Baby Drop

by Jennie Melville

  Charmian hesitated, she was about to leave: she knew nothing about the woman beyond her own observation, but she thought she was honest. She decided to trust her, they could talk money later.

  She followed her new helper into the kitchen. ‘Right, well go ahead, you’ll find cleaning things in that cupboard, and the broom and brushes in with them.’

  Amy started bustling around with a pleased look, she was a pretty woman except for a small scar across her cheek, but she covered this well with make up.

  ‘What about pay?’

  ‘The usual, by the hour. We can settle that later.’

  ‘I have to go now.’ Charmian once again made a move to leave, there seemed no end to this morning already.

  At the door, she decided that trust worked both ways. ‘Would it distress you very much if you learned that Sarah was dead?’

  ‘But I saw her. Twice, I said so.’

  ‘I know, but if you were wrong, and the child was dead. Could you face that? Death?’

  Amy blinked. ‘I guess it’s like full-frontal nudity, you have to take it head on when it comes your way.’

  Charmian drove down Maid of Honour Row, turned right in Prince Consort Place, and then into Royal Road. There was very little traffic, she was too late for those hastening towards trains and offices and too early for the shoppers and ladies going to the hairdressers.

  She was reminded of her own need for the services of her good friend Beryl Andrea Barker, hairdresser and retired (or so Charmian trusted) criminal. She considered making an appointment for today, Baby was good about fitting her in, which was understandable since not only had they known each other for many years, been professionally acquainted on different sides of the law, but somehow they had ended up friends. Charmian found Baby a good source of informed gossip. Baby also had a shrewd eye for a lie when she heard one, sorting out truth and falsehood with the skill of one who had heard them all.

  And there were a lot of lies floating round this case.

  Charmian was approaching the corner of Royal Road where it runs into Castlereagh Street and thence on towards her office, when her car telephone rang. The road was quiet here without a line of parked cars so she steered into the side.

  ‘Ah, got you.’ Feather sounded jovial. ‘Been ringing around, this was my last try. It’s about viewing the video in company with the mother, that’s what you wanted?’

  ‘It was on offer, wasn’t it?’

  ‘She won’t come except in a group, father and grandmother to be included. To get one, you’ve got to have the lot. Any objection?’

  ‘There might have been advantages in letting them view separately. Should be interesting, though. Have to watch them.’ Faces often revealed more, much more, than speech. She wondered if they wouldn’t let Biddy come on her own, she thought she had picked up family tensions. ‘Think she’ll bring the dolls as well?’

  Feather ignored her black joke. ‘I’ve had to be accommodating about time: four o’clock this afternoon. Any good to you? I might be able to negotiate a slightly later time.’

  ‘I’ll take four o’clock.’ It was interesting that he used the word negotiate. ‘ I can do it.’

  ‘And we’re going on looking for a body. Just in case. We keep trying.’

  They always kept trying. As she drove away, she thought of some of the people she had worked with in the past, who had kept trying: Inspector Fred Elman, Superintendent Feather, Clive Barney (she mustn’t keep thinking about him), all now promoted, retired or moved away.

  She drove on, stopped at intervals by traffic lights and pedestrians crossing. A few yards ahead was the shop of Mr Madge, Jeweller to the Queen. The Queen was Queen Victoria but the first queen whom the family had served had been Charlotte, wife to George III whose portrait hung in the shop. Mr Madge, who was at the shop window setting one brilliant diamond ring into position with the air of one arranging a crown or at the very least a coronet, saw her and waved his hand.

  There was a kind of royal command in the wave, which she found herself obeying. In front of the shop was an old-fashioned cobbled stretch of road on which motorists avoided parking because it looked so old and holy somehow, and also because they instinctively knew that it would damage their suspension and tyres. Charmian bumped her way across to stop outside the shop.

  The exterior had always charmed her, with its gentle crooked roof and the sloping walls with their air of having settled into the earth before the rest of the town was built, and the shop window with its narrow panes made her think of the Old Curiosity Shop, although it has to be said that if there were curiosities in Mr Madge’s emporium they would have been mighty expensive ones since he did not deal in trifles.

  ‘Any news?’ he asked at once. ‘I saw the television interview. Bound to get results, I thought.’

  ‘Bit early for any result on that.’

  ‘True, true.’ He had moved back to the old-fashioned counter on which a few choice objects were displayed. ‘They usually do though, don’t they? People ring in, trying to help.’

  He keeps too much valuable stuff around, Charmian thought almost angrily, as she had done often in the past. Everyone knows he does, why isn’t he robbed? And yet he never was.

  ‘It’s not all the real news,’ she said. ‘People invent scenes, sometimes even think they saw what they didn’t. But yes, we do get lucky. I hope we do this time.’

  ‘It’s sad to think of an old family like that dying out, isn’t it?’

  Charmian didn’t think it mattered very much, but did not say so.

  ‘There was a brother, you know, little Anthony.’

  ‘Little?’

  ‘He died young, a mere baby, he’s buried in the family vault. They have their own chapel, used to have a chaplain once but that’s long gone.’

  ‘So I should imagine.’

  ‘Ah, you’re not sympathetic. You can’t be.’

  ‘I am, I like the idea of old landed families, but perhaps it isn’t an idea for today. You seem to know a lot about them.’

  Mr Madge had taken up a soft yellow duster with which he was polishing an antique silver rose bowl, and he continued with this gentle pursuit, performed in a careful, loving manner while he talked.

  The shop was dusky and quiet, crowded as ever. One or two new objects seemed to have arrived to join the throng. Charmian didn’t remember seeing that parure of opals set in silver and displayed on a bed of black velvet. And was that carnival mask of gold and emerald with glitter as of diamonds round the eyes, for sale or decoration? He must have a small fortune tied here.

  As well as the portrait of Queen Charlotte, Mr Madge had added some photographs of his own, his father, his grandfather, and faded sepia pictures from an even more distant past. You trace the resemblance from generation to generation and it was there in William Madge himself: tall, delicately boned hands and face with a firm strong mouth and nose.

  The air of the shop was scented by a great bowl of potpourri set on a side table of fine old walnut, undoubtedly valuable. The china dish itself looked like Meissen and probably was.

  What a place, Charmian thought, looking at Mr Madge as he mused on, full of his memories.

  ‘I was always there as a child. My father, and his father before him and great-grandpa before that, used to go there once a week to wind the clocks, and I often went with them and had tea in the kitchen. I did the clocks myself for a long time, I don’t go now, of course, those days are over. I don’t know who attends to the clocks now. Mr Peter perhaps. More likely her ladyship. She knows all about the house and everything in it.’

  He put down the silver he was polishing: ‘Come and see what I’ve got,’ he said in a secretive way. ‘In here.’ He led her into a back room which was even darker and more crowded than the shop. Here he switched on a lamp, opened a morocco-leather box to reveal the solid glitter of a large diadem. It had a high curving baroque front, set with emeralds and diamonds. It also had a kind of battered, elderly look as if it needed a help
ing hand.

  ‘I’m repairing it, a big job.’ He spoke with satisfaction. ‘Splendid thing, isn’t it? Part of the old Russian crown jewels.’

  ‘Wherever did it come from?’

  Mr Madge put his finger to his nose. ‘Ah, you may ask … We all know which member of the royal family had a taste for picking up valuable articles at bargain price … No names, you know. Well, it’s in the blood, and I won’t say who the buyer is but you can make a guess. Came from Russia very very recently. Where it’s been all these years, I couldn’t say, but it’s here now to stay.’ Something amused in his voice, told her that, in spite of his genuine love and admiration in all their ranks for the descendants of George III and his Queen, he also had the cynical scepticism enjoyed by all true courtiers. They knew the emperor had no clothes, nor did they care, it was their joke too.

  ‘Very handsome, isn’t it? Not quite what you and I would want to wear, conducive to a bad headache, crowns are, you know.’ No doubting his quiet amusement now. ‘And badly in need of a clean. My bill will be a pretty one, I assure you.’

  In this quiet dark room where the scent of dried roses and lavender floated in from the outer shop, Charmian felt bold enough to dig in her purse to bring out the gold locket.

  ‘I showed you a photograph of this before. Can you look at it and see what you can tell me about it?’

  Mr Madge held the locket under the lamp. ‘Ah now,’ he examined it closely, glass loup wedged firmly into his eye. ‘Now that is one of ours. We sold that to whoever it was. I know the mark, we always put our own special mark.’

  He let Charmian see a tiny curlicue.

  ‘That’ll be my father’s mark … No, I correct myself, I believe it is Grandpa’s.’

  ‘There’s a difference?’

  ‘Oh yes, my mark is straighter, more angular, I haven’t the freedom of line that my father used. He had better control of wrist and fingers, lovely slender entwined line he could produce. Grandpa was a thorough Victorian and his work reproduces that, he managed a very florid, well – embellished circle. Yes, this one is his.’

  ‘I believe you. I don’t suppose …’ No, it couldn’t be done after all these years. ‘You can’t trace who bought it?’ And if he could, then it might be a present, handed on.

  ‘I can look in my books. I have the shop records going back to Josiah Madge in 1847. Not easy to read owing to mice and damp but I have the stuff.’

  ‘It would interest me.’

  ‘May I keep it while I search?’

  She thought about it, but he would be a careful custodian. ‘Yes, for a bit.’

  ‘I’ll lock it away … but examining it slowly may give me some pointers … I don’t know, but it may …’ He hesitated, then asked the question he had been longing to put: ‘Is it connected with Sarah?’

  Charmian hesitated, wondering what to say. ‘ No, not exactly, but one thing has led to another.’ Connected more closely with a little bag of bones.

  He led her to the door with his usual politeness, but there he paused to point out a picture hanging on the wall by the door. ‘This is the Big House.’

  Charmian moved closer, it was placed high but she could see it. Not a photograph but a charcoal sketch, obviously by an amateur but with charm.

  ‘You did it?’ she said, turning to him.

  ‘Twelve years old, I was. I had some talent then, but it melted away.’

  The house was low and old, dark stone covered here and there with ivy. On either side a range of buildings, one side having a clock, and the other a bell tower, stables perhaps. In the distance a small churchlike structure, which must be the chapel.

  ‘You admire the house?’ It seemed evident to her.

  ‘Respect. Some houses command respect.’

  Crouching there with the hills on either side, the side wings stretched like paws, it was like an animal.

  If ever a house could growl, this one could.

  Mr Madge delivered his judgement, with satisfaction it seemed to her: ‘A house like no other.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘ “Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady. You must have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I was in this family before you were born.” ’

  Bleak House

  Inside the house that was like no other, Peter Loomis was talking to his mother in her own sitting-room, still called the boudoir by her and the one old servant who had been with her all her life and had been born in the household itself. Things like that wouldn’t go on much longer, as they both knew and as everyone told them, but the two of them kept up the old ways. Emily Grahamden was m’lady and her servant was ‘My Lady’s own maid’. It didn’t mean servility since they were equally rude to each other, also equally kind on occasion, but it suited them.

  It was mid-afternoon on that dark November day so that the lamps were already lit over Chantrey House, her ladyship liking a lot of light. In this, her own particular room, the light was diffused and gentle. One silver lamp-stand in the shape of a naked lady who held an opalescent lampshade aloft was matched by a tall floor lamp with a pleated silk shade. A small pyramid of burning oil, scented by sandalwood, smoked underneath.

  The boudoir had been decorated by Emily’s mother in a high early nineteen-twenties style, sleek and angular with a fine display of French black-enamelled furniture made in 1926, set out with Lalique glass, all remotely reflected in a large Venetian mirror. In this looking-glass, Emily was doing her face. She had been out, had only just got back, and would have described her face, if asked, as ravaged. She felt ravaged inside, life was pinching her hard, but she had survived before and would do so now.

  ‘Are you going to be much longer, Mama?’ Peter was so familiar with the room that he hardly saw it, but once or twice recently he had thought that the ambience of the room created by his grandmother, a friend of Noël Coward and an ex-Gaiety girl, had influenced his life, making him smoke too much, drink too much, and be unhappy in love. You can’t blame a room for your life, but he would dearly like to have done. He took a straw-coloured cigarette from a gold and platinum case, which had been Grandma’s wedding gift to her husband.

  ‘As long as I like, dear,’ she said calmly. ‘When you are my age it takes longer to put yourself together.’ She went to the door and called loudly: ‘Mousie, Mousie, bring me my fur coat.’

  A distant voice called back: ‘Get it yourself, m’lady.’

  ‘Oh come on, Mousie. Who pays your wages?’

  ‘Who earns it, three times over? All right, all right, I’m coming.’

  Peter said: ‘You let her get away with too much.’

  ‘She has a lot to do.’

  ‘I don’t know why you got rid of Amy.’

  ‘I did not get rid of Amy, as you put it, she left. She didn’t get on with Mousie.’ Who had hit Amy with the back of her hand on which a ring had torn her cheek. Amy had departed at once.

  ‘Oh, I know Mousie is the one who counts.’ Peter had wondered what the quarrel was about but it almost certainly had something to do with his mother. Secrets, he thought, damn them both. But he had his own sad secrets.

  ‘Loyalty is to be treasured,’ said his mother. ‘ I didn’t trust Amy.’

  ‘She was a nice woman. And brave. I’ve never forgotten how she rescued my terrier from the bulldog.’

  ‘People will sometimes do things for animals that they won’t do for humans. I think that wrong.’

  There was a sharp note in her voice which her son registered.

  ‘I love Sarah. I want you to know that.’ His hands were shaking as he took out another cigarette. He hadn’t finished the first.

  Emily Grahamden put away her bright red lipstick.

  ‘Smoking again, I see. Thought you’d given it up.’

  ‘I’m upset.’

  ‘Which is precisely why I’m letting Mousie alone: she’s upset, I’m upset, we’re all upset. It’s very upsetting having to see this video.’ She went to the door
to shout once more: ‘I’m still waiting. If you want to come too, bring your own coat.’

  Peter said: ‘I don’t think she should come.’

  ‘Certainly she should, she’s as good a witness as we are. Biddy’s the one I wish we could leave behind. Unfortunately we cannot. Shall we try?’

  ‘What a monster you are.’

  The door was flung open as Mousie marched in, carrying a long dark mink coat and wearing her own thick tweed, buttoned to the neck. ‘Here you are, my lady.’ She held out the coat so her employer could insert her arms. ‘You’re putting on weight. I‘m coming.’

  Mrs Moucher was the only full-time servant now employed by Lady Grahamden, since Amy had been given notice. Or departed, whichever version you followed. Mousie was the nickname Emily had given her as a child and now she knew no other name; she had started as a kitchen maid and now controlled the household under her Ladyship’s domineering eye. Daily staff came and went.

  They were much of a height and Emily Grahamden knew, although she was not going to make a point of it, that the grey tweed was a coat of her own from La-chasse that she had by no means made up her mind to cease wearing.

  Peter stood up. ‘Come on, then, let’s get going. Biddy will be waiting.’

  ‘I don’t know why she can’t drive herself.’

  ‘Because I’m driving her. And it looks better if we all go as a family. God knows we’re a rum enough family, anyway.’

  Mousie said: ‘I put this coat on, m’lady, because I thought you’d want me to look nice, and my old red coat is really past it, besides not being the suitable colour for such a sad occasion.’

  ‘It’s not a funeral, Mousie,’ said Peter Loomis. ‘Just a viewing of a video with a lot of policemen watching our faces.’

  ‘No one suspects you of anything, Mr Peter.’

  ‘Don’t they just? I’ve been there before, don’t forget. That large policeman who isn’t nearly as nice as he pretends let me know they link Sarah’s disappearance with a boy whose body was found. You’ve heard about that? I dare say he thinks I did the boy in.’