I’m hating this more than I can ever remember hating anything in my entire life, thought Edmund. I don’t want to hear any of this.
‘It went on for three weeks. I would have died for her, killed for her. And then, that last day, Kline caught us together. He stood in the doorway of her dressing-room – I can see him now, standing there, insolent devil that he was. He said, “Oh, Lucretia, are you at that game again?” And he sounded so – so indulgent. So loving. As if he was reproving a wayward child. I said, “It’s not a game – we love one another,” and he laughed. He took me into some other room – a wardrobe store, it was – and he said, “You ridiculous boy, she’ll ruin your life. Let her go. Find some nice English girl instead. Someone of your own age.”’
He broke off, struggling for breath, and Edmund said, ‘You don’t need to tell me this—’
‘I told him she loved me,’ said the harsh voice. ‘But he said, “She doesn’t love you. It’s a diversion for her.” I snatched up a knife or a dagger – something they had used on the film set earlier – and I attacked him. I just kept on stabbing him – I had to wipe out the words, you see. “She doesn’t love you,” he had said, and I had to get rid of those words, so I brought the knife down on his face – on his mouth – over and over again. There was so much blood – you can’t imagine how much blood there is when you stab someone, Edmund. And it smells – it fills up a whole room within seconds, and it’s like the taste of tin in your mouth.
‘I ran away then. Kline’s blood was everywhere, it was all over me, and I didn’t know what to do next. But I knew I had got to save myself. They would have hanged me, Edmund, they really would—’ Once again the hands came out, clutching, seeking reassurance. ‘I ran out of Ashwood as if the Four Furies were chasing me, and I ran until I reached the road and somehow – I don’t remember it all – but somehow I got back to the house where I was living in Ashwood village. I locked myself in, and later I pretended I knew nothing about the murders; I pretended I had left Ashwood an hour before it all happened.’
He pulled Edmund closer. ‘But all these years I’ve wondered if someone did know and if someone had seen. I could never be sure, that was the thing.’ He turned his head away. ‘I was mad that day, and I think I’ve been mad ever since, Edmund. But if I’m really mad, I shouldn’t still be hurting, should I, not after all this time, thirty years since she died…’ His voice became fainter, not physically, but somehow spiritually, as if he was moving further away from the world.
Edmund had no idea what he should say. He kept hold of the thin hands. The echoes swirled and eddied all around the room.
Then his father said, very softly, ‘I think I’m going to die very soon, Edmund.’
‘No—’
‘Yes, I think so. I shall go down into oblivion and peace. Or will it be down into a tempestuous darkness, where hell’s demons dwell? People don’t know until they get there. But I’ll know quite soon, because I’m going to die tonight, aren’t I?’
Edmund stared down at the bed, watching the sanity come and go in the thin face, conscious of a dreadful pity. He could just remember the bright-haired, bright-minded man of his early childhood, and he could remember his father’s lively intelligence and imaginative mind, and the feeling of security he had given Edmund. When Edmund’s mother had died when he was tiny, his father had said, ‘I’ll always be with you, Edmund. You won’t need anyone else, because whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll be there.’
‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’ his father was saying. ‘You won’t ever tell anyone.’
‘No,’ said Edmund slowly. ‘No, I won’t tell anyone. No one outside this room will ever know that you’re a murderer.’
The shadows seemed to creep closer, and to reach out to claw the words and take them into their darkness, and then return them.