It was not easy to hear what Graham Forbes said. The stroke had pulled his face sideways, like a poster misapplied to a wall. Saliva dripped from the useless edge of his mouth.
But if Carole concentrated, she could understand him.
His thin body looked too long for the hospital bed in which it was coiled. He’d been prepared for her arrival, however. Presumably Irene had rung through and told him the visitor was on her way. Even in his debilitated state, Graham Forbes managed a courteous greeting.
Then he gasped out the words, “Have you come to ask me if I’m sorry? Do you want me to say I regret what I did?”
“No,” said Carole.
“Just as well. Because I’ll never say it. I can’t say what I don’t mean. I had twenty-eight years of misery married to Sheila, thirteen years of bliss living with Irene. I’m afraid, for me, those facts answer all the moral arguments.”
“‘Thou shalt not kill’?”
His thin shoulders managed a shrug. “That one too. Even in the days when I went along with the observances of organized religion, I never believed any of it. We have to make our own moral values, according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There’s no absolute right or wrong. And we’re only here once.” There was a cough that could have been a chuckle. “Not that I’m here for a lot longer.”
“Can you just…would you mind…for my personal satisfaction…telling me if what I’ve worked out about what happened is actually right?”
“Oh, Carole, you been playing amateur detectives, have you?”
“Well…”
“All right, you spell out how you think the master criminal wove his evil schemes, and I’ll tell you where you go wrong.”
So Carole did as she was told. Occasionally, Graham Forbes nodded, though she couldn’t tell whether it was in appreciation of her cleverness or his own.
When she got to the events of Thursday 15 October, the night of the Great Storm, he couldn’t help himself from taking up the narrative. “I remember how miserable I’d been that evening, stuck in the house with a woman I had hated through most of our marriage, knowing that – if I didn’t put my plan into action – in a few days I’d be back in KL and I’d see Irene again, and I wouldn’t be bringing what I’d promised her.”
“What was that?”
“Myself. Free. I’d met Irene two years before. We both knew what we felt for each other, but she was very…proper. Had been brought up to do the right thing. Strange, really, Chinese girl, raised as an Anglican in Malaysia. Anyway, she made her rules clear. I was married. Nothing could happen to our relationship while I remained married. She didn’t deny she loved me, but…Rather quaint and old–fashioned in these cynical days, isn’t it?”
“Anyway, before I left KL for that leave, I promised Irene I’d talk to Sheila about getting a divorce. And I did. Nothing. She wouldn’t give an inch. Sheila wasn’t going to give up her status as the memsahib out East, or as the Lady Bountiful back in Sussex. Since passion had never played any part in her life, she had no sympathy for what I was going through. So…”
He paused, exhausted by his confession.
“But you’d planned it,” Carole prompted gently. “Ib have time for Pauline to get her passport, you must have planned it.”
“Yes, I planned it, but I still didn’t know whether I could carry it out. That was why I was so depressed the evening before the storm…because I thought I didn’t have the guts…or I was too decent…too British…that I’d just accept my lot in life…and lose Irene.”
“When had you worked out your plan?”
“Soon after we came back for the beginning of that leave. Pauline was cleaning here one morning, and Sheila was being her usual hyper-critical self, bawling the woman out for not dusting on top of the picture rails or something, and they had a row. Suddenly, as the two of them stood toe to toe, shouting at each other, I realized how incredibly alike they looked. Once that seed was planted, the rest of the details fell into place.”
“But you still didn’t think you’d summon up the nerve to carry it out?”
“No. I have the storm to thank for the fact that I did.”
“Oh?”
“The Great Storm started late the Thursday evening and got worse in the small hours. I remember, you could hear the wind getting louder and louder. And then gates began banging, windows rattling, dustbins being blown over, branches torn off trees. Well, all this noise…” He smiled a lopsided smile. “It had the nerve to wake Sheila up. Never a good idea, as I’d discovered very early in our married life.
“And, of course, being Sheila, when something she didn’t want to happen happened, she had to find someone to blame for it. And there, as ever, in the single bed beside hers, was me.
“So she starts in at me. Why hadn’t I fixed the gates more securely? Any husband worth his salt would have had Warren Lodge’s loose windows replaced. Why was I so incompetent? It was all my fault.
“And that was it. I didn’t mind being blamed for things that I might possibly have done or failed to do, but to be blamed for freaks in the weather…
“In one movement I rolled out of bed, put my hands around her throat and squeezed harder than I’d ever squeezed anything in my entire life…”
Carole let the silence ride, till he broke it with a little choke of laughter.
“Funny. The killing wasn’t premeditated. But unavoidable. At the moment I did it, I couldn’t have done anything else to save my life.” He became aware of what he’d said. “Or indeed to save hers.”
“I stayed still in the bedroom for a some time, while the storm roared and crashed around outside the house. And then, slowly, I realized it had all been meant. My plan had been set up. I’d only lacked the nerve for the vital moment of murder. The storm had given me that nerve.
“Unlike Irene, I don’t have any religious faith. But I believe that moment was orchestrated for me by some kind of higher power.”
“Be a strange kind of higher power that facilitates murder.”
“Don’t you believe it, Carole. Read some history. Start counting up the number of wars that have been started for reasons of religion.”
“Maybe. What happened then, Graham?”
“I was very organized. I wrapped Sheila’s body in a sheet, carried it down to the barn. With the way the storm was still raging, I was in no danger of anyone seeing me.”
“But weren’t you in danger of people going into the barn and finding the grave? Everyone in the village seems to use the place as a rubbish tip.”
“They do now. But it’s only been happening the last five years or so. One person chucked in a fridge and… suddenly everyone was doing it. A nasty element has moved into the village recently, you know.” The was a slight edge of parody in his voice, sending up some of the crustier members of the Village Committee. He shrugged and turned his faded brown eyes on to Carole. “And do you know, very soon after Sheila had died, I forgot about it. I could put it from my mind. My life was so much better, so much more fulfilling, that her death was something that was clearly meant to happen.”
“You weren’t worried?”
“Not after the first few days, no.”
“And you didn’t tell Irene what you’d done?”
“No. That was bad of me perhaps. When I got back to KL after…” He seemed amused as he thought of the word. “After the murder…I didn’t contact her for a week or so. Then, when I did, I gave her the story about Sheila having gone off with another man. Irene was so delighted to hear I was finally unencumbered that she didn’t question me about the details.”
“So your life together has been based on a lie?”
“Don’t go all po-faced on me, Carole. It doesn’t suit you.”
She was appropriately contrite, before continuing, “But when you heard I’d found the bones in South Welling Barn, didn’t that worry you?”
“No. Never occurred to me they might be Sheila’s.”
