Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,46
with all her weight. The impact bruising my finger and grazed the skin. Julian and Bianca held me there, holding the key down — my hand pressing down the key to blow Charles to pieces — until we heard a muffled explosion. Then Julian pulled himself off me, and Bianca released my hand. She looked exultant.
“It had to be,” said Robert. “He would have betrayed us, otherwise.”
“We can blame him for everything now,” nodded Bianca. “No need to switch the bottles back... if there is any doubt raised about the old man’s death, we can say that he’d found out that Charles was fiddling the books, and had threatened to expose him. That would have given Charles sufficient motive to kill J.B. It ought to finish Oliver Ashton off, too, to hear that one of his sons is a murderer! And Mary Ashton! When I see her face...!” I thought she was going to have hysterics, but she managed to control herself.
I was looking at Robert; he shrunk away from me. “You must see we had to safeguard ourselves,” he explained.
“That’s right,” said Ruth, mopping herself up. “We couldn’t trust Charles because he couldn’t be bought with money, or subdued by violence. We could control him more or less while he thought you were in danger, but once the old man was dead and we had to release you, we couldn’t be sure what he’d do.”
I took deep breaths, one after the other. Soon I would begin to feel, and to suffer. Now I could only think how unfair it had been that Charles should have had to die. I didn’t recognise my voice when I started to speak.
“You killed him because he was loyal and couldn’t be bought; because he was true to those he loved. You killed him out of envy, because he was everything that you are not. He brought you face to face with the dark corners of your souls, and you couldn’t bear it. He showed you that an easy conscience is of more lasting value than all the money you’ve stolen. You fought him with all the weapons you had, and although he was hurt he wasn’t beaten because he could still laugh and make love and be loved in his turn.” I had their full attention. “Can any of you say that you truly love anyone else, or that you can laugh at a good joke, or even that you are loved? At night, when you go to bed, do you sleep peacefully or do you dream of the harm you’ve done? Do you dream of a harmless, kindly old man locked away in a cold cell, cut off from his family, just because he tried to help Julian, here? Will you, Robert, ever be free from asthma? Your trouble is psychosomatic, isn’t it? It’s brought on by worry, and worry will never leave you now, not till the end of your days. And you, Ruth... can you look at the man you’ve married and not envy other women their loving husbands and children? Does Robert love you? No, of course not. He hates you because every time he looks at you he’s reminded of what he’s done. And you hate him because he cares nothing for you. And what about you, Julian? Can you face the long hours of the night alone in your bed without wondering if with another woman you might have been able to enjoy a normal relationship, if you might even have been loved for your own sake and not for your prospects of inheriting a fortune? Will you ever be able to sleep, without thinking of the harm you did your benefactor, Oliver Ashton, and how you’ve killed the only man who understood your faults and was able to love you in spite of them? How does it feel to have killed your father? And Bianca...”
“Yes?” she said, slit-eyed.
“I think I understand you now. You married Julian thinking he would be your passport to an easy life. Perhaps you even loved him for himself once, but that was all over a long time ago. Perhaps you stopped loving him when the money started to run out, perhaps when you met the Ashtons and saw what it might mean to be loved by the genuine article. You fell in love with Charles. He was the same age as the man you’d married and he had many of the same physical characteristics, but Charles was a true Golden Boy,