The following morning, at home, head now light and clear, William took the unusual measure of going to his study before breakfast. He wanted to lean against a wall, make sure of his bearings, steady himself. He was exhausted by the Alpine range of hopes and disappointments over Bonnie: he needed rest, calm. Besides which, a tide of reasoning was beginning to approach: the melancholy thought that even if he made another foolish attempt to get rid of Grace, there was still no reason to hope that Bonnie might want him. Come to think of it–and coming rationally to think of it was not an agreeable prospect–Grace in her great wisdom had probably been right … absurd … Bonnie’s a beautiful young girl … can you imagine her thinking of you as anything but a father …? Grace’s voice persisted in his head. He could not shut it out or ignore its sense. Music might solve things, though he had not the energy to take up his violin. (Somehow, before the Beethoven concert the day after tomorrow, he had to pull himself together.) He put on The Trout because the CD happened to be in the player. Then, leaning against his favourite wall, opposite the window, he settled to listen to the sun dancing through water, the fish engaged in its mellifluous acrobatics, and the ache of Bonnie’s absence, the hopelessness of ever being able to show his love for her, was eased a little by the musical water. When at last he left the room to go downstairs, he was conscious that it was with the gait of an old man. He was bowed, stiff, shuffling. Safe at home, it would nonetheless be a hard day to face.
As he reached the hall the telephone rang, drilling the silence. William picked it up with an irritated swipe. He did not like people to ring before nine.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Bonnie.
‘Of course I’m all right.’ William steadied himself with one hand on the banister.
‘No need to sound so cross. You looked pretty rough yesterday. I just wanted to make sure–’
‘I’m fine. There was no need. Good night’s sleep put me back on track.’
‘Glad to hear it. I mean, it was an unusual sort of night, wasn’t it? But really good fun. Think we all enjoyed ourselves.’
‘Yes,’ said William. He wanted never to hear the word fun again.
‘See you at the rehearsal this afternoon, then.’
‘Oh Christ, I’d forgotten that. I thought it was tomorrow morning.’
‘William! We’d better have a long go this afternoon, you said. The Beethoven. The cavatina will calm you down.’
‘So I did.’ His heart was battering uncomfortably. However could he put the girl from his long-term plans when she continued to have this effect upon him? ‘See you there.’
It was Bonnie’s friendliness that was so confusing, made it all so difficult. She didn’t have to ring him, enquire after his well-being. Neither Rufus nor Grant had thought to do so. As a matter of fact, they hadn’t even thanked him for the three bottles of champagne, put on his bill, which William had had to pay yesterday morning–thus adding shock to his hangover. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered to himself, very out of sorts. How unappreciative is mankind.
He braced himself for his late breakfast and Grace’s half-smile, which she employed as her disguise for concern: it never fooled William, but in the game of marriage he had learnt it was easier to appear to accept a spouse’s offering as the truth, rather than provoke complications by asking questions.
When Grace opened the kitchen window a gust of mild air, out of character with January, came through the window. Intimations of spring, she thought: and the wicked idea came to her that, rather than getting down to painting this morning, she would go and buy pots of hyacinths and narcissi, cheer up the kitchen. Her ankle was better. She would like the walk.
Grace was not surprised that William had not appeared at his normal time. As far as she could judge, he had a lingering hangover to deal with, though naturally he had made no mention of this–had not even enquired about the whereabouts of the aspirin. Grace had caught him rummaging through unlikely cupboards. She would, of course, go along with his ignoring the whole situation, but in her own subtle way ensure he was in good shape for the next concert. Porridge, she thought. That should help. She would also suggest he open his study window to let in this glorious, downy air. Then a nap before supper, perhaps? As always it was difficult to judge the delicate line between bossiness and kind suggestion. But Grace, who had had a good night’s sleep, felt confident she could work her gentle plan subtly enough not to arouse William’s sensitive defences.
So busy was she making her calculations that she gave little thought to Lucien. Then, as she ate her own breakfast opposite William’s empty place, he came to mind once more. She looked up at the open window, half expecting to see him: hoping he would come, fearful of the consequences if he did. (William, in his present delicate state, would react in a far from polite way to any visitor this morning.) Grace could not help feeling that Lucien had been here yesterday. There were no signs, no clues: he had not been able to get in, but she had an irrational sense that he had come to find her, and discovering she was away had left–what? angry? disappointed? Guilt struck. Perhaps her flight had been cowardly. She should have been there for him. If he had been in the endearing mood Lobelia had described, it would have been a pleasure. He would have asked to have seen her latest paintings–chided her for not having done more. Encouraged her. They might have made a little expedition together: gone to lunch in the Post House, or taken a bus to Oxford and visited the Ashmolean. Grace would have liked an adventure of that sort: its scale would not have alarmed her, though Lucien’s presence would always cause her unease. But by leaving, full of silly alarm, she had forgone, perhaps, the joy of a whole day with Lucien. Also, had she stayed, she would have remained innocent of the foolish antics of the Elmtree–the evening in Bournemouth she wished in many ways she had never witnessed, despite her curiosity at the time.
Still, if Lucien had come round yesterday and found the house empty, it was likely he would try again today. She would find out from Lobelia what he had been up to–Lobelia! At the thought of her, Grace’s mind turned to the nurturing of a new friendship–slowly, quietly–visits to each other’s houses, consultations about their gardens and books, then a gradual crescendo into wilder things. Grace envisaged trips to England’s great cathedrals, perhaps, or even a day in Paris (Eurostar there and back) to look at pictures and lunch by the Seine, the kind of thing that William could never be persuaded was a prospect of delight. Grace pictured herself and Lobelia wandering down the Boulevard St Germain arm in arm, on a fine spring day, blue sky. Then William came into the kitchen. It was ten o’clock.
He took his place at the table, picked up the teapot with a hand that shook very slightly. The considerate silence that had lodged between him and Grace since their return from Bournemouth was broken by a scream–a scream from outside. Then the splattered sound of running footsteps.
A woman’s cheese–white face appeared at the window. Fright had infected her eyes with an unnatural, myxomatosis bulge. Grace recognised her. She lived a few houses down the road.
‘Let me in!’ she shouted. ‘The telephone! There’s no one else in anywhere–there’s been an accident or something–‘
Grace ran to the back door. William stayed where he was. It seemed to him a shotgun had been aimed at the kitchen table. Grace, in her hurry to rise, had pulled the tablecloth awry. Toast had fallen from the rack. Cups and saucers were askew. The strange woman kept up her damn howling. The possibility of a quiet, restoring breakfast was over. The drama, whatever it was, did not touch him. He sipped his tea.
But over by the dresser the wild woman, sweat and tears pouring down her cheeks, was screeching into the telephone.
‘Number fourteen! Watson, yes. Quickly, please. There’s blood everywhere. I think someone may be dead. Yes, I said fourteen … straight away, please
She put down the telephone, turned to Grace.
‘I couldn’t get an answer from Lobelia’s door–delivering eggs, I always do every Wednesday morning. So I went to knock on the dining–room window, saw all this–’
Even William noticed a terrible, denser paleness drench her face. She broke into a wailing sob. It bent her double. Grace pushed a chair beneath her. She half collapsed. Her words, in a further attempt to describe the scene, were incomprehensible. William carried on drinking his tea, still detached from the scene a yard from him, still annoyed that the plan for his morning was now upset.
Grace patted the woman’s shoulder. She knew at once what had happened–Lucien had tried to kill himself, and had succeeded. A sour black nausea rose in her gullet. She felt the discs of her spine loosen, making her useless, floppy, and yet her hands were on the hysterical woman’s shoulders trying to calm. She knew it was her fault: she should have been here when Lucien wanted her, not dashing off in that cowardly way. It was because she had been, insanely, on her way to Bournemouth, where she was not wanted, that Lucien was now either dying or dead.
‘I’ll boil the kettle,’ she heard herself saying, ‘get you a cup of tea.’
‘They can get in through the back door,’ sobbed the woman, ‘the key’s in the shed. Lobelia always left it there so Lucien didn’t have to take it with him and lose it–’
‘William?’ Practicality swung through Grace like a pendulum. Her time to break down would come later. ‘You’d better go round, wait for the ambulance. Give them the key. I’ll come as soon as I can.’ She spoke in the terse snapping tone of one in whom reason surmounts shock.
‘Very well.’
William rose reluctantly: the potential seriousness of the situation he could no longer ignore. He looked mournfully at the untouched toast, and left through the back door, avoiding a further glance at the sobbing woman and Grace’s stricken face. It was so curiously mild, outside, that he abandoned the idea of returning for his scarf.
William pottered down the road, wondering why he was not gripped by any particular sense of urgency or trepidation. The hysterical bearer of the news had most probably exaggerated, in common with many of her sex, and the drama she described was no more than some minor accident. If by chance Lucien had done himself in–well, not good riddance, exactly, but typical of the self-obsessed, no-good rotter that he was. If that was the case, William hoped Grace would not take it upon herself to feel guilt, blame herself in any way. There could be no one less to blame.
Whatever was in store, William enjoyed the exceptional softness of the air, the faint creases of blue teasing their way through the sky. A lilac bush in one of the neighbour’s gardens showed the first swellings of buds. The sight took him to Prague, to Bonnie.
He turned into the Watsons’ front drive. There were large windows on the left of the front door–similar in all but detail to those at home. The dining room, he supposed. Scene of the … whatever.
William was puzzled by two reddish marks, like distorted cobwebs, on one of the windows. He hesitated for just a moment. Then he went on, a faint tremor behind his knees. Two feet from the window the marks were clearly distinguishable: the prints of two hands, cast in blood, held up side by side as if in horror. Or perhaps in triumph. From the thumb of each print a single streak of blood had run further down the window and come to rest in a congealing clot, impairing the almost perfect pattern. William swallowed. He moved very slowly over the last foot of tarmac, edging away from the grotesque red hands. Then he stepped into the soft dark earth of the flowerbed. It sank beneath his feet. For a second he had the impression it was lowering him into the ground, giving him reason not to look. But its beneficence only went a few inches. He could not now avoid looking through the window.
Directly opposite him was a wall-length sideboard of gloomy wood. A long mirror hung above it. Through this he could see a reflection of himself looking through the window at his own reflection, the red hands–alone in space on the invisible glass–just a few inches from his head. There was a breadboard on the top of the sideboard, and half a white loaf. A bottle of sherry, a pepper pot. William let his eyes rest on each object for a long time, dreading moving on to the next for fear of what he should find. He had no wish to look again upon the floating hands so near to his own head.
The bread knife– where was that? As the question asked itself, William sensed the schoolboy detective within him: the realisation that none of this was quite real, and at any moment there would be a rational explanation.
His eyes drifted to the white tablecloth, which had been dragged to the far end of the long table and left in a whirlpool of unshining damask, reminding William of the kind of unmade bed that he would find a challenge … The rumpled mess of the cloth, he then saw, was scattered with gashes of scarlet blood. His eyes followed the bloodlines downwards. They led to a dense purple pool on the carpet–dark on dark, the viscous substance only distinct from the fabric in its dull gleam.–And there, too, the bread knife, scarlet blade, bloodied handle. Inches from it … a foot. No: two reddened feet without shoes. Legs to the knee, in pale torn tights, ladders white as tapeworms crawling up through the blood that drenched them. Whoever had been attacked had been pushed under the table. So, thank God, William could see no more of the victim. Drawing his eyes away from the scene–and yet still conscious he must avoid the floating hands–William turned his stupefied gaze towards the right-hand wall of the room. There, a decorous pattern of small framed etchings was stamped like flags in a sunset of blood: a great scarlet fan of the stuff had splattered almost to the ceiling. The stabbing, or slashing, of the body must have been conducted with an almighty force to produce such a high gush of blood. On the glass of the etchings threads of blood still crept down, only stopped by the frames. William’s eyes hovered on down beneath the bloodied wall to a low cupboard. Just one piece of decoration, here: a glass case caging a stuffed owl. This, too, was lashed so thickly with blood that only one dead glass eye and a few deathly breast feathers were visible. The owl appeared to be the second victim in the attack.
William turned his feet in the earth, stepped shakily back on to the tarmac drive. He had no idea whether he had studied the bloody spectacle for a matter of seconds or for hours. Disinterest, cool, calm, had flown. He shook. The warm air had turned every part of him to ice. He felt very close to vomiting, and swallowed back the sick that rose in his throat. But he was no longer alone. Suddenly a different nightmare confronted him: the flashing of blue lights, wailing sirens, shouting. Several men in green, slashed with livid yellow bands, were running towards him.
‘Know how to get in?’ one of them shouted.
William nodded. That was why Grace had sent him. To let them in. To help. To rescue the owner of the bloody legs. He tried to move, but his feet would not work. The paramedic–the word came to William’s mind like a string of lost beads, an agreeable word–took his arm. Somehow they reached the shed by the back door. The man, the paramedic (how gentle, how comforting was the word) found the key on a nail. He unlocked the back door. Despite his haste to reach the victim, he had thought for William. He was a marvellous man, this paramedic, a credit to his profession. When all this chaos was over William would write to some high-up figure in the NHS … the green arm supported him through the dark hallway, lowered him to sit on a stair.
‘You just stay there, mate,’ he said. ‘And don’t look at anything. I’ll be back soon as I can.’
Two more green-and-yellow men then rushed past William, into the dining room. He heard one of them swear. Then the door was slammed shut. A moment later it opened. William saw another flash of scarlet-and-white tablecloth before he looked away, so dizzy he reached for the support of the banister. He wondered if he could stop himself from spewing out the bile that had risen in his mouth again. The man who had helped William was back in the hallway, speaking on a mobile telephone. He looked up at William.
‘Police need to be here pretty quick,’ he said. ‘Whoever did this was out of his bloody mind. Nothing we can do till the police arrive–she’s dead. You look done in, mate. I should stay where you are a bit longer, if I were you.’
‘You look pretty shaken yourself,’ said William, quietly. But the man was shouting at the police. He didn’t hear.
Moments later police tramped in, scarcely glancing at William on the stairs. The dining-room door was opened and quickly shut again. He heard voices on mobile phones. He heard obscene exclamations. One of the paramedics came out with a deadly white face and hurried towards the cloakroom. William put his head in his hands. He wanted to see and hear no more. This was a real murder, he supposed. The very thing he had been playing at, contemplating, made manifest. He crouched over his knees, wizened with self-disgust, horror, fear. Too shaken to stand and leave, he longed only to be with Grace, to hold her hand.
In her own state of crisis Grace dealt with the traumatised neighbour as quickly as she could. She provided tea and brandy, and suggested she should stay until she felt stronger. Then, asking the woman’s forgiveness, she said she must now go round to the Watsons’ house. However terrible the scene, she wanted to be there.
‘Lucien was my friend,’ she said.
‘Lucien your friend?’ For a moment incredulity broke through the woman’s sobs. ‘That psychopath?’
Grace hurried out of the house. How long had William been gone? she wondered. Ten minutes? Two minutes? Time turns such somersaults in a crisis. Silly, irrelevant questions speared her mind. They were cut short by the sight that confronted her as soon as she turned into the road: twenty yards ahead, outside the Watsons’ house, an ambulance and two police cars were parked. Their blue lights turned silently, but sickeningly, throwing ugly streaks of electric colour on to laurel and yew. A crowd had gathered, recognisable neighbours.
Grace ran. She pushed her way through the spectators. A length of fluorescent tape had been strung across the entrance to the driveway. She tried to duck beneath it, but was stopped by a guardian policeman.
‘Sorry, love. No one allowed.’
‘But he was my friend.’
‘He?–Sorry.’
Grace stood her ground. She had never felt more determined. Besides, William …
‘My husband,’ she said, ‘went ahead to let everyone in, to get the key. He’s in there. I must be with him. Surely … please?’
The policeman hesitated. He scanned her eyes bleakly, as if studying an out-of-date driving licence. Evidently he saw something that prompted him to think again.
‘Very well,’ he said, lifting the tape, ‘only don’t say I said so.’
Hurrying round to the back door, Grace did not see the red hands at the dining-room window, or the vile scene inside. She made her way through the kitchen–mud all over the floor, poor Lobelia–to the dark narrow hall, where she collided with another policeman.
‘Who are you, may I ask?’
Grace considered. Who was she in this unreal morning, Lucien in some kind of crisis, police and ambulance men running amok through the quiet grey privacy of Lobelia’s house?
‘I’m a neighbour, and William Handle’s wife,’ she said at last, words all bending as if in a breeze.
‘Chap on the stairs?’ Grace nodded, though she had no idea what he meant. ‘He’s a bit shocked just at the moment, poor bloke. Soon as we’ve sorted this business someone’ll take care of him.’
The policeman moved to one side, letting Grace pass in the narrow passage. She looked up to see William, some half-dozen stairs above the ground, sitting with his head hidden in a cradle of unsteady hands.
Grace moved quickly beside him, leant against him, but did not touch his hands.
‘I’m here,’ she whispered. William moved his shoulders.
‘Good,’ he said after a while. ‘Christ almighty, my Ace.–What I’ve just seen.’
Silence.
‘Is he … by any chance not dead?’ Grace knew that if she did not ask quickly she would break into tears, and gathering information would be harder.
‘Is who not dead?’ Suddenly William raised his head from his hands. Grace was surprised to see that confusion, rather than shock, had gathered in his eyes. It must be the shock, though, that was making him so stupid.
‘Lucien, of course.’
William sighed. He turned to Grace. She could see the movement cost him great effort.
‘My dearest Ace, I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s no indication your friend Lucien is dead.’ He watched a smile begin at the edge of her mouth: could read her thinking: Lucien’s alive, the rest is all bearable. She was in for a shock. He took one of her cold hands.
‘Lelia–’
‘Who?’
‘What’s her name, his mother?’
‘Lobelia–?’
‘Lobelia, it seems, is the one … who hasn’t escaped.’
‘Lobelia?’
‘From the way they’re carrying on, I assume she’s … From what I saw through the window.’ The Handles’ hands tightened. ‘Don’t ask me about it.’
‘No.–But Lucien: where’s Lucien?’
‘I know nothing, my Ace. No more than you. Nobody’s mentioned Lucien. Naturally this lot can’t say anything.’ He glanced at the policeman by the dining-room door. ‘I can only imagine that your poor new friend, Lola–’
‘Lobelia–’
‘–could be the culprit.’
Grace unlocked her hand from William’s. She stared at the curiously ecclesiastical glass of the top half of the front door, an Edwardian entanglement of labourers, sheaves of corn, doves, poppies, and ribbons with no purpose other than ludicrously to entwine the elements of the pastoral fantasy The reds and blues seared her eyes. The orange ball of formalised sun pressed like a hard ball in her throat. In the chaos, the coloured glass window was the only thing that remained unmoving.
‘Lobelia was about to be my friend,’ she said.
‘I know, my Ace. I know.’
‘She’s probably all right.’
‘Could be.’
‘She can’t be dead. Lucien would never have done anything like … He was a bit unbalanced, yes. But not dangerous. She must have done it herself. Lucien must have driven her over the edge, but not … There must be some mistake.’
The doorbell rang. The policeman opened it. For a moment Grace’s eyes were relieved of the coloured glass. Two men in white overalls came in. One of them was pulling on a glove of thin, milky stuff that reminded Grace of a caul. In place, the hand looked ghastly, armed for its task. The men seemed to know by instinct their destination. The policeman merely nodded in the direction of the dining room and they slid discreetly through the door, shutting it firmly behind them.
‘Jesus,’ said William. ‘How many …? Now, my Ace …’ He put an arm round her shoulder.
Another policeman appeared beside the one standing on guard. He whispered something, glanced at William and Grace.
‘You two on the stairs,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you but we’ve got a job to get on with. You are?’
‘Mr and Mrs Handle,’ said William. ‘That’s an le, not an el.’
‘Mr and Mrs Handle: what, neighbours?’
William nodded.
‘Number six. Reddish House.’
The policeman took out a hand computer, tapped something into it.
‘We’ll be round to ask you a few questions later. But now, if you don’t mind, I must ask you to move. We’ve got to search the house.’
‘What for?’ asked Grace.
‘My wife’s feeling sick and faint,’ said William, speaking for himself.
‘Just a while longer, then. But don’t mind us if we get started.’
The two policemen, suddenly athletic for their cumbersome size, lumbered up the stairs. Grace had to lean closely to William to let them pass. Her eyes returned to the sickening glass vista in the door, while her mind ran amok: strange how shock, disbelief, shatter firm images like gunshot. Lucien’s face was full of cracks in her mind’s eye. She could not recall his smile. Only the strange look, which had so often spurred her fear, in his eyes.
They listened to the two men going from room to room on the first floor–opening and shutting cupboard doors, slapping at curtains as if Lucien might be hiding like a child. Grace hated the idea of Lobelia’s house being so violated. Though if she was not actually dead, and no one but William–whose opinion in a matter so far from real life was not to be relied on–had suggested she might be, then Grace could of course help restore order. But perhaps, after all this, she might reasonably want to move elsewhere, far away.
They heard the men climb stairs to the third floor. Two doors open and close. Then, a thick laugh, like anthracite being flung from a coal scuttle. Grace had heard that laugh before–Lucien at his nastiest. It was followed by a command, indistinct beneath the shoals of laughter.
Lucien must have been in his room, waiting for them. Grace glanced at William. William had been sitting here, alone on the stairs. Lucien had never liked him. In his unbalanced mood Lucien could have taken the chance for further revenge.
‘I think we should go,’ she said, tears on her cheeks.
But William did not move. They heard, now, three pairs of uncoordinated footsteps coming down the top staircase. Then crossing the landing. Simultaneously Grace and William looked up.
Lucien was between the two policemen, handcuffed. His bloody shirt stuck to his chest. He moved calmly, unperturbed. The laughter had stopped but he was smiling (not the encouraging smile Grace knew, that used to raise her spirits). This was no defiantly brave face. He was enjoying himself enormously.
Grace and William rose quickly, shakily, hand in hand. They hurried to the bottom of the stairs. There they leant against a wall of hanging coats for support. Grace heard the creaking of an old mackintosh behind her. She could not take her eyes from Lucien’s cheerful face.
They watched as the awkward threesome negotiated the narrow stairs. At the bottom, Lucien stopped. He wriggled his hands as well as he was able, constricted by the handcuffs. His palms were crimson, the nails black as they had always been of late.
‘Left my bloody signature, didn’t I?’ he said, his look somewhere between Grace and William. ‘I signed my best piece of work–Lobelia.’ His eyes slammed directly into Grace’s. ‘Can’t imagine what the fuck would’ve happened now you two got together, you and her.’ The smile whipped away. Grace winced, as if struck. The mackintosh behind her moaned. Lucien’s captors urged him to move again. He did not resist. The three of them went through the front door. William and Grace could hear jeers, whistles (peculiar for such a discreet neighbourhood) as he was led to the waiting police van.
The front door was shut again. Grace and William stood helpless in the dark hall. Grace saw that on the table, beside a dying poin-settia, stood a collecting tin for some charity. She remembered that it was because of her own charitable work, collecting from the neighbours, she had first encountered Lucien–a strange, endearing creature with an irresistible smile: nothing to do with the cold grim figure, stiff with self-satisfaction, who had just so bloodily gone through the door in handcuffs.–A criminal, a murderer.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered.
‘I think we should go home now, my Ace,’ said William. ‘Through the back.’
The dining-room door opened again and a paramedic with a kindly face appeared. In the instant that the door was open William was able to see that the blood hands had been wiped from the window.
‘I’ve a moment,’ said the man. ‘Can I drive you two home? You want to take it easy.’
William tucked Grace’s arm into his, met the man’s well–meaning eyes.
‘Thank you very much,’ he said, and drew himself up. ‘But we only live a few yards down the road. We’ll be all right, see ourselves home.’
‘Tea, with plenty of sugar for the shock,’ said the man.
‘Thank you,’ said William again, surprised by the firmness of his own voice, but still confused by what it all meant. ‘Plenty of sugar, then the rehearsal this afternoon. Beethoven B flat major, the Op. 130 …’
The paramedic looked on without understanding as the Handles made their way to Lobelia’s back door. He knew that shock takes many forms.
William, with Grace heavy on his arm, began to let the first bars of the Beethoven into his mind. Outside, the sky was a pure but fragile blue, and the earlier warmth of the morning had increased by several degrees.
Grace sat in her chair by the telephone like an angel. Back lit from the light outside, William saw her as he had seen her so many times in her youth: soft, quietly pretty, visible strength beneath the gentleness and patience. She had rung Rufus, Grant and Bonnie: explained there had been an emergency–‘a friend of William’s and mine died this morning.’ William would be a little late for the rehearsal. (No one had actually told her that Lobelia was dead. From William’s silence–he said nothing of what he had seen–she assumed this was so.) Each member of the Quartet suggested the rehearsal was cancelled. But William was insistent it should go on. He wanted as much as possible for life to continue as normal. An hour or two sitting quietly, a couple of aspirin and a bowl of Grace’s soup, and he would stop the confounded shaking. Grace looked reasonably calm, but then she had not set her eyes on the carnage.
‘Are you quite sure you don’t mind being on your own for a while this afternoon?’ he asked.
‘Quite sure. I daresay I’ll collapse a bit, do my weeping.’ She patted her chest. ‘Then I’ll be fine.’
William made an effort. He knew he must ask the sort of question he most disliked–the kind it was his habit to avoid, and to replace with understanding silence.
‘Wouldn’t you like me to be with you when … you do your weeping?’
‘What on earth for? Certainly not. What a funny question.’
She was an angel, Grace. Letting him off the hook, even in a crisis.
‘I just thought … Well. It’s all so horrible. Lucien: your friend. I didn’t much like him, as you know. But he was your friend.’
Grace turned to look out of the window. William regarded her profile keenly, as if for the first time: familiar, it was, and yet there seemed to be a new sharpness. So odd, how unexpected events can change or enhance physical things. He had never understood that.
‘You know, if I hadn’t followed you to Bournemouth …’ Grace was saying. ‘Some instinct made me leave very fast. I had a feeling he was coming round here … Of course, it might have been perfectly all right. It so often was. But I was afraid, I’ll never know why. It’s horrible to fear someone you’re fond of … and if I had been here, I might have deflected him in some way. It might never have happened. That’s what will haunt me for ever.’
‘Thank God for your decision. You, here, alone with a deranged … It doesn’t bear thinking about. Don’t let’s think about might-have-beens, my Ace. Too dreadful to contemplate. I mean, it could so easily have been …’ He quivered. ‘Just thank God you were spared.’
Grace saw two level tears appear in his eyes.
‘But Lobelia … to think he brought about the thing that he then couldn’t cope with. He urged us to meet so that he could enjoy his sick joke, play the last card in his appalling game. Then regret–or whatever it was–drove him overboard. I don’t understand. Especially as Lobelia said he had been so sweet and calm just two days ago.’
‘No point in trying to understand an irrational mind. He was a dangerous psychopath, the sort of man who shouldn’t be allowed out for his own good. Or for the sake of others’ safety.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘I think we do, my Ace.’
‘I don’t know why I was so drawn to him.’ Grace was speaking almost to herself. ‘I felt he needed protecting. I thought I could help a bit.’
‘Who’s to say why we’re drawn to people? When the match is unlikely …’ William paused, also thinking aloud. He wasn’t much good at this sort of thing, but he felt he ought to keep trying. ‘When the match is unlikely, when irrational passion or affection are the only link, rather than anything more cementing, practical, well, it can cause all sorts of trouble. Suffering.’
Grace seemed not to notice the effort in his voice. She could not, of course, ever guess the evidence on which he based his small homily. Of that, William would make sure, she would remain innocent for ever. She went on looking out of the window.
‘Oh, William,’ she said at last. He could see she was near to breaking.
‘It’s not often ordinary people like us are neighbours to such atrocity,’ he said, feeling himself beginning to flounder, ‘but we mustn’t let it darken our days. Whatever you feel about having let Lucien down, you must see that you were blameless. I doubt that having been here would have stopped him in his murderous path. In all innocence you befriended an evil, mentally disturbed man.–Probably nothing as dramatic as all this will happen in our lives again, thank God.’ He stood up. ‘Now, I must be getting on.’ He paused, waiting for Grace to move, too, offer to warm his soup. But she still sat looking out of the window, an unbreachable distance from him. So after a while he left the room and began inefficiently fumbling at the stove. It was the first time he had made his own lunch for years, and in the horror of the morning it gave him an unexpected feeling of satisfaction. As he left the house, he heard the telephone ring.
William arrived early–not late as Grace had warned–at Grant’s barn, so he drove on some way till he came to a bench on a small common. The feelings that had raged within him on the drive over–detracting dangerously from his concentration on the road–had to be quelled before he confronted the others. He had no intention of embarrassing them by his shaken state.
He sat on the bench, eyes on a block of council offices across the common. Then they shifted to a small boy kicking a football. He watched every innocent move of the boy’s foot, listened to the small sound of boot against leather. There was very little time to work out what he must do, and he realised that in his shocked state it was not going to be easy. But plainly the most important thing was to protect Grace, persuade her that guilt was the last thing she should feel. He could see that would be a struggle, but he would not give up. Even harder, because it must remain unspoken, would be the dealing with his own unforgivable past behaviour. How could he, a sane, gentle musician, ever have allowed himself to contemplate the murder of a much-loved wife, simply because of some irrational desire for a young girl? Perhaps his intention had never been deadly serious: until this morning he had never understood murder. It was something you read about in the papers, distant from your own life, the stuff of a different world, or fiction. He had thought it could be easy, tidy, painless: peanuts, a fall from a cliff (not that tidy), drowning quickly in the bath. He had never dwelt on the possibility of blood–the obscene gallons of blood that can spurt from a human body, drenching the killer, lacerating yards of wall, carpet, cloth … He had never intended anything like that for Grace. His imagining had been of a bloodless end. He had planned it would all be easy–if he really had planned–had he? Had he? Looking back, it was now hard to be sure of his intentions, of anything. His strategies, as he always really knew, had been half-hearted–impractical, foolish, bound not to work. What on earth had he been playing at? Perhaps his intent to murder was no more real than his intent to win Bonnie. But nefarious thoughts are scarcely less evil than nefarious deeds: he, too, therefore, was no less a criminal, no less a despicable human being than Lucien. Self–hate, disbelief at his own unbalanced behaviour, shame, all thrust through him so powerfully that death itself for a moment seemed compelling.
So William got up from the bench, walked back across the park to the car. The boy with the football smiled at him. Innocence crossing the path of wickedness, William thought. But the boy’s cheerful face spurred a little hope: not only would no one ever need to know what had been cankering his being for the last few months, but also there was time for redemption. The asking of forgiveness, the receiving of pardon. From this very moment–he unlocked the car door with his usual difficulty–he would repair his misdoings. The remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. He waved to the boy, who looked surprised.
In the barn the players were tuning their instruments, shuffling through scores. William stood at the door looking at the familiar scene–players at one end, the usual muddle at this, the kitchen end of the place–and the picture acted as a placebo. It occurred to William that though he could never understand how Grant could thrive in so disorganised a habitat, he could see the comfort of it. Drawers were open: things hung, swung, seemed close to falling: the back of each chair was padded with jackets and scarves. There was a feeling of pleasurable life here. Grant’s joie de vivre pervaded. (At Reddish House, the sense of order in all but William’s own room meant a certain lacking of vitality.) This horrible day, walking into the warm chaos provided by Grant, William felt grateful for his unconscious way of making his barn a place of welcome and peace. William went over to join the others, noting Grant’s neat piles of alphabetically arranged scores and CDs–in anything concerning work, his neatness and efficiency could not be faulted.
Rufus, Bonnie and Grant asked no questions when he reached them. They waited for him to tune his violin, and within moments they launched into Schubert’s Quartet in A minor, whose andante always brought William the same solace it did to Grace, though this afternoon he had not dared to believe it would come to him so soon. He scarcely looked at Bonnie. When he did he saw that she was just a bright young girl, an exceptionally talented viola player, a girl he still loved (and supposed he always would, in a way) but whom he had no further inclination either to fantasise about or to pursue. God in His mercy had relieved him of that. From out of darkness once more had come light.
When they broke for tea Grant announced there had been several calls for William.
‘Various reporters,’ he said. ‘Seems it was murder. They heard you were first on the scene.’
‘That’s right,’ said William.
‘Phone’s switched off now. Anything we can do to help?’
William smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m innocent of murder.’ He looked from one to another of them. ‘Rather an unbalanced young man, befriended by Grace, stabbed his mother. Of course I ran round to let the police and ambulance men in. Grace followed.’
William saw Bonnie bite her lip. There was a glitter of tears in her eyes. Then one of them overspilled and ran down her cheek, a small thread of tinsel.
‘Bloody awful business,’ said Rufus.
‘Exactly’ said William.
‘Brandy, or anything?’ asked Grant.
‘Perhaps later, thanks.’ There was no finer group in the world than these, his players. Their understanding, his love for them, rendered him almost speechless.
‘Let’s get back to the third movement,’ he said. ‘Time’s getting on.’
When the rehearsal was over, Bonnie came with William out to the car.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘It’s not your fault.’ Dazed, William realised it was now too late and too complicated to correct his answer.
‘What d’you mean? You must be in a state of shock.’
‘Daresay I am. But I was thinking–well, not about the murder. Anyhow, thanks.’
Bonnie put her arms round him. Her summery smell was intact, but distant as a horizon, no power to affect. She kissed him on the cheek. But she was somehow irrelevant. William felt the chill of her irrelevance wash all over him.
‘If there’s anything I can do …’
William nodded, blindly. A moment later he drove away.
He arrived home to find Grace had been harassed by reporters all afternoon, both on the telephone and at the front door. She had kept up a non-committal front, she said, giving away nothing. But she feared they would distort the few words she had said. She was exhausted, and angered by their persistence. William, furious on her behalf, begged her to leave them to him. If they returned, he said, he’d deal with them in no uncertain terms.
Later that evening two detectives arrived to take statements from William and Grace. The process was long and wearisome, but uncomplicated. Lucien had confessed–apparently with some relish–to the killing of his mother, and was to be charged with murder. It was all pretty straightforward–black and white, really, said the detective, finally switching off his mini-recording machine. Just one of those horrible things in this ugly world. The Handles would, of course, be called as witnesses at the trial, but that was likely not to be for some time. It occurred to Grace to enquire if she could visit Lucien while he was on remand. But then–no, she thought: she could not bring herself to go that far in understanding, even if he was not responsible for his actions due to some quirk of the brain. What she must do now, in order to live with his memory, was–well, she was not yet quite sure. But now that she had had her bout of weeping, and the detectives had gone, life must go on.
‘Concert tomorrow, then,’ said William. ‘I’ll be leaving late morning.’
‘The Beethoven?’
‘The Schubert A minor, too. Went quite well this afternoon. Despite.’
Grace put the guard in front of the fire.
‘Would you like me to come?’
‘Would I like you to come? Why not, my Ace?’ Her presence would not affect him one way or another, and it would please her to feel she was pleasing him.
‘I will, then,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll drive you.’ This would mean there was no necessity, tomorrow, to start wondering what she should do about her book: follow the advice of a murderer, and finish it, or abandon the whole project with its uncomfortable associations. She needed time to think about how to occupy the clear, fearless days ahead. An evening spent listening to William’s inimitable rendering of some of Beethoven’s late quartets might inspire ideas. It might also unravel the incredulity within her–Lucien, her friend, a killer: Lobelia, her potential friend, dead.
Grace went to the kitchen to turn out the light. She saw that on the wall calendar she had written LUNCH LOBELIA in capital letters under Friday. The words had been written in such hope. Grace took a red pencil and crossed them out. Then she followed William upstairs. His readjustment of the bed was unusually perfunctory. Grace did not know whether to take this as some sort of sign of future change, or whether the events of the past forty-eight hours had driven him to the kind of exhaustion that blasts all care for the routines of every day
The telephone rang early.
‘Leave it to me,’ said William. It was Jack.
‘Dad? We see you’re famous.’
‘What do you mean?’ William, with the help of pills, had slept deeply. Yesterday was only just beginning to lumber back into his mind.
‘Story in all the papers. This murder. Famous musician rushes to the scene … Lucien Watson, close friend of the violinist William Handle–all that sort of thing.’
‘Christ,’ said William. ‘The bastards. Mr Watson was no friend of mine.’
‘Must be quite exciting, being in the thick of things, though. What’s it all about?’
‘Hardly exciting.’ Heavens, what a foolish oaf Jack was, apparently jealous of a few moments of disagreeable fame. ‘Extremely unpleasant, the whole thing. A neighbour’s psychopath son stabbed her to death. As you can imagine, your mother and I had quite a day of it yesterday. We don’t want to go over it all again today.’
‘No. Well. Quite. Understood.’ Jack paused. William sensed there was awe in his son’s silence. ‘Still, fame at last–’
‘Come off it, Jack.’ He could see all too easily what Jack was thinking: years of life in the Quartet, and only discreet reviews by way of recognition. Then a neighbour is murdered and suddenly real fame is upon him.
‘Can’t do you any harm,’ Jack blundered on, ‘audience-wise. Mark my words, there’ll be a rush on tickets for your next concerts. Anyway, I’m sorry, Dad. Wretched thing to be involved in. If you ever feel you want to talk it through–’
‘Very unlikely,’ snapped William.
‘Laurel and I have a good friend who’s a counsellor, highly skilled in this sort of thing.’
‘I do not want anything to do with a counsellor, Jack. Your mother and I, as you should know by now, are perfectly capable of getting through life’s occasional unwanted surprises on our own. We’re not the sort of wimps who resort to counsellors.’
‘Well, then perhaps it’s the sort of moment you and Mum should go away somewhere, deal with it all. Go to ground at least till the hubbub’s all over. I’m sure Laurel could get you some very good terms–Spain, Greece, whatever. You only have to ask.’
‘We’ll stick it out at home, thanks. Besides, we’ve a busy programme. Concerts most weeks almost till Easter.’
Jack gave a small laugh. ‘Daresay you’ll find yourselves booked up till Christmas, so famous now–’
‘Oh shut up, Jack,’ said William, and put down the telephone.
A conversation with his son was never a good beginning to a day and William, having briefly felt the benefits of his good night, now found himself in extremely bad humour. The telephone rang constantly: he refused to answer it. A side of smoked salmon, along with a note from a tabloid newspaper offering several thousand pounds for his exclusive story, was pushed through the letterbox. The downside of fame was weighing heavily.
‘This is unbearable,’ said William, mid-morning to Grace. ‘We’re off somewhere nice for lunch, my Ace: then we’ll drive straight on to Windsor, meet the others there. Here, we’re prisoners in our own home.’
Twenty minutes later they left the house in mackintoshes against a light rain. They experienced a tiresome moment as several photographers snapped at them, calling to them to turn this way and that–William paid no attention. Grace was to drive, as she always did when they went out together. But William was stabbed with a sudden moment of vanity. He felt he could not be seen by these rotters from the press to be driven by his wife. There was no chance to convey his change of mind to Grace. Confusion was added to confusion as he pushed her from the driver’s door, indicating she should take the passenger seat. Silent eye messages between husband and wife–What? Why? Do as I say!– provided further photographic opportunities to the scoundrels jostling against the laurels. Then, deflected by the shouting and the flashlights, William’s exit from his own front door was not the smooth get-away he had hoped for. The maltreated little car juddered into the road, narrowly missing the most provocative of the photographers–the only thing, in a wretched morning, that brought any joy to William’s heart.
In the papers next day there were pictures of the Handles in a woebegone state by their car.
‘Can that be us?’ asked Grace. ‘We look so old and dotty. And your mac, William. You really must …’
But then the story fizzled out. It was a horrendous but straightforward murder case–no mystery. Nothing further to report, or even speculate about, until the trial.
Grace was one of only three people at Lobelia’s funeral, a bleak little occasion in an overheated modern church. As she looked upon the coffin, Grace could only feel the intense pity of it all: an innocent mother whose suffering at her son’s hand, both during her life and in her final moments, was too dreadful to imagine. What an end to a sad, puzzled, lonely life. For herself, Grace could not help regretting that the promise of a real friendship had been slain before it had a chance. But she had always been one to count her blessings, and as she walked home she thought of her own good fortune, most especially in her husband of so many agreeable years: William, at this very moment at home, waiting for her.
He greeted her in a dither of barely contained pleasure.
‘Stephen has been getting calls all morning for engagements,’ he said. ‘Where’s the diary? The Elmtree, my Ace, is about to experience something of a renaissance.’
Grace was glad of his news. A week had passed since Lobelia’s death, and the shock was subsiding. Both Handles were still a little frayed, jumpy, incredulous, but with considerable fortitude were fighting for their own particular misgivings. William still sensed the relief of Grace’s escape–something he felt might never leave him. Grace was beginning to accept the idea that Lucien’s killing was not her fault. She, too, experienced the headiness of relief: the fact that Lucien would never appear at the kitchen window again was a blessing she appreciated each new morning.
Once the funeral was over, Grace and William shared a feeling that it was time for something cheering to happen. Stephen’s telephone call was the turning point. Then, as they knew it would, normal life resumed.
