by Alice Castle
Wendy avoided looking at Beth. ‘There was a bit of a re-organisation of times a while ago…’ she said confidingly to Katie. ‘Well, some of the newer members wanted a bit of a shake-up. I can’t remember quite why.’
Beth fulminated. She was willing to bet it was because they were responsible grandparents and wanted to help their children out. She took a swig of her bitter tea and grimaced.
‘When was that reorganisation?’ Katie asked, after glancing at Beth and realising she was too cross to speak.
‘Oh, a few years ago… does this really matter?’ Wendy was wonderfully vague. ‘I think I’m remembering a bit more of what happened now…’
I bet you are, thought Beth. But then, what good did it do, getting cross with her mother yet again? Nothing would change Wendy’s fundamental behaviour at this point. She took a deep breath and tried to pin an interested smile on her face as her mother continued.
‘So, there we all were, collecting in the bridge room upstairs, as usual. You both know Belair House, of course?’
Beth and Katie nodded.
Chapter Five
No-one who lived in Dulwich could be unaware of the beautiful white slab of a mansion house that stood at one end of Dulwich Village, like a Fortnum’s Christmas cake smothered in royal icing. Once upon a time this Georgian masterpiece, which the hopeful always claimed showed the hand of the great architect Robert Adam himself, had been the glittering centrepiece of polite society in the area.
It had been built by a Whitechapel maize farmer-made-good, by the name of John Willes. Just as Beth’s frenemy Belinda MacKenzie today chucked her husband’s money this way and that, trying to crowbar herself into prime position in Dulwich, so Willes had done his best to shed the shameful chaff of his tradesman status via this grand house. He’d have hosted balls and galas aplenty, with the great and good of the area dressed up to the nines in their best taffeta and lace. They’d have been happy enough to dance the night away by candlelight at Willes’ house, though they’d no doubt laughed behind his back at their host’s Rumpelstiltskin skills at spinning gold out of his humble corn. An invitation to a Belair House soirée would have been a very hot ticket indeed, in the days when a neighbour’s hen stopping laying would have been a major talking point for weeks.
These days, Belair House was doing a grand job at keeping afloat in difficult times, by hiring itself out to groups like the Bridge Club, as well as providing a perfect backdrop for weddings and lavish parties. Though these grand occasions were no longer held by candlelight, in all other respects they were as splendid as the thrashes of yesteryear.
‘The bridge room used to be the ballroom,’ Wendy confided. ‘But the Bridge Club has been coming so long that, well, we’ve really settled into the place. Part of the fabric, you know, and they’ve rechristened the room in our honour.’ Wendy couldn’t resist a quick preen. Belair House’s glamour still cast a spell, even two hundred and thirty years on. ‘I always sit North/South with Alfie.’
Beth and Katie looked at Wendy blankly, and she snorted a little with impatience. ‘Really, you two, don’t you know anything about bridge?’
Katie was content to shake her head very sadly, as though admitting to a grave personal failing, but Beth, as usual, rose unthinkingly to the bait. ‘Why should we, Mum? We don’t play.’
‘Honestly, Beth, you do know the rules, you know you do. Your father and I spent so long trying to teach you and your brother. We tried to give you a good start in life…’
Beth snorted. Of all the social graces to concentrate on, was bridge really the most useful? But she did remember those afternoons. Wendy would round her up, with her unwilling and fidgety brother, and force them to sit at the dining room table with their patient father, who obviously enjoyed the whole business about as much as they did. Wendy always managed to convince herself she was helpfully instructing her offspring in the art of bridge-playing out of the goodness of her heart, but even as a young child, Beth had suspected she was being used as cannon-fodder while Wendy honed her own skills in any way she could. Otherwise, the weekends passed for Wendy as bridge-free wildernesses. Even twenty years ago, she’d been an extremely keen player. It was fair to say she was now some way towards becoming an addict.
Beth felt a twinge of sympathy for her mother. Even if this murder business with Alfie came to nothing – and she didn’t, frankly, see how it could go elsewhere – she knew that the loss of such a kindly partner was a crushing blow for Wendy. She was very unlikely ever to find such a sympathetic conspirator in her bridge crimes again.
‘Those lessons you used to give us were some time ago, Mother,’ she said as mildly as she could, congratulating herself on her forbearance.
Wendy gave her an irritated glance and swept on.
‘Well, anyway, the players are named after the points of the compass. North and South are partners, and so are East and West. We sit at square tables, you see. So, you face your partner, while your opponents also sit opposite each other. We play duplicate bridge at the Club – that just means that the same hands are passed around all of the tables in turn. It’s fascinating because you’re not only playing your opponents at the table, but are pitted against all the other North and South teams in the room.’
Beth looked at Katie and was glad to see that she looked just as baffled as Beth was feeling.
‘You might need to explain all this a bit more,’ said Beth, with what she believed was admirable restraint. Really, she deserved a medal for her conduct today. Maybe two.
Katie was starting to move anxiously from side to side. In Ben, Beth would have diagnosed an urgent need for the loo. She lifted a quizzical eyebrow.
‘I’m getting slightly worried about Teddy. I thought it was better not bringing him to school for Charlie’s first day, but I really shouldn’t leave him for too long… You know what he’s like, Beth.’
Beth nodded briskly. She knew only too well what he was capable of. Although he was now almost a year old, and had settled down considerably, he was still a particularly hare-brained canine, as far as Beth could tell. Despite her own unexpected ownership of Colin, she didn’t pretend to know much about dogs.
Colin was more like a kindly uncle than a dog, anyway. Beth sometimes felt he was looking after her, rather than the other way round. She sat up straighter in her chair and craned outside. Sure enough, Colin was there and exchanged a resigned glance with her. Neither was having the morning of their dreams, but Colin seemed to realise this was something that needed to be done, and was content – or reasonably so – to sit it out until Beth had finished.
Teddy was an entirely different kettle of fish, if that wasn’t hopelessly confusing her animal metaphors. Of course, in conversations with Katie, Beth always referred to him as ‘lively’ and ‘so affectionate’. As with annoying children, such words rapidly became code for ‘uncontrollable’ and ‘an utter pest’ – the sort of things she would never, ever say directly to her best friend. Criticising someone’s dog was as fraught with danger as breathing a bad word about their offspring, husband, or even, she realised, mother. Though here at least, Beth was quite likely to get in first and didn’t usually mince her words.
‘Oh, he’s such an adorable dog,’ said Wendy, apparently quite genuinely as she clapped her hands together enthusiastically. She won a beaming smile from Katie. Compliments for young Teddy were as thin on the ground as Aldi bags in Dulwich’s high street.
‘I should probably check on Colin, too,’ said Beth quickly, scenting a possibility of escape, even though she’d just satisfied herself that he was perfectly fine. Or at least being very patient.
‘Colin?’ Wendy looked puzzled.
Beth tutted loudly. ‘Ben’s dog, remember?’ It smarted that her mother knew Charlie’s dog’s name so effortlessly, but not that of her own grandson’s pet.
‘Oh, yes. You still have that, er, creature with you, then?’
Again, Beth sighed. Her mother had been over only the other weekend, and anci
ent, sweet Colin had been very much in evidence. All right, they hadn’t exactly acquired him in the normal way – Colin and Beth had accidentally adopted each other in challenging circumstances – but he’d been part of the family for almost as long as Katie’s Teddy. But Beth did admit that Teddy was most definitely the more memorable of the two dogs. In her view, for all the wrong reasons.
‘Oh, well,’ said Wendy in an ominously small voice. ‘I thought you two had cleared a bit of time for me. But if you have to rush off for your dogs, then so be it. I do quite understand.’ She fiddled with the spoon in her saucer, dropping it to the floor.
Beth bent down and picked it up without comment, looked briefly and wistfully at all Wendy’s trailing scarves, then polished it on her own coat sleeve before putting it back on the table. Normally, she’d just ask the waiter for another, but here in Aurora it didn’t seem worth the inevitable battle.
‘No, Mum, that’s all right,’ she said in resigned tones. ‘I did say I’d stay for as long as you need. I know you want to give me all the details. In any case, Colin seems ok outside.’
‘And I’ll be fine for another few minutes. The house needs redecorating, anyway,’ said Katie with somewhat forced brightness.
‘Well, then,’ said Wendy.
Beth prepared for more endless faffing with the scarves. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Wendy had slowed down almost to a standstill now that she’d ensured her audience was going nowhere. So, she was a little wrong-footed when her mother burst into speech.
‘The thing is, it’s quite horrible remembering it all. I suppose that’s why I’ve been dragging my heels a bit.’
‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘We completely understand, don’t we, Beth?’ Beth nodded briefly, marvelling as usual at her friend’s kindness. In the face of Wendy’s distress, Katie had apparently put all thoughts of the wreckage of her house out of her head.
‘It was like this.’ Unconsciously, both women leaned nearer to Wendy as she finally embarked on her story. ‘It had been a perfectly normal afternoon. Just the usual. Everything as you would expect.’
Talk about anti-climax, thought Beth, drawing away again a little crossly. Under the table, Katie pressed Beth’s battered pixie boot with her own pristine Ugg. Her friend was right. There was no point in putting Wendy’s back up again. They’d just be here forever. At least she’d started talking now, even if she didn’t seem to have much to say after all.
‘We’d played the first two hands, and everything had gone smoothly. Well, Alfie had been a bit hopeless on the bidding, but that was nothing new. I really had been feeling for some time that he was losing it a bit. Very sad, but at his age…’
Beth gave Katie a significant glance. Even Wendy seemed to be conceding that the pile-up of years on Alfie’s plate was a factor. And there was still nothing, as far as she could see, that even so much as whispered at skulduggery. The man had not been in the first flush of youth, and there was no getting away from that fact. His death, while hugely poignant – especially for Wendy, mainly as she now needed a new partner – was hardly shocking.
‘Isn’t that what we’ve been saying, Mum? Alfie was, well, a little, erm, on the elderly side…’
‘Yes, yes, dear, I get it, he’d had a good innings and it’s nothing special when someone like that drops off his perch, or whatever other horrible metaphor you want to use,’ Wendy snapped. ‘But darling, it was definitely more than that. The circumstances, you see.’
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t see why the circumstances were suspicious. You’d played a couple of rounds—’
‘Hands,’ corrected Wendy tersely.
‘Whatever. Hands. Then poor Alfie dropped dead. Great shame. Terrible. No mystery,’ said Beth, pushing back from the table.
‘But don’t you see? It didn’t happen like that at all,’ said Wendy crossly.
Beth sighed. ‘Go on then. What is it that makes the whole thing so suspicious?’
‘It’s the way he died. And where. Alfie never wanted to go outside at break time. He felt – we both did – that it broke our concentration. We tended just to have a quick cup of tea, sitting with the others sometimes, sometimes not, but really keeping ourselves… well, I think young people say, ‘in the zone,’ if you two understand what I mean.’
Beth blinked. Was Wendy now suggesting that her daughter was somehow past it, too ancient to decode trendy phrases that she herself was perfectly au fait with? That was a bit rich. But Katie, next to her, didn’t seem to have taken umbrage at all. Maybe Beth was taking it all too much to heart, as so often happened with her mother. How was it that family could always press the right, or wrong, buttons?
Beth didn’t pretend to get much about her mother’s way of life, and she certainly didn’t see why Wendy had to treat a game of bridge as seriously as though she were engaging in some sort of full-on battle with a bloodthirsty opposition. These were elderly folk playing a game, after all. But now Katie was nodding in sage agreement.
‘I know how you feel. I’m the same at yoga, between classes. Everyone wants to get gossiping, you know, start talking about what’s going on with the kids or with work, but I have to be careful not to get involved, stay focussed.’
‘Yes, but you’re the actual teacher, Katie, so you’ve got good reason to stay aloof, I completely get that. I’m not quite sure why you, though, Mum, would need to…?’ Beth didn’t want to seem rude, but really, sometimes her mother seemed to have the oddest ideas.
‘Well, you may find it hard to believe, Beth, but yes, although I’m not an official teacher, some of the others in the club do look to me for guidance. Katie knows what I mean,’ Wendy said with a warmth in her eyes as she beamed at Beth’s friend, which rapidly cooled as she turned back to her daughter. ‘It just so happened that the club director, Deidre MacBride, wasn’t able to come to the session that day. She’d previously asked me to keep an eye on things for her if ever she wasn’t able to make it. Just informally, you know. There’s so much jealousy at the club, sometimes, you’d be surprised. But we knew where we stood, Alfie and I.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I don’t know where you stood? What do you mean?’
‘Well, dear, if you need me to spell it out, we were unofficially in charge if Deidre wasn’t around. We were one of the better pairs. Not to put too fine a point on it, Beth, and you know I don’t like to boast.’ Wendy lowered her eyes modestly for a moment, then ruined the effect by going on to blow her own trumpet in a lengthy solo. ‘We were actually the top pair at the time. Alfie and I had an unassailable record. And I also have a much surer grasp of the rules than quite a few other players I could mention. Sometimes people are quite happy to deploy a bit of selective amnesia to win an extra trick or two. Honestly, I think you two would be a bit shocked at how sneaky things can get in that place.’
Beth and Katie exchanged glances. In some ways, yes, it was a bit disturbing to hear that a peaceful game of cards could become so competitive. But on the other hand, this was Dulwich. People here had a tendency to play to win.
Some, like Belinda MacKenzie, just made it their life’s work to have the biggest, boldest bag in the playground. She relied on the fact that it acted as a signifier that she also had the richest husband, cleverest children, and largest house. Some preferred the simpler option of becoming CEOs of major companies. Others wanted to push their children further, higher, and faster (and Beth rather dreaded the thought that she was in this camp). There was no logical reason to suppose these drives were put straight into mothballs as soon as their owners retired.
Wendy, of course, had never had a job to retire from, unless you counted harassing the other members of her family from the sidelines. And as far as that went, as Beth could attest, she had certainly not decided to draw her pension yet.
‘So, you were sort-of in charge that afternoon. I’m not sure why that makes it more likely that Alfie was murdered?’
It was Wendy’s turn to sigh. ‘Sometimes I worry that you do
n’t have my gift for empathy, Beth. Can’t you read between the lines?’ Luckily, she moved on swiftly while Beth was spluttering and trying to formulate a riposte which would stop short of causing nuclear war in the café. ‘We weren’t really supposed to leave the premises. We had to be on hand, in case someone had a complaint about the play. If there’s a problem, if someone has revoked, say…’
‘Revoked?’ Katie’s eyebrows shot skywards.
Wendy turned to her patiently. ‘That’s when someone pretends, or even genuinely believes, they have run out of a suit. If they then trump someone else’s card, and in a later round it turns out they could have followed suit all along, then they can be liable to a forfeit.’
‘Honestly, people actually do that?’ Beth eyes were wide.
‘There’s a lot at stake. How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘But what? What’s at stake? You don’t play for money, do you?’ Beth said, her eyebrows high behind her fringe.
‘There are more important things in life than money. Or haven’t you discovered that yet, Beth?’
Beth didn’t think it was the moment to point out that, given her circumstances and her mother’s inability or reluctance to help her financially, she’d had no choice but to discover that hard truth a very long time ago. Most notably when her beloved husband James had died suddenly from an unsuspected brain tumour and left her as sole breadwinner and lone parent to a very small boy. There was silence for a beat.
‘So, is it just the shame of losing? Or what?’ Beth asked tersely.
‘At my age, there’s a lot of prestige tied up in doing well, you know,’ said Wendy with some dignity.
