Clémence ran downstairs and opened the door. She wanted to hug him, but his tall, stooping presence was forbidding. She jumped on him anyway, and kissed his leathery cheek.
‘Goodness me,’ he said gruffly. ‘Is the old bugger here? I thought I saw him with you upstairs?’
‘The “old bugger” is here, Grandpa. Come in. Can I get you some tea?’
‘Got any whisky?’ said Stephen, following Clémence into the sitting room.
‘And this is my boyfriend, Callum,’ said Clémence. Callum was hovering on the bottom step.
‘Hello, Mr Smith,’ said Callum, holding out his hand.
Stephen looked at it, and for a moment it seemed as if he wasn’t going to shake it, but then he clasped it briefly. ‘Trickett-Smith,’ he growled.
Clémence found Stephen a seat. There was a bottle of Famous Grouse on a little table by the door and she fetched a couple of glasses from the kitchen, and put on the kettle.
Alastair shuffled into the living room. ‘Hello, Stephen.’
Stephen ignored him but collapsed into a chair. Alastair sat down opposite him. Clémence watched as the two old men stared at each other under impressive eyebrows.
24
Alastair examined the old man opposite, his former friend, former rival, former enemy. He didn’t recognize the features in front of him, the unkempt white hair, the ravaged face, the wayward bristles sprouting from nostrils and ears. But he recalled the fair-haired, handsome airman with the Roman nose, grinning at him in black and white from a wartime cinema screen. And then he remembered the picnic in Capri with Sophie and Stephen and Elaine. And the tall, immensely charming undergraduate working his way through a bottle of hock in an ancient wood-panelled room that must have been Alastair’s at their college at Oxford.
Clémence handed Stephen his whisky.
‘I’ll have one of those,’ said Alastair.
As she poured a second glass, Stephen spoke. ‘And where is the interfering old bat?’
‘Do you mean Aunt Madeleine?’ said Clémence.
‘Of course, I mean Madeleine. Who else is an interfering old bat?’
Clémence handed Alastair his whisky. ‘Can you make me a cup of tea, Callum?’ she asked.
‘Sure thing,’ said Callum.
‘We had lunch with her in Dingwall,’ Clémence said. ‘She’s at the airport now, probably, waiting for a flight to London.’
‘Good,’ said Stephen. He sipped his whisky. ‘So you fell down the stairs? Those stairs, presumably?’
‘Yes,’ said Alastair.
‘Hit your head? Can’t remember anything, Clémence tells me.’
‘Virtually nothing. Some things come back eventually, hazily.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that that was a good thing?’ Stephen said. ‘That you should bugger off back to Australia and leave things best forgotten forgotten?’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Alastair, calmly. ‘I didn’t know what I had forgotten. I didn’t even know who I was. That’s what Clémence did, help me find out who I was.’
Stephen snorted. ‘That must have been an unpleasant discovery.’
‘Yes,’ said Alastair, holding Stephen’s eyes, refusing to be provoked. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘What are you doing here, Grandpa?’ Clémence asked.
Stephen looked away from Alastair and up to his granddaughter, who was still standing. ‘When I realized what you and Alastair were up to, reading that bloody book and everything, I thought it would be easier all round if I came up here and told you all you want to know. Then you’ll go back to St Andrews, and he will piss off back to Australia.’
‘Thank you,’ said Alastair. He felt his hopes rising. It sounded as if he was at last going to get to the truth, or close to the truth. And whereas previously the truth had frightened him, now, with Clémence’s support, he felt braver about facing it, even hopeful.
Stephen’s glare switched back to him.
‘I mean it. Thank you, Stephen. You have come a long way. I appreciate it. I suspect we both do, don’t we, Clémence?’
‘Yes,’ said Clémence. ‘Thanks, Grandpa.’
‘All right,’ said Stephen. ‘Let’s get on with it. What can I tell you?’
Alastair took a deep breath. It was time, time to discover who he truly was.
‘Who killed Sophie?’
‘You’ve read all of that damned book, I take it?’ said Stephen.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s all wrong. You got completely the wrong end of the stick, old lad.’
‘So Alastair didn’t kill her?’ Clémence asked, her eyes shining.
Stephen seemed a little disconcerted by her excitement. ‘No. And neither did I. It was Nathan.’
‘Nathan?’ said Alastair. A wave of relief was poised to burst over him. Relief that he was not a murderer after all. Relief that he was not quite the evil person he thought he was. But he held it in check. He wanted to listen; he wanted to learn. ‘What happened?’
‘That night, Nathan saw you and Sophie sneak off to the boathouse. He followed you and waited while you made love to my wife. Then, when you left, he went inside. He killed Sophie. He heard you coming back and he whacked you over the head with an oar, without you seeing him. You were out cold; apparently he thought you were dead. He dumped Sophie in the loch and returned to check on you. But you had come round.’
The old man listened closely. ‘Had I seen him kill Sophie?’
‘No, or else he would have finished you off. You had no idea she was dead until the stalker found her the next day — the book is correct about that, at least.’
‘So what were you doing at the time?’
‘Stumbling around looking for Sophie. When I saw the French windows in the drawing room were open, I went outside to search the garden. Then I noticed the boathouse door was open too, so I had a look in there, which is how I left my footprint. I didn’t notice anything wrong, but then I was too pissed. Nathan watched me staggering around, but left me to it. He just wanted to get you into bed and out of the way. Then, when the police decided I was a suspect, he was willing to go along with that. And so were you, apparently.’
‘Yes,’ said Clémence. ‘We found the original manuscript of Death At Wyvis, and that says Nathan found Angus unconscious.’
‘I haven’t seen that,’ said Stephen. ‘But you sent it to Nathan from Australia. He put a lot of pressure on you not to publish it, but you insisted. So then he got you to change it. By that stage he had persuaded you that you had killed Sophie yourself and just forgotten it.’
‘So that’s why Alastair called it a novel?’ said Clémence.
‘I suppose so,’ said Stephen.
‘Presumably I told you all this?’ said Alastair.
‘That’s right. You said you’d come back here from Australia to see if you could find out more about Sophie’s death. You had read an article in a medical journal about false memories: apparently people with amnesia have a tendency to fill in the gaps with what makes sense, and then begin to believe it’s real. You thought you might have done that yourself. Turns out you had.’
‘It certainly sounds like it.’
‘I think I saw that article upstairs in the study,’ said Clémence. ‘Something about “confabulation”.’
‘And then when I got here I spoke to Pauline Ferguson?’ said the old man.