The Last Judgement

‘I believe you,’ said a chastened and somewhat surprised Flavia. ‘Do you know anything about your father’s finances?’

‘Not a thing. Nor do I want to know.’

‘There was a bank statement and cheque-book in his apartment with monthly payments of money. Quite a lot of money. Where did it come from?’

Ellman sighed. ‘I really don’t know or care. I just know that when it was late, last year, I mentioned it and he said not to worry, he was going to sort it out the next day. The next day I rang and Madame Rouvet said he’d gone on a trip. Sure enough, the money came in regular as clockwork after that. That’s all I can tell you. We barely communicated, except when we had to.

‘My father and I did not get on too well,’ he said. ‘In fact we hated each other. He was a vicious and mean man. A monster in his small-minded way. He didn’t even have the grandeur to be a big monster. He as good as killed my mother through his neglect and cruelty, and I remember my own childhood as being one long nightmare. He sucked people dry. I loathed him.’

‘But you asked for money, and he gave it.’

‘And didn’t he hate it.’

‘But if he was as bad as you say, why did he give it?’

Ellman gave a smile which Flavia thought initially was apologetic, until it became clear that it was a smile of pure pleasure at the memory. ‘Because I was blackmailing him,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

‘I was blackmailing him. The Swiss are very punctilious people, and my father concealed certain matters when he got his citizenship. Like what his real name was. Had they found out, he would possibly have been prosecuted, and would certainly have lost his citizenship and his job. About a decade ago I found out about it, and suggested then that he started contributing to my charitable work. By way of recompense.’

‘You did that to your own father?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Why not?’

‘But why did he change his name?’

‘Nothing terrible, you know. He wasn’t a bank-robber on the run or anything. At least, I don’t think so.’

He said it with the tone of someone who had almost certainly made some enquiries. It’s the way it was, it seemed; people wanting to find out about their fathers, the good and the bad. What a lot of trouble it caused.

‘It was the need for a job. The original Ellman was a comrade killed in the war. A childhood friend, I gather, although it’s difficult to imagine my father having friends. My father was the town layabout and thug, Ellman was the studious, hardworking type. Before they both went into the army, my father drank and chased girls, Ellman studied and got a degree. He was killed, so when he came to Switzerland in 1948 my father assumed his name, and the degree, and got a well-paid job on the basis of it. Jobs were short after the war. He reckoned he had a right to all the help he could get. He was like that.’

‘What was his original name?’

‘Franz Schmidt. About as common a name as you can get, really.’

‘I see,’ she said. A new variety of family life, she thought. Which was worse, a father like that, or a son like him? Maybe they deserved each other. Ellman seemed untroubled by what he said; he lived in a topsy-turvy world where bad means corrupted good ends and he was incapable of noticing. What made such a man tick, she wondered after she’d ended the interview and gone back to the train. Did he end up working for an African charity to cancel out his father? Didn’t it occur to him that maybe he was re-creating his father behind a smoke-screen of virtue? It would have been so much easier had he been a simple, straightforward, no-nonsense playboy she could have disliked.

By the time Argyll got back from his errand, Flavia was making up for lost time. She’d bathed, collapsed on the bed, and was so profoundly unconscious she could well have been in advanced rigor mortis. Argyll found her, breathing softly, her mouth open, her head resting on her arm, curled up like a hamster in full hibernation and, much as he wanted to prod her and tell her his little stories, he let her be. Instead, he watched her awhile. Watching her snooze was a favourite occupation of his. How you sleep is a good indication of what you are like: some people thrash around and mutter to themselves, constantly in turmoil; or regress to childhood and stick their thumbs in their mouths; some, like Flavia, manifest a deep-seated tranquillity that is often disguised when they are awake. For Argyll, watching Flavia sleep was almost as restful as sleeping himself.