I hope I can be forgiven for thinking that, ever since I arrived in Hemlock Bay, my every move has been opposed by a malign fate. At every turn, obstacles have confronted me. Inquisitive neighbours were bad enough, but now both Hooker Jackson and Joseph McAtee present threats to my enterprise. What is more, the Mystery Man campaign will flood the resort with prize-hunters. And now, an appalling calamity. A man has been brutally murdered on my own doorstep. Or at least within a couple of miles of it.
Mrs Stones broke the news to me when she arrived to make my breakfast and flick a duster this morning. I can’t imagine she has been so animated since the Armistice.
‘Would you believe it?’ she demanded, waving her copy of the Clarion under my nose. ‘A clairvoyant, killed with his own crystal ball! And in Hemlock Bay, of all places!’
A chill ran through my body. ‘What? You mean someone has died here?’
‘The Great Hallemby, he called himself! Bludgeoned to death in Paradise!’
‘Good Lord.’
‘Whatever next? We’ll all be murdered in our own—’
‘May I see?’ I asked, desperate to dam the torrent of exclamations.
She handed the newspaper to me. In the past, I’ve seldom spared the Clarion anything more than a cursory glance. The tone of its reporting is excitable and sensationalised, with little factual information of any kind, let alone details of interest to a chartered accountant. The story occupied almost the whole of the front page and covered many column inches in the rest of the paper.
Astonishingly, the reporter – a man by the name of Flint – stumbled across the body himself. Flint claims to have been staying in the Hemlock Hotel on holiday. If that is true, it is a remarkable coincidence, given that he appears to be the newspaper’s chief crime correspondent. But I suppose even representatives of the gutter press are entitled to have holidays. The deceased, whose real name was Bellamy, was killed in the hut where he told people’s fortunes. Why Flint was there in the first place is unclear. Presumably he is embarrassed to admit to wanting to have his palm read. His description of the scene of the crime was melodramatic, but I was particularly interested to read the comments attributed to the detective in charge of the investigation.
‘We have made rapid progress with our enquiries,’ Inspector Young insists. ‘I anticipate that we will soon be in a position to make an arrest. Perhaps even within the next twenty-four hours.’
Flint is coy about the prime suspect’s identity, but only a dunce would fail to read between the lines. The report makes frequent references to the dead man’s ‘close friend’, a woman named Lescott who works at a puppet show. Flint quotes several people connected with the pleasure grounds, but not her. Indeed, he makes a point of mentioning that she was not available for comment, and leaves his readers to put two and two together.
Is she on the run?
Hooker Jackson is quoted as confirming that Paradise will reopen today as usual. He was obviously concerned to dismiss any criticism that he had been insensitive. ‘Mr Bellamy’s death is a dreadful tragedy,’ he told Flint. ‘However, it is in the finest traditions of family entertainment that the show must go on. This is certainly what poor Mr Bellamy himself would have wanted.’
Is it? I’m not convinced, but the implication is clear. Patrons of the pleasure grounds are not at risk because the culprit’s identity is known and she is about to be apprehended. I can only presume that the murder was sparked by some kind of lovers’ tiff, and that the woman picked up the nearest weapon within reach, namely the crystal ball.
‘Extraordinary,’ I murmured as I handed the newspaper back to Mrs Stones.
‘Isn’t it?’ she breathed. ‘Whoever would have thought? In Hemlock Bay, of all places!’
If Mrs Stones had not been present, I would have had my head in my hands. Policemen will no doubt mill around the town today, hoping to find the missing woman. I can only pray that the inspector’s optimism is not misplaced.
I am beginning to wonder whether Providence has taken a hand in my humble affairs. Is it possible that all these setbacks have a deeper significance, and that I should reconsider my resolution to rid the world of Louis Carson?
And yet, wouldn’t that be a betrayal of Alicia?
As soon as Mrs Stones has gone, I shall retrieve that crumpled letter from its hiding place. Reading it will stiffen my resolve and give me the courage to keep on.
*
8 July 1930
Dear Basil
By the time you read this note, I shall be dead. I hope you will forgive me for what I have done. I have not been a good wife, and now I am about to commit a mortal sin.
I fell in love with Neville Carrington the evening you brought him home for dinner. Every other client of your practice had proved deadly dull. Neville was not only handsome, but wonderful company. He expressed a burning desire to read my poetry, the same verse that you once, in a fit of pique, derided as flowery tosh. That he also appeared to be extremely wealthy was neither here nor there. It was only later that I learned that he earns very little at the Bar and that the little poetry publishing press he runs as a sideline is hopelessly unprofitable, an avocation rather than a business. Its survival is entirely dependent on funding from Lavinia, his dreadful wife, whose claws have always kept a tight grip on the purse strings.
To say that I was infatuated with Neville does not do justice to the enduring power of my emotions. All my life I had dreamed of true love, and finally I had found it. I won’t beat about the bush. Neville and I began a torrid affair. It was wild and passionate, everything that our marriage is not. You are not a bad man, Basil, far from it. In many ways you are too good for me. You dote on me, rather as a lepidopterist admires a butterfly trapped in his collection. But I have long yearned to spread my wings.
Neville was desperate to marry me. He said so many times. I have no doubt that you would refuse your consent to a divorce, but that is the least of our problems. I would be happy to live in sin, even though Neville is unwilling to see my good name tarnished. But the stumbling block is Lavinia. She is vindictive by nature and her solicitor – who has served the Henderson-Halls for forty years and is principal trustee of the family trust – is a wily bird. If Neville walked out, she would cut him off without a penny and make sure that he was ruined as a professional man. Neither of us could bear that. Neville insists that he wouldn’t care a jot, as long as we were together, but I know in my heart that isn’t true. He is too accustomed to his creature comforts. And so, for that matter, am I.
We were wrestling with our dilemma when disaster struck. Neville received an anonymous letter, a disgusting blend of cowardice and menace. The author revealed that he was in possession of one of the letters I had sent to Neville. His extensive quotation from one purple passage proved the point. By some unfathomable means he had got hold of the letter when we were staying in Brighton, snatching a blissful weekend together while you were visiting your Aunt Maud in Ludlow and Lavinia was having an old school friend to stay.
For the return of the letter, he demanded an absurdly high sum. The money was to be sent to an accommodation address in Kemptown, close to the shore at Brighton. The name he used was Nap Moth. As Neville said, this was transparently an anagram for phantom. Just one more means of tormenting us, another twist of the screw.
Lavinia could have paid without a second thought, but Neville assured me there was no chance of his persuading her to give him such an amount, whatever the pretext. As a result, I had to beg you for the money which I said was needed for my cousin’s emergency operation.
The compromising letter was returned to Neville, and we prayed that would be the end of the matter. But forty-eight hours later came another demand, accompanied by a quotation from an even more extravagant expression of my physical desires. This time he wanted twice as much as before.
At this point, Neville admitted that half a dozen letters of mine – ‘the juiciest’, he said – had been stolen from him in Brighton. He’d brought them in his suitcase because he was afraid that Lavinia might stumble across them during his absence from home. Meanwhile you had discovered that my cousin was fit and well and were refusing to believe my frantic lies about how I’d spent five hundred pounds in addition to my usual allowance. At that point, you and I were barely on speaking terms. I begged Neville to talk to Lavinia, but his forecast proved correct. She refused to give him one pound, let alone a thousand.
Neville decided to play a risky game. He said we must call the blackmailer’s bluff. I was too distraught and frightened to argue. Perhaps he was right, and we had no choice. His letter refusing to pay another penny was magnificently disdainful. But we knew we were courting disaster.
Neville received a telephone call at his office – from the blackmailer himself. He sounded oily, Neville said, a regular Uriah Heep. The vile creature gave us forty-eight hours to produce the money. Otherwise, the remaining letters would be sent to Lavinia. Neville said he would make payment by instalments. He has an interest in prizefighting and hired a muscular fellow to accompany him to Kemptown.
The accommodation address proved to be a chemist’s shop close to the Sassoon Mausoleum. At first the chemist was unwilling to disclose the true identity of Nap Moth, but Neville’s hireling soon managed to knock it out of him. The chemist sailed on the windy side of the law and was crafty enough to make sure he knew something about his customers. He’d discovered that the name of our blackmailer was Louis Carson and that the man lived somewhere in the locality, but that was all.
The money was never collected. Carson had got wind of Neville’s determination to fight back. He retaliated with the most powerful weapon at his disposal. He did not bother with you, Basil, because he guessed that you would forgive me anything. Like an anarchist hurling a bomb, he sent my letters to Lavinia.
She threw Neville out of the house. He could go and live with his slut for all she cared. That was me, Basil, a slut! One thing he could be sure of, she said. He’d never receive a farthing from her, as long as she lived.
Can you imagine our despair? I know you’ve always prided yourself on your lack of imagination, but I swear that even you, Basil, must in your heart understand at least something of the pain of true love.
Neville was distraught. Not even my adoration was enough to console him. He is a man of wild emotions, as I am. That is why we are soulmates.
There is no easy way to say what I need to say, so I shall be brief.
On this earth, we are doomed. We have resolved to follow the precedent of Mayerling. Like those other star-crossed lovers, Crown Prince Rudolf and his beloved Mary Vetsera, we shall both go blissfully into the uncertain beyond. As Mary said of Rudolf, ‘If I could give him my life I should be glad to do it, for what does life mean for me?’ I feel the same.
Do not think unkindly of me, Basil. You are, by your own lights, a decent man.
I have not behaved as a respectable wife should, and although I cannot regret yielding to my passions, I apologise for any distress that I may have caused you.
Please do not blame Neville for what has happened. There is only one person who is guilty of cruelty and wrongdoing.
His name is Louis Carson, and I hate him with every fibre of my being.
Goodbye, Basil.
Your respectful wife
Alicia
Neville Carrington oozed charm from every pore and my dear Alicia was susceptible to the admiration of a handsome bounder. She was always headstrong and inclined to act on impulse rather than after the meticulous weighing of pros and cons. I can quite see why she fell in with his absurd and utterly selfish proposal that the pair of them should die in a suicide pact.
Of course, he was a weak-willed coward. Having shot Alicia, he lost his nerve and could not face turning the gun on himself. I don’t believe he had any sort of coherent plan, for in such circumstances he would inevitably be convicted of murdering my wife.
Perhaps he realised this, I cannot say. All that is certain is what happened. The pair of them had met for their final, fatal tryst in his basement room in chambers. After shooting Alicia, he ran out of the building in a panic. A passing Alvis (the 12/50 model) knocked him down on the Embankment. For the next forty-eight hours he lay in a coma, with a police constable at his bedside. He died without regaining consciousness. Plainly a merciful release. At least he was spared the gallows.
Alicia’s death prostrated me. I was already at my wits’ end with grief when, the following day, I received her letter. I revealed its existence to nobody and shortly before the inquest I was admitted to a nursing home. People described me as a broken man.
Thankfully, the coroner was sympathetic and discreet. As a result of his concern for the well-being of the bereaved, the scandal was hushed up as well as Lavinia Carrington and I could have hoped. Neville Carrington was said to have suffered a temporary derangement. He had fallen head over heels with a beautiful woman and lured her to the flat on a pretext. When she resisted his overtures, he killed her in hot blood, before meeting his end as he rushed from the scene of his crime in a fit of horrified remorse. A tragedy for all concerned. Thankfully, the eyes of the nation were fixed on the Test Match at Headingley, where Bradman was putting English bowlers to the sword. I was profoundly grateful for our national obsession with the summer game.
As I began my slow recovery to health, my thoughts began to crystallise.
Carrington’s extravagance and lack of judgment meant he would always need money and could never have kept Alicia in the style to which she was accustomed. They would have quarrelled. The so-called passion would have faded. His eyes would have wandered in other directions as he looked for some other rich woman to take Lavinia’s place.
In the meantime I would have remained patient and shown forbearance. Alicia would have come back to me. She would have learned her lesson. We should have been reunited forever.
Despise Carrington as I do, I have never entertained the slightest doubt about who is the real villain of the piece.
Louis Carson.
That man is responsible for everything that has gone wrong in my life. Alicia’s blood is on his hands, and I shall not rest until I have avenged her.