but I could not – would not – believe he had been a bigamist, that his marriage to my mother had been a fake. Waiting wouldn’t do for Murfitt, though, he wanted immediate recognition. He’d somehow struck up a rapport with Pen, got him on his side and persuaded him to try and talk me into acknowledging Murfitt, even if he was my father’s bastard. Pen knew more than anyone what a drain Fairlie House is on me and he insisted that selling it was the only sensible and right thing to do. To sell my inheritance, and to share the proceeds with Murfitt, who wouldn’t then make any claims on the Fairlie name.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Pen always thought he knew what was best for everyone, didn’t he? And when he saw persuasion was getting him nowhere, he began to use coercion …’

  ‘Coercion?’

  There was no answer. It was as though he’d been talking to himself, as though the spate of words had been forced out of him like champagne from a shaken bottle, and now the bottle was empty. How impossible it must have been for him to face the truth – not only that his father, a Fairlie, his idol, had had feet of clay, but had even possibly been a bigamist. Suddenly he stood up, peered at his watch and said abruptly, ‘Well, work doesn’t stop. I have an urgent call to make on a patient. Come with me and we can carry on talking in the car.’

  This was something she positively did not want to do, but she knew there was more he was desperate to say … and possibly to no other living person than herself would he have willingly admitted what she’d already heard. For the sake of what he’d always done for her, this man she’d known all her life, she couldn’t refuse.

  They left the house. For a moment, after he shut the door, he stepped back, facing it, then he went into the surgery to collect his bag, opened the dispensary door and exchanged a few words with Myra before leaving her to lock up.

  As Reardon and Gilmour hurried to leave Bryn Glas, Verity called out from the sitting room. This time she wasn’t crouching miserably over the fire but sitting next to her mother. She was actually smiling and the papers they were poring over together suggested they’d buried whatever hatchet had been between them. ‘Have you seen Carey?’ she asked. ‘She was here looking for you earlier, said it was urgent.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she said what it was about?’

  ‘No. She just asked to use the telephone, and then left in a hurry.’ She gave him a worried look. ‘I thought she seemed a bit upset.’

  There was only one other telephone in Hinton, and since that was where they were bound …

  Myra Jenkins was just leaving when they arrived at Fairlie House, after calling at Lessings Lane on the way and not finding Carey there. ‘Surgery’s closed and if you want the doctor, he’s just left.’

  ‘Was Miss Brewster with him?’

  ‘She was, as a matter of fact. He was on his way to see a patient – old Mrs Ghyll. She hasn’t been well since her husband died last week. There hasn’t been an emergency call, not that I’m aware of, but he tore off like his tail was on fire. Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Jump in the car, Mrs Jenkins, we’ll give you a lift home. You live not far from the Fox, I think?’

  ‘A few doors along. Well, thanks, I wouldn’t say no.’ Gratified by the offer but with her avid curiosity unsatisfied by the silence that hung in the car, she sat bolt upright on the back seat as Gilmour drove back into Hinton.

  ‘You’re lucky it hasn’t taken longer, considering what a bad fracture it was.’ Jack had been told yet again by the specialist doctor who was monitoring the progress of his broken leg. ‘Give it another week or two.’ Another week or two, not long to him, maybe, but Jack was finding it hard to be patient. But since he couldn’t go back to his job without being certified fit for work, he’d gritted his teeth and kept on with the recommended exercise routine, which included two daily brisk walks, one of which invariably seemed to take him past Carey’s house. He’d developed a nagging worry about Carey, ever since she’d made her decision to leave Hinton, though he’d kept it to himself. Now, however, it was he who needed reassurance. She’d made it plain by not waiting for him yesterday that she thought he’d been acting like a jealous schoolboy over his mother’s attachment to Pen. He knew she was right. He was a bloody fool to have let it rankle, even if it had been subconscious.

  He found her house in darkness. She was probably with Kate Ramsey, he told himself – a virtually empty house was no comfortable place to spend an evening alone, but for some reason he still felt obscurely worried.

  By the time he arrived home, the police car had just drawn up outside the Fox, Myra Jenkins had alighted and was coming towards him. She looked disappointed that no one but him was around to see her arriving in state. ‘They’re looking for Carey Brewster,’ she said when they met, waving back towards the car. ‘You haven’t see her, have you?’

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘She’s probably still with Dr Fairlie then, so that’s all right.’

  ‘Yes.’ He bade her goodnight, watched until she’d let herself into her house then hurried towards the Wolseley, with an urgent feeling that it was very far from all right.

  ‘She’s gone off with Fairlie?’ he said into the car.

  ‘If you mean Miss Brewster it seems she has.’

  ‘Something’s up, isn’t it? It’s important that you get hold of Fairlie – and Carey?’

  ‘Yep,’ Gilmour said. ‘I’m just working out the way to get to a place called Pyldene. The doctor’s gone to see a patient there … maybe you can point me the way.’

  ‘Why has he taken Carey with him?’

  His sense of urgency communicated itself to Reardon, adding to his own unease. There was no reason to believe Carey was in any danger – if she meant as much to him as everyone said. He had to remind himself sharply that there was in fact nothing against the doctor so far, except Reardon’s own unprovable suspicions. And yet … Could they afford to ignore that, and the fact that Carey had wanted to contact them urgently, that she’d seemed upset …?

  ‘Pyldene’s out of the way. I can direct you there, but better to show you.’

 
Reardon made a decision. ‘Right. You know the route – you can navigate. Or better still, you can do the driving.’

  Gerald, steady, unflappable Gerald, was driving erratically and at an almost reckless speed: the headlights slicing into the blackness ahead. Carey wasn’t dressed for riding in a heater-less car on a freezing night and despite her woolly gloves, her fingers as well as her toes were soon numb. Icy draughts insinuated themselves around her ankles, her neck. She huddled into her coat, shivering and pulling her collar tighter, and the car swerved unnervingly as he reached back into the dickey, hauled out a tartan car rug and tossed it on to her knee. He hadn’t even paused to put on a coat or driving gloves before leaving, but he didn’t appear to be feeling any discomfort. And despite what he’d said about talking as they drove, he hadn’t spoken since they left Fairlie House; his gaze stayed fixed on the empty road. She was afraid to break the silence; it was less unnerving than her fear of what she might hear if she did.

  She tucked the rug tightly around her legs and feet, trying not to dwell on his driving and the way her nerves were jumping. ‘Who’s the patient you have to visit, Gerald?’ she made herself ask at last.

  ‘What?’ He took his eyes off the road and threw her a quick, sideways glance. The car did a kangaroo hop, the needle on the speedometer flickered and then went up to a dangerous thirty while she gripped her seat. ‘Oh, old Amos, Amos Ghyll.’

  Not for the first time that evening, her insides did a gut-wrenching plunge. On her left, the hillsides rose, close and dark, hugging the side of the road. She didn’t want to think of how close they were on the other side to the cliffs above the river. Where was he taking her, and why? It was no professional call he was making on Amos Ghyll – the old man, a well loved Hinton character, had died last week, everyone knew that. She closed her eyes, but they flew open when she heard him say suddenly, ‘I’ve done things that were wrong, Carey, but that doesn’t mean I’ve done them for the wrong reasons, you must believe that. It shouldn’t have happened to Pen. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t lied to me about writing a confession.’

  The car bucked and jerked and the noise of the engine made her acutely aware of the silence of the night outside wrapping itself around them, the absence of any human habitation for miles. Was it possible that her breathing had actually stopped for several minutes?

  ‘Do you remember the night your mother died, Carey?’

  Muriel? What had Muriel to do with Pen writing a confession? Confession of what?

  ‘How could I have forgotten?’ she managed to say. The night when all those last months of increasing agony for Muriel had finally ended. Carey had nursed her through those last weeks of constant pain, though worn to a shadow herself with all the sleepless nights … and then, that night, Pen had arrived, searched her face and insisted she must get some rest while he sat with Muriel or there would be another patient for Gerald in the family. She’d had no will to do anything but obey, falling almost immediately into an exhausted, bottomless sleep. ‘You came that night, Gerald, making a call on your way from somewhere else, and found Muriel had just died. But you and Pen let me go on sleeping, for hours longer.’

  ‘You needed it. There was nothing that already hadn’t been done.’

  With a sudden wrench, he pulled off the road and bumped along over the rough grass and heather that covered the spur of cliff jutting out over the river. She knew where they were headed: it was a well known vantage point, offering magnificent views across the wide valley below and the rising Welsh hills in the distance, you could see it from Bryn Glas. Somewhere far below was the river, making a sharp oxbow bend round the escarpment into flatter land beyond. The place was known locally as the Old Man, so called because the rock which formed it resembled, at a distance and with a lively stretch of the imagination, the bearded profile of a man.

  Before they reached the seat at the end, Gerald stopped the car. The engine died and he turned off the headlights. There was nothing to see ahead, they were isolated in a black void. After a moment he began to speak again. ‘The night Pen died … what happened was …’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me this, Gerald.’ Her mouth was dry.

  ‘But you of all people have the right to know,’ he insisted. ‘That night … I called in to give Muriel her morphine, and found Pen sitting with her while you slept. She didn’t need it, she was dead when I arrived, minutes after he’d put the pillow over her face. He was still agitated but he made no bones about what he’d done: you couldn’t take any more, he said, you or Muriel. Nor did I feel any compunction at signing the death certificate. Neither of us, I have to say, felt any remorse, and at no point was it ever mentioned between us again – not until we went upstairs together the night he died and he issued what was tantamount to an ultimatum, said he was prepared to make public and confess what had happened if I wouldn’t “do the honourable thing” as he put it … in other words if I didn’t agree to go along with this bee he had in his bonnet about Murfitt’s “rights”. He was bluffing of course. Even a man in his state of health wouldn’t voluntarily put his own neck in the noose. But it made me angry that he’d chosen to interfere in what was no concern of his.’ He stopped, leant back and closed his eyes. After a while he went on, a note of desperation creeping into his voice: ‘He wouldn’t listen to me so I took hold of him and forced him to look at me … It wasn’t deliberate, I … I just went too far. I’m a doctor, I should have known better. God knows, I hadn’t meant him to die. I tried desperately to bring him round but …’ He stretched a hand out and grabbed hers and even through her gloves she felt a scalding heat coming off him. ‘Please believe me, Carey.’ She pulled her hand away as though burnt. She felt sick.

  ‘And then, there was Murfitt …’ He went on, but Carey had had enough.

  Without even thinking about it she wrenched the door open and tumbled out of the car, catching her foot against the running board and almost falling. She ran, stumbling among the heather roots and tussocky grass, back towards the road, her numbed feet and legs stiff with cold and inaction and not working properly at first. Her breath was coming in great sobs, she willed herself not to think of footsteps pounding behind her …

  The night sky was as black as a witch’s heart above the tortuous rock-sided road to Wyvering. Jack was hunched over the steering wheel, anxious not to miss the turning to Pyldene. Suddenly in the tunnel of blackness, the beam of the headlights revealed something pressed against the rocks – no, not something but someone, a person, desperately waving their arms. Jack let out a profanity from his service days, stamped on the brakes and was out of the car before the other two realized what was happening, racing forward, no trace of his limp evident. They too were out of the car in a moment, but then Reardon’s hand fell on Gilmour’s arm. The car’s headlights showed Jack with his arms wrapped around Carey as if he would never let her go.

  Almost incoherent, she was helped into the back of the car with Jack beside her. It was Gilmour’s turn to take the wheel and follow the track Carey had indicated. Fairlie’s car stood lonely and silent, the only alien object on the headland, empty save for his bag on the passenger seat, open with some sort of book protruding from it. Of Fairlie himself there was no sign. The cliff top was treeless and bare of anything except grass, rocks and clumps of heather. There was nowhere he could have hidden himself, nowhere to go except over the cliffs and into the river below.

  EPILOGUE

  Reardon sat with his feet up, by his own fireside. Ellen in the chair opposite, was writing Christmas cards and letters on the small table drawn up to her chair, while Tolly was curled up at her feet in Gypsy’s old basket. He didn’t know why he still needed the sheaf of papers on his knee that he’d been reading yet again. He knew it by heart, a typed copy of the book Fairlie left deliberately displayed before he had abandoned his car. The case was closed, loose ends tied up, but the dark memory of Hinton still haunted Reardon. Three unnecessary deaths: an old man, a young man who only wanted what he s
aw as rightful recognition and a good doctor.

  Fairlie’s body had been recovered down river the next day. He hadn’t drowned; the jump down the cliffs and on to the rocks had killed him before he’d hit the water.

  The book he’d left was a quarto-sized exercise book with board covers and the handwriting covering the pages was no doctorly scrawl, but a neat and careful hand, almost copperplate. It was a journal of sorts, written up sporadically, only when something of interest or worth recording had occurred. The first entry that concerned the case had been dated four months previously:

  He came here again, last night. Each time his demands have become more insistent, though he says he is prepared to wait – but not indefinitely. Meantime, he seems to take perverse pleasure in prolonging the torment. First it was the coat, and now the documents he claims he found when his mother died. Until now, I have been able to disregard what he calls evidence but this last … I cannot, I will not, allow the name of Fairlie to be smirched by some Johnnie-come-lately who may, or may not be, who he says he is.

  After he had taken himself off, I was sent for to see old Amos Ghyll, who was dying of emphysema. The end was very near, and though there was no need, I stayed to see it through with his wife, who had sat by his bed for three days. Downstairs a son and a daughter also waited, united in grief. The old man, honest and God-fearing, had been an agricultural labourer, the couple had been married for over sixty years and had brought up a family of six in this tiny cottage, yet they had survived all the vicissitudes of a hard life: sickness and unemployment, the loss of a daughter to childbirth and one of their sons in the South African war.

  And in that room, in that modest, loving home, as the quiet hours passed, something extraordinary occurred. I cannot explain what happened to me, I only knew that in some way the night watch had vouchsafed a glimpse of the way life should and could be lived. There is no future for me now, but in the presence of death, I saw the chance – not for redemption, or forgiveness … never that … but perhaps a last chance to do what Pen had wanted, to right a wrong.