The Keys to the Street (18 page)

“It’s just the same as if you’d lost your mother,” he said, his attitude quite changed from what it had been that evening the news came. “It’s the same kind of grief. We do wrong when we judge the bereaved person’s feelings by some level of kinship.”

This man was the same one that only a week before had told her she should be thankful not to have had to nurse her grandmother through a lingering end. Alistair had not mentioned money or the disposal of the house in Belsize Park. He had not mentioned sex either, or staying overnight. And nothing had been said about the transplant or the Harvest Trust.

There had been nothing from Leo. She had met him only three times but she missed him. “Desperately” was the word that came to mind. She told herself not to be so extreme, hysterical almost. How could she feel an intense longing for the company of someone she hardly knew? She had begun to dream about him, once in an erotic and romantic scenario that shocked her awake.

Flesh of my flesh, she remembered, bone of my bone. Those
words of his had been the high point of an emotional moment when she had felt briefly that years of intimacy lay behind them. Was it unnatural or presumptuous to have believed then that years of closeness lay ahead of them?

He had disappeared into nothingness. The day after the dream in which he held her, kissed and caressed her, she had the strange feeling that if she never saw him again, if he had gone from her life as swiftly as he had entered it, those few hours they had spent together would remain with her always.

Sorrow at her grandmother’s death competed with the emotions Leo had aroused, but it failed to drive him from her mind. If he had come to her she could have talked to him about Frederica Jago. He would have listened, would have wanted to hear. Alistair cut short her reminiscences. Memories and recollections weren’t to his taste.

“I did know your grandmother, darling. I knew her a lot better than I know my own relations.”

And Dorothea said dwelling on the past was upsetting. Once the funeral was over she should put all that behind her.

“I don’t agree with all this talking things through. It just makes it worse. Look at all those people who talked things through and discovered they’d been abused as kids. Wouldn’t they have been better off not knowing?”

“It isn’t that kind of talking I mean. I don’t want a therapist.”

“You want to live in the present,” said Dorothea.

Leo, Mary somehow guessed, would have listened and asked all the right questions, would have been patient with her, spent hours if necessary hearing about the grandmother who had been a mother and friend and a great consolation for the trials of life and whom no one could replace. But she was half-afraid now that she would never see Leo again.

She went back to work before the funeral. It was better to be at the Irene Adler than in Charlotte Cottage alone. An evening talking to Celia Tratton, who had come back from Crete the day before,
made her feel calmer, more able to accept. The number of tourists visiting the museum had fallen off since the murder had ceased to be a talking point and no longer had its place in newspapers, and Mary used a half hour when no one came to try to phone Leo.

It had taken a good deal of self-persuasion to get her to this point. She had reminded herself of all the things he had said to her, the kind and flattering things, how almost everything he had said at that first meeting and on the Friday had indicated that he wanted them to be friends. His last words, tinged with impatience, she tried to put from her mind. She did her best to banish the picture she had of his abrupt departure. Something had happened to prevent his getting in touch, perhaps something to do with his brother. Or it might be that he had tried to phone her but had given up because the line had been so frequently engaged since her grandmother’s death. Reminding herself of that, she had on the previous evening three times attempted to phone at his brother’s number, but there had been no reply.

Had she ever told him precisely where she worked? He had told her only that he was employed by his brother and had a part-time job. Whether that was at home or in some office he hadn’t said. There was no mystery about it, of that she was sure, there simply had been no occasion to go into details about the job.

By now she was beginning to ask herself what she would say if he did answer. Why haven’t I heard from you? Can we meet? I would like to see you again? All were impossible for someone like her. She wanted an explanation but knew she was incapable of asking a man she had only met three times why he had dropped her. He could hardly be put into the category of an inconstant lover. Perhaps she could just ask him how he was, make some bland, empty inquiry. She dialed the number and again there was no reply.

It rained on the day of the funeral. Alistair took time off work and was there to hold an umbrella over her. The man she had met at Frederica’s dinner and who had asked her to the cinema with him
came to the church with a woman who was clearly a girlfriend. The elderly friends were there, all but the Blackburn-Norrises. Mary made a mental note to phone their hotel in Acapulco and break the news gently to them. Frederica’s solicitor, who had also been at that dinner with his wife, sat in a front pew, and when it was all over, and the dismal gathering afterward in Belsize Park was all over, he stayed behind.

Mary wondered why, vaguely thinking that perhaps she had done something wrong in inviting mourners to a place that was not hers, or not yet legally hers. But she had supposed it would be even more heinous to hold any sort of party in Charlotte Cottage. However, Mr. Edwards had remained behind for a very different reason and one that Alistair, refilling his sherry glass, seemed to know all about. Suddenly a staginess took over from the funereal atmosphere. Mr. Edwards whispered something to Alistair and Alistair said, “I am sure my fiancée is quite up to hearing it now.”

The two of them retired with measured tread to Frederica’s dining room. Mary was so indignant at being called Alistair’s fiancée that she hardly noticed the door had closed and they were in there together. It opened after a few seconds; Alistair put his head out and he asked Mary in a low, very serious voice if she would come in and join them.

Mr. Edwards had seated himself at the head of the table. Alistair sat at the foot. But when Mary came in he got up, held a chair out for her, and stood behind it. He went on standing behind it after she had sat down, like a husband in a Victorian wedding photograph, she thought.

“Mr. Edwards is going to tell you the contents of your grandmother’s will, my dear.”

“My dear” was another departure. The two of them were taking her over in a patronizing, paternalistic sort of way, and the idea came to her that if only Leo were there he would stop this happening. But
she restrained herself, nodded to Mr. Edwards, and told him please to go ahead.

With a small deprecatory cough, he told her what she knew already, that this house was now hers, and told her too what she had never dreamed of, that her grandmother had left her everything she possessed, just under two million pounds.

•   •   •

If Mary had for a moment thought that somehow—she couldn’t begin to guess how—Alistair had
known
, that he and the solicitor had been in cahoots, one look over her shoulder at his face dispelled that. It was like someone else’s face, someone she had never known, for it had crumpled and grown soft, his eyes very wide open, his mouth slack. He pulled out the chair next to hers and sat down on it. She half expected him to throw his arms across the table and lay his head on them, but he remained quite still, staring at a picture on the opposite wall.

Mr. Edwards was talking about small bequests, little sums to little charities. She scarcely heard him. She was asking herself why it was she had never guessed her grandmother had had so much. He stopped talking quite suddenly and turned on her a bright, almost gleeful smile, as if he had not, some two hours before, attended the funeral of an old and valued friend and client.

“Thank you,” Mary said.

Alistair took hold of her hand and held it hard. She saw Mr. Edwards looking at them benevolently, as at a young couple on the threshold of their married life, made happy by a windfall of gargantuan proportions. They could hardly realize it yet, he must be thinking, the joyful shock had half stunned them, but in a few moments …

Even the tone of his voice had changed as he began talking about probate, the law’s delays. Mary nodded. Alistair found the tongue
that she thought must have been cleaving to his palate and said, “Yes, absolutely. My fiancée is in no immediate need. And afterward—well, I am in banking as no doubt you know, and I can take care of all that.”

The rain had begun again by the time Mr. Edwards left. He put up his umbrella and made his way at a half-run toward the street and a taxi. Alistair had phoned for one for them. They traveled back to Charlotte Cottage in silence. Having closed the front door, he turned to her and tried to take her in his arms. Worms turn, she thought, and I have not even been quite a worm, more of a trapped insect that can still sting. She held his hands, took them down from her shoulders, and stepped back.

“It’s a strange thing,” she said, “that while I was living with you I was your girlfriend and now I’ve left you I’m your fiancée. How do you account for that?”

“You’re going to say it’s the money, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not going to say that, Alistair. You’ve said it. You’ve said what I couldn’t bring myself to say.”

“Perhaps it’s slipped your mind that I’ve been here seeing to things practically every day since your grandmother died. I didn’t know what kind of money she’d left.”

“You made an intelligent guess. You’re a banker, as you told Mr. Edwards, you know about these things.”

“Darling,” he said, “darling, I want to marry you. All right, I didn’t know that until you’d left me. Is that so bad? I didn’t value you as you should be valued while you were with me, but when you’d gone I missed you so desperately.”

“ ‘Darling’ and ‘my fiancée,’ I think of them as expressions people use when they don’t want to say someone’s name.”

He said angrily, “What’s that got to do with it? I said I wanted to marry you, I told you why. You’ve no right to hold the past against me. Those things will never happen again, I’ve promised you that.” He clenched his hands. “You haven’t even noticed, have you?”

“Noticed what?”

“That I haven’t once mentioned the transplant, that harvest thing, whatever you call it. I’ve put that behind me. I made myself a promise never to say any more about it and I’ve kept to that. What more do you want?”

It grew easier with every sentence. Her strength increased at an almost alarming rate. “I don’t want anything, Alistair.”

“What does that mean?”

“From you. I don’t want anything. I thought I’d explained that.”

“No, you’ve got everything, haven’t you? What you’ve been waiting for. Independence. You don’t
need
me is what you mean.”

He made a kind of running jump at her, taking her by surprise. He seized her by the shoulders and began to shake her. His face had changed back to what it used to be, flushed dark red, the eyes very black. “You’re mine, you can’t get away from me like that, just because you’re rich now, you think you don’t need me, after everything I’ve done for you, after what we’ve been—”

The doorbell rang. His hands tightened, then faltered, and she twisted away from him. Her teeth were chattering. She put up her hand to cover her mouth as if its pressure would stop the shaking. The bell rang again and she went to answer it, speechless, trembling, unable to speak to Bean, who stood on the doorstep wearing his polite obsequious smile.

“Good afternoon, miss. Little fellow ready for his walkies, is he?”

The borzoi, the beagle, the golden retriever, the chocolate poodle, and the scottie were tied to the gatepost. A large sticking plaster covered most of the bald part of Bean’s head. Mary looked at it in a dazed sort of way before fetching Gushi. Alistair followed her to the door, said a hearty “Good afternoon” to Bean and that it was far from ideal weather for dog-walking.

“Needs must, sir, when the devil drives,” said Bean ambiguously.

Mary shut the door. Alistair was leaning against the wall.

“Look, I’m sorry about that. But you can be so exasperating I get
carried away. I suppose I just have this feeling I can shake some sense into you.”

“You ought to know by now that you can’t.”

She opened the door again. She was struggling hard not to cry and succeeded better with the door open, with Bean and the dogs still visible, with the man in the house opposite braving a shower to deadhead his roses.

“I’d like you to go. Please just go.”

There was a moment, no more than a few seconds, in which it seemed he might wrench the door from her, slam it shut, and lean against it, confronting her. He must have thought of it, maybe postponed such action until a later date. Something had struck him as dumb as she had been with Bean, perhaps a too-late realization of what he had done, how he had reverted to the behavior he said he had put behind him. He took his raincoat from the hallstand and went out into the rain, walking very fast.

Alone, she could cry if she wanted to, but she no longer wanted to. She went into the living room, sat at Lady Blackburn-Norris’s desk, and began writing a letter to Leo.

•   •   •

The nuns on Primrose Hill had dispensed tea to Pharaoh the key man at five on Saturday afternoon along with Racker and Dill and some of the jacks men and himself. Roman told the police all this and that he had spoken to Pharaoh, insofar as it was possible to have a conversation with anyone so distracted and strange and out of touch with reality as the key man was. He understood that he had supplied Pharaoh with an alibi for something that had occurred at five, though no one told him what.

When he asked what had happened, in his middle-class way, the way that expects explanation from authority, they said they were unable to tell him that. For a moment he thought the officer was going
to call him “sir.” Bewildered by his accent and perhaps by a very different manner from that of the jacks men, the young policeman was on the verge of calling him “sir” until he reminded himself this was a vagrant he was talking to.