Langham pulled up before the imposing gateposts and turned to Ryland.
‘I’ll get out here and walk,’ the detective said. ‘I’ll wait until you enter the hall and then follow you in. You said he doesn’t employ staff?’
‘That’s right.’
Ryland climbed out and gave a salute, and Langham eased the car past the gatehouse and up the winding drive. He told himself that, despite Maria’s concern, he had nothing to worry about. All he had to do was to accept the raffle prize, keep Dent talking and Ryland would do the rest. Nevertheless, his heart was pounding as he approached the four-square pile of the hall.
He parked before the house, climbed out, and was about to ascend the steps when he was halted by a shouted summons. ‘Langham! Hullo!’
He turned. Haverford Dent’s tall figure was silhouetted against the sky on the rise beyond the main lawn. Langham waved and strode across the grass to meet him.
He climbed the bank and joined the artist on the crest. Down in the amphitheatre the orrery was in pieces, the tracks piled like jackstraws and the halved orbs nestled into each other like spoons. What had once been a bizarre work of art was now just so much scrap metal.
To their left, standing on a knoll overlooking the amphitheatre, the guillotine constructed from a car bonnet rose high into the summer sky. Langham glanced back at the hall; he made out Ryland’s slight figure dart behind a stand of topiary before the building.
‘I hear they’ve arrested Edward,’ Dent said.
‘Bad news travels fast.’
‘Bad news?’ Dent said. ‘You don’t think he did it?’
Langham looked at the artist’s long, hollowed-out face, his skin the unhealthy shade of tallow. ‘No, I don’t. Do you?’
Dent shook his head. ‘Edward might be many things … a bore, a gullible fool, a philistine … but he isn’t a murderer.’
He gestured toward the dismantled orrery and Langham accompanied him down the incline. The artist came to the nestled orbs and laid a calloused hand on the hemisphere of Jupiter, almost lovingly.
‘If Edward isn’t the murderer,’ Langham said, watching Dent closely, ‘have you any idea who it might be?’
The artist looked at him with rheumy eyes set in deep wells of wrinkled flesh. He asked, ‘Do you?’
Langham looked Dent in the eye and said, ‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’
Dent moved on, caressing a halved Saturn, trailing a hand along a length of curved track. He stopped and stared up at the guillotine, then surprised Langham by asking, ‘Do you believe in evil?’
Langham wondered at the question. ‘Do you know something? I don’t think I do.’
‘Good man. Neither do I. It’s a lazy word, a cliché beloved of lax leader-writers and addled judges. Words like evil and God and the Devil … all abstractions that have no real meaning in a sane world. Would you agree?’
‘In principle, yes.’
‘And what about people who are described as evil?’
Langham glanced at Dent as he replied, ‘So called evil acts are the results of certain pressures, psychological and societal, to which … let’s say weak or desperate individuals succumb.’
‘And would you call me weak or desperate, Langham?’
The artist was still gazing up, his expression neutral, at the car bonnet guillotine on the hill.
‘I think only you would be able to answer that question.’
‘Perhaps I am weak. In fact, I most certainly am. I would draw the line at calling myself evil, but I am … weak and immoral, let’s say.’
Langham felt his heart thud in his chest. He said, ‘Immoral … in what way?’
The artist moved towards a pile of stacked half-orbs and sat down on the northern hemisphere of Mars, clasping his big hands and staring at them for a long time.
Langham leaned against the piled tracks, watching Dent.
‘I possess the weakness of vanity,’ the artist said at last. ‘And anger, an all-consuming anger that is both an advantage, in that I have used it to fuel my better works, and a failing, when I direct it at those people whose views I despise. I have the failing of most egoists, in that I am also intolerant … and intolerance and anger and vanity can be a lethal combination.’
The silence stretched between them. Langham waited for Dent to continue.
‘I met Edward Endicott in ’forty-nine,’ Dent went on. ‘I found him personable enough, though his gullibility rankled. He believed in a lot of occult malarkey, which I found objectionable – apparently he’d had some experience in Hollywood. I came to despise the man for his belief in the irrational. He had no proof on which to found his beliefs, of course – merely faith, which is all these believers have to hold on to.’ He laughed. ‘Also, I didn’t like the way he derided my art. So I …’
Langham said, ‘So you hired the actor, Cedric Hartwell, to play the role of Vivian Stafford, Victorian satanist.’
Dent stared at him, smiling. ‘So you know all about that? I should have suspected you’d be on the ball, a scribbler of ingenious thrillers as you are.’
‘What happened?’
‘I ensured that I wouldn’t be traced to Hartwell,’ Dent said. ‘We conducted all our negotiations by mail and I used an assumed name. I set up all the meetings, the séances, the “smoke and mirrors” hauntings … All Hartwell had to do was play the part – and he did so, brilliantly. Edward, the fool, fell for it hook, line and bloody sinker.’ He laughed. ‘It was wonderful to witness, at first: his increasing belief in what “Stafford” told him about his life, his immortality. I honestly didn’t think he’d buy it, didn’t think he was so feeble-minded. And I must admit that I felt a twinge of guilt, but only a twinge. Then I rationalized that Edward deserved to be duped, deserved what was coming to him.’
‘Which,’ Langham interrupted, ‘was to be the big reveal at the final occult evening – the occasion when you’d tell him everything, with Hartwell’s help, and ask him where his belief in the occult stood then?’
Dent nodded, smiling as he said, ‘Perspicacious of you, Langham. That’s exactly what I had planned, yes.’
‘But …’ Langham said, ‘then Hartwell contacted you, wrote to say he no longer wished to play the part you’d cast for him or appear at the final occult evening – scuppering your plans to humiliate Edward.’
Dent closed one eye and squinted at Langham. ‘As a matter of fact he did contact me, yes.’
Langham ran a hand along a short length of track. He looked across at Dent, who was watching him. He was confident of besting the artist if it came to a fight, but in extremis the span of track could always be employed as a club.
He asked, ‘Is that why you killed him, Dent?’
Dent’s face was a convincing mask of surprise. ‘What did you say?’
‘You killed Cedric Hartwell. He contacted you, and in a bid to persuade him to continue the charade you broke with your anonymity and invited him up here. You met on Saturday but he refused to continue, then he set off to tell Edward how he’d duped him over the years. But you couldn’t allow that, could you? You realized that it would enrage Edward when he found out – and perhaps you feared his anger. So you attacked Cedric Hartwell as he made his way to the Chase. Not a premeditated attack, perhaps, more a spur-of-the-moment act.’
Dent stared at Langham then flung back his head in an uproarious guffaw. ‘You’re way off the mark there, Langham. Way off! Go back to writing your detective stories!’ He fixed Langham with a beady eye. ‘I might be many things. I might be a fornicator, a deceiver, an egoist … but I am not a murderer. Whatever you might think, whatever clever plot you’ve concocted in that thriller writer’s mind of yours, I never once harboured the desire to kill Hartwell.’
Langham stared at the man; Dent’s show of indignation was convincing.
‘You do realize,’ Langham said, ‘that the police must be informed about the deception?’
‘Of course I bloody well realize, Langham!’
‘After all, it did lead to a murder – perhaps more than one.’ He paused, then said, ‘Did you realize that Cedric Hartwell was a blackmailer?’
Dent stared at him, and he could tell from the artist’s expression that this was news to him. ‘A blackmailer?’
‘He was extorting money from … someone in the village. For all I know, they weren’t his only victim.’ Langham watched the artist. ‘Did you see him acting suspiciously with anyone? Do you recall anything at all that could shed any light on whether he might have been blackmailing anyone else?’
Dent said, ‘You think he might have been killed by one of his victims?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
Dent opened his mouth to say something, but remained silent. Langham could almost see the cogs of his mind turning. ‘What?’
Dent said, ‘He was blackmailing Caroline Dequincy, wasn’t he?’
Langham said, surprised, ‘How did you know?’
The artist smote the hemisphere of Mars that was his seat, swearing out loud. ‘It was my fault, Langham. But how was I to know?’
‘What happened?’
Dent shook his head. ‘It was the second occasion I’d met him. We were at the Three Horseshoes for an afternoon session and we met Caroline and the vicar and a few other locals. Then we came back here. We’d had a fair bit to drink, and there was something about Hartwell … I rather thought that he and I shared certain … proclivities. I saw in him a fellow sybarite who shied against the fetters of sexual convention, for want of a better expression. So I told him about my collection of erotica.’
‘Ah,’ Langham said, ‘the blue films.’
‘I prefer to call them erotica,’ the artist said. ‘And it turned out that Hartwell was an aficionado. His predilections ran to boys, but he didn’t demur at watching the heterosexual act, and he was particularly excited by orgies. It was while we were watching one of the latter that we espied …’
‘Caroline,’ Langham said.
Dent shrugged. ‘I was surprised, to say the least. I mean, who would have thought it of our own Ice Maiden? But live and let live has always been my motto.’ He laughed. ‘It even gave me a certain grudging respect for the woman.’ Then his smile turned to a grimace, and he said, ‘But evidently Hartwell didn’t think the same …’
‘Evidently,’ Langham echoed.
Dent stared at him. ‘But … I mean to say, much as Caroline and I don’t see eye to eye, she couldn’t have killed the chap, could she?’
‘I’m pretty certain she didn’t do it. Or perhaps that’s wishful thinking,’ Langham said. ‘But did you see Hartwell buttonhole anyone else in the village? Think, man. Did you see him acting in any way untoward with anyone …’ He stopped as an expression – a quizzical frown – passed across the artist’s rugged features. ‘What?’
Dent stood up, walked a few paces and paused, staring up at the rearing shape of the guillotine. He turned. ‘Well … It was perhaps the third or fourth time Hartwell was up here. We’d just had a long session at the Three Horseshoes. It was a nice night and we’d spilled out on to the green … It was late on, and dark, and I saw Hartwell and Alasdair … they seemed to be having an argument. Upshot was, young Endicott ran off like a frightened rabbit. I asked Hartwell what the hell he’d said, but Hartwell cut me dead, more or less told me to mind my own business …’
‘You don’t think …?’
Dent cocked an eye at Langham. ‘Did you know that Endicott junior was a fruit?’
‘I … suspected he was that way inclined, yes.’
‘And if old Endicott had got to know about it … well, there’s no telling which way Edward would have blown up. Not the most tolerant of chappies, old Edward.’
‘But Alasdair …?’ Langham said, his mind racing. ‘I just can’t see Alasdair committing violence on anyone.’
Dent looked at him. ‘Not even some evil old bastard who’s threatening to spill the beans about Alasdair’s sexuality to his father?’ Dent grunted a humourless laugh. ‘Christ, what a business. And all because I had the hubris to think I could teach Endicott a lesson or two!’
Langham looked at his watch. He’d been with Dent for a little under fifteen minutes. He sighed. ‘Look, I’d better be pushing off.’
Dent reached into the pocket of his tweeds. ‘Oh – here you are. This is what you came up here for, after all.’ He held out an envelope. ‘The winning voucher. Well done, Langham.’
Langham shrugged, took the envelope and slipped it into his trouser pocket.
The artist sighed. ‘And just when I thought the week couldn’t get any worse …’
Langham had turned and was moving away from Dent, but something in the man’s tone stopped him. He turned and stared at the artist.
Dent said, ‘The Reverend … I should have bloody well seen that the orrery was an accident waiting to happen.’ Dent shook his head. ‘And then finding out that it was through me that Hartwell blackmailed poor Caroline … Do you know, despite the fact that she dressed me down in front of every bloody drinker in the village that time, and slapped my face into the bargain, there’s something about the old gal I like.’ His face darkened. ‘And to find that Hartwell was blackmailing her …’
‘Well, that’s all water under the bridge now, Dent.’
‘And if that wasn’t bad enough, this morning I had word from the knobs at the gallery in London.’
‘Bad news?’
‘You could say that. The bastards don’t want my work. Nothing, not a ruddy thing. Not a single sculpture. And I was relying on a fat cheque to make the hall half habitable.’
Langham gave a commiserating frown. ‘I’m sorry, Dent.’
The artist sighed. ‘Well, as you so wisely said, that’s water under the bloody bridge, isn’t it?’
Langham walked away from the dismantled orrery, paused at the foot of the grassy bank and looked back. The artist was gazing at the guillotine on the hill, his expression distant.
‘Goodbye, Langham,’ Dent said, with something in his tone that Langham understood only later.
He walked up the incline and down the other side, crossed the lawn to his car and sat in the driving seat. He glanced at the hall, but there was no sign of Ryland. He left the door open to cool down the stifling interior and was considering Alasdair Endicott, and what he should do next, when he heard something.
A mechanical sound, a labouring grind that he had heard once before, and recently.
‘No!’ He leapt from the car, running across the lawn and up the incline. He could see the upper section of the guillotine now and the automobile bonnet as it started its swift descent.
He cried out again as he came to the crest of the rise and stared across at the work of art, and the artist, combined in the ultimate act.
He turned away a second before the bonnet impacted.
When it did, with a deafening crash, he flinched and froze with his back to the guillotine. He knew that he should turn, take one last look in case the artist had by some miracle survived and could be helped.
Bracing himself, he pivoted slowly and stared across at the macabre contraption, silent now, a ghastly epitaph to its creator who, Langham saw, was beyond all help.
Taking deep breaths, he returned to the car, slumped into the driving seat and closed his eyes.
He was startled, minutes later, when the passenger door was pulled open and Ryland slipped in.
‘Not a bleeding thing,’ the detective said. ‘Turned his study upside down, for all the good it did.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Langham said.
Ryland stared at him. ‘What?’
Langham described his meeting with Dent, then told the detective that the artist was dead.
‘Dead?’ Ryland looked mystified, as if unable to comprehend the meaning of the word.
‘By his own hand.’ Langham gestured towards the guillotine. Ryland made to get out of the car, but Langham said, ‘I wouldn’t if I were you, Ralph. It’s not a pretty sight.’
Ryland dropped back into the seat. ‘So … what now?’
Langham thought about it then said, ‘Dent thought that Hartwell might’ve been blackmailing Alasdair Endicott. If so …’
‘What are you going to do, Don?’
‘I think I’ll go and see Alasdair now.’
‘Want me to come with you?’
Langham smiled. ‘I think I’ll be able to handle him on my own.’
He started the engine and drove back into the village.
He parked outside the Chase, left Ryland in the car and entered the silent house. At the foot of the oak staircase he called out, ‘Alasdair?’
He moved to the sitting room and saw, through the French windows, the young man sitting beneath the cherry tree at the far end of the garden. Rasputin was lying at his feet, and Alasdair appeared to be talking to the dog.
Langham stepped from the house and walked across the lawn.
Alasdair looked up, shielding his gaze from the sun. ‘Oh, Donald. I was wondering where everyone was.’
Langham sat down on the grass beside Rasputin and scratched the dog’s head. He looked up at Alasdair. ‘Did you know that your father has been taken in for questioning again?’
‘No … I was out walking Rasputin. I’ve only just got back.’
Langham sighed. ‘He’ll be released, of course, when the police realize they don’t have sufficient evidence.’ He paused, then went on: ‘I’ve heard about the altercation you had with Hartwell outside the pub a few weeks ago.’ Langham hesitated. ‘Look here, don’t you think we’d better drive into town and tell the police everything? We’ll get your father off the hook …’
Alasdair stared at him. ‘Off the hook?’ he echoed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Hartwell was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?’
Alasdair swallowed. He gazed down at the grass for a good minute, as if calculating, then looked up and said, ‘Yes. Yes, he was.’
Langham asked, ‘How did you work out that it was Hartwell who was …?’
‘It wasn’t that difficult. I received a typewritten note demanding a certain sum. I noticed a defect in one of the characters. A few days later I was at the Chase when my father received a letter from “Stafford”. The address was typed, and it bore the same defective letter “d”.’
‘And you approached Hartwell outside the pub one evening, argued with him?’
‘Yes, yes, I did. The galling thing was he was quite brazen about what he was doing. He laughed in my face and said that if I didn’t pay up … well, that my secret would soon be public knowledge.’
Langham imagined Alasdair coming across the actor on Sunday as Hartwell arrived at the Chase to tell Endicott senior of his part in the charade. Perhaps they had words again, and Hartwell made further demands … And then? Had Alasdair become enraged and, on the spur of the moment, snatched up the closest thing to hand, the lawn-edger, and swung it at the actor?
‘What I can’t work out,’ Langham said, ‘is why, after you attacked Hartwell on Sunday, you phoned and asked me to come up? Why did you say you wanted my help, and then on Monday draw attention to the blood?’
Alasdair stared at him, slowly shaking his head. ‘What?’ he said incredulously. ‘But I didn’t kill Hartwell.’
Langham blinked. ‘You didn’t?’
‘Of course not …’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I didn’t kill him, but I know who did.’
Langham’s pulse felt loud in his ears. ‘Go on.’
‘On Wednesday … Marcus came to see me. He was in a hell of a state. He admitted what had happened, confessed …’
‘Denbigh?’ Langham said.
‘It’s terrible, isn’t it, when you see someone you care for in such a terrible state, and you’re absolutely powerless to help them in any way.’
Langham said, ‘Alasdair … tell me, what happened?’
‘Marcus was beside himself when I saw him on Wednesday, just before Dent’s art show.’ He paused, staring at Langham. ‘Did you know that Marcus was on medication? Antidepressants. And all thanks to that bastard, Stafford … or rather, Hartwell.’
Langham opened his mouth in sudden understanding. ‘Ah, so Hartwell was blackmailing Denbigh, too?’
Alasdair nodded. ‘Marcus told me that he’d received a blackmail letter. I said I’d had one too, and we compared them. They were from the same person, of course. So the next time Hartwell was in the village, Marcus confronted him … not that that did much good. Marcus pleaded that he couldn’t raise the money, but Hartwell was relentless and gave him two weeks in which to pay up. Then Hartwell arranged to meet Marcus in the woods on Saturday evening. He said that if Marcus didn’t turn up with the first instalment of fifty pounds his bishop would get to know about his … his indiscretions.’ Alasdair looked up. ‘Well, Marcus was desperate. They met in the woods on Saturday. Marcus had managed to gather twenty-five pounds, but Hartwell was merciless. He wanted the rest, immediately. Marcus fled, followed by Hartwell …’ Alasdair paused, taking a deep breath, then went on. ‘He told me that he didn’t know what to do, didn’t know where he was going … he just wanted to be away from the malign man. But Hartwell dogged his steps, telling Marcus of the consequences if he didn’t find the money. Marcus came to the bridge, crossed it … saw the Chase through the trees. He said that he thought of me, decided that he’d call in on my father and ask if he might phone me in London, ask me to come up … Oh, what a bloody awful situation he was in!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Langham said inadequately.
‘Anyway … They hurried through the copse, Hartwell in pursuit, and something he said then made Marcus see red. He wasn’t a violent man, Donald. He was a good, Christian man. But … but then Hartwell said he’d tell my father about Marcus’s friendship with me – and Marcus saw the lawn-edger and … and in rage and desperation he took it up and swung it at Hartwell.’
‘And killed him outright?’
Alasdair nodded. ‘With a single, accidental, panicked blow …’
‘And then?’
Alasdair shrugged. ‘He hid the body in the woods and flung the lawn-edger in the river, then went back to his church and prayed for his mortal soul.’
Langham shook his head. ‘The poor man.’
‘Of course,’ Alasdair said, ‘when I came up here on Sunday and found the house empty, the study locked from the inside and my father missing …’ He shrugged, unable to bring himself to meet Langham’s gaze. ‘That’s when I rang you.’
Langham stood up, moved to the bench and sat beside Alasdair. He reached out, held his hand above the young man’s shoulder for a second then brought it down in a futile, but necessary, gesture of consolation.
Alasdair pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.
‘Come on, clean yourself up back at the house, then we’ll motor into town.’
‘Will they … I mean, will I be prosecuted for … what’s the phrase? “Perverting the course of justice”? I should have gone to the police yesterday.’
‘They’ll probably just give you a good ticking off, that’s all.’
Alasdair nodded, then said, ‘But how did you find out that I was being blackmailed? Who told you about my argument with Hartwell outside the pub that evening?’
‘I’ve just been up to see Haverford Dent. He told me.’
‘He knows about me and Marcus? Oh, God! I wouldn’t put it past Dent to let it be known …’
Langham sighed. ‘Alasdair, Haverford Dent won’t be telling anyone anything. He took his own life this afternoon.’
‘Dent?’ Alasdair looked shocked. ‘He killed himself?’
‘With one of his own bloody inventions.’
The young man stared at him, shaking his head. ‘But why?’
‘I think Dent didn’t much like himself – himself or his fellow man. And he felt guilty about the orrery, and Marcus using it to …’ He shrugged. ‘Also, the gallery owners had just declined to buy his artwork. Taken all together, it just proved too much.’
They sat in silence for a while, before Alasdair spoke next. He looked at Langham. ‘And need the police know about Marcus and me?’
Langham shook his head. ‘I don’t really see what good would come of the police knowing, Alasdair. If you come with me to the station and tell the inspector about Hartwell blackmailing Marcus …’
Langham looked up. The French windows of the study swung open and glinted in the sunlight. Edward Endicott appeared in the doorway, raised a hand in greeting then stepped back into the study.
‘Your father’s back,’ Langham said. ‘You’d better go and tell him what you’ve just told me, then we’ll set off to the station.’
Alasdair nodded, and Langham watched the young man as he made his way back to the house, accompanied by Rasputin.