A Mansion and its Murder

by Robert Barnard

  Digby was good at quick sums.

  ‘That fits in well with your uncle Frank.’

  ‘Fits in well enough with either of them.’

  ‘Not really. Frank was born in the late 1850’s, wasn’t he? So by 1930 he’d be seventy-odd – getting tired, and handing the reins over to a more vigorous, younger wife. I remember Cousin Leopold, but not well. I saw him as some kind of rival, due to all the family talk about the Bank and its future. We met at Frank’s wedding in 1893, I remember. He was five years older than me. Born around 1879, then. About the same age as you. So in 1930 he would have been around fifty, fifty-one.’

  ‘Perfectly possible to have a grey beard at fifty.’

  ‘Perfectly. But losing vitality, and apparently so old?’

  ‘Old-seeming. This is to a young child, remember. I’d have thought that eminently possible – even natural.’

  He gave a wry grin. ‘I consider the fifties the prime of life.’

  ‘You would. You’re only just past them.’

  ‘All I’m saying, Sarah, is that the story fits better if it was your uncle Frank than if it was your cousin Leopold.’

  But I wasn’t willing to acknowledge that. I didn’t think he was making sufficient allowance for the child’s eye view. Maybe Digby had never really been a child himself.

  When our conversation was over, I went looking for Ed. I wanted to show him at least George Gilbert Scott’s Grand Staircase in the Foreign Office, then perhaps send him off to the Abbey and Westminster Hall. But he was deep in Bank duties and procedures with his new friend, and was already committed to lunch with him, and to another session in the afternoon. Well, he’d no doubt had his fill of the company of an old woman like me. I shrugged, smiled at the pair of them, and retraced my steps to get a tube train to Westminster and the Foreign Office.

  I was caught in the corridor of its first floor by the shambling, wheezing, smoke-puffing figure of Ernie Bevin, the Foreign Secretary. Actually, everyone else calls him Ernie, but I usually call him Bev. Ernie is the name of my dog – called after him. Besides, I had the healthiest respect for him, and liked him, but Ernie sounded too friendly for someone I suspected I would before long have big rows with, probably over Palestine. But we had a very genial joshing sort of relationship. I was not on that terrible, intimidating list of people he despised.

  ‘Hello, Sal. Up for a few hours’ work?’

  ‘My token appearance of the week,’ I agreed.

  ‘Then back to the stately ’ome,’ he wheezed on. ‘Some people do ’ave it good.’

  ‘I should think my gatehouse is considerably smaller than your home,’ I said. ‘And most of its furniture is on its last legs.’

  ‘So you always say. I bet it’s grand beyond my imagining. I see we’ve got something fascinating lined up for you this afternoon,’ he went on, with relish. ‘A delegation of Foreign Office dowagers! They’ll give you a hot ’alf hour!’

  ‘I’m prepared for them,’ I said confidently. ‘They won’t get far with me. I do seem to get all the rotten jobs.’

  ‘You probably think it’s because you’re a woman, don’t you?’ he said, puffing a rich-smelling smoke into my face. ‘Well, it’s not. It’s because you’re the most junior thing around here. Only an MP for two years, only properly elected a year ago, and straight into the government. Not a top job, hadmittedly, but nobody in their senses would sneer at being Hunder-secretary of State at the Foreign Office. Landed on your feet in politics, didn’t you? Of course you get all the rotten jobs.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ I said. ‘I’ve had the most interesting year of my life – better even than Nazi codebreaking. I don’t expect this to be the most fascinating meeting of my time here, but I’ve seen enough of ambassadorial and consular widows to have a good idea what I’m in for.’

  I was wrong. I couldn’t remotely have guessed what I was in for.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Diplomatic Wife

  The delegation was due at half past two, and was ushered in by the minorest of civil servants (a man with a staggeringly brilliant Oxford First in Hebrew), who gave them more deference than I would have been inclined to. Probably it was his way of preparing them for inevitable disappointment. The more sensible of the diplomatic relicts wore dark, simple dresses, with no more than a piece of token jewellery. One had even gone so far as to choose a shabby dress. Most, however, could not resist old habits: for a visit to the Foreign Office one decked oneself out, made oneself up, had hair permed, all in the name of ‘keeping up standards’ (a phrase I expected to hear more than once during the deputation’s stay). So there were satin and silk and crepe-de-chine, there were ropes of pearls, dangling diamond earrings, ruby rings on gnarled, beveined fingers. Anyone could have told these ladies this was foolish policy, probably they knew it themselves, but they were visiting the new Labour Party masters of their old stamping ground, and they were anxious to assert, now Attila the Hun was in control, that they had been part of an older, more gracious, more refined regime. Perhaps that was why I had been chosen to receive them: they would all be aware that I could buy them up, rings, pearls, and all, and not notice any depreciation in my bank balance.

  Or perhaps they gave me the job in the hope that that thought would sober them up, moderate their militancy. If so, they were mistaken.

  It was a delegation of about a dozen, and they sat around in my large, elegant office, gracefully positioning one leg over the other, exposing silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, their elderly-vulture faces covered in whatever they had acquired in the way of foundation cream, powder, and lipstick, to lessen (without hiding) the ravages of time. This was the more foolish, and larger section of my delegation. They were also the less pleasant: they had a grievance, and the grievance was that their pensions as diplomatic widows had last been raised in 1937, and they were now (they said) seriously embarrassed by its inadequacy.

  ‘We have represented our Country abroad, our Husbands were directly appointed by the King,’ said their leader, Lady Greystone, who could speak capital letters like no one’s business, ‘and it is natural that people should continue to see us as Representatives, should see our treatment by The Country as a yardstick of The Country’s respect and gratitude for all We, and Our Husbands, have done in the past.’

  ‘It’s a question of keeping up standards,’ said a second voice. It was a lady of seventy-plus, in a pale orange silk blouse, smartly cut tan skirt, and pearls you could hang a man with. I nodded casually to register the remark, and looked elsewhere for follow-ups.

  There were a great many of these. The country would be judged, we the Labour government would be judged, by the way we treated the widows of their diplomatic representatives abroad. The argument was too absurd to be listened to. We would be judged on how we got the country back to work and on how we brought equality and fairness into its social system. My mind strayed. Something had caught my eye about that second voice in the orange silk blouse: the shape of her face, the tilt of the head. She was not the leader of the delegation, but she was an enthusiastic backer-up.

  ‘When my husband was in St Petersburg,’ she was saying, ‘long before it was Leningrad, of course, long before anyone had heard of such a person as Lenin.’

  I put on an expression of great interest, as if doings in Tsarist Russia could tell us a great deal about how affairs should be conducted in the world today. But when the baton had been passed on in the talk-relay and it was safe to do so, I cast my eye down the career details supplied to me by our bureaucrats, details covering all the ladies in the delegation.

  This looked like her. Lady Talbot-Boothe. Hadn’t I seen that name somewhere before? The final ‘e’ rather set it apart. Husband had been some kind of undersecretary in St Petersburg in the nineties. Very undistinguished career, climaxing in Consul in Cracow in the early thirties, and Ambassador to Yugoslavia briefly in 1934-5. Typical of the Foreign Office to appoint a nincompoop to a sensitive area like Yugoslavia, no doubt
through some collective scorn for the Balkans generally. They had learnt nothing from the events of summer 1914. Indeed, the more I saw of Foreign Office civil servants, all recruited from the brightest Oxbridge had to offer, the more I thought them incapable of learning from any experience whatsoever.

  I looked at Lady Talbot-Boothe again. The heavy makeup had to contend with the fact that the face was collapsed, had bags in places that had once been firm and china-doll-like. When she nodded vigorously, the bags seemed to take on an independent life of their own, wobbling in all directions. Evelyn, Lady Talbot-Boothe. The Christian name meant nothing to me, but somewhere or other I had encountered the surname.

  It was time to make some response.

  ‘Of course I shall take all you have said to me very seriously, and talk the matter over with the Foreign Secretary. You must realise that the government is having similar representations made to us on behalf of many groups – to take an obvious example, the widows of men killed in the war.’ (Common soldiers’ widows! their expressions said. You are comparing us with common soldiers’ widows?) ‘This is a time for tightening our belts. All over Europe people are starving, in the aftermath of war.’ I refrained from mentioning the Germans – everyone except the occasional clergyman was outraged at any mention of their pitiable state. ‘Our friends the French are suffering appalling hardships. In any case, as experienced Foreign Office hands, you won’t expect a reply from me today. I can only assure you again that …’

  And so on. As I talked – and talking in this vein was becoming second nature to me, though it made banking talk seem direct and to the point – I could keep my eye on Lady Talbot-Boothe. She had, throughout the meeting, looked approving and interested at each speaker, like a lady used to running committees, used to pretending that what was being said was of great interest to her. But I had got the idea that as she looked from one person to the next, she always shot a glance at me – was really more interested in me than in any other person in the room. Now she was concentrating her attention on me I had an additional impression: that behind the false display of interest and attention there was a glint of malevolence in her eye. As if she had some grudge against me or my family, or maybe some congenital dislike of what we represented. It was disconcerting, but I did not allow myself to falter in my platitudes. I prided myself on being the complete professional. Being in banking had been a schooling in imperturbability.

  When I had finished there was really little more that they could say. It was what they had steeled themselves to expect from a Labour minister.

  ‘So kind of you to give us of your time,’ cooed Lady Greystone insincerely. ‘I’m sure that in the discussions you will do the best you can for us.’

  The pushing back of seats, the taking leave and saying farewell, were all done in a socially approved, embassy-established way. Some came up and had a ‘special word’ or shook my hand. None said that it was a special pleasure to find a woman in a post of responsibility at the Foreign Office. I can only assume none felt it.

  I was watching for Lady Talbot-Boothe, and she, I sensed, was watching for me. She was having a side conversation, seemed to be unduly prolonging it, and when her interlocutor dragged herself away, she turned and came over to thank me for my time – as if I had any choice but to give it. By then she was one of only two or three left in the room.

  ‘So kind of you – and such a thrill for all of us to be back in the old place,’ she said. She paused. It was an opening for me, and intended as such.

  ‘I have a feeling we ought to know each other,’ I said, with a tentative smile. ‘But I can’t see we can have met at anywhere where your husband was posted.’

  She gave a knowing yet secretive smile.

  ‘Oh, no. I’m sure you never met him. I’m not even sure that we have ever met. Perhaps when you were a young girl. But’ – and here the malicious glint came unmistakably into her eye – ‘your family has been very generous to me over the years.’

  That was it! The list of my family’s pensioners. The name had been on it, without my querying who it was or why it was there. It had been one of several names that rang no bells.

  ‘Ah! Of course many of the people who—’ I tried to put the matter tactfully – ‘to whom we regarded ourselves as being indebted were people I never knew myself. You say we could have met when I was a little girl?’

  ‘I would have been not much older myself.’ She seemed to say this not only from a misplaced concern about her age, but in order to play with me further. ‘I think what you recognised was a family resemblance. I and my sisters were always considered very much alike by people in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘You and your sisters?’ I said, with ominous presentiment.

  ‘I was Mary Coverdale’s sister. I was the eldest: Miss Coverdale, as I was always called – one of those old usages that seems to have faded, more’s the pity.’

  ‘I see.’ We shook hands again, rather awkwardly. I had an odd sense of handling this encounter badly, of already being at a disadvantage. ‘Of course I knew both your sisters, though the younger one not well. How interesting that we should meet up again like this. You say that my family has been—’

  ‘Very generous.’ It was not said in a grateful tone. But it was not unusual for recipients of bounty to feel no gratitude. ‘My father died soon after the beginning of the First War, and my brother was killed in the trenches not long after that. Since then …’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry not to be better up in our financial affairs.’ We were by now, of course, completely alone in the room. ‘I think there may be a little more coffee in this pot. Would you care for another cup?’

  She smiled, a purely social smile, verging on the glacial. ‘How kind of you. Good coffee is not easily come by these days, is it?’

  But again I was struck by the malice, not just in her eyes, but in the tone of her innocuous remarks. We sat at a side table, I poured two cups, and handed her cream and sugar. She helped herself liberally to both.

  ‘Luxury!’ she said. Then drew back. ‘It must seem to you that I really shouldn’t have been with this deputation, being so well provided for by Fearing’s Bank.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not the only one with other sources of income,’ I said, placatingly. ‘You were putting a general case, weren’t you?’ (Like hell they were putting a general case!)

  ‘True, true,’ she said, nodding her head vigorously and causing the bags and pouches to go bobbling off on their independent ways. ‘And it dies with me! The agreement was that it was continued to the next generation, but not beyond. My sister has cancer, and Peter of course is long dead.’

  ‘That was sad. I liked and respected him very much.’

  The eyes sparkled with tiny daggers.

  ‘He needn’t have volunteered for active service, you know! He was senior enough to have a desk job, and too old to be on the battlefield – not much short of forty!’

  It was said not in terms of admiration but of grievance. His death had virtually seen the end of her family, and the prestige a living family name brought with it. I was confirmed in my belief that Peter was the best of his family.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m quite sure your brother was very brave, and I rather think he died as he would have wished. So the pension dates back to – when?’

  ‘Eighteen ninety-six. Not the time of the marriage, though your grandfather was very generous at that time.’

  ‘Grandpapa … could be generous.’

  ‘Well, he more or less had to be, didn’t he?’ Here the venom showed clearly through, and a strong vein of commonness, which spite often brings out. ‘The marriage would never have taken place if he hadn’t been generous.’

  ‘I was still in the schoolroom at the time. We heard nothing about arrangements with your family. The talk was that Uncle Frank’s debts had all been paid.’

  ‘So I heard. I wasn’t party to the details, either – my husband and I were in St Petersburg, a fairy-tale posting, his first. All I kno
w I heard much later, from my father. Of course the family was not at all happy with the proposed match.’

  ‘No?’ I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice, and the disbelief. That had not been at all my impression at the time. But Lady Talbot-Boothe hardly bothered to hide her contempt.

  ‘Well, hardly. Of course we don’t take any notice of that sort of thing these days,’ (oh don’t we?) ‘but rich bankers? I’m afraid, to put it bluntly, you weren’t the sort of people the Coverdales were used to marrying into.’ Personally I thought that the Coverdales had been very willing to swallow their pride and principles at the prospect of very rich bankers as in-laws, but I held my peace. ‘The Coverdale baronetcy dated back to 1624, you know. One of the oldest in the country.’

  I refrained from saying that baronetcies were bought from the early Stuarts as surely as they were bought in the twenties from Lloyd George. Instead, I said, ‘Was it your sister Mary, then, who insisted?’

  ‘By no means! At least not at first. She was very far from enthusiastic, though her reasons were primarily … personal.’

  ‘Personal?’

  She looked down, as if talking reluctantly, though I think everything she said and did had a purpose.

  ‘She had had an … unfortunate experience in early girlhood. The thought of … the intimate side of marriage revolted her.’

  That, at least, was news to me, though it didn’t altogether surprise me. But it could not be said to slot anything else into place.

  ‘I see,’ I said slowly. ‘That sort of experience is more common than people like to acknowledge.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. But Mary would certainly have preferred to stay unmarried. Your uncle gradually realised this.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m still not understanding this,’ I said, more briskly. ‘They were married. The marriage produced Richard, poor boy.’

  She smiled, chillingly.

  ‘You perhaps were not aware of your uncle’s taste in women?’ That nonplussed me.