Sweet Poison (3 page)

‘Ah,’ said the wagoner judiciously, ‘I reckons now there be so many o’ these here blooming automobiles, begging your pardon, sir, there ought to be a notice. But you’re bleeding, sir; are you hurt bad?’

‘No, no bones broken, I think.’ Edward tried to open the door but it was jammed, so slowly he raised himself out of the driver’s seat and clambered out, wincing and hoping he was right about not having broken any bones. He was bruised and he had done something to his knee which made it painful to walk, and no doubt in twenty-four hours he would feel stiff and aching all over. His chest had collided with the steering wheel but fortunately the force of the impact had been cushioned by his heavy ulster. No, he could congratulate himself that his idiocy had not been the death of him. It was to be the first time that evening death had chosen to spare him.

At Mersham Castle the Duke’s guests had already repaired to their rooms to rest and bathe before dressing for dinner. It was a pity that none of them was in a mood to appreciate the airy beauty of this magical castellated house. It had something of the feel of a Continental château or maybe an Austrian duke’s hunting lodge. Certainly, it was not quite English – light and airy where Norman castles had been dark and claustrophobic. It seemed to float in the evening light as serene as the swans drifting on the river which moated the castle walls. On an August evening as perfect as this one, it was more beautiful than any fairy-tale castle. Lord Tennyson, who knew Mersham well, had, it was said, recalled it in his
Idylls of the King
. No such place could be without a garden where lovers might walk arm in arm and declare to one another everlasting devotion and there were indeed lawns stretching down to the water, also a rather threadbare maze created only a century before in 1830, but the jewel in the crown was an Elizabethan knot garden of intricate design, in August blazing with colour and heady with the scent of roses. Beyond it there was a little woodland called The Pleasury.

It was not love but death upon which General Sir Alistair Craig VC brooded as he stared at himself in the looking-glass; not his own death, though he knew that was crouching at his shoulder like a black cat, but the death of his beloved wife just a year before, friends dead in the war or after it, and the death of the child in his wife’s womb so many years ago, the son he was never to clasp in his arms. For some reason he could not begin to explain, he thought too of the funeral of his old and revered chief, Earl Haig, a just and upright man who had saved Britain and the Empire but whose reputation was already being savaged by men who called themselves historians but who, in the eyes of the old soldier, were little better than jackals and not good enough to wipe the Field Marshal’s boots. It had been all of seven years ago that he had processed through London with so many other generals, three princes and statesmen from all over the world. From St Columba’s Church, Pont Street, they marched bare-headed along the Mall and Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. Crowds lined the route in solemn silence. Many wore poppies, the symbol not just of those millions who had died on the field of battle but of the great work the Field Marshal had done in helping the wounded and dispossessed in the years after the war. It had been an event, a ceremony, which the General would never, nor ever want to, forget. It gave meaning to his own life that this great man, under whom he had served for three cruel years of war, should be so honoured. And now, was this honour to be stripped away like the gold leaf on a pharaoh’s coffin? Only last year at Oxford, in a debate in the Union, undergraduates had supported a motion that in no circumstances would they fight for king and country. The report in
The Times
had made his blood run cold when he read it. Pacifism was gnawing away at the nation’s manhood. It was a sickness. He, General Craig, had sent men to their deaths, many thousands of men. It had been his duty. Was it now to be said that, in obeying the orders of that great man now lying in honour in Dryburgh Abbey, he had not done well? Was he now to stand accused of . . . of murder? That was no reward for a life’s patriotic service.

And what of tonight? Why had he come? Out of respect for the Duke, certainly; he did not altogether agree with the Duke on his attitude to their erstwhile enemy. The General believed, albeit with melancholy bordering on despair, that Britain was enjoying nothing more than a truce in her war with Prussian militarism. He could not believe that anything – talk, diplomacy, treaties, behind-the-scenes-negotiations – anything short of force – naked and brutal – would affect how Hitler behaved. Throughout history, despots had chosen foreign adventures as a way of uniting their people behind them. That way opposition to anything they chose to do could be construed as unpatriotic and be ruthlessly suppressed. The General considered it to be self-evident that the new German Chancellor, like the Kaiser before him, would use mindless xenophobia dressed as patriotism to distract the German people from troubles at home. In his view, the new Germany was worse than the old one – a shabby, disreputable alliance of big business and an army which had convinced itself it had not been defeated in battle but stabbed in the back by its own politicians. But tonight at the Duke’s dinner he would play his part in trying to alert his country to the peril he could see looming on the horizon. Maybe there was still something to be done, something only he could do.

General Craig was a solitary man – all the more so since the death of his dear Dolly – and these sorts of social gatherings were even more of a trial to him now, without her, than they had been before. He had little hope of finding a kindred spirit at the Duke’s table. There was Larmore who had somehow blackmailed his way into an under-secretaryship at the Foreign Office and that appalling rogue Lord Weaver, the Canadian owner of the
New Gazette
. The General hated journalists, despised the whole pack of them, and he knew a good deal about Weaver through his friend Will Packer who had had business dealings with him back in New Brunswick where Weaver had made his first fortune. Packer had told him that Weaver had come to New Brunswick from Newfoundland, not yet a part of Canada and too impoverished to offer much scope to a man with ideas of making money. Corner Brook, where Weaver had been born, was at the time little more than a village but in New Brunswick, so Packer said, Weaver had spread his wings and turned a few tricks, some at Packer’s expense, which had left him very bitter. It made Craig gag to see how high the man had climbed and he was half inclined to spill a few skeletons out of the closet if Lord Weaver, as he now styled himself, refused to do the right thing by him. The General curled back his upper lip, revealing long yellow teeth. Fortunately, he was no longer gazing into the looking-glass or he might not have liked what he saw there.

When he had arrived at the castle the Duke had told him that the Bishop of Worthing was already there, but after a strong whisky the General had gone to his room to change without seeing him or any of the other guests. He had never met the Bishop but he was well aware of who he was – a pacifist whose anti-war sermons in 1917 and 1918 had, in his view, gravely damaged the war effort. Worse even than the Bishop, the ‘guest of honour’ – if such a one could be so called – was to be some German diplomat. He smiled grimly to himself. He was to dine with his enemies; feasting with panthers – hadn’t someone thus described such gatherings? It made it worse not being in uniform. He only felt truly comfortable in uniform and among his own kind. In white tie and tails he was just another man to be judged by others on his social talents, in which he knew himself to be deficient: small talk, smiles and jokes. Dolly had often told him he was not a sociable animal but of course, to be fair, the Duke had not invited him to dinner to talk sweet nothings. He was a fighter, always a fighter, and he would hold his corner to the bitter end.

He turned again to the looking-glass and began slowly, unwillingly, to tie his tie. His hands froze on the ribbon. The face in the mirror – was that really his? Why, he could see quite clearly the skull beneath the skin. His hands, flecked with yellow liver freckles, the confetti of old age, dropped from his neck and he looked as though at a stranger: the pale face, the cold sea-water-blue eyes, the sharp nose, the narrow upper lip he was happy to disguise beneath a little brown moustache cut to a bristle every morning for half a century. It was a grim face, he thought, and he wondered for a moment whether, had Dolly lived, it would have still looked so.

His inspection was rudely interrupted by a bayonet stab of violent pain in the stomach. He held his hand to his side. The pain was sharper tonight, perhaps because of the stress he was under, but why prevaricate: in the last few months it was always sharper than it had been the day before. He checked he had with him the little silver snuff box in which he kept his pills. It was there. He contemplated taking one now but decided that that was weakness. They had to be kept for when he was really in pain – later perhaps. He settled his shoulders and stiffened his back. His bearing said ‘soldier’ as clearly as if the word had been written on his forehead. Well now – he had better get on with it. He had his duty to do, perhaps for the last time, and he had always done his duty.

‘I’m not going down – I’m telling you, Mother: I just refuse.’ The girl recognized the unpleasant whine in her voice and tried to check herself but really, it was too bad. Her mother had persuaded her to come to Mersham Castle, to what she had known would be the dreariest of dinner-parties, by promising her that among the guests would be Charles Lomax, but she had now been told when it was too late to retreat that Lomax was not to be there after all.

‘Bah!’ said the girl, her narrow face, not unattractive when she smiled, now disfigured by disappointment. ‘I guess his cold won’t stop him taking Pamela Finch to Gaston’s tonight. What a sell! He swore I meant more to him than . . . Anyway, I need to . . .’

‘Now, honey,’ said her mother calmly, seated at the little dressing-table vigorously rubbing cream into her face and trying to convince herself the lines under her eyes were no more noticeable than they had been six months ago. ‘Maybe it’s all for the best. The Duke says his brother – Lord Edward Corinth I think they call him, though why he should have a different name from the Duke’s I will never understand – he’s going to be at dinner and from what I read in the illustrated papers he is everything a young man ought to be: rich, good-looking, and a duke’s brother is
something
after all.’

‘Oh, Mother – he’s just a younger son,’ the girl said, her voice whetted by scorn. ‘He’s not a duke and never will be. Anyway, I met him at Lady Carey’s and he was so stuck up – I quite hated him. He patronized me – treated me like a child. He dared to tell me I was going round with “wrong ’uns” as he quaintly put it and had the cheek to say if I wasn’t “deuced careful”’ – she mimicked his clipped accent – ‘I’d get myself into trouble.’

Lady Weaver paused for a moment and looked at her daughter queerly. ‘Sound advice I’d say, darling. I like the man already.’

‘Oh, Mother, don’t be a bore. You would say that. You’re so predictable,’ and she flounced out of the room.

In the mirror the mother had caught sight of her child’s face and she had noticed for the first time that her daughter was in danger of turning into a shrew. She was almost twenty-three but when she scowled, as she was scowling now, she looked older. Why was she so often nervy and irritable? Surely she understood that there were younger, prettier girls being presented at court every year. If she was to marry she would have to make an effort to please. She would have to talk to her about it but this wasn’t the moment. Hermione wasn’t a fool. She was just like so many of the younger generation: rootless, pleasure-seeking but essentially unhappy. Spoiled little rich girl, the mother thought ruefully. She needed to find her a good man but where were they? So many had been killed in the war and the new young men – well, they seemed shallow, selfish to her. They liked to assume a ‘know-it-all’ attitude which she found wearisome. If Hermione was to find a suitable husband – someone a little older, more mature – like Edward Corinth perhaps – she had to learn some winning ways. No wonder the Lomax boy had cancelled. She had seen them together when he had come to collect her from Eaton Place before going on to some dance in Belgrave Square and Hermione had been all over him. She had noticed then, though Hermione did not seem to, that it had embarrassed him. Hermione made it quite plain when she did not like a young man and her snubs were legendary but when she did find a boy wild enough to attract her she couldn’t hide her adoration from the poor man, so he usually ran as far and as fast as he could. If only she didn’t feel she had to choose men of whom her stepfather would be sure to disapprove. Her mother sighed. She supposed it must be her fault. Wasn’t it always a parent’s fault if their children turned out – no, she would not say ‘bad’ – ‘difficult’, that was the word. She had so hoped her daughter would get on with her new father but they had always been like oil and water. Joe had tried. It wasn’t his fault. It was the only shadow on her life, which was now so good in so many ways.

She thought with simple pleasure of Joe, Lord Weaver, now closeted with the Duke in the gunroom smoking a cigar, without which he was rarely to be seen, and drinking Scotch whisky, which gave him indigestion. Her husband was what was now being called a press baron. He was immensely wealthy and the owner of two national newspapers, a London evening paper and a large number of North American regional news-sheets much more profitable if less influential than his London stable. Lord Weaver – he had been ennobled by Lloyd George after making a very generous contribution to party funds – had been born and brought up in Newfoundland, in Corner Brook – a one-horse town which he had told her he had got out of as soon as he could. He had not cut his ties with it altogether and when he had made his first money, in New Brunswick, he had financed a paper mill just outside Corner Brook. This had proved a shrewd investment and the town had become almost entirely dependent on woodpulp which was transformed into paper to feed the ever increasing North American newspaper industry. Joe Weaver was now the town’s most famous son. He had returned only once, some years before, and endowed a concert hall, a picture gallery and a hospital. He intended to be buried in Corner Brook, so it was important he was remembered in the town as a generous benefactor and a role model for other young men. Until that day, when he returned in his coffin, he had determined he would never go back.