‘Oh, the natural chemicals your brain makes when you’re hurt or eat or exercise or whatever, and that make you feel euphoric? As well as sleepy?’
‘You know about that?’
‘Oh, I know a lot about such things,’ he said. ‘It’s always been an interest of mine. Anatomy and physiology,’ he added as he saw her puzzled look. ‘I’ve got all sorts of books on it. I first got interested when I was a chef and had to learn how to handle various sorts of meat and fish and poultry. I thought it was extraordinary the way so many animals have the same interior arrangements – hearts and livers and so forth – that I started to cross-check with people. Riveting, it was.’
‘Yes,’ she said and stifled a yawn. ‘It can be.’
‘Ah,’ he said then. ‘I should have thought of this sooner. Hold on, I won’t be a moment or two.’ He pulled the car over to the kerb and got out to run into a branch of Boot’s the chemists’. She watched him go and thought, he’s after plaster or something. I really should have insisted he took me to the hotel. This is all getting too silly for words.
But when he came back and pushed a bag into her hand, before starting the engine and pulling out into the traffic, she found he hadn’t been after wound dressings at all. The bag contained a pair of black tights and she turned the pack over in her hands and laughed. ‘I see you got the large size.’
‘Not everyone is blessed with legs as long as yours,’ he said. ‘I noticed ’em when we were in Sloane’s. I thought it better to get them too big than too small.’
‘You’re quite right. I do need this size. Thank you for your trouble. What do I –’
‘If you dare to ask me how much they cost and try to pay me back, I’m liable to get very stroppy indeed,’ he said. ‘I tore ’em, I buy ’em.’
She couldn’t argue with that so she said no more and went on looking out of the window. They were out of the town now, on a narrow country road which, after another few minutes, narrowed even more as it curved into a bend. And then she caught her breath.
‘Oh, come on!’ she said. ‘That really is ridiculous!’
He laughed delightedly. ‘Isn’t it just? I’ve said that ever since we moved in.’ And she went pink with mortification.
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. Is this your home? I shouldn’t be so rude. But it looks like – like –’
‘Like a chocolate box, yes.’ Indeed it did. It was a long low building crowned with neat thatch, whitewashed, with low diamond-paned windows, and a neatly hedged front garden that was crammed, even this late in the year, with colour from late asters and roses, Michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemums and variously brightly berried bushes. There was even a wisp of smoke emerging from a chimney and the scent of woodsmoke in the air. Everything but a woman in a crinoline, in fact, holding a parasol and hiding her face in a poke bonnet.
‘It looks a lovely place to live,’ she managed.
‘I live in just half of it.’ He came round the car and opened the door to let her out. She moved gingerly, for her leg had stiffened considerably and was far from comfortable. ‘You’ll see. Now come along. Lean on me.’
She did, and hobbled up the path – which was, of course, she noted with some amusement, made of bricks between which sprigs of thyme and other scented plants grew, filling her nose with their aroma as she trod on them – glad to have the help. The front door, which was, inevitably, painted a glossy black and bore several heavy brass fittings, opened as they reached it.
The woman who stood there was small and neat and had exceedingly black hair frizzed into an aureole round her narrow face. She wore a good deal of make-up, with pale blue eye shadow, exceedingly red lipstick and pink cheeks, but she was obviously old; really, George thought, very old. Seventy or more.
‘I saw the car,’ she said, coming out to reach for George’s other arm. ‘What on earth is all this, Mr Jasper? Really, what has been happening to you, you poor soul?’
‘I ran her over, Pushkin.’ Jasper said. ‘Backwards. She needs a bowl of warm water and some antiseptic and bandages of some sort. And don’t try to do the dressing for her because she’s a doctor.’
‘Then she’ll have the sense to let a good nurse take over what nurses do best.’ The old woman grinned widely at George, showing teeth to match the rest of her appearance: that is, highly artificial in their white regularity. ‘’N’t that right, doctor?’
George, who wanted nothing more than the chance to get her now very sore leg comfortably dealt with, smiled and nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, knowing that arguing would get her nowhere. The old woman looked very pleased with herself.
‘You see? I told you. Now you go and get my dressing box and then get out of the way. We’ll sort this out in no time.’
She led George into a neat kitchen, which was surprisingly modern with highly reflective Formica work-surfaces and cupboard doors. George looked round, a little startled. The old woman laughed as she saw her face.
‘I told him, I said, you can be as oldee worldee as you like everywhere else, my lad, but not in my kitchen. I want the most modern there is; I don’t care if it does look like an operating theatre, and there’s an end to it! So that’s what I got. He spent a fortune on all the old stuff out there, he did, but not so much as he had to spend in here.’ She laughed, a fat, self-satisfied sound and almost lifted George on to a high stool. The arms were remarkably strong.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘I must find a nice bowl and some – ah, here we are …’ She moved easily about her kitchen, collecting a glass bowl and filling it with warm water and adding a splash of something from a bottle she took from the box that Jasper brought in at that point.
‘You hoppit, now, Mr Jasper. We’ll be out when we’re good and ready,’ the old woman said. Jasper flashed a smile at George and obediently went without a word. Really, George thought, this is too feudal to believe, and had to say something about it.
‘Jasper,’ she said. ‘I thought it was his first name?’
‘It is,’ the old woman said. ‘He’s Jasper Powell. Now, you’ll have to get those poor old tights off, won’t you? Ah, got another pair I see, very good. Here you are then.’
George went on talking as she stood up gingerly and hoiked up her skirt to get her tights away from her bottom before sitting down again. ‘I didn’t think anyone called people “Mister” and then their first name any more,’ she said. ‘It does sound …’
‘Well yes, but it’s better I think. He said just to call him Jasper, but since I call Edward “Mister”, I can’t be different with him, can I? Even though I’ve changed every nappy he ever wore.’
‘Eh?’ George stared at her. The old woman was helping her pull the tights over her feet and it helped to have her attention distracted, because the action hurt her injury.
The old woman laughed. ‘I used to be his nanny, you see. Both of them.’
‘Jasper and –?’
‘No. Edward and Richard. Lord and Lady Durleigh’s boys, rest their poor souls. Lord and Lady D., I mean. Dead a long time now they are. Only me and the boys left really. And now …’ She shook her head, squeezing some cotton wool in the water in the bowl, and began with deft and practised movements to clean the mess on George’s shin. ‘Richard’s dead. And David.’
‘Richard,’ George said carefully, almost unable to believe her good luck. She thought she’d struck a mother lode finding Sloane’s this morning; but this! She wasn’t sure what to say, and chose to be honest. ‘I know,’ she said and then, as the old woman looked up at her, seeming startled, added: ‘The papers are full of it.’
‘Yes, o’ course. I forgot that. I never see them. Nor watch the telly. Not me. I like old films, that’s what I like, and I’ve got my video that Mr Edward bought me and a lot of old films and that’s all I watch, and very nice too.’ She seemed determined to say no more about Edward, and for a moment George was nonplussed. She wanted very much to talk about him, and about his dead brothers, but knew perfectly well she had to walk on eggshell
s. She’d promised Gus, after all, that she wouldn’t let anyone know that she was doing any investigating here in Durleighton. But she had to go on; to waste an opportunity like this when it had fallen into her lap would be lunacy.
‘It must be dreadful for you, after so long with the family to have lost – I mean, two of them …’ She left it dangling.
The old lady stopped her ministrations to George’s leg and stood there, her head down, thinking. Then she said, ‘Yes. It’s not easy. But then, it never has been. Right from the start, it was problems with those two. Lady D. always said we should have called them Pharez and Zarah, but then she was always one for her Bible. And now David too.’ She shook her head. ‘What’s done is done. No point in crying over what’s happened. Now, you did make a mess of this leg, didn’t you? Well, I’ll get on with clearing it up and we’ll see how we go.’
‘Thank you,’ George said, and left it at that, for the old woman had set her jaw and clearly had no intention of saying any more about the Durleigh family.
‘I’m George Barnabas, by the way,’ she said after a little while and the old woman looked up at her and nodded.
‘Dr Barnabas. And very nice too. I’m Edna Lyons.’
‘But Jas– he called you Pushkin.’
‘Well, he likes to be the same as Mr Edward. When they was little they couldn’t manage Nanny Lyons the way their mother said they should, and anyway Richard started calling me pussycat because he saw one on my lap one day and I said, “Say hello to Pussy,” and he thought it was me, you see, that I was pussy and well, you know how it is with children. They get their pet names for people and they sort of stick. There now, that looks better! I’ll just try a bit of our yellow magic. It’s old-fashioned but it’s good.’
She took a bottle of acriflavine from her box and dabbed some of it on to the injury, turning it a fierce saffron, and George was very amused, even though it made her wince momentarily because it stung. Aniline dye antiseptics were as old as the Ark. But it didn’t matter; the graze would soon heal with it or without. She watched as Mrs Lyons smoothed a sticky dressing on top of the yellow, and then straightened her back.
‘There,’ she said. ‘You pull them tights up and then we’ll see about a nice cup of tea to complete the cure.’ She called Jasper to fetch her box to return it to its place and he came back to the kitchen looking hopeful.
‘Comfortable now?’ He peered down at George’s leg and nodded. ‘I can barely see the dressing under the blackness of the tights. I hope they fit all right?’
‘None of your business,’ Mrs Lyons said sharply, looking scandalized, and they both laughed. ‘Go to the sitting room, do. I’ll fetch your tea in a moment or two.’
The next half-hour was extremely agreeable. The sitting room was as studiedly period as the exterior of the house, and Jasper took a good deal of pleasure in explaining to her how it had come about.
‘There was a row of four cottages that were tied to the estate – farm workers got them as part of their job. But then, as agriculture turned mechanical, they got rid of the workers and their families and Lord Durleigh was going to sell these. But my friend Edward who is – was – Durleigh’s brother, and who lived up at the Abbey then, said he wanted a place of his own. So he got them and converted them. It’s two houses now – did you see there was another front door a bit of a way along? That’s the smaller cottage. It’s mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘While I live here.’ Jasper smiled easily. ‘I don’t own it. It’s Edward’s but he wanted me to have it on a tenancy. I’ll show you later – it’s a bit smaller than this one. This has an en-suite bathroom upstairs alongside the main bedroom – very Tudor, my dear, couldn’t be more!’ He laughed then and looked at her sideways. ‘As well as another bathroom for the other two bedrooms. Guest rooms, you see. Then there’s this big room we’re in and the kitchen and the utility room …’
The room they were in really was big, with odd turns to the walls, and small areas which were reached by a couple of steps up or down, and a vast log-burning fireplace, in which at the moment a small fire was crackling in a cheerful manner. The period look was completed with lots of chairs, deep, squashy and upholstered in very bright chintz, ruffled lace curtains at the windows and a plethora of highly polished wood everywhere.
‘And yours is the same as this?’ she said, looking around. ‘Very …’
‘Very not me,’ he said firmly. ‘I think all this is right over the top but there you go. One man’s meat and so on. I’ve done my interior in a rather more stark fashion which Edward hates. He won’t come in there. But Pushkin doesn’t mind. She cleans up after me as happily as she does in here for Edward.’
‘Why did you bring me here instead of to your own house?’ she asked, and he looked surprised at the question.
‘Because I wanted Pushkin to look after you. And I knew she’d be here. Edward likes to drop in at home for lunch, so she has a busy morning. He should be here soon.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s almost twelve now.’
She sat up sharply. The hot tea and the cheerful chatter had made her unaware of all but her immediate comfort, but now she remembered. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Gus’ll be looking everywhere for me.’
‘Gus?’ he sounded curious, but not particularly so, and she almost told him, but held back just in time. Gus said to keep a low profile and keep it she would.
‘A friend. We’re staying at the Bald Monk and he said he’d find me around the town when I’d done my shopping. I really must get back.’
‘Oh, do wait for Edward,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’d love to meet you. You really are a breath of fresh air in a place like Durleighton. We meet very few interesting people here. All these country types – you’d think it was still 1955 sometimes, they’re so stuffy.’
It was then and only then that George realized what a pit had been dug for her feet. She had met Edward Caspar-Wynette-Gondor, at the party at the House of Lords where she first met Lord Durleigh. It had been a brief meeting, but it had happened. And if he came in now and remembered her, she’d have to admit that yes, indeed, she had been at the party with a superintendent of police and yes, they were investigating the murders including those of Edward’s brothers, Richard and David. And how could she explain all that without displaying just how duplicitously she had been behaving all morning? Edward’s sighting of her would surely expose entirely the fact that Gus was snooping around the town, and that could … She hated to think about it.
She got to her feet and said urgently, ‘Really, I can’t wait. I’d be most grateful if you could give me a lift back to town right away. I know G– he’ll be most concerned at the delay. If you’d be so kind?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Be glad to. Just let me have a quick word with Pushkin.’ He turned to go back to the kitchen and then lifted his head to listen. ‘Well, wouldn’t you know it? There’s Edward’s car now. I’d know the row that old banger of his makes anywhere. Just a quick hello then, and I’ll see you back to town at once.’
25
She did what any woman does in an emergency. She asked for the bathroom and locked herself in.
This really was a mess, and for a change not one of her own making. She hadn’t chosen to be run into by that socking great car, she told herself with a tinge of self-pity as she sat on the lidded lavatory and contemplated her situation. Gus can’t say I’m up to my neck in trouble because as usual I’ve talked too much or deliberately gone where I shouldn’t.
But that line of thinking didn’t help at all. What she had to do was to try to convince Edward that he did not recognize her, and that he’d never seen her with a police superintendent companion. And that wasn’t going to be easy. She knew she was a striking-looking person, with her hair piled on top of her head, her big glasses, her height and her –
She stopped then and peered into the mirror above the washbasin. With swift fingers, she unpinned her hair. There was a comb on the little shelf beneath the mirror and
mentally she blessed Edward – or should it be Nanny Pushkin? – for such care of guests as she used it to fluff up her hair into as wild a look as she could, especially making a sort of fringe with side bangs to cover as much of her face as possible. Then she took off her glasses and peered at the hazy image in the mirror, wishing she’d brought her contact lenses out with her. To herself she looked exactly like herself, of course, but she thought she might just bamboozle a man who had seen her only once, so she took a deep breath, tucked her shoes under her arm to make them as unobtrusive as possible, slumped her shoulders and curved her body to reduce her height, and unlocked the door.
The two men were standing in the middle of the hearth rug in the living room, with their backs to the fireplace, talking quietly and intensely, and they looked up as she came into the room from the far end, where a set of small steps led up to the lavatory. The cloud was lifting now and as she saw the feeble splash of sunshine on the floor by the windows she moved that way, trying to get the light behind her. That might help.
Whether it was the hair, the sun or the absent glasses and shoes she would never know, but something had worked; Edward came forward readily, one hand outstretched in response to Jasper’s introduction, and looked at her politely but without any hint of recognition.
‘It was my fault as much as his,’ she said, trying to sound as English as possible, remembering just in time that when they had met he might have noticed her American accent. ‘How do you do.’
‘I’m glad Mrs Lyons was able to help you.’ Edward was still being very punctilious, but he seemed a little abstracted and she thought, busy man, wants to get on with his lunch, can’t be bothered with a stray visitor: I’ve pulled it off! She smiled widely.
‘She was splendid. And now I really must go. Thank you so much for your help, Mrs Lyons,’ for the old woman was fussing around a small table which she was setting up for lunch in the hearth, ‘I’m most grateful.’
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