The Shape of Sand (16 page)

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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

Tags: #Mystery, #Historical

BOOK: The Shape of Sand
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The telephone rang. “Daisy?”
It was Guy, as if she had conjured him up just by thinking about him. The heavy black bakelite receiver grew even heavier in her hand as she heard him out, her face ashen. “Oh, God,” she said, and then, “Yes, yes, of course I will. I'll come home immediately.”
“What is it?” Athene asked, as the receiver rattled into its cradle.
Suddenly, even young Lorna's problems seemed to recede. “Guy's just heard. The builders at Charnley … Oh, Athene! They've found a – a body! The police want me and Harriet to go down and identify–”
Athene, who had seen as many dead bodies, and parts of bodies, come to that, as Daisy had in France, was nevertheless equally horrified at the prospect.
Daisy pushed her chair back with a great effort. “Must go home. We're going to collect Harriet at her cottage and go on
to Charnley from there.”
“You're not driving?” Athene's alarm was evident. Her brother had given up driving some time ago, when his eyesight had become troublesome, but she obviously thought Daisy was in shock, and in no condition to be in charge of a motorcar. In her opinion Daisy was an erratic driver in any state.
“No, Nina's already on her way over to have lunch with Guy. He's sure she'll drive us on to Harriet's. Harriet was coming down for lunch, too, but he caught her before she left home.”
Athene seemed relieved to hear this. Her niece was a capable young woman and would drive safely. “Cup of tea first.”
“Don't have time.”
But Athene, who knew the effects of shock when she saw it, insisted. If the body's been there all that time, it's not going to go away now, she thought, but had the sense not to say.
 
Nina Tempest had set out early for her lunch with her father, in order to pick up some small items of shopping on the way – some of Guy's favourite tobacco, a bunch of flowers for Daisy, and a call at the library to pick up a new book or two for herself. Walking at a brisk clip, the high heels of her new shoes tapping, skirt swinging, hair bobbing on her shoulders, she was unaware of the admiring, speculative glances that followed her – pretty young woman looking forward to meeting her lover, perhaps? They couldn't have been more wrong.
During the past couple of weeks, she had at last begun to feel more at one with herself, and today, she was suddenly fuelled by optimism and energy, firing on all cylinders. She dared to hope that at last she was regaining her sense of humour and that natural capacity for getting the most out of life which had made even her conscription into the WAAF something of a lark, rather than simply an experience to be endured. On this glorious early autumn day, when the plane trees were already beginning to shed their leaves in a golden carpet on the shabby, war-scarred suburban streets of North London, she felt it was time to get on with her life again – her life, as opposed to the work in which she'd absorbed herself
for the last fifteen months. The end of a long, hard slog. Too long, perhaps. Sooner or later she had to find some answers, admit that burying her head in the sand was getting her nowhere. Stop using her work as an excuse, and come to terms with her future, look at things in a clearer, and more honest, light. Face the truth. Or whatever other tired, worn-out cliché you cared to employ.
The truth was not exactly elevating. She'd spent nearly five years as the lover of another woman's husband, a man named Matthew Maran, snatching hurried meetings as and when they could throughout the war, worrying about his safety as a senior army officer in various war zones, waiting for the war to end, the children of his marriage to grow up, or the marriage itself to disintegrate. Then, when all these things had at last come about almost simultaneously, her lover found he'd changed his mind about spending the rest of his life at her side. He'd seen no reason why their relationship shouldn't carry on exactly as before, however, which she'd interpreted rightly, the scales falling at last from her eyes, to mean that he regarded their long, passionate affair, and what she had believed was love, as nothing more than a convenience. She was shaken to the core. And guilty, too, morbidly obsessed by that legacy from her French, Catholic mother, the nuns at her convent school: the feeling that her misery was some sort of punishment for what they would have seen as lying and adultery.
She hadn't been prepared to accept the new situation on Matthew's terms, and in the end, she'd summoned up enough courage to walk away. She blamed herself for the naivety that had envisaged a future which could never have been more than make-believe. On her release from the WAAF, financial necessity dictated that she had to resume her previous, mind-numbingly dull position working in a bank, but she'd also taken the plunge, and committed herself and every moment of her spare time to writing That Book. Nothing heavy, nothing more than a light historical romance, something she'd always meant to try. Without distractions, writing far into the night and wearing a determined pair of blinkers (on her emotions as well as on the outside world) it was done, speedily and more
easily than she'd even dreamed of, and to her delight was accepted for a modest sum and published. Her second would soon be at the proof stage and the publishers were wanting another. But having driven herself so mercilessly, she'd found she was temporarily written out, in a kind of limbo.
The fact that she was without a creative idea in her head was beginning to nibble rather ferociously at the edges of her conscience. Two books were no guarantee of financial security and she could not afford to give up her job at the bank, but today, with a couple of days off due to her, she felt almost light-hearted as she made her way across London via tube and then bus towards the rambling, untidy terrace house in Maida Vale which had been home until she'd been called up, and thereafter a place to stay when she was on leave. After which, she had found her own bed-sit, having discovered independence, too precious ever to relinquish completely again. Besides, she had been aware that without her, Daisy and her father had somehow developed an easier way of acknowledging the separateness of their working lives while still retaining the respect and affection that held their marriage together.
Nina loved her stepmother – it was impossible not to love warm-hearted Daisy, who gave so generously of her time and energies to other people, often making tactless remarks and blunders which nobody took amiss because it was obvious she meant so well — but at the same time, Nina knew she hadn't been an ideal substitute mother, being too often wrapped up in her own busy life, too preoccupied with injustices in general to have much time or insight to spare for recognising individual problems nearer to home. On the other hand, within her own lights, she had been good for Nina – never intruding into the dead Cécile's territory, acting more as a good chum than a mother figure.
But with Daisy had come Harriet, and Harriet was a different proposition.
Never mind the difference in their ages – from the start, they were on an equal footing. It wasn't only that they were on the same wavelength about books and music, and laughed at the same things, they were somewhat alike in character – determined, impatient, perhaps, unwilling to accept fools
gladly. A little intense about relationships. If there were reservations between them – and there were a few – it was simply because each respected the other's innate need for privacy. It was a rare, strong friendship, treasured by both women, though not overtly expressed.
Guy had telephoned before Nina left home to tell her that Harriet was expected for lunch, too. They hadn't met for some time and she looked forward to it with anticipation.
The sun glancing on its many windows did nothing to lessen the elegiac sombreness of the grey pile that was Charnley. Perhaps it was the absence of sound – no clanking of metal sheets being thrown into lorries, as when Harriet had visited it the day previously, no sound of grinding machinery dismantling the air raid shelters. Only silence, so profound it was hard to believe that the tranquillity of the house had ever been disrupted - by family tragedy, by two world wars, or even by the discovery of a body that might well have remained undiscovered until the house fell down.
Daisy alighted from the car and looked around. The restoration work now being within an ace of completion, on the outside, at least, the great old house had regained some of its former self-respect, now that roof tiles had been replaced, its tall chimneys repointed, broken windows reglazed and the lead flashings that had been stolen put back.
“It's hardly changed at all!”
“Wait until you see the inside,” replied Harriet.
She was relieved to see that her sister had pulled herself together somewhat. Daisy had been uncharacteristically silent and withdrawn on the way there, sitting in the back seat next to Guy, occasionally dabbing her eyes, obviously shaken to the core by the news of what the builders had uncovered. It was so unlike her to go to pieces in this way that Harriet, rather than advising her sharply to pull herself together as she might otherwise have done, had tried instead to prepare her for the changes she would see inside the house. She doubted Daisy, absorbed in her misery, had taken much interest.
“Go ahead,” Nina was saying now to the other three, “I'll wander around the gardens while you go in. Unless, of course …”
She threw an enquiring glance at Daisy, but Daisy had dried her eyes, blown her nose and answered quite firmly, “No
need for you to come inside, darling – really. You go and have a little look around – I don't expect we shall be long.”
She gave Nina's arm a squeeze, then determinedly followed the others. A young uniformed constable stationed by the door came forward to conduct them through the hall – which now held a reception desk, presently unmanned – towards what had once been their father's study. The Holy of Holies. The room which now, according to the wooden label lettered in white and screwed to the door, belonged to Mr E.G.Aiken, whoever he might be. The policeman knocked on the door, poked his head around it and said something to the occupants, and a middle-aged man came out. He introduced himself as McLellan, the Home Office pathologist, and took Guy to one side, leaving the others to join the sizeable knot of people already in the room.
Harriet and Daisy were given chairs in the bay window, overlooking the fountain on the lower terrace, where the stone figures of Laocoon and his sons remained intact, still struggling in the coils of the sea serpents, though the basin was dry and cracked. Harriet hoped someone would eventually get the fountain to work again. Its derelict state seemed almost more of a sacrilege to her than the name-plate defacing the study door, the disappearance of her father's mahogany desk, and his books. She wondered what Daisy was making of it all. She was gazing out of the window, as if refusing to face the once familiar room and acknowledge the changes which had taken place in it. Although she was by now obviously making an effort to regain her normal air of cheerful solidity and good-natured competence, she wasn't being too successful. Unnervingly, she had that look she'd had sometimes when she was a child, lost and bewildered at the unexpected unfairness of life: little Daisy, in the grip of some childish grief – usually over some deceased pet or a doll with a broken arm, a sisterly squabble, or perhaps because of a small punishment for a misdemeanour. There had never been much more cause than that: Charnley had been a civilised home where people were kind to each other, and good humoured; where real anger rarely surfaced, where there was indeed little need for it because people had been well brought up; it was not done to show feelings …
and therein, maybe, had lain the fault. Perhaps there had been too much bottling up of destructive emotions.
The body which had been found was that of a woman, they had been told.
Harriet had believed that both she and her sister had long ago gone beyond the point of shedding tears for their mother, but she was discovering that this new and terrible revelation was no less painful now than it would have been forty years ago. She had always, at the back of her mind, been convinced that Beatrice must be dead – and that their father must have thought this too, and it was that which had contributed to him taking his own life. But to have it confirmed, after all these years, and in this macabre way, was breathtakingly cruel. This would change everything …
‘This' being what had just been uncovered, and what they were required to identify … the mouldering rags of what was still recognisable, though only just, as a black silk kimono embroidered with chrysanthemums and a dragon motif on the back, and a fine necklace of garnets: all that remained to indicate that the body had once been that of Beatrice Jardine. They lay on a couple of utility desks pushed together into the centre of the room to form a makeshift table, together with a small leather valise which had gone mouldy, containing a silver hairbrush, a walking costume, and delicate, rotting, embroidered silk underclothing.
“Yes,” Harriet said, and Daisy too nodded. They both turned away.
It was obscene, a nightmare. Their mother's body, lying so near, all the time they had been searching for her. And afterwards, too, when they had gone on with the business of living at Charnley. The implications of where she'd been found – behind one of the walls Rose Jessamy had painted – were horrible beyond the bounds of credibility.
 
The pathologist, McLellan, a bony Presbyterian Scot who did not believe in shuffling around the truth, had faced many horrifying deaths but this discovery was shocking, even to him, and was the reason he'd taken Guy aside and left the others to go ahead into the room where the articles to be identified were
waiting. “You're a doctor, you'll understand what I'm about to tell you. The deceased was murdered, strangled by ligature. With her own necklace – you realise what I'm saying?”
Guy wasn't actually quite sure what the pathologist was getting at. He knew that after nearly forty years there would be nothing left but a skeleton, nothing left to identify except a bundle of bones. It would certainly be possible to tell whether she had been strangled, if the delicate hyoid bone in the larynx had been fractured – and if the necklace was still in place around her neck, it would be assumed that had been the ligature. “But—”
“Hear me out, please, Tempest,” McLellan intervened. “She was found in a chimney. Where draughts could circulate freely. To be blunt, the body was mummified, covered in dust and cobwebs. The necklace was still embedded in the flesh. Not very pretty.”
Guy was temporarily bereft of words. Eventually, he found his voice. “Mummified? A chimney? Good God! How the devil– ?”
“How and why she got there is none of my business, or even who she is. All I can say is how she died. If it turns out the body is that of their mother, the ladies are going to find this added circumstance difficult to accept, so it will probably come better from you. That's why I wanted to tell you first.”
“Yes, indeed. Very thoughtful. I appreciate that.”
But grateful as he was for the delicacy that had prompted the pathologist to give this warning, Guy thought he would rather do practically anything else he could think of than have to face his wife and Harriet with this.
 
When the others had gone into the house, Nina was left looking dubiously at the gravel paths surrounding the bare beds and borders. Ruinous to high heels. On the other hand, she couldn't walk on the sharp little stones in her stockinged feet, and she was curious to see more of this Charnley she'd heard so much about but never seen before. Besides, her father's ancient Sunbeam hadn't improved since the days when Guy had first taught her to drive it, and she'd be glad to get out and ease her cramped limbs and the tension in her shoulders.
Reluctantly, she slipped back into her shoes, kicked off as unsuitable for driving, and walked gingerly along the front of the house, intending to take the mossy steps to the garden and the old fountain below. It wasn't long before she was cursing those dratted heels afresh. She should have had the forethought to borrow a more sensible pair from Daisy, or Harriet, though she'd have had to stuff the toes somehow, since they both took a larger size than she did. Actually, her whole outfit - a cherry red two-piece, made last week to cheer herself up, the blouse with a frilly jabot – felt ludicrously frivolous for such an occasion. Nothing to be done about it now; she'd left home not knowing how grimly the afternoon would turn out. She turned a corner and there, unexpectedly, was a further wing set back from the main body of the house, a much older part. Tudor? Workmen's tools, several skips and ladders stood outside, and a heavy, dark oak door with iron studs and door furniture was wide open.
It was tempting. She stepped inside and found herself in a long corridor.
“Oi! Sorry miss, can't come in here! Admin's through the front door and turn left.”
“I do apologise, but I wasn't looking for Admin.” Turning back to make as dignified an exit as possible, she was confronted by a man in the uniform of a security guard.
“That's all right, miss. Lots of folks get lost around here. Where is it you want to be, then? Personnel office? You'll be lucky, though – I hear most of the new staff's been taken on, now we're nearly ready to open proper.”
“I'm not looking for a job, I'm just curious.” The admission caused the friendly look to be replaced by one of suspicion. “My people used to live here,” she smiled, stretching the truth somewhat, “but I've never seen the place before.”
“Oh, I see.” He eyed her with a little more favour. “All the same … sorry, but nobody can come in here just now, on account of the police …”
“It's all right, Simmons, I'll deal with this.”
Nina turned to see a self-consciously elegant, fair-haired young man in a smart, double-breasted pale grey suit. She immediately recognised the glamour-boy, God's gift to
females smile, and gave him a cool glance. Ex-RAF, fighter-pilot, she guessed, his long upper lip looking as though it ought to be still sporting a handlebar moustache. “I
am
the police, actually,” he drawled. “Detective Sergeant Fairchild.” He held out a hand, appraising her with rather more interest than a police scrutiny warranted. Her hackles rose further. “And you are – ?”
“Nina Tempest.”
“Ah. Then you're with the lady who–”
“Yes.”
“Bad show, all this.”
She acknowledged that with a nod and made to continue her way outside, but he stopped her, saying, “I suppose you were wanting to see where the body was found?”
He'd marked her down as some sort of ghoul. She threw him a look shot with dislike, but he seemed to be the sort with whom that didn't register. She said coldly, “No, I wasn't. It was the Jessamy rooms I wanted to see – just to look at those wonderful wall paintings I've heard so much about.”
“Not much wonderful about them, now! That's where they were working when they came across the body, behind a chimney-breast.” He sounded slightly bored.
“Oh.”
He eyed her, weighing up options. “If that's all you want, I don't suppose it'd really matter–”
“No thanks, I don't think so, not now.”
But there was no denying she was intrigued – actually, a bit more than that. She knew from Daisy something of the events here at Charnley that had disrupted for ever the Jardines' pleasant and protected life, though her stepmother had never dwelt on particulars, in fact she'd been inclined to gloss over details whenever the subject of the old days came up. So Nina only knew what she suspected was a highly edited version of the old scandal. But her writer's instinct told her that here was a story waiting to be uncovered, something which was almost certainly going to reveal the answer to the riddle of a woman who'd been missing for nearly forty years. A body had been found, and though she knew no more than that yet, it seemed to her that it must almost certainly be that of Beatrice Jardine.
And those wall paintings, and how they came to be executed, were part of the story. All the same …
“No, I couldn't, really. I wouldn't want to get you into trouble.”
The policeman looked at her. Nina's smile was one that had disarmed better men than he. He hesitated only for only a moment longer. “OK, I dare say I could stretch a point,” he said, anxious to disabuse her of the idea that he might have no authority in the matter, “if you really wanted to have a quick dekko, seeing as you're part of the family. As long as you don't go past the tape on the other end …”
“I promise I don't want to see anything other than those murals.”
“Won't get much out of 'em, I'll tell you that. They're a dead loss, in rotten condition, damp and all that. The – er – the one room's – strictly off-limits, right?”

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