Broken Music

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘True enough. Except that nobody seems to think Marianne Wentworth had any troubles.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘She left no note.’

  ‘They don’t allus, do they?’

  In the distance a narrowboat piled high with coal was negotiating the last of the series of locks, emerging with its gaudy paint bright in the sun. The slow-plodding carthorse that would resume pulling it was already patiently waiting to be hitched up again, cropping what grass there was near the towpath, with the bargee’s wife standing by its side, knitting, apparently as impervious to the cold as Henry was.

  ‘So…if she didn’t kill herself, and if it wasn’t an accident, there’s only the other thing left.’

  ‘’Owd on! There were no indications of foul play, remember.’

  ‘Maybe we missed something.’

  ‘Look at it this road,’ Henry said after a minute. ‘Facts: last seen, previous evening, going to bed late after a party. Found, morning after, eight o’ clock, by the gamekeeper’s dog, floating under the jetty, her frock caught on the rotten posts. Questions: Why did she go out on her own that time o’ night? Why did she venture out on to that jetty when everybody knew it was a death trap? Why did she go down to the lake at all? Answer to that one: To meet somebody.’

  ‘Do you know that she did?’

  ‘We never knew she didn’t.’

  Reardon digested this confirmation of what his own mind had told him all along. ‘So you’re agreeing with me, Henry?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, neither. What I am saying is, you’m on a hiding to nothing trying to shift it otherwise.’

  ‘Who was questioned?’

  ‘Everybody she knew – or them as was left. Them young blokes – that young Foley from the Big House, and the Austrian bloke, them as she’d been running around with all summer – they was already off, same day.’

  ‘I remember. A bit funny, wasn’t it, that?’

  ‘Not when you think how everybody was rushing to join up. One on ’em yourself, if I remember right.’

  That was true enough. Reardon had queued, like hundreds more, outside the recruiting station, fired up with patriotism, the spirit of adventure and, in his own case, the feeling that he was lucky to have got as far as he had in the police, and wasn’t destined to get much further, except by filling dead men’s shoes, so he might as well try something else.

  ‘Of course,’ Henry added thoughtfully, ‘there was them gyppos an’ all. Her sister thought one their lads had his eye on Marianne. But they’d made theirselves scarce even before word got round that she’d been found, and we never caught up with ’em, though it ain’t hardly likely a wench as well brought up as her would’ve gone out in the dark to meet one of that lot, anyroad.’

  ‘They’re back in Broughton Underhill, her sister told me.’

  ‘Just goes to show then. I’ve no love for the likes of them, skiving lot of toerags they are, but they wouldn’t show their faces again if they’d owt to be afeard on.’ He said suddenly, ‘I did hear as how you weren’t back in the force, yet.’

  ‘I’ve only been home a week or two. I’m not sure whether I want to go back at all.’

  ‘Bollocks, of course you want to go back! You were all set to be a bostin’ copper. You know a recommendation for your promotion came through just after you’d gone?’

  ‘What?’ Reardon stared. He’d always been extremely ambitious, and had he known that was in the offing, might he not have been so keen to rush off?

  ‘Thought not. Well, it did, and I know for a fact they had their eyes on you, them upstairs. Don’t go chucking away all you’d gained for nowt. But take my advice and pack this little lot in – if it gets round you’re doing this off yer own bat, that’s you finished.’

  Reardon knew Henry was right: without authority to back him up and allow him to ask questions, this was highly likely to be the case. He watched as the barge, now fully through the lock, stopped about fifty yards away. It looked as though it was being moored. Dinnertime, it smelt like. ‘I believe the constable in the village is still the same one who was there then?’

  Henry sighed. ‘You allus was pig-headed. Well, if you won’t listen to me, go careful. Village constable did you say?’ He laughed. ‘Ted Bracey. He’ll be there till he’s pensioned off. You can ask him what he remembers but I doubt you’ll get much out of him. ’Tain’t in his interests.’

  Reardon scrambled to his feet and held his hand out. ‘It’s been good seeing you, Henry.’

  Henry nodded. ‘You an’ all.’ As Reardon turned away, he added, ‘You can try asking that gamekeeper. The one as found her – name of Naylor, if I remember right.’ He held out a mittened hand. The fingers stuck out like sausages. ‘And good luck, cock, with everything.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Gentleman of leisure, who ever would have thought it?

  It was a question Arthur Foley often asked himself nowadays. The idea doubly tickled his puckish sense of humour – not only that he, Arthur Foley, should be classed as a gentleman, but also that he should have the leisure to sit and contemplate the notion. Having worked all his life, from when he’d entered his father’s engineering works as a boy of sixteen, to the day last year when his doctor had warned him that it was high time he retired and left his business in other hands, a life of idleness had been to him an inconceivable concept. However, for the sake of his wife and daughter he had lately done his best to come to terms with it. That heart attack at the beginning of the war had been a warning which he had ignored, in view of what faced the country, and he had continued to work non-stop, having turned over his foundry and machine shops to the casting and machining of metal bomb casings, the only thing he had been able to do, at his age, to help the war effort. But now his doctor had persuaded him that he owed it to his family to obey orders and be a little more circumspect. Reluctantly limiting himself to being driven over to the works two or three times a week, and following the regime his doctor dictated, he had to admit he was beginning to feel fitter. But decidedly underoccupied.

  ‘Damn all doctors!’ he muttered. He looked at the books lining his study wall without enthusiasm, guiltily aware that he ought to use this unlooked-for spare time to try and make up some of the deficiencies of a grammar school education which he had endured rather than benefited from, and of a lifetime thereafter spent in industry, in which there had been no space for what he called falderals. He knew, realistically, that he never would. He was a man of practical skills, with a hard head and a talent for managing men and making money, and that was the sum total of Arthur Foley. Books had always been something of a mystery to him, the world of pictures and paintings was uncharted territory, and he did not understand as much of music as he would have liked, despite the efforts to show him how to appreciate it made by Grev, whose whole world it had been.

  He knew it was generally assumed that he had married Sybil for her position in society, and that she had married him for his money, but this was to understand only half the situation. At an age when he’d thought himself past all that sort of thing, he had fallen headlong in love with the glamorous, fascinating Lady Sybil Greville the moment he saw her (at a charity event to which he had been invited by a hostess anxious for him to head her subscription list). He had decided there and then, in his pragmatic way, that his only chance was to make himself necessary to her through his money and went about it with his usual no-holds-barred strategy. In the event, he was the one who had been bowled over by her ready acceptance of his proposal.

  There may have been sceptical eyebrows raised at the whirlwind romance between this Arthur Foley, who was, perhaps not quite, and Lady Sybil, but on the whole the county approved her sensible choice, he knew that. How else could she, left an orphan, have kept up the lifestyle to which she’d been accustomed since birth? Theoretically she could have married anyone she chose, but when it came down to it, even her sparkling personality and undoubted pedigree were not enough to persuade the
scions of the aristocracy, preoccupied with their own lack of finances, to take on the burdens she represented. Her feckless father had died, leaving her an heiress to nothing but debts, a dilapidated house and a run-down estate, much of which was due to be sold to pay off death duties. By marrying Arthur, Sybil had got herself out of a very deep hole, and she never forgot it. She had provided him with constant affection, home and a family: first there was Grev, whom he loved dearly, and then his little golden-haired Eunice, who was his pride and joy. He had achieved standing and a certain amount of respect in county society (as if he cared a fig for that!) although his money and his generous contributions to charity had no doubt helped, he thought wryly. It never occurred to him that much of the respect accorded to him might have had more to do with his own qualities than for his position as Lady Sybil’s husband.

  But let ’em think what they wanted, she had brought to their marriage warmth, tenderness and grace, and had continued to make him the happiest and most contented man on Earth. Showering her with what worldly wealth he had was the least of it. He would have climbed up and given her the top brick off the chimney if she’d wanted it.

  Sybil had been forced to pull herself together before she went to find her husband. The news she had to tell him was good, but it was going to be difficult for both of them to receive it with as much joy as they should. When she was dressed, she sent her maid, Edith, away (what was she to do about Edith? she worried yet again, working the treadmill of her thoughts, then pushed the worry determinedly aside). She inspected herself in the mirror, appalled at the signs of her own distress. How too dreary she looked! With a sigh of dissatisfaction she tweaked down the jacket of her sober tailor-made. It was all very well for the government to preach economy and stick up posters declaring that dressing extravagantly in wartime was not only bad form; worse, it was unpatriotic. Throughout the war she had been willing to obey, but really by now, she was quite sick of wearing grey, and seeing everyone else wear it, as if that would have helped the soldiers in any case. She had always prided herself on being well turned out. And what was the use of a wardrobe full of beautiful, pre-war clothes waiting to be worn again, if not to cheer oneself, and everyone else up? There didn’t seem to be much cheerfulness about yet, six months after the war had ended. Nor much incentive to do anything, now that her hard work was no longer needed.

  Despite everything, the war had been good for Sybil in many ways. After Grev’s departure – and especially after that desolate time when he had been posted missing, believed killed – she put everything she had into occupying herself with the war effort. Being busy and active had helped to give her something to think about while her heart was slowly breaking for her beloved son over there in France. She no longer had the time to think, a thousand times a day, if only…

  She had been too old to see active service, though she would have been one of the first to rush off and drive an ambulance, despite her age, if she had not felt her responsibilities were at home with Arthur, after his heart attack. Instead, she had thrown herself first of all into organising help for Belgian refugees, and when the necessity for this became a little less urgent, she had further secured for herself a post working under Gervase Hatherley, their neighbour, who was concerned with the administration of military hospitals in the area. She wore a Red Cross uniform and enjoyed the work, although it was quite hard and demanding. She hadn’t turned a hair when Oaklands itself was commandeered as a convalescent hospital and long huts to serve as wards sprang up like mushrooms in the smoothly tended grounds. Only part of the house itself was given over to the hospital– the ballroom and the large dining room as specialist wards, smaller rooms as sitting and rest rooms for the patients and accommodation for the hospital staff– but all the same, she saw to it that valuable furniture was carted up to the attics, along with silver and other valuables in trunks and tea chests, there to be stored for the duration of the house’s occupation. The best pictures were removed, twenty-foot-long curtains were caught back and their nether portions encased in holland bags. Sybil was leaving nothing to chance, having heard tales of the soldiery. Soon, now, it would all be restored to the family. Meanwhile…

  She looked at herself again, resolutely dismissed all thoughts of Edith and blotted her tears. She tidied her hair, dabbed scent behind her ears and on her wrists, and thus fortified, set forth with straightened shoulders to find Arthur in his study.

  At the other end of the village, on the summit of the Hill, under the very same windswept thorn on which the crow had previously perched, sat Herbert Reardon.

  He had left his motorcycle at the foot of the hill, behind a hedge, and climbed the rough path at a good pace. Despite his recent long spells in hospital, he was in good physical shape once more. He had always been tough; the desperate conditions he and all the other men had suffered during their time in France and Belgium had not been without its effect on him, but he was still a young man and his splendid constitution had helped him through the traumatic months after receiving his terrible burns; latterly, in hospital, between operations, he had kept himself fit with self-imposed exercises. He was still breathing easily when he reached the top.

  He sat on the stony ground, his heavy coat providing insulation from the cold, and ate the sandwiches his landlady had provided. They weren’t as good as Em’s. The beef she’d managed to get from somewhere wasn’t half bad, admittedly, but the bread was grey and gritty, the product of austerity flour, and the margarine was thinly scraped. Still, there was plenty of mustard, and he got them down with the help of the tea from his Thermos, though awful as only his landlady knew how to make it.

  He had a week, possibly a little more, before him, to undertake what he had come to Broughton Underhill to do.

  After his meeting with Henry Paskin he had suddenly known that his mind was made up. Inspector, eh? That had made a difference. He knew what he was going to do (and perhaps had intended to do all along) and had acted immediately, before he had the chance to think better of it. He had made application to rejoin the police and was once more a member of the Worcestershire Constabulary – or at least, he would be at the beginning of the next working week. It wasn’t without regret that he’d abandoned the idea of world travel, but one day perhaps he might take it up again, who was to say? It was Henry who had brought it home to him how much police work was in his blood, that it had always meant more than simply a lucky escape from work in a foundry or a factory, and how rewarding he had always found it, all in all, despite the obstructions to promotion. And perhaps the answers to the large ethical questions the war had posed were not, after all, only to be found in distant lands, philosophies and religions, but equally here at home. As an unencumbered single man, and not likely ever to be anything else now, he would not lack opportunity to read and pursue as much as he wished the questions that puzzled him.

  He had been warned that he would in all likelihood have to start in the uniformed branch all over again, but he knew his war experience, if it had done nothing else, had given him a different and a broader perspective, which would not be a bar to his ambition of once more becoming a detective. Meanwhile, during the interim, he believed if he was discreet enough about what he thought of as his private business here it need not come to the ears of officialdom.

  He had already made a tentative start on his enquiries, though what he had achieved hadn’t amounted to much. After that meeting in the churchyard with Marianne Wentworth’s sister, Nella, the nurse, he had successfully booked himself in at the Greville Arms for a few days, starting from tomorrow, and then, before going to find Henry Paskin, he had decided to return to the rectory and call on the Reverend Wentworth. The meeting with him had turned out to be inconclusive, though in actual fact he had expected nothing less. A queer fish and not half, he had thought the reverend on the day Marianne had been found, and saw no reason to change his mind now.

  After the rectory door closed behind him, propelled by some compulsion, he had paid his respects to his daug
hter Marianne’s grave, and silently renewed his promises to her. All in all, he wasn’t entirely dissatisfied, so far. Despite Nella’s apparent dismissal of what he’d said, he believed that when their conversation had sunk in she might decide to be more forthcoming. Intuition told him her hostility arose because she was afraid he would find out whatever it was she was concealing. Maybe she would come round and see sense. Maybe he could talk her into it. We shall see, he told himself.

  And that youngest sister now– Amy, wasn’t it? – how old would she have been in 1914? Thirteen, not old enough at that time to have been questioned too closely, and talking to her now might not be much use. It all depended on how good her memory was. On the other hand, though only having caught a glimpse of her as he left the rectory, he had a feeling he might not be wasting his time with her. That practised glance had shown him a bright-eyed young woman who noticed things – and wasn’t above a bit of eavesdropping, he thought. She’d been standing under that gloomy stained-glass window in the dark hall when he’d come out of the reverend’s study and the sharp look she gave him convinced him she’d overheard what had been said. She’d been watching him in the churchyard, too, he was sure.

  A few minutes later, almost as if his previous thoughts had conjured her up, he saw Amy Wentworth again, walking down the village street far below him, swinging a basket, unmistakable with that red hair showing under the tam she wore. If she was going shopping, she’d be disappointed: the village was deserted, curtains drawn and blinds down in respect, for the funeral of an old village biddy later that afternoon, he’d learnt. He understood how much store folk set by that sort of thing, and for that very reason had decided to abandon his enquiries until the next day as soon as he’d learnt about the funeral. He saw Amy pause before the shop, which he could have told her was closed, then turn impatiently round and begin walking back home.