A Presumption of Death (18 page)

Then she contemplated turning on the water, finding the gas main, trying for the minimum necessities in her own house, and thought it would be too much trouble. On the other hand if she went across to Bunter’s house, she might wake him before nature would have done, which seemed unkind, or make a third when his wife arrived, which seemed tactless. She felt far too scruffy and underfed to make the journey home as she was. So she remembered the privilege of wealth – she had never entirely got the hang of it – and went to have a bath and breakfast at the Ritz.

When at nine in the morning she returned to Audley Square to pick up that string bag of books, and get over to Liverpool Street for the train home, she was confronted with the astonishing sight of the old Bunter restored to her: Bunter immaculately turned out, scrubbed and shaved and kempt, and clearly lying in wait for her to open the front door.

‘Good morning, my lady,’ this incredible apparition said to her. ‘I trust you slept well?’

‘Thank you, Bunter, yes,’ she said, ‘if less soundly than you.’ Did the ghost of a blush appear on Bunter’s imperturbable countenance? She noticed with a pang of affection for him that, although spruced up, he looked haggard and exhausted, and older than before.

‘I am very afraid, my lady,’ he said, ‘that I perpetrated an indiscretion last night, which I hope you will be kind enough to overlook, indeed put right out of your mind in the circumstances.’

Perhaps the ghost of a blush was now appearing on her own face. While she wondered what to say, he added, ‘I think when you were kind enough to ask me when I last ate, I replied by giving you not the hour of the meal in question, but the location in which it had been consumed. That was officially secret information.’

‘Oh, of course, Bunter. I’ve forgotten it already. I won’t mention it to anyone. The entire family have been consoling themselves with the thought that you and Lord Peter were together. You have a reputation for being able to get him out of a hole.’

‘Thank you, my lady. That was a very different war. This one has asked of us considerably less digging, and considerably more cunning.’

‘I imagine I am not allowed to ask you about the circumstances in which you and Lord Peter went separate ways.’

‘Better not, my lady. But I would like you to know that I left him on an order from him, which I would much rather not have obeyed.’

‘I believe you.’

‘There were two ways home, my lady, of which one was safer than the other. He sent me by the safer one. I now believe that he practised deception on me, my lady, but I did not think of that in the heat of the moment. There were only a few minutes in which to decide.’

‘He
tricked
you?’ There was amazement in her voice. The relationship between man and master which she had observed for so long, and sometimes even with a pang of jealousy, seemed to make such a thing nearly impossible.

‘He suggested that we chose who went by which route by tossing a coin, my lady. I called tails, and he told me it had come up tails. But I did not see the coin myself. Only later did it occur to me . . .’

‘It was a very fair way of making the decision, as between two men both with children, Bunter. I am sure Peter didn’t cheat. Am I allowed to ask you how he was when you last saw him in whatever country?’

‘He was in remarkably cheerful spirits, my lady. He observed that you were an exceptionally clever woman, that he had turned the tables on you at last, and the score was now, so to speak, love all.’

‘Whatever . . . ?’

‘I think he was adverting, my lady, to the difficulties which can arise when people save each other’s lives. May I take this opportunity, my lady, of thanking you on my own behalf, and, of course, on behalf of my wife and son?’

‘Oh, rubbish, Bunter. No, you may not.’

‘One other thing, my lady. I do not clearly recall how I came to be undressed and asleep in my own bed last night.’

‘Neither do I, Bunter,’ said Harriet coolly, meeting his eye. ‘Neither do I. I am returning to Talboys now. Keep in touch.’

Liverpool Street station was besieged with people. A crowd of uniforms all seething around urgently. Harriet was reminded of anthills, and instantly in a huge hurry, since the departures board was announcing her train in only a few minutes, and unburdened with anything more than a string bag and a gas-mask case, Harriet pushed through the throng and found a seat in the first-class carriage. All the class carriages were packed. Faded posters in the carriage she sat in offered wildly unlikely holidays: in sunny Bournemouth, on the Norfolk Broads, or hunting in France.
Hunting in France?
Did nobody think to bring these things up to date?

Harriet loosened the window-strap in her compartment, and lowered the window so that she could lean out and take a last look at London sliding away behind her. A lot of people were missing, or only just catching, the train. And among them she saw a face she knew: that of Flight Lieutenant Brinklow, racing along the platform when the train had already shuddered, and started to move very slowly. He pulled a door open right at the back of the last carriage, after the guard’s flag had dropped and his whistle had blown, and pulled himself aboard. Hadn’t Mrs Ruddle said he wouldn’t have any but a London dentist? Harriet hoped the posh dentist had fixed his now legendary toothache. She settled into her seat and began to read.

She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t get rid of an expectation that she would open a door at Talboys and find Peter home again. That she would be in her husband’s arms again just about at the same time as Hope Bunter arrived in Audley Square.
Jack shall have Jill, Nought shall go ill . . .

Unfortunately a lot could go ill in these unhappy days. On the station at Great Pagford Harriet bought a newspaper. The first civilian to be killed on British soil by enemy action had died in an air-raid in Scotland. And when she reached home there was no Peter, nor any word from him or about him.

Mrs Trapp was plainly very pleased to hear about Bunter. ‘He’s a good servant, my lady, in a world that hasn’t got any too many of them. And what’s even more unusual he’s appreciated for what he does. I’ll be very glad to have him back in the household.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mrs Trapp. Surely he’ll want to be with his own family at a time like this.’

‘He has a living to earn, same as most of us,’ she said. Harriet looked at her in surprise, but she didn’t seem to mean it pointedly, it was just plain statement of fact. ‘Mark my words, my lady, he’ll find a way to be back in harness with Lord Peter if he possibly can.’

‘Well, as to Lord Peter . . .’

‘Have faith, my lady,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘It doesn’t do a body a might of good to be fretting as you’re fretting.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Harriet.

Mrs Trapp was certainly right. If Harriet succumbed to alarm and despondency, where would the household be? There was plenty of distraction however. It was Sadie’s day off. Queenie had last week gone to work in a munitions factory in Birmingham, and was ever so sorry to let Harriet down, but could she go without notice? Harriet had of course let her go. It was raining, and the children were fighting air-battles with and over paper planes down the stairs and through the hallway. Charlie kept asking for paper. He didn’t seem willing to make his planes out of her scrawled-over rough papers, but wanted virgin sheets each time.

‘Couldn’t you buy a nice pad of paper with your pocket money?’ she asked him, mildly annoyed.

‘I did, but it’s all used up,’ he said, so mournfully that she gave in, and let him have a stack of new writing paper.

Then she returned to the task in hand. There were numerous bills to pay, and Harriet was doggedly ploughing through the desk-work with the study door ajar in case the joyful uproar in the hall turned to tears of outrage or injury. When Mrs Trapp appeared to announce Superintendent Kirk, and chase the children into the kitchen to play Ludo and help make apple pie, Harriet was relieved.

‘The inquest will be next Tuesday, my lady,’ said Superintendent Kirk. ‘Can’t hold it off any longer, even if we haven’t got very far. So I thought we had better compare notes.’

‘You won’t want me as a witness, I think?’

‘No, my lady. I’ll have all the principals you identified speak for themselves. You have been a great help.’

‘I can’t have been, I haven’t found anything out.’

‘Well, it’s only in novels that detective work is fascinating and leads quickly to the villain,’ he told her. ‘In real life it’s often as not just plodding. When it isn’t obvious, that is. It’s a serious disadvantage of the war, Lady Peter, that it gives everyone in sight a cast-iron alibi.’

‘Well, if they have cast-iron alibis then they didn’t commit the crime, Mr Kirk. It saves you wasting your time on those who didn’t do it, but can’t remember where they were, or who were wandering about not meeting anyone, or asleep in bed alone, but only a short trot from the scene of the crime. All that sort of thing.’

‘Of course you’re right, Lady Peter. But when we have eliminated all these people who didn’t do it, who is there left? Tell me that.’

‘I can’t. There’s the theory of the passing maniac . . .’

He shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

‘There’s the theory of the person scrambling up the ventilation shaft out of the vaults below the Crown . . .’

‘And this person somehow
knowed
ahead of time that they would meet Wendy Percival coming down the High Street and nobody else in sight? Or acting on impulse like the passing maniac?’

‘Being, in effect, a passing maniac.’

‘The trouble with detective stories,’ he said solemnly, ‘is that—’

‘Real murderers have to have more than opportunity. They have to have been able to
foresee
the opportunity,’ said Harriet. ‘I’ve thought of that. But one thing I did wonder about, Mr Kirk: did anyone check that all those airmen got back to their barracks after the dance, exactly as they should have done?’

‘Oh, yes. First thing we thought about. It’s rock solid; they had to have permission to take the RAF lorry to get over here, and there was a roll-call when they got back. All present and correct. You’ll hear the commanding officer tell the coroner so.’

‘You would like me to be present, then, Mr Kirk, even though you don’t want to call me?’

‘In case something strikes a woman’s eye in the demean-our of witnesses, Lady Peter, yes I would. If you wouldn’t mind.’

‘What do I hear?’ she said. ‘What’s this about a woman’s eye?’

‘I’d have to admit,’ he said, ‘that women are doing very surprising things these days. You’d be amazed what work is being done by the wives of my band of coppers, Lady Peter. We’ve been seriously underestimating the fair sex, I think.’

‘So what has Mrs Kirk been up to?’ asked Harriet, smiling.

‘She’s been organising all those evacuees, Lady Peter. Getting things going for them so the host families have a break one day a week. Running a clothes exchange. You wouldn’t believe how few clothes the little perishers have got with them. Some of them are stitched into strips of old sheets instead of underwear. And some of the host families haven’t got the funds to buy clothes.’

‘Please tell Mrs Kirk that we will sort out everything any of ours have grown out of. I’ll gladly contribute.’

‘Thank you, my lady. See you next Tuesday, at the Crown.’

Harriet returned to her household accounts. Something was niggling in the back of her mind, some small thing which she should have noticed and hadn’t quite registered. To do with Bunter? No, she thought not. But her attention was diverted by the imperious ringing of the telephone. Since the household was now shorter by one pair of hands Harriet went into the hallway to answer it herself. It was the unwelcome voice of her sister-in-law. She would be driving up to Denver at the weekend, and would call at Talboys for lunch on Saturday. She did not ask, she simply declared herself. Harriet did not venture to repel boarders, but meekly accepted her.

Charles Dickens,
The Old Curiosity Shop,

1841

Helen appeared in a kind of ersatz uniform: a dark brown suit with squared shoulders and a military cut. She was very brisk, and evinced such ill-concealed dismay at the appearance of her colony of nephews and nieces at the family lunch table that Harriet dismissed them all to eat in the kitchen.

‘Hooray!’ said Charlie, with maximum tactlessness. ‘Mrs Trapp and Sadie are
good fun
.’

‘Heavens!’ said Helen. ‘Whatever is happening to their manners, Harriet?’

But Harriet, considering that her nephew had been provoked, made no reply.

‘Those Parker children must be a bad influence on Bredon; Paul’s too young, I suppose . . .’

‘Whatever makes you think them a bad influence?’ enquired Harriet, serving out the cheese omelette that Mrs Trapp had provided for lunch. The sight of the omelette briefly diverted Helen.

‘Heavens!’ she said. ‘However many eggs are in this? And just for the two of us.’

‘Dried eggs,’ said Harriet serenely.

‘Look, since I’m here, could you give me a reaction to one or two of these slogans?’ Helen asked. ‘We just can’t get the sort of people we need to dream up nice crisp wording for public information posters, and since you are a writer . . .’

‘I’ll give you a reaction, gladly,’ said Harriet. ‘But I’m not the sort of writer you need. You need someone who works in advertising.’

Helen looked at Harriet, horrified. ‘Do you really think so? Wouldn’t people like that feel a bit uncomfortable? They could hardly fit in . . .’

‘What have you got to try on me?’ said Harriet, hoping to divert the conversation from the social acceptability of advertising men or women.