Death in the Garden

by Jennie Melville

  Edwina let her tongue run over her teeth; the doctor had suggested she should visit her dentist. It had been, after all, a cheerful interview. The child within her was growing; he had made a spurt. Perhaps he would always be one of those people who developed in jumps.

  But as he gained, so Edwina lost: certain vital minerals and metal traces were leaching from her blood. The doctor had also suggested more iron, more calcium, more vitamin tablets.

  She had passed Mrs Matthews on her way to the consultation. ‘This doctor’s lovely,’ was the message.

  ‘You’re doing fine, girlie,’ he had said, in a strong New Zealand accent, giving her a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘You and the little one. On your way.’

  Immensely heartened, Edwina walked to the gallery to find Dougie in the process of selling a picture to a large lady in tweeds and a great deal of gold and pearl jewellery. He looked so pleased with himself that she walked past to her desk, tactfully letting him get on with it. But she knew the woman and knew that she would return the picture within the week and demand a refund. The signs were there already. She was pointing a finger at a portrait painted in 1930 of Gertrude Lawrence. ‘ Look at that,’ she was declaiming. ‘Detail is wrong. Any fool knows they wore gold jewellery in the morning and platinum in the evening.’ Dougie would learn.

  She sat down at her desk and started to examine the post. Presently Dougie came over and sat down beside her, his customer having departed leaving a cheque.

  ‘Made a sale,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘Clever you.’

  ‘Nice to see you back. You look fine, more upbeat, somehow.’

  ‘I am.’ Amazingly it was true. Edwina was back to feeling she could take on the world. Anyway for a limited period. But she meant to tidy up her private life first. This child of hers must come into a world in which its mother had some control. Or understanding. She was working through the papers with some speed.

  Understanding meant taking action and she meant to do just that. She had been entirely too passive in this business so far.

  ‘Will you be in regularly from now on?’ Dougie was hopeful.

  ‘Probably. But away for a few days first.’

  ‘I see.’ Things not quite back to normal yet then. ‘What about the post? Send on or will Kit collect?’

  ‘Hang on to it.’

  ‘Ah,’ Dougie nodded. Kit out of favour then, or some other little hiccup in his beloved employer’s life? ‘ Will do.’

  ‘But do me a favour.’ She was typing rapidly:

  Dear Mignon,

  Hang on to the object in question. Here is a retainer. [She

  had estimated Mignon’s temporary loyalty at twenty

  pounds. More would be required later. Or something else.

  Mignon wanted what she could get.]

  I shall be claiming it in due course.

  E.F.

  ‘Take this in person.… The address is on the envelope and let me know what you think of the old person who receives it. I’d like to know.… And don’t say anything.’

  ‘Be glad,’ said Dougie, holding out his hand. ‘And where will you be?’

  ‘I have a bit of journeying to do.’

  ‘Ah.’ He was reading something about her that he did not like, that alarmed him. ‘Can’t I come too?’

  ‘Nothing dangerous.’

  ‘You alarm me,’ and he meant it. Dougie was a sharp observer of his world and he didn’t like what he saw. ‘ Want to tell? Me, or tell Cassie or Alice? Why not? Better to talk.’ But from the look on her face he could tell she was not going to and this in itself told him a lot: she doesn’t trust any one of us.

  ‘I’ve been the pursued long enough,’ said Edwina. ‘Now I’m going to do a bit of hunting on my own account.’

  After a longish pause, he said, ‘Are you going far?’ But, of course, it was not movement in space that counted but movement in time, and from the look of her she might be going a fair distance there.

  ‘Quite a way.’ She smiled. ‘Quite a way.’

  The road to the north was crowded; a week ago, Edwina would not have had the strength to face the drive. Now she was enjoying it, the sun on her face, the wind blowing her hair. Didn’t matter if the air smelt of diesel and petrol from the M1. Edwina was a reluctant driver, but one who got pleasure from it.

  She was on her way to Northumberland to visit Tim’s mother, and to see his grave. She ought to have been braver about it before; now she had to go, to lay this fantasy that he was not dead.

  Behind her was a tricky interview with Kit Langley.

  He had come upon her packing her things before departing yesterday evening.

  ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon.’ She had raised her head from her case.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘I was going to let you know.’

  ‘After the event? Oh come on, love. I know it’s swings and roundabouts with you at the moment, there’s probably a good physical reason for it that you can’t help, but you might tell me what’s up.’

  She had not wanted to tell him her destination but with a short, brisk cross-examination he had it out of her: Northumberland; Tim’s home; his mother.

  ‘All right.’ He relaxed a little. ‘Perhaps you’re right to go. Are you going to tell her about the child?’

  Edwina shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet.’

  ‘She has a right to know.’

  ‘I’ll think about that.’

  ‘You can be bloody, Edwina, when you like.’

  But he was less angry now he knew where she was going; he knew enough not to ask if he could come. Anyway, he had an important case in court next day. Sometimes Edwina seemed to him immensely more important than any career point could be, and sometimes she didn’t. Now the career was on top.

  ‘Cassie or Alice going with you?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t mind that, either. In his eyes it was no bad thing that the close triangle was breaking up.

  ‘Let’s have a drink then, and I’ll take you to dinner.’

  Food might settle her down. He thought of her as a bird or some winged insect. Sometimes Edwina seemed to settle in his hand so that he thought he had her there, then she was gone again. One day she might flutter off for ever. It was terrible to love anyone as much as he loved Edwina and yet not feel sure she could be part of his life.

  Would he really want her if he got her? How ever would they live together? Hard questions demanding hard answers, but loving Edwina was a hard business.

  There was something about Edwina that made you love her and fight against her at the same time. Provoking was the word.

  ‘I’m not going to drink too much.’ There she was, at it again, planting down an assertion like a blow. You could pick it up and return it, or ignore it. He ignored it. This time.

  ‘Of course not.’ He handed over a glass of wine. ‘You wouldn’t dream of it.’

  Over the wine, a good white Burgundy, intelligently and deliberately chosen by Kit, she said: ‘Are you in love with me?’

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘I’m thinking of letting it happen.’

  She could not tell if he was lying or not; he was not a barrister, a kind of actor, for nothing. But she was thinking of him now as she drove. Her body told her to trust Kit, her mind said: Watch.

  That was one of the disadvantages of being a woman and a pregnant one at that; you fluctuated so, your mind and your body frequently going in different directions. There was no question that your judgement was threatened. What was the equivalent for men? None, probably, that was the maddening thing.

  If I was really a witch, she thought, as the M1 melted away behind her, instead of being called one by some, and thought one by others, I would concentrate my powers on seeing that men did have some similar situations.

  Some form of infatuation would do.

  ‘That’s not bad, Eddie,’ she told herself.

  Behind her she had left a police investigation that was growing li
ke a vegetable, a brachiate, with arms spreading out. One arm would soon reach out and touch Edwina: Miss Drury, recovering in hospital, had sent a message that she wanted to see her. Edwina had left, the message missed her, but was received by various other people including the person who least wished to hear it: the murderer.

  Another arm of the investigation had stretched out geographically, going to an open prison in Worcestershire near Bromsgrove. A couple of officers, one a woman, one a man, of equal rank, both sergeants but representing the two sides of the investigation team, had gone as a pair. (Two teams for the different areas were working on the related murders of Luke Tory and Miss Dover: later their co-operation was to be a textbook example of how to work together.) They knew the questions they had to ask, having been well briefed, and they had photographs to produce. It had been, in its way, a small cause célèbre.

  They saw the prison governor, and afterwards the prison medical officer.

  ‘Oh yes.’ The governor knew at once what to say. ‘I wasn’t here, but I know the details. They met here. Just before my time, but I know the details. It started here, but I had no idea it was still going on.’

  ‘Only in a way,’ said the woman detective.

  ‘Quick of you to pick it up.’

  ‘The name was remembered.’

  ‘Good thought.… One person here, our doctor, remembered them. I believe he introduced them. And bitterly regrets it.’

  The prison medical officer was a small, sparse, anxious Scot whose whole life had been devoted to medicine and the theatre.

  ‘It was through you they met?’

  ‘Yes. And the biggest mistake of my life. Of course, the whole thing was put a stop to. I thought that was it.’

  He’d been a bit naive, the young woman detective thought. Not the end. Not the beginning, either. Of course, the whole story had been kept quiet, only the police and prison circles had known.

  In her opinion he continued to be naive. ‘In spite of what he’d done, he had quality, Tim. In this case, I swear he was unaware of the effect he was having. Young men like him draw a certain type of person. Sex hardly comes into it.’

  Don’t you believe it, thought the young woman. Naive, again. And wrong. ‘Goodbye and thank you, Dr Fleming.’

  ‘You’ve got what you wanted?’

  ‘Yes. Some of it.’

  Confirmation. Identity match. ‘Yes,’ Dr Fleming bad said as he looked at a photograph, ‘I recognise the face. Changed, but the same.’

  Faces change but remain the same, moods change but underneath you still know where you are going.

  A few miles short of her destination, a village called Eglington, Edwina stopped in a layby to think.

  The countryside with its green, rounded hills, sparse of trees and yet managing to be a rich, domestic scene, was as beautiful as she remembered it. She had been this way only once before. With Tim she had driven north to meet his mother; he knew her father, now it was her turn to meet his mother, a widow. But at this spot, more or less, Tim had stopped the car, turned and driven back. He had refused to let her meet his mother. They had driven back south in silence, not quarrelling but not touching either. Not long after, Tim had been killed.

  She could see now why he had kept them apart: he had not been ready to tell her about his own past.

  He might never have been ready. It was possible that he had crashed the car with this on his mind. An accident.

  One of those accidents that have to happen.

  Like the child?

  Yes, that too. Death for Tim and life for Edwina, and probably both not quite an accident.

  Time to move on.

  Within minutes she was driving into Eglington. Ahead lay a wide, quiet street of grey stone houses with sharp pitched roofs and tall narrow windows. They were homogeneous and looked as if they had been built as a unit. In fact they had; she remembered Tim telling her that the whole village had been part of the Tusmore estate and that the mid-Victorian earl had been an ‘improving’ landlord, who had rebuilt the village to his own taste.

  At the end of the street stood the village church, also a monument to mid-Victorian piety but a pleasing one, a quiet construction, again of grey stone, with a low tower and a pointed porch. A low wall round the churchyard.

  The churchyard was neat, with well-clipped turf between the tombstones. Edwina walked between the graves, looking about her with care. She soon saw that all the graves around her were old, some going back beyond the last century, older by far than the church itself. Some of the stones were so old that the winds and the frosts had eaten away at the lettering, leaving only unreadable runes.

  The new graves were in a bleaker area like a field behind the church. Not so many here.

  She walked slowly, studying each memorial carefully. No stone bore Tim’s name. He might lie beneath one of those rounded humps of earth still awaiting the stonemason’s work. Poor Tim, it would be so like him to get left with bare earth, not even grass.

  The story had gone that Tim’s mother had taken his body home for burial in their own village churchyard.

  ‘I don’t think so, though. You’re not here, Tim, wherever you are.’

  There was a bomb ticking away somewhere in her future, she was aware of it, never more so than now in this quiet, bare churchyard, and yet she continued to walk towards it with gentle determination.

  Her walk brought her to the gate of Tim’s mother’s house. Tim had never described it, but she knew it all the same. ‘My mother likes everything in order,’ he had said, ‘ and all paint black.’

  She stood at the gate, looking towards the front door where a figure in an overall and a big dark hat came round the corner of the house wheeling a barrow full of leaves. Edwina opened the gate. The gardener and the wheelbarrow advanced towards her.

  ‘Madam’s not at home,’ said the gardener, turning away.

  But Edwina was not deceived. ‘It’s Mrs Croft, isn’t it? I’m Edwina Fortune.’

  Mrs Croft put down her wheelbarrow and took off her hat, revealing a lean, tense, eager face with bright blue eyes in a tanned face. She appeared civilised and kind, and to Edwina’s intense relief, she in no way resembled Tim. She looked Edwina up and down. ‘I knew you, of course. What is it you want?’

  ‘I’ve come looking for Tim. I wanted to see if he could be here.’

  Mrs Croft hesitated. ‘You’d better come inside.’

  ‘I had a sort of fantasy,’ said Edwina, her eyes searching the other woman’s face, ‘that Tim might be still alive, and here with you. So I came looking.’

  ‘Some brandy, I think.’ Mrs Croft turned away to a cupboard. ‘You look as though you could do with it. And, after that, food. And you’d better stay the night.’ She poured the brandy and handed it over. ‘You don’t look like the sort of girl to have fantasies to me.’

  ‘No. There are reasons, but I’d rather not go into it now.’

  ‘As you can see, he isn’t here.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to worry you like this.’ Suddenly the enormity of what she had done came to her. ‘You must think I’m mad, Mrs Croft.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve been down that road myself. Tasted a little madness.’ She drank her brandy, neatly but cleanly as if she knew how.

  And more than a little of that too, thought Edwina.

  ‘It’s like believing in UFOs or aliens beaming from some distant star – a kind of comfort.’

  She drank some more brandy.

  ‘That and gardening; I find turning the earth very soothing. That’s where Tim is, in case you were wondering. He was cremated and I scattered the ashes myself. I’m not sure where exactly; it seemed better not to remember precisely, but somewhere on the hills where the wind is strong.’

  Edwina wondered how much brandy she had had or would have during her day. It was an escape she herself had not thought of so far.

  ‘I’m afraid I treated you very badly, but I somewhat hated you at the time. I thought it was because
of you Tim died. Not a complete accident, you know, his death. The police were never quite sure. But in Scotland you don’t have to have an inquest and the Procurator Fiscal thought no enquiry was necessary. Or kind.’

  She put out a hand towards Edwina who took it and held it gently. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I was all that good for Tim, but I did love him.’

  ‘And he loved you. And would have loved the child.’ She squeezed Edwina: it was her only reference to the child. ‘But there was a lot of fear and anger in him always. Well, you know.’

  ‘I know now; I didn’t.’

  ‘He was afraid that violence in him would surface again and he would kill again someone he loved. His father was a violent man. Violence breeds violence.

  ‘That was why I hated you. I thought: if she’d left him alone, none of this would have happened. But it’s not true. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.’ She turned her head away. ‘In fact there was someone – or had been. I think still was, if you want to know.’

  Edwina drank some brandy while she tried to think of some words that did not sound too hurt. But hurt she was and badly. For the first time, she saw a likeness to Tim; both of them knew how to hurt.

  ‘I’m not telling you this just to give you pain. I wanted you to know that it may have been from this person that Tim was escaping. There was the fear there – I had a letter after his death, written the day before. At the time I thought it was you he was worried about – it may still be that it was – the child and everything. But there is this other possibility – this other person.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘You know Tim’s history – they met in prison. Inmate and prison visitor, that’s how it started. It went on from there – till it was broken up.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know till it was all over. But I just have this impression that this person resurfaced in Tim’s life. Or perhaps never lost touch. Always followed him.’

  They left it there. Mrs Croft took Edwina upstairs and showed her a small, quiet room with a bed covered in flowered chintz. ‘Not Tim’s room,’ she said briefly. ‘Come downstairs when you’ve settled yourself.’