Skeleton Key

by Robert Richardson

  Tess stiffened as an angry bitterness entered Dunford’s voice.

  ‘The night before the ceremony, they heard her screaming in her room for hours,’ he continued, and it was as though the tragedy had just happened. ‘Then she stopped. In the morning they found she had torn her wedding dress into strips and woven them into a rope and hanged herself. Only her mother’s pleading allowed her to be buried in consecrated ground. Her father refused absolutely to place her in the chapel, although given the influence of the Pemburys that could probably have been arranged. For Christ’s sake, they were prepared to arrange everything else in her life for her.’

  Dunford turned to look at Tess and the moonlight caught the anger and sorrow staining his face.

  ‘Her mother kept the note she left and it’s still in the archives. All it said was, “I cannot do my duty”.’ He sighed as Tess looked at him with a questioning frown. ‘No, you don’t understand. Very few people do. When you’re born into a family like mine, duty is the iron they put in your soul. There’s a terrible fear that our citadels will crumble if one of us doesn’t obey. That’s what killed Susannah.’

  Tess had to stop herself from mocking him, reminding him that it was now the late twentieth century and women had the vote. Dunford was rational and intelligent—and now tormented by something she could not understand.

  ‘That was more than a hundred years ago,’ she gently reminded him.

  He smiled without humour. ‘They have a saying in Old Capley that when you walk through the gates of Edenbridge Park you should put your watch back two hundred years. It doesn’t matter how up to date we are in some ways—running the estate with computers, making videos to show to potential tourists in America—certain things simply never change. The first thing I can remember being told as a child was that one day I would be Lord Pembury. Ever since, it’s been constantly hammered into me that I have no choice about it.’

  ‘Yes you have,’ objected Tess. ‘You could refuse the title. Others have.’

  ‘It’s happened with a few minor titles,’ Dunford acknowledged. ‘But not in one of the really ancient families like mine. The only thing that it’s like is being brought up as a devout Catholic. You can reject it as much as you want…but on your deathbed you beg for a priest. When my father dies, I must take the title and pass it on to my own son.’

  ‘And some people would envy you,’ said Tess. ‘A beautiful home, money, a privileged lifestyle. There are worse fates.’

  ‘Yes, I expect there are. But those who envy me don’t have to pay the price—and there always is a price. It’s called duty and it comes before everything else.’ Dunford gestured towards the grave. ‘It killed Susannah.’

  A burst of sound suddenly surged over the wall as the party guests raucously joined in the chorus of the most inane pop song. Whooping, half-drunken voices were mixed with the screech of party whistles and the explosion of balloons. In another world of St Barbara’s silent, grey churchyard, Tess sympathetically leaned forward and kissed Dunford’s cheek. She could feel the anguish surrounding him, even though she was unable to comprehend it. But what confused her most was why he had decided to reveal something so private and painful of himself to her; she was convinced that had not been his intention when he had taken her out to the church.

  5

  With her hair wound in two tight coils against her ears, Joanna York looked slightly old-fashioned, like a telephone operator left over from an old black and white film, but was at least becoming increasingly animated. Maltravers, who had found her standing on her own in one of the quieter rooms of the house, had persevered after several false starts to their conversation—she had seemed almost petrified when he had first approached her—then had chanced to ask her something about the history of Old Capley and a completely different woman had emerged. She was well-informed and as she talked, prompted by only occasional remarks from him, her confidence grew. For nearly twenty minutes he found her entertaining, even witty company, making shrewd and faintly caustic observations on various past worthies of the parish and holders of the Pembury title. Suddenly she abruptly stopped as if embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised hesitantly. ‘I’m…I talk too much sometimes.’

  Maltravers sensed that a lot of barriers had dropped sharply back into place and had spotted her apprehensive glance behind him just before she stopped speaking. He glanced round and saw that her husband had entered the room.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said and was gone. Maltravers watched her walk straight over to York as if his very appearance had been an unspoken summons and raised his eyebrows disparagingly. He found such submissive behaviour unhealthy, particularly in a woman who clearly had a personality of her own, however stultified it may have become.

  The party had changed into its after-midnight gear; about half the guests had left and the ones that remained were slowing down. Maltravers strolled out to the door leading into the garden as Tess and Dunford walked back towards the house.

  ‘We were just about to send search parties,’ he remarked.

  ‘Sorry. I’ve been showing Tess the family vault,’ said Dunford. ‘I couldn’t see you around anywhere or you could have come with us. I hope you don’t mind.’

  Tess’s eyes flickered warningly, cutting off any comment Maltravers might have made.

  ‘Not in the least,’ he replied equably. ‘However, Luke’s been wondering where you’d got to. He was upstairs in the study when I last saw him. Said he wanted to talk to you about something.’

  Dunford looked uneasy. ‘I expect I’d better go and see what he wants…You’re not leaving yet, are you?’

  ‘Not for a while. It’s a very good party…and I want to dance with Tess.’

  ‘I’ll see you shortly then.’ As Dunford walked past them towards the hall, Maltravers looked at Tess closely as she watched him go.

  ‘Another drink?’ he suggested mildly. ‘There still appear to be copious gallons left.’

  She nodded absently. ‘Yes, please…That was all very strange.’ She turned and smiled at him. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t realise how long we’d been gone. You weren’t worried, were you?’

  ‘In the circumstances, there was hardly anything for me to worry about, was there?’ Maltravers raised his eyebrows, blandly interrogative.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Maltravers looked surprised that she did not understand him. ‘Don’t be obtuse, darling. You were perfectly safe with Simon. Surely you knew that?’

  It still took her several seconds to realise what he meant then she closed her eyes and tapped her fingers against her forehead as though trying to send a message through to her brain.

  ‘Of course!’ She shook her head, reprimanding herself for her lack of perception. ‘You stupid cow! When did you know?’

  ‘It crossed my mind when they arrived together,’ said Maltravers. ‘When I spoke to Luke a short while ago I was certain.’

  ‘Then…’ Tess frowned as she reassessed what had happened in the church. ‘Then what was all that about? I thought he was going to make a pass at me and at one moment he almost did. What was he playing at?’

  ‘I don’t know, but if you want an educated guess, I think it may be crunch time for Simon,’ said Maltravers. ‘Whatever his personal inclinations are in matters sexual, he’s going to have to change his ways fairly soon. The time is rapidly approaching when he’s going to have to marry and produce an heir. He doesn’t really—’

  ‘—have any choice,’ Tess interrupted, finally understanding a great many things. ‘And that’s what he meant about Susannah. I cannot do my duty.’

  ‘Susannah? Who’s she?’ Maltravers looked mystified.

  ‘Get me that drink and I’ll tell you all about it. Our little trip to the family vault suddenly becomes very interesting indeed.’

  *

  Having failed to make any progress in his conversation with York, Oliver Hawkhurst had indulged in his customary habit of seeing what
sexual action might be available at the party. A woman whose husband had walked out on her after ten years of marriage was offering distinct possibilities. She was overeagerly interested in any man who paid her any attention and was not greatly particular over who she found to occupy the empty desert of her double bed. Hawkhurst was finding it almost embarrassing for matters to be so easy as Dunford walked past them in the hall and went upstairs.

  ‘Actually I never stopped taking the Pill,’ the woman remarked casually, looking at Hawkhurst archly. ‘After all…well, you never know, do you?’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  After that it was only a matter of establishing which front door in Bellringer Street would be on the latch when he discreetly left a short while after she did. His wife and three children were as irrelevant to her as they were to him. Only their motives differed: in her case, a matter of eating when you happen to be hungry, in his the common practice among certain husbands who buttress flimsy egos by deluding themselves that women—preferably younger women—sleep with them because they are irresistible. The woman gave him a lascivious look of promise as she went out of the front door. He was the third prospect she had tried that evening and his smug self-satisfaction would have been fatally undermined had he known that she regarded him as only a marginally better alternative than another night spent alone with Edna O’Brien and a very large gin.

  *

  Dunford hesitated outside the closed door of the study, trying to wade through the emotions that were washing about him. The interlude with Tess in the church had compounded his confusion and the inevitable image of Susan Penrose that came into his mind only made the whole thing a bigger and more tormenting mess. Luke’s refusal to accept the situation by simply turning up at Edenbridge House again had thrown him off balance just as he had thought he was beginning to sort himself out. There were too many pressures, too many complications and Dunford was rocking helplessly between what he wanted to do and what he knew he would be forced to do.

  As he pushed the door open, Norman was sitting at Trevor Darby’s desk holding one of a pair of cricket balls, commemorating some distant and forgotten victories, that rested on small plinths in front of him. He glanced up cynically as Dunford entered then returned his attention to the battered blood-red sphere in his hands.

  ‘And was the lovely Miss Davy satisfactory?’ he asked. ‘You always did swing both ways, didn’t you darling?’

  Dunford closed the door behind him. ‘Nothing has happened with Miss Davy.’

  Norman tossed the ball a few inches into the air and caught it again.

  ‘Wouldn’t she play? Or couldn’t she turn you on?’

  ‘If you’re just going to be crude, Luke, there’s no point in talking to you. If you think I owe you an apology, then I’m sorry that I used Tess to try and make a point to you. You’re going to have to accept that it’s got to finish between us. I’ve told you enough times that I don’t have any choice about getting married.’

  Norman looked at him bitterly for a moment then stood up and crossed the space between them.

  ‘Which is exactly what you told Harry, isn’t it?’ he demanded. Dunford looked away uncomfortably. ‘Oh yes, he told me all about that. He said he believed you until you turned up with me three weeks later. And how long did it last with him? Two years? It’s our second anniversary next month.’

  He was standing so close that Dunford could smell the whisky on his breath as he moved past him and went over to the window.

  ‘All right, it was just an excuse for Harry, but it’s the truth for you.’ He spoke with his back to Norman. ‘My father has tolerated my behaviour up to now but he has made it quite clear that it’s got to stop. If I were to die without producing an heir everything would go to Oliver—and that happens to matter a lot.’

  He turned to face Norman, urgently pleading.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Luke, can’t you see the position I’m in? I don’t have complete freedom about what I do with my life. I’ve even been told who I’m expected to marry. There are only three choices and two of them I can’t stand. It would be exactly the same if I’d spent the last ten years screwing every woman I could find. At the end of it I’d have to ditch them for a wife.’

  ‘Balls, Simon,’ snapped Norman. ‘Your father was over forty before he married, you’re just using this as an excuse. You could play the gay scene for years and that’s exactly what you’re going to do. I know all about that Guards officer while I was away in Hanover. Is he the one you’ve got lined up to take my place?’

  ‘Listen!’ Dunford was suddenly angry with exasperation. ‘I’ve spent the last year trying to come to terms with this. As you so charmingly put it, I swing both ways and I happen to find both satisfactory—it hasn’t just been men in the past year. I’ve sorted out what I want, now get off my back!’

  ‘What you want?’ Norman shouted. ‘You bloody, titled bastard! Do you think this is still the Middle Ages when the Lord of the Manor can have it off with any peasant he fancies? How many of us are there? Ten? Twenty?’

  As Norman screamed at Dunford, there were suddenly three men in the house who wanted to kill him, one for greed, one for vengeance and one for love.

  *

  Half-lit by the flickering disco lights coming through the open French doors, Maltravers and Tess sat on the low wall by the steps of the terrace in the warm darkness. The figures in the room were silhouettes, the arabesques of their lazy movements picked up in a slow kaleidoscope of shadows appearing and vanishing on the walls. Peggy Lee sang the sentimental story of the folk who lived on the hill. The party was fading away like a glowing fire.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Maltravers asked when Tess had finished recounting her confusing visit to St Barbara’s and the tombs of the Pemburys with Dunford.

  ‘That he is very unhappy, that he’s probably still in love with Luke Norman but knows it’s hopeless. The way that Luke looked at me when Simon and I went out of the house together means he’s angry about it. And…’ Tess screwed up her lips as if trying to unravel something. ‘And I can only assume that Simon started out meaning to make a pass at me to…I don’t know. Prove something to himself?’

  ‘That’s possible. But you say he didn’t.’

  ‘No…but I’m sure he wanted to. There was something in his face in the chapel when he looked at me, as though…’ She shook her head in her own confusion.

  ‘As though his life would be so much easier if he wasn’t Lord Dunford—and all that means—and wasn’t gay,’ said Maltravers. ‘It’s perfectly obvious why he identifies with the unhappy Susannah.’

  Tess glanced at Maltravers inquiringly. ‘Why does he have to get married? For God’s sake, Edenbridge House will survive if he doesn’t. It’s been there long enough.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ he replied. ‘Edenbridge represents something, it’s part of a dynastic process. We are dealing with the ancient aristocracy who do not operate by our standards. Lord Pembury cannot understand my sense of values any more than I can understand his. I can’t imagine what it’s really like to have the responsibility of owning Edenbridge House or how important it would be that my son should inherit it. But I can imagine that it might matter a great deal.’

  ‘But if Simon doesn’t have children for any reason, it will still stay in the family. Didn’t you say his cousin is next in line?’

  ‘Yes, but Lord Pembury may not relish the prospect. Simon has been brought up to be Lord Pembury and run Edenbridge in a certain way. Cousin Oliver apparently wants to turn it into a funfair. When you’ve got pictures on the walls of ancestors who could have known Pepys, you have a special perspective of such things. And when you die you leave a great deal more than a suburban semi-detached and a few life insurance policies. You’re caught up in an historical process.’

  He finished his drink and stood up.

  ‘Anyway, if we can’t understand it, there’s little point in speculating about it. It would seem that Simon is now having
to select the next Lady Dunford—which is certainly not likely to be you, my love—and Luke Norman is not best pleased. A fascinating glimpse into the lifestyle of the very upper classes, but nothing to do with us. A last dance and we go?’

  They left their glasses on the wall and stepped into the lounge, two more shadows in the gloom now wrapped in Nat King Cole’s timeless ‘Unforgettable’. The clockwork spring of the party had almost completely unwound from its earlier frantic tension. Apart from the dancers, a group of guests in the kitchen were examining the remaining bottles, a couple on the stairs were earnestly discussing God, a young man had passed out in the lavatory and Joanna York was refusing to dance with a member of the Estate cricket team as she waited for her husband to reappear. As Luke Norman slipped out of the front door without saying goodnight to anyone, Trevor and Evelyn Darby were telling each other it had been a wonderful farewell party. On the floor of the study, Dunford’s dead and sightless eyes were fixed on the ceiling as blood surged from a massive, battered cavity in his head and soaked into the carpet, darkening from vivid scarlet to black.

  Nat King Cole faded away and a very young Sinatra announced that it was a lovely way to spend an evening.

  *

  Alister York found that he could think surprisingly clearly as he looked down at the body. He had certainly not planned it this way, but his mind was able to grasp the situation then race through what would follow, identifying the obvious problems. He even smiled as a particularly clever touch occurred to him, then he unhesitatingly knelt down. It took less than a minute to accomplish what he wanted to do then he paused only briefly to make sure he had made no mistakes before hurrying out of the room and down the back stairs to the kitchen where Trevor and Evelyn Darby were saying goodnight to Maltravers and Tess.

  ‘Trevor!’

  Darby turned, startled by the sharp urgency in York’s voice. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can you come upstairs please? Now.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Alister. The place isn’t on fire, is it?’ York strode across the kitchen, his agitation slicing through the air of tired inertia as people stared at him.