Enter Pale Death (13 page)

Joe had sent her on a wild goose chase.

She left the dining room the moment she’d finished her coffee. On her way out she paused to bother the maître d’hôtel with a fussy old-lady question. Her arthritic left knee had detected a draught at the table she’d just vacated. Could she be certain of a seat somewhere less exposed for dinner on Saturday night? When he politely referred to his plan, she bossily peered over his shoulder and pointed. “There I am!” She’d actually been taking in the information that Fitzwilliam was booked to have dinner discreetly at the far end of the room. “You’ve put me in the same place but there’s a much better one for me right here,” she said, indicating a table that had a strategically better outlook on the pair she needed to watch. “I should like to be there, well away from the door, if it’s no trouble. Oh, and could you possibly set a second place? I’m expecting a friend to join me.”

The adjustments were duly made and Lily hobbled off to the
lift. The Saturday night dinner was the only meal apart from today’s lunch that she’d heard her target making a booking for. She quite expected him to disappear into London for the rest of the time and she would not follow him. It was not in her brief and Joe had told her that his movements about town had been thoroughly vetted by the Branch. She was to stay at her post and report on whomever he met.

The whole business pivoted on his single guest tomorrow night, Lily reckoned. It could be anyone from a visiting Head of a Nation to a lady on the end of a telephone. In the lift she took out her London diary to check whether there was something she’d missed, some special occasion or event that might have drawn him here on this date.

Saturday the 24th of June
, it said,
Midsummer’s Day. New moon. Feast of St. John
.

Academic term’s end. Racing at Ascot
.

Lily’s romantic streak interpreted these dry facts with some licence. It must be the time of year. In the green depths of an English summer—that’s where they were poised. In that moment when young things found themselves set free from constraints of timetable and corset, their limbs and hearts suddenly open to the sun and new experiences. Nowadays, they jumped on a ferry and made off for Paris or Monte Carlo. In earlier times they’d have been gathering boughs in English woods and leaping bonfires to ward off evil spirits. St. John’s Eve was a time of mystery and fraught with delicious danger: witches walked abroad on mischief bent, egged on by sprites and goblins. Shakespeare had staged the battle between the King and the Queen of the Fairies this evening. Beltane, god of the Celts, chose Midsummer as his moment to pay court to the Great Goddess. Gods, humans and supernatural beings, all were possessed by the same joyous urge to celebrate the return of fertility. Even in the city, all unaware of the deeper meaning, school children still danced around maypoles in June,
wearing white for Whitsuntide. With a wreath of lilac blossom on her head, Lily had done this herself in happily pagan East London as a child. Her playground games, some only half understood, had crept into the city from the country and flourished like the yellow St. John’s Wort in the cracks in every causeway-side. Beneath her sophisticated, street-wise exterior, a Celtic undertow ran deep and unquestioned in her blood.

There was something intoxicating and ancient about the very word “midsummer.” Lily found her mind, so recently alerted to an author’s sensibilities, supplying a following alliterative: “madness” or “mischief” or “malice.” She searched for a word less baleful and found none.

CHAPTER 9

Joe couldn’t repress a shout of laughter when Hunnyton drove up to collect him at the Garden House after breakfast on Friday morning. He walked around the dark red open-topped sports tourer expressing his approval of the motorcar and his admiration for the driver. Hunnyton was suitably dressed in waterproof cape, cloth cap with earflaps and tinted driving goggles.

“Now who’s doing a Mister Toad?” Joe challenged. “Look at you! I’m afraid if I climb aboard you’ll drive me back a couple of decades. We’ll be bursting into the Edwardian age before you can say ‘H. G. Wells’!”

Hunnyton shook his head. “Who needs a time machine? Besides—Edwardian? Pouf!—that’s just yesterday. No, we’re going back a few centuries. Disappearing down a tunnel of green gloom into an age where they still speak the language of Chaucer and think this young Shakespeare feller is a bit avant-garde with his expression.”

“I shall be glad to have an interpreter aboard then. What is this vehicle?”

“It’s a Lagonda M45. The poor man’s Bentley, they call them. Very popular with undergraduates seeking to impress. I thought we’d have something with a collapsible hood so we can enjoy the
views and the fresh air. It’s a bit wide for the country lanes but it’s got tough wheels and tyres and we won’t have to blush for it when we park it on the forecourt of the Hall. If it were a horse, I’d say it was a well-shod, long-legged hunter with a deep chest, suitable mount for a gentleman.”

He turned off the ignition and made to climb out.

“No, no! Stay where you are,” Joe hurried to shout. “You look perfect at the wheel. It would take me at least ten miles to get the hang of it. And I did note the streams rushing down open gutters on both sides of Trumpington Street on the way here. They’d caught a Ford, two bikes and an old lady on a tricycle before breakfast, I noticed. Damn dangerous bit of plumbing! Can’t think why you allow that in a civilised city. The Romans would never have sanctioned it.” Chattering on, he threw his bags into the back and, hearing not even a token objection, settled into the passenger seat.

Hunnyton looked sideways at Joe as they moved out into the almost empty King’s Parade, heading for the river crossing. He took in Joe’s lightweight Burbury trench coat worn with an officer’s swagger open over a summer tweed suit; he eyed his pale grey soft hat and his black shoes from Lobbs. “I think they’ll work out which one of us is from the Yard,” he commented.

“I never see any point in disguising what I am when I’m working,” Joe said. “Some have even found it reassuring. If it scares the villains—good.”

A
LL ATTEMPTS AT
conversation were abandoned as they zipped along the main road east leading to Newmarket and on to the North Sea coast. Joe noticed that, as with most good horsemen, Hunnyton also seemed to have a sure touch with a motorcar, and he wondered with envy why the skills had not been meted out to him in equal measure. Joe had been born on a Scottish Borders farm, and had grown up riding everything from pony to plough horse, but he was the first to admit that
he was never in harmony with a car. His lack of enthusiasm to take the wheel seemed to have further confirmed Hunnyton’s picture of him as a high-ranking officer who expected to be driven everywhere, a Man of the Metropolis. He had no doubt that the superintendent was looking forward to watching him submerge his shining Oxfords in something unspeakable at the first opportunity.

After a few miles of dodging dangerously around lorries and swaying haywains, they turned off the noisy road, taking an offshoot to the left. Hunnyton slowed down in response to the narrowed road and trundled along at twenty miles an hour. Perversely, now that conversation was possible, neither man chose to speak. Both were hushed by the silence of the thick green canopy of oak and beech enclosing the road over their heads, hypnotised by the rhythmic swish of the tree trunks as they passed through. It had the same effect on their senses as the architecture of a lofty cathedral, arousing a quiet awe.

Hunnyton broke the silence. “It’ll be like this for miles now. We should get where we’re going before the horse-drawn hay-carts start clogging up the roads. They’ll be taking a third cut this year—it’s been a good one so far.”

“What’s that scent? Like incense …” Joe answered his own question. “Of course—honeysuckle!”

“S’right. Ten minutes of this’ll unclog your city nose.”

“Coked up as it is with soot and fog and the spewed-out contents of the Lots’ Road power station—my next door neighbour in Chelsea. Ears, too. Birds! I can hear real birds! We only get pigeons and raucous seagulls in London.” Joe was perfectly content to exploit the image of city slicker he’d detected in Hunnyton’s evaluation of him.

Once started, conversation began to flow easily along the lanes, punctuated by village and hamlet and the occasional grand house set in its own parkland, each accorded its commentary by
Hunnyton.

“I notice that the grandeur of the houses increases the further we go into the dark interior. Have I got that wrong?” Joe remarked.

“Oh, where they’ve survived at all—and many have not—they go on getting ever more splendid right through up into Norfolk. Until you stumble on the real stunners like Felbrigg and Oxburgh and Blickling. Melsett, the house we’re heading for, is not as grand as any of those, but it’s the one out of all of them any man with an ounce of sense would choose to live in. Smart enough to invite royalty to stay, old enough to fascinate, well staffed and equipped. Guests never get to see the electricity generator or the refrigerators and cleaning machines it powers, though they appreciate the lamps they can turn on at the flick of a switch, the impeccable laundry and the ice cream desserts. There’s abundant produce from the farm and garden. Where are we?… June … Strawberries, gooseberries, peas, beans, possibly a pineapple or two from the glasshouse … and the choicest lamb. Cook’s favourite time of year.”

“Shame we’re not invited,” Joe said.

“Don’t worry. You’ll eat well enough. We’re having supper at my cottage. Yes, the old home. I bought it from the guv’nor when my parents died. My sister Annie lives in the village still—she’s married to the local grocer—and she’s coming in to dust about and leave a dish of something in the oven for us.”

“That’s very kind of her. But—supper, Hunnyton? I don’t much fancy travelling down these roads in the dark and I have to be back in London tomorrow. Family event in Surrey going on this coming weekend.”

“Entirely up to you, how much time you want to spend over here. I’ve just taken precautions. If we do get benighted you can bunk up in my spare room. And you can count on there being a good breakfast. Home-cured bacon and Newmarket sausages.
Eggs snatched straight from under the hen …”

Joe stirred uneasily. “Sounds wonderful but—look—is there a telephone I can use out here? I shall need to contact my sister again. If Lydia’s still speaking to me after my early morning call from the Garden House.” He put on a crisp, cross voice: “ ‘You’re
where
? Well, you shouldn’t be! Why aren’t you coming down the drive?’ ”

“Fouling up her plans are you?”

“I’m afraid so. She’s used to it. But this is to be rather a special time. Much planning has gone into it. I can’t disappoint.”

“The phone lines have staggered out this far,” Hunnyton said drily. “You can use the one at the Hall. The butler’s an old mate of mine. He won’t mind. Mr. Styles is someone you ought to talk to if you want to get a clearer idea of what was going on that night in April. He doesn’t miss much and he was presiding over the dinner party when the row broke out between the ladies.”

“Anyone else in the household I should put at the top of my list?”

“Grace Aldred. Her ladyship’s maid.”

“She hasn’t moved on, then?”

“No. Her family are local folk. She could have got a job in London but she preferred to stay on here, though she had to take a lowering of position to do that. Gracie’s a laundry maid these days. She gets on well with the housekeeper, Mrs. Bolton, and I’d say she could train on to replace her when Mrs. Bolton retires. I’ve asked the staff to stand by to be interviewed after twelve o’clock. We’ll be finished with the vet by then and you can take as long as you want up at the house.” He looked at his wristwatch. “We’ve made good time. Nearly there. This is all Truelove’s land hereabouts. We could take a break and offer ourselves a little distraction, I think. Your first taste of Suffolk.”

He parked the car by the roadside, choosing a space under
a broad oak to ward off the increasing heat of the sun and pointed across the way to a broad stretch of meadowland dotted with stately chestnut trees. “They should be still out there waiting for someone to come and round them up for the afternoon’s hay carting.” He glanced up at the branches of the tree, assessing the wind direction. “Come on. Get out and come and prepare to meet the best horses in the east of England.”

Warily, but making no protest, Joe took off his trench coat, fanned his face with his hat and took a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped the sweat from his face and neck and followed Hunnyton to the fence. He jumped over it and walked two paces behind his guide into the field.

“Here they come! They’ve caught our scent.” Hunnyton gave a high-pitched whistle.

A quarter of a mile away in the distance something in the landscape was breaking loose and on the move. Hunnyton continued his swift march towards the centre of the field. Coats shining like conkers in the sunshine, ten horses were whinnying a greeting and thundering towards them. Joe counted eight fully grown, one-ton, seventeen-hand Suffolks and two smaller, but not much smaller, colts. Probably two years old and as yet unbroken, Joe estimated. They came on in a line, ever accelerating, pounding the ground. Half a minute away. Joe swallowed, unsure whether the shaking in his body was due to the tremors in the earth or his own increased heartbeat. Joe had stood up to both cavalry charges and machine gun bursts and knew that it was a waste of time to tell a soldier that the mechanised assault of a stream of bullets was more lethal than the charge of a mounted division. Every Tommy knew in his head that in terms of numbers it was. But the onward rush of heavy horses, eyes rolling, nostrils flaring, right in amongst you, way above your head height, brought with it a terror that froze your guts and your limbs as no impersonal
attack from a distance ever could.

Joe found himself, ridiculously, reaching down to his side for a weapon—any weapon. It was Hunnyton’s sliding glance backwards, assessing the effect the charge was having on the city gent, that roused Joe. He stepped forward defiantly and took up his place at Hunnyton’s shoulder. Waiting.