The Sister

by Poppy Adams

  “Is it?” I check my digital wristwatch: 4:12.

  “Well, I just meant it’s past teatime and she thought something might be wrong because you didn’t turn up. I did tell her you’d most probably forgotten, but she didn’t think you would have, and she was insistent that I come and make sure myself and”—he shakes his head in a way that makes me wonder how often he’s had to mediate tea dates among the elderly—“you know what some of these old dears can be like. She didn’t want to walk up to the house herself.” He pauses, perhaps waiting for me to say something. “She made me promise her I’d pay you a visit and check that everything was all right,” he says apologetically. I don’t say anything.

  “Well, I’ll pop into Eileen’s on my way back to the station and let her know, then, shall I? Do you want me to tell her you’ll be calling in later…or not?”

  I nod. “Was that a ‘not’ or not a ‘not’?” He laughs.

  I nod again.

  “Well, then…” He coughs and plants one foot inside the car as if to go. Then he glances up at the towering house, the turrets and the gargoyles that seem to hold the bricks together around the crenellations. “Great place,” he says. “Fascinating.” He pauses. I think I see him shiver.

  “Well, have a good evening, madam.”

  “What time did you say it was?” I ask quickly, quite forgetting that a minute ago I wanted him to go away as quickly as possible, quite forgetting for a moment that Vivien is upstairs, dead. Murdered, in fact.

  “Well”—he flicks over his wrist—“it’s just gone seven.”

  “Is it?” I’m unable to hide my astonishment. “I make it twelve minutes past four.” He laughs as if I’ve made a joke. It’s such a shock that I can’t say anything more. I can’t think straight.

  “Well, there you go,” he starts, as if he’s solved a case. “That will explain the confusion….” But I’m not listening. I’m appalled. The tops of the limes along the drive are swaying…. I had thought that at most I’d be out by eleven minutes. Not three hours. I’m watching his mouth. His lips are wet and full and form their words with large slow ovals so that I can clearly see the pink gums inside. Nothing feels real. I have a rush of dizziness. The limes look as if they’re about to uproot and topple.

  That’s it.

  Two men are peering down at me. One is PC Bolt, I remember, and the other, whom I don’t recognize, is shining a bright torch into my eye. There’s a sharp throbbing pain at the back of my head. I can hear a woman’s voice and a lot of other people talking and walking about outside the room. Soon I realize I am on my bed in my room and the previous events come back to me. I remember being on the drive, PC Bolt telling me how out of time I was, and then I must have fainted. I have no idea how long ago that would have been.

  I hear a soft voice. “Miss Stone? Can you hear me? It’s PC Bolt.” I look at him. “Are you Miss Virginia Stone?” I nod. “Right, I didn’t realize you were the sister,” he says.

  “What’s the time?” I ask.

  “Just relax,” says the other man. “Please don’t try to talk.”

  “What’s the time?” I ask again.

  “It’s all right. I’m a doctor and you’re going to be fine,” he says, raising his voice, assuming I’m a bit deaf. This is torturous.

  “I’d just like to know what time it is, please, Doctor,” I say once more, but this time in a taut, stifled voice that’s not attached to my throat. I have my eyes shut tight to expel the frustration.

  “It’s about eight o’clock,” the doctor says nonchalantly, without consulting any sort of timepiece.

  Now I look at PC Bolt in despair, as if he, out of the two of them, might just understand. “Constable, please tell me the exact time. I need to know,” I beseech him.

  He studies his watch for a suitably long time. “It’s ten minutes past eight.”

  I had been straining my neck without realizing it, and now I let my head fall back onto the pillow and relax.

  Fifteen minutes later I am sitting up on my bed. A mug (which I don’t recognize) of tea is steaming on my bedside table, which I want but can’t bring myself to drink, as I didn’t make it. Besides, it’s too milky. Now a different, much older policeman is in the room with me, standing by my bed. “Would you like some tea?” he asks, gesturing to the mug.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’m Inspector Piggott.”

  Inspector Piggott goes into the bathroom without a word and comes back fifty seconds later (I’m looking at my bedside clock while he is away). He hands me a glass of water.

  “Drink this,” he orders. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  “What is it?” I look inside the glass, which reminds me that I’d said the same thing to Vivien only this afternoon. My God! I’d completely forgotten. Vivien!

  “Water,” he says. Oh, Lord, does he know about Vivien? Has he smelt her yet?

  I take a sip and hand it back.

  “I hope you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you,” he says, loudly and clearly. “Look, I’m very sorry, I’ve got some rather alarming news.” He places the glass on the table.

  As you can imagine I’ve had rather too much alarming news recently and I’m not sure I’m up to it. I feel a little frail and my head hurts. The anticipation is unbearable.

  “Your sister, Vivien. I’m afraid she’s dead.”

  Is that it? I think, and I’m very thankful Inspector Piggott’s news isn’t in the least bit alarming.

  “Oh dear,” I muster in reply, because he’s looking at me, waiting for one.

  “Yes, earlier this afternoon, we think,” he continues, loud and slow. “Did you happen to see her today?” he asks casually.

  “Yes,” I reply and then I say, “Actually, no,” and, to tell you the truth, I’m completely confused. I’m trying to give him the right answer rather than the real answer.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Stone. You’ve had a little knock to your head and I think everything will become clear in a while. We’re taking her away now so we can look into the specific cause of death,” he adds, sitting on the edge of my bed, rather as if he’s settling into a long bedtime story. I can feel the heat rising to my face and I can’t stop it. I’m not used to strangers sitting on my bed. “Do you know if she was ill,” he asks, “or taking any medication?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Inspector Piggott waits while PC Bolt and the doctor leave the room. When they’ve gone he sighs heavily and rubs his brow with the tips of his fingers as if he’s trying to rub out the lines he has there. “I know this is a lot for you to take in right now but I’ll be frank. We’ve come across something in the glass by your sister’s bed and, well, we think it might be cyanide. It has a very distinct smell.”

  Suddenly my mouth is extraordinarily dry. I know that almond smell well.

  “Cyanide,” I repeat, because again, I know some sort of response is required.

  “Miss Stone, do you have any idea where the cyanide could have come from?” Wasn’t he going to ask me why I killed her? Now, that would have been a tricky question. Where the cyanide came from was easy.

  “We’ve got plenty of cyanide here,” I say.

  Inspector Piggott looks down at me, surprised. “Have you? What on earth for?”

  I hold out my arm for him to steady me as I lift myself from the bed. A sharp pain anchors my head as I tilt up and I wish I hadn’t decided to move, but within a minute or two I am leading him slowly out of the room, turning right and crossing the landing. A young man I’ve never seen before rushes up to us and offers me a walking stick—Vivien’s, as it happens, the one she used only once to embellish her arrival.

  As we approach my lookout I see Eileen Turner and PC Bolt come out through the double doors from the east wing. Eileen is sobbing and saying, “She’d only been back for three days…,” but as soon as they see us their conversation stops abruptly and their pace slows. As we walk past, the two policemen exchange glances and Eileen looks down. I mu
st admit I have no idea if it is a quiet consolatory nod or if she’s scared to look at me. I have an odd impression that my house is crammed with people, strangers wandering all over it, getting into every crevice like a swarm of ants in a larder.

  I open the door to the spiral staircase and walk extra slowly up the stairs, all at once overwhelmed by age. I can hear Eileen’s voice again, this time low and muffled, floating up intermittently from the far side of the landing. I have Vivien’s walking stick in my left hand and Piggott is still gripping my right arm at the elbow, steadying me now and again. He and I do not speak to one another. I, for one, am concentrating on my footing until, finally, we’re at the top and I’m opening the door to the attic. Two bats are disturbed as we enter and the inspector flinches in surprise as they squall and flutter into the next room. I think I hear him gag as, with his spare hand, he retrieves a handkerchief from his top pocket and holds it over his nose and mouth. I lead him to the laboratory and point, with Vivien’s stick, to the left-hand side, where the bottles are labeled with the skull and crossbones.

  “Killing fluid,” I say.

  “Ah,” says the inspector, muffled by the handkerchief. “Killing what?”

  “Moths, mainly. That was our family…” I was going to say “living,” but at the last moment I change my mind. “Our family expertise,” I say proudly. He asks me if I could show him which ones are cyanide so I point to the different types. Mainly, I explain, there’s either sodium or potassium cyanide, NaCN or KCN, but there’s also prussic acid, which is another name for hydrogen cyanide, HCN, and that in the bottles they are all solutions but on the very top shelf are the powdered poisons in their purest form.

  “Is there one missing?” He cuts across my lecture, pointing to an obvious gap along the shelf.

  “Yes,” I tell him. After he’s helped himself to a couple of bottles and tins, carefully sealing them in a polythene bag, I lead him back downstairs to the hall. The house is quiet again but for the hollow tick of the longcase clock. I look slowly round the decrepit hall. It’s capacious and empty. Wallpaper is peeling badly at the top edge near the cornice where the damp has nuzzled through, but everything is as it should be, in its place. To me, it is safe again. Safe and still and workable. I can feel the entire week’s buildup of tension start to loosen and melt away. I feel happy, even.

  Nearing the front door Inspector Piggott turns to me. “Miss Stone,” he says, very formally, “can you think of any reason why your sister might have wanted to take her life?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “No,” I say, and then I think that taking her own life was probably the last thing Vivien would have done.

  He nods and is turning to go when I stop him. “Inspector Piggott, I just wondered…”

  “Yes?” he says, turning keenly, eager for me to divulge a secret.

  “Do you have the time, please?”

  “The time?”

  “Yes. I’d like to know what time it is.”

  “Nine o’clock,” he replies.

  “What, exactly nine?”

  “Well, no, a little after.” He looks at his watch again. “Five past.” He turns to go again.

  “Exactly five past?” I ask quickly. It still sounds a little general to me. He stops, turns back to me, and studies his watch carefully, filling me with confidence that he is about to give me the most accurate answer he can.

  “I make it almost seven minutes past nine,” he says, eyeing me cautiously.

  “Oh, thank you,” I say, really meaning it. “And does that, do you think, correspond with the police-station clock? I mean, do you check it against the station clock sometimes?”

  He pauses. “Yes. Regularly,” he says reassuringly.

  “Oh, thank you, Inspector, thank you.” I sigh. I am truly relieved. I reset both my wristwatches and close the front door after him.

  Tuesday

  Chapter 23

  Intuition

  It is not until the next day that they come to get me. I knew they would, that they would have discovered the truth using the additional sense that everyone but me seems to have been born with. What did Vivien call it? She said she could tell what had happened here from 250 miles away because “Ginny, most people just have that sort of intuition.”

  I’m ready for them as I watch the police car crunching up the drive from my lookout window, and I know this will be the last day I see Bulburrow, that I set eyes on it. I must admit I’m terrified about where they will take me; I’ve never lived anywhere but here. I won’t feel safe.

  Inspector Piggott leads me out of the house. He gently lays a blanket over my shoulders and I pause by the door of the car to take one last look.

  My attention is caught by a familiar figure walking up the side of the drive towards me. I can tell who it is even before his features become clear, by the hunched lope, the stocky build, the lazy gait and the big hands hanging apologetically by his sides. How did Michael know I was leaving?

  Michael wanders over to me by the open car door and we stare at each other. He’s about to say “Good-bye,” I’m sure of it, and I’m about to say it too, but suddenly, I have this feeling, and again I’m sure it’s a mutual one, that we have so many things to say to each other, so many understandings to share, that even to say “Good-bye” is not only unnecessary but trite. It’s as if I suddenly understand that he’s always been in my life, in the wings, and always known and understood who I am and what has happened and even been able to foresee, with some infinite wisdom, what will ensue. And he’s here now, telling me all that without uttering a word. Half of me wants to hug him, the other wants to cry because, now that I think about it, this is the saddest moment of my life, my most naturally emotional moment. Not all those times that I might have expected myself to cry—not when my sister fell off the bell tower, not when my mother died or when my baby died. But this, this is the saddest moment, leaving Michael and leaving my house, one and the same I suppose. It comes to me in a chorus of understanding: Michael is the only person who cared for me and looked out for me, without expecting anything in return, without using me or thinking of me as a burden. Perhaps, if I can dare to say it, my only true friend.

  Instead of words, he gives me the slightest form of a nod, a fractional dip of the head with a brief lowering of his eyelids. To anyone else it is imperceptible, but to me it is bountiful. It says “good-bye” and “I’ll take care of things” and simply and honestly “that’s it then.” I know I don’t need to say or do anything, nothing is expected of me, so I don’t even dip my head in return.

  Today

  I’m sitting up in bed. It’s not my bed. I don’t know whose it is. I’m in a little room with pale yellow walls and a white ceiling. It has a small window with a blind and a grille on the outside and there’s another little window cut into my door so I can see anyone who walks past in the corridor outside. I have a bedside table, a builtin cupboard and a chair. The walls are bare and my bedside clock, the one with the luminous face, sits companionably on the table beside me. When I need to go to the bathroom, I’m taken to one at the end of the corridor. It has long white handles on the walls, by the basin and beside the loo, and the bath has a contraption over it, like a harness, for if I’m ever unable to get into it by myself. It looks to me like the sort of thing they’d use to lift a horse.

  A woman comes into the room and rolls open the blind. The woman’s name is Helen. I’m not able to open the blind myself, even though she’s tried to show me how. There’s a knack to yanking it down a little first, then letting it glide up slowly, but it’s got a mind of its own—always getting stuck partway, or not going up at all so when you keep yanking it it just gets longer and longer.

  “Morning,” she says. She says exactly the same things every day, but I don’t mind. I don’t know anything about Helen and Helen doesn’t know anything about me. She has no idea I’m a famous lepidopterist and I lived in a mansion. Can you imagine? If I told her, she’d never believe me.

  I
sit forward while Helen arranges some pillows behind my back. After she’s plumped them up, she turns my clock a little on the bedside table to face me.

  “Tea?” she asks, leaving the room. I don’t need to answer; she’ll bring it whatever I say. I push the clock back to how it had been before. I find it infuriating when she moves it, but I’ve not been able to tell her yet. It’s taken me long enough to persuade her to make the tea satisfactorily.

  Helen returns with a tray. She puts a mug of hot water on my table for me to see.

  “Here we go,” she says. “Watching…?” She plops a tea bag into the mug, then stirs it continuously with a teaspoon. She counts, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” and at once she lifts the spoon and the tea bag deftly out of the mug and drops them onto the tray. Then she takes up a dessertspoon and concentrates as she pours the milk into it. When it is so full that the milk is wobbling and about to burst over its sides, she tips it into the mug. She drops the spoon onto the tray.

  “There you go.” She picks up the tray and walks out.

  The weekend that Vivien came home seems unreal now. I’d still like to know why she came, and the other thing I’ll never understand is why, throughout our lives, I’m the only one of my family who managed to pull through unscathed. It’s unnerving. I’ve had to watch the lot of them first despair and then die. I tried my hardest to help them, to hold them together, but the harder I tried the more they fell apart until, in the end, each one seemed to find their own way to self-destruct.

  Here I feel as if I’m in a different life altogether, as if I’ve switched with someone. I don’t mind. I definitely got the better exchange. I don’t miss Bulburrow Court in the slightest. I’m so much less anxious here. It’s small and manageable, there’s no clutter, and I don’t get unexpected visitors. I find they have a very reliable routine and, I’ll tell you the best thing of all: if I want to check that my bedside clock’s correct, I have only to ring this little bell and someone comes, day or night, whatever the time.