The Silver Castle by Nancy Buckingham Page B

that his reasons were complex. He must have felt that the pressures on him were beyond solution.”
    “Pressures?” Something in Anton’s voice made me look at him sharply. “What pressures?”
    He lifted his shoulders. “Don’t we all of us feel under pressure of some kind? But I now think that your father did what he did for something more than love of Valencienne. The most important thing in Benedict’s life was his work, his integrity as an artist. He was very serious about that. He had his own code of honesty, which he adhered to strictly.”
    “You’re being very generous towards him—a man you have every cause to hate.”
    I was watching Anton’s face now and saw a shuttered look come down across his eyes. It was as if he’d let me come too close to sharing his secret thoughts.
    “The best thing to believe, Gail, is that his brain snapped suddenly under the strain, and that he wasn’t entirely responsible for what he did.”
    “Are you saying this to make it easier for me to bear?”
    “Not only for you—for myself, too. And what little we know for certain does fit that theory. The phone call he made to me just beforehand ... he sounded like a man at the end of his tether.”
    “Tell me about that. Raimund mentioned it, but he wasn’t very clear about what had been said.”
    “Neither am I.” Anton passed a hand across the back of his neck, as if to ease a tension. It was so unexpected. I picked up the phone and Benedict was on the line.”
    “Please try to remember what he said.”
    “It’s difficult, but I’ll do my best. I know he started off, “Is that you, Anton? Listen, I’ve got to make you understand.” And he rushed on about not being able to face up to it, things were beyond bearing ... that the only course left him was to end it all. I tried to reason with him, to ask him what it was all about, but he refused to listen to me. It was too late for arguments and evasions, he insisted ... there was only one way out, and they were going to take it. That’s the sort of thing he kept saying, on and on in a jumble of words. I had no idea, of course, that by ‘we’ he meant Valencienne and himself. All I grasped was that he’d worked himself up into a state about something, and needed calming down. I expect Raimund told you that I tried to find him, but nobody had seen him that evening.” After a pause, Anton finished, “Next morning a fishing boat spotted the launch lying on the bottom of the lake. It was in quite shallow water.”
    He had half turned away from me and was fingering some of the things on the small table beside the easel. But I knew his thoughts weren’t here. He was back to a morning, two months ago, when the surface calm he had painstakingly imposed upon his life had been shattered by brutal ugliness and scandal.
    “You must feel very bitter against him,” I said in one breath.
    It was a long moment before Anton replied. “I suppose I do. But to some extent I must blame myself.”
    “You mean because you couldn’t find him that night?”
    “No, not just that—for being blind. For being so absorbed in my work that I was unaware of a situation developing right under my nose. To that extent the responsibility was mine.”
    “I think you’re being unfair to yourself,” I said impetuously.
    “As I was unfair to you yesterday.”
    “Oh that. But you couldn’t be expected to make a fair and unbiased judgement when you were suddenly confronted with Benedict Sherbrooke’s daughter.”
    “At least,” he said, “I could have avoided being so disgustingly rude to you. I can only apologise.”
    “Please, forget it.”
    There was an oddly intent look in his eyes. “During the time I was in America I thought often of the English girl I met the day I left Zurich. I was on my way to the airport and I called in to collect an electric shaver I’d left for repair. As I came out of the shop, there you were.”
    The episode was so vivid in my mind. I could recall