Meanwhile, I reached Donald and knelt beside him, checking for broken bones. That terrible hump frightened me. I was afraid to move him. If he had broken his back -
‘Is he okay?’ Arnold knelt beside me. I could see my fear mirrored in his eyes.
‘I don’t know. I — I think so.’ Reassurance came only because Donna was sitting there unstrapping her skates so calmly. If anything serious were wrong with her twin, she would not have been so placid.
‘Oh ... wow!’ Donald moaned and began stirring.
‘Take it easy, son,’ Arnold said. ‘Can you sit up?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Donald took several deep breaths – he had been more winded than anything – and pushed himself to a sitting position. Now we could see what had lain beneath him, giving him that humped appearance.
‘No! Oh, no!’ The green Victorian jardiniere, spilling its hoard of umbrellas, was decidedly the worse for wear. There was an enormous crack running from top to midpoint and several large spots gleamed obscenely white around the rim where it had chipped.
‘It’s not too bad.’ Arnold tried to cheer me. ‘Maybe we can glue back the bits.’ He looked around vaguely.
‘And maybe we can’t.’ I remembered the crunching noises as I saw that two of the largest shards had been ground to powder under the wheels of Donna’s skates. ‘I hope to God that thing didn’t have any sentimental value for the Blakes.’
‘We’ll replace it,’ Arnold said. ‘Just be thankful it wasn’t Ming Dynasty. Although –’ His face darkened and he turned to the twins accusingly. ‘Even that’s going to cost something. Victorian stuff comes high these days.’
‘If we could ever match it.’ I looked despairingly at the fallen jardiniere. It was looking rarer and more valuable by the moment. Furthermore, there were telltale streaks now marring the parquet flooring. ‘What on earth did you kids think you were doing, anyway?’
‘You told us to try out our skates,’ Donald mumbled.
‘And it’s raining outdoors,’ Donna whined. Both of them were on the verge of the ultimate weapon: tears.
I hadn’t realized Esmond had followed us into the hallway until I heard an unpleasantly familiar little hacking sound. I whirled around just in time to see him sicking up his dinner in the corner.
‘Oh, no,’ I wailed. ‘Not him, too. Why can’t we ever get a cat with a strong stomach?’
‘That’s it!’ Arnold roared. ‘Upstairs! To bed! All of you!’
Cat and kids scattered, leaving us to survey the damage in what passed for peace.
‘I’ve just written to Rosemary to break it to her about the hedge.’ I gathered up a couple of still-intact chips and tried to fit them into place on the rim of the jardiniere. ‘And now – this. I’ll have to write again. She’ll begin to dread my letters.’
‘Give it a couple of days, Babe.’ Arnold patted me on the shoulder. ‘We’ll see what we can do with this tonight and things will look better in the morning.’
Eight
Things were better in the morning. Arnold had always been good at jigsaw puzzles and I had discovered that my green eyeshadow was almost the same shade as the jardiniere. I rubbed it well into all the chipped places until they lost their glaring whiteness and acquired a slightly mossy aspect. I could never kid anybody that they were supposed to look like that, but at least it gave the impression – that the damage had been done some time ago. We moved the jardiniere to a darker corner and decided that was as much as we could do for the time being.
If only we were at home,’ I said wistfully, ‘we could ask Viv and Hank to find a duplicate jardiniere. It wouldn’t take them long. We don’t even know where to begin to look for one here.’
‘If we can’t find one,’ Arnold said, ‘we’ll just have to give Rosemary about three times what it’s worth and let her find another one herself — or buy something else. Maybe we ought to do that, anyway. For all we know, she doesn’t like it, anyway. It may be something she got stuck with – a Christmas present, or a bequest from a relative.’
‘Maybe she’ll be glad we did it.’ Donald was even more optimistic than his father. ‘Maybe she’s hated it for years and always wanted an excuse to get rid of it.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ I told him. ‘Just keep quiet and eat your breakfast.’
‘That’s right,’ Arnold said. ‘Hurry up and finish your breakfast and run out and play.’
‘It’s still raining –’
‘You won’t melt. English kids have been playing out in the rain for thousands of years and it hasn’t done them any harm.’
‘Angela and Perry are out in their backyard now.’ I looked out of the window at the exquisitely ordered garden aligned with ours. ‘Why don’t you go over and play with them? Or, better still, invite them over here – they don’t seem to have any swings.’
‘Are you kidding? Their mother would kill us.’
‘Don’t get my hopes up,’ I snapped.
‘Look, kids –’ Arnold intervened. ‘I’m the one who was driving. Lania will have it in for me – she won’t be so mad at you by now. Just you go ahead out there and see if that isn’t so.’
After Arnold had left to catch his train, the twins settled down to play on the swings. I gave them some paper towels to mop the seats, vetoing Donna’s suggestion of removing a couple of cushions from the sofa to put on the seats. We would not add muddy cushions to the damage already done.
Sure enough, the prospect of cadging rides on the swings brought Angela and Peregrine first to the dividing fence, then over it and into our yard. If Lania disapproved, she evidently was not about to make an issue of it. Maybe, like me, she felt it was hard enough to keep children entertained on a rainy day and anything that kept them out of the house and happily occupied was not to be discouraged. I wondered why they weren’t in school. It was probably some local holiday I didn’t know about.
I settled down with another cup of coffee and the morning paper to enjoy a few peaceful moments before I started the chores.
There was the perfunctory ring of the doorbell, then the scrape of a key in the lock. Arnold must have missed his train.
Footsteps came along the hallway, too light and quick for Arnold’s. I looked up from my newspaper to see a strange female walk into the kitchen and set down a shopping bag. She was obviously quite at home.
‘Oh ...’ After a moment, the blankness cleared and my mind began to function again. I recognized her from Lania’s dinner party. ‘Good morning, Mrs Thing.’
‘Good morning ... Mrs Harper.’ She gave me a strange look. I hoped we were going to get on all right.
‘Please, call me Nancy.’ I stood up quickly and held out my hand. ‘I’m awfully pleased to see you again, Mrs Thing. It’s very nice of you to come and help us out.’
‘Um ... yes.’ She took my hand tentatively and released it immediately. She didn’t seem pleased to see me. Maybe she thought we’d always be out of the house when she came to clean. Come to think of it, I’d prefer it that way, too. Then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about sitting around in my bathrobe with the dishes in the sink and the beds unmade.
‘Well ...’ I kept smiling but my mind had gone blank again. What did I do now? Should I suggest she go ahead with her work? Would that sound insulting? Maybe I ought to offer her a cup of coffee? But I had just emptied the pot and would have to make more.
‘Well ...’ She glanced around the kitchen and then at me. ‘I expect you’ll want to go and get dressed.’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, I do,’ I said, gratefully leaping at the chance to retreat. ‘I’ll just ...’
‘Don’t bother about me.’ She interpreted my hesitation correctly. ‘I’ll just get on with things down here.’ She began clearing the table.
I smiled nervously at her and fled.
I stayed out of sight for as long as I could. When sounds of activity below began to die down, I guessed that she must want to come upstairs and clean up here. Meanwhile, I had made the beds and
done some preliminary dusting. It didn’t look quite the pigsty it usually did when the twins were around.
‘Uh ...’ I went to the head of the stairs. ‘I suppose you’d like to do up here now, Mrs Thing?’
‘In a minute.’ She glared up at me. I had miscalculated. She had not finished. Far from it. She was on her hands and knees in the hallway, scrubbing away at the streaks on the parquet flooring.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry about that. The twins had new roller skates and they started trying them out inside the house before I could catch them.’ I knew without being told that the Blake children would never ever have dreamed of doing anything like skating indoors. I wondered if she had noticed -
‘I see you’ve moved the jardiniere.’ She had. She had probably counted every chip.
‘We’re going to buy a replacement,’ I said guiltily, starting down the stairs. ‘And we’ll hire a sander before we leave and do the hallway properly. Please, Mrs Thing, don’t bother about it. We’ll fix it.’
‘My name is Mrs Dover –’ She lurched to her feet and glared at me, eye-to-eye. ‘Dover, as in the port of.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I could feel myself going red. ‘I thought – I mean, Lania said –’
‘Oh, I know where you got it from, don’t worry. I know what that one calls me behind my back. It’s all part of the airs and graces she gives herself, making out that she’s too above people like me to remember our names. She doesn’t dare call me that to my face, I promise you.’
‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Th – Mrs Dover. I do apologize most earnestly.’ I was growing furious, with myself as well as with Lania. I should have realized that Thing was an unlikely name from the way Lania had rattled it off.
‘Don’t worry, I know it’s not your fault. And I’ll tell you something about that “lady”. She’s not all she pretends to be – not by any means. Lania – hhmmph!’ Mrs Dover sniffed. ‘Her real name is Lana – so that just shows you, doesn’t it?’
‘Er, yes. Yes, indeed,’ I agreed cravenly, wondering what I was being shown.
‘She stuck the “i” in to make it sound lah-di-dah, but she started out as Lana, all right. And I happen to know for a fact that she’s got a sister named Marlene and a brother named Orson. I’ve seen letters from them. So she needn’t go around trying to pretend she’s so upper crust. Her and her Mrs Things!’
She turned on her heel and marched up the stairs, nodding her head vehemently at every step, still muttering under her breath.
Thoroughly demoralized, I fled to the kitchen, shook the money for her salary out of my purse and left it on the kitchen table, then checked that the kids were still okay out in the yard.
‘I’ve got an errand to do,’ I told them. ‘You stay here and be good. Tell Mrs Dover her money is on the kitchen table, if she asks. I’ll be back later.’ Then I left the house.
There was no doubt about it. No way was I ever going to be in the house again on Mrs Dover’s cleaning day.
Nonetheless, as the day wore on, I found myself immoderately cheered by the realization that Lania was only, as Beatrice Lillie had so aptly phrased it, ‘Every other inch a lady’.
The knowledge stood me in good stead after dinner that evening. Hazel had served a delicious meal and we had adjourned to the living-room for coffee and liqueurs, the twins settled in a corner with a video game belonging to her absent children. Hazel sent an occasional wistful glance towards them and it occurred to me that she must be very lonely, trying to fit into the life of a new community, with her husband always off on business and the children away at school. I was about to remark sympathetically on this situation when the doorbell rang.
‘I’ll go –’ Hazel said rather apprehensively – and unnecessarily. Certainly no one else was going to answer the door in her house. She sent us an almost pleading glance and hurried out of the room.
We heard the front door opening and then a babble of voices. One voice rose above the others and I froze. I turned to Arnold and saw that he had paled. We exchanged a look of mutual helplessness and despair. We had been set-up.
As Lania and Richard reached the doorway, Lania was laughing at something he had said. She took one look at us and stopped laughing.
‘Don’t blame us,’ I said quickly. ‘This wasn’t our idea.’
‘Actually –’ Hazel edged them further into the room, closed the door and leaned against it, cutting off any escape for Lania. ‘It was my idea. Mine – and Richard’s. We felt the awkwardness had gone on long enough. It was an accident, for heaven’s sake – and you do live next door to each other. You can’t carry on like this all summer.’
‘That’s right,’ Richard chimed in. ‘Time to kiss and make up –’ He caught the look Lania flashed at him and faltered. ‘Well, make up, anyway.’
The silence seemed to go on for ever, punctuated by random bleeps from the corner where the twins, happily oblivious, were annihilating astral aliens.
Lania looked as though she wouldn’t mind disposing of a couple of troublesome terrestrial aliens herself.
‘Come, come –’ Hazel gave a nervous laugh. ‘Please –’ Her voice quivered with genuine emotion.
‘I have so few friends in this town. I can’t bear it if you’re not speaking to each other.’
‘Jolly awkward,’ Richard agreed. ‘The children playing together, getting on so well – and the parents on the outs.’
‘I’m not on the outs,’ I said pointedly. ‘I’m not not speaking to anyone — and neither is Arnold.’
‘There now –’ Richard turned to Lania. ‘You see? It’s all up to you. What do you say?’
We held our breath.
‘Oh, all right,’ Lania said ungraciously. She forced a smile. It was an accident, I know. But I put so much time and effort into coaxing that hedge into shape –’
‘That’s enough now,’ Richard said. ‘We’re going to forget the hedge and start all over again.’ He turned to Hazel. ‘How about that coffee and liqueur we were invited for?’
‘Coming right up.’ Hazel moved swiftly towards the kitchen.
‘Well ...’ Lania forced another smile and looked around the room. ‘Isn’t this cosy?’ She found a seat in the farthest corner. Diplomatic relations had been resumed, but it was going to take a while before they went beyond the bare courtesies.
‘Just the way it should be,’ Richard said expansively. He seemed to be secretly relieved; he had not been at all sure which way his cat would jump.
‘Here we are.’ Hazel wheeled in the hostess trolley with fresh supplies of coffee and exotic bottles – all unopened. I wondered if this was the first time she had entertained in a long while.
Possibly it was the first time she had entertained in this house. There was a curiously bandbox look about it. All the furniture was new and shining, the rugs seemed not to have been subjected to any wear and tear. The room had not the conscious spotlessness of Lania’s drawing-room, it was more like the impersonal background of a hotel. There were no family photographs on the wall or on any of the gleaming surfaces. Only the video games the twins were playing with gave evidence that there were children somewhere in the background.
That wistful expression on her face when she watched the twins had betrayed how much she missed her children.
On the other hand, she might be enjoying the chance to have an uncluttered home for a few weeks. It would get that lived-in look fast enough when she had her husband and kids back. She might then be wistful about the good old days when she had been running a bachelor-girl establishment, with no one to tidy up after.
‘I think you’ll like this.’ Hazel set a liqueur glass beside my demitasse. ‘It’s framboise – my favourite.’ A swift glance at both fragile objects gave me the sudden dizzying impression that I was a child again partaking of a doll’s tea party. I lifted the glass to my lips and my head cleared – this was no child’s drink.
“That’s what I call raspberry juice with a kick,’ Arnold approved.
‘Would you mind telling me where we can find a bottle of this for ourselves?’
‘There’s a little shop in town –’ Lania cut in before Hazel could reply, unable to resist the temptation to give advice. Hazel caught my eye, smiled, and leaned back and left her to it.
The conversation lost its constraint and went smoothly from that point. By leavetaking, most of the cracks in the Harper-Sandgate relationship had been papered over. We were back on an almost friendly footing again.
‘You’ve been great.’ Arnold turned impulsively in the doorway and hugged Hazel. ‘You must come to us next time.’
‘I’d like that,’ Hazel responded warmly. Too warmly. They were right underneath the front porch light and I could see her arms tighten around him.
A nasty little suspicion curled through my mind: Hazel was missing more than her children.
I would take this up with Arnold later. I turned away and caught the look that passed between Lania and Richard. They had noticed, too.
‘You can stay, if you like,’ I told Arnold sweetly.
‘Just coming –’ Arnold dropped his hostess guiltily.
‘Don’t hurry on my account. Any time you want him –’ I laughed merrily to Hazel – ‘I’ll swap him for a rusty toasting fork.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ she laughed back.
Nine
After all that, it was highly ironic to realize that Lania would have begun speaking to us again on Saturday in the normal course of events.
Not that it was normal for the police to bring Arnold home.
He’d been in London all day – as usual. He’d warned me that he might be a bit late as there were a couple of bookshops in Charing Cross Road he wanted to visit. I knew Arnold when he got into a bookshop – he looked on them as libraries with price tags – he was almost impossible to dislodge until the place closed for the night.
So I wasn’t surprised at how late he was. Annoyed, but not surprised.
I turned the oven to its lowest setting and worked off my irritation by whipping cream with a manual eggbeater. When the doorbell rang – just like him to forget his key again – I ignored it. I heard the twins’ footsteps racing for the door. Then:
Paws for Alarm Page 6
