...Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinn'd against than sinning.
-- William Shakespeare, King Lear (Act III, Scene 2)
Երեք (Yerek')
Three
1916 brings two things: Alec's "legal" marriage and Dzovig's reappearance.
Davit knows only too well that the first one is coming. He and Alec have exchanged letters at least once a week since he arrived in London. Alec tells him everything: how horrible Gwladys is, how insufferable her parents are, and how certain he is that the marriage won't last the year.
The second one is a surprise. Not a very welcome one, either. Mrs. Gilpin, who keeps an eye on the house when it's unoccupied and is currently both cook and housekeeper for Davit, appears in the library with a portentous expression.
"Excuse me, sir," she says, "there's a young woman to see you."
Davit stares at her blankly. Very few people know him. His adoptive parents know he's in London (compiling research, he tells them in his letters) and so does Louis. Alec knows, of course. But otherwise he has no friends or close acquaintances. Certainly he doesn't know any young women.
"She must have the wrong house," he says.
Mrs. Gilpin folds her arms. "David Eames, she asked for, and a funny-sounding name she gave. Funny-looking woman too. I'd give a lot to know how she got that scar. Respectable young ladies don't have scars like that."
The pieces fall into place. "Show her in," Davit says.
Dzovig must have been listening outside the door. She storms in without waiting to be invited.
After Mrs. Gilpin leaves, Davit turns to Dzovig in astonishment. "How did you find me here?"
"It wasn't hard," she says in Armenian. "You weren't in Cambridge, so I started asking questions. Finally I tracked you down. Imagine my surprise when I found you living in a viscount's house."
She glares at him with open hostility. Davit goes back over everything he's said and done that might have offended her.
"Alec— Alexander and I are friends. I'm doing some research for him."
"Is that what you call it? I've seen those letters you write him. I never would have thought my brother would lower himself to... to whoring himself out!"
Davit jumps up. He very nearly slaps her. He stops himself in time. Dzovig glares up at him.
"How did you see my letters?" he demands.
"I've watched this house for a week, ever since I found where you are. When you were out I picked the lock and went through the house. You shouldn't leave your letters in your desk if you don't want your filthy secrets discovered. I could forgive you if you did it out of necessity," Dzovig continues sadly, "but those letters! You enjoyed letting him... And you want to do it again!"
Davit feels as if she's stripped him naked. In a way she's done worse than that. She's discovered the most private, intimate parts of his life, meant to be shared only by him and Alec, and is using them to attack him.
"You spied on me," he says, "you read letters that had nothing to do with you, and now you come and insult me in my husband's home? Yes," he adds in reply to her reaction, "he is my husband in every way that counts, whether the law recognises us or not."
Dzovig scoffs. "An unfaithful husband, from what I hear. Don't you know he's about to marry a woman?"
That stings. "I know all about it. But why are you here? Surely you didn't go to all this trouble just to insult me."
Dzovig sits back in her chair. "Oddly enough, I'm here because of your... husband's fiancée."
Davit stares at her, then goes over to the bottle of sherry left on the table and pours himself a cup. "Do you drink?" he asks over his shoulder. "Alec doesn't. I bought this for myself."
"I don't drink." Dzovik looks annoyed, maybe at having something in common with Alec.
Davit returns to his chair. "What about that woman?"
"Her father is an American millionaire who works with a Turkish car-importing company." The second bit of information is new. Davit feels a sudden sense of foreboding. "Do you remember when we last met? I told you I was hunting a Turkish businessman. I followed him to America, where I learnt some very interesting facts. He is the millionaire's business-partner. He recently started a career in politics. And he doesn't just sell cars. He makes a fortune selling guns and ammunition on the black market. He supplied the murderers with weapons in March 1909."
Davit can see where this is going.
"His son has been having an affair with Miss Whare for five years."
He's right.
Fate has a very dark sense of humour, and has apparently been reading too much Dickens.
"Alec has nothing to do with this," he says.
"I know he doesn't. But when he marries Miss Whare, it won't be long before she goes back to her old lover. Through her I can find out who his father is connected to. Because the Turkish government is planning something. They're gathering weapons and anti-Armenian propaganda is in all the newspapers again. It looks like another massacre, much worse than Adana. My commanding officer has ordered me to find out as much as I can about Ertem Bey and his son Çelik Bey.
"The son is the easiest to deal with. He's more interested in spending money than making it. Right now he's causing headaches for his father, because when he heard Miss Whare was going to marry he ran off with an opera singer. But I've no doubt he'll be back. He's always gone back to her no matter how many girlfriends he has.
"You're an answer to prayer, Davit. I've spent weeks trying to find a way to get into Miss Whare's household. Now I see I don't have to. You are going to move back in with your lover. You can do whatever you like with him as long as you keep me informed of everything Miss Whare does. And when she meets Çelik Bey again, I want to know every word he says."
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Alec marries Gwladys on the 12th of January. They go to London first before going on to Edinburgh for their honeymoon. They stay in a hotel, because Gwladys doesn't know about the house in London. She also doesn't know where Davit is. In his letters Alec says he told her Davit was just a casual acquaintance he had a fling with.
The honeymoon lasts two weeks out of a planned month. Alec sends a telegram: Can't stand more. Going home.
On Sunday he arrives on the doorstep, and nearly gives Mrs. Gilpin a heart attack.
"Why, young master Alec!" she cries. "I thought you were on your honeymoon!"
He manages a smile, but Davit can see the exhaustion and fear in his eyes. "I was, but I have some urgent business to take care of. I can only spare an hour or two."
Davit has begun collecting information on the various Orthodox churches. As Mrs. Gilpin serves tea he tells Alec about it. As soon as she leaves he sits beside Alec and studies him.
"You look ill," he says.
Alec has dark circles around his eyes. He's paler and possibly thinner. His smile is pained. He can't stop moving even when sitting down; he constantly fidgets with his watch, or his teacup, or even his hair.
When he finally speaks it's like a dam has burst. "I can't bear it another minute," he says. "She never leaves me alone. I can't talk to a man — any man, not even the waiter in a restaurant — without her making awful insinuations. She knows I'll divorce her, so she's determined to have a child. She doesn't know much about law; she thinks couples with young children can't divorce. And she—"
He stops. He looks like he's about to be sick.
Somehow Davit knows what's coming next.
"She forces me to sleep with her every night. To make sure we have a baby. She insisted on a room with a double bed instead of two connected rooms so I can't lock her out. I tell her I'm not interested and she laughs. Says horrible things about what I'm interested in. Makes... appalling suggestions. And she touches me. I tell her to stop but she never does. I— I struck her, two days ago, to make her stop. I'm not proud of it. She went around like a martyr yesterday and showed all her friends the bruise. That's why I left."
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Davit is silent. He thought he hated Gwladys before. It's nothing to how he hates her now.
"So," Alec finishes, "I'm going home. And I... I couldn't bear to leave without seeing you."
On the one hand, what Dzovig told him. On the other, what Alec tells him. Weighed up, there's only one option.
"I'm coming with you," Davit says. He sees the brief hope followed by the crushing misery on Alec's face. "As a friend, nothing more. Not while you're still married. But I won't leave you alone with her."
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On the train to Birkenhead Davit tells Alec everything he learnt about Gwladys and her possible future lover.
"I'm not surprised," Alec says. "She told me that she'll only be faithful to me until she has a baby. To avoid any suggestion the child isn't mine."
The ship to Belfast is the first time Davit has been on a ship since January 1910. It's more a cargo ship than a passenger ship. No White Star Line comfort here; the connection between Birkenhead and Belfast is for people in a hurry, who can't wait for one of the more luxurious but less frequent ships. Alec gets them a shared cabin but with two separate beds. As Davit lies in his bunk he feels the ship go down, then up, then down. He isn't sick but he also doesn't like it.
He doesn't get much sleep, for much less pleasant reasons than the last time he shared a room with Alec.
They arrive in Belfast at six in the morning. It's still dark. All Davit can see of the city is a blanket of lights.
He falls asleep at some point on the bus ride to the train station. Alec didn't bring his car with him on the honeymoon, so they have no choice but to rely on trains.
When they get to the station they have to wait for an hour before the next train. Davit dozes in the waiting room. Alec sits down for at most five minutes at a time. Then he gets up and wanders around the station, as if he's physically incapable of sitting still.
If they were on their own Davit would hold him, kiss him, do anything to show him he's not alone. But there are other passengers waiting in spite of the early hour. He can do nothing.
They travel from Belfast to Portadown, then from Portadown to Omagh, and finally from Omagh to Enniskillen. Alec finally sleeps during the journey. It's half five in the evening when they arrive in Enniskillen. The sun has already set. Davit's first impression of the town isn't very favourable. It's cold and windy and the streets are muddy.
"Do you want to get dinner in the hotel or wait until we get home?" Alec asks. He's sent a telegram to his mother to tell her to expect him.
Davit is hungry — he's only had breakfast and dinner on the train, and dinner was hours ago — but he's also tired and wants this constant travelling to stop. "How far is it to your house?"
"About a mile."
"Then let's go there."
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Lennox House is a former school converted into a house. It's draughty and echoey and has strange architectural features that make no sense, like balconies overlooking rooms and two doors side-by-side which lead into the same room. Davit doesn't know what to make of it when he first arrives.
He also doesn't know what to make of Alec's parents. Lord Kilskeery is an invalid who copes with the misery of his life by ensuring everyone else is miserable too. Lady Kilskeery spends most of her time holding ladies' meetings for women from her church. Neither of them is happy about Alec leaving his wife in Edinburgh.
"You've behaved like a cad, Alex," Lord Kilskeery roars at him the day after Alec and Davit arrive. He's the only person who calls Alec "Alex". Davit wonders if that's why Alec prefers the other diminutive.
"It's a disgrace. All my friends are talking about it," Lady Kilskeery says. "Go back to Edinburgh at once and apologise to that poor girl! I know marriage is hard to get used to, but you must at least try."
"I can't," Alec says. "I can't explain it to you, but it's impossible."
Neither of his parents know what to make of Davit either.
Lady Kilskeery looks at him doubtfully, then turns to Alec and says, "Who is this again?"
"This is David Eames," Alec says, because Davit asked him to keep using that name. He doesn't want Gwladys to find out he's Armenian. She might pass it onto her boyfriend. "He's my research assistant."
Lord Kilskeery glares at him as if he'd been caught stealing a horse. "What is this?"
"He," Alec says coldly, "is my best friend."
They manage to be alone together in Alec's study for most of the day. But things have changed. The spectre of Gwladys is constantly between them. Alec won't break his legal marriage vows, and Davit won't ask him to. They're just friends working together on a shared project, and as long as they don't look too long at each other they can pretend that's all they are.
Alec consults his solicitor on how quickly he can get a divorce. The information isn't encouraging. He and Gwladys have to live apart for at least five years to claim the marriage has irrevocably broken down, or he has to prove she committed adultery.
Three weeks later, news arrives from Edinburgh which throws yet another spanner in the works.
Lady Kilskeery walks into Alec's study one day with a grim expression. She's holding a letter.
"Alexander," she says, and Davit has never heard her so angry, "your wife is with child." Stunned silence follows. She apparently thinks he didn't hear her the first time, because she repeats, "Your wife writes to inform me that she believes she is with child, and you abandoned her."
"She can't know yet," Alec says, and his voice shakes. "It's only been a month."
Davit hears what he doesn't say: that if she is with child, it was conceived against his will.
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Whether Gwladys knew for certain or merely hoped, it turns out she's right. She is with child. Alec has no choice but to arrange for her to come home.
"She'll kick me out if I'm just a research assistant," Davit says. "She'll say I can research just as well in London as here."
"What do you suggest?" Alec asks.
Davit has thought about it and come up with a plan. "Hire me as your valet. If I have a definite job here, and if I work directly for you and no one else, she can't dismiss me."
He knows there'll be an explosion when Gwladys finds him there. It's less violent than he expects; she has the good sense not to air dirty laundry in public in front of Alec's parents. Mainly it manifests in spiteful comments directed towards Alec, and occasional cruelty towards Davit.
He can't prove it, but he's sure she poured wax on his bedroom floor. He gets a nasty bruise and a sprained wrist in the fall. There was no reason for that tin of furniture wax to be in his bedroom at all.
For about a month they live in the calm before the storm. Then Lord Kilskeery dies.
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Within hours of the funeral Gwladys tries to take over running the house. This starts a war between her, the former Lady Kilskeery, and Mrs. Skinner the housekeeper. It wages for the rest of the year and finally ends with Mrs. Skinner being dismissed against Alec's wishes and the former Lady Kilskeery moving to the house in London.
While it's still going on, shortly after Gwladys gives birth to twins, one of Alec's schoolfriends visits. Davit can tell at once that he's in love with Alec.
He leaves abruptly after a week. Alec refuses to speak about him. His departure coincides with a sharp deterioration in Alec's mental state.
Davit can piece together what happened even though Alec won't talk about it. The friend confessed his love, maybe tried to kiss Alec. That combined with Gwladys constantly tormenting him has brought Alec to the brink of a nervous breakdown.
After the twins are born Gwladys contacts her old friend Çelik Bey. Davit finally has some information to pass on to Dzovig.
Dzovig moves to Enniskillen. She gets a job in a factory.
"I've been ordered to kill Çelik Bey," she tells him when they meet, and clearly expects him to object.
Davit has long since lost any morals he might have had. "I'll help, on one condition. We kill Gwladys too."
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It's his plan from the start. He wants to do it earlier, with a gun or a boating accident, when Çelik Bey first visits in January 1917. He fails when he can't find a plausible way to stage the murders. They have to wait until the next time Çelik Bey deigns to visit Enniskillen.
1917 gets off to a grim start. Gwladys has little time for the twins herself. But when she finds Alec is reading to them, she explodes. She forbids him from seeing them again.
"It's not safe for you to be around children!" she shouts at him in that argument.
Davit is listening outside the door. He does that constantly now. Each insult he hears is another crime bringing Gwladys closer to the gallows.
In another argument she says something that has devastating consequences. "One of these days I'll poison you!"
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Maybe she does put poison in Alec's food once, then loses her nerve. Maybe it's all in Alec's mind, exacerbated by his nerves. Davit doesn't know the truth.
He does know that Alec takes sick after dinner one night.
Davit sits up with him all night. He knows Gwladys's servants are spying on him. The slightest hint of anything non-platonic in their relationship and he'll be kicked out. Probably frog-marched to the police station too. So he keeps the bedroom door ajar and sits at a distance from the bed.
Neither he nor Alec sleeps much. Alec because he's shivering and occasionally retching, Davit because he's planning how to commit a murder and get away with it.
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From then on Davit either shares Alec's food or prepares it himself. Alec starts to eat less. Some days he only eats once in spite of all Davit can say. When he does eat a proper meal he feels ill. He thinks he's still being poisoned. Davit thinks it's the effects of his disordered eating.
Alec rarely talks to him now. His resurgence of religious faith has increased his guilt about his sexuality. Sometimes he almost seems afraid to even look at Davit.
The situation can't continue. Forget Dzovig and her mission. Davit is going to kill Gwladys whether Çelik Bey comes or not.
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He rows every day in summer. It starts out as a way of releasing stress. It becomes something more when Dzovig arrives and picks the empty house as her base.
Davit has a copy made of the boat-house key. When McCullagh locks the boat-house in the autumn, Davit continues to take the boat out without anyone else knowing. He starts rowing in the evening, memorising every feature of the bank until he could navigate it in his sleep.
In the autumn and spring he crosses and recrosses the river at night. At first he needs help: he leaves a lantern on the boat-house door and gets Dzovig to hold a lantern on the other pier. He wears a life-jacket the first few times. He knows how to swim.
He gets to know the river.
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Not even he knows just how bad things are. It's a terrible shock to discover Gwladys has driven Alec to such complete despair that he considered suicide.
The detective's arrival is both a blessing and a curse. He can prove Gwladys is abusive and committing adultery. He might also prove Davit killed her.
Çelik Bey arrives. Dzovig takes up her position in the house across the river. Davit forges two letters: one in Gwladys's handwriting, one in Çelik Bey's, each asking the other for a meeting outside the greenhouse the next morning. Safe from prying eyes.
Alec has a key to the boathouse. Davit borrows it. He takes a coil of rope and an oar. That night he goes to sleep at nine. He wakes up at four.
He rows Dzovig across. They wait in the greenhouse
Gwladys and Çelik Bey have their rendezvous outside the greenhouse. While they are talking with their backs to the door, Davit and Dzovig walk up behind them.
He hits Gwladys so hard that her skull splits. She probably dies instantly.
Dzovig cuts Çelik Bey's throat. Then she strips off his shirt and slices his chest. Cuts off his nipples. Mutilates him exactly as hundreds of Armenian women were mutilated by Turkish knives.
They drag the bodies closer to the house and hang them from a tree where they'll be discovered.
Dzovig insists on praying. She kneels down and crosses herself, takes her necklace and kisses the cross. Davit goes along with the motions. He doesn't beg forgiveness or ask for help concealing his crime. He prays only for Alec.