Typically, I had acted first and thought last. In an agony of frustration, I heard Susan moan that she had dropped her watch, which she had taken off in order to peer more intently at the dial. When she got up to look on the ground, we noticed a separation in the stone bench large enough for a Thermos to have fallen through. Susan dug around inside and, tearing up with relief, found her watch. “I couldn’t have gone back without it,” she said. “Mummy and Daddy warned me I wouldn’t get another if I lost this one.”
She wasn’t the only one trembling with relief and nerves. The omniscient face of the moon put me quakingly in mind of Mrs. Battle as we scrambled back up the Dribbly Drop; her countenance could also be cold as marble when the situation merited it. I considered myself lucky for days afterward that there was no summons to her office. The pity was I didn’t learn my lesson.
Now was no time for a wallow! I resolutely shoved aside the memory of my later entirely independent transgression as Dorcas approached the village green with its wooden benches shaded by fringed canopies of beech and chestnut trees. The circle of houses, set back from hedged gardens, presented a harmonious appearance despite a mix of whitewashed exteriors with brown or pale-rose brick facades, along with a variety of roof styles from sharply pitched to low forehead ones. Old-fashioned wooden or iron gates gave entry to pathways leading to front doors painted mostly green, white, or black, but with an occasional blue one added. Flowers bloomed in crowded cheer, the whole softened by a golden wash of sunlight, creating an effect similar to a filmlike hazy flashback to an earlier point of reference: the idyllic scene before tragedy rips apart the fabric of lives steeped in the traditions of afternoon tea, croquet on the back lawn, and harmless flirtations with the curate.
I thought of the monotonous rows of houses we had passed on the outskirts of Tingwell and of my difficulty in imagining anything pleasurably exciting ever happening in them. These had the reverse effect upon me. I found it inconceivable that one anguished hour had ever been spent within any of these walls. Minor problems, yes! A comb getting sucked up by the Hoover, a near trip over the dog, a misplaced Liberty scarf. But no deaths, seething hatreds, or unanswered dreams!
I was about to express this to Dorcas when she said that the two semidetached houses directly across the green were occupied by Ms. Chips and Mr. Middleton.
“His is on the left, Ellie. Green front door. Lives there with his unmarried sister. Wife died—ten years ago or more, according to the grapevine. It was him told Chippy before her retirement that next door would be up for sale.”
“Did they get on sufficiently well through the years for that to be a good idea?” I had just asked, when the genteel calm was shattered by the savage roar of a motorcycle swerving past us. I caught a flash of the male rider’s blond hair and black leather jacket as he cut a swath around an old gentleman with a stick before shuddering to a halt within inches of a girl in the all-too-familiar St. Roberta’s uniform of bottle-green blazer and mustard-yellow shirt. In my day we had worn Panama hats in summer, a bit old-fashioned even then. If this girl had been wearing one, it would doubtless have sailed off her head as she stepped desperately back, tripped, and broke her fall with her hands.
She was still crouched on the ground like a mesmerized rabbit when Dorcas stopped the car.
“He almost ran her down,” I said furiously, as we climbed out. “I’m for giving him a piece of our minds to chew on.”
“Right ho! Fellow shouldn’t be allowed out on roller skates, let alone a motorbike.” It could have been Colonel Mustard marching alongside me, not that Dorcas needed a military mustache to bristle with the best of them. The young man stood straddling the motorcycle. The girl was scrambling to her feet as we crossed a corner of the green to reach them. Neither glanced our way; I saw them as an image sharply delineated within their surroundings, framed by but not included in the golden haze. His profile was sculptured, hers roundly childlike.
“Who is she?” I asked Dorcas softly, when we were a few yards away.
“Gillian Parker, Matron’s grand-niece.”
“Recognize him?”
“Lady Loverly’s grandson, Aiden.” She probably would have expounded on this had our attention not been caught by the girl.
“That’s a lie! I’m not a thief!” She spoke in little more than a whisper, but Dorcas and I were now close by, and her palpable fear made the words reverberate in my mind during the hours and days to come.
3
“Beastly scare for you, Gillian.” Dorcas touched her gently on the arm and received a frightened nod in return. I put her age at fourteen or fifteen; she was pretty in a muted way with wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. Seeing she needed a moment to draw breath, I held off on snarling at Aiden Loverly.
The old gentleman had made it onto the green and was now seated on a bench under one of the old spreading trees. A gate opened and a small boy in a red jersey pedaled his tricycle with fierce concentration along the pavement. An unseen dog barked and a ginger cat leaped up into an apple tree the size of a young oak in the garden of the house Dorcas had said belonged to Ms. Chips. I bent to pick up the brown leather satchel lying on the ground, and Gillian took it from me, her eyes staring blankly.
“It’s my sheet music.” She might have been speaking in a foreign language she didn’t understand but had been ordered to recite. “Mr. Middleton told me, if I didn’t get on with ‘Für Elise,’ he’d help me with it this afternoon.”
“Still gives private singing and piano lessons at the school several times a week, even though he retired as full-time music master,” Dorcas murmured to me.
“I had permission from Mrs. Battle to come to his house today.” Gillian winced as she shifted the satchel to her arm.
“No problem there,” Dorcas assured her.
Noticing the girl’s hands I exclaimed, “You’ve really scraped them!”
“So you have, Gilly!” Aiden Loverly’s upper-crust voice matched mine in concern, but there was something about his laconic pose and the wry lift of his eyebrows that caused me to doubt his sincerity.
Viewed close up, he was an Adonis, golden tan, eyes a dark gray, shoulder-length blond hair lifting like a silk banner in the breeze. I don’t often make snap judgments—well, not more than once or twice a day—but I did so now. This young man was not only reckless but cruel. Even if he had reason to suspect that Gillian had taken the Loverly Cup and was upset on his grandmother’s behalf, there was no excuse for scaring her half to death. Had Mrs. Malloy been with us, she’d have itched to put a fist in his face.
“You could have seriously injured or even killed her if you’d hit her at the speed you were going!” I glared at him furiously.
“Should be ashamed!” Dorcas placed a protective arm around Gillian’s rigid shoulders. The old gentleman on the bench was looking our way, as if wondering what the modern world was coming to.
“Did I cause bodily harm?” Aiden Loverly responded in the manner of one gently addressing a pair of dimwitted children. “I can stop this thing on a button. All she had to do was stand still. Gilly’s not cross with me; she knows I’d never hurt a good little girl, which is what she claims to be.” To me the threat behind the words was obvious, but I couldn’t tell if Dorcas sensed it. She’s wonderful, but if she has a fault it’s an unwillingness to see the worst in people. Getting through the next few days without Mrs. Malloy’s stark skepticism would have its drawbacks.
Gillian’s pallor had increased, and she said, still in a wooden voice, that she hadn’t been looking where she was going.
“Wouldn’t have mattered.” Dorcas clapped the girl on the back, unwittingly causing her knees to buckle. “Mr. Loverly drives at shocking speed. Should apologize and promise more decorous behavior in future.”
“He doesn’t need to,” Gillian protested faintly.
“Nice girl,” said Aiden Loverly, eyeing Dorcas as if she were an insect meticulously pinned to a board. “You’re Ms. Chips’s replacement. Haven’t done
too well for the lacrosse team this season, have you? No holding onto Granny’s cup after nine glorious years. And now it has disappeared. What will befall the culprit when unmasked? Will she be dragged down to the crypt and left to molder, a skeleton to scare forthcoming generations of St. Rob’s girls?” He laughed—a charming sound, blithe as a minuet played upon a harpsichord—but my dear friend didn’t smile in return. She stood, thin and plain, diminished, her hair sticking out and up from a face that was all eyes and orange brows. Squished. Gillian’s face had been pale before; now she was chalk white.
“Oh, dear!” Aiden Loverly, still straddling the motorcycle, traced a manicured finger along the gleaming handlebars. “Was it my mentioning the crypt that has made the roses fade from your cheeks, Gilly? I’d forgotten that you schoolgirls are convinced the convent ruins are haunted by the Gray Nun. But of course a sensible girl like you wouldn’t go seeking her out at dead of night. The consequences could be quite terrifying if you should happen upon vengeance lurking in the shrubbery.”
“Yes.” Gillian swayed, and Dorcas came back to life to get a grip on her.
“Please don’t let us keep you chatting, Mr. Loverly,” I said icily. “We need to get Gillian into Mr. Middleton’s house and those hands seen to—”
“Here he is.” Dorcas nodded in the direction of a man who had just emerged from the front door to stand peering around him, as if sizing up the weather or hoping for inspiration—from Beethoven or Mozart would be my guess. He looked exactly as I remembered him. Medium height, medium build, medium coloring. Although, if anything, he appeared younger than I had thought him all those years ago. To the young, anyone approaching early middle age looks ancient. I put him now in his early to middle sixties.
Gillian unlatched the green painted gate that matched his front door and stumbled toward him. “Mr. Middleton, I’ve come to ask for help with ‘Für Elise.’” She was clutching not only at her satchel but at the assurance of what was safe and secure, distancing herself from Aiden Loverly by more than the steps she took away from him.
“Yes, my dear, quite right,” said Mr. Middleton, “although I’m sure you’re managing beautifully on your own. My sister is next door having a chat with Ms. Chips, but I will fetch her back. She always enjoys hearing you play. Confidence is all you lack. One day you will be famous and I shall tell everyone who will listen that I taught you. Don’t shake your head, child; I am not being kind, merely truthful.” A nearby laugh caused him to look away from Gillian. “Ah, Mr. Loverly,” he continued, just as gently. “Are you also here to see me?”
“Just buzzing around the area like the bumbling bumblebee.” The reply was steeped in honey. It was also a lie. I knew as if I had witnessed it that he’d either spotted Gillian walking from St. Roberta’s or had known ahead of time that she would be coming this way and had followed in order to corner her, before she could streak for safety with the speed of the ginger cat that had minutes earlier gone up Ms. Chips’s apple tree.
“A lovely day to be out and about, but shouldn’t you be getting back to the Hall?” Mr. Middleton pushed back the sleeve of his navy-blue cardigan to look at his watch. “I know from long acquaintance that Lady Loverly is punctilious about sitting down to afternoon tea at three o’clock, which leaves you barely ten minutes. Doesn’t do to keep your grandmother waiting, my boy. Forgive my interference, but I’d buzz home if I were you.”
“I’ll do that, even though Mrs. Brown has one of her migraines and any refreshment will be a catch-as-catch-can affair. See you, Gilly.” A negligent wave and, with a cataclysmic earth-moving roar, the motorcycle shot around the green and out onto the road in the opposite direction to St. Roberta’s. Before the sky could get back on tilt or the trees stop grabbing at each other, for emotional if not physical support, Mr. Middleton addressed Dorcas.
“Poor Mrs. Brown. Her ladyship’s housekeeper does suffer from headaches. Apologies, Miss Critchley, for ignoring you and this other lady. I see your car parked across the way.”
“On route to the school. Saw Mr. Loverly come within an inch of running Gillian down.” Dorcas jabbed the recalcitrant strand of hair back into place with its clip. The improvement to her appearance wasn’t huge, but she was filling back out from a flattened insect to a three-dimensional figure. “This is my friend Ellie Haskell. Attended St. Roberta’s. Back to stay at the Chaplain’s House for a few days.”
“It was Ellie Simons,” I said. “But it’s been twenty years, and I’m sure you won’t remember me.”
“I think I do.” His eyes studied me reflectively. “Couldn’t sing a note but helped paint the scenery for Pirates of Penzance. Some good art pieces up at the Hall that I’m sure Lady Loverly would be glad to show you if you have the time to visit. She enjoys company. Can’t be easy having a grandson who”—Mr. Middleton paused to glance at Ms. Chips’s tree—“delays her tea. Now, shall we all go inside?” He began leading the way down the short path, but Gillian stopped him with a timid touch on his arm.
“But Mr. Middleton, isn’t that Harpsichord in the apple tree?”
“Yes, foolish creature! I saw her from the window bolting up; that’s why I came out. But she’ll have to languish. Time to attend to your scrapes and bruises.”
“You can’t leave her up there!” It was a tug this time on his sleeve, and I saw that Gillian’s pale face looked ready to disintegrate.
“Won’t she come down when she’s ready? My cat Tobias is a great one for acting as though he’s lost his nerve and is sending out an SOS, but the moment I head inside, down he shoots after me.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I realized how smugly unhelpful I sounded. “No two animals are alike,” I amended feebly.
“Weak ankles, perhaps.” The words shot out of Dorcas’s mouth like a ball lobbed from a lacrosse stick, like the one with which I had demolished Miss Chips’s nose.
“Ankles?” Mr. Middleton appeared understandably nonplussed.
“Known plenty of girls who could shin up a rope with no problem but couldn’t get down to save their lives, just hung there like flags in the wind. Afraid of a hard landing and wrenching one or both.”
Gillian twisted her hands. “Do cats have ankles?”
“Technically speaking, I suppose they do,” I said, despite remembering that I hadn’t done outstandingly well in Anatomy, one of a couple of subjects taught by Mrs. Battle. In fact, I seemed to recall I had come in bottom each and every term. Despite her staunch desire that life provide a fair playing field for man and beast alike, uncertainty was now written on Dorcas’s face. I could hear Mrs. Malloy’s voice inside my head saying, Bees have knees, don’t they? and decided it was just as well she wasn’t present or we’d all be up a tree forever.
“Harpsichord’s problem,” began Mr. Middleton, only to be interrupted by an anguished meow, “is one of uncomplicated funk.”
A ginger face peered through the leaves. Perhaps I didn’t experience a rush of boundless affection for Harpsichord because the name reminded me of Aiden Loverly’s nastily tinkling laugh. That aside, we were looking up at a craven feline if ever I’d seen one. Further mewing made it clear her loyalty would be to the closest extended hand, in return for which government secrets would be handed over. Not a cat to have in one’s corner when the chips were down. Then again, neither was Tobias. His price for turning me over to enemy agents would have been the vague promise of having a brand of salmon named for him after his death.
“Anyone would think the silly cat had dropped by parachute from the sky,” said Mr. Middleton, his thoughts apparently running in sync with mine.
Gillian managed a shaky laugh. “But she’s so scared.”
“I’ll take you inside and come back for the ladder. Third time this week, but nothing else to do, I suppose.”
“Please don’t waste time; I can go into the house on my own,” whispered Gillian.
“Got an idea, Mr. Middleton,” proffered Dorcas. “Ellie and I can accompany her. See to a bit of first aid.”
“If the two of you wouldn’t mind.” He smiled. It was a very nice, kind smile and I experienced regret that I hadn’t harbored warmer feelings toward him, due to his having detected my singing off-key in his class, with the result that I’d turned into a goldfish whenever there were hymns at church.
“Delighted to be of use.” Dorcas squared her shoulders, and for a split second I wondered if she intended to toss Gillian over her back.
“You’ll find antiseptic ointment and gauze in the downstairs cloakroom. Won’t be long. I keep the ladder at the side of the house, as opposed to forever getting it out of the shed.”
Harpsichord meowed something that from its aggrieved sound could have been a threat to cut Mr. Middleton out of her will if he didn’t get moving. Dorcas shepherded Gillian and me onto the doorstep, through the front door, and into a good-sized hall. The staircase went straight up on the right, its russet-colored carpet going well with the dark banisters and amber wall paint. My impression was of a solidly built house, circa 1940s with some Victorian touches, such as the rose-patterned chamber-pot-shaped ceiling light and ornate plasterwork. An open doorway to our left revealed a living room whose focal point was a grand piano, in a corner by French doors that presumably led into the back garden.
Gillian set aside her satchel and sat down on the bottom step, hugging her knees. She announced with pathetically determined cheerfulness that she had a cat of her own at home.
“A ginger one like Harpsichord?” I guessed.
“His name is Carrots. My little sister Sarah has a rabbit named Lettuce.”
“It’s odd about Harpsichord. I thought ginger cats were always male.”
“She’s an exception.”
The resident voice inside my head said it was fatal to make assumptions about anything. Mrs. Malloy is given to tossing out these pearls of wisdom, which I should take to heart but usually don’t.
Goodbye, Ms. Chips Page 4
