Broken Music (25 page)

In the orangery, Eunice was saying, ‘The party was as much for William, William Wentworth, you know, as for Mrs Villiers, a sort of send-off to his joining the army.'

It had been arranged that one of his friends, a brother officer who owned a motor car, would come to pick him up after they had eaten, when they would drive together to join their unit. William fooled around throughout the supper, drank a lot of champagne and teased Eunice until she blushed, then stopped fooling, looked into her eyes and told her how pretty she looked. She wanted the evening never to end, but it did, too soon after the meal, when Piers Beresford arrived in a noisy, racy-looking motor with a strap around its bonnet. The non-family guests shook hands with William and wished him luck before drifting into the drawing room for their coffee, leaving the family to say their goodbyes in private. Rupert and William stood for several moments with their hands clasped. ‘I have just made my farewells and thanks to your family, since I shall be leaving before breakfast tomorrow, to go home,' Rupert said at last. ‘Grev has promised to drive me to Birmingham in his mother's car early in the morning.'

‘The sooner you leave the better. Good luck, Kess.'

‘You too, my friend.' William clapped him on the shoulder and Rupert walked away.

‘No waterworks, now!' William warned jokingly, as the rest of them went outside. The girls and his grandmother did their best, though they could not help a tear or two as his things were stowed in the back. He hugged and kissed them all, Eunice as well, who was there because he had gripped her hand and refused to let it go. She just
might
have imagined, she thought, her eyes bright, that he had held her so tight for a moment when saying his goodbyes – but she had not imagined what she had read in his face, the emotions he had been at such pains to conceal all evening, the feelings every young soldier must have on going to war for the first time: the fear that he might never return, or would not be brave enough in the face of the enemy, the unexpected wrench at leaving his family. The revelation had been gone in an instant, concealed once more beneath a mask of joking. The two young men in their brand-new uniforms seemed more like a couple of excited schoolboys setting out on a larky adventure than officers in the British Army…indeed, Piers Beresford, with his blonde curls and choirboy face, scarcely looked old enough to shave.

At last they were ready to leave, and as William was preparing to crank the motor, Francis stepped forward and uncharacteristically took William's hand in both of his, then drew his son towards him. ‘God keep you, my boy,' he said, and went abruptly indoors.

With a tightening in her chest, Eunice watched as the motor started, William threw his long legs over the door and slid into the front seat, and with whoops and a cheerful wave of their hands, he and his friend roared away between the two lines of dark, pointed yews towards the road. The women watched until the motor could no longer be seen and then dried their tears. Eleanor stretched out a hand to Eunice as they went indoors to join the others, but she shook her head. ‘I'll be in presently, Mrs Villiers,' she said gently.

She needed to be alone for a while and walked down into the rose garden, where its small centre pool was surrounded by a great circle of roses trained on ropes that swung in swags, one to the next, and a stone cherub in the middle perpetually spouted water onto the lily pads almost covering the water's surface. She sat on the stone rim of the pool, battling to overcome the sense of loss, the feeling of change and impending disaster. It had been another very hot day and the stones were still warm, though a slight breeze had arisen and made a gentle soughing through the trees. In the dusk, the scent of the roses was almost overpowering.

The windows of the drawing room were open to the evening and the sound of Grev playing the piano floated across to her, overlaid with a subdued hum of conversation. The sort of music he played nowadays was not the sort most people stopped their conversation to listen to. Modern music, hard to understand, with no tune, only a series of discordant notes and plangent silences. She wondered if this might be one of his own compositions.

It was time she rejoined the others, she thought as it came to an end. She went through the French windows into the drawing room, just as Grev was beckoning Marianne to join him. Sitting next to each other on the piano stool, they began to play together a tune from
The Gondoliers
, one that all of the guests recognised, and this time listened and hummed to, smiling as they watched the young couple playing in perfect harmony: the dark, handsome young man and Marianne, looking particularly lovely tonight, in a soft cream shantung dress and a string of seed pearls. Her hair was a nimbus of red-gold round her head in the soft lamplight, and she had a cream rose tucked into it, which Eunice had not noticed when she arrived. She looked across the room and saw Rupert, watching them with a peculiar intensity. He could not play a note of music and claimed to be tone-deaf and quite ignorant on the subject of Mozart, his native city's most famous son, all of which naturally did not help to endear him to Grev. He was watching both the players intently, a slightly supercilious smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

They finished in unison and as the polite applause began, and the indulgent smiles, Eunice turned her head and her glance came to rest on her mother. Sybil was standing, frozen, gazing at the pair. Eunice was transfixed herself. It did not take a great mind to see what was going on between her brother and Marianne, she thought, and was sorry. Marianne Wentworth, dearest of family friends though she was, could never come anywhere near being the brilliant match their mother had envisaged for Grev.

Sybil came to life and walked over to the piano. ‘Charming,' she said, with one of her most radiant smiles. ‘You've become very talented, dear Marianne. You must play again for us later in the evening. For the present I must see to the tables in the card room and leave all you young folks to each other. Come and see me for a few minutes before you go to bed, darling,' she added, lightly touching Grev's shoulder.

He glanced at her smiling face. ‘Yes, of course I will, Mother,' he replied, with an answering smile.

 

‘It wasn't that Mother didn't like Marianne,' Eunice told Reardon. ‘She did, very much, everybody did, in fact she was rather a pet of hers. It was just that, when it comes to marriage – one has to marry the right person, as I have reason to know.' She laughed a little, but there was a hint of desperation in her voice. ‘And Mother and Grev…he was very special to her.'

‘I think I understand,' Reardon was recalling the photograph he had noticed in the drawing room, Foleys and Wentworths together, Sybil standing proudly with her son's arm linked through hers, her other arm around Marianne. Everyone smiling, except the rector, standing saturnine at the edge of the group.

‘Although I must say, I was surprised. I had always thought – and still do,' Eunice added with a lift of her chin, as if convincing herself, ‘that when it came down to it, Mother would not absolutely insist, as long as we found someone we could truly love.'

‘And after that? At the party, I mean.'

‘Oh, after that, we younger ones fooled around generally, laughed and talked, played silly pencil-and-paper games and so on, until it was time to go home.'

‘I see. But you haven't told me about the fight.'

‘Oh. Oh, she told you about that as well, did she, Mrs Rafferty?'

‘What happened?'

‘Goodness, it was nothing, really. It was old General Izzard who started it. Those who hadn't gone home were all milling around in the little room off the hall, waiting for the motors to be brought round, you know, and he started talking to Rupert – about the war. He was not very tactful and Rupert's hackles rose, I suppose, at any rate he answered very sarcastically. It wasn't at all sensible of Izzie to bring the subject up, but he
is
very old, and everyone knows how outspoken he is, though he doesn't mean anything by it. But Grev took Rupert's remarks to an old man amiss, and in no time at all, they were at each other's throats – not literally, but exchanging insults, you know, Rupert taunting Grev about his pacifism, calling him a coward, which was certainly not true, and in the end Grev just lost his temper and knocked him down, though it was more of a push, really. It didn't hurt Rupert, I'm sure. I think he was more surprised than anything, as much surprised as Grev himself. At any rate, he apologised to the general, who accepted, though pretty stiffly. And Grev apologised to Rupert and they shook hands. So you see, it wasn't much of a quarrel at all. I'm afraid they'd both had a little too much champagne.'

‘Feelings were running very high about the war at that time.'

‘Yes,' she said gratefully, ‘they were, weren't they?' A little colour had come back into her face. ‘In any case, that was the end of the evening. Mother was concerned about my father. She thought he wasn't looking well and asked me to go upstairs with him and she'd be up later, after she'd seen the last of the guests off – the Wentworths, who were waiting for the Daimler. Papa had ordered Garbutt to drive them to and from the rectory, all of them except William and Rupert, who'd walked here, through the woods.'

‘Rupert would have walked back, then?'

‘I expect so. There wouldn't have been room for him in the motor. But I was upstairs with Father by that time, and when my mother came up we helped him into bed.' She laughed ruefully. ‘He won't have a manservant to run his bath and shave him and lay his clothes out, you know – he despises all that sort of thing, and he insisted he was all right when we left him. But I didn't think he was, so I didn't go to bed straight away, just in case. In the end, I was about to, when I heard Mother's door slamming with a tremendous crash, and then I heard Grev running along the corridor and down the stairs, and the front door slamming.'

‘How did you know it was your brother?'

‘No one else in the house ever ran down the stairs like that! He used to take them three at a time sometimes, and jump the last.'

‘Do you think they had quarrelled?'

‘Grev and Mother? That wasn't something that often happened.' Her lip trembled. ‘But I think they must have done. I can't think of anything else that would make him run away like he did that night and do what he did. I waited for ten, fifteen minutes, wondering whether I ought to go to Mother, or if it would make things worse. In the end, I did, but Edith advised me to leave her alone. She convinced me there wasn't anything to worry about, nothing that a good night's sleep wouldn't cure. But of course, none of us got much sleep that night. It wasn't above an hour after that Father had his heart attack.'

And they couldn't find her brother when that happened because he'd already fled, Reardon recalled, but did not say so. He didn't wish to press her much further at that point; he had read unacknowledged terror in those soft eyes and she would, soon enough, have to admit the conclusions which must follow from her mother's blackmail. After a few minutes, he thanked her for her cooperation and left her. She had, in any case, already told him a great deal more than she thought she had.

After he left Eunice, Reardon walked back to the Greville Arms, taking the short cut between Oaklands and the village, along the same well-used path which Edith had taken on her last night.

Reaching the point where the path divided, where the sandstone outcropping surfaced on the slight slope towards the waterside and provided a convenient place to sit for a moment, he dropped down onto it, wondering if this was the very same rock where Hatherley sat, keeping his nightly vigils. And where, perhaps, he had watched Marianne and young Foley meeting that fateful night. Why did he come here? Was it masochism, guilt?
Was
Hatherley the figure Danny Boswell had seen struggling with Marianne after Foley had left her?

The initial elation brought by his conversation with Eunice Foley was diminishing rapidly. His mind alive to the possibilities this had brought forth, he had, for a while, almost believed he could see where all this business had started, how it had continued and even, possibly, how the end had come about. His speculations as to the motive for Edith's blackmailing were becoming certainties. As for the perpetrator…well, he was not at all sure he could see Lady Sybil resorting to murder. On the other hand…He sighed. There was always an ‘on the other hand'. He would have been prepared to wager a month's salary that she was not the woman to submit to blackmail in the first place, either, but she almost certainly had done.

He stood up, feeling suddenly cold. Was it his fancy that the tragic deaths of two young women had overlaid this spot with a brooding, almost sinister atmosphere, or was it the picturesque, almost Gothic scene itself: the bulk of Broughton Hill opposite, the ancient caves scooped out of the soft rock looking like gaping mouths; the broken down boathouse, a total ruin now, roofless and with saplings growing through it, the rotting posts of the jetty still standing, reminding him too much of the shattered tree stumps in no-man's-land; the whole of it the epitome of the romantic fallacy, almost asking to be depicted on the canvas of some artist with an exaggerated imagination?

He gave himself a mental shake, stood up and followed the path to the village, alongside the lake as it curved in an elongated tadpole shape until it joined the river at its tail.

 

Inside the Greville Arms, Sam was busy behind the bar of the snug, and a good smell of home baking issued from the direction of the kitchen. ‘Any chance of some tea, Sam?'

‘That there is. Your sergeant's just had a pot. I'll get Mattie to send in some fresh.'

He found Wheelan drawn up to the fire, papers spread out on the table, which also held a tea tray, with a plate empty but for crumbs and a stray currant or two. The sergeant jumped when he walked in as if he might have been nodding off. Reardon couldn't blame him: cosy fire, Mattie Noakes's baking…But if he had been dozing, he became immediately awake to the moment, adjusting the spectacles which had slipped down his nose, screwing the top onto his fountain pen and tapping together the papers spread out on the table while Reardon divested himself of his coat and sat down opposite, legs stretched to the fire.

Looking over the top of his spectacles, the sergeant passed over the report he'd typed out with two fingers on the Remington they'd brought with them. ‘Report all up to date, er, Inspector.'

‘All right, all right, Wheely, what's wrong with Bert? As long as Kelly doesn't hear you. He'd have me strung up.' He'd always been ‘young Bert' to both Wheelan and Paskin and anything else didn't feel right, not yet, especially since he felt himself dependent on the sergeant's experience, not to mention his capacity for taking exactly the right kind of notes, and his prodigious memory. It had crossed his mind, in fact, to wish Wheely had been with him when he had been talking to Eunice Foley. He couldn't, however, help feeling that it was those first few minutes of conversation with her (about that young man who'd lost his legs – Shawcross, wasn't it? – and which would have been impossible in the presence of anyone else) that had established a rapport between them and which had led her to trust him enough to be so candid.

‘Bert, then, if that's what you want. By the way, I thought I might as well look in on them Gypsies, seeing as I was passing by the Lezzers. Nowt doing. They swear to a man they didn't see or hear a thing – for what that's worth. However, four of 'em were drinking here in the taproom and playing skittles in the alley till closing time. All bar the old bloke who seems to be the boss, Daniel Boswell – and one lad they say is bad with some sort of fever and never left his bed. The women all say they were together, and never set foot out the camp.'

‘What about Danny Boswell, the young one?'

‘Seems to have been in Ireland for the past week, buying horses, or that's what they say, and no reason to disbelieve 'em. As near the truth as we're going to get, anyroad.'

Reardon sighed. ‘Well, no more than we expected, I suppose.' He had intended visiting the Gypsies to talk to Danny himself, but it might not matter all that much now.

The friendly, buxom woman called Mrs Jenner, who helped out in the kitchens, brought in his tea and, he was pleased to see, another plate on which reposed two fragrant, golden squares. ‘Leave your tea to draw if you want a good cup, but get on with the lardy cake while it's still warm.' She nodded pleasantly and left them to it and Reardon didn't hesitate to obey. He'd sampled Mattie's lardy cake before, and though the rich, somewhat heavy confection might later induce somnolence in him also, he felt the sort of hollow inside that had nothing to do with hunger, yet only something sweet and stodgy would fill. In any case, the cold motorcycle ride across country which he was due to take yet again in less than an hour, in order to bring Kelly up to date with events, would take care of that.

While he ate, and drank his tea, he thought over Wheelan's report. Very much to the point, and faithfully recorded, word for word, he had no doubt. The kitchen staff had opened up to his avuncular presence, as people usually did.

‘Hm. So Edith did have a handbag with her, after all. Where did it end up, then? In the lake with the weapon, I reckon,' he finished, answering his own question.

‘I wouldn't be so sure of that one. Just you 'owd on a bit.' Wheelan produced the furled umbrella he had purloined from the stand at Oakland, explaining his reasons for doing so.

The goodly lump of rounded, polished amber-like substance which formed the swan's head and neck, seemingly meant to fit comfortably into the palm of the hand, was rather bigger than a golf ball. A good, old-fashioned umbrella, it was sturdy, with a heavy frame, and its cover was also heavy and thick. Reardon tried an experimental sideways swipe, holding it upside down with the back of the swan's head towards his imaginary objective, and found its weight gave it a good impetus. Enough, if it landed in the right place, to crack open a skull. And in all probability the right shape and size.

‘That's a bit of luck. Looks like we could have the weapon, Wheely, but I reckon we'd best see what the doc, and the experts, make of it before we start counting chickens. If it is, it disposes of any ideas of a random killing.' He considered for a moment or two. ‘Let's suppose Edith takes it from the stand in case it rains, and then Naylor, in spite of what he said, comes out to wait for her. They meet and have an argument, he grabs the umbrella and hits her with it.'

‘There's a lot of supposing there. And how did it get back into the stand?'

‘Well, if Naylor had taken it back to the house…I don't suppose anybody would've thought it odd, seeing him around the back entrance. He must use the estate office if he's been helping out with the management lately, as he says. The umbrella stand is just outside the office door. The domestics were in the kitchen, playing cards, and the hospital lot are always in and out, the door opening and shutting. It would only have needed a minute to put the umbrella back, no more.'

‘No chance of much evidence from it, though, after all that rain – and anybody with any sense would've wiped the handle. Why didn't he chuck it in the lake and be done with it?'

‘It might have been missed. And it was pelting down by then, Wheely, as you said. A long wet walk back to the house. I dare say he used it. With the added advantage it would wash any ‘extraneous matter', as our friend the pathologist called it, off the cover.'

‘And him underneath it? Gawd.'

Reardon grinned. ‘Maybe not. Naylor's hardly the type to care about a drop of rain. But it's a thought.' He sat for a moment, thinking, then having finished his tea and with a piece of lardy cake sitting comfortably in his stomach, he said, ‘My turn now,' and gave the sergeant the gist of his conversation with Eunice.

‘So Edith was there with her mistress, then,' Wheelan said, ‘when this row between her and her son happened?'

‘In the dressing room, anyway. Which adjoins the bedroom, near enough for her to have overheard what went on.'

‘And to hold it over Lady S later?'

‘So it would seem. Then he storms out of the house, goes to meet Marianne Wentworth at the lakeside – and here we stumble a bit. Was it prearranged? Must have been, I think, and if so, it seems Hatherley wasn't the only one she liked to meet in secret. But this was at night and young ladies, however fancifully inclined, don't usually go that far. However, if we're to believe Danny Boswell—'

‘A gyppo?'

‘For the moment, we have to believe him. She certainly did go there, and according to Danny, she and Foley did meet. They had a tearful farewell, he leaves her, then disappears without a word to anybody. His sister confirmed what Mattie here told me earlier, that he had made an arrangement with his mother to drive the Austrian fellow to Birmingham, but he never returned. He left the motor in the care of the stationmaster, who let Lady Sybil know and held it until it was picked up. Still no word to his family until about three weeks later, when they got a letter telling them that he and von Kessel had parted in Birmingham, von Kessel to make his way back to Austria, if he could, at that stage, and Greville to join the British Army. Which in itself poses questions, in view of his avowed pacifism.'

‘Jubous,' said Wheelan, ‘all very jubous. Especially if he'd had a fight with the Austrian.'

‘Apparently they made it up.'

Wheelan's eyebrows rose.

‘Well, his sister says they did – and Greville Foley was apparently one to keep his word. And then there's this other person to consider, the one Danny Boswell saw having some sort of argument with Marianne after Grev had left her. Hatherley was at the lake at his own admission.' Reardon tried the teapot to see if there was any left. Only a few cold dregs came out, but he drank it anyway. ‘There were a deal too many people around there that night for my liking.'

‘What about the Austrian? Could it have been him Danny saw?'

‘Von Kessel? Hmm. According to Eunice Foley, he set off for the rectory about eleven; why should he have hung around the lakeside till then?'

‘But just supposing he did…young Foley could have killed him, which makes more sense of him running away.'

With surprising and gratifying speed, the information had already come through that there was no official record of von Kessel ever having been interned as an alien in Britain. Enquiries with the Austrian authorities, as to whether he had ever reached home, or indeed if he had survived the war, could well take months.

‘How about contacting his parents direct? Rule him out, one way or t'other,' Wheelan suggested.

‘I'd rather wait until we've gone through the usual channels. No point in upsetting his family unduly.'

Until they had to drag the lake, was the unspoken thought that lay between them.

 

His meeting with Kelly went on too long for Reardon to think of returning to Broughton that evening, and he returned to his lodgings, an indifferent meal and an evening alone in the back parlour, thinking, making notes and staring at his reflection in the dark glass. A pattern was emerging to this case. He believed he had the gist of it clear in his mind, but it was still maddeningly far from complete in ways he could not ignore. He tapped his teeth with his pen and frowned.

Somewhere in the yard outside, Mrs Hingley's dog barked, invisible beyond the darkened window. Reardon laid down his pen.

It had been eight-fifteen when Arthur Foley had seen Edith go past his study window. A dark, wet night with no moon, pitch-black by then. If Foley had looked out of his window with the curtains undrawn, he would only have seen, as Reardon was seeing now, his own reflection staring at him. Why had he lied? Or perhaps he hadn't, had simply been mistaken, and had meant to say
seven
-fifteen, the time the servants said Edith had left the house, when it was not yet fully dark. Eight-fifteen was the time the butler had brought in his whisky and water.

 

He woke next morning in the lumpy confines of the musty flock mattress Mrs Hingley provided for her lodgers, fighting nameless fears, with an equally ungraspable depression hanging over him. It was not, nowadays, an unfamiliar sensation to wake up with, this knowledge of having journeyed, in those unconscious hours beyond his control, back to somewhere beyond the limits of human endurance. Nor was the relief of being able to tell himself that was all it was, now, a nightmare past and gone. He hoped he hadn't shouted his terror, or screamed, or otherwise made an unacceptable disturbance, but there had been no banging on the wall or ceiling from any of the other lodgers.

It had rained again during the night. He stood at the open window and took deep breaths. The air was cool on his overheated face, but smoky and polluted. Street lamps were pale in the foggy dawn. It was never totally dark, here: the clouded night skies were always crimson with the reflected glow from the forges and blast furnaces below.