Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (37 page)

She drove to her mother’s house. There was no sign of Mrs Stapleton but the back door was unlocked and she walked in.

‘Mum?’ called Kit.

‘In the conservatory!’ came a faint reply.

Kit made her way towards the sound and came upon her mother surrounded by a motley collection of potted plants. All appeared to have suffered some disaster. Some had leaves that had withered and turned brown; others were reduced to mere stubs of branches and bare twigs. Kit thought privately that the plants looked the way she felt.

‘Hi, Mum!’ She kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘They don’t look very lively.’

‘They’re all things I’ve brought in from the garden to overwinter in here. They wouldn’t survive outside. They don’t look much now but they’ve bloomed all summer and autumn, and done sterling service. These fuchsias, for instance, aren’t a hardy variety so have to be brought under cover. Now I’ve cut them back I’m fairly certain they’ll sprout new growth in the spring, and do well next year when I put them outside again.’

‘Why not chuck them out and buy a new lot next year?’

Her mother looked at her reproachfully. ‘I’ve got to know them. They’re individuals. I’ve taken care of them. They’ve given such pleasure to the eye all summer. It would be churlish to abandon them now. Besides, I’ve told you, they’ll come back.’

Kit drew a deep breath. ‘Things do come back, don’t they? People, too?’

‘You want to talk about Gervase,’ said Mary Stapleton, straightening up and dusting her hands together. ‘I meant to ring you. A young police detective came to see me. Let me wash my hands. Just put the kettle on while I do, will you, dear?’

A little later, as they sat either side of the kitchen table, she asked Kit, ‘Have you heard how Gervase is? I considered ringing the hospital, but I’m not a relative so I thought they wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Oh, he’s OK. He’s been let out of the hospital and he’s been to see Petra this morning,’ Kit told her with a note of exasperation in her voice. ‘Gervase always survives. He’s indestructible, like some sort of plague they can’t wipe out. He’s moved out of the hotel and gone to Serena’s place, to be looked after by her. You see? Fallen on his feet!’

‘Oh, Kit, dear …’ said her mother with a sigh. ‘I wish you didn’t hate him the way you do.’

‘Don’t you hate him?’ asked Kit, surprised. ‘After what happened to Petra?’

‘I’m very angry about what happened to Petra. I’ll always be that. No, I don’t hate Gervase. If he’d been a stranger – at the time of the crash – it might have been different. But I knew him as a little boy. I saw him grow up. You and he were such good pals. What happened was terrible. But Gervase has suffered, too.’

‘How can you say that?’ Kit gasped. ‘And please don’t tell me he had a rotten childhood. It doesn’t mean you have to grow up to drink and drive.’

‘He didn’t have a good childhood,’ agreed her mother. ‘But you’re right, having an unhappy childhood doesn’t excuse what you do later. Gervase went wrong when he was about nineteen. But he hasn’t been in any trouble I’ve heard about since he left here, and went to live in Portugal. On the other hand, I’ve not heard that he’s done anything positive. It saddens me that he’s wasting his life. He’s harmed himself by his actions.’ She broke off and smiled at her daughter’s outraged expression.

‘I’m not defending him, Kit. I’m not making excuses for him. To see Petra as she is now breaks my heart; even though I admire the way she’s fought back. I’ll never feel differently about the accident. But I also feel sorry for Gervase in so many ways. I certainly don’t let myself hate him. Hatred harms the people who hate, far more than the one who is hated. Do try and remember that, Kit. Hatred eats you up. Sometimes, when I look at you or listen to you talk, I’m afraid you’ve become bitter. I know you aren’t happy. That failed marriage to Hugh didn’t help matters, either. All of that has to sadden me. But Petra hasn’t let it eat her up. It hasn’t made her bitter. Don’t let it do that to you, please, Kit.’

‘Petra’s forgiven him,’ Kit said bleakly.

‘I know.’

‘She told you?’ Kit stared at her.

‘No, she doesn’t have to tell me. I know my child.’ Mary Stapleton sipped her coffee. ‘Will you have a piece of my fruitcake? I must say it turned out rather well. Sometimes they sink in the middle, but this one didn’t.’

‘Is all this,’ Kit asked in a low, tight voice, ignoring the invitation, ‘what you told the copper who came to see you?’

‘I was going to tell you about that, wasn’t I?’ Her mother had got up to fetch the battered old cake tin that Kit remembered so well. It had a Victorian Christmas scene on the lid, much scraped and faded now. It showed carol singers standing knee-deep in snow. How long ago childhood seemed and how carefree.

‘His name was Stubbs,’ her mother continued, returning with the tin. ‘Detective Constable Stubbs, like the artist. You know, the one who painted all those horses. He was plain-clothes, the detective, I mean. He was a very nice young man and, by a stroke of luck, I’d not long taken this cake out of the oven. He ate two pieces, even though it was still a bit warm. I hope it didn’t give him indigestion.’

‘And you told him you had nothing but kind thoughts about Gervase, and didn’t make up any nasty notes threatening him harm,’ Kit said crossly. ‘Sorry, Mum, but really, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the only person left who sees Gervase for the waste of space he is!’

‘If you’d spoken like that to the police, they would have thought you’d concocted that note!’ her mother said crisply. ‘Although I like to think that neither I, nor you, would ever have done anything so pretty and vicious. We know now it was Muriel Pickering responsible for all of it. That did shock me. But if you thought Gervase had a bad childhood, well, you never knew old Major Pickering. He was a tyrant. But for Muriel to behave as she did … I can’t bear to think of her striking down that young man and lighting the fire.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘She was always an unhappy woman and she let it eat into her, with what terrible results!’

‘All right, all right,’ said Kit, ‘I do get the message.’

Her mother smiled. ‘How is the cake?’

‘Very good, one of the best you’ve done in a long time.’

‘Yes, I thought so.’

After a pause Kit said sadly, ‘I wish Muriel had let well alone and not done the horrible things she did. I wish the fire hadn’t brought Gervase back; and now I wish he’d just go back to Portugal.’

Her mother looked at her downcast eyes and miserable face. ‘I dare say he will, if he has no reason to stay here. But before he does, do think about making your peace with him, Kit, won’t you?’

For a brief time Gervase had the Foscott house to himself. Serena had collected Charlie from school and taken her into Cheltenham to keep a dental appointment. Reggie was at work. Gervase had switched on the fake log fire in the hearth to boost the inadequate central heating and draped himself over the chesterfield to tackle the
Daily Telegraph
crossword. When he heard a car draw up outside he thought that, now Serena had come back unexpectedly early, her first action on entering the room would be to turn off the fake logs, just when the additional heating was beginning to make some impression on the atmosphere. He folded the
Daily Telegraph
with a sigh, slid off the chesterfield and went to the window.

When he saw Kit getting out of her car he blinked, at first unable to credit his eyes. Then he went to pull open the front door as she approached.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said Kit, standing rigidly some four feet away as if at the barrier marking an exclusion zone. ‘I came to see how you are.’

‘I’m fine and I’m not contagious. Won’t you come in?’

Kit sidled past him into the hall and halted there.

He stood back and gestured towards the room he’d quitted. ‘I’ve managed to get one spot in this fridge of a house just about warm enough for human existence.’

‘OK,’ said Kit, and followed him to the dusty drawing room. She sat down awkwardly on a chair and it twanged under her.

‘All Serena’s furniture is like that,’ said Gervase. ‘Would you like a drop of Reggie’s whisky? It’s decent malt. One of his clients must have given it to him.’

‘I’m driving. Well, all right. Just a small one, lots of water,’ Kit said. ‘Thank you.’

As she accepted the tumbler he handed her, she repeated her enquiry after his health.

‘I’m all right,’ he told her, retaking his seat on the chesterfield and slouching back. ‘My head’s still sore but there’s no damage to anything that matters, no brain damage. I suppose you’ll tell me there’s not a lot of brain there to harm.’

‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Kit said crossly. ‘And don’t make me angry because I’ve come here to be
pleasant
!’

‘I look forward to it,’ said Gervase with a smile.

But his eyes were sad, and Kit saw it. She thought ruefully that she probably wouldn’t have seen it, before her talk with her mother. She would just have thought he was being flippant again. Whereas he was protecting himself in the only way he could. Mum is right and he’s wretched.
Well, he should be!
Damn! cursed Kit silently. Damn, damn, damn it all!

Then she thought,
but so am I wretched, and it’s getting us nowhere. Mum and Petra are right about that, too
.

Aloud she said, ‘Petra and my mother both think I should bury the hatchet – and no jokes about that, please, either.’ She sipped her whisky and water.

‘Suits me,’ Gervase said. ‘But it’s no use saying you forgive me if you don’t … because it won’t work, Kit. You were always the most honest of beings and lying doesn’t become you.’

‘I didn’t say I forgave you. And I’ve got a question for you before we can discuss this any further.’

‘Go ahead,’ he urged when she fell silent again and stared into her glass.

‘Did you really ever think I set fire to Key House?’ Kit raised her eyes to his surprised face. ‘You did ask at The Royal Oak if I knew who did it. Then, when we were at Petra’s cottage, you asked if I’d pushed that stupid note under your door.’

Gervase had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Yes, I did. That upset Petra, didn’t it.’

‘It upset
me
, you idiot!’ Kit burst out, leaning forward. ‘Did you really imagine me concocting anonymous letters or, even worse, creeping round with a box of matches? Perhaps you thought I’d killed that poor man, too?’

‘No, no! Of course I didn’t. Look.’ Gervase put down his glass to hold up both hands, palms outwards, in a gesture of appeasement. ‘I asked you to be honest with me and I’ll be honest with you. When Reggie first informed me of the fire – when I was still in Portugal – I did, just for a mad minute or two, wonder if you’d finally taken revenge. I never thought you’d
killed
anyone. I was never crazy enough even to imagine you might kill
me
! If Pietrangelo had been attacked by someone else earlier, you could have lit the fire without realising he was lying unconcious in the building. The place was used by dropouts. Perhaps you hadn’t seen him …’ Gervase let the sentence trail away as it was obvious every word made things worse.

‘Great!’ returned Kit through gritted teeth.

‘But as soon as I saw you again, when you walked into the lounge at The Royal Oak to tell me off for calling on Petra, I knew you were the same Kit as ever was, and you hadn’t done it.’

‘You still asked if I’d written the letter, in front of my sister!’ she accused him.

‘Well, all right, I still asked about that although of course I knew it wouldn’t be your style. I told Campbell you wouldn’t have done it.’

‘Oh? Discussed it with her? Was I top of her list?’

‘No – how do I know? I just said to her she could count out the Stapleton family.’

‘Mum too?’ Kit’s face had turned an alarming shade of red.

Gervase held up his hands placatingly. ‘Do calm down, you look as if you’re going to throw some sort of fit. I agree it was stupid of me to ask you about the letter in front of Petra. As you are fond of reminding me, I do stupid things. But I’m not going to be like Poppy Trenton, apologising to anyone who will listen for a careless remark to Muriel Pickering. I shouldn’t have asked you but I still, somehow, wanted to hear you say you hadn’t done it. Call it a desire for reassurance. Call it whatever you like. I’m not going to go on apologising for that.’

There was a silence. ‘And the crash that put my sister in a wheelchair or forces her to creep round on crutches? Is that also to be written off as another piece of stupidity?’

‘No!’ Gervase said savagely. ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot, Kit! That’s entirely different. There isn’t a day of my life—’ He broke off.

After a moment Kit said quietly, ‘I do realise that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said just then.’

‘I should have said this, you shouldn’t have said that – are we going to continue this conversation on those lines indefinitely?’ Gervase asked crisply. ‘Because if so, it will be extremely boring, get us nowhere, and you are going to have to manage it by yourself, one sided.’

‘No. But any other conversation will have to mean both of us trying to understand.’

‘Put your cards on the table, Kit,’ Gervase invited. ‘Let’s see what I’m supposed to try about.’

‘Fine. It isn’t just about realising how you feel or my forgiving you. My problem is that I can’t
forget
, Gervase!’ Kit burst out wildly. ‘How is that possible when I see my sister every other day, and even if
she
has forgiven you? I suppose you might say, if she is the injured party and she’s found it in her heart … then I, as a mere bystander, ought to find it in mine. But it’s somehow easier to forgive than to forget.’

‘Neither can I forget,’ Gervase told her. ‘So what do we do?’

‘I don’t know,’ whispered Kit miserably. ‘I want everything to be as it was once, but one can’t go back, can one?’

‘One can go forward,’ Gervase said, after a moment.

‘That’s what my mother and Petra keep telling me. It’s not that I don’t want to do that. I will try. Truly, Gervase, I will. But I find it very hard. It’s like crawling up an icy rock face and slipping back down all the time.’