Hard luck, Nannie, thought Frances unsympathetically. But more to the point, hard luck, Frances. Because here was an unfair obstacle on the course, the only clue to which had been that twitch of the detective-sergeant’s just half a minute before it had loomed up in front of her. And more than an obstacle, too, because obstacles could be removed, or climbed, or jumped, or avoided.
Nannie was watching her intently, no longer with naked hostility, but without either approval or deference. And that was the problem: somehow, and very quickly, Mrs Hooker must approve of and defer to Mrs Fitzgibbon.
Small smile.
‘Sorry, Nannie. But I’m afraid I’m the best they could manage at short notice. You’ll have to make do with me.’
‘Nannie’ was a risk, but she had to take a short cut to some degree of familiarity. And also, at the same time and without seeming too pushy—too unfeminine—she had to assert herself.
She turned to Geddes. ‘Who else is here?’
‘Inspector Turnbull and his DC, madam. And the uniform man.’ Geddes gave her a glazed look. ‘I think they are out the back somewhere, in the garden.’
She wanted them all out. She wanted Nannie to herself, without interruptions.
‘Then would you be so good as to tell the Inspector that I’m here, please?’ No smile for Detective-Sergeant Geddes. ‘Don’t let him stop what he’s doing. I’d just like to have a word with him before he goes … before you all go… will you tell him?’
‘Very good, madam.’ Geddes moved smartly towards the door.
‘And wipe your feet when you come back in,’ admonished Nannie to his back.
‘Yes, madam.’ He sounded happy to be getting out of her way. What was more important, however, was that the foot-wiping admonition offered one possible short-cut to Nannie’s heart: the sooner Mrs Fitzgibbon got rid of the police, the better for Mrs Fitzgibbon.
‘Now, Nannie… I take it the Colonel hasn’t phoned, or anything like that?’ She padded the question deliberately.
‘No, Miss Fitzgibbon.’ Nannie declared neutrality.
‘Are you expecting a call from him? Does he call home regularly when he’s away?’
Frances decided to let the ‘Miss’ go uncorrected for the time being.
‘No, Miss Fitzgibbon.’ Armed neutrality.
‘I see… Well, we’re doing our best to get in touch with him.’ Not true. ‘It’s only a question of time.’
Nannie stiffened. There’s no call to worry him.’ Frances wondered how much Nannie knew about the nature of her employer’s work. Probably not a lot, the Official Secrets Act being what it was, though enough to accept that a break-in at Brookside House could never be treated at its face value.
‘I’m sure there isn’t,’ she agreed gently. ‘But the rules say that we have to, for everyone’s protection. So you must look on me as just part of the rules, Nannie.’
Nannie thawed by about one degree centigrade. ‘Very good. Miss Fitzgibbon.’
It was going to be hard work.
‘At least I can get rid of the police for you, anyway,’ she offered her first olive branch with a conspiratorial grin. ‘There’s no need for them to hang around now that I’m here.’
As an olive branch it was not an overwhelming success: Nannie simply nodded her acceptance of the lesser of two evils.
More than hard work, decided Frances. ‘In the meantime, perhaps we could go somewhere a little less … public?’ She looked at her watch: it was two o’clock already.
‘Somewhere where there’s a telephone?’
Nannie glanced at the telephone on the table at the foot of the staircase, then back at Frances.
‘There is a telephone in the library,’ she admitted grudgingly, indicating a door to Frances’s right.
Frances followed her to the door. There had to be a bridge between them somewhere, or a place where the bank was firm enough to construct a bridge. Or even a ford where she could cross over to Nannie’s side without drowning in the attempt.
The library really was a library: a long, high room entirely walled with books from floor to ceiling except for its two immense mullioned windows. The wooden floor shone with the same high gloss as that of the hall, but here there was no smell of polish, only the dry odour of accumulated knowledge on paper, compressed between old leather and matured over dozens of years. At the far end was an immense mahogany desk, in the direct light from one of the windows. All its drawers were open, one of the top ones pulled out so far that it rested at an angle on the one beneath it. A silver-framed photograph lay on the floor, face down.
Frances heard Nannie draw in her breath sharply beside her.
Suddenly Frances remembered how hot her own dear Constable Ellis had been on the subject of burglary—
* * *
‘But I’ve nothing worth taking, Mr Ellis. I might just as well leave the cottage unlocked.
They wouldn’t find anything, no matter how hard they looked.’
‘Don’t you believe it, Mrs Fitz. They’d take something you wouldn’t want to lose, even if they left empty-handed.’
‘Now you’re being too clever for me, Mr Ellis. Shame on you!’
‘Oh no. If it happens to you, you’ll know sure enough. And it’ll make you sick, too. Because breaking into a woman’s house—goin’ through her private things, like the flimsy things she wears next to her skin, if you’ll pardon me, like her knickers and her silk slips an’ suck-like—that’s almost like rape when a stranger does it. So … breakin’ into a house is like raping it.
Raping its privacy, you might say. It isn’t changed, not really. But it isn’t the same, even if they don’t take a thing.’
* * *
Frances looked at Nannie. ‘Have the Police been through here?’
‘Yes.’ Nannie continued to stare at the desk.
‘Right, then.’ Frances walked across the library to the desk. First she fitted the displaced drawer into its runners and pushed it back into its proper place, and then slid back the other drawers, one after another (very neat and tidy was Colonel Butler; his letters held together with elastic bands, still in their original envelopes; his receipted bills in their appropriate folders—School Fees was the topmost folder in one drawer.
Insurance in another; a place for everything, and everything in its place, that was Colonel Butler). Then she methodically straightened the desk diary and the pen-holder and the leather-bound calendar. And last of all she set the silver-framed picture in its proper place, on the left. The photograph was of Nannie herself and the three children at the seaside; judging by the size of the largest child it dated from the early 1970s.
‘It’s all right now—everything’s all right. He—they were only looking for money, Nannie. The picture glass isn’t broken.’
‘There wasn’t any money in the desk,’ said Nannie, not to Frances but to the library itself, as though the thief was still hiding in it.
But then, of course, she was right: the thief was still hiding in it. A different thief, yet one who knew what she was after even if she didn’t know what she might find. Not a conventional thief, who would take the water-colours off the walls and leave the drawers gaping, but certainly a thief within Constable Ellis’s definition.
A thief, no doubt about that.
The thought was painful to Frances, but the pain helped to concentrate her mind on the job just when she’d been in danger of letting sympathy cloud her judgement.
‘Don’t worry, Nannie.’ She touched Nannie’s arm reassuringly. Just a touch—a Judas touch; a pat would have been too much. ‘It won’t happen again, we’ll see to that.’
Nannie looked down at the slender hand, then up at Frances.
‘You know, I think we probably have friends in common,’ said Frances, testing the bridge cautiously. ‘Isn’t the Colonel one of Cathy Audley’s godfathers—David Audley’s little daughter?’
Nannie regarded her for the first time with something approaching recognition.
‘D
avid Audley is another of my bosses.’ Frances smiled. ‘And I know his wife too.
Have you met them—the Audleys?’
Nannie blinked, and her nose seemed less aggressive. ‘You know Dr Audley, Miss Fitzgibbon?’
‘One of my bosses—my first, actually … Though I’m assigned to the Colonel at the moment. Which is why I’m here now, of course.’ Frances nodded encouragingly. The bridge—a totally false structure, but built with convenient pieces of genuine truth—was beginning to feel solid beneath her. It even occurred to her that she was building better than she had intended: if Colonel Butler himself didn’t altogether approve of David Audley—at least if Paul Mitchell was to be believed—it looked as though Nannie differed from that view; and that coincided with her own observation, that while Audley was generally rather rude to his equals, who were usually male, he was unfailingly courteous to women.
(The first time she’d encountered David Audley he’d been having a blazing row with Hugh Roskill, who hated his guts, when she’d been Hugh’s secretary; and he—David—had apologised to her next day (but not to Hugh!) with a big box of After Eights.) But she was losing momentum with Nannie now—and she only needed another few steps to be over the Bridge of Lies. Already she was so far over and committed to the crossing that the last worst lying truth, the truest lie, was no longer too outrageous to use.
‘It’s “Mrs”, not “Miss”, Nannie … actually.’
‘”Mrs”?’ Nannie frowned, yet somehow more at herself than at Frances. ‘Oh … I’m sorry, Mrs Fitzgibbon…’
‘Yes?’ Frances hooked on to Nannie’s uncertainty. One way or another she had to fish the right cue out of her. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch what the constable said when he introduced you…’
Nannie wriggled on the hook.
That wasn’t the right cue. But it also wasn’t what was really in Nannie’s mind, Frances sensed. There was something else.
‘Yes?’ Frances jerked at the line. Given time she would have played Nannie gently, that was the whole essence of the art of interrogation, even with a hard-shell/soft-centre subject like this one. But time was what she hadn’t been given, this time.
She looked down at her wrist-watch, and as she raised her eyes again she saw that Nannie was staring in the same direction.
She looked down again: Nannie couldn’t be interested in the time; Colonel Butler’s girls—my girls—didn’t get home until 6.20, they did their two preps at school after tea, just as she had done once upon a time, a thousand years ago.
Nannie had looked down at the same angle—nose at the same angle—a few moments before, at the hand on her arm.
At the hand.
Frances looked at her hands. There was nothing to catch Nannie’s interest, or her disapproval either (yesterday morning Marilyn’s unspeakable Rose Glory red would have aroused that, but now the talons were trimmed and clear-varnished—now the hands were hers again).
Nothing—they were simply hands and fingers, unadorned.
Nothing!
Oh, beautiful! thought Frances—like the mention of David Audley, it was better than she had designed, the ultimate true-lie handed to her—handed indeed!—on a plate, steaming hot. and appetising!
She ought to have spotted it more quickly, the thing that she always looked for in other women. But now she mustn’t spoil her good fortune by looking up from her third finger in triumph: and to get the right expression all she had to remember was what a dirty, despicable, millstone-round-the-neck unforgiveable lie she was about to tell.
The lie twisted under her breasts as she met Nannie’s eyes.
‘No wedding ring, you mean?’ She spread the empty hand eloquently without looking down at it again. ‘No wedding ring?’
She clenched the fingers into a small fist as soon as she was sure that Nannie was looking at them.
‘The ring is with my husband. He was killed in Ulster three years ago. Three years and six months and a week. He was with the SAS at the time, but he was a Green jacket really. And we were married for seven months and four days.’ Frances plucked all the years and months and days out of the air for effect: she might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and lies that couldn’t be checked ought always to be fully-grown and vigorous, and hard-working.
Now there was pain in Nannie’s eyes, and that was good.
So … it was time for a little more truth.
‘I was a secretary in the department—‘ Hugh was on good terms with Butler, as near a friend as the Colonel had among his colleagues ‘—Group-Captain Roskill’s secretary.
Do you know Group-Captain Roskill, Nannie?’
Nannie knew Hugh Roskill, she could see that. And since Hugh was also no slouch with women, young or old (though not in the David Audley class), that was good too.
In fact, she was home and dry now: Nannie knew enough to make all the necessary connections and deductions from the Fitzgibbon saga. Which was a merciful deliverance from the need to use the ultimate weapon, the last truth that was itself a deliverance of a sort; the little Robert, or little Frances, who hadn’t made the grade, accident (or too much gin) cancelling out accident.
That wasn’t even in the records, anyway, it was one of the few private things left, and she’d given enough by now to expect to collect on her investment.
‘Your husband served with the Colonel, didn’t he?’ Frances changed the subject unashamedly, as of right. It was Army widow to Army widow now, sister to sister in misfortune although separated very nearly grand-daughter-grandmother in years.
Nannie nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘I thought so.’ Frances let the answer appear to confirm what might have been an intelligent guess, it would never do to reveal how much she knew about RSM Hooker and his lady, from the Butler file.
Unfortunately, Nannie didn’t seem disposed to enlarge on the relationship. It was depressing to find that even the home-and-dry ground was still hard going.
‘In the Lancashire Rifles?’ There was no way Nannie could let that misapprehension go by, she had to correct it.
‘No, dear –‘
No, dear! That ‘dear’ had been dearly bought, even haggled over, but she had it at last.
‘No, dear. Mr Hooker was a Mendip—the Royal Mendip Borderers. The Colonel came to us in Korea, from the Rifles.’ The nose moved elliptically between then, half correcting and half confirming. ‘And he was a captain then, of course, when he came to us.’
(To us. It was still us after more than a quarter of a century, the family us of RSM Hooker’s long-time widow; it could have been us with the Widow Fitzgibbon just as easily, if she’d indicated the need; they would probably have found her another subaltern if she’d indicated the need—probably given the poor sod his courting orders, they were old-fashioned that way; even as it was there was often something waiting for her in the accumulated post at the cottage, like the regimental newsletter, and always a Christmas card.)
(Even Nannie here in front of her was a proof of the durability of the system: all those years after Korea—us in Korea, when Nannie had never been within five thousand miles of the place—Butler had remembered the widow of the RSM of his adopted regiment when he’d needed someone for his girls.)
‘Of course—I understand now.’ Frances nodded wisely, and decided to change the subject again. She had the vague memory, from one of Robbie’s attempts to explain how the army had been reorganised—massacred—in 1970, that the Mendips had been swallowed up in the Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry. But it really was a vague memory, and it wouldn’t do at all to exhibit a lack of military knowledge in such an area, when there was nothing more to be gained there.
She glanced around her. She could ask about this library, which had more books in it than ever Colonel Butler could have read. But that question would sound too obviously chatty, even though she genuinely wanted a quick answer to it; and she could get the answer easily enough for herself, though not so quickly,
simply by looking at those books—always providing she remembered how completely Paul had mis-read the ones by her own fireside.
Better to get down to business, that was something Nannie would accept without suspicion.
‘Now, Nannie … what I have to do—is to decide what sort of break-in this has been.
This is because … of the kind of work the Colonel does.’ She gave Nannie half a smile.
‘It’s a precaution, that’s all—a sort of double protection, in addition to what the Police provide.’
As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t, because in the circumstances of those open drawers and missing christening mugs it was gobbledygook, and from the slight lift of the eyebrows, over those grey eyes it was quite clear that Nannie knew it was, too.
Then the eyebrows went back to normal, and the half-smile was returned.
‘Yes, dear—I understand that,’ said Nannie. ‘The Colonel has been through the routine with me. You don’t need to explain. If it’s all right you sign a form and give it to me, and the Police carry on a normal investigation.’ She nodded helpfully.
It occurred to Frances that she hadn’t got a release with her. Maybe Detective-Sergeant Geddes had one—maybe he had a whole pocket full of them. But it really didn’t matter now that Nannie was on her side.
It didn’t seem to matter much to Nannie either, suddenly; she had her sang-froid back, though it was a subtly-altered coolness, now a benevolent neutrality more concerned with Frances than herself, even to the extent of accepting that garbage about double-protection without irritation.
Just as suddenly Frances felt ashamed of what she’d done, what she’d had to do. It wasn’t lying about Robbie—the ring, that little circle of white gold, wasn’t with him, it was in the bag on her shoulder, to be used as necessary; she simply hadn’t bothered to put it on today, it hadn’t been important—if there was deceit there, it didn’t matter because it betrayed nothing of value. But deceiving Nannie was something different.
‘And it is all right, dear,’ said Nannie solicitously. ‘You don’t need to worry. Because this is just … an ordinary robbery, the constable said so.’ She nodded. ‘He said there have been two others just like it this morning.
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