Of course Stephen had known that he hadn’t murdered Sophie himself, but he had felt so guilty that he wasn’t surprised that the police believed he had. The guilt was an overwhelming burden that crushed him.
He had tried hard when they had first got married to treat her well, and by and large he had succeeded. Even when he had taken on bit roles in films, he had managed to treat them as a nine-to-five job from which he returned to dinner with his wife.
But the movies were beguiling. Even in wartime there was glamour. Sophie was always beautiful, but then so were the actresses. And they were out of bounds and therefore tempting. There were long stretches with nothing to do, and there was alcohol. As he became more famous, there were the fans: the young women who thought he was handsome and dreamed of sleeping with him.
He dreamed of sleeping with them. And then he did.
In Hollywood it all got worse, as Sophie had known it would. He drank. He took drugs. He slept with lots of women. He treated her badly, very badly.
He treated her much worse than Alastair ever would have done.
And somehow he didn’t notice any of this until he was sitting in a Scottish jail, waiting for his trial for Sophie’s murder.
The truth was he broke down; he couldn’t mount a credible defence for Sophie’s killing, since he knew he was responsible for it. When he was found guilty of murdering her, it seemed to him that justice had been done. He wasn’t innocent.
It was lucky that he didn’t have access to alcohol in prison, but even without it, he reached despair that was so deep he couldn’t remember it.
It was Maitland who had pulled him out of it. Maitland was a manager in an insurance company who had murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy when he had discovered her with another man. Unlike Stephen he had always treated his wife well, at least according to him, and Stephen believed him. Unlike Stephen he had actually killed her. Like Stephen he regretted her death.
But he had learned to live with the fact. He was different from other people: he was a murderer, and he was in prison, where he should be. His life was going to be shitty, which was as it should be. But since he was still a living organism on this planet, and likely to remain so for many years yet, he would get as much out of those years as he could. The small things. Like the Telegraph crossword.
What was the point of Maitland’s life? It was a big question, with no big answers, so he had provided a small one. Doing the Telegraph crossword.
Stephen was Maitland’s disciple. Life was shitty, but it was no longer unbearable. That was despite bloody Alastair Cunningham’s repeated attempts to make it so.
First there was the publication of Death At Wyvis. It was true the book had got Stephen released a few years early for a crime that he didn’t commit. But it had stirred everything up: Sophie’s death, the trial, Stephen’s responsibility for the whole thing. Oddly, Stephen blamed Alastair for that, more than the fact that it was he who had actually killed Sophie.
The fuss died down eventually, and Maitland was let out on parole and came to live in Shepherd’s Bush. He and Stephen began to meet daily at the Windsor Castle for a pint and the crossword. Stephen’s days achieved some focus.
Then, for reasons only known to himself, Alastair had returned from Australia to cause trouble, big time. They were both over eighty, for God’s sake! Why couldn’t Alastair just stay in Australia and rot?
So Alastair felt guilty? He deserved to! Why mess things up for everyone else? Because there was no doubt that Alastair had messed things up for everyone.
And then the stupid bastard had fallen, hit his head and forgotten everything. Excellent! It should all have just stayed forgotten. And it would have done if Madeleine hadn’t interfered again and got Clémence involved.
It was really for Clémence’s sake that Stephen was on the train going north. It wasn’t just that Clémence was an innocent bystander who didn’t deserve to be caught up in the mess. Clémence was Stephen’s granddaughter, and even though he rarely saw her, every time he did she reminded him of Sophie.
Alastair could get what was coming to him. But Clémence? Clémence he had to protect.
Clémence heard wheels crunch gravel outside the nursing home. Their taxi had arrived.
It took them less than ten minutes to get back to the vet’s farm. Clémence didn’t see either Jerry or his blue car lurking, although she couldn’t remember exactly what make his car was, so it was difficult to identify it in the traffic.
Her heart leaped when she saw Callum waiting by the front door of the farmhouse, next to his bike.
She rushed out of the taxi to give him a hug. ‘I’m so glad to see you!’
He squeezed her. He was reasonably tall, very thin, with dark curly hair and gorgeous blue eyes. There was something very reassuring, very normal about his presence. As though the boy sitting next to her in her French grammar class would banish all the weird stuff that had been happening to her over the previous few days.
She paid the taxi driver and introduced Callum to the old man, who greeted him warmly. They went inside, and Clémence made them all tea while she explained to Callum the gist of what had been happening.
Callum took it all in, asking some questions for clarification. Despite the extraordinary situation Clémence and the old man were in, Callum seemed to take it in his stride.
‘So what do we do now?’ he said, as Clémence brought the three of them mugs of tea, and they sat around the kitchen table.
‘Did you bring the manuscript of Death At Wyvis?’ asked the old man.
‘Yes,’ said Callum, opening the bag he had brought in with him. ‘And the published book, like you asked.’
‘We’ll have a look at this,’ said Clémence. ‘We are meeting my aunt Madeleine for lunch; she knows as much about all this as anyone. And then we are going to the police.’
Callum handed the manuscript to Clémence.
‘I’ll just check the chapter where Sophie gets killed,’ said Clémence.
The old man nodded.
He and Callum sipped their tea, as they watched Clémence scan the relevant chapter, ‘Chapter X — The Boathouse’. The chapter — the conversation with Sophie on Ben Wyvis, the dinner back at Wyvis Lodge, putting Stephen to bed, having sex with Sophie in the boathouse, the row, stumbling angrily around in the woods — seemed to be identical, with the exception that the narrator’s name had been changed from ‘Alastair’ in the manuscript to ‘Angus’ in the printed novel.
But Chapter XI was different. Clémence skimmed the first page quickly.
‘Here, let me read this,’ she said to the other two. ‘In the published novel, Chapter XI starts with Angus waking up at dawn and throwing up in the loo. But there are a couple of extra paragraphs right at the beginning.’
She cleared her throat and began to read.
Chapter XI
Justice Undone
‘Are you all right?’
I opened my eyes to see Nathan bending over me. I was in a ditch by the side of the track and my head hurt badly.
‘What happened? Did you fall?’
‘I... I don’t know.’ And I didn’t know.
‘Here. Let’s get you out of this ditch.’
I tried to heave myself to my feet, but it was difficult. Fortunately, the ditch was dry, and with Nathan’s help I scrambled out. I saw the boathouse.
‘Where’s Sophie?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s just get you back to the house.’
Leaning on Nathan’s shoulder, I stumbled back to Wyvis Lodge and collapsed on to my bed. I was asleep in seconds.