The Perfect Daughter (18 page)

‘Vincent darling, I think you'd better come. Kitty Dulcie's thrown the man from your publishers into the lily pond and he thinks he's broken his elbow.'

She was flustered, as any hostess might be, but I guessed she wasn't sorry to have an excuse to get him away from me. One glimpse of his tear-washed eyes and rumpled hair was enough to convince her that I'd disobeyed instructions to be careful with him.

‘Not poor little Robbie?'

At least the news seemed to cheer him up, or perhaps it was relief at being rescued.

‘No, the big one from accounts.'

They hurried together back up the lawn. A few words from Valerie drifted back, ‘… told you we shouldn't invite her…' I followed and found that most of the party had congregated round the pond. A plump man, wet as a frog, in a pink-and-maroon-striped blazer was sitting on a bench dripping water onto the gravel. Somebody was making a sling by knotting table napkins together and people were twittering around the flowerbeds asking each other if they'd seen it and if anybody had called a doctor. At some distance from the rest a small woman with dark hair cut very short stood frowning over the lawn. Valerie went up to her, touched her on the arm and said something then they went together into the house. If the woman was meant to be in social disgrace, she didn't seem to feel it. She walked in a jaunty athletic way, with a swing of the shoulders. Vincent, meanwhile, had gone up to the man in the striped blazer and was trying to pacify him.

‘I'm sure she didn't mean any harm, Rodney. Doesn't know her own strength, that's all.'

‘Well, she damned well should. Ju-jitsu be blowed. The woman's a homicidal lunatic.'

A small man in a quieter blazer, Robbie possibly, said, ‘After all, Rodders, you
did
challenge her.'

‘No I didn't. All I asked her was whether she really thought she could throw a normal athletic man and – whoomph!'

‘That was when you grabbed hold of her, um, upper body, Rodders.'

‘Only after she got hold of my wrist.'

A woman in the crowd, trying not too hard to hide her amusement, said, ‘But she was only demonstrating how she'd do it theoretically—'

‘Theoretically, be blowed! She was determined to get somebody in that pond.'

While somebody fixed the sling, Vincent suggested that the victim should come inside with him for a stiff whisky and a change of clothing. They went, Rodney still grumbling but not moving like a man with any bones broken. I noticed that Vincent had given Valerie plenty of time to get Kitty Dulcie out of the way. Those two worked well as a team. After a few minutes I went up to the house myself and found Valerie on the steps, waving off one of the chauffeur-driven cars with a single passenger in the back of it.

‘Was that Kitty Dulcie?'

She turned, and I had the distinct impression that I'd outstayed my welcome too. Still, she was polite.

‘Yes. She has to catch the train back to town for a demonstration she's giving this evening.'

‘I'd hoped for a word with her.'

She looked alarmed. ‘You're not
writing
about this, are you?'

‘No, but I've seen her at Edith Garrud's gymnasium. I wondered if she might be a friend of Verona's.'

‘I expect they would have known each other but Kitty … well it has to be admitted that Kitty is in some ways a rather peculiar young woman.'

I thought, but didn't say, so was Verona. Soon afterwards, when the party was breaking up and we were sorting ourselves into carloads to be driven back the station, Valerie said how nice it had been to meet me and handed me an envelope. I opened it in the train back to London. It was the list of their guests at the young peace-makers' house-party in April. Verona's name was there, along with a dozen others I didn't recognise, though with luck some of them might mean something to Max. In spite of what I'd said to Vincent, I still found it hard to believe that whatever had killed Verona had started there among the ducks and the high-mindedness.

Somebody in the train said, ‘Wish I'd seen the ju-jitsu girl throwing the fat man in the fountain.'

Although I bore the man no grudges, so did I. It would at least have been some reward for an afternoon's work.

Chapter Fourteen

S
OMETHING WAS WORRYING ME ON THE WAY HOME
. It had been worrying me for five days. As far as I could tell, nobody was following me. In the way that even the most outlandish things become commonplace, I'd adapted over the past month to the fact that the watchers were there unless I made a determined attempt to lose them, and it wasn't usually worth the bother. At first I'd dated their persistence from the Bobbie escape episode. Then, more chillingly, from when Verona died. But five days ago in raiding their office over the chart shop, I'd done something they should find unforgivable. Yellow Boater must have recognised me. At the very least, they could have me charged with breaking into the place. So where were they? I was worried when they started following me, scared now they weren't. It meant they were trying different tactics, hollowing out the ground under me. Some day soon a pit would open up and there was no way of telling where or when.

I searched the house routinely when I got home. There was no sign that anybody had been there. The letters and the syringe were still locked in my desk, the inch of black silk thread I'd closed in the drawer was still in place. I picked up the mail and the sight of a Manchester postmark and Bill's handwriting was as reassuring as a landmark when you're lost. His letter was dated Monday, two days ago.

Dear Nell,

I have received your letter with great concern. I wish you had consulted me, or even told me, about what you were planning to do. There's a lot I can't say in this letter, because if you're right, or even halfway right, there may be other people apart from you reading it. But please, please promise me that you won't think of doing anything remotely like that again. Whatever's going on, that can only make things worse.

I'm also, as you may imagine, seriously worried about this business of the work basket. I think you're mistaken in keeping the objects in the house and the only sensible course is to hand them over to the police, with an explanation. If you like, I will get one of my friends who is a solicitor in London to handle the matter for you, but of course I can't approach him until I have your permission. As to how they got there, I have my ideas on that.

I've been giving all this a lot of thought since last week and I'm becoming convinced that you are tackling all this from the wrong end. I can't say more about that until we're together but I'll be making my own enquiries and will let you know the result. Until then, please,
please
lie low, do as little as you can even in suffragette activities and do nothing at all to attract the attention of the police or anybody else.

I suppose you won't like this letter. I can see you biting your lip in that way you have and cursing me for a cautious, conventional, passive lawyer. Well, I am a lawyer and so I suppose I am, by your standards, cautious and conventional (but so, my dear whirlwind, is the greater part of the known world). But I'm not, I hope, passive and – with luck – may be able to prove that to you the next time we meet. If I am lecturing you like an elder brother, please put it down to the fact that I do care about you very much, more than I've been able to say to you when we've been together, and that I hope and believe you've given me a right to be concerned about what happens to you.

Oh my dear, do please for once – for my sake if not for yours – be patient and be careful.

Yours

Bill

I was furious. Let your defences down for an hour or two, and a man assumes that you're simply waiting for him to gallop into view on a white charger – or in this case a bicycle – and start running your life for you. I'd thought that Bill was different and I'd been wrong. How dare he lecture me about not attracting the attention of the police when I'd been playing cat-and-mouse with them for months. What right had he to tell me to cut down suffragette activities, even temporarily? As for giving him a
right
to be concerned … I grabbed a postcard, addressed it to his private address and wrote: ‘I already have an elder brother. I don't need another, thank you.' Then I tore it up and threw it at the overflowing wastepaper basket. He didn't deserve even that. He didn't deserve anything except being ignored. I changed out of my party things and broke the strap on the shoe I'd repaired, cursed a bit, put down fish for the cats. They ate while shooting sidelong nervy looks at me. I made tea and toasted cheese for supper and burned the toast. The rest of my mail was routine, including a polite but pained letter from the London Library asking if it might be convenient to return some of the German fairy-tale books because other people were wanting them. Trying to work off the black mood, I sorted out business letters from the pending pile that deserved uncivil replies, banged away on the Underwood until the keys started sticking then lost a hairpin in the works trying to clear them. At ten o'clock it was still light enough for children to be playing in the street outside, but I'd had enough. I went to bed and, amazingly, went straight to sleep. At four in the morning, with the first light coming in through the gap in the curtains and sparrows making a racket on the sill, I woke up, still angry, but thinking more clearly.

*   *   *

There was one thing in Bill's letter that was worth considering. He thought I was tackling things from the wrong end. I didn't know what he meant by that and certainly wasn't going to ask him but there was a glimmer of sense in the words. Whatever caused Verona's death probably had its origins in those lost nineteen days. I wasn't investing too much hope in Vincent Hergest's house-party. His instinctive reaction that there were no desperate characters on the guest list was probably right. He was too careful of his reputation to take serious risks and I was prepared to bet that Valerie was even more careful on his behalf. I'd show the list to Max in case he recognised any of the names, but even with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the left, that was betting on an outsider. So if that was no good, start at the other end. The people who'd know where Verona was and who she was spying on in those lost days would be her employers, the initials. All I had to do was ask. I laughed out loud, imagining myself walking into the imposing building on Whitehall that housed the War Office and up to the doorman.

‘I want to speak to somebody from a department called MO5 or possibly from SSB. I gather they're fairly new and very secretive. Purpose of visit? To ask them about one of their spies who died. My name? They'll know me as card number 191 on their index.'

Well, it wouldn't be the first time I'd hit the pavement in Whitehall but it wouldn't be much help either. I could hardly put an advertisement on the front of
The Times.
‘North London woman wishes to meet gentleman from the Secret Service for exchange of information.' The ironic thing seemed to be that there was never a secret service man around when you wanted one. A few days ago I'd been over-supplied with them. Now when I wanted to ask some questions they'd all deserted me.

Then it struck me that I could do something about it. Since we broke into the chart shop I'd been waiting for them to take the initiative and they hadn't. Either I could wait patiently or I could do something to provoke them into showing themselves again. At the best of times I'm not good at being patient and with Bill's unwanted advice to lie low still rankling, this wasn't the best of times. So provocation it was. The only question was, what would work best? I thought of my file card: ‘Travels frequently on Continent. Fluent in most European languages.' (They flattered me there, by the way. I'd only rate myself really fluent in French and German.) If speaking foreign languages and travelling abroad were suspicious activities, then I'd give them something to worry about.

*   *   *

First it was only fair to give the London Library its books back so I took the underground to Charing Cross and walked to St James's Square. I handed them in, then started discussing something or other with the man at the returns counter. There was a little queue of people waiting to have books checked out at the counter next door, but it wasn't until I turned to go that I noticed the man at the back of it. He had one book tucked under his arm, and was reading another while he waited, his neat little grey beard angled down at the page. Even then, I only gave him a casual glance but it was the scar that made me stop dead. A pink shiny line down the left side of his face from hairline to beard, dragging down the corner of his eye. I don't know why I was so surprised to see Archie Pritty there. After all, there's no rule that retired rear admirals can't use libraries, and Prudence had told me he spent some time in London. Seeing him unexpectedly brought back all the raw hurt of the inquest and I hesitated, thinking meanly he hadn't seen me and that I might get out before a meeting that could be embarrassing for both of us. Perhaps I thought better of it and made some sound or move, or perhaps he sensed me there. Anyway, he looked up from his book and our eyes met. He seemed startled at first, as if trying to place me, then was courteous.

‘Miss Bray, isn't it? I'm glad to see you again.'

‘How's Alex?'

‘Being brave, as one would expect. If you'd be kind enough to wait a minute while I sign these out, perhaps we could go outside and talk.'

I waited for him to deal with the books and collect his bowler hat from a peg, then we walked together down the steps and into the square. He tucked the books under his arm. ‘An ancestor of mine, involved in the Napoleonic Wars in the West Indies. I'm working on a biography of him, on and off. God knows if I'll ever finish it.'