by Janet Neel
‘Much, much better,’ he said, his glance flickering over the Wilson clan who were tactfully avoiding his eye. He ended the rehearsal, and nodded to Bill Westland, who as Principal Establishment Officer also inherited the mantle of President of the Choir and had felt it right to turn up for this rehearsal.
‘Aquarius Choir and friends, I see,’ Bill Westland observed, sotto voce, nodding to the Wilson boys. ‘Good of you to volunteer Charlie – oh, you didn’t? I see. Where is she?’
They were by now in the main entrance hall of the Department. ‘Who is that?’ Westland watched Francesca greeting John McLeish.
‘That’s Frannie’s new boy-friend. He’s a policeman.’
Bill Westland bore purposefully down on them and was introduced to John McLeish. Henry joined the group to say hello and managed to take McLeish aside for a minute. ‘That bad girl had lunch with Hampton yesterday. After I warned her off.’
‘I’d heard. They ate at a restaurant where one of the waiters does a bit for us on the side. Leave it, Henry; I’ll cope.’
‘Is she embarrassing you?’
The hazel eyes flickered. ‘Only a little. I reminded the informant that she was a senior negotiator for the Department and spent her time having lunch with men in the line of business.’
Despite his brave words to Henry, John McLeish found himself unable to cope with the Hampton issue. That evening Francesca greeted him with affection and fell into bed with him with obvious pleasure, and he simply did not feel like disturbing the atmosphere. He stayed the night, as had become a habit, and was eating breakfast with her on Thursday morning when he heard a double blip on the bell, followed by the sound of a key turning in the front door.
‘That’ll be Perry,’ Francesca said, unperturbed. ‘He has a key.’
Perry sauntered in, greeting McLeish without surprise, and made himself coffee, very much at home. McLeish decided to take Francesca back to his flat for the night next time, before he turned into an adjunct of the Wilson family.
‘Frannie, the party. Is Jamie coming or do you have to sing the page?’
‘Jamie is coming. He’s staying with Mum and I’m going round a bit early to do some practice with him. I did explain, didn’t I, John?’
‘You did. I’ve taken late duty Friday instead, so I’ve got Saturday free. I can make time to eat with you on Friday, if you’d like?’
There was a fractional pause, which just caught his ear.
‘Oh damn! I’ve fixed to have a drink at 6 p.m. with a chum who is on the way to Heathrow.’
She picked up both plates to put them into the dishwasher, and he saw Perry look at her thoughtfully under his eyelashes.
‘So it doesn’t fit,’ McLeish said into the silence, calmly. ‘I’ll see you Saturday.’ He felt some wordless communion pass between brother and sister and Perry disappeared upstairs while Francesca came up behind him and wound her arms round his neck.
‘You could come on when late duty is finished. I’m only having a drink for an hour, the chum is catching the 8.30 to Geneva.’
McLeish leant back against her, gravelled for speech. He suddenly noticed the time and realized he was going to be late for the station meeting and had no time to tackle the issue presented to him. Nor very much inclination to, either, he admitted to himself as he got into his car. If she was going to see Hampton on his way to Geneva, what did it matter? He drove away, cursing, knowing it mattered very much.
He was still in a state of indecision on Friday morning, to the point where he was relieved not to be able to speak to Francesca for any length of time. She was on her way in to a meeting and obviously tense. He had arranged for a CID Sergeant at Heathrow to report Hampton’s movements, after a difficult time with his immediate superior who was obviously finding the connection between a possible fraud at Britex and the death of Fireman tenuous at best. Only McLeish’s good record and confidence in his own abilities carried the day, and he came out of the meeting well aware that he had drawn heavily on his credit balance. ‘Just as well you’ve got friends in high places,’ his Chief Inspector had observed irritably. ‘I had to talk to the Commissioner about you the other day.’
McLeish had looked blank. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve no idea. He was asking all about you … moral character, marital status. Are you trying to seduce his daughter, John?’
McLeish had denied all knowledge of any daughters the Commissioner might possess and gone back to work, thinking about Francesca. He would, he decided, have it out with her on Saturday or Sunday. Or sometime. But he was unable to resist turning up at her house after working late on Friday. She was playing the piano as he rang the bell at ten o’clock and greeted him with all the warmth he could have wished, so that he was wholly distracted. He woke next morning, late, to find her quietly getting dressed.
‘John? Darling, I have to go and help my poor mother organize supper for forty for the party; she’ll never manage without me. And practise “My Heart Ever Joyful” with Jamie. You don’t need to be early if it’s difficult.’
McLeish sat up in bed, slowly sorting out this stream of information. ‘I’ll come at seven. Forty for supper? Who are they all?’
‘Mixed oldies — Mum’s friends — plus their children, plus all of us. It’s probably more like fifty, but Mum can’t count beyond thirty. After that it just becomes “many people” to her. I’ll probably have to come back and fetch all my plates.’
McLeish, child of two elementary school-teachers who had never been known to entertain more than six visitors, and that only with enormous strain, marvelled at the confidence with which she expected to deal with fifty. He noted also the indulgence with which Francesca spoke of her mother, as if referring to some dotty blonde rather than the obviously capable Mary Wilson.
It was Mary Wilson who let him in at 7 p.m. that evening and he stopped for a minute, breathing in the smells of food. In a room above he could hear the piano and Jamie’s soaring treble. ‘Do go and listen. Neither of them will notice you. And no, there is nothing left to do.’
He moved quietly up the stairs and into a large living-room, very much the same in design as the one in Perry’s and Francesca’s houses, and like theirs with a grand piano at one end, the lid propped open.
‘Jamie, it’s not a quaver there. Listen.’
James Miles Brett peered over her shoulder at the music. ‘Yes’, he said. ‘From 14 then.’
Francesca played two chords and he started again, the sharp treble like a trumpet in the Bach cantata. They got to the end and smiled at each other in a moment of perfect understanding and pleasure. Jamie moved closer and riffled back through the music. ‘I wasn’t quite right at 11,’ he said. ‘Can you play those three bars again, with the top line?’
Francesca obliged, with the boy watching the music, counting under his breath, then starting to sing, then going back over it, nagging at the phrase, totally absorbed and professional. Francesca, equally absorbed, worked with him on the piano, biting her tongue with concentration.
‘Thank you, Fran,’ the boy said at last, very small and light under the quiff of blond hair. She smiled at him, and McLeish thought with longing of coming home to a wife and child of his own.
An hour later the big room was full of people. McLeish found himself deserted by Francesca, drinking a glass of mulled wine and trying to hold an intelligent conversation with an elderly lady about the Sherlock Holmes Society. He had just listened to her account of last summer’s expedition to Switzerland where members of the Society had dressed up as Moriarty and Holmes and re-enacted the scene at the Reichenbach Falls, and was struggling for some sensible comment, when Francesca appeared and warmly embraced the elderly lady, greeting her as dearest Phyllis.
‘Laddie,’ dearest Phyllis said to her, confusingly, ‘this young man of yours does not appear to have read much of Sherlock Holmes.’
‘Darling, I am sorry. The thing is, he is a real modern detective and may not have that much time for reading fiction. J
ohn, come and see Charlie who longs to talk to you.’
McLeish allowed himself to be led away and placed in the middle of the Wilson boys. Charlie grinned at him. ‘I saw you talking to Phyllis. Mother of Fran’s best friend at school. Did she press you to join the White Boar Society?’
‘Does that have something to do with Sherlock Holmes.’
‘No, no. The White Boar Society exists to prove that Richard III was innocent of the murder of the Little Princes. Phyllis is on the committee.’
McLeish considered Charlie carefully to see if he was pulling the leg of an outsider, but he appeared to be wholly serious. As he arrived at that view, Perry appeared at his elbow with another formidable middle-aged lady in tow. ‘Lady Sybil, this is John McLeish — Detective Inspector in real life. John, the Lady Sybil Cole.’
‘How very nice.’ This particular Lady, McLeish noted carefully was thin and distinguished rather than plump and cheerful. ‘And you are a friend of Francesca’s.’ She considered him speculatively, while he resisted an urge to hide behind the curtains. ‘Dear Francesca. She has given us all a great deal of entertainment over the years.’
Out of the corner of his eye McLeish saw Perry blench, but neither of them was a match for Lady Sybil who extracted ruthlessly the details of McLeish’s background, education and training before drifting away to talk to Francesca.
‘God, I am sorry John.’ Perry was genuinely shaken. ‘I hoped I was doing you a favour — she’s married to some frightfully high-up policeman and was a friend of Mum’s at university. She’s an earl’s daughter, though, and I suppose she does still have the style.’
McLeish looked at him, speechless for a moment. ‘She’s married to Sir Francis Cole? Commissioner of the Met?’
‘That’s right. He is singing the Good King this year.’
‘What?’
‘As in Wenceslas. It’s a tradition. We sing carols later and we always do that one. One of us used to do the page till the twins’ voices broke, and one of Mum’s ancient mates always does the King. This year she has resuscitated this Sir Francis from somewhere and Jamie will sing the page. Fran won’t let him over-use his voice, that’s why he isn’t doing the rest of the carols. Jamie, I mean, not Sir Francis.’
The crowd round them opened, the familiar, diminutive figure of his Commissioner advanced on them, and McLeish found himself coming to attention.
‘Sir Francis, this is Detective-Inspector John McLeish,’ Perry said promptly.
‘Thank you, Peregrine. Would you be good enough to find me a weak whisky with plenty of soda? Come and sit down, McLeish, I’m too old to stand long.’
A passage cleared for them miraculously and McLeish sank uneasily on to a corner of the sofa, the small man perched up beside him. He found himself put through a detailed catechism of his experience in the force, and understood, as his mind recovered from temporary paralysis, that the Commissioner was better briefed than was reasonable on the career of one out of the hundreds of Detective- Inspectors in his command. He saw in the background, just for a few seconds, Mary Wilson watching them consideringly, and very nearly failed to reply to a question, occupied as he was with the revelation that this nice woman, whom her children treated so indulgently, had quietly arranged to take up a reference on him and had gone straight to the top for it.
Peregrine had come back and was hovering with a weak whisky – held at a ten-foot distance, McLeish decided, by the force of Sir Francis’s personality alone. Sir Francis finished his questions and observed, with a needle-sharp sideways look, that he had heard McLeish well spoken of, in particular from colleagues at Edgware Road, then indicated to Perry that he might approach.
‘Sir Francis, I am also to tell you that if you are ready, my mother would like to start the carols.’
‘I’ll come, Peregrine. You’ll be wanted yourself, McLeish.’
Dismissed, McLeish struggled to his feet and arranged himself beside Charlie, as the party swept into the first verse of ‘Good King Wenceslas’.
‘Hither page and stand by me’, Sir Francis sang decisively, revealing a fine bass voice. Jamie, standing beside Sir Francis, came in smoothly as the page. The rest of the party sang the next verse and the clear sharp treble came again, frightened that the night was growing colder and the wind stronger. Another communicator like Perry, McLeish thought, and understood Francesca’s evident affection for this slight, golden child. Like Perry, he made you feel the cold and the wind and the fear. He listened with pleasure to Sir Francis’s bluff, kingly reassurance, much more suited to calming several hundred nervous policemen than one anxious boy.
They all sang two more carols together, then Francesca took over the piano. Jamie sang flawlessly the Bach cantata that McLeish had heard them practising and there was a slight pause before the party applauded. McLeish observed that the Lady Sybil was wiping away tears.
‘Shall we try “The Lost Chord”, laddie?’ It seemed to be Perry who was being addressed but several people agreed cordially, and McLeish backed away towards the curtains, knowing his own limitations.
‘We just accompany Perry,’ Phyllis said firmly to the assembled group, who nodded obediently. McLeish noted with respect that it seemed to matter to Perry not at all whether he was accompanied by a motley collection of family and friends or by the Bach Choir — he sang just as beautifully, and timed the crescendo at the end in exactly the same way.
‘Makes you see the bright angel, doesn’t he?’ Sir Francis observed to McLeish. ‘A stunning voice. Rocks ahead there, though, I would have thought. It’s a lot to cope with, a talent like that.’
McLeish blinked at him, lost for comment, but Sir Francis appeared to have said all he had to say. ‘Time to go home for me, but I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. Or young Miles Brett.’ He collected his lady with one swift authoritative nod, and went over to say goodnight to Mary Wilson.
‘Bit of a golden oldie, that one,’ Perry observed companionably to McLeish, watching as Sir Francis said good-night to Francesca. ‘Not a bad voice at all. Choir-trained, one imagines. Right then, let’s get them all out — I am due somewhere else.’
‘And thank you for giving an old man the pleasure of singing with you,’ Sir Francis said, beaming generally on the assembled Wilsons.
‘What old man is this?’ Francesca was laughing, and Sir Francis smiled at her.
‘A baggage,’ he observed to McLeish. ‘I’ll be seeing you again, young man, I don’t doubt.’ He wheeled himself and the Lady Sybil out of the door, signalling a general break-up of the party. McLeish under Francesca’s direction helped with the clearing up, and not long afterwards managed to get her as far as the door.
‘Where did Perry get to?’ she asked crossly. ‘He ducked the washing up as usual.’
‘I thought he was probably meeting a girl,’ McLeish said firmly.
‘No! Honestly, and with poor Sheena still unconscious.’ She brooded her way down the steps, then remembered her manners.
‘Good night for a run,’ she observed conversationally. ‘Look at the stars.’
McLeish gazed obediently at the bright sky, his attention elsewhere. ‘Who runs with you at night? Perry?’
‘No, of course not. I run by myself. I’m much better than I was, I can do two miles.’ She caught sight of his face. ‘But John, I don’t run in Hyde Park at night, just round my own streets.’
‘Frannie,’ he put his arm round her, ‘there are more than enough villains on the streets where you live to do you a lot of damage.’
‘Oh nonsense! I’ve lived here or hereabouts all my life and I’ve always gone out at night by myself.’
‘I’m a policeman, remember. Night after night we get girls in the station who have been robbed or raped or frightened. Why should you be immune?’
She hunched her shoulders, obviously deeply irritated. ‘I’m hardly a seven-stone weakling, and I don’t hang around when I run. You told me yourself that the average drug addict isn’t strong enough to rob anyth
ing more ambitious than a little old lady. And a rapist can surely find an easier target than me sprinting through the streets, seductively dressed in Charlie’s old tracksuit.’
‘Rubbish.’ He tightened his arm round her shoulders, but she pulled away from him. He looked at her, amazed. ‘Frannie, don’t be so bloody silly — I’m only trying to look after you.’
He pulled her towards him and kissed her, but she was still looking thunderous so he decided to leave the subject and wait for her native common sense to reassert itself. ‘I’ll never forget Jamie singing the Bach,’ he said, and was relieved to see her relax and smile.
‘He’s lovely.’
‘He’s very fond of you.’
‘And I of him.’ She smiled to herself, her face soft.
‘You could marry me, you know. We could have a Jamie of our own.’
He had spoken on impulse, carried away by the memory of her and Jamie practising in perfect understanding in her mother’s livingroom, and he glanced anxiously down at her to see how she was taking the idea. In the sodium light she was pale and pinched and plain, staring straight ahead at some spiritual desert.
‘I can’t,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘Never again. We were so happy when we first met, and then somehow, very quickly after we married, it all went dark and he hated me, and we were enemies. I mean, I hated him too.’
‘Wrong man,’ McLeish said, steadily, holding her firmly. ‘I’ve met him, remember. He put you down; he needed to make you feel bad for some reason. And he is doing the same to the next girl along.’
She still would not look at him but some of the tension eased. ‘Possibly,’ she said carefully. ‘But what was so awful was that I was stuck in the situation. I couldn’t do anything else. And if there had been children I could never have left. Not fair on them.’
McLeish considered her serious, driven face. ‘I’m nicer than he is.’