After the Armistice Ball (31 page)

After lunch, a row broke out.

‘Oh, come on, Mother,’ said Donald, ‘What’s the point of coming if you’re not going to join in?’

‘I am not playing hide and seek,’ I insisted. ‘There’s nowhere to hide.’

‘There’s heaps of places to hide,’ said Teddy with his arms spread to the heavens and a look of incredulity on his face. ‘Look around. The riverbank, dozens of good trees, long grass . . .’

‘You’re wearing a pillow case anyway,’ said Donald, looking disparagingly at my rather crumpled linen, ‘so it can go in the tub for a boiling. Come on!’

‘We’ll let Mr Osborne decide,’ I said, and turned pleadingly to Alec.

‘I say let’s,’ said Alec, leaping to his feet and brushing away pie crumbs. ‘You boys can hunt for Mummy and me first.’

The boys draped themselves over the bonnet of the motor car and started counting. Around the next bend in the river, I knew, was an ancient and rather sickly beech tree with a hollow in its trunk and I thought Alec and I might fit there, snugly but not beyond the boundary of propriety, so I dragged him off in that direction. When we got there, however, I saw that this hollow – so commodious in my recollection – was actually only the size of an average bathtub, and while it might have done very well for one of the boys and myself, it was out of the question for Alec and me. He looked at it with one raised eyebrow and then scanned the upper branches.

‘You get in there, Dan,’ he said, chivalrously kicking out some old leaves, ‘and I’ll shin up a bit and keep a lookout.’

‘It won’t be long, I hope. This is bound to be the first place they look.’

Resigning myself to the ruin of my frock and to Grant’s censure on my return I backed myself in and snuggled down, while Alec, with a great deal of grunting and rustling of leaves, climbed into the crown above me.

‘Can you hear me?’ he said, presently. I assured him I could. ‘I have a clear view,’ he said. ‘We can talk now, but if I see them coming I’ll shush you.’

I marvelled at his unspoken assumption. We were to speak of the murder of his fiancee, but only until it threatened to interfere with our winning at hide and seek.

We had hardly begun, though, when I heard a series of whoops and ululations from quite close by and my heart sank. Unsatisfied, as ever, with just hide and seek, they had added a Red Indian element, and, in my experience, being stalked by braves took a good bit longer than by little Scottish boys, what with endless suspensions of the action to discuss anthropological details, as well as the obvious retarding effect of them dropping to their tummies whenever they drew near their prey.

I heard heavy breathing and slow careful footsteps and I peeped out to see Teddy, bent over at the waist and carrying the knife we had used for the pie, pick his way on tiptoe along the bare earth below the beech tree, looking for tracks. He did not even glance up as he passed.

Alec waited an age before he spoke again.

‘All clear,’ he whispered, then in a normal voice, he carried on. ‘That day at Croys, Dan. Cara said to you she was a good girl who always did as she was told.’

‘Yes. I’ve told you several times she did.’

‘No, but listen. What were you talking about when she said it? Can you remember?’

‘Something to do with the diamonds,’ I said. ‘Something to do with her telling her mother. I blush to admit it, but I was more taken up with that fact. I mean, would you? Lena?’

‘I should rather have died,’ said Alec. ‘But what I’m really getting at is – Sssh!’ I shushed immediately, thinking he must have had some sudden spark of an idea and needed to catch it before it evaporated, but the steady tramp of approaching feet told me, after a minute, that he had merely heard the boys coming back. I could not help a sigh of exasperation from escaping me. It was too ridiculous for words. I sighed again, rather more loudly, and then wanting only to get out of this tree and go home, I cleared my throat.

The boys, who had to have heard me, went quiet. Their footsteps stilled and then they began to move again more stealthily, barely making a sound. I held my breath, ready for their leaping attack, but gradually, unbelievably, the quiet footsteps receded. They were walking away. The little devils were deliberately walking away and refusing to find us. This was a ploy of some tradition; hide and seek when they were tiny consisted of my moving myself to more and more obvious locations in the house and their refusing to ‘find’ me even when, giggling helplessly, they looked straight into my eyes. I had learned, as a result, never to allow the game to begin just before bedtime and I remember saying to them in my sternest voice that I should agree to play hide and seek but refused to play ‘hide and hide’ or ‘seek to be sought’ any more. Really though, they should have been past such tricks by now.

And then suddenly something was clear, as though a bar of carbolic had been dropped into a bath full of bubbles, popping them all at once and revealing my own body lying large as life in the plain water. I struggled out of the hollow and looked up at Alec perched in the branches above me. My face must have shown it because he jumped down and took my hands, all thoughts of hiding forgotten.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘What about this?’ I said. ‘It’s so obvious, you’re going to kick yourself. Since November, the Duffy diamonds have been taken out of the bank to be cleaned, to be valued, and to have pastes made, but they have not been worn. Now answer me this: who takes jewels out of the bank and has them cleaned if they are not going to wear them? Who has their jewels valued for no reason? What kind of person would have pastes made if they were not going to wear the pastes?’

‘The same kind of person,’ Alec said slowly, ‘who has a photograph album of her two daughters enjoying a week in the country when one of them is already dead. Is that what you mean? Lena was constructing a record?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all. She wasn’t hiding. She was seeking to be found. She was trying to make the theft come to light. Trying to get someone to admit that the diamonds were fakes.’ I laughed, shaking my head. ‘Don’t you see? She was desperately trying to get some jeweller or banker to blow the whistle. She must have been beginning to despair of its ever happening. Certainly the further it got from the Esslemonts’ ball the more difficult it was going to become to convince anyone that
that
was where the theft occurred.’

‘So who stole them?’ said Alec.

‘She did,’ I said. ‘Lena did, of course. That’s why she could be so sure of when they were stolen. She stole them herself. And she probably set up the theft with as much care as she set up the fire – only to find that the theft would not come to light and all her lovely evidence at Croys was wasted. She stole them herself, Alec, and what is more, she meant to steal them twice. Once in reality and once by claiming the insurance money. Or as it turned out by extorting the insurance money from Silas.’

‘But why would she?’ said Alec.

‘Perhaps because Gregory meant to give them to Cara. And because Lena loves them. Perhaps she still has them somewhere and always meant to keep them for herself. For herself and Clemence, I mean. I’m prepared to believe that she loves Clemence as well as the diamonds but we know that she hated Cara.’

‘Do we?’ said Alec. He sounded bewildered, as though struggling to keep up with me.

‘She killed her, Alec darling,’ I said. ‘She killed her twice. In cold blood and in anger. Her own child. Of course she hated her.’

‘What about Cara trying to sell them?’ said Alec. ‘If you’re right about this. Does it help that fit in?’

Another of the bubbles popped and I looked at him through the clear water, cold and certain.

‘Cara tried to sell them, my dear Alec, because she was a good girl who did as she was told.’

‘Who was telling?’

‘Lena, of course.’

‘And Cara obeyed? Why?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand the hold Lena had over her, any more than I understand the hold Lena has, or thinks she has over Silas and Daisy. Horrible woman, with all her little secrets.’

‘And why was Cara to be killed?’ said Alec.

‘Because she could not be trusted to keep it all to herself once she was an independent married woman. She was used to bring the theft to light and then, since she was expendable, she was expended.’

‘Evil woman,’ said Alec. ‘For jewels? For money?’

‘But, you know, in her favour I don’t think the sacrifice of Cara was part of the plan from the start. If one of those horribly discreet jewellers had done what they were supposed to do –’

‘Mummy,’ said Teddy’s voice, high with indignation and wonder. ‘Why aren’t you hiding? And what on earth are you talking about?’ I started and gobbled uselessly like some nervous item of poultry, but Donald and Teddy were clearly wearing out too and made little protest as we packed up the picnic things and bundled everything back into the cart for a hasty return. They were not too tired, however, to persist in trying to find out what we had been discussing. They kept on and on until Alec relented and told them it was a story we had not finished reading and were trying to guess the end of, and then went into enormous detail about such quelling matters as which of the two heroes the heroine really loved and what kind of stocks and bonds the old banker had embezzled, until Donald begged him to shut up.

‘And
why
weren’t you hiding?’ said Teddy.

‘Why weren’t you seeking?’ I countered.

‘We were using Indian tracking methods, Mother,’ said Donald.

‘Well then, I don’t think much of them,’ I said.

Both boys began to talk at once, Teddy’s voice, being the more piercing, winning through.

‘– just where you’re wrong. Because they are actually very skilful – better than blacksmiths and everything that we’ve got here – and not at all savage at all.’

‘Even scalping,’ Donald put in.

‘Scalping isn’t savage?’ I could hardly help laughing. Donald looked witheringly at me.

‘Yes, but it’s not just lunging at someone and ripping his hair off, Mother, there’s a lot to it and . . . Mother? Are you all right?’

‘Are you going to faint, Mummy?’

‘Are you going to be sick? Did you eat berries?’

‘Because you’re always telling us not to, and really after that huge lunch –’

‘Dandy?’

I could not answer.

‘Right, you two,’ said Alec, bundling them into the trap. ‘You set off now and we’ll give you three minutes and race you home.’

I sat numbly in the motor car while he started it, not quite believing where my thoughts were leading me.

‘What is it?’ he said, once we were under way, rolling along in the wake of the pony.

‘Simply this,’ I said. ‘When a person flies into a murderous rage and attacks someone, what one ends up with is a battered bloody corpse, not a girl lying in a bed who looks as though she has had an abortion. And if we hadn’t been so cowardly about making ourselves face it I should have seen that straight away.’

‘What made you think of it all of a sudden just now?’ said Alec.

‘Scalping,’ I said. ‘It’s brutal and nasty but not, as my charming children pointed out, just lunging at someone and ripping his hair off. And the same goes for what happened to Cara. There’s no way one thing could be mistaken for the other.’

‘But Dr Milne –’

‘Yes, but that’s what I’ve been thinking through. Dr Milne said precisely nothing. Simply that she had tried to miscarry in a very silly way that only an ignorant girl would think of. He supplied no details.
I
filled it all in, and in the most grisly way possible.’

‘And you told me no details and I did the same,’ said Alec. ‘You’re right. But Dr Milne did seem sure, Dandy.’

‘He also seemed sure that the girl was a servant, and we know she wasn’t. Besides, something about what he said has been bothering me all along in a way I can’t get a hold of. I almost got it at the memorial service, or I thought I did, but then I fell asleep. So maybe I was dreaming.’

‘Don’t drift, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Concentrate. What
can
have happened? You’re right, of course. Any . . . direct method would have nothing in common with a sudden angry outburst, but what else is there?’

‘Hot baths? No. Gin? Clearly not.’

‘What about jumping?’

‘That’s an old wives’ tale,’ I said. ‘Complete nonsense – But oh! That’s exactly what Dr Milne said, isn’t it? That only a silly ignorant girl would believe it would work and that anyone with any sense would see that she’d be as likely to die as to miscarry.’

‘And jumping, jumping off something and landing badly, would look almost identical to being shoved and landing badly.’

‘And a shove is exactly the kind of thing one would do if one flew into a rage, isn’t it? I’m sure this is right, Alec. It must be.’

We rattled up the drive to the house. The boys, unable to stop the pony, who had got the bit well and truly between its teeth, swept away around the side to the stables. I gestured for Alec to pull up on the gravel then hurried inside and straight to my sitting room to the telephone.

‘Who are you calling?’ he said, arriving just as I lifted the earpiece.

‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Yes, it’s a Dr Milne in Gatehouse of Fleet, please. Kirkcudbright 59.’ I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Before I lose my nerve,’ I whispered to Alec.

‘Well, be careful,’ he whispered back and sank into a chair to listen.

Chapter Seventeen

It took the usual aeons for the call to be put through, clickings and whirrings and sudden hollow silences. While I was waiting, Alec whispered at me again.

‘What are you going to say?’

‘No idea. But don’t worry – it’s a favoured ploy of mine.’

The telephone was ringing at last.

‘Yes, hello, what is it?’ said a clipped voice at the other end. If this was Mrs Milne, then I pitied the doctor.

‘Might I speak to Dr Milne?’ I said. ‘Or leave a message?’

‘Can you not come to the surgery?’ said the voice, surely a housekeeper.

‘Oh, no,’ I trilled. ‘This is not a professional call. I’m a friend. Mrs Gilver. But I’ll happily ring back if Dr Milne is busy.’

‘Oh, Mrs Gilver,’ said the voice with deep interest. I supposed I was famous in Gatehouse by now. The doctor was in for Mrs Gilver, no doubt about it, and the housekeeper, for such she must be (a wife would hardly be so accommodating in handing over even her husband’s ear to such a female), bustled off to fetch him.