she worked alongside.’
‘What did Guy make of Brill?’
‘He said it was only a passing phase, that she would soon grow out of him and find someone more mature.’
Harry bit his lip. ‘I’d like to ask you about the day of Carole’s death. Forgive me, I’m sure it must be painful for you.’
Her mouth a tight line, she said, ‘Compared to everything that has happened in the past, Mr Devlin, I don’t suppose it matters a jot. When I returned home that evening, I found my husband in a state of complete collapse. I could not understand it: he seemed to be over-reacting absurdly to the fact she had gone out for a short walk but not come back as quickly as expected. I supposed there would be some simple explanation, but Guy’s attitude convinced me that we should call the police. As time passed, my own nerves began to fray, but the news that her body had been discovered came as a quite devasting blow.’ She bowed her head. ‘Carole was, after all, my daughter and despite the friction between us, I did care for her. However, I can’t deny that I had come to resent her as well. I resented the way she defied me and I resented her for being the apple of her father’s eye.’ She gave him another stern schoolmistressy look. ‘Do I shock you, Mr Devlin?’
He shook his head. ‘It takes a great deal to shock me. I wonder, how did you find out your husband had killed her? Did he confess?’
‘No, at least not there and then. Those terrible days after Carole’s death are no more than a blur in my memory. I can remember a vague sense of relief that the police had been quick to pick up her killer. I had never cared for Vera Smith’s boy, a wretched inadequate, although she was an indomitable character and her late husband had been a forceful businessman. Yet I found it impossible to hate Edwin for what I thought he had done. The murder drained me of all emotion, and Guy was in a terrible mess. It wiped him out and soon he was undergoing psychiatric treatment.’
‘So when…?’ He let the unfinished question hang in the air.
‘I can’t give you a time and date when I realised that Guy had murdered our daughter. It was simply not like that, but in time I began to realise that the breakdown he suffered was caused by something more than grief. He used to talk jumbled nonsense in his sleep, and slowly it dawned on me that what was crucifying him was guilt. Not just the natural guilt that we all suffer at a time of bereavement, when we wish desperately that we had not said and done certain things, but remorse more deeply rooted than any I could have imagined. When Smith committed suicide, I thought time would start to heal the wounds, but it did not. Guy would not explain what was wrong, we were scarcely able to communicate at all, and so I searched around in my mind for an explanation.’
‘Did you confront him?’
‘Yes, finally I summoned up the courage to ask him what had really happened. By then I was certain that he had not been telling me the truth. I dreaded the thought of what he might tell me, but nothing was worse than not knowing. His resistance was token. When I pressed the point, he came straight out with it. Yes, he had strangled her. She had tormented him and he had reacted instinctively, with ferocious violence.’
‘He was jealous of Clive Doxey, wasn’t he?’
‘How did you guess that? Yes, Carole had been all too aware of her power over him, had known how to exploit it to best advantage. She was no innocent — I already knew that — yet Guy swore to me that he had never interfered with her in any way.’
‘And did you believe him?’
‘Yes,’ said Kathleen Jeffries. She threw her head back defiantly and her dog lifted its head and growled softly, as if warning Harry not to challenge his mistress. ‘You see, I knew my husband. I knew when he was keeping something back about our daughter’s death — but I also knew when he was telling me the truth. I can assure you, Mr Devlin, if he had been sleeping with her, I would have squeezed an admission out of him.’
‘The way I imagined it,’ said Harry slowly, ‘Guy did not envy a boy like Ray Brill; he was confident a pop singer was just a teenager’s passing fancy. But when she told him she was in love with an older man who happened to be Guy’s closest friend, a man she wanted to marry, he found that far too much to take.’
She nodded. ‘He realised that Carole’s feelings for Clive were genuine and he could not face the prospect of losing her. She had outgrown her father’s love and wanted to make a life of her own. Being Carole, she was not prepared to wait. The silly fool had proposed to Clive and he had accepted. She was determined to marry and that meant she needed parental consent. Guy refused — and that proved disastrous for all of us.’
‘She threatened him?’
‘Child abuse was not a subject people talked about so much in those days, Mr Devlin, although I expect it was no less prevalent then than it is today. But Carole was ruthless — as well as shrewd enough to know that a lie told with conviction will often be believed. “No smoke without fire” is, I have always thought, the wickedest phrase. Guy told me how she put it: “Think how the Tory Press will lap it up. A leading Labourite screwing his own daughter — imagine what he would do to the economy!” She said it would make a bigger stir than the Profumo scandal. If he didn’t change his tune before I came home, she said, she would tell me that he had seduced her and then call the police. Even if the newspapers did not print the story — they they were more timid in 1964 than today, or perhaps more responsible — the damage would have been done. She said she would go out for a walk in the park to give him a chance to think it over.’
Both of them said nothing for a little while. The Labrador had lapsed back into sleep and Harry could hear the gentle sound of its breathing. He pictured the scene in his mind: the wild and wilful girl, the father tortured by fear and jealousy. Glancing back at Kathleen, he saw that the mask of severity had finally slipped. In her weary features he saw despair written more clearly than any words could have told. Suddenly she seemed old and frail. Keeping the secret for thirty years had drained every ounce of her strength.
At length she said, ‘Guy walked out of the house and followed her in a state of panic. He caught up with her and begged her to see reason, but she simply laughed in his face. She was no fool, she knew when she had the upper hand. He took hold of her, wanting to shake some sense into her, but she struggled and told him he was dirty, he disgusted her. Her own father and he had taken advantage of her, abused her for his own vile pleasure.’
Harry stared at the floor, unable to meet her gaze as she described the day which had destroyed so many lives. Her voice began to crack as she said, ‘He could not remember strangling her with her own scarf. All he knew was that her body went limp in his hands and he suddenly realised what he had done. Frantically, he tried to revive her, but it was no good. He was feverish, not knowing what to do. He dragged her body into the bushes and staggered back to the house. He had been outside for less than a quarter of an hour: no-one had seen him leave the building. His only thought was that the truth must not come out.’
‘When he had told you all this,’ said Harry after a little while, ‘what did you decide to do?’
She cast her eyes down. ‘Not what I should have done, that goes without saying. I showed no courage. I had lost a daughter and I could not contemplate losing Guy as well. Despite everything that had occurred, stupid and inexplicable as it may seem — I loved him. Edwin Smith was dead and I could not save an innocent life by speaking out. Guy was a sick man; it was plain to me that he would never recover from what he had done. The guilt he carried with him to the grave was punishment enough. I said no-one else would ever know.’
‘And Mrs Smith, what of her?’
‘I acted wrongly, I do not deny it. But we all have our weaknesses, Mr Devlin. Guy was mine.’
‘So you stayed with him and kept your promise?’
‘You sound horrified, but I felt I had no choice. Guy was like a lost soul for those last fifteen years. He could never bring himself to tell the psychiatrists the truth and in the end they all gave up on him. We broke off with our friends in the Party. Guy did a little writing as well as assignments for the University, but all the passion was spent. There had been talk of a Chair, but of course that came to nothing. Clive tried to stay in touch, he was hurt and bewildered when we rebuffed his approaches. But that was inevitable. He had been the unwitting catalyst for our family tragedy.’
‘And Guy’s suicide?’
‘It was not his first attempt, far from it. There had been other incidents with whisky and sleeping pills, but I had managed to hush them up. I’m afraid I’ve been rather too good at hushing things up, Mr Devlin. Frankly, when the end came, it was a merciful release. Everyone felt sorry for me, but no-one knew the burden I had had to bear since Carole’s murder.’ She gave Harry a wry smile. ‘Do you know, I think there may be a grain of truth in that old cliche about a trouble shared. For so long I have been bowed down by my own sense of complicity in the crime. I
