The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘At least she didn’t expect you to be at her beck and call, day and night. She was kind to me, in her own fashion. (I know she has always thought I’ve stayed with her all these years because she found the garnets one day when she was snooping in my room, and blackmailed me into not leaving, but the truth is, after Beatrice Jardine, I liked working for her. She’s always talked to me as if I was a human being, and we even had a laugh or two together sometimes.) But the time in Egypt didn’t last long. It was soon back to Charnley, and the old routine, the children – and Mr Jardine.

  ‘How can I explain what he was like? He was such a nice man, always pleasant, though I guessed he had worries of his own that he didn’t share with his wife and family. All the same, he found time and the money to order that grand birthday party for her.

  ‘What a party that was! One that I was never likely to forget.

  ‘Long after they’d all gone home and I’d been dismissed for the night, Madam decided to send for me again. I was already in bed and fast asleep when the bell woke me. I was bone-weary after dancing attendance for hours, being there ready with pins and needle and thread for ladies who’d had their trains trodden on, or for those who needed hairpins to fix their hair because their maids hadn’t done it properly in the first place. A box of headache powders ready to hand, a flask of eau de cologne and another of smelling salts. I’d waited for Madam to come up to her bedroom and then I’d helped her to undress, as far as she wanted me to. But at last I got to my own room, and fell into bed exhausted. When the bell rang I looked at the clock and saw it was twenty to two. I’d only been in bed an hour! What was she doing, still awake at that time?

  ‘Well, quite often she was up half the night, playing cards or gossiping and tittle-tattling with her friends. Of course, she could stay in bed all the next day if she wanted to, and I don’t suppose it ever occurred to her that I had to be up betimes, just in case she took it into her head to rise early for once and needed me to help her into one of those extravagant outfits of hers. But that night, she’d sent me to bed an hour ago. Well, that was Madam all over. Never thinking of anyone else, exactly as she was when she was a girl. No one else in the world but Beatrice – though what with those sweet smiles and never losing her temper, no one ever suspected how selfish she was. Except her husband. But he loved her in spite of it.

  ‘The bell rang again as I was throwing on some clothes. I hurried to her room, by then half expecting some emergency, such as that when she’d lost the child.

  ‘I soon found she’d sent for me to do nothing more than undo her necklace, her birthday present from Mr Jardine. A beautiful thing it was, garnets set in marcasite, hanging from a thin silver chain, part of a matching set. There was something wrong with the clasp, it just wouldn’t open. I struggled with it but it was stuck, fast. “You’ll have to have it cut off tomorrow,” I told her.

  ‘“Cut off? Well, then, I must sleep with it round my neck all night! Like an odalisque.” She smiled and put her hands to where the necklace lay against her white throat and stroked it.

  ‘I had no idea – then – what an odalisque was but I had my answer as to why she wasn’t yet in bed and asleep, like any other good Christian soul. She was still undressed, with nothing on under the black jap-silk kimono. Her stockings were flung across the room and her silk chemise had slid in a pool to the floor where she’d stepped out of it. Her eyes were brilliant and her cheeks flushed, when she moved she seemed languorous and heavy. The little smile stayed at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘He had been to her. She thought no one knew, on those occasions. But I knew, always. I had the sense to keep my mouth shut, but there isn’t much a maid doesn’t know about her mistress. And the master, her husband, Amory – oh yes. Well, if he didn’t know, he must have been blind. About his friend Lord Wycombe – and the shameful way she flirted with young Kit. There had been others, from time to time, as well. I don’t think he ever knew about the disgraceful way she’d treated that Iskander, but I’m sure he suspected something had gone on that time in Egypt, the way everyone was subdued when he arrived, the way the trip back to Cairo down the Nile was cancelled without any reasonable explanation.

  ‘And for some reason, I couldn’t stand the thought of all this any longer. I heard myself say, as if we were still girls together, what I’d always wanted to say to her then, but never dared: “You should be ashamed of yourself, Miss.” And when she stared at me, all haughty and those blue eyes like chips of ice, I added, for good measure, “A good man like that.”

  ‘“What? What was that you said?”

  ‘It was too late to go back.’

  ‘I hadn’t hated her, not really. She had her good points, like everyone else, and I don’t suppose she could help her nature, any more than I can help mine. I stared down at her, lying on the pretty flowered carpet. She was the ugly one now. Her lovely face was all mottled and swollen, and for a while I couldn’t take in what I’d done. How I’d stood behind her and taken up the slack of the necklace and twisted it until it bit into the soft white flesh, and she finally went limp.

  ‘And then I heard Mr Jardine in the next room, his hand on the doorknob, the door opening. There hadn’t been much of a struggle, but I suppose he must have heard something. I bent down over her with some idea of covering up her body. She was still breathing. Oh, thank God, thank God! My own breath nearly stopped with relief, but I cried out to him and he rushed into the room, pushing me aside. He began to try to revive her and all at once I felt such a desperate urge to vomit I had to turn aside to use the slop pail under the washstand. I thought my stomach would never finish heaving, but all the time I could think of nothing else except to thank my maker that she was still alive. But when at last the shaming sickness stopped, and I turned around, expecting her breathing to have come back to normal, I found the master was still kneeling over her, his face as white as chalk.

  “‘It’s all over. Go and get Copley. Find your brother, we need his help.”’

  ‘He never gave me a word of blame, or asked me why it had happened. I expect he knew.

  ‘It was Fred’s suggestion to put her body behind the chimney-breast in the west wing room. He’d helped the young woman painter enough to know what to do. He was handy, and he’d always been quick to learn. As soon they were gone, I did as I’d been told and packed a valise with things, as if she’d suddenly taken it into her head to go away. (We had to leave the fine details of this plan until later, but it turned out to have been a good idea, for afterwards, we came across Iskander in the conservatory and learned he was leaving first thing the next morning, so it looked every bit as though she’d run off with him.)

  ‘I grabbed a pile of underwear from the drawer and threw it over the valise to cover it, picked the armful up and opened the door. Imagine my shock when I saw Miss Vita coming towards me. Without even thinking about it, I turned and said ‘Goodnight then, Madam,’ into the empty room behind me, and with my free hand closed the door. Miss Vita appeared not to notice anything out of the ordinary; I think she was too busy finding some excuse for being out there herself, fully dressed, in the middle of the night. At any rate, she said nothing. She was no doubt as glad to escape as I was.

  ‘There was no sleep for me that night. I was worried over what Madam called her Egyptian journal. I had made it my business to see what it was she’d been so busy writing those last few days, so I knew that if anyone else came across it and saw how terrified she’d been of him, they’d never believe she’d left Charnley of her own accord, with him. First thing in the morning, I went back to her room and cut out those last pages. It was then I saw the rest of the garnets, lying on the dressing table.

  ‘That was something else: if she had run away, as we had to make them believe, she would surely have taken the whole set, so I slipped them into my pocket. The thought of wanting them for myself never entered my head. Me, wearing such things? For a moment, I contemplated taking some of her more valuable jewellery as well, to make it lo
ok even better, but I knew if Fred found out I’d done that, he’d want to sell it, and that would ruin all our plans.

  ‘As it was, everything went as we hoped.

  ‘When the family at last accepted that she really had gone, I left Charnley quietly, without any fuss, before they had the chance to dismiss me. No one tried to stop me, or ever came looking for me. I doubt whether they noticed I’d gone. I couldn’t ask for a character reference in the circumstances, and for a while I wondered how I was going to earn my bread. Then I met Mrs Kaplan’s ex-maid by chance and heard she was looking for a replacement.

  ‘I have been punished. I have prayed for forgiveness, but God hasn’t yet forgiven me such a great sin. He has chastised me by giving me a long, weary life in which I have lived that night over and over again. But I can take no more. My greatest remorse is that I caused that good man, Mr Jardine, such sorrow that he was forced to end his own life.’

  “And there we have it,” Grigsby had said heavily, after this had been read out to the assembled family. “A full confession. Backed up by Professor Iskander’s testimony, confirmed by what Lady Wycombe said. All the same–”

  He broke off as his gaze rested on Harriet Jardine. He wasn’ t a man for sparing people’s feelings unduly but sometimes, he thought, there was a case for doing so. When it came to the point where pursuit of non-existent evidence to vindicate his own theories would lead them exactly nowhere, expediency won hands down. He looked Harriet straight in the eye. She didn’t flinch. Then he said quietly, “That’s how it happened. Apart from one or two loose ends to be tied up, the case is closed.”

  Epilogue

  “But that’s not how it happened,” Harriet said at last, to the passenger in the seat beside her. “Not really, and Grigsby knows that.”

  Kit didn’t immediately answer. She looked at his strong, beaky profile and also fell silent, miserably aware that perhaps she ought not to have spoken. But she would never be able to unburden herself to either of her sisters, and it had unexpectedly come to her that the one person she might talk to was Kit. It had given her a sharp stab of unbounded joy, like a light illuminating the dark misery of the last days, to feel that perhaps their differences were at last over.

  They were now driving back from Wycombe’s funeral. She was heading for London, where she had business regarding the purchase of the cottage. Kit had unexpectedly turned up at the funeral with Daisy and Guy, but had begged a lift back to town with Harriet.

  The funeral, in accordance with Wycombe’s wishes, had been a quiet and simple affair, and he now lay buried at Stoke Wycombe next to his ancestors. There had been few people there apart from the family, for he was so old he had outlived most of his generation.

  He had died quietly, although the end had come suddenly. The shock of recent events, said Vita, had taken their toll of his energy and possibly the will to continue living. One day after lunch, sitting quietly in front of the fire with the manuscript of a proposed article on pre-war German painters which he was preparing on his knee, he had fallen asleep and simply never woken up.

  “We talked before he died, Harriet,” Vita had told her. “I did as Oscar had advised – and no, I don’t blame myself that it had upset him, just the opposite. He was relieved to have cleared the air, and so was I. He had, you know, been determined to keep me from finding out about any feelings he’d had for Mama, to avoid causing me pain, but in the end … well, the last days were more like the time when we were first married – and after the boys died – when he was so – so kind and loving to me. And I’m so thankful that at least we didn’t part with anger and recrimination.”

  She still looked strained and preoccupied but she seemed to have regained her balance. She was now a very rich woman. Wycombe, having no heirs and there being no entailments on his estate, had left everything to her. She talked of selling Stoke Wycombe, when the endless business of document signing and legal shenanigans was over. Meanwhile, Schulman was taking care of her. The future, for Vita, was not as bleak as it had been. She had found a certain peace at last, which was more than Harriet yet had. Throughout the funeral, she had been frozen into calm but now that the anaesthetic necessary to keep up appearances was wearing off, the pain was well-nigh unbearable.

  “Harriet,” Kit said at last, “Talk to me if you wish.”

  She turned towards him a face he thought he would remember for the rest of his life for its mixture of shame and uncertainty, and such grief that he couldn’t help sliding his arm along the back of the seat and squeezing her shoulder, the nearest thing to putting comforting arms around her that he could make in the circumstances.

  She acknowledged it with a hunch of the shoulder that brought his hand to her cheek.

  This was no good. She couldn’t drive like this, seeing the road through a lake of tears. She drove on for a few hundred yards until she came to a convenient lay-by where she could pull the car in behind a large white furniture van. There she sat for a while, trying to find a steady voice. He waited until she could speak.

  “She was breathing, Kit, when Hallam turned round to be sick. But she was dead when she turned back.”

  “Well, yes. Your father tried to revive her but she was too far gone.”

  She shook her head. “Do you believe all that? Do you really believe it?”

  Please don’t say we shall never know, she prayed silently. Please don’t say that.

  He was silent for a very long time. “No, my dear, I don’t think I do. But whether we believe it or not, that’s the official verdict. We can do nothing but bring more misery by trying to cast doubts on something that can never be proved, one way or the other.”

  There was a long way to go before she could accept that, but he had sounded so strong and confident that, just a little, she felt a flicker of something that might be hope, and she knew that he was right, and that she’d been right to tell him what was troubling her.

  “It all seems to have been so pointless. That business at Luxor, it was all something and nothing, after all, blown up in her mind – and in Iskander’s too, I suppose. Though I suppose it all began long before that. They both had such unhappy childhoods – my mother, and Hallam. They both needed so much to be loved.”

  “Going back to first causes is an unprofitable business, Harriet.”

  They sat looking at the graffiti scrawled in the grime on the back of the furniture van. Advice to Clean It; a less polite injunction; a heart with an arrow and Ted loves Susan. “At the moment, I cannot imagine how I’m going to live with this for the rest of my life, but somehow I suppose I shall manage.”

  “Oh yes, Harriet, you will. You’ve always managed,” he said sadly. “You’ll start again.”

  “An old woman like me?”

  “Don’t say that. But don’t bury yourself away from everyone, Harriet. That’s not you.” He hesitated. “You and I, Harriet –”

  She said, shaking her head, “It won’t do, Kit, not after all this time.”

  She had been expecting this, and perhaps he had, too, for he said immediately, “Then come and work with me. We can still be friends, can’t we? We’re desperately in need of someone like you in the parish and I have room in my vicarage. What’s a woman of your capabilities doing buried in the country, marking papers, for heavens’ sake?”

  Though she was able to smile weakly, he’d made his point. She let him go on. “I know there’s a job going in the Diocesan Finance Department. Just the ticket for you.”

  The idea grew and was suddenly tempting. Not that job, perhaps, but something similar, challenging. She would still buy the cottage, and rent it until such time as she retired. But she was a long way off that yet.

  Come on Harriet! Life goes on, after all, as they say. She dried her eyes and blew her nose and turned the key in the ignition, and started off again in the direction of London.

  Marjorie Eccles was born in Yorkshire and spent much of her childhood there and on the Northumbrian coast. The author of over twenty books, seria
ls and short stories, she is the recipient of the Agatha Christie Short Story Styles Award. Living on the edge of the Black Country, where she taught creative writing, inspired the acclaimed Gil Mayo series. A keen gardener, she now lives with her husband in Hertfordshire.

  THE SHAPE OF SAND. Copyright © 2004 by Marjorie Eccles. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby Limited

  eISBN 9781466821545

  First eBook Edition : May 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Eccles, Marjorie.

  The shape of sand / Marjorie Eccles.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-35232-8

  EAN 978-0-312-35232-5

  1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Upper class—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. England—Fiction. 5. Egypt—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6055.C33S53 2006

  823’.914—dc22