Broken Music (20 page)

‘Arthur, this is Inspector Reardon.'

Reardon's hand was taken in a firm grip. He looked more closely at the man and noticed deep shadows under his eyes and the bluishness in his lips of the chronic heart sufferer. The effort Foley had made during the war might not have been without its cost to him: Mattie Noakes had said he had suffered a heart attack on the eve of the war, yet he had carried on. It could not have been money that motivated him to do that, although turning their factories to munitions had not exactly been unprofitable for those who did. He sat down now close to his wife on the sofa, one arm resting on the back, the other holding her hand, very firmly. She sat a little more upright; the closeness, quiet understanding, and marital solidarity was impressive.

A solid man altogether, Mr Foley, as Reardon knew. The name Foley's, as he was growing up, had been almost as familiar to him as his own. J Foley & Son, in huge iron letters, arched over the gates of the big foundry and engineering shop in Cradley Heath, one of the biggest employers in the Black Country. He might have ended up there himself, had he not been lucky enough to be accepted by the police. He recalled how many men and women had lately been employed there on munitions, when the works had been turned over to making Mills bombs, of the type which Reardon had thrown himself, on occasions, though he hadn't been thinking of Foley's at the time. Then, it had been more a matter of concentrating on lobbing the grenade into the right place, the enemy's trench, which hadn't been much different to throwing a cricket ball. Only the effect was different. He knew how many people had been laid off at the works too, now that the war had ended, although, as employers, Foley's had a pretty fair reputation. As long as you didn't step out of turn, they were known to be even-handed, and they'd kept on as many people as they could for as long as possible – but business was business, after all, as no doubt Arthur Foley, a Black Countryman born and bred, would have said. He was an astute man, he hadn't come in with the last load of coal.

Reardon thought it was time to produce his own version of a Mills bomb. He slid the little wooden box from his pocket. ‘Any of you recognise this? No? Then allow me.' He tipped the jewels out on to a low table in front of the sofa. For a long, unnerving moment, there was silence in the room. ‘Perhaps your maid Edith sold something like this to help her buy her books,' he suggested to Lady Sybil.

‘Where on earth did you get those?' Eunice asked.

‘Have any of you seen this jewellery before?'

‘Well, of course,' Eunice replied for all of them. ‘That little turquoise ring, and that garnet bracelet, the hair brooch…Mother?'

There was an even longer silence. Lady Sybil sat up very straight, her shoulders tense. ‘I gave them to her, they're only trinkets, nothing of much real value. Just presents, little tokens when she'd been particularly helpful.'

Reardon saw immediately that he was not the only one in the room who did not believe this. Eunice, after the first searching look at her mother, went rather white and began to pay fixed attention to the acanthus leaf pattern on the carpet, and Foley was looking at his wife with an expression that might have been sadness, or pity. Lady Sybil said coolly, ‘The reason I gave them to Edith is really nothing to do with anyone. Whatever else, she was excellent at her job. She stayed with me throughout the war, and I thought she deserved some recompense.'

‘I see.'

Sybil's colour heightened. It was evident what he was thinking – that a personal maid in wartime was an unwarranted luxury, and so it was. But Edith hadn't been able to see herself getting her hands dirty driving an ambulance or doing all the nasty things nurses had to do. Least of all could she envisage working in a munitions factory and coming out with her face and hair all yellow, or in fact doing any of the other demanding jobs women were taking on to free men to go to the front. It wasn't right that Sybil should have no one to help her, she said, especially now that she was so busy with all those hospital committees and fund-raising activities. Edith would stay with her mistress and help in her hospital work. Their eyes had met, Sybil bit her lips and in the end had found herself doing what Edith wanted. It had not been the first time the girl had shown how implacable she could be.

This unvarnished truth, however, was inappropriate in the circumstances, and Sybil decided on a more acceptable version. ‘Edith wasn't strong enough to drive an ambulance or anything like that, so I kept her with me, and she helped me in my hospital work. She turned out to be extremely efficient. Isn't that so, Eunice?'

Eunice raised her eyes from the floor. After a moment, she said, ‘I believe so, Mother.'

‘When was the last time you saw her?' Reardon asked.

Lady Sybil inclined her head. ‘I was feeling rather tired last night, and in view of the journey we were to make to London today, I had something light on a tray brought to my room and spent the evening quietly in bed, writing letters. I needed Edith to help me undress, brush my hair and so on, of course, and she spent about twenty minutes, I suppose, tidying up, putting my clothes away and setting out those for today,' she added, leaving Reardon to wonder how the rest of the world managed to do these things for themselves. ‘After that, her evening was her own.'

‘And you, Miss Foley?'

‘I saw her as I was going up to my room, after dinner. She was taking Mama's tray down to the kitchen.'

‘What time would that be?'

‘Around seven. We dined as soon as my father came home, about six o'clock – we always do, unless we have company. Then Father and I played a little chess before I went upstairs. Like Mama, I wanted to spend a quiet evening, getting my things together, writing a letter, reading a little, just pottering.'

‘Was she in her outdoor clothes then?' Eunice shook her head.

‘She was when I saw her, later,' Foley said unexpectedly. ‘From my study window. I must say, I thought she was going to get a soaking in the woods. And pretty late it was, too, about a quarter past eight.'

‘What made you think she was going into the woods, sir?'

‘What made me think that?' Foley repeated. His wry glance took in the others. ‘It was no secret that she was off down to see Naylor whenever she got the chance,' he said dryly, which was followed by a small silence.

Reardon rose to go. ‘I'm afraid I must keep these, for a while,' he said, scooping the jewellery back into the box, ‘but you'll have it back, later, of course. By the way, she was wearing one of those brooches, you know, with Mizpah written across it.' Eunice started. ‘She wouldn't have had a young man by any chance, a sweetheart in the army, at any time?'

Arthur Foley shrugged, mystified, and Lady Sybil said, ‘If there was, I have never heard of him – and I've never seen her wearing anything like that, have you, Eunice?'

‘No,' said Eunice, colourlessly. ‘No, I haven't.'

After a few more questions about Edith's personal life, friends, acquaintances, anyone with whom she might have quarrelled, all of which yielded negative answers, Reardon came to the conclusion that they had reached the point any interview got to at some stage, the point where that was as far as he was going to get for the moment. It would be necessary to interview all the domestic staff, as well as those employed in the hospital, but that would come later. He left the house and walked, via the lake, into the village to meet Wheelan for lunch at the Greville Arms and to book them both in for the next few nights. He also hoped to persuade them to let him have somewhere there which would serve as an office, since the front room of the police house, which was Bracey's office, was nowhere near big enough. He had in mind the small parlour where he had had his meals served when he stayed there, which would do nicely.

As he walked, Lady Sybil's assertion– ‘She was excellent at her job…whatever else' – still rang in his ears. Whatever else. Surely the phrase and the way she had used it implied that although Edith Huckaby did her job well, there were other things about her which were not quite so commendable. And he wondered about the Mizpah brooch. It was pretty, and had sat well at the high neck of her blouse, but why was she wearing such a thing, unless to give herself the status of someone who had a man at the front?

And what did Miss Eunice Foley know about that brooch?

For the first part of the previous night, while Edith Huckaby's body was lying lifeless by the lake, the occupants of the rectory had slept – or tried to sleep – as the storm crashed over the house, the banshee wind howled down the tall chimneys and the rain lashed down in torrents. Eventually the storm rolled away, only to stay grumbling in the distance until just after midnight, when it came back with a vengeance and the household was reawakened with a great splintering, groaning crash. After the few moments' eerie silence which followed, bedroom doors flew open onto a hall which was now part of the roaring windy darkness outside. The great staircase was strangely lit by lurid flashes of lightning, and gusts of rain were blowing in through the space where the Susannah window had once gloomed over the hall. One of those ancient yews, planted too near the house and once believed to be indestructible, had been split, root to tip, by the lightning, and one half was now thrusting itself through the shattered remains of the stained-glass window like the neck of some prehistoric monster, the bitter green smell of its leaves permeating the air.

Unlike Oaklands, where a generator housed in a shed in the grounds provided electricity, here at the rectory they were still dependent on oil lamps and candles, and the lights they held flickered onto the glass which littered the polished wooden floorboards – ruby, sapphire and golden in the light of the candles, a prettier picture in their splintered ruin than they had ever been in their completeness. The two older women, Florrie bristling with curling pins and Mrs Villiers with her hair hanging down her back in a tidy grey plait, began to rush about to see what could be done, while Francis, who rarely went to bed before two or three in the morning, emerged from his study and stood by, shocked and helpless.

‘Well, at least that's the end of the nosy old Elders,' Nella said. Amy, at first overawed by the extent of the damage, began to giggle.

‘This is scarcely the time for hilarity, miss! Go and get some cloths from the attic, one of you,' Mrs Villiers commanded severely. The lightning, in striking the tree, had saved the tall chimneys from being struck, but the wind had apparently blown slates from the roof, for not only was rain blowing in through the glassless window, but water was also coming through the ceiling onto the half landing. ‘Hurry, we shall have to get rid of the water before we can remove all that glass – though how we'll do that without getting cut to ribbons, I surely don't know.'

The brisk commands galvanised them into action and they all hurriedly retreated to throw on some clothes, after which Amy ran off with Florrie to fetch buckets, mops and brushes, Francis was despatched to knock up Strudwick, who was so deaf he had probably slept through it all, while Nella, holding her candle, flew up the attic stairs to bring down some of the torn-up rags rescued from old clothes too far gone to be of any use for anything except dusters and floorcloths. She snatched up the whole of the accumulated pile from the corner where they sat – they were going to need them all – then stopped, momentarily transfixed, by what lay underneath.

It was a rectangular wooden box about fifteen inches long, six or seven inches deep, encrusted with an intricate pattern of varnished shells, the work of some Victorian young lady, no doubt. The children had found it, empty, among the other odds and ends left behind by previous occupants of the rectory and which had been banished to the attic: murky oil paintings of mournful-looking Highland cattle, up to their knees in mist, dim sepia prints of English cathedrals and countless heavily framed portraits of previous incumbents of St Ethelfleda's – and sometimes their wives and large families as well. Marianne had immediately pounced on it and it had been the repository for those exercise books with marbled covers in which she had written her stories ever since. Nella dropped the rags and cautiously lifted the lid. The notebooks, which they had never found after Marianne died, were still in there.

‘Nella! What
are
you doing?' came from Mrs Villiers, distractedly waiting below.

Later, later. Hastily, she opened Dorothea's clothes chest and thrust the box in, burying it as far down amongst the dresses and furs still there as she could, and then clattered down the attic stairs with the cloths.

By the time they had cleared up what they could, there hadn't been much time left for sleep, and the following morning, bleary eyed from their disturbed night, the women sat around the kitchen table drinking tea and eating an early breakfast, while Francis disappeared into the church to inspect it for any damage which might have occurred there. They were too tired to talk much, and presently Nella left them and went first to her room to collect the exercise books she had spent what was left of the night reading, and then up to the attic to return them. She had the books in her hands and was looking at the shell box, wondering where the best place would be to hide it again, when the door opened and she saw that Amy had followed her.

‘I knew there was something the matter,' Amy said. ‘You've been so quiet.' Her glance went from the familiar box to the notebooks. She made a strangled little sound that was almost a scream. ‘You've found them? Oh, Nella, you've found them!'

 

The bright, hopeful new day which had followed the storm seemed like an affront in view of the appalling event which had occurred the night before, news of which greeted Nella when she arrived at Oaklands. She was stunned by it; she moved through the day like an automaton, avoiding the gossip as much as she could while struggling with the discoveries she'd made the previous night and the feeling of disbelief that the unthinkable could have happened again in virtually the same place – albeit in a different way– even down to the thunderstorm, just as there had been on the night Marianne died.

The whole hospital was horrified and shocked by the murder, although Edith had only been known to the nursing staff as a distant figure, part of Lady Sybil's household, one who occasionally appeared among them with a message, always quietly but elegantly dressed, fastidiously avoiding coming into contact with the more unpleasant aspects of hospital life. Whenever she appeared, she had been regarded warily by the hard-working nurses: the appreciative glances of any of the men she accidentally encountered in her scented and graceful progress were enough to remind the women that they were wearing stiff, unbecoming uniforms with their hair bundled under a cap, and were smelling unattractively of carbolic, or worse. They rolled their eyes at each other. All the same, the murder sent a ripple of pity, and then unease, through their ranks when the staff was gathered together and warned by Miss Inman to avoid the woods (a favourite walk of the nurses when they were off duty), where a dangerous homicidal maniac might be lurking. One by one, the male staff, the nurses and the hospital domestic staff were then questioned by Sergeant Wheelan and his men.

Duncan Geddes, in his turn, was being questioned by Reardon, along with the matron when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the swish of Nella's skirt as she hurried past the open door with her hands full. This dreadful news could do nothing but open old wounds for her, remind her of her sister's death. He
must
find some way to talk to her today, though he could not rid himself of the idea that she was avoiding being alone with him – and who could blame her? he asked himself bitterly. Were they ever going to get the chance for that walk she had promised – and the opportunity for him at least to clear the air? The hospital was quietly and gradually winding down but circumstances seemed to be deliberately conspiring against time being found in the still-busy daily routine which kept them both fully occupied – and now this unexpected and tragic happening, which was taking up every spare minute and disrupting everything. About which it would be unthinkable to complain.

Reardon was at that moment tentatively enquiring if all the patients could be accounted for the previous night. Only a few were actually bedridden, and although he thought the chances of any one of the ambulant patients having committed this murder were slight, it was necessary routine questioning.

Duncan had guessed what he had been getting at. ‘Inspector, we all experienced things in the trenches that would turn anyone's mind, and many of the men here still suffer nightmares – like anyone else who was there,' he added pointedly. ‘However, this is a surgical unit, not a psychiatric one. I doubt if any one of them—'

‘Even if the ward doors were
not
locked at night,' interrupted Miss Inman crisply. ‘By myself.'

‘Locked?'

‘Against the unlikely event of anyone sleepwalking.'

The notion of any of the patients sleepwalking, following Edith in the pouring rain and battering her to death, never mind the very idea of the redoubtable Miss Inman forgetting to lock the wards securely, did not in fact persist for long in Reardon's mind. ‘All right,' he said, ‘let's drop that idea for the moment.'

Duncan Geddes listened with half an ear as Reardon continued. He was still thinking about Nella, his mind worrying at ways to find an opportunity to talk to her, really talk, now that he had found her again, at last…