Blood on the Wood

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘Like leaving Daisy where she was?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t have done that.’

  I didn’t say the obvious – she’d still be alive at least.

  ‘So what else might you have done differently?’

  ‘Last night, everything. I should have told her first, or Felicia first, or…’

  I said, as gently as possible in the circumstances, ‘If you want me to listen to you, could you please tell me what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Last night. I … you see after I’d spoken to you, I…’

  ‘All right. Let’s take it from when you spoke to me. I told you about finding Felicia in the summerhouse here, with the revolver. You were on your way down to see Daisy when I met you. Did you go to her?’

  ‘No. I needed more time.’

  ‘So you didn’t see Daisy last night?’

  ‘No. After what you’d told me I started thinking and…’ His voice died away. I waited and I suppose he got his mind into some sort of order because after a long time he looked up at me and started talking more or less coherently.

  ‘I couldn’t have faced Daisy or anybody else. I just walked round the fields, thinking about her and Felicia. You see, I hadn’t realised that she – Felicia, I mean – I just hadn’t realised that she, well, loved me. I mean, I knew we liked each other a lot, and the family liked her, and it would be quite jolly being married to her and writing music and bringing up children and so on, but I just didn’t think I was the sort of man that women felt … felt like that about. We weren’t Tristan and Isolde, if you see what I mean.’

  He paused and I murmured that yes, I saw they weren’t Tristan and Isolde. Thinking all the time how ironic it was that he’d been right first time. Unless I’d misunderstood Felicia completely, it wasn’t love for Daniel himself that had driven her to despair but the prospect of losing the life that had opened out to her with the Venns. Worse than useless to say that now, though.

  ‘So, when I thought about that, I knew the engagement to Felicia had to be on again. After all, Daisy couldn’t be in love like that with me, could she? Not after just a few days.’

  I thought Daisy had looked too scared and broken in spirit to think of loving anybody for a long time.

  ‘She needed somebody to help her, though,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, of course she did. And I’d have gone on helping her. We’d have all helped her. It would have been a lot easier with Felicia and me engaged again. So that was what I worked out, walking round and round the fields in the dark. Get engaged again to Felicia, tell Daisy as gently as possible that we weren’t engaged any more but we’d look after her. Lot of humble pie for me then back to the beginning, start again and get it right this time.’

  ‘So which of them did you decide to tell first, Felicia or Daisy?’

  Daniel ran his hands through his hair. ‘Well, neither. That is … I decided I’d tell Harry Hawthorne first.’

  I just managed to bite back a comment on his habit of talking about his emotional affairs to practically anybody but the women directly involved. Too late now.

  ‘Why Harry Hawthorne?’

  ‘I suppose I saw him as a kind of godfather of my engagement to Daisy. I know you don’t have godfathers at engagements, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that night when we were all dancing and making music round the bonfire, it came to me quite suddenly what the answer to the Daisy question was. So I put it to Harry Hawthorne there and then and he was all for it.’

  So Max had been right. The combination of romance and defiance to the middle classes had fitted in nicely with Harry’s plans.

  ‘Are you sure he didn’t suggest it?’

  ‘No. It was definitely my idea. But he thought I should make the announcement there and then. And it seemed like a good idea, so…’

  ‘So you decided he had a right to know it was all off. How did he take it?’

  ‘Not well. In fact, he was furious. I’d wanted to get him on his own. He’d gone to bed in the old schoolhouse by then, but I roused him and he came out in the yard and I told him. God, that man can talk. From the way he went on you’d have thought I was some depraved old French count seducing the peasants’ daughters.’

  ‘I can imagine. Did you get a chance to put a word in?’

  ‘Eventually. I told him I’d changed my mind because of Felicia trying to kill herself…’

  ‘You what!’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have. But the things he was saying, I thought I had a right to defend myself, show I wasn’t entirely heartless.’

  ‘Did it make any difference?’

  ‘I’m not sure he believed me at first. So I remembered I still had the revolver you’d given me in my pocket. I took it out and showed it to him and … What did you say?’

  I’d groaned. ‘Nothing. Go on.’

  ‘I think it convinced him I was telling the truth, because he went quiet. Then he just got up and went inside.’

  ‘Without saying anything?’

  ‘Just a few words over his shoulder about the rottenness of the middle class. Anyway, whether he liked it or not, I’d done what I’d come to do.’

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell Daisy because I thought she’d be sleeping with the rest of the women in the old dairy and I could hardly go in there and get her. So I thought that would have to wait till morning and I’d go back to the house and tell Felicia. But I hadn’t realised how late it was. When I got back to the house it was after eleven and she’d gone to bed.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘I remembered I’d promised to check the studio door was open for you, so I went and saw to that.’

  ‘So you were in the studio some time after eleven? Did you hear or see anything?’

  ‘I didn’t go in. I just checked the door from outside on the terrace. You mean she might have been in there?’

  ‘I think she might have been, yes.’

  He shivered. ‘Did somebody put her there deliberately, do you think?’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘The Long Lankin story, the woman being killed.’

  ‘Why would anybody do that?’

  ‘Why would anybody kill Daisy?’ His head sank down again. He said to the floor, ‘Adam didn’t want me to see her. I had to. I tried to take her hand but it was so stiff. She had such quick little hands when she played and it was so stiff.’

  I think he was crying. I waited for a while to give him a chance to recover.

  ‘So you decided it was too late to talk to Felicia that night. What did you do then?’

  ‘I was too keyed up to sleep, so I went out again and just wandered – up and down the road, through the fields. I can’t remember. Then I thought I’d better be getting back to the house to be there when people woke up, looked through the window and there you all were, sitting there. I knew something must have happened but I just didn’t dream … How could I?’

  ‘And what did you do with the revolver?’

  It had to be asked. The police would be doing it in a few hours anyway. He looked at me, blinking.

  ‘Have you still got it?’

  He felt in his pockets, produced a tuning fork, an apple and a small metronome and laid them on the bench.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what did you do with it? Did you leave it in the house?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must know. You can’t be that casual about a gun.’

  ‘I hardly knew where I was, what I was doing. I suppose I might have just put it down and left it somewhere in the house, or…’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I might have left it with Harry Hawthorne or put it down in the old school yard somewhere. I just don’t know. Anyway, there’s no point now, is there?’

  I stayed for quite a long time after that in case he wanted to say anything else, but he didn’t. so I said goodbye to him and left by the back gate and not throu
gh the house, in no hurry to meet Inspector Bull again.

  * * *

  There were a few things I needed to collect from the camp so I went down the field to the old dairy. The Lancastrian and a few of the other women were sitting around drinking tea and talking in low voices, not about politics for once. There were a lot of questions when I came in, most of which I couldn’t answer beyond confirming that Daisy had been found dead in the Venns’ house. The news had been carried to the camp by a delivery lad who happened to be up at the stables when the groom came back with the gig.

  ‘Mr Hawthorne went straight up to the house,’ one of them said. ‘He was furious. He thinks they killed her to stop her getting married to Daniel.’

  But the women themselves weren’t so sure. They were sad, puzzled and a little scared.

  ‘Sunday night,’ the Lancastrian said, ‘you remember she woke up screaming that somebody was after her?’

  ‘Don’t let him take me,’ somebody else said. ‘That’s what she was screaming, ‘Don’t let him take me. We thought it was just a nightmare, but…’

  ‘Who did she mean, then?’

  But nobody knew. I thought of the devil-man in the song, the long fingers and grinning face coming through the window, and wondered if that was what Daisy had seen in her nightmare. I warned them that the police would almost certainly be coming with questions about when Daisy was last seen. It turned out that was what they’d been asking each other when I came in, and they didn’t like the answers.

  ‘The fact is,’ the Lancastrian said, ‘none of us knows for sure.’

  They were shamefaced about it because they were supposed to be looking after Daisy, but as one of them pointed out she was a grown-up girl after all, not a baby. They all remembered her on Monday morning, in the tent at Daniel’s music lecture. She’d been with them when they ate tea and bread and cheese under the big elm tree at midday, then somebody had suggested that she might like to help prepare vegetables for the supper stew.

  ‘We weren’t slave-driving her or anything, we just thought it would make a change for her from sitting listening to us talk.’

  So for some undefined time on Monday afternoon, she’d scraped carrots and turnips in the yard with two of the other women then … ‘Well, she just … I suppose she just disappeared. I mean, one minute she was there and the next…’

  The girl who was talking turned to her friend who’d also been on vegetable duty. The friend nodded.

  ‘That’s right. She was a quiet little thing anyway and when we noticed she wasn’t there we just thought she’d gone for a walk.’

  ‘Did anybody you didn’t recognise come up and talk to her at any time?’

  ‘No, but we wouldn’t necessarily have noticed. We weren’t watching her every minute of the day.’

  I asked if she’d been there for the evening meal. They were quite sure about that. She wasn’t. There’d been some talk about it and they’d decided she must be with Daniel Venn.

  ‘They were engaged after all, so you’d expect them to be spending some time together,’ the Lancastrian said. ‘We thought he might have invited her up to the house at last to introduce her to the family.’

  ‘Had she said anything about that?’

  ‘No, but then she didn’t say much about anything.’

  ‘Was she there when you went to bed?’

  ‘No. We were pretty sure by then we’d been right and she was staying up at the house. We even talked about it a bit and said Daniel might have sent down to let us know.’

  On further questioning, it turned out that the evening meal had been about six. The two girls doing the vegetables were sure that Daisy had disappeared quite a long time before that, two or three hours before probably. So that meant that the last any of them had seen of Daisy was around three or four o’clock on Monday afternoon, scraping carrots. I put my things in a bag and got ready to go.

  ‘What shall we do about her violin?’ one of them said.

  It was lying wrapped in a cloth on the pallet where she’d slept, like a smaller version of her own body. The sight of it and the thought that her fingers wouldn’t touch it again hit me worse than finding her had, and tears started pouring down my cheeks. They were kind, sat me down and offered tea. After a while I thanked them, picked up my bag and began to walk towards the railway halt. As for her violin, we agreed that it would have to be given to the police when they came.

  Chapter Twelve

  I CAUGHT AN AFTERNOON TRAIN BACK to town. The mechanical harvester was still at work, although I suppose it must have moved on to a new field by then. The steam from it stood out bright and white against a grey sky. By the time we got to Paddington it was drizzling, just enough moisture to turn the dusty pavements greasy, to wilt the feathers on the hats of women waiting with me in the bus queue and paste bits of torn newspaper and wisps of hay into a mushy layer in the gutters. There was an end of summer feel to everything that would have been depressing even without what had happened. When the motor bus came at last the conductor was surly, standing room only, and a child who was told by his mother to be a little gentleman and give up his seat to the lady left a blob of everlasting toffee as a souvenir that lived up to its name by forming what seemed likely to be a lifelong attachment to my skirt. The only piece of good luck was that when I got to Clement’s Inn Emmeline was out, not expected back until the morning. I said I wouldn’t leave a message, dodged questions about where I’d been and why I looked as if I’d been sleeping under a hedge, and went home to Hampstead. There was a mountain of mail inside the door, all of it dull looking. The milk in the pantry had turned to curds and whey, the bread had grown green mould and a mouse had been at the cheese because I’d left the top off the dish. Too tired to shop, I dined off black tea, Bath Olivers and raspberry jam, went to bed and slept for ten solid hours.

  * * *

  Next morning, a Wednesday, I gave Emmeline a carefully edited account. She had to know of course that both pictures were still in Oliver Venn’s possession, and that a young woman had been shot. A protégée of the Venns, I said, a musical young woman from a poor family. The police were investigating how she died and I would probably have to go to the inquest because I’d been unlucky enough to find her body. I’ve never been more grateful for Emmeline’s ability to ignore distractions and concentrate on the job in hand. A lesser woman might have wasted time expressing regret over the dead girl or even over the shock to my nerves.

  ‘It’s all very unfortunate, but in the circumstances we can’t press the subject of the picture without risking unwanted publicity,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to wait until the police have finished investigating, then take it up through the lawyers.’

  Just what I’d suggested in the first place and it would have saved me a lot of trouble, although I had the sense not to point that out. I didn’t mention my burglary attempt, let alone that I’d allowed Lady Fieldfare’s daughter to get involved in it, because I was sure Oliver Venn wouldn’t dare let the police prosecute me.

  With that interview over, all there was left for me to do was get on with my work and wait for the next few days, so that’s what I did. I spent a couple of blameless days at home. Finished the bicycle catalogue translations and sent them off with an invoice saying prompt payment would oblige. I was down to my last ten pounds or so in the bank. Shopped, answered mail, cleaned the house up to a point, found the lid of the cheese dish. Considered seriously an offer from a neighbour of two pretty kittens to deal with the mice. On Friday I went back to Clement’s Inn, did some proof reading for our newspaper, wrote letters to supporters and was even driven to using the telephone twice – I hate not being able to see people when I talk to them – in connection with a conference of the Women’s Trade Union League due to take place in Bath the following week. During one of the proofreading spells, Bobbie Fieldfare arrived suddenly at my shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Miss Bray. What’s happening?’

  ‘Work’s happening.’ I handed her a damp galley pro
of. ‘Read that to me. Out loud and not too fast.’

  It was about the work of women sanitary inspectors. She got through a couple of paragraphs, while I checked from the manuscript copy.

  ‘It’s not very interesting, is it? What I wanted to ask you is whether the police—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. Start again from “Statistics for the last five years in Burnley…”’

  Another few paragraphs, then, ‘My mother was awfully curious about where I’d been. I didn’t tell her anything.’

  ‘Good, but keep reading. We’ll be locking the page up in a few minutes.’

  ‘Talking of locking up, I wondered if—’

  ‘Bobbie, are you in there?’ Lady Fieldfare’s voice from the corridor.

  ‘Oh dash it. I’d better go.’ She let the proof slide to the floor. ‘Only I do want to talk to you. I’ll see you soon.’

  Not if I can help it, I thought as she whisked out of the door. Already, with her instinct for doing the wrong thing, she’d wrenched my mind back to where I didn’t want to be. I’d tried hard over the last few days not to think about Daisy, avoided the parts of newspapers that might have carried a paragraph about the death by shooting of a young woman in the Cotswolds, but probably wouldn’t because it wasn’t significant. Only after Bobbie had gone and we’d got the page locked up did I start wondering why I’d been trying so hard not to think. I said I needed some fresh air, went outside and walked round the streets under dusty and tattered plane trees, dodging children playing hopscotch. Once I let myself think, the answer was clear. I felt guilty.

  * * *

  It took another few turns of the streets to decide what I felt guilty about. Certainly not trying to take the picture. My conscience was as clear about that as it always had been and it was just a pity I’d failed. Lying to the police, then? Well, it wasn’t the first time I’d had to do that, unfortunately. Anyway, I hadn’t lied in so many words, just left out a few things. All right, more than a few things. Daniel’s engagement. Felicia with the revolver. ‘I had a gun, didn’t I?’ Daniel with the revolver. Bobbie. An impressive list, and yet that wasn’t at the heart of my trouble. In the end it came to just one word – Daisy. We’d all of us pulled and pushed her around as it suited us. By Daniel’s account her uncle had been prepared to sell her with less care than most men would sell a horse. Even Daniel had started out wanting her for the tunes and dances in her head then cast her as the rescued damsel in his own personal drama. The rest of the Venn family saw her as an embarrassment. True, they’d intended to deal with her honourably enough, a little room of her own in some distant college, a folk-dance teacher’s certificate as her stock in trade. But what it amounted to was getting her out of their civilised, socialist, nicely ordered lives. Harry Hawthorne had been right to be angry, but then wasn’t he using her for his own purposes just the same? Manoeuvring Daniel into announcing his engagement to her was a way for Harry to embarrass the bourgeoisie, like his noisy grief for Daisy dead. They’d all used her as it suited them, tried to tidy her away when it didn’t and now they were trying to tidy away her death. Correction, now we were trying to tidy away her death. I didn’t like it, but I was as guilty of that as any of the rest of them. So the question was, why was I conspiring with them?