Skeleton Key

by Robert Richardson

  ‘Would you like one of these?’ She sounded very apprehensive about making the offer.

  ‘How very kind,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t expect to be waited on.’

  The girl—he had instantly decided it was unsuitable to describe her as a woman although she appeared to be in her mid-twenties—smiled nervously and raised the plate towards him like a frightened acolyte serving the High Priest. He took a sandwich and she scuttled away before he had time to say anything more, leaving him with an impression of crucifying shyness.

  ‘Hell, that was more like it!’

  The enthusiastic voice of Milton Chambers II burst in upon Maltravers again like a man who has just seen the Grand Canyon for the first time. ‘You and Lord Dunford really took ‘em to the cleaners. Is it always like that? Kinda slow at the start and all the action at the end?’

  ‘Limited over games usually are,’ Maltravers admitted. Chambers grinned at him crudely.

  ‘And you tell me cricket’s got nothing to do with sex? Come on.’

  ‘Mr Chambers, that is heresy and if you repeat it, I must warn you that we’ll have to come over and take Yorktown back,’ Maltravers told him sternly. ‘The great thing to remember about cricket is that it is not a game. It is a morality.’

  ‘Ignore him, Mr Chambers.’ Tess had joined them with Peter and Susan. ‘Gus is insufferable when he gets pompous. Shut up, darling, and eat your sandwich.’

  ‘And very good it is,’ said Maltravers, cheerfully unabashed. He had reached the happy stage of life where embarrassment over his actions was a youthful memory. ‘Although I can’t imagine why the young lady who gave it me seemed terrified that I was going to bite her.’

  ‘Small girl, china-doll face, long black hair, wearing a yellow dress?’ Susan inquired. Maltravers nodded in some surprise through a mouthful of asparagus rolled in brown bread. ‘I thought so. Joanna York. God, I want to shake her sometimes.’

  ‘Alister York’s wife,’ Peter explained. ‘You’ve met him of course.’

  ‘Yes, last night after you left.’ Maltravers had not felt it necessary to observe Dunford’s request to keep the disappearance of Tom Bostock secret to the extent of not telling his hosts. ‘Anyway, why do you want to shake her?’

  ‘She’s so…obedient.’ Susan sounded exasperated. ‘It’s unreal the way she just obeys Alister like a child. She’s a poppet when you get to know her but she makes me furious.’

  ‘Funny thing marriage,’ Maltravers remarked. ‘Some women like being treated that way.’

  ‘Well I like to think that one day she’ll learn better,’ said Susan. ‘It’s grotesque. She’s the only woman I know who doesn’t breathe a word of criticism against her husband, even when she’s with a group of other wives. It’s as though she can’t even talk without his permission.’

  Further comments on Joanna York were prevented by Dunford returning to introduce Lord and Lady Pembury, who had been watching the match from garden chairs set up beneath a canvas sun umbrella. They were accompanied by a man Maltravers did not recognise but whose looks suggested a possible relative.

  ‘A splendid innings, Mr Maltravers,’ Pembury said as they shook hands.

  The twelfth Earl’s manner was bone-deep aristocracy; centuries at the heart of the English establishment creating a demeanour of tangible polite condescension to the lower orders of society, which in his case began with the viscounts. Repeated marriages within a limited circle had laid down the family’s anaemic looks; the blood may have been of the deepest blue, but was probably insipid. He and his wife resembled fine Dresden figures, their delicate physiques reflected in both Dunford and the stranger.

  ‘I just can’t understand Alister,’ Pembury continued. ‘Most unlike him to play a shot like that. Where is he by the way?’

  Everyone instinctively looked round as if Pembury’s inquiry about the whereabouts of his secretary carried the implied instruction to find him; the legacy of generations of having orders obeyed without question.

  ‘I saw him walking back towards the house after he was out,’ said Peter. ‘Probably checking that everything was all right.’

  As the absent York was forgotten, Maltravers observed the young man with the Pemburys, dressed in a smooth, cream linen suit with a mustard-coloured silk handkerchief erupting out of the top pocket. He gave the impression of being totally bored by everything and everyone around him.

  ‘Oh, this is my cousin Oliver Hawkhurst,’ Dunford said. ‘Oliver, Augustus Maltravers. The writer.’

  ‘Really?’

  Maltravers rarely made snap judgements of people, particularly on the evidence of only one word, but he was prepared to make an exception in this case. Hawkhurst had managed to inject disinterest, superciliousness and even a slice of contempt into his reply, and seemed to think that even looking at Maltravers was really too much trouble. Dunford had caught the unmistakable tone and glared at his cousin in undisguised annoyance.

  ‘A distant cousin?’ Maltravers inquired mildly, which was as far as he could go in the circumstances, but he had the satisfaction of seeing Hawkhurst’s sneering face flush with anger before turning away. Dunford grinned and appeared to appreciate the implied insult.

  Hawkhurst remained with his back turned as Lord and Lady Pembury talked to Susan about the baby—it struck Maltravers that she seemed unusually reluctant to discuss the subject and wondered why—and Milton Chambers appeared momentarily uncertain as to whether a potential Lord of the Manor should bow when introduced to a Peer of the Realm and the correct form of address consistent with a great republican heritage. After a few minutes, Dunford and Maltravers left the group as the match restarted.

  ‘I’m afraid cousin Oliver showed his usual charming manners just now,’ Dunford remarked as they followed the umpires out. ‘He’s like that with most people and I find it offensive. I liked your return of service though—that got up his snotty little nose.’

  Maltravers found the remark revealing; in a family like the Pemburys, whose tribal loyalty would rival that of a Mafia clan, overt criticism of a member, especially to a stranger, was almost unknown. Obviously Dunford had very little time for this particular relation.

  ‘Is he really a distant cousin?’ he asked.

  ‘Far from it. After me he’s the heir to Edenbridge. He’s making one of his regular visits to see how I am. It always disappoints him to discover that I haven’t contracted something fatal. Cousin Oliver has an unhealthy desire to get hold of this place and turn it into some appalling Disneyland…Anyway, enough of him. Are you a bowler as well?’

  ‘No, I am not,’ Maltravers said firmly. ‘Stick me out on the boundary where I won’t do any harm.’

  Dispirited by the score amassed against them, the Town side put up a feeble resistance. Alister York made up for his earlier batting error with a thirty-yard throw of pinpoint accuracy to run out their opening batsman and Maltravers amazed himself by taking a flying one-handed catch just inside the boundary rope, falling backwards and thumping to the ground just in front of Tess in the process.

  ‘Remember your age, darling,’ she called out. Maltravers scowled at her.

  The Town’s innings closed more than a hundred short of their target and Dunford led his side off to the delighted applause of the spectators, only the more elderly of whom could remember the Estate’s last victory in the fixture. As the Estate side celebrated their success with the remains of the beer, an odd incident marred the atmosphere when an irate tourist appeared in their midst demanding to see Lord Pembury who had, in fact, left immediately the game had finished.

  ‘We want our money back,’ he demanded, loudly enough for everyone over a wide distance to hear him. ‘It’s bloody disgusting, scaring little children out of their wits.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Dunford murmured, replacing his glass on the table. ‘I’d better see what all this is about.’

  He went across to the man, skinny and aggressive with a good deal of pink perspiring flesh protruding from short-sleeved shir
t and Empire-builder shorts.

  ‘Perhaps I can help,’ he said courteously. ‘I’m sorry that Lord Pembury isn’t here, but I’m Lord Dunford.’

  The aggrieved paying customer looked slightly uncertain for a moment; asking for someone with a title was one thing, being suddenly confronted with one appeared to be quite another.

  ‘It’s your ghost,’ he said grumpily. ‘Frightened the life out of our Sue-Ellen.’

  Maltravers added the child’s name to his personal collection of Darrens, Waynes and Jasons who seemed to inhabit his local supermarket. Spawned, named and dressed out of the television age and with ice cream now occupying a fair proportion of her singularly plain face, she seemed totally recovered from whatever had happened to her.

  ‘There is no ghost in Edenbridge House,’ Dunford assured her father. ‘I don’t know what your little girl…’

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ The mildest suggestion of contradiction had instantly rekindled the tourist’s wrath. ‘We found her screaming the place down.’

  ‘Where was this exactly?’ Dunford asked.

  ‘Over there.’ The man pointed irritatedly to the West wing of the house. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter where it happened.’

  ‘But those are the private family quarters,’ said Dunford. ‘They’re not open to the public. How on earth did your child get in there?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ The man remained pugnacious, although now possibly apprehensive that his child may have trespassed where she was forbidden. ‘We heard her screaming and found her crying in a corridor.’ He decided to support a suddenly shaky case with a second line of protest. ‘We’d already complained when they said the cellar where you keep the skeleton was closed. That was the main reason for coming here. Sue-Ellen was looking forward to that.’

  The party, never stout in the first place, was collapsing rapidly and visibly. His announcement of Sue-Ellen’s morbid juvenile hopes sounded almost pleading.

  ‘Well, I can only suggest that she may have seen a member of the household staff,’ said Dunford. ‘If that terrified her, it seems best that she did not see a human skeleton. I’m sorry if she was frightened, but it really must be your responsibility to look after your own child.’

  Surrounded by witnesses to his own confession that he had been in the wrong in letting his daughter wander unsupervised around the house and his argument about not seeing Tom Bostock turned back on him, the tourist gave instant indications of raising his level of protest to avoid humiliating retreat. Dunford hastily defused the situation.

  ‘However,’ he added, as the man’s face started to go through a spectrum of red as he remustered his aggression, ‘in the circumstances, perhaps your little girl would like a doll from our tourists’ shop. With our compliments of course. Perhaps that will make her feel better.’

  The rush of blood spontaneously dissipated into a reluctant grunt of acceptance.

  ‘Right then. Who do we see?’

  ‘This gentleman will take care of it.’ Dunford gestured to York who was standing nearby. ‘Alister, will you take this lady and gentleman and their little girl to the shop, please? I think she would like one of our Victorian-style dolls.’

  People looked away, hiding their amusement as the little man kept what tattered dignity he could in outmanoeuvred retreat.

  ‘God preserve us from the British public,’ Dunford said feelingly as he re-joined Maltravers and Tess. ‘Well, at least it will get rid of one of those hideous mock-Victorian monstrosities that no one will buy.’

  ‘What do you think she saw?’ Maltravers wondered.

  ‘Certainly not a ghost,’ Dunford replied firmly. ‘That is one thing Edenbridge House doesn’t have. Not even Tom Bostock haunts the place and he’s got more reason to than anyone.’

  ‘Well, she’d have terrified any ghost with that scream,’ Tess remarked as Sue-Ellen’s screech comfortably crossed the increasing distance between them. ‘I wonder what brought it on again?’

  Sue-Ellen, infant and inarticulate, was screaming in terror at the tall, forbidding man who was walking in front of her father.

  ‘I trust you’ll be at the party tonight,’ Dunford said to Maltravers as they walked away from the cricket pitch with the Penroses.

  ‘We’re told it’s part of the traditions of the match,’ he replied. ‘Where is it again?’

  ‘Trevor and Evelyn Darby’s, the enormous house just over the road from us,’ said Peter. ‘Trevor’s President of the Town club. It usually goes on until breakfast time for those who can last the pace.’

  ‘What about you?’ Dunford gestured towards Susan’s body hesitantly, as though somehow embarrassed at the evidence of her advanced pregnancy.

  ‘Oh yes, we’ll be there, Simon.’ She looked down at herself ruefully. ‘Although this year I think I’ll be leaving early.’

  Maltravers noticed that Dunford seemed somehow relieved. It was unlikely that it was because Peter and Susan would be at the party; more likely he was grateful that there had been no repetition of her inexplicable behaviour towards him at the concert the previous evening.

  ‘Marvellous, I’ll look forward to…’ Dunford stopped suddenly, his eyes flashing towards a white MG, driving through the crowds in the park rather too fast and noisily dropping a gear before sweeping round the side of Edenbridge House towards the family’s private entrance. His face hardened and for a moment it was as if nobody else was there, then he turned to them again.

  ‘Anyway, I must be getting back. I’ve got a great deal to do. See you all later.’

  It was not, Maltravers reflected, the politest of withdrawals as Dunford turned abruptly and walked swiftly towards the house. Despite the heat of the day, the MG had not had its roof down and Maltravers had been unable to see who had been driving it, but he or she was clearly not a welcome visitor as far as Dunford was concerned. Watching Dunford go, Susan felt a sense of relief that she had managed to speak to him normally; she was still furious with herself for allowing things to come so dangerously near the surface when he had unexpectedly appeared after the concert. Dunford’s mind was filled with the anticipated difficulties of an angry and emotional encounter with his lover.

  4

  While it did not immediately appear to be one, Old Capley had in many ways reverted to its original existence as a village. Distinctly separated from the New Town by the railway line to London and what had at one time been part of the Great North Road, it had become an official Conservation Area, clustered about the skirts of St Barbara’s which floated high above its rooftops. There was a village gossip, a drunk, even at one time the scandalous suggestion of a local whore, several candidates for the position of resident idiot and a yearly pattern of events around which the social calendar revolved: the Spring Flower Festival at the church, the Conservative Party Summer Dance, Autumn Fair and Christmas Bazaar for the deserving poor of the parish. There was also Trevor and Evelyn Darby’s annual party after the Town v. Estate cricket match which, in its time, had achieved its own legends. At least four marriages, several affairs and two divorces could be traced back to it and an impromptu inebriated attempt at Kent Treble Bobs on the church bells still lived in the memory, as unforgettably as it had once clangingly disturbed the peace at three o’clock in the morning. But this was to be the last party before Trevor Darby took up the position of chief executive of a multinational bank in Saudi Arabia where the average account exceeded the gross domestic product of several Third World countries. Floated on a tidal wave of alcohol and with enough food to solve Oxfam’s global problems for a week, the evening was calculated to strip away all normal inhibitions of English reserve and leave a legacy of thundering hangovers and vague misgivings of half-remembered indiscretions.

  When Maltravers and Tess arrived with Peter and Susan shortly before nine o’clock, nearly a hundred fully paid-up members of the middle classes were concerned with nothing more than endless discussion of their concerns. As they stepped through the front door, the seething
clamour of talk was like a curtain of sound blown into their faces.

  ‘Nine hundred overdrawn and this snotty letter arrives from the manager’…‘For God’s sake, I found contraceptive pills in her bedroom. She’s only fifteen’…‘You can’t just say that bringing back National Service will solve everything’…‘Then he had the nerve to say he’d bring the union in’…‘Of course we feel guilty about it, but comprehensive schools just haven’t worked. The fees go up again next term as well.’

  Weaving like a barrage balloon with faulty controls, Susan was led through to a chair by Evelyn Darby as Peter and Maltravers were joined by some members of the Estate team. Tess stood next to them, irritatedly sipping her first glass of wine too quickly, wondering if it was possible to escape the wretched game anywhere in the house. Surrounding them on the walls of the large square hall immediately inside the front door were photographs of teams long past, statically posed Victorians in moustaches and sepia, the ruffled casualness of the 1930s, the slick Brylcreemed hair of the post-war years. There were framed cartoons of famous players with immense heads on diminutive bodies; an ancient, scarred bat treasured in a long glass case; the county cap won by Darby’s father. Listening to incomprehensible references to leg glances and sticky wickets, Tess looked for any avenue of relief. Strangers regarded her with discreet uncertainty, half recognising the face but either unable to place her or hesitant to approach. She was considering going up to a couple obviously engaged in an excited ‘Do you know who that is? I’m sure it’s…wasn’t she in…you know, with that chap who was in the other thing?’ discussion when the front door opened again and Dunford walked in with his cousin Oliver and a man Tess did not know. As Trevor Darby welcomed them, Dunford smiled at her and she noticed his eyes flashed approvingly up and down her soft green, flowing dress. It was the sort of look with which she was very familiar and was usually followed by a pulling-in of stomachs, a casual discarding of inconvenient wives and a familiarity with little-known but excellent restaurants in town should she ever be free for a quiet dinner with adultery for dessert. The couple, who had just decided to approach her under the impression that she was someone else entirely, looked disappointed as Dunford stepped across the hall and joined her.