‘I’m sorry. Forgive me.’ Alec didn’t follow her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he called after her, as loud as he dared.
A roar went up as the trap jerked around the corner. Berserk happiness, far greater than the moment deserved, broke out. Dried flower petals rained on Kitty. She waved with one hand, held up the orb with the other.
The smile on her face revved up the cheers from her subjects. It amazed her, from the other side of her beautiful face, how her features swung into action so readily. She felt her lips pull back, she felt the slight pressure of her front teeth against them, she knew her eyes had creased into slits, she knew her nose had flattened. She felt her freckles sing.
It would ruin it all if she vomited, so she swallowed the foul taste in her mouth. She picked out Caroline, in Doris’s arms. Saw Caroline’s face open like a pansy with amazement at the sight of her mammy in such splendour. Saw Doris press down the cowlick that fell in Caroline’s eyes and hold her up higher to witness Elizabeth I’s triumphant progress around the duck pond.
Lurching, smiling, Kitty was transformed and so was the village. The pageant would sustain them for another year, despite the needle-branches of the trees and the washed-out sky. They were happy, they were in it together, they were transformed from disparate, desperate people into a patriotic clump.
Good Queen Bess’s loyal, beloved Raleigh waited by the pump in the shape of the vicar. He lacked the legs to carry off hose, but his bejewelled cape was so vivid nobody noticed.
Dan stepped out from the crowd to hand Kitty down from her carriage. He beamed into her face. And Kitty? She beamed back.
The big moment was upon them. Kitty stood, pole star of Ambridge, with everybody watching.
Everybody except Mr and Mrs Pargetter. Pamela was listening to something her husband was saying into her ear, her head bowed and to one side, her Elizabethan get-up adding to the grace of how her neck curved.
‘It’s done,’ he said.
Pamela straightened and watched the vicar throw down his cape. Clumsy, not as rehearsed. She applauded with the crowd. She clapped very hard.
At her feet, Mavis did a minuscule shit on Alec’s shoe.
* * *
It was midnight or later. The moon was put out. Ambridge was dark.
Hunched, his nose to his knees, Dan suspected that Alec was asleep beside him. This bush opposite The Green was no feather bed, but Alec had come straight from The Bull, and then taken a nip from his flask every two minutes. Dan had refused the Scotch; they were on maypole duty, and you wouldn’t find Dan Archer asleep at his post, no sir.
Hang on! What the blazes? Why was Walter Gabriel in bed with Dan and his Doris? Muggy, he began to protest but other details bothered him. There was no bedroom wallpaper, just the cold slap of outdoors. And that wasn’t Doris beside him!
Dan hastily un-spooned himself from Alec and creaked to his feet. ‘Say that again, Walter? I wasn’t asleep, just—’
‘I got him! The letter bastard! I got the blaggard!’
Wrapped in Walter’s thick arms, the figure struggled but only in a token way. Limp, head bent, frame buried in a military greatcoat.
Dan plucked off the beret, roughly unwound the scarf. ‘Good God.’ He drew back, as if the letter writer was indeed poisonous. ‘It can’t be,’ he said.
‘Good evening, Dan,’ said Blanche.
* * *
They spoke in whispers.
They were not in church, they were in the parlour at Woodbine Cottage. Blanche was upstairs in her bed, and Morgan was attending to her.
In rag curlers, Jane was diminished, a doll. Furniture had frozen in the room, all wore coats. Except Agnes. The crow was busy, buzzing from kitchen to parlour and up the stairs, keeping up a supply of watery Ovaltine and salty one-liners. She wore her brooch every day now, despite Jane’s disapproval of such ‘showy’ jewellery on duty. It glowed in the lamplight as she nipped about the cottage.
Alec was there, blank-eyed, and Walter, glorying in his role as saviour of Ambridge. Dan couldn’t sit still. ‘Blanche,’ he kept repeating. ‘Blanche?’
‘But how?’ Jane added little except questions. She was drowning. A current far beneath that had always tugged at her toes now had her legs. ‘I blame myself.’
‘Pish.’ Agnes sounded more angry than consoling.
Dan stepped in. ‘Now, Jane, you’re not to do that. Your sister…’ He hesitated; nobody knew better than Dan Archer how thick and muddy blood ties could be. ‘Blanche fooled us all, not just you.’
‘A spot of something stronger, gents?’ Agnes winked. ‘In your Ovaltine?’
Nobody refused.
A call from upstairs. Morgan used the voice he reserved for homes of the dying. ‘Miss Gilpin is ready to see you now.’
Slotted in like knick-knacks at a second-hand emporium, the men lined the walls of Blanche’s bedroom. All was peachy, tranquil, low-lit. All was sour, and baffled.
By the head of the bed, Morgan said, ‘I’ve examined Miss Gilpin.’ There was distance now from their friend and neighbour; she was a ‘Miss’. ‘I have found nothing wrong with the patient’s legs. She has complete mobility. She is well enough to answer your questions.’
‘This,’ said Blanche, ‘is a kangaroo court and I don’t recognize it.’
Jane covered her face with her hands. She sat forward, and her wrap gaped to show her chicken chest.
‘Would you rather,’ asked Morgan, ‘that we fetch the police?’
There had been a hurried consultation between the men. Wasting police resources in wartime was, they agreed, wrong. None of them needed to say aloud that they didn’t want this getting out beyond the village.
It was, essentially, a family matter.
‘I’d rather,’ said Blanche, ‘you let me get some sleep.’
Glances were exchanged. Evidently nobody had shown Blanche the script; where was her humility? Her mortification? Leaning against a bookcase of romance novels, Alec was elsewhere, somewhere unpleasant by the look on his face, and Dan’s questioning frown didn’t bring him back to them.
Their natural leader having abdicated, Morgan stepped up. ‘Miss Gilpin, it’s clear that you’re responsible for the spate of malicious notes that have blighted the village. What do you have to say for yourself?’
Blanche looked at the beamed ceiling. Then, as if bored, at her hands.
Suddenly, vehemently, Jane said, ‘Why’s she in bed? She can sit.’ Her face contorted and she growled, ‘Put her in a chair.’
The men were irresolute. ‘Well,’ said Morgan, but went no further.
‘It’s all the same, surely,’ said Dan.
‘It is not.’ Jane seemed to notice her dressing gown was scandalously open and pulled it around her. She wished Denholm were here, to take charge, to protect her from the she-witch masquerading as her sister. ‘Get her up!’ Jane didn’t look directly at Blanche. As if that might burn her retina. ‘Get her out of that bed.’
‘Will you agree to sit on this chair?’ Morgan set down a pretty, spindly boudoir seat.
‘No.’
More glances. More disquiet.
‘I believe we can get through our business without moving Bl— Miss Gilpin,’ said Morgan. His tie sat sideways and he had brushed only the front of his greying hair when pulled from his bed.
‘Get on with it.’ Walter’s beery fragrance argued with the tuberose of the bedroom. His meaty arms were crossed, his fingers tapping impatiently. ‘We know she done it, she knows she done it, don’t matter if she’s lying in the bed or dancing on the bloody roof.’
‘True,’ said Morgan, ‘but we must proceed with some semblance of order.’
‘You did it, Blanche.’ Jane looked at her at last, all venom, a wasp in curlers. ‘Just admit it. You’ve dragged dear friends through the mud. When I think of Nance and Pamela and heaven only knows who tonight’s victim was.’
Dan perked up. ‘That’s a point! Walter, did you find a letter when you tackled Blanche?’
/> ‘Nah.’ Walter shrugged.
‘We must search.’ Dan was always grateful for something practical to do. ‘Can’t have some poor soul happening on slander about themselves.’
Blanche spoke. She was bored. ‘It’s not slander, though, is it? It’s all true. Nobody can say I smeared their good name. I simply shone a light on their true selves.’
‘And who made you God Almighty?’ Walter’s head wobbled. ‘Eh? Who gave you the right to pick out all the little things what folk have done and show ’em off to the world?’ He pushed something deeper into his pocket. If Blanche wasn’t so compelling a figure, if Alec had been taking note, it might have been noticed.
‘Don’t pretend you’re righting wrongs,’ spat Jane. ‘You make up horrible lies, you’re not a public service! You just want to do damage. Morgan here knows full well what a liar you are. How can you look him in the face when you claimed his father-in-law is German? And Alec? The things you said about him are unforgivable.’
Morgan flicked a look at Alec, but Alec was elsewhere entirely. He took another run at it. ‘Miss Gilpin, it may go better for you if you refrain from justification and simply explain yourself.’
In the silence that followed, Agnes spoke. Nobody had noticed her, neatly hidden between the bookcase and the door. ‘Hold on, something’s fishy here. The second letter was about Blanche, weren’t it? She’d hardly bad-mouth herself!’
Jane said, ‘You’re forgetting how clever my sister is, Agnes. Letter number two put her above suspicion.’
‘Ooh yes, I get it.’ Agnes seemed impressed by Blanche’s guile, and asked her, ‘’Ere, are you really having it off with Whitey White?’
‘If I were to have it off, as you put it, I’d set my sights considerably higher than Whitey, I assure you.’ Blanche was simmering. Like a rocket preparing to blast off.
A personality like hers could never be contained in a frilly single bed. She punched her pillow, all eyes upon her, and settled herself comfortably. ‘If you’re waiting for a boohoo apology you’ll be waiting all night. The best I can tell you is that it gave me something to do.’ She held out her hands. ‘There,’ she said.
‘Shocking,’ whispered Jane. Humiliation crept over her like moss.
Morgan said, ‘I see it now. This bed is the fulcrum of village gossip. All you had to do was turn it into something salacious.’
‘It’s all catalogued up here.’ Blanche tapped the side of her head. ‘I know everything.’ She savoured the word. ‘People are indiscreet around me, thinking it’ll go no further, they’re only telling a poor cripple.’
‘And of course you’re adept at opening people up,’ said Morgan.
‘She’s like a squirrel,’ laughed Agnes. ‘Only she goes for scandal, not nuts.’
‘But it’s not merely listening to what people say.’ Jane was agitated. They were fudging an important point. ‘She makes up these insinuations.’
Nobody backed her up. The men were quiet. Agnes folded her arms, as if relishing her front-row seat at the discomfort in the room.
Dan, who missed his bed and missed his wife and missed the very recent good old days when the letter writer was some faceless git, said impatiently, moving matters along, ‘First off, how come she doesn’t have polio?’
‘Hmm.’ Morgan blew out his cheeks. ‘I’ve never, well, one doesn’t, I didn’t question the diagnosis. I took over Blanche’s care when she was…’ He hesitated; gallantry forbade him name too precise a year. ‘She was in early middle age, and had been crippled since girlhood so I assumed…’
‘I did have polio,’ said Blanche. ‘It was horrible and I was far from home with stupid Aunt Maud over in the United States. It was mild. A temperature. A fever. But Auntie died before she could cable home the good news that I made a good recovery.’
‘So, as far as the family were concerned,’ said Jane, creeping along the story, ‘you were terribly ill and getting worse, when in fact you were better.’
‘I was wheeled onboard for the voyage home. Just a precaution, because I’d been bed-bound. I was tired and exhausted, bereaved, and quite alone. People were kind. I was a celebrity.’
Dan understood. ‘You liked being the centre of attention, so you stayed in your wheelchair when you got home.’
‘It was a game, at first. Then Mother and Father were so solicitous. They’d rearranged the whole house for my comfort.’
‘Not to mention my life,’ said Jane. Her naked anger discomfited the men, who were accustomed to hearing her simper, and to tuning out that simpering. ‘My entire life’s been built around your comfort, Blanche. You’ve made me a handmaiden to nothing.’
‘Nobody forced you into a thing.’ Blanche rolled her eyes; the discussion might have been over a quart of spilled cream, and not a life. ‘Jane, dear, you suit martyrdom. What else would you have done? You’re hardly marriage material.’
‘Blanche!’ said Dan.
‘You old bitch,’ muttered Walter.
Jane thought of Denholm now, the man she had given up for Blanche. She thought of him the way she thought of her parents’ house; a crumbling place she had once loved and was now torn down. She wanted to scream, but that was not allowed.
‘I kept expecting to be found out.’ Blanche sounded amused. ‘Back then, our dear old family doc didn’t even correspond with the American medics. All I had to do was say over and over that I’d had enough of treatments and hospitals, and nobody mentioned cures or therapy again. It’s not your fault, Morgan. My history was set in stone by the time you arrived.’
‘I’ve been your accomplice,’ said Morgan. Perhaps he was remembering all those drives, how he carried his patient downstairs, and used up precious petrol. ‘Alec, there are ramifications to this. Can we really keep it to ourselves, or should we fetch a police officer?’
‘No police,’ said Alec, unfolding his arms, coming to. ‘Let’s wind this up. Everybody’s exhausted, and Jane needs her rest.’
‘I’m perfectly all right.’ Jane bridled at the suggestion. ‘I say we thrash it out. Confess, Blanche, do the decent thing at last. Tell us how you did it.’
Alec pushed his hand over his face.
‘Ugh,’ said Blanche, her mouth turned expressively down. ‘What do you need to know?’ She yawned. She was ruined-looking in the early light. ‘Here goes, for what it’s worth. I wrote the notes with my left hand. Mind you, it still looked like my handwriting. You people, you don’t see what’s right in front of you. For years now I’ve been getting out of bed in the middle of the night to stretch my legs. Yes, Jane, make that face again. I’ve been capering around the house while you sleep. I am your ghostly children, waking you up with creaks and giggles and smashing your eggs on the kitchen tiles. The freedom of it! And then I began to venture out, and ooh la la, the things I saw. People in places they shouldn’t be, with people they shouldn’t be with.’
Alec kept looking at the floor, at the cutesy design on the rug.
‘The best fun was leaving the letters.’ Blanche unfurled a finger for each note’s location. ‘The gate outside the church, that was yours, Alec. Letter number two, I tiptoed into Frank’s yard and hid it in the box of Walter’s rhubarb. That was the one about my torrid romance with the postman. Then, let me think, ah yes, then it was back to the church where Jack Archer grabbed me by the collar and almost put an end to my career. That letter went missing.’ Blanche lowered her chin, looked Dan dead in the eye. ‘I wonder if we’ll ever know what it exposed.’
‘We have no wish to hear,’ said Morgan.
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Agnes.
‘Where was I? That brings us up to date. Tonight I visited the maypole. I knew you two swashbucklers would be lying in wait, but I also know you’re too old for night-long vigils. I didn’t foresee Walter, though. Well done, Walter.’
‘Don’t you well done me.’ Walter, too, was counting on his fingers. ‘You missed out the letter about the Browns, the one as was read out at his wedding.’ He looked a
t Morgan, who clearly rather he didn’t. ‘The one about your new missus, Doc, and her old dad being a Nazi and that.’
‘Hardly a Nazi,’ said Morgan.
‘That,’ said Blanche, ‘wasn’t me.’ She shook her head, stubborn, absolute. ‘I hold my hand up to all the rest but that wasn’t me. I had no idea Frank’s a Kraut.’
‘He’s not a…’ Jane faltered at the ugly word. ‘Tell her, Morgan. Tell her to stop pretending she’s a soothsayer.’
Morgan’s mouth worked but he said nothing.
‘I did not write the letter about the Browns. Believe me or don’t, but there it is,’ said Blanche. ‘You have another bogeyman in your midst.’
‘Your word,’ said Morgan, ‘is worth little at this juncture.’
‘My dear doctor,’ murmured Blanche, ‘your bedside manner has deteriorated somewhat.’
‘Why don’t we reconvene in daylight?’ Alec sprang up, his motor jumping suddenly to life. ‘We can’t achieve much more at this hour and we’re all exhausted.’ He was halfway to the door before the others could agree or disagree.
‘There’s a lot of questions left hanging,’ said Dan. He thought of bed. ‘But it is late, so… Alec, I’ll walk with you.’ He gathered his hat, hoping Doris would let him hop under the covers for a couple of hours’ kip when he got home.
‘Sorry, man, no. I have to dash.’ Alec must have levitated down the stairs; they heard the front door slam only seconds later.
‘Too bad the last letter is lost.’ Blanche reached for her sleep mask and pulled the covers up to her chin. ‘I’ve been saving it up.’ She lifted the mask and one eye peeked out at them. ‘It’s the one about murder.’
* * *
Nothing mattered except Kitty.
Alec had made a mistake. A towering mistake, fantastically wrong. What had made him preach at her and offer that stilted, insulting ‘goodbye and thank you for all your hard work’ speech? It couldn’t have been Alec, because Alec loved Kitty. He needed her and he loved her and he had to reverse matters. He ran all the way to Noon Cottage.
The Archers Page 25
