Josephine knew her presence had been all but forgotten in the recriminations between mother and son. She looked at Marta, and was surprised to see that she seemed to be growing calmer as the exchange went on. Now, she leaned forward and put her hand on Vintner’s shoulder. ‘I wanted to take you with me more than anything in the world, but your father put me away and made sure I couldn’t see you,’ she said. ‘You’ll never know how it destroyed me to lose you, and I swear I’ll make it up to you, but we need to stop this now. There’s been enough violence.’

Vintner shook her off. ‘You could never make it up to me. We could spend every day together for the rest of our lives and it wouldn’t make up for those years of not having you. There was a time when I longed for you to reach out and touch me, but not any more.’ He met her eyes, his own filled with hatred. ‘As it happens, though, I have kept my promise to you. I’ve managed to trace your daughter. In fact, I’ve known who she is for some time. I was with her just the other day.’

Josephine would have given anything not to have noticed the small flicker of hope that passed across Marta’s face before she 256

walked into the trap her son had set for her. ‘Why didn’t you say?

Where?’

‘She was on a train,’ Vintner said and sat back, waiting for the horrific truth to sink in.

Marta had gone a shade of white which Josephine had always believed to exist only for the dead. Her own sense of grievance had, she realised, all but disappeared in the face of this torture: whatever Marta had done, she did not deserve to be played with like this. Josephine reached out and took her hand. She was convinced the two of them were going to die very shortly anyway, so what danger was there in a little compassion? ‘The girl who died on the train was called Elspeth Simmons,’ she said and then, when Marta showed no sign of recognition, ‘She was your daughter.

Yours and Arthur’s.’

As she uttered the words, she saw shock transform itself into the adamant disbelief which so often delayed the onset of grief. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Marta said, shaking her off. ‘You just want to hurt me for what I tried to do to you. That couldn’t possibly be true.’

‘I’m afraid it is, Mother,’ Vintner said, and there was a hardness in his voice which signalled to Josephine that his deadly game was reaching its conclusion. ‘You see, what I haven’t told you is that Father gave me a few instructions before he died. You don’t think that pathetic note he left on his desk was his final word, do you?

That was just something to be read out at the inquest for Tey’s benefit.’ He glanced at her for a second and then turned back to his mother. ‘No – Elliott Vintner was capable of something far more creative than that. The very last thing he wrote was actually a letter to me. I’ve got it here, in fact.’ He rested the pistol on the piano and took a sheet of paper – worn and dirty from repeated handling

– out of the pocket of his corduroy trousers. Josephine recognised the scrawl of dark red ink from correspondence she had had by the same hand. ‘Shall I share it with you?’ He did not wait for an answer but unfolded the paper and started to read. ‘To become an expert in murder cannot be so difficult,’ he began, then paused and looked again at Josephine. ‘You’ll recognise that bit, of course, but guess what? It’s actually true.’

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He continued and Josephine knew that she was watching a performance, as carefully rehearsed as anything he had ever spoken on stage. She listened while the letter was read out, and Rafe Vintner’s voice was replaced in her head by his father’s, that low, confident drawl which had tried and failed to destroy her in court. These words, however, were far deadlier; the argument, more emotionally charged: ‘“We have always been close, Rafe, bound not just by our love for each other but by your mother’s betrayal of us both. If that love means anything to you, you can keep it alive, even after I’m gone, but only if all traces of that betrayal are destroyed. I can tell you howto do that, but you must search within your heart to decide if I’m asking too much. If the answer to that is yes, then forgive me for asking and go on with your life as best you can; if, however, the answer is no, if you share any of the pain and resentment that has led me to ask such a thing of my son, then this is what you must do to protect my name and to lighten the burden which you will carry alone after I’m gone.”’ Rafe Vintner’s voice was filled with emotion as he read on, outlining instructions from a dead man which had sealed the fates of Elspeth Simmons and Bernard Aubrey, and now seemed certain to do the same for Marta and for her. Josephine only had to look at Marta to know that Elliott Vintner’s final wish – that she should be made to suffer beyond all measure before she died – was a fait accompli: she could see that Aubrey’s relationship to Arthur had been as much a revelation to Marta as the identity of the girl on the train, and the combination would surely destroy her. ‘That’s the gist of it, anyway.’

Vintner folded the letter carefully and put it back in his pocket before picking up the gun again. ‘I won’t bore you with the practical details at the end except to say that they were very thorough.’

There was silence in the room and Josephine wondered if his arrogance was such that he expected applause. When Marta eventually spoke, her voice was barely audible but surprisingly steady.

‘So it wasn’t a mistake at all. When we met at the theatre afterwards, you already knew exactly what you’d done.’ It was a statement, not a question, but her son was eager to explain further.

‘Oh yes. I had no intention whatsoever of killing Tey – not then, 258

at least. I was going to pretendI’d misunderstood your description of her, but then you told me to go for the woman in the hat – so it ended up being your mistake. Never in my wildest dreams could I have hoped for that. It’s the ultimate irony, don’t you think? You instructed me to kill your own daughter. How Father would have laughed,’ he said, turning to Josephine, ‘to paraphrase your splendidplay.’

‘And then you tricked me into agreeing to kill Aubrey by making me panic,’ Marta continued, ‘knowing all along that, if I did, I’d be killing the last link with Arthur.’

‘Yes. Neat isn’t it? Two down, one to go.’

Josephine knew it was only a matter of time before Vintner carried out his father’s instructions to the letter and added her to the tally as a bonus. Playing for time, and understanding that he was the type to enjoy talking about his cruelty, she said, ‘How could you have known that Elspeth was going to be on that train? Or anywhere near me? We met by chance.’

‘Not exactly. I gather from poor Hedley – he’s a friend of mine, you know – that Bernard Aubrey arranged the tickets as a treat for his soon-to-be-acknowledged great-niece. In fact, Hedley saved me a lot of trouble all round. I knew who Elspeth was and what she was interested in – Father could tell me that much because he’d made it his business to keep an eye on things after he’d given her away. I knew I could arrange to bump into her, either at the theatre or at that ridiculous shop, but I thought I was going to have to seduce her myself to get her where I wanted. As it happened, Hedley did my dirty work for me and there was no need to venture into those murky waters, so I suppose I have to own up to a bit of help there. I couldn’t believe my luck when Hedley came downstairs one night after the show and asked for an autograph for Elspeth Simmons. It only took a bit of gentle encouragement to get them together and, after that, I could always find out where she was. It was embarrassingly easy, really. He was so excited about her coming down this weekend that he never stopped talking about it and how thrilled she’d be that his precious Mr Aubrey had arranged for her to meet her favourite author. It was pathetic.’