“Really?”
“Oh yes, but they certainly gave themselves airs, so it was very difficult for them when Naomi was involved in that scandal.”
“Scandal? What sort of scandal?”
“Oh, something medical,” she said airily. “I never heard the ins and outs of it—all hushed up, of course. But Dr. Denver—he was my doctor before Dr. Macdonald, one of the old school—told me about it. It seems there was some sort of research, up in London at one of those teaching hospitals, where it turned out that some of the facts, or figures or something, had been falsified.”
“Goodness! And Naomi was part of the team?”
“Exactly. That’s why she had to come down here. Such a disappointment for her family,” Mrs. Dudley added with relish, “after they’d gone on about how brilliant she was, all set for the Nobel Prize! Of course, they said it was due to ill health; well, what else could they say? That’s why she made a dead set at poor Lewis.”
“At a time when he was feeling vulnerable,” I said. “Do you think he knew? About the scandal, I mean.”
“I suppose she’d have had to tell him. Probably
after
they were married!”
“Poor Lewis. Well, I hope this nice grown-up daughter will be a comfort to him.”
“If Naomi lets him see her.”
“Oh surely—”
“I wouldn’t put anything past that woman,” Mrs. Dudley said firmly. She drank the last of her coffee and I took this as a signal for my dismissal.
As I kissed her good-bye she felt very frail and I suddenly realized how time had passed. When I’m with her I’m so used to feeling a mere schoolgirl, Rosemary’s friend, but now (it suddenly swept over me), I’m in late middle age and she is old. One day in the not too distant future she won’t be here anymore, and in a little while after that, neither will I.
I took my gloomy thoughts down to the sea wall, my favorite brooding place. Now that the summer visitors were gone, the council had stopped smearing the rails with whatever it was they put on them to keep the seagulls away and, to my delight, they were back again, a row of little terns, with the odd gannet and herring gull swooping overhead. As I got out of the car other gulls on the beach flew up, hoping to be fed, but today I had nothing for them. I walked along for a little way, and stood watching a container ship moving slowly up the far side of the Bristol Channel to one of the Welsh ports. As I turned to go back to the car I saw a figure approaching. Somehow I wasn’t surprised to see that it was Lewis Chapman.
“Not a very nice day,” he said as I approached, “but after a tiresome committee meeting at the hospital I felt the need of a little fresh air. How about you?”
“Not a committee meeting,” I said, “but I just felt a bit depressed and somehow all this”—I made a vague gesture—“helps. It’s soothing, I suppose.”
He smiled. “It works for me.”
“How is Naomi?” I asked.
He looked surprised, as well he might, since I don’t usually inquire for her when we meet. “She is fine—very busy, as usual.”
“Oh, good. It’s just that I thought she looked a bit tired when I last saw her,” I improvised hastily.
“Oh well, she’s just started a new project, so, as I said, it’s a busy time for her.”
“Of course.”
“So how’s the famous Book coming along? We’re all looking forward to it in the village.”
“Oh, I’m making quite good progress. People are being very helpful. But it’s so sad, that poor Annie won’t be here to see it.”
“Yes, poor Annie,” he echoed, somewhat perfunctorily, I thought.
“Such an unnecessary death,” I said, “especially as she’d been eating those fungi perfectly happily for years.”
“Well, I suppose people get overconfident . . .” His voice trailed off. “Oh well,” he said, “I suppose I’d better be getting back. Nice to have seen you, Sheila, and good luck with the Book.”
Watching him hurrying away, I was left with the feeling that he wasn’t keen to talk about Annie, and I wondered whether it was because she’d known why Naomi had left her research job in London. If Dr. Denver knew about it—and he was a tremendous old gossip—then it was almost certain that Annie did too. And that would have been the hold she had over them. But surely that wouldn’t have been enough motive for murder.
They were mounting up now, all the secrets Annie could have known. William was right; we all have things we’d rather people didn’t know about. Not necessarily bad things or illegal things, sometimes just embarrassing, but things we wish to keep to ourselves. Things, indeed, that we’ve tucked away at the backs of our minds and had hoped to have forgotten. Small things but powerful if used as subtly as Annie had used them.
Rosemary rang me that evening to thank me for visiting her mother.
“I hope it wasn’t too much for her,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if she should be downstairs.”
“Oh no, it did her a lot of good. You know Mother; stimulation is what really helps and I gather she was able to fill you in on a fair bit of gossip?”
“As always,” I said, and told her about Naomi.
“Yes, I do vaguely recall Mother telling me about it, ages ago. She had several run-ins with Mrs. Cromer on various committees, so it was manna from heaven to find out that her precious daughter wasn’t as clever as all that. No, I had the whole saga all over again this afternoon—Mother hasn’t been so animated for days!”
I laughed. “She certainly did seem to gather momentum as the story went on.”
“Anyway,” Rosemary said, “now that she’s been downstairs once, she thinks she can get up tomorrow and watch the racing on the television in the sitting room. She says the one in her room makes people look funny.”
I laughed. “It really is extraordinary, your mother’s passion for racing. Does she ever have a bet?”
“Goodness, no. She might lose, and Mother would hate to lose at anything! Anyway, she doesn’t think the Queen bets.”
“Not even on her own horses?”
“We don’t go into that.”
“I suppose that stuff about Naomi was the hold Annie had over her and Lewis,” I said.
“Sure to have been. I daresay she knew a lot of medical secrets.”
“Not just medical, really. As a district nurse she’d be in and out of people’s houses all the time. People might have confided in her, trusted her—patient confidentiality, you know, like a doctor.”
“Using that sort of thing would have been a terrible betrayal of trust,” Rosemary said. “Do you think she was really that bad?”
“It looks like it.”
“How do you know—” she began, then stopped and said, “No, don’t tell me. If you’ve found out things,
they’d
be secrets and I don’t think I ought to know.”
When Rosemary had rung off I made myself a cup of hot chocolate, fed the animals and went to bed early, trying to lose myself in the quiet pleasures of
The Provincial Lady
, reflecting that life in E. M. Delafield’s village, full of incident though it was, was a good deal more comfortable than life in Mere Barton.
Chapter Sixteen
The library sent me a card to say that the book I ordered was now in and so I went to fetch it. Looking at the photograph on the cover I wondered again what had made Annie—notoriously careful with money—willing to pay what she would have considered a sizable sum for such a book. I put it in my bag and went on to do my shopping. It was a chilly day (autumn was really upon us) and dodging the blustery showers was tiring, so when I’d finished I felt I deserved a coffee and made my way to the Buttery. It wasn’t too crowded and I was just making for a seat where I could have a look at the book when I saw Phyll beckoning me over to where she and Martin were sitting.
“Hello, Sheila, lovely to see you,” she said. “Come and join us.” She looked excited, like a child who’s just been told of a projected treat. “Isn’t it splendid? Martin’s definitely coming to live in the village!”
“Really?” I said. “That’s”—I searched for a suitable word—“absolutely
splendid
.”
“Well,” Martin said, “I’ve more or less retired and, since I don’t want to sell the cottage, it seems silly to keep the flat on as well. I can do any trips I have to do just as well from Mere Barton as from London.”
“Of course.”
I wondered if he would feel any regret at leaving a place where he had lived for many years with his late wife, if there might be memories—unhappy ones, perhaps. Maybe that was why he wanted to get away. And, of course, there was Phyll. He must surely know by now how she felt about him. Just now, leaning eagerly across the table, her eyes shining, it was very obvious how happy this move had made her. I caught Martin’s eye and he gave me a half smile as if he had read my thoughts, so I said hastily, “Will you like being part of village life, do you think?”
“Oh, I hope to fit in. The people there seem very friendly.”
“You’ll have to do quite a bit to the cottage,” I said. “I don’t think Annie had much done since her mother died.”
“Oh yes,” Phyll broke in, “it’s so exciting. We’ve been and had a good look round. The whole place needs doing up—decorating and so forth—and it really does need a new kitchen and bathroom!”
I wondered how Martin felt about the way Phyll seemed to be taking over the whole project. He smiled again—it was a warm, friendly smile that reassured me that he really did care for her.
“Phyll’s been an enormous help,” he said. “Lots of marvelous ideas for doing it up. I’m most grateful!”
“It’s not the best time for selling your flat,” I said.
“Oh well, I haven’t got to buy anything, so I can afford to take a lower price. Really, I just want to move as soon as I can.”
“Certainly you wouldn’t want to leave the cottage empty for too long,” I said. “It seemed to me when we went in it that everything was very damp.”
“I know,” Phyll said. “It was really bad. So I lent Martin a couple of our electric heaters to warm things up—they’ll do until he can get some proper heating arrangement. Annie had open fires and
nothing
upstairs—imagine!—but I think a wood-burning stove in the sitting room would be nice. That could warm the whole house and give you hot water as well.”
“A splendid idea,” Martin said. “I’ll see what I can find online.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” Phyll said. “I’ll look out some brochures we had from Jack Cartwright—he’s our builder—Father and I got them when we thought of having one at Higher Barton.”
“I suppose I’ll have to get things moving pretty soon,” Martin said, “or winter will be upon us and the bad weather might hold things up. Perhaps I’d better have a chat with this Jack Cartwright of yours.”
I left them making plans and went home wondering just how far Martin had committed himself as far as Phyll was concerned and what Rachel thought of the whole affair. If Phyll got married (and it looked as if things might be heading that way), then Rachel would be alone in that big house and she might wonder if moving down from Inverness was a good idea after all.
Maddeningly, the animals were particularly demanding when I got home and it was a little while before I could really settle down and look at the book. I opened it first at the index, looking for familiar names and, sure enough, there was an entry for Toby Parker. But it was disappointing. He was mentioned only as a member of a parliamentary committee, something to do with balance of trade and imports, quite complicated. I’d have to ask Michael to explain it. There was no other name in the index that had a connection with anyone in the village. Still, at least Max Holtby had mentioned Toby by name; he knew who he was.
Perhaps Annie had heard—or overheard—something that had aroused her suspicions about Toby’s financial activities and had prompted her to spend good money on the book. But, equally obviously, it occurred to me there wouldn’t be anything in the book that overtly connected Toby with Max Holtby in any inappropriate way. If there’d been just a hint of that, even though Toby was a very minor backbencher, the press would have been onto it at once and the usual Sleaze headlines would have been trotted out.
I skimmed through the book while I had my lunch. A rags-to-riches story—impoverished Scottish childhood, widowed mother, scholarships to a good school and then to Oxford, geological expeditions in the Middle East, taken on by an oil company, headhunted by a major oil company, useful Middle East connections leading to membership of the board and then managing director—a brilliant career, helped by sharp decision making and general ruthlessness, an eye for the main chance. The sort of person, perhaps, who would know how to buy influence if he felt it necessary.
I looked again at the picture on the jacket. Yes, certainly that sort of person, someone who was used to getting his own way. And he knew Toby’s name. A few discreet inquiries about Toby’s personality—would he be persuaded, by bribery or flattery, or a combination of the two, to “be helpful” in putting a certain point of view, a word, in the right place. From what I knew of Toby (weak and open to flattery), all this was quite possible.
So, if Annie had any suspicion that all this was going on, it would give her a very positive hold over him. Nothing overt, of course, but sarcastic comments and intimations that she knew . . . what? I remembered several exchanges between them; he was certainly uneasy with her. Of all the people in the village that Annie was blackmailing, he had the most to lose.
Had Toby been in the village just before Annie died? I didn’t think so. He was certainly at her funeral and, now that I came to think about it, was most anxious to know what would happen to the contents of her cottage— perhaps worried that she’d committed something incriminating to paper. But although he hadn’t been in Mere Barton when she was taken ill, Diana was.
The more I thought about it, the more I saw how easily Diana could have (quite naturally) walked across the field and, having made sure Annie was out, preferably at a meeting that would take some time, slipped into the cottage by the back door and substituted the poisonous fungi for the harmless ones. She adored Toby, would have done anything for him. Diana made no secret of the fact that she loathed Annie, probably because of the way she’d been tormenting Toby about his secret. I wondered if he’d put her up to it (thus giving himself an alibi), or if she’d thought it out herself and Toby had no idea. Either way, the stress of it all would account for her drinking and general fragility. I sat for some time considering all this and was startled to realize that it was after three o’clock and I was still sitting there with the remains of lunch and the unwashed dishes all around me.