After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Yes, but you were about to tell me something about the coalman?’

  ‘Quite. Mr McNally delivered five hundredweight of best house coal, as well as two sacks of sticks, the week before the Duffys arrived. It was ordered by letter from Edinburgh. Now, the coal store at Reiver’s Rest – somewhere between a large bunker and a shed proper – sits separate from the house itself, quite some way away, owing I suppose to the local wariness about wooden houses –’

  ‘Or possibly the complete lack of concern on the part of the builder for the little maid who had to trot back and forth with the buckets,’ I put in.

  ‘That too,’ said Alec. ‘Well, after much hemming and hawing, Mr McNally admitted to me that he went back to the cottage yesterday, to “check on” the coal. For which I think we can understand “take back and resell”, but why not? Coal would be the last thing on anyone’s mind, and as McNally pointed out to me, a heap of it just sitting there is a temptation to any troop of wee rascals who might happen past with a box of matches and a heidfu’ o’ naethin’.’ Here Alec dropped into a dreadful approximation of a Scots tongue, painful to the ear.

  ‘Now, the coal shed was kept locked,’ he went on, ‘but Mr McNally has a key and when he opened up yesterday, what do you think he found?’ For a horrid moment my mind ran skittering over some of the things I imagined might be found in a locked coal shed, rats being the very least. Then Alec went on.

  ‘He found nothing. Nothing. The coal was finished. In one week, enough coal had been used to have kept a family of ten warm all winter.’

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ I said. ‘Mrs Marshall – nice Mrs Marshall – told me that one day when she went by she saw that all the doors and windows were thrown open. She remembered particularly, because the new curtains were blowing out against the outside walls getting dirty, and she was puzzled because she knew the fires were hotter than Sandy thought was advisable with new paper.’

  ‘And yet didn’t Clemence say at the inquiry that the bedroom fires weren’t even lit?’ said Alec. ‘I wonder why no one corrected her? No matter. You know what this means, don’t you, Dandy?’ I thought I did but it seemed not only far-fetched, but beset with problems. ‘All the fires lit, the range stoked and the windows flung open. That little house, that little wooden house, was being dried out like kindling. It was supposed to catch fire and it was supposed to burn to the ground when it did.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but there’s a problem, Alec, don’t you see? Cara couldn’t possibly have arranged that and carried it out, could she?’

  ‘No indeed. Indeed she couldn’t.’ Alec’s voice was grim. ‘Our suicide theory begins to crumble. And anyway, didn’t you say that both the Mrs Marshalls remarked how happy Cara was?’

  ‘“A cheery wee thing”,’ I agreed. ‘Yet that second letter she sent you seemed anything but cheerful.’

  I took a last puff at my cigarette and threw it into the fire. Alec was busy fiddling with his pipe. (Perhaps he was welcome to it; who could be bothered, after all?)

  ‘The second letter aside,’ I said, ‘if Cara didn’t kill herself, what did happen? Was it an accident after all?’ Alec resettled his pipe, raised his eyebrows and said nothing. I began to shake my head, horrified. ‘No, Alec, no, you can’t mean that. That Mrs Duffy or she and Clemence together . . . and then calmly went for a walk and left her there. And how on earth could Cara be made to stay in the house and let it happen?’ I asked.

  ‘We said ourselves that she must have hit her head and been unconscious,’ said Alec. ‘And we agreed that people don’t just hit their heads.’

  ‘But it’s impossible,’ I said. ‘Her mother? Her sister? It’s utterly preposterous. And why?’

  ‘It would explain their oddness, their watchfulness,’ said Alec. ‘Their peculiar reaction to seeing me. Mrs Duffy’s attempts to quash all hint of trouble at the inquiry.’ I was beginning to feel sick. To think of them (or just her?) banking up fires and stoking the range, the windows open and everyone still sweltering. Wait! No, it couldn’t be. Relief rolled over me like a wave of warm water.

  ‘It can’t have happened that way,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see? Because how could they have explained it to Cara? She wouldn’t have sat quietly while they made a tinderbox of the cottage around her, would she?’ Alec’s shoulders dropped and he smiled.

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ He gave a sigh that was almost a laugh. ‘I’m sure we’re right about what all the coal was used for, but it must have happened with the knowledge and acquiescence of everyone in the house. It must have.’

  ‘And since we can’t countenance the idea that Cara was a willing accomplice in her own death,’ I said, ‘where does that leave us?’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Alec, sitting suddenly upright from where he had slumped down in his chair with relief. ‘That’s exactly what must have happened. Cara, Clemence and their mother were all in it together. It was a deliberate scheme, what the Americans call a frame-up. And what it means – of course! – is that Cara is still alive.’

  ‘What?’ I said, but the sense of it hit me almost at once. ‘Oh, yes, I see! Oh thank God! She’s not dead. She’s disappeared somewhere and that’s why the house had to burn right to the ground – to make it plausible that nothing remained of her.’ I beamed.

  ‘And it all went according to plan,’ he said. ‘Including you turning up as a convenient witness, except that I was not supposed to turn up with you and that rattled them.’

  ‘And do you think that was the secret she wanted to tell you? And do you think that she and her mother couldn’t agree on whether you might be told? And she couldn’t bear you to think she was dead while you were still engaged and that’s why she wrote to break it off?’ Alec nodded faster and faster as I rattled through all this, and as his smile deepened I thought to myself that yes, it must have hurt him at some spot between his heart and his pride to have got that letter, despite how cool he had seemed, and that he was glad to have an explanation of the jilting that was nothing to do with his attractions as a husband, even if we now had more questions, and more puzzling ones, than ever.

  ‘So . . . why?’ I asked. ‘And how did she get away? And where is she? And how are we even going to start to find her?’

  Chapter Nine

  We could be sure of one thing: there was nothing more to be learned in Galloway. Clearly the Duffys had chosen the spot because they could go about their business unobserved there. So I telephoned to Gilverton, telling Hugh with a nice truthfulness that the Duffys had gone off to the mountains and that I should like Drysdale to fetch me from Edinburgh the following afternoon. I was glad; despite a growing fondness for the peace of my little room with its striped flannel sheets and its view of the barrels in the yard, my lack of success with the locals (around whom Alec seemed able to run the expected rings) was a constant thorn, and I was missing Bunty, growing tired of the clothes I had brought and, after this morning, I needed Grant to attend to my coat and gloves as a matter of urgency.

  We spent the journey up to town dividing the tasks ahead. I was to tackle the jeweller who identified the pastes, since both Alec and I felt a lady could best achieve the right combination of tenacious interest and muddle-headedness to find out all there was to know while not putting the man on his guard. Besides, the jewels were my proper concern, being Daisy’s only one. I thought it rather unlikely that Cara would have said anything useful to a jeweller, but thoroughness is to be recommended in most arenas and, also, there was not much else for me to do.

  Alec had rather wider scope. Under cover of unbearable grief, he was to make visits to Cara’s closest friends and beg them to talk about her. We both thought it certain that they would speak of the last time they had met, or the last letter they had had, and that something about the pickle she was in might be revealed. I secretly hoped, as I daresay did he, that he should actually discover much more than this; that is, that he should discover Cara herself holed up with a chum somewhere. We did not, however, gi
ve voice to this hope.

  So, after a blissful night back in my own bed and having submitted myself to one of Grant’s most punitive toilettes – it always incensed her to have me go off on my own – I found myself in Edinburgh again, descending Frederick Street, approaching the jeweller’s with the reluctance of a dog being led to its bath water. Stopping at the corner of the street and pretending to look with interest at a suite of hideous mahogany bedroom furniture in the window of a shop, I ran through my plan once again. I hoped this plan was a wily testament to my growing skills as a detective, but I feared it was another rag-bag of unnecessary lies and pointless indiscretions. Briefly, it was this: I had decided to tell the jeweller that I suspected suicide and was convinced that Cara’s attempt to sell the jewels was connected. I should ask him not to tell the Duffys about my interest, and I felt sure that out of common decency, even if not out of any sense of obligation, he would agree. I should begin calmly but was ready to dissolve into tears if the occasion arose and a corner of my handkerchief was soaked in Thawpit to help with the dissolving.

  An hour later I was striding out along the pavement again, with my head high and a bounce in my step like the first day of spring and I had swung around the corner past the mahogany furniture and begun the uphill climb before I began to falter. It was true that I had performed brilliantly. The jeweller was flattered by my confidences and only too eager to discuss every detail of his meeting with Miss Duffy. He hoped to be struck dead if he breathed a word of such a distressing thought to her family or anyone else and (my final triumph) he made a cup of tea and put my feet up on a stool when I broke down and ‘despite dabbing my eyes’ succumbed to a fit of weeping. However, the thought struck me only now that my visit had in fact been a complete failure. Put simply, I had not found anything out. Miss Duffy had said nothing at all about her reasons for selling up, and remarkably little about the jeweller’s discovery of the fakes. She had seemed neither very surprised nor suspiciously unsurprised but only rather distant, as though unconcerned in the transaction. This, he had assured me, was not uncommon. Ladies selling their jewels often masked the unpleasant feelings it aroused with haughty remoteness. She had not even reacted when told that, had the jewels been genuine, she would have needed to produce proof of ownership before a sale could go through, but the jeweller considered that this might be put down to, as he called it, breeding.

  I was forced to stop at the kerb on George Street while a number of taxis passed and, glancing along, I saw a willowy figure dressed in black emerge from a shop on the other side, followed by another, bulkier, outline in deeper and yet more garish mourning. The second was undoubtedly an upper servant of some description but the first, now walking in my direction, was Clemence Duffy. I scuttled across between taxis and, composing my face into friendly sympathy, approached them.

  ‘Darling,’ I exclaimed, attempting to press Clemence to me, maternally. ‘What happened to the Lake District? Is your mother better? Not worse, I hope. Not too ill to travel?’ Clemence, after recovering from her initial surprise at seeing me and, I expect, at being clasped so inexpertly to my bosom, looked rather pleased, or as pleased as her unanimated face ever did.

  ‘Mummy and Daddy are still at Grasmere but I came home to pack for Lucerne.’

  ‘You’re alone?’

  ‘No,’ she said, waving vaguely behind her. ‘Nanny’s here.’ I nodded towards the elderly servant who hovered nearby clutching a bulky parcel done up in brown paper. ‘I’m to go through Cara’s things before Mummy comes home, and then there are such a lot of letters to be answered.’ I was still puzzled. It was authentic enough that Mrs Duffy might not be up to this, but it looked very odd to leave Clemence to deal with what would have been such upsetting tasks. Even while this fresh evidence that Cara was not really dead cheered me, I suffered exasperation that their act was so unconvincing.

  ‘Besides,’ Clemence continued, ‘there was something else I particularly wanted to attend to.’ She patted the parcel in Nanny’s arms and then, struck by a thought, she turned back to me with her sleepy, beatific smile. ‘Would you care to join me for luncheon, Dandy? And see it first? It will have to be at home, I’m afraid, because of the mourning, but you’re very welcome.’

  We lunched off boiled chicken and asparagus jelly against a background of studied gloom in the dining room at Drummond Place, the shades being half-pulled, the room unadorned by any flowers, and the maid who served us red-eyed and sniffing. The servants at any rate were responding suitably to what they believed about Cara’s death, however bogus the family might appear to my over-informed eye. Afterwards, we carried coffee upstairs to a sitting room which, being at the back of the house, was allowed its full measure of sunlight. It was hardly more comfortable for that, however, being antiseptically modern. The white floor shone like glass, making one fearful to walk upon it too heavily, and it was hard to believe that one might sit on one piece of the gleaming white furniture and put down a coffee cup on another, so like sculpture and so unlike chairs and tables did they seem.

  Clemence caught me gaping and said: ‘Mummy just had it done. Isn’t it delightful?’

  I thought it looked silly against the Georgian windows and under the Georgian cornice, but could hardly say so. Luckily, Clemence turned from me and pounced on the brown paper parcel laid on a white cube of a table before the Georgian fireplace and began to pull off the wrapping.

  It was a large black leather book, wider than it was long, its covers held shut by a ribbon. Untying this and flicking aside a sheet of tissue paper, she pushed it towards me and I saw it was a photograph album. The first photograph was of Cara. I caught my lip in my teeth to stifle a gasp; it was so beautiful, so light and soft-looking, quite unlike the usual snaps in which moon-faced freaks barely recognizable as one’s relations sit propped up like corpses. In this photograph, Cara, close up, only her head and shoulders showing, was standing in a room posed very casually with one elbow leaning on a chimneypiece, and although she was evidently facing the window (for I could see it reflected in the glass above the fireplace behind her) something to do with the light bouncing from behind as well as in front gave her an intensified version of that back-to-the-window glow every woman tries to arrange whenever she can. It was not just the light, though. Cara’s expression, too, was like a distillation of all that was so charming about her. She had her face half-turned away as though shy and was smiling the curling smile I remembered, but with such a serenity that, forgetting for a moment that she was still alive, I felt a lump form in my throat.

  ‘Look,’ said Clemence, turning the stiff page, ‘they’re not all of her.’ She showed me pictures of Mrs Duffy and of Clemence herself in the same room, sitting in plump armchairs or standing against the windows, sprigged cotton curtains billowing around them.

  ‘These are heavenly, Clemence,’ I said, turning to the next, which had Mrs Duffy and Clemence sitting at a garden table with teacups. With a jolt, I recognized the shingle path and the white fence in the background and realized that this was the beach cottage. Quite a substantial structure, I saw, almost to the point that calling it a cottage was an affectation, and I thought again about the way it had been reduced to such a small pile of ash. My detective instinct prompted a question.

  ‘Did someone from the photographer’s shop come down for a visit, then?’ I thought that such an individual would surely have something to tell me, and felt a surge of excitement to think of him five minutes’ walk away in George Street. Alec would be astounded.

  ‘No,’ said Clemence. ‘These are mine. I mean, I took them.’

  ‘Well, they’re splendid,’ I said. ‘People usually look like propped-up . . . dolls, don’t they? But these are lovely.’ Clemence’s face does not pucker into easy frowns any more than it breaks into grins, but something did happen in her expression then.

  ‘I hope Mummy doesn’t mind,’ she said. ‘Only I went to such trouble.’

  ‘Of course she won’t mind, Clemence dear. She will
be delighted. What luck that you should have taken them. And what extraordinary luck that they should not have been lost in the fire too.’

  We were both silent for a moment considering this. Then Clemence blinked and her next words came in the quiet, careful voice she had used in the court.

  ‘I carry all my plates together in a special case – the fresh ones and the ones I’ve used – so naturally I had them with me on our walk.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I agreed.

  Her face smoothed again. ‘I took the plates into Rollins’ when I got home,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t ask them to hurry or anything, so imagine how touching when they telephoned this morning to say they had made them up already. They must have done it because of Cara, don’t you think? They must have heard.’

  ‘People are sometimes too extraordinarily kind,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Clemence. ‘Only it’s not – I just hope Mummy isn’t angry.’

  I could see how one might as easily think it ghoulish as touching, but I gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile, and went back to the topic of the photographs.

  ‘How did you take the ones with you in them?’ I asked, examining the picture of the garden more closely. Photographic tricks held no interest for me, but I thought a good run on her hobby horse would put Clemence back at her ease. However, when she spoke she sounded strained, starting the speech with a strangulated little laugh.

  ‘Oh, Cara took that one. She wasn’t very good at it. Look, you can see this is not as clear as some of the others.’ I could indeed. This was much closer to Hugh’s efforts with his Box Brownie, nothing like as beautiful as the picture of Cara in the house. Clemence cleared her throat. ‘She got very cross with me,’ she said, ‘when I tried to explain what she was doing wrong. I suppose I must have been lecturing. One does, doesn’t one, when it’s one’s passion. And then she flounced off. Look.’