He was silent a moment, staring out of the window.
“All this time you’ve been my yardstick. I knew that if I could convince you about the series, I’d be able to convince Petersen. I also knew that if I’d missed something, you might point it out to me. But I also wanted to be fair, if that’s the right word here-to give you every opportunity to discover the truth. How did you realise in the end?” he asked suddenly.
“I remembered what Inspector Petersen said this morning: that you never know how far a father will go for his child. The day I saw you and Beth together in the market I thought I sensed a strange relationship between you. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that she seemed to want your approval for her marriage. I wondered if you could really have invented a series of murders to shield someone you didn’t even see that often.”
“Yes, even in despair she knew exactly where to turn. I don’t know whether what she believes is true and I suppose I never will. I don’t know what her mother told her about us. She’d never mentioned it to me before. But perhaps to make sure I’d help her, she played her trump card.” From the inside pocket of his jacket he took a piece of paper folded in four and handed it to me. “I’ve done something terrible,” read the first line, in a strangely childish hand. The second line, which looked as if it had been added in desperation, said, in large anguished letters: “Please, please, you have to help me, Daddy.”
Epilogue
As I came down the steps of the museum, the sun was still there, with the benign, extended brightness of late afternoons in summer. I walked back to Cunliffe Close, leaving behind the golden cupola of the Observatory. As I made my way slowly up Banbury Road, I wondered what to do with the confession I had just heard. Lights were coming on in a few houses and through the windows I glimpsed bags of shopping, televisions playing-fragments of normal life proceeding unperturbed behind the hedges. In Rawlinson Road a car, behind me, honked twice briefly and cheerfully. I turned round, expecting to see Lorna. Instead I found Beth waving from a small, brand-new, metallic-blue convertible. I went to the kerb. She smoothed her untidy hair and leaned across the passenger seat, smiling broadly.
“Would you like a lift?”
She stretched out a hand to open the door, but she must have seen something odd in my expression because the hand stopped midway. I complimented her mechanically on her new car and then looked into her eyes. I looked as if I were seeing her for the first time and ought to find something new in her. But she was happier, more carefree, more beautiful, that was all.
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve just been speaking to Arthur Seldom,” I answered hesitantly.
A look of alarm flashed across her eyes.
“About maths?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “We were talking about the murders. He told me everything.”
Her face darkened and she placed both hands on the wheel, her body suddenly tense.
“Everything? No, I don’t think he can have told you everything.” She smiled anxiously to herself and the old bitterness appeared in her eyes for a moment. “He could never bring himself to tell you everything. But I see,” she said, glancing at me again cautiously, “that you believe him. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. What can I do? They’d probably arrest him too,” I said, staring at her. Of all the questions, there was really only one I wanted to ask. I leaned towards her and looked into her hard blue eyes. “What made you do it?”
“What made you come here?” she asked. “You didn’t come just to study maths, did you? Why did you choose Oxford?” A slow tear appeared on her eyelashes. “It was something you said. The day I saw you getting out of that car with your tennis racket, looking so happy. When we talked about grants. “You should try it,” you said. I couldn’t stop repeating it to myself: you should try it. I thought she was going to die soon and I’d have a chance to start a new life. But a few days later she got her test results. The cancer was in remission, the doctor told her she might live another ten years. Another ten years shackled to that old witch…I couldn’t bear it.”
The tear on her lashes now rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away abruptly, self-consciously, and searched for a tissue in the glove compartment. When she placed her hands back on the wheel I again noticed her small thumb.
“So, are you getting in?”
“Next time,” I said. “It’s a lovely afternoon, I’d like to walk a little further.”
She drove off and I watched the car grow smaller until it disappeared into Cunliffe Close. I wondered if what Beth thought Seldom would never dare tell me was what he had already told me, or whether there was something else, something I didn’t dare imagine. I wondered how much of the truth I really knew and where to start when writing my second report. At the beginning of Cunliffe Close, I looked down but could see no sign of the badger. The last shred of flesh had disappeared, and as far as the eye could see, the road stretching ahead of me was clean, clear, innocent once more.
Guillermo Martinez
Guillermo Martínez is an Argentinian novelist and short story writer.
Martínez was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. He gained a PhD in mathematical logic at the University of Buenos Aires, where he currently teaches.
