Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘What are you saying?’ asks Kirsty, frowning.

  ‘Give what back? The money?’ cries Avril.

  ‘No, no, I’m joking, don’t take any notice,’ wails Bernie distraughtly, her face turning ashen. ‘But now Rory’s in hospital and I just don’t know what’s going to happen. You see, I was depending on him.’

  ‘That’s your trouble,’ says Avril tartly, sounding so like her mother that even she recognizes the echo on the ether. ‘You’re always dependent on somebody else.’

  Bernie, faced with the magnitude of her betrayal but still able to pay for a room at the Burleston, invites the others for an evening meal at which she will break the terrible news, the demise of Magdalene and her part in it. The death of their hopes and dreams. The betrayal of her friends. She is terrified of Kirsty’s reaction. She feels sick and shaky and blind with panic.

  ‘But surely you don’t include Jake and Gemma in the invitation?’ says Avril quickly.

  ‘Oh, Avril, they’d love it,’ says Kirsty. ‘They’ve never been inside a really posh hotel before.’

  ‘Kirsty,’ spits Avril with horror, ‘they wouldn’t know how to behave! They’d be all over the dining room, shouting, squabbling, showing us up.’

  ‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ says Kirsty, colouring. ‘What sort of kids d’you think they are?’

  ‘If they go I’ll stay at home,’ says Avril, ‘and that’s flat.’

  ‘Well, if you really feel so strongly,’ but Kirsty seems totally bewildered. ‘I had no idea you felt this way. Gemma and Jake love you, Avril, they see you as one of the family, and it’s horrible that you don’t like them.’

  ‘The Balls will babysit,’ says Avril, refusing to be drawn. ‘Jake and Gemma can stay with them until we get home.’

  ‘OK,’ says Kirsty, cut to the quick, but it’s about time someone told her the truth. ‘If that’s the way you feel, Avril.’

  ‘There’s something wrong with Bernie.’

  ‘Well, yes, there would be, her fiancé is in intensive care.’

  But Kirsty shakes her head. ‘No, not that, something else. She’s a wreck, she’s terrified of something.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t noticed,’ says Avril.

  Kirsty dresses down, as usual, a dowdy summer dress with a cardigan round it. Avril, on the other hand, makes the most of the occasion; she gets out the black, backless number she hasn’t yet had a chance to wear. Her heels are thin and high.

  ‘You can’t walk in those,’ hoots Jake, ‘you look like a duck.’

  ‘Jake, Jake, don’t be so rude to Avril,’ Kirsty at last responds.

  ‘I can see your knickers,’ sings Gemma, rolling around on the caravan floor and looking up Avril’s skirt.

  Avril kicks out and catches Gemma on the chin and Gemma sets up an infuriating wail. It can’t have hurt that much, but the heel has caught her. Her face is bleeding; the wretched child makes a meal of it and Kirsty is fussing all over her, dab, dab, dabbing at the sink as if the kid’s been maimed for life.

  ‘That wasn’t necessary, Avril,’ snaps Kirsty.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ lies Avril, basking in a pleasing glow; she yearns to follow up her attack, see the brat scream over something worthwhile. ‘I was merely trying to protect my modesty.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t guess that,’ retorts Kirsty, ‘if you’re really intending to go out like that.’

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with me,’ says Avril, giving Kirsty a meaningful stare. Cinderella. Miserable cow. ‘And anyway, look, it’s only a prick, the skin has hardly been broken. It’s stopped bleeding now. Give her a plaster and don’t fuss.’

  Candice Love, back at the Burleston, stops in her tracks when she sees Bernie. ‘I never thought I’d find you here.’ And her voice is icy.

  Bernie averts her guilt-ridden eyes. ‘I couldn’t stay at the flat, could I?’

  ‘No.’ Candice shakes her silken head. ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  ‘How’s Rory?’ Bernie seems ashamed to ask.

  ‘The same, as far as I know.’ She guesses the reason for Bernie’s return. ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t believe it. You really haven’t told them yet, have you?’

  Bernie hangs her head. ‘Don’t blame me for all of this. It wasn’t my idea. None of this is my fault. They made me carry the whole damn can so it’s them to blame more than—’

  ‘God help you,’ says Candice, moving on.

  After the initial surprise at seeing their agent at the hotel, they sit in the bar sipping cocktails, Kirsty quiet and serious after her quarrel with Avril.

  ‘I had to come.’ Candice’s expression is hard and cold, nothing like the light-hearted, flamboyant creature of their first encounter. ‘If you hadn’t all been here tonight I would have had to come and find you.’

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ says Kirsty. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘I think,’ says Candice, sitting back in the same old brown chesterfield that once dwarfed Clementine Davaine, ‘you ought to tell me that.’

  There follows an awkward silence.

  ‘This isn’t going to go away,’ Candice warns them. ‘And neither am I. There has been some deception going on round here, and it’s serious and worrying and I intend to get to the bottom of it.’

  Nobody likes to answer. Nobody is sure what she means. Everything seemed to be going so well and now they are suddenly faced with this. And why doesn’t Bernie look at them? Why does it feel as if she’s estranged, all shrivelled up in a corner? Avril and Bernie and Kirsty and Candice know Ellen Kirkwood wrote Magdalene. Avril also knows that she almost set fire to the caravan of her parents thus causing their deaths, Bernie knows she drove Rory to suicide, while Kirsty knows that her husband is dead down a mine shaft not 100 yards away from here.

  So what should they now confess to?

  There is so much—so much.

  Eventually, after silently eyeing all three women, Candice delves into her Gucci handbag and brings out the copy of Magdalene that was sent to her in the post. She lays it on the table beside the olives and the peanuts, alongside Bernie’s Blue Ocean Wave, Avril’s Tequila Sea Mist and Kirsty’s Brandy Alexander.

  Kirsty turns deathly pale. Avril whispers, ‘Where did you get it?’ while Bernie drags defensively on her cigarette.

  ‘It arrived yesterday,’ says Candice, ‘but we knew about the book by then. It doesn’t matter how we knew, but Rory and I found out the truth. The secret is out and now I want some straight answers.’

  ‘But who sent you that? There was only one copy, we thought—’

  ‘I don’t know who sent it, but I intend to find out. I spent all yesterday afternoon doing research in the British Library and came up with some pretty interesting facts. I wonder if you are aware of them?’ And then Candice turns to Kirsty. ‘Where, exactly, did you find your copy?’

  Kirsty, dumbfounded, can do nothing but answer honestly. ‘I found it in the quiet lounge here at the hotel. It was part of Colonel Parker’s collection, a library for the guests.’

  ‘And you saw its merits immediately?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave it alone. I was obsessed.’

  ‘So was I when I read it,’ admits Avril, trembling.

  ‘I thought we could make some money,’ Kirsty goes on quietly; it sounds like she is confessing in church. ‘It seemed to me that nobody could read Magdalene and not think it brilliant.’

  ‘And, between you, you managed to fool me and all my colleagues. Not only them, but, remarkably, one of the most respected editors in the land.’

  ‘It wasn’t that easy.’ Bernie sobs, remembering Rory and the wonderful life that has slipped from her desperate grasp. And what if the others find out it was her who went and blew the gaff?

  ‘When I first tried to contact you, Kirsty, that time you gave me your correct name, I rang the hotel to ask for you and a woman answered the phone. We had rather an odd conversation.’

  ‘That was Mrs Stokes.’

&nbs
p; ‘I know it’s a while ago now, but can any of you remember whether Mrs Stokes passed my message on?’

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ says Avril.

  ‘So she never passed on my private address and telephone number?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she had them. She took them down all right. She copied them down, reluctantly, furious to be disturbed, I remember.’

  ‘She’s like that,’ says Avril, nodding.

  ‘So it must have been her who sent me the book. What did you do with your copy?’ Candice asks Kirsty.

  ‘I burnt it,’ Kirsty confesses again, ‘in the hotel boilers. I watched it burn. It burned to ashes.’

  ‘And you hoped there were no other copies?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. It was done and decided in moments. I never bothered about other copies or author’s rights. I was scared someone might remember it, but I didn’t even bother to change the title. I was just fanatical about getting the book out whatever it took.’

  ‘And you still are, aren’t you?’ says Candice quietly.

  The next dreadful half-hour is spent listening to Candice Love’s biography of Ellen Kirkwood, the author.

  ‘Jaysus, Jaysus, that’s why I freaked out when I read it.’

  ‘So it’s true life. It’s a kind of diary?’

  This thought is repellent.

  ‘It would seem that they never discovered how many murders Kirkwood committed, and at that time the whole nation was focused aggressively on the impending war, and it was inappropriate for the authorities to divert the nation’s attention to some hideous crime wave in one little corner of the country. The government’s War Propaganda Bureau was well oiled and buzzing by the time Kirkwood came to court, the cinemas and newspapers were full of the perfidy of the Germans and it was essential that the whole nation think well of themselves, despite severe economic depression—God is on our side and all that. But the most obvious reason the book was abandoned was because the author was a murderess. In those days it just wasn’t done. The very idea would be outrageous.’

  ‘So the publication of her book was dropped.’

  ‘Yes, but only after a handful got through.’

  ‘And Colonel Parker happened to have one in his library?’

  ‘And somebody else near here had another.’ Candice offers round French cigarettes.

  ‘But who else might have a copy?’ asks Avril.

  ‘God only knows,’ says Candice, pausing to order more drinks.

  ‘Family?’ asks Kirsty.

  ‘There seems to have been no family, except for the one illegitimate child.’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing you might keep and treasure.’ The thought is too awful to dwell on. ‘If your mother was hanged and you grew up an orphan and were made ashamed of who you were, you might hold on to something like that.’ Kirsty’s voice trails away, thinking of Gemma and Jake.

  ‘Born in 1913, that baby will be elderly now. Apart from Colonel Parker himself, and that seems very unlikely, is there anyone else you can think of around here in that age group?’

  ‘Hell, eighty-six?’

  ‘She couldn’t be, could she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Old Stokes.’

  ‘Seventy-six perhaps, but… Ellen Kirkwood’s baby?’

  They fall into an uncomfortable silence while each one conjures the rigid form of the housekeeper: upright, scrawny, wrinkled, yet still spry and energetic. Her neck is invariably covered by a scarf or a high-buttoned collar. Her hands hide under her cardigans. Hers is not a physical job—she sits in her office most of the time organizing from there—or she creeps round spying on staff, or checking the laundry, or dressing down miscreants.

  ‘Eighty-six, Mother of God.’

  ‘She could be.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘But why would Mrs Stokes leave one copy of her mother’s book in Colonel Parker’s library?’

  ‘Perhaps she felt it ought to be read,’ says Candice. ‘Maybe she felt her mother was denied the acclaim that was due to her, the one positive thing she left behind her, apart, of course, from her child.’

  ‘In that case,’ Kirsty muses, ‘wouldn’t she have been pleased to see the novel published at last and recognized by everyone as the masterpiece it is? So why would she throw a spanner in the works by sending you this copy?’

  ‘She wanted the novel published, but perhaps not in your name,’ says Candice, seeing a small light at the end of the tunnel. ‘She wanted to make certain the truth came out. Once she knew it was in print, even in proof form, she had to act fast to get Bernie’s name replaced by her mother’s on the cover. But she didn’t want herself involved. Even after eighty-six years, Mrs Stokes is still ashamed of her mother.’ I know that feeling, thinks Avril ruefully.

  Thirty

  MR DEREK DEFLATES LIKE a long, thin, flaccid balloon with all the wind puffing out of it.

  ‘Mrs Stokes,’ his hoarse voice begs of his outraged housekeeper, ‘don’t you think I’ve enough to contend with this morning? Flagherty has been found dead in his shed.’ The second corpse of the summer. Oh my God. His nerve seems to be going. He throws his harassed head back and exposes a shaving nick on his neck. ‘At the moment they say it looks like any normal heart attack, but the way things are going round here no doubt we’ll be told he was smothered.’

  Mrs Stokes, her papery skin flaming scarlet this morning, doesn’t take the slightest notice of her manager’s dilemma. ‘I don’t think you have grasped the enormity of what has just happened to me,’ she huffs. ‘I have been accused not only of being the offspring of some serial murderess, but also of being aged eighty-six.’

  Poor old Moira. Her gad-about husband, Alf, never loved her, being star-stuck at an early age by a visiting beauty from the USA. Quite a bit older than she was, he left her and then left the Burleston only one year after their marriage, never to be heard of again. Moira always fondly insisted there was a child somewhere, the only relative she ever claims, a somewhat tenuous connection by way of her husband’s busy loins. Only a few people know this; the hackneyed tale has been handed down discreetly through the ages. But Mr Derek breathes in wildly. ‘Well, how old are you, Mrs Stokes?’

  ‘That is nobody’s business but mine, but, good heavens, I am certainly not eighty-six.’ And she pulls herself up forbiddingly to her full and sprightly height.

  ‘Poor old Flagherty,’ sighs Mr Derek, scratching his head so that a section of hair stands up like a child’s at the back. ‘I can’t tell you how long he’s been with us.’

  ‘A time-waster and a scoundrel’ is the housekeeper’s tart reply.

  After Flagherty’s body has been removed, with the manufacturers’ imprint from a sack of bone meal stamped on his face, the police, faced with another sudden death, begin a slack but routine search of the 12 x 10 shed where Flagherty ambled through most of his life. From between the leaves of a faded copy of Adam the Gardener, hidden under tins of condensed milk and plastic seed labels, a stained and crumpled note is spotted.

  I let the lad take the blame becos he was gilty of one anyway. But I gave Mr Board the biff that kiled him. It was purly accidental! He kindly offerd to teach me to drive and I never got the hang of it! I hid the club in the old cottage, down the hole! Signed Patrick Flagherty head gardener!

  ‘Hell, this certainly puts a different complexion on things,’ says Sergeant Mallet briskly. He is dispatched to fetch the key to the bungalow in the garden, and arrives back at the Burleston with keyholder, Kirsty Hoskins, and Avril Stott and Bernie Kavanagh in tow.

  ‘Well, Miss Stott will have to be interviewed in connection with her damning statement,’ he tells his superior when he expresses surprise. ‘It couldn’t have been her brother. She was clearly mistaken if Mr Flagherty’s note is genuine, as it seems. And Mrs Hoskins and Miss Kavanagh just insisted on coming with her, sir.’ He gives a short, informative aside, ‘Mrs Hoskins seemed quite hysterical. I thought it best not to leave her
out.’

  The little party congregate outside the paint-peeled door. Mallet’s superior inserts the key and they follow him inside. To start with there is nothing exceptional about this miserable place, save for a repulsive smell.

  ‘Where is this hole Flagherty referred to, I wonder?’ muses the inspector, handkerchief to his nostrils, eager not to linger long. He takes some tenuous steps, prodding the ground before him with a broken curtain rod. He arrives at the upside-down table and pauses, pulling nervously at one of the badly splintered legs. ‘Could it be here?’ he asks the party. ‘There’s no sign of a hole anywhere else.’

  The inspector makes an impatient gesture. The two coppers drag the table away and the three of them look down.

  ‘Good God, Mallet, what a mess. Come on then, let’s get busy, if the weapon’s down there we’ve got to find it. The old guy certainly went to some trouble to cover his tracks.’ And he presses his handkerchief harder against his nose. ‘There’s enough rubbish down here to set up home with.’

  Like magicians emptying their pockets, the contents keep coming, never ending. Now there’s a pile of household utensils and the policemen, sleeves rolled up and covered with dust, are sweating profusely. One is inside the hole chucking stuff up, while the second shovels it out of the way.

  ‘Hang on,’ cries Mallet. ‘Hang on.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I dunno, but there’s something bloody odd here.’

  ‘Keep delving.’

  When Mallet’s face next appears it is shocked. His hair is white from brick dust, his eyes are red and rimmed. ‘You better take a look, Inspector.’ And he holds back the mess with a frying pan handle. ‘Further down, under the rubble. He’s got to be dead, sir. Got to be.’

  The inspector stares down in horror. ‘My God. I don’t believe it. How long has the poor bastard been stuck here?’

  ‘Who can he be?’ asks Bernie, enthralled.

  ‘This is awful,’ sobs Avril.

  Kirsty stands rigid and silent, her eyes focused on a far-off place.