Michael Ridpath: Amnesia

Stephen’s glare switched back to him.

‘I mean it. Thank you, Stephen. You have come a long way. I appreciate it. I suspect we both do, don’t we, Clémence?’

‘Yes,’ said Clémence. ‘Thanks, Grandpa.’

‘All right,’ said Stephen. ‘Let’s get on with it. What can I tell you?’

Alastair took a deep breath. It was time, time to discover who he truly was.

‘Who killed Sophie?’

‘You’ve read all of that damned book, I take it?’ said Stephen.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s all wrong. You got completely the wrong end of the stick, old lad.’

‘So Alastair didn’t kill her?’ Clémence asked, her eyes shining.

Stephen seemed a little disconcerted by her excitement. ‘No. And neither did I. It was Nathan.’

‘Nathan?’ said Alastair. A wave of relief was poised to burst over him. Relief that he was not a murderer after all. Relief that he was not quite the evil person he thought he was. But he held it in check. He wanted to listen; he wanted to learn. ‘What happened?’

‘That night, Nathan saw you and Sophie sneak off to the boathouse. He followed you and waited while you made love to my wife. Then, when you left, he went inside. He killed Sophie. He heard you coming back and he whacked you over the head with an oar, without you seeing him. You were out cold; apparently he thought you were dead. He dumped Sophie in the loch and returned to check on you. But you had come round.’

The old man listened closely. ‘Had I seen him kill Sophie?’

‘No, or else he would have finished you off. You had no idea she was dead until the stalker found her the next day — the book is correct about that, at least.’

‘So what were you doing at the time?’

‘Stumbling around looking for Sophie. When I saw the French windows in the drawing room were open, I went outside to search the garden. Then I noticed the boathouse door was open too, so I had a look in there, which is how I left my footprint. I didn’t notice anything wrong, but then I was too pissed. Nathan watched me staggering around, but left me to it. He just wanted to get you into bed and out of the way. Then, when the police decided I was a suspect, he was willing to go along with that. And so were you, apparently.’

‘Yes,’ said Clémence. ‘We found the original manuscript of Death At Wyvis , and that says Nathan found Angus unconscious.’

‘I haven’t seen that,’ said Stephen. ‘But you sent it to Nathan from Australia. He put a lot of pressure on you not to publish it, but you insisted. So then he got you to change it. By that stage he had persuaded you that you had killed Sophie yourself and just forgotten it.’

‘So that’s why Alastair called it a novel?’ said Clémence.

‘I suppose so,’ said Stephen.

‘Presumably I told you all this?’ said Alastair.

‘That’s right. You said you’d come back here from Australia to see if you could find out more about Sophie’s death. You had read an article in a medical journal about false memories: apparently people with amnesia have a tendency to fill in the gaps with what makes sense, and then begin to believe it’s real. You thought you might have done that yourself. Turns out you had.’

‘It certainly sounds like it.’

‘I think I saw that article upstairs in the study,’ said Clémence. ‘Something about “confabulation”.’

‘And then when I got here I spoke to Pauline Ferguson?’ said the old man.

‘She the old stalker’s wife?’

‘That’s her. We saw her this morning.’

‘Well, she told you there was something fishy about her son that night. He was helping out with serving dinner and clearing up; now he lives in New York. You tracked him down over there, and got him to spill the beans. He told you that on his way home on his bike he saw Nathan whacking you over the head with the oar. But Nathan gave him two hundred pounds on the spot to shut him up, and then set him up in business in America to keep him shut up.’

‘This was last October?’ said Alastair.

‘I think so. Then you went to see Nathan. You confronted him. He admitted it was he who had killed Sophie.’

‘Was Madeleine there?’

‘You saw Nathan alone in his study.’

‘So Aunt Madeleine was telling the truth!’ said Clémence. ‘She didn’t know Nathan killed Sophie after all.’

Stephen shook his head. ‘After you had spoken to Nathan, you insisted on telling Madeleine. You said she had a right to know who had killed her sister.’

‘How did she take that?’ Alastair said.

‘She didn’t like it one bit. She was furious with Nathan. There was an almighty row and you were thrown out of the house. I’m surprised you can’t remember that.’

‘Why?’ asked Alastair. ‘Did Nathan say why he killed Sophie?’

‘Not exactly. But you seem to have pieced it together. Sophie had told him earlier that evening that she had made up her mind to go to the police about how Alden had really died in 1935 or whenever it was. Nathan tried to blackmail Sophie, threatening to tell me about you and the boathouse if she went to the police about Alden.’ Stephen shook his head. ‘That was never going to work.’

He paused and swallowed. Clémence and Alastair watched him, gave him time.

‘Nathan said when she refused he lost his temper and killed Sophie in a rage. An impulsive murder, just like Alden’s.’

‘Did I believe him?’

‘No. You said it was opportunistic rather than impulsive. You seemed to think that in Deauville Nathan had spotted the opportunity to kill Alden under the guise of the mock swordfight. He knew all along that he would inherit a lot. Nathan was very ambitious then; I remember he wanted to be one of the men with money in college. “Swells” he used to call us. So quaint.’

‘People like you?’

‘Like me.’ Stephen laughed. ‘It’s extraordinary to think now that I ever had that much money. Not you though. You never had two shillings to rub together.’

‘So Nathan killed Sophie to keep her quiet?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

The old man thought through what Stephen had said. It all made sense, it all fitted. It injected some logic into what had seemed an illogical life.

‘How do you know all this?’ Alastair asked. ‘I wrote to you, didn’t I? We saw your reply.’

‘Yes, you did. You wrote saying you were going to publish everything you had found out. I told you not to be so damned stupid. Then you came down to London, oh a month ago, maybe. You had written everything down in an exercise book. Everything I’ve just told you. I read it through. I told you I still didn’t want you to publish, and neither did Madeleine. You insisted. We had quite an argument. Are you sure you don’t remember? It was only a few weeks ago.’

‘It seems to be the most recent stuff that is hardest to get back,’ said Clémence.

Alastair nodded. ‘I don’t remember the argument at all. But I do remember I needed to give you something. Show you something. It must have been the exercise book. Do you know where it is now?’

‘Isn’t it here?’ said Stephen.

‘No,’ said Clémence.

‘Well, I don’t know where it is. Look.’ Stephen leaned forward, staring at Alastair. ‘I’ve told you everything. You know it all now. There’s nothing to find out. It’s done. So you can go back to Australia, Madeleine can go back to New York, Clémence can go back to St Andrews and I can go home. And none of us need talk about this again.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ said Alastair.

‘Why not? Why the hell not?’ Stephen glared. ‘Now you know what you’ve forgotten, can’t you just forget it again?’

Alastair listened to his old friend, the man whose life he and Nathan had ruined. His brain was tumbling, trying to comprehend the rearranged jigsaw of his life. He wasn’t a murderer. But he had let down his friends, Stephen above all.