After boarding a first-class carriage at Brighton Station, Mirabelle took a seat opposite an old man puffing a pipe. It was a curious fact that on cold autumn days the smoke in a train made it feel more welcoming, somehow, and warmer. The smell of tobacco usually reminded Mirabelle of being a child – coming downstairs in the morning when the dinner party her parents had hosted the night before was cleared away, but the scent of cigars still lingered. Today the smoke on the air didn’t invoke such rosy memories. She shuddered, imagining what it would feel like to be sitting on the train in a fog, surrounded by smoke yet again. There had been something awful about not being able to see – worse even than the flames, she realised. It was the smoke that had really terrified her. It had pressed on her lungs. She kept coming back to the thought that she might have died that way, the world masked by a thick, grey shroud and she choked by it. As the train pulled out, she swapped to an empty carriage and made a conscious effort to keep her eyes on the view and try not to think about what had happened. It wouldn’t be long before the leaves were off the trees and the smell of bonfires started to pervade the weekends. I wonder how I’ll feel about bonfires, she thought.
At Victoria she took a cab, which dropped her at a very grand street only a couple of minutes from the station. She stopped to gather her thoughts. The houses here were wide and solid – the terrace chequered now and again by one that was greying. The buildings were the same era as the townhouses along the front in Brighton but they were bigger and somehow more self-important. Mirabelle noticed the peeling paint and the chipped windowsills. It was difficult to keep things up during the war and after it nobody had had much money. The Beaumonts’ house, however, looked pristine.
She hovered on the pavement until the clouds let rip and large raindrops began to bounce off the paving stones. Scrambling, she moved more decisively than she felt towards the old-fashioned wrought-iron bell-pull, tugged it and waited. A moment later a woman opened the door with a snap. Mirabelle felt immediately off balance. She had expected a butler or a maid at the least. It took a moment before Mirabelle recognised the woman framed before her as the lady in pink at the racetrack. Today she was wearing a dark grey dress with a smear of what looked like egg down the front. Her thick rope of pearls seemed out of place. Her hair was tousled and, clearly, she had been crying.
‘I’m so sorry to trouble you,’ Mirabelle said.
The woman sniffed and pawed at the watery trail of mascara marking each of her cheeks. She had the air of someone who had been caught in the middle of a sentence, suspended in a spotlight.
‘I shouldn’t have answered,’ she said.
Mirabelle was unsure what to say. ‘I came to see Mr Beaumont,’ she tried.
The woman stiffened. ‘He had to see to everything. I can take a message.’
‘You are Mrs Beaumont?’
The woman nodded.
‘My name is Mirabelle Bevan,’ she introduced herself. ‘I live in Brighton. In the flat below your son’s. I’m so sorry – I came to offer my condolences. I was there, you see. I was in the building the night he died.’
Mrs Beaumont couldn’t contain her grief. Her lip quivered and she brought her hand to her mouth to try to cover it but it was useless. Her face twisted and she began not so much to cry as to howl. A raw, desperate sound emanated from her lips. She laid her hand on the wide doorframe as if this alone would keep her upright.
‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’ Mirabelle backed into the rain but Mrs Beaumont reached out and grasped her arm.
‘Come in,’ she sobbed. ‘Please.’
Bundled inside, Mirabelle looked around. It was obvious that Mrs Beaumont should not have been left alone. A house like this must have staff but perhaps the family emergency had scattered them. The hallway was furnished with dark, carved oak that looked practically medieval but nobody had lit the lamps on the side tables and the light from the long windows was limited by the unrelenting banks of grey cloud outside. Mrs Beaumont led Mirabelle into a rather grand sitting room decorated in the latest style but with a display of stuffed heads over the fireplace – a zebra, a lion and two dyk dyk. The poor woman sank on to a pale blue sofa – a bright oasis amid the gloomy surroundings.
‘My husband went into town,’ she said, pulling a crumpled linen handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘There has been a good deal to do. And he needed help, so they all went one by one. And today is cook’s day off.’
Mirabelle hovered uncomfortably. Her eye was drawn to the photographs that were propped haphazardly on the mantelpiece next to a bank of printed invitations. The first picture was of a wedding that had taken place quite recently if the cut of the dress was anything to go by. Then there was one of Dougie Beaumont that appeared to have been taken some years before. He was wearing a uniform and standing beside a light aircraft in the sunshine.
Mrs Beaumont followed Mirabelle’s eyes and dissolved once more into tears. ‘That was taken when Dougie was in Nairobi. When he got called up,’ she sobbed.
‘After the war?’
Mrs Beaumont nodded. ‘He missed the fighting by a few months. I can’t tell you how relieved I was. Dougie had a simply marvellous time out there though of course I missed him terribly. You always worry, don’t you? I mean they come out of school and they get sent goodness knows where. I worried that Africa might be dangerous. But it’s not a lion that got him or a poison dart.’ She sank deeper into the sofa, her hands trembling. ‘For Dougie to do it himself. Oh God.’
Mirabelle looked around. Mrs Beaumont seemed to suddenly notice that she was hovering. ‘Please.’ She shifted along the padded cushion and motioned Mirabelle to join her. ‘Would you like a cup of . . .’
‘No. Thank you. I only came to pass on my condolences. He seems to have been such a strapping young man. It is a dreadful tragedy. I can’t imagine how you must feel. I’m a neighbour, of course, but I never met him. I saw him race at Easter at Goodwood. He won.’
‘Dougie spent the summer racing. He’d only just got back from Europe.’ Mrs Beaumont sounded eager. The recently bereaved often mired themselves in small details as if the last meals and travel arrangements of the people they’d lost took on a strange and symbolic importance. ‘He spent the last few months on the Riviera, between Grand Prix, of course. He simply loved France.’
Mirabelle thought of the previous year when she had been drawn back to her own past, in Paris.
‘He spoke French terribly well,’ Mrs Beaumont continued. ‘You’d think he’d been brought up there. Our name – Beaumont – in hotels abroad, they often assume we’re French. Dougie could bring that off. He felt at home there. And he always said that the French circuit was the best in the world. He hadn’t won it yet but he would have. He’d set his sights on Le Mans.’
‘It sounds as if he liked speed.’
‘Yes. Since he was a little boy. It was horses at first. Well, ponies, really, but as soon as he discovered what a motor could do . . .’
‘And he flew. I didn’t know that.’ Mirabelle nodded towards the photograph.
‘He learned in Africa. Boys are like that, aren’t they? So good at picking things up. He was such a lovely little boy.’ She started to cry again, softly. ‘I’m sorry. This is why Elrick left me here. He’s quite right, of course. I mean I can’t go about just howling like this. I’d only get in the way and there’s so much to attend to. I keep thinking of Dougie. I can’t help it. I wonder where he is now. And then I remember that he’s in Brighton. In the mortuary.’ She heaved a sob.
‘It sounds as if he was a wonderful son.’
Mrs Beaumont grasped Mirabelle’s hand. ‘He was. Such a tremendous help. I don’t know how we’d have managed without Dougie. Did you see him, Miss Bevan? I mean afterwards? Did you see him?’
Mirabelle took a breath before she admitted it. ‘Yes. They brought his body outside. After they had carried him out of the fire. I recognised him almost straight away.’
Mrs Beaumont’s hand flew to her throat,
her fingers darting behind the thick rope of pearls. ‘I just don’t understand why he did it. Everything was going so well. He loved driving. He said it was what he had been born to do. My poor, poor boy.’
‘You had no inkling?’
Mrs Beaumont shook her head. He had even made plans for next summer – an alteration to his car. My son was an innovator, Miss Bevan. A whizz kid, my husband called him. Elrick was quite right, of course. And Dougie was dreadfully good with money. They were altering his engine as an investment, you see. He’d come up with something that was going to add speed. I don’t understand that kind of thing but Dougie was excited. They all were. Dougie’s career has become something of a family obsession, you see. We’re all right behind our boy.’
Mirabelle found her head moving to one side. She had never thought of a motorcar as an investment. On the contrary, she was sure they cost a great deal. ‘It was his life’s work, then?’ she said encouragingly.
‘Oh yes. And now no one will be able to drive the thing as well as he could. He fixed things, you see. He was always fixing things. His friend had a place – a garage, I mean. He spent hours there just playing with engines. I think it’s where he was probably happiest. He’ll be buried quite close to it, now. When we get his body back.’
‘Oh, I wondered where he might be buried?’
Mrs Beaumont dabbed her nose with the handkerchief. Her stare was fixed. ‘Not here. At home. The canon came at once – I was hardly up and dressed,’ she said, waving her hand dismissively towards the street beyond the window.
‘Your local church, you mean?’
Mrs Beaumont nodded. She seemed to be struggling, trying not to speak, but her eyes flashed with temper and she lost the battle. ‘The nerve of the man,’ she spat furiously. ‘He wouldn’t have it – Dougie’s funeral, I mean. My family has lived here for generations. I’m a Roedean girl, you know. My father paid for the stained glass in the apse and I’ve a mind to take a hammer to it now. And that man, calls himself a Christian. An Anglican, no less. He expects to sit in my home and preach to me, having refused the only thing we have ever asked. And I’m supposed to feel ashamed of my son. Well I won’t. Dougie was worth a hundred of those heartless . . .’
‘Please.’ Mirabelle tried to calm the poor woman. ‘You said that you’ve found a place for him. Near his friend’s garage.’
‘Yes. Chichester. The bishop is a friend of my husband’s and he has agreed to do it . . . to allow . . . It doesn’t seem real. I mean Chichester is so far away. But Elrick says it’s for the best. I suppose Dougie loved Goodwood and it’s close to that.’
A tear trickled down Mrs Beaumont’s cheek and Mirabelle remembered the horror she’d felt at the idea of Jack’s body going into the ground. She hadn’t attended his funeral. As Jack’s mistress it would have been entirely inappropriate, but that wasn’t the only reason she’d stayed away. There was something unbearable about the damp, dark earth closing over a coffin and the still, empty flesh that was inside. She had attended a hundred funerals, but when you really loved someone there was something too final about a burial. Something brutal.
‘I’m glad you have arranged somewhere. Somewhere he would have liked. That’s a comfort,’ Mirabelle said, and immediately bit her lip. She knew perfectly well that in such an abyss of grief, nothing was really a comfort. It was only something that people said to each other.
‘Elrick intends to name a race after him. A silver cup. He mustn’t be forgotten you see,’ Mrs Beaumont continued wistfully. ‘I don’t know how we are going to stand it. I keep thinking that it is such a waste. I said to my husband, “We can’t go back to Nairobi.” Usually, we go as a family every Christmas. It has become a tradition. The boys love it – some kind of adventure – and it’s wonderful to get away from the cold weather. But I’m not sure I could stand it this year.’ Mrs Beaumont stopped to dab her nose. ‘Dougie was the most engaging young man, Miss Bevan,’ she continued. ‘And so popular. I mean girls followed him about, like puppies. They flung themselves at him. He was terribly charming.’
Mirabelle wanted to hug the poor woman. ‘I’m not sure you ought to be here on your own, you know. Not today.’
‘Oh, Enid is coming,’ Mrs Beaumont said, as if it was an afterthought. ‘My daughter and her husband,’ she explained.
Mirabelle’s eyes raised to the other photograph on the mantelpiece – a blond bridegroom, who looked rather stern, she thought, and his starry-eyed bride, who must be Enid, her face half covered by a veil that had been caught in the breeze. ‘That’s good. I shouldn’t like to think of you being alone.’
‘People . . .’ Mrs Beaumont sounded mystified and Mirabelle understood.
What good would people do? The only person who mattered wasn’t there.
‘This is a very historic building.’ Mirabelle cast her eyes around. Apart from the heavy carved wood the place seemed so empty. The frantic maelstrom of Mrs Beaumont’s grief was the house’s only content. When it was built, Mirabelle couldn’t help thinking, the women who lived here would have worn hooped skirts. What tragedies had they had to face?
‘We did it up quite recently. None of our forbears had bothered and the old pile was in a dreadful state.’
Mirabelle watched as Mrs Beaumont pulled herself together. In less than a minute, she changed from a heartsore, devastated mother into an MP’s wife – the sort of lady who might open a summer fete or visit a hospital. It was as if the sense of discretion that had deserted her suddenly reinstated itself. She could swear even the egg stain looked less obvious.
‘I hope I haven’t embarrassed you, Miss Bevan,’ she said, her fingers alighting on the rings that adorned her wedding finger. ‘Elrick would be cross if he could hear me rattling on.’
‘Not at all. I only wanted to pay my respects,’ Mirabelle assured her. ‘And to offer – if there is anything I can do. Especially in the matter of your son’s flat. I live in Brighton and we’ll have workmen in the building anyway. I’m happy to help.’
Mrs Beaumont stood up. ‘Thank you.’
Mirabelle followed suit. ‘He’d only just moved in above me, you see. I imagine he’d hardly unpacked.’
Mrs Beaumont shrugged. ‘Dougie travelled light in life,’ she said. ‘He knew it was people who were important.’ She managed a smile as she saw Mirabelle to the door.
Back in the street, the rain had relented. It would soon be the weather for boots. As Mirabelle picked her way down to the main road, she couldn’t help wondering what Mrs Beaumont had meant when she said her son was a help. That was, in Mirabelle’s experience, a word a mother might use more usually about her daughter. The poor woman was engulfed in grief but still. People gave away everything if you only let them speak. She was a woman who had defined herself by her husband, her son and her old school. Nothing else.
She looked back before crossing the road and, standing at the bus stop, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d met Dougie Beaumont on the stairs as she came home, what side of himself he might have shown – the risk taker, the man who could hug the bends and not turn over the car, the family stalwart or, if she was lucky, perhaps the part of him that had seemed so engaging – the part of him that had smiled at his mother so warmly when she had congratulated him that day he won the race. If she had met him might she have understood why he had killed himself? His death seemed such a waste, a tragedy, even. But then, there was another word for it – mystery.
‘Perhaps I’ll just look into it a little more . . .’ The thought trailed through Mirabelle’s mind as the bus pulled up. The route would take her eastwards – and that was most convenient.
Chapter 6
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
Vesta stood silently in the middle of Mirabelle’s drawing room, while Mr Timpson, the Prudential’s assessor, surveyed her list.
‘Very thorough,’ he intoned, looking up with a half-smile.
‘I used to work in insurance.’
‘Good. T
hat will make matters easier. Terrible business this. It just seems strange this catastrophic incident came so soon, Mrs Lewis. After the policy was taken out, I mean. Mr Evans, downstairs, has been with the Prudential for eight years but Miss Bevan . . .’
Vesta folded her arms across her ample chest and a worried expression flitted across Mr Timpson’s face. Formidable at the best of times, Vesta looked as if she was squaring up for a fight. She knew the man was only doing his job, but she was going to do what she saw as hers. ‘If you are suggesting that my colleague, Miss Bevan, arranged for her upstairs neighbour to kill himself and set fire to the premises in such a manner as she might die in the blaze, and only with great good fortune escape with her life, then much as I respect my colleague’s abilities, you have endowed her with a good deal of foresight and, indeed, luck.’
‘I am not suggesting any such thing, Mrs Lewis. No indeed, I am not.’
Vesta’s shoulders appeared to broaden. ‘Good. I understand that you have to ask, Mr Timpson. So for your information, I organised this insurance among other policies, towards the end of last year because we had made a substantial profit in the business.’
‘I see.’ Mr Timpson took a note. ‘Do you know if there is any other insurer with an interest in the property?’
‘You mean upstairs?’
‘Yes.’ Mr Timpson nodded. ‘Because that isn’t one of ours.’
‘I don’t think it would be right to call the family so soon after poor Mr Beaumont died. You may, however, wish to do so. The telephone number is in the directory – they live in London, I believe.’
‘Thank you.’ Mr Timpson sucked his teeth so that momentarily the sound of a deflating balloon echoed around the room. Then he relented. ‘It will all have to be cleaned to start with and you’re quite right, the kitchen cannot be entirely recovered. There will have to be substantial replacements. We will draw up a schedule of works based on what you have started. I fear for the wiring with all this water. We’ll have to have it checked. The fire brigade do not consider such matters.’
Operation Goodwood Page 5
