And how long had it been going on, this whatever-it-was between him and Sophie. Days? Years? Perhaps Stephen had been stopping off in Paris to see her every time he visited his mother in Antibes, and not telling me anything about it.
The anger was like a worm, creeping through every part of my system. I wanted to leap out of bed, jump onto Stephen and ram my fists into his face. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but I had scarcely ever seen him in any physical contact with anyone. He didn’t play sport; he avoided trouble, whereas I let my aggression rip every Saturday on the rugger field. I was well known for my hard tackling — if I crashed into you at full speed, you didn’t get up. I could beat the shit out of Stephen. I should beat the shit out of Stephen.
All right, perhaps I shouldn’t do that. But I should tell him how I felt. How my best friend had betrayed me.
I watched the cigarette glow above his pillow. I knew Stephen knew what I was thinking, yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to speak it. It was humiliating, too humiliating to admit to aloud. I had fallen for a girl stupid enough to fall for a cad like him; yet fallen so quietly, so feebly, she probably hadn’t even noticed. I was a lot stupider than she.
The anger burned. Even when sleep came eventually, the embers glowed.
Alden was there on Capri too. He joined us for breakfast in the morning; he was with us when we visited the Blue Grotto on a boat hired from the Marina Grande. But he was there as our friend, an uncle who was still benevolent.
We wanted him there as a friend, not as an enemy. He was mentioned in conversation frequently: ‘Alden would adore the grotto — he’d rush out and buy a painting of it right away’; ‘I bet Alden would have bought a villa on Capri if he had ever visited it’; ‘Alden would have loved this limoncello — he was always a sucker for sweet liqueurs.’ This was especially true of Madeleine and Nathan. It was as if by invoking his spirit as part of the group of friends, they were affirming his approval for their marriage. Tony saw him as his supportive patron still and Stephen and Sophie went along with the others, Sophie possibly to support her sister, and Stephen because he was a heartless bastard.
I, alone, didn’t mention Alden’s name. The reason was pretty straightforward really: I felt guilty about helping to kill him.
The murder was only mentioned head-on once, at dinner on the second night. As he was pouring some of the delicious soft caprese wine from the third bottle of the evening, Nathan reminded us of the couple who had been looking after the Deauville villa.
‘I don’t think I told you, but I heard from Monsieur Lemoine a couple of years ago. His wife was getting old and unable to do all the cooking and cleaning that they were used to. They wanted to retire, and buy a small cottage in Pont L’Évêque to be near their daughter and grandchildren. They wondered if I could help them.’
‘Good God!’ said Stephen. ‘That’s blackmail!’
‘It is indeed,’ said Nathan. ‘But very nicely done. No mention of what they had or hadn’t seen. No threat. They were asking for an amount that we could easily afford.’
‘Did you give them the money?’ said Stephen.
‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘They were very grateful.’
‘But how can you know whether they really saw anything?’ said Tony.
‘They saw something,’ said Madeleine. ‘Or more probably heard something. It’s just they were cunning enough to keep quiet during the murder investigation. They wouldn’t make a demand like that unless they knew something was amiss.’
‘But they’ll just come back for more,’ said Stephen.
‘They already have,’ said Nathan. ‘Now they live in Pont L’Évêque they need a car. Just a small one.’
‘And you paid them?’ said Tony.
‘Half of what they asked for,’ said Madeleine. ‘Just to stop them from getting too greedy. We can afford it, and it’s worth it.’
‘Since we are all here together now, we just thought we should let the rest of you know what we’ve done,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s the kind of thing you shouldn’t put in a letter.’
There was silence around the table. We were not just friends; we were conspirators.
‘We were lucky,’ said Tony.
‘Very lucky,’ said Stephen.
‘It was all thanks to Angus,’ said Nathan. ‘I don’t know how you thought of so much so quickly. I will always be grateful.’
He raised his glass. ‘To Angus.’
‘To Angus,’ the others repeated.
‘It was nothing,’ I said, looking around the table at my friends with a stiff smile. It was true: with the exception of Elaine I had been the most innocent, the most naïve of the people in the room that night, yet it had been me who had somehow cobbled together a story that held up against all Inspector Pasquier’s probing. And their gratitude seemed sincere, with the exception of Sophie, who looked uncomfortable, as well she might. The others were willing to go along with the fiction that we had dealt sensibly with a ghastly accident. Indeed, it was a lie I had told myself for the last four years to enable me to live with myself. But it was a lie. Nathan had killed Alden and the right thing to do would have been to tell the police.
‘We are not quite all here,’ said Stephen. ‘How is Elaine? Where is she?’
‘She’s a junior at Bryn Mawr,’ said Nathan. ‘Studying French, I believe.’
‘She wrote me that she’s coming over to Europe again next month,’ said Tony. ‘With a friend from college and possibly her aunt as chaperone, although she is trying to lose the aunt. She’s planning to stay here for a week.’
‘She hasn’t said anything about Alden?’ Stephen asked.
‘We’ve never mentioned it,’ said Nathan.
‘I’ll make sure she is OK with it,’ said Tony. ‘But she’s a good kid. She won’t talk.’
From what I had seen of her four years before, Elaine didn’t strike me as a good kid. But she was probably practised at keeping her own misdemeanours quiet.
‘None of us has anything to worry about,’ said Nathan. ‘I guess the French authorities will have something much more important to be concerned about soon. Like the Germans marching over the Maginot Line.’
There then followed a disjointed and ill-informed discussion of likely German and French strategies in a war. But I feared that Nathan was dead wrong when he said that we need not worry about Alden’s death. I suspected we would all be worrying about that for the rest of our lives.
And so we should.
We visited the Villa Jovis on the third day. At breakfast, they all asked me about Tiberius. I described the orgies and torture the emperor was supposed to have indulged in on the island: the teams of sexual performers copulating in triple unions in front of him; the ‘old goat’s garden’ where boys and girls dressed up as Paris and nymphs solicited sex; the paintings and sculptures in his palace and his library of erotica always handy in case guidance was needed on the more complicated techniques. I skimmed over some of the more depraved descriptions involving young boys and babies. Tiberius was a monster, at least according to Suetonius, but I was fascinated by how and why the most powerful man in the world should choose to shut himself up on this island for the last twelve years of his life.
The path up to the palace was steadily uphill, and despite a stiff cool breeze, it was hot work. We shooed off the locals trying to tempt us on to donkeys for the climb. Birds serenaded us from lemon trees and vines along the route. I walked with Tony at the head of the group, who of course knew the route, and with Sophie. After a while, we paused for breath beside a drinking fountain. The Bay of Naples had opened up before us, and behind us was Capri town and the stone ramparts of Monte Solaro.