Blood on the Wood

by Gillian Linscott

  * * *

  Once I started being honest about it, the answer wasn’t complicated. Protecting Bobbie was only a part of it. Naturally I was glad to get her out of the way, but that wouldn’t justify keeping things from the police and helping to conceal evidence of murder. The truth was that I was almost sure I knew who had killed Daisy and that the Venns knew it too. The name had been thumping like a terrified heart in the background of that talk in the early hours before Adam could bring himself to go to the police. Fe-lic-i-a, Fe-lic-i-a. As if vibrating through the timbers of the house from the room where she was sleeping a drugged sleep upstairs. She had the motive to kill Daisy Smith. With Philomena’s revolver accessible to anybody in the household, she had the means. And I’d almost caught her doing it red-handed, taken the gun from her when it was still warm.

  The more I thought about that, the more horribly neatly it fitted. The shot Bobbie and I heard was the one that had killed Daisy. When I found Felicia with the gun, Daisy’s body might have been only yards away at the back of the summerhouse or even tumbled into one of the overgrown borders. Perhaps I hadn’t been so wrong in thinking that Felicia intended to kill herself: murder, then suicide. (Perhaps she’d even tried. Daniel thought two rounds had been fired from the revolver, although in my memory there’d been only one.) I’d got there in time to stop her and, in taking the gun, unintentionally confused the evidence. She’d recovered enough to talk to Carol more or less normally then pleaded illness and gone upstairs to her room. Late at night, she went down to the garden, picked up Daisy’s stiffening body from where it had fallen or been hidden and propped it in the cabinet. Not impossible physically. Daisy was small and thin and Felicia from the look of her a normal healthy young woman. The question why she’d do that could only be answered from a place most of us never go to – the mind of a person who has taken the life of another human being. Outside that, I could only guess. Perhaps it had been remorse – giving Daisy a kind of entombment. Perhaps it was a message to Daniel, blaming him for driving her to it. The strain of carrying the body through the garden into the studio would explain her state when Carol and I found her. If the police knew even a part of what we knew, Felicia would come in for some hard questioning and in that case, I was certain, she’d break down and confess. If she were lucky enough to escape hanging – with a good barrister and a jury sympathetic to her youth, unhappiness and provocation – she’d wither slowly away in a prison cell. Even if that was what she deserved, should I be the one to put her there? On the other hand, by not telling the police what I’d seen and heard I was behaving as if Daisy didn’t matter.

  I sat on a bench under a tree, watching a pigeon chasing another pigeon in the dust, trying to think a way out of where I’d put myself. Now, if Daisy had been my friend or my sister, Felicia’s fate wouldn’t have mattered a jot. I’d have wanted justice for Daisy, revenge even. But she hadn’t been a friend or, even in the comradely sense, a sister because I hadn’t tried to make her one. Apart from comforting her after the nightmare, I’d been content for the Scipian girls to look after her. Now like all the rest of them all I wanted was to keep her out of my life because to do otherwise would mean grief and pain.

  ‘And you know it would, Daisy,’ I said to her in my head. ‘A lot of grief and pain for everybody. Is that what you’d want?’

  The answer was that I had no idea what she’d have wanted because I didn’t know her. None of us knew her.

  * * *

  I took the unanswered question home with me, tried to smother it in work over the weekend. A postcard arrived on Saturday about a meeting in Holborn the following evening, protesting about the French military action in Morocco. Still out of sorts and angry with myself I thought there was no point in pretending to worry about whole countries if I couldn’t even help one person and decided not to go. Then on Sunday it occurred to me that Max Blume would certainly be there and he was the only person I knew in London who’d actually met Daisy Smith. So I was there at the meeting, noting and deploring along with the rest. Afterwards, I got Max on his own at the back of the hall.

  ‘Have you recovered from all that country air, Nell?’

  He was waiting for me to make the first move.

  ‘When did you leave?’ I said.

  ‘Wednesday, the day after you. Not before I’d been questioned by the police.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘No personal distinction about it. They questioned everybody left in the Scipian camp – although there were no more than a couple of dozen of us left by then. The main thing they seemed interested in was whether Hawthorne might have been inciting us to tear down the Venns’ house.’

  ‘Not about Daisy?’

  ‘Oh, they wanted to know when anybody had last seen her, but they didn’t get far.’

  There it was again. Even among the Scipians – who were kindly disposed to her – she’d hardly existed in her own right, made no more lasting impression than a shadow on a brick wall.

  He gave me a sideways look. ‘What’s wrong, Nell?’

  ‘I don’t know. A lot, I think.’

  Somebody came round with a petition. Max read it at a glance, then signed. I broke my own rule by signing without reading for once.

  ‘Let me get us something to drink and we’ll talk properly,’ Max said. ‘Coffee or cocoa?’

  He collected two mugs from the table by the urn and we settled in two seats in a far corner. The coffee was vile, as it normally is with good causes. Max took a gulp, winced. ‘So what do you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Did the police ask you about Daniel and Daisy?’

  ‘The engagement? No.’

  ‘Did you have the impression they knew about it?’

  ‘I don’t see how they could fail to. After all, it was the talk of the camp so I’m sure one of the women will have mentioned it to them. Does that matter?’

  ‘Probably, yes.’

  He looked worried. ‘Is all this for the sake of Daniel Venn’s beaux yeux?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I was the one who found her – found Daisy’s body.’

  I desperately needed someone to discuss it with and when a friend was really in trouble Max could be relied on to put aside his journalist’s instincts. So I told him about the attempt at art theft and how it ended but couldn’t tell even him about Felicia. That left a hole in the middle of the story and Max, of course, spotted it.

  ‘Yes, I can see it was bad for you and I’m sorry, but I don’t see why you have to stay involved.’

  ‘There’ll be an inquest and so on and the police will want to speak to me again.’

  ‘And you’ll simply tell them everything you know – won’t you?’

  I just looked at him.

  ‘Like that, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nell, if you’ll accept some advice from me, don’t get too close to the Venns.’

  ‘I’m not close to them. I don’t want to be close to them. It’s only…’

  ‘So it is Daniel?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t. If it’s anything, it’s Daisy. I hate the way the world’s closing over her already as if she never existed. Even when she was alive, she never existed much. None of us can even remember properly when we last saw her.’

  ‘One of the things the police wanted to know was whether anybody had seen her with a stranger from outside the camp.’

  ‘Had anybody?’

  ‘No, but there again, would they have noticed? After all, we were most of us strangers to each other. The camp had only been going for three days and if somebody saw a woman talking to Daisy, they’d simply assume it was a Scipian they didn’t happen to recognise.’

  ‘Why a woman?’

  ‘Because she spent most of her time with the women. She was such a timid little thing I think somebody would have noticed if she’d been talking to a man.’

  Another point against Felicia. One of the things that had puzzled
me was how Daisy came to be on her own in the garden of the Venns’ house. Suppose Felicia had gone down to the Scipian camp at some time in the day, found Daisy and delivered a message – a message, say, that Daniel wanted her to come and meet him. If she’d done that and it could be proved against her, at least then I could forget the picture of her spending the rest of her life in prison. That cold premeditation would be enough to hang her. I tried to get that out of my mind and concentrate on what Max was saying.

  ‘Of course, I don’t know what Harry Hawthorne said to the police. Most of us were questioned by constables, but they sent an inspector down to see Harry. They were more than an hour together and neither of them looked very happy at the end of it.’

  ‘Inspector Bull, big man with cold grey eyes?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Do you think Harry Hawthorne might have met Daisy somewhere before? He was up at the Venns’ house playing a lament for her soon after the police got there. It was grotesque and yet I’d have sworn he was really mourning Daisy.’

  ‘Perhaps it was guilt.’

  ‘Guilt!’ I looked round, making sure nobody was near enough to hear. They were all safely clustered round the urns. ‘You’re not saying he had something to do with killing Daisy?’

  ‘No. But I do think it’s possible he put her into a situation where she got killed. You know what I said to you about trying to embarrass the Venns. Suppose he decided to persuade Daisy to go up to the house and confront them?’

  ‘She wouldn’t confront anybody.’

  ‘Not on her own, no. But if he had one of his crazy schemes – oh, I don’t know – imagine all the Venns trooping into dinner and Daisy sitting there at the table with Harry hiding behind a curtain, working class come to claim its own from the bourgeoisie. I’m not saying that’s what Harry did, but something like that would be in character.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t have shot Daisy for that.’

  ‘No. Well, maybe he persuades her to creep in after dark and one of the Venns really does take them for burglars and – like any good middle-class socialist in defence of his property – fires into the dark to scare them off. Only he hits poor Daisy and Hawthorne gets away.’

  ‘I just don’t believe he’d go off and leave her like that.’

  ‘Perhaps he’d convinced himself she was only injured and it was a real shock when he heard she was dead, hence the guilt.’

  ‘But if he hates the Venns so much, surely he’d tell the police that.’

  ‘No, because he’d be quite sure the police would side with the Venns and put the blame on him. He might even be right about that.’

  ‘Is Hawthorne still at the Scipian camp?’

  ‘No. That broke up after the police came. Nobody had much heart for it. I suppose Harry’s back in town. In fact, I thought he might be here tonight but—’

  Before he finished speaking, there was a stir by the doorway and Harry Hawthorne walked in with a little group of supporters behind him. By then the meeting had been on the point of breaking up; people had separated into little groups, the caretaker was fidgeting with keys. When he came in there were shouts of welcome, cheerful insults about being late as usual. The petition was produced and Hawthorne scrawled his signature, taking up three lines. I noticed because I was at his shoulder by then. Before I could speak he turned round and saw me.

  ‘You were at the camp. You’re a friend of young Daniel Venn’s, aren’t you?’

  At the top of his voice as usual, his beard practically scratching my face. A knot of people had collected round him already and others began to drift in from corners of the room. I started saying I was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but he didn’t take any notice.

  ‘Well, did they kill her?’ Gasps and questions from all round. He played up to them. ‘Rich young man got himself engaged to a working-class girl and the family objected so they shot her, like doing away with a puppy you don’t want.’

  I said, loudly because he seemed to be making a public meeting of it, ‘We don’t know who did it. Anybody could have shot her.’

  ‘But who’d have wanted to?’

  I felt Max’s grip on my elbow. He said to Hawthorne, ‘I don’t think we’ll get far like this. Why don’t we go and talk outside?’

  Surprisingly, Hawthorne obeyed. Max steered the two of us out of a side door into an alleyway. There was a gas lamp on the brick wall above us and by the direct light of it Hawthorne’s face looked lined, older. He lit a cigarette that smelt like a cattle shed, his hand shaking, and took a long drag on it.

  ‘Why do you think they killed her?’ I said.

  ‘They’d taken a trip to the marriage market and brought him back a nice young woman with a dowry. Then he goes off slumming and comes back with a penniless girl who’ll cost them a packet. What would you expect them to do?’

  ‘You’re talking as if they were millionaires,’ I said. ‘You can’t describe Daniel as rich, and even if Felicia is going to inherit some money of her own, I’m sure it won’t be the sort of fortune people get killed for.’

  ‘What do you know about what people will kill for, girl? I’ve been in places where I’ve seen a man murdered for ten bob and that’s daylight truth.’

  I started saying but this was a different world, but it only played into his hands.

  ‘It’s all the same world, girl. Just that some of it has prettier curtains than the rest.’

  Max came in on my side. ‘That’s all very well, Harry, but the Venns aren’t stupid. Why would they take a risk like that for a few hundred pounds and some passing social embarrassment? Give them a year or two, they’d have had poor Miss Smith pouring Earl Grey tea and playing Chopin on the piano just like the rest of them.’

  Hawthorne’s laugh was short and bitter. ‘Anyone will behave stupidly when he’s panicking.’

  ‘And you think the Venns were panicking?’ I said.

  ‘Daniel admitted it himself. That Sunday, when he came down to tell me how they’d taken it, he said his brother and his uncle were in a panic about it.’

  ‘They didn’t like it, of course,’ I said.

  ‘More than that. Daniel had some money in trust from his aunt for when he got married – you knew that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, his uncle’s a trustee and his brother knows all about it. Daniel goes to them on the Sunday and says he’d like his money, please, because he’s going to marry Daisy and they tell him he can’t have it because it’s not there.’

  ‘Daniel told you that?’

  ‘He did, and the day after that, the girl’s shot. What more do you want? Daniel even had a gun. He showed it to me the night she was killed.’

  With only the two of us for audience, his voice was more subdued, almost depressed.

  ‘So you’re claiming Daniel himself shot Daisy?’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘I think there’s just a shred more decency in Daniel than the rest of them, just a shred. Showing it to me, he was as good as confessing what his brother and uncle had done.’

  ‘Daniel had the gun because he thought the other girl he was engaged to had used it to try to kill herself. He told you that, didn’t he?’

  ‘That was the story at the time, yes.’

  ‘What did he do with the gun? Did he leave it with you?’

  ‘Of course not. Why would he do that? He took it away with him.’

  ‘What happened when he’d gone? Did you try to find Daisy Smith and tell her what he’d said about ending the engagement?’

  ‘No. I thought she’d be asleep with the rest of the women.’

  ‘But she wasn’t, was she? When did you notice she was missing?’

  ‘I didn’t. By the time I knew, she was dead.’

  ‘Did you suggest she should go up to the house?’

  ‘I might have if I’d talked to her, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  He took another long drag on his c
igarette. ‘Some time on Monday, I suppose, probably at Daniel’s talk in the morning.’

  I looked up and caught Max’s eye. He seemed content to let me ask the questions but I knew I wasn’t getting far. Hawthorne was keeping something back.

  ‘Why were you so pleased when Daniel announced he was engaged to Daisy Smith?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nice to see a poor girl getting a chance.’

  ‘There was more to it than that, wasn’t there? You knew it would embarrass his family.’

  His eyes went to Max. ‘Have you been talking to her?’

  Max nodded. Hawthorne took another lungful of tobacco smoke, threw the butt down and ground it under his heel until it was no more than a smear on the cobbles.

  ‘All right, he’s told you that the Venns owe us money. There was five thousand the old lady wanted the Scipians to have and they haven’t got it. So yes, I was showing them that we weren’t going to go away quietly and forget about it.’