Shroud of Silence (2 page)

Gwen’s voice was calculated to penetrate mistiness of the mind, “Tansy, this is Kim Bennett. You know, Hilary’s sister.”

A birdlike fluttering; eyes that could fill with tears too easily. “Poor poor Hilary!” Tansy came towards me with her head on one side, a sympathetic hand stretched out to me vaguely.

I could do without this sort of emotional scene. Hilary and I had tended to grow apart, but these last few anxious weeks I’d realized how close we really were. Maybe all sisters are, in the critical test. Maybe even Tansy and Gwen.

Tansy dripped with woeful lamentations. “How terribly, terribly sad! To think of you coming all that way from America to be with poor Hilary, and then for just a little dose of flu to carry her off like that...”

“Flu’s a killer when you’ve got polio,” I said crisply, and made a show of looking around the room for Jane,

“We were having a game of hide and seek,” Tansy explained. “Come on out now, Janey dear. Here’s Auntie Gwen and her friend to see you.”

Silence. Not a sign of movement anywhere.

“Come along now,” Tansy coaxed. “There’s nothing to be frightened of, dear.”

And that, I thought grimly, shows typical misunderstanding of a speech-handicapped child. Nothing to be frightened of, she said. Could Tansy begin to imagine what it was like for a stammerer to meet somebody new? To dread the inevitable spluttering over a few simple words of hello? To be thought a semi-idiot as a result? Even at five years old it must be bitter.

The three of us were standing, bunched together. Waiting. An intimidating sight to little peeping eyes.

I broke away and strolled to the window.

“What a magnificent view! From up here you can see over the top of the trees and right across to the hills.”

At least Gwen got the idea if Tansy didn’t. She came across to join me.

“Do you see the water?”

There was a ripple of silver-gold between the fir trees, far away down at the bottom of the valley.

“Is that the trout farm?” I asked with a bright show of interest. “How do you get to it?”

“The drive continues on right away round.” Gwen gestured largely. “There’s whole series of ponds, stepped at different levels down the hillside. That’s the lowest one you can see from here.”

I heard a quiet patter on the carpet and a small body clambered up to the padded window seat. I glanced down, deliberately casual.

She was quite small, with timid soft brown eyes over-large in her solemn face; straight mousy hair, and a scatter of freckles. It didn’t add up to much as little girls go.

But she claimed me in a flash. She snatched my heart and twisted it hard. My job called for sympathy, not sentimentality, and I had to hold on to everything as I watched her painful efforts to speak.

“M-m-m-my d-d-d….”

I smiled at her with the quiet ease of having all the time there is, and glanced away down the valley again. I wouldn’t for the world have attempted to prompt, to ease her round the block.

But Tansy didn’t hesitate to blunder in. “That’s right, dear. It’s your daddy’s fish farm, isn’t it? Clever daddy.” She looked around at me knowingly. “Poor Janey has such trouble with her words, don’t you, dear?”

My God, I thought, this child is crying out for help. And I knew I’d never quite forgive myself if I didn’t take her on. Dear, kind, gentle, over-loving Tansy was doing a pretty good job of sabotage. And Tansy was only the beginning. Little Jane also possessed a mother who didn’t care a damn and a father entombed in his own gloom. Pandering love; careless indifference; and black remoteness.

I didn’t know which of the three was the worst for the child. But I did know that they were each in their own way pretty darned destructive.

Jane leading the way, we all went down to the floor below. I was shown into a bedroom rather heavily furnished with pieces of a century ago. But like Jane’s playroom above it faced the sun, with ,a view down the wooded valley to the skyline of gently rolling hills.

Gwen lingered behind as the other two left.

“Well?” she demanded. “What do you think about Jane?”

“I’m staying,” I said firmly. “Poor little mite.  But Gwen, you’ve just got to go and explain why I’ve come here. I refuse to spend the night at Mildenhall unless Jane’s parents know and approve.”

“All right, my dear, that’s fair enough,” she agreed. And unwisely, I left the matter in Gwen’s forthright hands.

She helped me fetch my luggage from the hall and then left me to change,

“Come downstairs when you’re ready, Kim, and do make yourself at home. I’ll be around somewhere.”

I chose a cocktailish sort of dress in bright lime green—not too mini, but not too much either. It boosted my confidence against any hard selling that lay ahead. Not that I was trying to compete with Corinne. I couldn’t. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. The Corinnes of this world don’t like competition, and I wanted her to like me—as far as she’d ever like another woman.

I clipclopped my way down those barren stairs and wandered into the drawing room. It was empty. Gwen, I guessed, was right this minute in private session with Jane’s parents. Soon they would be coming to find me; either to ask me to stay and work on their daughter, or to give me a polite brush-off.

The sun, much lower now, still flooded the room with red golden light. I stepped through the open French windows out to the terrace, but the cooling September air nipped my arms just enough to urge me straight back.

A new voice halted me with a greeting that had all the overtones of an astonished wolf whistle.

“Well, hello.” The half-closed eyes that matched the voice surveyed me slowly, up and down. Unpeeled me, savored me, and appeared to approve.

I covered my nakedness in a babble of words. “It looked so lovely out here, but actually it’s rather chilly ....”

His hair had reddish glints, and that clued me in more than any particular facial resemblance. Corinne’s brother, I’d take a bet. He was certainly a fabulous looker—far too much for his own good. His type reckon that one glance is enough to slay any woman.

But I wasn’t nearly dead yet.

Lounged in one of the garden chairs, he came up slowly. He seemed to go on forever—six foot three or four, maybe.

“If you’re cold, then let’s get acquainted indoors.” He prompted me with a hand that hovered calculated millimeters from my bare shoulder. I could feel sparks bridging the gap.

Inside, he gave me a slow, lazy smile. “Let me get you a drink.”

“Thank you.”

“What shall it be?”

“A martini, please. Not too dry,”

He went over to a drinks cupboard and started sorting out bottles. “I like a woman to know her own mind,” he remarked.

“Oh, I always do.”

He stopped in mid-pour and looked round at me, “Always?”

Damn him.” He was forcing me to look away. I made a business of sitting down, but he knew he’d won the round.

He brought my drink over and presented it to me. “I’m Felix Harper, by the way.”

“Mrs. Barrington’s brother?”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s right. And you?”

“My name’s Kim Bennett.”

“Kim Bennett....” he mused. “Am I supposed to know you?”

“Not really,” I said uncomfortably. “I’m ... I’m a friend of Gwen’s.”

Gwen came in briskly, and I was glad of the interruption. She was still wearing the tweed suit she’d traveled down in. “Ah good, drinks. So you two have introduced yourselves?”

I was expecting some sort of sign from her, but none came. While Felix was fixing her up with a straight gin, I whispered: “Well, what did they say? How did they dike it?”

Gwen answered me in her normal voice—a muted bellow. “How did who take what, dear?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said weakly.

So she still hadn’t spoken to Jane’s parents! I wished she’d get some skates under her. It was hellishly embarrassing for me, and a ridiculous waste of time, too. If I was going to try and help Jane I wanted to get started with the preliminaries; asking questions, explaining what I needed in terms of the family’s cooperation.

Annoyed with Gwen, I made conversation elsewhere. “Are you staying at Mildenhall for the weekend, Mr. Harper?”

“I only answer to the name of Felix.”

Gwen was spluttering into her drink. “Staying for the weekend? That’s a laugh. Our Felix lives here—and Corinne’s sister Verity as well.” She looked up at him with a grinning malevolence. “You two are on to an easy billet, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t we all?” he said with pointed irony. “Aren’t we all?”

Her grin vanished. She flushed with quick-firing anger. “Now you look here, Felix ....”

“I’d much rather go on looking at Kim,” he whipped back at her. “Statistically she’s a lot more rewarding.”

If Gwen had a counterblast to that, she didn’t need to use it. Tansy came dithering in, looking lost. Then she brightened.

“Oh, I know what it was I wanted to say. Dinner will be half an hour early tonight. About half-past seven.”

“What’s that in aid of?” asked Felix. “Is the boss man going out or something?”

“Oh no, it’s not Drew,” Tansy fluttered. “It’s just Miss Pink. There’s a program she specially doesn’t want to miss.”

Felix turned to me. “You may think it odd that an entire household should revolve round the idiot-box fancies of a servant. But this one does. Drew was fool enough to give her a set for her birthday.”

“Now don’t be unkind, Felix dear,” said Tansy mildly. “It’s such a comfort to her.”

Dinner time arrived, and still nothing had been said about me. I was feeling slightly desperate, because I’d have to act my way through a farce, digging an even greater hole for myself as just a weekend guest of Gwen’s. It would look odder than ever when at last Drew and Corinne Barrington were told about the speech-therapy angle.

Verity Harper came strolling into the room. Facially she was quite unlike Corinne, yet she too had a tall slim grace and unbelievably marvelous looks. All three of the Harper family—Corinne, Verity and brother Felix, were variations on the same striking theme; and Number One, I guessed, counted first and foremost with each of them. Always.

In contrast to Corinne’s strapless black chiffon, Verity had made no attempt to dress up for dinner. She wore an off-white, pants suit with a red-spotted scarf tucked in at the neck. Her strawberry-blonde hair made the total effect close to sensational. Toward me, she was ready enough to be friendly in a casual sort of way.

Drew joined us at the last minute, just as we were going into the dining room. He had changed into a dark suit and crisp white shirt. But the face was the same—worried, withdrawn. Lonely, I thought.

I soon found there was nothing of the comfortable family dinner party about this gathering. The conversation was largely between Corinne, Verity and Felix, an exchange of snide taunts. Only when Gwen barged in was there any sense of unity among the three Harpers. They joined forces briefly in order to flatten her, for nothing more than the sheer hell of it, as far as I could see.

Tansy didn’t really settle at the table. She kept dithering in and out of the room, “Just giving Miss Pink a bit of a hand,” as she put it apologetically each time she fluttered off.

In the master’s chair, Drew Barrington seemed entirely oblivious to the various cross tensions. He tackled his meal without interest, ignoring the talk in favor of his own somber thoughts.

Until, that is, Gwen threw in her hand grenade.

Unbelievably inept, she mentioned the fact that I was a speech the therapist, and then announced baldly: “She’s going to have a go with little Jane.”

Drew broke surface at once. Putting down his knife and fork, he stared at his aunt incredulously.

“I beg your pardon, Gwen?”

She blundered on, quite unaware of the sudden electric atmosphere. “A wonderful stroke of luck, wasn’t it? When Kim came to see me after Hilary died, I got to telling her about our Janey. She was so positive that something could be done for the poor child that I persuaded her to come down here and do her stuff.”

“Oh, but it wasn’t quite like that,” I muttered wretchedly. Right then I longed for a small hole to crawl into.

Drew’s head turned slowly in my direction; so slowly that I thought his eyes would never get around to meeting mine.

“It’s very kind of you, Miss ... er ... Bennett, but...”

Go on, I thought, why not say it? But what the devil is it to do with you?

He was far too polite for that. Instead he said stiffly, “We can hardly presume upon your kindness. You’ll have your own work to attend to.”

“Look,” I said desperately, “will you please let me explain how it happened ....”

He cut in on me, a shade less polite now. “I think
I
should explain to
you,
Miss Bennett, that however much it might appear to the contrary, we do in fact have Jane’s interests very much at heart.”

“I’m sure you do, Mr. Barrington, and Gwen suggested ….”

“We have already taken advice on the matter of her speech defect,” he went on with chilling smoothness, “and we have been advised that Jane is too young for treatment as yet.”

“Who on earth told you a thing like that?” The words were out before I could gag them.

Drew kept hold of his fraying patience, but allowed me to see the effort it cost him.

“My wife consulted a highly qualified man.”

I glanced towards Corinne and saw her flush beginning, spreading as I watched. Was it just anger at my uninvited interference?

If the subject could only be allowed a quick and decent death, I thought despairingly, there might still be a chance of salvage. I could have a quiet talk with Drew and his wife later on, just the three of us. I’d apologize for the bad beginning, and perhaps start afresh.

Alternatively, I could abandon the whole project here and now. I need simply say that there had obviously been a regrettable misunderstanding, and bow myself out with a remnant of dignity left.

Temptation nearly won me over. I had an almighty urge to get away from Mildenhall tomorrow morning, and thereafter forget the Barringtons even so much as existed.