Longshot. Part 74

I thought of Angela Brickell and of all the afternoons Perkin had spent alone in the house. She had tried to seduce even Gareth. Not hard to imagine she'd set her sights also on Perkin. Intelligent men in love with their wives weren't immune to blatantly offered temptations. Sudden arousal. Quick, casual gratification. End of episode.

Except not the end of the episode if there were a failure of a birth control measure and the result was conception. Not the end if the woman asked for money or threatened disclosure. Not the end if she could and would destroy the man's marriage.

Say Angela Brickell had definitely been pregnant. Say she was sure who the father was; and working in a racing stable with thoroughbreds she would know that proving paternity was increasingly an exact science. The father wouldn't be able to deny it. Say she enticed him into the woods and became demanding in every way and heavily emotional, piling on pressure.

Perkin had not long before seen Olympia lying dead at Nolan's feet. He'd heard over and over again how fast she'd died. Say that picture, that certainty, had flashed into his mind. The quick way out of all his troubles lay in his own two strong hands.

I imagined what Perkin might have been feeling. Might have been facing.

Mackie at that time had been unable to conceive and was troubled and unhappy because of it. Angela Brickell however was devastatingly carrying Perkin's child. Perkin loved Mackie and all too probably couldn't face her knowing what he'd done. Couldn't bear to hurt her so abominably. Was perhaps ashamed. Didn't want his father to find out.

Irresistible solution: a fast death for Angela too. Easy.

Perhaps he, not she, had chosen the woods. Perhaps he'd planned it, perhaps it hadn't been a lightning urge but the first of his traps.

Impossible to know now if either scenario were right. Possible, likely, probable; no more than one of those.

I wondered if he had gone home feeling anything but relief.

Long before Doone came knocking on the door, Perkin could have decided, in case the girl's body were ever found, to say he didn't remember her. No one had thought it odd that he didn't; he was seldom seen with the horses.

His one catastrophic mistake had been to try to settle the mystery for ever by making Harry disappear.

By his actions shall you know him-

By his arrows.

I thought that Doone might not think of looking in Perkin's workroom for a match to the arrow's wood. Perkin hadn't had much time to hunt elsewhere for anything suitable. He would have used a common wood, not exotic; but all the same there would be more of it to be found, perhaps even in the cabinet he was making of bleached oak.

He hadn't had any handy feathers, so no flights.

Perkin would have known that a wood match could be made. He knew more about wood than anyone else.

Doone, with his promise of instant detection once I woke up, must have been the end of hope.

He did love Mackie. His universe was lost. One way out remained.

I thought of Tremayne and his pride in Perkin's work. Thought of Gareth's vulnerable age. Thought of Mackie, her face alive with the wondrous joy of discovering she was pregnant. Thought of that child growing up, loved and safe.

Nothing could be gained by trying to prove what Perkin had done. Much would be smashed. They all would suffer. The families always suffered most.

No child would become a secure and balanced adult with a known murderer for a father. Without knowledge, Mackie's grief would heal normally in time. Tremayne and Gareth wouldn't be crippled by undeserved shame. All of them would live more happily if they and the world remained in ignorance, and to try to achieve that I would give them the one gift I could.

Silence.

At the short uncomplicated inquest on Perkin a week later the coroner found unhesitatingly for 'Accident' and expressed sympathy with the family. Tremayne came to collect me from the hospital afterwards and told me on the way to Sh.e.l.lerton that Mackie had got through the court ordeal bravely.

'The baby?' I asked.

'The baby's fine. It's what's giving Mackie strength. She says Perkin is with her, will always be with her that way.'

'Mm.'

Tremayne glanced briefly across at me and back to the road.

'Has Doone found out yet who put that arrow through you?' he asked.

'I don't think so,' I said.

'You don't know, yourself?'

'No.'

He drove for a while in silence.

'I just wondered-' he said uncertainly.

After a while I said, 'Doone came to see me twice. I told him I didn't know who shot me. I told him I had no ideas of any sort any more.'

I certainly hadn't told him where to look for arrow wood.

Doone had been disgustedly disillusioned with me: I had closed ranks with them, he said. Goodhavens, Everards, Vickers and Kendall. 'Yes,' I'd agreed, 'I'm sorry.' Doone said there was no way of proving who had killed Angela Brickell. 'Let her lie,' I'd said, nodding. After a silence he'd risen greyly to his feet to leave and told me to look after myself. Wryly I'd said, 'I will.' He'd gone slowly, regretfully, seeing regret in my face also, an unexpected mutual liking, slipping away into memory.

'You don't think,' Tremayne said painfully, 'I mean, it had to be someone who knew you would fetch Gareth's camera, who shot you.'

'I told Doone it was a kid playing Robin Hood.'

'I'm- afraid.'

'Block it out,' I said. 'Some kid did it.'

'John-'

He knew, I thought. He was no fool. He could have worked things out the same way I had, and he'd have had a h.e.l.lish time believing it all of his own son.

'About my book,' he said hesitating, 'I don't know that I want to go on with it.'

'I'm going to write it,' I said positively. 'It's going to be an affirmation of your life and your worth, just as was intended. It's all the more important now, for you especially, but for Gareth, for Mackie and your new grandchild as well. For you and for them, it's essential I do it.'

'You do know,' he said.

'It was a kid.'

He drove without speaking the rest of the way.

Fiona and Harry were with Mackie and Gareth in the family room. Perkin's absence was to me almost a shock, so accustomed had I become to his being there. Mackie looked pale but in charge of things, greeting me with a sisterly kiss.

'Hi,' Gareth said, very cool.