Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

‘They’re swinging the body on to the canal bank,’ Ruth whispered.

Jason tightened his grip on Ruth’s hand. ‘Is it her?’ His voice was flat.

Ruth was craning forward. ‘No,’ she said suddenly; ‘whoever it is, it’s not Nan Luc.’

The body swung slowly past and was brought to rest below them on the canal bank. Looking down from the bridge Ruth thought the face of Mary Page Butler could have been sculpted in pale Italian marble.

Chapter Forty-Four

She awoke to daylight bright enough to hurt the eyes. Ruth Caswell was standing beside the bed, a cup of coffee in one hand and clothes draped on her arm. ‘There’s a visitor downstairs for you,’ she said, putting down the coffee and laying the clothes on the bed. ‘There, jeans, sweater, trainers. We’re about the same size I guess.’

‘This visitor, he’s from the police?’

Ruth shook her head. ‘Get dressed and come downstairs. Doctor Harkness said it was OK for you to get up as soon as you’d slept it out.’

Nan Luc struggled up in bed. ‘Not the police?’

‘No. They’ll want to speak to you later. Jason’s just back from Meyerick. They’ve established a fingerprint connection with a murder in a motel in the Bronx. A lot of dirt’s hit the fan. But Jason says there’ll be no charges against you.’ She watched Nan Luc tense. ‘Now don’t tighten up,’ Ruth said. ‘Whatever you intended last night, you never carried it out. The night patrolman at the wharf was witness to the fact you tried to save Stevenson. No,’ she shook her head, ‘it was the fire that killed Cy Stevenson. And the police seem to be in no doubt it was started by Mary Butler.’

‘The woman who was trapped in the fire?’

Ruth nodded. ‘Jason talked to Cy Stevenson’s wife on the phone a couple of hours ago. She says her husband and her sister Mary were having an affair. Seems he needed Mary Butler’s vote on the board of trustees.’

‘Why would she want to kill him?’

Ruth helped Nan Luc to sit up in bed. ‘Drink your coffee. Why did she want to kill him? I don’t know. I guess a lot will come out in the enquiry into the running of the fund.’ She paused. ‘A piece of advice, Nan Luc. No need to be too forthcoming about your intentions last night.’

‘What do you know about my intentions, Ruth?’

Ruth smiled. ‘Only what your visitor tells me. Max Benning’s been here since before dawn.’

Max was standing on the long gallery looking up at the Rose family portraits as Nan Luc came out of the room. She ran forward into his arms. For a moment they stood together, arms round each other.

‘He’s dead, Max,’ she said.

‘I know. Thank God it wasn’t you that killed him.’

They came slightly apart. ‘I knew by then he wasn’t my father. Perhaps I’d known for some time.’

He released her and they began to walk along the gallery. ‘What finally persuaded you that Stevenson wasn’t your father? Not what Louise told you. Or what I said.’

Nan shook her head. ‘No. It was standing opposite him for the first time. I thought of all I knew about my mother. And I suddenly realised there was no greater insult to her memory than to believe she had chosen this man.’

He stopped her and turned her lightly towards him. ‘Are you OK now?’

‘I think so.’

‘My God,’ he said quietly. ‘I arrived just as the body of the woman was taken out of the canal. I was convinced it had to be you. At that time nobody was thinking of the fire stairs.’

She slipped her arm round his waist. ‘I didn’t even know they were there. I just ran through the smoke and came out on to them.’

They had turned and walked slowly down the gallery. ‘How did you know to come to Meyerick?’ she asked him.

‘Hal Bolson got himself clearance to tell me a story.’

‘Hal Bolson. One of the journalists at Cahn Roc?’

‘Lives in New York now.’

They walked down the stairs and along the corridor to where Ruth was standing at Jason’s door. ‘I don’t understand,’ Nan said. ‘What did Hal Bolson know about all this? Who did he have to get clearance from?’

They were passing a window overlooking the snow-covered garden. Max pointed. ‘He had to get clearance from that lady there.’

Nan looked out across the garden. Mrs Rose, bareheaded, but in a coat and thick gloves, was pacing the snow-covered drive. ‘Mrs Rose? I don’t understand.’

Ruth opened the door and Jason stood up behind his desk. ‘Hear this from Jason, Nan.’ Max propelled her gently forward.

‘How’s she looking, Ruth?’ Jason asked as they all sat in the deep chintz covered sofas round the fire.

‘Everything considered, she’s looking marvellous,’ Ruth said. ‘Just a little bewildered.’ She took a briefcase from the desktop and handed it to Jason.

He arranged it before him and sprang the locks. ‘I never knew this briefcase existed until a retired journalist named Hal Bolson phoned my mother this morning. Immediately she put the phone down she went up to her room. When she came down she was carrying this case. I could see she was pretty upset, but she didn’t want to talk. She handed the case to me and told me to do whatever I had to do with what it contains.’ Jason opened the case. ‘There are a lot of documents here,’ he said. ‘But this picture tells the essential story.’

Nan took a yellowing photograph from him. In her hands, as she looked down, she saw she held a copy of the same picture of her mother Bernadette had given her. A long silence fell in the room.

‘My father was in Saigon many times from the mid-sixties to his death,’ Jason said, taking a pack of letters from the case. ‘Max and Ruth have read these letters out to me. They’re letters to my mother. The first ones told her, very candidly, about his meeting and falling in love with a Vietnamese nurse, Pham. It’s clear from later letters that my mother refused a divorce. Even after a child was born. You.’

Nan Luc sat back, swamped with feelings impossible to absorb. She looked past Jason at the photograph of the man on the table under the window. A face quite different from the severity of the portrait on the gallery, an open face that seemed to merge with flickering, elusive memories. Did she see again that figure, Philip Rose now, on the lawn in front of the white villa? Did she hear her own childhood voice as she skipped and danced across the grass? Even as she sat there, breathless, she knew she was doing what all human beings desperately need to do. She was creating a past.

‘My father,’ Jason said, ‘your father too, as we now know, died in 1975 of a massive heart attack on his way to Los Angeles. He had already founded the Meyerick Fund, the fund Cy Stevenson eventually took over when he arrived in Meyerick on the lookout for new opportunities. I’m afraid the information he held over my mother is what made her originally vote him on to the fund. I genuinely believe that she thought she was protecting her husband’s memory.’

Nan Luc glanced again at the photograph on the side table. Feelings of indescribable warmth passed through her. If only she could dredge from the past just one certain memory when she and her father had been together.

Max had reached out a hand to touch hers. ‘And Peter Benning.’ She turned to Max. ‘He and… my father knew each other?’

‘They worked together in Saigon,’ Max said. ‘Philip Rose’s professorship was in Oriental Studies. He and my father worked on recovery projects together.’

Nan Luc stood up and crossed to where Jason stood. Leaning forward she kissed his cheek. He put his arm round her and hugged her close. ‘Jason, I’d like to talk to Max for a few moments,’ she said. ‘But first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call Edward, my husband, in San Diego.’