Fear In The Sunlight Part 24

Penrose could understand her anger: after the first war, Bridget had made a series of drawings for an anti-war society of former soldiers living in asylums a the victims of society's shame, shut away like criminals simply because their minds could not cope with what they had experienced. He remembered her bitterness at the crudeness of their treatment; drugging, purging and a little light starvation, she had called it, regardless of individual needs. It was the same here: people suffering from epilepsy were not responsible for their actions during or after an attack and were therefore insane according to the legal definition of the word, but an asylum was surely the last place in which they would find the care they needed.

'It would have been humiliating for anyone to be treated like that,' Rhiannon continued, 'but it was only a matter of time before Edwin had a fit up there in front of everyone, like some sort of freak-show entertainment. We were there once when it happened. Everyone was laughing or shouting obscenities at him, and the noise was unbearable. None of the attendants did anything to help. If anything, I think they were grateful for the distraction.'

Penrose glanced at Gwyneth. She had closed her eyes and he could only imagine the pictures she was seeing in her mind. 'What happened to Edwin?' he asked quietly.

'He had a fit one night and hit his head, alone in a cell where they'd put him as a punishment for something. G.o.d knows what. He was supposed to be under constant supervision, but he'd been dead for nine hours by the time someone found him.' She took Gwyneth's hand and held it. 'He was just a young man, Mr Penrose, and so sweet-natured. Is it really any wonder that she didn't want that for Taran, that she'd do anything to avoid it?'

Penrose knew that she was pleading with him for her friend's sake, but he doubted that any legal recrimination would be as harsh as the one Gwyneth had given herself. 'It was all right while I was there to protect Taran,' Gwyneth said quietly, as if she had read Penrose's thoughts, 'but I knew they'd take him away if anything happened to mea and I never expected to live a long life. Now, every day I wake up is another day of guilt for the time he could have had, and look what it's all led to.'

'Mrs Draycott, you can't hold yourself responsible for every evil thing that David Franks has ever done,' he said. 'The murders he committed in America are . . .'

The rest of his sentence was lost in the cry of protest from the bed. Gwyneth Draycott clutched desperately at the sheets and tried to sit up. 'Please leave now,' Rhiannon begged, looking at Penrose. 'She needs to rest. She's had so little sleep since she heard about Davida and she's more likely to have an attack if she's tired.'

Penrose did as he was asked and waited outside on the landing. Another flight of stairs led up to an attic rooma and, through the open door, he caught sight of what looked like a child's nursery. Rhiannon was still occupied with Gwyneth, so he climbed the steps and looked inside. There were toys lying on the floor by the window: stuffed animals, tin soldiers, a wooden Noah's Ark, all the more poignant because this was not the house where Taran had lived, but where he had died. What caught Penrose's attention, however, was a collection of small carved figures, arranged in groups on a long table down one wall. He walked over to look at them more closely and saw that each arrangement represented an everyday scene: a family having a meala a cla.s.sroom of childrena a woman reading a bedtime story. It was a life lived out in miniature, the story of growing up which every mother took for granted but which had been denied to Gwyneth.

'She's lived in that world more and more these past few years.' Penrose had been too absorbed in what he was looking at to notice Rhiannon's footsteps on the stairs. 'It's as if she can't face reality any more; hardly surprising, I suppose. David made all those figures for her. He was always clever like that.' She picked up one or two of the other toys and tidied them away in a chest. 'David was the perfect son she never had.' She saw his face and tried to explain. 'In Gwyn's eyes, I mean. He was always so full of life a handsome, bright, strong, successful. Everything she had once wished for Taran she saw fulfilled in him. She had watched him grow up, remember. Every summer the Gypsies came back here, he spent more time with hera and he never really wanted to leave. From Gwyneth's point of view, his mother was deada and it was safe for her to care for him as a son, free from all the fears that tainted her love for her real child. After what happened to Taran, theirs was the ultimate bond, I suppose: you don't share a secret like that without an enormous amount of trust on both sides.'

'Why didn't David stay with Gwyneth after his father was killed?'

'That's what both of them wanteda but Grace didn't think it was safe for him herea and she asked Bella to take him. Looking back, I wonder now if the two of them suspected the truth and got him as far away as they could. Either way, it was the worst possible thing for Gwynetha and she always resented Bella for taking him from her.'

'What about when he came back to England in the twenties?'

'He lived in Londona but he visited Gwyneth all the time, I gather. Grace was dead by thena and Gwyneth had moved back here, but she and David had always kept in touch. Just before the war, when he went to America for the second time, he begged her to go with him. He'd inherited Bella's moneya and he offered to move us both out there where we'd be safe, but she wouldn't leave here because of Taran. David saw that as a choice, I think, although if he resented it, he never said.'

'Did she know what he was doing in America?'

'No.' Penrose looked doubtfully at her and she relented a little. 'You saw her reaction earlier when you mentioned ita and it's the same if I try to talk to her. She's in denial, and I suspect she always has been. Every so often, he came back herea and there seemed to be a pattern to his visits: he'd arrive troubled and withdrawn, stay a few weeks and then go back like his old self. My guess is that he came here whenever he had killed, but that's all it is a a guess. He never told me anythinga and I would swear that he never spoke to Gwyneth about his crimes either. He didn't need to confess to find peace here. This was always his sanctuary.'

'Somewhere he could come to be forgiven,' Penrose said, trying to keep any note of judgement out of his voice.

'More than that. Somewhere he could come to be loved for what he was, where there was nothing to forgive.'

'And you? You're obviously an intelligent woman; was it so easy to turn a blind eye?'

'He frightened me.' She said it with such feeling that Penrose regretted his naivety in even asking the question. 'Particularly towards the end. He was coming back here more oftena and I knew he was out of control. He had no affection for me other than as the person who cared for Gwyneth. Would you have challenged him if you were in my shoes, or done anything braver than pray for him to be caught?'

'No, I don't suppose I would.'

She glanced round the attic and gave a shudder. 'I'm sure you have more questionsa but do you mind if we go downstairs? I hate this room.'

In truth, Penrose was glad to leave it too. 'Where do you fit into this, Mrs Erley?' he asked bluntly when they were both seated back in the kitchen. She frowned at his use of the name, but said nothing. 'The story is that you ran off with Henry Draycott all those years ago, and yet here you are caring so fondly for his wife. You didn't leave here with him, did you?'

'No.'

'Were you even having an affair with him?'

'He paid me for s.e.x, Mr Penrose. You'll have to decide what you'd like to call that relationship.' She softened, realising perhaps that sarcasm was not the best line to take with so little in her favour; privately, Penrose admired her spirit, although he would never have admitted as much. 'As I said, Gwyneth and I were brought up together. My parents died when I was very younga and hers were kind enough to take me in. We were roughly the same age, and we took to each other straight away. Had we been real sisters, I doubt we would have been closera and we've stayed friends all our lives.'

'Did she know about your arrangement with her husband?'

'Of course she did. She had always been honest with Henry about what their marriage would be if it went ahead: they would never be husband and wife in the truest sensea and he could never expect children from her, but she would care for him and look after his house and turn a blind eye when he looked for s.e.x elsewhere.'

'And that's where you came in.'

'Yes. It was an arrangement that suited us all for a while. I'd married for what I thought was love when I was very young, but it didn't take me long to discover that he was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and I was a fool. I won't bore you with a list of his qualities except to say that he drank, was handy with his fists and extremely possessive in that one-sided way which comes naturally to so many men.' In spite of the circ.u.mstances, Penrose suppressed a smile. 'We lived next door to his family, and sometimes I found it hard to remember whether I'd married him or his mother. My plan was to make enough money to leave him and start again somewhere else, and Gwyneth made sure I was well paid for my services to her husband.'

'So what went wrong?'

'We didn't take into account the fact that Henry loved Gwyneth to the point of obsession. s.e.x with me a or any other woman, for that matter a was never going to satisfy him in the long term. He would have agreed to anything to marry her, but he always believed that he'd win her round.'

'Hadn't she explained why those conditions were there?'

'Yes, of course. She wouldn't have been able to hide her illness for long in a marriage. One day, when she was sick of Henry trying to persuade her to sleep with him, she took him to the Castle to see what sort of life her brother was living, but even that wasn't enough: Henry couldn't stop himself. He forced her to give him what he wanteda and, once he had crossed that line, he wouldn't stop. It was only a matter of time before she fell pregnant, and she was terrified.'

'Did she know that David had seen it happen?'

'What?' She stared at him in horror.

'It's in his confession.'

'She had no idea. Good G.o.d, she'd have died of shame if she'd known; she was reluctant even to tell me, but she was desperate.'

'So what did being desperate lead her to do? Or lead you to do? Did you blackmail him?'

She laughed scornfully. 'With what? She was his wife, for G.o.d's sake. No man would have blamed him for taking what he was ent.i.tled to.' Penrose wanted to argue, but he remembered what Marta had said and knew in his heart that she was right. 'She could have killed him, I suppose, but she wasn't capable of that, so the only way round it was to make him as afraid as she was. It was a way out for both of us.' She avoided his eyes for the first time, and he guessed she was either searching for words or deciding how much to tell him. 'Henry liked his s.e.x on the rough side,' she said eventually. 'I imagine Gwyneth's resistance made things more interesting for him. He was certainly never very considerate with mea and I earned my money. He particularly enjoyed knocking me about or having his hands round my throat. One day, I simply didn't get up. I let him think he'd gone too far.'

'He thought he'd killed you?'

Even as he said it, Penrose doubted his own interpretation of her words, but she nodded. 'I can see what you're thinking; I never thought he'd be that stupid, either. But he panicked, and n.o.body acts rationally in a situation like that. He was horrified at what he'd donea and he would have agreed to anything to get away with it. Gwyneth made him promise to leave. If he went immediately and swore never to come back, she said she'd hide my body and tell everyone we'd run off together. As you can imagine, it didn't take much consideration. Rightly or wrongly, murder is a capital offence and adultery isn't; he barely stopped to pack a bag.'

'He died thinking he was a killer?' As contemptible as he found Henry Draycott's behaviour, Penrose could not reconcile what had happened to him with his own personal sense of justice. Whatever else he had failed at, Draycott had excelled in the role of scapegoat for the rest of his life, even in his own mind, and David Franks's undertaking at Portmeirion had been made so much easier as a result. Franks had gambled on the human readiness to judge, and he had been right. Rhiannon must have sensed his disapproval because she made no effort to defend what she and Gwyneth had done. 'Who else knew about this?'

'David and his father. I had to leave quickly a it was only a matter of time before Gareth Erley came knocking at the door, demanding to know where Henry Draycott had taken his wife a and they helped me get away. Tobin was pleased to do it. There was no love lost between him and my husband. The feud was long-standing, and I expect you know how it ended.'

'What about Bella Hutton? Did she know?'

'No. She believed that Henry had run off with me at first. Then Gwyneth got a letter from her, saying she knew what had really happened and that Henry couldn't be allowed to get away with murder. This was back in the thirties, just before Henry died. It wasn't the truth at all, of course. David must have put it into her head.'

'Because he knew that Bella would do something about it and he could use that to destroy them both?' She shrugged. 'Did you know what David was planning to do that weekend, Mrs Erley?'

'No, absolutely not. I hadn't seen him since I left here, and he was still just a boy then. All I knew was that Gwyneth had been in touch to say that it was safe for me to come back a if I wanted to.'

'Safe because Henry and Bella would soon be past caring whether you were dead or alive.'

'I didn't know that,' she repeated calmly. 'I just knew that Gwyneth was getting worse and she needed someone to care for her. I wanted to make up for all the years a all those difficult years with Taran a when I couldn't be there for her.'

'A kind of penance for not being around to stop her making that terrible decision?'

'If you like, yes.'

'So you were back here by the time the murders took place?'

'I came back the following morning.'

What excellent timing, Penrose thought. 'And did you go to Portmeirion that weekend?' If Henry Draycott had been the third murder victim mentioned in Franks's confession, it was not inconceivable that Rhiannon Erley had been waiting in that Bell Tower to help him on his way while Franks was conspicuous on the terrace. It would have been risky, but she would just have had time to get down the steps and out before he arrived at the scene.

'No. I've never been there.'

She had no trouble meeting his eye, and Penrose believed her. 'Did Gwyneth know about the murders in advance?'

Rhiannon hesitated. 'She knew something was up when she saw Henry outside the house. It terrified her a she thought he'd discovered the truth and come back to punish her. She told me that she'd telephoned David at the hotel to find out what was happening and he just told her not to worry. She trusted him to protect her.'

'Don't fool yourself,' Penrose said. 'He settled all his personal scores that weekend: he wiped the slate clean, and organised the evidence accordingly.'

'I can see that nowa but I didn't know it then.'

'So when a policeman knocked on Gwyneth's door and told her that her husband had killed two people and then himself, you both took that at face value?'

'Gwyneth would have turned a blind eye to anything after what David did for her,' Rhiannon admitted. 'She loved him unconditionally.'

'And you?' Throughout the interview, Penrose was conscious that Rhiannon Erley had made no reference whatsoever to her daughter. He would have expected her to talk of regret at leaving her child or pleasure at returning, but Branwen seemed to have played no part in any of her mother's choices a and that baffled him. He could not approve of the decisions that Rhiannon had taken, but he understood most of them and sympathised with many; her att.i.tude to Branwen's murder, however, was beyond him. 'Did you love Gwyneth enough to turn a blind eye to the murder of your own daughter?' he asked. 'Franks used her a to set Turnbull up and because he enjoyed it.'

She thought for a long time before answering, but her expression was impossible to read. 'Please don't think I wasn't shocked and upset by Branwen's death,' she said at last, 'but she wasn't my daughter. My husband was her fathera and she was raised as our child, but I had almost nothing to do with her. Gareth's mother saw to that.'

'So all the time she was looking for you . . .'

'She was looking for the wrong woman, yes. I don't know who her real mother was. There were a number of candidates.'

'Do you know if Branwen sent Gwyneth a letter that weekend?' Penrose asked.

'Yes. It was something else Gwyneth panicked about.'

'Did she give it to David?'

'I don't know. I never saw it, but she told me later that Branwen was threatening to talk to Bella Hutton to find out where I was because her baby had a right to know its grandmother, but obviously I . . .'

'Branwen was pregnant when she died?'

Rhiannon looked at him in surprise. 'Yes. Didn't you know?'

'No,' Penrose said quietly. 'I had no idea.' At the time, he had asked Roberts to send him copies of the post-mortem reports on all the victims, but the inspector had never bothereda and Penrose had been too busy with his own cases to chase them. So Branwen's unborn child was the third life that Franks had taken that weekend; he would have learnt about her pregnancy when he doctored the letter to incriminate his uncle.

He walked over to the window and looked out at the well-kept garden, stocked with fruit trees, roses and hydrangea. 'Do you know where Taran is buried?' he asked. 'Is he somewhere here?'

'Gwyneth would never tell me,' Rhiannon said, coming over to stand beside him. 'Obviously I've thought about it, and it's possible that his grave is somewhere in the garden. She's left the house to me, and I suppose that would be a way of keeping him safe.'

'But you don't think that's the answer.'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I have no idea, Mrs Erley. It just seems to matter.'

His answer persuaded her to trust him. 'Come with me.' She led him back into the hall and opened the front door. Penrose looked across to Portmeirion and wondered if she was going to tell him that Taran's final resting place was in the dog cemetery or somewhere in the village; in fact, she surprised him by suggesting neither. 'Gwyneth has left instructions in her will that she's to be cremated and her ashes scattered on the island,' she said. 'So that would be my guess.' He followed her gaze and knew instantly that she was right: the island was the perfect burial place, peaceful and solitary, viewed constantly from both sides of the water but never truly seen, and always at the heart of Gwyneth's world. 'Only she and David know for sure, though.'

'You've given your life to her.'

'It may seem like that to you, but loyalty is complicated. From the outside, it's duty; from the inside, it's love.' He nodded, remembering that Josephine had once said something very similar to him. Rhiannon glanced back up the stairs, torn between waiting to see what he was going to do and returning to Gwyneth's bedside. 'I can't expect you not to act on what I've told you. We've broken the law in so many ways, and love and fear don't justify everything.' She must have seen the indecision in his eyes, because she addeda 'Gwyneth needs me now, but do what you have to. You know where I'll be when you've decided. I hope, by then, she'll be somewhere much safer.'

She closed the door behind hima and he walked back to the gate. A few yards further up the road there was a bench overlooking the estuarya and he sat down to think, glad to be out of the house. It was just after three o'clock, and Portmeirion had finally lost its exclusive arrangement with the sun; the heat had burnt away the last of the cloud and the whole of the peninsula was bathed in a glorious light. If he didn't know better, he might have been fooled into thinking that the transformation was more than surface-deepa but, in the house behind him, two women were playing out wasted lives surrounded by guilt and fear; and to his right, on an island covered with heather and sweet-smelling gorse, a small boy lay in an unmarked grave. He knew what he should do. He knew what he wanted to do. And he thanked a G.o.d he didn't believe in for waiting until now to trouble him with a conflict between the two. He sat there for a long time, thinking back a few years to when Josephine had given him a copy of her new novel, Brat Farrar, and they had argued over its ending: he had insisted that the police could never turn a blind eye to such a serious misdemeanour, no matter how sympathetic they were; she had laughed at his earnestness and kissed him, and he could still hear her saying that just because something was real that didn't necessarily make it right. He had had no reply to her then, and he had none now.

Rhiannon's face fell when she saw him back at her door, and he spoke quickly to rea.s.sure her. 'I'm only here because there's something you should know, Mrs Erley, and then I'll leave you both in peace. Taran died in this house.' The shock took a moment to register. 'Obviously, that's not something his mother would ever want to heara but I thought you should know. I don't know what you plan to do with your life once Gwyneth is gone, but it might be time to make a new start.'

Penrose turned to goa but she called him back. 'Why are you doing this?' she asked. 'Why are you being so kind?'

He smiled sadly. 'A friend of mine should have waited to hear the end of this story. We were in Portmeirion together when it started, but it's too late now for me to talk to her about it. The least I can do is make sure that it finishes in a way which would have pleased her.'

Rhiannon was about to say somethinga but Penrose didn't trust himself to stay any longer. He got into his car and drove away from the house for the last time. As he reached the end of the narrow lane he had to pull over to allow an ambulance to pa.s.s, and he realised what she had been going to tell him. In his rear-view mirror, he watched the vehicle make its way down the b.u.mpy track, skirting the potholes as it went, but there were no lights, no warning bell and the lack of urgency could only mean one thing: Gwyneth Draycott was dead. What that said about justice, he could not even begin to work out.

4.

The Friday-night crowds in Mayfair fell into different camps: locals and tourists taking a stroll after dinner and asking for nothing more than the splendour of a summer's evening in the capital and those with a more specific purpose, rooted to the pavement outside Claridge's, desperate for a glimpse of the next star to pa.s.s through its doors. During the war, the hotel had served as a haven for kings and queens from all over a war-ravaged Europe; these days, its royalty came almost exclusively from Hollywood a less authentic, perhaps, but more popular, and ardent movie fans of all ages were now as regular a feature of the Claridge's facade as its soft red stone and cast-iron balconies. Reluctantly, Penrose took his place alongside them, standing at the corner of Brook Street and Davies Street, waiting impatiently to see at which of the hotel's two entrances. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's car would stop. The papers had been full of the director's visit to London to promote Rear Window a his homecoming, as those still smarting from his Hollywood defection would have it a but Penrose guessed from a quick glance round that most people were here to see Grace Kelly. Press photographers held their cameras ready, fans clutched their magazines, hopeful of a signature, and even Penrose could not remain entirely immune to the sense of occasion. Josephine would have been proud of him.

There was a murmur of excitement as a sleek black car pulled up in Brook Street, and Penrose was pleased to see that he had positioned himself well. Hitchc.o.c.k got out first without waiting for his chauffeur, and he looked relaxed and happy as he walked round to open the door for his latest leading lady. Other than being a little slimmer and a little greyer, he had hardly changed since those days in Portmeirion a but even from a distance there was an air of success about him, a confidence that exists only in a man at the very top of his game. Grace Kelly emerged from the limousine to a barrage of cheers and whistles: elegant, serene and cool to the point of glacial a like a piece of Dresden china, as one of the magazines had put it. Penrose stared in awe at her perfection, and wondered what Bella Hutton would have made of this new generation of film star; somehow, he thought, she would have approved. Hitchc.o.c.k and Kelly played up to the camerasa and then, as the actress was whisked off into the hotel, Hitchc.o.c.k turned back to the car and held out his hand: Alma got out, looking more pet.i.te than ever, and smiled up at her husband. The cameras had turned away by the time the director and his wife walked inside together; in Penrose's opinion, they had missed the picture of the night.

He pushed through the crowds and followed the party into the hotel. The art-deco lobby was exquisite, and Penrose smiled to think that the finest British craftsmanship could still compete so effortlessly with all the glamour that Hollywood cared to throw at it. A champagne reception was being held in the film's honour in one of the downstairs suites, and the sound of laughter and celebration made it easy to find. Penrose walked up to the door, but a waiter stepped forward discreetly to stop him. 'I'm sorry, sir, this is private unless you have an invitation?' Instinctively, he reached inside his jacket for his warrant card but found only air. Across the room, he saw that Alma had noticed him. She spoke quietly to her husband, and Hitchc.o.c.k broke away from the crowd. 'Mr Penrose, how nice to see you again after so long.' He waved the doorman away and ushered Penrose into the room. 'It is "Mr" now, I believe? You've retired?'

Penrose ignored the social niceties: he had not come here to catch up with an old friend. 'I want to talk to you about David Franks.'

'Ah yes. A terrible business, but my a.s.sociation with Mr Franks was very briefa and it all happened a long time ago.'

'Franks wrote to Alma from prison, didn't he?' Hitchc.o.c.k looked at him sharply, and Penrose experienced the satisfaction that always comes from being underestimated. 'She liked David, and she must have been horrified when she heard what he had done. She wanted to understand, so she sent him a letter to ask why.'

'I hardly think my wife . . .'

Penrose interrupted him. 'You don't need to defend what she did. It's human to look for a reason: evil for evil's sake is too much for most of us to contemplate. And Franks was happy to tell her all about that weekend at Portmeirion because he wanted you to know how clever he'd been. Alma gave him the excuse he needed: to write to you would have been an admission of how important you were to him, but he knew she'd show you the letter. He wanted you to realise that all the time you were blaming him for what went wrong, he was actually a step ahead of you a the organiser, the manipulator, the director. Everything that happened that weekend was planned by him, not by you.'

'I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about,' Hitchc.o.c.k said, recovering his composure.

'There's no point in denying it. The prison records of Franks's communications are quite clear. What I don't understand is why you sent the letter to me.'

'Don't you?' Hitchc.o.c.k smiled. 'I'm not admitting anything, Mr Penrose, but if I had sent you that letter, it would have been to set the record straight. I can't bear the thought of such a long and distinguished career coming to an end with questions still unanswered.'