The Embroidered Sunset

by Joan Aiken

  “So you did know where she was!”

  “I have not said so.”

  “Well, you needn’t have any further scruples,” said Lucy tartly, “because I know she’s at Mrs. Tilney’s in Reservoir Street; I suppose you’ve seen her there.”

  “Not as a patient; I visit one or two of the other old people in the house. She does not approve of doctors, you know. But she tolerates me because I like her pictures.”

  “So I notice!”

  “But you have hardly looked at them yet; aren’t they beautiful!” he said. In his enthusiasm he took her arm and piloted her round the room. “Which do you think is best? Sometimes I incline to Daniel in the lions’ den, but that vision of St. John the Divine is really a masterpiece—it needs a bigger wall really, but that is the best I can do at present. Look at the detail! It is better than Breughel.” He switched on some lights, muttering, “Light in this country is hopeless, hopeless, but when I take them back to Turkey, aha!”

  “Aha!” said Lucy frostily. “Charming! So you leave the poor old girl to live in that den of squalor while you collect her pictures and take them back to Turkey. What do you think she would say?”

  Dr. Adnan considered, frowning. A red velvet cap with a tassel lay on the piano; absently he picked it up and slid it to a comfortable position on his head.

  “Do you know, I think she would not give a damn,” he said. “My impression is that once she has finished a picture she does not care any more about it than if it were a—a dish of mashed potatoes. She has certainly given them away freely enough. And as for the den of squalor, she herself chose to live there—who am I to chase her about? You Anglo-Saxons are sadly predictable; benevolence with you always takes the form of organising people in ways which they probably do not enjoy at all.”

  “But that place is dangerous! Some old boy nearly broke his neck on the stairs the other day.”

  “So? The street is dangerous, but you would not prevent her going out, in spite of the fact that she might get knocked down by a car. (By the way they never did discover who knocked over that poor Clough).”

  “Listen,” said Lucy. There was a table behind her; absently she sat on it. Pushing aside her hair, she asked Adnan earnestly,

  “Do you think she really is Great-aunt Fennel? Do you think she really did do those pictures? She doesn’t seem to be doing any at the moment.”

  “Well, the circumstances are hardly conducive, are they? Also, I understand her eyesight has deteriorated in the last year. Besides, if she is not herself, who is she? You talk in paradoxes.”

  “She might be her friend—the one who fell into the stream. I mean, it might have been Great-aunt Fennel who fell in.”

  “What would be the point of the impersonation?” said the doctor slowly, sitting down on the piano stool.

  “Well, my uncle’s firm pays an annuity to Aunt Fennel. At her death it should stop.”

  He studied her thoughtfully. Lucy felt herself going pink. “This was my uncle’s idea,” she said defiantly.

  “So he sent you to investigate?”

  “Well? What if he did? It’s his firm who are paying out the cash.” Lucy felt she had slipped into a false position and returned to her original question. “The thing is—she seems so childish most of the time—”

  “You think the person who did those pictures was not childish? But they are primitives, after all.”

  “Ye-es,” Lucy agreed, “but when a person has created works of art on—on that scale, you’d think her character would give some indication of it?”

  “And you consider Miss Culpepper’s does not? Do you already know her so well?”

  “I’ve spent the last few days with her, getting to know her.”

  “But perhaps she is cleverer than you! Perhaps she is pretending not to be Great-aunt Fennel!”

  Lucy stared at him. “Why should she do that?”

  “My dear Miss—what is your first name?”

  “Lucy,” she said mechanically.

  “Thank you. In Turkey we prefer to use the first name. Lucy—aha! Very appropriate. Miss Lucy Snowe!” As usual he seemed to be enjoying some private joke at her expense. “How can I tell what your aunt’s reasons might be for pretending not to be your aunt? You Anglo-Saxons are so often a great mystery.”

  “Just now you said we were sadly predictable.”

  “In the mass, yes; as individuals, no. Now with Turks it is just the other way round; you can tell what an individual Turk will do, but the nation, never!”

  He spun round on the stool and suddenly sang, accompanying himself on the piano:

  Dial me on my Linguaphone

  I am cut off, I am all alone;

  Get your computer to call up mine,

  The number is neun, neuf, nono, nine;

  Oh, it will be a day for jubilation

  When nation can really speak to nation!

  “Don’t you think that is very good?” he said to Lucy.

  “The tune is not bad. The words don’t impress me.” But in fact she was quite impressed by his voice—a pleasant tenor—and by his nimble playing. Dr. Adnan grinned at her.

  “Now, shall I give you a cup of coffee or seduce you?”

  “You’ll do neither,” said Lucy coldly. “I came to get the name of a dentist for my aunt, who seems never to have been to one in her life.”

  “So we can’t establish her identity by her bridgework. Well, Fawcett is about the best in Kirby. Mention my name, he’ll see her sooner.”

  The surgery bell rang.

  “What a pity,” said Dr. Adnan. “I just began to feel we were getting to know one another. And it would have been the best cup of coffee you ever drank—Turkish, of course. Never mind—another time. You can go straight out by this door. I am so pleased to have met you again—good-bye.”

  “Just a minute,” said Lucy. “What did you pay for those pictures—and who?”

  He grinned his flashing grin again; it reminded her irresistibly of Mr. Jackson, in The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse.

  “My dear girl, I am the doctor—people are mostly glad to give them to me in acknowledgment of my skill!”

  Lucy walked crossly away, feeling that Dr. Adnan had learned a great deal more about her than she had about him.

  She telephoned Fawcett, who had a cancellation at eleven and could see Miss Culpepper then; that gave her an hour. It was no use arriving too early; Mrs. Tilney, hobbling about with her hangover, stumblingly taking her elderly boarders their breakfasts in bed, could not abide people coming to her house before ten-thirty A.M.

  Lucy went into an espresso bar and had a cup of coffee; not Turkish, but about a thousand per cent better than the brew offered to lodgers in Redcar Street. Someone had left an early edition of the Kirby Evening Advertiser on the seat next her; she picked it up, wondering if Aunt Fennel would enjoy being taken to the movies; but neither Son of Dracula nor The Secret Life of Sexy Sandra seemed suitable, particularly in view of the fact that Aunt Fennel had probably never set foot in a movie house in her life.

  A familiar name caught her eye beneath the headline WIDOW BATTERED WITH HAMMER: “Mrs. Geraldine Truslove, 44-year-old widow, of The Laurels, Tingwell Street, was admitted to hospital last night with shock and concussion after being attacked by a man. ‘I had a difference of opinion with a neighbour about the name of his house,’ she told our staff reporter. ‘It has led to a lot of difficulties.’ A man has been detained by the police . . .”

  Oh dear, thought Lucy. Poor silly woman. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to stop her she wouldn’t have done it. I hope she’s not badly hurt.

  She read about a performance by the Kirby Thespians of French Without Tears: of how Clough, the Appleby gardener knocked down by a hit-and-run motorist had made a good recovery but the person responsible had never come forward; of how the Durham jail escapee wa
s now thought to be in London.

  “A stolen car was found by South London police in a thicket on Putney Heath; on the steering wheel were the fingerprints of Harbin, the escaped man, who was serving a 30-year sentence for his part in smuggling £30,000 worth of stolen gold out of the country; he still had ten years of his term to go. Harbin was apprehended with another member of the gang when the plane in which they planned to leave England crashed on take-off at Liverpool airport; Harbin lost a hand in the crash. Goetz, the second man, was released last year after serving the full term of his lighter sentence; both men had made several previous attempts to escape. The stolen gold was never recovered. The police had lost track of Goetz since his release . . .”

  Before I was born, Lucy thought. She tried to imagine the emotions of somebody who had escaped from prison after twenty years. One would feel defenceless, at a loss, like an old person who has lost touch with progress; unhappy, probably, and antagonistic; one would have paranoid suspicions of everything and everybody—

  That was why it was not possible to be utterly convinced by Aunt Fennel’s fears; she appeared to entertain the same suspicion and terror towards her roommate who, she said, had stolen her warm winter vests, as towards the unknown hypothetical murderer of her friend Dill.

  But old people really were defenceless; they had a right to their paranoid fears; whereas if you had come out of prison with £30,000 waiting stowed away for you somewhere, you would presumably feel to some extent buttressed against the unknown.

  Still, what a different world to come out into: space flights, kidney grafts, artificial fertilisation of human ova, pollution clogging the air and water; it would hardly seem the same place.

  “The country doesn’t seem to have changed much,” Goetz said, looking out across the featureless expanse of moorland visible from Appleby Old Hall’s third-floor bedroom. “Why did you want to buy a house in this God-forsaken place?”

  “Property’s cheap round here,” Mrs. Marsham said shortly. “And it’s quiet.”

  “By cripes it is.”

  “Well? Have you any complaints?”

  “No, no,” he said. “You’ve got the place very well fixed up, I don’t deny.”

  “Yeah?” said Goetz. “It gives me the gooeys to see all those old nuts doddering around downstairs.”

  “Rinse, please,” said Harold. Harbin, who was having his new dental plate adjusted, rinsed and spat. “Anyway,” Harold went on, “Ma has a sentimental attachment to this part, haven’t you, Ma? Can’t say I share it; I’ll be glad to get back to Brum, when I’ve got you fixed up.”

  “Sentimental attachment?” said Goetz. “Go on! I should think the only thing Linda would have a sentimental attachment to would be a humane destroyer.”

  Mrs. Marsham made no reply, but set her lips in a thin line; she was changing the dressing on Harbin’s rebuilt nose with swift precision.

  “You didn’t come from these parts, though?” Harbin spoke with difficulty and cautiously moved his eyebrows up and down. “Merseyside born and bred, you were.”

  “Old flame of hers came from round here, though,” said Harold, “or so she thinks. That’s you done, then,” he told Harbin. “Can’t think why you wore your own for so long, they were in a terrible state. Wasn’t there a decent dentist in stir?”

  Goetz looked uneasy; Harold picked up a container of used dressings and left the room.

  “Old flame?” Harbin had been peering at himself sideways in a shaving-glass; he glanced round sharply. “Who?”

  Goetz reflected; after a pause he said, “You don’t mean Fred?”

  “Fred never let on where he came from,” Harbin said. “Compared to Fred, oysters suffer from frantic verbal diarrhoea.”

  “Bet it was Fred though,” Goetz said, studying Mrs. Marsham’s inexpressive face. “Well, well! That is sentimental attachment for you.”

  “How did you find out?” said Harbin.

  A bell rang on the stairs. “That’s someone at the front door. I must go,” Mrs. Marsham said.

  “Oh, come on, Linda,” said Goetz. “Don’t be such a clam. After all, we’re interested in Freddie too, don’t forget. Whatsername will answer the door.”

  “It was only a guess, really,” Mrs. Marsham said at last.

  “You were always a pretty smart guesser, Linda, in those gay old days when you were queen of the B.I.C.A. air hostesses.”

  She was silent again. Then she said,

  “There were just three little things he let fall at different times. The first time I ever met him he had a briefcase with the initials W.C. on it; you’d remember a thing like that, wouldn’t you, and I did. Ever after that he was always Fred Smith. I asked him once about the briefcase and he said he’d borrowed it from a chap called Cooper; but the name didn’t come out quite pat.” Harbin nodded. “Then, another time, we happened to be talking about place names that are spelt one way and pronounced another, like Cirencester; he said, ‘Oh yes, Appleby’s another,’ and then stopped short and looked annoyed at himself. Why should he think of such a tiny place if he hadn’t got connections there?”

  “Humph,” said Harbin. “Pretty thin reasons for moving here, however. What was the third thing?”

  “It was once when he’d had a bit to drink; Fred never drank much, he wasn’t going to lose control of himself, ever. But it was in Hong Kong and we’d brought off a successful trip and he was feeling just a little more relaxed than usual. He said, ‘I’m going to be a success in the world, Linda. I don’t care what way. I just want my name to be remembered for more than because it’s one of four on a village war memorial.”

  There was a silence while they thought about this. Then Harbin said, “I take it there are four names here?”

  “A Holroyd, a Crabtree, and two Scarthwaites.”

  “Many surnames in the village beginning with C?”

  “Quite a few. Crabtree, Crossley, Coxwold, Clough, Culpepper, there’s a couple moved here recently called Carados—”

  “Any of ‘em with long-lost relations?”

  “Nearly all,” she said. “Appleby’s a place most people move away from.”

  “Well—” Harbin shrugged. “It’s a fairly remote chance he’d ever come back, don’t you think? If he did come from here.”

  “Maybe. But Fred was greedy. If anyone died, and there was the question of a legacy, for instance—and as the situation suited in other ways—”

  “Oh sure. I’m not complaining. This old folk’s home is a bloody good idea. Be a little gold mine, I daresay.”

  The internal telephone buzzed. Mrs. Marsham picked up the receiver. Nora’s voice came through.

  “Oh, matron, there’s a young lady here inquiring about accommodation for her aunt.”

  “Tell her we haven’t got any—” Mrs. Marsham began irritably. “Or no—I’d better come down, I suppose. Say I’ll be down in a moment, but I can’t promise anything. What’s her name?”

  There was a pause; then Nora returned.

  “She says her aunt used to live in the village here, that’s why she’s keen to come. You saw the young lady the other day. Her name’s Culpepper.”

  VII

  “Damn that girl!” exclaimed Wilbie vexedly, crackling the letter about and then throwing it down on the coffee table beside his untasted drink. “I tell her exactly what to do, I even pay her fare, and what happens?”

  “What does happen?” Russ asked. He picked up Lucy’s letter. He was a slow reader, and while his eyes made their deliberate way from side to side and down the blue sheet, Wilbie twitched and pressed his lips together and drummed on the arm of his chair with pink stubby fingers. The house was empty; Rose and Corale had gone off to a cocktail party; Wilbie was supposed to follow them when he had freshened up from his day’s labours.

  “Goddam little fool has found some old lady who’s pulled the wool o
ver her eyes properly. Now she’s going to spend all the dough I gave her installing this old phoney in some de luxe residential home.”

  “Why are you so certain she hasn’t got hold of the right old girl?” Russ asked lazily, dropping the letter back on the table and picking up his own drink.

  “You can see she knows she’s being bloody annoying,” Wilbie went on angrily. “I ought to have had more sense, I suppose; ought to have seen she was the last person to do that errand; I know she hates my guts. But she can be smart when she wants, and she certainly was sold on those pictures—if it had worked it would have been—oh, well, to hell with it; there’s no use relying on women, they always let you down.”

  “Reckon so?” said Russ. If Wilbie had been paying attention he would have noticed a certain irony in his assistant’s voice, but he was irritably rereading Lucy’s letter.

  “And as for sending her to that Appleby place, what do they call it, Wildfell Hall, that’s clean out of the question; I’ll have to put my foot down.”

  “What’s so specially wrong with that place—d’you know something about it?”

  “What?—oh; no, but you can see a home like that is sure to cost a small fortune—just newly opened, all their initial outlay to cover,” Wilbie said hastily. “There must be dozens of more suitable places. Though anyway I’m damned if Culpepper is going to shell out to keep some old fraud in luxury eating her head off in any of them.”

  “You’ll get the bank to query the annuity payments?” Russ asked. “Cause a lot of stink—publicity—over such a flea-bite? After all, even if she is a phoney, you say the old lady’s in her nineties? She can’t last much longer.”

  “If she’s not Aunt Fennel Culpepper, then it’s money she’s no right to,” Wilbie said with the obstinacy of the mean man. “I don’t care how much it is, it’s the principle that counts.”

  “Well, it’s your decision, of course. But you can bet your boots on one thing happening if you start a lot of legal investigations and proceedings—”

  “What?” snapped Wilbie, taking an irritable gulp of his drink.