Indian Summer

by Sara Sheridan

  Upstairs, Mirabelle stood in the long window of her drawing room and watched the car pull away. She stared at the empty beach and then her eyes fell to Lali’s bench. After a minute, she stepped back and sank into one of the armchairs by the fireplace. It felt as if Father Grogan’s death was somehow her fault. ‘I’m a bad penny,’ she mumbled. Jack. Father Sandor. Father Grogan. She didn’t want to think about all the people who had died.

  She contemplated the morning. The children waking to find out Father Grogan wasn’t coming back. When had it happened, she wondered. A post-mortem examination would put a clearer timescale on it. She thought of the two women who had arrived with the Tupperware that afternoon and wondered what had been in it. And then there was the possibility that Father Grogan had eaten something after Vespers or when he arrived at the children’s home. She’d just thought he was tipsy, that’s all. Such a stereotype – a drunken Irish priest. The poor man had been dying. Mirabelle stumbled into the kitchen and scrabbled around for an aspirin, which she gulped down with a glass of lukewarm water from the tap. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. And she didn’t feel one bit closer to finding out what was really going on.

  Chapter Five

  Excellence is a habit

  At a quarter past nine the next morning, Vesta abandoned the frame of the pram at the bottom of the stairs and lifted baby Noel up to the office in a navy canvas basket. Noel was resplendent in a yellow cotton dress and a sunhat. He gurgled as his mother put the basket down on her desk and turned to take off her jacket. Noel’s plump little fist bobbed up and down as he stretched, grasping at shadows.

  ‘It’s hot out there already,’ Vesta said, and went to put on the kettle.

  Mirabelle fussed over the baby. She did so every morning, letting him hold her finger and cooing at him. Blowing kisses. Today, it felt particularly restorative. She had fixed her hair so that the bruises didn’t show or at least Bill Turpin, the third member of the team at McGuigan & McGuigan, hadn’t noticed them.

  Bill did not indulge in playing with Noel. He treated the baby as if he were a fully grown man, nodding gruffly in the direction of the baby basket by way of acknowledgement in a ‘grab yourself a seat’ fashion. The Turpins didn’t have children and Mirabelle couldn’t help thinking perhaps that was for the best. Bill had declined Vesta’s invitation to the barbecue the weekend before. ‘We’ve something on already. Julie’s side of the family,’ he had explained.

  Mirabelle hadn’t entirely believed him. She wondered if Bill’s marriage was in trouble and hoped it wasn’t. He’d seemed tired the last few weeks and, she noticed, he had stopped bringing a lunchbox to work. Though Mirabelle had worked with him for four years now, there was no way she could ask about it. Bill wasn’t the kind of man who talked about personal matters – perhaps that was what was wrong at home.

  ‘Bill,’ she said without looking at him. Instead she patted her lip and widened her eyes over the cot, as Vesta made a pot of tea and Noel’s face broke into a delighted smile, his chocolate-coloured eyes glistening at the thrill of attention. ‘Do you know anything about a convalescent home for children on Eaton Road?’

  ‘I do,’ Bill replied. He had spent most of his career as a policeman. ‘Them kids are trouble. They’re turfed out with no connections to the place, no neighbours to keep them right. They go shoplifting something criminal,’ he chuckled. ‘Down from London most of them and not brought up – dragged up, more like. Pocket-picking little ruffians.’

  ‘Hey,’ Vesta objected. She had grown up in Bermondsey.

  ‘But no complaints about the place itself? The running of it? Nurses selling medical supplies? The kids being mistreated?’

  ‘No – nothing apart from them being left to roam free nicking stuff,’ Bill confirmed. ‘We tried to get them to supervise the little blighters, but they reckon the sea air is good for them and they ain’t got the staff.’

  Vesta distributed steaming teacups to each desk. At Bill’s feet, Panther the office dog raised his head, as if checking each teacup had reached the correct recipient. Then he curled up again.

  ‘What made you ask, Mirabelle?’ Vesta lifted the cup to her lips and took a satisfying sip.

  ‘I met a little girl who had been convalescing there. She was from Jamaica. It was at the weekend, after I got home from your place on Saturday.’

  ‘Convalescing?’

  ‘Yes. The children have respiratory complaints. TB mostly.’ Mirabelle was about to repeat what Bill had said about the sea air, but before she could get the words out, Vesta had crossed towards the little crib.

  ‘You’ve been hanging about with kids who have TB?’ Panic rose in her voice. She picked up Noel and interposed herself, as if she might form a barrier to infection.

  ‘Oh goodness. I’m sorry, Vesta,’ Mirabelle backed away from the desk. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘What’s that on your cheek? Is it a bruise?’ Vesta demanded, tight lipped, as she expertly swaddled the plump baby in a thin blanket and squinted at Mirabelle’s skin.

  ‘Father Grogan died. Do you remember Father Grogan?’ Mirabelle started.

  ‘From the church in Hove? The priest who spoke at Father Sandor’s funeral? Did he have TB? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Vesta had felt close to Sandor. She had been taken prisoner with him for several hours – it had been years ago, when the women had only just met. She had been the one who got away. Sandor had escaped the kidnap later but had only walked into worse.

  ‘No. Nothing like that. Father Grogan was murdered last night. The police reckon it was poison.’

  Bill sat back in his chair. ‘What would someone want to do that for? Kill a priest?’ He made a low, tutting, what-is-the-world-coming-to sound.

  ‘I think Father Grogan’s death had something to do with his connection to the children’s home.’

  Vesta opened the office door and swung the canvas basket outside, depositing Noel briskly on to the linoleum. She wedged the door open with her foot. ‘Here’s Mrs Treadwell now,’ she said.

  The sound of the old woman climbing the steep stairs reached the office. At the top she paused to catch her breath.

  ‘Morning everyone,’ she chimed, peering around the doorframe. Mrs Treadwell always wore lavender. It was her favourite colour. She had once said to Vesta it meant she never had to put an outfit together – everything in her wardrobe matched. Today she sported a pale purple rayon scarf around her hair and a fitted – if old-fashioned – summer dress in the same colour. In the hallway, Noel gurgled. He loved Mrs Treadwell. Her arrival every morning always seemed an unexpected treat. It had occurred to Mirabelle that Noel would have an affinity for women who wore purple for the rest of his life and never realise why.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll see you this evening.’ Vesta sounded businesslike. She handed over the cot, and Mrs Treadwell’s doughty frame retreated downstairs without asking why Noel had been lying on the floor in the hallway or what the rush was about. Vesta came back in and closed the door. ‘We can’t work in the same office, Mirabelle, you and I. Not till you’re out of quarantine.’

  ‘Quarantine?’

  ‘Forty-eight hours at least. It travels in the atmosphere.’ Vesta looked upwards, as if she was inspecting the air for infection.

  ‘I don’t think it’s as easy as that to catch TB …’ Mirabelle started.

  Vesta’s expression brooked no argument, however, and Mirabelle immediately relented. ‘Why don’t you take a couple of days off?’ Mirabelle offered. ‘I mean, if you think there’s a risk.’

  Vesta’s foot flexed. ‘You should take it. You look as if you need it and it’s you who’s been exposed. Besides, I have to get on with the Hayward case.’

  Bill got up, slurped the last of his tea and picked up some papers. Panther, taking his cue, rushed to the door, tail wagging. The Hayward case had been going on for months. Vesta had made no ground with it. Mr Hayward had money but seemed disinclined to pay his debts. He made promises and reneged on
them, repeatedly. Recently he had taken to asking a series of detailed and pointless questions about how the figure he owed had been calculated. ‘Educated bloke,’ Bill pronounced. ‘The worst kind. I’ll be off on my rounds, then. Whatever you two decide, I’ll see one of you later. And Miss Bevan, leave it to the police this time, eh? If it’s the death of a priest, they’ll take it seriously. Do they have someone decent on it?’

  ‘McGregor,’ she said.

  Bill nodded. The superintendent was clearly an acceptable choice. ‘Good,’ he said, and disappeared out of the door.

  Mirabelle looked at the sheet of figures before her. McGuigan & McGuigan continued to prosper. ‘There’s money in collecting money,’ Vesta had pronounced earlier in the year, when they’d completed the annual accounts. But the columns of numbers felt unsatisfying this morning. She glanced at the unread newspaper on her desk and then out of the window, where a slice of startlingly blue sky punctuated the high-walled buildings on every side.

  ‘Go on,’ said Vesta.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re on to something, aren’t you? There’s no point in pretending. And I can’t help you. Not if there’s tubercular children and dead priests. Not now I have responsibilities.’

  Mirabelle regarded her cup of tea. A few years ago, Vesta used to beg to be taken on unusual cases. She used to dive in with gusto. It was Mirabelle who used to turn things down – divorce cases and the like. ‘I need to pick up a copy of Peter Pan,’ she said absentmindedly.

  ‘It’ll be good for you. Like the old days – teaming up with McGregor.’

  Mirabelle bristled but held her tongue. McGregor was the last person she wanted to spend time with. She hadn’t told Vesta what the superintendent had done – the reason for their falling out the year before. Not only had he been complicit in a murder, he’d been unfaithful too. Mirabelle had never met the girl involved, but there had been a girl – young and blonde by all accounts. A prostitute. The betrayal still rankled. She’d trusted him.

  ‘I’ll look after things here.’ Vesta’s tone made it clear the matter was settled.

  ‘Two days,’ Mirabelle repeated. ‘That should be enough.’

  Back out in the sunshine, Mirabelle walked up Brills Lane. She felt disappointed in Vesta. It felt like she had been abandoned, somehow, rushed into the street – thrown out of her own office. Mirabelle understood, of course. If she’d had the chance at a life with Jack and a baby, she’d have taken it in a shot. Still, it was odd Vesta wasn’t curious – it seemed such a change in her personality.

  Steeling herself, Mirabelle picked up her pace. The smell of baking floated on the morning air and she spotted a halfhearted streak of white cloud, like a tiny frill on the edge of the horizon. Gulls were wheeling above, the sound of the traffic and erratic snatches of distant conversation punctuated by their savage cries. Almost at the top of the street, she caught a familiar flash of a regulation mackintosh against salt-and-pepper hair. The superintendent had just rounded the corner from the direction of Bartholomew Square police station. She didn’t want to face him so, on impulse, she dodged into the stationer’s and pretended to look at notepaper. Her heart was hammering and she turned away as he strode past the shop window and stepped smartly into the office building on his way to question her. He had no consideration, it seemed, for how much he’d hurt her. Mirabelle tried not to think of it. Vesta would keep him chatting for a couple of minutes at least. She’d give him his interview. Of course, she’d have to – just not now. Quickly, she nipped back outside and made her getaway in the other direction. At the junction, she turned along North Street.

  Sexton’s bookshop occupied three floors of an old building just off the main road, further west. Wooden racks of secondhand volumes were stacked in order of size beside the door, but Mirabelle wasn’t there to browse. Instead she ducked inside. Nobody was behind the counter but an open notepad and a half-eaten apple lay next to the till. Mirabelle peered further into the interior and noted that the door to the storeroom was open. ‘Hello,’ she called. A boy of no more than sixteen peered out. He wore a heavily starched white shirt, a home-knitted, sleeveless V-neck and a pair of grey shorts. ‘Sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘I just nipped in the back to find J. R. R. Tolkien. There’s a gentleman needs it for his lunch break.’

  ‘I’d like a copy of Peter Pan,’ said Mirabelle, realising there was an urgency in her tone that probably wasn’t usually associated with a requirement for children’s fiction, though the chap in need of the Tolkien may well have sympathised with her.

  ‘Play or prose?’ The boy’s face did not betray surprise. Perhaps people often arrived with requests that seemed ill suited to their outward appearance and unexpectedly pressing. Mirabelle didn’t imagine she looked the motherly type. Perhaps an aunt. She supposed at some point she might buy a book for Noel. Yes, that much was true. She was a godmother. Definitely.

  ‘Prose,’ she said decisively. ‘With colour illustrations, if possible.’

  ‘Follow me.’

  The boy led her upstairs. The first floor was so crammed that Mirabelle felt almost overwhelmed. She didn’t read much these days – only the newspaper. When her flat had been refurbished a couple of years ago, she had replaced whole shelves of smoke-damaged paperbacks with new ones, but the volumes had remained unopened. Now she thought on it, she hadn’t been into Sexton’s for at least a year. The last time she’d popped in was to buy some George Orwell, back in the days when she used to discuss books over dinner with Superintendent McGregor. The shop, she knew, had recently been bought over and it seemed there was a good deal more stock than she’d seen on that visit.

  The boy scaled a ladder and expertly tipped a hardback out of its place. ‘Here,’ he said cheerily, handing it to her as he climbed capably down. ‘Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. It’s a lovely edition. Good as new. That’s three shillings and sixpence, miss.’

  Mirabelle did not inspect the book. Instead, she fished inside her handbag and brought out her change purse. ‘Thank you,’ she said as he put the book into a paper bag and she left the shop, turning smartly down Ship Street towards the sea.

  The fact it was a weekday appeared to make little difference to the crowds on the front. People, it seemed, would take holidays as long as the weather held. Mirabelle decided to walk along Kingsway, despite the crush. She was less likely to bump into anyone she knew, Superintendent McGregor in particular. Police vehicles generally stayed away from the seashore unless there was an emergency, though down on the pebbles she spotted three officers dotted along her route – all wearing white pith helmets and police jodhpurs as they helped lost toddlers and gave directions to visitors. If any of the children from the convalescent home were out pickpocketing this morning, the law was ready for them.

  As she passed, Mirabelle noted that Lali wasn’t sitting on her bench or looking for crabs on the shore. With a shrug she continued along Kingsway and turned up Fourth Avenue, towards Eaton Road.

  It took a good three minutes for the doorbell to be answered at the convalescent home – a sign, no doubt, that the news of Father Grogan’s death had reached them. Nurse Frida’s gaze was hard when she appeared. At first, it seemed the nurse did not recognise Mirabelle. Mirabelle raised the volume in her hand. ‘I came to read to Pete,’ she said. ‘He had never heard of Peter Pan.’

  Frida looked over her shoulder towards the ward, as if checking it was still there. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bevan. We’re in disarray this morning.’

  Mirabelle raised a quizzical eyebrow, as if she didn’t know that Father Grogan was dead. Nurse Frida didn’t explain. ‘You’d better come in. The beds are on the terrace as usual. Can you find your own way?’

  It was busier today. Several children were playing on the lawn but they avoided the old tin swing, which Mirabelle realised would be scorchingly hot on bare skin in this weather. Pete smiled as Mirabelle approached. Furrows had been combed into his hair, she noticed. Someone was keeping the children spick and s
pan, despite the bereavement. The boy put his fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, before falling back on to the pillows and gulping in some air. Lali appeared almost immediately at the bottom of the bed.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Did Pete just whistle for you?’ Mirabelle asked.

  ‘That’s how we do it at home. All the kids have got special whistles. Whole families have their own. So you know who’s calling.’

  ‘In Jamaica?’

  ‘In Whitechapel. In Jamaica your mama just shouts. You brought a book.’

  ‘Peter Pan. Aren’t you out and about this morning? Getting the sea air?’

  ‘No one’s allowed out. Sister hasn’t turned up and the doctor cancelled his rounds. We usually get examined on Monday morning. Nurse Frida said if I got the all clear, I might be discharged by the end of the week. I don’t know what will happen now.’

  Mirabelle surmised that the children had not been told about what had happened, or that would have surely been the first item of business on Lali’s list. She decided it was best not to fill them in. ‘Where’s the sister?’ she asked.

  Lali shrugged her shoulders and climbed on to the end of the bed. ‘They don’t tell us things like that.’ She gestured towards the book. ‘All children but one grow up,’ she said encouragingly.

  Mirabelle opened the first page. That was the first line, all right. Lali was a clever little thing. ‘Do they send you to school while you’re here?’

  Lali shook her head. Pete laughed. ‘There’s a lady who comes to do poetry,’ Lali continued. ‘The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump which you may well see at the zoo, But uglier yet is the hump we get from having too little to do,’ she recited.

  Pete giggled. ‘That’s silly,’ he said.

  ‘Kipling?’ Mirabelle checked. Lali nodded. It struck Mirabelle that it was a curious poem to teach to children who were probably frustrated by how little they could do because of their illness. ‘What a good memory you have,’ she said, ‘Well, once you’re discharged, I’m sure you’ll catch up at school in no time.’ She took a breath and turned the book around so that the children could see the first illustration. From the bed next to Pete, the pale-faced, mousy-haired girl in the large white nightgown strained to see, and Mirabelle held the picture higher so the child had a decent view. ‘Well, Lali is right,’ Mirabelle said. ‘All children but one grow up. That’s how it starts.’