A Mansion and its Murder

by Robert Barnard

  Bankers and politicians quite acceptable. Used to them.

  All my love,

  Sarah

  Sadly I could find no postcard even mildly risqué in Cambridge. This could well be because I did not know where to look. I sent one of young men in boaters punting on the Backs.

  My relationship with my father, you will have realised, was changing. Now I was on the verge of being ‘grown up’ he began to value my company, talked to me a lot, introduced me with pride to Blakemere’s guests. It was not till my Cambridge years were over, however, that he would use phrases of introduction such as ‘The future head of the family’, or ‘the future mistress of Blakemere’, or even ‘the future head of Fearing’s Bank’. That, at the turn of the century, was an idea that few could take in – few men, that is, and not a great many more women. We forget, these days, how many prominent women there were foolish enough even to oppose female suffrage.

  Actually they are still around. They are the sort of women who in the war opposed the Land Army, and found its women workers unwomanly and reprehensible.

  Aunt Jane remained hostess at Blakemere, and I only stepped in during her occasional illness. It was not a role I coveted, though I relished many of my encounters with politicians: it was the age of Balfour, but also of Lloyd George – he being a coming man, and therefore courted by Fearing’s Bank in spite of his lowly origins and dubious moral character.

  But my vacations at Blakemere meant, above all, Richard. He was at home permanently now, and in the charge of Bertha, the slow but loving housemaid, newly promoted and properly paid, and taking wonderful and constant care of him. Richard was growing up: physically the process was unmistakable, mentally it was less so. He had long periods of contented lethargy, broken by spells of joy, activity, simple pleasure in people and things around him. He loved me unreservedly (was he the first human being to do so?), and in return I made him one of the centres of my universe. He was a person for whom one could only make the simplest of plans, and that was indeed a happiness and a relief. There had always been too much plotting and planning, too much trying to nudge Providence, at Blakemere. We were never content to lie back in the water and let the wave take us. Even my father was not immune to this family trait.

  ‘Who do you anticipate inheriting Blakemere if you have no family?’ he asked me one day, when I was indulging in a fashionable feminist diatribe against men.

  I shrugged. ‘Probably one of Cousin Anselm’s sons,’ I said. ‘I can’t see one of Clare’s taking over, can you?’

  Aunt Clare’s (wholly delightful) collection of sons were beginning rackety careers that included music-hall performing, ballooning, commercial travelling, on-course bookmaking, and dabbling in dubious transactions that led to prudent and hurried emigration. Aunt Clare and Uncle Alfred were burnt to death two years later in a fire at their home-cum-studio, in which an awful lot of bad paintings were also destroyed. They were buried in Chelsea, rather than in the newish Fearing family vault in Wentwood Church.

  ‘Yes,’ my father nodded, ‘it does look as if it will all have to come to one of them. And Digby seems a lot more reliable than his father. But I hope you’ll get married.’

  ‘I haven’t worked out my attitude to men yet,’ I said, as if the world was waiting. ‘If only I could find myself a young man like Uncle Frank.’

  ‘I blame myself about Frank,’ said my father, after a pause.

  That was all he said, and something in the set of his shoulders told me to pursue the subject no further that day. I did approach the subject of Frank now and then with my father, but this was the closest I ever got to a statement of his share in the responsibility. I got no details ever of the last night Frank spent at Blakemere, or anything beyond the family line about where he was. My father registered my curiosity, but never satisfied it. One day over breakfast – a meal we generally shared alone – he read a letter, then pocketed it, saying, ‘That was from your aunt Mary. Funny woman. She seems to repel sympathy.’

  I agreed with that wholeheartedly.

  ‘What is she doing?’

  ‘Looking after an aged relative in Dumfries. Doesn’t need to – gets a splendid annual income from us. Wants to be a martyr, I suppose. Bit of a hypochondriac, too.’

  ‘Like Mama.’

  ‘Yes, like your mother. Though that went well beyond hypochondria.’

  If I had not then worked out my attitude to men, I soon began to do so. One of the pleasures of being at Cambridge was that occasionally, usually at the beginning or the end of term, I could spend a weekend with my grandmother in London, doing the things she loved and wanted me to love too: going to plays, galleries, and museums, holding or going to intimate dinners (so different from Blakemere’s dinners) where a few intelligent people discussed topics of current interest. My grandmother, I sensed, had bloomed, and was enjoying life more than ever before. When I was in my last year at Cambridge she proposed that I should spend a week or ten days with her at Easter in the south of France: a party was going from Bankside School, she said, so Edith Beale could be my chaperone on the journey. The girls and their headmistress would be staying at a small pensionnat in Nice, but I would of course stay with her. I was overjoyed, and I think felt just a little flattered.

  I joined the party at Waterloo. The girls were loomed over and shepherded by Robert, now becoming portly, but immensely intimidating should intrusion or impertinence threaten the little party. Edith, too, was putting on weight, but she was the respectable and efficient school principal to the life. How long ago it seemed, when I had listened to Robert’s footsteps in the corridor outside our bedrooms, and how the twelve young ladies in the party would have enjoyed hearing about it!

  ‘Sarah!’ said Edith, kissing me. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again – and looking so well.’

  I shook hands with Robert and was introduced to all of the girls. I was a little ashamed to admit that this was just as big an adventure for me as it was for them, so I assumed a world-wise pose, and it was only as we were going through Customs at Dover that I wondered whether the pose would survive my first experience of sea travel.

  By a miracle it did. I experienced no discomfort at all. It has always been a great joy to me – even, foolishly, a pride – that I can keep my stomach when all around are losing theirs. It was when most of the girls were below deck, suffering grievously, or foolishly pretending to, that on the breezy deck in weak sunshine a young man approached me.

  ‘It is a beautiful day, is it not?’

  A young Frenchman! Heaven! The traditional trap for the virginal English girl. I saw Robert moving away from his wife, who was looking queasy, and coming to stand close by.

  ‘Quite perfect for a sea trip.’

  ‘Mademoiselle does not suffer from seaillness?’

  ‘Sea-sickness,’ I said, before I could stop myself. I had foreign friends at Cambridge who always wanted their English corrected. The man just nodded. ‘No, I don’t. It’s a great boon to have that sort of constitution.’

  ‘You are going to Paris?’

  ‘To the south – Nice. And you?’

  This last question, I’ll have you know, was very forward, even brash, for a young lady at the turn of the century: one did not question a young man about himself.

  ‘To Marseilles. And yours – it is a pleasure trip?’

  ‘Purely pleasure. And yours?’

  ‘One does not go to Marseilles for pleasure.’

  I smiled, he murmured, ‘Charles de Maurras, at your service, mademoiselle,’ and removed himself to another part of the deck. I think, in retrospect, I should have asked myself why he had not asked my name. In retrospect, I think it was because he already knew it.

  He was there again when we got to the Gare St Lazare, and we talked while Robert was busy with porters and luggage, and while Edith, though nearby, was occupied with shepherding her flock and answering their questions. Her flock’s eyes were mostly on me, instinct with curiosity, and I suspect that many of their
questions to her and affectations of nervousness were designed to keep their headmistress’s attention elsewhere than on us. Girls had to stick together in those days.

  He told me he was in the cotton trade, was returning from Bolton and Burnley, where he had business, and now had to report back to his Marseilles firm before he could hope for a few days’ holiday. He asked my name, perhaps realising his earlier mistake, asked why I was travelling with a school party when I was clearly beyond school age, expressed wonderment that I was studying at the world-renowned University of Kembritch. When Robert had sorted out the matter of the luggage he engaged the young man in conversation for a minute or two, but soon M. de Maurras bowed and left to catch a different train.

  He appeared in Nice on our second day there.

  I realise I am relating an incident wholly predictable, one irrelevant to the matter in hand, except in so far as I figure in it. I am telling it to you simply because it was a determining incident in my life. There were also matters of some interest as side issues, in particular the attitude and behaviour of Edith and Robert.

  It had been tacitly assumed that I would, when not with my grandmama, go around with the school party and receive the extremely efficient chaperonage that they were given. With the reappearance of Charles de Maurras (the ‘de’ was self-assumed, I feel quite sure) the situation tacitly changed. He came up to us on a visit to an art gallery, and engaged not just me but Edith and Robert in conversation. By the time the gallery visit ended we had an assignation for the next day. I told Edith I was engaged with Grandmama, and she made no attempt to verify the assertion. From then on she and Robert turned a blind eye to what was going on, though they certainly saw us around.

  What was their motive in this? It is possible that Charles slipped them some money, but I doubt it: they had no need of it, and if it were found out, it would ruin their relationship with the family and probably destroy their school. I think they decided I was twenty-one, and it was time I was initiated into a side of life from which they themselves derived unashamed pleasure. I think they thought it was time I began the process of deciding what place what we today simply call sex was to have in my life. If so, the decision came quicker than they could have anticipated.

  It was after our second session in a hotel bedroom – seedier than I was used to, but not the less exciting for that, at least first time round – when, after that all-purpose word sex, and after thanks and endearments, Charles began talking about banks and money with considerably more interest and enthusiasm than he ever could muster about me, that I made up my mind.

  ‘I must go,’ I said, and got up and began dressing.

  ‘Tomorrow, ma chère? Two o’clock?’

  I nodded. I think by the time I let myself out of the shabby room he had registered my lack of enthusiasm, so it may have been small surprise to him when I did not appear in our usual meeting place at two o’clock. I never saw him again. He later went into politics, and had a minor ministry in the Petain government. We didn’t bother to shoot him, so he is probably even now preparing the way for a return to political life. How odd if we should meet officially!

  My grandmother, for the rest of my stay, had the pleasure of a great deal of my company, probably rather more than she wished for. Sometimes, though, usually in the early evenings, I would take myself off and walk on the promenade or on the beach. I thought about men, and though I did not decide to forswear them entirely, I did decide they were to have no more than a marginal place in my life. Sex was pleasant enough – no more. Not something to give up my controlling interest in myself for.

  Which left me with – what?

  One possible answer was the Bank and the house. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I had got, or would get in the future, if I accepted it. It may seem like an odd choice, but remember there were many women who would count me lucky beyond belief to have such wealth, and the possibility of such a fascinating occupation. And by heading Fearing’s Bank, even if only by inheritance, I could blaze a trail for other women. I still thought, you notice, in the metaphors of explorers and empire builders.

  ‘I don’t think men are going to be very important in my life,’ I said to my grandmother, as we sat over coffee at the end of a fine dinner, toward the end of my stay.

  ‘Men?’ she said disapprovingly. ‘I presume you mean the man you marry, or don’t marry.’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘And what will you do if you don’t marry?’

  ‘Run the Bank and be mistress of Blakemere, as Grandpapa wanted in his will.’

  ‘If you run the Bank, men will certainly be very important in your life,’ my grandmother pointed out, with reason.

  ‘I mean in my personal life,’ I explained. ‘Marriage. I think a man would only get in the way. I don’t think I’d want to give too much time to one.’

  ‘In that case, you certainly should not marry. A man always takes a lot of a woman’s time, though he doesn’t always give her a great deal of his own.’

  ‘Apart from you and Grandpapa, I’m not sure our family’s cut out for marriage. Look at Papa and Mama, look at Uncle Frank. I think Aunt Jane and Aunt Sarah were wise.’

  Grandmama raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Your aunt Sarah never had an offer, and your aunt Jane had romantic notions that prevented her accepting the one offer she did have. If your grandfather’s and my marriage was …’ She paused, and I knew at once what word she was rejecting, ‘successful, it was because I knew my place – an old-fashioned idea these days, but it worked. In public I supported him absolutely, in private I might influence him, but it was best to be indirect, to lead without seeming to, to flatter him.’

  ‘What sort of ways did you influence him in?’

  She thought.

  ‘My people, the Jewish background I came from, has always been interested in money, but also in using it well, for the community, for people in need. My successes were modest, but I think I helped a little in that direction, because your grandfather was not naturally charitable.’

  I thought a lot about that later on.

  ‘And what went wrong, do you think, with Papa’s marriage, and Uncle’s?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Who can tell the truth about another person’s marriage? Your mother was – is – a poor creature. I don’t need to mince my words with you. She had her moment of glory, at the marriage, and later when she was pregnant. But underneath she was trivial and selfish. Hers is a life hardly worth living.’

  ‘And Uncle Frank?’

  Incipient tension now showed itself in her body.

  ‘What about him? You know the marriage was a disaster.’

  ‘Do you regret forcing him into it?’

  ‘Forcing? He was a grown man. He made the decision … But I do regret that we offered him inducements. He was quite irresponsible with money, and money should have been cut off. You can’t make people responsible about money by offering them more.’

  ‘The conditions were hard.’

  ‘What do you know about it, young lady? He could have married any young woman he chose – anyone acceptable. Choosing Mary Coverdale was choosing to sail toward disaster.’

  ‘Do you think he has learnt his lesson? Is he making a new life for himself in Australia?’

  ‘I have no idea. He does not communicate with us, and we don’t communicate with him. And that is all I am going to say on the subject, my girl.’

  She was perhaps wise to close the topic, because I was going to ask whether a total break with the most attractive of her children was not a disproportionate punishment both for herself and him for the failure of his marriage. But I knew, anyway, that the total break was due to death, and I certainly did not think it was of her doing.

  I meditated on these things as I drove to Wentwood to dispatch my boxes back to London. There is a tiny bit more traffic on the roads now, with the coming of summer and people finding ways of fiddling the petrol rationing. I nearly had a minor collision at a
country cross roads, and I stopped dreaming of the past and concentrated on what I was doing. On the way back I exercised Lizzie and Ernie on Wybush Common. The woman – the shrew – I’d had the altercation with was in her garden, but she merely turned away when Lizzie dashed through it. She knows who I am, I thought, and that’s why she’s holding her tongue. But was it the mistress of Blakemere or the public figure who intimidated her? I decided it was probably the latter.

  Back in the gatehouse I parked the car and fixed the waterproof cover over it. It’s just too far from the stables to make it worthwhile parking it there. I was straightening up when I saw that there was a figure walking down the long path from Blakemere. That was unusual. The grounds are in effect open (all the cast-iron gates and railings went to make munitions during the war), but few take advantage of the fact. Someone interested in Victorian architecture? I wondered. There are one or two signs that the art and buildings of the nineteenth century are poised to make a modest comeback. This was a young person, though, with a rucksack on his or her back … His. A young man, tanned, a good walker. As he approached I thought how rude I was to stare: I didn’t mind if he made free of the Blakemere grounds. I turned towatd the front door of the gatehouse, but I was hailed.

  ‘I say, excuse me. Are you Sarah Fearing?’

  I turned back.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve come to say hello. I’m a sort of distant cousin of yours.’ It was as if a large cold hand suddenly gripped and held my spine. His accent was broad Australian.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Visitor

  That feeling of a cold hand with a grip that held my whole body was still with me as I said, my voice not entirely steady:

  ‘Well, you’d better come in … er …?’

  ‘Edmund. Everyone calls me Ed.’

  ‘Australians don’t like two-syllable names, do they?’ I realised I’d put on my ‘making conversation’ voice as I led the way into the pokey but welcoming little gatehouse. ‘A cup of tea? Some orange squash? Lemonade?’