The Shape of Sand (20 page)

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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

Tags: #Mystery, #Historical

BOOK: The Shape of Sand
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Nina had agreed to Harriet's suggestion that it was best for her to stay at the cottage for the time being, if they were to work together. There should be no difficulty about time off from the bank, since she'd been taking her holiday entitlements in dribs and drabs in order to leave the school holiday period free for those people with families, and she was still due to at least two weeks. After a hurried cup of coffee the next morning, she set out in pouring rain, wearing Harriet's mac and a borrowed umbrella, and took the first bus from the village to catch an early train into London, leaving Harriet to get on with some of her correspondence papers, which she vowed absolutely must be marked. There might be a subtext there: wrestling with the corrections of such imponderables as quadrilateral equations or the square on the hypotenuse, felt Nina, to whom anything above the ten-times table lurked in the unplumbed depths of uncharted seas, must surely concentrate the mind wonderfully, leaving it free to work subliminally behind the scenes on personal problems. Maybe that wasn't so far off the mark. Nina couldn't get over the feeling that Harriet's insistence on the Egyptian connection with her mother's murder masked a fear that the real truth was to be found nearer home – within the family, even. And that – possibly – she'd seized upon this chance to rout it because, in truth, she didn't have enough to occupy her mind. There was very little stimulus to be found in the country.
The train was already almost full when it arrived, but she managed to get the last seat in the compartment which drew up beside her on the platform, after which it was standing room only for the City-bound office workers cramming in like sardines. The windows steamed up. Everybody smoked. Leaning her head back against the seat, she closed her eyes and wondered how many nights it would take to become accustomed to the church clock, punctuating the silence with
its regular booms, on the hour and the half hour, each time just as she was about to drop off to sleep. She'd spent what was left of the night, after finishing Harriet's notebooks, in a restless, half-comatose state. But it wasn't only the clock: she knew that the events of the day, and what she'd afterwards read, so far into the night, had been so much in her mind that she clearly hadn't been sufficiently composed for sleep before turning out the light.
As the train lurched towards London, and strap-hanging commuters banged against her knees and their wet umbrellas decanted water into her shoes, the events of the previous day still passed cinematographically behind her closed eyes, mixed in with the images of Egypt: the grey stones of Charnley and the now flawed splendour of its painted rooms mingling with visions of hot sand, burning skies, pyramids, temples and ruins.
She was already so fascinated by what she'd read that she felt she might easily become obsessed with unravelling the mystery of Beatrice Jardine's life and her appalling death. A forty-year-old murder should by now have lost its horror for someone who had never known the victim. Had the body been nothing but a pile of bleached bones, perhaps Nina could have regarded it more objectively, but knowing that the outstandingly beautiful woman she had seen in those photographs last night had ended up so macabrely dead, as a mummified corpse behind a disused chimney wall, strangled by her own jewelled necklace, only increased the surreal sense of horror. By this morning, she knew she was as committed as Harriet to finding out as much as possible about the events that had led up to the murder.
It was still all so much in her mind that she thought she must be hallucinating when, just as the train was drawing into the London terminus, she opened her eyes and saw in front of her the headline on the newspaper of the bowler-hatted businessman opposite. The news had already broken. Well, it had been inevitable that the press would sooner or later get hold of it – and there it was, on the front page of one of the national dailies: ‘MUMMY FOUND IN COUNTRY HOUSE'.
She was able to read no more, the train was drawing to a
halt, and the man was folding up his paper and putting it into his briefcase, but the headlines had to concern Charnley. How many other mummified corpses could have turned up yesterday, for goodness' sake?
She bought the paper for herself as soon as she left the train and, sinking on to a seat, she read the brief report. The headline was in heavy type, but with only a few column inches on the subject beneath it. There had, after all, scarcely been time to gather a host of gory details, and the police had evidently not yet given out the identity of the body. She was initially relieved to find that it merely said, with an understatement this particular paper was not noted for, that a mummified corpse had been found during restoration work being carried out at Charnley House. But it ended by referring to an inside feature. Turning to that, she found Charnley described, with the paper's usual hyperbole, as ‘a former stately home, ancestral residence of one of London's former top lawyers, once noted for its glittering house parties.' Inevitably, it went on to recall the circumstances nearly half a century ago which had led to the ‘dramatic suicide of Amory Jardine, tipped for a knighthood in the next honours list, following the mysterious disappearances of his wife Beatrice, a notable Edwardian beauty and society hostess of the day, and of one of their guests – an Egyptian gentleman …' There followed a brief outline of Charnley's subsequent fortunes until the time it was bought by Vigilance Assurance. The article was, on the whole, more restrained than she'd expected, though the inferences were obvious, given the item on the front page. No doubt they were saving their big guns for when the identity of the corpse was officially identified as that of Beatrice Jardine, and the confirmation that she had been murdered, and how, in all its grisly detail.
The rain had diminished to a murky drizzle by the time she emerged from the station, no less unpleasant, and the skies still pressed down like a lid. Nina took the crowded tube and then walked from the station to her bed-sit to pick up what she would need by way of sensible clothes and shoes for the country, ration book and other necessities, including her old Remington typewriter – allegedly portable, but weighing a ton
- and told her landlady she would be away for a couple of weeks. She rang the bank and spoke to her manager. He was not pleased when she asked permission to take the two weeks' leave owing to her, at such short notice. She knew he had been hoping she would forego the rest of her holiday entitlement, now that it was getting so late into the year, but she stopped herself from feeling guilty. She'd hitherto done her best to be accommodating on the subject. She didn't exactly occupy a key position at the bank, and a rescheduling of duties would be all that was needed to take care of her absence – if indeed, they noticed it at all, she thought cynically.
Guy telephoned her while she was packing up her things, but their conversation was unsatisfactory. She didn't feel she could say what she wanted to say when the telephone was in the hall, with the dining room door ajar and Mrs Prior inside, one ear cocked, but he didn't seem to want to chat anyway. He'd spoken to Harriet and knew of the arrangement for Nina to stay at Garvingden. Apart from the Lamb & Flag, the shop, the vicarage and the district nurse, Harriet was the only other in the village with a telephone (the rest considered it an unnecessary expense), but it had proved its worth over the last few days. Now Guy was asking, “Can you leave your belongings in the left luggage at the station, and slip over here before you go back to the cottage? Take a taxi – Daisy's at home and she wants to talk to you.”
“What is it? Have you seen the papers?”
“Yes, darling, we have, but you'll know what it's all about when you get here.”
Nina normally found that sort of exchange irritating, and tried not to sigh. It was one of her father's little foibles: he rather enjoyed keeping one hanging on, wondering what he had in store. From the tone of his voice, which sounded excited rather than gloomy, she thought it was unlikely there would be more unpleasant revelations, but by the time the taxi drove up outside the tall narrow house and Guy had hurried out to pay the driver, her mind had turned over all sorts of possibilities.
“Sorry it's taken me so long, Dad,” she said, kissing him as the taxi disappeared. “It took me ages to find a cab. I thought for a while I was going to have to go and queue for a bus, so I
was glad you'd suggested leaving my case and things in the left luggage, but then one came along …”
“Listen, Nina,” Guy broke in. “There's someone here Daisy wants you to meet. We're in the back.”
“Who is it?”
But he wouldn't say.
In the comfortably shabby room overlooking the long-by-narrow garden, they were drinking coffee, and its aroma mingled with the rich, lingering smell of the tobacco smoke which her father's pipe had wreathed around. Nina's entrance into the room caused an immediate uproar: Guy's fat old fox-terrier skidded across the polished floor to greet her, ruckling the rugs and leaping around her in a frenzy of ecstatic joy, trying to reach Nina's face to lick it. Nina laughed and bent forward to pat the old dog, incautiously stepping on the displaced rug, which slipped from under her feet. She would have fallen if she hadn't been caught by the man who had risen awkwardly as she came into the room.
“Down Phoebe!” Guy commanded above all the hubbub. The dog froze, then simply keeled over on to her side, beat her tail, and immediately went to sleep. In the resulting silence, they all laughed, and Nina turned to look at her rescuer.
“Phoebe obviously knows who her friends are,” he said, holding out his hand. “You must be Nina.”
He was a big, athletic-looking man with a craggy face, wearing the uniform of a commander in the Fleet Air Arm. His movements were somewhat awkward; he walked with a slight limp, and it seemed to her that the turn of his head was deliberate, so that she was immediately made aware of the disfigurement of one side of his face: a puckered seam of shiny new skin that ran down from his temple and disappeared under his collar. Someone saying this is what I am, take me or leave me.
“This is Tom Verrier, Nina.” Daisy didn't offer any further explanation. Something – the arrival of this man? – seemed to have flustered her. Odd. But then Daisy, who coped with difficult situations every day of the week at Hope House without turning a hair, when faced with them in her own life frequently didn't quite know what to do. She sought refuge now in insisting that Nina needed a sandwich and took herself off
to make it, bringing it back with fresh coffee.
The sandwich was typical of Daisy's attitude to food, made with scraps of cold mutton left over from Sunday. Nothing could help the greyish Government-decreed bread, which was dry, or the taste of margarine predominating over the dabs of mint sauce with which she'd mistakenly tried to enliven it. Still, as always with Daisy, the gesture had been well meant, and Nina, not having had any breakfast and brainwashed by warnings not to waste food, managed to get most of it down, with the help of the coffee, and only then did she find out who this stranger was and why he was here.
Almost the first thing she learned about Tom Verrier was that he was Rose Jessamy's son.
 
Harriet, amongst her other telephoning, had called Vita first thing that morning, and as soon as she rang off, Vita picked up the phone again and began to dial a well-remembered sequence of numbers. Her hand shook so much she had to make several attempts before she eventually succeeded and heard the ringing tone at the other end. It rang, and rang, and she thought despairingly: He's not there. But wait! Maybe, in her fumbling haste, she'd dialled the wrong number. Try again. Still no answer. She had the receiver halfway back towards its rest when she heard his voice. “Dr Schulman here.”
“Oscar! It's me!”
“Vita, my dear! What is wrong?” She registered that he could obviously tell that she was upset, simply from the tone of her voice. She made an effort of will to steady it.
“You don't know, then?”
“Not unless you tell me.”
There was a measurable pause. “Oscar, I must talk to you. Something's happened. You must come round immediately.”
“Of course I will come, if you need me, you know that. But - immediately?” The Middle European accent was barely noticeable, except when he was speaking on the telephone, but his beautifully modulated voice, calculated to soothe the most nervous of patients, did little to reduce her sense of panic. “I have several appointments, and business to do before that. I
can come to you this afternoon, perhaps–”
“I really do need you here, now. I simply c-can't explain over the telephone, and–” Her voice broke on a sob, and she couldn't go on.
He was silent for the space of a second then, evidently sensing that this was more urgent than her usual plea for his attention, he said, “Vita, make yourself a cup of tea – tea, I say – and lie down. No gin. And no pills. Do you hear? I will be with you as soon as I can. Ten minutes?”
“Darling Oscar” – a shake of relief in her voice – “I knew I could rely on you.”
 
Oscar Schulman had arrived in England in the spring of 1938, after the Anschluss, the annexation of his homeland, Austria, by Adolf Hitler. No Jew would be safe in Vienna after that. He was thirty-eight at the time, a childless widower. The son of wealthy doctors, he was already a distinguished and prosperous doctor in his own right. Since he had no dependents, and was possessed of the necessary money and influence, he experienced little difficulty in obtaining the requisite exit and entry visas which would allow him to come to England.

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