A Death in Two Parts

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “I know. It’s true of all of us. Someone needs to harness the energies of the old. To treadmills if nothing else offers. We’re so wasted!”

  “You’re not old, Patience, and don’t try to behave as if you were. It was a pleasure to see old Ma Vansittart taking in your new outfit. How soon can we go to London and buy you that suit?”

  “Not till we have got a few things sorted out here. Your A levels, for a start; we must lose no time about that. And I must see Mr Jones and get him working on what happened about your mother’s money. I can’t believe even Geoffrey would have left you totally unprovided for.”

  “Mr Jones?”

  “My solicitor; such a nice man. He lives down the High Street.”

  “Here in Leyning? Don’t you have someone looking after all that money?”

  “Geoffrey did. Mr Jones is finding someone.”

  “Ouch.” She pulled a face which turned into a yawn. “You look tired, Patience, and I’m knackered. All that bracing Brighton ozone, d’you think? Shall we be slobs and stack the dishes and go to bed?”

  “Yes, it’s been a long day. I admit I am a bit tired. We’ll both be better for a long night.”

  But in the morning she woke with a small niggling headache and lay for a few moments wondering if she could be starting flu.

  No time for that. She got herself firmly out of bed and discovered she had forgotten to open her bedroom window, which doubtless explained the headache. She thought Veronica looked heavy-eyed, too, when she joined her for breakfast. “Let’s have a quiet day today,” she said, pouring coffee.

  “Let things settle a bit,” agreed Veronica. “Cool. No, I won’t have an egg today, thanks, just a bit of toast. That’s all I usually have.”

  “Funny to know so little about each other,” said Patience.

  “I reckon we know the things that count. But, yes, there’s going to be some ground to cover. Like do you watch the Teletubbies or the Simpsons?”

  “Neither,” said Patience. “But I like to get the six o’clock news.”

  “Mum watched a lot of soaps. I’m not into it much. Boring.” She stifled a yawn. “I’m falling asleep again. May we get the dishes done, Patience, so I can get going in the cellar? I’ll feel better when I’ve done that.”

  “It’s going to be a horrid job, I’m afraid.” Patience turned on the hot tap.

  “And serve me bloody well right. Sorry! Why don’t you have a dishwasher, Patience?”

  “No room. Anyway, I quite like doing dishes. Specially at this sink, with its view of the garden. We must get some more nuts for the birds when we go out.”

  “I like the way you say ‘we’,” said Veronica. “When are we going to go out?”

  “When you’re done in the cellar? There are all kinds of things I need for the house. It was all so different at the Hall. Goodness, it’s hard to believe it’s only five days since I left there.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re homesick?”

  “Good gracious, no way! If I never see that place again, it will be too soon. Lord, it’s good to have you here to say that to, Veronica. Promise you won’t let me batten on you?”

  “Batten? Not just your line surely.”

  “Well, don’t let me bully you either. I mean, maybe you don’t want to come out shopping.”

  “‘Course I do. The least I can do is carry for you, when you’re feeding me.”

  “I like feeding you.” In her turn, she swallowed a yawn. “Are you sure you want to do the cellar today? It’s going to be a pig of a job.”

  “It’ll get worse with leaving. Have you any old rags I can use for the turps?”

  “Oh dear, not a thing. It never occurred to me to bring those.”

  “Well you didn’t know you were getting a poltergeist with the house, did you?”

  “That’s just what it felt like!” Patience smiled at her. “I know! Why don’t you use that drippy skirt for rags? I really don’t think I want to see you in it again.”

  “I should rather think not.”

  “Unless you think you ought to send it back to the friend who lent it to you?”

  “No.” It came out explosively. “I shan’t be seeing that lot again. That’s the other reason I came away. What I didn’t know, when I went to them, was they’re on the hard stuff. They took my purse; that’s why I had to hitch up here.”

  “You hitched! Oh, Veronica. Promise you won’t ever again. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Not looking the way I did, it wasn’t. Well, one of them was a bit off, but you’ve got to be able to cope. And the last one gave me a fiver. Not for services rendered, in case you were wondering. He came from Newlyn, said he wouldn’t want a nice St Ives girl loose in Brighton with no money. Truckers are OK mostly; it’s private cars are dodgy. OK—” grinning at Patience as she dried the last teaspoon – “never again and that’s a promise. Where did you put the turps?”

  “Still in its bag in the front hall, I think.” Patience unbolted the cellar door as Veronica tore strips from the sad skirt. “Promise to leave it if it’s impossible, Veronica; we can always get a man in, after all.”

  “Anything he can do I can do better,” said Veronica cheerfully, rolling up her sleeves. “No, I can manage, thanks.” She picked up turps, scraper and rags. “Why don’t you sit down for a bit? You look a bit off this morning, tell you the truth.”

  “I’ve felt better,” admitted Patience. “I do hope I’m not starting something.” She finished polishing the table and was glad to sit down beside it with the newspaper, while Veronica vanished down the cellar stair.

  “It stinks of paint down here,” came her cheerful voice. “No wonder you weren’t fooled.” And then: “That’s funny …”

  She reappeared a minute later to find Patience nodding over the newspaper. “Wake up,” she said. “There’s something blocking the vent down there; that’s why we’re so sleepy. It’s the boiler.” She found the front door key on the hall shelf and swung the door wide. “Yes,” – looking down into the sunk area beside the steps – “something’s fallen on to the vent. It wasn’t like that the other day or I could never have got the paint down. Come and look, Patience, fresh air’s what you need.”

  Patience had been on the verge of drifting off to sleep, but pulled herself reluctantly out of her chair and moved slowly out to join Veronica at the top of the front steps.

  “Don’t fall in!” Veronica put a steadying arm round her waist. “You need a grating over it, Patience. It looks like somebody’s rubbish down there. What sluts people are. Missed the dustmen, I suppose, and just dropped it in. And it’s cut off the air supply to the boiler, see? You read about it in the papers: whole families dying in caravans with faulty heating.”

  “What an extraordinary thing.” Patience was breathing great gulps of fresh air and feeling better by the minute. “Do be careful.” She hung on to the door jamb as Veronica let go of her and climbed down into the area.

  “It’s just a bag full of newspapers.” She picked up the black bag and heaved it up on to the pavement. “How very odd.”

  “I don’t like it a bit,” said Patience. “Bring it indoors, Veronica – quick, before anyone notices.” She glanced swiftly across the road.

  “She went out shopping,” said Veronica.

  Back in the house, Patience went straight to the back door and threw it wide open. “Would you be a dear and open all the windows upstairs? But don’t sit down or anything!”

  “I sure won’t. Should we leave the front door for a bit, do you think? Get a through draught?”

  “Don’t you think the windows should do it, if we stay out for a while?”

  “Get the shopping done now, while it clears? Now you’ve got that bolt on the back gate we could perfectly well leave the back door open while we are out.”

  “I suppose we could.” Patience propped a chair against the back door to hold it open against the draught that rushed through the house when Veronica opened the front windows upstairs
.

  “I managed to get the attic window open,” said Veronica, returning. “You ought to do something with all that space, Patience. How do you feel?”

  “Better.”

  “So do I. But should we call the Gas Board, do you think?”

  “I don’t really see why. They’d take forever to come, and we’d have to stay in for them, and we do know exactly what happened. They made me put in that grille, you know, after I had the boiler installed. When they tested it, it didn’t draw properly, and it was the grille or no boiler. You’re absolutely right, I should have had a grating put across the top, but I was afraid it might mean planning permission and all that hassle; you’ve no idea how fierce they are in this High Street.”

  “I can imagine,” said Veronica. “You can hardly change a door knob in St Ives without a fuss. When are your dustbins emptied, Patience?”

  “That’s the funny thing,” said Patience. “Tomorrow.”

  Ten

  “But you really ought to tell someone,” said Veronica, not for the first time, over their lunch of salad and cheese. “Like, I keep thinking, if you hadn’t had the heating switched to go off at night, we might not have waked up this morning.”

  “I don’t think it works like that.” Patience had been thinking about this. “The boiler was on all night, after all, it’s just the radiators go off. It’s a slow build-up, isn’t it? You had your window open, didn’t you? I forgot mine. But it was your going down to the cellar saved us. Lucky for me you came.”

  “Lucky for me too. Look, I know it seems crazy, and it has to have been an accident, but don’t you think maybe you ought to tell the police?”

  “You say that?” Patience temporised. “I thought you young hated the police?”

  “Like pigs, you mean? Fuzz? All that? I’ve always found them OK.”

  “Well, I suppose in St Ives they knew who you were.”

  “For what it was worth? I suppose they did. So: good old English snobbery at work, you mean?”

  “Just that. Geoffrey was a policeman when we met.”

  “I never knew that. I thought he was just a leisured gent.”

  “That was after he married me,” said Patience. “Before, he was working his way up at Scotland Yard. But it didn’t happen fast enough for him. Nothing ever did, poor Geoffrey …I’ve never liked the police much. You see, I was accused of murder once. Clapped in the cells, in Lewes, under the Magistrate’s Court.”

  “You have to be joking!”

  “No. It’s true. I was twenty-one – not much older than you are. There was capital punishment then. I sat in that cell, facing the gallows. I was sick with fright, Veronica. Not fair to blame the police; it seemed such a clear case. Of course they treated me like a guilty thing, worthless, who’d killed an old lady for her money.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes. I was her companion. It’s a long story. She made a will, you see, to tease her relations, leaving it all to me. I was a relation too, actually. And then she died – poisoned – and everything pointed to me. It was hard not to believe it myself, sitting in that cell. Then Geoffrey read about it at the Yard – we knew each other a bit – and he came down like St George and the Dragon. He had one bit of evidence that helped my case, and then I got thinking and we talked about it, and he looked at it with a fresh eye, believing me. He would have been a good policeman, Veronica; it was all such a pity. Money spoils people.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He went through the evidence against me with a fine-tooth comb, and it didn’t stand up. How could it? So they let me out. Goodness, that was a strange day: the doors opening, the change in my gaolers, the grovelling. I think they were afraid I’d sue for wrongful arrest, but there wasn’t so much of that about in those days. Besides, I hadn’t actually been arrested, they kept saying that, just ‘held for questioning’. It felt like arrest to me. I’ve not been mad keen on policemen since. Though of course all that lot retired years ago.”

  “Brave of you to come back to the Hall.”

  “I didn’t want to. But Geoffrey wanted to live there. It suited the image he’d planned. He talked me into it. I’d have been better without all that money too. I should have gone back to college – I was in my last year when it all happened. But it was all so awful: the whole family lined up against me, conspiring, it felt like. Well, I was the outsider; you couldn’t blame them for closing ranks against me.” Her mind shied away from the picture of that hostile group, and Mark among them, his eyes avoiding hers.

  “So who had done it? What happened?”

  “Geoffrey discovered that the old lady was coming down with senile dementia, or thought she was. And she had forged a lot of the evidence against me herself, so as to get a hold on me. She was such an old tartar, the other companions had always left, but I stood up to her. I think she liked it actually; up to a point. But she had to have everyone under her thumb. When I refused to report on her family to her she forged her own signature on a cheque and landed me with it. I gave in for the moment – anything to get through Christmas – but I was going to leave right after. Only then she died. There had been a forged prescription, too, for the sleeping pills that killed her. You can see how black it looked for me, until Geoffrey turned up and went to work on it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “In the end the coroner ruled that it was suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed, or some woolly phrase like that. So then of course I inherited all her money.”

  “That can’t have pleased her family.”

  “No, poor things. It was hideous for them. They had counted on it so. And that hadn’t been good for them either. She’d kept them all dangling on her strings. A horrid business. Money really is the root of all evil.”

  “Lack of it’s no fun either. But it’s not just the money bothers you, is it? Like, there’s something else.”

  “It was the way they ganged up on me. The whole lot of them. I didn’t ever want to see them again.”

  “And have you?”

  “Not till just the other day. The day we met, actually. My cousin Mary suddenly showed up on the doorstep. It was her turning against me I’d minded most, her and her brother. She was on her way to the ferry to meet him in France somewhere. Said it was time we buried the hatchet. And we did. It was good. She stayed to lunch, and we talked about it a bit. She told me she and Mark had been going to break ranks, as she called it, meant to stand up for me if it had come to a trial. I don’t know how much good it would have done me, and of course one will never know—”

  “Whether they really would have? No way. Easy to say it after the event. You liked them?”

  “They were the best of the lot. Mary had got away, had a flat of her own in town, and a job, and a string of young men. In those days, of course, she got engaged to them, one after the other. She brought one down that Christmas and married him after it was all over, but it didn’t work out. It was their mother asked me to go there in the first place. I never could like her. She was tough as old army boots, Josephine Brigance.”

  “And the brother – what was he like?”

  “Mark?” Was she blushing? Could she after all these years? “He had all the charm in the world, and used it. I’m not sure charm isn’t almost as dangerous as money; you get to think you can get away with murder.” And then, horrified: “No, that’s not what I meant at all.”

  “‘Course not. What did he do, this charming Mark?”

  “Damn all, so far as I could see. He’d done awfully well at Cambridge, his mother kept saying, and had just been idling about at home since he came down.” He had offered to get a job for her sake. Top hat or bowler, he had asked lightly, surely not meaning it. She did not want to talk about Mark. “If you could call Featherstone Hall home.” She changed the subject. “It did not feel much like it to me. Horrible house.”

  “And yet you lived there all those years, afterwards.”

  “Yes; it’s hard to believe, now, knowing a
bout you and your mother.”

  “But you didn’t. And I suppose he had charm too, my father, when you come right down to it.”

  “Oh dear me, yes. But a totally different kind from Mark’s. Geoffrey was the ‘I’m just a helpless little boy, you must look after me’ kind. Mark was your Byronic man, the world his oyster. You could imagine him swash-buckling his way through a romantic novel. Women swooning all over him. That kind of thing.” She felt she was achieving just the light touch she needed.

  “Did you swoon?”

  “Well, a bit. That’s why I minded it so much when I found he and Mary were part of the cabal against me.”

  “Like, you fell into Father’s arms on the rebound? That figures. And he gave you no time to change your mind. He was always a quick operator, was Father.”

  “He said he wanted to take me away from it all.”

  “‘Course he did. You and the money. What happened to romantic Mark then?”

  “Do you know, the most surprising thing. Mary was telling me the other day. She was off to meet him in France because he went into something very cloak and dagger indeed. The only way to see him is by assignation somewhere in Europe. And he must be good at it too. Well, he would be. They won’t let him retire.”

  “Charming the secret birds off the trees. Cool. I’d like to meet your Mark.”

  “Hardly my Mark.”

  “But nobody else’s?”

  “Well, no marriage, Mary said. But what that means these days—”

  “Damn all,” said Veronica cheerfully.

  It gave Patience the courage to ask a question that had been simmering in her mind. “How about you, Veronica? Have you a …” She hesitated, looking for the right word.

  “Like, boyfriend? Partner? Man? Mate?” suggested Veronica. “Thought I had, till I went to him in trouble and he pinched my purse. Aren’t I glad I was too busy looking after Mum to fall into bed with him like he wanted.”

  “I’m glad too,” said Patience. “So we don’t have to worry about that.”

  “No way. Actually, Patience, it taught me something. Like, it’s awfully uncool, but I don’t reckon I’m going to sleep with anyone till I know them a hell of a lot better than that.”