A Ghost at the Door (40 page)

‘How did you know it was my wife?’ McQuarrel asked, almost casually as he rose to refresh their drinks.

‘The photographs in the hallway. The biggest one, of your wedding. I got a good look at it. Unmistakable. The same sensitive eyes. Fragile face.’

‘Yes, she was fragile, that’s an excellent description. My poor Agnetta. Leukaemia. That was almost ten years ago, with many more years of suffering before that. For us both.’
The voice was dry, like the rustle of dead leaves in an autumn wind. With his back to her he poured two substantial whiskies, bigger than the first, and set them down on the table, but then
retreated to his desk and began sifting through the contents of a drawer. He returned, clutching his own copy of the photograph and set it on the table before her.

‘The Aunt Emmas,’ she declared.

‘My dear, dear friends.’

‘And every one of them dead.’

He gazed at the photo, inspecting every face, naming every one. ‘We should salute their memory.’

He raised his glass, Jemma too, and they drank. Was it her imagination or did the whisky burn on her lips and throat?

‘I wasn’t surprised to get your call, Jemma,’ he began again, wiping his own lip with a forefinger. ‘I knew Harry and Randall were meeting but I have to admit I was
expecting a rather different outcome. How much of all this do you know?’

‘Harry told me everything. So as much as him. And perhaps a little more.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be like this,’ McQuarrel whispered. ‘I’d like you to believe that. We all had our dreams. Ali would bring peace to his world, Finn wanted to win
a Pulitzer, Randy would sit at the right hand of God, while Christine glittered throughout every chancellery in Europe.’

‘And Johnnie?’

‘Ah, Johnnie. I must admit he was a bit of a mystery. Skated deeply across the surface of things, that’s what he used to say about himself. At times he could seem extraordinarily
superficial. He never quite convinced me of that. It was all diversion.’

‘And you, Alex. What about you?’

‘Me?’ The question took him aback. ‘I never wanted anything more than Agnetta. And this house.’

‘But it was already yours.’

Yet even as she spoke he was already shaking his head. ‘It was our family seat for three hundred years. A place of safety throughout all the turmoil. How many Scottish families can say
that? Until the time of my great-great-grandfather, Lachlann. A mighty useless specimen. A drunkard, a weakling, a numpty, all of that and more. But he was also a gambling man. It might even have
been in this very room, at the cards, and he was losing badly, couldn’t find his way out. So the fool bet everything he had on the turn of a single card. And lost. Left with nothing but his
name and he’d made that worthless. The story has it that when he realized he was ruined, the man he had lost everything to took him to the front door and cast the offending card into the
wind. “Wherever it flies, McQuarrel, will be your home from now.” The card landed where the village grew. It was where my father was born, and I after him, living in the shadow of our
family’s shame.’ He reached once more for his drink, trying to wash away the bitterness. ‘My father’s dying wish was that I would find some way to take this place back,
restore it, along with our family name. That’s what I’ve spent my life doing. With Agnetta. Did that seem so wicked?’

‘That depends.’

‘We chased our dreams and we went too far. All of us. We shared everything, made merry, made love, made money, lots of it, and by the time we understood what we had done it was too late to
go back. The Rubicon had been crossed, our feet were wet, our hands filthy.’ He shook his head in a manner that seemed to carry all the sorrows of the world. ‘None of us wanted that or
ever intended it. When Christine was killed it seemed like some sort of divine retribution, but then the following year Ali arrived with the most extraordinary news, information that could make
every one of us wealthy beyond any further need. One last throw of the dice, he said, and we could walk away from the casino for ever. But it seems others got to find out what he knew and killed
him for it.’

‘Along with his entire family. Even the children.’

‘It was the end for us, the Aunt Emmas. It was no longer a game. From that day we began to fall apart.’

‘Do you have any children?’

‘No. Agnetta was, as you say, fragile.’ For a moment he stared into the bottom of his glass, swirling what was left of the whisky as if it held more secrets that needed to be set
free. ‘There was a time when I thought Harry might be my son.’

Jemma choked in astonishment.

‘We shared everything, and too much. Harry’s mother Jessie, too, was fragile, in her especially beautiful way.’

‘So how do you know you’re not?’

‘Not Harry’s father?’ McQuarrel laughed drily in dismissal. ‘You only had to watch the boy grow. Just like Johnnie.’

‘Johnnie knew about it?’

‘Perhaps. I wasn’t Jessie’s only distraction. She wandered far and wide but Johnnie loved her, always brought her back, rescued her from every rock on which she’d
foundered. He was devastated when she died. Hid it, of course, tried to find comfort elsewhere, but in the end I think he died of a broken heart.’

‘Is that what killed Susannah Ranelagh?’

‘No, of course not. She was like Finn, got spooked, couldn’t be trusted.’

‘So?’

‘So there was no choice. It was either Susannah or us.’

‘You mean Susannah or you. The rest of the Aunt Emmas were pretty much all gone by then.’

‘Except for Randy.’

‘And now . . .’

They had come to the moment where there was no more point in pretence.

‘I watched Susannah, watched her as she died. In that chair where you’re sitting, Jemma. She was looking out over the lake.’

‘It’s dark, the moon’s gone. I can’t see the lake.’

‘You see the truth.’

She stared into his cold, soulless eyes and knew what he had done.

‘It’s all Harry’s fault,’ McQuarrel said bitterly. ‘If he hadn’t chased around the world stirring things up, Susannah would still be alive. Randy, too, and
the black Bermudan policewoman.’

‘And me?’ she whispered.

‘There will be no pain, Jemma, I promise you, just a gentle numbness, a shortness of breath. It’s what Agnetta chose.’

‘What have you done?’

‘It’s a neuro-muscular drug. A company I was involved with spent years trying to develop it. Agnetta worked there, too, before she became ill. The sort of potion neurological
surgeons need for the removal of a brain tumour, that sort of thing. It keeps the patient totally immobile yet still conscious, so the surgeon can test their reflexes. Based on the same chemical
composition as snake venom. The early trials seem to suggest it was highly effective but, alas, it proved inflexible. No reliable reversal agent, and none at all in large doses.’

‘How . . .?’

‘When I topped up your drink. Oh, my, but we have been talking a very long time. I expect any moment now . . .’

The police car sent the gravel flying as it skidded to a halt beside the Volvo. There was no sign of life around the house. Edwards and Staunton jumped out of the car, pursued
by Harry’s cry.

‘Hughie!’

The chief inspector turned.

‘You daren’t leave me on my own,’ Harry shouted.

Edwards stamped his foot in indecision, knowing Harry had a point, but knowing he daren’t take Harry with him, either.

‘Oh, you’d better be on your best bloody behaviour, boyo,’ he growled, heaving open the rear door of the car, ‘otherwise you’ll find me breaking something else of
yours.’

The sergeant was already pounding on the old oak door. Nothing stirred inside.

‘You come with me round the back,’ Edwards snapped at Harry.

Edwards ran, trying windows, testing doors, while Harry, still handcuffed, stumbled on in the policeman’s wake. At the rear of the house they found a lake, with a ruined boathouse and a
willow tree. They also found an unlocked door. Edwards rushed through it, Harry close behind, their voices raised, calling for Jemma.

Then Harry found her. He saw a light beneath a door and burst into the library. He could see the back of her head above the cracked leather of an old armchair. Rich auburn hair, always tussled,
as if it had come fresh from his pillow. And in the chair opposite was McQuarrel, staring at her.

‘No!’ Harry screamed.

And as he cried out, Jemma turned her head and rose from her chair. ‘What are you complaining about this time, Jones?’ she said, sobbing, the tears cascading down her cheeks.

Suddenly Edwards and Staunton were in the room with them, the chief inspector barking instructions that they were to touch nothing, the sergeant checking for a pulse on McQuarrel.

‘Well?’ Edwards roared at Staunton.

‘I’m not sure, Guv. Might be one, very faint.’

‘There’s no point, no way back,’ Jemma interjected. ‘He told me so himself.’

‘What the hell, Jem?’ Harry whispered in rebuke, even as he tried to staunch the flow of tears with his thumb.

‘There’s a photo in the hall of his wife,’ she began. ‘She’s the other woman in the croquet photo. So it had to be him, didn’t it? He was the only one left.
He’d poisoned Delicious, I knew he’d try the same with me, so when he gave me a whisky and turned away to fetch the photo of the Aunt Emmas . . .’ She paused as she relived the
moments, ‘I switched the glasses around.’

‘For pity’s sake, that was taking one mother of a chance, miss,’ Edwards scolded. ‘I mean, what if he’d known the game was up, poisoned his own drink? You know,
some sort of grand farewell.’

‘He’d already killed so many I thought he’d rather kill me than kill himself. You know how selfish men can be, Chief Inspector.’

But her simulation of defiance was done. She rested her head on Harry’s good shoulder and he felt the warmth of tears soaking through his shirt.

‘You took that risk, for me,’ he whispered.

‘No, not for you, Harry. For us.’

‘But why, Jem?’

‘Because you’d have done the same thing yourself stupid.’

They left it until the calmer weeks and cooler winds of September when the earth had stopped baking before they sailed into the port of Patras. Johnnie’s grave was there.
The last of the Aunt Emmas. It seemed the thing to do.

Harry and Jemma had arrived by gently rusting ferry from Venice, their arrival delayed by several hours because of an unscheduled strike. They had tried to make rudimentary arrangements by
phone, had promised to be at the cemetery by noon, but by the time they struggled up the hill from the port in an overworked taxi the shadows of the pine trees were already stretching out to greet
them. The iron gate that led to the graveyard creaked with age as it swung back to let them enter, its hinge held together with wire. They gazed around. The place seemed deserted except for the
flapping of crows in the trees. Then they saw the approaching figure of an old man, summoned by the complaining gate. He was grizzled, unshaven, his face like new-ploughed earth, his legs bowed
from carrying so many years. A battered straw hat rested on top of two corrugated ears.

‘
Kali Mera
,’ Jemma greeted him, resurrecting a phrase she had picked up during the low months of a gap year.

‘
Kali Mera
.
Otheos Mazisou.
May God be with you,’ the old man replied, gazing at them with a quizzical frown that added more furrows to the face. His teeth were
remarkably white and natural. ‘Mr Joh-nas?’

‘
Nai
, Jones,’ she repeated. ‘Sorry we’re late.’

‘
Dhen Peirazi
. No matter.’

The ancient caretaker wiped his brow with a large handkerchief before turning and shuffling off, waving for them to follow. He led them further up the hill to a distant corner of the cemetery,
past orderly lines of tombstones, some marble, others painted in whitewash and azure, adorned with lanterns, images of the dead, summer-blighted flowers and passages from biblical scripts. Not all
the graves were Greek, or Orthodox. Up ahead, almost hidden among the trees, they could see a small collection of graves in a patch that was relatively neglected and unkempt, with Stars of David on
the stones. In Patras, death didn’t discriminate. One tomb they passed was dedicated to an Englishman. ‘Fondly Remembered’, so its inscription claimed. ‘Not Johnnie,
then,’ Harry muttered, walking on. He was sombre, hadn’t talked much all day.

He and Jemma walked slowly, hand in hand as they climbed. Then the old man stopped, pointed to a stone in the lee of an ancient cedar whose spreading limbs were like arms reaching out to protect
something. Johnnie’s grave.

It was of dark-grey marble, not the colour of fresh cream like the others around. Harry’s pace became slower, heavier, as he drew close.

It bore a simple inscription.

J E M
ALTRAVERS
-J
ONES
. 1941–2002
.

Underneath was another short line.

N
O
E
XCUSES.
N
O
R
EGRETS.

‘Typical. He always had to have the last word,’ Harry breathed. Jemma noticed he was biting his bottom lip as though something hurt. The wizened caretaker had drifted away, leaving
them alone with their thoughts. As he disappeared an early-evening breeze began to shake the branches of the tree, casting dappled shadows across the grave. The scent of pine resin and cedar, as
sweet as it was heavy, carried on the air. Harry squeezed Jemma’s hand, a fraction too tightly.