by Mary Stewart
‘Miss Bryony! Won’t you come along in and take a cup of tea? The kettle’s just on the boil for Rob, and I’ve made a batch of scones.’
My first impulse, with the package for Walther weighing heavily in my hand, was to make some excuse and go on my way, but something made me hesitate. The smell of the freshly baked scones came meltingly out on the air, along with the scent of wood-smoke and polish and the smell of ironing. I could see the laundered clothes hanging on the kitchen pulley. Details hardly noticed, but adding together to something deep out of the past that answered, like an echo to a bell, the distress in me that I had hardly recognised as yet, and had barely yet begun to suffer: James and my dead father, and the evidence of the silver pen; my rejection of my secret friend, and now, in this envelope in my hand, something that might be his betrayal. Before I even knew I had spoken, I said, ‘Thank you, I’d love to,’ and headed for the door.
‘Come along in then, dearie,’ said Mrs Henderson, ‘and I’ll make the tea. Rob’s just got in.’
She vanished into the doorway. I followed her.
Rob was there at the sink, in his shirt sleeves, washing his hands. I saw he had taken the bandage off his left hand, and had been carefully cleaning the injured thumb. He greeted me rather shortly, as he had done that morning, then his eyes fixed on my face and he straightened, speaking in quite a changed voice.
‘Is something wrong, then?’
I opened my mouth automatically to deny that anything could be wrong, but somehow no words came. Instead of the brittle, conventional denial of ‘Nothing at all. What should be wrong?’ I found myself saying with all the force of unhappiness, ‘Oh, Rob, it’s all so awful,’ and I put a hand to my eyes.
His hand, still damp, took me very gently by the elbow and steered me to a place at the table. ‘What you need’s a cup of tea. It’s making now. So come your ways and sit down.’
I don’t remember that I ate anything, but I drank the strong, scalding tea, and watched Rob and Mrs Henderson eating scones and bramble jelly, and listened to the two of them talking over the common-places of the day – the shirt she would take home to mend, the pie she had made for him to heat at supper-time, the mouse-hole that she had found when she swept the back bedroom. The two of them addressed remarks in my direction from time to time, but never anything I had to answer; the talk went around and over me with the instinctive tact of long-standing affection. They were hedging me about with kindness, and I knew why the sunlight in the stackyard, the cottage smells, the sound of Rob’s warm country voice, had suddenly and unaccountably broken me down. I had been here before. As a little girl I had come often to the Grangers’ house, sometimes for comfort and refuge from the boys’ games, sometimes just for a ‘visit’ with Mrs Granger on the days when Rob’s father was safely distant at market or down at the Bull. It had been the farm kitchen then, not the cottage, but it was the same; the faded rug, the old dresser with the green and blue plates, the brown teapot, the smells of baking and freshly ironed clothes, and the warmth and welcome that all these things added up to. I had loved these visits, tea with ‘bought cakes’ (which as a child I had thought so much better than anything we had at home) and sardines on toast and tinned fruit and condensed milk, while Mrs Granger listened to Rob and me boasting about what we had done and dared that day at school in the village. I had never understood her faded edginess and her air of always listening for an unwelcome footstep; nor did I guess why, if Mr Granger came back while I was still there, I was expected to get up and go straight home. Nor had Rob’s sullenness meant anything except ‘Robbie’s sulks’. What happened when Matt Granger came home at night was a well-kept secret, and had never touched little Miss Bryony. Well, that was over now, and the familiar warmth lapped me round, and from somewhere came comfort and calmness.
When tea was done I helped Mrs Henderson clear and wash the dishes, while Rob pushed the cloth back from his end of the table, and spread his account book and papers out and got on with his figuring. He was surprisingly quick and neat. The sums looked complicated, but long before I had dried and stacked the dishes he had shut the book and put the papers aside and picked up a sheaf of what looked like highly-coloured catalogues or holiday brochures. He read them intently, paying no attention to the two women moving around him. He might have been alone in the room. It was curiously soothing.
Mrs Henderson took her apron off and hung it behind the door. ‘Well, that’s it for today. I’ll let you have the shirt by the weekend, Rob. Shall I feed the hens for you?’
‘Thanks, yes, I’d be obliged.’
She took her leave of me then, and I thanked her for the tea. She had obviously assumed my distress to be caused by my father’s death, and by the loneliness of my first night back at Ashley. She had too much natural delicacy to say anything directly, but she came as near to it as she could. ‘Are you all right at the cottage, Miss Bryony? Is there anything else you want?’
‘Nothing at all, thank you, Mrs Henderson. Everything’s fine. You got it lovely.’ She went then, leaving me with Rob.
He laid the papers down and pushed them aside. ‘Now what’s to do? Can’t you tell me? Seems like it might be bad trouble, to upset you like that.’
‘It might.’ I sat down at the other side of the table from him. He watched me, saying nothing.
It was very different from the recent tête-à-tête with Emory; no tensions, no careful reticences, no attempts to see past an apparent meaning to a real one. And different, too, from talking with my cousin James; there, as well, had been the sprung overtones of emotion, of a difficult affection, of a personal distress. And in both interviews I had felt the impact, doubled because united, of a strong personality and a calculated desire to drive me into action over the Court and the trust.
Here there was none of that. The dark eyes that watched me steadily were not Ashley eyes, those wary, clever eyes with their cool self-sufficiency and their self-absorption. Rob could have no axe to grind, nothing to gain, nothing he wanted from me. He was not even, like the Vicar, bound by a set of rules which could force me to an alien action like the betrayal I was contemplating. He was just an old friend, someone belonging to the Court, who had known it and me and Jon Ashley all his life; a real person, kind, uncomplicated, who would listen without judgment unless I asked for it, and would answer me then with plain and disinterested common sense. I supposed he loved the Court; I didn’t know; but he knew it, and he knew me. Neither fear nor favour . . . He had never feared anything, Rob Granger, except perhaps, when he was a child, his brutal father. And he had no reason to show favour, now that my father was gone, to any of us above the others; only to Ashley itself. Or so I thought.
‘Rob,’ I said, ‘it’s something awful, and I oughtn’t to tell you, but I’ve got to tell someone, and there’s no one else.’
Vaguely to my surprise he didn’t say, ‘What about your family?’ or even, ‘What about the Vicar?’ He merely gave a little nod, as if that was reasonable, and waited again.
I swallowed. ‘I think it was James who knocked Daddy down. I think he was there, in Bad Tölz. They picked up a silver pen with the initials J.A. just where the accident happened. When they gave me his things I assumed the pen had been his, though I’d never seen it before. And yesterday – yesterday James saw me using it, and said it was his own. He didn’t know where he’d dropped it, he said, but it was his . . .’
He had listened without moving. Now he stirred, and asked, sharply for him: ‘Did you tell him where it came from?’
‘No. Oh, no. I told him I’d found it in the churchyard the night before last.’
‘Did he accept that?’
‘Yes. He didn’t even seem surprised.’
‘Meaning that it was him in the vestry – or at any rate in the churchyard – that night.’
‘You could say so,’ I said. ‘Oh, he denied it when I asked him before, but I know James, and I was sure then that he was lying, and he knew I thought so. He took it as a joke. Last n
ight he didn’t even trouble to go on pretending. I know what he was doing there, too – though I don’t really understand all about it. It doesn’t matter anyway, not compared with this.’
‘What does matter,’ said Rob bluntly, ‘is that he shouldn’t know you’ve any call to suspect him of being in Bad Tölz.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t. It was all quite casual. He just pocketed the pen and went out.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Rob was frowning. ‘What was the date your Dad was knocked down? The thirtieth of April, wasn’t it? Well, James was here then, or thenabouts.’
I sat up abruptly. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure enough. I saw him. He called here to pick up the Underhill girl.’
‘Rob, are you sure it wasn’t Emory?’
‘Well, no, I suppose it might have been. I didn’t speak to him – I was busy working along the drive. But the Underhills said afterwards that it was James. I remember that, because of course I thought it was Emory with her; you’ll know they’re sweet on each other, of course?’
‘Yes.’ I added, thoughtfully: ‘So he wasn’t ringing for his twin that day? I wonder why?’
I had spoken, softly, to myself, but Rob had not only heard, he had got there with almost electronic speed. ‘So they’ve been doing that, have they? Can I take it that that wasn’t Emory here yesterday, then?’
‘No, it was James. It was Emory today, though.’ I looked at him across the table. ‘Rob, don’t you see? It probably was Emory here that day with Cathy. Which means it was James in Bad Tölz.’
‘Would it matter which of them it was in Bad Tölz,’ said Rob forcefully, ‘if he was driving that car?’
I didn’t answer. I was looking down at my hands, which were pressed flat on the table in front of me, covering the letter as if to hide it. Then I looked up at him. I knew that all the strain and uncertainty, yes, and the longing, too, must be there, naked to view, in my face and eyes. I didn’t care. I saw him take it all in one swift, summing look, then he said, in a voice carefully empty of sympathy: ‘Yes, I can see it would. But it doesn’t help to take on about it, not till you know a bit more.’
It braced me, as it was meant to. I sat back in my chair, and let my hands fall into my lap. ‘I’m sorry. Throwing it all at you like this. It’s your own fault, you know, for being so easy to talk to.’
‘Maybe because I’m just part of the fittings. I belong in the garden, sort of, along with the trees.’ There was no edge to the words. He was smiling. ‘It’s all right, you know. You can tell me anything – it’s likely enough I’d know it anyway, with my ear to the ground most days.’
‘Like telling the bees?’
‘I reckon,’ he said, comfortably. He stretched, then got to his feet and leaned his shoulders back against the mantelpiece. His look was solemn again, a little heavy. ‘Well, you’ve told me. Never mind why, but you don’t want it to be James. But you can’t leave it at that, you know. You’ll have to find out. Whichever of them it was, even if you don’t want to know the answer, you’ve got to go on and find out. That’s true, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. But—’
‘And there’s something else you’ll have to face.’ He hesitated, then finished abruptly. ‘As far back as I remember, Bryony, whatever one of them was in, the other was in just as deep.’
‘Not James.’ It was meaningless and purely defensive, but he answered the implication rather than the words.
‘Maybe not. But he was always there after the fact, as they say. Anyway, we have to find out, don’t we? Are you up to facing that?’
Somehow I wasn’t up to facing him. I looked down at my hands. ‘I have to, haven’t I? You just said so.’
‘Yes.’ It was abrupt and uncompromising. As unswerving a judgment, I thought with vague surprise, as the Vicar’s. I still couldn’t look at him, but I turned my head to the window, where the curtains swelled and swayed in a sudden breeze. There was a pot of pink geraniums on the sill, the twin of the one at my cottage. The breeze brushed a fading head of flowers, and a scatter of petals floated down into the room. One of them, drifting to the floor beside me, stirred a memory; the petals floating from the clematis last night. Last night; before I had known what I knew now. When all I had had to worry me was the ‘theft’ of a few things from the Court. It seemed a lifetime ago.
Bryony. Bryony, love.
I must have jumped in my chair. I felt my nerves tighten like a net pulled in by a fisherman. Somehow, in that unguarded moment of memory, he had managed to reach me. It came with the breeze, sweet as the summer air; it was round me like the falling petals; comfort, love, longing as strong as anguish. So strong that for one awful, choking moment I thought he would be able to see through my mind into the contents of the envelope that lay beside me on the table.
Get out! Do you hear me? Leave me alone. You know why.
Yes, I know why. Bryony . . .
All right. Did you do it?
No reply. Just that longing and love, hopeless and receding.
Did you do it? Were you there when he died?
No answer. He was gone. Above me Rob’s voice was saying, with that careful lack of warmth: ‘You don’t have to look like that, Bryony. Whoever was driving that car, you surely can’t think it was anything but an accident, so—’
‘Well, of course it was an accident! But why keep it quiet? Why not stay and – and help him? He wasn’t dead.’
‘Would it have saved his life if they had?’
‘No. No, Herr Gothard said not. But it might have prolonged it. He might have lived till I got there . . .’ I choked on that one, and then managed to add, more steadily: ‘That’s not true, no. Herr Gothard said it made no difference. But one can’t help feeling—’
‘No, you can’t,’ said Rob, ‘but you can think as well, and that’ll help. Come on, think about it. Say it was one of your cousins knocked your Dad down. Okay. What was he doing in Bad Tölz in the first place?’
‘I – I suppose he must have gone there to see Daddy.’
‘Right. Must have. Well then, what about?’
There was only one answer to that, too. ‘About the Court, breaking the trust. They need money. James says they need it very badly.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ said Rob drily. ‘I suppose the difference is, what do you do to get hold of it. Yes, I know, but there’s no need to look like that, love—’ The country endearment came out as ‘luv’, as natural and meaningless as when the local shopkeepers or bus conductors used it— ‘because we’re taking it as an accident, aren’t we? All right, go on thinking. Your cousin – we’ll call him Emory if it makes you feel better, and he could easily have had a loan of his brother’s pen, and never missed it when he dropped it – Emory goes to see your Dad to talk him into something; it doesn’t matter what, but it was urgent, or he wouldn’t have gone to that trouble. Now, since your doctor pal never saw him, Emory must have been on his way up to the hospital when he overtook your Dad on the road. Didn’t recognise him in the dark, we’ll say—’
‘Of course he didn’t recognise him! You couldn’t ever think—’
‘Hey, calm down, I said we were taking it as accident. Well, he knocked him down in the dark. And after that he panicked and drove off and never said a word. It happens. It’s human. It’s the reason for all the hit-and-run jobs there are.’
‘I’d like to accept that. But it doesn’t fit, does it? He must have recognised him after the accident. Don’t forget that whichever of them ran Daddy down must have got out of the car to look at him, and if Ja—Emory leaned over him long enough to let that pen drop from his pocket, he must have recognised who it was. The car’s lights would be on, too.’
Rob nodded. ‘He ran away because he recognised who it was. Don’t you see? Your cousin went there to talk your Dad into something. He went because he was desperate for money, and his own Dad hadn’t managed to get yours to part with anything, or agree to break this trust. Then by accident he knocks your Dad down on the
road and hurts him badly; he must have known how badly. Anyway, he knew about his heart . . . Well, put yourself in his place. How’s it going to look if he, of all people, is involved in an accident like that, and then your Dad dies? The people who stand to gain are him and his family. They’re the only people in the world who might want your Dad dead. No—’ quickly, to forestall me ‘—I’m not saying they did. I’m saying that’s what the police would have said once they ferreted the story out.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see. But even if they didn’t dare pick him up and get help for him, surely they – Emory – could have telephoned from somewhere and told someone where he was, and to go and help him?’
‘What sort of German do they speak?’
‘Oh, yes, that would have given them away. Of course. But, Rob, just to leave him lying like that—’
‘I know, it takes a bit of swallowing. But I’ve known your cousins as long as you have, remember, and I’d say they were realists. You told me yourself it wouldn’t have helped your Dad if they’d stayed by him.’ He left the fireplace and sat down where he had been before, resting his folded arms on the table and leaning forward on them. ‘That’s it, you see. I dare say you’ll find out that they were only planning to look after their own interests. But it went wrong, and now you’ve found out, and the very thing’s happened that they’d have given their eye teeth to avoid; you’ve been set against them.’
I said nothing. It fitted, all too well. Whichever twin had been beside my father and dropped the pen, the other would no doubt have been ready to create an alibi by confusion, either in Bristol or in Spain. This was why neither man had come to the cremation, or showed up at Bad Tölz to see me home. I would have recognised him, and if there had been questions later, this might have destroyed whatever alibi they had concocted between them. It could have been either of them telephoning from England; Walther was not familiar with their voices, and it was perhaps significant that the caller had not asked to speak to me. I began to wonder, but with the dullness of emotional exhaustion, if Cousin Howard was involved as well. If neither twin had been in Spain at the time of the accident, would their father say so? Was he, even, well enough to know? But, with England, Spain and Bavaria only hours apart by air, heaven knew it would have been easy enough for the twins to create their own kind of alibi.