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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death? These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results. With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs. Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter's night in Vienna. Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, Last Nocturne is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action.
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Seitenzahl: 545
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Last Nocturne
MARJORIE ECCLES
Contents
PROLOGUE
The child wakes in panic and sits bolt upright up in bed, clutching the cotton stuff of her nightgown to her chest. Outside, the great bell on the Stephensdom echoes the thump of her heart. She counts the strokes. Eleven! Hours since she was firmly tucked up, since her bedroom door was closed. Hours since she’d determined not to go to sleep, but to slip out of bed again to open the shutters and let the moonlight into the room so that He would be afraid to come. Only she’d fallen asleep, after all.
But perhaps there’s still time. Heart beating fast, she leaves the warm cosiness and goes to the window and stands on tiptoe, barely able to reach the knobs on the shutters. When they fold back at last, she sees there is to be no moon tonight. The only light coming through the window is the strange, bluish radiance somewhere beyond the dark which means there has been snow. She can see the snow-frosted roofs of other houses in the city and, rising way above them, the great cathedral and its spire, soaring up and up into the sky. In the daylight, the tiles on the cathedral roof have a brightly coloured pattern, but tonight snow and darkness obscure it. With a shiver, she remembers to say a quick, anxious prayer to Saint Stephen, one Berta has taught her, and then scuttles back to the warmth of her bed.
There’s no noise; the snow has muffled even the clatter of the fiacre wheels and horses’ hooves on the cobbles, or perhaps it’s too late even for them to be about. She lies still, not daring to move, scarcely daring to breathe. Somewhere, He might still be waiting to get her, perhaps hiding behind the huge, painted armoire in the corner – though for what misdemeanour she can’t think. But He, Struwwelpeter, the boy-demon with wild hair and long, sharp, nails like claws, will surely discover something. In the book, he always finds out naughty children and punishes them. Perhaps he’ll cut off her thumb because she still sucks it like a baby, although she tries not to. It’s very hard to be perfectly good, all the time. She tries to think of anything wrong she might have done that day. She hasn’t pulled the cat’s tail, or forgotten to practice her scales, but she suddenly remembers the little chocolate and cinnamon biscuit she popped into her mouth when Berta’s broad back was turned, and shivers.
The ancient house creaks and moans around her, as it often does in the night, as if it can’t sleep, either. It’s warm in the bed against the big square pillows, under the downy feather quilt which almost buries her. The only part of her showing is her nose, growing cold at the tip. Bruno must have forgotten to stoke up the huge green-tiled stove which keeps the house warm.
Perhaps He won’t know she’s there in the bedroom if she ducks her head right beneath the quilt to hide, leaving only a tiny space to breathe. She tries it and gradually the darkness reassures her, the terror recedes. Presently she sleeps again.
Perhaps it’s something in a dream that wakes her for the second time, but now she isn’t afraid.
With the wide unseeing eyes of the sleepwalker, she slides from the cosy warmth, not feeling the cold of the tiles as her feet touch them and she walks to the door. Leaving her bedroom, she turns away from the light coming from under the door of the attic room up the next flight of stairs. She doesn’t even pause when she reaches the banisters overlooking the huge dark cave of the ancient hallway, scary even in daylight, but passes barefooted along the gallery and down the next flight of worn stairs to the door, as swiftly and silently as if she’s gliding over them. Into the dim, shadowy cavern of the hall, where the remains of the sulky fire smokes and smoulders, and a single lamp still burns.
No one hears her, she feels no gentle, loving touch upon her shoulder, there is no soft voice to guide her back to bed and tuck her up once more. No sound from Igor, none of his deep baying to wake the household, not even the rattle of his chain as he stirs in his sleep on the straw of his kennel.
The great front door of the house hasn’t yet been locked and bolted for the night, but although she usually has to struggle with the heavy iron latch, tonight it responds easily. Leaving the door wide behind her she steps out into a still, white world.
The snow is thick and unblemished, the night dark and silent. She doesn’t notice the icy drop in temperature, however, as she begins to walk, nor the new snow-flurry which is starting and whips her nightdress around her legs. But almost at once something stops her. The street is in darkness, apart from the gas lamp where it turns the corner, throwing yellow light onto the snow. None of the other tall houses are lit. Their shadows lie black against the whiteness as the lane narrows in perspective, where the hollows in the snowdrifts show purple and mysterious. And silhouetted against the snow is a black writhing shape, grown huge and formless.
Struwwelpeter!
She screams, and the scream wakes her. For another moment she stands petrified, then she turns to flee back to the house. The door is still open but now another lamp has been lit in the hallway, and a familiar presence is striding towards her, scooping her into reassuring arms and rushing her inside. By the time the door is closed on the scene behind them, the snow is beginning to fall again, thick and fast, already covering the trail of her small bare footprints.
PART ONE
England 1909
CHAPTER ONE
It wasn’t Grace’s new outfit, worn in hopeful anticipation of spring, that helped her to decide, so much as the ridiculous hat belonging to Mrs Bingley-Corbett in the pew in front. Its brim was wide and flat as a cartwheel, its outsize round crown entirely studded with velvet bees and tiny flowers, so that at a distance it resembled nothing so much as a plum pudding on a plate, perched uncompromisingly on top of her elaborate coiffure. Grace suppressed an urge to laugh but could scarcely help envying Mrs B-C the self-assurance that let her wear such a monstrosity, especially to Evensong.
Not that Grace had any desire to emulate her, modish as such creations now were, restraint in that and many other matters having been abandoned in the years since the death of the puritanical old queen. Indeed, standards had altogether dropped now that Edward, her decidedly more liberal-minded son, occupied the throne, said Robert, disapprovingly. But it would have been nice to be able to think that one could do exactly as one wished for once; to know that being the late Canon Thurley’s daughter didn’t for ever place one in the shapeless tweeds and dreary hat brigade, something she had at least managed to avoid so far. Yet…although her own new hat that evening was entirely becoming (burnt straw with silk trimming in shades of yellow and cream, worn with the costume she had made herself, in the new otter-brown colour), seeing that other one had undoubtedly provoked not only a smile, but also fuelled the spark of rebellion and excitement already kindled by that letter. Rebellion about a great many things in her life…making her reject a more obviously sensible outfit to wear that evening, for instance.
Anyone with any sense would have foreseen that despite the day’s sunshine, it might turn chilly at eight o’clock of a Birmingham evening in late March…but though she was young and fair and pretty, and clever enough to avoid displaying how intelligent she really was, the desire not to be forced into a mould sometimes led Grace to be a little unwise. Shivering in the freedom of the unconstricting corded silk, she was forced to admit that Robert’s sister Edith had undoubtedly scored a point by wearing the thick maroon tailor-made, hideous and heavy though it was, and wished that she herself was not so often compelled to try and prove something or other – albeit only to herself.
Still, there it was; and as she came out of church on Robert’s arm, she knew her mind was finally made up, and all because of Mrs Bingley-Corbett’s hat. In the face of all advice to the contrary, she would accept Mrs Martagon’s offer and – here her resolution almost, but not quite, faltered – give Robert his ring back.
Awkwardly sharing an umbrella with him down the Hagley Road – for rain had now added to the unpleasantness of the evening – provided no opportunity to broach the subject. Robert was obsessed at the moment by the necessity to persuade his father to buy a motorcar in which to make their rounds, rather than the pony-trap his father, Dr Latimer, had always used and trusted and saw no reason to forsake. Such an outmoded form of transport did not become an up-and-coming young doctor, said Robert, and he could lately think and talk of nothing else but the relative merits of Wolseley and Siddeley, notwithstanding the outlay of a couple of hundred pounds. Understanding nothing of either, Grace could only listen and interject non-committal remarks at suitable intervals.
Later, feeling slightly warmer in the steamy heat of the gloomy conservatory at his family home in Charlotte Road, her back to the sodden lawns and even gloomier shrubbery beyond, she managed to screw up her courage. The first fatal words having been uttered, Robert stood facing her, outraged.
‘The Honourable Mrs Martagon?’ he repeated, as if unable to believe his ears. ‘London?’ As though Mrs Martagon were the Empress of China and the capital, not above a hundred miles distant, Outer Mongolia.
Straddle-legged, well-barbered, clean-shaven, thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, he waited for further enlightenment, but it seemed that her original astonishing explanation had exhausted in Grace any further capacity for speech, and she faced him uncharacteristically dumb, with lowered eyes. They were her best feature, a dark, smoky blue, but she was afraid they might give her away.
‘Well?’ Although not yet quite thirty, Robert Latimer was already inclined to plumpness, and the unprecedented announcement had caused his face to grow quite pink, giving him a slightly porcine appearance. ‘Why was I not informed of all this earlier?’
Despite his pompousness, Grace was beginning to feel that perhaps she had behaved badly in not having acquainted him with Mrs Martagon’s letter the moment it had arrived. She was, after all, engaged to be married to him (when he considered the time was ripe; when he had established himself, as he put it. Meaning, Grace assumed, when his father had retired from the medical practice they shared, an event which did not seem at all likely in the foreseeable future), so he did have the right to know. On the other hand, if she had told him, she knew with certainty that he would have dismissed the matter out of hand before she’d had time even to consider it, as he was all set to do now.
‘I think you owe me an explanation,’ he asserted, reasonably enough. He never made a diagnosis until he was fully in possession of all the facts, and now he led her to the rather uncomfortable wrought-iron bench between a bank of ferns and a glossy aspidistra, and took her hands, which were trembling and cold even now, and still bore the engagement ring on her finger.
Grace was afraid her explanations weren’t going to satisfy him. Even her mother was against her only child committing herself to what was being suggested, despite – or more likely because of – her long acquaintance with Edwina Martagon.
The letter had come out of the blue. Mrs Martagon had written to ask if her dearest friend Rosamund would be prepared to let Grace help her out over the period of the next twelve months: she was in need of someone of good family, nicely brought up, who wouldn’t be an embarrassment living in her house in London, to assist her with her voluminous correspondence and keep track of all the details of her extremely busy social life. Especially would this be necessary over this coming year when she was already making preparations for her daughter Dulcie’s coming out, next year. Such help as Grace would be required to give would not be onerous, Mrs Martagon had assured them, and though one didn’t wish, naturally, to dwell on such things, there would of course be a small remuneration – a delicate reference to Rosamund Thurley’s reduced circumstances after the death of her husband. And perhaps Grace might also act as companion to Dulcie until she came out and found a suitable man to marry, which occurrences, Mrs Martagon confidently implied, would be simultaneous. And all this, of course, would also mean the opportunity for Grace to get about in society and become acquainted with people…and perhaps to find a suitable young man for herself. Mrs Martagon had allowed her correspondence with ‘her dearest friend’ Rosamund to grow desultory over the years, and she didn’t yet know of Grace’s recent engagement.
‘All the same, you can’t possibly do it,’ said Grace’s mother, quite sharply for her. ‘I know Edwina. What she really means is that she wants you to run after her and pick up the pieces and deal with all the boring things, like addressing her envelopes and sorting her stockings. I never knew a more disorganised girl – how she managed to be always so well turned out was the greatest mystery – and I don’t see why she should have changed.’
‘Doesn’t she have a maid?’
‘Now, now, Grace, you know perfectly well what I mean. Of course she has a maid. Edwina has never had to lift a finger for herself in all her life. The only reason she’s written now is because she can’t find anyone else…you’d never have a moment to call your own. Her last secretary – for in plain words that’s what you’d be – went downstairs one morning with her bags packed and a taxicab waiting, and smashed all the china in the breakfast room before she left for ever. Nervous breakdown, poor thing. Don’t forget, I’ve known her a long time, since we came out together, when she was still Edwina Chaddesley.’
To prove her point, Mrs Thurley lifted the plum-coloured, velvet-covered, seed pearl-embroidered album from the sofa table and opened it at a photograph of two eighteen-year-old girls taken in the dresses they had worn to their first ball: both in white, of course, Rosamund fair and sweet, with a chaplet of roses on her head, her companion a proud-looking beauty even then, with a glorious mass of wavy hair, a firm chin and a determined lift of the head. Yet, of the two, Rosamund had been the first to marry, and it had been for love. Only a younger son who had gone into the Church, alas, and one, moreover, who was never destined to reach high clerical office, but it had been a love which lasted all their life together. Whereas Edwina, who had been expected to marry into the aristocracy at least, had not received any such offers and had eventually settled on Eliot Martagon, the scion of an undistinguished family. There were compensations, however, which presumably made up for her disappointment. Eliot’s father, as a young man, had gone out to South Africa for a spell and had made a great deal of money in the goldfields.
New money of this sort paved the way to a life of idleness for many a young man, but it did just the opposite for Eliot, freeing him to pursue more seriously his particular interests, which lay in the visual art world. Eliot was an artist manqué, but he was honest enough to see and admit soon enough the gap between his ambitions and his capabilities. Although frustrated, he hung around the fringes of the art world for a while, until eventually he found he did have a gift after all – one which lay in discovering and promoting those more talented than himself. He had begun by making a modest but interesting collection of pictures on his own behalf, which led to commissions to do the same for friends and acquaintances. After his father died, he had been able to buy a small and exclusive gallery, the Pontifex, just off Bond Street. As his knowledge increased, the scope of his enterprise widened considerably, necessitating much time spent in the various capitals of Europe and later in America, where he found patrons with wealth enough to buy what they wanted and what he could supply. After that, there had been no stopping him.
‘I suppose they complemented each other,’ said Mrs Thurley, closing the album. ‘Edwina is asked everywhere – perhaps not into the very grandest circles, but by people with the right connections, you know – which cannot but have helped him. And she’s always been known as a brilliant hostess.’ She mused on this for a while. ‘She would make a slave out of you.’
‘Only if I let her,’ Grace had replied coolly.
‘Dearest, I really don’t believe I should give this idea my blessing,’ Mrs Thurley said, though not quite as firmly as she might have done had she not been thinking of the opportunities such a sojourn in society might open for Grace…if only she hadn’t already been engaged to be married, that is. ‘Besides, there’s that other matter.’
‘Mama, that was something Mrs Martagon couldn’t possibly help.’
‘Of course not. But it leaves a stain on the family.’
There had never been any satisfactory explanation for why Eliot Martagon, a man in excellent health whose private life was beyond reproach, his business flourishing, his affairs in perfect order, his wife and children excellently provided for, should have shot himself dead six months ago. To be sure, his business assistant had stated at the inquest that he hadn’t seemed quite himself for some little time, though he couldn’t specify in precisely what way, and could offer no explanation of anything that might have been troubling him. He’d left no note behind him to explain why such a good-humoured, popular and kindly man at the height of his success should have taken this terrible step, and a verdict of accidental death while cleaning his gun – more acceptable than suicide – had eventually been given.
‘It’s only for a year, Mama.’ Grace, for all the level-headed self-control she tried so hard to maintain, couldn’t keep a trace of wistfulness from her voice. That one year beckoned so very enticingly: twelve months in a world far removed from her placid, uneventful, boring existence here, largely bounded by church activities, arranging the flowers, doing a little shopping, and passing a feather duster over her mother’s more cherished ornaments. A life which would be replicated a hundredfold when she married Robert.
Rosamund sighed as she met the blue, direct and sometimes incomprehensible gaze of her only child. She and Grace were very close, but there were times when she failed to understand her daughter. She took her face between her hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Dear child, I’m very aware you haven’t had the chances you should have had in life. But you’re a good daughter, and I wouldn’t want to see you making mistakes. It’s your own decision, of course, but do think very carefully about what it will mean. To you – and to Robert,’ she added, hesitating slightly. ‘A year can be a very long time.’ She was determined to like Robert and always tried to be fair to him, since Grace had accepted to be his wife.
So Grace had agreed dutifully to consider before making a decision, and now that she had, she’d made a fudge of it, in telling Robert so baldly. And here he was, standing in front of her, arms folded, tapping his foot, still waiting for her reply.
He drew in his breath and she felt him taking hold of his temper. ‘Come, Grace, this isn’t at all like you. What can you be thinking of – putting yourself at the beck and call of this woman? What on earth is it all about, hmm?’
Surely one should be able to confide one’s deepest feelings to the man one had, until half an hour ago, been about to marry? Goodness knows, Grace had tried, so many times before, but any attempt to do so invariably brought a frown of embarrassment to Robert’s face. At the beginning of their acquaintance, she’d hoped for so much. Just after her father had died, she had been sad and lonely, eager for affection, and Robert had been kind and, at first dazzled and admiring of someone so different from himself and his sisters, only too willing to give it. They’d played tennis together and shared country walks, bicycle rides and lectures at the Margaret Street Institute… Robert took himself and his pleasures seriously. They saw each other constantly. Only gradually did she face the fact that he automatically decried the things which amused and interested her…books, concerts, theatres or art exhibitions, all of which he regarded as frivolous; when he couldn’t avoid them, he gulped them down as if they were some of the nastier medicines he doled out to his patients. Once or twice lately, it had occurred to her that their paths were running on parallel lines which would never converge. She had pushed such thoughts to the back of her mind. Now, she couldn’t help being thankful that her eyes had been opened in time, before either of them had truly committed themselves, finally and irrevocably, to a marriage that could only in the end prove stale and unprofitable.
‘Plunging into this without thought,’ he was continuing, his tone appreciably colder at her failure to reply, ‘I regard it as an irresponsibility. You are considering no one but yourself in this matter, Grace.’
That wasn’t quite fair. Her mother, and the difference it would make to her, had been a very real factor in Grace’s decision. The ‘small remuneration’ Mrs Martagon had offered was in fact extremely generous and would relieve Rosamund of responsibility for Grace and enable her to go and live at Frinton-on-Sea with her sister Lettie, also widowed, which was what she wanted above all things. Mrs Thurley had always disliked Birmingham.
‘You must think again,’ Robert commanded, ‘but I have to say, Grace, as the man who is shortly to be your husband, I think you are being extremely selfish.’
‘Perhaps I am, in a way, but please don’t be bitter, Robert.’ She was very distressed at having hurt him – and he hadn’t yet heard the worst of it. She breathed deeply. ‘I – don’t believe either of us has been very wise to think of marrying each other.’
‘What?’
‘I think – I must ask you to consider our engagement at an end, Robert.’
‘What?’ he fairly shouted.
The stiffly formal words had come oddly from Grace, but she’d chosen them deliberately as being the only ones likely to convince Robert she was serious. ‘We’re too different,’ she went on bravely, ‘tonight has surely convinced you of that?’
‘You might have thought of that before you said you would marry me!’ he returned with a fine show of petulance, beginning to pace about, the heels of his boots ringing on the Minton tiles.
Speaking from the depths of her own troubled state of mind, she burst out, ‘But do you imagine for one moment I would have agreed if I hadn’t thought I loved you?’
‘There! You’ve admitted it. If you really loved me, you would have had no need to think about it.’
‘Well then, perhaps I didn’t, enough.’
‘Perhaps not yet. But you will, Grace, you will. I won’t accept my ring back. You must keep it, until you come to your senses.’
The ring, a half-hoop of opals alternated with brilliants, still lay on the palm she stretched out towards him. Perhaps Edith had been right when she said opals were unlucky. Robert shook his head, his lips stubbornly closed, his hands clenched behind his back, and she looked helplessly at him, but she would not be forced to keep the ring simply by default, and in the absence of anything else to do with it, she leant forward and laid it on the wrought-iron table.
Her judgement this evening was not at its best. The ring fell between the metal openwork leaves of a curved acanthus and onto the floor, rolled a little and fell through the iron grating where the heat from the hot pipes came through.
With a cry she dropped to her knees, but of course she couldn’t retrieve it. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m—’
‘Oh, to the devil with the dratted ring, Grace!’ Robert’s disregard of the ring was splendid, though the effect was spoilt by his adding that the gardener would take up the grille first thing tomorrow morning and get it back. ‘More to the point is – what am I to tell everyone about this business – my father, Edith, the girls?’
‘Really, Robert!’ Half-laughing, despite her distress, Grace scrambled to her feet, brushing down her skirt. ‘What does that matter? Tell them the truth, that it was all my fault. Edith at least won’t be surprised.’
She shouldn’t have said that. Robert really had little sense of humour, and Edith was his favourite sister, the eldest of the family who, after their mother had died, had brought them all up – Robert, Dolly, Mary-Alice and Louie – but he scarcely noticed: she knew him well enough to see that he was already calculating the explanations he would give in order not to lose face, conscious as he was of his standing in the community. Difficult though the rejection might be for him, his pride was more bruised than his heart.
The clouds outside had dispersed, leaving a tender green and rose sky, and the dying sun found its way through the fronds of greenery in the conservatory; a ray of warmth fell onto Grace’s outstretched foot as she sat by the table. Outside, a blackbird sang in the rain-drenched garden, so pure and sweet it almost brought tears to her eyes. But at the same time, she felt light as air, free at last of something she now realised had been growing into an insupportable burden. Her heart lifted. She might not be doing the right thing in deciding to go and live in London with the Martagons, but at least it would be a mistake which would affect no one but herself.
And after that? It might be that her adventure would amount to nothing and she would have to pocket her pride and resume living with her mother, and her aunt, at genteel Frinton-on-Sea – which would undoubtedly be more tedious and even less rewarding than the sort of life she was now leading…except that… Well, who knows? Grace asked herself. In a new age when women were climbing mountains in Switzerland and trekking through Africa, anything was possible. She smiled to herself, not really expecting anything of the sort to happen – but at least, she need never return here.
As far as Robert went, she had burnt her boats and she was not displeased to see them flaming behind her.
‘Oh, Mama, it’s such an unexpected opportunity, please be happy for me,’ she pleaded later, telling her mother what she’d decided. ‘Things will be so different, in London.’
‘Opportunity?’ The only opportunity a woman needed, in Mrs Thurley’s opinion, was to meet Mr Right, receive his proposal, and thereafter be a good wife and mother. ‘You surely don’t mean to join those frightful suffragettes,’ she added in sudden alarm, ‘like that woman who threw slates from the Bingley Hall roof onto the prime minister?’
‘Mama, if I was of that mind, I needn’t go to London to join them, there are plenty here. I admire them tremendously, but I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of courage. I wish I had.’
‘Well, I for one am glad that you have not. I don’t call what they are doing courageous – I call it madness. And so unwomanly. She might have killed Mr Asquith, you know.’
‘Not to mention herself, climbing onto the roof,’ said Grace. ‘Then, somebody might have taken notice. As it is, she’s had to try and starve herself to death.’
‘Sometimes, Grace, I don’t understand the things you say.’
‘Sometimes, I don’t understand myself.’
‘Well.’ Mrs Thurley sensed this was dangerous ground. Grace was, after all, only twenty-two years old and sensible as she undoubtedly was, not by any means as independent as she liked to appear. ‘I hope you won’t go putting ideas into the head of an innocent young girl like Dulcie Martagon when you get to London – though I’m quite sure Edwina would soon put a stop to it if you did. On second thoughts, however, I believe you’ll be quite a match for her.’
‘Mama! You make me sound like Miss Grimshaw!’
‘Well, my dear, she taught you very well for seven years and you can’t deny that you’re more than a little that way inclined. Perhaps it did rub off on you, a little,’ said Mrs Thurley, softening the remark with a fond kiss, and then adding unexpectedly, ‘and perhaps I’ve leant on you too much since your dear Papa died. I’ve got used to you managing things, but maybe it’s time I learnt to stand on my own two feet.’
Despite her feelings of anxiety for Grace, Mrs Thurley began to cheer up when she thought of the changes in her own life that Grace’s decision would bring about. And she thanked Heaven fasting that Grace would not, after all, be marrying Robert Latimer.
CHAPTER TWO
At a quarter to six on a cool, fresh spring morning, while most of London was still waking up, the housemaid at number 8 in one of the better streets of run-down Camden Town ran to the top of the area steps with her earthenware pitcher, in order to intercept Charlie, the milkman, already doing his rounds. In the early morning quiet, before things and people got really moving, she could hear his cheerful repartee coming up the steps from the basement of a house further along as he ladled out the milk at the kitchen door. He’d be a few minutes yet, but Janey waited, knowing he’d serve her as soon as he saw her. She felt in her pocket for the bruised apple she’d brought for Benjie, but the horse had his nose in his feedbag, so she had nothing to do but wait impatiently, her arms goosepimpling in the fresh, early morning breeze. Another housemaid further along the street came out to sweep the front steps and waved to her. An early tram clanged by on the Hampstead Road. The world was stirring. But meanwhile, it was a beautiful, quiet, sparkly morning and Adelaide Crescent was looking as good as it ever would do – the new leaves on the trees in the public garden looked lovely and – oh, wouldn’t a bit of ribbon of that same colour trim her old hat a treat for spring? Or maybe a bunch of cherries would be better? And maybe she might just manage sixpence for a new pair of gloves as well…
When Charlie clattered back up the steps and saw her waiting, he gave her a wink before going to the back of his two-wheeled cart to tip one of the ten-gallon churns into the smaller one he carried to his customers’ doors.
‘Come on,’ Janey called, ‘I ain’t got all day to wait.’ Cook’d give her what for if she knew she was hanging about up here, when she should be starting the porridge and making sure the fire in the breakfast room was well alight so that everything would be just so when the master came down. But she hadn’t wanted to wait until Charlie knocked at the kitchen door, when there was every chance Cook might choose that moment to appear and overhear his cheeky backchat. Cheeky, yes, but Janey smiled. The morning exchange with him set her up for the day. She was – very nearly – walking out with Charlie.
At last, he finished what he was doing, and crossed the pavement to where she was waiting. Dumping his churn, he deposited a smacking kiss on her cheek. ‘Beautiful as the mornin’, Janey me duck, as usual.’
‘Two quarts today and look sharp about it, and who are you calling your duck and taking liberties?’
‘You, darlin’, and how about down the Empire, Sat’day? Your night off, ain’t it?’
‘We’ll see. Have to think about it.’ She slipped the apple into Charlie’s pocket. ‘And that’s for Benjie, not you.’
‘Oh, sharp this morning! Watch you don’t cut yourself,’ rejoined Charlie, lowering the pint dipper four times into the milk and transferring the brimming contents, thick, creamy and foaming, into her jug. You could trust Charlie; his milk was always new and fresh and never watered, not like some. She gave him a smile that showed her dimples. If she got that ribbon for her hat, it would be just right for an evening in the gallery at the Empire.
‘So long then. Till termorrer, and don’t forget Sat’day.’ Charlie turned back to his float and then stood rooted to the spot. ‘Gawd!’
‘What’s up?’ Janey turned to follow his glance back along the street and when she saw what he’d seen, the pitcher fell from her hands. Pieces of brown and yellow pottery scattered in all directions and a white river ran over her boots and the pavement. ‘Oh, my Gawd,’ she echoed Charlie, colour draining from her face and leaving it white as the milk itself.
Further along the street, impaled on the area railings, as though on a skewer ready for spit-roasting, was the body of a man.
CHAPTER THREE
Embury Square, at a safe distance from those less than salubrious parts of Camden Town, boasted large, prosperous-looking houses on three of its sides, and on the fourth a road lined with plane trees which led eventually into Piccadilly. Number 12 was situated at the back of the square, the last house before it turned the corner. Echoing the formality of its neighbours, it was double fronted and four-storeyed, including the attics, with a shallow flight of steps leading to a pedimented front door. It differed from the other houses only in the colour of its stuccoed fascia; this the late Eliot Martagon had decreed should be painted dark green, with sparkling white trim, while the front door and the area railings were the same smart, shiny black as the railings around the square’s central gardens.
Discreetly curtaining the inside of the house from the curious glances of passers-by hung fine ecru lace, through which lamps shone at dusk, hinting at the luxury to be found inside: the warm colours of the floor tiles in the hall and the hushed carpets and richly papered walls; the large pictures hanging in heavily gilded frames; the solid, ornate furniture gleaming with years of polish and the elbow grease of housemaids; a sweeping staircase in the spacious entrance hall rising to the next storey where it divided to form a gallery.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, the road beyond the square was busy with shoppers, errand boys on bicycles and home-going nursemaids pushing baby-carriages; and noisy with motor omnibuses, taxicabs, horse-drawn traffic and the cries of newsvendors. Faintly, in the distance, there came the sound of a barrel-organ. But none of this penetrated the well-built, prosperous façade of number 12.
Dulcie wasn’t the fidgeting sort, but today she found it hard to sit still, longing to be outdoors on such a heavenly day, where the spring breeze was chasing the clouds to shadow the sun from time to time, dappling the gardens in the square with flickering light. Daffodils danced amid the dark evergreens and under the blossom-trees, and already the wallflowers were showing hard, clustered buds which would later burst into rich colours and delicious scents. Eminently suitable subjects for young ladies to paint. Dulcie, however, preferred something more austere.
While listening to her mother with half an ear, she was automatically observing the plane trees she could just about glimpse in the main road. The branches were still bare and leafless on the rough, scaly, elephant-grey trunks, and the lopped ends sported bottle-brush fans of twigs, as feathery and elegant as a Japanese print, especially when seen through the soft focus of fine lace. Her fingers itched to be out there sketching, chilly though it was, despite the bright, chancy sun, as she’d found when she’d taken her little pug, Nell, for her run in the garden. Cold for the flower woman on the corner, shivering under her shawl, chilblained fingers emerging from her woollen mittens as she bent over her basket the way Dulcie had sketched her from memory, dozens of times, using the sharp, fine strokes that had begun to characterise her work. Poor thing, sitting there hour after hour, selling her violets and mimosa; a plain old woman whose broad face under her red shawl was yet beautiful. And who, ridiculous though it might seem, in some ways reminded Dulcie of her father. Perhaps it was that strong nose and wide forehead, perhaps it was the smile she always had for Dulcie…
But Dulcie turned her thoughts determinedly away from her father. It was a matter of pride that she wasn’t a person prone to tears, yet whenever the memory of him returned she could never be quite sure she wouldn’t cry. Something warm and vital had gone for ever when Eliot’s spirit had departed this life.
‘Have another cake, Dulcie,’ commanded her mother, dispensing tea. Because they had company she smiled, showing her beautiful teeth, but her look brooked no refusal. She sat very upright, as always, splendidly corseted, wearing a bronze silk tea-gown trimmed with black velvet, an ecru lace modesty vest at the crossover of her bodice, but only just veiling her magnificent curves. Yet it struck Dulcie that for some reason she didn’t seem as quite in command of herself as she invariably was. It was hard to say just how. She made the usual striking picture behind her tea-table, her head held high and proud on her long neck, around which gleamed the string of large, evenly matched pearls she almost always wore. It was no accident that the colour of the gown gave a subtle depth to her still-glorious hair, which was sculpted and waved, dressed wide, its rich brown enhanced now by gleams of silver. ‘Cake, Dulcie?’ she repeated.
Dulcie returned her mother’s smile to prevent herself looking mutinous. She hadn’t wanted the first pink-iced fairy cake, tiny as it was, but only a very few people ever argued with Edwina Martagon, and her daughter wasn’t one of them. It was her mother’s oft-stated belief that Dulcie needed ‘filling out’ to complement her height, so that it would become an asset for which many women might envy her, rather than the burden to her it so obviously was. At seventeen, Dulcie ought to have learnt to hold herself straight, with her shoulders back – and she should surely have developed a bosom by now. ‘There’s really nothing at all wrong with your looks, child,’ was her regular admonition. ‘You’re extremely fortunate to have such an excellent complexion and very nice eyes – but why must you be so stubborn about having your hair waved? You won’t be able to wear it scraped and tied back like that when you’re out, you know.’
Dulcie knew she would never come up to her mother’s expectations and bore these strictures, if not with patience, at least in silence, which unfortunately gave her an air of aloofness and secrecy which irritated Edwina even more. Obediently, she stood up now and lifted the tiered, cut-glass cake-stand. ‘Perhaps Mrs Cadell would like another cake, too?’ she asked politely, offering the prettily decorated fancies on their lace doilies to their visitor.
Cynthia Cadell stretched out a be-ringed white hand and took one with a smile before returning to the subject they had been discussing: the art exhibition currently running at the Pontifex Gallery and the artists at the centre of it, presently being eulogised by those in pursuit of the latest fad. Mrs Martagon was diverted, and the moment passed without her noticing the absence of another cake on Dulcie’s plate.
‘Darling, such outré sorts of persons, these young artists, or at least one assumes so through their paintings… I have never met any of them…but madly intriguing, don’t you think? One can hardly afford to ignore them, though one has to admit that the subjects they paint are not those normally considered – well, artistic, shall we say? Common people and places, and – and that sort of thing,’ said Mrs Cadell delicately, one eye on Dulcie.
‘Nudes, don’t you mean? And not very attractive ones at that, I suppose,’ returned Edwina forthrightly, helping herself to another chocolate éclair, lifting a delicious creamy morsel to her mouth on her silver fork. She hadn’t been married to an art dealer for thirty years without learning that since nudes were Art it was permissible to speak about them without embarrassment.
‘As a matter of fact, that isn’t quite what I meant, Edwina dear. Plenty of rather sordid subjects perhaps – not very elevating at any rate, to my mind – and there are a few nudes, though nothing actually – improper. I wonder you don’t intend going to the exhibition to see for yourself.’
‘I dare say I ought to make the effort. If only to see why it’s on everyone’s lips. But I’m not sure. The Gallery, you know…’ Edwina let her voice trail off and raised a scrap of fine, lace-edged cambric to the corner of a dry eye, as if the gallery Eliot had owned, where he had conducted his business and had held regular exhibitions, brought back unbearable memories, which was not the case; but she was always very careful and watched for adverse reactions when her late husband’s profession was mentioned. In Edwina’s book, buying and selling works of art came perilously close to being in trade, but if this upset her, she had never betrayed it, not even by the flicker of an eyelid. So many people had managed to overlook the connection that Edwina had been able to do the same.
Dulcie’s heart had given a little jump at the mention of the exhibition. Grace Thurley had already suggested asking permission to visit it, but Dulcie knew that would have been to invite a refusal. Her mother was not in the business of encouraging Dulcie’s artistic ambitions. On the other hand, the surest way to get Edwina to do something she was against was to agree with her, and vice versa. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Mama,’ she murmured. ‘I believe one or two of the exhibits are in fact said to be rather – modern.’ She couldn’t make herself blush, but she could cast her eyes down modestly; and luckily, Edwina didn’t ask how her daughter had come by this particular knowledge.
‘Hmm. I’m sure I don’t understand this passion for realism as they’re pleased to call it – it all stems from Abroad, I am convinced.’ Edwina spoke of this suspect place in the same tones as she would have spoken of Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘There’s nothing beautiful to my mind in depicting the seamy side of life…’
But the dark side of life is all some people know, thought Dulcie – and why shouldn’t art be for and about them – real life, as lived by real people – as well as those living pleasant, sheltered lives?
‘…but I am the last woman in the world,’ Edwina went on, ‘as anyone will tell you, not to be open-minded. The last.’
Then why had the decidedly modern, though admittedly disturbing, Sickert, which her father had hung over the fireplace in his very private study – not to mention the more discreet, classical nudes in different parts of the house – been removed within days of his death?
‘However – one cannot judge the merits of any work of art by what other people say, Dulcie. I would have thought you, as someone with artistic leanings, would appreciate that,’ Edwina continued, managing to make Dulcie’s desperate ambition to be an artist sound little more than a hobby along the lines of tooled leather bookmarks and découpage. ‘As your father always said, one should trust one’s own judgement.’
Dulcie held her breath, sensing the possibility of this particular battle being won. Her father had been the only one who had understood and sympathised with her frantic desire to attend one of the London art schools and to learn how to paint and draw properly, her feeling that talent alone was not enough – or not without some direction. Had he still been alive, she would have been enrolled at one or other of them by now, probably the Slade, instead of having to endure all this useless nonsense about coming out and doing the season. But her mother wouldn’t hear of it and her brother Guy, who was now legally responsible for her, was still too wrapped up in the aftermath of his father’s affairs to be approachable, much less to enter into a battle with his mother.
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Mrs Cadell, ‘if it is too painful for you to visit the gallery yourself, Edwina, Dulcie may go along and judge for herself, as you suggest? Your nice Miss Thurley might take her. She seems a sensible creature.’
Dulcie raised her eyes and realised that help was coming from an unexpected source. Cynthia Cadell, currently her mother’s best friend, was a small, pretty woman with a triangular kitten face and a penchant for gossip with a spice of malice. She purred, but had claws. Yet Dulcie sensed an ally, if only because Mrs Cadell had probably seen the opportunity of outmanoeuvring Edwina, something which did not often happen. Perhaps she, too, had sensed, as Dulcie had, that there was something a little – distraite – about Mama this afternoon, almost as if her mind were on other things.
‘Well, I’ll speak to Guy, and see what he thinks,’ Edwina said at last, blinking, looking as though she suspected she’d been trapped, but didn’t quite know how. ‘And Grace – where is the dear girl now, Dulcie?’
‘I believe you told her you wouldn’t need her, so she went for a walk.’
‘A walk?’ echoed Edwina, who never walked anywhere, other than to take a stroll in the square gardens or around St James’s Park. ‘Alone? Perhaps not quite so sensible, after all, Cynthia. All the same, we’ve all become very fond of Miss Thurley – Grace, we call her, the dear girl, since I’ve known her from the cradle, after all. Her mother and I came out together, you know.’ She omitted to say how many years had passed since then, or that she and Grace had never previously met. ‘But I believe they don’t have the same sense of comme il faut in Birmingham as we do.’
Dulcie seized the moment. ‘She may be back now. Shall I see if I might find her?’
‘Run along, do,’ Edwina answered, dismissing her daughter with evident relief, fluttering a hand. She had large, well shaped and very white hands and used them often and expressively, which was useful to draw attention to her beautiful rings.
‘Yes, Mama. Goodbye, Mrs Cadell,’ said Dulcie politely. ‘So nice seeing you.’ She smiled, looking almost pretty, and her large dark eyes said thank you.
‘Your girl seems devoted to Miss Thurley already,’ remarked Cynthia, after Dulcie had been allowed to make her escape from the drawing room.
‘Devoted,’ agreed Edwina absently.
It was true that Dulcie – so quiet and watchful – so judgemental at times – appeared to have taken to Grace Thurley, though one never knew with Dulcie. The last thing she would ever do was to confide in her mother. But she and Grace seemed to have made friends, which was a blessing, relieving Edwina of much anxiety as to how to occupy an unwilling daughter during this indeterminate stage between schoolroom and the adult world. Though in truth, Edwina hadn’t yet made up her mind whether Grace as a solution to the problem was going to work out or not. She herself was prepared to like the young woman, who seemed discreet and pleasant, and had worked so very efficiently at organising Edwina’s rather more than chaotic private affairs. But she’d occasionally caught a look of irony in her eyes which warned Edwina not to take her for granted. ‘She’s certainly very agreeable,’ she temporised.
‘My impression exactly when I met her the other day. And deliciously pretty, too. You’ll have to keep an eye on her where Guy is concerned, dear Edwina. Every mama of my acquaintance has him in her sights,’ rejoined Cynthia, smiling, watching Edwina carefully. She too, had a marriageable daughter. And, lurking somewhere in the background, a husband, whom she seemed constantly to be misplacing, like a lost pair of spectacles – until he was called upon to repay her persistent bridge and dressmaking debts, which he did with great reluctance, and only after a tremendous show-down. The result was that Mrs Cadell was chronically short of money, and it was her mission in life, to which she was dedicated with absolute and utter ruthlessness, to see that her Virginia should not make the same mistake as she had.
‘What? Guy?’ demanded Edwina sharply. ‘In that case, they may be disappointed. Amongst other things, he’s come home with some strange idea that he will never marry, if you please. Quite maddening.’
Maddening to distraction, if the truth were told, though she wouldn’t have let her dearest Cynthia see this, not for the world, especially since she knew what Cynthia was angling after, something she was determined to prevent at all costs. Edwina could do better than silly, penniless little Virginia Cadell for Guy. He was, after all, her only son – their only child, in fact, for thirteen years – until Dulcie was born. But that led to matters best not dwelt upon, she thought, a little lurch of the heart taking her back two hours, and noticing a little belatedly how Mrs Cadell’s smiling little triangular cat face had become avid with curiosity. She ought to have remembered: Cynthia missed nothing – and by the way – ‘You are looking particularly smart today, Cynthia dear. It must be your new dressmaker – what is her name, again?’
‘Lucile, Edwina. Surely you must remember. Everyone’s mad about her.’
‘No, I forgot. You know how bad my memory sometimes is – which is only to be expected when I have so much on my mind.’ But of course Edwina remembered Lucile now – the newest fad, a provocative dressmaker who was taking rich society women by storm with her daring – and perhaps not quite nice – creations. Original, however. Cynthia’s dress was in shades of green and amber that reflected the colour of her eyes. Clever Cynthia.
‘The young can be too provoking,’ murmured the lady in question, bringing Edwina back to the point with a gentle prod.
‘Yes, too vexatious of the boy, but what can one do?’ Edwina gave an amused lift of her shoulders to indicate the subject closed.
Cynthia, however, was on the scent, and not to be put off. ‘Darling, one assumes he meant it as a joke? Though one hasn’t seen him around much since he came home…’
‘Oh, you know Guy. He doesn’t make those sort of jokes. I’m sure he means what he says. At the moment he’s more interested in winding up his father’s affairs – which is only right and proper, of course – than in looking for a wife. If he thinks of anything else, it’s of righting the world’s wrongs. A phase which will, of course, pass,’ replied his mother, untroubled, as ever, by uncertainties. But then, she couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her. ‘No girl’s going to want him, however, if he does nothing but glower – and the annoying part is that he can be so charming when he wants to be.’
‘Of course he can. We all know what Guy was like as a boy. But my dear, I hardly think you need worry. Those dark, moody looks are madly attractive. And I do believe girls see a little disdainfulness as a challenge.’
‘Do they?’
Edwina was very well aware of the romantic attraction her son had for marriageable young girls, which made his indifference to them all the more infuriating. ‘Talking trivialities to silly young women bores me,’ he told his mother, unanswerably. His manners could be casual, not to say offhand – unless he drilled himself into being polite on necessary occasions which, to give him his due, he generally did. Yet, quite apart from the respectable fortune inherited from his father, his enigmatic personality intrigued those silly young women he so despised. Exotic adventures in foreign parts which one could only guess at had kept him away from home for years and, as well as making him tanned, athletic and fit, had endowed him with a mysterious aloofness which made him all the more sought-after as a desirable parti. But on his return after his father’s death he had not, as his mother had expected, plunged back into society, taken up a man-about-town’s existence like the other young men with whom he’d been at school. Edwina felt she no longer knew her son as she had done once. He had a left England a smooth-skinned, fresh-faced boy; he had returned hard and lean, sunburnt and taciturn. A man, and one of whom, sometimes, even she could be a little afraid.
CHAPTER FOUR
Scarcely had the door closed behind Cynthia Cadell before Edwina rushed back to her room. It had already been tidied and bore no signs of the ravages of a couple of hours ago. She rang for Manners and the maid, with a frightened face, appeared, as if fearing her mistress was about to make a delayed scene over what had occurred before she had gone downstairs to preside over her tea-table. But Edwina merely ordered her to dab some cologne on her aching forehead, unlace her and unpin her hair so that she might lie down, then leave her undisturbed until it was time to dress for dinner.
When Manners had gone, she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. Despite the cologne, a fierce headache throbbed at her temples. Freed at last from the discipline of the last hour and a half, when she’d been unable to show any sign of the emotion churning her stomach, her thoughts raced back uncontrollably to that incredible half hour before she’d been forced to take hold of herself and descend the staircase to perform her duties as hostess.
A routine afternoon, that’s all it had seemed to promise, as she sat comfortably en déshabillé in her warm, scented, luxurious bedroom, changing for the afternoon. She would have thought her social life quite wanting had she not been compelled to change her clothes several times a day, according to the needs of each event. It would be an unforgivable social faux pas to appear inappropriately dressed for the occasion: a blouse with a high-boned collar and a skirt for morning, another outfit for luncheon, or for whatever the afternoon had to offer; and again a change for the evening – sometimes twice, if dinner was later followed by a concert or the opera, say.
Waiting impatiently for Manners to bring in the tea-gown she’d chosen to wear, and which the woman had been sent to re-press after Edwina had declared that the pleats in the godet at the front were not sharp enough, she’d seated herself at her dressing table and reached for her powder puff to touch up her complexion (or rather touch down, for her high facial colour, which had become more pronounced as she grew older, sometimes contrasted a little too vividly with her white arms and shoulders). She did not, however, consider herself by any means a spent force at forty-eight. Though she was putting on a little weight – she had such a sweet tooth! – she had very few lines or wrinkles, and her reflection as she regarded her splendid shoulders and the regal carriage of her head in her mirror underlined the knowledge that she was still a desirable woman. An additional confirmation, had she required it, was Bernard Aubrey.
Despite her habitual self-control, a sigh escaped her. Bernard wasn’t yet her lover, though no one she knew would have raised an eyebrow if he had been. Truth to tell, she was growing a little impatient with his dilatoriness, rich and titled though he was. Not that she’d any fault to pick with Bernard himself: everyone who knew him adored him, for he was never less than agreeable and amusing; he hated controversy and could always be guaranteed to dissipate any awkward situation which might arise, usually by means of a little harmlessly malicious gossip or an amuse bouche, a small diversion. An amiable man with unremarkable looks, sandy hair and a penchant for beautiful rings, of which he wore two different ones each day, one on each of his long, beautifully shaped hands, he came from a rich, titled family but was known affectionately to all simply as Bernard. He lived in a bachelor apartment just off Berkeley Square, which he’d furnished with choice antiques and works of art, and had no need to work, since he’d inherited enough money to keep him in unostentatious luxury. An invitation to one of his small but exquisite luncheons was much sought after and Edwina’s relationship with him was regarded as something of a trophy to be chalked up. An engagement announcement, now that she was a widow, was expected after the required lapse of time.
