A Presumption of Death (11 page)

‘I brought you a little bacon to go with some of those eggs,’ said Harriet. ‘Mrs Trapp has a whole side of bacon sent down from the Duke’s farm at Denver last week, and she wishes to repay favours with a few rashers while she has some to spare.’

‘Oh, oh!’ cried Miss Twitterton, clasping her hands together in evident delight. ‘Oh, she shouldn’t have, Lady Peter! I only gave her an old hen past its day for laying; just once. I suppose the Duke can get a slaughtering licence any time he wants. But the bacon ration is so mean, isn’t it? Just four ounces for a whole week! I am most grateful.’

‘I haven’t asked about licences,’ said Harriet, ‘and I don’t think I will enquire. The Duke raises prize pigs, and I suppose he has to kill one of them now and then.’

‘Oh, quite so. Least said soonest mended. I don’t think those people in London making up the regulations have the least idea what usually goes on in the country. And you know, Lady Peter, if they try to stop country people keeping the food they raise themselves, and grow themselves, they won’t have piles of country produce going off into the cities; they’ll just have less food all round. Calling it the black market, when it’s only what has been going on since well before the Kaiser won’t help – it just gets up people’s noses.’

‘I suppose you’re right, Miss Twitterton. But before I go I did have something to ask you. Mrs Spright tells me she sees you going past her place late at night. I am sure there is an innocent explanation.’ Harriet saw in astonishment that bright red patches had appeared on Aggie Twitterton’s cheeks. She was wringing her hands in agitation. ‘I was sure I had only to ask . . .’

‘I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong!’ cried Miss Twitterton. ‘It isn’t any business of that Spright woman, it isn’t anybody’s business, not even yours! It’s completely secret.’ Then she added, more calmly, ‘It’s confidential. I gave my word not to tell anyone, and I won’t. Not
anyone
. It isn’t against the law to go walking down the lanes and in the woods. I’m not breaking blackout; nobody can tell you they’ve seen me with a torch. I shall keep my counsel, and that’s that.’

‘Well of course,’ said Harriet, both surprised and embarrassed. ‘I’m sure you have your reasons. I won’t press you about it.’

‘What does that old fool say about me?’ asked Miss Twitterton. ‘Does she say I murdered Wendy Percival? You know that I didn’t, Lady Peter, because we were down the shelter together. I suppose she thinks I’m a German spy. Let her, say I; she’s saying that about anyone and everyone, even the dear vicar. Right off her head, she is.’

‘Yes, I rather think she is,’ said Harriet ruefully. If Mrs Spright was obviously potty, what was she doing asking Agnes Twitterton about her allegations? And yet Miss Twitterton had not denied going up to the woods after dark, had indeed confirmed it.

‘She used to be a very good dentist,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘I never went to her myself; I always go to Mr Pargeter at Broxford for my teeth. But so I have been told. You won’t be cross with me, Lady Peter, for keeping a secret from you? I quite hate not being able to tell you, but you see, I did give my word of honour.’

‘Of course I won’t be cross,’ said Harriet. ‘A promise is a promise; I do understand that. I’ll see you at choir-practice on Wednesday.’

And indeed, Harriet was not cross with her friend, just severely puzzled. Could Miss Twitterton have remembered the awful crisis during the investigation of the Noakes murder, when Harriet had told Peter about the Twitters’ involvement with Crutchley, and Peter had told the police? Miss Twitterton had not asked for secrecy on that occasion, but confidentiality had been implied, and the confidence was misplaced. But that was nearly four years ago, and seemed never to have cast a shadow on friendly relations so far. Indeed Miss Twitterton had seemed overjoyed when Harriet arrived in the village complete with family and appendages, to stay for the duration.

Harriet’s meditation on this subject was interrupted by meeting Mrs Ruddle, coming laden from the village shop, and falling in with Harriet since their way lay together as far as the Talboys gate.

‘I’ve been saying to Mr Willis while he weighed my bit of cheese,’ offered Mrs Ruddle, ‘as how there’s some people really are
perculiar
. There was Mrs Hodge’s Susan in the shop with me, buying her bacon ration, what lets out her cottage to that Lieutenant Brinklow, and she says he’s got the most horrible toothache, been going on for days, she says, and she told him last Tuesday as how he did ought to go to the dentist, and he wouldn’t hear of it, and now she says his poor face is all swoll up as how you’d hardly reconise him. And he must be in agony, Mrs Ruddle, she tells me, in pure agony, and she says to him, well, now surely you’ll go to the dentist, and he says to her as how he can’t bring himself, along of being terrified of dentists so as he’d rather have the pain. So I says to her, Susan, I says, it isn’t just pain you’re talking about there, but you can get poisoned blood off of a rotting tooth, I said, like my cousin’s sister’s hubby over Lopsley way what nearly died of it. Well, I know that, Mrs Ruddle, she said, but what can I do? I can’t make him go, can I? He says as how he wouldn’t trust a dentist except down in London. I ask you, I says. Him a pilot what flies off to fight with them Messysmiths, brave as a lion in a plane, and afraid of a dentist, what can you say?’

‘What indeed, Mrs Ruddle?’ said Harriet.

Francis Bacon, ‘Of Marriage and Single Life’,

Essays
, 1625

When she got home she heard laughter coming from the kitchen – adult laughter – and she found her sister-in-law, Lady Mary Parker, formerly Lady Mary Wimsey, sitting at the kitchen table being plied with tea and talk by Mrs Trapp. Mrs Trapp, she realised, must have known Lady Mary from a babe in arms, and as was the way with family servants (the things that marrying Peter had enabled Harriet to know about!) spoke with deep familiarity and scant courtesy to the grown people the family children had become.

‘What a set of young savages you’ve billeted on her ladyship!’ Mrs Trapp was saying. ‘Greedy as gannets; always hungry and running wild. I’m surprised you’re not ashamed to show your face here as their mother.’

‘Oh, come, Mrs Trapp,’ said Mary. ‘At least they weren’t sewn into their vests for the winter and full of head-lice like the evacuees we read about in the newspapers.’

‘I’ll give you that, m’lady,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘The poor little mites. Perhaps this’ll open people’s eyes to what has been going on. My niece in the Salvation Army has tales to tell as would make your blood run cold. Working in the East End is worse than missions in Africa, she says. She says the more of the slums Hitler knocks down the better it will be, as long as the people are down the Underground at the time, of course.’

‘Mary!’ said Harriet. ‘How good to see you.’

‘I’m missing the children so much Charles sent me up a day early,’ said Mary, rising to embrace her. ‘And I haven’t had sight or sound of them yet. They’re out and about somewhere.’

‘They’ve gone for mushrooms, so they say,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘To help out the housekeeping.’

‘Goodness, is that safe?’ asked Harriet. ‘Or shall we find we’ve been done to death by toadstools supplied by our loving families?’

‘Bless you, I won’t cook what they bring,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘I’ve got a nice punnet of mushrooms in the larder that Bert Ruddle let me have, and I’ll cook those instead.’

‘There I go, underestimating you again, Mrs Trapp. It’s impossible to overestimate you, I think.’

‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ said Mrs Trapp contentedly. ‘Off you go, Miss Mary, and take your tea in the drawing-room as if you’d been properly invited!’

There wasn’t time to talk to Mary at once though. The children came home from the fields in a hand-holding group, with Sadie shepherding them, and offered to Harriet’s fascinated gaze a little family drama. Charlie ran to his mother, offered his cheeks to be kissed, and began at once to tell her about the piglet that would be coming from Bateson’s sow’s litter, and how Sam—

‘Who’s Sam, Charlie?’ asked Mary.

But Charlie’s explanation was long and detailed, and kept falling over itself with his excitement, so that Mary broke into it. Polly was standing in the doorway, seeming almost shy, as though her mother had been a stranger. How long was it, Harriet wondered, since she had seen Mary? Well, it might be eight weeks, and that was a very long time in a life of only seven years.

‘How’s my little girl?’ asked Mary. ‘Is there a kiss for Mother?’

But Polly did not move. She said, ‘Sadie bathes me, and Aunt Harriet reads my bednight story.’

If Mary flinched, Harriet did not see her. She said, ‘Perhaps tonight I could help them?’

Meanwhile little Harriet toddled straight across the room, climbed into Mary’s lap, leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder, and put her thumb peaceably into her mouth.

Big Harriet intercepted her own two, and carried them away to her bedroom, offering stories and sweets, to give the Parker family time to re-form itself. Would Bredon be just like Charlie in six years’ time? she wondered. Was he a mirage of the future of her sons? They could do worse: he was a nice little boy with a kindly disposition towards the babies. And Bredon adored him, and imitated his every move. Only she hoped Bredon would be more light-hearted; Charlie took everything so seriously. But then look at their respective fathers . . .

Later, when the children were asleep, the two women sat comfortably by the fire to talk.

‘Polly’s still a bit strange with me,’ said Mary. ‘I ought to get up here more often.’

‘It’s hardly your fault, when we are sternly enjoined not to travel more than necessary,’ Harriet reminded her. ‘She’ll be all right with you by lunch-time tomorrow.’

‘And she’s been all right here? Not pining?’

‘I’m afraid not. She’s been fine. It’s only when she saw you . . .’

‘And at least mine are with family,’ said Mary. ‘Think what it must be like to have your children with strangers. One of Charles’s officers had to borrow a police car and go and fetch his son home, and the boy had red weals all over his backside. He was being beaten for not eating. Think of it, Harriet, when this war is long over there will be people still alive in the next century who will bear the psychological marks of all this. War damage, so to speak.’

‘Well, I expect there are children who are better cared for than they were at home, too.’

‘Yes, of course. And if bombing were to really start . . .’

‘That would be different, wouldn’t it?’

‘You know, Harriet, London is really strange at the moment. There are sandbags everywhere, and the other day there was an air-raid warning, I think it was another false alarm, and people were trekking through the streets at dusk to get down Underground stations. Air-raid wardens were trying to stop them and direct them to official shelters, but of course they only had to buy a ticket for the Tube, so they couldn’t be stopped, and the surface shelters look pretty flimsy. And at the same time as all this there are still bright young things in posh frocks going to night-clubs and bars, and you can still get a slap-up meal in the big hotels if you have the money, although the Ministry has just forbidden the fish course if you have the main course. And then in the morning all the people stream out of the shelters and trudge home at the same time as the toffs come out of the clubs. It’s like a London-wide version of coming out of the opera as the Covent Garden market got going – you remember what fun that was!’

Harriet, who had not been able to afford opera tickets before her marriage, had not had that particular kind of fun. After her marriage Peter had taken her to the opera, of course, but Bunter had always brought the Daimler to the opera house steps to take them home.

Lady Mary was smiling to herself. ‘All the coster-mongers and vegetable stall-holders and barrow-boys would stop unloading the farm lorries and stand around waiting for us,’ she said. ‘They would cat-call, and yell, “Likes your frock, ducks!” Or, “Cor, that’s cut a bit low that is. That’s a lovely pair of melons, ’ow much do you want for them?”’

Harriet laughed.

‘You’d be picking up your hem to step over cabbage leaves and squashed tomatoes, and the cockneys would yell, “Don’t touch the fruit now! No prodding, just looking afore you buy!” Sometimes your escort would get annoyed,’ said Mary, ‘but the awful truth is, I liked it. Nothing like a wolf-whistle for a woman’s morale!’

‘I don’t know what I’ve been missing,’ said Harriet. Though she was not the kind that got whistled at in the street. ‘So how is Charles?’ she asked.

‘He’s working far too hard. When the bombs start falling in earnest a lot will be expected of the police. I don’t see much of him, so I’ve volunteered as an ambulance driver. But now I wonder if I shouldn’t be here with the children. Or take them to Denver.’

‘I wouldn’t move them again just yet,’ said Harriet.

‘I suppose you’re missing old Peter?’

‘Yes. It makes it harder somehow not knowing where he is.’

‘I expect he’s in Sweden,’ said Mary.

‘Whyever? I don’t think he’s in a neutral country; I believe it’s very dangerous.’

‘I think Sweden might be a way in to Finland. And we have family in Sweden. Delagardies.’

‘But Uncle Paul Delagardie is French!’

‘Likes to pretend so, yes.’

‘Well, if he’s in Finland . . .’ said Harriet, with a sinking heart. The Finns had yesterday signed a treaty of capitulation, ceding a large part of their territory to Soviet Russia. They had exacted a terrible price – maybe as many as a million Russian dead – but they had been overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. There was no comfort in this. Her unfinished sentence hung in the air between them.