The Death of Lucy Kyte (31 page)

18

Archie's telegram arrived the next morning, and made Josephine's mind up for her. He was in Felixstowe – the clipped nature of the medium added to the mystery of why – and suggested they meet there for lunch the following day if that suited her. It did. She needed to talk to him more than ever, but had given up hope of being able to see him before she went back up north; now, she could use today to call on Rose Boreham, drive to Felixstowe tomorrow, and still keep her promise to Morag to be home by the end of the week. Energised by a new sense of purpose – and by eight hours of dreamless sleep, courtesy of Marta's miracle powder – Josephine walked briskly into the village to send Archie his reply; while at the post office, she telephoned her father again and managed to catch him before he left for the shop. He seemed bemused by her concern, dismissing his injury as ‘a wee bit of a bruise', and told her to come home when she was good and ready; there were, apparently, enough women making a fuss over nothing already. His gruffness reassured her about his health, but not about her reputation, and she promised to see him on Friday. There was no answer from Stewart, Rule & Co., which was a shame because she was more than ready for Jane Peck, but she could always call later from Stoke. As she walked back to the cottage, yesterday's despair seemed a long way away, the product of tiredness and an overwrought imagination, and she was pleased to put it behind her.

The morning air was cold, but sweet with the scent of autumn. Rather than test Chummy's temperament by driving her out on consecutive days, Josephine decided to get Hester's old bike out of the garage and cycle to Stoke instead. She set out, her tyres crackling over fallen acorns in the road, and was pleased with the choice she had made. The October day had dragged a rich, warm yellow from the sun, and small flocks of fluffy white cloud blew about the sky, making it a pleasure to be out in the open with time to notice the beauty of the season. Hedgerows on either side were covered with hundreds of tiny webs, and blackbirds busied themselves in stripping fruit from the brambles. In fact, all of nature seemed to be preparing itself for the long, dark months ahead.

The road was kind to her, rising and falling gently all the way until a clutch of houses told her that she had reached the outskirts of the village. She dismounted near the top of Scotland Street, careful not to step in a trickle of blood that ran down the side of the road from the backyard of a butcher's shop, giving the impression that Sweeney Todd had abandoned Fleet Street and retired to rural Suffolk. It was a grisly introduction to an otherwise beautiful village whose streets were lined with medieval houses, unspoilt and full of character. Stoke was considerably bigger than Polstead, boasting several shops and pubs as well as a truly magnificent church. She remembered seeing its pinnacle from the graveyard yesterday, dominating the horizon with a quiet dignity. Up close, there was nothing quiet about it at all: the mighty brick, stone and flint tower stood tall and proud as the glory of the village, and Josephine had little doubt that when the bells rang from here, the whole county would know about it.

The sign for the Black Horse was further down the main street. It was too early for the pub to be open, so she left her bicycle by the village hall and did some shopping. The general stores, next to the rectory, seemed to stock everything under the sun, including a top-up of sleeping powders – just to have in, she told herself – and Josephine bought as many supplies as the bicycle basket would carry. She added a chop from the butcher's for dinner, then spent half an hour in the bookshop next door, buying presents for Marta and Archie. In the end, she chose two volumes by Virginia Woolf: a signed collection of short stories for Marta, including one called ‘A Haunted House'; and a first edition of
Mrs Dalloway
for Archie, who – she knew – would be desperately missing London. She could never quite see the point of Woolf herself, but the devotion was strong enough in both of her friends to suggest that the problem lay with her.

The church clock struck midday, and Josephine made her way back to the Black Horse – a long, timber-framed building, dating back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and originally made up of two separate cottages. The sign rose up from an old boundary stone at the front, which declared that the pub was technically in the parish of Polstead; apart from that, it looked more like a house than a commercial enterprise, and the only other clue to what happened inside was a faint smell of beer from the pavement. The north-facing rooms at the front were cool and dark, but they had an austere homeliness about them, with polished brick floors and scrubbed tables. The Borehams obviously kept a popular house: she was by no means the first person across the threshold that day and, as she waited her turn at the bar, she noticed that a table in the room next door was laid out with pies, hams and cheeses, ready for a luncheon party.

‘What can I get you?'

The woman behind the bar was dressed entirely in black, and Josephine wondered if the food was actually for a funeral. She ordered a glass of beer and handed over the money. ‘Mrs Boreham?' she asked, relying on the fact that the woman was the right age to be Rose's mother.

‘That's right. Who wants to know?'

‘My name is Josephine Tey. I've come over from Polstead today, from Red Barn Cottage. Hester Larkspur was my godmother, and I've taken the place on.' Mrs Boreham's expression made a subtle shift from suspicious to downright hostile, and Josephine knew that she had found someone else whom Hester had managed to alienate. ‘I was hoping to have a word with your daughter,' she added, less confidently now.

‘Why? What are you going to tell me she's done now?'

Josephine was taken aback by the aggressiveness of the question. ‘I wasn't going to tell you she's done anything. That's certainly not why I'm here.' Mrs Boreham's eyes hardened still further, and Josephine guessed that her accent wasn't helping; it placed her in the same camp as Hester the minute she opened her mouth.

‘Forgive the lack of hospitality, Miss Tey, but the last time I heard a voice like yours it was telling me a load of lies about my own daughter.'

‘I know, and I'm sorry,' she bluffed, not having the faintest clue what the woman was talking about, but ready to play along if it got her what she wanted. She couldn't help thinking that it would be easier to get an audience with the Pope than to snatch five minutes with Rose Boreham, but she bit her tongue and used the scant information she had gleaned from Hilary to weave what she hoped would be a placatory story. ‘I understand there was some unpleasantness between your daughter and my godmother which led to Rose losing not one position, but two,' she said, relying on ‘unpleasantness' to be suitably vague. ‘I'm here to apologise, and to try to make it right with her if I can.'

God only knew how that was to be achieved, but her conciliatory tone seemed to have set her on the right track. ‘Rose is busy at the moment,' her mother said, still difficult, but less hostile. ‘We've got the men from the shoot in for lunch any minute.'

‘That's fine. I'm happy to wait. Do you serve food?'

Mrs Boreham gave her a look that explained very eloquently what she thought of women who had all the time in the world, but the victory was Josephine's. ‘I can do you a sandwich,' the landlady admitted grudgingly, ‘and I'll send Rose over when the men are settled.'

Josephine took her drink over to a table in the corner and busied herself with making a list of questions for Archie. After a few minutes, the beaters filed into the next room and the noise in the pub went up a level. Through the open door, she watched the sought-after Rose pass hot toddies round amongst the men, giving as good as she got with the banter and innuendo that came her way. She was a pretty girl, with wavy dark hair, a heart-shaped face and full lips, but her appeal was less in the features themselves than in what Rose did with them – how easily she laughed or feigned surprise, the blend of innocence and worldliness that she could persuade them to convey. She had a natural spirit that a village pub – even at its most raucous – seemed to struggle to contain, and Josephine understood immediately why Hester would be charmed by her. The message had obviously got through: every now and again she stole a curious glance at her visitor, whilst somehow making it clear that she would come over when she was ready and not a minute sooner. She disappeared into the back and Josephine – her list finished – was just about to give Virginia Woolf another chance when a plate of cheese and pickle sandwiches was banged down in front of her. Rose took the chair opposite without waiting to be asked. ‘Mum said you were after me,' she began, establishing from the outset that she was there under sufferance. ‘What do you want?'

Josephine realised – a little late, admittedly – that she had no real answer to that question, and certainly nothing as direct to offer in return. ‘Look, Rose,' she said, deciding to see where honesty got her, ‘I have no idea what went on between you and my godmother. I didn't know Hester Larkspur, and we only met properly when I was a very small child, far too young to remember anything about her. Until she died, I didn't even know that she was an actress. I certainly wasn't expecting her to leave me anything in her will. All that should have gone to my mother, who was Hester's closest friend, but my mother is dead and now I find myself in a strange cottage, hundreds of miles away from my family, where nothing makes sense to me. Quite frankly . . . well, quite frankly I need some help. Can we start again?'

Rose wasn't going to forgive and forget that easily, but she softened a little and a smile played on her lips. ‘You've met her, then?'

‘Met whom?'

‘Lucy.'

Josephine had never had any intention of discussing Lucy with Rose – either the diary, or the unexplained presence in the cottage – and she was shocked to have the rug pulled from under her. ‘What do you know about Lucy?' she asked cautiously.

‘Only what Miss Larkspur told me,' Rose said, and the fact that Hester had told her anything indicated to Josephine how well the two of them had got along. ‘Who she was and when she lived in the cottage, that sort of thing. I never saw her myself, though, except in the photograph. I always hoped I would one day, if she got to know me and trust me, but it never happened.' She shrugged. ‘Some people are more open to that sort of thing, aren't they? I must be about as psychic as a plank, because I could never see anything at the vicarage, either. You obviously take after Miss Larkspur. You're lucky. What's Lucy been up to?'

Josephine could not quite believe that they were discussing a dead woman as if she were just another girl from down the road who might turn up at any moment. It was hard to decide if Rose's calm acceptance of the situation was reassuring or disturbing, and she sidestepped the question with one of her own. ‘What did you mean about seeing Lucy in a photograph?'

‘It was the one of Mr Paget that Miss Larkspur kept on her desk. There's a woman in the background with Maria's rose, and that's her.' Josephine brought the picture to mind, and realised that the face she had seen at the window was indeed the same as the face in the photograph; that was why it had seemed familiar. She tried to recall how often she had looked at the image, and whether it was planted firmly enough in her mind for her to imprint it elsewhere, but in hindsight it was impossible to be sure. ‘I always thought it was another daily woman,' Rose said, ‘but Miss Larkspur told me I was the first help she'd had.' She glared at Josephine, misinterpreting her confusion. ‘If you're not going to believe me, I'm wasting my time sitting here.'

She got up to leave, but Josephine grabbed her arm, conscious that Mrs Boreham was watching intently from the bar. ‘No, Rose – please stay. It's not that I don't believe you. I'm just having trouble coming to terms with what's been going on.' She smiled. ‘Until now, I thought I was cut from the same plank as you. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.'

The girl took her seat again. ‘That's what Miss Larkspur told me. She said it was the cottage that did it.'

‘I'm sure she was right. Did she talk to you about what happened, the things she saw?'

‘She said that Lucy was always around – she'd hear her coming up and downstairs sometimes, or things would move about the cottage for no reason. It always sounded a bit creepy to me, but Miss Larkspur liked having her there, said Lucy kept her company and it was better than being on her own. I'd hear her talking to her sometimes, to her and to Walter.'

‘But nothing more sinister than that? Did she ever mention that room off her bedroom?'

‘She hated that room. Filled it with junk, and never let me clean it. She said it had always been sad, even when they first moved in. You could smell the pain, she said.'

So the boxroom had been desolate even before Hester's death, Josephine thought. That answered one question, but it did not solve the mystery of why she had chosen to die in a room she hated. ‘Did Hester ever
see
Lucy?' she asked.

‘Oh yes,' Rose said, as if it were the most natural question in the world. ‘Often in the garden, apparently, or standing by her bed. Sometimes she'd see her out in the field where the barn used to be. Once she told me that she would occasionally hear the sound of a fire and people shouting and screaming, said it was like being there when the barn burned down.'

‘And you believed her, even though you never saw Lucy yourself?'

‘Of course. It stands to reason that the poor cow wasn't going to rest in peace after everything that happened.'

Josephine felt as though the reins of the conversation had slipped her grasp some time ago, and she decided just to let Rose have her head. ‘What do you mean?' she asked, picking up her sandwich.

For the first time, Rose hesitated. ‘Miss Larkspur swore me to secrecy, but I don't suppose it matters now, and you'll know about it anyway now you're living there. I mean all the stuff that Lucy wrote in her diary. I don't know how she did it, moving into that cottage so close to where her best friend was butchered. I couldn't have done it, but I don't suppose she had any choice. What else was she going to do, on her own with no job and tainted by working for the Corders?'