‘Attacked? But how dreadful. For him – and for his poor wife,’ Deborah added, her soft brown eyes sympathetic.
‘I wouldn’t think too much pity’s needed there,’ Kay returned bluntly. ‘I dare say she’ll be glad to be rid of him. Now don’t look so shocked, darling, it’s what everyone who knew them will be thinking. Downtrodden isn’t the word for Lily Aston. The only one who’s upset is that woman in his office, Eileen Gerrity. Admit it, he was an awful rotter, you know.’
‘Your Uncle Osbert never seemed to think so.’
‘Didn’t he? I’m not so sure. Aston traded on the fact that they’d been together in South Africa, and he’d saved him from a bullet or whatever it was he did, and I suppose that did make for some sort of bond, but I never got the impression that Uncle really liked him.’
‘Hmm.’ Deborah adjusted her spectacles and picked up the sewing she was engaged on, a peach crêpe de Chine slip she was trimming with coffee-coloured lace, intended as a gift for Margaret for her trousseau. There were rather daring French knickers to match: modern girls like Kay and Margaret laughed at the idea of Directoire knickers with elastic round the legs. Deborah was not sure that she wasn’t just a little shocked … even she, who wore whatever clothes she felt like wearing, regardless of what anyone thought.
‘That’s a very expressive hmm, Aunt Deborah.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be. Your uncle …’ She stopped and then went on, ‘Whatever Arthur Aston was or was not – well, Kay, violence against anyone is appalling.’ After a moment she added, ‘What a dreadful thing for Mrs Aston. I think I must go and see her. And we must ask the vicar or Symon for prayers to be said for her husband in church.’
Kay rolled her eyes. ‘I always suspected you were a saint, now I know you are. Aunt Deb, that man’s been persecuting you for months!’
‘Pestering yes, not persecuting. There’s a difference.’
‘All the same.’
Deborah remained silent, putting a hand up to tuck a tendril of her untidy grey hair back into its pins while Kay, glass in hand, stared out through the open window over the long garden, still and quiet, that had once been her aunt’s delight but was not as well cared for now as it had been. Soft scents of spring wafted in. Dusk was beginning to fall and the daffodils under the trees showed like pale, sentinel ghosts. A blackbird began to sing.
‘Did it ever cross your mind, Aunt Deb, that it might, just possibly, have been better to do as Aston wanted? If you had gone along with the uncles and agreed to sell the Hadley Piece premises to him, you could have moved out of here and bought yourself a nice, modern little house. You still could, you know. This place is far too big.’
‘But when you have your own practice, it will make an ideal doctor’s house – room for a surgery and waiting room and everything. Unless, of course, you and that nice young pathologist … Donald Rossiter, isn’t it—?’
‘Oh, I’ve no time for all that,’ Kay said, brushing the remark aside. ‘Don’t sidestep, darling. All right, I won’t push it, but I just wonder why Aston wanted that old horror of a building so much?’
The premises on Hadley Piece, in effect a large, ugly warehouse, and one of the properties originally acquired by old Huw Rees-Talbot for the fairly substantial rent it brought in, had come down to Deborah and her two brothers. Out of use as a warehouse for several years now, Arthur Aston had been angling to buy it, having outgrown the two separate Henrietta Street buildings and needing larger premises in order to bring them together to – what was it he had said ? – to rationalize his business. Hamer had been willing enough to sell and Osbert, reluctant for some considerable time, had eventually come round to it just before his death, but it had needed Deborah’s agreement too and she had steadfastly refused to put her signature to the document which would enable the purchase to go through.
‘He said he needed to expand, Kay.’
‘I know what he said, but now is hardly the time to be thinking of expansion. I suppose he thought he could buy it cheap and hold on to it until better times arrive.’
Deborah opened her eyes very wide and said calmly, ‘No. That was what he wished me to believe – about expanding, I mean – but he only wanted it to knock it down.’
Kay put her glass on the table and stared at her aunt. ‘You surely haven’t any sentimental attachment to that gruesome old eyesore? Anybody with any sense would be glad to see it razed to the ground.’
Deborah laid aside her sewing – it was getting too dark to see – and contemplated what was left of her sherry. ‘My dear Kay, those new houses that the council have built on what they’ve christened the Walnut Hall estate … that’s very satisfactory, but more land will soon be needed if we’re to believe Councillor Daley’s mayoral promises to provide three hundred new homes in Folbury—’ She broke off. ‘Oh, drat that squirrel! Stealing the bird food again!’ Jumping up, she rushed to the open window and clapped her hands. The squirrel remained motionless for a split second, then swung like a trapeze artist to the branch of a nearby tree, poured itself down the trunk and disappeared.
Deborah resumed her seat, switching on a lamp as she did so. The room blossomed and the garden receded into darkness while into the quiet space came the vibrant chimes of the Holy Trinity church clock. ‘Now why,’ remarked Kay as its echoes ended, ‘didn’t that occur to me? That Aston didn’t want the warehouse but the land it stands on? And also that you,’ she added, smiling affectionately at her aunt, ‘are holding on to it until the council wants to build more houses?’ People were always doing that, herself included, underestimating sweet Aunt Deborah, who was really quite sharp, and could summon up an equally sharp tongue, too, when the occasion warranted it.
‘Unlike Mr Aston, though, I shall see it’s sold at a fair price.’
‘Not, I hope, at lower than the market value. That would be so like you, Aunt Deb, but not a good idea.’
‘There’s very little spare money in the municipal kitty for new council housing,’ Deborah answered evasively, fingering the long, old-fashioned rope of amber beads round her neck. ‘But I wholeheartedly support the need for them. I hear they are marvellous. Three bedrooms, electricity and a bathroom! Ask Maisie Henshall what her sister thinks about living there. After a two-up and one-down in Arms Green, three children and a husband out of work, it must seem like a taste of heaven.’
Heaven to Deborah Rees-Talbot, when she was a girl, had always seemed to be a matter of finding Mr Right, living in a nice house and filling its nursery with children. After all, what more could any girl hope for, however clever she was? And she was clever, she knew that without boasting, much more so than her sister Caroline, and at least as clever as either of their brothers. But whereas the boys were sent away to school to learn Latin and Greek and so on, she and Caroline were left at home to be taught by a governess who knew less than Deborah herself, she discovered as she grew older.
It came upon her in later life that other women of her age and class had managed to overcome the same sort of restrictions and gone on to work at all manner of things – but they had been of a different nature to Deborah, not so naturally compliant and with perhaps more courage. And somehow Mr Right had never appeared on the horizon.
When the South African war was over, her brother Hamer’s regiment had been sent to India, where he was in fact destined to serve for most of his army life. Her younger sister Caroline was married with a small daughter, and Osbert was also married by then with a son and another baby on the way, living in the old family home, Alma House, which Deborah herself had never left. Even more than usual, she had felt her life was without purpose, a maiden aunt, not exactly an embarrassment but certainly de trop, in her own eyes at least.
So that when Hamer wrote to her and encouraged her to join him in India, she had been unable to resist the spirit of adventure stirred in her by the idea. When she arrived, it wasn’t the heat and dust, the snakes and the mosquitoes, the relentless sun, the monotonous rains or the constant battle agains
t infections and upset digestions that brought disillusion; it was the knowledge, imparted to her by way of a joke, that she was thought of as just another girl in the hordes of nicely brought up young women who regularly went out to India expressly to catch a husband – the Fishing Fleet, as they were derisively known.
The Fishing Fleet! She was outraged, even though she could not in all truth have denied that at the back of her mind, if unacknowledged, had been the thought that she might at last have met Lieutenant or Captain Right out there. In her contacts with those other young women who had come out to India, some hopeful, painful in their determination to please, others hard-eyed and determined – and especially when she met the men who were on the look out, stationed out there without a woman – her disillusion was complete. She had taken the next available boat back to England and Folbury, knowing she was being tagged with the even more insulting and utterly degrading term: Returned Empty.
But the experience had at least taught her the value of independence, and she had not returned to live at Alma House. With the money left to her by her father she had set up her own household here in Parkside Crescent, a tranquil, tree-shaded curve overlooking the municipal park. It was a very pleasant location, the house was pretty, and at last she began to live as she wanted to live. She began to take an interest in the affairs of the town and became a pillar of the congregation at Holy Trinity. At home she lived in a state of mild disorder, doing a little painting and becoming renowned for her precise and expert needlework, much of it for the church. She dressed for comfort in the old-fashioned clothes she had once packed away, in roomy skirts and hats with large brims from under which her sweet face smiled and her hair straggled. She gardened and also learnt to cook. But none of it made up for the one thing she longed for: a child of her own. A husband, she had firmly decided after meeting those who might have been available to her in India, she could absolutely do without.
Hardly a day passed that she did not look in on the motherless new baby, little Margaret, to make sure she was being looked after properly by the nanny Osbert had procured, but it wasn’t the same as having a child in her sole care. She had never envisaged her dearest wish would very soon be granted, particularly not in the way it was, when her sister Caroline had died suddenly and tragically of pneumonia, leaving an only child with a father who proved himself totally unable to cope. The shock of his wife’s death was too much for Jack Dysart, always a weak character. He had thereafter walked through life in a daze until one day he stepped out into the road without a glance either to right or left, straight under the feet of the big shire horses pulling a loaded open charabanc on a works outing to the races in Worcester, and was killed immediately.
And that was how little Katherine had come into her life, where she soon emerged into a forthright little person with a bright, quick intelligence. Determined that Kay, as she soon decided to call herself, would not be left in the same position as herself, it became her mission in life to see to it that the child had a sound education, and when she announced her wish to become a doctor, Deborah had done all she could to encourage and support her.
Eight
Inspector Waterhouse had returned from his daughter’s wedding, not pleased to find Folbury police station buzzing with excitement and its formerly leisurely pace revved up several notches, a murder having occurred and the enquiry being well underway, a detective inspector previously unknown to him installed as the investigating officer, and all without his permission. On the small side for a policeman, with a toothbrush moustache, Waterhouse liked the sound of his own voice, but this time he had to listen, inwardly fuming, while Reardon brought him up to date. But Waterhouse was a conscientious police officer with long years of service behind him, and he was smart enough to realize that it was in his interests to be cooperative in the present circumstances. At that moment, the investigation hadn’t warranted much more than a couple of his uniforms to do the house-to-house canvassing on Henrietta Street and so on, and if it could be kept that way, without Reardon calling for a team of detectives from Dudley, that was all right by him. With as good grace as he could muster, he put what resources Folbury had to offer at Reardon’s disposal and decided to make the best of it. Afterwards, he made up for it by chivvying everyone around. And that included sending Joe Gilmour out to interview Lily Aston for the second time.
Lily wasn’t in mourning black that day, though she had on her best dress, a dark red marocain with a biscuit-coloured, self-embroidered modesty vest pinned into the vee neck. No apron or dust-cap, never mind that it was Tuesday morning, her day for doing upstairs. When they first moved here, up-and-coming as they were, Arthur had insisted they employ a maid-of-all-work, but after so many had packed their bags and left, Lily had taken on the housework herself. She preferred it that way; she wasn’t used to servants and in fact she enjoyed keeping her own house sparkling and polished. And besides, such a routine filled days that otherwise dragged on forever. On this Tuesday, however, the bedrooms remained unswept and undusted, while she sat defiantly downstairs in the front parlour in an easy chair with a pot of coffee and two chocolate biscuits on the table next to her. She wasn’t altogether sure whether she liked coffee, not even with plenty of milk and sugar. Arthur would never allow it, said he hated the smell. He liked a strong brew of Lipton’s Indian tea, so they had always drunk that. But Arthur wasn’t here now.
She nibbled on a biscuit and sat back, contemplating her crossed feet raised up in front of her on a pouffe. Her shoes were round-toed black leather, low-heeled and roomy, with a single bar across the instep, and she regarded them with loathing. They’d never been fashionable and now they were showing their wear. They seemed to sum up everything about her life. They were why she was going to buy new ones this afternoon – the smart, lizard-skin pair with Louis heels and a T-bar she’d coveted in Rayne’s shop window for weeks – and risk what they might do to her bunions. She would buy them after her visit to the hairdresser’s, where she’d booked for a marcel wave, expensive and daring though it had seemed when that girl from the newspaper had first suggested it to her. She’d warned Lily it would require frequent visits to keep up with it, but she must have guessed that anything would be worth not having to screw her hair up every night into uncomfortable metal curling pins which, no matter how she tried, made it tight and frizzy. She wouldn’t have thought of it herself, but it was true what Judy had said: it was time she looked after her own interests.
She took another determined sip of coffee, pulled a face at the unaccustomed bitter taste, then leant back luxuriously in the chair. She was no longer a drudge, a skivvy. Free at last!
Then – oh, drat it, there she went again, overcome by that feeling of guilt. Her new-found confidence wavered. Free … for what? Why was she doing all this – or more rightly, who for? Who was going to care, now, what she looked like?
Unaccountably, the tears began to roll. She had never imagined freedom would feel like this. She kept hearing things: Arthur’s heavy tread on the stairs, his snores during the night. She saw him in his long combinations doing the morning exercises he’d never failed to do since leaving the army, folding his trousers at night and putting them under the mattress (an old army trick) before she was allowed to get into bed – though she’d often had to press them again to his exacting standards next morning.
He’d made her life a misery with his hectoring and bullying, his long, moody silences. Although they were married, they shared nothing except a bed, and that she preferred not to think about. She’d longed to be rid of him, prayed for it every single night. She’d thought of leaving him, only for so long she’d had nothing to make that possible, no money and nowhere to go. And now I have money to spare but … oh, drat this – blubbing again!
One thing I do know, though, I don’t miss you, you old devil, she thought robustly, blowing her nose. But something, some glimmer of hope that had entered her life not so long ago was gone, gone for ever. For perhaps five minutes, she had glimpsed a future
where even the previously unimaginable might be possible—
A knock on the front door startled her and nearly made her spill the coffee. Visitors were rare at seven, Cherry Avenue. She sprang up and peered through the lace curtains. The police! That Sergeant Gilmour again. Hastily mopping her face with her handkerchief, she went to answer the summons.
The first thing Joe noticed when she let him in was that she’d been crying, poor woman. He’d met her before, when they came to break the news, and she hadn’t shown much emotion then. Probably delayed reaction. She stood aside to let him pass her awkwardly in the narrow hall, crowded with unnecessary furniture and dominated by a coat-and-umbrella stand laden with a selection of coats and hats of various kinds – except, of course, for the bowler Aston had been wearing when he was killed; that was still being held by the police. She went before him into the front parlour, just as overfurnished as the hallway, where everything was polished and maintained to such a high degree of cleanliness it made Joe feel as though he ought to have been disinfected himself before setting a foot inside. It was a dull room with varnished brown paintwork and faded, leaf-patterned wallpaper, but there were a lot of cushion covers and chair-backs in startlingly bright crochet-work. A basket sat on the floor next to a chair, filled with a rainbow medley of wools.
After they entered, she stood in the centre of the room; nor did she invite him to sit.
‘What do you want?’ she asked ungraciously. ‘I already told you everything I could last time you were here.’
He trotted out the usual response to that. ‘We’re following a new line of enquiry, Mrs Aston.’
She put a hand to her scrawny chest. ‘What do you mean, enquiry? There’s nothing else to enquire about as I see it. You don’t have to enquire about an accident, do you?’
‘Well, yes, we do. We have to know how it happened. To make certain,’ he added carefully, ‘that it was an accident.’
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