Echoes of Silence

by Marjorie Eccles

  Well. He felt, suddenly and strongly, that if it had been up to her, he would have been told the whole truth and not simply what it was they thought he should know. The idea created a return of the instant empathy he’d felt between himself and this woman, right from the start. He was so aware of it that he couldn’t believe it wasn’t stamped on his face. But such feelings had no place here and now, possibly ever. He sharply returned his mind to what he’d just been told, and what it might mean, in what way Freya’s abandonment of her memoirs might impinge on the matter of Wyn Austwick’s murder.

  ‘I agree, I think she knew, too,’ Ginny said suddenly, as if capitulating. ‘She wanted us all here, especially my brother, she quite desperately wanted to see him. Unfortunately, he was at a diocesan meeting and didn’t get here until it was all over. She collapsed and died before the doctor arrived. He said it was a stroke.’

  Richmond’s mind swung back to his conversation with Wyn Austwick at the Woolpack, and her claims. That night, she’d sworn she’d told no one – apart from Richmond himself – of whatever it was she’d discovered regarding Beth’s murder, had promised she wouldn’t contact Freya again until she’d spoken further with him, until he’d had time to reconsider his refusal to recommend that the case be reopened. Well, he didn’t hold any brief for Wyn Austwick’s probity. It seemed more than likely that Freya’s refusal to go on with the book had caused Austwick to reveal what she regarded as the damning evidence she had unearthed, the proof she claimed she had.

  So that if Freya had known she was dying – and who was to say this wasn’t possible? – or even if she’d only been afraid that she was, it could explain why she’d been so desperate to see her son, the Reverend Peter, the original prime suspect. In order to warn him about the woman? But she’d been dead several days before Freya’s collapse. There had been plenty of time for her to have warned him already. Time enough before that for him to have silenced Austwick.

  ‘Did your mother do anything yesterday that might have caused her to be so upset? Where did she go? Who did she see?’ he asked.

  ‘No one, as far as I know,’ Polly answered. ‘She asked Nagle to take her out for a drive, that was all. After she came back, I went to pick my daughter up from school and while I was out she walked down to post a letter – there’s a box by the Moorcock. It’s not far, but it’s a good pull back up to the house, and it was very difficult for her to walk. She should’ve asked me to post it for her, obviously the effort was too much for her – she looked exhausted when I got back.’

  ‘Perhaps it was important enough for her to want to catch the post.’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone who she could be writing to who was that important – she hardly ever wrote letters, anyway.’

  ‘I need to speak to Mr and Mrs Nagle. I can come back if Mrs Nagle isn’t fit enough to talk, but what about her husband? Is he around?’

  ‘Not at lunch time,’ Polly said drily. ‘He’ll be at the Moorcock, where else?’

  Richmond stood up and thanked them all for their time. He took his leave and Katz saw him to the door. ‘Terribly upsetting, all this. My wife …’

  ‘She seems to be taking it very well.’

  ‘Oh yes, Ginny copes with most things. But so does Polly. She means well, but she can be very outspoken.’

  Richmond took this to mean he wasn’t to take too much notice of what she’d said.

  ‘If we can be of further help, don’t hesitate.’ Katz offered the warm handshake again, maintaining eye contact. A likeable enough man, or one accustomed to making himself agreeable when the occasion demanded it, Richmond thought as he was about to get into his car. His key in the lock, he heard someone calling his name and saw Polly at the door.

  ‘Mr Richmond! Mrs Nagle will talk to you. She’s in the kitchen.’

  When he reached the door again she said, ‘I’m sorry, we weren’t much help in there. It’s just that you’re not – well, not the usual sort of policeman, are you?’

  ‘Perhaps your experience of policemen isn’t very extensive.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant. I’m sorry – sorry that it’s had to be this way, I mean – you having to come here like this …’

  ‘It’s my job.’ His expression said he didn’t have to like it. They looked embarrassed, not knowing what else to say, until he added, ‘Why don’t we stop apologising to each other, Mrs Winslow? We don’t seem to have done anything else since we met.’ Mrs Winslow, Mr Richmond! How ridiculous it sounded. And he thought, what the hell do I mean by that?

  She smiled suddenly, the first this morning. A pale imitation of the one he remembered, but he immediately felt better for it, and smiled back.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Mrs Nagle. She’s a tartar, but not if you stand up to her.’

  He followed her out of the bright cold sunlight, plunging into the gloom of the hallway and on through the rest of the rambling house. She walked ahead of him, warning him where the floor levels varied and where to duck his head under great oak lintels, herself quick and sure in the familiarity of a house she’d grown up in as a child. God, what a home for children to be brought up in! He pictured them – the two little girls, one fair and placid, the other brown-haired, like quicksilver. The brother, artistic and sensitive, or that was how Isobel had seen him. And in the background, that other child, the one he hadn’t yet met, the one called Elvira Graham, whom none of them had mentioned, but with whom Wyn Austwick, according to her diary, had had an appointment after she came back from holiday. What part did she play in this family? It seemed important to him to know: she’d been there on the day of Beth’s disappearance, had been the last person to see her.

  He stumbled a little and she warned, ‘Careful.’ Away from the yellow and white room, the whole house was dark and draughty, all unexpected nooks and shadowy corners. Two uncarpeted staircases with wide shallow treads and carved newel posts, several more vast fireplaces. Tiny windows where you least expected them, sometimes high up on the wall, beamed ceilings. He suspected the house might be an architectural treasure, but it would take more than that for him to want to live in it. Even number 4, Albert Street seemed suddenly to have acquired all the characteristics necessary for a very desirable residence indeed.

  In one dark corner, at the foot of one of the staircases, a small Christmas tree had been set up, ready for decorating. Brightly coloured glass baubles and tinsel spilled out of a box alongside. Five weeks to Christmas. Her child – Polly’s child, Harriet – was obviously as impatient for Christmas as Beth had always been.

  He’d bought a tree for her for that last New Year she’d spent with him, a last-minute purchase, a left-over, an ailing creature whose needles dropped like rain. She’d professed to love it and he’d held her while she ceremonially put the angel on top. It had stayed there, leaning at a drunken angle, until weeks after she’d disappeared. He’d carried the tree outside at last, angel and all, and set fire to it in the garden. He’d been sweeping up pine needles until the day he finally left the house.

  At last, a long, draughty passage ended with a door leading into a cavernous kitchen. Somewhere, in all that dark labyrinth behind them, must lurk a dining-room. How did they ever manage to have a meal that was even half-way hot?

  The woman whom Polly introduced as Dot Nagle was standing at an ironing board, a small, skinny woman, in her early sixties, he guessed. Very pale but heavily made up, scarlet lips compressed into a thin line, punishing a pile of linen with a heavy old-fashioned iron. Perhaps it was this that gave him his first impression of suppressed anger. Later, when he’d learned how close she’d been to Freya Denshaw, he decided he might have been mistaken, that it could have been sorrow she was suppressing, that drew the plucked eyebrows together and kept the lipsticked mouth tight, like a slash. But then, her whole being was one of held-in emotion. She had tightly permed grey hair, and a belt round her narrow waist that looked fit to cut her thin form in two.

  The kitchen itself was wonderful to be
hold, a jumble of ancient and modern. A free-standing oak dresser so huge it must have been made in situ, now a repository for a chaos of plates, pots and all the oddments for which life has not provided obvious resting places. Under the window, a stainless steel sink of industrial dimensions, next to it a microwave oven and a gleaming, state-of-the-art electric cooker. The question of the dining-room was resolved by the presence of a long oak refectory table, set with table mats and cutlery. The room seemed not to have been decorated since the years when cream and eau-de-nil were the de rigueur colours for kitchens, half a century ago.

  The faint sound of the front door bell penetrated into the kitchen. Polly jumped. ‘That’ll be – excuse me, Mr Richmond.’ She was gone, disappeared with the swish of her skirt and the memory of her perfume.

  ‘The undertaker,’ Dot Nagle said, resolutely ironing.

  She professed herself willing to answer questions, speaking through the smoke from the cigarette dangling from her lips. Richmond didn’t need to lead in. She lost no time in telling him that she wasn’t in the least surprised that woman had got herself killed. ‘Asking for it, she was, meddling in things that didn’t concern her.’

  ‘So you didn’t hold with this collaboration?’

  ‘Is that what it was, then? Pouring money down the drain, more likely. If Freya wanted to write her life story, that was one thing, but – ’ She coughed and took the cigarette out to tap off the ash, then decided to stub it out in an ashtray balanced on the top of the stove. ‘There’s things that should be made public and things that are private. Let somebody like her into your life and you’ll never have it to yourself any more.’ That chimed in very much with what he’d thought of Wyn Austwick himself, and Richmond was glad to see that his impressions hadn’t been due to simple prejudice. ‘All right if them you’re writing about are dead, they don’t care,’ she went on, scarcely pausing for breath, ‘but what about the living? What was it to her how long I’d been here? What Eddie and me were paid? Why we came here? Insinuating … Oh, I’ve met her sort before!’ She stamped the iron down on to a rumpled pillow case without smoothing it first, thereby creasing it still further, but didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘What sort of insinuations, Mrs Nagle?’

  ‘I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen,’ she went on, ignoring the question. ‘She was always wilful, Freya.’ At last hands and voice came to a stop. The passage of the iron was halted as she stared bleakly out of the window, until a smell of scorched linen made her switch it off. She threw the pillow case back into the laundry basket, pulled out one of the chairs from the table and sat down heavily. ‘You’ve caught me at the wrong time. I can’t think straight, not yet, not when she’s lying cold upstairs.’

  Richmond didn’t say that he preferred to catch suspects at such times. It might not be pleasant for either party, but when people were off their guard, questioning them then often brought forth the truth that they might otherwise have kept hidden. It wasn’t happening now, though. She was keeping her lips buttoned as tight as her interlocked fingers, laced together, as though holding her very thoughts in. He was pretty sure Dot Nagle would be able to tell him much more about this family’s affairs than the family members themselves, if she so chose, but she wouldn’t, now. He’d lost her. She vouchsafed no further personal opinions, confining herself to practical details, such as the last date Mrs Austwick had been here – a week before Freya had died.

  It would have to do for now. He’d tackle her again, later. He knew panic when he saw it. And panic like that didn’t go away.

  The sun had gone in behind banking grey clouds as Richmond eventually reversed his car in the limited space left available by the arrival of what he saw to be the undertaker’s hearse. As he emerged from the gates of Low Rigg, he smelt in the air the snow that had been forecast.

  10

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, Polly?’ Ginny inquired searchingly, zipping up her boots. Leon, firm, kind, unshakeable, had stayed on with them while the undertaker finished his grisly business. After Freya’s body had been borne away, Leon had recommended a stiff drink, but both women had opted for coffee and sipped it in a sad silence after Leon’s own departure. Now it was Ginny’s turn to go. ‘You look a bit off colour, I must say,’ she added with some concern, as she stood up.

  Polly smiled. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s been a shock, that’s all. For all of us.’

  ‘You haven’t looked a hundred per cent for a day or two, though.’ Ginny put a sisterly arm around Polly’s shoulders and hugged her.

  ‘I’m OK,’ Polly repeated, with an effort. ‘And with all there is to be done, it’s better if I make a start.’

  ‘If you’d wait until the weekend, we could do it together. It’s a miserable business to tackle on your own, and you know how chaotic Freya’s things are likely to be.’

  Polly was tempted, but resisted it. ‘You’ve got your hands full enough, and since I’m at a loose end, I might as well. You know me.’ As someone who naturally needed plenty of physical activity, getting things moving had always been her reaction to stress. ‘And don’t forget,’ she added drily, ‘I’ve had a lot of experience of doing this sort of thing lately. The thing to do is keep your mind on practicalities. Besides, we don’t want to leave those papers lying around any longer than we have to.’

  ‘Sonia did offer —’

  ‘I know, but she’s better occupied looking after Peter …’

  ‘Poor Sonia.’

  The picture of Peter accepting comfort from Sonia, however, seemed an unlikely one. More probably, he had closeted himself in his study, shut Sonia out, denying her the solace of being needed. But poor Peter, too. Their mother’s death had been such a body blow to him. Not only her dying: the fact of his own absence from her bedside was weighing heavily on him, he was wearing the guilt for it like a hair shirt.

  It was a terrible thing when death, rather than drawing together those who were left, tore them apart, Polly thought. Dissension had already arisen. Why hadn’t they interrupted his meeting with an urgent message? he’d demanded passionately, refusing to believe that they hadn’t appreciated how ill Freya really was. Maybe he had some justification for feeling upset, maybe they should have persisted until they reached him. He and their mother had always been so much in accord, he’d always been the favoured one. Polly didn’t really like to admit that maybe they hadn’t tried too hard to get him because Peter, despite his calling, would have been no use at all to any of them. He’d always gone to pieces in a crisis.

  ‘There’s not a lot anyone can do to help Peter, there never has been, he doesn’t encourage it,’ Ginny said, firmly putting him aside, confident in her elder sister knowledge of her brother. ‘He’s his own worst enemy, we all know that.’

  But Polly had lately felt she didn’t know anything about her brother at all. They hadn’t been really close, even as children. He’d never had much time for young sisters, which was normal enough, but that apart, he’d always been introverted and dreamy – though not moody and totally withdrawn into himself, subject to outbursts of rage as he was now. Ginny had been closer in age to him; she’d mothered him and stood up for him, but even she had never understood him.

  What had happened to all that artistic promise he’d shown as a young man, before he’d astonished everyone who knew him by throwing it all away to enter the Church? Though perhaps no one should have been surprised at that. He’d always been inclined to – self-righteousness, she supposed. Actually, a bit of a prig! But such a dramatic reversal had been so unexpected. Mind-boggling, really. If he’d suddenly found a vocation, that might have been understandable, but if he had, it was not obvious. Certainly, it had brought him no joy.

  Ginny stood up and walked to the door. ‘OK then, love, do what you can here, and don’t worry about Harriet. I’ll pick her up from school with the twins. You’ll come down later? No silly ideas about staying here the night?’

  Polly was more than willing to promise that, having no wis
h to stay here alone, with shadows and ghosts at every corner. Philip didn’t count. He’d shut himself up with his music, deaf to everything else, his usual way of coping with any kind of stress. So Polly promised. ‘And Ginny – I’m sorry. Maybe Leon was right and I shouldn’t have said anything. Me and my big mouth.’

  ‘Forget it – but just don’t say any more. Not until we know.’ She flipped a big black wool serape around her shoulders, gave Polly a quick hug before settling into her low-slung car, swinging her elegantly booted legs sideways. Polly watched her drive away. Ginny, so dependable and sensible, the elder sister, the calm centre of this unstable family. Wishing she too could compartmentalise her feelings so successfully, she went to make herself a mug of coffee and took it up with her to her mother’s bedroom, determined not to put off the task she’d set herself, otherwise she might not start at all.

  It took a positive act of courage to push the door open and enter her mother’s room, to force back the notion that Freya would still be there, in the least forbidding, the best room in the house – beautifully proportioned, with a low ceiling and a long row of mullioned windows which gave a wide panoramic view right over Steynton to the moors on the other side of the valley. A huge, chilly room nevertheless, unless warmed by the large capacity electric fire set on the old hearth, which Freya had kept constantly turned on to augment the barely adequate and wildly erratic heating system. Polly switched the fire on. Beautiful as it was, this room had always dampened her spirits and now, with the chill of her mother’s last hours still laying cold fingers along her spine, she welcomed the heat as much as Freya had done.

  As children they’d never been encouraged to come in here. Nor really wanted to, Polly thought sadly. Freya hadn’t ever been the kind of mother to snuggle up to in bed, while she read them stories. The only times when they were tolerated here at all were when the collection of clothes with designer names were taken out for their occasional airings, to be shown off – most of them dating from the fifties and no doubt now worthy of places in a museum – to look at, to admire, perhaps to touch, but never, ever, to play with as dressing-up clothes, as little girls loved to do.