A Medal For Murder (13 page)

‘I’m sure the bazaar will be great fun,’ I said.

‘I hope so. But of course there’s a very serious side to it. We split the takings between church funds and a charity. This year our charity is the home for unmarried mothers.’

‘A very worthy cause.’

‘I’m glad you think so. Personally, I would have preferred widows and orphans. They at least cannot
help their predicament. But perhaps you’ll call in? We open the doors at two o’clock.’

‘Right, thanks for telling me.’ I returned the hammered toffee to the table, and remained standing, to indicate departure. She did not take the hint.

She stuck to her chair. ‘Of course not all the committee ladies were entirely happy about our choice. Some of us argued that by supporting such unfortunates we would be condoning immorality, slack values, rewarding sin, not to put too fine a point on it. But there we are. Charity is as charity does. The vicar was all for the fallen women. What about those who don’t fall but stumble along as best they can? That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘I’ll put the book over here, shall I?’ I set the copy of
Anna of the Five Towns
on the sideboard beside the peacock. ‘I’m sorry to have missed Alison.’

‘You see at one time, I would have had an ally in Mrs Milner. She was a practical, down-to-earth woman, and very fond of poor motherless Lucy. Of course with Captain Wolfendale and Mr Milner having fought side by side, and Lucy and Rodney being close in age, the families were quite in each other’s pockets at one time. Two old soldiers. Though Mr Milner not so old of course, and now a widower . . .’

So she had not heard about the murder. At the thought of it, I stopped hearing what she said. I placed a hand on the table to steady myself. What was going on that both Lucy and Alison had disappeared around the same time as Lawrence Milner’s murder? According to Mrs Hart, Alison and Rodney Milner were in love, and Lucy was like a sister to Rodney.

Something stank, and I did not know what. This was
not up to me. I should tell the police. It was possible that last night’s shock, which set my every nerve on edge, was making me see connections where none existed. Information. That was what I needed before wasting Inspector Charles’s time with red herrings. Was there some connection between the murdered man and the captain?

‘Mrs Hart, I believe you have a telephone.’

‘I would not be without it, and hang the expense.’

‘Would you mind very much if I make a call and reimburse you?’

She hesitated. I took out my purse.

‘Of course. This way. It is in what was my husband’s study.’

She led me along the hall and into a book-lined room, the shelves bulging with legal tomes. The telephone stood on a desk by the window.

I waited until she had gone and closed the door behind her. Her footsteps retreated along the hall. Had she loitered, I would have put in an innocuous call to my housekeeper.

As it was, I took the chance of finding my London cousin, James, at home. He is Something-in-the-War Office and on close terms with the old colonel who has intimate knowledge of what every British officer who fought in the Boer War had for lunch on the day Ladysmith was relieved. James’s wife, Hope, answered. I exchanged the briefest pleasantry imaginable before asking for James. Hope keeps such a discreet silence over everything that you would be hard pressed to get beyond a weather report. Much as I disliked mentioning names over the telephone, I asked James what he could find out about Corporal Lawrence Milner and Captain
Wolfendale. My excuse being, that they were so very brave and one of them would shortly help write the other’s obituary. James cottoned on in an instant, saying he would send me a telegram at home.

I left money by the telephone, and then returned to Mrs Hart. She walked me to the door.

‘I’ll tell Alison you called.’

‘Thank you. Good luck with the bazaar.’

All I had to do was report back to Captain Wolfendale that Lucy was not with Alison. After that, it would be up to him. Like Mrs Hart, he would probably blame Meriel and the play, seeing acting on stage as the root of all evil. Certainly amateur dramatics did seem to have revolutionised the lives of Lucy and Alison. Now they were young women who dared.

 
 

Everything seemed to Lucy to be a rehearsal: a rehearsal for the play, a rehearsal for the rest of her life. She dipped her toes in the stream and then slowly slid her feet into the icy water. She was Anna now, on the chapel picnic a year or so before the action of the story. This was how Meriel had instructed them to rehearse. ‘Go out somewhere, as your character, and never for a moment be yourself. Go onto The Stray. There you will meet Dylan. But he won’t be Dylan. He’ll be Willie. This is the situation: the time is a year before our story begins. You are about to set off on the chapel picnic. Just a little way off are the elders of the chapel, your neighbours and their children, your Sunday school charges. But you have wandered away, you and Willie, and find each other. What will you say, as Anna? What will you say as Willie? How will you look at each other, how near will you stand, will you walk?’

They decided not to follow Meriel’s instructions to the letter. They agreed that to be seen on The Stray by
people who knew them would leave them feeling foolish, and exposed to mockery. It was a fine Sunday. Dylan suggested the spot.

Taking a moment on her own, away from children’s games, matrons’ bossiness over food hampers and lemonade, Anna Tellwright wandered barefoot on the bank alongside the stream. She conjured up the laughter and cries as her younger sister played games with other children. Playing her part as Anna, Lucy walked with that feeling that if she stepped off the beaten path, stood for a long moment by a certain oak tree, she would latch on to another life, the life that must be out there, waiting for her.

‘Anna.’

The voice was soft, almost a whisper.

She looked up. Dylan was Willie to the life. His trousers hitched a little too high, a look on his face that spoke deprivation, hunger, yearning.

‘Hello, Willie.’

‘Are you enjoying the picnic?’

‘I suppose so. The ham is nice.’

‘The ladies have put on a very good spread.’

‘They have.’

Silence. A long silence. Dylan picked a buttercup. He held it under his own chin, in the way that he thought Willie might. Lucy laughed, as she thought Anna would laugh. ‘Someone is meant to do that for you, Willie. How can you see yourself whether you like butter?’

He handed her the buttercup.

‘Tilt your head a little.’ She held the buttercup close to his throat. ‘You like butter, Willie.’

‘I do, Anna.’ He took back the buttercup and held it under her chin. He could not seem to decide, to read
whether the reflection on her throat indicated like or dislike of butter.

‘We’re not very good at this are we?’ Lucy said. ‘Meriel would tell us off for not being properly prepared in our characters.’

‘What do you think I would say as Willie?’

‘I don’t know. What do you think I would say as Anna?’

‘I think you’re very kind. You would put me at my ease because I’m awkward and unsure.’

‘I wouldn’t know how, being awkward and unsure myself. Everything is in my head. I’m hopeless at conversation.’

He studied her throat. ‘It must be that you like butter. I’m sure of it now.’ He set the buttercup down carefully among the clover.

Lucy shook out a picnic rug, not in her own careless throw-it-down fashion, but as Anna, straightening the sides, smoothing out the creases with the flat of her hand. She sat down, tucking her legs to one side, patting the space beside her.

Dylan sat as far from her as he could without being off the blanket altogether.

‘Are you sitting there as Willie, or as yourself?’

He blew a confused breath through parted lips. ‘Perhaps we should just practise our lines. Do you think that would be all right?’

‘Dylan, we know our lines. She wants us to . . . What was that word she used? Something the characters.’

‘Inhabit. Inhabit the characters. I remember because it made me think of my work and the properties we rent out to people who inhabit a place in the world not their own, which is most of us. But you best not call me Dylan. I’m Willie Price.’

‘Before we “inhabit” the characters, just tell me, who are you named after in real life? Is Dylan a family name? If I know that I can put it out of my mind, and you’ll be Willie.’

‘Don’t know. Never thought about it. It’s just the name my parents gave me.’

‘Where are your parents? You’re not from round here are you?’

He blushed at her interest in him. ‘No. I’m from where this play is set. From the Potteries, only Ma thought it would be a good idea for me to see a bit of the world. An uncle of hers knows Mr Croker. That’s how I got the job as house agent’s clerk.’

‘Do you get lonely away from your family?’

‘To tell you the truth, I like to have the space of the room above the shop. At home I shared with my three brothers. They were all bigger than me, great strapping lads who work in the potteries. My sisters work there too. Paintresses.’ He did not say that they had called him the runt of the litter.

‘It must be very interesting, to go out and about, looking at houses. Is that what you do?’

‘Once a week I collect rents, on a Friday evening and on Saturday morning if people were out the night before. Other times, I’m in the office. I read a book, though I’m not supposed to. It’s in the office that I learned my lines by heart.’

She picked a clover. ‘I’m not sure that Anna and Willie would have talked like this. I think they just saw each other now and then, and he was only just building up courage to talk to her.’

‘If we weren’t in this play together, perhaps we wouldn’t talk either. You would walk by Croker &
Company and never so much as glance to see who sat behind the desk.’

‘Oh I would.’

‘No. You wouldn’t. I’ve watched you pass by ever so many times, with a friend, or alone. You never once looked.’

‘I shall look next time.’ She bit the head off the clover and ate it.

‘I’d like that. If you want to step inside, you could pretend to be Lucy looking for a fine house, coming into her fortune.’

‘You mean I could pretend to be Anna?’

‘Yes, that’s what I meant. You could pretend to be Anna.’

‘Where would you recommend for her, for Anna?’

He made a little clucking sound of thoughtfulness and stretched his scrawny legs. ‘I would recommend that she leave the Potteries altogether and come up here. There’s a spot not far off that would be just right for her, and her sister. She could turn it into a most magical place. It would need some work.’

‘Take me to see this place. Let’s go as Anna and Willie. Then it will be all right.’

‘But we said we’d meet the others here, Alison and Rodney Milner.’

Lucy came to a kneeling position, ready to stand. ‘They can get on without us. Don’t forget that Henry Mynors and Beatrice had an understanding long before Mynors turned his attention to Anna. We’ll leave them a note, a message.’ She smiled at her own ingenuity, picked up a stick and ran down to the soft sand of the stream’s bank. She wrote
Anna & Willie gone for a walk. Do not wait!

Dylan hesitated. ‘Is that fair to Alison?’

Lucy laughed. ‘But they’re not Alison and Rodney. They’re Beatrice and the upright Henry Mynors.’

Rodney Milner swerved round the bend on the wrong side of the road. With seconds to spare, a girl on a horse urged her mount onto the verge and practically fell into the hedge.

‘Dashed horses!’ Rodney complained. ‘D’you ride Alison?’

‘Not for ages.’ She adjusted the motoring goggles. They pressed too hard and made ugly red marks around her eyes and on the bridge of her nose.

‘Be glad when the horse has gone the way of the dinosaur. Sooner the better from our point of view.’

‘Would you like a peppermint cream, Rodney?’

‘Pop one into my mouth, eh? There’s a good girl.’ He turned to her, opening his lips.

Gently, she placed the peppermint cream on his tongue. ‘I thought it was a good idea to bring peppermint creams for the picnic, because of my character being so fond of chocolates. But they’re very melty.’