The Death of Lucy Kyte (40 page)

‘She would have said something if she were unhappy.'

It was the first naive thing that she had ever heard Marta say. ‘I know how much you'd like that to be true, but I don't think there was anything wrong with Lydia's car tonight, do you?' She put her hand gently on Marta's cheek. ‘You have no idea how badly I want to be with you now, but we can't do it – not like this, not in front of her friends. If you don't go back to the house now, Lydia will be utterly humiliated and that's not fair. You don't want that any more than I do.'

Marta sighed. ‘No, of course I don't.'

A taxi drew up at the next junction, apparently summoned by their resolve. Reluctantly, Josephine waved it over. ‘If I took the sleeper tomorrow night, I wouldn't have to be at Euston until six. We could spend the day together.'

She heard Marta's smile in her voice. ‘I'd like that.'

‘Yes, so would I.' The cab pulled in to the kerb and Josephine opened the door. ‘I'll wait for you at the club. Come whenever you can.'

23

The Inverness air was thick with fog and gossip. Reports of the imminent abdication had broken in the press a few days earlier, and the story was well and truly out across Britain and the Empire. The newsstands were cleared in minutes and the papers were at war:
The Times
, the
Morning Post
and the
Telegraph
stood against the King; the
Mail
, the
Mirror
and the
Daily Sketch
adamantly for him – but all were united in packing their pages with as many photographs as possible, taken over a period of months and stored away until the embargo collapsed and it was decent to use them. At breakfast each morning, Josephine pored over pictures of Wallis Simpson – on yachts, in restaurants, at Ascot; the image that lingered in her mind, though, was of a woman on Felixstowe Promenade, anonymous and untroubled by anyone; a stranger to herself, no doubt, now that the peace of those last few weeks was lost and irretrievable.

Marta telephoned every day, still advocating caution where Jane Peck was concerned, and Josephine was at last able to admit that she had been in Felixstowe while Mrs Simpson was living there to fulfil the terms of her divorce – and that somewhere in the corner of an American newspaper there was probably a photograph of the wrong woman. Marta's descriptions of the atmosphere in London were dramatic and vivid: the silence on the Underground as everyone read their newspapers; bookshops and department stores eerily empty in the run-up to Christmas; crowds outside Buckingham Palace, waiting through the night, their eyes fixed on two or three lights burning in the upper windows. Whatever the bishops and politicians were doing behind the scenes, the people had come out to support their King: there were demonstrations at Marble Arch, Marta said, and the national anthem was not simply observed in theatres and cinemas, but applauded. Lydia, a staunch royalist, was practically in mourning. It wasn't an absurd reaction, Josephine thought; even in Inverness, further away from events and in a country where attitudes towards the British monarchy were more complex, there was a sense of shock among the townsfolk, a numbness and a disbelief that were not unlike the early stages of grief. She shared their astonishment: in Felixstowe, she had seen with her own eyes how seriously Wallis Simpson was treated, but she had never truly believed that it would come to this.

Marta's concern, coupled with a heavy cold that made Josephine listless and irritable, gave Jane Peck a few days' reprieve. By Thursday, she was feeling better and had had time to consider the most sensible way to approach the situation. There was no point in going to the office; she needed Miss Peck to be on her own and preferably off-guard, so she decided to call unannounced at her house that evening. They would be able to talk privately there, and if – God forbid – Josephine was wrong, she would not have humiliated anyone in public. The small matter of exactly what she was going to say was still unresolved by the time she left Crown Cottage and walked the short distance to Greenhill Terrace. It was probably best to play it by ear, and let the other woman set the tone of the conversation by her reaction to the unexpected visit.

Jane Peck still lived in her old family home, renting it now from the man she had sold it to after her brother's death. A wave of complex emotions washed over Josephine the minute she set foot in the street, and they had nothing to do with Hester – at least, not directly. She could not remember exactly what age she was when her family had moved here, but her youngest sister was not yet born, so she must have been six or seven. The house was bigger than the one they left behind in Crown Terrace, a reflection of her father's hard work and good fortunes, and she had loved it. She paused outside, allowing the memories to play in her head without effort or censor. Moments like this had ambushed her more often recently, and she put it down entirely to Red Barn Cottage. It was strange, but in a house full of other people's lives

– Lucy's and Maria's and especially Hester's – the past she had returned to most often was her own.

The number Josephine wanted was at the other end of the terrace. She wondered if she had left the secretary enough time to get home from work, but there was a light on in the front room and the door was answered before the chime of the bell had had time to die away. Miss Peck seemed different out of her customary environment – younger, somehow, and less severe, although most people would struggle to intimidate in a housecoat whose colour was best described as a dowdy salmon. She invited Josephine in without comment or question, and the absence of any flicker of guilt or suspicion was the first blow to Josephine's confidence: if she had expected Miss Peck to panic and confess at the very sight of her, she was obviously going to be disappointed. The house was identical in structure to the one she had grown up in and the thought disarmed her for a moment, but the decor was sufficiently different for her to recover quickly. It did not take her long to realise that these rooms were designed entirely for appearance's sake. The curtains at the front windows were good and the one solid piece of furniture – a round oak table, crowned by a vase of cheap flowers – stood at the head of the sitting room, where it could be seen from the road; further in, away from the judgemental glance of passers-by, the house was sparse and shabby, with everything either grey or beige. Even the chrysanthemums could only aspire to cream, and the lack of colour in the room – while it made the housecoat seem quite daring – depressed Josephine instantly.

Two cheap, oddly matched armchairs were huddled round the single bar of an electric fire, and the only other comfort was the low murmur of a wireless, soft and insistent in the background. A film magazine lay open on the floor – more economical, perhaps, than actually going to the cinema – and a plate with a half-eaten sandwich rested on the arm of the better chair. The scene reminded Josephine of how she had found Hester's room when she first walked into the cottage, the shrinking of a world to the most basic human necessities of food and warmth and another voice; what it did
not
suggest was a woman who had recently found fortune in the cruellest of ways, and she began to think that Marta was right. If Jane Peck was guilty of nothing more than screaming against the injustice of her life, then she, Josephine, shouldn't even be here: exposing pride as a lie was the unkindest thing she could have done. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, aware that her thoughts were probably written all over her face. ‘I've obviously interrupted your meal.'

The grandiose description of her supper brought the shadow of a smile to the other woman's lips. ‘It will keep,' she said. ‘Can I get you something, Miss Tey?'

‘No, thank you.'

The answer obviously came as a relief, either because there was nothing much to get or because it implied that Josephine would not be staying. Miss Peck gestured to the chair opposite, and there was an awkward pause as she waited in vain for her guest to state her purpose. Josephine struggled to find a non-committal way to open the conversation, but it was in fact a news announcement that broke the silence and her host leaned forward to turn the wireless up. ‘This is what we've all been waiting for, I suppose.' The voice was Stanley Baldwin's, speaking in the House of Commons, but the words he read were the King's: ‘
After long and anxious consideration I have determined to renounce the throne to which I succeeded on the death of my father, and I am now communicating this, my final and irrevocable decision.
' It seemed strange to be listening to something so momentous in the company of a stranger, and it made the situation more surreal than ever. Josephine watched Jane Peck as she listened intently, but her face was inscrutable. Baldwin followed the King's declaration with a speech of his own, but the wireless was snapped off abruptly before he could get very far. ‘There we are,' Miss Peck said, apparently satisfied that her own fears had been proved correct. ‘We can't expect a sense of duty from anyone these days – not even, it seems, from our King. You and I are a dying breed, Miss Tey.'

It was hard to say if the final comment was a compliment or a curse, but again Josephine found the fellowship that it implied disturbing. ‘I imagine that even kings feel a duty to the women they love,' she said.

‘Duty and love are rarely connected, in my experience.' Deliberate or not, her response gave Josephine the perfect opportunity to raise the subject of Hester's broken engagement, but the moment was snatched from her before she opened her mouth. ‘Did you resent it at first?'

The question wrong-footed her. ‘Resent what?'

‘The assumption that you would come running back and do
your
duty when your mother died.'

‘I didn't come running back,' Josephine said, a little too quickly. ‘I worked in England for three more years, finished what I wanted to do and came back when I was ready. So it wasn't really like that.'

‘Oh, it's always like that, whether you admit it to yourself or not. Preferring not to marry, putting your work first – it's a dangerous choice, and you pay for it in the end.' She turned the fire off, although the room was anything but warm. ‘I went away to college, just like you. Mine was secretarial, of course. I had hoped that I might go to Edinburgh after that, or even to London, work for a busy chambers, perhaps. Then Cameron had his stroke and my parents were too old to look after him, and my sister . . .' She laughed to herself, thinking back. ‘Well, my sister couldn't get up the aisle quick enough. So it was all down to me. It's a shame, really. I was good at what I did. I've always been good at managing other people's lives. If I'd known it was at the expense of having one of my own, I might have chosen a different path.'

‘They say it's never too late to make a fresh start.' Good God, Josephine thought, listening to herself; where on earth had that come from? She deserved the derisive sneer that came her way.

‘I expect better than that from you, Miss Tey. I won't be patronised, and you of all people should know how it feels to be pitied.'

‘That wasn't what I intended.'

‘Good. Because it's all a sham. People are always saying how
good
we are to stay at home, aren't they? I get that all the time from my sister. I expect yours are the same – they treat you as a race apart, fill you with saintly qualities that make it easy to do what you do, when they never could. It's gratifying at first, isn't it? It gives you a sense of worth for a while, until you realise
why
they do it – to make sure you'll carry on. But I'm not a saint, are you, Miss Tey?'

‘No.' Josephine did not trust herself to say any more. Everything that Jane Peck had said was true, and it frightened her that this woman should see so easily into her darkest soul, laying bare the anger and despair that she thought she had kept hidden, even from herself.

‘No, you're not a saint. And yet people will look back at your life when you're gone and talk about the sacrifice you've made. They'll pity you for it, and what a blow that will be to your pride! You'll look down from wherever you are – or up, of course – and you'll want to scream at them to stop, but it will be too late by then. If you think they talk about you now, just wait until you're dead.' Something in the controlled calm of this speech told Josephine how carefully it had all been prepared; there was no doubt in her mind now that Jane Peck had known she would come, that she had waited here for days for the chance to bring Josephine face to face with her own demons; the only question was whether she had done it before with Hester, and how much she would admit. ‘Still, at least that sacrifice
will
be recognised, because you're famous. Others make it, and just fade quietly away. Faded. That's how I've always felt.' Josephine's blush gave her away, and Jane Peck acknowledged it. ‘I see that's how you think of me, too. And what was it all for? I wonder. Cameron wasn't even a war hero, for God's sake, just an invalid. Sometimes I used to think that would have been so much easier. I watched those women, caring for their heroic sick, united by some sort of collective tragedy, and I envied them that solidarity.'

‘I'm not sure they would give it the nobility you seem to think it should have. A wasted life is a wasted life, no matter how worthwhile you're told the cause is.'

She refused to rise to the bait. ‘But at least they knew they weren't alone. That's the point. I've
always
been alone. And it should never have been me, should it? We may as well get round to why you're here. It should have been Hester Larkspur.'

In the end, the question came easily to Josephine, and she matched Jane Peck's composure word for deadly word. ‘Did you kill Hester?'

It was as though she had never spoken. ‘She made a fool of Cameron from the very beginning. It wasn't hard to do, not to a man like him, but she achieved it with a certain panache, I must say. She came home less often from those theatre tours and it was obvious that she'd met someone else, but he wouldn't have it. Not his precious Hester. Even when she left him, he wouldn't have a word said against her. Is that love or foolishness, do you think? I could never tell, being a stranger to both.'