‘I have a lot of questions for you, Miss Hartwell – but I’m afraid I also have something I must tell you. Something of an extremely distressing nature.’ He was struggling to find the words – ‘distressing’ was wholly inadequate, and the noise of the car and the wind did not help. ‘I think you should find a layby and stop the car. I can’t make myself heard properly above this wind.’
‘What? What have you got to tell me?’
‘Please, I really think you should stop.’
‘Is this about Peter?’
They were on a narrow stretch. She swerved into a farm track and brought the car to a juddering halt, kicking up a cloud of dust from the dry earth.
‘Well? Is this about Peter? I know he’s dead, if that’s what you mean.’
That was something at least. One piece of bad news that he would not have to break to her. ‘There is that, yes – but something else, too,’ he said, still searching through the recesses of his vocabulary for the appropriate phraseology. How could he tell this young woman that her father was dead, hideously murdered, his throat slashed in his own bedroom?
‘Come on, Mr Wilde, spit it out. And while we’re about it, perhaps you’ll give me some clue as to why you were up in Scotland – and why you tried to follow me to London.’
‘Your father’s dead.’ There, he had said it. Plain and unvarnished – and horribly brutal.
She frowned, her lips curled in a disbelieving smile. ‘I’m sorry? What did you just say?’
‘Your father, the Reverend Hartwell, is dead. I was there with him at the end.’
‘What utter nonsense. Daddy isn’t dead.’
Wilde nodded his head slowly, firmly.
‘He can’t be dead.’
‘I dearly wish it wasn’t true, Miss Hartwell, but I’m afraid it is.’
‘How? How is he dead? He wasn’t sick – people don’t just die.’ She was angry now and yet unsure of herself. Trying to weigh up the possibility that this man might just be telling the ghastly truth.
‘He was murdered. I’m so sorry.’ He reached out to touch her arm, but she shook him away as though ridding herself of an irritating fly.
‘How dare you say such a thing? No, I won’t believe it. You’re lying.’
‘He was killed at his home near Clade. I was there earlier today.’
‘Daddy murdered?’
‘I’m really, truly sorry. I wish there was some easy way to tell you this.’
‘Who by . . . how?’
‘He was stabbed. I can describe the killer to you, because I saw him fleeing on a motorbike. I believe his name to be Mortimer, but I can’t be certain of that. I have no idea about the motive. That’s all I know.’
She recoiled, shying away from him even as she faced him full on, disbelief in her eyes. Disbelief, rage and something else. Fear?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, for want of a better word.
‘If this is some kind of cruel and unpleasant joke, Mr Wilde, I don’t think it’s very funny.’
He so wanted to give her a comforting word, but there was none to be had. ‘It’s the truth. I wish it weren’t but it is. I was brought up a Catholic and wanted to give him the last rites, but I didn’t know the words, or even if I was entitled to, not being a priest. I don’t really believe but I thought some sort of blessing or prayer might bring him some comfort in his last moments. There was nothing more I could do for him, you see . . . nothing that could save him.’ He was gibbering now, irrelevant information pouring forth from his mouth for want of anything better to say.
‘No, I refuse to believe you.’
But he knew she did.
‘Damn you, why were you there? Why didn’t you save him? Did you kill him?’
‘No.’
‘Then what are you hiding from? Why are you avoiding the police?’
‘Because I couldn’t explain to them why I was at your father’s home. I was there because I was looking for you – your passport said you were from Clade. I found his name in the telephone book. Nothing more to it than that. I turned up at the house, the door was open – and I found your father. Someone – the killer – had escaped through the window and I saw him riding away on a motorbike.’
She clenched her eyes closed and howled. A long, unrelenting wail that carried across the field like the cry of a wild animal. He wanted to put an arm around her, comfort her, but her hands were curled into talons as though she would rip into his flesh. Suddenly her whole body slumped and she was silent, save for the whisper of her shallow breathing.
Tears were streaming down her face. ‘Was he tortured?’
‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth. There had been so much blood, he could only see the obvious injury – the deep gash to the throat. On reflection, though, he now realised there were other marks – something like burns on his face. If he was being tortured, it was possible the slash to the throat was a panic measure when the killer was disturbed by hearing Wilde’s knocks at the door, his voice and his footsteps approaching. A killer’s strike to finish off his prey once his usefulness was done.
‘They were trying to find me,’ she said. ‘They would have tortured him to discover where I was. But he didn’t know anything, so what could he tell them? Anyway, even if he had known where I was, he would have said nothing, whatever they threatened him with, whatever they did.’
Wilde nodded. The thought had occurred to him already that she might have been the killer’s true target.
‘Why, Miss Hartwell? Why would someone go to such lengths to find you?’
‘To kill me, of course. To silence me. Poor Daddy. He died because of me. Poor Georgie and all the others – they all died because of me.’
‘Georgie?’
She looked at him as though he were slow-witted. ‘Prince George. The Duke of Kent to you. He was never the target – I was. Me and Rudi. Georgie and the others just happened to be there on the plane. Wrong place, wrong time.’
‘Rudi?’
‘Oh, never mind. None of it matters now.’
‘But if what you say is true, you’re still in grave danger, Miss Hartwell.’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes. Bit of an understatement actually.’
‘Shouldn’t you go to the police?’
She laughed, even as she was wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘You have no idea what we’re dealing with, do you, Mr Wilde?’
‘The police will protect you.’
‘And you really believe that? Who do you think is trying to kill me?’
‘I have no idea. I simply can’t imagine.’
‘Cui bono, as Daddy would have said. Who stands to gain? All you need to know is that if I went to the police, I would be dead within a couple of hours.’
‘Then why trust me? If you are being hunted, why let me into your car?’
‘Because you had something of mine. But mostly because Mimi trusted you and so did Peter. He had spoken about you often. He said you were the only person in Cambridge he had any confidence in. And clearly you are somehow involved, for why else would you have been in Scotland – and why else would you have gone to the Dada Club?’
‘I had no idea I had made such an impression on Peter Cazerove.’
‘Well, you did – which must be why he came to you when he decided to kill himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to die alone.’
So she knew that he had been in the carriage when Cazerove poisoned himself.
‘I’m afraid your presence here with me in this car puts you right in the firing line, too,’ she continued. ‘So what are we going to do, Mr Wilde? No, what are you going to do? You can get out now if you want and walk back to Cambridge or wherever you want to go.’ She leant over him, yanked the door handle and pushed it open. ‘There you are. Off you go. Much safer for you. I wouldn’t want to be in proximity to me if I were you.’
Wilde made no move. ‘Drive to the American embassy in London. I’m an American citizen. Whatever danger you’re facing, I can offer you protection there.’
She pulled the door shut. ‘No, we’re going to Mimi’s.’