The Perfect Daughter

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘Is that so?’

  He just stood there, not moving. It was like trying to talk to a slab of slate.

  ‘So, if you’ll excuse me, please…’

  I stepped past him, towards the screen. He probably knew a dozen different ways of sending me flying through the window and when I heard his bare footsteps padding behind me I thought it might happen. But I made it to the screen.

  ‘Miss Dulcie, could you spare me a few minutes, please.’

  She’d taken off the trousers of her pyjama suit and replaced them with a white pleated skirt. When she came out from behind the screen her face was expressionless and she gave no sign she’d seen me before.

  ‘Do you remember a pupil at Argyll Place named Verona North?’

  ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘She was my cousin’s daughter. She’s dead.’

  Surely Edith Garrud would have told her that after my visit, but there was no reaction.

  ‘I don’t remember any of their names.’

  ‘About your age, red-brown hair, a beginner.’

  ‘They mostly were.’

  ‘She was one of the people Vincent Hergest talked to.’

  ‘He talked to a lot of people.’

  No sign there of being impressed by the great man.

  ‘You went to his party on Wednesday.’

  ‘So did a lot of people.’

  Her voice stopped just short of being insulting, the way that her brother, standing a few steps behind me, stopped just short of being threatening.

  ‘She stopped going to classes in April. Do you know why?’

  She shrugged. ‘A lot of them give up when they’re afraid they might get hurt.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Verona.’

  ‘I told you, I don’t remember her.’

  ‘I think you do.’ Silence. ‘Well, if you do remember anything at all, I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch with me.’ I gave her my card and, remembering what Edith had said about her liking money, added, ‘I’d pay you for your time.’

  ‘She’s told you, she doesn’t remember.’

  The brother, from behind me. Kitty had taken my card between her fingertips. Now she opened them and let it fall to the floor. I turned and walked over what felt like a long expanse of bare boards to the door, opened it and stepped out into the yard. Why should Kitty bother to lie about somebody who should have been no more than a passing acquaintance? Some people panicked at the thought of being associated with an inquiry into a suspicious death, but that didn’t apply here. Kitty had no reason to think Verona’s death was suspicious and she didn’t strike me as a type who panicked. She liked money, but she’d thrown away the chance of earning some. If she’d known … A bang and a crash of metal stopped me in my tracks. I was in the middle of the scrapyard, alongside the remains of what looked like a corrugated-iron chapel. At first I thought a piece of metal had fallen against another, and stopped and looked around, simply curious. Another bang. It’s funny how the mind can be so reluctant to acknowledge that inexplicable things are happening. Probably a workman dropping something on a building site, lots of them round here. But an instinct quicker than the mind made me turn and, as I turned, something flew past my ear and punched a hole through a rusty corrugated-iron sheet, so close to me that little flakes of rust landed on my jacket. The brother was standing outside the red-brick building, with what looked like a Winchester rifle on his shoulder.

  I shouted, ‘Are you shooting at me?’ Which was admittedly not one of the more intelligent questions of my career, but my mind was still trying to catch up. For answer he sent another shot into the corrugated iron, this time about an arm’s length above my head.

  ‘Leave my sister alone. Kitty doesn’t want to talk to you, understood?’

  The voice wasn’t loud, but it carried.

  I said, ‘If this is meant to be an advertisement for your music-hall act, I’m not interested.’

  The gate at the end of the yard opened and the man I’d asked for directions came through it. He looked at me, then at Kitty’s brother standing there with the rifle and went back through the gate before I could ask him for help. I couldn’t blame him. I was capable, just, of standing there, even talking to Kitty’s brother without my voice shaking. What I couldn’t do was turn my back on him and walk to the open gate. Then there was a rumbling of wheels and the man came back through the gate, this time pushing his handcart loaded with bits of broken guttering. If they’d been gold bullion I couldn’t have been happier to see him. He trundled the cart towards me, seemingly not in the least put out.

  ‘Found them then, miss? He been showing you his trick shooting?’

  ‘Yes, something like that.’

  ‘Good shot, he is. Put a hole through a cigarette card blindfold.’

  ‘Good thing I’m not a cigarette card.’

  ‘What was that, miss?’

  I glanced round. The brother and his rifle had disappeared, presumably back into the studio.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Lucky, you were.’

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘I mean, most people have to pay to see him, don’t they?’

  I agreed I was lucky, wished him good morning and walked to the gate. The dog was still worrying its bone. The workmen opposite were unloading scaffolding poles from a cart with a noise very like rifle shots. And that was meant to be the easy bit of the day.

  Chapter Sixteen

  LIVERPOOL STREET HAS NEVER BEEN ONE OF MY favourite places to start a journey. Stations seem to take on the characters of their destinations. At Victoria, for instance, you can almost catch the whiff of coffee from the street cafés in Paris or pines by the Mediterranean. Liverpool Street, even on summer evenings, always feels to me as if a blast from the cold and foggy North Sea has found its way down the lines and into London to mix with soot and pigeon droppings. All it can promise you on the journey are views of the flatlands and slow rivers crawling between muddy banks to a grey sea. The boat connections link to serious northern places – The Hook, Rotterdam, Antwerp – nowhere to make your heart beat faster. The passengers too have a grey, dour look to them. You know they’re mostly travelling for business or, if not, then for a very sober kind of pleasure.

  I got there soon after seven, nearly an hour and a half before the train left, with no luggage but a shoulder bag, and my mind still going round in circles. I was at least half-persuaded that Bill was right, that the answers I wanted were somewhere else and I was wasting my time. When in doubt, go on. The smell of cheap pies from the buffet made me glad I wasn’t hungry but I went in, sat at a conspicuous table in the middle of the room and lingered over a coffee. As far as I could see, nobody was at all interested. I strolled over to the W.H. Smith stall and collected an armful of papers and magazines. When I paid and stowed them away in my bag, I made a point of letting it flap open to show the brown paper package inside because there was a man in a trilby hat loitering near the counter. He didn’t react which wasn’t surprising because a few minutes later a plump woman with three children, a porter and about a dozen suitcases collected him and took him away. I was already feeling like the girl in the song who took her harp to a party and nobody asked her to play.

  By that time a queue was already forming at the barrier. There were a group on a weekend excursion to Holland in the care of a Thomas Cook courier; two or three families with armfuls of babies; an invalid in a Bath chair with uniformed nurse and valet in attendance; a German husband and wife with what looked like all their worldly goods, down to kettle, cushions and a picture in a frame almost as tall as they were; and a few young sailors in uniform, probably on their way to join their ships at Harwich and Ipswich. Apart from them, the queue included just six men on their own. Two of them were elderly so I ruled those out, as most of the watchers had been in their thirties or forties. One was plump and too prosperous, with a rolled umbrella and dispatch case, another in his early twenties, so thin and languid that it seemed only a matter of time b
efore somebody came and grew beans round him. The two remaining were both possibles, although I’d seen neither of them before. One, in his late forties, had a retired sergeant-major look and a waxed moustache. The other was dark, in his twenties and twitchy, definitely waiting for something besides the train. I joined the back of the queue and kept an eye on both of them. A couple more sailors and a pale girl who’d been crying arrived just after me. We all of us waited glumly while the babies yelled, the girl gave an occasional sniff and pigeons scavenged round our feet for non-existent crumbs. I thought how nice it would be to see someone I knew, like Weaver or Yellow Boater or even our homely Detective Constable Gradey.

  A quarter of an hour before the train was due out a ticket collector opened the barrier and started grudgingly letting us through. As we shuffled forward a beautiful girl came flying up to the twitchy man and they hugged as if they’d been apart for years. The sailors behind me whistled, a few older women tut-tutted and I mentally crossed another one off my list. When I got to the barrier the inspector took my ticket, punched it and handed it back without a second glance. I’d considered going first class to be easier to find, but all that open space round me wouldn’t give them the cover they needed. You had to understand their habits, like rearing pheasants. I walked halfway down the platform, got in at the door of a second-class coach and went along the corridor looking for an empty compartment. It turned out to be too much to ask. Although the train was going to be far from crowded, every compartment had at least one person in it. I glimpsed the sergeant-major sitting back smoking a pipe, looking uncurious and at ease with the world. A little way on from him was a compartment with only a man and woman sitting face to face in the window seats. I opened the door, said good afternoon and settled into one of the seats by the corridor with my bag on my knees. From there, I watched people as they came hurrying along the platform behind their porters, steam from the engine wafting round them. Then, a few minutes to half past, the late arrivals came sprinting, outdistancing the porters who refused to do anything as undignified as break into a run. Doors all along the train slammed like … like rifle shots into corrugated iron. Don’t think about that now. Concentrate on what’s happening out there. Only a minute to go. The guard stood with his green flag furled, whistle in mouth. A man and his suitcases were bundled in at the door nearest to the barrier. Then the green flag went up, the whistle blew. The couplings made their groaning, wincing sound as the strain came on them and we started moving, first at walking pace then picking up speed. Our carriage must have been nearly at the end of the platform when the brakes came on with a suddenness that sent us rocking forward in our seats and brought a bag thumping off the overhead rack. There was shouting from the platform at the barrier end.

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ the woman in the window seat said. ‘If people can’t get here on time they shouldn’t let them on.’

  The man said nothing. I could see he was trying to wedge his false teeth back and looked away to let him get on with it. After a minute or two we started moving again. The platform fell away and there was only an expanse of rails shining in the sun, sooty brick walls on either side. The door from the corridor opened.

  ‘Excuse me, would you mind if I took one of these seats?’

  A clergyman, quite young, curate probably. Surely even the watchers wouldn’t …

  ‘I was in one of the compartments back there but there was a man with a most dreadful pipe and it does so aggravate my chest.’

  He smiled and settled on the seat opposite me, considerately halfway between the window and the corridor to give us as much space as possible. The other man anchored his false teeth and stowed the bag back on the rack.

  ‘My sister’s got a weak chest too,’ the woman said. ‘Can’t stand even the sniff of a pipe.’

  You could tell she felt that even a junior clergyman raised the tone of the compartment. We were moving faster now, the grey-and-yellow-brick terraced houses of Bethnal Green flicking past the window. I got a magazine out of my bag and skimmed through it. There was a photograph of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, linked to a forthcoming visit to Sarajevo. I looked up and found the curate staring in my direction. He gave an apologetic little grimace and looked away.

  ‘You’re welcome to a look at the magazine,’ I said. ‘I’ve got plenty of other things.’

  He thanked me and took it clumsily, committed to trying to read it whether that was what he wanted or not. We rattled past small factories and a few grimy rivers, then into open country after Brentwood with the fields managing to heave themselves into the corrugations that pass for hills in these parts and sheep grazing. We stopped at Chelmsford where a lot of people got out, including the couple in the window seats, leaving me and the curate alone in the carriage. When the train started again he gave me back the magazine.

  ‘Thank you. Very interesting.’ Again, the apologetic little grimace.

  ‘Are you going all the way to Harwich?’ I said.

  ‘Oh no, I’m getting out at Colchester.’ Slightly shocked, as if I’d suggested some form of dissipation. Then, ‘Are you going to Harwich?’

  ‘I’m booked through to the Hook of Holland.’

  ‘Do you know people over there?’

  ‘A few.’

  By now I was sure he wasn’t my fish, so I threw him back into silence and hid behind The Times. I’d told him I was booked through to the Hook of Holland, as I try not to lie unless people deserve it. The ticket was in my bag, but that wasn’t the same thing as going there. I was almost certain that the initials would move in on me before the boat sailed. On one hand, they might think it useful to follow me on to foreign soil and catch me delivering a package to my supposed accomplices. On the other, what could they do about it in Holland, Germany or Switzerland? Evidence of an intention to go abroad would be enough for them and they’d have that as soon as I walked through the customs shed at Harwich. There’d been an outside chance that they’d confront me at Liverpool Street but that hadn’t suited them. If they were on the train with me they must deliberately be keeping their distance. It would be easy enough to find me if they wanted me. From their point of view, it might be easier to wait until Harwich.

  * * *

  We stopped for a long time at Colchester and took on water. The curate wished me bon voyage and left. I saw the sergeant-major figure marching along the platform towards the exit, which meant every one of my guesses had been wrong so far. When we pulled away from the platform I still had the compartment to myself. By now the heat was making me drowsy. I got up and walked along the corridor, peering shamelessly into compartments as I passed, but I knew I’d entirely lost faith in my ability to spot them. A few of the compartments had blinds drawn on the corridor side against the sun that was already well down in the west. It was quarter past nine by my watch. We were due into Parkeston Quay at Harwich at five to ten. My stomach churned. I was in for it now, with no stops scheduled between Colchester and Harwich. Even if you’ve been running around inviting the beast to pounce, it’s hard to look forward to it. I went over in my mind for the hundredth time what I’d say, what I had to do to make them understand. We started slowing down. Surely not there already? I let down the window, smelt salt in the air and heard seagulls. There were fields of long grass stroked sideways by the breeze off the sea, gleaming like a lion’s mane in the setting sun. We stopped alongside a platform. The sign said ‘Manningtree’. Nearly journey’s end, but we weren’t meant to stop there. We were on the estuary of the River Stour with Harwich Harbour at the end of it. I hung out of the window, trying to see if there was anything happening. A few heads were looking out of other windows. Nobody got in or out. There was nothing but the seagulls and the bumps and clanks of machinery cooling. I went back in the compartment and waited, wondering why we’d stopped there, looking out of the window on to the track. After a while there were steps along the corridor, loud and heavy, breaking the hush that settles inside a stopped train. The steps came to a halt at the open doorway
of my compartment.

  ‘Excuse me, madam, are you for Harwich?’

  A middle-aged ticket inspector, forehead sweating from his heavy uniform, a hat several sizes too small for him balanced on top of his head like a pat of butter on a teacake.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Train splits here, madam. This half goes on to Ipswich. Back half goes to Harwich.’

  ‘They didn’t say anything about this at Liverpool Street.’

  ‘I’m sorry, madam.’

  The regulation satchel slung at his waist was new, with a powerful smell of leather coming off it. He looked at me and waited. His face was surprisingly tanned for a man who worked inside but it had a blank, official look as if he always did what he was told. In his schooldays he’d probably been the ink monitor.

  ‘May I take your luggage, madam?’

  The hand he stretched towards my bag was tanned like his face and looked stronger than it needed to be for punching tickets.

  ‘No thank you. I’ll carry it myself.’

  He stood back to let me out then followed me along the corridor. A door to the platform stood open.

  ‘That way, madam.’

  ‘Can’t we just walk along the corridor?’ It’s such a suffocating feeling, handing yourself over to other people, that I was already kicking against it.

  ‘They’ve already uncoupled the carriages, madam.’

  He said ‘madam’ with a gulping sound. I was getting tired of it. We walked side by side down the platform. A few people inside the train looked at us curiously.

  ‘What about these other people?’

  ‘All going on to Ipswich, madam.’

  He was right about the carriages being uncoupled. There was a gap between the main body of the train and the last two, both first class. The back one of the two had blinds pulled down over the windows. I looked up the line to the north and saw a cloud of steam and under it an engine shunting backwards towards us.

  ‘That’s the one for Harwich, is it?’