The Perfect Daughter (29 page)

I put Bill's letter in my bag along with a notebook and a change of underwear, locked up and walked down the hill to the underground station, not bothering to check for watchers on street corners. As far as I was concerned they could be three deep behind every chimney stack. The game had gone beyond that now. I got to Paddington, bought a return and had a cup of tea and a dried-up cheese sandwich in the buffet, not because I was hungry but because I couldn't remember whether I'd eaten anything since the fish and chips at Southend. Heading south-westwards in the train – more fields, wider rivers – I started thinking again about Bill and the telegram. I guessed he was spending the weekend walking in the Pennines with his deerhound, Roswal, for company then called myself a fool for imagining just him and the dog. Why not another woman? Fool again because what did I mean,
another
woman? That implied there was a first one and a few hours on the moors didn't mean I'd accepted that vacancy, or even that it had been offered to me. ‘…
a right to be concerned
…' I got the letter out, re-read it and, for the first time, began to wonder if Bill's weekend away might be connected with all of this. Surely he couldn't have known about Verona and Vincent Hergest and Yew Tree Cottage. Or was it just possible he'd drawn conclusions from the two of them being together at the deputation, gone to confront Hergest and … There was a smear of something sticky on the armrest of the seat – jam, ice cream? A fly had settled on it, proboscis spearing into the stickiness, its whole body throbbing with sucking it in. I remembered the flies in the boathouse and felt sick and terrified. He wouldn't do that. He was methodical, cautious in his way. ‘…
I suppose I am, by your standards cautious and conventional … But I'm not, I hope, passive and – with luck – may be able to prove that to you…
' When I re-read that I tried in my head to send him back to the Pennines, with a whole bevy of other women if he wanted them, but he wouldn't go.

The journey seemed endless – the sun hardly moving down the sky, long waits at stations where nobody got off or on, the last Sunday in the month of longest days and nobody in a hurry but me. That was until we got to Exeter. I had to change there and was standing by the door as the train slowed down alongside the platform. There were purposeful crowds around and an air of bustle you wouldn't expect on a Sunday evening. A pile of what looked like rolled-up mattresses was stacked on the end of the opposite platform, a man with a clipboard watching them and, of all things, an Army officer in riding boots; cap and Sam Browne belt watching the man with the clipboard. There were more soldiers around on our platform, officers and men, plus civilians in Sunday suits, Boy Scouts and women with a tea urn on a trolley. A young man standing by the tea trolley had a bandage wound thickly round his head like a turban, but the stain had soaked through and the back of the turban was more red than white. The lad beside him had one arm in a fresh white sling and was drinking tea with the other hand. I got out before the train had properly stopped and the whole platform was full of walking wounded, with slings and bandages and crutches, all of them standing there quite stoically talking to each other as if nothing had happened, not even looking at a train on another platform and the team of men carrying empty stretchers inside, stretcher after stretcher, dozens of them. I grabbed a porter who was standing watching.

‘What in the world has happened?'

‘It's all right, miss. Nearly finished now they have.'

He moved off in response to a signal at the other end of the platform. A whistle blew. The wounded men started forming up in rows on the platform. I grabbed a passing Boy Scout and repeated the question.

‘Blueland invaded us at Bridport, ma'am. Thirteen hundred casualties, eleven hundred of them hospital cases.'

He'd learned it by heart.

‘Invaded? Why? What's Blueland?' The feeling of unreality that had been there for days became panic, heart thumping, throat dry. ‘What do you mean? What's happening?'

The wounded men – not even men, most of them looked no older than schoolboys – had lined up now and an officer was making a speech to them, thanking them. At the end of his speech they started laughing and shouting, tearing off slings and bandages and throwing them at each other. A word from the officer and they were quiet and orderly again. Boy Scouts went along the platform, collecting up crutches and soiled dressings. On the far platform the empty stretchers were all loaded and the train was pulling out. My Boy Scout had gone, chasing bandages with the rest. I found a young man in civilian clothes, watching the lines of wounded boys, and asked for the third time what had happened.

‘An exercise. The War Office is running them all over the country.'

‘War Office?'

‘To test our readiness for dealing with casualties if we're invaded by a foreign army. They've been sending them to hospitals all over the place – Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton and so on. Our boys were asked to volunteer to play casualties.'

‘Your boys?'

‘I'm a schoolmaster, waiting to collect our lot and take them home to supper. By the look of them, they've been having the time of their lives.'

He was right. Outside the station there were rows of horse-drawn charabancs waiting for the boys. They were driven away laughing and singing, highly pleased with themselves. Back on the platform, the man with the clipboard and the officer were still watching their mattresses. There was no reason to think that anybody would be looking for me among all the excitement, but if there were War Office people around I couldn't risk trying to get a train connection for Teignmouth that evening.

I found lodgings near the cathedral, got woken by the bells in the morning and caught a local train from a platform as clear of soldiers, stretchers and mattresses as if the exercise had never happened. As the train ran along the estuary of the River Exe a man and a woman in my compartment were tut-tutting over a newspaper, saying something was terrible. I'd bought a paper at the station, unfolded it to see what they were talking about and read that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary, had been assassinated in Sarajevo.

We'd turned the corner of the estuary by then and were running in and out of tunnels in the red rock along the coast. In a few minutes I'd be back on Verona's home territory and still wasn't sure where to start. Fact, Verona had been in Epping. Further fact, she was found dead about two hundred miles away in Devon. Conclusion, she'd gone from Epping to Devon. So how and why? I wished I'd asked the Hergests to let me take away the letter Vincent had shown me, or at least made a copy of it. She'd written about a secret and going away for a few days to put things right. One secret at least I'd known about and one interpretation of the letter was that she was ashamed of having been a spy and was going to resign or retire, or however people in her profession put it. Surely, though, she wouldn't have to go away for a few days to do that. She'd have contacts in London, might even have been meeting Yellow Boater out at Epping. So, if the letter could be taken at face value, that would point to some other secret. A former lover, or perhaps somebody who thought of himself as her fiancé back at home? That would fit, only nobody had mentioned there was anything of the kind and her best friend, Prudence, had implied quite the reverse. She and Verona had promised each other not to get married or ‘silly over men' until they'd done something in the world. Only there had been a lot poor Prudence didn't know. Verona had grown up quite suddenly and left her behind with the puppies. The other passengers were still talking about the assassination.

‘His poor wife too, such a lovely woman.'

‘Austria will have to do something. Bound to do something.'

‘I wish the Tories were back in. You can't trust the Liberals with foreigners.'

Normally I'd have been interested, even joined the discussion, but I was in the state where anything happening outside my own problems seemed frivolous and irrelevant, like having toothache on a grand scale. The discarded fiancé theory might make sense after a fashion – leaving aside that there wasn't a shred of evidence for him so far – but it involved one big and possibly wrong assumption. It assumed that the letter Vincent showed me could be taken at its face value. I ruled out forgery. I was almost certain that the handwriting was Verona's and it had the over-excited style of her earlier letter to Prudence. Verona had written it, but the question was, in what circumstances? Was it dictated to her? Could it even have been suggested to her as some kind of literary exercise? She'd called him ‘Dearest Tutor' after all. It had read to me as artless and genuine, but then I'd been wrong about Verona nearly all along the line and there was no guarantee I'd stopped being wrong now. Assume it wasn't genuine – then what? The first thing was that there was no proof that Verona had made the last journey of her own free will – or even conscious. The Hergests had several motorcars and Valerie had proved she was capable of driving herself to Devon. ‘
Val, my more-than-sister
' at the steering wheel with a girl, morphine-doped, curled up in the back seat. The train came alongside the platform at Teignmouth.

*   *   *

At one stage in my varied education, I was taught by a schoolmistress who said that when you were in doubt about what to do, you should choose the option you least wanted and get on with it. It didn't stop my friend and me getting into serious trouble when we climbed the bell tower to put a bedpan on top of a gargoyle and claimed in defence that it was what we'd least wanted to do on a frosty midnight. She was stronger on morality than logic, but in fairness to her we still had ten years of Queen Victoria's reign ahead at the time. The memory of that schoolmistress came back to me for the first time in years as I was walking between my cousin Ben's white gateposts at the top of the drive leading to his house. Of all the things that I might have wanted to do, confronting Ben and Alexandra came at the bottom of the list, which would have made it the right thing by her standards, but there was logic to it as well. Either Verona had come home of her own free will, or she hadn't. If she had, then the letter to Vincent Hergest was probably genuine and she'd gone to put something right, and if there had been something that needed putting right at home, surely her father or mother – especially her mother – would have known or guessed.

The gateposts gleamed white, newly painted. The fuchsia bushes on either side of the drive with their dazzle of red-and-purple flowers were the kind you can find growing wild in the West Country but these specimens were disciplined and well drilled and the yellow gravel as bright as if it had been holystoned at dawn. There was a flagpole to the right of the gateway from which Ben had the irritating habit of flying the Union Jack when in residence but today there was no flag. It wasn't till then I remembered Ben wouldn't be at home. In that talk with Admiral Pritty, which seemed like weeks ago but could only be a matter of days, he'd told me Ben was back at sea already. I profaned his gravel with my footsteps, walked up the three granite steps into the porch. There was a tall wickerwork basket to the side of the royal-blue front door, stuffed with golf putters and croquet mallets. My knock echoed hollow and empty inside and I more than half-hoped Alex had gone away.

‘Good morning, ma'am.'

The maid who opened the door was very young, no more than fifteen or sixteen. She looked worried. A Siamese cat rubbed against her calves and gave me a go-away look from its blue eyes.

‘Good morning. Is Mrs North at home?'

‘I don't know if she's seeing anybody, ma'am.'

Then, from inside, Alexandra's voice, sounding weary, ‘Who is it, Jenny?'

I gave my name. The maid disappeared inside and came back, still with the cat following her.

‘Mrs North says to please come in.' She gathered up the cat, draped it over her shoulder. ‘Drive you mad, they would.'

I followed her down the corridor and she nudged open a door at the end of it on the right. I knew the room from some family occasion, a lounge with a relaxed and floating feel that probably had more to do with Alexandra's taste than Ben's. The floor was polished wood with a scattering of rugs in bright jewel colours – garnet, amethyst and topaz – with cushions and drapes in the same colours flung over an assortment of unmatched but comfortable chairs. Even so, Ben's taste had barged its way there, with models of every ship he'd served in or commanded lording it on shelves, tables and windowsills. The room was built for the view over the estuary with a huge window taking up most of the outside wall. The tide must have been nearly full, because there was a great sweep of blue water with a few white sails.

Alexandra said, ‘Good morning. Did you find your way here all right?'

It was as if she'd learned the words carefully in a foreign language. Although the maid had told her my name, it hadn't registered. The room was awash with pitiless light. It looked as if she'd tried to keep it out because she'd drawn up a tall screen on her right. The screen was covered with cut-out pictures of flowers, animals and sailing ships, the kind of work that good children are encouraged to amuse themselves with on rainy holidays. In the early morning it would have given some shade but now the sun was high and beat through the big window on to the armchair where she was sitting, the table beside it covered with cards and papers, the sherry decanter and half-full glass. Her hair was tidy, her white blouse and black skirt pressed and neat, her eyes desperate.

I said, ‘I gather Ben's away.'

She nodded. ‘On his ship, in the Bay of Biscay.'

‘I'm sorry.' I wasn't, but she seemed so desperately lonely, marooned in all that sunshine.

‘It's his duty, you see.' She'd had a sherry or two, but she wasn't drunk, just absent. I still didn't think she'd registered who I was, but she was being polite.