‘The door,’ I said. ‘Yes, I see. Or even if she left the room and then came back to find the fire already going, it wouldn’t be between her and her escape, would it? Unless she tried to get beyond it, to save something. She didn’t have a dog down here with her, did she? I should quite likely have plunged into a fire for Bunty.’ Alec shook his head.
‘She might have tried to beat the fire down and then, when she couldn’t, panicked and fled and tripped and hit her head on something,’ I suggested.
‘Of course,’ said Alec. ‘At any moment of any day a person might suddenly become unconscious by simply tripping and hitting his head, but it tends not to happen. Have you ever fallen down and knocked yourself unconscious? Do you know anyone else who has?’
‘I’ve fallen,’ I said. ‘Mostly on the curling pond. And my younger son once got hit on the head by a low branch running along a riverbank, but you’re quite right. People don’t generally react to tripping by falling headlong like felled trees, do they?’
‘Unless they are very drunk. So let’s discount the letters in the grate, shall we?’
‘One other possibility occurs to me,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘Would it have been at all in character for Cara to have lit the corner of a sheet of paper and held it aloft, watching it burn, before dropping it into an ashtray with a contemptuous curl of her lip and a toss of her head?’ Alec was speechless. ‘I saw Clara Bow do it,’ I said, ‘and I remember thinking what a pity I should probably never get the chance to repeat it. Rather an extreme reaction to an inflated greengrocer’s bill, you know.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought that was Cara’s style at all,’ said Alec drily, and remembering how she had laughed that day at Croys about ‘pining’ for Alex, I agreed. This recollection led me back with a jolt to what I had been all but forgetting. What we were talking about here, the two of us, cosily over our tea, was the death six days ago of the girl Alec had been to marry. I took the opportunity of his being busy buttering a teacake to have a good long look at him. In his expression and demeanour he seemed, and had seemed since this morning, quite different from the creature I had found shaking and pale on the bridge the day it happened. Also, he was displaying only suspicion about what had really happened and outrage that it might go undetected; there seemed to be no personal sadness, much less raw new grief. And he had changed his clothes already, out of mourning and into a Norfolk jacket – still with a black tie which looked very peculiar – as though Cara was not worth the discomfort of an afternoon in black cloth as well as a morning. I could think of no way to broach any of this with him, however, indeed no real excuse for doing so beyond curiosity, so I decided to stick to the subject in hand.
‘Very well, then,’ I said. ‘The Fiscal was thorough in dreaming up possible sources of flame, but did he miss anything out?’ We thought in silence for a while.
‘For instance,’ I said. ‘Did Cara really not smoke?’
‘Of course she did,’ said Alec. ‘But not in her mother’s house and certainly not in the morning. Is there any beauty routine that requires a naked flame?’
‘Such as what?’ I asked, amused and not hiding it to get my own back for Clara Bow.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Alec, shifting. ‘Curling irons or what have you.’
I thought back to Cara’s perfect shingle and stifled a laugh.
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘she might have needed burnt cork – if she were blacking up for a minstrel show. I wonder that the Fiscal didn’t think to check –’
‘Oh shut up,’ said Alec. ‘Let’s leave this. We both know that Cara did not die as a result of accident and we’re wasting time.’
‘What do we think did happen?’ I said. I knew what I thought, but at that early point in our investigation it still seemed too fantastical to say it plainly aloud.
‘I think Cara killed herself,’ said Alec, ‘and so do you. And so does her mother, and possibly her sister too. I think it’s something to do with the theft, and I think the same thing – whatever it is – is why they suddenly rushed off down here and why Cara became convinced, or was persuaded, that she should break off the engagement.’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly. I was wishing against wish that I could deny this, but it was no use. He was right.
‘But,’ I went on, ‘should we do anything about these convictions of ours? Shouldn’t we just let matters lie?’
‘Another failure of nerve?’ Alec asked, looking at me very hard.
‘No. Just that even if we do find out what happened and even if her mother knew enough to stop it from happening – and I’m sure she did – so even if we feel Lena deserves it to be out in the open, what about her father? Do we really want to put her father through the ordeal of a verdict of suicide?’ Alec looked uncomfortable at this.
‘And how do we find out what happened?’ I went on. ‘And actually, why?’
‘What do you mean “why”?’ said Alec.
‘I mean who are we to?’ I said. ‘Who am I to? On what authority? I’m only supposed to be sorting out the diamond theft.’
‘You’re what?’ said Alec, and I remembered, too late as usual, that I had not told him this. There seemed little reason to pussy-foot around it now, however, so I briefly filled him in.
‘Well, there you are then,’ was all he said, when I had finished. ‘That’s your authority. I think it’s all connected, as a matter of fact – it must be – but if you’re squeamish, then concentrate on Silas and Daisy by all means. You can leave Mrs Duffy to me.’ He spoke grimly, and at my questioning look, he said: ‘It sticks in my throat, that’s all. She thinks she’s handling it so beautifully, and there’s something repugnant about that. Her daughter’s death should be all she cares about. Any potential scandal should hardly register. So, I mean to find out what happened and face her with it. Then even if no one knows the truth except her and me, at least she won’t be able to pride herself on having handled it all.’
Again, I was struck with a familiar thought. Disgusting as it was to think of Mrs Duffy’s scheming (and I was sure Alec was right about it) weren’t we just as bad? How, rather than thinking only of Cara and his own loss, could he be busily planning revenge? At least, his schemes were for Cara, though, in Cara’s name. When one got right down to it, it was only Lena and I who were vile; she containing a scandal and I preventing another.
‘But I ask again,’ I said, pushing all of that aside, ‘what are we to do? I can hardly chase off to Grasmere, much less Switzerland if it comes to that.’
‘No, the last thing we want is to ask any more questions of the Duffys,’ said Alec. ‘Not just because we don’t know what to ask and if we did they wouldn’t tell us, but we don’t want them to know that we’re interested. Do you see?’ I didn’t. ‘Because when the time comes that we do want to ask something of them, we must not be suspected. What we need to do now, is stay here and try to find out something, anything, that will tell us about Cara’s state of mind that last week.’
‘But how?’ I said. I suppose I had thought vaguely that I should go home and think things over, perhaps talk to some of Cara’s friends and . . . I hadn’t thought; that was the trouble. I certainly hadn’t thought of snooping around for clues.
‘Well, there must be countless people who spoke to her,’ said Alec. ‘Servants, for instance.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They didn’t have a servant with them.’ I saw no need to discomfit both of us with details of the poor little maid.
‘Well, a village woman then,’ said Alec. ‘To cook and clean. And the postmistress would know what letters Cara sent and if she made any telephone calls. You must take care of the women. I’ll speak to tradesmen – the milkman and suchlike – about any comings and goings. It’s sure to lead somewhere. Small town gossip, you know.’
‘Yes, and then the fire will have made everyone think back carefully for any titbit that puts them close to the action. People do that, I’ve found.’
‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘We won�
��t have to dig. It will be impossible to help finding out whatever there is to know.’
‘There’s still the problem of Hugh,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘What on earth shall I say to him about why I’m still here?’ I was not entirely sure why I did not just tell Hugh about Daisy employing me as her sleuth. Perhaps because although he might have roared with laughter, patted me on the head and given me his good wishes, he might just as easily have put his foot down.
‘You must lie,’ said Alec. ‘Either by commission or omission, depends how Jesuitical you feel about it. But lying is the only option, I’m afraid.’ He spoke with great jollity, but did not quite meet my eye. ‘Either make something up – tell him you’re interested in a little house, or a boat or an orphanage which need a patroness – or send a telegram. A nice ambiguous telegram.’
And so, blushing and feeling that my life, having jogged soberly along during all the years one is supposed to run wild, was certainly making up for lost time now, I sent another telegram to Hugh. ‘Inquiry found accident. Duffys shattered. Am staying to help. At least one week. Dandy.’ I tried to see the startled look of the girl at the telegraph counter as a good thing; I hoped it would put her and me on the cosiest terms when I came to question her about Cara. Of course, the story of how I stayed at Gatehouse with Alec Osborne would be all that our mutual friends could talk of for weeks once the first one found out, but knowing our mutual friends I could be sure that Hugh would never hear of it, and what is more, knowing Hugh, that he would never speak of it to me if he did.
I went early to my room that night, feeling rather like a pea in a drum downstairs now that everyone else had gone, and sat propped up in Mrs McCall’s brass bed in the lamplight as the sun faded outside, plotting away like mad. My first task should be to track down the individual (or individuals) who had gone in to do the rough work at the cottage, and I had my excuse for snooping after them all ready. I was rather proud of it and was trying to ignore a small misgiving I had that it would land me in a great deal of trouble if it didn’t come off. Then – I removed one of the three fat pillows and snuggled down – just when the girl at the telegraph desk should have had time to regale all of her friends with my wickedness and be agog for more, I would seek her out again. I should not need any further story to cover my designs, she being as keen to speak to me as I to her. I turned out the lamp, closed my eyes and fell asleep to the comforting drone of the men’s voices in the bar.
Chapter Eight
‘Well, Miss Madam,’ said Agnes Marshall, ‘you had better come in.’ I had tracked her down disappointingly easily, simply by asking Mrs McCall after breakfast, getting Alec to drop me in the village of Borgue, and setting out to walk to her cottage ‘right facing you at the Kirkandrews road end’ where I was assured I would find her at home, Saturday being baking day.
I followed her and was shown into a small parlour, aggressively clean and obviously seldom used. She shut the door firmly on the warmth and delicious smells emanating from her kitchen and sat down opposite me on the edge of a hard chair, carefully folding her apron around her floury hands to save a speck falling on to her well-brushed horsehair and gleaming linoleum.
‘Can I get you some tea, Miss Madam?’ she asked. Her mode of address, which I had taken at first to be a slip of the tongue arising from fluster, was evidently as habitual as it was original. ‘I cannot offer you coffee,’ she said, ‘for I wouldn’t have the stuff in the house.’ This fierceness put me off accepting anything.
‘I am a friend of Mr and Mrs Duffy,’ I began, ‘and I believe that you were Cook at the cottage up until –’ Mrs Marshall was shaking her head.
‘Not “Cook”!’ she said and I wondered what bitter insult I had dealt her (I never can keep up with the tortured questions of rank below stairs). ‘I just went in first thing, got the range het up again, not that it was ever cold, did the dishes from the night before and got one or two things sorted for the day. Peeled the tatties and dressed a bit of meat for them and that. And then I was off and away mid-morning again. A gey queer set-up if you ask me. But them that pays the piper calls the tune. It fidgeted me I can tell you, sitting here at home all night, knowing they dishes were in the sink growing ears. Still.’
‘And I believe that Mrs Duffy didn’t get a chance to speak to you before they left,’ I said, crossing my fingers in my lap.
‘No indeed,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘I doubt I was the last thing on the poor woman’s mind.’
I relaxed.
‘Well, I daresay, but she did think of you, and asked me to be sure to give you this.’ I unclasped my bag and handed her the envelope. I hoped she would show the proper Scottish reserve around money and not open it until I was gone – I had no idea if the sum I had enclosed was outrageously small, outrageously large or just right. She laid it aside without so much as squeezing it for a clue.
‘Well then,’ she said. ‘There was no need for that, tell her when you see her, Miss Madam. No need at all. I’m affronted.’ I took this as it was meant, as a thank you, and went on.
‘I wonder if you could tell me where I might find the other maids?’ I said.
‘Others?’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you. There weren’t any others. Just me in the morning to get redd up and they did the rest of it their own selves.’
‘How odd,’ I said. ‘Were they waiting for more staff to be sent from town? After the poor girl – After the maid –’
‘Very private ladies,’ said Mrs Marshall, and I wondered if I imagined the note of reproof. ‘Having a bit of fun to theirselves playing at houses, or so I thought at first.’ Either Dr Milne had done even better than I imagined at hushing up the maid’s trouble or Mrs Marshall was one of the least gossip-prone women I had ever met. And just my luck to have come up against what must be one of the few individuals for miles around who would not jump at the chance of being centre-stage.
‘So you thought at first,’ I echoed. ‘But then?’
‘Well, I daresay you’ll know anyway, Miss Madam, being a friend of theirs, if there’s anything to know. But I did begin to wonder if maybe they had their reasons. I wondered if maybe there was illness, for they kept the place gey hot for the spring. Or some other trouble. Not with the mother – the mistress, I should say. But those lassies.’
I waited, trying not to seem too eager, and avoided her eyes by looking with absolutely feigned admiration at the pot dogs on her fireplace.
‘I got to thinking they had had a fall out, for they weren’t close like you’d think sisters would be. It was near like their mother was trying her best to get them to make it up, but as far as I could see they’d have nothing to do with each other. Aye well, I suppose there’s no saying that two peas in the pod have to be pals as well as neighbours, eh?’ I recognized another of Mrs Marshall’s own expressions, and nodded my agreement. This was a new angle, I thought. Trouble between Clemence and Cara. What might it be? Mrs Marshall seemed to answer me.
‘But there, it can’t have been easy for the girl to see her wee sister getting wed before her. I wondered myself why the man would have gone for the one and not the other.’
‘Did Clemence – the elder girl, that is – seem unhappy to you then, Mrs Marshall?’ I asked. This was obviously much too frank, and she reacted as though stung.
‘I’m sure it’s no more my business than it is –’ ‘Yours’, she had been about to say, I am sure, before politeness stopped her. I decided, since I had probably ruined my chances anyway, that nothing more could be lost by pressing on.
‘I had rather thought it was Cara who was feeling glum. Not going out for a walk on that last morning for instance, poor girl. Still, as you say, if they had quarrelled, I daresay neither one was thrilled to be thrown together in a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere.’ I realized halfway through this that I was currently sitting in possibly an even smaller dwelling in the same remote spot, and too late I bit my lip. Mrs Marshall bridled but said nothing. I am sorry to say that what came out of m
y mouth next was not even reckless inquisitiveness so much as babbling, pure and simple.
‘I wonder what they had argued about, don’t you? I mean, they’re normally as close as close can be. Devoted sisters, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I couldn’t say, Miss Madam,’ said Mrs Marshall, predictably. But as it happened she was not merely being snooty, for she followed this with: ‘I had never met the family before.’
‘Oh really?’ I said, sensing safer ground. ‘You are new in the area, then?’
‘I am not, then,’ she said stoutly. ‘My grandfather was born in this house. It’s them that’s new. I took the job on to help them out this once, but a month ago, I wouldn’t have known them to pass in the street.’ My eyes strayed to the envelope on the table, thinking that under these circumstances I had been rather too generous with Daisy’s money. Mrs Marshall, most unfortunately, caught my look and all hope of amity between us was lost. I quitted her parlour and, imagining her removing my taint from her sofa with a stiff brush, I stamped back towards Borgue in a temper, cursing myself for my foolishness.
‘Stupid woman, stupid woman, stupid woman,’ I chanted, in time with my steps. I should be reliving that visit, that wasted chance, in my sleep.
‘That makes two of us then,’ said a voice, sounding only feet away from me. I jumped and wheeled around looking for the source. An ancient, crooked but sturdy old woman slowly unbent herself from where she had been stooping behind the wall which edged the lane to my left. She put her hands into the small of her back and stretched herself with a groan, before coming back to rest, not upright but gently curved forward like a feather. ‘Aye, the Dear knows why I’m crippling myself with this caper,’ she said, pointing to the ground at her feet with a knobbled and earthy finger. I peered over the wall at a vegetable patch, laid out between brick paths, in which stretched long rows of tiny green plants, looking like stitches in a brown blanket. ‘I’ve near kilt myself planting out they cabbages and now I’ll be out here every night with my candle trying to keep the snails off them, and then when I’ve been out in the snow to cut one and washed it and cooked it and laid it down, they’ll all turn their noses up anyway.’ She spoke with great weariness but her eyes were twinkly and she looked back at her poker-straight rows with pride. ‘And what have you done?’ she said. ‘Here, I hope you’ve not stepped in muck in they boots.’ She bent again and delving her hand into a bucket she began to sprinkle something around the neck of a tiny cabbage plant.
After the Armistice Ball Page 11