by Joan Aiken
It was plain that Miss Culpepper had never been in a car before and, besides being still unstrung with fright, had not the least notion how to set about getting in. The first try ended with her back to front and upside down. Patiently Lucy started again, inserted her limb by limb, shut the door at last, and ran fast round to her own side. But Miss Culpepper seemed to have no more thought of trying to escape.
Switching on engine and heater, Lucy collapsed into her own seat. She had left her door open so that the inside light shone.
“I’ve put your stick in the back; do you want to put on your hat and eyeshade? Look, you can see yourself in the little mirror.”
Obediently, without looking in the mirror, the old lady put on her hat; the shade seemed to be too much for her. Her hands trembled; her eyes had the fixed jerky movements of total apprehension. Quivers passed over her face.
“That’s fine. Now, how about another of these marvellous peppermints? Or I’ve got some apples here—would you like an apple?”
Unexpectedly Miss Culpepper’s eyes focussed on the apple. She put out her hand for it.
“Thank you, dear,” she said faintly. “I’ve always fancied an apple—that looks like a Cox. Always used to have our own—never see one now. That One says they’re too dear.”
She bit into it.
“Do you like music?” said Lucy. “I always listen to music while I’m eating apples—it seems to make them more digestible—”
They sat side by side, eating their apples. It was hard to believe that five minutes before they had been engaged in that grotesque struggle across the shore, which now seemed completely dark, cut off from them by the windscreen.
“Why, hark,” said the old lady. “I know that! It’s a Strauss waltz—isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is!”
Lucy noticed that her companion’s apple was nearly finished. It seemed as if something would be lost when this point of rapport was eliminated.
“Would you like another, Aunt Fennel?”
The old lady shook her head doubtfully.
“Do you want to put your core in the bag?”
“Why do you keep calling me Aunt Fennel? You’ve done it several times.” Suspicion was in her voice, and a quaver of terror.
“Aren’t you Miss Culpepper?” Lucy said gently.
There was a long pause. Then the old lady said,
“Who are you?”
“Do you remember Paul? Paul Culpepper? Your nephew—your brother James’s son? He married a girl called Ann Edwards—remember? I’m his daughter Lucy. So I’m your great-niece.”
“Paul’s daughter Lucy.” The voice was completely detached, as if trying over each word separately for the first time. Another silence fell. But then she went on, very slowly, “Ann brought her over once or twice to see Dill and me, after Paul went to Canada. We used to call her the little shrimpy girl—funny little thing, so skinny and pale, and not a bit pretty, with those crossed teeth.”
For once Lucy did not show her teeth. Instead she turned her face to the window.
“Don’t mind me, Aunt Fennel, but I am crying a bit. I’m not used to having a great-aunt.” After a pause she went on, picking her words with care, but resolutely. “That is—I hope you won’t mind me talking this way, but you are Aunt Fennel, are you—Miss Culpepper? It was your poor friend Miss Howe who died, is that right? Please forgive my speaking about it—but nobody up at Appleby seemed quite clear which of you had died and which had moved away.”
The old lady was silent. Little puckers and twitches ran over her face.
“Dill,” she whispered at last. “Nobody knew how it could have happened. She’d gone to shut up the hens. But she did that every night of her life, never went near the edge of the dene before. Fell down, lay there all night. I’d gone to bed early with a headache. Knew nothing about it till next day. How could I have just slept, while she was dying? Dill?” She began to shake, more and more violently. “Dilly? Dilly?”
Lucy was horrified. “Don’t—please don’t, Aunt Fennel!” She worked an arm round the frail shoulders. “You’ve got to forgive yourself—she’d forgive you like a shot, wouldn’t she now? She’d lived with you thirty years—she loved you. Hush! Stop crying now and tell me where you live, I’m going to drive you home. You’re all cold and damp and upset—you ought to be in bed.”
But the shaking did not immediately stop; Lucy heard a broken whisper.
“That’s why I’m frightened, you see; how do I know it was her he meant to kill? How do I know he isn’t going to come back and murder me?”
VI
Dear Uncle Wilbie,
I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear that I’ve found Great-aunt Fennel Culpepper alive and well. She had moved away from Appleby as she didn’t like to stay on alone in her cottage after her friend Miss Howe died, and she has been living in a boarding-house in Kirby-on-Sea. It is a perfectly dreadful place, run by an old drunk called Mrs. Tilney; you never saw such a dark, cluttered hole in all your life. How they don’t all break their necks every day, goodness knows. Well, one of them almost did the other day, I gather. I’m going to get Great-aunt F. out of there as soon as I possibly can. By good luck somebody—a Mrs. Marsham—has recently opened what seems to be a very decent private old people’s home in Appleby itself and I think I can get the old girl in there; it would be much more suitable and she’d like to be back in her home village if properly cared for. I’ll let you know developments. But a postal strike starts here next week, so you probably won’t be hearing from me for a while. And it won’t be any use your writing to me, as your letter wouldn’t get through.
Please give my best to Aunt Rose and Corale.
Yours, Lucy
Lucy grinned her foxy grin as she stuck down the flap of the air letter, thinking of all the huge gaps she had left in it. The main gap, of course, being that she still had no proof whatsoever that Aunt Fennel was in fact Aunt Fennel and not Aunt Fennel’s best friend. But she was not going to say that to Uncle Wilbie. Nor was she going to confess that the old lady was still far from placing full confidence in Lucy—was still in a very strange state, indeed, of alternating fright and affection, mixed terror, defiance, and little impulses of trust.
It was like dealing with a badly disturbed child who had a high IQ and no education at all.
Another subject Lucy had not touched on was the pictures.
After all, she thought, as long as Aunt Fennel’s alive, Uncle Wilbie has no claim to them—I’m damned if I’ll help him get his paws on them. And if my old girl is really Miss Howe, the chances are that Aunt Fennel would have left the pictures to her, so he still has no claim to them. I wonder if Aunt Fennel has ever made a will? Wonder if old sourface in the bank at York would say.
The third topic Lucy had not mentioned was one she had only skirted around, even in her own mind. Why was Aunt Fennel—call her that, till there’s reason to do otherwise—just why was Aunt Fennel in such a paralysis of fear? For there was no doubt that fear had caused her to leave her beloved home and move away from Appleby; fear had kept her on the move from one shabby boarding-house to another, fear made her conceal her address and confuse her identity. And who was the person, alluded to as That Other One, whom she suspected of having killed her friend? Why did she plainly have every expectation that whoever it was would follow up the first crime by trying to murder Aunt Fennel herself? Was this just an old lady’s dottiness? The paranoia of old age? Or did she really have cause to fear? Who would want to kill an old lady—a harmless old girl in a village at the back of beyond? But then an old lady had been killed . . .
Let’s not make mountains out of molehills, Lucy thought. Old age is accident-prone; like it or not, old ladies do sometimes tumble into streams and die of exposure. It’s probably all just a load of baseless nonsense.
Yes? And what about the village gossip—the wailing gh
ost in the glen calling for vengeance?
Nuts to the village gossip. When people live cut off by forty miles of barren upland, in a singularly unfrolicsome village, their only diversion is inventing ghosts and jumping out on each other. “Where was Lenny Thorpe on Friday night?”
Nuts to Lenny Thorpe too. Anyway the village superstitions and Aunt Fennel’s fears were all subjective, whereas her peril at Mrs. Tilney’s was real.
It had been perhaps half-past seven in the evening when they had arrived at the address in Reservoir Street which Aunt Fennel had at last, with considerable reluctance, divulged.
“Honestly, Aunt Fennel, you can’t walk home, you’re much too tired and upset. And all the streets in this town are just about vertical.”
Reservoir Street turned out to be only two blocks away from Redcar Street.
“I might have come across you any time these last few days!” Lucy said.
“Oh no, dear, because I never go out. But I had to today, you see, to cash the cheque.”
“I’d have found you sooner or later,” said Lucy.
Mrs. Tilney’s, number nineteen, was a two-storey terrace house. Its tiny front garden was almost entirely filled with junk: old coalscuttles, marble-topped wash-stands, curtain poles, and defunct standard lamps. An agile person could just scramble through. Lucy wondered how they managed about deliveries; perhaps nothing ever was delivered here.
“We’ll have to ring,” Aunt Fennel said.
“Doesn’t she give you latch keys?”
“Oh no, dear.”
Lucy began to wonder if the bell worked, but at last the door flew open and a small, print-overalled, white-headed woman stood blearily regarding them.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said at last recognising Aunt Fennel. “Where the heck have you been? You’ll get no supper now, you know; it’s all over and done with long ago. Well, come on in.”
“Are you Mrs. Tilney?” Lucy said.
The small woman’s eyes swivelled round to take in Lucy. She had a pronounced cast, so that her eyes looked in disconcertingly different directions; Lucy addressed herself to the right one.
“Yeah, I’m Mrs. Tilney; who the devil are you?”
“My name’s Culpepper; I’m Miss Culpepper’s great-niece,” Lucy said dispassionately observing the felt slippers, headscarf over curlers, and a sour-sweet waft of gin.
A bleary civility replaced Mrs. Tilney’s aggression.
“Oh, pleased to meet you, luv. Do you want to come in and have a dr—a cup o’ tea? Have to sit in the kitchen, I’m afraid; all the old dears are watching telly in the lounge, there’s no room in there.”
No room anywhere, Lucy thought, edging her way incredulously through four foot square of lobby crammed with bicycle, grandfather clock, umbrella stand, and twelve coats; getting a glimpse of the tiny front room filled to capacity with a huge TV set and what looked like a number of corpses sitting elbow to elbow.
“I guess my aunt ought to go straight to bed; she’s very tired. Do you think I could heat her up some milk?”
“Oh yes, certainly, luv, if we’ve got any milk, that is. If not I’ll just pop round and borrow a cupful from Mrs. Holbrook.”
The kitchen smelt of stale grease and contained four chairs, each occupied by a fat scurfy animal. “I love cats and dogs,” said Mrs. Tilney, surreptitiously helping herself to a teacupful of Booth’s Dry. “They say it’s a sign of a soft heart, don’t they?”
“Oh yes?” Lucy found an egg and broke it into the pan full of blue milk.
“That’s right, luv, make yourself at home; you’ll find a cup somewhere . . .” Mrs. Tilney swayingly made her way to a chair, tipped off the occupant and sat down. “I get so tired, evenings, after looking after the old dears all day . . .” Her eyes closed.
Lucy washed a cup, found a hot-water bottle, filled it from the boiling kettle, and made her way upstairs. She managed not to trip on the trailing vacuum-cleaner lead, dodged round the statue of Venus (who in God’s name had ever brought that into the house?) and wardrobe blocking most of the upper hallway, and prospected on towards a dim light. She found Aunt Fennel struggling to undress by the glimmer of a candle in a small room containing three beds, three commodes, another wardrobe, and a large chest of drawers.
“Here you are, Aunt Fen; I’ve brought you a posset. Let me give you a hand; that’s the way. Oh, you want your corsets under the pillow?”
“Yes, always, dear.”
“Okay; now hop into bed quick and drink this while it’s hot. There’s a bottle for your feet.”
“Oh, dearie!” Aunt Fennel took the cup in trembling hands and sipped; a tear slid down her cheek. “Nobody’s looked after me like this since Dill died.”
“Well, they’re going to from now on,” Lucy said grimly, looking at the hank of towelling which dangled from a nail in the wall two feet away from the flickering candle. “How you haven’t all been burned in your beds I can’t imagine. And as for that old gin-pot downstairs—”
“Oh, Mrs. Tilney isn’t too bad,” Aunt Fennel protested in an anxious whisper. “I’ve been in far worse places than this, dearie! She has a kind heart, you know.”
“Kind or not,” said Lucy, “I’m giving her a week’s notice tomorrow.”
No, there wasn’t the slightest doubt that Great-aunt Fennel would be far better cared for in Appleby Old Hall; hideous it might be, and Mrs. Marsham was not Lucy’s personal cup of tea, but it was clear that she was an efficient organiser and the place was clean and decently run.
Lucy grabbed her hold-all and ran down the stairs of her own boarding-house.
“I shan’t have time for breakfast this morning,” she announced gladly, putting her head round the dining-room door and getting a great greasy waft of bacon, “I want to get to the doctor’s surgery at nine.”
“Bottom of Knapp Street, last house on t’right. Something the matter, luv?”
“No, it’s not me, thanks, it’s my aunt.”
One of Aunt Fennel’s random impulses of confidence had caused her to disclose to Lucy that she often suffered from toothache which her herbal remedies, strangely enough, did little to alleviate; Lucy was determined that before they left Kirby she would find a reliable dentist and have the poor old lady’s teeth set to rights, even if this meant dragging her bodily to the dentist’s chair. Drunken Mrs. Tilney had of course forgotten the name of any dentist but thought her doctor had a list of them up in his surgery.
The last house at the bottom of Knapp Street had the well-worn look that doctors’ houses acquire; following a sign that said SURGERY, Lucy went down a side path to the back. Passing a window she automatically glanced through and saw a sitting-room furnished with a bizarre but pleasant mixture of skeletal modern furniture and opulent oriental draperies; on the walls hung at least eight of Aunt Fennel’s pictures; more, probably, Lucy thought, pressing her nose against the glass in a vain effort to see round the corner. Somewhere not far off she could hear a piano being played rather well and a male voice singing.
She went on to the waiting-room. Nobody else was there but the door had rung a bell; as Lucy looked round her for a list of dentists, Dr. Adnan came briskly in.
Today he was wearing a lemon brocade waistcoat over a flowered needlecord shirt.
“Are you the only patient?” he began, and then recognised Lucy. “We meet again! How delightful. I hope that you have some disease I can cure?”
“I think it highly improbable,” said Lucy coldly.
“Oh, too bad; you are so young to have already an incurable ailment.”
“Look here,” said Lucy, “why did you tell me such a pack of lies the other day? What about your Hippocratic oath?”
“My dear young lady, I told you not a single lie! And the Hippocratic oath has nothing to do with such a case; it does not mention lies.”
“You said you
had never heard of my Great-aunt Fennel Culpepper! And you with one of her pictures in the boot of your car at that very moment—not to mention eight more in your parlour!”
“Ten, if we are to be precise. A very industrious lady, your great-aunt. Would you like to see the others?”
He led the way through an office into the sitting-room, which turned out to be L-shaped; on the wall that Lucy had been unable to see were two more of Aunt Fennel’s pictures. Below them stood a modern upright piano with some manuscript music on it.
“So why did you tell me that you didn’t know Aunt Fennel?”
“A—” he checked her with an upraised hand. “Let us be accurate. I said she was not my patient. Perfectly true. Naturally I had heard of her.”
“Why? Why naturally?”
“Why, my dear girl, because as soon as I went to Appleby and saw some of those marvellous, those miraculous pictures hanging in people’s houses I made it my business to find out who had done them. An old lady, I am told, who has recently moved away to Kirby. They seemed surprised that I find the pictures remarkable; just old Miss Culpepper’s hobby, I am told.”
“So why didn’t you tell me this the other day?” demanded Lucy. “I’m her great-niece, after all!”
Dr. Adnan looked at her inscrutably with eyes as dark as mussel plums. “You took long enough to come and look for her,” he said at last. “How am I to know whether your intentions are good or bad?”
“Why in heaven’s name would they be bad?”
“How should I know? All I know is that something within the last year has given this old lady a bad scare and that she prefers to hide herself in Kirby where, perhaps, her loving relations cannot find her. I am certainly not going to be the one to give away her whereabouts.”