The Bones in the Attic (21 page)

“Perhaps if we'd learned from you a little too . . . But that's . . .” Peter's voice faded into silence.

“I have very few memories of that time,” said Matt. “One or two have come back since—since the find in the attic, but not all that much to the purpose. Of course I've talked to people where I can.”

“Yes, I was going to ask—”

“I know you were. Rory Pemberton I've talked to, and Harry Sugden, Ben Worsnip.”

“They weren't really members of the gang, Harry and Ben.”

“I know. They were from down the hill, like I was. But sometimes the outsider sees most. And Lily Fitch, of course, Lily Marsden as she was then—I've talked to her. And Mrs. Carpenter came to see me, and the detective on the case with Yorkshire police has talked to Mrs. Armitage.”

Peter sat for a moment, silent, considering the list.

“The Armitages, they were the saddest thing,” he said eventually.

“I know. She's dying.”

Peter nodded.

“Lily married while Sophie and I were living in Houghton Avenue.”

“Yes. There's a son, I believe.”

“Oh, yes. She was pregnant when she married.”

“There seems to be a complete breach between them.”

“The husband and her?”

“Yes, but I meant between her and the son.”

“The story of Lily's life.”

“You mentioned Sophie. I've never had any lead on her.”

“Wild, really wild, for a bit. Then suddenly she settled down. She's a housewife in Truro now, parent governor at her kids' school, that kind of thing. She's into being a pillar of the community with an understanding side that can sympathize with teenage rebellion. She was, I suppose, the least affected of all of us.”

“And you the most?”

“Oh, I don't know. There was poor Eddie. And Rory is a complete dipsomaniac, as I suppose you've found out.”

“Making tentative steps in the direction of the wagon, I think. You felt the need to change your name, get yourself a new identity, didn't you?”

Peter spread his hands wide.

“It was one of the things I tried. Just took my mother's name. I was never close to my father. It was in the seventies, during the feminist revolution. It seemed the thing to do. Solidarity and all that . . . Of course I was trying to escape. Yes. If only it was that easy!”

“You keep in touch. All the gang, as you call them.”

“Yes. Minimally. We tell each other if we move, or the telephone number changes. We pass on any information. It's not fail-safe. I never quite know if I get through to Rory Pemberton. It's always been difficult to find a time when he could take it in.”

“I can imagine. This movement toward the wagon—it's as if he is trying to get a grip, but perhaps only because he senses he
has
to, rather than because he wants to.”

“Poor Rory. He never fitted in anywhere, not even into his own family. His parents were repellent, simply on the make. I think we half realized that at the time. Looking back, I get the feeling he and Lily never had a chance.”

“
Why
do you keep in touch?” Matt asked, looking at him straight. Peter held his look, but with difficulty.

“That was what we decided . . .
then.
”

“Why? Why protect the people responsible?”

“They were part of the gang. And in a way we all felt responsible. But also—there was someone else—still alive, so far as I know. At least none of us has ever heard to the contrary.”

Matt nodded. “I've guessed a bit about that person.” Suddenly he asked, because he so much wanted to know: “What happened to Marjie?”

“Marjie?” Peter looked at his watch. “She should be here soon.”

“Here? But why? You didn't know I was coming.”

“She's at a WI annual get-together. We live together. Have done for five years.” He saw that Matt was moved by this, and said quickly: “Oh, it's not something terribly romantic. Both of us have tried romance. It works for us still less than it does for most. We're just two bruised people who are better off together than hurting anyone else. And of course we always liked each other. We tell people here that Marjie's husband is a Catholic, which is true, and that she shies away from divorcing him, which isn't.”

“My partner's a Catholic, with a husband,” said Matt. “Even more problematic. So what does Marjie do?”

“She's a journalist. Works on the
Nottingham Echo.
”

“And you?”

“I'm attached to the Home Office, with responsibility for
children's homes in the north—and I occasionally have to look at fostering arrangements too if big problems or controversies have arisen. Children, you see—the workings of conscience. I travel around, making spot-checks and unannounced visits. What I told you in my letter was basically true.”

“I'm sure.”

“What I didn't tell you was that, once I'd heard you on Radio Leeds, on my car radio, I always turned to it if I was within range, and, knowing you worked there, I've always watched ‘Look North' if I could, and sometimes have seen you doing local bulletins during the day.”

“Why? Did you
want
me to turn up, asking questions?”

“Half of me, Matt. Half of me. Ah—here's Marjie.” The door, which had opened a crack, was thrown open when the newcomer heard voices, and a substantial woman burst in.

“Matt! I saw the car with a Leeds number plate parked by the green, and I wondered—no, I knew!” They threw arms around each other as if they'd been lifelong friends, then Marjie held him at arm's length. “Well, I'll say this for you: you've grown up bonny!”

“You too, Marjie.”

“Fat and frumpish, and nobody cares less about it than myself. If you can't let yourself go when fifty beckons, when can you? Ah, tea—is there still some in the pot?” She poured herself a cup and grabbed a handful of biscuits. “Lunch was a Women's Institute quiche that suggested the institute is losing its grip on the housewifely arts. Have they been taken over by professional women? I asked myself. If so it's been done by stealth, because I've heard no whisper of it.”

The grown-up Marjie was plump, forthright, and funny, and if she was bruised as Peter said, she hid it better than he did. She was so evidently and undisguisedly pleased to see Matt that her enthusiastic manner warmed his heart.

“You know, I must have seen you doing the daytime bulletins in the past without realizing who you were. Once we'd identified you, Peter did call me in one time, but too late—I just caught a glimpse. But I do follow the local stuff on ‘Look North.' I have to as a journalist, which we both are, in different ways.”

“I'm a sports journalist if anything. Otherwise I just do talk shows—interviews with local notables and would-be notables, and read things put in front of me.”

“Local radio seems all talk these days. The music used to be crap, but the talk is crap too. Present company's excepted.”

“Not excepted. But I'm pretty good on football.”

“So you damned well should be. Well, you don't want to be exchanging polite nothings with us, do you?”

“Actually that's exactly what I would like to be exchanging for as long as you like. Trouble is, I have three children at a football match who have to be picked up afterward.”

“Yours?”

“Partner's. As near mine as I can make them.”

“That's nice. . . . We have talked about this, Peter and I. So we're prepared.” She looked in Peter's direction. He turned to look straight at Matt.

“We realized there was a strong possibility of your turning up. We disagreed a bit about whether to contact you directly. Marjie wanted to, but I thought we should stick to the line we'd agreed on all those years ago. As it was, our
contacts with you probably fell between two stools—either saying too much or too little.”

“They were diagnosed by an expert as the product of someone in a muddle.”

“Between the two of us, we were,” said Marjie.

“But knowing you might turn up, we've thrown around the question of what we could tell you. We feel that we owe you an account of how the baby died. And that's something that doesn't incriminate anyone, not seriously, at any rate.”

Matt just nodded, not wanting to commit himself at that stage to being satisfied with what they were willing to tell him, or to accept the spin they put on it. Even if they were reluctant, the agreement with the rest of the gang would force them to do that.

“It's quite simply told,” said Peter, and his voice took on the rote sound of someone who's been over before what he is prepared to tell. “It was the day after you left to go home, like I said in the letter. We'd been kicking the ball around on the Catholic school playing field as usual. We were lacking you and Lily and Harry Sugden, so we didn't have the men for a proper game. Then we all wandered along to my house, to Dell View, and there, on the stone-flagged bit in the front, was Lily Marsden. With a baby in a pushchair.”

“Why at yours?”

“She knew our mother was away, Sophie's and mine, visiting her brother in Barnsley. And next door, the Pembertons were both out at work. Lily's mother must have been in—probably subjecting herself to some new beauty treatment. She was obsessed with her looks, mad about preventing wrinkles or sagging cheeks, and spent hours pulling out gray hairs. She was a horror, and always making
disparaging remarks about Lily's lack of attractions. So there she was, standing outside our front door with a pushchair and a baby in a pair of cotton shorts and nothing much else.”

“And Rory Pemberton too?”

“Oh, no. Rory had been playing with us. But I saw a look pass between them. He knew she was planning to do something like this.”

“Fulfilling what she'd already been talking about quite a lot?”

Peter looked down, and there was a second's pause. That was something that he might have tried to gloss over.

“Yes. You remember that?”

“I remember talk about people not being allowed to breed.”

“If it were only that. That was only the beginning. . . . I don't think we can say much more about that.”

“She was being fed notions.”

“Yes. And some of the others in the gang went along with her. . . . Anyway, we were gobsmacked for a bit, just saying things like ‘But you can't,' and ‘That's kidnapping,' and so on. She'd done exactly what she always said she'd do, and we couldn't believe our eyes. She said she'd met up with the male hippie, the one we called Dippy, in Armley Park. I expect, in fact, she'd followed him from home, or the squat, rather. He'd got a puppy with him, and he and the little girl, Bella, were playing with it. So she stood around for a bit, and before long it ran off. Dippy wasn't sure what to do, and Lily said she'd mind the baby while he went to catch it. Once he'd run off in search she just wheeled the pushchair back home.”