by Nicola Upson
‘She’s not posing,’ Josephine said defensively, feeling gullible now for believing everything she was told about Lucy. ‘She’s just in the background. And her dress looks old-fashioned.’
‘How much has a servant’s uniform changed in two hundred years, especially in a country village? I think Hester was having a laugh with your Rose.’
Josephine smiled, embarrassed. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. Or Rose was having a laugh with me.’ It was getting late and, in spite of all their bravado, she did not want to arrive back at the cottage in darkness. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, ‘and I’ve kept you long enough. But thank you, Archie. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll give Bill a call from the hotel now, and see what he can find out. You said you were going back to Scotland?’
‘That’s right. Tomorrow.’
‘Then I’ll telephone you there as soon as I have some news for you.’
‘How’s Bridget?’ she asked, as he walked her back to the car. ‘Have you seen much of her lately?’ By chance, Archie had bumped into someone from his past during a holiday at Portmeirion that summer, an artist called Bridget Foley with whom he had had an affair during the war.
‘Not really. She’s been busy getting ready for an exhibition, and then all this kicked off, so we haven’t had a chance. But we’ll see each other when I’m back in London, I hope.’
‘How much longer are you here for?’
‘Just a few days, then I have an appointment in Ipswich and it’s back home.’ He paused, obviously feeling awkward about something. ‘You won’t say anything about what happened earlier, will you?’
She laughed. ‘Of course I won’t.’
‘Sorry, but I had to ask.’
‘There is one condition, though. When it’s all out in the open, I get to tell Ronnie and Lettice.’ Archie’s cousins, Ronnie and Lettice Motley, were stage and costume designers and two of Josephine’s closest friends. Lettice, in particular, was renowned for keeping her ear so close to the ground that she risked damaging her jewellery, and Josephine relished the chance of trumping whatever gossip they had to offer when the time came.
‘All right, it’s a deal.’
Chummy was waiting patiently outside the restaurant, and Archie showed considerable restraint in resisting another comment. ‘I nearly forgot – I’ve got you a present,’ Josephine said. She reached behind the passenger seat and handed him a book wrapped in brown paper.
‘Don’t tell me – it’s an early copy of Claverhouse.’
She raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘If only.’
He unwrapped the parcel and smiled when he saw the jacket. ‘Mrs Dalloway – how lovely. Thank you, Josephine.’
‘I know you’ve got it already, but you won’t have brought it with you and I thought a vicarious walk around Westminster while you’re here might do you good.’
He smiled. ‘Only you would have thought of that. It’s ridiculous, I suppose, but I do miss London.’
‘It’s not ridiculous at all – especially when there’s someone there you want to see.’
She saw him flush a little, and hoped that Bridget understood how much he was beginning to care about her. ‘Well, we both know how that feels,’ he admitted. ‘So you can borrow this when I’ve finished with it.’
‘I’m far too busy to read, Archie. You keep it.’
He laughed, and was about to extol the novel’s virtues when they were both distracted by a small group of people coming out of a driveway nearby. One of them was the woman whom Josephine had seen earlier with the King. She stopped when she saw Archie, and put a hand on his arm. ‘Thank you for coming to our rescue earlier, Chief Inspector,’ she said, in a soft American accent. Josephine tried to remain nonchalant as she looked at her, and was struck by her pale, smooth skin and wide mouth – an intelligent face rather than a beautiful one. ‘We appreciate it.’
The woman rejoined her friends and Josephine watched them go, amazed that someone whose name would surely be on everyone’s lips before long could pass unnoticed in the street; whoever this woman was, she had turned the head that mattered; for now, though, she might as well have been invisible.
20
It was late November when Josephine returned to Suffolk. The year had moved on without her, and the changes to the garden and surrounding fields were all the more pronounced for their delay. The long summer had finally moved on, and the landscape around the cottage defined itself in a subtle arrangement of greys, drained of all colour by heavy-hanging mists. There was no sign now of the clear, flutelike birdsong that had kept her company earlier in the year, but only the harsh, melancholy cry of rooks; from her bedroom window she could see them playing and bickering in the bare trees, their privacy snatched by the winter months. The village lanes were full of carts taking farmyard litter to be spread on the earth, and the men worked hard in the fields, seizing what time they could from the encroaching November darkness. Josephine caught the drift of their voices through the mist, heard the stamping of horses’ feet in the lane outside, and felt more strongly than ever the urgency of the farming life to which the cottage had belonged for most of its life. When she walked into the village, she was struck by the smallest of changes in the hedgerows and gardens, and her familiarity with the landscape surprised and pleased her. It gave her a sense of belonging.
A month away had helped to clear her mind and banish some of the doubts she had felt when last here. She had dragged Claverhouse kicking and screaming into his middle years, and – although her progress owed more to pride and bloody-mindedness than to any sort of genuine inspiration – she had been able to look Margaret MacDougall firmly in the eye whenever she used the library and report truthfully that the book was on schedule. One night at home had been enough to reassure her that her father was telling the truth about his accident: the most serious repercussion seemed to be a missed fishing trip while he waited for his wrist to heal, and – other than a resentment towards the salmon that continued to swim freely in his absence – his spirits remained high. He was interested in Josephine’s news – at least, in the edited version he received – and encouraging of her plans for the cottage, but he also managed to convey in the nicest possible way that his life would continue in much the same vein whether she was there or not. Her exchange with Jane Peck still smarted, but she put it down to idle gossip and to the familiar mix of spite and self-righteousness that a number of Inverness women carried with them – as vital an accessory in the town as gloves or a handbag, and just as easily acquired. When she visited her solicitor, the subject of her father was carefully avoided, and – having learned that Hester’s accounts were all in order as far as John MacDonald could tell – she parted with Miss Peck on civil, if not friendly, terms.
Her communications with Archie were less reassuring. As far as Scotland Yard was concerned, John Moore had done nothing more serious than peddle materials of a questionable taste. He had no criminal record and nothing on the premises that was known to be stolen, although he freely admitted buying his ‘stock’ in good faith and asking for very little information with regard to its provenance. The onus, as he had pointed out to Archie’s disgruntled sergeant, was on the police to prove him guilty of an offence, which he challenged them to do. As far as the diary was concerned, he had paid cash to a woman who came in off the street; no names had been mentioned, and he had not seen her before or since; when pressed for a description, his memory was conveniently vague, and not even the full Sergeant Fallowfield treatment could come up with anything more specific than ordinary-looking and not dissimilar to the woman who had bought it – a double blow to Josephine which even Archie’s careful paraphrasing could not soften. Hester’s death certificate had proved equally unforthcoming: the doctor had recorded ‘senile decay’ as the cause of death, with neglect a contributing factor, and this was – apparently – consistent with the scenario that Archie had outlined to her. He apologis
ed for not having anything more positive to report, and promised to circulate a list of the other items that were missing from Hester’s collection, but she knew he had done his best with an impossible task: the chances of recovering anything once it was lost to such an underground industry were very slim indeed.
Frustrated by the brick walls that met her at every turn, Josephine resorted to the one idea she had left: she found Tod Slaughter’s address in Who’s Who and wrote to the actor, asking if they could meet to talk about the years he had spent on stage with her godmother. It was a long shot, but Slaughter would know as much as anyone about Hester’s ‘old life’, and could probably identify the woman at the funeral. She received a charming reply just before she left Scotland, affectionate to both Hester and Walter and complimentary of Josephine’s own work; Slaughter would, he said, be only too happy to do as she asked, and suggested tea after a matinee at the Little Theatre, where he was currently in rep. They settled on a date at the end of the month, when she was hoping to be in London to see Marta, and she smiled as she replaced the receiver; the actor’s manner was as extravagant in real life as it was on the screen, and she looked forward very much to meeting him.
In the mean time, she returned to Polstead with a new resolve to look to the future. The cottage needed to be secured and made more comfortable, and there was no question of what her priorities would be. Mr Deaves – junior or senior; he was of an age that could have been either – scratched his head in bewilderment as she listed the changes she wanted made to the boxroom: a new window put in and the window seat replaced entirely, the fireplace opened up and made fit for use, a bath and sink installed, and all the necessary plumbing dealt with. At a loss to see why she would go to such trouble for the sake of the smallest room in the house, the builder launched into a lengthy explanation about drainage and septic tanks, but she cut him off with a promise of continued work into the spring – and confirmation that she did, in fact, have more money than sense. His reluctance to carry out the work in the winter months was reflected in the size of his estimate, but Josephine called his bluff and instructed him to start work as soon as possible. In the end, they agreed that the room – and consequently the fortunes of Deaves and Son – would be transformed by Christmas. It was her one concession to the outside world: mindful of Archie’s warning, she sent Rose a friendly note to postpone their meeting, and saw Hilary only briefly when she collected some bric-a-brac for the next church jumble sale.
The rain arrived on her third night, biblical in its persistence and ushering in days of storm and shadow. Josephine lived a hermitlike existence, packing things safely into boxes to make way for the builders, sorting out her mother’s letters and the Inverness photographs to take back to Scotland with her, while the wind whistled down the chimney and tore at the new curtains, and the cherry trees in the garden strained against its strength. The rain was relentless. Within hours, the thatch was sodden, as dark as slate, and she worked to the sound of water cascading from rain barrels that had never been designed to cope with such an onslaught. In the scullery, where she kept an umbrella to go to the outhouse, a permanent pool of water sat on the herringbone tiles, and she struggled to dry the coal sufficiently to keep the range alight. On the fourth day, the level of the pond rose perilously, then overflowed its banks, and Josephine feared for the cottage, remembering the flooding that Lucy had mentioned in her diary. The lower fields held the water, making it impossible to access the village that way, and – on the few occasions that she braved the weather for supplies – she found Marten’s Lane almost impassable, too, and came back covered in mud, her boots trailing leaves across the floor. Her evening fires were slow and petulant. In the lamplight, the wind-blown bushes outside the window threw moving shadows onto the study wall, giving the photographs of Hester a troubled, restless look that preyed heavily on Josephine’s conscience.
At last, the storms relented and peace returned. Josephine went outside to assess the damage, glad to be able to lift her head and look around without the sting of rain against her face. The wind had beaten down the plants and the garden was full of fallen leaves and other debris that cried out for a bonfire, but it would be far too wet to burn anything for some time. Apart from that, her land seemed to have escaped unscathed and the weather had only intensified the bleakness of what was there already: November was the most depressing time for any garden, Josephine thought; everything was static, held in time in a way that was peculiarly appropriate here, and no matter how hard she looked, the smallest sign of growth and renewal eluded her. It occurred to her as she walked around that flowers died as variously as they bloomed – the graceful fall of a rose petal, the harsh withering of the hollyhock on its stem – and she longed for the spring, when Hester’s garden would surprise her with more gifts than she could imagine. It was a sizeable piece of land, and she and Marta would have their work cut out to bring it round, but it was something that they would both enjoy – the shaping of seasons to set a pattern for the future, a quiet promise of shared years to come that meant more, somehow, than any spoken declaration.
An ash tree had fallen across the pond, and the surface of the water was now a mangle of moss and twisted branches. Josephine walked over to the gate to have a look, relieved that the flooding had not reached the garage and orchard as it had threatened to do. Something caught her eye among the branches – a dark shape floating on the water, close to the trunk of the fallen tree, and she could see that it was the body of an animal. She went closer, hoping that something would tell her she was looking at a fox or even a badger, but foxes did not wear collars and she had never seen a badger with a rope around its neck. The rope was frayed, and it was impossible to tell whether it had once been a makeshift leash or something more sinister, but she knew in her heart that the body was Hester’s dog, and he had obviously been in the water for some time. Josephine had no idea how to retrieve him. She only knew that she must manage it somehow, and bury the dog properly in the earth that had been his. With a heavy heart, she fetched a spade from the garage and found one of the old sheets that had covered Hester’s stage sets. She decided to dig the hole first, then worry about how to move the body, and she chose a patch of ground close to the old iron bench, where the dog must have sat in the sun with his mistress, but even that part of the task seemed beyond her. The soil was soaked through and unbelievably heavy, and she was exhausted before she had dug a foot down. There was only an hour or so of proper daylight left; at this rate, she would never get the job done in time, but it seemed irrationally important that Hester’s beloved collie should not spend a night in the open air, exposed to predators, and it was all she could do not to weep with anger and frustration.
‘Miss Tey? Is there something I can help you with?’
‘Bert! Thank God.’ Josephine was so pleased to see him in her garden that she didn’t care why he was there. ‘It’s Hester’s dog – at least I think it is. His body was in the pond, and the rain has brought it to the surface. I can’t . . .’
‘In the pond?’ Bert repeated, interrupting her. ‘What the hell was he doing in there?’
‘I don’t know, but I can’t get him out on my own and he’s got to be buried before it gets too dark to see what we’re doing.’
He put a hand on her shoulder, and spoke in a gentle voice. ‘Leave him to me. I’ll take care of it. You go into the house and make yourself a cup of tea.’
For once, Josephine didn’t argue about a woman’s place: she had no wish to make a point by insisting on helping with Benjamin’s body. Instead, she went inside and watched from the window as Bert made short work of finishing the grave; he disappeared with the sheet, then returned ten minutes later, soaked to the waist and carrying a bundle in his arms. As he placed the dog carefully in the ground, Josephine was struck by the combination of strength and sensitivity in his manner; no wonder Hester had appreciated his friendship during the years following Walter’s death. He picked up the spade, but she remembered something and hurried
out to stop him. ‘Bert – wait a minute.’ She went into the garage and fetched the ball and blanket that she had found on her first day at the cottage. ‘I didn’t have the heart to get rid of them,’ she explained, and put them on top of the dog’s pitiful body. She waited quietly while Bert filled the grave in, then asked: ‘What do you think happened to him?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Miss. It’s just another thing that isn’t quite right.’
Josephine could not have put it better herself. ‘Did Hester keep him on a leash like that?’
‘Not as far as I know. Mind you, I never saw much of him. She had to shut him in the next room when I called round. He hated visitors.’ The expression on his face suggested that he knew what she was thinking, and that he shared her concern. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what happened now.’
It was hard to tell if he was talking about the dog or about the end of Hester’s life in general, but she felt his sadness keenly. ‘No, probably not. But thank you, Bert. I don’t know how I would have managed that on my own.’
‘It’s no trouble. Happy to help when I can.’
‘Would you like some tea?’
‘I won’t, thank you, Miss, if you don’t mind. I’d best be getting back to the house and change out of these wet clothes.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Nice to see you back, though. And you’ve got the place looking lovely – really shipshape. Anyone would think you were staying.’
Josephine smiled, and let him go. Only later, when her gratitude for what he had done had subsided a little, did it occur to her to question Bert’s parting comment. He hadn’t been over the threshold since she moved in, and she always kept the curtains drawn while she was away; the cottage might look shipshape – but unless he had been inside without telling her, how could he possibly have known that?