“What happened that morning?” Claire asked.
“I saw her next when I went to the little study downstairs where she used to sit and do her letters and accounts. Nobody was ever allowed to disturb her there, but at eleven sharp I used to take her a glass of wine and some biscuits. Well, I took them. I put them down quietly because it was never safe to interrupt her if she was busy. I put the tray at her elbow. She was writing a letter—writing fast, which was a sign she was angry. On front of her on the desk was another letter—I got the impression she was answering it, and I remember thinking to myself: ‘Somebody’s getting it.’ Then she turned her face to me, and . . . well, it wasn’t pretty, I can assure you. My first thought was that she was going to say something about the papers—I hadn’t been able to find some papers of Geoff Summerhill’s that she’d wanted the day before, and she’d been very angry. Then I remembered that I’d given them to her with her letters that morning, so there was no reason for her to act as she did. She said—she almost spat: ‘Get out!’ You can imagine that I got out—fast. And that”—she looked round the room as though unable to believe her own words—“that was the last time I saw her alive.”
“Could the papers you gave her have had anything to do with—”
“—her changing her Will? Nothing whatsoever.” Mrs. Peel spoke with conviction. “They were simply Geoff’s birth and death certificates which she needed in connection with some stocks she’d bought him long, long ago and which had fallen due. I couldn’t lay my hands on them until Grant told me I shouldn’t be looking among his mother’s papers but among Lotty’s—and that’s where they were, buried under the general mess her things are always in. I put them into an envelope on Mrs. Tennant’s tray with the other letters, but there was nothing in them to upset her. She knew quite well when Geoff was born and when he died.”
“When did she go out?”
“About twenty minutes afterwards. I heard her open the window and ring the little handbell that was the summons for Pierre to stop whatever he was doing in the garden and bring round the car. Usually, I used to see her off—see she had everything she wanted, run inside for things she’d forgotten. The last day, I’m sorry to say I didn’t. I let her go off alone.”
“Was she often—”
“—in those moods? I never saw her quite so angry, but she didn’t have a pretty temper. You’ve got to remember that she was very rich, and not young, and there are very few rich old women—of my acquaintance, anyhow—who haven’t gone most of the way towards becoming spoiled. If you get your own way all your life, you end up by resenting anything that gets in the way of what you want.”
“If she had written a letter, surely Pierre would have seen her post it?”
“That’s what Grant and I thought, at first. When the Will was read and we were all feeling stunned, we tried to look back, think back, to the morning she died. As soon as I remembered the letter, I asked Grant to ask the lawyers if they knew anything about it. They didn’t. I looked through the handbag she’d taken with her that morning—no letter. But if she’d posted one, Pierre wouldn’t have known, because there was a pillar box at the entrance to the lawyer’s office—our lawyer, not the one she went to later. She would have got out, Pierre would have shut the door and gone back to the driving seat, and as she walked into the lawyer’s, all she had to do was slip the letter into the box. He certainly didn’t see her post anything—but once she was out of the car, he wouldn’t wait to see her walking across a yard or two of pavement.”
“Wastepaper basket?”
“I thought of that, too. Nothing. So we had to put it out of our minds—if we could. Grant obviously did, but I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and wonder about it. It wasn’t in her room—I went through it. It wasn’t anywhere in the house, as I well know, having turned it completely round since she died. No letter. No letter that could have explained why she acted as she did. All the same, I’m as sure as I’m standing here talking to you that she did get a letter, and she did write a letter, and that one or both of them was the reason she went out that morning and cut us all off without a shilling’s worth of thanks or affection. Somebody said something—why else would she sit rigid with rage in the lawyer’s and say, over and over again, that we were ‘all in it’? Why? Why?”
Claire could not tell her why, but she found that her mental picture of Mrs. Tennant, hitherto hazy, had become a good deal clearer—and far less attractive.
“Isn’t Paul,” she asked, “rather young for boarding school?”
“He’s a weekly boarder at Grant’s old prep school. He could have gone to a day school in Spenders, but getting him ready every day, and at the same time every day, proved a bit of a strain on Lotty. She means well, does Lotty, but you can’t cut her out to pattern. She’ll be glad to see Richard—she’s waited a long time. The worst thing that could have happened was that skiing accident of his. It kept him away from the funeral, which meant that he wasn’t here when the Will was read. If he had been, he would have seen to it that Grant did something definite, something concrete, something to give us a lead. But he wasn’t here, and Grant rushed away as though the house was full of snakes. Lotty settled down to wait for Richard. I settled down to keep the house running—but it was hard to know what to use for money, at first. When no word came from Grant, I took to sending him the bills I thought he should pay. They didn’t include the bills for Lotty’s keep, or mine. He must have told you that he offered us all . . . well, I suppose you could call it compensation.”
“Yes, he told me. You all refused it.”
“We did then—but we’ve had time to think. Nobody wants him to do anything on the scale his mother had promised to do, but it would be nice if old Pierre could be provided for. He’s too old to look for another job. It was Lotty’s old nurse, Corinne, who got him this job; they were cousins, and she asked Grant’s mother to take him on as a gardener. He always got along with Mrs. Tennant—but Corinne didn’t. They hated, really hated, one another. They both loved Lotty, and it was over Lotty that they fought. They—” Mrs. Peel stopped abruptly and marched to the door. “Why didn’t you tell me how long I’d been talking? Let’s go down. I should have talked and worked at the same time.”
Claire walked downstairs beside her, but as they reached the hall, Mrs. Peel stared out through the window overlooking the drive and gave an exclamation of annoyance.
“Look at that!”
Claire, looking, saw Lotty Summerhill sauntering slowly towards the house. Beside her was a tall, very thin man.
“What did she have to bring him back for?” Mrs. Peel demanded angrily. “Only me to do the cooking here—and he’s got a staff of four. She’ll offer him a drink and he’ll hang on looking hopeful, and as there’s no clock in Lotty’s stomach, I’ll have to give in in the end and ask him to stay to dinner. You stay and meet them, Claire—I’m going into the kitchen. But there’s one thing I’d like to say first.”
She hesitated, and Claire prompted her.
“Well?”
“Be patient with Grant,” Mrs. Peel burst out.
“March, April—” Claire began slowly.
“Oh, I know, I know. You’ve waited a long time—but don’t hold it against him.”
“Do I sound as though I did?”
“It doesn’t matter how you sound; I’m just trying to say that a lot of quiet, inoffensive people get put down as cowards simply because they haven’t got the stamina for rows. Grant never could stand and fight, because he couldn’t bear the ugly things that quarrels did to people—and by people, I mean of course his mother. You’ve got a good man, Claire, and he’ll look after you in his own way. If I’d ever had a son, I would have wanted him to be exactly like Grant. I would have taken him just as he was, without any change anywhere—and I hope you’ll do the same. You said you loved him; well, so do I. He’s been as good as a son to me for nearly thirty years. Be good to him—but don’t try to change him, because you’ll never succe
ed. Take him or leave him.”
She did not wait to learn Claire’s reactions to this speech. The door leading to the servants’ quarters banged behind her and Claire was left staring absently at the two approaching figures.
“I’ll take him,” she said aloud.
Chapter 3
Claire had not taken away, after Mrs. Tennant’s funeral, any clear impression of Lotty Summerhill. She remembered her surprise at finding that unpromising details like lank black hair, a long, thin face and large, somewhat expressionless black eyes could and did add up to beauty of a delicate and unusual kind, but she had been unable to make anything of the dreamy, faraway manner.
By the end of dinner, after studying the subject with as much frankness as politeness permitted, the only conclusion she could come to was that this was the first woman she had ever met who could create the illusion of not being there. If you really worked, she had discovered, you could bring her back from the distant place to which she had withdrawn. When she came back, she could talk sensibly and intelligently—but always with the air of a guest hovering on the edge of departure. If she ever married Ronnie Pierce, he would have, Claire thought, a hard time chasing her in and out of the shadows.
Ronnie looked more than willing to make the effort. He was extremely long and lean—so lean that he gave the uncomfortable impression that his clothes were hung on to bare bones. He moved, spoke and, Claire discovered, thought slowly; while he was deciding what to say, he rose on his toes and then let his heels fall again in a slow, rhythmic manner; if he was seated, he made a minute examination of his hands or his shoes or—in the most absent and unseeing way—of his companion.
Claire, going downstairs before dinner, had found him in the drawing-room; she had concluded that Mrs. Peel’s desire to get rid of him had proved less strong than his desire to stay. She would have liked to withdraw, but could think of no polite way of doing so, and they had exchanged a few words between long pauses. Once, desperate, he had offered to go and look for Grant.
“He’s changing,” Claire said. “He was grubbing about in the garden with Pierre just before you and Lotty came in.”
“Lotty . . .” He liked to hear the name. “You met her before, at the funeral, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She’s … I mean, don’t you think…”
“She’s lovely,” Claire said.
He went pink with gratitude.
“Oh, yes!” he agreed fervently. “So gentle, so . . . well, as you say, lovely.” He picked up an ash-tray and fondled it. “I suppose you know, don’t you, that I’m . . . well, to be absolutely frank, I’m …”
“You’re in love with her.”
“Oh—that!” He waved the ash-tray, brushing aside this superfluous statement. “Anybody, if you follow me, would … No, what I meant…”
“You want to marry her.”
“Yes, that’s what I was coming round to say. For years, as a matter of fact. Five years and four months, to be exact. I bought this farm in October, and I met her the following spring, and at first it seemed all right. I mean, apart from the impossibility of believing that she ever could . . .” He gave a despairing glance at his shoes. “But what really held everything up was —well, she’s dead, I mean to say, and one can’t really be frank, but she . . . Do you know, I can’t help telling you this; I’ve never told anybody, but you look so kind, one might say sympathetic—she, Mrs. Tennant, went so far as to tell me to . . .” His colour took on an apoplectic tinge—“Would you believe me if I told you that she actually told me to ... to get off the place?”
“I hope she didn’t mean to say it quite so strongly.”
“Her actual words were: ‘Get off and stay off.’ I’d gone to her to tell her I wanted to marry Lotty. There was no question of permission or anything of that kind, but it seemed to me that as I was coming over here day after day, the least I could do was to… to …”
“Declare your intentions?”
“I suppose you think that’s out of date, but that, in fact, is what I did. I didn’t expect her to give me any encouragement—who’d want to lose Lotty?—but I certainly didn’t expect to be ordered off the place like a tramp.”
It was not difficult for Claire to understand Mrs. Tennant’s reluctance to consider this maypole of a man as a suitable husband for Lotty, but she could not understand her dealing so summarily with anybody who looked out at the world with eyes as clear and blue and guileless as Ronnie’s. There were worse fates than a scarecrow husband; he loved her deeply, he could give her a good home and a substantial income. Fatten him up, Claire thought, her liking for him growing moment by moment, and he’d be quite a figure of a man—he had height and a certain shy dignity.
“You know”—he was looking at Claire with an expression compounded of admiration and gratitude—“you really are, if I may say so, a person one is able, as it were, to confide in. I hope I’m not giving you the idea that I expected Mrs. Tennant to—well, naturally she wanted Lotty and Paul to go on staying with her; you can understand that, can’t you? And I could see that perhaps if Lotty wanted to marry again, there were men who were more . . . But looks aren’t everything, and I felt I could look after her and make her comfortable. Lotty was very kind, but if you’re told by the owner of a place to get off it and stay off it, what are you to do? It wasn’t as though Lotty liked me enough to—well, to come in on my side. Not then. It’s only lately, since Mrs. Tennant died, that I’ve been coming over here again. I’ve never been able to find out what Grant thought about me, but I don’t think he’d put anything in the way. I’m not so sure about Richard, though.”
“Why shouldn’t he want Lotty to marry you?”
“There was some talk of her going back to France with him. She certainly seems to me to be waiting to see what he’s going to do. I know she likes France better than England—seems odd, doesn’t it?—but I understand that Richard may be coming over to the London branch of his firm.”
Everybody, Claire noted, was waiting for Richard. For a man who had spent so little time in this house, he seemed to have an undue amount of influence over its occupants.
“He doesn’t,” she ventured, “sound like Lotty.”
“Who, Richard?” Ronnie spoke in horror. “Good Lord, chalk and cheese!”
It sounded almost as informative as one of Grant’s descriptions. But Grant had come in, and had gone to the cabinet in which drinks were kept, and there had been no more talk of love or Lotty. And now they were all in the drawing-room, and Mrs. Peel was collecting their empty coffee cups and putting them on to a tray.
“No, thank you,” she said, to offers of assistance. “Lotty can finish showing Claire over the house—and Grant, you’ll find some of Ronnie’s egg and butter and milk bills on the desk in the study; I added them up just before dinner and it seems to me time they were paid.”
“Oh, but—” protested Ronnie.
“Come along,” broke in Grant. “I’ve let things like that slide far too long.”
Since nobody could disagree with this statement, it was followed by a slightly awkward pause, but Claire, glancing anxiously at Grant, saw that he was unaware of it. Following Lotty across the hall, she wondered whether he was unusually lacking in perception or whether she herself was growing hyper-sensitive.
“Where,” she heard Lotty asking, “do you want to go first?”
“Oh, anywhere,” Claire said. It would all be uniformly gloomy, and the view would be either of dripping trees or damp lawn. How a young girl like Lotty could have lived here for so many years …
“What,” she asked impulsively, “do you find to do here?”
“You mean it seems rather dull?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“In a way,” Lotty agreed. “But I’m … well, it suits me, I suppose. I don’t like some of the things that people call fun: I don’t dance very well and I can’t bear crowded rooms or a lot of people at once. I like to read and . . . well, I suppose dream.
And I paint a lot.”
“What exactly do you paint?”
“Would you like to see?”
“I’d love to.”
“This way. I’m on the ground floor,” Lotty explained, leading Claire down a long corridor and opening a door at the end. “My rooms are in a sort of wing. Grant’s mother felt that Paul could make a lot of noise here without disturbing her.”
Claire found herself in a child’s bedroom, gay with colour—a startling contrast to the dullness they had left behind. Without pausing, Lotty walked through the room and opened another door.
“Mine,” she said.
Claire was too surprised to comment, for the room was that of a married couple. The bed was large and canopied, and a small alcove held the furnishings of a man’s dressing—room. There were even, Claire saw with bewilderment, a man’s brushes laid out, a leather collar box, stud cases.
“Grant’s mother wanted everything left like that,” Lotty explained.
“Did you?”
Lotty considered.
“No,” she said at last. “I would have put everything away, or given everything away.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I suppose it was easier not to.”
“Did you have to give in to her all the time?”
“Give in? I didn’t,” Lotty explained, “think of it as giving in. She wanted things sometimes, and got awfully violent if she didn’t get them—so if they were things that didn’t matter much, I did them. I hate arguments. Grant hates them too. He always…gave in.”
“Perhaps it was cause and effect.”
“What was?”
“Perhaps she got like that because nobody ever opposed her.”
“Perhaps.” Lotty smiled faintly. “When I met her, it was a little late for her to change.”
“Did she bully your father?”
The smile widened.
“My father was like me.”
She left it at that, but Claire took it up.
Letter To My Love Page 5
