The wounded men – not even men, most of them looked no older than schoolboys – had lined up now and an officer was making a speech to them, thanking them. At the end of his speech they started laughing and shouting, tearing off slings and bandages and throwing them at each other. A word from the officer and they were quiet and orderly again. Boy Scouts went along the platform, collecting up crutches and soiled dressings. On the far platform the empty stretchers were all loaded and the train was pulling out. My Boy Scout had gone, chasing bandages with the rest. I found a young man in civilian clothes, watching the lines of wounded boys, and asked for the third time what had happened.
‘An exercise. The War Office is running them all over the country.’
‘War Office?’
‘To test our readiness for dealing with casualties if we’re invaded by a foreign army. They’ve been sending them to hospitals all over the place – Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton and so on. Our boys were asked to volunteer to play casualties.’
‘Your boys?’
‘I’m a schoolmaster, waiting to collect our lot and take them home to supper. By the look of them, they’ve been having the time of their lives.’
He was right. Outside the station there were rows of horse-drawn charabancs waiting for the boys. They were driven away laughing and singing, highly pleased with themselves. Back on the platform, the man with the clipboard and the officer were still watching their mattresses. There was no reason to think that anybody would be looking for me among all the excitement, but if there were War Office people around I couldn’t risk trying to get a train connection for Teignmouth that evening.
I found lodgings near the cathedral, got woken by the bells in the morning and caught a local train from a platform as clear of soldiers, stretchers and mattresses as if the exercise had never happened. As the train ran along the estuary of the River Exe a man and a woman in my compartment were tut-tutting over a newspaper, saying something was terrible. I’d bought a paper at the station, unfolded it to see what they were talking about and read that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary, had been assassinated in Sarajevo.
We’d turned the corner of the estuary by then and were running in and out of tunnels in the red rock along the coast. In a few minutes I’d be back on Verona’s home territory and still wasn’t sure where to start. Fact, Verona had been in Epping. Further fact, she was found dead about two hundred miles away in Devon. Conclusion, she’d gone from Epping to Devon. So how and why? I wished I’d asked the Hergests to let me take away the letter Vincent had shown me, or at least made a copy of it. She’d written about a secret and going away for a few days to put things right. One secret at least I’d known about and one interpretation of the letter was that she was ashamed of having been a spy and was going to resign or retire, or however people in her profession put it. Surely, though, she wouldn’t have to go away for a few days to do that. She’d have contacts in London, might even have been meeting Yellow Boater out at Epping. So, if the letter could be taken at face value, that would point to some other secret. A former lover, or perhaps somebody who thought of himself as her fiancé back at home? That would fit, only nobody had mentioned there was anything of the kind and her best friend, Prudence, had implied quite the reverse. She and Verona had promised each other not to get married or ‘silly over men’ until they’d done something in the world. Only there had been a lot poor Prudence didn’t know. Verona had grown up quite suddenly and left her behind with the puppies. The other passengers were still talking about the assassination.
‘His poor wife too, such a lovely woman.’
‘Austria will have to do something. Bound to do something.’
‘I wish the Tories were back in. You can’t trust the Liberals with foreigners.’
Normally I’d have been interested, even joined the discussion, but I was in the state where anything happening outside my own problems seemed frivolous and irrelevant, like having toothache on a grand scale. The discarded fiancé theory might make sense after a fashion – leaving aside that there wasn’t a shred of evidence for him so far – but it involved one big and possibly wrong assumption. It assumed that the letter Vincent showed me could be taken at its face value. I ruled out forgery. I was almost certain that the handwriting was Verona’s and it had the over-excited style of her earlier letter to Prudence. Verona had written it, but the question was, in what circumstances? Was it dictated to her? Could it even have been suggested to her as some kind of literary exercise? She’d called him ‘Dearest Tutor’ after all. It had read to me as artless and genuine, but then I’d been wrong about Verona nearly all along the line and there was no guarantee I’d stopped being wrong now. Assume it wasn’t genuine – then what? The first thing was that there was no proof that Verona had made the last journey of her own free will – or even conscious. The Hergests had several motorcars and Valerie had proved she was capable of driving herself to Devon. ‘Val, my more-than-sister’ at the steering wheel with a girl, morphine-doped, curled up in the back seat. The train came alongside the platform at Teignmouth.
* * *
At one stage in my varied education, I was taught by a schoolmistress who said that when you were in doubt about what to do, you should choose the option you least wanted and get on with it. It didn’t stop my friend and me getting into serious trouble when we climbed the bell tower to put a bedpan on top of a gargoyle and claimed in defence that it was what we’d least wanted to do on a frosty midnight. She was stronger on morality than logic, but in fairness to her we still had ten years of Queen Victoria’s reign ahead at the time. The memory of that schoolmistress came back to me for the first time in years as I was walking between my cousin Ben’s white gateposts at the top of the drive leading to his house. Of all the things that I might have wanted to do, confronting Ben and Alexandra came at the bottom of the list, which would have made it the right thing by her standards, but there was logic to it as well. Either Verona had come home of her own free will, or she hadn’t. If she had, then the letter to Vincent Hergest was probably genuine and she’d gone to put something right, and if there had been something that needed putting right at home, surely her father or mother – especially her mother – would have known or guessed.
The gateposts gleamed white, newly painted. The fuchsia bushes on either side of the drive with their dazzle of red-and-purple flowers were the kind you can find growing wild in the West Country but these specimens were disciplined and well drilled and the yellow gravel as bright as if it had been holystoned at dawn. There was a flagpole to the right of the gateway from which Ben had the irritating habit of flying the Union Jack when in residence but today there was no flag. It wasn’t till then I remembered Ben wouldn’t be at home. In that talk with Admiral Pritty, which seemed like weeks ago but could only be a matter of days, he’d told me Ben was back at sea already. I profaned his gravel with my footsteps, walked up the three granite steps into the porch. There was a tall wickerwork basket to the side of the royal-blue front door, stuffed with golf putters and croquet mallets. My knock echoed hollow and empty inside and I more than half-hoped Alex had gone away.
‘Good morning, ma’am.’
The maid who opened the door was very young, no more than fifteen or sixteen. She looked worried. A Siamese cat rubbed against her calves and gave me a go-away look from its blue eyes.
‘Good morning. Is Mrs North at home?’
‘I don’t know if she’s seeing anybody, ma’am.’
Then, from inside, Alexandra’s voice, sounding weary, ‘Who is it, Jenny?’
I gave my name. The maid disappeared inside and came back, still with the cat following her.
‘Mrs North says to please come in.’ She gathered up the cat, draped it over her shoulder. ‘Drive you mad, they would.’
I followed her down the corridor and she nudged open a door at the end of it on the right. I knew the room from some family occasion, a lounge with a relaxed and floating feel that probably ha
d more to do with Alexandra’s taste than Ben’s. The floor was polished wood with a scattering of rugs in bright jewel colours – garnet, amethyst and topaz – with cushions and drapes in the same colours flung over an assortment of unmatched but comfortable chairs. Even so, Ben’s taste had barged its way there, with models of every ship he’d served in or commanded lording it on shelves, tables and windowsills. The room was built for the view over the estuary with a huge window taking up most of the outside wall. The tide must have been nearly full, because there was a great sweep of blue water with a few white sails.
Alexandra said, ‘Good morning. Did you find your way here all right?’
It was as if she’d learned the words carefully in a foreign language. Although the maid had told her my name, it hadn’t registered. The room was awash with pitiless light. It looked as if she’d tried to keep it out because she’d drawn up a tall screen on her right. The screen was covered with cut-out pictures of flowers, animals and sailing ships, the kind of work that good children are encouraged to amuse themselves with on rainy holidays. In the early morning it would have given some shade but now the sun was high and beat through the big window on to the armchair where she was sitting, the table beside it covered with cards and papers, the sherry decanter and half-full glass. Her hair was tidy, her white blouse and black skirt pressed and neat, her eyes desperate.
I said, ‘I gather Ben’s away.’
She nodded. ‘On his ship, in the Bay of Biscay.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I wasn’t, but she seemed so desperately lonely, marooned in all that sunshine.
‘It’s his duty, you see.’ She’d had a sherry or two, but she wasn’t drunk, just absent. I still didn’t think she’d registered who I was, but she was being polite.
‘Do sit down. You’ll excuse my not getting up, but if I do they’ll be all over the place and I’ll forget which ones I’ve done and which I haven’t.’
There were a few black-bordered cards on her lap and some more letters. I settled on a big footstool, opposite her.
‘Condolences?’
She nodded. ‘We should have replied to them by now. It’s more than a month.’
‘I’m sure people don’t expect replies.’
‘Ben says they do. These things have to be done properly, don’t they?’
‘Why?’
She stared at me. I hadn’t expected her to take any notice of what I’d said, but her mind was working on it.
‘Why properly?’
‘I don’t see that it matters either way. If it helps you…’
Without taking her eyes off me she picked up a black-bordered letter from her lap and held it by its corner between finger and thumb. She tore it just a little at the edge, then waited like a child expecting somebody to shout at her. When nothing happened she tore a strip carefully down the edge, then round the corner, along another edge and round another corner, slowly converting it into a spiral that trailed down her skirt. Silence, except for the sound of paper tearing and a shut-out Siamese complaining from the corridor. She concentrated hard on ending the spiral in a neat disc of paper, then held it up at arm’s length and let it go. We both watched as it landed in a tangle on the floor and quivered gently.
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Only I don’t know what’s supposed to be right, any more.’ She started on one of the cards, then dropped it and picked up another letter. ‘Would you like a sherry? There’s a glass over on the sideboard.’
I fetched it, poured from the decanter. She signalled with her eyes that I should top up her glass as well.
‘Thank you – Nell. It’s very nice of you to call.’
She’d registered who I was then, but she didn’t mean it about being nice. The last time she’d seen me was when I came up from the boathouse after finding Verona’s body. She was in no state to notice me when she left the inquest.
‘Are you on your own here?’
‘Apart from Jenny and Mrs Tell. Adam had to go back to Dartmouth to get ready for the war.’
She said it matter-of-factly, watching as another spiral quivered to the floor, then took a sip of sherry and started tearing another letter.
‘War?’
‘Ireland or the Balkans or somewhere. Adam will be killed and Ben will be probably be killed too and then it will be all over.’
I could have argued about Ireland, pointed out that naval officers and cadets would hardly be at risk in the Balkans, but there was a mad, blank certainty about her.
‘I’m sure they’ll come back to you.’
‘Verona didn’t.’
The spirals were piling up now. She was working faster and faster. I wondered whether I should stay for a polite time, then go without asking any questions.
‘Verona didn’t, did she?’ More urgently, looking at me as if she wanted an answer.
‘I think perhaps she did.’
‘To hang herself, yes. Home to hang herself.’
Over the last few days I’d come round so firmly to the belief that Verona had been murdered that it was a shock to remember she was still officially a suicide. Tread carefully.
‘I think there might have been more to it than that. I think she came back here for another reason.’
Alex dropped a half-torn letter and stared at me. ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was harsh, quite different from the dazed tone so far.
‘I’ve seen a letter she wrote, to friends near London. She said she was going away for a few days because there was something she must put right.’
‘The baby. She must have meant she was going to get rid of the baby.’
‘No! No, I’m sure it wasn’t that. She was happy about the baby.’
Even if the Hergests had been lying about other things, the evidence of Kitty Dulcie and the neighbour at Yew Tree Cottage was on their side in that respect.
‘You knew that, did you? She talked to you?’
‘No.’
‘You knew her better than I did. Everybody knew her better than I did.’
‘No. Listen, I hardly knew her at all, but I’ve been talking to people who did. It wasn’t the baby, I promise you that.’
‘Put right. What did she mean?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you might.’
‘She was nineteen. She was expecting a baby. She was doping – my daughter was. How could she put that right?’
‘I don’t think she was doping.’
‘Ben said the doctor at the inquest—’
‘She had morphine in her body. We don’t know she injected it herself.’
Alex took a long gulp of sherry and looked at me. I still didn’t know if what I was doing would help her but it had gone beyond drawing back.
‘If she didn’t—’
‘She came here. This was probably the place where she had to put things right. Have you any idea what it was? Was there anyone here she was close to?’
‘Outside the family? A lot of friends. Prudence of course, the families we sailed and picnicked with.’
‘Anybody special? Anybody she might think she’d … well … done wrong to by loving somebody else?’
She looked angry at first, then shook her head. ‘There were plenty of young men who wanted to be special, mostly young officers – danced with her, sent her flowers. We’d … we’d laugh about them sometimes, the two of us. She didn’t love anybody yet – not like that. She wasn’t ready.’
More or less what Admiral Pritty had said. Alex picked a letter off the table, read a few sentences then started another spiral.
I said, ‘There was an older man.’
‘In London?’
‘Yes.’
‘The baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope he rots in hell.’
No careful spiral this time. The letter went to the floor in jagged pieces. She grabbed a handful and wrenched at them together. She must have ripped a fingernail because there were smears of blood on the paper.
‘I trusted you to look after her, Nell. I didn’t want her to go to London, but I thought you’d look after her.’
‘I don’t think Verona wanted to be looked after in that way.’
‘She was no more than a child.’
‘She was quite a lot more.’
‘What do you mean?’
All the way down in the train I’d wondered if I could tell her about Verona’s spying activities. I’d have to put a patriotic gloss on it if I did, hide some of the nastier details like how she used me to find out about my friends.
‘Alex, did she discuss with you what she was going to do in London?’
She looked at me. The look and the tone of her voice when she answered told me a lot I needed to know. ‘Art school.’
‘It wasn’t just art school, was it?’
Her fingers stopped their tearing. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’ The tone wasn’t angry, just weary.
‘No,’ I said, ‘Verona didn’t tell me anything.’
She looked at me and decided to believe it. Her face went slack with relief. ‘They didn’t tell me anything either.’ The relief was not having to live with the intolerable idea that Verona might have trusted me more than her.
‘They?’
‘The three of them: her and Ben and Archie.’
‘Archie Pritty, her godfather?’
‘Yes.’
‘You guessed what was happening?’
‘I knew there was something. There was…’ She went quiet, looked out at the expanse of water, then quickly away again. ‘There was a kind of excitement about them.’
‘Her and Ben?’
‘The three of them. Then when this art school business came up I expected Ben to say she couldn’t go. He did at first – but that was for my benefit, I could see that. He gave in too quickly. Ben doesn’t give in. You know…’
There was one of Ben’s model ships on her writing table, a delicate little three-master, probably one he’d served on in his cadet days. She picked up a paperknife and used it to pull the model towards her by its rigging. ‘You know how it is in the Navy. Sails shot away, sheets dangling, half your crew dead. Never pull down your colours. Sink if you must, but never pull down your colours.’
The Perfect Daughter Page 23