A Mansion and its Murder (8 page)

That was one factor in the approaching combustion. The other was the unbridgeable gap between my grandparents’ insistence that Uncle Frank keep his side of the bargain, and Uncle Frank’s conviction that he already had.

The day before the eruption of the family volcano that was to change my whole life, and the lives of many of the other inmates of Blakemere, Uncle Frank arrived in the early evening. He went straight to his old bedroom. There was no longer any pretense of marital relations between him and Mary, and indeed even when they returned from honeymoon they had had separate bedrooms in their apartment. Now, apparently, he could not bear even to be so close to her. This much I had learnt from eavesdropping in the servants’ hall. Later on, Uncle Frank dined with the family. He was, I was told, rather morose, so I made no moves in his direction but rather waited on
him to initiate some. At breakfast time there was a note from him, brought by Robert, begging a morning off lessons for me so that we could go over and see Richard and Bea.

So he was not morose with me. I changed my dress, got into my coat, and we set off with delight.

Unbeknownst to me things happened while we were away. People posted ‘o’er land and ocean without rest.’ A footman on horseback took the same route as us to Tillyards with an important message. Telegrams were sent elsewhere, summoning interested parties. Aunt Jane was taken in one of the house’s lesser carriages toward Wentwood, where she had a serious talk with Aunt Sarah. Relations between the two were perfectly friendly but not warm. This was probably due to Aunt Sarah’s ‘oddity’ (anything not perfectly orthodox in opinions and behaviour was counted odd, and atheism and an independent life certainly qualified as not perfectly orthodox, especially in a woman). Sarah’s ‘oddity’ probably also accounted for the fact that Aunt Jane’s mission was unsuccessful: she declined to be one of the party which was massing to bring Uncle Frank into line.

We only became aware of this activity when
we returned to Blakemere after a happy morning with Richard and with Bea’s little son Merlin. I had looked for any sign that contact with the assertive, lively boy was acting as a tonic to Richard’s listless brain, and in my depths of love for the boy I thought I saw some. Uncle Frank agreed, whether from conviction or to keep my spirits up I do not know. It was as we drove up to the Grand Entrance to Blakemere that he said, ‘Uh huh. Something’s up.’

We were still half a mile away, and I could not see who was getting out of the carriage that was drawn up in the centre of that endless facade of sub-medieval castle.

‘It’s Anselm,’ explained Uncle Frank. ‘Anselm and Margaret. Anselm the Unreliable and Margaret the Unremarkable.’

It was very naughty of Uncle Frank to speak of our relatives in this way, and I was delighted. Anselm Fearing was head of the younger branch of the Fearing family, son of Grandpapa’s younger brother. He was also father to Digby Fearing, who is currently running Fearing’s bank in my absence on more important matters, and running it very capably. It always amazes me how children can turn out so totally different from any of their parents or even grandparents.
I have never had a moment of doubt about Digby’s probity, yet there hung about his father (and even at twelve I could sense it) an air of unreliability, of being only as honest as staying within the law required, of having an eye for an easy profit and a sharp deal.

He was, of course, the father of that brood of male Fearings who were always spoken of as a sort of last resort, if the male Fearings descended from male Fearings descended from my grandfather should fail, and if I (as everyone I think expected) should decline the honour of becoming the head of the family. The moment Uncle Frank mentioned his name I realised that the family was assembling to put the maximum possible pressure on my uncle to patch up his marriage and (to put the matter in the sort of language that was being used at the time) to ‘try again.’ It puzzled me, this arrival of Cousin Anselm, because it was not in his interest, or that of his sons, that Frank should try again, and I wondered why he should join the forces arraigned against him. With hindsight, and greater knowledge of the man and his ways, I suspect that he was offered a substantial inducement to do so. He would be bound to prefer goodies then and there, and for him,
over goodies in the future for his sons. Cousin Margaret was a doting mother who would want only the best for her children, but hers was not a voice that was ever listened to.

‘So the forces of attack are massing,’ said Uncle Frank in an odd voice. He thought about it, then rubbed his hands. ‘I rather think I am going to enjoy this.’

‘Poor Frank!’ I think now, and my eyes still fill with tears.

He did not speak again till we drew up at the Entrance, but then he turned to me and spoke earnestly.

‘If I have to break with the family,’ he said, ‘see to it that Richard has all the love you can give him.’

I nodded my promise – the promise that was to dominate my life for the next twenty-five years and more. But at the time the only thing I could think about was the dreadful gap that would be left in my life if Uncle Frank were to leave Blakemere forever. When we got inside, I ran to my room to have a brief sob. Then I put a brave face on it and went to have my dinner with Miss Roxby.

In the course of the afternoon Cousin Margaret came to the schoolroom and sat in
on a history lesson. I suppose she could not think of anything else to do. She was a dumpy, comfortable soul who let her life revolve around children. She stayed on to talk to Miss Roxby during my break. I went out onto the autumnal meadows, where the trees were starting to be tinged with yellow and brown. From there I watched Cousin Anselm walking up and down the terrace with a woman whose bonnet shielded her face. Anselm had the sort of droopy moustache that straggles down to the chin – a sort of moustache I always associate with fraudsters and murderers. It did nothing for his features: his weak mouth, insignificant nose, and wandering eyes. At one point they turned to look at the river, and I realised the woman was Aunt Clare. I wondered what purpose her summoning could serve, beyond that of swelling the numbers. Perhaps it was thought that her romantic temperament, if it had survived fifteen years of marriage to a bad artist, would bring forth an eloquent defence of marriage, and a moving plea to Uncle Frank to make one last effort to right his foundering matrimonial barque.

I was, of course, free of the whole house (so long as my legs would stand the marathon distances involved), and I went down to the
kitchens to observe preparations. They were nothing special so far as I could see.

‘Just an ordinary family dinner,’ confirmed Mr McKay, and Mrs Needham nodded.

An ordinary Fearing dinner would of course feed a small village for a month on 1946 rations, but I took the point. Dinner was not what all this was about. Later on, when the house’s thousand clocks told me the family would have finished sherry and gone in to eat, I went down and lurked outside the Green Dining Room, where the family ate when they were on their own, much less grand than the splendid banqueting hall used for honoured guests such as Mr Gladstone. A small staff was serving the fish course. Conversation was fairly general, but muted and stilted. Sir Thomas Coverdale’s goatee beard wiggled and he talked in hushed tones to Grandmama, while his wife (a showy woman, but nicer in my eyes) was finding it fairly hard going with Grandpapa. My father looked as if he were a thousand miles away. Uncle Frank stared at his baked cod as if it were something on a mortuary slab. Mary was sitting at the other end of the table, her rosebud mouth pursed, her eyes troubled and discontented. It was as if she, one of the central
figures, had resigned herself to defeat before the battle had even started.

An idea occurred to me. If the concerted attack on Uncle Frank was not to occur at dinner, it must be scheduled for later – probably over coffee and liqueurs in the sitting room. I walked demurely down the corridor, then, when I was out of sight, sped to the room in question – the dark crimson, high, horribly overfurnished room that the family used for what passed for every day. Coffee cups were already set out, also dishes with chocolates and tiny cakes, and several large bowls of fruit, more and less exotic, with plates and knives beside them. The blue velvet curtains were already drawn. I ran over to one of the windows, got behind the curtains, and opened it – a modest slit of an opening but sufficient for my purposes, I thought. Then I went upstairs, kissed Miss Roxby good night, and went to my room, ostensibly to go to bed.

An hour would see them through dinner, I calculated. I sat on my bed, not sure what to do. I sometimes read for a while when I went to bed, if I had anything exciting under way (
Jane Eyre,
for example, or
Oliver Twist
), but mostly I went straight to sleep. I knew I wouldn’t be able to settle to reading that night, and feared
that if I tried I would probably fall asleep. There were soft footsteps in the corridor and I wondered who it was: our part of the house was mostly deserted at night. I thought about the approaching confrontation and decided that the family would almost certainly lose: Uncle Frank having it already in mind to break with the Fearings suggested that, as did his invincible distaste for the wife they had forced on him. The Fearing clan, I concluded, had very few good cards in their hands. Soon after eight, darkness having fallen, I put on my coat, scuttled along back corridor after back corridor, then down an obscure staircase and to a back door that gave on to the terrace. The night air came as some relief to hectic, troubled thinking.

The window in the sitting room that I had opened looked out over the croquet lawn and the rose gardens nearby. I had no fear for myself in the surrounding vastness of the Blakemere estates, only fear for Uncle Frank – or rather the fear of losing him. I recognise now that my concern was essentially selfish, as children’s usually are. I approached silently, or as silently as was possible over gravelled paths. I heard a voice as I was still some way away.

‘Let’s get it over with.’

It was my father’s voice, the first and only time he contributed.

‘Agreed,’ came Uncle Frank’s voice.

‘If I may presume, as a relative outsider—’ This was the voice of Sir Thomas Coverdale, one I knew less well, but unmistakable. ‘An interested outsider, of course, but one who has not been involved in any wrangling or recriminations—’

‘You have been the model in-law,’ came Uncle Frank’s ironic tones. ‘You have kept out of it.’

‘Nevertheless, the difficulties of the marriage have distressed Mary’s mother and me, because of course she has talked all the problems over—’

‘The last thing I’d try to do is to stop her having a heart-to-heart. If such is possible.’

‘Frank!’ said my grandmother commandingly. I was now just beside the window, and though the heavy velvet curtains prevented my seeing anything, I could imagine her look.

‘The point I would make,’ resumed Sir Thomas, ‘is that marriages where the heart is not … not
initially
engaged, if I may put it so, are not uncommon among people such as ourselves … gentlefolk with a position to maintain locally and nationally, and that such marriages quite often go through a crisis early on. But a modus vivendi is almost always found.
Where there’s a will … It is Lady Coverdale’s and my devout wish that such may be the outcome in this marriage, on which so much rests.’

He sounded like the Archbishop of Canterbury.

‘You are ignoring the fact,’ said Uncle Frank, his voice even and unemotional, ‘that such marriages are willingly undertaken, with both parties clear in their minds what they are doing: making an alliance, ensuring the family’s continuance and stability, extending its influence or boundaries.’

‘Well?’

‘Mine was not willingly undertaken. It was entered into as a result of strong and continuous pressure from my family.’

‘You condemn yourself by saying that.’

‘I am aware of the fact.’

That was the end of Sir Thomas Coverdale’s attempts at mediation. The next voice to emerge through the thick velvet was, surprisingly, that of Aunt Jane.

‘But my dear Frank,’ she said, her voice unusually sweet, ‘remember that love may come, bloom, after marriage, and with the coming of little ones.’

‘That, my dear Jane, is a view of marriage
that comes from reading rather than observation. Look at Claud and Harriet.’

‘I was aware,’ came his wife’s clear, passionless tones ‘that Francis did not love me – not in the usual sense.’

‘Not in any sense. I made that clear.’

‘What you did not make clear was that you had no intention of trying to make the marriage work.’

‘That was not the case – then. Though I did have the gravest doubts as to whether it could.’

‘Then you should never have gone through with it.’

Uncle Frank’s tone was now totally serious.

‘Again – the blame, the criticism, is all on me. I accept that. We entered into a contract that was doomed before it was signed and sealed. I should have recognised that, and set sail for Timbuktu rather than let you enter into it.’

‘But my dear Frank’ – it was Cousin Anselm – ‘all of us here want to see the marriage work. Margaret and I, though it may seem not to be in our best interests, are desperate to see it back on a firm and happy footing.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Might it not be that, away from the family, in another environment, say on a cruise, maybe
to India, or the Cape, that you could on your own sort out a modus vivendi?’

In the darkness I could just imagine his face when he said this. Cousin Anselm was what we today would call smarmy.

‘Tried that. Didn’t work,’ said Uncle Frank, with a return to more satirical tones. ‘Too much of each other just shows us how hopeless it is.’

‘Not us,’ said Mary.

‘Me.’

‘The truth of the matter is,’ came the impatient tones of my grandfather, ‘that the boy made no effort to fulfil his side of the agreement.’

I think all this talk of love, of relationships, was inimical to Grandpapa. Contracts, bargains, agreements were more in his line.

‘I made every effort to fulfil my side of the agreement, and did so,’ Uncle Frank said now.