The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  “Oh, I see.” He eyed her with a little more favour. “All the same … sorry, but nobody can come in here just now, on account of the police …”

  “It’s all right, Simmons, I’ll deal with this.”

  Nina turned to see a self-consciously elegant, fair-haired young man in a smart, double-breasted pale grey suit. She immediately recognised the glamour-boy, God’s gift to females smile, and gave him a cool glance. Ex-RAF, fighter-pilot, she guessed, his long upper lip looking as though it ought to be still sporting a handlebar moustache. “I am the police, actually,” he drawled. “Detective Sergeant Fairchild.” He held out a hand, appraising her with rather more interest than a police scrutiny warranted. Her hackles rose further. “And you are – ?”

  “Nina Tempest.”

  “Ah. Then you’re with the lady who–”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad show, all this.”

  She acknowledged that with a nod and made to continue her way outside, but he stopped her, saying, “I suppose you were wanting to see where the body was found?”

  He’d marked her down as some sort of ghoul. She threw him a look shot with dislike, but he seemed to be the sort with whom that didn’t register. She said coldly, “No, I wasn’t. It was the Jessamy rooms I wanted to see – just to look at those wonderful wall paintings I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Not much wonderful about them, now! That’s where they were working when they came across the body, behind a chimney-breast.” He sounded slightly bored.

  “Oh.”

  He eyed her, weighing up options. “If that’s all you want, I don’t suppose it’d really matter–”

  “No thanks, I don’t think so, not now.”

  But there was no denying she was intrigued – actually, a bit more than that. She knew from Daisy something of the events here at Charnley that had disrupted for ever the Jardines’ pleasant and protected life, though her stepmother had never dwelt on particulars, in fact she’d been inclined to gloss over details whenever the subject of the old days came up. So Nina only knew what she suspected was a highly edited version of the old scandal. But her writer’s instinct told her that here was a story waiting to be uncovered, something which was almost certainly going to reveal the answer to the riddle of a woman who’d been missing for nearly forty years. A body had been found, and though she knew no more than that yet, it seemed to her that it must almost certainly be that of Beatrice Jardine. And those wall paintings, and how they came to be executed, were part of the story. All the same …

  “No, I couldn’t, really. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.”

  The policeman looked at her. Nina’s smile was one that had disarmed better men than he. He hesitated only for only a moment longer. “OK, I dare say I could stretch a point,” he said, anxious to disabuse her of the idea that he might have no authority in the matter, “if you really wanted to have a quick dekko, seeing as you’re part of the family. As long as you don’t go past the tape on the other end …”

  “I promise I don’t want to see anything other than those murals.”

  “Won’t get much out of ’em, I’ll tell you that. They’re a dead loss, in rotten condition, damp and all that. The – er – the one room’s – strictly off-limits, right?”

  She looked along the corridor and saw again the tape stretched across. “I certainly wouldn’t want to see that one, anyway.”

  “Good show. I’ll come with you, then.”

  She’d walked into that one, but she saw that there was no other way she was going to see what she wanted. He escorted her along the corridor and opened the door of a room just before the police tape began and where a wooden-faced constable stood on guard. “Sorry, no further than this, but the next room’s very similar.”

  She hadn’t been expecting much from what he’d said, but the large room she was looking into was at first glance a disappointment, all the same. Here and there a whole section survived - in particular, part of a border of lotus and papyrus still as fresh and brilliant as it had been the day it was painted, but for the most part, flaking plaster showed only patches of what must once have been vibrant colour, the only indications that once queens and pharaohs, gods and goddesses had marched around it in a glorious panoply of colour, the greens and lapis blues and the shine of gold against their brown-red skin, the white of their kilts and black hair. The tall white crowns of Upper and the reds of Lower Egypt.

  And yet. It could all have been an artistic muddle, she thought, but it wasn’t. What she hadn’t expected was to find that the rooms must have captured so much of the flavour of the glory and elegance that once was ancient Egypt. The room she was looking into was much, much larger than she had expected – or was it? Wasn’t it just that it had been given an illusion of added length, and perhaps dignity, by a clever use of perspective – trompe l’oeil columns and architraves —

  “Not much to look at now, is it?”

  “Not much.” But even in this condition, her imagination providing what had once been there, it took Nina’s breath away. It was evident that Rose Jessamy must have been inspired when she painted these walls.

  Detective Inspector Linus Grigsby from Scotland Yard was in charge of the case, a big man with a Cockney accent, wearing an ill-fitting suit of some thick brown material (demob suit – sizes small, medium and large, guessed Harriet) which he filled to capacity. He had a battered face and looked like a prize fighter, an impression reinforced by his habit of rocking lightly on the balls of his feet when making a point. Not prepossessing, but at least he was demonstrating tact and sympathy. He had cleared the room, previously overcrowded with several members of the police, the pathologist and his pretty young secretary, there with him to take notes. He had asked for tea to be sent in and when Guy returned, had left them alone while Guy squared his shoulders and did his best to prepare them for something more macabre than they could possibly have envisaged.

  Mummified. Strangled with her own necklace. Left in that chimney. That was grotesque enough to have to cope with by any standards, but it did at least put paid to those ghastly imaginings about her not being dead before the chimney had been bricked up – though that had been the first appalled thought in both their minds, in their faces as they’d looked at each other, when they had learned where their mother’s remains had been found. All those horror stories, heard and shivered over with frightened delight as children: stories about the west wing being haunted by the ghost of the Roman Catholic priest who had been hidden in the priest’s hole, the door sealed to prevent his being found, and who’d died before he could be rescued. Other tales of mediaeval nuns being punished for their sins by being walled up alive and left to die …

  Guy soon put an end to that sort of speculation before it could be voiced. “I’m afraid there’s no doubt she was murdered, the necklace proves that. Her body must have been put where it was to conceal the fact.”

  Daisy said suddenly, into the seemingly endless silence that followed, “Who’s going to tell Vita?”

  Vita. Oh, yes.

  “I suppose it’s up to me,” said Harriet, after a moment.

  Daisy pushed a stray hair behind her ears. “Actually, I don’t mind. This is going to knock her sideways.”

  And of course, Vita must be handled with kid gloves. And I, naturally, thought Harriet, am not to be trusted to do that. Probably rightly. Vita had always resented being told what to do by her elder sister. She’d never listened, had gone her own way, even when it meant ruining her life.

  All the sparkle and vivacity had gone out of Vita from the moment she’d given Bertie Rossiter his ring back. He had taken it, promising to put it on her finger again when he had control of his own fortune, yet within the year he had succumbed to his mother’s bullying and married the lumpy Horsley girl. Even worse, with incredible insensitivity, he had taken his new bride to live in the house where he and Vita had hoped to start their marriage.

  Within a few weeks of hearing that, Vita had become
engaged to Lord Wycombe.

  What? Wycombe?

  None of her siblings could, at first, absorb the idea, still less believe that Vita could possibly be serious about accepting his proposal, and was not going to be moved by their arguments. He was old —as old as their father had been! He was their Uncle Myles! The very idea was almost – incestuous. If Vita would only give it time, she would certainly find a younger man.

  But no one on earth could be more stubborn than Vita when she wanted to be. Or, as Harriet knew, more secretive in her thoughts. And in the end, after making the supreme effort to forget he had ever dandled them on his knee, it became just possible to acknowledge she might have known what she was doing. Wycombe was, after all, handsome, athletic, cultivated, titled – and rich. Rich enough to make it possible for Charnley to be kept in the family – had that been her idea? If so, Marcus would very quickly have disabused her of it. He would accept that sort of sacrifice from no one, least of all his sister. But many a girl other than Vita would willingly have married a man nearly thirty years older than she was for the advantages such a marriage brought. As Lady Wycombe, she continued to live the life she had been brought up to expect. She gave her husband his heirs – two sons, the love of his – and her – life. She was an accomplished hostess, her social calendar was full, she was popular, free to do pretty much as she wanted. But was she happy? Seemingly, yes, at least on the surface – until that terrible tragedy which had come to her later. After which, it was hard to get anywhere near Vita. Though she’d come through, after a fashion. Been psycho-analysed and emerged at the end of it a different woman.

  All the same … her stability was still fragile, there was always the sense of her being on the edge.

  “I dare say you’re right, Daisy,” Harriet said more circumspectly. “She’ll take it better from you.”

  “I won’t telephone – I’ll go and see her tonight. Guy?”

  “We’ll call on our way home.” He patted Daisy’s hand. The way in which she’d received the news had been disconcerting, coming from Daisy, who always coped so sensibly with everything, but perhaps the tears had been necessary. He was not worried about her, or not in the long term. She would suffer and grieve over this, but already he could see her recovering, reverting to being splendidly capable again. Thinking of other people, as always, in the same way she worked herself to death over those girls of hers. Harriet worried him far more. Outwardly, she seemed her usual self – shocked, of course, though still astringent, ironic, self-contained. And yet beneath it, he sensed what he could only feel was a barely concealed panic. Had she, he wondered uneasily, found rather more among those papers she’d gone through yesterday than she was admitting to? Or was it something else? You couldn’t always tell with Harriet.

  Grigsby had given them twenty minutes alone, but now he was back, followed almost immediately by a younger, handsomely self-satisfied looking detective, accompanied by Nina, rather white-faced.

  “Oh, Nina,” said Daisy, her eyes filling again, “there’s something rather awful–”

  “I know, darling. Sergeant Fairchild has just told me.” She went and stood in front of the two older women, taking a hand of each.

  Grigsby said, “Thank you, Fairchild,” with the sort of look that implied later retribution.

  Who the hell had given him permission to blab to that young woman? He wasn’t the sergeant Grigsby would have picked to work with him on this job if he’d had any choice. Bright enough, if his interest was caught, but too cocky by half, couldn’t forget he’d been an RAF officer and flown a Spitfire, one of the Brylcreem boys in their handsome blue uniforms, while Grigsby himself had never risen above the rank of army sergeant in the Military Police. Fairchild had his eye on promotion and didn’t take kindly to Grigsby being his boss – Grigsby, who’d come up from the ranks, who’d learned what he knew on the beat, in the same streets where both he and the villains he caught came from. He had a reputation for toughness and thoroughness. He was a bulldog – when he got his teeth into a case, they’d have to be prised open with an iron bar before he’d let go.

  But truth to tell, this was far from his usual sort of investigation and he felt like a fish out of water, though Fairchild thought it was going to be a piece of cake – and maybe that’s how it would turn out, in its own way – meaning that nothing in the way of evidence would emerge after all this time and the enquiry would die a slow, natural death. His sharp antennae told him he’d need to keep his wits about him here, all the same. Both women had taken the gruesome news better than he expected, but neither, even the younger, would easily be fobbed off, or be likely to wilt under interrogation.

  “You’ll appreciate that in the very unusual circumstances–” he began, then cleared his throat and went straight into it: he would need to question them in detail, he said, about events around the time when their mother had disappeared. He remembered to soften it by adding that he realised he was asking a lot after such a time lapse, but added that it was essential he should have as complete a picture as possible.

  “You must have records,” Harriet Jardine returned sharply. “Or did the man in charge of the investigation not make any? Sergeant Maitland, wasn’t it?”

  The chief inspector was not one to be overawed by an imperious woman, however impressed he was by her memory. He sensed in Harriet Jardine a tendency to be hostile. Charitably, he put it down to shock. He wasn’t feeling all that chipper himself, come to that; it was the first time in his career he had ever had to deal with a forty-year-old mummified corpse, and having seen it he hoped it would be his last. Forty years – or very nearly! The odds on solving a murder that long after it had happened weren’t ones he’d have laid money on. He was tempted to wonder if it even mattered now – but only briefly. Justice always mattered, to somebody. He doubted, all the same, whether he’d be given the go-ahead to spend much time or resources on what was probably an insoluble mystery, with not a cat in hell’s chance of bringing the perpetrator to book. The victim herself, had she lived, would’ve been – what? Over eighty. And the murderer most likely dead and buried by now. He tried not to let his thoughts show. He said stiffly, “Sergeant Maitland is no longer with us.” Which sounded like a euphemism for Maitland being dead. Whether he was or not, Grigsby hadn’t a clue. He’d simply meant that he’d retired, donkey’s years ago, and maybe that was lucky for him.

  While being driven down here from the Yard by Fairchild, Grigsby had familiarised himself with Maitland’s old notes about Beatrice Jardine’s disappearance and her husband’s subsequent suicide, and had got a distinct whiff of Billingsgate. With the facility he had of reading between the lines, he sensed that the case had been bodged – or more likely, facts and situations had been turned up which were unacceptable, and had then been brushed under the carpet. The family had been local gentry, after all, in with the Chief Constable and God knows who else, and that had mattered in those days. The war had altered that sort of social hierarchy. The sort of thing that couldn’t happen today. Could it?

  “This new evidence that’s turned up has thrown a different light on the case, as you’ll appreciate. There’ll be questions now that never needed to be asked at that time. I shall need your help, both of you, if we’re ever going to find out who killed your mother, and why.”

  Harriet sensed, rather than heard, a hint of coercion and her hackles rose. “We might have known that at the time, if more effort had been made to trace Valery Iskander.”

  Grigsby might have pointed out that this was most likely due to pressure being put on poor old Maitland not trace the Egyptian, but he held his tongue. “Miss Jardine, Mr Iskander leaving suddenly isn’t evidence of his having committed this murder, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  She was silent for a long time, and then gave a slight smile, an attractive, crooked smile that made her look quite different, more approachable. “Forgive me, you have your job to do. But you must admit it looks suspicious.”

  “What I’m more in
terested in is the fact of the body being found where it was. The room was in the process of being decorated with those Egyptian murals, right? Was Mr Iskander concerned with that?”

  “Only in so far as he put the idea into her head. Miss Jessamy’s head, I mean. Rose Jessamy. She was the woman who was doing the decorating.”

  Grigsby was less insensitive than Harriet imagined him. His small, sharp eyes regarded her shrewdly. The bitter irony of finding a mummy in rooms decorated with Egyptian temples and pyramids and sphinxes hadn’t escaped him. He hadn’t yet quite grasped just why it had been decided to paint those rooms like that, unless it was something to do with that Nile trip the victim had apparently taken years before. But the implications, in regard to the murder, were clear. “That wall was certainly plastered and decorated after the body was put in the chimney – so the person who was painting the walls is someone we shall need to talk to.”

  “Rose Jessamy? You think she killed my mother and put her there?” Harriet Jardine laughed shortly. “Well, unless she was actually killed in that room, I should think you can rule out the possibility. She was a slight little thing and Mama was not small.”

  Grigsby had seen photographs of Beatrice Jardine that were with the case notes. What his mother used to call ‘a fine figure of a woman’. Like a younger Queen Mary, Mrs Jardine had been a stately lady, full-fleshed, a bit haughty looking – though if the camera wasn’t lying, she’d also been an absolute stunner, a real Edwardian belle. Lillie Langtry, Alice Keppel and Mrs Patrick Campbell rolled into one.

  Mrs Tempest, the younger sister, suddenly said, “I think I can help you there.” Up until now, Grigsby had assumed her silence had meant she was too upset to speak, but it seemed she might just have been deep in thought. “She – Rose, I mean - would chip off the old plaster in the evening, ready for plastering it up the next day, so that she could paint directly on to it with watercolours.”