Blood From a Stone (2 page)

‘I think we'd better be getting back,' said Frank. He stood up, offering her his arm, and together they walked across the grounds to the house.

Frank, pipe in mouth, stopped beside the painting in the hall. Terry's painting, the painting of the temple.

On the grass in front of the temple sat a younger Frank, his hair dark, sharing a picnic with little Celia. The chequered blue and white picnic cloth at the centre of the painting, the white of the classical columns and the blue of the sky picked up the colours of Celia's white frock tied with blue ribbons.

‘I dunno,' he said, between puffs of smoke. ‘There's something about it. I don't know what.'

It should have been, Mary thought, a delightful picture but there was something unsettling about it, as if something was hiding in the shadows, hidden by the bright glare of the sun. She looked at the signature.
Terence Napier. 1914.
Very soon after the painting was completed, the war had gathered him up and carried him off.

She shivered. That summer of 1914 had been wonderful, the last in a line of wonderful summers. It was as if the old world, the world before the war, had wanted to end in one last blaze of sun-soaked glory before the black clouds rolled in and darkness shrouded the earth.

‘Mary?' asked Frank. ‘What's wrong?'

‘It's nothing.' Incredibly, her voice nearly broke. ‘Nothing much, that is.'

There was lots more she could have said: in 1914 Charlie was alive, Frank was young and unworried and, most of all, there was no Evie lurking in the shadows, draining her happiness away.

‘Before the war,' Frank said softly. He sighed. ‘Nothing was ever the same again.' He reached out and touched the painted signature. ‘Good old Terry. I haven't heard from him for ages.'

Mary shook herself. ‘Didn't he go to the South Seas or something?' she asked in a consciously bright voice. ‘I know it was somewhere frightfully exotic.'

‘Absolutely he did,' said Frank with a laugh. ‘The last time I saw Terry he said he wanted to get as far away from the war as he possibly could. I had a postcard from him in Tahiti. He
was painting and beach-combing, poor as a church mouse, but as happy as a sandboy, without a care in the world.'

For all her belief in the supernatural, Mary had a strong practical streak. ‘What on earth did he live on?'

‘Terry never bothered about money.'

Mary found that unsatisfactory. Everyone had to bother about money. The painting was very, very good. Surely someone with that amount of talent would amount to something? ‘I wonder,' she said thoughtfully, ‘what Terry's doing now?'

In the village of Topfordham, twenty-two miles from Breagan Grange, Dr James Mountford could have answered Mary Hawker's question.

‘Terence Napier?' said Dr James Mountford with a frown.
He picked up the note from the tray of coffee and biscuits his wife had brought in to the surgery.

Mrs Mountford always brought in coffee and biscuits into the surgery after the morning patients had departed. It was part of Dr Mountford's invariable routine and Dr Mountford, a solidly built, middle-aged, well-scrubbed-looking man with the healthy complexion of one who enjoyed country air and country food, liked routine.

Urgent visits first – they weren't that common, thank goodness – then down to business in the front room of the Mountfords' house in Fiddler Street which was kitted out as a surgery.

Mildred Mountford, who, with the help of a girl, acted as both secretary and dispenser, used the adjacent room to make up the medicines her husband prescribed. Elevenses, as Mrs Mountford called their morning coffee, was followed by visits to those patients who were either ill enough or well-off enough to warrant a call from the doctor.

‘That's right. Terence Napier,' said Mrs Mountford, as she crunched her way through a custard cream. ‘Mrs Paxton's nephew. Mrs Paxton sent the note round with her maid, Florence. I imagine she wants to discuss him with you.'

Dr Mountford's eyebrows rose slightly. Mrs Constance Paxton of The Larches definitely came into the category of the well-off. If she requested a visit, he would certainly call, but he was still puzzled as to why.

‘Mrs Paxton doesn't say anything about any nephew in her note, Milly. I didn't know she had a nephew.'

‘That's just it, James. Nobody did, but he's there, all the same. Just turned up out of the blue. Naturally Mrs Paxton wouldn't say anything about it in a note. Apart from anything else, Florence would be bound to read it, but I'm certain Mrs Paxton wants to talk to you about Terence Napier. I questioned Florence and she said her mistress was perfectly well. As far as I'm concerned,' she added with an air of finality as she brushed crumbs from her dress, ‘that settles it. I'm surprised you haven't heard Terence Napier spoken of.'

‘I never listen to gossip,' grunted her husband, reaching for his coffee.

‘No, dear,' said Mrs Mountford, looking at her husband affectionately. ‘I hope Mrs Paxton's not going to keep you long. It's liver for lunch and it doesn't like being kept waiting. You'd think, wouldn't you, that an old lady like that would go to the vicar if she wanted to talk things over.'

‘Douglas Billington's too young,' said Dr Mountford absently. ‘Tell me about this nephew.'

Mrs Mountford pulled a face. ‘He hasn't made a very good impression. He's tall, with fair hair, a pointed beard and spectacles with those very thick rims which always make me think of motoring goggles. He's just arrived from Paris, would you believe. He's about thirty-five or so, isn't married, seems a bit down at heel and is very off-hand and superior in his manner. Heaven knows why, because he doesn't sound anything special. His clothes are very well worn – scruffy, even – and
not
the best quality. He sleeps with the window open, had hardly any luggage and doesn't like haddock.'

James Mountford blinked. Mrs Mountford laughed at her husband's expression. ‘Cook heard as much from Redditch, the fishmonger, and young Wilf, the butcher's boy. She wanted to know more, but that's all Mrs Welbeck, Mrs Paxton's housekeeper, would say. She isn't very forthcoming.'

‘Heaven forbid what she'd let slip if she was chatty,' said the doctor with a grin. He put the list of calls in the pocket of his tweed jacket and picked up his bag. ‘Keep my lunch hot for me if I'm late.'

Although Dr Mountford had laughed at his wife's interest in Mrs Paxton's nephew, he was curious enough to feel a twinge of expectation as he rang the bell of The Larches later that morning.

The Larches was a monument of Victorian gothic, and was, in Dr Mountford's opinion, far too big for one old lady and a couple of servants to run. However, he could hardly criticise Mrs Paxton for living in the house. Mr Paxton had been dead a long time and, as far as he could gather, Mrs Paxton had eked out her subsequent life of genteel poverty in boarding houses in London and on the South coast before the Burwells, distant relatives of the deceased Mr Paxton had died, leaving her The Larches together with, so it was rumoured, a fair amount of money, some eight years ago.

The door was opened not, as he had expected, by Mrs Welbeck, the housekeeper, or Florence, the maid, but by a tall, languid man with lank, grubby-looking fair hair curling over his collar, a pointed beard, heavy-rimmed glasses and an ill-fitting jacket. The nephew. He looked Dr Mountford up and down and seemed uninspired by what he saw.

‘Hello. You must be the doctor, I presume.' He spoke in an affected, tired voice. ‘My name's Napier, don't cher know. My aunt said you'd be calling. Come in, won't you?'

Dr Mountford felt he'd been judged and found wanting. He couldn't help taking a dislike to Terence Napier on the spot.

‘God knows what she wants to see you for,' continued Napier. ‘She's not ill or anything.'

Dr Mountford handed Napier his hat. Napier gazed at it vaguely before shrugging and putting it on the hall sideboard.

‘She's frantically old, so it might be some medical thingamajig or other.'

Dr Mountford cleared his throat in a non-committal manner as he followed Napier down the hall.

Terence Napier smiled in sly understanding. ‘You wouldn't tell me if there was, eh? It could be nerves, I suppose. Living here would be enough to put anyone in a looney-bin. The house is a perfect scream but there's enough Victorian gloom in it to get anyone down. My aunt's in the parlour. She likes it in there. God knows why.'

‘Perfectly decent room,' muttered the doctor.

‘My dear man!' said Napier in horror. ‘It's like a museum. Those button-backed horrors of armchairs are positive instruments of torture, and as for the
colour
... All those muddy greens and browns and chintzes. I ask you! Watch out for the horsehair sofa, by the way. It's like sitting on thistles.'

He opened the door of the parlour and ushered Dr Mountford into the room.

Mrs Paxton, a redoubtable woman with a high forehead and iron-grey hair was sitting in the fireside chair, her walking stick beside her.

‘Here we are, Aunt Constance,' said Terence Napier. ‘One doctor, as prescribed, to be taken regularly before lunch.'

‘There's no need to be facetious,' reproved Mrs Paxton. Despite the words, her expression softened as she looked at Napier. ‘Come in, doctor. Please sit down.'

As Dr Mountford took a seat, he felt the itchy prickle of horsehair through the material of his trousers. He reflected that, although he didn't like Terence Napier's manner, he did have a point about the sofa.

It was an old-fashioned room. Indeed, he didn't think it had been altered since the Burwells' time. The massive gilt-framed and highly ornamented mirror over the massive and highly ornamented mantelpiece reflected a welter of draped occasional tables, whatnots, plant-stands and ferns under glass domes. The room was dotted with silver-framed photographs, mainly of exuberantly moustached men and rigidly corseted women. A grand piano, its brass candleholders brilliantly polished, stood in one corner. Everything in the room was repressively polished and cleaned, regimented into its place and yet this gloomy grandeur made him feel oddly at home. It was like the parlours of his youth, the sort of room that went with stability and success, and he guessed for Mrs Paxton, with her history of boarding-house life, it represented security.

Mrs Paxton turned to her nephew. ‘Off you go, dear, and leave us in peace for a few moments.'

‘Just as you like, Aunt Constance.' Napier shrugged and left the room.

‘He's a dear boy,' said Mrs Paxton, looking fondly after him as the door closed. ‘What do you think of him?'

Dr Mountford, a tactful but honest man, coloured slightly. The real answer was
not much
, but the expectant look on Mrs Paxton's face warned him to be careful. ‘It's a little difficult to say,' he said diplomatically. ‘I've only just met him. He seems a little – er – unconventional.'

‘He's an artist.'

Dr Mountford's face lengthened. He didn't know anything about artists.

‘He was brought up, if you can call it that, by my cousins, the Leighs. You might have heard of them.'

Dr Mountford nodded. He might not listen to gossip, but everyone knew Mrs Paxton was connected to the Leighs of Breagan Grange.

‘There's bad blood in that family,' said Mrs Paxton severely. ‘Francis Leigh has very poor judgement and his father, Matthew, was a
gambler
.' Dr Mountford grunted in agreement. He had heard Mrs Paxton on the subject of the Leighs before. ‘How Francis Leigh keeps the place going I do not know, with the pittance his father left.'

She brooded quietly for a few moments, then shook herself. ‘Still, I didn't ask you here to talk about the Leighs. There is quite another matter I wish to discuss. I know in the past you have been concerned about my heart and I know I am obliged to be careful of my chest, but would you, doctor, say I am in reasonably good health?'

‘Absolutely, dear lady,' agreed Dr Mountford, happy to drop the thorny subjects of artists and families and return to familiar ground. ‘Let me see ... You were suffering from bouts of sleeplessness, but I think we've cured that, haven't we? The sleeping draught I prescribed does the trick, eh?'

‘Indeed it does. I find it very beneficial. I know I'm getting older –' She was, as Dr Mountford knew, in her mid-sixties – ‘and my knee gives me trouble, but I'm not
old
, am I, doctor?'

‘Of course not. Mind you,' said the doctor with a smile, ‘I won't see fifty again myself. But why do you ask? You're not worried about your health, are you?'

She shook her head. ‘No, it's not that. I want to go abroad. I wanted your reassurance that I was fit to travel.'

‘Abroad, eh? Jolly nice, too. It'll do you good to have a change of air, as long as you don't attempt anything too strenuous. I'd prescribe it for all my patients if I could.' He stroked his moustache, looking at her curiously. There was an expression on her face that he found hard to pin down, a sort of pleased excitement mixed with wariness. She was itching to talk but something was holding her back. ‘Where are you off to?'

She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes alight. ‘I'm going to Paris.'

‘Paris!' repeated the doctor, startled. ‘What, with your nephew, you mean?'

She nodded in suppressed excitement.

‘But why, dear lady?'

He was right about her mixed emotions. He could see the struggle on her face. She was silent for at least a minute, then she reached a decision. ‘If I tell you, doctor, you will promise to keep it to yourself, won't you?'

‘You can be assured of that,' said Dr Mountford.

She took a deep breath and Dr Mountford looked at her alertly. She seemed to be nerving herself.

‘My nephew – a dear boy – thinks I should say nothing but I have managed my own affairs for years. I prefer to take advice from someone I can trust.' She looked at him appraisingly. ‘Dr Mountford, I trust you.'