Peter Robinson - Before the poison

‘But they didn’t find any in the house.’

‘So what? That doesn’t prove that Grace got rid of it. Maybe it was his last dose. If it had been wrapped in paper, it could have got cleaned up along with the paper from the stomach powder. Either way, it would have ended up on the fire. Or it could have been in tablet form. It could have been loose in his pocket. The point is, again, that there is no evidence that Grace dosed her husband with chloral hydrate. It’s all highly circumstantial.’

‘So what did she do?’

I paused. ‘I think it’s what she didn’t do that matters.’

‘I don’t understand. You’re talking in riddles.’

‘Not at all. Grace was a trained nurse. Don’t forget that. More than that, even, she was a Queen Alexandra’s nurse, and they were the cream of the crop. I’ve read a bit about them. I imagine they drove some of the doctors crazy with their set ways of doing things, but they were damn good. When faced with an emergency, any emergency, Grace would revert to her training. All this stuff about her knowing her way around poisons because she was a nurse was smoke and mirrors. The main thing, the thing that everyone forgot, or ignored, is that nurses are trained to help the sick. To bring comfort. You’ve read her journal. She sat up all night comforting a dying German boy she hated, for crying out loud. But it wasn’t just her job; it was who she was. That was what I missed before. Grace herself. Who she was, beyond the lover, before the poison.’

‘But there are nurses who’ve been convicted of murder.’

‘I’m not saying that nurses never kill. Of course they do. But I think that if you examine the evidence you’ll find they usually do it out of some mental imbalance or delusion. There’s no evidence that Grace was unbalanced or delusional in any way. Far from it. Even if she had done what the prosecution claimed she did, her acts were represented as cold and premeditated by the prosecution and the judge, the products of a clever and calculating mind. That wasn’t Grace. She didn’t have a cold, clever, calculating mind. And Grace may have been angry and concerned, but she wasn’t mentally ill, either.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

I poured the last of the wine. ‘OK. I believe that Ernest Fox had a heart attack that night. A massive one. The pain woke him, even from his drugged sleep, and he called out for help.’ I pointed towards the hall. ‘Grace went across the landing, just up there, and into his room. That’s where I think things get a bit murky. I’ll not deny that relations were bad between Grace and Ernest. Maybe she hated him. There were years of neglect and coldness, perhaps even cruelty. They hadn’t shared a room or a bed since Randolph was born. Then there was their argument about the Porton Down job. And there was Sam.’

‘So what did she do in the room?’

‘What I think happened is that she hesitated. Simple as that. All this went through her mind as she stood in the doorway, all the reasons she might have had for wanting Ernest dead, and I’ll bet she contemplated, just for a moment, how easy it would be to stand there and do nothing and let him die. It would be the perfect solution to all her problems. And for a while, I thought that was exactly what she had done, then I realised that the missing factor in all of this was Grace herself, her character.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘When I read her journal, I think I understood some of it. As the woman she was, she couldn’t just stand there and watch Ernest die. Much as she would have liked to, it went against her every impulse, every aspect of her being. So she stood there watching him for a few seconds, perhaps fully intending to let him die. But she couldn’t. She snapped to her senses and acted with her instincts, her compassion. It was not so much that she was a nurse, but why she was a nurse. She dashed downstairs and got his medical bag. Treatments for heart attacks were pretty limited back then. There were no CPR or defibrillators or anything. It was pretty much nitroglycerine, which she gave him first, or digitalis, which she gave him later when the nitro didn’t work. That didn’t work, either, and he died. I’ll never be able to prove it, but I know it now as sure as I know day is day that Ernest Fox died of natural causes.’

‘What if she’d reacted sooner?’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘Maybe those few seconds would have made all the difference. Maybe it was her hesitation that killed him, and as I said, she probably wanted him dead. But she didn’t kill him. She couldn’t. I’m convinced of that.’

‘So you don’t believe that given the right circumstances we’re all capable of murder?’

I couldn’t answer that question. I had killed Laura. I didn’t know whether that technically made me a murderer or not, but that didn’t matter. I had killed. It was what I’d done and why I’d done it that counted for me, and how I came to live with it. I felt that I knew Grace now. Fanciful or not, imagination or supernatural, she had called to me as soon as I entered Kilnsgate House, drawn me in, chosen me, willed me to tell her story, to find the truth. I had half-dreamed I heard her playing the piano. I had seen her in the mirror hesitating, then moving swiftly away to do what had to be done, just as I had seen the young woman who had hanged herself in the mirror at Scarborough. Even if all these things were inventions of my mind, I had still experienced them.

What I saw in the mirror was what I believed happened that night at Kilnsgate in 1953, a recreation of what had happened when Ernest had his heart attack. But that sounded crazy. Perhaps Graham would understand, but I wasn’t going to repeat it to Heather. Grace had nursed dying Germans, dressed suppurating wounds, sat up all night cooling the brows of those men who had done such terrible things to her sisters and to the officers she had laughed and danced with. Heather had read about that, too. A woman who had done those things wasn’t going to plan the cold-blooded murder of her husband, as the prosecution had argued, and the judge and jury had believed. Perhaps I needed Grace to be innocent so that I could partake of that innocence, too, as I had realised in Cape Town. But I didn’t believe that Grace could have stood by and watched Ernest die any more than I could have stood by and watched Laura live and suffer any longer. I couldn’t tell Heather that, either.

Heather tossed back the last of her wine. ‘Supposing you’re right?’ she said. ‘What happens now?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s all over now.’

‘Really?’

‘What else is there to do? None of it can be proved. The cause of Nat Bunting’s death. What Grace did that night. Besides, it happened nearly sixty years ago. The only people who care, apart from me and you, are Louise, Sam and Wilf, and I’ve already talked to them.’

‘How did they react?’

‘I think they saw the logic of it. Louise sees her grandmother as a heroine now, a martyr, and not as a murderess or a scarlet woman. That can’t be a bad thing after all she’s been through. Wilf didn’t say much. I think he already had his mind made up. And Sam… Well, he persists in feeling cheated out of the love of his life, and who can blame him? He’s idealised Grace’s memory, and, in a way, I don’t think it matters to him whether she did it or not. He decided years ago in his heart that she didn’t, so I suppose he might feel vindicated that someone else has dug a bit deeper and come to the same conclusion. As for me, I’m convinced. I don’t need to search any more.’ I paused. ‘This has been thirsty work. How about I open another bottle?’

Heather thought for a moment. ‘Well, only if we can take it upstairs and you let me show off my new dress for you.’