She looked me up and down, and finally nodded satisfaction. ‘Then,’ she told me, in decided tones, ‘you may come in.’
The dog was a Boston bull terrier, small and suspicious. It circled behind as I entered the house.
‘He isn’t used to strangers,’ I was told. ‘But he doesn’t usually bite.’
Which was all the reassurance that I got before she turned and led me down the hall. I’d expected the inside of the house to look like something from the pages of a decorating magazine, one of those ones that showed rooms I could never afford, filled with fine art and mirrors and flower arrangements. The hall, at least, was none of that. It was, like the owner herself, quite surprisingly plain – a coat rack, an umbrella stand, a row of family photos, and an oriental runner that had worn at its centre till the pattern of the carpet had begun to disappear.
She was talking. ‘Andrew told me to expect you; to be nice to you. I must say, you’ve taken your time, though, in—’
‘Not here.’ I stopped at the door of the room she had entered, refusing to follow. This kitchen, like my grandmother’s, was cosy, warm, inviting, with a scrubbed pine table set beneath a window, overlooking the back yard. ‘We can’t talk here. Is there another room?’
She turned, surprised at first, and then she looked me up and down a second time, with growing shrewdness. ‘I think, Kate Murray, that you’d better tell me just exactly what is going on.’
‘And so,’ I finished off, ‘that’s why I came to you; that’s why I’m here.’
She lit her third cigarette, exhaling into the already smoky small room that her husband had used as a reading-room, windowless, lined round with glass-fronted barristers’ bookshelves that caught the reflection of lamplight and cast it back to us from all four walls. The chairs wrapped round you, sagging at their centres where the springs had worn, a comfy spot to sit and talk, and I’d already talked too much.
I’d left nothing out, from my first meeting Deacon to my turning up this evening on her doorstep, and through it all she’d sat and smoked in silence. Not a single interruption. I admired that in people – the ability to sit and listen quietly, without interjecting their own thoughts and opinions – mostly because I was incapable of doing it myself. But in this instance I’d have rather had her interrupt. The story, told unbroken, sounded just like that: a story. Hardly plausible.
She drew on the cigarette, thinking. ‘I knew he was dead,’ she said finally. ‘No one got in touch to say so, but I knew. He said he’d call, you see. He said he’d call again, and when he didn’t…’ A small movement of her shoulder, like a shrug. ‘He was always a man of his word. So I knew.’
She had taken it matter-of-factly, I thought, just as Regina Marinho had, but with the same thread of wistful regret, as though something had passed from the world that would not be replaced. It wasn’t love, not love, not in the same way that my grandmother had felt it; yet these women had felt something, had esteemed the man so highly that the knowledge of his death somehow diminished them.
‘When,’ I asked her, ‘did you talk to him?’
‘The last time? Oh, back at the beginning of September.’
‘And he mentioned my name to you?’
‘Yes, several times. He made me write it down. He didn’t trust my memory, I suppose, even though he had ten years on me. Men can be like that. Unreasonable. Anyhow, he told me you’d be calling on me soon, and that I ought to let you in and be nice to you – his exact words. I don’t expect he trusted me with that, either. I’ve never had a reputation, really, for being nice.’ The willful Reynolds jaw was very much in evidence as she angled her head to tap ash from the cigarette.
Into the pause, I said, ‘Did he say why I’d be coming to see you?’
‘He said you’d fill in the details.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘I gather, from what you’ve just been telling me, that you can’t do that.’
‘No.’
She echoed, ‘No.’
I took my tape recorder out and showed it to her. ‘Do you mind if I use this?’
She shook her head. ‘You’re sure he mentioned murder?’
‘Yes.’ I paused a moment, thinking, and then asked, straight out, ‘How did Manuel Garcia die?’
‘Garcia?’
‘Yes. He died on April 6th.’
‘Oh, I remember the day well enough. But that wasn’t a murder. It wasn’t a nice death,’ she said, ‘but it wasn’t a murder.’
‘You’re certain of that?’
She nodded, drawing deeply on her cigarette. Her gaze began to drift and lose its focus in a way that I now found familiar. Quietly, she said, ‘I’m very certain. I was there.’
The day had got off to a promising start. She’d arrived at the office to find out that Vivian Spivey was ill, and would not be at work. That, for her, was as good as a holiday. Like Regina, Jenny had no use for Spivey, and lately her already poor opinion of the man had darkened to something approaching real hatred.
It had started the previous autumn, when she had been seeing a young man who worked in the legal department. James Iveson was from New York, like Jenny. He blew through the office that fall like a breath of fresh air, irresistibly fun, and of course, for Jenny, he had the added appeal of being somebody she had to keep secret.
It wasn’t that her father didn’t like James – quite the contrary – but Reynolds was increasingly upset about the rumours that marked Jenny as his mistress, and, protectively, he tried now to discourage any actions that might hurt her reputation. Life was dull for her, and sneaking out with James to go to nightclubs, or the movies, gave her something to look forward to; a temporary thrill.
And then one night, somebody took her father’s car and left it parked in front of James’s house till dawn, right on the street, where everyone could see it. Her father, when he found out, hit the ceiling. James was fired, and Reynolds purged the whole office of unmarried men.
She tried protesting, arguing, telling her father it hadn’t been her; that she’d been in her own bed all night, but the evidence was damning, and the word of her accuser more reliable.
The person who’d accused her had been Spivey. She suspected from the start that he had been involved, because he disliked James. She didn’t know the details, only that the air grew chilly in the office when the two men faced each other, and that Spivey resented the favour that James had been gaining with Reynolds. Suspicion had turned to certainty after she’d talked to her driver, Joaquim. He’d been off that one night, or else she would have had his word to back her up, but he—
‘Joaquim?’ I couldn’t help the interruption. ‘Your driver’s name was Joaquim?’
‘That’s right. Why?’
‘I think I might have met him, when I was in Portugal. Did he also do work for the British Embassy, do you know?’
‘I honestly couldn’t tell you. He wasn’t exactly a talkative person, Joaquim. He didn’t say much, about himself or anyone else. He overheard a lot of conversations, in the car, but I think he’d have stood up to torture before he repeated so much as a word.’
Yes, I thought, that sounded like the man I’d met in Lisbon.
Anyhow, she told me, picking up the thread of narrative, Joaquim had made a point of speaking to her, a thing that ran contrary to his character. He’d said that he’d seen Spivey at the garage on the afternoon before the car was taken to be parked at James’s house. There would have been no reason, so Joaquim had said, for Spivey to be at the garage, but the keys to both cars were kept there, in plain view. There would be no point in accusing Spivey, Joaquim had said, on such speculative evidence, and even less to gain by confronting him, since Spivey’s ill graces, once gained, could be poisonous. But Joaquim had thought Jenny should know, for her own sake. Before returning to his normal, tight-lipped self, he’d offered the advice that, ‘It is good, in a garden, to know where the snakes lie, so one can step carefully.’
Her personal opinion was that, if a snake
were dangerous, one ought to take its head off with a shovel, but she knew Joaquim was right. Her father trusted Spivey, and that made a shield so strong that any arrows aimed at Spivey were deflected back upon the one who’d fired them. She’d have needed the Biblical David’s skill with a slingshot to topple the man from his pedestal. So she’d stepped carefully.
Even when she’d been assigned to Spivey as his secretary, later in the year, she had kept her complaints to a minimum, though working in close confines with the man had galled her terribly.
He’d known it too. She’d seen it in the way he smiled when she was in his office, a sadist’s smile that took its pleasure from another’s impotence. And there’d been little she could do but bite her tongue and tough it out.
Till Deacon came.
She hadn’t known, when she’d first seen her father’s new curator, that this quiet-spoken Englishman would change her life so greatly. She’d thought him rather dull, in the beginning; but that hadn’t stopped her envying Regina, who, with Roger Selkirk, and now Deacon, claimed the two best-mannered men to work for in the office.
In fact, Jenny had never thought that anyone could be as nice as Roger, but while Roger was a sympathising confidant, a shoulder she could lean on, who could cheer her and give good advice, he wasn’t one to intervene between her father and herself – he trod a neutral path.
Deacon, who had less to say, was more inclined to act.
One day, after taking dictation from Spivey, she’d been attacking her typewriter in a black mood when she’d become aware of Deacon, by Regina’s desk, observing her. He’d looked away again, not saying anything, but later on that afternoon she’d had an unexpected summons from her father.
Her father hadn’t been the sort of man to sit at desks. Upstairs, in his wood-panelled office, she’d found him pacing like a restless animal between the two long windows. When she’d entered, he had stopped and turned to face her, strong arms folded. ‘Mr Deacon has asked for assistance, a few hours a week, cataloguing the paintings. Regina can’t do it, she’s buried with work as it is, but we thought, since you’ve only got Spivey to worry about, that you might have the time.’
It had not been exactly a question, but Jenny had answered it anyway, feeling like a prisoner being granted an early parole. ‘Yes, I’d be glad to help.’
And so each week she’d spent a few hours working side by side with Deacon in the storage room, among the artworks, putting numbers on the canvases and writing down the details of each piece. The work was easy, and she knew he hadn’t really needed her at all, to help him. She had told him so, one afternoon.
‘Perhaps not,’ he had said.
‘So why request me, then?’
He’d shrugged, not looking up from the small statue he was numbering, and in his quiet voice he’d made the comment, ‘Mr Spivey’s not an easy man to work for, I’d imagine.’
‘No,’ she’d answered, wondering why he had changed the subject, till she realised that he hadn’t changed it. Then more slowly, with new understanding, she’d said, ‘No, he’s not.’
‘Well, then.’ Glancing up, he’d nodded at the page that she was writing. ‘Just keep on with that. And take your time.’
He hadn’t always kept her working in the storage room. He sometimes took her with him when he went to meet with dealers, or appraise a private painting Reynolds wanted to acquire. ‘A change is as good as a rest,’ he would say, and it was.
To counter Spivey’s protests, Deacon had often remarked to her father how impressed he was with Jenny’s eye for art, and with her eagerness to learn about the subject. It wasn’t true – she hadn’t known a good work from a bad one – but, for Deacon, she had tried.
It had felt good to be rewarded with her father’s warm approval, and his pride. Being able to sit with her father and look at a painting and speak, at least, in the same technical language, had finally given her the kind of connection she’d wanted with him all her life.
She’d had Deacon to thank for that, as she’d had Deacon to thank for the freedom her father increasingly gave her, beginning the night when her father, attacked by a stomach complaint, had told Jenny they wouldn’t be able to go to the theatre. Deacon, silent till then, at the storage-room table, had spoken up out of the blue: ‘I could take her.’
She’d known what her father would answer. He’d never allowed someone else to escort her – only Roger, and Roger was busy that night. She’d been turning away, disappointed, when he’d unexpectedly said, ‘Yes, all right.’
So she’d gone to the play after all, and from that evening on she’d adored Andrew Deacon.
She smiled through the memories, now, sitting with me in the windowless room of her Washington house, while her cigarette, forgotten, burnt to ash between her fingers.
She said, ‘I don’t know why he bothered with me, really. I mean, I was young then, and pretty, and used to men paying attention to me, but Andrew was different. He didn’t want that.’ Her smile deepened. ‘I know, because I made a pass at him once. He was a perfect gentleman about it, very polite, but he wasn’t the slightest bit tempted. I ought to have known. He was too much in love with his wife.’
She noticed the state of her cigarette, and reached to gently tamp it out.
‘Amelia, her name was. She died, did you know that? A week or so after my father.’
‘Died how?’ I was curious, wanting to know what the story had been.
‘She was walking, I think, in a park, and a strong wind blew down a great branch from a tree, and it hit her.’
That would have pleased my grandmother, who had wanted Amelia to have an exciting end; nothing too boring.
‘It was an awful month, for deaths. Garcia, and my father, and then Andrew’s wife…it absolutely crushed him, when he got the news. He went back to England soon after. I don’t know,’ she said, ‘that he ever recovered from losing Amelia. I mean, he went on with his life, and he travelled a lot, but he never remarried; he never had children. I always thought that was a shame. He’d have made a good father. Look how he took it on his shoulders to watch over me, all these years, as though I were his responsibility. He never missed a birthday, or a Christmas, or—’ She paused, as though acknowledging that all of that was past; that Deacon wouldn’t be there anymore. A match scraped in the silence of the moment as she lit another cigarette. The small flame flared, and danced, and died within one breath. ‘But I’ve gotten off topic,’ she said. ‘You were asking me about the day Manuel Garcia died.’
The first part of the morning had passed quietly; happily, even, with Spivey not there. Jenny had typed a few letters for Roger. The new secretary, Miss Bryce – who wore her hair back in a no-nonsense bun and insisted on being called Miss Bryce, no Christian names, thank you – was struggling, still, with Regina’s old workload, and Roger was fussy about how his letters were typed.
He’d been grateful.
‘Thanks, darling,’ he’d said, as he half leant, half sat at the edge of her desk while he proofread the pages. ‘I’ll have a few more, but they won’t be till later. Your father wants me over there this afternoon, to take dictation.’
‘Over there’ was the house where Reynolds was impatiently confined to bed, recovering from surgery. His doctors had wanted to keep him in the hospital, but he had argued, ‘Hospitals are where you go to die,’ and he had said it with such force, with such defiance, that in that moment Jenny had believed that he might truly win the battle with his illness. She’d been told the odds weren’t good. The stomach troubles that had plagued him for the past few months had worsened to the point where he’d had difficulty keeping down his food, and when he’d finally called his doctors in, the verdict had been grim: it was a pancreatic cancer. Not survivable. The surgery might help him live a few more weeks; a month, perhaps, but medically, they could do nothing more.
Jenny hadn’t accepted the news. She’d just begun to get to know her father; she was not prepared to lose him. And besides, it was impossible to t
hink that Ivan Reynolds could be felled by such a little thing as cancer. Even with all the weight loss, and lines plainly drawn on his face by the pain, he looked larger than life; indestructible. That gave her hope.
He’d looked better, she’d thought, when she’d seen him that morning. He’d been sitting up, giving the poor private nurse he had hired proper hell for the strength of his tea.
She warned Roger about this, now. ‘Watch out. He’s more like himself today.’
‘Well, that’s good news, then, isn’t it?’ Gathering his letters, he nodded towards Spivey’s office. ‘Vivian’s not in today, I see.’
‘He’s ill.’
‘Something serious, I hope?’
She smiled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Ah, well. Bit of a break for you, anyway, having him out of the office.’ He grinned. ‘You can take a long lunch.’
She hadn’t thought of that, but he was right, she could. And so she did, returning well past one o’clock. Miss Bryce was there to meet her at the door, concerned.
Miss Bryce said, in a disapproving whisper, ‘There’s a man in Mr Spivey’s office.’
Jenny shrugged her coat off, frowning. ‘What man?’
‘He didn’t give his name. I told him Mr Spivey wasn’t in, and he should wait for you, but he said never mind, he knew what he was looking for, he’d only take a moment.’
‘Is that so?’ She hung up her coat on its peg, and trained her gaze on Spivey’s door. ‘All right, thank you, Miss Bryce. I’ll take care of it.’
She was braced for a confrontation when she entered Spivey’s office, but the man who stood behind the desk was not a stranger. He glanced up as she came in, and smiled. ‘Miss Saunders. Good. You’re back.’
She relaxed. ‘Mr Cayton-Wood. How can I help you?’
JL Cayton-Wood met Spivey every month, to keep abreast of Reynolds’s oil shipments passing through the harbour. He was a charmer, not the sort of man a woman should take seriously, but he was so handsome that, at times, she could forget.
Every Secret Thing Page 28
