Death in the Garden

by Jennie Melville

  ‘It’s not Luke,’ said Edwina, as if she knew.

  They looked at her.

  ‘I’ve seen him. At least, his back view as he walked away and it wasn’t Luke.… He came into the gallery while I was out. Dougie spoke to him.’ Douglas Clark was her assistant. ‘ He was tall, sallow, wearing dark spectacles and he asked for me. By name. Tell Edwina.’ She stopped. Dougie had described the voice: harsh, high, whiny. That was it.

  ‘Tell Edwina what?’

  ‘That I’m looking for her.’

  ‘You’d better answer that phone,’ said Alice.

  ‘It stopped some time ago,’ said Cassie.

  Then it began to ring again. That made the twice.

  Luke had taken a taxi home. He had given his address then crawled into the cab, opening the window. He needed air.

  ‘Don’t let the rain in.’ The driver loved his cab. ‘ That leather you’re sitting on is new.’

  ‘It’s not raining.’

  ‘A storm coming any minute.’

  There’s a storm inside me, thought Luke, raging around. He could feel the turmoil rise to a crest within him.

  Someone had left an evening paper on the seat and his eyes fell on a headline.

  POLICEMAN IN ROBBERY PLOT

  Police Constable Edward Miller, aged 22, living in Wilberforce Street, WC, and James Meckendorf of Hounslow, were jointly charged in the conspiracy to commit a robbery in Slough.

  Luke pushed the paper away and groaned. ‘All I needed. Oh, the bloody fool.’

  Feeling even sicker, his symptoms now including a terrible burning sensation in his guts combined with an inability to swallow, Luke lay back. Every organ, inside and out, seemed to be swelling and taking on a life of its own. He ordered the taxi to the nearest hospital.

  This turned out to be the Skin Hospital, off Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was another fifteen minutes by the time he arrived at St Thomas’s Hospital, Lambeth.

  By this time the storm had broken. But it was not water that was staining the taxi’s leather.

  The taxi driver had been proud of his cab but it wasn’t on his mind now. ‘ Poor little bugger, poor little bugger,’ he kept repeating.

  And his passenger had been muttering something. Tell Eddie, had it been? Well, it could have been, and he had to hope that whoever Eddie was, he would find out.

  When Luke arrived in hospital, barely conscious, the young doctor who received him speedily called in his senior.

  Luke could still talk, just. The doctor listened, and made out what he could. ‘Yes, I think I’ve got what you want. I’ll do what I can. Calm down, feller.’

  He was a bright young man, but glad when his experienced registrar appeared.

  ‘He’s had violent diarrhoea with a big haemorrhage. He’s bad.’

  The registrar made a quick examination. ‘My guess is an irritant poison of some sort. Can he say? Suggest anything?’

  Luke could not, he was a bit beyond giving them much help. He tried, but could remember nothing he’d eaten or drunk that was special. But he wanted someone to tell Edwina.

  The registrar gave a number of swift orders. Luke was hurried into the Intensive Care Unit.

  This was at 10.30 p. m. At intervals the young doctor tried to phone the number Luke had given him. No one answered. At 12.30 a.m. Luke slipped into a coma from which he did not emerge. It would have to be the police.

  The evening ended sooner than their evenings usually did. When Edwina said she was tired and was going home to bed there was no argument. In her condition she needed rest. The other two conceded this.

  The telephone had rung twice more, with short intervals, but had remained unanswered. Cassie had found this hard to bear. She was a girl who usually rushed to answer the telephone, longing to know.

  Alice got into her car to drive away to Lowndes Square. Edwina was going to leave her car where it was parked and walk across the Garden and round the corner to where she lived. She’d drunk too much to drive, she said. They all knew she was nervous of driving these days.

  Before she left Alice said to Cassie, ‘Do you think there’s anything in this telephone business?’

  Cassie shrugged. ‘Might be.’

  ‘Or just Eddie being imaginative.’

  ‘She’s not usually.’

  ‘No.’ Alice considered. ‘But then she’s not been pregnant before.… I suppose that’s true?’

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Forget I said it. But she was very upset over Tim, even more than she showed, I think.… We ought to look after her. She’s very vulnerable. Agreed?’

  It was the first time any one of them had used that word to describe themselves. Or even thought it could apply to them.

  Cassie nodded.

  ‘Right then, it’s up to us.’

  ‘About these telephone calls—’ Alice began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s Kit Langley,’ said Alice. ‘He’s in love with Eddie if I’m any judge. And he didn’t like Tim any too much.’

  ‘He’s not a creep.’

  ‘No. Probably not.’

  ‘No,’ said Cassie.

  While they were still talking Edwina gave them a brisk goodbye and set off home. She walked carefully and slowly round the open square then turned the corner into Packet’s Place. As she passed she could see the lighted windows of Alice’s shop where an Edwardian perambulator was draped with a lace christening robe. A few yards away was her own gallery where the beautiful Thistlewaite landscape was held in the light of a single spot.

  The square was quieter now, emptier, but a few pedestrians and the odd taxi were on the move.

  There were always ghosts in the Garden, but Edwina loved them. To begin with there were the ghosts of the old market porters. You could still smell the odour of rotting vegetables and overripe fruit when the air warmed up. But as well as these, Edwina could imagine the ghosts of opera stars and actresses from the past. Tetrazzini, Melba and Callas walking together, then Mrs Siddons on her way to Drury Lane, while Ellen Terry rattled past in a cab to her home close by. They were all there in the Garden.

  There were two other ghosts, too. Newer ones. The ghosts of a happy Edwina walking home holding Tim’s hand.

  She missed Tim. It was all very well being a solitary parent, but you needed the man. She did, anyway, and it was a revelation to her that pregnancy could make her so weak. She’d always been the stronger one.

  Now she felt vulnerable, as though not only might terrible events befall her, but she might even attract them. This was one of the extraordinary by-products of pregnancy and one she had not expected. Yet it had been a feeling of fear, a cold tremor in the pit of her stomach, that had announced her pregnancy to her.

  As soon as she had felt it one morning on waking, she had sat up in bed and said, ‘That’s it. I’m enceinte.’ She didn’t need any tests or any doctor to tell her. She told him.

  Edwina lived on the top floor of a tall old house. On the ground floor was a jeweller’s shop, above that offices, and above that Edwina. She had done the conversion herself and it was total. Like Cassie she wanted space and you opened the front door into one great light room where the canvasses that Edwina had not displayed in her gallery were hung in lines or propped up against the wall.

  She had more furniture than Cassie and her spoons were silver but otherwise you could tell that they were young women of similar tastes who were likely to be friends. Alice was different. She lived in a cosy clutter.

  Edwina unlocked her door and let herself in. One light shone at the end of the room, a spotlight on her favourite picture of the month: she always had one. Later, she would sell it.

  This month’s picture was a tiny seascape of the Clyde estuary by Lizzie Macalinden.

  Not a flat to bring up a child in, she thought as she closed the door behind her. I’ll have to create a nursery.

  On a table at the end of the room stood her telephone answering machine. A machine that had just lately becom
e an enemy to be feared. There was another in the gallery and that was an enemy too. She switched it on: better to do it sooner than later. Unthinkable to go to bed and let the secret voice whisper on unheard.

  The first message was a business appointment.

  She made a note of it on a pad: lunch at the Connaught. Good, she loved the Connaught, and this American collector of paintings was about to buy one of her most valuable pictures: a country scene by Anne Redpath.

  The second message was from Lily. ‘Darling stepdaughter,’ said that light, cheerful voice. ‘This is to tell you how happy I am. Also your Dad. I’ll look after him, Eddie, and love him. Promise.’

  The last message had come through at twenty-three hours and twenty-three minutes precisely, because the speaker said so.

  Edwina looked at the clock on the wall. The hands were coming towards the half-hour. Less than ten minutes since the call had come in. She had been on her way from the Garden to Packet’s Place.

  The voice said in its harsh, high whisper, ‘I want you to know, Edwina, that I am coming close to you. You, Edwina. I shall be close. Pretty close, Edwina. You can tell the others. They are out of it now. Only you. Goodnight.’

  There was no second call. The voice obviously meant what it said.

  Reluctantly, Edwina got herself ready for bed. Somehow, she did not fancy tomorrow. Another bloody day.

  Edwina slid into that deep, heavy sleep that seemed to be her way at the moment. Perhaps it was something her body demanded. Or possibly it was a way of escape.

  Either way her sleep was sullen and heavy. But dreamless. In her sleep Edwina was neither loving nor loved. Just a mindless sack in which another body grew. That was how it felt when she woke up, as if night was a growing time.

  Cassie slept lightly and peacefully as was her wont. She had strong nerves and an imagination harnessed to practical things. She never ever dreamt of a roof falling in on a building of hers; her roof never would. She claimed she did not dream at all. Nevertheless, she was troubled. The tiny seed of disquiet that the telephone caller had planted was growing even in her sceptical soul. But she was heedless of the débris of the wedding party: glasses, plates, empty champagne bottles lay all around. The wedding, or what was left of it, still stood in unprotected splendour. The cleaners would be in on Monday, the caterers would clear away. Till then Cassie could forget it. So she slept, ignorant that the disorderly room spelt trouble.

  Alice was curled in her pretty brass-and-white enamelled bedstead, trimmed with muslin and blue bows, which was so much more practical than it looked. As was Alice herself. She was half asleep and half awake. All the time she was thinking. Alice always said she could think in her sleep, and her friends believed she could. Anyway, she often woke up with her decisions made. Now she was thinking about Edwina whom she loved but for whom she feared. She was certain it was on Edwina that the trouble centred. All right, they were all contaminated now, but it had started with Edwina. There was something about Edwina at the moment that made her attractive and yet vulnerable at the same time. Edwina felt it herself and Alice accepted it. Being pregnant was part of it, but Alice felt there was something else.

  Edwina was still mourning Tim. Mourning is magnetic, attracting and repelling at the same time.

  Alice had no doubt that sex came into it, somewhere, but she did not propose to question Edwina. Although they were so close as a group, they respected each other’s privacy and did not ask questions. So about Edwina’s life Alice could only guess from what she saw. Certainly Edwina had loved Tim. But there might have been other men on the edge of her life. Alice could think of a few, even name them. Mark Darbyshire, the painter; Alec Farmer who was a successful barrister and Johnny Dishart who seemed to do nothing at all and had the money to do so. But she couldn’t see any of them ringing Edwina (not to mention the other two) with silent lust.

  The telephone caller seemed to have mixed feelings about Edwina, hating her and yet being attracted. And why did Alice feel sure that the caller was not just one of those poor, dismal beings who get a kick out of making obscene calls? Alice asked herself that question as she came fully awake.

  Because Alice knew something that the other two did not.

  She too had seen the caller.

  A week ago she had watched Edwina walk across the Garden to her gallery. Behind her had stalked a tall figure in a dark suit. Alice had noticed but thought nothing of it at the time; now she remembered with alarm that figure flitting behind the oblivious Edwina.

  Canon Linker was in bed but awake. He was an insomniac with no real talent for sleep. So he amused himself with reading theology and crime in about equal shares. Tonight his reading would be divided between the Bishop of Durham and Miss Elizabeth Ferrars. He settled back comfortably, sure of a treat.

  Before going to bed he had settled Aunt Bee for the night and arranged all the objects around her that she liked within easy reach: her piece of amber to hold, the rose to smell, and the silver Thermos of tea. He had made the tea himself, but it had been Mrs Grandy who had placed the tape recorder ready where it was in case Bee felt like getting on with Chapter Eleven. He believed it was Chapter Eleven. Every day he thanked heaven for Janine who gave Aunt Bee such comfort and help. She was a perfect secretary, coming when she was wanted and melting away when she was not. She operated from a small typing and secretarial agency she had set up for herself, called Mrs Grandy’s Agency.

  Two years now since Bee had finally admitted it, and six months since she had come to live with him. ‘See you in the morning,’ he said to her as he closed her bedroom door. He still found it hard to accept that Aunt Bee was blind.

  Before getting himself and Bee home from the wedding he had superintended the homeward journey of Ginger and Pickles who had had a touch too much to drink. They had wobbled off happily in the old van. He hoped the police did not find them. They were happy, though, and had thrust a carton of special Bulgarian yoghurt as a thank-you present into his unwilling hands. He hadn’t put it into the refrigerator yet, he remembered, it was still sitting in his car. Be pretty ripe in the morning.

  But he was not really thinking about Aunt Bee just then, although she came into it. In a way he blamed her for his anxiety. She had a way of opening windows in the mind that you could never afterwards close. In this instance, she had reminded him of the old nurserymaid who had sent a series of vicious anonymous letters around the village before drowning herself. ‘There was a cloud of darkness hanging over that girl, darkness made visible, and one of us should have spotted it and done something to help her. Not you; you were only a child.’

  He did not remember the nursemaid, or whether he had seen a cloud of darkness, but he had seen blackness himself that day as he had entered his own church when it was full of the flowers and lighted candles ready for Lily’s wedding. Ahead of him he saw a tall thin figure, back towards him, sitting in a pew.

  The head was bent forward, but somehow not in the attitude of prayer. No, this person was sitting there in unhappy thought. A cloud of darkness seemed to hang about the figure. It was an emotional and mental darkness rather than a physical one. He couldn’t say he actually saw it, but it was certainly there: the mind recognised it.

  He stepped forward to say something when he was interrupted by the verger, come with some problem about the organ. When he was free again, the figure had gone, taking the darkness with it.

  Now that he thought about it, he knew the episode had frightened him. It was a kind of spiritual loitering with intent. He recognised it without knowing what to do about it, or even knowing what it meant.

  Poor soul, he said to himself. Poor soul.

  Something, somehow, had to be done. He gave that little lift of the shoulders that meant that, unconsciously, he had accepted responsibility.

  Ginger and Pickles, Miss Drury and Miss Dover, slept noisily because they had drunk most champagne at the wedding and enjoyed the party most. They didn’t get out much, the demands of their Help-Yourself-to-
Health life were considerable. Both were dedicated but Pickles was the theorist and intellectual of the two. ‘Our philosopher’, as Ginger admiringly called her. She was also far and away the more adventurous. Miss Drury, Ginger, was content to get most of her supplies from a hygienic factory in Hertfordshire, adding to them a few simples made up by herself from her herb garden. Camomile tea, peppermint cordial and feverfew tablets were her specialities.

  But Pickles’ imagination took in a wider stretch reaching to India, China and South America from whence she imported such remedies as Dragon’s Breath, Elephant’s Ear and the Energy of Man, Potions One, Two and Three. She had a busy market for the Energy of Man, although she usually advised caution in the use of strength Number Three. Afterwards, she saw that the other side of a warning is encouragement. It all depended on what you wanted. She was told to take her share of blame when it came to be handed out.

  Pickles got up just after midnight to stumble to the bathroom. She too had seen the tall thin figure, but had not noticed the cloud of darkness, wouldn’t have known it if she had seen it but, perhaps unconsciously responding to it, had put extra force into the warning on Energy of Man, strength Number Three. You need it, Chummie, she had thought. She knew what the dark spectacles meant, didn’t want to be recognised, now or ever. As if she cared, but they always thought she did.

  While Ginger had made their cup of acorn coffee (she always hated the customers that Pickles called ‘Chummie’ and kept well away) Pickles had watched her customer skirt the Cardboard-Cut-Out Theatre, cross the Garden and go towards the car park behind the Duke of York. This Chummie knew his way around the Garden, that was clear. You had to be local to know where to park.

  Pickles went to the kitchen to pour some water down her parched throat. She looked out of the window: rain was pouring down, she felt like death.

  It was quiet with her as with all those named: Edwina, Cassie, Alice and Canon Linker. Quiet and dark.