“God, Agatha, you might make an effort! Alphonse Henderson.”
“What kind of sadist would name a child ‘Alphonse’? I’ll bet you any money he’s an absolute pillock. Just what you’d expect Lucy to drag home.”
“Try to be nice. Father is in the barn. He’s going to need to be cleaned up before tea, or Lucy will never forgive him. I’ll go.”
When Mary was gone, Agatha sank into a chair and pulled her white skirt up over her knees to cool down. The air seemed suddenly close and thick. She was certain there would be a storm. Lucy was so intent on making an impression. What did it matter? Lucy would marry and go off to Yorkshire or wherever the blazes Alphonse came from, and the rest of us will stay on, sinking quietly into spinsterhood. She watched the river through the trees at the bottom of the garden, the water moving swiftly, always hurrying to the sea, always being anchored right there at the end of their garden. Like her own heart, she thought, always away to some far-off place, always stuck here.
The shadow that fell across her face shook her from her reverie, and she looked up to see a young man in a pale linen suit smiling down at her. “I hope you don’t mind. The maid told me to come through.” He glanced with amusement at her exposed legs. “A casual household. What a relief. I was worried I should have to be on my best behaviour.”
Agatha hurriedly pulled her skirt down and stood up. “This is a good start, isn’t it? I’m Agatha, Lucy’s elder sister. I think you’ll find the rest of them much more appropriate, if they ever get out here.” She offered her hand. “Please do sit down. I think if we are very, very patient, someone will eventually bring out the tea.”
He sat down and stretched out his legs. “It’s heavenly here! I’m Alphonse Henderson, but you’ll have guessed that already. I expect I’m the chief exhibit here today.” He looked at her, tilting his head slightly, and then looked away.
It was his voice, Agatha decided, that was much the most attractive thing about him. It had a deep, soft resonance that carried. She was impressed with Lucy’s taste. His dark brown hair was parted on the right side and swept unostentatiously away from his face. He was not fussy, his hazel eyes were direct. What did he do, again? She wished she’d paid more attention when Lucy babbled about him.
“Yes, I’m afraid you are. We’ll try to be kind, though you will appreciate our restraint. It is hard not to tease one’s youngest sister abominably. Did you have a good journey?”
“Splendid. Beautiful countryside on the way. I feel like I could live with utter contentment in a place like this. Of course for all I know, you’re desperate to escape.”
“Well, you’ve found me out in no time! But happily Lucy is not, so you may get your wish, if it’s the quiet country life you hanker after.”
He turned to her with interest, and Agatha felt the shock of his eyes looking directly into hers. God, we are sheltered, she thought. She’d met young men, certainly, among the scattered local families. But they were as familiar to her as her own sisters. No wonder Lucy fell for him.
“Where would you go?” he asked.
“Somewhere big and airy. The Americas, perhaps. I like a view.”
“So not the big city.”
“I’ve been up to London. I felt the world was closing in on me. And it was dirty.”
“That’s a shame. You must come up and visit me one time. There are some really lovely bits you might have missed.”
Voices behind them signalled the arrival of the rest of the family. Their father had been cajoled out of his work clothes and into a suit, and Lucy was looking as lovely and nervous as an eighteen-year-old could look, her golden hair swept becomingly into a knot on top of her head. She wore, like her sisters, a white linen tea dress, though her collar had delicate forget-me-nots embroidered on it instead of lace. Agatha felt a rush of fondness for her. For her loveliness and vulnerability at this turning moment of her life. It was too late for her, at nearly thirty, ever to have such a moment herself, but she was happy that her beloved Lucy did.
THE STORM HAD come in the form of a heavy rain that drove them all, laughing and carrying crockery and damp cake, into the house. But it had come later too, when Alphonse was gone and Lucy lay sobbing on her bed in her darkening room. The storm clouds mingled now with the coming night, and Agatha, who was sitting on the bed trying to console her desperate sister, looked around for the lamp.
“Let me get the lamp. You can’t lie miserably in the dark like this.”
“I don’t want light,” Lucy wailed. “Why did he not talk to Father? Why?”
“Darling, I’m sure it means nothing at all. You can’t expect he’d do it right at the first visit.”
“But he said he would. He said that’s why he wanted to come down. He said!”
Agatha had no answer. She sat with her hand on her sister’s back, looking out at the storm.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PLATFORM OF THE NELSON train station bustled with travellers going to the coast. Some stood in awkward silence next to those who had come to send them off, their goodbyes said, the travellers looking anxiously at the train pulling in. A group of young women were talking, seemingly all at once. Lane heard “you’d better get a new hat before he sees you” and looked toward them. Off to join a fiancé? Or better, take up a job in the city? She almost envied the girls’ sense of purpose, whatever the cause. She herself felt like a leaf caught in an eddy, swirling uselessly, waiting for Darling who was in the station buying his ticket.
She wore her yellow cardigan over her shoulders. It had been vain of her to wear her summer dress with the calla lilies, and she regretted it now, feeling ostentatious, and wrapping her arms tightly across her chest in a subconscious effort to hide. How had she succumbed to the temptation to look her prettiest for a very new lover who was going away? In a moment he was beside her, dressed in his one brown suit. He put his bag on the ground and stood before her, turning his hat in his hands, his charcoal eyes filled with longing and worry. The train had come to rest and hissed loudly. Travellers moved forward expectantly, waiting for passengers to alight so that they might get the best seats.
“I want to kiss you,” he said.
“You always say that.”
“I always, every minute, want to. It’s probably very unseemly behaviour for Nelson’s dour inspector.”
“Well, you’d better get on with it, unseemly or not, or you’ll be left behind.”
Darling put his hat on the suitcase and pulled her close. “I can’t bear to leave you,” he murmured into her hair.
Lane could feel tears welling up. “Look, this won’t do.” She kissed him, embarrassed by her own desperation to keep him there, to memorize the softness and passion of his lips. “I’ll look an idiot stood here weeping like an ingénue. Get off with you.” Anyway, she wanted to say, I’ll see you soon. “Wire me as soon as you get there. Promise.”
“God, you are beautiful. I will always remember you in that dress.” He stroked her cheek.
“For God’s sake, Inspector. Now you’re being dramatic. You’ll be back in no time.” How Lane wished that were true, but there was a sinister quality to this sudden polite summons to London that really frightened her.
“Look after Amesy,” Darling said, recovering slightly and putting his hat on.
“I’ll bake him cookies and knit him socks,” she said, wiping away the tear that had escaped.
“I thought you didn’t bake. I’ll be very cross if I come back and find him with his stockinged feet on my desk and guzzling your cookies.” The stationmaster made the last call for boarding. Darling picked up his suitcase and looked at her as if he were memorizing every plane of her face. “I love you.”
“Me too,” she said. He turned and boarded the train.
She did not stand and weep on the station platform but instead went outside and sat on a bench, watching cars pulling back up the hill, their travellers dropped off and safely away. The idea that had lodged in her head as she waved at Darling, until
his face in the window disappeared under the reflection of the sun on the glass, would not now leave her, and it alarmed her. Of course. She could use her grandparents as the excuse; she had not seen them for more than a year. But she was too honest to disguise from herself that she could not bear to see him go. He would be appalled, think her clingy, and might be angered that she couldn’t trust him to look after himself. But right at the centre of her mental struggles, one truth stood out. If he was in trouble, the connections she had in England might be able to help him.
She would stop in to see Ames. But first things first. She went resolutely to her car and drove to the post office to write and mail off a letter to her grandmother, announcing that she would be there within the fortnight.
London
THE TAXI PULLED up outside a row of houses and the driver called into the back, “There you are, gov, number five.” Darling pushed some coins through. He had spent the ride from the aerodrome at Croydon reminding himself about the workings of pounds, shillings, and pence and staring out at the city he’d not expected to see again for many years. Buildings that had been bombed still lay in heaps, though the roads around them had been cleared, but in spite of the lingering mess, the streets had an air of getting on with things. Their route had taken them through the City, and men with bowler hats were pouring out of buildings, talking and laughing. Young women met on the steps of buildings and lit up cigarettes. He had glanced at his watch. It must be noon. He should have changed it to local time.
“Thanks,” Darling said, pulling his suitcase out after himself. He’d wired his friend Rudyard about his visit to London and had been told he was not to think of staying anywhere else. The door opened even before he mounted the steps. A woman of his age, with a great pouf of permanently curled blond hair framing a round and cheerful face, came onto the steps.
“You must be Rudy’s friend Frederick. Come in! I’m Sandra Donaldson, Rudy’s wife, for my sins.” She offered a hand with deep red fingernails. “I was so pleased to hear you were coming over. Rudy talks about you all the time. Here. Give us your hat and I’ll show you up.” She led him up a narrow flight of stairs to a room at the top of the landing.
“Here you are, then.” She pushed open the door to a small, neat room with one window that looked over the narrow back garden. The flowered bedspread and matching curtains gave the room an air of cheerfulness that Darling hoped would be a refuge from whatever decidedly cheerless business brought him here.
“This is lovely. Thank you so much for allowing me to impose on you.”
“Oh, nonsense. The loo’s down the hall. Have a bit of a wash-up and come down for a cup of tea and some lunch. You must be exhausted.”
He was exhausted. He put his hat down on the desk by the window and looked longingly at the bed. He knew if he succumbed and lay down for even a moment, he would be lost to sleep and would wake groggy and disoriented at some inconvenient time. Instead he took out his sponge bag and went down the dark hallway to the bathroom. When he had washed and shaved, he stopped a moment to gaze at himself in the mirror. He could see the bags under his eyes. It was not just the journey over, through most of which he had been unable to sleep. It was the anxiety before he left that had rendered his nights long and without peace. It was leaving Lane, who had become a touchstone, a growing centre around which he organized his sense of self. Now suddenly he was just himself again, alone, self-sufficient. He had not understood how much she had grown to be a part of his world until he confronted the sudden void that her absence left. He turned away and pulled himself back to the present moment, pressing his lips into a grim line. Whatever was about to happen, he knew he would need all his wits about him.
Darling and Donaldson sat in the warm, dim light of the sitting room nursing Scotches. Sandra Donaldson had taken herself off to bed, and the two men occupied matching chairs in front of the fire. They had been friends since flight school, a friendship that intensified as the losses in the air diminished their number throughout the war. Both had been pilots and, aside from the attraction, which had been almost immediate, their deeper understanding of the feelings a pilot developed toward his crew and his plane brought them a level of common experience that infused their understanding of each other. Where they should have been able to sit in companionable silence, this silence was full of anxiety.
“I don’t understand, Darling. What’s this all about?”
“Hanged if I know. A smarmy party turned up in Nelson claiming to be from the Canadian government, a claim I doubted immediately, given his posh public school accent, and began to grill me about the accident. I agreed to come here on my own for ‘further investigation’ because I honestly didn’t know how much power he wields in his velvet gloves. For all I know he could have had me arrested there and then. For what I am at a loss to explain.” Darling swallowed the remains of his Scotch and did not prevent his friend from refilling his glass.
“I mean, what are they hinting at?” Donaldson asked. “Cowardice at the scene of the accident? Fault for the crash in the first place? You lost a couple of men as I recall. Is it something to do with that?”
“I’ve been through my report ten different ways, I’ve written out every bloody thing I can remember about that night, and I’m stumped. I feel like I’m playing a game with someone who has half the high cards up their sleeve. They have something on me they haven’t deigned to share with me, only since I can’t think of a single thing I did wrong, I can’t begin to guess what they’re on about.”
Donaldson got up, put his glass on the mantle, and spoke with sudden decision. “You need a solicitor. My flight engineer, Drake Higgins, was in the law before the show. He’s gone back to it. I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”
Darling wanted to say, “I’m sure it’s not as serious as all that,” but he was beginning to feel, all things considered, that it was. He leaned forward and took a folded piece of paper out of his wallet. “Listen. If anything happens, I mean, something serious, like I get arrested, I want you to contact this person. She lives in the countryside, but she’s on the telephone. But only in extremis. I don’t want her bothered otherwise.”
Unfolding the paper Donaldson read it and then glanced at Darling. “You’re a dark horse. You never told me about her.”
“You can stop being coy. It doesn’t become you. I met her last year when she came out to Canada from here, as a matter of fact. She’s intelligent and deserves to know if I’m not coming back.”
“Well, well. I thought after that balls-up with Gloria you’d be off women for a while. Good for you. You deserve someone wonderful. I bet she’s a looker, too.” Gloria had been Darling’s disastrous wartime romance. It was the event that had taught him something essential about himself; that he could never be casual about love.
Darling refrained from discussing Lane’s looks, though he felt his heart ache at the memory of her standing in a slant of sun in her sitting room in the house by the lake, her dark hair framing her exquisite cheekbones.
“I DON’T KNOW why we went through all this palaver. He could simply have been arrested by Canadian authorities.” Andrew Sims, a detective inspector seconded from Scotland Yard into Special Investigations Branch, grumbled. He was unhappy because he’d been given a cramped office in the basement of the War Office that was at the farthest remove from an entrance to the building, and it had taken him twenty minutes to find it in the warrens that were the corridors of the Horse Guards Avenue behemoth. He wanted the whole business over with and to get back to his office with the window at the Yard.
“Well, sir, we don’t strictly know the level of his involvement. He evinced genuine puzzlement when I interviewed him,” Jensen said.
“Rubbish. It’s open and shut. We have a completely impartial witness who saw him do it. He may have pulled the wool over your eyes with his genuine puzzlement, but it won’t work with me. I want him here first thing tomorrow so we can get this business over with.”
“I appreciat
e the severity of the evidence. However, he has a distinguished war record and deserves to have the case thoroughly investigated.”
Sims stood up. “If you’re questioning my ability to conduct a murder investigation . . .”
“I do beg your pardon, Detective Inspector Sims. That was not my intention at all. Please, let me show you to the canteen, where you can have a decent tea, and I’ll assemble all the paperwork and bring it here. Darling knows to come here at nine o’clock. Anything else you require will be at your disposal.” Crikey, Jensen thought. At least ten civilian police seconded to War Office work through the war years, and I get the one with the thorn in his paw.
CHAPTER SIX
LANE DID NOT FIND AMES at the police station on the morning Darling left. She collected some packets of chocolate-covered biscuits for the Armstrongs and the Hughes, some milk, a tin of coffee, and just a few other essentials to keep body and soul together until she herself set out to the old country. In the two days that followed, she found her suitcase where she’d stored it in the attic and opened it on the chair in her bedroom, and there her forward motion stopped.
Now she sat, exhausted, at her kitchen table, looking out at the lake, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. The morning was ushering in a day of indeterminate weather, and clouds gathered in the folds of the mountains on the far shore. She should really get a wireless, she thought. No doubt they offered news and weather reports. She often found the Armstrongs sitting in their snug kitchen listening to radio dramas or classical music, Kenny’s feet up on the fender of the stove, but she resisted the temptation. She found the silence soothing. It felt expansive, like the vast sense of physical space she had found in Canada. The silence gave her a kind of spiritual space.
She drank the last of the coffee and swallowed the anxiety that had been growing in her since her decision to go to home. No, not home. This was home. Her anxiety had manifested itself in being unable to make any decisions about what to pack. Her initial plan had been to go to Scotland to see her grandparents, and this would require warm clothes—wool stockings, her tweed suit, trousers—and she laid these out. But she knew she really wanted to be with Darling in London. She feared that her notion that she could be of help would prove to be ludicrous. She didn’t have the least idea of what was happening to him, and she hadn’t heard from him. She stood in the hallway and glared at her blameless ancient phone. Ames would know. She had to go into town to pick up her tickets from the agency. She would stop and see him. He had to have heard from Darling. He wouldn’t have left Ames struggling completely on his own with a murder case. She tried to dismiss what his wiring Ames but not her implied about her importance to him. She was being small-minded. She tried to remember whether her workmates had been more important to her than Angus, the man with whom she’d had the secret and ultimately disastrous affair during the war, but knew they weren’t. But then she had worked in an atmosphere of oppressive secrecy that disrupted normal relations completely. And perhaps it was different for men.
It Begins in Betrayal Page 5