03 - Murder in Mink (7 page)

Clara went to bed early that night. Dinner had been an
unpleasant event, with mournful faces and downcast eyes. Everyone fudging over
a cold montage of dishes left over from the reception. It seemed a lot of
wedding guests had felt it indiscreet to eat a reception feast without an
actual wedding taking place, so they had made their excuses and returned to
their hotels or homes. Far too much food had been left over, so Glorianna had
swept it up and had it transported home for dinner. She was trying to put a
brave face on the matter, but was clearly drained and miserable.

Peg had smoked herself sick and was toying with a plate
of cold meat and potatoes. Hogarth was the opposite, downing his food in record
time and demanding more, clearly comfort eating to assuage his misery and
confusion. Susan had fluttered down from her room, but was morose, aware that
her own performance the night before had not aided domestic harmony. Only
Eustace ate with what seemed a normal appetite, his indigestion fast forgotten.
Andrew was still missing.

Clara picked her way through some cold chicken, guiltily
casting an eye to an assortment of exquisite looking desserts stocked on the
sideboard. At home dessert tended to be occasional and consisted of rice
pudding or a fruit crumble. The extraordinary dishes that had been prepared for
the wedding were a far cry from her usual sweet delight, and her eyes were
unerringly drawn to a sherry trifle, with thick cream and gold flakes on the
top. The wedding cake had not returned home, at least, not to the dining room.
It had been dismantled, its many layers parcelled out between the staff at the
hotel and the Campbell servants. At least for them the day had ended with a
pleasant surprise.

Dinner finished abruptly. There was dessert for those who
wished it, but Glorianna, Susan and Peg retreated solemnly. Clara decided it
prudent to discreetly pile a bowl with dessert and disappear to consume it in
her room. Tommy followed her example and they quietly made their excuses
leaving the two Campbell brothers alone.

“I hope they don’t fight.” Clara briefly thought to
herself as she locked herself in her bedroom.

It was oddly relaxing to suddenly be free of the Campbell
drama and safely shut away. Clara dumped her bowl of trifle, lemon torte and
chocolate mousse on a writing desk and began spooning her way through while
composing a letter to her maid, Annie, informing her she was likely to be delayed
in coming home.

Dessert dealt with and the house strangely quiet, Clara
found herself at a loose end. She opened her window a touch as the night was
stuffy and sat thinking of nothing much for a while. She listened to an owl
calling and noted how silent it was in the countryside. At any given time at
her house in Brighton there was bound to be some noise coming from outside.

Just before midnight she gave up trying to think of
something to do and went to bed. Naturally this was not conducive to instant
slumber and she lay awake for a while, her mind working over-time.

The woman in the church
had
to be genuine. No one
would try such a scam otherwise, it would be so easy to dismiss. And Andrew had
not said a word, not denied her, not laughed, not even shown a trace of anger.
He was so mute over it all. That chilled Clara. Laura had acted as expected;
complete shock, outrage and horror. She had drooped back in her father’s arms,
clearly overcome. Then there was Mr Pettibone, yes, that was curious. Surely
any normal father would have ranted and raved over his only daughter being so
humiliated? But Mr Pettibone had gone along with things so quietly and meekly.
No furious outpourings. No blustering denials. Was this really the wealthy
businessman Clara had been told about? She supposed everyone had their own ways
of acting; perhaps Mr Pettibone was not the demonstrative type. Glorianna, at
least, had acted true to form.

So, if the crisis were true, as it very much seemed to
be, where did that leave things? And what did it say about Andrew? Well, in the
second case it meant he had lied and kept secrets not only from his wife-to-be,
but his family too. Tommy was probably right in that it was a wartime fling, a
moment of madness that Andrew had endeavoured to forget. But secrets like that
tend to catch up on people. Had he really thought he could get away with having
two wives? Surely he realised once it was in the papers there was a high chance
his first wife would see it? Or had he made arrangements with her, expecting
her to keep her distance and she had reneged? That was always possible. In any
case the matter had to be resolved and that left two options; return to his
first wife or petition for a divorce. Option one was liable to be difficult.
Andrew had left his wife and Clara was of the opinion that if a man abandoned
his spouse, press-ganging him into coming back was not going to result in
marital bliss. Perhaps, Clara told herself, that was blatant cynicism. But she
knew of few cases of people being forced into doing something they didn’t want
to, where they ended up liking the situation. It went against human nature.
Force a person and they had a natural instinct to revolt.

That didn’t mean she was softening to Andrew’s plight. He
had been a cad. Whatever her thoughts on the woman in red, Andrew had married
her, taken sacred vows and then run off. Supposing, just supposing, there had
been a real reason. Perhaps the woman had gone first, or he had thought her
dead, then that might just excuse his actions. Yet even so he should have
checked before his second marriage and assured himself he could legally wed
Laura. Imagine if they had had children and then it had all come out! Any
offspring would be illegitimate and Laura would have been doubly disgraced! It
was all so horrid a thought.

Well, if Laura could forgive him, and as Peg had said
that would take some doing, that left only one option – a divorce. Which was
messy, public and controversial. They would not be able to wed in a church for
a start, and there was a dreadful stigma attached to divorcees, more so women
than men, but still…

Laura would need to be prepared for scandal. It would be
a real test of her love for Andrew, if not her endurance, and that was assuming
her father was prepared to have his daughter marry a divorced man. Very
complicated.

Clara rolled over on her side and watched the hands of
her wristwatch ticking round slowly in a shaft of moonlight. Pity Andrew wasn’t
a widower, that would have made things so much simpler. Widowers were allowed
leeway, they were pitied not derided. They were victims, not sinners. Perhaps
Andrew had convinced himself the woman was dead and that it was fine to marry
Laura. If he had he had been extremely foolish. What a mess this all was!

Clara yawned and snuggled down in her pillow. Sleep came
smoothly on despite her over-indulgence on sugar.

She was woken at quarter to one by the cold draught
coming in the window. She roused from her bed, freezing, and went to shut it. A
car roared throatily somewhere in the distance as she dropped the sash and it
made her wonder if Andrew was home yet. Had he really gone to look over his
car, or had he paid a call on his wife?

Clara dropped back on the bed and drew up the blankets,
aware she was suddenly wide awake again. She had been dreaming of the wedding
vividly, the woman in red had been as clear as a photograph down to her hat and
shoes. The more Clara thought of her, the more she sensed the wrongness of it
all.

The woman had been wearing a dress in the latest style,
dyed scarlet but there had been a hint of faded charm about the outfit. It was
possibly homemade from a pattern book. There had been something about it that
implied it was trying to mask an otherwise impoverished lifestyle. Her shoes! Yes
her shoes had been old, but recently polished. When she walked they were badly
scuffed on the soles and she had not worn stockings. That had not registered at
the time, but now it struck Clara for stockings were such an essential of life,
yet they could also be expensive.

She had had no jewels, except a half-hidden string of
pearls, only they could easily have been costume jewellery from Woolworths, at
a distance it was hard to tell. The hat was nondescript, a little knocked out
of shape. It had had sequins, but Clara was certain some had been missing.
However the woman’s make-up had been perfect, if heavy. She was masking her
age, but nothing could hide the crows’ feet at her eyes and the thin lines
along her lips from smoking. She was older than Andrew and it had shown.

But the fur stole! Oh that had caught Clara’s eye at once
because it was thick mink, fawny brown with a soft cream lining. The sort of
thing you wore in the depths of winter for warmth and there she was swaddled in
it on a balmy spring day! It was so out of place, except it wasn’t. Not if the
woman was intending to prove that at one time she had been loved by someone who
could afford such things for her. Not if the mink had been given to her by
Andrew. Oh yes, she would wear it then. Her one prize from her wedding. She
would wear it and march up the steps of the church and rub it in Laura’s face.
Look what he gave me, just look!

Clara collected her thoughts, what did this tell her
about the woman? Well, she was used to poverty and it was real poverty, the
kind where even the essentials of stockings were unaffordable. The dress was
homemade, maybe even borrowed, the shoes were likely her only pair polished up
for the occasion. The hat had been battered around, handled a lot, maybe even
been in and out of the pawn shop. But she had once known such wealth it had
spun her head. The mink was worth a fortune, she could have sold it at any time
to feed herself or buy dozens of stockings. But she kept it because it meant
more to her than money, it represented a lost love, a moment of hope when she
had thought she could rise above her poverty and be something else.

Who was she? Clara didn’t like to think it, but she had
the hallmarks of a woman of the night. They were far from infrequent in Brighton
and they were made by poverty. There had once been a reform home for them in
the town, but more often than not the girls came to the seaside resort because
of the money that could be made from the tourists and the soldiers stationed
nearby. Clara had seen prostitutes haunting the town. It wasn’t precisely hard
during the season. Her mother had told her not to look at them, but it was difficult
not to when they were dressed to dazzle and falling off the arms of some toff
with too much money and not enough discretion. For all their flaunted ‘good-times’
and cheeriness, there were grim lines on their faces which they tried to mask
with heavy powder. It made her think so much of the woman in red’s face. Those
same lines, that same hardness. In their world it was girl against girl, anyone
younger than you was a threat and treated with disregard and no sympathy. Why
should Laura be viewed any differently?

Clara shuddered off that line of thought. It had all
grown so muddled and dark, now she was comparing marriage to prostitution. Yet
it made sense. During the war London was a regular stopover for men on leave,
some preferred to stay there and indulge rather than go home. Indulging meant
drinking, sometimes drugs, and very often women – the bought kind. The truth
was prostitution had become quite a business in those strange days and the
police were barely able to keep on top of the brothels and call-girls. So
Andrew wanders into a den of vice and he meets a woman, and he likes her, he
thinks himself in love even. Then tomorrow he is headed to war, perhaps he
shall die on the front and he is swept up in a tide of passion and fear, and he
thinks he shall marry this woman, the woman he loves. He shall go to the front
with a sweetheart’s name on his lips.

Clara paused. Had Tommy ever done something like that? If
he had, would he even tell her? She was not naïve, or stupid. The men who
refrained from consorting intimately with girls, whether prostitutes or not,
were remarkably few. She would not blame Tommy if he had, she didn’t blame any
of them. Not when the future they faced was so bleak.

Clara shut her eyes and concerned herself with falling
back asleep. Her clock ticked reassuringly and the silence seemed peaceful,
even if it hid a wealth of torn emotions. Slumber found her again.

When she woke for the third time she wasn’t sure the
cause. Her wristwatch said five minutes past four and there was a faint glow
outside that hinted at dawn not being far off. Clara rolled onto her back and
heard the sobbing. It was a woman weeping, softly but heavily. Perhaps she
would never have heard it, never have woken from her sleep, had it not been so
near. Clara drew a mental picture of the house in her mind and tried to think
whose room was closest to hers. Susan’s bedroom was surely just above her. It
could easily be Susan who was weeping so solemnly. Clara listened a while, she
was not tempted to go up and check on her. People who pick the middle of the
night to start crying usually do so because that is the time when they are least
likely to be disturbed by a well-wisher. They don’t want someone to creep in
and start sympathising.

If it was Susan, Clara fully understood her anguish. She
could be weeping for the sake of her friend’s broken marriage, but weeping in
young women is usually self-centred, unless they are mothers. Weeping comes
from the heart and it tends to break when we are weakest and when we are
thinking the hardest of ourselves. Clara knew what that was like. She only ever
cried in private and when she did it was because something had penetrated her
usual shell of self-confident calm. She wouldn’t be surprised if Susan was
weeping over her own misfortunes in life. Her bubbliness masked a deep-centred
unhappiness. Susan was lost, she didn’t know what she wanted from life, yet at
the same time she wanted
something
. She had no husband, which might have
been off-set if she had a career of some description, even a hobby, but she had
none and, truth be told, life as a housewife was still the only career most
women could expect. So she was jealous and that made her feel guilty, and guilt
made her angry at herself and so she wept.