The Quality of Mercy (32 page)

‘I know. I ought to have said that but I could not do it. I just told the truth – that the box hadn’t been opened. I must have been a bit mad. You know, I think I half-hoped I would be found out. I didn’t want to get away with it. I knew I shouldn’t be allowed to get away scot-free.’

‘But your uncle was found at the bottom of Tarn Hill, almost on the Broadlands drive?’

‘I thought I had given him enough ergot to kill him but I was wrong. He was woozy when I got him into the car. If he had been unconscious, I couldn’t have manoeuvred him.’

‘And so when you left him . . .?’

‘By then he was unconscious. I thought he was dead. I kissed him and walked away. I knew he would be found before too long.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t have allowed him to lie out there all night.’

‘But he wasn’t dead?’

‘No, he must have come to – oh, it’s too awful to think about – and staggered down the hill and died where he was found. I’m a murderer, aren’t I? Tell me I am wicked? Tell me I should be hanged?’

Edward looked at Vera aghast. Tears were running down her cheeks but she did not wipe them away.

‘So why did you mention the notes on the canvas? Why did you draw attention to the fact that your uncle had taken ergot unexpectedly?’

‘I don’t really understand myself. I suppose I thought you suspected there was something wrong and I wanted to distract you.’

‘And you were successful. Verity and I thought the notes had to be connected with someone at Broadlands – possibly Mountbatten himself.’ A thought crossed Edward’s mind. ‘Did you do those squiggles on the canvas?’

‘No, no! He did them and I really believe that he was upset at the thought of my aunt’s home being destroyed. I think, in his muddled way, he did want to talk to Lord Louis about it. That was what he
was
trying to do when he walked down the hill that last time. He was getting so forgetful, as I said, he made notes to remind himself . . .’

‘But I think there was another reason why you suggested there was something strange about your uncle’s death. I think you wanted to be found out. You wanted someone to know – to ease your conscience. You wanted to be punished.’

Vera hung her head like a naughty child. In a low voice, she said, ‘I thought of you as my nemesis. It was so unfair, I know. I thought that if you found out the truth . . . and forgave me – or did not forgive me – I would have – what’s the word? –
expiated
my sin. It was very wicked of me. . . to try and transfer my guilt to you. I suppose, if I was religious, I would have confessed to a priest.’

‘But I
didn’t
find out the truth,’ Edward said bitterly.

‘You didn’t want to,’ she murmured.

Edward was silent. He was not God. He was not nemesis but he did distinguish – as the law did not – between murder done out of malice – greed, envy, hatred – and murder brought on by despair. He thought, wryly, of the legend beneath the Mersham coat of arms –
Aquila non captat Muscat
. Eagles don’t catch flies. He suspected there must be other instances where children, driven to the edge of madness by the burden of looking after senile parents, resorted to snuffing out a life. Such deaths seldom if ever came to be investigated by policemen and condemned by judge and jury.

He knew he ought to be angry that it was so but he preferred to think that there was often mercy in the killing and mercy should be shown to the killer. As Shakespeare put it, ‘the quality of mercy is not strain’d. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,’ by which he meant, surely, that mercy should not be governed by inflexible human laws.

They sat in silence for several minutes until he could restrain himself no longer. ‘Oh Vera! Why did you have to tell me this? What am I supposed to do? There’s no evidence to convict you of murder except your own confession. Yes, if you were convicted of murder, you would indeed be hanged. It is the mandatory sentence for murder. The Home Secretary might reduce the sentence to life imprisonment but how could you ever bear that? Your defence counsel might argue that, when you left your uncle on the hill, he was still alive so you had not actually killed him, but the fact remains that you
meant
to kill him and, in the end, he did die as a result of the ergot you gave him. However, unless you decide to repeat it to the police your confession is of no interest to anyone except those who care about you. I have no intention of repeating what you have told me to the police. That is for you to do, if you so wish, but I beg you to keep silent and find some more constructive way of dealing with your guilt.’

Vera looked at him, haggard and pale. ‘At first I thought that I could deal with it – my guilt. I had my freedom and would pay the price for my wickedness having to live with the knowledge that I had committed the worst sin against the person I loved most in the world. As the days went by, I realized I could not. I had to tell someone. It was as simple as that. So I told you. I am so . . . so sorry to have burdened you with it. ’

She made to get up but Edward stayed her.

‘Vera,’ he said, laying his hand on hers. ‘No one who knows you can doubt that you are a good person. You acted out of desperation. You had been deprived of the childhood which was yours by right and suddenly you were faced with the fact that, once again, you would have to devote the best part of your life to caring for your uncle. No sane person would say you are a cold-blooded murderer.’

‘But that is what the law would say.’

‘It would,’ Edward said grimly, not wanting her to be in any doubt of the danger in which she lay. ‘And, what is more, you would be pilloried by the newspapers – misunderstood and caricatured. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘My God! What am I going to do?’

‘You alone can decide. No one can make the decision for you but the fact that you had to tell me what happened suggests to me that your conscience will lead you out of the morass. You must do something or you may punish yourself some other way.’

‘Suicide? I have thought of that. Don’t think that I haven’t,’ she said vehemently.

‘Your death will help no one and I can’t believe it would be what your uncle would want. He had seen enough pain and suffering.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘It’s not for me to tell you but I have a suggestion,’ he said slowly. ‘The Germans have an expression,
Trauerbeit
– the labour of mourning. The coming war is going to bring a world of suffering. Why not devote as much time as possible to helping refugees? Perhaps, in that way, you will be able to make peace with yourself.’

Vera’s face cleared a little and she looked at him with something like hope in her eyes. ‘Refugees?’

‘Verity and I have helped bring over and settle a trainload of Jewish children from Vienna. Other trains are planned but the organizers are desperately short of competent people to help.’

‘Children are coming on trains?’ she sounded bewildered.

‘Yes. The British Jewish Refugee Committee has been formed to organize what they call
Kindertransport
– trains and planes to rescue children from almost certain death in the camps which the Nazis have set up. Would that be a way forward for you?’

Edward spent another hour talking Vera through the tragedy in her life and he was very weary when at last she left. They had not felt like eating but now he found he was hungry. Although it was nine thirty, he thought he would see if Verity was in her flat. He had dialled her number before he remembered that she was dining with her father. He was just about to replace the receiver when, to his surprise, she answered. She sounded as though he had woken her.

‘You’re not at the Ritz with your father . . .?’

As matter-of-factly as she could manage, she told him how she had been stood up.

‘Meet me at Gennaro’s and we can weep on each other’s shoulders,’ he urged her. ‘No need to dress.’

Had he known Verity was going to pour out her anguish at her father’s ability to absent himself whenever she needed him most, he might not have been so ready to take her out to dinner. He had had about as much as he could take of fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces. However, he listened patiently as she told him how isolated she felt – how badly she had missed a mother’s guidance as a child and, worse still, when she had first gone out into the world as a young girl. She spoke about her passionate love for her father and how she had been so proud of him. How she had tried to understand why the good causes he espoused had always taken priority over her. She remembered a school play in which she had the starring role. He had promised to be there but his seat had remained empty and when, taking her curtain call, she had looked for him, he was not there. How she had trained herself not to care – or so she thought – that he forgot to collect her from her friends’ houses and never remembered her birthday unless she reminded him. It became a sort of joke between them, only it had ceased to make her laugh.

When she was quite done, he told her about Vera.

‘Oh God! Edward, you must be exhausted!’ she cried. ‘You ought to have told me to shut up. How could I have burdened you with my problems with my father when Vera . . . oh, that poor girl! You know, I always thought there was something odd going on. That day I met her at her uncle’s flat, she was doing her best to appear normal but there was something . . . I couldn’t put my finger on it. Of course, what she told you explains everything.’

‘Do you think we were foolish not to have worked it out without her having to tell me?’

‘I don’t see how we could. She had no motive for killing her uncle – or none that we could have known about. But, thank God, we never spoke to anyone about our version of events.’

‘Particularly that ass, Inspector Beeston.’

‘No, thank goodness!’

‘Darling V! Tell me again that you’ll marry me. I somehow can’t quite believe it. Say you haven’t changed your mind.’

Verity closed her eyes and then opened them again as if she had been praying although as a paid-up member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and an avowed atheist this was unlikely. She put her hands into his across the table and said simply, ‘I will marry you, Edward, if you still want me.’

A week later, Edward found himself in a gloomy north London synagogue listening to a rabbi recite Kaddish. He prayed for the soul of Georg Dreiser and for his parents, probably in some hideous concentration camp by now. Then he prayed for Verity, who had left for Prague, and for their marriage.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she had ordered when he kissed her goodbye. ‘I won’t be in Prague for very long. The Germans will march into Czechoslovakia and I will be thrown out. I am trying to be thrown out of every country in Europe.’ She joked but her voice cracked. ‘I am the albatross – the bird of ill-omen. I move to the sound of marching boots and I dance to the goose-step.’

‘V!’ he chided her. ‘Don’t go all gnomic on me. It’s not like you to be so gloomy.’

‘Georg’s death has shocked me more than all the deaths I saw in Spain.’

‘Why? Because you think it was our fault?’

‘No. I know it wasn’t our fault but I feel it as very close to me. Georg was the first person I thought I had a chance of saving and I failed. And now I won’t be at the synagogue to pray for him.’

‘You don’t believe in prayer.’

‘No, but I’m not always logical as you well know. Pray for him for me, will you, Edward?’

Before setting out on her long journey across Europe, Verity had spent the night in the arms of her lover. They had eaten a last supper of bread and cheese and drunk a last bottle of wine in the bed which smelled of their entwined bodies. The flat in Cranmer Court – still largely unfurnished – was an adequate refuge, so anonymous it seemed to concentrate all their longings inwards, one upon the other.

After they had eaten, they lay in the darkness and tried to sleep but there were too many thoughts to pursue in each of their minds to make it possible. Edward stroked her, feeling her flutter under his hand like a bird. She clung to him with all the passion of a child at her mother’s breast, wanting to tell him what he already knew – that she was frightened of her appointment with destiny. She had been in danger so many times and escaped death when others close to her had not. Perhaps her luck was finally running out. Perhaps she would end up in some squalid Nazi prison camp. She tried to still her rising panic. She knew that in the morning light she would see things more clearly. She would not be afraid. She would be dry-eyed as she kissed Edward goodbye but, in the darkness, she could give way to night terrors and be comforted.

‘V, darling, you’re shivering. Are you cold?’

‘I am a little cold, yes.’

‘Shall I warm you again – the way you like?’

‘But it’s the middle of the night . . . Don’t you want to sleep?’

Edward did not answer but cradled her to his chest. She was so small! How could such a sparrow fly so far from him? He felt her breath warm against his mouth. He kissed her and felt, rather than saw, her tears.

‘Hey, don’t cry, my darling,’ he murmured. ‘We’ll part in the morning but only for a little while. I shall come after you in a month or two and bring you home.’

‘But, Edward,’ she protested, suddenly happy, ‘I’m a hard-bitten, bloody-minded reporter – not a child to be carried off to safety as soon as the going gets a little rough.’

‘Of course you are, my darling, but you are also going to be my wife and that gives me the right to protect you. It’s a right I have desired for so long and now you cannot deny me.’

‘I won’t deny you anything,’ she promised him.

‘Oh, V!’ he cried, entering her as though into a new life. ‘Come to me, my darling girl! I love you very much. You will never be alone again, however far away you are from me.’

And when it was all over and they were satisfied, they slept and were comforted.

The rabbi had told Edward that the Kaddish was in essence a reminder of the greatness of God rather than what a Christian might think of as a mourning prayer.

‘You see,’ the old man said, ‘the great Rabbi Meir consoled her husband for the death of their two sons with a prayer which likened their dead children to precious objects God had lent them for a while and now demanded they return. So, when a loved one dies, we say, “The Lord gave and the Lord took back. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”’