The Crimson Rooms (9 page)

“When Father died last April he left us in very poor financial circumstances.”

“But as I had Edmund, in the end I had no choice but to come here and throw myself on your mercy. To be truthful, Evelyn, these years have not been easy. Can you imagine how your family might have reacted if you’d appeared back home six months pregnant by an unknown and incidentally dead serviceman? My family was far from pleased, I can tell you. They are Roman Catholics living in a small village outside Toronto. Everyone talked. Relations between me and my parents post-Edmund’s arrival have not been easy, especially since the money from England dried up. And I was surrounded by siblings and cousins who had done the right thing—got married, even been widowed, some of them—as opposed to bearing a child out of wedlock. Besides, nursing in the war had given me a taste for independence. I felt stifled at home and once I thought of traveling to London I couldn’t resist, so here I am.”

“But weren’t you taking an enormous risk, coming all this way and not knowing how you’d be received?”

“I didn’t think so. I’d met your father, and James of course, so I knew the type of family you were. I expected you to be charitable.”

Was there just a hint of irony in that word,
charitable
? I noted that she had not said
welcoming
or even
merciful
. Apparently she’d got the measure of us already.

Around us, lady diners wagged their heads so that their collective feathers waved and bobbed; from the next table came a trill of laughter as a couple of young women leaned their heads together over a cigarette lighter and the air was warmly scented with food and perfume and smoke. “When I went through Father’s papers after his death,” I said, “I found nothing about you and Edmund, otherwise of course I would have written.” How typical of Father to have kept this secret from me. He would simply not have deemed it my business, unless he chose to make it so. But it must have been on his mind as he sat late at his club or, on the rare occasions he dined at home, in lonely splendor at the end of the dining room table while we ladies yawned over tea in the drawing room, watching the door. “Did you have a formal contract of any kind? I need to know what is due to you.”

“I see what you’re thinking,” Meredith said after a pause, “you think that I may be an impostor of some kind, posing as Edmund’s mother. Well, I have this ring. And your father was convinced right away. He was very generous. But then I think he had to be, don’t you? After all, there’s Edmund.”

You think I am an impostor.
The expression cut me deeply, that she had so crudely given voice to such an idea. But then perhaps I was shocked because her judgment was so unerringly accurate. I wanted Edmund to be real, but not Meredith. Until now James had been the shining heroic boy, entirely ours, a young brother grown so tall he could hook me under his arm and rest his chin in my hair, whose great feet thundered on the stairs, who used to burst into my bedroom and project himself head-first across my bed, saying, “I swear I will throttle Father if he tells me one more time I’m throwing away any prospect of success if I don’t go into partnership with him.” I thought I knew him, inside and out. Even when he died, he was still mine; sometimes it felt as if the best part of me had followed him down to that cold, still place he’d found.

“Perhaps, if you don’t mind, you should tell me a little of what happened between you and James,” I said stiffly. “You were a nurse and he was your patient.”

“That’s it. I was posted for a while to a hospital near the Belgian border. Men not so badly wounded were sent back to us to be patched up and returned to the front. James, as you probably knew, sustained a severe injury to his upper arm. He was with us about three weeks.” She was watching me across the rim of her teacup, which she held daintily, as if it were wafer thin. “A week or so after he’d been sent back, I heard he was dead.”

She was so much closer to him than I, had more recent knowledge. It was as if a new fragment of my brother was being dangled before me. “Three weeks,” I murmured, “you knew him for just three weeks.”

“That’s all. A lot can happen in three weeks, in a war.”

I reached for my briefcase, finding this last, softly spoken remark, too intimate to bear. “You said you wanted to talk to me alone,” I said. “Was there something else, before I go?”

“Evelyn, I want you to be on my side. I want a life here. You have achieved so much. Will you help me do the same? And I want to see Edmund settled in a school. He must have at least as good an education as his father’s, don’t you think?”

James’s old school? The idea was clearly impossible—we would never afford it and they would surely not accept Edmund (the word
bastard
flashed through my mind and I felt a protective pang of indignation on his behalf). But it also dawned on me that Meredith was regarding her stay at Clivedon Hall Gardens not as a visit but as a permanent arrangement. Things were moving much too fast.

“We’ll talk again. Now I must get back. I have so much to do.”

She caught my hand. “You work far too hard. Really you do. I should like to see you have a little fun. How would it be if you came to the seaside with me and Edmund one Saturday? I feel as if he must catch up on his English heritage and surely a trip to the beach must be part of that?”

“Thank you for asking, but I’m afraid I have to work on Saturdays. I am very behind, as I’ve said.”

She seemed to have forgotten her offer to pay for lunch and made no effort to reach into her handbag. In just one hour I had squandered nearly a fortnight’s spending money.

W
hen I reached Arbery Street,
I found the door to Breen & Balcombe’s ajar and could hear even at a distance that Breen was in one of his rages. “. . . And where is that blasted boy?” I heard him shout. Muted reply from Miss Drake.

I crept into the hall, thinking that I would retreat to my basement office, write up the Leah Marchant notes, and prepare a letter of resignation. Breen’s office door was wide open. “The partnership will be bankrupt,” he yelled as a pile of papers was slapped down on the desk, “nobody has earned a penny since I left for my holiday—my first break in six years, note, but the moment I turn my back . . . Where is Gifford, what excuse has she for deserting a sinking ship?”

“She appears to be taking a very long lunch break,” observed Miss Drake slyly.

“I’m here,” I said quietly.

What had formerly been the front parlor of a family house was now Breen’s office; sunlit, dusty, and furnished with ancient Victorian pieces passed down through generations of Breens & Balcombes. The room had a maverick quality and could change as fast as its owner’s moods. Sometimes the shelves of ancient tomes and box files seemed to dominate, creating a fusty, legalistic atmosphere, but on other days, such as winter afternoons when there was a fire in the hearth and Breen was happily engaged in dashing off one of his devastating tirades against the police or governmental department responsible for victimizing one of his clients, the room was inviting as a Christmas card. Today the desk was littered with ledgers and a window was open, causing a fluttering and billowing of documents and curtains so that it was as if Breen were onboard ship, surging through a backlog of paperwork. Miss Drake sat demurely in an upright chair, notepad at the ready, striped blouse crisply pressed.

“Ah, Miss Gifford, I’ve been searching for last month’s invoices. Where are they?” said Breen, as if genuinely bemused.

“I placed them in the tray as usual.”

“These?” He held up a few wisps of paper. “They come to ten shillings and nine pence. Hardly any of your ragtag clients pays a bean, Miss Gifford, you have turned this partnership into a charitable institution.” There was no point protesting that my clients were allocated by Breen himself; best allow the storm to pass over. “What about your new case—Marchant—I suppose it’s too much to expect that you managed to get her bail?”

“If I may, sir, I’d like to talk to you in private about Mrs. Marchant.” I glanced at Miss Drake, who hung over her notepad, feet firmly planted in anticipation of witnessing a delicious row.

“You can tell me on the way. We’re going out. I’ve been waiting for you. We’re off to Wheeler’s house to collect a few personal items for his use while in prison. I need a female eye—see if you can notice anything the police might have missed.”

“Mr. Breen, there is so much . . . I must talk to you. . . .”

He gave me a piercing stare: “If you’ll excuse us, Miss Drake.”

Miss Drake displayed an excess of feeling by a reduction in expression rather than the reverse. Gathering up her things, she gave Breen a tightly professional smile and closed the door sharply behind her.

After she’d gone, I said, “Mr. Breen, I should like to offer my resignation with immediate effect,” but even to my own ears I sounded melodramatic, a trait that Breen could not abide in others.

He flung down his pen and I was conscious of a slight movement of floorboards in the passage outside the door. “It’s for me to dismiss you, not for you to resign,” and he picked up the next document to signal that the conversation was at an end.

“I am doing damage. This morning, in the case of Leah Marchant, I made us all look ridiculous, the defendant, myself, even you, because I am associated with you. She is charged with a very serious offense and must have proper representation.”

“She’s got it.”

“No. She won’t even look at me, let alone trust me.”

“Is that your only complaint? Stephen Wheeler won’t speak to me but that doesn’t mean I’m going to drop his case.”

“The magistrate made such a fool of me there was no point even trying to argue for bail. Sir, it’s you she needs, though I warn you she’s got no money whatever to pay your fees. Don’t you think she’s disadvantaged enough without me representing her?”

“You found her, you keep her. And as for the fees, I’ve no doubt we can twist the arm of some journalist or other to pay us a few bob for the exclusive rights to her story.” He glanced at his watch. “I said we’d be at the Wheeler house at four.”

I felt better.
How could I not, when I was marching along dusty pavements in the wake of Mr. Breen while above us clouds passed swiftly over the sun so that one moment there was dense shade, the next vibrant heat? As our train puffed its way out of Euston, I told myself that a thousand ladies, at this moment fidgeting over afternoon tea trays, would give their eyeteeth to be Evelyn Gifford, articled clerk. My own face was reflected in the dirty windowpane;
wonderful bones
, Meredith had said.

And as we passed through Queen’s Park and Willesden amid grubby factories and terraces clustered together with their backs to the railway line, I glimpsed the lives of other women. Prudence said that when and how people hung their washing was a sure indicator of breeding and it was certainly the case that, it being Tuesday, only gray remnants of laundry remained in certain backyards. I saw a woman sitting on a step as she minded a clutch of children and poultry, and another washing her scullery window.

During the journey, Breen immersed himself in back copies of the
Times Law Reports
but occasionally favored me with a spurt of information, the most momentous being that Stephen Wheeler had not entered a plea (or indeed uttered any other words) that morning in court when the charge was read out, and that committal proceedings were already under way. The police regarded the case as cut-and-dried and expected it to be heard at the Aylesbury Assizes in July. After all, the circumstantial evidence fitted: Wheeler and his wife had been alone on the hill above the church for several hours, the weapon and gloves were his. The police had even fixed on a motive, outlined scornfully by Breen. A fortnight before he was married, Wheeler had taken out life insurance for himself and his wife to the tune of ten thousand pounds each. “The police call this suspicious,” said Breen, “but what man, cautious by nature and working in an insurance office, would not be tempted by his company’s special rates for employees? His wife was not earning—she’d been a waitress at Lyons but of course stopped working when she was married. He was wise to take out insurance, I’d suggest.”