‘I’ve got to stay. They need me.’ I gave him a weak smile. ‘Besides, Granny Byfield will fight off any intruders.’
‘But this could go on for ever.’
‘Nonsense.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Listen, we can’t stay too long. I’ve got to collect Rosie from school.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s really no need. I’ll take the car.’
‘I’d like to come. And I’m going to book myself into a room here.’ He flapped a hand at the smoke between us. ‘Have you paid that cheque in yet?’
I shook my head.
‘Then that’s something else I can do, isn’t it? You see – I can make myself useful.’
‘Henry –’
‘Wendy.’
We looked at each other across the table.
‘Yes?’
‘I wish,’ he said, and stopped.
‘I do too.’ For an instant I laid my hand on top of his and watched the expression of shock leap into his eyes. I moved the hand away. ‘I don’t think I want any coffee.’
‘What about a small brandy?’
‘Not for me.’
When we got back to the Dark Hostelry, we found Janet crying on the sofa, David looking harassed in the hall, and Granny Byfield standing in the doorway between them, explaining what she was going to do. She glanced at us as we came up the stairs from the kitchen.
‘I’m sure Mr and Mrs Appleyard will agree with me.’
‘Agree with what?’
‘That the Dark Hostelry is no place for a child at present.’
‘I take your point, Mother,’ David said. ‘But the question is whether Rosie would find it more upsetting to go back with you than to stay here.’
‘I’m surprised at you,’ she fired back.
‘Take her,’ Janet said.
David slipped past his mother into the drawing room. ‘Darling, are you sure?’
Janet blew her nose. ‘Your mother’s right. Especially now.’
Now that the police were treating Mr Treevor’s death as suspicious.
Granny Byfield wheeled on Henry and me. ‘The sooner the better, don’t you agree? I wonder if one of you would be kind enough to drive us to the station. I’ll get ready to leave while you pick Rosie up from school. There’s a train back to town at ten to four.’
‘I’m coming as well,’ Janet said.
‘Where?’ Granny Byfield asked.
‘To the station, of course.’
The old woman nodded. ‘But you won’t come up to town with us?’
‘No,’ Janet said.
Janet and I went upstairs to pack a suitcase for Rosie.
‘Are you sure this is sensible?’ I murmured.
‘She’s right. I don’t like to have to admit it but she is.’
‘They needn’t go by train. If you want I could drive them, and you could come too.’
Janet thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. ‘It would only prolong the agony.’
‘Where exactly does she live?’
‘She’s got a flat in Chertsey. It’s quite large, and very nice.’
I knew her well enough to understand what she wasn’t saying. ‘But no place for a child?’
‘As Granny Byfield has said herself. More than once. But at least she’ll be away from all this. No, don’t pack Angel. Rosie will need her on the train.’
I carried the suitcase down to the kitchen. Janet launched into a desperate conversation with Granny Byfield about Rosie’s likes and dislikes. Semolina would make her sick, and she wasn’t very fond of porridge. Could she have the landing light on when she went to sleep? She usually had a glass of orange squash in the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon.
‘We’ll see,’ Granny Byfield said. ‘I don’t approve of cosseting children.’
Henry and I slipped out to fetch the car.
‘Poor Rosie,’ Henry said as we walked up the High Street. ‘I’d pay quite a lot of money to avoid a few days alone with Granny B.’
‘She’s a tough little kid.’
‘She’ll need to be.’ He touched my arm. ‘Funny how they vary – kids, I mean. I wonder what a child of ours would be like.’
‘I wonder.’ I stopped by the car and unlocked the driver’s door. ‘By the way, aren’t you going to have to buy a toothbrush and so on if you’re staying the night?’
Henry accepted the diversion and we moved on to safer subjects. We drove down to St Tumwulf’s and collected Rosie. She was shy at first with Henry but willing to flirt with him – she always preferred men to women. Then I told her that Granny Byfield had come to take her on a little holiday. Her face froze for a moment as though briefly paralysed.
‘Can Angel come?’ she said at last.
‘Oh, yes.’
I drove round to the High Street door of the Dark Hostelry. There were no journalists, which was just as well. Granny Byfield was not in a mood for compromise, she would probably have attacked them with her umbrella. Janet and I loaded her into the car while David put the suitcases in the boot.
David said, ‘Wendy, if you don’t mind, I’ll take them down to the station.’
‘Is this wise?’ his mother said through the open window of the car. ‘Having both Mummy and Daddy there might give Rosie a bit of a swollen head.’
‘I don’t think so,’ David said.
He started the engine. His mother was beside him in the front. Rosie sat in the back holding Angel, both in pink to make the boys wink.
We’re sisters now.
As the car drew away from the pavement, Janet glanced up at me, her face unsmiling. No wave, no words, just an expression that said, Now I have lost two children.
Henry and I went back to the Dark Hostelry. As I was unlocking the back door, Henry brushed my arm.
‘Look. There he is. I’m sure it’s him.’
I swung round. A large black car had just passed us, moving slowly up the High Street towards the marketplace. I glimpsed the profile of a man sitting in the front passenger seat. The driver was very small and his head was turned away from us, towards the passenger. It was impossible to see dearly because of the reflections in the glass.
‘Munro?’ I said.
‘I think so.’
‘Who’s driving?’
‘It looked like that woman. The one who was having lunch in the Crossed Keys.’
‘Perhaps she works for Martlesham too.’
The car turned left and vanished round the corner.
‘Hell of a car,’ Henry went on. ‘A Bentley. He must be simply rolling. Do you think Martlesham could have been in the back?’
‘I don’t think anyone was.’
He looked at his watch. ‘I need to draw some cash. We’ve just got time before the bank doses.’
‘Do you still have an arrangement here?’
He shook his head. ‘But I can give you a cheque made out to you and you can draw the money out of your account.’
‘All right.’ I patted my handbag. ‘I’ve got a cheque book.’
We walked down the High Street to Barclays Bank. It was a dark, gloomy building both inside and out. Henry and I sat facing each other at one of the tables in the banking hall and wrote our cheques. I reached for a paying-in slip.
‘Wouldn’t this be a wonderful opportunity to pay in that cheque for ten thousand?’ he suggested.
‘I’ve not made up my mind about that yet.’
‘Then pay it into your account and make up your mind afterwards.’
‘Don’t try and bully me.’
‘After all, your handbag might be stolen.’ He slid the new cheque across the blotter to me. ‘And there’s the other one.’
I don’t know what I would have done if we hadn’t had the interruption. I’d been dimly aware of a tall man in a dark suit standing at the counter with his back to us. At that moment, he turned around, sliding a wallet into the inside pocket of his jacket. It was the dean. Mr Forbury saw me at the same
time that I saw him.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Appleyard.’ He nodded in a stately way.
Henry pushed back his chair and stood up, his hand outstretched. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Forbury.’
As chairman of the Choir School governors, the dean had had a good deal to do with Henry’s resignation. But Henry wasn’t the sort of person to bear a grudge. He wouldn’t have wanted this meeting, but now it had happened he was going to make the best of it.
‘Good afternoon.’ If the dean’s face had been a pool of water, you’d have said it had frozen over. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Appleyard.’
He ignored Henry’s hand and stalked out of the bank. I noticed that the tips of Mr Forbury’s ears were pink.
‘Horrible man,’ I said.
Henry shrugged. ‘It had to happen sooner or later.’
He spoke lightly but I wasn’t fooled. Henry liked people to like him. It was his little weakness. The episode with the Hairy Widow hadn’t just been about money.
‘The bank’s going to close in a moment,’ I said. ‘We’d better get a move on.’
He was always quick to seize an advantage. ‘You’ll pay in both cheques, won’t you?’
I scribbled the long row of noughts on the paying-in slip. Just because of the dean.
‘Good girl,’ Henry said.
I stood up. ‘Don’t push your luck.’
We were the last customers to leave the bank. I stood in the doorway searching for my keys in my handbag and listening to the heavy doors closing behind us and the soft metallic sounds of turning locks.
‘Excluded from paradise,’ Henry said. ‘Again.’
‘We’ll have to go back through the Close. I haven’t got my back-door key.’
The Boneyard Gate was only a few yards from the bank. As we went through the archway, the full length of the Cathedral was in front of us, stretching east and west like a great grey curtain.
Henry said, ‘It will get worse, you know. Much worse.’
‘That business with Mr Treevor?’
He nodded. ‘You don’t have to stay here.’
‘I do.’
We walked a few yards in silence. Our squat shadows slithered along the path in front of us. The sun was in the south-west and another shadow lay beside the nave of the Cathedral like a canal of black water.
Henry glanced at me and smiled. ‘By the way, now David’s mother’s gone, there must be a spare room at the Dark Hostelry. Do you think Janet might let me ask myself to stay?’
I smiled back. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
At that moment Mr Gotobed shepherded a group of tourists out of the north door. They broke away from him and scuttled down the path round the east end, towards the cloisters and the Porta. I raised a hand in greeting.
‘Do you mind if I have a word with him?’
‘With Gotobed? Why?’
‘His mother’s ill. I’d like to know how she is.’
‘It’s hard to believe you’ve actually met the mother.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s rather like someone claiming they’ve met a leprechaun. No one ever sees her, you see, not close up. The boys used to claim she died years ago, and that Gotobed –’
‘She certainly wasn’t dead when I had tea with her.’ I opened my bag. ‘Look – here are the keys. Why not make yourself useful and put the kettle on?’
I veered across the close-cropped grass towards Mr Gotobed, who was still standing at the north door. Henry had irritated me. I liked the Gotobeds. They weren’t there to be laughed at.
As I drew near, Mr Gotobed bobbed his head as though I were the dean and he had come to conduct me from the vestry to my stall.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘As well as can be expected, thank you. She’s had these turns before but this one’s worse.’
‘She’s still at home?’
‘Won’t go to hospital. Put her foot down. Doctor says it’s best to let her be. But people come in to help.’
Mr Gotobed was very pale, his skin dry and flaking. There were more lines than ever before. He blinked often, the sandy eyelashes fluttering like agitated fingers.
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘You’ve got enough on your plate.’
‘I’d like to help.’
He looked at me. ‘Thank you. It might cheer her up to see you. But perhaps you wouldn’t want to –’
‘I’ll come. When’s the best time?’
‘Could you manage this evening? About six o’clock?’
I nodded.
‘The nurse comes to settle her down about six-thirty. But by six I will have given her tea, and as a rule she’s quite perky after that. It’s a good time.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Don’t be surprised at the change. Her mind wanders more. You know?’
‘I know,’ I said.
We said goodbye. Mr Gotobed went back into the Cathedral and I walked on to the Dark Hostelry. On the way it occurred to me that Mr Gotobed hadn’t called me ‘Mrs Appleyard’ once. He hadn’t been nervous, either, or embarrassed. Between them, Mr Treevor and Mrs Gotobed had succeeded in dissolving the formality between us.
I don’t know what made me stop at the gate of the Dark Hostelry. Some people claim we have a sixth sense that tells us when we’re being stared at, which strikes me as an old wives’ tale. Nevertheless, something made me look over my shoulder.
At first sight I thought the green between the Cathedral and the Boneyard Gate was empty. Then a movement near one of the buttresses caught my eye. Someone was standing in the great pool of shadow that ran the length of the Cathedral.
Not standing – walking. The sun was in my eyes. It was as if a drop from the pool of shadow had broken away and taken independent life. The smaller shadow became a man in dark clothes. Around him glowed the brilliant green of the lawn. He was coming towards me, but he must have seen me watching because he swung away towards the Boneyard Gate as if trying to avoid me.
Francis?
Then I blinked. It was Harold Munro, dressed as usual in his drab, old-fashioned clothes. He might be flesh and blood but he had no right to haunt us.
‘Hey! You!’
At my shout he stopped. He stared across the lawn. I began to walk, almost run.
‘Mr Munro I’d like a word with you.’
He said nothing, just waited, cigarette in hand. A moment later I was within a yard of him. Because of my heels I was an inch or two taller than him. In my stockinged feet we would have been about the same size. There were flecks of dandruff on his black jacket and his pinstripe trousers needed pressing. He wore a grubby hard collar and a greasy, tightly knotted tie. A silver chain stretched across the front of his black waistcoat. The bald patch the shape of Africa glistened with sweat. The only cool thing about him were his eyes, which were grey and slanting.
‘Why are you spying on us?’
‘Me, miss?’
Anger bubbled out of me, surprising me as much as it surprised Munro. ‘You can go back to Simon Martlesham and tell him we’re sick and tired of having you turn up like a bad penny round every corner. And what’s more, you can tell him I’ll be notifying the police about a suspicious character hanging round the Close and harassing old ladies.’
I paused, partly because I had run out of things to say and partly because I wanted to hear his reaction. But he said nothing. He sucked on his cigarette and stared up at me with his little grey eyes while the sweat ran like tears down his cheeks.
‘So you’ll tell Martlesham?’ I put my hands behind my back because they had clenched into fists. ‘I’ve had enough. We’ve had enough. Can’t you see?’
Munro nodded.
‘He’s looking for his sister, isn’t he? That’s what this is all about.’
He bobbed his head again and smiled – not at me but at something he saw in his mind. He flicked the cigarette end into the air. We watched it falling to the ground. Then he slipped away, a black shadow gliding silently acros
s the grass towards the Boneyard Gate.
I sniffed the air like a rabbit scenting danger. I smelled Turkish tobacco.
42
The little sitting room was even more crowded than before because they’d moved a bed into it. A bank of coal glowed in the grate. The windows were dosed. The smells of old age were stronger. The body was decaying in advance of death.
Mrs Gotobed’s tissue-paper skin covered the bones of her face like a sagging tent. ‘Wilfred, go and have your tea,’ she said.
‘I’m all right.’ Mr Gotobed smiled uneasily at me. ‘Mother likes to make sure I’m eating properly.’
‘That’s why you must have your tea. Mrs Appleyard will sit with me.’
‘Of course I will.’
Mr Gotobed left the room.
‘I don’t know what he’ll do when I’m gone,’ Mrs Gotobed said as soon as the door had dosed. ‘No more sense than a new-born baby.’
‘How are you?’
‘Tired. Very tired. Sit by the window where I can see you.’
I sat on a hard chair near the window overlooking the Close. Pursy stared incuriously at me from the window seat. A golden slab of sunshine poured through the opposite window. Dust swam in the air and lay thickly on the horizontal surfaces. I wished I could turn back time for Mrs Gotobed, and for myself, until we reached a golden age when pain had not existed. The lids fluttered over Mrs Gotobed’s eyes.
‘Still looking for Canon Youlgreave?’ she said.
I nodded. ‘In a way.’
‘He was a good ’man, a good man.’ The eyes were open now to their fullest extent. ‘Do you hear what I say? A good man.’
What I say three times is true. But why was it so important to her even now, when the life was almost visibly seeping out of her.
‘What about the Martlesham children’s aunt? What happened to her?’
The old woman’s shoulders twitched.
‘You must have known her.’ Urgency made me raise my voice. ‘What was she like? What did she feel about the children?’
Mrs Gotobed shook her head slowly from side to side. She blew out through loosely dosed lips, making a noise like a dying balloon.
‘I’m a fool, aren’t I?’ I said. ‘It was you all along. You were the aunt.’
She continued to blow out air. Then she stopped and smiled at me. ‘I wondered if you’d ever guess.’
The Office of the Dead Page 28