After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  I too tried to call out but could only make a dream’s smothered straining mumble. When I woke I knew I had made the sound aloud and was thankful that I had got myself out before I really found my voice.

  Once more, through the house, even colder now at the dead still of four o’clock when the embers are grey and even the night creatures outside have fed and killed their night’s measure and turned for home.

  The boys, tired out and having slept hard since ten, were drifting up to meet the morning and they stirred as I crept back into their room. This time I knew why I was there. I had not, as feared before, come up here to channel motherly feelings like some opportunistic medium whose seance looked like going flat; much less had I turned to the easy sentiment of ‘my dear boys come home to me’ simply to drive away the horrors. I had come to force myself into honesty and make myself face what had to be faced. I had failed Daisy and I had failed Cara. I had failed because, however short of the ideal I might fall when it came to cooing and sighing and gazing fondly, deep down I could not help thinking like a mother. Thus, hidebound, hog-tied, I had allowed myself to ignore a sign so glaring that my own brain presented it to me night after night and looked as though it would continue to do so for my whole life unless I gave in. Well, I was ready to give in now.

  Lena had planned her daughter’s death. Lena had prepared the fire that was to have caused her daughter’s death. And now Lena’s daughter was dead. The missing step, where I had tried to cram Cara’s inexplicable change of mind and then her killing herself, that space could only sensibly be filled one way. I could hardly bear to think it, I was such a coward, but I knew it was true: Lena had killed her child and I, least motherly woman one could imagine, could not stand listening to the breathing of my own children and ignore it.

  ‘Cara,’ I whispered, then went on even more quietly as Donald flinched and resettled, ‘I promise you. I promise.’ I did not need to speak the promise, not to someone who was in my head and orchestrating my dreams, but it was no less sincere for that.

  There was no instant clarity, however, just because I had let go of my resistance. As to what exactly Lena had done to kill her child I did not know and could not bear to speculate. And as for why, I had no idea where to start. There was so much of it all and it made no sense, as though more than one story in loose leaf had got shuffled in together and I was reading now a page from this, now a page from that, never knowing where the join should be. I needed help.

  Brightly, at breakfast the next morning – the children breakfast with us in the holidays, at least to start with until all parties tire of it – I announced to the boys, and hence indirectly to Hugh as well, that we were to have a visitor.

  ‘His name is Alec Osborne and he’s a friend of Daddy’s and mine, but younger. He has had a rotten time lately and he needs a quiet break in the country with his friends.’

  Donald groaned and said with what I hope was affected weariness, for it would not be pleasant to think that one’s eleven-year-old boy was really that jaded: ‘Not another shell shock case, surely, Mother. That was years ago.’

  Hugh’s eyes bulged but he said nothing.

  ‘No, dear,’ I replied calmly, understanding what Hugh refused to understand, that there was no way we could hope to explain to the boys anything about the true nature of the war. They had lived through it but they had been so well protected that they still viewed it as a game; one which had unfairly finished before they were old enough to play and which had left behind it only its most dreary components – the wounded, the money worries and indeed the shell shock cases. What Hugh and I did share, I am sure, was a fervent wish masquerading as a conviction that at least we should never see its like again and they had missed it for once and all.

  ‘He was to be married,’ I went on. ‘But there was a dreadful fire and the girl died in it.’ Donald’s and Teddy’s eyes grew round with delight. ‘So you see he is very sad and needs to be jollied up with games and expeditions.’ I hoped by this to fix their interest on the possibility of a more exciting companion than either Hugh or me. I failed, of course.

  ‘A fire! Gosh, Mummy, did he try to save her and get beaten back by the flames?’

  ‘And have to listen to her gurgling screams while she –’

  ‘No!’ I said, almost shouting. ‘Where do you get this? Gurgling screams indeed. You are forbidden to mention it to him, do you hear?’ This seemed to diminish Alec’s value rather severely and both boys pulled wry faces and went back to gobbling.

  Still, Hugh had been informed of the visit and had not made a murmur, so now my only task was to summon Alec, but I was not quite sure exactly where he was. He had gone to the Duffys’ after their return from the Alps, had been staying with them at the time of the memorial service, but he was not there now, none of them feeling equal to the situation. Had their estate been open he might have skulked there inconspicuously for weeks until the relationship faded, but I quite saw how neither he nor the family could bear his presence in the narrow confines of the Edinburgh house, with wedding presents still arriving and having to be sent back, and visits of condolence being paid. Perhaps he had returned to Dorset.

  My telephone was ringing as Bunty and I came back into the house after our morning walk and although I broke into a lope to reach it I was still only halfway across the breakfast room when Pallister disappeared through my door with a withering look at me over his shoulder. He was holding out the earpiece towards me when I caught up with him and spoke in a chilly voice even by his standards.

  ‘A young gentleman, madam.’ This of course was exactly what Pallister feared a private telephone was for and it was hard to say whether distaste or pity was the chief ingredient in his expression as he withdrew. Little I cared.

  ‘Dandy?’ said Alec’s voice, and despite everything my heart lifted a bit.

  ‘Alec, I need to speak to you most seriously,’ I began, shrugging off my coat and pointing Bunty fiercely towards her rug.

  ‘Yes, but since I telephoned to you, dear,’ said Alec in his most amused drawl, ‘I’m afraid you shall have to wait.’ I heard the click of him resettling his pipe and waited for him to go on. This appearance of such extreme relaxation had to be a deliberate act, for if it were not why had he rung me?

  ‘I have had the most peculiar interview with old Cousin Gregory,’ Alec said. ‘Last evening in his library. I was invited, not for dinner but to come and see him at ten o’clock and was bundled in and upstairs like a chorus girl being brought to a stag party. Then we had a long talk about Cara.’ Alec must have heard me catch my breath and correctly interpreting my interest he dispelled it immediately. ‘Nothing to the point of our investigation, Dandy, just generally, you know. I think the poor old boy can’t be getting much of a chance to talk about her. Lena’s act of “grief to the point of distraction” is still going strong. And as you know he has no time for Clemence, so I daresay he’s just had to bottle it. He looks ten years older.’

  ‘And?’ I said, beginning to feel disappointed. ‘Would you like me to visit and “draw him out”?’

  ‘Stop interrupting,’ said Alec. ‘I’m getting to something important. Two things, actually, and I hardly know which is more startling. First thing: Gregory wanted to assure me that I was to remain his heir. That in itself I’m sure you will agree is nothing, but he was vociferous on the topic of my marrying Clemence.’

  ‘What?’ I said, before I could help myself. ‘Alec, are you . . .?’ I had been going to say ‘mad’, but bit my lip just in time. Clemence? Clemence knew. She at least knew something. I was sure she did. ‘Are you to be a Mr Collins after all then?’ I finished lamely.

  ‘Concentrate, Dandy, please,’ he said, and his tone told me that at least I had managed to conceal the extent of my fright. ‘Cousin Gregory, talking around and around, and never quite saying it exactly or even hinting at why, has let me know that if I marry Clemence I am to be disinherited and the estate will pass to another branch of the family entirely. Now what d
o you make of that?’

  ‘He knows something,’ I said. ‘He must know that Clemence was bound up with Cara’s death. But why on earth . . .? Have we got it wrong, then? Is it all Clemence and nothing to do with Lena after all? Because why should Mr Duffy be so down on Clemence alone?’

  ‘That brings me to the second item,’ said Alec. ‘He’s not concentrating on Clemence. Far from it. He told me that he is going to divorce his wife.’

  I was speechless, my mind racing but failing to find a thought to grasp and hold.

  ‘He is divorcing Lena,’ Alec went on, ‘settling the Canadian property on Clemence, who we can only assume is to be packed off there, and handing the estates over to me.’

  It is to my shame that what should have been the least important of these points, that Alec might be coming to live on the Duffys’ Perthshire estate after all, lodged in my mind as firmly as all the others.

  ‘How can he divorce her?’ I said. ‘You mean he is to let her divorce him?’ Even that was a ludicrous notion. Mr Duffy, stiff, proper and sixty-five, allowing himself to be photographed at an hotel with a girl hired for the purpose. But Alec was adamant.

  ‘He can’t just cast her off with no grounds,’ I said.

  ‘He has grounds,’ said Alec. ‘“I will have no trouble producing grounds” were his exact words, and you’ve no idea how grim he looked when he said it.’

  I could only whistle.

  ‘How soon can you get here?’ I said, sensing that we could spend the remainder of the morning on the telephone before we had done turning this over between us. ‘I’ve already warned Hugh that you’re on your way. I’m afraid he thinks you’re coming for solace and there’s worse – my boys are home and there will be a fair bit of letting them win at tennis and mending kites to be got through.’

  ‘You’ve already said I’m on my way?’

  ‘Yes, darling. Because Cousin Gregory who knows something is not alone. We know something too. Or I do anyway and I can’t go on pretending I don’t. Look, I don’t want to talk about it on the telephone, but unless I face it and do something about it, I am never going to sleep a peaceful night through again. Only –’ a sudden thought had struck me – ‘Mr Duffy didn’t say anything about wanting you to let sleeping dogs lie, did he? I mean, it’s not a condition of the inheritance that you don’t make any trouble? Because if it is . . .’

  ‘You think I might let Lena off with murder to get my hands on it?’ said Alec. His voice was cold and it was that I first responded to, flushing at his offence, at my insult. Then I realized what he had said, and the silence between us lengthened.

  ‘So,’ I said, at last.

  ‘Just so,’ said Alec.

  Having arranged for his arrival two days later, we rang off. I walked around the room for a while picking up and setting down ornaments and disarranging the flowers. Clemence, Mr Duffy, Lena, Alec, the fire, the abortion, the photographs, and countless other flitting ghosts of ideas too vague even to be named whisked around my head, only obliquely visible, disappearing if I looked straight on. I despaired of ever being able to organize it all and view the whole thing at once. If I could only lay out each fact in order in front of me. For things are connected and life does make sense – I had decided that as early as the Croys visit and it had served me well until now. But this was like trying to play soldiers with kittens, goldfish even, seven disappearing for every two I managed to set in place and hold there.

  Despairing of a head-start then, although it galled me to admit that I must wait for Alec, I thought I could at least make some practical preparations. Slipping into Hugh’s business room I helped myself to a quantity of the large sheets of paper he uses to sketch out his interminable improvements. From the day nursery I took an India rubber and some pencils, and I looked forward to standing in front of my fire sharpening them with a pocket knife; this is one of my few manual skills, learned in childhood from a rather dashing drawing master and something which I felt would give me a welcome air of competence in front of Alec. Passing out of the nursery again, I stopped at the bookcase and, feeling rather silly, extracted the illustrated volume of Sherlock Holmes stories.

  For the rest of that day I sat curled in my chair devouring it, hoping for guidance, but as tea approached I concluded that the working methods of a genius are of no use to lesser beings. Besides, real life is rather less neat than Mr Conan Doyle would have us imagine, or perhaps I should say rather more neat, people (as a rule) not dropping the ends of unusual cigars and abandoning scraps of their garments on convenient thorns as they pass. Really, when one thinks about it, story-book villains must be hardly decent and must suffer terribly from draughts, considering how much of their clothing they leave behind them. I closed the volume and hid it in my desk.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alec was a terrific hit with the boys. In fact, his commandeering of their admiration prodded Hugh into enormous efforts of his own, even to the extent of getting Drysdale to fix up an old two-wheeled carriage and teaching the boys to drive along in it behind a quiet pony; I quite saw that they would be returning to school in September utterly spoiled.

  Each day, after tea, which I and Alec and hence unbelievably Hugh – Hugh! – took with the children, it was understood that Alec and I should be left alone until it was time to change.

  I cannot say what Alec was feeling, but on the first afternoon I felt as bashful as a child at a recital when it came to sitting opposite him and telling. Apart from anything else, there was so little of substance to tell. I cleared my throat.

  ‘I think Lena killed Cara,’ I said. ‘I’m convinced of it, although I cannot explain why. Why I’m convinced, I mean. Or why she did it for that matter. Or how. Or how on earth Dr Milne managed to make the mistake he did.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Alec. ‘We need to work out what happened and then we need to find some evidence. And then, whether we like it or not, we must go to the police.’

  I leapt on this.

  ‘Couldn’t we go now?’ I asked. ‘I should love so much simply to hand it all over.’ Alec was already shaking his head.

  ‘What on earth would you say happened? How would you even begin? What proof do we have?’

  ‘There’s Mary’s evidence,’ I said. ‘There never was a servant at the cottage.’

  ‘That shows that Cara died, Dandy, not that Lena killed her.’

  ‘And there’s the diamonds,’ I said.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ He was right: we needed proof. And unless we worked out what had happened we shouldn’t even know what to look for proof of. I saw that.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Alec.

  ‘Quite,’ I replied.

  By the end of a few days, we had reams of notes and permanent headaches and with each discussion it seemed we were losing sight of anything sensible, miring ourselves in endless speculation which produced nothing except fatigue.

  A typical conversation might begin with me saying: ‘There’s just too much of everything.’

  ‘Run through it again,’ Alec would say, sitting back in his chair with his eyes shut. He said this on average every half-hour until I began to feel like a secretary.

  ‘And none of it makes sense,’ I would conclude at last. ‘No one is behaving in a way that makes any sense at all. Take Mr Duffy. If he knows Lena killed her daughter, why is he content with divorce? Or rather if he is angry and disgusted enough to divorce her, why is he not angry and disgusted enough to go to the police? And how did he find out? And if he thinks Clemence knows, why is he giving her the Canadian property? But if he doesn’t think Clemence knows why is he sending her off to Canada? And why also is he concerned to make sure that you don’t marry her?’

  ‘Or Lena,’ Alec might say, running his hands through his hair for the hundredth time. ‘Why did she make such elaborate plans to burn the house down if she had no intention of using the fire to destroy the body? Why did she take such a risk in asking Dr Milne to hush up
the maid? Why did she think she could blackmail Silas and why does she now appear to have given up? What does she know about the disappearance of the diamonds?’

  ‘Come to that, where are the diamonds, and who stole them and why and who knew about it?’

  Then a silence.

  ‘Might Cara have stolen them to raise money for an abortion?’ This tended to recur.

  ‘That would be far too much money. And anyway, in November? Impossible.’

  ‘When do you suppose it did happen?’ This from Alec, very gruff.

  ‘Not before November, darling. She’d have been immense by the time of the Croys visit.’

  ‘When then?’ he said, staring hard at his feet.

  I tried to remember Cara in her slim tube of a dress walking beside the river. Silk jersey it had been, the most clinging and least forgiving of any stuff dresses could be made of. I had not worn it for years.

  ‘Oh, well after the New Year, anyway,’ I said. Within a few months of the coming wedding then. But since we were talking about it, and he was squirming with embarrassment anyway, I finally resolved to ask something I’d been ducking.

  ‘Forgive me, Alec, but was there no sign, no sign at all, that something like that was up?’

  ‘What do you mean? What kind of sign?’

  ‘Well, wasn’t she – I mean, didn’t she – Because I’ve been thinking, if it had been me, in Cara’s predicament, I know I would have.’ I hoped he would work out what I meant. No such luck. He blinked at me and waited.

  ‘Remember when I asked you a very impertinent question to which the answer was no? Well, might I ask why not? I mean, whose decision was it?’ I was being terrifically modern, and I wondered if Alec knew, or if he believed that in my youth, so recent and yet so distant, I had turned this question over calmly as though deciding between a walk or a drive on a Sunday morning.