A Presumption of Death (10 page)

Peter’s last letter – weeks ago now – had suggested she might use her skills to inspire the public with solidarity and heart for the tasks and suffering ahead of them, but the public were behaving by and large very much better than that stupid Ministry of Morale had expected of them. And Harriet’s skills were not really those of a propagandist; or not directly. Surely she was right to think that making a skirt for her niece Polly was a more important occupation. Faced with the awful possibility that hardship and death lay ahead of the happy gaggle of children under her care, it seemed overwhelmingly important to keep them carefree for as long as possible.

And that might be difficult. Only yesterday Bredon, who was not quite four, spotting a collapsed section of garden wall in the High Street, had asked her if that was war damage. In a way it was, since old Mr Critch had driven into it, after missing the road in the blackout, but how did Bredon know to ask, when she never listened to news broadcasts till the children were in bed, or playing out of earshot?

Sadie had appeared to fetch Paul to bed. Harriet gently eased her supporting arm from under her sleeping son’s head, and handed him over. She tried to gather her thoughts. The children were having a wonderful time, in one way, running almost wild, making friends with village children, always having others to play with. How lonely, by comparison, she herself had been as a child! How lonely, on one level, she was herself now. Missing Peter was something she couldn’t afford to think about, it was too painful, too full of hideous dread. But the fact was, she was also missing her profession. Writing scrappily, constantly interrupted, at a little bureau in the sitting-room certainly wasn’t the deeply absorbing and consoling thing that work used to be. Was that why she had agreed to help Superintendent Kirk? To have something to think about that was not domestic, and asked for powers of reasoning?

If that were the case, then being desultory about it would not do. It wouldn’t do at all. Lord Peter’s consort would have to live up to the challenge.

Harriet felt very disinclined to pursue and interview the local young men without an explicit request from Mr Kirk, and he had apparently set his local constable, Jack Baker, to the task. There was a slight sense of impropriety in asking young people about their dating or their love lives directly, except in some official capacity. She did not herself seem to possess Peter’s wonderful talent for getting people to talk fluently and indiscreetly. Until Miss Climpson had done her stuff and reported back to Harriet, there didn’t seem any way of taking up the gauntlet, except following up the gossamer lead offered by Fred Lugg’s sighting of the mysterious Mrs Spright.

The green banks of Datchett’s Lane were full of primroses, like clots of curdled cream in the grass, and with a receding glimpse of wild violets here and there. The hedgerows on either side were unfurling tiny leaves on every twig, and cheerful with birdsong. Walking down it lightened Harriet’s mood, until the sound of a solitary aircraft overhead reminded her how fragile a peace this was. ‘Be reasonable,’ she rebuked herself. ‘Nothing, not even Hitler victorious, could ever stop an English lane from sprouting wild flowers.’ Mrs Spright’s cottage was the last in the lane, and backed on to fields. Beyond it was a little wood. Seeing the owner in the garden, Harriet lifted the latch of the gate and went in.

Mrs Spright was rather dishevelled, but then she was busy digging over her vegetable plot. She was a large, rather muscular woman, wearing a cross-over pinafore in flowered cotton over her clothes, and with her grey hair restrained by an Alice band which looked as though it belonged on a child’s head rather than a grown woman’s.

‘What a beautiful day!’ said Harriet. ‘That looks like warm work.’

Mrs Spright stood upright, and leaned on her garden fork. ‘We are enjoined to grow vegetables,’ she said.

‘But of course,’ said Harriet. ‘What are you planting?’

‘Beans and cabbages first,’ said Mrs Spright. ‘And carrots, of course, since they help one see in the dark.’

‘I have heard that,’ said Harriet. ‘Is it true?’

‘The dark,’ remarked Mrs Spright portentously, ‘is best for seeing some things that are hidden by day. Yes, Lady Peter, it is true. Also they clean the teeth even better than the proverbial apples.’

‘May I ask you what you have seen in the dark, Mrs Spright?’ said Harriet boldly. ‘On the night of the 17th of last month, in particular. You did not take shelter that night.’

‘Wasn’t a real raid, was there?’ replied Mrs Spright. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea. It’s too damn cold to stand around out here talking.’

The cottage was clean and rather bleak. A number of certificates for achievements in dentistry hung in the hallway, which was also decorated with a display of dark green plates. The sitting-room had brown leather chairs, and a fireplace swept clean and empty. A certain chill about the room, and a number of old newspapers stacked on a pouf, suggested to Harriet that the room’s owner spent little time there, and had little attention to spare for it.

‘Take a seat,’ her hostess said, adding, ‘I don’t usually sit in here. I prefer the kitchen which isn’t overlooked from the road.’

‘Is being overlooked a problem?’ asked Harriet, surprised. ‘Isn’t this the last house? There can’t be many passers-by, surely.’

‘I like to keep out of sight of my enemies,’ said Mrs Spright. ‘I like them not to know if I am in or out, or around and about. Not to know where I am.’

‘What enemies are those?’ asked Harriet. She was getting a distinct uneasy feeling.

‘Spies,’ said Mrs Spright simply, ‘and fifth columnists. They know I’m on to them. And since the authorities don’t do anything about it, Lady Peter, I have to look out for myself. Mark my words, when the Germans invade they’ll be coming for me before many who think themselves too important to act on my information. They’ll have a grudge against me for keeping an eye on them when nobody else believed me.’

‘Are there many spies in Paggleham?’ Harriet asked. Surely this woman was a loony – and yet she might have seen something.

‘Well, if they aren’t spying, I’d like to know what they are up to,’ said Mrs Spright. ‘Sugar, Lady Peter? I’ve stopped taking it myself, but . . .’

‘No, no,’ said Harriet hastily, as a laden spoon was held over her cup. ‘Thank you, but I don’t take sugar in tea. You were saying? What are who up to?’

‘I can’t trust you,’ said Mrs Spright. ‘Half the aristocracy are on Hitler’s side you know.’

‘Not me, I assure you,’ said Harriet. ‘Nor my husband.’ But what form, exactly, did the woman’s evident lunacy take?

‘There’s Aggie Twitterton, for one,’ said Mrs Spright.

‘Good Lord!’ said Harriet, nearly dropping her cup. ‘You don’t suppose Miss Twitterton to be a German spy?’

‘She goes out at night a lot. She’s over here rather a lot, for one who doesn’t live in the village.’

‘Well, she doesn’t live far away. Her little cottage is just outside Pagford, on the Paggleham road. An easy walk in fine weather.’

‘Friend of yours, is she? Someone should ask her what she’s doing after dark, just the same. Then there’s Bert Ruddle. Says he’s poaching when he goes by at night, but I’ve seen lights in the woods, and when did a poacher ever show a light? There are people here claiming to be what they aren’t, and they think nobody can see through them, but I can spot them. That Brinklow fellow. And what about the vicar? Why has he got an iron cross on the kitchen dresser if he isn’t a German? Why does he have Germans living in his house? Answer me that.’

‘I think I can, Mrs Spright,’ said Harriet indignantly. ‘The vicar has the iron cross because it was given to him by a dying German soldier at the Battle of the Somme. He was serving as a stretcher-bearer, behind the lines, being too old for any more active service. The man’s courage made a deep impression on him, and he has kept the cross all these years for that reason. As for the strangers living in the Vicarage, he has taken in some refugees.’

‘He’s taken people in, indeed he has. And then there’s that land-girl. Why was she murdered if she wasn’t a spy?’

‘Did you see who murdered her?’ asked Harriet. Not that anything this woman said could be thought reliable.

‘I could have murdered her myself,’ observed Mrs Spright. ‘I don’t like spies. They are the foulest of the enemy, and the most cowardly, don’t you think? Hanging is too good for them. I saw her running along the street in her tarty dress, but I didn’t see who killed her. No. Can’t help you there.’

‘Did you see anyone else around that night?’ asked Harriet, hope against hope.

‘And if I did who would believe me? The half of the country are in the pockets of the enemy. If you’ve finished your tea, Lady Peter, I’ll get back to my carrots.’

Harriet walked back to Talboys feeling troubled. There was such a poisonous tinge to Mrs Spright’s conversation. Could Aggie Twitterton really have taken to night prowling? And if so what could it be about? More likely a lover than a bout of spying in aid of the enemy. Not that the one was hugely more likely than the other in the case of poor Miss Twitterton. Such a lonely person. Brought up too refined for her station in life, and left high and dry with ideas and manners and aspirations that made her poverty really painful to her. A sort of latter-day version of Miss Bates in Jane Austen’s
Emma
. But however unhappy she was, Harriet was sure Agnes Twitterton was not a German spy. She would stake her life on it.

In that case, of course, there would have to be another explanation for the Twitters’ night wandering. And the simplest thing to do would be to ask her about it. Surely she was enough of a friend to meet the question without taking offence? She and Harriet had got to know one another quite well, and very quickly when Agnes Twitterton’s disappearing Uncle Noakes had turned up in the cellar at Talboys, and disrupted Harriet’s honeymoon. Harriet smiled to herself as this recollection brought into her mind a string of images of Peter: most particularly of Peter calling her Queen Aholibah, and riding a chair wildly like a rocking-horse, then a moment of such depth and stillness between them; and poor Miss Twitterton had burst in upon them, wailing that she could not bear it; a happiness so intense had suffused that moment that it was unbearable both to those it excluded and to those it included and enclosed. Once in a lifetime would be enough for such a moment.

Harriet’s reverie was broken as she turned into the home-stretch towards Talboys by finding Polly waiting for her, swinging on the gate. Polly was a pretty child, much more Wimsey than Parker, with her mother’s fair hair and china-blue eyes, and would-be-firm expression, quite unlike her father’s broad-browed, dark-haired appearance. She was teetering on the brink between baby-childhood and child-childhood. And she was a new experience for Harriet, who couldn’t help noticing, although she tried not to, that Charles and Mary’s daughter had a line to her understanding not available to her own sons. Daughters are different, evidently.

‘Aunt Harriet, couldn’t you help Charlie with his crystal set? Couldn’t you really?’

‘Has it gone wrong again?’ asked Harriet. ‘Bother! Well, I’ll try, but I’m more likely to make it worse than better I’m afraid.’

‘He gets so upset,’ offered Polly, ‘and he isn’t any fun when he’s upset. We want to look for mushrooms in the wood, and Sadie says we can’t go unless Charlie will come to look after us, and Charlie . . .’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Harriet.

It turned out that she couldn’t do anything with the receiver, because it had mysteriously righted itself by the time she got to it. And of course, she realised, if Charlie was tuning in to the Home Service, that could explain why Bredon knew about bomb damage. Should she confiscate the set? What grief she would inflict, if she did such a thing as that. No. Should she try to make sure that Charlie didn’t play the scary bits of news to the younger children? But did they realise what was scary? Could they possibly realise how serious the situation was? Probably it would be more frightening if she tried to prevent them from listening than if she left well alone.

All the same she tried to offer a bit of moral support. ‘Are you listening to much news, Charlie?’ she asked him.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Only about once a day.’

‘You know we are going to win this war, Charlie, however grim the news might be on a given day.’

‘I know,’ he said serenely.

She had come as near to lying to him as a hair’s breadth, though. The trouble with living with children wasn’t what she had thought it would be. They were on the whole as interesting to her as a group of adults; she wasn’t in the least bored with them, although one could see that if one had no helping hands and could never get an uninterrupted moment for oneself it would be very wearing. But they were liable to present one without any warning at all with acute moral dilemmas, like a fatal cosmic game in which the stake was one’s integrity – not truth or dare, but truth or comfort, like this chat with Charlie; justice for all or protection for the weakest, like the other day when Bredon had retaliated against baby Paul throwing bricks.

At least she could look forward to the weekend, when the Parker children could present their moral challenges to their own parents for a couple of days.

Harriet’s visit to Miss Twitterton proved surprising. Miss Twitterton was in the kitchen of her little cottage, carefully weighing out grain into brown paper bags.

‘I used to give them more than this each day,’ she said sorrowfully to Harriet, ‘but now the grain is short . . . I don’t know what I shall do, Lady Peter, when they go off laying, unless we can have our egg rations back when that happens. Mrs Ruddle says we should give up keeping them, that the game won’t be worth the candle by the time the Ministry of Food has tied us all up in knots, but I can’t do without my bantams, eggs or no eggs. I’m used to having them, and they’re company for me.’