The Old Vengeful (12 page)

“Those men, at the house … were they—?”

“KGB? I wish to hell that I knew! They certainly didn’t behave like KGB—they were too bloody careless by half, thank God! Ugh!” He shivered at the memory. “But then Josef Ivanovitch was careless, too—he wasn’t lucky like me!”

“What?” She almost bit her tongue on the question: if he was ready to be indiscreet then she mustn’t interrupt him.

“Oh—he was careless! He let me get a sight of him, when he was just slipping into his car to follow you, round the back of the church at the fête … I was thinking of going for a quick drink, actually.”

“In preparation for a boring evening?”

Instead of replying he put his foot down on the accelerator and overtook the children’s car, and the next one, and the next one too, into the flashing lights of an approaching lorry which couldn’t quite work up enough speed for a head-on collision.

Then he cleared his throat. “
I
was going for a drink, but
he
was going after you. It was careless of him to let me spot him … But if he took the risk that meant he couldn’t afford to lose you—and you weren’t routine after that—d’you see, Elizabeth?”

She saw—half-saw, didn’t see at all, but saw enough to imagine his moment of truth, when this terrible Russian had surfaced in the wake of the dull Miss Loftus at the parish church tower restoration fund sale and fête: it was one of those enlivening occurrences which might have been amusing if she hadn’t been at the other end of it.

“And we still don’t know
why
—I suppose your burglars may have been contract labour, and he was keeping his eye on his investment … but I don’t go very much on that—it doesn’t have the right feel about it… But we’re checking them out, by God! In fact, Elizabeth, after our mutual acquaintance Joseflvanovitch we’re checking
everyone out
—“

“Including me?” She tried to match his tone, even though now she was out of her depth.

“Including you, naturally! And for the second time … In fact, I did you this morning, Elizabeth—you’ve been double-washed, and wrung-out and dried on the line … and you’re what we call ‘clean’—“

“ ‘Clean’?” It was a reflex, not a question: she knew it was true, but the thought of being ‘double-washed, and wrung-out and dried’ stung her. “Are you sure?”

“We’re never sure.” The joke was lost on him—if it was a joke. “But we have to draw the line somewhere. Your closest known security-risk is two removes away, and that passes for white in our book. Which … presumably … is why you are privileged to meet Mrs David Audley in the very near future, as I’ve already said.”

Meeting Mrs David Audley, clean or dirty, wasn’t something she wished to think about. “You make me sound very dull.”

“Dull…” He tripped the indicator, swinging the car out of the line on to a side-road. Just in time, as the road sign flashed by, Elizabeth caught the legend
Upper Horley
—5 and
Steeple Horley
—
5½
. “Dull …”

Horley? She screwed up her memory, from the
Book of Wessex Villages
and
The Parish Churches of Sussex and Hampshire
in the bookcase in her bedroom, on the shelf dating from her childhood voyages of exploration in Margaret’s company during the holidays, by bus or bicycle.

“Yes, I guess you could say ‘dull’,” reflected Paul.

The Horleys, Upper and Steeple, had been just outside their range, tucked under the Downs away to the east, or east-nor’-east, unserved even then by any traceable public transport.

“Or maybe ‘wasted’,” murmured Paul.

But they had been on the list; or Steeple Horley had, for its gem of a church, complete with recumbent stone crusader and the re-used Roman bricks it shared with the much-decayed manor house built on the site of a Saxon hall mentioned in the Domesday Book—

Paul’s last murmur registered suddenly, breaking her concentration. “ ‘Wasted’? What d’you mean—‘wasted’?”

“Ah … well, you haven’t exactly spread your wings for long flights since you came down from Oxford, have you, Elizabeth?” He raised one hand off the wheel defensively before she could reply. “Just an observation, that’s all.”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business.” She felt herself bristling, but then the bleak truth submerged her anger as another signpost pointed them to the Horleys, in preference for a
No Through Road
to some unnamed farm.

“Someone had to look after my father.”

“Sure. And a house-keeper did that perfectly well when you were at school and at Oxford … Mrs Carver, No. 3, Church Row.
And
she’s still hale and hearty—don’t tell me he couldn’t have afforded her, because we both know bloody well that he could have done.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought we were … not exactly poor, but not rich.”

“Doesn’t matter—forget it—“ he shook his head “—
he
wasn’t an invalid, your esteemed father, that’s what I mean. He may have had a heart condition, but he didn’t need a First-Class honours graduate to … to—how did you put it so graphically?—to ‘type his bloody books, and cook his bloody meals, and wash his bloody laundry’—eh?”

He knew too much—too
bloody
much—about Father, and Mrs Carver, as well as about the foolish Miss Loftus, who had let slip far too much under the combined pressures of fear and self-pity and brandy.

“But I suppose you thought it was your duty—right?” He slashed the word at her, almost contemptuously. “You had to do your duty by him?”

Another signpost:
Upper Horley
left,
Steeple Horley
right—and it would have to be left here, because there was only the church and the “much-decayed” manor the other way, the book had said.

Pride came to her aid. “So what if it was—my duty?”

“Then do your duty now!” He fed the wheel to the right, to Steeple Horley and another
No Through Road
which had to end in half-a-mile under the steeple and the shoulder of the high downs curving above them. “Stretch yourself for us, Elizabeth.”

It wasn’t the thought of duty which stretched her—she had never even thought of duty in relation to Father: he had been there, sitting at his chair in the study, when she had come down from Oxford for the last time, and Mrs Carver had already been given her notice, and everything had been taken for granted, herself included … but perhaps that was what
duty
was—the thing that happened, and the state of mind which made it happen, without any conscious thought on either side, the giving and the taking being equally automatic.

But it wasn’t that which stretched her now, it was the certainty that Mrs Audley was waiting for her half-a-mile ahead, or less—and that she needed Paul to help her—

God! What a mess I am—hair, clothes, face—!

The
Vengeful
—Father had gone back to France, to re-write the chapter—

But not
back
to France … that first writing had been just routine— just as she had
been just routine
when she’d first glimpsed Paul in the mirror, and he had seen her—

The car was slowing down—it was turning past a little cottage, into a gravel drive—past the cottage garden, with its apple trees already heavy with fruit, and the runner-beans, bright with their harvest to come, festooned over their bean-poles—and banks of blackberry bushes now, on either side—
but Father had gone to France to re-write the chapter
—

“It has to do with the survivors. The
Fortuné sank
somewhere off the Horse Sands, but that was at night, and no one knows where exactly, and there were only four survivors. But there were also survivors from the
Vengeful
—they came ashore on the Normandy coast—he had a footnote about them … But …”

“Good girl!” He braked, slowing from his snail’s-pace to stop altogether between the blackberry bushes, with the curve of the drive still ahead. “But what?”

“They all died. Or the French shot them when they were trying to escape—there was a scandal, anyway … But—I don’t know …”

“Don’t know what?”

“Just… don’t know. But that’s the only reason he could have had for going to France—the survivors who died in France—or how they died.”

“That’s my
good
girl!” The car began to crawl forward again. “That’s what I needed to put you finally in the clear.”

“What—what you needed?” She caught a glimpse of a house ahead. “What?”

“Because they didn’t all die. At least one of them lived to tell the tale—and a very curious tale too, so David says.” The car crunched and slithered on the thick gravel as he braked finally. “And here’s Faith waiting to welcome you.”

THE SOUND AT
the bedroom door disconcerted Elizabeth twice over: first because she was hardly ten minutes out of her bath, and was wondering what to do with her hair, never mind her face and her clothes; and then because it didn’t sound like the sort of business-like knock she would have expected from Faith Audley—it was more like the tentative tap of a scholarship pupil who hadn’t finished her essay-on the Eleven Years’ Tyranny of Charles I and hoped against hope that Miss Loftus wasn’t in, or wouldn’t hear if she was.

Only this time it was Miss Loftus who wished she wasn’t in, or hadn’t heard. But she was, and she had, and once again there was no escape.

“Come in!” She saw the lips of her bedraggled reflection in the dressing-table mirror pronounce the invitation.

The door opened slowly … too slowly, and not far enough before it stopped opening.

Oh God!
thought Elizabeth.
Not Paul Mitchell—?

But neither Paul’s face nor Faith Audley’s ash-blonde head came through the gap—though an ash-blonde head
was
coming through, but at a level she had not anticipated.

A child—a child’s face, like and yet unlike—
like
for its thinness and pale colouring, but
unlike
, with the gold-framed spectacles magnifying the eyes and the metal brace disfiguring the mouth which opened to speak.

“Mummy says—I’m sorry to
disturb
you, she says—but I heard your bath go down the plug at the back—she says, would you like the hair-dryer? And …
and
, she says—we can do your things … Clarkie can wash them, and tumble dry them, and iron them, and all that…
Clarkie
—that’s
Mrs
Clarke—and …
and
…
Mummy says there’s this—“

This, and the hair-dryer, and more of the miniature Faith Audley—
like
and
unlike
—slid unwillingly into the bedroom.

“It’s a caftan.” The child juggled with her burdens the better to display the garment, allowing its material to ooze silkily over the hair-dryer. “Daddy brought it back from the East somewhere years ago, long before he even met Mummy, and she’s never worn it … Only, she says it’ll fit, and she hasn’t got anything else that will … But she says it’s
very
beautiful.”

Elizabeth guessed that Mummy hadn’t quite said all of that, or at least not for passing on. But Mummy was certainly right about the caftan.

“Come in, dear.” She remembered belatedly that she ought to be smiling, not staring the poor little thing out of countenance. “You must be Cathy, of course.”

The child hesitated. “I’m supposed not to bother you, Miss— Miss—“ her composure began to desert her as she searched for the right name.

“Elizabeth,” said Elizabeth quickly, searching in her own experience for the right approach. She had never taught children of primary school age, and was doubly nervous of one whose IQ went off the scale, if Paul Mitchell’s judgement was to be relied on. “Elizabeth Loftus.”

Cathy stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed, as though the name itself was a revelation. Then she advanced into the bedroom, dumped her burdens on the nearest chair, and presented her hand to Elizabeth gravely.

“How do you do, Miss Loftus.”

Elizabeth recognised the hall-marks. “How do you do, Miss Audley. But if you will call me ‘Elizabeth’ then I can call you ‘Cathy’—all right?” She smiled again as she took the little hand, but a cold memory came back to her as she did so, of just such another offer which Paul Mitchell had made to her—an exchange of names designed to lull her into indiscretion when she was most vulnerable.

But the way Cathy Audley was looking at her suggested that David Audley’s daughter could not be so easily deceived.

She released the hand. “Is that all right?”

Cathy frowned. “Daddy says … the names we use to each other are important. They all mean something—like, when he wants to be nasty to someone, he always says ‘Mister’—or ‘Colonel’. But I don’t believe I understand the rules yet.”

Elizabeth thought hard. “You mean, like Treebeard not wanting to give his full name in
The Lord of the Rings
?” That wasn’t at all what Audley had meant, but it was a carefully-fired long shot nevertheless, because this was the sort of child who would have read Tolkien.

The frown cleared, and Elizabeth watched the bridge build itself between them, half ashamed, but also half pleased with herself.

“Well… no, I don’t think Daddy did mean that, actually—and he doesn’t like Tolkien—it’s Mummy who likes Tolkien. Daddy’s favourite is Kipling.”

“And which do you like?” The shame faded and the pleasure increased. If this was the sort of game Paul enjoyed, it was dangerously addictive.

“Oh … I like both of them,” said Cathy loyally. And then looked around quickly. “But I ought to go now, Miss—Miss—Elizabeth. Mummy
said
—“

“Don’t go! You can show me where to plug in the hair-dryer.” The game played itself, almost. “And you can help me dry my hair—I’d like that, Cathy.”

“Oh—yes … The point’s just down there—by the little table—“ Cathy scurried obediently to obey orders dressed up in the uniform of appeals for help.

“Is Dr Mitchell still here?” She applied the Audley-Treebeard rule hastily.

“Paul? Yes. He’s phoning Daddy at the moment—with the scrambler on, so it must be jolly important,” said Cathy over her shoulder, from under the table. “He’s staying for dinner—I don’t know when Daddy will be back, but Mummy’s laying for five—
there
, it’s ready now—just in case, she says … and that doesn’t include me, because she says dinner will be late—ready!”