The Quality of Mercy Read online

  ‘I do mean about my uncle, yes.’ There was something desperate in her tone of voice as though she had nerved herself to say what she needed to say and could not bear to be prevented from speaking.

  Edward poured out the cocktails, wondering whether whisky might not have been more appropriate, and sat down opposite her.

  ‘Now tell me what’s bothering you. Have you discovered something among your uncle’s papers to distress you?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that. The fact is . . . I wanted to tell you that I killed him.’

  ‘My dear! No! I simply don’t believe it. You were the most loving niece a man could wish for. A daughter could not have cared for him better. What possible reason could you have for . . . for doing that?’

  She put her cocktail down heavily on the table beside her chair, spilling much of it. She did not notice what she had done and continued to stare at Edward in mute horror.

  ‘There was a moment when I thought you had guessed why I did it. I killed him because I could not bear it to happen all over again.’

  ‘For what to happen all over again?’ It came to him in a flash. ‘You mean his depressions?’

  She nodded her head slowly. ‘Not so much depressions this time but . . . well, at first he became forgetful. He forgot to eat or wash.’

  ‘He was still painting.’

  ‘How can I make you understand? He used to take his painting kit up to Tarn Hill and do exactly the same picture he had done before.’

  ‘But that was a tribute, or at least I thought it was, to the place where he had been happy – where he courted his wife.’

  ‘It began like that but towards . . . towards the end he did not know why he was painting that picture – except that it was the only one he could still paint. You see, he had done it so many times before that he didn’t need to think about it. His body took over.’

  ‘You mean he was going senile?’ Vera nodded. ‘Did you take him to a doctor . . .? Surely he wasn’t old enough to go senile? ’

  ‘The doctor said it was probably brought on by his breakdown during the war but I blame it on the ergot. He said my uncle would soon need full-time nursing and that I ought to make arrangements. I told him I couldn’t afford it. The doctor said, cool as anything, that it was my job. I was to be his nurse. I asked about putting him in a home. He said that, if I couldn’t afford nurses, I wouldn’t be able to afford a private hospital. I asked if there were any public ones and he looked at me as if I had asked for an abortion. He said coldly that no one would put a man like my uncle in a public hospital if they had ever seen inside one.’

  ‘So you killed him rather than see him deteriorate?’

  ‘I killed him to save my own sanity,’ she said bitterly. ‘I am so selfish! I just couldn’t face twenty or even thirty years trapped with someone who didn’t even know his own name . . . someone whose every need I had to see to . . . someone who could not even go to the lavatory on his own. That was what the doctor said I was faced with.’ Her voice became shrill as she relived her panic. ‘It wasn’t as if he was an old man and, you see, my childhood was given over to looking after him. You can’t imagine what it was like. I was his slave. I always had to be at his beck and call. When he was in one of his depressions, I was the only one who could soothe him. Twice I came back from school to find he had cut his wrists. When he was himself, he was the kindest man imaginable but, at the back of my mind, I always feared the black dog – that was what he called it – would come and spoil everything. And it always did.

  ‘As a child, the burden of it almost drove me mad. I couldn’t pay attention at school. I was naughty and even wild. The teachers despaired of me. I had very few friends and those I had I did not dare take home. As I got older, I saw my life slipping away. I had no boyfriends. Well, I didn’t mind that so much, but I wanted to paint and I couldn’t. I was stifled. I was always anxious, always looking for signs that the black dog was coming. Oh dear! I can’t explain it to someone like you who has never had to be at anyone’s beck and call. It’s a prison without bars but a prison nonetheless.’

  ‘What were the signs that your uncle was going to have one of his depressions?’

  ‘He would be angry for no good reason. Normally, he was the mildest of men. He stopped sleeping, and then he would have these nightmares.’ She shuddered. ‘You don’t want to hear all this. You must think I’m just trying to make excuses for what I did.’

  ‘These nightmares,’ Edward persisted, feeling instinctively that Vera needed to talk about what she had suffered, ‘what form did they take?’

  ‘I would hear him groaning in his sleep. You can’t imagine how frightening that was. Then the next night he would be shrieking. I would go and try to wake him but it was surprisingly difficult. Sometimes, if I woke him too suddenly, he became violent.’

  ‘He would hit you?’

  ‘Not deliberately. He would be dreaming he was at the front and his friends were being blown to pieces all around him. He would punch the air – as if he was fighting to escape some net.’

  ‘And when he woke?’

  ‘Then he would cry. In some ways that was worst of all. As a child, to find my uncle weeping like a baby . . . I would feel so helpless . . . so sad.’

  ‘And during the day?’

  ‘I would go off to school and, while I was out of the house, I knew he would be thinking about killing himself. He could not bear the idea of going to bed and suffering those nightmares again. He tried drink but that did not work. He hated whisky and, if he tried to make himself drunk, it just made him more suicidal. The only thing which helped then was ergot but, as you know, it has side effects. It gave him hallucinations and he couldn’t paint. In the end, I think the ergot brought on his dementia but, at the time, it was better than nothing.’

  ‘Weren’t there any friends you could call on?’

  ‘When I was very young there was Auntie May, as I called her – though I think she was really a cousin of some sort. She couldn’t cope with me or Uncle Peter. After that, there were some friends . . . painters for the most part, like Reg Harman. But they had their own lives to lead and my uncle was reclusive by nature. He made it difficult for his friends to help him.’

  ‘He didn’t teach or anything?’

  ‘He tried teaching but, unlike Reg, he wasn’t good at it. In the end, the Slade more or less sacked him.’

  ‘But things got better and then you were able to move to Lawn Road?’

  ‘Yes, as a new war loomed, Uncle Peter – in an odd way – became happier. He stopped having nightmares of the trenches. I thought he had recovered and it was all going to be all right. For the first time I had the freedom to live my own life, paint my own pictures. I have never been so happy as I was in my little flat – my own living space. Virginia Woolf said that all creative women – sorry, does this sound pretentious – anyway, she said we need a “room of one’s own” to escape domestic life for a few hours and she was right.

  ‘I knew it could not last but it was so brief . . . so very brief.’ Vera hung her head and mumbled. ‘I had been out of the cage for such a short time and suddenly – talking to that awful doctor – I realized that I would have to move back to the flat and look after him – maybe for years. I might die before him. I just . . . I just thought I couldn’t do it. I think of myself as a strong person but I knew I couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘You couldn’t have found someone to help you . . .?’

  ‘I told you, there was no money and anyway, I would have felt guilty not looking after him myself. After all, he was a real artist and I’m . . . I’m a nobody. People would have said that he took me in as an orphan. Now it was my turn to care for him.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Well, the weeks went by and I became more and more desperate. In the end, I decided to give him ergot – there was plenty left – a dose big enough to kill him.’ She faltered for the first time and Edward saw the tears running down her face. ‘I thoug
ht I would take him up to his favourite place and let him die where he was happiest. And so that was what I did. Only I forgot the palette knife he always used and Miss Browne found it in the studio.’

  ‘I remember. But why didn’t you tell her that you had opened his paintbox and the knife must have fallen out?’

  ‘I know. I ought to have said that but I could not do it. I just told the truth – that the box hadn’t been opened. I must have been a bit mad. You know, I think I half-hoped I would be found out. I didn’t want to get away with it. I knew I shouldn’t be allowed to get away scot-free.’

  ‘But your uncle was found at the bottom of Tarn Hill, almost on the Broadlands drive?’

  ‘I thought I had given him enough ergot to kill him but I was wrong. He was woozy when I got him into the car. If he had been unconscious, I couldn’t have manoeuvred him.’

  ‘And so when you left him . . .?’

  ‘By then he was unconscious. I thought he was dead. I kissed him and walked away. I knew he would be found before too long.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t have allowed him to lie out there all night.’

  ‘But he wasn’t dead?’

  ‘No, he must have come to – oh, it’s too awful to think about – and staggered down the hill and died where he was found. I’m a murderer, aren’t I? Tell me I am wicked? Tell me I should be hanged?’

  Edward looked at Vera aghast. Tears were running down her cheeks but she did not wipe them away.

  ‘So why did you mention the notes on the canvas? Why did you draw attention to the fact that your uncle had taken ergot unexpectedly?’

  ‘I don’t really understand myself. I suppose I thought you suspected there was something wrong and I wanted to distract you.’

  ‘And you were successful. Verity and I thought the notes had to be connected with someone at Broadlands – possibly Mountbatten himself.’ A thought crossed Edward’s mind. ‘Did you do those squiggles on the canvas?’

  ‘No, no! He did them and I really believe that he was upset at the thought of my aunt’s home being destroyed. I think, in his muddled way, he did want to talk to Lord Louis about it. That was what he was trying to do when he walked down the hill that last time. He was getting so forgetful, as I said, he made notes to remind himself . . .’

  ‘But I think there was another reason why you suggested there was something strange about your uncle’s death. I think you wanted to be found out. You wanted someone to know – to ease your conscience. You wanted to be punished.’

  Vera hung her head like a naughty child. In a low voice, she said, ‘I thought of you as my nemesis. It was so unfair, I know. I thought that if you found out the truth . . . and forgave me – or did not forgive me – I would have – what’s the word? – expiated my sin. It was very wicked of me. . . to try and transfer my guilt to you. I suppose, if I was religious, I would have confessed to a priest.’

  ‘But I didn’t find out the truth,’ Edward said bitterly.

  ‘You didn’t want to,’ she murmured.

  Edward was silent. He was not God. He was not nemesis but he did distinguish – as the law did not – between murder done out of malice – greed, envy, hatred – and murder brought on by despair. He thought, wryly, of the legend beneath the Mersham coat of arms – Aquila non captat Muscat. Eagles don’t catch flies. He suspected there must be other instances where children, driven to the edge of madness by the burden of looking after senile parents, resorted to snuffing out a life. Such deaths seldom if ever came to be investigated by policemen and condemned by judge and jury.

  He knew he ought to be angry that it was so but he preferred to think that there was often mercy in the killing and mercy should be shown to the killer. As Shakespeare put it, ‘the quality of mercy is not strain’d. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,’ by which he meant, surely, that mercy should not be governed by inflexible human laws.

  They sat in silence for several minutes until he could restrain himself no longer. ‘Oh Vera! Why did you have to tell me this? What am I supposed to do? There’s no evidence to convict you of murder except your own confession. Yes, if you were convicted of murder, you would indeed be hanged. It is the mandatory sentence for murder. The Home Secretary might reduce the sentence to life imprisonment but how could you ever bear that? Your defence counsel might argue that, when you left your uncle on the hill, he was still alive so you had not actually killed him, but the fact remains that you meant to kill him and, in the end, he did die as a result of the ergot you gave him. However, unless you decide to repeat it to the police your confession is of no interest to anyone except those who care about you. I have no intention of repeating what you have told me to the police. That is for you to do, if you so wish, but I beg you to keep silent and find some more constructive way of dealing with your guilt.’

  Vera looked at him, haggard and pale. ‘At first I thought that I could deal with it – my guilt. I had my freedom and would pay the price for my wickedness having to live with the knowledge that I had committed the worst sin against the person I loved most in the world. As the days went by, I realized I could not. I had to tell someone. It was as simple as that. So I told you. I am so . . . so sorry to have burdened you with it. ’

  She made to get up but Edward stayed her.

  ‘Vera,’ he said, laying his hand on hers. ‘No one who knows you can doubt that you are a good person. You acted out of desperation. You had been deprived of the childhood which was yours by right and suddenly you were faced with the fact that, once again, you would have to devote the best part of your life to caring for your uncle. No sane person would say you are a cold-blooded murderer.’

  ‘But that is what the law would say.’

  ‘It would,’ Edward said grimly, not wanting her to be in any doubt of the danger in which she lay. ‘And, what is more, you would be pilloried by the newspapers – misunderstood and caricatured. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘My God! What am I going to do?’

  ‘You alone can decide. No one can make the decision for you but the fact that you had to tell me what happened suggests to me that your conscience will lead you out of the morass. You must do something or you may punish yourself some other way.’

  ‘Suicide? I have thought of that. Don’t think that I haven’t,’ she said vehemently.

  ‘Your death will help no one and I can’t believe it would be what your uncle would want. He had seen enough pain and suffering.’

  ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘It’s not for me to tell you but I have a suggestion,’ he said slowly. ‘The Germans have an expression, Trauerbeit – the labour of mourning. The coming war is going to bring a world of suffering. Why not devote as much time as possible to helping refugees? Perhaps, in that way, you will be able to make peace with yourself.’

  Vera’s face cleared a little and she looked at him with something like hope in her eyes. ‘Refugees?’

  ‘Verity and I have helped bring over and settle a trainload of Jewish children from Vienna. Other trains are planned but the organizers are desperately short of competent people to help.’

  ‘Children are coming on trains?’ she sounded bewildered.

  ‘Yes. The British Jewish Refugee Committee has been formed to organize what they call Kindertransport – trains and planes to rescue children from almost certain death in the camps which the Nazis have set up. Would that be a way forward for you?’

  Edward spent another hour talking Vera through the tragedy in her life and he was very weary when at last she left. They had not felt like eating but now he found he was hungry. Although it was nine thirty, he thought he would see if Verity was in her flat. He had dialled her number before he remembered that she was dining with her father. He was just about to replace the receiver when, to his surprise, she answered. She sounded as though he had woken her.

  ‘You’re not at the Ritz with your father . . .?’

  As matter-of-factly as she could manage, she told him how she had been stood up.


  ‘Meet me at Gennaro’s and we can weep on each other’s shoulders,’ he urged her. ‘No need to dress.’

  Had he known Verity was going to pour out her anguish at her father’s ability to absent himself whenever she needed him most, he might not have been so ready to take her out to dinner. He had had about as much as he could take of fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces. However, he listened patiently as she told him how isolated she felt – how badly she had missed a mother’s guidance as a child and, worse still, when she had first gone out into the world as a young girl. She spoke about her passionate love for her father and how she had been so proud of him. How she had tried to understand why the good causes he espoused had always taken priority over her. She remembered a school play in which she had the starring role. He had promised to be there but his seat had remained empty and when, taking her curtain call, she had looked for him, he was not there. How she had trained herself not to care – or so she thought – that he forgot to collect her from her friends’ houses and never remembered her birthday unless she reminded him. It became a sort of joke between them, only it had ceased to make her laugh.

  When she was quite done, he told her about Vera.

  ‘Oh God! Edward, you must be exhausted!’ she cried. ‘You ought to have told me to shut up. How could I have burdened you with my problems with my father when Vera . . . oh, that poor girl! You know, I always thought there was something odd going on. That day I met her at her uncle’s flat, she was doing her best to appear normal but there was something . . . I couldn’t put my finger on it. Of course, what she told you explains everything.’

  ‘Do you think we were foolish not to have worked it out without her having to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t see how we could. She had no motive for killing her uncle – or none that we could have known about. But, thank God, we never spoke to anyone about our version of events.’

  ‘Particularly that ass, Inspector Beeston.’

  ‘No, thank goodness!’