Second Opinion (48 page)

‘Ma, are you all right?’

‘George? Oh, I told her not to bother you, honey, I am so sorry.’

‘Ma, what’s the matter?’ She was sharp with anxiety and she almost felt Vanny shrink away at the other end of the phone.

‘Why, not a thing, George, not one tiny thing! I’m having a marvellous time, truly I am. Please not to worry.’

‘I’m not worried. But — I mean, why did you call? You’ve never called me here before.’

‘Well, I told Bridget that! I said to her, we have never bothered George when she’s at the hospital and it won’t be right to do it now but she said it was our last chance and you’d want me to, so I did, but I am so sorry.’

George took a deep breath. She was almost giddy with relief; clearly her mother was well. There had been no need for that lurch of fear and she deliberately relaxed her shoulders, making herself breathe more easily.

‘Do explain, Ma,’ she said in as neutral a voice as she could. ‘What last chance?’

‘Well, it’s only today, you see, honey.’ Vanny sounded apologetic. ‘We have to pack tomorrow. There is no way, and so I told Bridget, no way that I’ll be hurried over that. I would rather we sit about for hours with nothing to do than be hustled. So —’

‘Pack?’ George said blankly and whirled to peer at the calendar on the wall behind Sister’s desk. ‘Ye Gods, Ma, what’s the date? Oh, no! I hadn’t — Look, Ma, I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realized how soon you were supposed to be going home. I’ll get back early this evening and we’ll — Ma?’

At the other end of the phone she could hear Bridget’s voice expostulating and her mother answering her and then
there was a rattle as the phone changed hands. Bridget’s voice came crackling at her, brisk and cheerful.

‘Your ma won’t come to the point, but I’m not so scared of you. George, you promised you’d spend this last free day we have with us. We talked about it, remember? We saved the Tate Gallery for today. And I told Vanny she should ask you what time we were to be ready for you and she just shillyshallies round it. So here I am asking you. What time should we be ready? Will we meet you there, or will you come home and we start from here?’

George had, of course, totally forgotten. It had been one of those vague promises people make and she could remember now the conversation a couple of days after Christmas. At that point the departure of the old ladies had seemed aeons away; and now it was here. She looked at her watch and did some fast planning at the back of her mind.

‘I hadn’t forgotten, really,’ she lied. ‘I mean, it had sorta slipped my mind just at present, but I’ve got just a couple of things to deal with here, and I’ll be on my way. We’ll be at the Tate in plenty of time to see all you could possibly want to. And I’m sorry you had to chase me.’

‘That’s all right, honey,’ Bridget said serenely. ‘We know how it is with you, saving lives and all.’ The phone clicked and George hung up, wondering just for a moment if Bridget had been digging at her. After all, she knew perfectly well that George’s job was in no way a life-saving one.

She called Gus then, knowing he wouldn’t be there, and left a message saying she needed to talk to him as soon as possible, and the young constable at the other end of the phone showed no surprise, which was one comfort. The last thing she needed was the sniggering she sometimes suspected was going on when she made contact with Gus at his office. Was their relationship the subject of gossip there? She supposed it was possible, even likely, and found the thought uncomfortable.

She came clean with Sheila, telling her directly what had
happened, and Sheila nodded and was as nice as she knew how to be.

‘It’s all right, Dr B., I can hold the fort here easily. I shan’t say a word to anyone about where you really are, and never you think it. Not even the staff’ll know. Just you and me. It’s not every day you get the chance to be with your mum, is it?’ She sighed sumptuously. ‘Not that I mean to be morbid, but after all, she is an old lady, isn’t she? And think how awful you’d feel if you’d missed today and she went home and then Something Happened.’ Sheila was the only person George knew who could actually speak in capital letters. ‘You be on your way, Dr B. Leave it all to me.’

So she did; and at half past two the three of them, she and Vanny and Bridget, climbed the steps of the Tate Gallery, where Vanny was to find for George the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was presently filling her thoughts.

35
  
  

‘My dogs,’ said Bridget with deep feeling, ‘are barking!’ She kicked off a shoe and rubbed her foot with a pained expression on her face.

George, sitting beside her on the long bench, grinned in sympathy and leaned back. They seemed to have been walking through the huge rooms for hours, gazing at canvas after canvas, trailing behind Vanny who was indefatigable. She trotted happily from painting to sculpture and back again, peering at the labels, reading her catalogue with absorbed interest and then looking again. George had forgotten now just how much her mother had always enjoyed paintings; had forgotten the long afternoons of her childhood when she would sit curled up on a museum bench with a book while her mother wandered, as she had this afternoon, rapt and happy.

‘I hope you’re enjoying it, though,’ she said to Bridget. ‘It’d be a pity to spend your last day doing something you didn’t want to —’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, sweetheart! I adore paintings — those impressionist rooms were darling. It’s just that my feet don’t have the stamina my eyes do. I don’t know where Vanny gets it from —’

She looked across the big space to where Vanny was contemplating a trio of Victorian story paintings by Augustus
Egg. ‘Look at her there. What’s that set called? ‘Past and Present”, isn’t it?’ She peered at her own catalogue. ‘Yeah, that’s it. I ask you. What could that poor wife have done to have suffered such a dreadful fate? And why does Vanny care so much what it was?’ She shook her head fondly as Vanny came back towards them.

‘I just love the way these painters could show you a whole world and way of life in just one little painting,’ she said as she came up to them. ‘The painting itself is so — well, so perfect! Just look at the wallpaper and the tablecloth in that one, the first of them.’ She waved a vague hand towards the Augustus Eggs she had been looking at. ‘But it’s more than that.’

‘What more, Ma?’ George said a little lazily. It was difficult to concentrate on the luscious detail of the paintings that surrounded them in the big airy rooms, but concentrate she should. Ma would be gone in a day or so and she wouldn’t have the chance to talk to her then about anything.

‘Oh, what their lives were really like,’ Vanny said, her eyes bright and alert. She looked far more like the mother George remembered from her more vigorous middle years than she had at any time since her arrival in London. ‘What the cities were like, what the people did and the jobs they had. There’s that marvellous one called “Work” with so many things going on it, it’s like you were living at the time to look at it. It’s not here though. May have it in a different gallery. But the same painter — Ford Madox Brown, his name was — did my real favourite. Look here.’ She reached down and pulled on George’s arm. ‘It’s over here. I’ve always loved it. This one and the Richard Dadds are what I wanted most to see. Over there.’

‘Richard who?’ Bridget said as she replaced her shoes and stood up too. ‘Is he someone special?’

‘He went mad and killed his pa with an axe,’ Vanny said matter-of-factly over her shoulder as she led them to a far
corner of the gallery. ‘And he painted fairies like no one else ever did. Take a look at the “Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke” if you want to see how good he was. It’s in another room. I’ll show you in a moment or two. But this one’s even more of a favourite. I just love it. Here you are!’

She had stopped in front of a small painting which hung almost in the corner. It was oval and simply framed, barely a foot wide and not much longer. It showed two mid-Victorian people, a man and a woman sitting side by side and staring out sombrely at the viewer. They were young and neatly dressed, she in a large bonnet and warm, voluminous shawl, he in a round hat and a heavy overcoat buttoned to his neck against the cold. They had a large umbrella keeping the wind off them, for they were shown sitting beside the ropes that served as a rail on a ship. In the background other passengers smoked and laughed and beyond them there was a view of rough seas and white cliffs. The whole mood of the painting was of deep sadness.

‘There!’ said Vanny in huge satisfaction and with an almost proprietorial air. ‘Do you see what I mean?’

‘Not entirely,’ Bridget said after a moment, with complete candour. ‘You tell me the truth, now, Vanny. What meaning am I supposed to see? They seem like nice young people in a picture, is all. What have I missed?’

‘Why, the birth of America, that’s what!’ Vanny said with great vigour. ‘Or part of it anyway. It’s called “The Last of England”. Just look at those two people! They’re having to emigrate, right? There’s a lot of poverty at home in Britain — that was the time people were emigrating in the most amazing numbers, around 1850 or so. So, they’ve decided to up stakes and go and seek their fortune in the New World. But they’re scared. He’s specially miserable, because he feels he’s kinda failed her, his pretty little wife, couldn’t make a go of it here so he’s taking her away from all she’s ever known and loved. Oh, he feels bad about that!
He doesn’t like the company much either — all those noisy revellers in the back of the painting, see? They’re not his class at all, so he knows the journey won’t be easy. And there’ll be problems over food too — see the cabbages they’ve got tied to the side of the ropes there, on the rail? That’s how it was. Fresh food at sea was a real worry. By the time they arrive in New York they’ll be a lot sadder than they are now.’ She shook her head in warm sympathy. ‘And then the saddest thing of all. See their hands?’

Bridget peered and so did George. The man was holding his wife’s gloved right hand in his, protective and caring. The cold had made his own bare fingers a little blue, but at least she was warm, and George said, ‘You’re right, Ma. It does tell a story, doesn’t it? I wonder why he had no gloves? Too poor, maybe?’

‘Oh, that — maybe.’ Vanny dismissed glovelessness with an impatient shake of her head. ‘No, it’s her other hand I mean. See?’

The woman’s other hand was just visible in the folds of her thick cloak. George frowned in puzzlement and started to speak. ‘She has no glove on that hand, has she? Maybe it’s in her pocket or —’

But it was Bridget who spotted what Vanny wanted her to see, and Vanny crowed with delight as she said so.

‘Oh, look! She has a baby’s hand there!’

George bent and peered too and there it was; peeping above the closed fingers of the woman were four much smaller fingers.

‘Oh, that is so sweet!’ Bridget cried. ‘She has her baby there. Under her cloak to keep him safe from the cold. Oh, those poor dears! How long would they be at sea?’

‘About three or four weeks, I think,’ Vanny said. ‘Maybe longer. Looking at the ropes in the background it’s clear it’s a sailing ship, isn’t it? Not a fast steamship. I’m not sure when the first steamship took immigrants, but at this time
anyway, poor people had to rely on the winds. It could take a long time, and them with a baby too, probably getting sea sick if nothing worse —’

‘They’d have needed more than a couple of Valium to keep it quiet on board,’ Bridget chuckled. ‘I keep praying there’re no babies on the plane day after tomorrow. I’m fresh out of pills and —’

‘Oh, my God!’ George said loudly. ‘Oh, my giddy God!’

The two old ladies turned and looked at her in unison, staring anxiously. George would have laughed at the comical effect of their synchrony if she hadn’t been so transfixed.

‘What is it, honey?’ Vanny said. ‘Are you sick?’

‘Sick? Oh, Ma, I’m not sick or anything like it! You’ve just solved the case that I’ve been working on all these weeks, that’s all! Of course that was how they did it! And getting them shouldn’t be all that difficult, now we know what to look for!’

‘No, dear,’ Vanny said peaceably and looked swiftly at Bridget. ‘If you say so. Um, how about a little cup of tea? I guess maybe you are a bit tired after all.’

‘They told me you were here having supper,’ George said, sliding in beside him and reaching for a chip from his plate. ‘Nice to be some people.’

‘This is the first proper meal I’ve had for days,’ he growled. ‘Kitty! Fetch the doctor some grub, will you?’ Kitty looked up from the other side of the restaurant, waved and flashed a grin at George. ‘So, what’s so urgent? I did get your message and tried to call but I don’t have to tell you you weren’t available. Found out who done it, hmm? Went to Maternity and got someone to confess, have you?’

‘No.’ She refused to be baited. ‘I decided that wouldn’t work. Too many people marching in and out all the time. There’s hardly a department that doesn’t overlap with
them. You might as well try and sort out alibis for everyone who walks in here in the next week.’

‘Hmmph,’ he nodded. ‘I supposed that was likely. Well, we’ll have to get our heads down even harder, won’t we? We’re looking for the friend Sylvia said put her in touch with the scam in the first place. Not much joy there yet, but the robbery’s all sorted, at least. They got them in Manchester, as sweet a collar as you ever heard. I’ve got the paperwork sewn up and we’re clear. Tomorrow we can bring back all the people I’ve had working on the robbery to the murder room and we’ll see if we can crack this little bugger, however long it takes.’