A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  Avoiding Edward’s chair, clearly marked by the piles of newspapers and remote controls, I took my plate to the opposite side of the hearth. ‘Grace Dearden was a leading light on the social scene, I gather.’

  ‘Well, most of the women are around here. Sometimes life seems like one long drinks party.’ He dropped into his chair and lounged back, whisky clutched loosely in one hand.

  ‘But Grace gave dinners, I gather. Impressive ones.’

  ‘I believe so. I wasn’t asked, of course.’

  I chewed a dense mouthful of cheese and bread. ‘What, never?’

  ‘Oh, once. No—twice. Ages ago, when I first moved in. But Will made it fairly plain that he’d rather entertain Hitler.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ he maintained with a fierce glare. ‘Bloody unfriendly. Sulked at the far end of the table. Threw dark looks in my direction. That sort of thing.’

  I took this with a pinch of salt: Edward had always been prone to exaggeration. I suspected that in this case he’d let his insecurities get the better of him. He had never been at ease with men who didn’t share his own rather blunt approach to life.

  ‘Grace was in her element, though?’

  ‘What? Oh, definitely. Brilliant cook.’

  ‘Wasn’t her food rather rich for you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘I’ve seen some of her menus.’

  ‘Not too rich, actually, thank you very much,’ he protested. ‘I’m not a total Philistine when it comes to food, you know.’

  I put the wedge of waxy cheese and dry bread back on the plate. ‘How would you describe Grace?’ I asked. ‘What’s she like?’

  He pulled his head back in mock recoil. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m the last person to ask. I’m hopeless on people. I mean, I take them as they come. I like them or I don’t, but don’t ask me to say why,’

  ‘Okay then—did you like her?’

  Exhaling slowly through pursed lips, he considered this. ‘Yup,’ he said reflectively, then with more decision: ‘Yes, I did. She was always very charming. Very nice. Funny, too.’

  ‘Funny?’ I paused with my tea half-way to my mouth. ‘Funny? In what way?’

  ‘There you go again. Don’t ask me. She just made me laugh, that’s all.’

  ‘What was she funny about?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ He gestured irritably. ‘Umm…the neighbourhood, I suppose. People. The gossip—you know.’

  I absorbed this slowly, and asked the question I’d already asked Maggie and Anne Hampton. ‘Did she appear happy to you?’

  ‘Happy?’ His expression suggested that the very concept was an enigma to him, and I saw him as a kid again, hurt and permanently angry. ‘God,’ he sighed, looking into the fire, ‘you do ask some questions. Happy? Well…she seemed cheerful enough. Always bubbly and sort of…positive. But the rest? I just wouldn’t know. I didn’t see that much of her.’

  ‘Could she have had a lover somewhere, do you think?’

  His head did a slow revolve towards me, his stare hardened, he searched my face to see if I were joking. ‘A lover?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You’re asking me?’ And now he gave a short laugh. ‘Lex, I’d be the last person in the world to know something like that.’ The dry laugh again. ‘If there’s any gossip doing the rounds I’m always the last to hear.’ He scrabbled in his pocket and pulled out some cigarettes. ‘Why? Is she meant to have had someone tucked away?’

  ‘Not at all, no. But you were the one person I could ask without creating a rumour.’

  ‘I think you just did. Create a rumour.’ He rolled his eyes.

  ‘You know what I mean! I was simply considering it as a possibility, that’s all.’

  ‘So there’s no suggestion of a lover?’

  ‘Well, no. But you never know.’

  He lit his cigarette. ‘Suspicious little mind, Lex.’

  ‘Too much time in crime and family law.’

  ‘You said it.’ He shook his head with an exaggerated show of pity. He had always made a point of finding my devotion to the criminal classes totally incomprehensible.

  I picked up the sandwich again, without enthusiasm. ‘I went to see Grace’s mother, Veronica Bailey. She says she’s met you.’

  He looked blank for a moment. ‘Oh, yes—once.’

  ‘She thinks you’re wonderful.’

  ‘Some people do, you know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t doubt it,’ I smiled. ‘What did you think of her?’

  ‘God. Can’t remember.’ I waited but he made no effort to nudge his memory. ‘Have a whisky!’ he urged, sitting up as if to get one. ‘Come on.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Abstemious Alex.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘Iron discipline.’

  ‘I wish.’

  He threw me a look of blatant scepticism before saying casually, ‘So, what’s the thinking on Grace’s vanishing act?’

  I abandoned the leaden sandwich for good. ‘Complete blank. No ideas at all.’

  ‘But the police must be thinking something.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure they think she’s dead.’

  And you?’

  I took a moment to answer. ‘I do too.’

  ‘So? How do they think she died?’

  ‘Murder must be a possibility.’

  ‘A possibility,’ he mimicked savagely. ‘Really—you and your lawyer’s talk, Lex.’ For some reason he was getting angry with me. ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘Suicide. Mental breakdown.’

  He waved this aside with a movement of his glass. ‘No one believes that!’

  ‘What do they believe, then?’

  His eyes darkened, as though I had caught him out in some way. ‘I told you, ,’ don’t know! I don’t listen to gossip. But it seems strange that she disappeared on the very night someone tried to flood the Gun Marsh.’

  Now it was he who’d caught me by surprise and I didn’t attempt to conceal the fact. ‘Someone tried to flood the marsh? Deliberately, you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ And he took pleasure in being able to tell me. ‘Sure. Someone opened the sluices.’

  ‘I thought—’ But I kept the rest of this to myself. ‘Who would want to do that?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ he said with heavy emphasis.

  ‘Someone who wanted to make the land worth-less, perhaps? Someone who wanted to get at me?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Sure! The tenancy reversion was almost agreed, they thought it’d be a good way of getting at me, didn’t they?’

  It was late, I was tired; I wasn’t in the mood for games where everything was implied and nothing spoken. ‘What are you trying to suggest exactly?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he argued unconvincingly. ‘Just seems mighty odd that she should disappear on the very same nighty that’s all.’

  ‘How do you know, anyway? That the flood was deliberate, I mean.’

  ‘Those sluices don’t open themselves.’

  ‘But they could have been damaged.’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ When I didn’t reply, he nodded with irritating superiority, as though I had just confirmed my own gullibility. ‘They weren’t damaged, Alex.’

  ‘But how do you know?’

  He whistled softly to the dog and, gesturing for me to pass my plate over, picked up the remains of the sandwich and dropped it neatly into the dog’s mouth. ‘I was around the next morning,’ he said, watching the dog snatch the food deeper into its gullet. ‘I saw how much water there was on the marsh.’

  ‘So?’

  He gave me a pitying look. ‘So both sluices had been opened. Wide. For a long time.’

  ‘But…’ I groped for my point. ‘Why would Will try to drain the marsh if he’d only just flooded it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Make himself look good.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Ed.’

  ‘It’s not ridiculous!’ he insisted, with a flash of
his old vehemence. ‘He’s a tricky sod. Take my word for it! He behaved bloody badly over the Gun Marsh, tried to go behind my back. Devious, I tell you.’ Perhaps I didn’t look too convinced because he added hotly, ‘And that’s not even the half of it, believe me!’

  I gave up then. There was no discussing things with Edward in this mood. When he felt himself to be aggrieved he was like a blunt instrument, beating away at the same argument until he battered his opponent into submission.

  I said, ‘I think I’ll go straight to bed, if that’s all right.’

  Cheated of his argument, he sneered, ‘No time for the truth, eh?’

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping, that’s all.’

  ‘Tossing and turning over our Will?’

  I stood up. ‘Sometimes you’re so juvenile, Ed.’

  He made a wide gesture of innocence. ‘Just asking.’

  ‘You’re not just asking, you’re stirring. It’s a habit of yours, you know.’

  ‘So touchy. Lex.’

  ‘I’m tired. That’s probably why.’

  He twisted his mouth into a semblance of a smile: the retreat after the skirmish. I’ve put a hot-water bottle in your bed.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  We exchanged a look that contained the possibility of a truce.

  ‘I’ll show you up.’ As he led the way across the hall he said in the tone of someone alighting on a safer subject, ‘I sent that letter off to Pa’s solicitor, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, only half listening.

  He mounted the stairs at a slow trudge. ‘I’ll phone them tomorrow, just to make it clear we’re not prepared to hang about too long.’

  Still preoccupied, I picked a question out of the air. ‘How did you know it was missing, this money?’

  ‘Arithmetic’

  ‘Oh?’

  He turned onto the last flight. ‘The proceeds of the Falmouth house plus the value of his savings, less the nursing-home fees.’ He spoke in the cool emotionless voice he kept for anything to do with Pa.

  ‘And there was a hundred thousand missing?’

  ‘It was hard to tell precisely, but I knew it must be well over seventy.’ He paused at the door of a guest bedroom.

  ‘And you have some idea of where it’s got to?’

  He glared at me. ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘No. I just thought…’ I made a gesture of forgetfulness. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I have no idea at all of where it might be.

  Which is the whole point of finding out.’

  ‘It may be very hard to track down after all this time,’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s only a year ago.’

  ‘Well, don’t get too upset if it can’t be found.’

  ‘Too upset?’ He made a brittle exclamation. ‘Of course I’ll be bloody upset. It belongs to us.’

  ‘Maybe Pa gave it away to a good cause.’

  ‘I’m not interested in any of that,’ he retorted.

  There was no soothing such relentlessness and, letting the subject pass, I leant forward to kiss him.

  Responding to some childhood reflex, he stiffened slightly as my lips met his cheek. ‘Good-nighty Lex,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘Goodnight, Ed. Thanks for having me.’ And I smiled to show that I meant it.

  ‘Make the most of it,’ he remarked, in his most flippant tone. ‘I may not ask you again.’

  The dawn was soft with rain as I walked quickly up the side path to Marsh House and tapped on the kitchen door. A shadow moved across the lighted window, the door opened swiftly and Will stood silhouetted against the starry interior. He stepped back and beckoned me in.

  ‘Breakfast?’ he asked, and his eyes were dull and distant, like someone who has neither slept nor woken properly.

  ‘Some toast would be lovely.’

  While he cut some breads I poured myself a cup of coffee from the jug on the table. ‘Charlie not up?’

  ‘He’s at Mum’s.’

  In the silence that followed I was struck by a sudden awkwardness. ‘I told Ramsey we’d be in Norwich by three,’ I said as Will put the bread into the toaster. ‘I said I’d like to have a quiet talk before the news conference. I told him it was to do with Veronica. Never does any harm to give them an idea of what you’re going to say.’

  Will nodded vaguely as he moved to the Aga and stirred something in a pan.

  ‘I thought I’d go and see Maggie later,’ I hurried on. ‘Is she all right? You said you were taking her to the hospital.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, she’s fine. Fine. It was just a routine thing.’

  I chattered on. ‘Is there anyone else I should talk to? Like friends of Grace’s? Or her doctor? Had she seen him recently, do you know?’

  Will tipped scrambled eggs out of the pan onto some toast. He took his time to answer. ‘I don’t think so. Her doctor’s Julian Hampton, up the road in—’ He shook his head abruptly in disbelief. ‘For heaven’s sake, in your father’, old practice.’ His lapse of memory seemed to cast him into a deeper gloom.

  He brought the plate of scrambled eggs to the table and stood in front of it, staring in an unfocused way at a point somewhere on a far wall. His hair was wild and uncombed, his chin unshaven, his shirt wrongly buttoned so that one collar stood too high. He looked like a gypsy just in from the marsh.

  ‘Did Ramsey call you yesterday?’

  The roaster popped and he came to with a jolt. ‘Er, no…Just the woman, Barbara Smith.’ He brought me the toast then butter and marmalade. When he finally sat down he fell back into a trance.

  I got up and searched a couple of drawers until I found a knife and fork which I put beside his plate.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked surprised. ‘Thanks.’

  I found myself another knife and sat down again. ‘Are you taking anything to help you sleep?’

  ‘What? Oh…just Valerian, if you count that.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ he said with a faint stab at humour.

  ‘Perhaps you should consider something stronger.’

  ‘Trouble is, I always forget to take pills. Even the Valerian—it’s sometimes two in the morning before I remember.’

  ‘Well, try eating some breakfast. Might make you feel better.’

  He looked down at the fast-cooling eggs as if seeing them for the first time, then cast me a look which was suddenly very focused.

  ‘Always so practical, Alex. Always so sensible.’

  For some reason this pricked my vanity. ‘Not a failing, I hope.’

  ‘God, no. No—I always thought it was a wonderful thing to be. When we were kids…well, you weren’t like other girls.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘More like a boy.’ Appreciating his gaffe, he laughed. ‘In the nicest possible way.’

  I smiled back, but faintly.

  Focusing on the meal at last, Will began to eat halfheartedly. ‘So…Veronica…What heinous crimes am I meant to have committed?’ he asked without rancour. ‘I lose track.’

  ‘Well…there were quite a few.’

  ‘There always are.’

  I began at the milder end of the spectrum. ‘She suggested that Grace was unhappy.’

  He shook his head with something like pity. ‘That’s what Veronica wanted to believe, of course. Always did. Desperate for it to be true. But what Veronica wants in life and what she gets are two very different things, and that’s what she’s never been able to accept.’

  ‘So Grace was happy?’

  He looked towards the window, his expression taut. ‘Grace wasn’t capable of unhappiness.’

  Maggie had said almost the same thing. Anne Hampton, too. I wondered again now, as I had wondered then, at the sort of person who was immune to unhappiness.

  Will began to eat again, with more enthusiasm, as though he had suddenly developed a hunger. ‘What else did she say, the witch?’

  ‘She said there was a time when you and Grace almost split up. Soon after y
ou were married. When Grace discovered she had been—I think Veronica used the word—tricked.’

  ‘Ha!’ The insinuation had touched a nerve; his face came alive, his voice too. ‘Yes, yes. I failed to inform Grace that I was a man of straw. I lied to her! I was a devious trickster who’d deprived Grace of her one great chance of marrying money. Ha!’

  ‘There was no question of splitting up, then?’

  ‘After this great betrayal came to lights you mean? After I’d ruined Grace’s life?’ He gave a contemptuous scoff and attacked his toast with a sawing motion. ‘Though Veronica would have loved it. Would have loved Grace to cut her losses and find someone better.’

  ‘Even with Charlie…’

  ‘Oh. children aren’t a consideration for Veronica. They barely enter into her reckoning at all.’

  ‘Though she obviously felt so passionately about Grace.’

  He acknowledged the point with a lift of his fork. ‘But only in a vicarious way. Only when she saw that Grace was going to attract notice. When she realized that Grace might achieve the sort of life she’d always hankered after. The life that she herself had been’—he gave the words a mocking emphasis—‘cruelly denied.’

  ‘How was it denied her?’

  ‘Oh, by Grace’s father. A great disappointment to her. A nice man, from what I hear, but no ball of fire. Quiet and long-suffering. Never made it beyond major in the Guards, then had some poorly paid job as a club secretary. Generally useless with money. Veronica never forgave the poor bloke. He died young. Most men would have done the same in his position.’

  ‘But Veronica’s got a bit of money?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘But that flat?’

  ‘Only three years left on the lease.’

  ‘Ah.’ I saw Veronica’s despair in a new light. ‘And Grace? She has some money?’

  He gave me a look of mild reproach. ‘Ah,’ he said coolly. ‘Are we on to another allegation?’