Feeling a great deal better after a short rest in bed, where his wife and daughter had tucked him in like a damned invalid, deciding to get up and go along to see Sybil to say goodnight properly, talk over the party as they always did. Not intending to stay long because he realised, as he made his way on what seemed to have suddenly become an endless journey down a long, long corridor, that he maybe ought not to have tried it; that he was in fact still not feeling up to the mark after all the jollifications. Not feeling up to the mark at all. Reaching the door of Sybil’s room just as Grev stormed out of it, his face white and his eyes blazing. Throwing off Arthur’s hand as if it was a brand. Edith had noticed that, damn her. She was pottering about in the boudoir, preparing the nightcap she always made for Sybil on the little spirit stove kept in the corner, but her eyes were bright with curiosity (why had he never noticed before what sharp, knowing eyes she had?). Putting two and two together from what she’d overheard between mother and son, and making five, no doubt. He’d never liked the wench, an ungrateful young woman for whom Sybil had done a thousand kindnesses. Why had he not ignored her then and gone in to Sybil, after all? Because all of a sudden he had been feeling much worse – much more than just not the ticket. Hardly able to get back to his room and into bed before the pain really took him in its grip, in fact. By then panting, scarcely able to reach the bell to call for someone to help him.
Oh God, the same pressure in his chest he was feeling now, the same panic. Don’t let me die now…don’t mind dying, been prepared for it long enough after all, affairs all in order…but not now, leaving Sybil with all this. Not now. Summon up the strength from somewhere. Surprising where it comes from, when you need it most…
His groping hand found the amyl nitrite ampoules he had been told always to keep in his pocket and he crushed one in his fingers, inhaled. Better. Much better. Gradually, he was able to relax. He closed his eyes but, unbidden and unwanted, Monday night came back…himself at the chess table with Eunice, after their early dinner. They were talking desultorily between moves about the visit she and Sybil were to take the following day to London. He was teasing Eunice about spending his money. All pretence, of course. His beautiful daughter could have all he possessed, and more. He allowed her to let him win the game, before she went to her room to write letters and he went about his own business.
Later, a good deal later, fortified by the whisky and water Ellington brought him each night, he went up to say goodnight to Sybil. He opened the door gently. The lights were out. He whispered her name, then saw her bed was empty.
He went to look for her and found her – where else? – in the room that was almost a shrine, the music room, surrounded by all Grev’s music paraphernalia. Cradling in her arms like a baby the viol she had given him for a present, that Christmas when early music had been his current passion.
That had been the last Christmas Day they had all spent together – Sybil, he and the children – and the Wentworths, of course, who were practically family and always came across to Oaklands at Christmas. The huge fir tree in the hall decorated with bright baubles, silver ribbons and candles. All the women dressed in their best, Sybil outshining the rest in some midnight-blue and silver tissue creation with a diamond-held feather in her hair, dazzling not only him. Presents for all under the tree. Grev playing his new instrument for them, his dark, serious face explaining how it differed from the modern violin, how it had once been played in what was called a consort, six viols making a whole consort. Less than six, or different instruments in the group, and it was a broken consort. A broken consort. Of the one which had made up the group of Grev’s friends, two of them were gone. He stepped into the music room and walked towards his wife.
‘Oh, Arthur, what have I done?’ she asked shakily.
‘My dearest love,’ he answered in a voice no one else but Sybil ever heard him use. ‘I know what you’ve done. Did you believe I haven’t always known?’
‘You see, Inspector,’ Sybil said, ‘things had reached the point where there was no choice. I had to stop it.’
Her eyes were large and luminous with emotion in her white face. She had begun to pace the room as if she couldn’t keep still. ‘We had all heard that someone had once again been making enquiries about Marianne’s drowning. It was supposed to have been an accident, but how could I, of all people, believe that?’ she asked. ‘Did you know that Grev never once wrote to me after he left? To the family as a whole, yes, but not to me, personally. That’s what has haunted me, that he died without ever forgiving me…that he might never have died at all had he not been forced away by what he’d learnt from me – though in all conscience, I cannot think what else we could have done.’ She sank onto a sofa and sat with bowed head. Minutes passed in silence, but when she looked up again she was calmer, her face resolute.
‘That night, Monday, I could simply stand Edith’s insinuations no longer. I don’t believe she was aware that I knew she went down to see Ben Naylor most nights when she was free, or perhaps she did, and didn’t care. I waited until she left me and then I dressed again and went down the path and waited for her, under the trees, until she came past and then I…then I hit her, and hit her, and hit her.’ She covered her face with her hands.
‘What weapon did you use? What did you hit her with?’ Reardon asked after a moment.
She looked up quickly. ‘With the handle of her umbrella. I snatched it from her and began to hit her. And then, I-I just did not seem to be able to stop.’
‘Lady Sybil. Edith Huckaby was killed with a single blow to her skull.’
‘A single blow? What do you mean? That’s not possible.’
‘With the right instrument, and enough force, it’s entirely possible.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see. It was the first blow that killed her. Then I need not have…’ Her voice trailed off.
He thought, how foolish we are sometimes, all of us. Especially when it’s to protect someone we love. The confessions she’d made wouldn’t stand up for a minute, which she must have known had she not been blinded by the need to save her husband.
‘Lady Sybil,’ he said gently, ‘your husband told me he saw Miss Huckaby pass his study window at quarter past eight, but that’s impossible, you know. It was pitch-dark by then, he would have seen only the reflection of the room in the dark glass – and in any case, that is the wrong side of the house. Yes, I believe he did see Edith – but earlier, perhaps when he was playing chess with your daughter. And when Miss Foley left him, he immediately followed Edith.’
‘No, no!’
‘I believe he did it on the spur of the moment. He knew, or guessed, what was going on between you and decided to put an end to it.’
He had thought she was about to faint, but she rallied. She stood up and faced him, her hands gripping the edge of a chair, her head held high. ‘You will never be able to prove it.’
He thought, a flickering thought, that she might very well be right that this, his first case, was not going to leave him covered in glory,. Edith had died, possibly not through any deliberate intention to kill her, but in a moment of uncontrollable anger directed against her for the years of misery she had inflicted on her mistress…but what was there to prove this?
Whatever she had done, whatever misery and anguish she had inflicted, however, she had not in any way deserved to die. And how far had his own self-appointed investigations into Marianne’s death contributed? But this, the path of guilt and remorse, was one he refused to take. Others in this particular case had walked it before him, with what consequences?
It was something he was going to have to accept, along with the knowledge that Edith’s death might well be indirectly due to his wilful perusal of the way Marianne had died, which had provided her with an even stronger hold over Lady Sybil.
At that moment, the door burst open with an unceremoniousness surely unprecedented in this house, and the abrupt advent into the room of Garbutt, the chauffeur. His round, doughy face was the colour of cold porri
dge. ‘It’s the master. Come quick, m’lady, they’ve gone to find a doctor. Come quick, it’s the master!’
Arthur Foley was still in his limousine, slumped against the cushions. His face was livid, distorted. His wife raised him and held him in a sitting position, trying with her other hand to find his ampoules, not knowing which pocket they were in. A whispered sound came from him, almost unintelligible, uttered with great difficulty, something which sounded like ‘…better…’
‘Yes, yes, my dearest, you will be better soon. The doctor will be here, any minute. Where is he, where is the doctor?’ she flung over her shoulder. Her husband tried to speak again and struggled to move. ‘Hush, hush, be still. Just be still.’
‘No! No!…letter…!’
Duncan Geddes emerged from the house at speed and climbed in beside them, bending over the stricken man. Arthur Foley’s body quivered, his eyes became unfocused, and finally he sank.
‘Lady Sybil,’ said Duncan, laying his hand on hers, ‘I’m so sorry, it’s too late. I’m afraid he’s gone.’
Chapter Thirty-One
April had arrived and although it was still very cold, and dull today, in the churchyard it didn’t seem so, with the thousands of daffodils now in bloom, spreading sunshine over the grey old stones. And in the Oaklands woods, there had been primroses in the banks, the beeches were coming into translucent green leaf, the bluebells at their feet soon to turn into a misty blue.
As Nella walked into the hall, pulling off her hat, Amy met her. ‘You have a visitor, in the drawing room.’
‘Who is it?’
But Amy smiled mysteriously and wouldn’t say; this new, grown-up Amy who had her hair up and whom Nella couldn’t quite believe in yet. The last few weeks had changed her, as it had changed them all. Poor Amy, she would have to wait for her first grown-up party, after all, though if it mattered to her, she was hiding it very well. She added, ‘I should tidy yourself before you go in. Your hair’s a mess.’ Nella smiled. Not so different, after all.
She slipped off her coat, and as she turned to smooth her hair in the looking glass in the hall, she was arrested by piano music coming from the drawing room. It was a sound so little heard in the house that she stood stock-still, halted by recognition that was like a blow to the solar plexus; the sort of music her untutored ear could not understand, but her mind did: slow, moody and fragmented as it was, and which sent an almost superstitious frisson down her spine.
She opened the door and found Duncan Geddes in the drawing room, his hands moving over the keyboard of what had been Dorothea’s upright walnut piano. It was the one piece of furniture which had been transported here, with much trouble, when they moved, and which now sat in one corner of this plain, uncomfortable room, destined to remain mostly unplayed and looking highly incongruous with its gleaming polish and brass sconces and the rich, fringed green silk runner Dorothea herself had embroidered.
When he saw her at the open door, Duncan stopped playing at once and stood up. ‘Forgive me…I should have asked…’
She waved a hand. ‘What was that music?’
‘I’m not sure. It was already open…’ He turned back the pages of the sheet music on the piano rest. ‘Debussy. A prelude…‘Feuilles mortes’. Dead leaves. Melancholy, but lovely, don’t you think? At least it would be if I wasn’t making such a bad fist of it…And I’m afraid your piano needs tuning,’ he added apologetically.
‘No one plays it now. Marianne used to, sometimes.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘I came to say goodbye.’
So soon? Her spirits should not sink like this, when it was scarcely unexpected. Most of the hospital patients had now gone from Oaklands, the nurses, too, Nella being one of them, but she hadn’t expected the final closure to come quite so soon. She suspected there might have been a concerted effort on the part of Matron and the medical staff to speed things up after the shocking events which had happened there lately, a feeling that the family had a right to be left to themselves at last – which, if it were true, was laudable, and typical of Miss Inman, who was rarely given enough credit for having finer feelings beneath her starched facade.
‘They’ve started dismantling the huts, and the last patients have gone…good old Bomber last week, and yesterday young Shawcross went to a rehabilitation centre in Bradford – accompanied by his fiancée. Did you know he’s agreed to marry her, at last? He’ll be in good hands, she’s a sensible young woman and she’s beginning to make him see his life needn’t be entirely without point…your cousin did a good job, bringing her down to see him.’
‘Oh yes, Eunice and her lame ducks.’ Nella smiled. The pretty dress Amy had made for the homecoming party which had never happened, she would have occasion to wear after all, for Eunice and William – a William determined on a new start – were to be married after the period of mourning for her father was over. Together, they had plans to keep the Foley business going. Eunice had, after all, already learnt the ropes from her father, and men he had implicitly trusted – his shop-floor manager and his office manager – had returned home, and were willing and eager to give the support needed, if it would be the means of keeping the works open and providing employment.
They were to live at Oaklands. It would not be a house of ghosts, haunted not only by Grev, and perhaps Marianne, but also by Arthur Foley, the man who had been father to him all his life – and not least by Edith Huckaby, whose murder seemed likely to remain an unsolved mystery after the departure of the police and an inquest verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. Oaklands, which Sybil had been so looking forward to reclaiming for the parties and dances, the dazzling social life she had envisaged for Eunice, would become better than that: it would be a family home again, with children’s voices soon filling the empty spaces and dispersing the shadows.
Duncan had risen from the piano stool and was leaning against the piano, hands in his pockets. ‘And you – have you had any more ideas of what you will do with yourself now, Nella?’
She had thought of little else since leaving the hospital – even perhaps learning shorthand, and how to type, and then finding work in some office, though it was an idea entirely without appeal, and was certainly not how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. She had thought of asking Mrs Rafferty for advice, but she and her friend Miss Dorkings were more at a loss with themselves than she was, now that the vital objective of gaining for women the right to vote had finally been achieved. The Bill had been passed, said Miss Dorkings tartly, because the government could in all conscience have done no other than give them the vote, after women had proved themselves every bit as good as men during the war – but no doubt about it, it was also because people like their old adversary, Mr Winston Churchill, were afraid the Movement might start up again if they were denied it.
Nella shrugged. ‘Something will turn up, I’m sure.’ Talk about her future was too depressing. Looking around for a tea tray, she said, ‘You must think us very inhospitable. Has no one offered you tea?’
‘Your sister did, but I declined it, thank you.’
‘Are you sure you won’t have some?’
‘Thank you…very kind, but no.’
Why are we having this stilted conversation? Duncan asked himself. Perhaps tea would bridge the awkwardness of his unexpected visit, but it would only prolong the agony. Better say what he had to say as soon as possible and then he could leave.
The trouble was, he hadn’t seen Nella for a couple of weeks and she had, in some way he couldn’t quite put a finger on, become subtly different. Perhaps it was the dress she was wearing, of some amber-coloured wool, the colour warming her pale skin, and her thick bobbed hair, freed from the confines of her nurse’s cap, swinging forward towards her cheekbones, curving around her face. She looked a little lost and uncertain, and perhaps a little older. After being so used to seeing her in uniform, quick and decisive, so sure of herself, the change was oddly disconcerting. He thought he could, in fact, only rem
ember with any clarity one particular time she had been out of uniform, on that night they had first dined together. There was little chance of him ever forgetting that: the absurd ragged locks which had made him laugh; and the desire to kiss away the look of exhaustion and bring a smile to her eyes, which had brought the first realisation he might be starting to love her.
He said abruptly, ‘I took the liberty of coming here because I desperately need to make my explanations before I leave.’
She smiled, and her chin lifted imperceptibly. That, at least, was familiar. ‘Duncan, there is no need. I’ve told you, I understand perfectly.’
‘I’m very much afraid you do not – and how could you, when we parted like that? I deserve to be punished, but at least don’t send me away without some chance to redeem myself.’
Punish? She certainly had no desire to do anything of the sort, but she hoped she had enough pride not to allow herself to be hurt again, in the way he had once hurt her. Whatever had been between them was over and done with, and best forgotten. On the other hand, would she not be punishing him if she refused to listen?
‘I’m sorry, but I do need to explain. Please, Nella, at least don’t pretend it didn’t matter. Not that. Please, sit down.’
‘Well then…’ Someone – presumably Amy when she’d shown him in – had put a match to the fire always kept laid in case of visitors, who remained mostly non-existent (at least, those deemed worthy of the drawing room), but so far it had done nothing whatsoever to alleviate the chill of the room. She knelt on the hearthrug, holding her hands to the blaze, while he folded himself onto a low stool opposite. ‘I’m listening.’
He had sworn, over there in Flanders, never to involve her in the shambles that was his private life, until he came to realise it was becoming impossible not to. He had always had every intention of telling her about Dolly, though somehow he had never seemed to find the right opportunity. He’d told himself afterwards, repeatedly, it was because he hadn’t been absolutely sure of her that he had failed to do so; that perhaps he was mistaken in thinking she felt as deeply as he did; that she was too young and unspoilt to be drawn into the sordid chaos of his life. All of these things were possible, but he knew the real answer. The truth was that he’d been a damned coward, and he had taken the coward’s way out, on that night of the war which had seemed to him to have passed totally beyond what humanity had ever before been capable of. The mayhem all about them had brought home to him precisely how fragile was their own hold on life, and suddenly afraid of losing her, he had momentarily lost control of his senses, and blurted out the truth…or part of the truth.
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