Reardon had successfully secured the use of the parlour at the Greville Arms for the duration of the enquiry, and a small table had been found where the two officers could take their meals in private, leaving the large centre table free to be used as a desk, an arrangement which suited everyone admirably. Over bread, cheese and pickles Reardon thought about what Nella Wentworth had told him, about Marianne’s secret meetings with Hatherley, not so secret as he had thought, evidently. PC Bracey, for one, had been aware of those visits of hers to the lake, though he still swore he hadn’t poked his nose in, as he put it, to find out what was going on.
On the night of her death, when Danny Boswell had seen that figure, apparently arguing with her, Hatherley had, on his own admittance, been there. He said it was around eleven o’clock, but he could have been lying. He could have waited, or returned. But in either case, for what conceivable reason? Unless he had known Marianne was going to be there.
As for how it might link to Edith Huckaby’s death…
She was still something of a mystery, this young woman who had been murdered, but he was beginning to find slightly disturbing the picture which was emerging of the sort of person she might have been. The sad fact was that no one had seemed to actually like her. He was getting the impression of a rather lonely young woman with no real friends, poised as she was between the upper echelons of the family in which she could play no part and the lower servants who regarded her with suspicion and whom she most likely despised. Yet she was a young woman who must have had her dreams, her loves, hopes, aspirations. So much so that she was willing to grab the opportunity of marrying Ben Naylor, a match which seemed to Reardon could never have been made in Heaven: no two people more opposite could be imagined. It looked very much as though she had seized on him as her only chance to get out of the life that had been thrust upon her. Reardon could feel pity for her, disadvantaged from the start, with no parents, dependent upon the impersonal charity of the nuns she had lived with. Books appeared to have been her lifeline, a glimpse perhaps into the possibilities of another life, unreal and romanticised as it was (although it was something he partly understood, given his own addiction to reading, learning, and the new worlds it had opened for him). Then she had discovered that Marianne Wentworth shared her view of the world. Marianne had rashly confided in her – without the need for too much persuasion, perhaps, for she had been alone in that sense too, notwithstanding that she had been part of a loving family. Was it indeed some secret Marianne had rashly confided to her that Edith had used, and which had eventually led to her death?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Leaving Wheelan to interview Lady Sybil’s domestic staff when they went back to Oaklands shortly after lunch, Reardon went to speak to Lady Sybil herself once more. He was informed by the old manservant, Ellington, that her Ladyship was not well and asked to be excused, and that Mr Foley was not available either, since this was one of the days when he was driven over to the works.
He went to find Wheelan. Leaving the house, he turned the corner and walked along the terrace, at present occupied by a few men in hospital blue, reading, chatting, playing chess, writing letters, taking advantage of the pale spring sunshine while it was still there. The last of the patients, he supposed, before Oaklands closed as a hospital. He paused for a moment before the sweeping view from the terrace. Resplendent with graceful, mature specimens of sequoia, weeping ash, and cedar of Lebanon, the calm symmetry of the lawns was now spoilt by the double row of long wooden huts which had been erected as hospital wards. Nobody paid him much attention, apart from one young man sitting in a wheelchair, his lower half swathed in a blanket, who seemed to be watching him closely. But when their eyes met, the young man turned his chair in the other direction. Reardon walked on slowly, trying to fix the layout of the house in his mind and finally found himself, having come almost full circle, by the stable yard where all the ambulances were parked, and the back door which opened on to it, standing open.
In front of him was a passage with the back stairs which led up to Edith’s room, to the left were the kitchens, from whence he could hear the rumble of Wheelan’s voice as he talked to the servants. There wasn’t much room in this narrow back entrance, most of it being taken up by a combined coat rack and umbrella stand, top-heavy with what seemed to be a communal collection of coats, waterproofs, umbrellas and walking sticks. To his right was a door with a wooden plaque reading: Estate Office. Out of curiosity he tried the handle. It wasn’t locked but appeared to be unused now for its original purpose, although the scuffed footprints on the dusty floor showed that people still had reason to come in. Dust was everywhere: on the stacks of leather-bound ledgers and a Dickensian desk with a sloping top, on the pens and an inkstand in which the ink had long since dried up. A large safe, or maybe a gun cupboard, with tarnished, fancy brass door furniture, hung on the wall. As he turned away, debating whether or not to join Wheelan in the kitchen, through the dusty window he saw Eunice Foley.
Wheelan was sitting at the kitchen table in front of a cup of strong tea and a piece of Mrs Cherry’s feather-light seed cake. He hadn’t tasted seed cake since he was a child and had hoped never to do so again. He disliked the flavour of caraway, and even more the seeds which had managed to get under his denture, but he munched on stolidly. You couldn’t waste good cake in these stringent times, nor throw kindness in Mrs Cherry’s good-natured face.
‘To be truthful, she never rightly joined in, like,’ that lady was saying, answering his questions about Edith Huckaby.
‘Too stuck up, if you ask me,’ put in Elsie, the pert blonde maid who had, like most of the Oaklands domestic staff, worked in the hospital during the war, leaving only a skeleton staff of the ancient old butler, Ellington, Mrs Cherry the cook, and occasional women from the village to make up the shortfall. There was a new addition now in the form of Jinny, a round-faced fourteen-year-old who hadn’t long left school, and who seemed to be struck dumb with shyness in the face of her elders.
‘Now then, Elsie,’ reproved Mrs Cherry, ‘no need to speak ill of the dead. Miss Huckaby was all right – for a lady’s maid – though never what you might call really friendly, I have to admit.’
‘Well, I call that being stuck up. Lady’s maid! She barely brought herself to say hello to me when I saw her. All dolled up, she was, fox fur an’ all, making sure her stocking seams was straight and her hat was on just so in her handbag mirror before she went out. Fancy, all that just to see that old Ben Naylor! That was Monday night, the night she was killed.’ The way Elsie said it implied the last occurrence was more than likely to be consequent on the previous ones.
‘She had her handbag with her, then? What was it like?’
‘Lovely little grey suede pochette, with a kind of loop to put your thumb through, to hold it, like,’ Elsie replied promptly and not a little enviously. ‘Lady Sybil passed it on when the loop came off, but Edith fixed it.’
‘Did she have an umbrella with her?’
Mrs Cherry said, ‘I don’t think she had to start with but it began to look like rain just after she’d left and then I heard the door open and shut, so I expect she came back for one…there’s a whole lot of old umbrellas and mackintoshes that anybody uses in the stand by the office.’
‘Very handy. I wonder, would you mind having a look-see and tell me if there’s one missing?’
‘Lawks, there’s that many, how would I know? Why do you ask that?’
But Wheelan didn’t enlighten her. He valiantly swallowed the last of the seed cake. ‘No, no, thank you, Mrs Cherry, no more. Real tasty, but I have to watch me figure,’ he added, patting his comfortable stomach. ‘What time was it, when she went out?’
Mrs Cherry said. ‘Quarter past seven, thereabouts, it would be.’
‘You’re sure about that? Mr Foley says he saw her going out at quarter past eight.’
‘Maybe she came back and went out again, forgot something maybe. It was just after we’d had our supper when she left
, wasn’t it?’ she addressed the others.
They agreed and Elsie added, ‘Took her supper up to her room, of course. She came to bring the tray back to the kitchen and left the plates for Jinny to wash up, before she waltzed off. Breath of air, she said – as if we didn’t know where she was off to.’
The old manservant, Ellington, said with great dignity, ‘You seem to have forgotten, miss, while you’ve been working on the wards, that them Upstairs are no business of yours and you’d do better to remember in future.’
‘Edith Huckaby wasn’t Upstairs, even if she liked to think she was!’
‘She was as far as you’re concerned.’
Elsie had her own opinions about that but she knew when to shut up. She was a bright girl and hoped when things were back to normal to be given the now vacant place of the head parlourmaid, who had left to work in munitions, had met and married a soldier, and was now living in Nottingham.
‘Did Miss Huckaby have a key to get in with?’
‘No,’ said Ellington. She knew she had to be in by ten, otherwise she’d have been locked out.’
‘And you didn’t notice she hadn’t come in?’
‘Well, we wouldn’t have known. The hospital keep most of their supplies in the stables, now there’s no horses, and there’s a lot of coming and going outside this door with the orderlies and what not. I just assumed she had come in and gone up the back stairs,’ Ellington said, flushing at the implication he’d been lacking in his duties.
Mrs Cherry came to his defence. ‘Anyway, we was playing rummy, the four of us, making a bit of noise, laughing and that, but I could see Jinny here was nearly falling asleep, poor little duck; she’s not used to all the work, yet, so I sent her up to bed and we just sat talking by the fire, until I went up to my room and he went to lock up as usual at ten o’clock.’
‘So you were in here all night, all of you?’
‘Except for when I took the master his nightcap,’ Ellington said. ‘He always takes a glass of whisky and water of an evening. I took it in at half past eight. I went to draw the curtains and make the fire up, but he said not to bother, he was going to turn in right away. He did look a bit below par and I asked him if he wasn’t feeling well. Just tired, he said. Which isn’t to be wondered at, seeing how hard he works.’
‘So you were all in here until ten?’
‘Not me, I went up before that. I need my beauty sleep,’ Elsie said with a laugh.
‘Need time for all that titivating with curling your hair and that, more like!’ Mrs Cherry reproved her. Elsie only tossed her blonde head.
‘Right, well, I won’t keep you from your work much longer. Thank you for the refreshment, Mrs Cherry. Very welcome. I might need to see you again.’
On his way out Wheelan paused by the umbrella stand Mrs Cherry had mentioned, and after several moments’ contemplation, extracted a large cotton one, its original black colour faded and greenish, with a handle of amber, carved to resemble the head and neck of a swan. More likely resin, he thought on closer inspection, at any rate there was no million-year-old fly or any other insect embedded in it. It was tightly furled, and when he inserted a finger between the folds, it was very slightly damp. He looked at it thoughtfully, then tucking it underneath his arm, he took it back with him to the village.
Eunice had been hurrying across the stable yard when Reardon spotted her. Her head was down, and as he stepped outside to meet her, she almost bumped into him. ‘So sorry,’ she gasped, ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going. Oh, Inspector Reardon, it’s you.’
She looked distressed and agitated, with a heightened colour, far more than the near collision warranted, and he ventured to ask if anything was the matter. She shook her head. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘it seems as though this may not be the best time to ask if I may speak to you.’
‘Of course you may,’ she answered, visibly pulling herself together.
‘Somewhere a little more private?’
‘Round the corner, in the orangery?’ She smiled faintly. ‘That’s what we call it, though as far as I know there have been no orange trees kept there in living memory. We used it as a conservatory, before the war.’
Now the glass-walled, glass-roofed building against the south wall was evidently in use as a refectory for walking patients able to take their meals at the hospital-issue tables and chairs placed there. The heavy pre-war perfume of tuber roses and stephanotis and the damp, earthy smell of living green plants had given way to the lingering odours of institutional food and the disinfectant with which the floors and tables had been scrubbed. It felt bare and empty and echoing, despite some dispirited plants scattered here and there, indicating that someone had made a half-hearted attempt to cheer the place up, but had clearly not made any commitment to look after them.
Eunice went to sit at one of the tables by the windows and Reardon took a seat opposite her. There was another expanse of lawn on this side of the house, and her attention seemed to be riveted on it, where the same young man he had felt to be watching him was being wheeled along one of the paths intersecting the grass. She turned her gaze away but not before he saw that her eyes were suspiciously wet. He half rose from his chair. ‘Miss Foley, I can see this is definitely not the time to talk. Another time.’
‘No. Please stay. I’m simply being stupid.’ She lifted her chin. ‘How can I help?’
She was the sort of gentle young woman whose looks aroused protective instincts in men, but he did not think her helpless. Nevertheless, ‘I’m sorry to see you upset,” he said. “Is it something to do with what has happened? With Miss Huckaby? You must tell me if it is.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s an entirely private matter.’
‘I won’t press you, then. But nothing, I’m afraid, is private when it comes to murder, Miss Foley.’
‘This truly is, I assure you.’
There was a silence.
‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s start with Miss Huckaby. She had been with your mother a long time, so you must have known her quite well. Did you like her?’
She stared at him with her big blue eyes and at last she said flatly, ‘Actually, I thought she was pretty beastly. If you want the truth.’
‘Ah.’
‘But that doesn’t mean I’m glad she’s been killed.’ Two spots of colour had appeared on her face, but her chin lifted and she sat up very straight. ‘Do you smoke, Inspector Reardon?’
‘No.’
‘Then you can’t offer me one. Never mind. My father disapproves of me smoking, anyway.’ Her glance wandered out over the lawns again.
‘Miss Foley?’
‘What? Oh, I’m sorry…I don’t seem to be able to…I’m not concentrating.’ She bit her lip, then said suddenly, ‘You’re right, something is bothering me, though it’s nothing to do with Edith. What it is, there’s a soldier here, a patient, who worries me. He has been badly wounded, in fact he has lost both his legs.’
‘I see. And you and he…?’
She stared. ‘Good gracious, no, nothing like that! No…but because of what’s happened to him, he’s broken off his engagement to his young lady. He won’t have her marrying him out of sympathy, as he sees it, or because he’s a wounded hero, and he refuses to believe it isn’t sympathy she feels, but love. She is heartbroken, but nothing will convince him that he would be anything but a burden to her if they married. I’m afraid I have just been very cruel and told Jack Shawcross in no uncertain terms that if everyone in the same condition is to go through the rest of his life with a chip on his shoulder, well then—’
She stopped abruptly and he saw the realisation of what she was saying dawning on her. A hot tide of embarrassment spread over her face but she didn’t flinch from meeting his gaze.
‘Have you thought this young man might just be right?’ he said, after a moment. ‘It’s easy enough, I would suspect, to believe such obstacles can easily be overcome, to think things like that don’t matter, but will she feel the same
when they have both had to cope with it for ten, twenty years?’
‘I understand what you’re saying, but there is no reason to believe he won’t be able to lead a useful and happy life,’ she said stubbornly. ‘You think I am interfering in matters that do not concern me, don’t you?’
‘No. I believe you are tender-hearted, Miss Foley, and it does you credit, but I also believe you’re mistaken.’ He believed, too, that gentle Miss Eunice, with her dainty little figure and big soft eyes, was obviously rather more than she seemed. He remembered how firmly she had dealt with her mother when they had been stopped in the drive and informed of Edith’s murder.
‘If I loved a man, Inspector Reardon…’ she began, then stopped, blushing furiously. ‘Well, never mind. That isn’t what we’re here to talk about, is it?’
No, it wasn’t, but she had disturbed him. As she talked, across his mind had flashed a bright image of Ellen Calder, with her soft skin and her bright eyes, her forthright views and her support of his determination to educate himself better, and of the letters she had written so constantly while he was away. He had read and reread them and at one time dared to imagine he detected an increasing friendliness, even affection, in them. What had started with ‘Dear Mr Reardon’ had become ‘My dear Herbert’ and they had been finished off with warm sentiments. She knew about his facial wounds and had continued to write encouragingly to him in the various hospitals where he’d undergone treatment, in much the same vein as the words Eunice Foley had used. He had briefly hoped – then had told himself not to be a fool.
‘He won’t even reply to her letters any longer,’ Eunice was saying, ‘but I’ve taken the liberty of writing to Emily Boothroyd myself and asking her to come down here to stay, so that she can at least make him listen to her. There, what do you think of that?’
He thought she had done a very brave, and what might turn out to be a very foolish thing, with the best of intentions, but he forbore to say so. After a moment, she said, ‘Why did you want to see my mother again?’
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