After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  Two secrets, I wrote. Diamond theft, baby coming. I could not begin to see how either of these could lead to either of the murders, much less work out which went with which. Could a theft cause the planned death of one’s child? Could anything about a theft send one mad? Not in any way that I could imagine. But it was even more ludicrous to think that a baby coming too soon and from the wrong quarter could make a woman plot to kill her child. It was shameful, scandalous, it’s true, but it happened all the time and the most rigid families got over it in the end. But then Lena was such a curious mixture of respectability and complete carelessness. Clemence so protected, so coddled – I remembered Lena telling me with satisfaction how she tried to shield darling Clemence from the ugly truths of life. Cara on the other hand, since she had managed to get pregnant, must have been on a fairly free rein. And that was how it had been for years. Clemence at her mother’s heels and Cara racketing about with Sha-sha McIntosh and the others. Staying all on her own with Daisy and Silas years ago, walking in the woods with Alec, if it came to that. Questions of respectability seemed to influence Lena in random and mystifying ways. But could any mother, however odd she was, really care whether a child who is known to have killed herself is also known to have had a little accident as well? Daisy’s mother had been wild when Rupert had made his early entry in the too, too solid nine pounds of his flesh, but she adored him now.

  Of course! The revelation fizzed in my head. Of course! I had said it myself, hadn’t I? It’s the sort of thing that one gets over, but it rocks one on one’s heels at the time. Lena had not known about Cara’s baby.

  I had been right all along. There were two stories, each quite separate from the other. The planned murder, so meticulously prepared, the cottage decorated, the engagement broken and the coal laid in, was all to do with the jewels and nothing to do with the baby at all. It had to be so. Lena already knew about the jewels; the timing was right. A known fact causing a planned killing and then a nasty surprise wiping out all the plans and ending in something savage. That had to be how it was. If I forced myself to accept the one brutal fact that threatened to choke me, that Lena really had done what she had done, it fitted.

  From here, finally, I could bridge the gap. From this spot on my cliff edge I could point across to where Lena had gone and at least see what had plucked her away there. I still did not know exactly why she had planned the fire but that night at the cottage, with the plan set in motion, she must have been wound as tight as a steel spring, perhaps half-crazy already with the thought that she couldn’t, but she must, but she couldn’t, but she must. Then Cara went out on her bicycle to the post box and, if Lena discovered that she had gone, she must have assumed she’d gone for good, escaped. Lena must have been flung to the farthest edge of sanity at that, or drowned by a surge of hopeless relief, perhaps, that she needn’t go through with it after all. Then cruelly, unbelievably, she was snapped right back to the middle of it again when Cara returned. Into all of that, Cara dropped her bombshell and the shock must have cracked across Lena like lightning. She attacked, and attacked as though to blot out the very source of all the disgust and shame.

  But where was Clemence in any of this? Had she tried to intervene between her little sister and her mother gone suddenly, terrifyingly, mad? I had never seen so much as a word pass between the sisters in any of our meetings through the years, and Clemence was Lena’s through and through. Poor Clemence. (Why did we always say that?) What had been her part in that ugly night? She had been there, and yet it was impossible to make oneself remember her somehow. Lena and Cara with their secrets were curved around each other, interlocking, and Clemence did not fit. I shuddered. Not ‘poor’ Clemence at all. It was chilling to think that there was someone else there, besides Cara and Lena, not stepping in, not stopping it from happening, just watching it with her blank eyes and then taking her plates to the photographer’s shop to see how well they had come out. Perhaps whatever was wrong with the inside of Lena’s head had passed itself on.

  I felt besmirched by these thoughts, but not for the first time I put my uneasiness down to quite the wrong cause. I thought it was the horrid idea of what had been done to Cara that was unsettling me. I actually thought that I had pushed myself to my limits and beyond in making myself repeat the idea and see the image over and over again. In fact, of course, I had turned away in squeamishness every time, taking mincing little peeks at it and then bolting, and because of this I had not seen something glaringly obvious. Had I forced myself truly to retell the tale of what had happened in the cottage that night and tried to watch it happening before me like a news reel, I could not have helped but see the gaping hole in the story Ironic that I should then have been able to turn away from it once and for all. Nanny Palmer was right: monsters faced are mice, but because I had not faced this one it loomed over me like a behemoth still.

  It was with some effort that I arranged a suitable face to wear above my linen frock for the picnic, an effort which I surmised from Donald’s greeting was not wholly successful.

  ‘You look dreadful, Mother,’ he said, reminding me very much that he was his father’s son.

  ‘You don’t half need this picnic,’ said Teddy. ‘But it’s a shame you’re so big or you could come in the trap with us instead of the boring old motor. Now I wonder . . .’ He looked at the picnic things and unflatteringly at my figure, gauging their relative weights, I supposed, but Alec nipped this firmly in the bud.

  ‘No, we’re not getting it all out again when we’ve just spent such ages stuffing it in,’ he said. ‘You get in and drive the pony with Donald, and Mummy and I will crawl along behind and tell you what we think of your prowess.’ This proved the magic touch, although I pitied the poor pony, envisaging much more liberal application of the whip if the boys were playing to the gallery. Still it gave Alec and me talking time as we puttered along in their dust.

  ‘You do look ropy, actually, Dan,’ said Alec as we set off.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ I began, but could not go on. ‘I really am all right. In fact, it’s being all right that’s so shocking.’

  ‘I know,’ said Alec. ‘I remember this from the war. One gets used to more and more and more until one is quite happy to countenance things which would have been the stuff of nightmares in normal life. I remember –’ He broke off.

  ‘Please tell me, ‘I said. ‘I shan’t mind, because I know exactly what you mean. Every so often I hear myself saying “But since Lena killed her child that must mean . . .” and I think I shall faint or burst out laughing because it seems so impossible.’

  ‘Faint, if you’ve got a choice,’ said Alec. ‘When one starts to laugh one’s really in trouble. What I was going to . . . I once had this pie. It was in the trench, you know, and instead of the usual dried beef and mouldy biscuits, somehow from somewhere we had got these pies. Anyway, I found myself thinking that yes, I knew I had to do something about old Pinner, Sergeant Pinner, I knew he could not stay there for ever, but I was bloody well going to have my pie first and then a fag and then I should take him away, and it wasn’t as if he could see me anyway because his head was blown off all over the shop and that made it better. I started to laugh then and couldn’t stop, kept going until the whites of my eyes were red all over with burst blood vessels and then Pinner and I had to be carted off together. Look, one of them is still a bit pink.’ He turned towards me and opened his eyes very wide close to mine. I could not see anything in the dim interior of the motor car, but I nodded anyway.

  ‘So,’ said Alec, horridly brisk all of a sudden, ‘let’s at least see if you’ve been wading through the same horrors as me this morning, shall we? I concluded that . . . that . . . the nature of the attack points towards its being Lena’s sudden discovery that Cara was with child which brought it on.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said thankfully. ‘That on top of all the strain of what she was about to do. And, as well, there’s the fact that she is, must be, an extremely unstable woman. In our midst all the
time, looking perfectly normal.’

  And yet. Lena’s madness seemed to come and go so conveniently. Mad evil thoughts, and cool sane plans. Mad, ugly rages, and calm, brave solutions. I had heard of people who had hordes of unwanted guests inside their heads, independent agents each ploughing a different furrow, and I wondered again for a moment if Lena’s madness could be of this type. But no. Even when she acted like two separate people, one cleared up after the other. They were in it together.

  The boys had veered off the lane and were trotting the pony over the rough ground towards our favourite picnic spot, Donald driving the trap and Teddy, totally unnecessarily, standing up waving his arms to show us where they were going. We turned and began to bump over the grass behind them.

  ‘What about the diamonds?’ said Alec ‘Have you got anywhere with that?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘At best a lot of incompatible wisps.’

  ‘Me too, ‘said Alec. ‘Such as what makes Lena so sure that the Esslemonts’ ball is anything to do with it? After all, Cara told you that the jewels were in and out the bank more than once since then. To be cleaned and valued and have pastes made.’

  ‘Everything except to be worn,’ I agreed. ‘If I had anything as beautiful as those I should wear them all the time. Every day. I should be wearing them now.’ I was forcibly trying to lighten the mood as we drew to a halt and got ready to jump down and rejoin the children.

  Mrs Tilling might not have been up all night in preparation of the feast but that was clearly the effect she wanted to achieve. As well as tomato sandwiches there were chicken legs and a glorious raised game pie which Alec and the boys fell upon but which I, still trying to dispel the story of Sergeant Pinner, could not touch. A splendid luncheon, then, which would have been quite delicious freshly served in the dining room or even on the terrace, instead of damp and dishevelled on the ground a mile from home. The hardboiled eggs, as ever, were taken by Teddy and shied into the river.

  ‘Where they belong!’ he cried after them. ‘Mummy, why can’t you tell her? It’s a fearful waste of eggs apart from anything else.’

  ‘Write me the script, Teddy darling, and I shall deliver it with feeling,’ I said. ‘And if you come up with a winner we can adjust it slightly and I’ll use it to stamp out my birthday cologne from Granny.’

  After lunch, a row broke out.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mother,’ said Donald, ‘What’s the point of coming if you’re not going to join in?’

  ‘I am not playing hide and seek,’ I insisted. ‘There’s nowhere to hide.’

  ‘There’s heaps of places to hide,’ said Teddy with his arms spread to the heavens and a look of incredulity on his face. ‘Look around. The riverbank, dozens of good trees, long grass . . .’

  ‘You’re wearing a pillow case anyway,’ said Donald, looking disparagingly at my rather crumpled linen, ‘so it can go in the tub for a boiling. Come on!’

  ‘We’ll let Mr Osborne decide,’ I said, and turned pleadingly to Alec.

  ‘I say let’s,’ said Alec, leaping to his feet and brushing away pie crumbs. ‘You boys can hunt for Mummy and me first.’

  The boys draped themselves over the bonnet of the motor car and started counting. Around the next bend in the river, I knew, was an ancient and rather sickly beech tree with a hollow in its trunk and I thought Alec and I might fit there, snugly but not beyond the boundary of propriety, so I dragged him off in that direction. When we got there, however, I saw that this hollow – so commodious in my recollection – was actually only the size of an average bathtub, and while it might have done very well for one of the boys and myself, it was out of the question for Alec and me. He looked at it with one raised eyebrow and then scanned the upper branches.

  ‘You get in there, Dan,’ he said, chivalrously kicking out some old leaves, ‘and I’ll shin up a bit and keep a lookout.’

  ‘It won’t be long, I hope. This is bound to be the first place they look.’

  Resigning myself to the ruin of my frock and to Grant’s censure on my return I backed myself in and snuggled down, while Alec, with a great deal of grunting and rustling of leaves, climbed into the crown above me.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ he said, presently. I assured him I could. ‘I have a clear view,’ he said. ‘We can talk now, but if I see them coming I’ll shush you.’

  I marvelled at his unspoken assumption. We were to speak of the murder of his fiancee, but only until it threatened to interfere with our winning at hide and seek.

  We had hardly begun, though, when I heard a series of whoops and ululations from quite close by and my heart sank. Unsatisfied, as ever, with just hide and seek, they had added a Red Indian element, and, in my experience, being stalked by braves took a good bit longer than by little Scottish boys, what with endless suspensions of the action to discuss anthropological details, as well as the obvious retarding effect of them dropping to their tummies whenever they drew near their prey.

  I heard heavy breathing and slow careful footsteps and I peeped out to see Teddy, bent over at the waist and carrying the knife we had used for the pie, pick his way on tiptoe along the bare earth below the beech tree, looking for tracks. He did not even glance up as he passed.

  Alec waited an age before he spoke again.

  ‘All clear,’ he whispered, then in a normal voice, he carried on. ‘That day at Croys, Dan. Cara said to you she was a good girl who always did as she was told.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told you several times she did.’

  ‘No, but listen. What were you talking about when she said it? Can you remember?’

  ‘Something to do with the diamonds,’ I said. ‘Something to do with her telling her mother. I blush to admit it, but I was more taken up with that fact. I mean, would you? Lena?’

  ‘I should rather have died,’ said Alec. ‘But what I’m really getting at is – Sssh!’ I shushed immediately, thinking he must have had some sudden spark of an idea and needed to catch it before it evaporated, but the steady tramp of approaching feet told me, after a minute, that he had merely heard the boys coming back. I could not help a sigh of exasperation from escaping me. It was too ridiculous for words. I sighed again, rather more loudly, and then wanting only to get out of this tree and go home, I cleared my throat.

  The boys, who had to have heard me, went quiet. Their footsteps stilled and then they began to move again more stealthily, barely making a sound. I held my breath, ready for their leaping attack, but gradually, unbelievably, the quiet footsteps receded. They were walking away. The little devils were deliberately walking away and refusing to find us. This was a ploy of some tradition; hide and seek when they were tiny consisted of my moving myself to more and more obvious locations in the house and their refusing to ‘find’ me even when, giggling helplessly, they looked straight into my eyes. I had learned, as a result, never to allow the game to begin just before bedtime and I remember saying to them in my sternest voice that I should agree to play hide and seek but refused to play ‘hide and hide’ or ‘seek to be sought’ any more. Really though, they should have been past such tricks by now.

  And then suddenly something was clear, as though a bar of carbolic had been dropped into a bath full of bubbles, popping them all at once and revealing my own body lying large as life in the plain water. I struggled out of the hollow and looked up at Alec perched in the branches above me. My face must have shown it because he jumped down and took my hands, all thoughts of hiding forgotten.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘What about this?’ I said. ‘It’s so obvious, you’re going to kick yourself. Since November, the Duffy diamonds have been taken out of the bank to be cleaned, to be valued, and to have pastes made, but they have not been worn. Now answer me this: who takes jewels out of the bank and has them cleaned if they are not going to wear them? Who has their jewels valued for no reason? What kind of person would have pastes made if they were not going to wear the pastes?’

  ‘The same kind of person,’ Alec said slow
ly, ‘who has a photograph album of her two daughters enjoying a week in the country when one of them is already dead. Is that what you mean? Lena was constructing a record?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all. She wasn’t hiding. She was seeking to be found. She was trying to make the theft come to light. Trying to get someone to admit that the diamonds were fakes.’ I laughed, shaking my head. ‘Don’t you see? She was desperately trying to get some jeweller or banker to blow the whistle. She must have been beginning to despair of its ever happening. Certainly the further it got from the Esslemonts’ ball the more difficult it was going to become to convince anyone that that was where the theft occurred.’

  ‘So who stole them?’ said Alec.

  ‘She did,’ I said. ‘Lena did, of course. That’s why she could be so sure of when they were stolen. She stole them herself. And she probably set up the theft with as much care as she set up the fire – only to find that the theft would not come to light and all her lovely evidence at Croys was wasted. She stole them herself, Alec, and what is more, she meant to steal them twice. Once in reality and once by claiming the insurance money. Or as it turned out by extorting the insurance money from Silas.’

  ‘But why would she?’ said Alec.

  ‘Perhaps because Gregory meant to give them to Cara. And because Lena loves them. Perhaps she still has them somewhere and always meant to keep them for herself. For herself and Clemence, I mean. I’m prepared to believe that she loves Clemence as well as the diamonds but we know that she hated Cara.’

  ‘Do we?’ said Alec. He sounded bewildered, as though struggling to keep up with me.

  ‘She killed her, Alec darling,’ I said. ‘She killed her twice. In cold blood and in anger. Her own child. Of course she hated her.’