‘Balloons?’ She stared at Kathy, then, seeing she was serious, collected herself and sat down at the computer. ‘How about The Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning, 1783-1903, by Rolt, L.T.C.?’
‘Could be.’
‘You want me to get it for you?’
‘I’d like to look at its place in the stacks.’
‘Its shelfmark is S for science, Ballooning. Come on, I’ll show you.’
They went through to the floors of book stacks at the back of the building, coming to the Science and Miscellaneous section, then working alphabetically through to S. Ballooning, between S. Astronomy and S. Biology against the long side wall. Kathy began to remove books, until she found what she was looking for, a small green volume tucked between two others, its shelfmark H. India.
‘This is in the wrong place,’ Gael said.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Kathy said, and turned to page 213. It was intact. of unparalleled devotion to the service. There was, however, one incident in 1963 which cast a disastrous pall upon all our efforts, a potential scandal so serious indeed as to threaten a diplomatic rift at the highest level. One of our senior diplomats, let us call him W, had a son, a cheeky and unruly brat in his childhood, who had developed into a precocious youth, whose sense of seemly conduct left much to be desired. This youth, D, was raised by a devoted ayah, a modest Christian woman of impeccable character, who had a daughter, a year younger than D, who was flattered by his attentions. She became pregnant by him, and, so it was said, overcome with shame and unable to face her mother, she took her own life by eating arsenic, a horrible fate. Then a younger sister revealed the association with D, and rumours began to circulate that he had been with her on the night she took the poison, and that he had forced her to take it. Her family was incensed, their cause was taken up by opportunistic politicians in Dacca, and the affair threatened to take on the dimensions of an international incident. Fortunately I was able to call upon my extensive contacts in the Pakistani cabinet to bring the scandal under control. A compensation package was agreed between W and the girl’s mother, mediated principally by myself and a good friend in the Justice Ministry. W and his family were hastily posted back to London, and official references to the affair deleted from the records. For W it was an ignominious end to a meritorious, if somewhat unconventional, term in Bengal. On a more positive note, however, shortly after this unfortunate episode was concluded I convened a round table of Western diplomats to reach a consensus on our response to the new constitution for Pakistan promulgated by General Ayub Khan; a meeting, I think one can in all modesty claim, that was a triumph for British diplomacy.
•
‘Harding was a shit,’ Douglas Warrender said. ‘He was pompous, smug and dull, everything my father wasn’t, and he hated us as a result. The scandal over Vijaya’s death was a godsend for him, and he wallowed in it. When my father heard that he was publishing his memoirs in 1973, he demanded to see Harding’s manuscript, and threatened to sue if they didn’t remove page 213. It was a lie, you see, about my involvement in her death. Vijaya took the poison without telling me or anyone else. The book had been printed, a short run that Harding intended mainly for his friends, to big-note his mediocre career. In the end he agreed to cut out the offending page, but out of spite he kept one uncut copy which he presented to the London Library, where he was a member. Marion found it.
‘I told you before, didn’t I, about the sense of tragic fate that hung over my father’s attempt to help the people of Bengal? Well, it was even worse than I said. You see, although my father defended and supported me, I don’t think he was ever quite sure if the accusation that I had murdered Vijaya was true. I believe he threw himself into the tubewell program as a kind of atonement for the wrong that had been done to her. And then, you see, Marion’s interest in arsenic in the nineteenth century led her to this stupid book. She was a very smart researcher, Marion. Very thorough, as Dr da Silva also discovered.’
‘What did she propose to do with it?’ Brock asked.
‘Despite her apparent self-confidence and independence, Marion had a deep streak of insecurity. Although I had given her the house, the baby and many promises, she didn’t really trust me to go through with it. She actually thought-it sounds so sad and pathetic to say this now-she thought she could guarantee my fidelity by holding that damn book over me. She actually said she would give it to me on our first wedding anniversary. I laughed. I told her that it was history, no one was interested in that stuff any more. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? I think Emily overheard us, and told Joan. She couldn’t allow it to come out again. My father had gone through so much.’
•
‘I heard them talking together in the house one day. They thought no one else was at home. I heard Marion say she’d hidden the book somewhere no one would ever find it. Then she told Dad she didn’t want him to go to Corsica. She said that he couldn’t have us both, he would have to decide. He said he had to go, but he would tell everyone when they got back.’
Emily was sitting in an armchair in her room in the private clinic, Kathy recording their conversation, Brock listening in silence. Her solicitor was seated at Emily’s side, silhouetted against the windows and a view of bright sunlight glittering on green foliage. But Emily seemed shrouded in a dark world of her own, her voice faint, eyes rimmed with shadow.
‘It was the first I knew about their affair. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know who to talk to. I couldn’t tell Mum, I just couldn’t. So I spoke to Gran. She said she’d suspected as much. She didn’t tell me what was in the book, but she said it was pure poison, and must never be found. She said Dad had got into a scrape like this once a long time ago, and that it was up to us to put a stop to it, as she had then. Marion was a parasite who would destroy all our lives, she said, but if we were strong enough we could put everything right, while Mum and Dad were in Corsica.
‘I thought, I really did think, that she meant we would confront Marion and make her leave Dad alone, maybe give her money, but Gran said that wouldn’t work with someone like Marion. She said there was only one way to stop her.’
Emily buried her face in her jumper and began to cry, soft, choking sobs. They waited, and waited, and she began again.
‘I said no, I couldn’t do something like that, but Gran said it was simple, she knew a way, but if I didn’t want to be involved she would do it on her own. Only she needed a little help with the preparation. I tried to argue with her-I did! But she had made her mind up. Well, you know Gran.’
By now Kathy felt Emily wasn’t talking to them any more, but instead to someone inside her head, her better half, perhaps, to whom she’d made this appeal many times before.
‘We’d talked about the wallpaper before. Gran knew the stories about old green Morris wallpapers containing arsenic, and we’d spoken about warning the decorators. She wanted me to find out how to extract the poison. When I refused, she said, oh well, she’d have to resort to some other method, take Mum’s car and run Marion down in the street, or push her under a train on the tube. She’d have tried, too, so in the end I looked up Grandpa’s old books in the belvedere and worked it out. I never thought we could make much, and I hoped it might just keep Gran quiet, but then I had to help her-I was afraid she’d poison herself with the fumes, boiling up all that wallpaper, night after night, after the workmen had left. I was amazed when we ended up with as much as we did.’
There was a touch of eagerness in this, as if the experiments, the trials and errors, had been rather exciting. Kathy imagined the two of them in the darkened house, witches preparing a deadly brew.
‘I spent as much time with Marion as I could, helping her, and I got to know her routine. I followed her home one day and found out where she lived, and Gran found a set of Dad’s keys in his study. I also knew about the packed lunch she prepared each day, always the same: a sandwich, a chocolate biscuit and a bottle of juice.
‘When it came to that last week before Mum and Dad came back, Gran said we had to act. On the Monday, while Marion was away at the library, we drove over to Rosslyn Court and let ourselves in. We found her bottles of drink in a kitchen cupboard and poisoned each one, then we returned later that evening and waited outside the house. We thought, if she drank one of the bottles that evening we could wait until it was all over, then go in and arrange the things to make it look like she’d done it herself. But she didn’t. When she went to bed we phoned her, pretending it was a wrong number, just to be sure. When we returned the next morning we saw her leave for the London Library just as normal, and when we went inside we saw that one of the bottles was missing.’
‘What about her computer?’
‘I borrowed it from her on the Monday, saying I needed to transcribe work I was doing for her, and on the Tuesday morning I took her spare hard disk from her study. Once we knew she was dead we threw both of them away.’
