by Daisy Waugh
With a sigh, Alice closed her book. ‘What’s up, Granny?’
‘You know exactly what’s up. You know as well as I do.’ Violet leaned forward in her wheelchair, and whispered loudly across the table, so that everyone within three rows could hear it quite clearly. ‘If that woman “slipped and fell”, then I’m the Queen of Sheba. Somebody killed her!’
The thought had of course occurred to Alice. She had observed as much to Carfizzi. She said, calmly: ‘What makes you say so, Granny?’
‘What makes me say so?’ Violet rapped the arm of her wheelchair in frustration. ‘What makes me not say so! That’s what you should be asking. It’s as clear as the nose on that face of yours.’
Alice kept that face of hers impassive. She waited to hear more. Her grandmother had a point. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But there were bad vibes in the house: between India and Lady Tode, most obviously; between India and Mrs Carfizzi, between India and Mr Carfizzi, between Mr Carfizzi and Egbert, Mr Carfizzi and Dominic Rathbone, between Mad Ecgbert and Egbert…
‘Lady Tode didn’t even like her husband. Never did, never had. He was a dreadful man and everybody knew it. If you want to know,’ Violet added, ‘she was having it off with Brian Mellors the gamekeeper for several years, and then after that, there was the Nazi-looking chap… I forget his name. And of course the dog painter, what was his name? He was always staying at the Hall… And then, I shouldn’t be surprised, from what Mr Carfizzi was saying – I have a feeling she had a good go with Brian Mellor’s son. Everyone knew it. Lady Tode could never get enough sex!’
‘Granny—’
‘What? I’m telling you.’
Alice said, talking now in an ostentatiously quiet voice, in the hope her grandmother might be inspired to follow suit. ‘I must say, Granny, I got the impression she was ultra-respectable.’
‘Because she was,’ yelled Violet. ‘But only in public, d’you see? You couldn’t expect her to be loyal to that husband of hers, not for all those years. Awful man.’ She shuddered. ‘Very unattractive.’
‘Well – that’s interesting,’ murmured Alice, as quietly as possible, ‘I’m not sure it means she was murdered though. Lots of people have affairs. They don’t get murdered.’
‘I’m SAYING I don’t see why she would have gone to visit his silly coffin when she didn’t care two hoots about him, even when he was alive.’
Alice thought about this. Hardly compelling evidence. On the other hand… ‘Perhaps—’ she began.
‘Perhaps nothing…’ Violet settled, now she’d got the thing off her chest. She spoke more softly, adding: ‘I can’t help wondering about your young friend, Ecgbert, Alice…’
‘Ecgbert or Egbert?’
‘Ecgbert, of course. Young Egbert wouldn’t hurt a fly. A very nice young man.’
‘You mean, crazy Ecgbert? Disinherited Ecgbert? He’s not my friend.’
‘He certainly used to be.’
Alice laughed. ‘More than thirty-five years ago, Granny. I haven’t laid eyes on him since we were fourteen.’
‘You laid a lot more than eyes on each other then, if I remember rightly.’
This annoyed Alice. How did her grandmother know about that? It was nothing – a long forgotten nothing: a single summer evening up at Africa Folly, watching the sun go down… a bottle of disgusting sherry, stolen from the Tode cellar, a joint, stolen from Alice’s mother, and the ‘eternal snog’, as they referred to it immediately afterwards; followed by dopey – happy – fourteen-year-old giggles… All of it long forgotten. Except, apparently, by her grandmother, who was looking at her now with an irritating, knowing expression. Alice, as ever, remained impassive.
Violet said: ‘He must have been devastated when his mother gave the Hall to those two nincompoops. Devastated. He used to adore his mother – do you remember? Like a little puppy, he was. Dragging around behind her, just waiting for a nod or a smile. But she was a cold fish, Lady Tode. Chilly as you like.’
‘I thought people loved her.’
‘Well they did,’ Violet said, gazing out on the passing landscape. ‘Everybody loved Lady Tode. Just, she didn’t love them back. It can drive people a bit mad, that, you know, Alice. If you love someone with all your heart and you can never get through their shell. It can be agony.’ This was not the way Violet spoke, generally. This was unusual. Alice wondered if taking her grandmother to Tode Hall had been a mistake. Perhaps the journey had been too much for her.
Alice nodded kindly, as if she understood, which she didn’t.
Violet laughed. ‘But you wouldn’t understand about that, would you Alice Liddell, my darling? You’re a bit like Lady Tode yourself. Impenetrable. Not that I blame you.’ She patted Alice’s hand, which was resting on the table between them, holding the book. ‘You had a difficult childhood.’
Alice said: ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Granny? I can go to the buffet.’
She chuckled. ‘Did you see Mr Carfizzi? I should think he was in love with her. He could hardly stand up, could he?… Why do you suppose he lied about Dominic Rathbone, then? He said none of the actors from the show had stayed at the Hall – he didn’t mention Dominic, did he? Maybe Mr Carfizzi did her ladyship in. He might have done.’
Alice said: ‘Do you think you should talk a bit more quietly?’
‘Or – my heart doesn’t like it, Alice, but my head keeps going back to Ecgbert. Poor Mad Ecgbert. He comes and goes, India said. Always hanging around the place. Very angry. Very disappointed and hurt. I wouldn’t blame him, frankly. He probably lured her in there, and then bopped her on the head. I bet he did.’
‘Well, I don’t think that’s very likely,’ Alice snapped. ‘And I think you should shut your cake-hole.’
Alice never snapped. It jolted Violet to silence. Absolute silence. She sent her granddaughter a wide-eyed, knowing look; and sulked for the rest of the way home.
CHAPTER 20
Alice delivered her still-sulking grandmother back to the flat, settled her in, and went home to break the news of her new job to the triplets. They would be pleased. For a long time now, it had been obvious to them (to everyone but Alice) that she was bored and listless, and needed to find something to fill the yawning gap that made up most of her waking life. The move to Yorkshire would also, of course, give them free run of the London house, and a place to hide out when city life became too expensive or tiring.
They weren’t in when she got home, in any case. She wandered around the house, not quite sure what to do with herself. Should she start packing? But she had a fortnight to do that. Should she maybe call a friend, tell them the news? She couldn’t think of anyone to tell.
In the bath, she tried to imagine her new life in Yorkshire, but couldn’t. Images of Ecgbert in his care home, being told by housekeepers that his mother was dead, kept floating through her mind. But she didn’t want to think about that. She thought about her grandmother instead: her peculiar openness on the train back home. Her titanic sulk, after Alice had snapped at her. The argument was still unresolved. That was the problem! Alice knew she couldn’t end the day like this. What if Violet died in the night? What if she died, and she and Alice were still fighting?
The last thing Alice said to her mother, the morning she left for school and her mother died: she said, ‘You shouldn’t smoke in bed, Mum. You’ll set the house on fire.’ Her mother had not replied. And Alice, suddenly angry, said: ‘Maybe it would be a good thing.’ She’d slammed the bedroom door and gone to school. The end.
So after the bath, which was wonderful, very relaxing, Alice returned to her grandmother’s flat to make peace. There was a security coded keypad at the main entrance (as there was at Tode Hall), and Alice had a key to Violet’s studio flat. She let herself in.
It was only nine o’clock but Violet was already in bed. She looked frail, Alice thought. Her supper had been delivered to her room on a tray, but it lay untouched, half-congealed on the coffee table in front of the television. When A
lice tiptoed into her grandmother’s overheated bedroom, Violet turned her face to the wall.
‘You all right, Granny?’ Alice said, sitting herself by the bed. ‘Sorry I snapped at you on the train.’
Violet sniffed. Still she wouldn’t look at Alice. She said: ‘You’re very touchy, you know.’
‘Not really,’ said Alice. ‘Just sometimes you have a way of getting under my skin, Granny. That’s all it is. I think you know that, anyway.’
‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that. Telling me to “shut my cake-hole”. You shouldn’t talk to me like that.’
‘I’m sorry, Granny. Really, I am. It was very, very rude of me. Can we be friends now? Please?’
Violet didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either. Alice smiled. ‘It was a good trip though, wasn’t it?’
‘Well – give or take the odd murder,’ Violet said. At last, she turned to look at her granddaughter. ‘A bloody good trip, yes it was,’ she said. ‘And you’ll be happy there, Alice. With all them outcasts and peculiars. You’ll feel like you came home at last. I know you will.’
‘We’ll feel it, Granny. Don’t forget you’re coming with me!’
Violet Dean smiled. She patted her granddaughter’s hand. ‘Been a difficult life for you, darling,’ she said softly. ‘But you’ll be all right now…’
And then she closed her eyes and never opened them again.
CHAPTER 21
The police, their resources tied up detecting more manageable infringements, were keen not to be too drawn into the circumstances surrounding Lady Tode’s death. Thankfully, an examination of the scene revealed a raised slab on the ground just a half metre from her feet. There was a little moss growing around it, and the damage to her skull looked as if it might have occurred when her head hit the stone floor. She was quite old. Her eyesight was imperfect. The central chamber was dark. And in any case – India and Egbert were charming, and the outgoing Sergeant enjoyed Tode Hall House & Grounds annual membership, and often took his grandchildren to the adventure playground by the Boathouse Café. On top of which it was well known in the area that everyone, everywhere, had loved the late Lady Tode. It was inconceivable that anyone might have wanted to kill her.
Even so, she clearly hadn’t died of natural causes. It was an inconvenience, an embarrassment for everyone concerned, but there would still need to be an inquest. The law was the law, up to a point. Even at Tode Hall. In the meantime, as India so boldly put it, ‘Life must go on!’
* * *
In London, Alice packed up her suitcase, bade farewell to her triplets, cancelled the only two bookings still pending on the cookery course – and buried her grandmother. It wasn’t much. There wasn’t much to Alice’s life before she came North.
She felt an ache in her heart on the train journey back to Todeister. Last time she had made the journey it had been with her grandmother – and for her grandmother, too, really. Without Violet’s bossy insistence, Alice would never have applied for the job.
But here she was: a suitcase hardly larger than the one she had brought with her for the interview, crammed, now, with everything she cared about, except her children: her floaty hippy clothes, her junk jewellery, her pack of yellow hair dye, her tobacco tin. A woman half numbed by the knocks life had dealt her, with a ropey wardrobe and hair too long and too blonde for her smoke-creased, once-lovely face: fifty-one years old and ready to start all over again.
* * *
India Tode didn’t have much scheduled that day. The au pair had taken the children to the Boathouse for a picnic and wouldn’t be back until dark. She told Egbert she would go to meet Alice’s train.
She might easily have sent Mr Carfizzi, but she was looking forward to Alice’s arrival. Also, she realised, Alice might be feeling a bit down in the dumps, given that her grandmother had died. India wanted to make Alice feel as welcome and happy at Tode Hall as possible.
‘That’s so sweet of you, Munch,’ Egbert said to his wife, who was lying in bed. (A modern bed, their marital bed, brought from London. The old four-posters gave India the creeps.) He was already up and showered. ‘I feel a bit bad we haven’t cleared out the house for her,’ he said, putting his trousers on. ‘Do you think she’ll mind organising it herself? There’s not a great deal to do… Lottie and Lisa can help. And Kveta, if needs be…’
‘Oh she’ll be fine,’ India said. Now that Emma Tode had vacated it Alice had been allocated the far superior Gardener’s House to live in. India thought, when Alice discovered this change of plan, she would be unlikely to resent the delay. In any case, India said, ‘She’s not employing me, I’m employing her, for God’s sake. I’m not doing her housework for her.’
Egbert smiled at India. ‘Alice is a very lucky lady,’ he said. ‘I wish I could come with you to the station but I really can’t. I’m absolutely chocka…’
He had meetings all day: with the local constabulary, about the need for more tasteful traffic cones on the South drive; with Basmich Safety Solutions, about the implications of hosting a three-day Vegan Food Festival on a couple of fields behind Harsmead Wood; with handsome Oliver Mellors, about the possibility of building an expanded pheasant hatchery on the land below Vallory Farm… with a pushy friend of Dominic Rathbone, who was taking an exhibition of eighteenth-century dog paintings to Japan and wanted to borrow a couple from Tode Hall… on it went. ‘Will you be all right, Munchie? I don’t want you getting overtired. You’ve got so much on…’
India said: ‘I haven’t really. Ludo and Passion spend literally all day playing down by the boats with Weronika – they’re boat obsessed. They’re so happy here, Egbert! Sometimes I just think it makes up for everything… missing London, Carfizzi being such a pig, tourists peering in at the windows, stupid bloody Emma falling over in the mausoleum, wrecking Tintin & Dogmatix day…’
‘She did not wreck Tintin & Dogmatix day!’ Egbert protested. ‘You and Dominic did sterling work, keeping the show on the road. I was so proud of you. Actually I think Tintin & Dogmatix day was a tremendous success. Something you should be bloody proud of, India. Seriously.’
India shrugged.
‘Also,’ Egbert continued, ‘on the Emma front… It’s all jolly horrid. Not pretending it wasn’t. But honestly, I seriously think the best policy is not to think about it. Try to focus on all the lovely things about being here, darling.’
‘Easy to say.’
‘I know it is sweetheart. But we just have to push on. Be brave! It was a dreadful, awful, unfortunate, tragic accident. But I really do believe passionately that the best thing we can possibly do, under the circs, is to pretend it never happened. As much as we can. We certainly don’t want to upset the littles, do we?’
She smiled her angelic smile, and Egbert was reminded, once again, of what a lucky man he was. ‘They just love it here, don’t they Egg?’ she said again. ‘Makes everything worthwhile.’ He leaned across their luxurious modern bed and kissed her. He had a meeting to get to. Time to crack on.
* * *
India presented Alice with the keys to her new home with great fanfare. The house was only a hundred yards from the Hall, but it was set within its own walled garden, and neither building was visible from the other. This might have allowed for some privacy, but for the tourists who were always everywhere. The Gardener’s House had a private back yard, at least, but its front looked directly onto the Rose Garden’s lawn and a couple of benches which, Alice would soon learn, were a favourite spot among savvier tourists, for setting out their illicit picnics.
The Gardener’s House was designed more as a garden ornament than a home. With its toy-town mansion front, it looked like something out of Wonderland, or possibly Disneyland. Either way, behind the eccentric exterior, it was coincidentally a warm and welcoming place to live. There were three bedrooms, a large kitchen with wood burning Aga, a sitting room with French doors that opened out onto the private yard, and a pleasant terrace. The place hadn’t been done up since the seventies.
Emma Tode had been planning a lavish refit, but in the end she’d barely had time to unpack. Her belongings were piled high in boxes and cases in every room. Obviously it had been a last minute decision to put Alice into the Gardener’s House. Nobody had even got around to cleaning out Emma’s kitchen cupboard. There was stale milk and a carton of orange juice in the fridge, and Emma’s sheets were still on the bed.
‘Bit gross,’ India said, when she showed Alice round. ‘Sorry about that. I definitely asked them to deal with it before you got here. They must have forgotten. Don’t worry! Let’s go and have lunch in the Old Stable Yard Café, and I’ll get Carfizzi to send over the girls for a tidy up. Once they’ve got some of the junk out you can start making yourself at home. You can do whatever you like! Move stuff around. And if you want to order new curtains or anything – just say. Whatever you want. A new telly. A new bath. Whatever – we just want you to be happy.’
Alice followed her new employer back to the car, and they drove the distance to the Old Stable Yard, where India said they did really good bangers and mash and that everything was organic. Alice wondered when she might be expected to start work – or even what that work might entail. What with everything that happened last time she was here, and then her grandmother talking so much nobody else could get a word in, and Egbert being so keen to please, and India not being especially focused, the subject of her duties had never been very thoroughly covered. ‘Don’t worry!’ India said. ‘We’ll talk about all that during lunch.’
Over the bangers and mash, between warm exchanges with café staff and sundry, passing employees, India said: ‘So your job, Alice – don’t laugh. I’ve thought about this a lot, because I know we left it a bit woolly… But here we are, stuck in the middle of nowhere, you know… in the middle of Yorkshire. And it’s fantastic, and the kids are happy, and Egbert’s happy and… all that… But I just think – I love my family. Obviously. But Egbert can be a bit serious, bless him. So the main point is – you and I have got to make sure we keep it fun.’