Blood on the Wood

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ I told them. ‘Would you go upstairs and ask Daniel to come down.’

  Anything to get them away. Annie grasped the situation before Oliver, seeing from my expression that the accident was serious, and led him back upstairs. When I went back to the studio Carol was sitting upright on the couch beside her husband, pale and shaking but more composed. Bobbie had settled herself on a chair some way from them and Daisy’s body, head in her hands.

  ‘Now, Miss Bray,’ Adam said, still shaky but judgemental, ‘can you explain to us what’s happened?’

  The hardness of his voice told us, if we hadn’t known before, how bad things looked for Bobbie and me. So I told him, as calmly as I could, from the start. Daniel had suggested the substitution, I said. (I left Carol out of it. She had enough to deal with already and I wasn’t certain anyway how much she’d known about the details of the plan.) He listened, arm still round Carol.

  ‘But where did Daisy Smith come into it?’

  ‘She didn’t, not at all, until I found her in the cabinet when we tried to hide the picture in there.’

  Carol spoke for the first time. ‘In the cabinet? She was actually in the cabinet?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘But how…?’

  ‘It looks like a head injury,’ Adam said.

  I thought she was going to collapse again but she bit her lip and kept herself upright.

  ‘And Daniel suggested you should break in?’

  ‘More than suggested, he planned it. If you don’t believe me, you’ll have to ask him. But I can promise you that all we came for is the picture, and we’ve no more idea than you have what happened to Miss Smith.’

  Carol said, ‘Where is Daniel? And where’s Felicia?’

  Until then, I think we’d all forgotten about Felicia. There was a silence, then Carol pulled herself away from Adam and got to her feet.

  ‘Somebody’s got to tell them. I’ll go and see Felicia.’

  I thought Adam might protest, but perhaps he thought: Anything to get her out of the room. We were all so carefully not looking at the thin shape under the embroidery that had been Daisy.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ I said.

  She was trying hard, but didn’t look fit to get up the stairs on her own. In the hall Annie was waiting for us, terrified.

  ‘I’ve got Mr Venn to go back to bed, but we can’t find Mr Daniel anywhere,’ she said.

  Carol asked, ‘Isn’t he in his room?’ Then, when Annie shook her head, ‘Well, you’d better go and make tea for everybody. Serve it in the morning room and make up a fire there, please.’

  She still sounded near tears but her mind had obviously started working again. When in doubt, ask for tea. Keep everyone occupied. She was right about the fire too. Even an August morning strikes cold at two or three o’clock or whatever it was by now. We climbed the stairs together in silence and went to the door of Felicia’s room. It surprised me that the noise that had been enough to wake Oliver from his drugged sleep hadn’t brought her down. Carol tapped on the door gently.

  ‘Felicia, are you awake?’

  No answer. Another knock, louder this time.

  ‘Felicia?’

  No answer. We looked at each other. There was the slightest of noises from the other side of the door, maybe a bedspring creaking. We waited, but heard nothing else. Carol took hold of the handle and pushed the door open. The blue and willow-patterned room was different shades of grey in the light coming through from the corridor, the curtains half drawn back. There was no head on the big white pillow, only a hump under the quilt. The hump rocked and quivered and, as the door opened, let out a little moaning noise.

  ‘Felicia, what’s wrong?’

  Carol and I barged into each other in our hurry to get through the door. It was in my mind, hers too I supposed, that Felicia was tied up or injured under the quilt. We grabbed it, pulled it back, and there was Felicia in her nightdress, hair down and twisted round her, curled up on her side with her mouth open.

  ‘No, no, no, no.’

  A sobbing protest, like a child’s, at being revealed. She grabbed for the quilt, tried to pull it back over her.

  ‘What’s wrong? Are you hurt? What’s happened?’

  Carol was on her knees by the bed, catching hold of Felicia’s flailing hand. I found a lamp on the bedside table and lit it. Felicia’s ‘no, no’ had turned to a low moaning. Her eyes were huge and horrified. Her bare arms where the nightdress sleeves had fallen back were criss-crossed with scratches. Her clothes lay on the floor in a heap, including the peacock skirt she’d been wearing in the summerhouse. The bottom of it was thick with dust, bristling with fragments of grass and straw. By now Carol had got Felicia’s hand flat on the eiderdown, and was stroking it. After a while she persuaded her to sit up and propped bolsters and pillows behind her. I pulled the quilt back, unhooked a warm wool dressing gown from the back of the door and draped it round her shoulders. She’d stopped moaning but was still as tense as a violin string. Carol and I knelt on the sheepskin rug by the bed. Her eyes caught mine and I could see a question in them: What do we say about this? Mine were probably asking the same question, so neither of us got an answer.

  ‘Would you like anything, Flissie? Some hot milk?’

  This at least got an answer in the form of a little nod, although I doubted if she’d even understood the question. Carol stood up.

  ‘Do you mind staying with her, Miss Bray? I’ll go down and get it from the kitchen.’

  Time passed. There were movements from downstairs and I wondered where Bobbie was. I held on to Felicia’s unresponsive hand, pulled the dressing gown up over her shoulders when it slid down, and said nothing. There were two reasons for saying nothing. One was that I doubted whether Felicia would understand, whatever I said. The other was that there were questions in my mind that it would be inhuman to ask a person in this condition, even if they did get answers.

  Questions like: How did you know something terrible had happened?

  Or: Why didn’t you come out of your room when everybody else did?

  Or: How did you get those scratches on your arms?

  When, after a long time, she spoke at last I was so surprised that I almost missed what she was saying.

  ‘There was a shot.’

  Not quite her normal voice but not far off it.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There was a shot.’

  ‘I had a gun, didn’t I?’

  She was looking at me, aware now that she’d seen me before.

  ‘In the summerhouse, is that what you mean?’

  She didn’t answer, just crinkled her forehead as if trying to remember. I didn’t dare ask anything else and she hadn’t said another word by the time Carol came back with a mug of milk on a tray and a medicine bottle. At least having to look after Felicia had helped her get back her self-possession.

  ‘Adam suggested we should give her some of Uncle Olly’s sleeping drops. How is she?’

  ‘A bit better, I think.’

  I didn’t tell her what Felicia had said. I needed time to think.

  ‘Felicia, would you like some of Uncle Olly’s drops? You’ll feel better when you’ve slept.’

  She nodded silently. Carol slid six precise drops from a pipette into the milk and handed the mug to Felicia. We watched while she drank like a good child, kept on watching as her head sank back into the pillows, her eyes closed and her breathing became normal and regular. Then we tucked the quilt round her, drew the curtains all the way across and tiptoed out with the tray and the medicine bottle. Once we were out in the corridor with the door closed behind us, Carol heaved a deep sigh. Her face looked as drained and tired as mine probably did, but her voice was firm.

  ‘I’ve told Adam. He thinks you’d better join us for a talk downstairs, if you don’t mind.’

  Told him about Felicia, I supposed. I didn’t ask questions, just followed her down.

  Chapter Ten

  THE RO
OM WHERE WE HAD OUR discussion was on the same side of the house as the studio, curtains drawn back giving a view of the dark garden with a vine crowding the glass from outside. Inside, soft light of oil lamps, ash logs fizzing sap in the newly lit fire, tea things on the table.

  When we came in Adam was standing staring out at the garden wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he first came downstairs, trousers and a woollen pullover, sockless feet in leather slippers. His face when he turned and looked at us was strained and questioning. At first I didn’t notice there was anybody else in the room until a weak voice said ‘Carol, Carol, my dear…’ and Oliver Venn made a clumsy effort to get to his feet. He’d been hunched in the corner of a sofa by the fire. Carol sat down beside him and took his hand.

  ‘We thought you were in bed, Uncle Olly.’

  ‘He came down again,’ Adam said, not sounding pleased about it.

  Carol looked a question and he nodded.

  ‘I’ve told him.’

  ‘The poor girl,’ Oliver said. ‘Such a dreadful, dreadful accident.’

  Nobody corrected him. He’d changed out of his nightgown into flannels and a blue smoking jacket, but still looked more asleep than awake and his voice was quavering. ‘That awful cabinet. You should never have brought it here, Carol. I don’t like it. Philomena would have hated it.’

  ‘He thinks it fell on her,’ Adam explained, as if his uncle weren’t there. ‘What about Flissie?’

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Carol told him.

  A nod, as if something had been agreed between them. By this time I’d sat myself down on an armchair, uninvited, legs shaky. Adam turned to me.

  ‘You understand, Miss Bray, I shall have to go for the police – in fact, I should have done it by now.’

  ‘If there’s any question, you can say you had to deal with the hysterical womenfolk first,’ Carol said.

  Was she joking? She gave no sign of it. She was still holding Oliver’s hand, her long bare feet sinking into thick carpet. There was no sign of Bobbie.

  ‘Your friend’s in the kitchen with Annie and Cook,’ Adam said. ‘I realise that you have a difficult decision to make about what you tell the police to explain your presence here.’

  ‘There’s no decision to make. I shall tell them what happened. Only I want my friend kept out of this if possible. Everything she did was under my direction and she couldn’t have heard or seen anything that I didn’t.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that we keep things from the police?’

  Adam Venn was a lawyer, after all, and his tone made me feel as if I were already in the witness box, so I hit back.

  ‘I suppose that’s what this discussion is about. Otherwise you’d have gone for them already.’

  I was still angry on Daisy’s behalf, angry with us all. The Venns had tried to manage the inconvenience of her in life; now we were sitting around in this comfortable room trying to do the same thing with her death.

  ‘Please,’ said Carol, ‘don’t let’s start quarrelling.’

  ‘I’m not intending to quarrel, but a young woman’s been killed. That’s not something that can be tidied away,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no proof she was killed,’ Adam said, but he didn’t sound convincing.

  ‘What are the alternatives? If it was an accident, somebody must have put her body in the cabinet. Or are we suggesting that she crept in there and shot herself?’

  ‘Shot?’ Adam said. ‘Why do you say shot?’

  ‘Or killed herself any other way, come to that.’

  ‘Shot,’ he insisted. ‘You said shot.’

  ‘Please—’ Carol interrupted us, practically shouting the word. Then, when she’d got our attention, ‘Adam, this wasn’t what you wanted to talk to her about. Miss Bray, please listen to him.’

  Adam took a deep breath and sat down at last so that his eyes were level with mine. There was anger in them, but he was trying to control it.

  ‘Miss Bray, please accept that we’re not trying to tidy anything away. But when something like this happens, it’s not only bad in itself, it can lead to all sorts of unpleasant consequences that have no direct connection with the event itself. You agree with that?’

  I nodded, biting my tongue.

  ‘Thank you. The police will naturally make inquiries about Miss Smith’s identity and how she came to be in this part of the world. Inevitably, they’ll hear she came here with my brother Daniel. We can’t avoid that.’ He paused again.

  ‘Where is Daniel? What’s happened to him?’ Oliver’s voice was pathetic and querulous. Carol shushed him gently. Adam ignored him and went on.

  ‘The question is, whether it’s equally inevitable that they should know about his … his so-called engagement to Miss Smith.’

  ‘Considering the announcement was witnessed by about a dozen people, including myself, it probably is inevitable,’ I said.

  ‘And you intend to tell the police?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what I’m going to tell them. I suppose it will depend on what they ask me. But I’m not going to tell lies to protect your brother’s reputation.’

  ‘It’s not Daniel he’s thinking of,’ said Carol softly. ‘It’s Felicia Foster.’

  The name hung in the air.

  ‘What about her?’ I said. I could guess, but I wanted Adam to say it. He took his time, with long gaps between the words.

  ‘Miss Foster has suffered great distress in the last few days because of my brother’s actions. I think it’s our responsibility – yours as well as ours – to see that she doesn’t suffer any more from intrusive police questioning.’

  ‘How can what I say affect that?’

  ‘I gather from Carol that Felicia was in a state of great distress just now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you’ll agree that you would not have been in a position to witness that distress if you hadn’t come into our house stealthily and uninvited.’

  ‘I might have come into the house stealthily, but I went to Miss Foster’s room quite openly.’

  ‘This isn’t a matter for legalities.’ (I thought that rich coming from Adam, who’d been trying to take a high legal tone, but said nothing.) ‘It’s a matter of, well … decency. If Felicia said or did in her distress anything she might regret later, it would be inhuman to pass that on without very good reason.’

  ‘I agree. But suppose there were good reasons?’

  ‘Such as?’

  I let my eyes go where most of our minds must have been, towards the studio.

  ‘Somebody’s done this terrible, grotesque thing to us,’ Adam said.

  ‘To you? I thought it was to Miss Smith.’

  ‘To all of us. Are you going to let that ruin Felicia’s life? She’s distressed anyway. If she’s subjected to police questioning, she could break down entirely.’

  ‘Perhaps she already has,’ I said.

  I made my decision. I’d already told Daniel what I’d seen in the summerhouse. Now they’d have to know it as well. I told the story as flatly as possible, from the time I heard the shot at the gate to taking the gun from Felicia. Three pairs of eyes were on me, Adam’s hostile, Oliver’s bleary, Carol’s scared. When I finished talking, she was the one who broke the silence.

  ‘She said she’d found the gun there?’

  ‘That’s what she told me. It might not have been true.’

  Adam ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it so that he suddenly looked much more like his younger brother. Up to that point, I guessed, he really had believed he could control the effects of what had happened. Now he doubted it.

  ‘Is that why you said she was shot, Miss Bray?’

  ‘I don’t know she was shot, but the gun was in my mind, yes.’

  It must have occurred to him, as to me, that we could find out one way or the other by going next door and lifting the cloth from Daisy’s body. He didn’t suggest it, so neither did I.

  ‘What became of the gun after you say you took it from Miss Fo
ster?’

  I tried not to resent his use of ‘you say’. He had another shock coming to him.

  ‘It was in my possession for perhaps two or three hours, then I gave it to Daniel.’

  Carol flinched and let go of Oliver’s hand.

  ‘In your possession?’ Adam said. ‘You’re admitting you had a gun for most of the evening?’

  ‘I’m telling you, not admitting. I had it in my pocket, I didn’t fire it, I told Daniel what had happened and gave it to him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About ten o’clock, I think.’

  Carol had her fingertips together, pressed against her forehead. She said, from behind them, ‘If she was shot, wouldn’t we have heard it?’

  ‘Perhaps you did,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I gather you and Mr Venn were having a conversation at dinner about boys shooting rabbits.’

  The fingertips came down, showing dark, horrified eyes.

  ‘No!’ But it was an appeal, not a denial.

  Oliver said, presumably catching at something he could understand, ‘Lads from the village with shotguns. I wish they wouldn’t.’

  ‘You must have heard something,’ I said to Carol. ‘You were out in the garden calling Felicia. You even asked her if it was the boys shooting rabbits.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. I remember I did hear a shot but … oh God.’

  ‘A shot or shots?’

  ‘Don’t answer.’ Adam got up and sat beside his wife on the arm of the sofa. ‘Carol, you don’t have to answer that.’ He looked at me. ‘What are you trying to do?’

  ‘I think what the rest of us are trying to do. Decide if there’s anything we don’t tell the police.’

  ‘Are you seriously intending to put into their heads the idea that Felicia took a revolver, shot Miss Smith with it and hid her body in the cabinet? Is that what you’re going to say to them?’

  ‘She won’t. Of course she won’t,’ Carol said.

  She was nearly crying. Oliver just stared.

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’ve no idea how Daisy Smith died. But it is a fact that I took a revolver from Miss Foster and later handed it to your brother.’