We turned and saw Marcus limping into the room, and went back inside. He almost stumbled on a book on the floor, and I caught his arm and steadied him, startled by how light he felt. I took the bottle from his free hand and found three empty glasses.
He eased himself with a sigh down into another piece of furniture I remembered, a heavy dark wooden chair he called his throne. ‘So how are you guys?’ he said, examining us in turn. In that more haggard face his gaze seemed brighter, more intense, but his manner was less certain, almost as if he’d become withdrawn, unused to being with people, reclusive, or maybe just drunk.
‘We’re fine,’ Anna said. ‘I work over in Blacktown, and Josh has been in London.’
‘Ah, the merchant banker, yes. London?’
‘Right, I’ve just got back.’
‘Four years,’ he said. ‘Of course, of course.’ As if that was terribly significant.
I smiled. ‘How’s the uni these days?’
He lowered his eyelids, raised his wine cautiously to his mouth and drank. ‘I don’t work there any more, Josh. They decided they could do without me-very wisely no doubt.’ Some wine spilled onto his knee.
Anna said, ‘But you were a great teacher, Marcus. And your research …’
He gave a dry laugh that turned into a cough. ‘After the accident, well, someone had to pay. Inquiries, suspended from teaching, research grants withheld. They made life impossible for me, drove me out.’ He shrugged, wiped his knee absently.
I was shocked, by both his story and how he looked, and said, ‘I’m sorry. Where are you now?’
‘Um? Oh, I’m working on my own private research program.’
‘No more students?’
He gazed at his feet sombrely, then shook his head.
I raised an eyebrow at Anna, who took over.
‘We wondered if you’d heard about Curtis and Owen, Marcus?’
‘Curtis and Owen? No, I haven’t heard from them for a while. What about them?’
I hadn’t noticed a newspaper or a TV in the house.
‘They were killed in a climbing accident in New Zealand last month.’
He cocked his head forward, peering at her. ‘No …’ He looked confused, and I wondered if he might be on medication as well as booze. ‘A climbing accident?’ He shook his head, not upset but more as if this just couldn’t be right. ‘Another climbing accident? Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I went over there as soon as I heard. I was with Owen when he died in hospital.’ Anna was leaning forward, speaking slowly, watching his reactions. ‘Just before he died he told me something very disturbing. He said that Luce didn’t die the way the inquest had heard. He said her death wasn’t accidental.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He said, We killed her.’
Marcus looked startled, opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Finally he said, ‘No, that’s … that’s … crazy.’
‘Is it? You weren’t actually there when it happened, were you?’
‘You’re not serious.’ He began tapping a finger on the arm of the chair. ‘There was an inquest, a full investigation.’
‘Which relied on what Curtis and Owen said.’
He hauled himself abruptly upright in his seat, glaring at her. ‘This is crazy, Anna. Tell me again, the whole thing.’
While Anna did so I looked at the books lying around my feet. There was one called Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, which I thought might have been about climbing until I saw that the author again was Steiner. There were others by him-The Being of Man and His Future Evolution and Cosmic Memory-and a thick tome called A Guide to Anthroposophy. The books had Dewey classification numbers on their spines from the university library, and I wondered if he still had access, or if he’d stolen them.
‘Thank you for telling me this, Anna. I had no idea.’ Marcus drained his glass and I got up to refill it for him. ‘Have you told anyone else about it?’
‘Not yet.’
Marcus seemed agitated, preoccupied. ‘The fall,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Owen’s mind … He was obviously deranged by his fall.’
‘You don’t think it’s possible he could have been telling the truth?’
‘What? No! Of course not.’
I said, ‘How about Luce’s state of mind, in those last days before the accident?’
‘Luce? State of mind?’ He focused his eyes on me in that intense way he’d had before, as if he wanted to burrow right into your brain and find out what you were hiding in there.
‘Yes, I mean, was she depressed? At the inquest several people said they thought she was. The police investigator even asked you all if she might have killed herself. I just wondered what you really thought.’
‘No, Luce would never do that … Ah, I think I can see where you’re coming from, Josh. She still had a photo of you inside her wallet, and you’re wondering … Am I right?’
I felt the colour rise in my face, but didn’t say anything.
‘No, it wasn’t like that. A bit subdued maybe, towards the end of the trip, but not suicidal, no, no.’
Anna said, ‘One of the witnesses said there was a disagreement between Luce and other members of the team.’
He turned to her, then slowly shook his head. ‘No, Anna-no disagreements.’
I said, ‘What about Curtis and Owen, how were they getting on?’
‘Fine, we were all getting on fine.’ He shook his head, impatient with these questions.
‘Were they lovers?’
He glanced at me, eyebrow raised, as if reassessing me. ‘You know about that, do you? No, that was over long before, as far as I know. And even if they were-what difference would it have made?’
‘Luce felt protective towards Suzi and the baby. I think she felt that Curtis should have left Owen alone.’
‘Was that how it went, Josh? I don’t know. It was none of my business. And Luce never mentioned it. Look …’ he waved a hand at us, pale and bony as a turkey’s claw, ‘this has stirred up old memories, but nothing sinister happened. I promise you that. It was just a terrible accident, terrible, terrible. If there had been any hint of anything else … I miss her too, you know.’ He nodded towards a bookshelf on which we saw a small framed photograph of Luce. ‘Every day I think of her and blame myself.’
He took a deep breath, a glint of moisture in his eyes, and then added with a kind of choked sob, ‘I saw her, you know …’ He waved his hand at the French windows onto the terrace.
‘How do you mean?’
‘About a year ago, out there … Beautiful as ever.’
Anna and I exchanged a glance of alarm.
‘A year ago?’ I said.
He turned his face back from the window to me and said quietly, ‘Have you wondered why you’ve come back now, Josh?’
I looked at him in astonishment. ‘Well, it was just the way things turned out, with my job and so on …’
He shook his head and smiled as if I was being incredibly naive. ‘You were looking at my books,’ he said, pointing to the pile beside my feet. ‘Rudolf Steiner, a great man, a great scientist, who realised the limitations of conventional science and moved on further-much, much further. The man and woman who designed this house were great followers of his. They studied his books, his philosophy, his discoveries. It took me a long time to realise … The people they designed it for were my grandparents, who left it to me when they died twenty years ago, but it’s only in the last year that I’ve begun to realise that they were all into it, the people who came to live here, including my grandparents. There was art and dance, and everyone joined in; anthroposophical festivals in the open-air amphitheatre down below us here in The Scarp …’ he pointed to the French windows, ‘by the light of flares. Tell me, how many rooms are there in this house, Josh?’
His rambling was becoming more and more confused. I shrugged. ‘No idea, Marcus.’
‘Seven, arranged in three overlapping suites. Now, look at the carving of the stone window surrounds, the patterns of glass in the French windows, the design of the fireplace-all repetitions of seven elements in three overlapping groups, at many different scales. You see?’