The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (18 page)

His face creased with worry as he surveyed the new hedging.

‘Don’t use more than you have to here for the time being,’ he said. ‘Still, it’s looking very fine, Bolitho. It’s good that Lydia can see it from her room.’ He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘She’s taken Maggie’s disappearance very badly. But I don’t see what else anyone can do.’

‘Keep on pushing the police?’ William said.

Julian nodded. ‘The Wiltshire chaps are speaking to their colleagues in London, trying to make them see a fifteen-year-old country girl isn’t like a young woman from the city.’

‘David tells me he was feeling unwell in the heat,’ Laurence said.

Julian regarded him levelly. ‘It’s stuff and nonsense,’ he said. ‘He’s outside in the sun every day. He’s a good man but this sulking because he didn’t want to drive to London has had a catastrophic outcome. Not that he intended this mess but he’s responsible for it.’

When Laurence returned to the house, wondering whether David’s position was at risk, he met Frances coming up the passage.

‘Just the man,’ she said with what he sensed was forced enthusiasm. ‘Patrick and Eleanor have gone to Stonehenge to take their minds off everything. Do you fancy a walk?’

‘Fine.’

He was amused by the feeling he’d been ambushed.

‘I thought that while we’re out we might pop by Walter Petch’s, see if we can get a feel for where Maggie might have gone.’ She gazed at him so seriously and unblinkingly that he knew this visit was the sole object of the proposed walk.

‘Somebody has to do something,’ she said.

Walter Petch’s cottage was the last house in the village at the furthest point from the Hall. The nearest dwelling to Petch’s was a newly painted cottage with cut logs stacked up against the porch. Running alongside it was a sparse orchard, with small, gnarled apple trees and two beehives to one side. A few scrawny brown hens were pecking about

Frances nodded towards the well-ordered cottage.

‘That one is Mrs Kilminster’s,’ she said, ‘a very nice, sensible woman. It’s Ellen Kilminster’s cousin by marriage who survived with Julian and who’s coming home. Victor. He’s been farming in New South Wales.’ She hesitated. ‘Ellen’s sister was Kitty’s nanny.’

Walter Petch’s cottage was a gloomy contrast to his neighbour’s. The ridge of the roof sagged, the windows were grimy and opaque, and the path to the porch was so unkempt that the place felt derelict. The impression was reinforced by the long silence that greeted their knock. The porch had been built in rustic style: once the lattice of branches must have had charm but now, the wood slimy and several struts missing, it added to the sense of utter neglect. Laurence thought back to how excited and uncharacteristically voluble Maggie had been three days ago and felt sad.

‘Poor girl,’ Frances whispered. She was looking up at the chimney and the thin line of yellow smoke that rose from it.

He knocked again. There was a scuttling in the eaves above their heads and then, almost as if a larger version of whatever was in the roof was approaching from the other side of the front door, a heavy scratching noise. A bolt was drawn back, with some muttered curses, and the door opened. Walter Petch, whom Laurence had seen many times working in the gardens and on the church floor, and who must have known Frances since she was a child, stared at them suspiciously as if they were strangers. He looked as unkempt as his house and bleary-eyed with sleep.

‘We’ve come from the Hall,’ Frances said. ‘My sister—Mrs Easton—wondered if we could speak to you about Maggie?’

Walter Petch showed no sign of having heard her. He was still a big man and his bulk filled the doorway. He continued to stare at Laurence. His face had dirt ingrained in its heavy folds.

‘May we come in?’ Laurence asked, finally.

Walter stood for a few seconds more, then turned and walked back into his cottage. His broad shoulders blocked their view but as he made no attempt to shut the front door, Laurence assumed they were meant to follow.

The door opened directly into a dark room with a low ceiling, shiny and brown from years of pipe smoking. The smell was almost tangible: of tobacco, tar, beer and damp, and over it all a slight ammoniaca! tang. Clinker lay on the tiny grate and even on an summer’s afternoon an oil lamp provided nearly all the light. A deal table, with the greasy remains of a meal, and some hard chairs occupied a third of the space; two armchairs, of indeterminate colour, stood on either side of the fire. The floor was covered in oilcloth. The only decoration was a calendar picture of the King and Queen—not the current year, Laurence noticed—on the narrow mantelpiece. By the closed back door was a framed tract with the words ‘Every Good Gift Comes from Above’ surrounded by birds and blossom.

‘Mr Julian spoke to the police at Marlborough,’ Frances said. ‘They feel it is very unlikely that anything serious has happened to Maggie.’ She spoke firmly, as though trying to convince herself as much as the old man. ‘As she is fifteen they don’t feel it’s a job for them unless there’s anything indicating she’s come to harm.’

Walter grunted.

‘But we,’ she turned to Laurence as if to make it clear that they were a team, ‘we wondered if we could ask a few questions, just so that we can keep a lookout.’

‘Did she say anything at all about staying in London?’ Laurence asked.

Walter looked at him again, this time with clearer eyes. There was something else in his gaze too, almost as if he and Laurence both knew where she was and it was a private joke.

‘Little missy from the Hall had th’ whole county after ’er.’

Frances looked puzzled but only for a second before realising he meant Kitty.

‘As they would if Maggie was only five,’ she said firmly.

‘Bad blood,’ Walter muttered. ‘I did my best but it seems she were just like her ma. She run off. Left my boy.’

Frances looked at Laurence. It was extraordinarily unlikely that Maggie was involved in a love affair, he thought, and he could tell from Frances’s face that she didn’t believe it either. Whatever the police view, Maggie was much more of a child than a young woman. When she was getting ready for Wembley, with her hair brushed and wearing a pretty dress, she had looked attractive—he had never seen it before—but not fully adult.

‘Did she say anything?’ Frances was asking.

Laurence suddenly thought, what if the dressing-up and the excitement hadn’t been about Wembley but had been to do with some other plan? Was it possible that Maggie, stuck out here, had seen some opportunity in her first trip to London?

‘Never says much,’ Walter replied.

Laurence thought angrily that it was hardly surprising. Life had abandoned this young girl to live her life in this hovel with this gruff, slovenly man. But then again, he didn’t have much choice after Maggie’s mother had left and her father had been killed in France. It wasn’t every grandfather’s choice to have the responsibility of a growing girl foisted on him. He might simply have refused and sent her into service elsewhere once she reached twelve or so.

Walter seemed to soften slightly. ‘She’s never been much trouble,’ he said. ‘Daft at times but until now...’

‘Mr Petch,’ Frances said gingerly, ‘could we possibly look at Maggie’s room? Just to see if there’s anything that might help us find her?’ She paused, watching the man’s face. ‘We miss her, you know. I’m sure you do.’

Walter’s shoulders dropped and all his aggression seemed to leave him. ‘It’s up there,’ he said, indicating the far door with a lift of his chin. ‘Top on the right.’

Frances went up in front of Laurence. The walls either side were grimy where years of hands had brushed them while climbing those narrow stairs. There were only two rooms at the top. On the left, a door half ajar gave on to the same depressing mixture of neglect and spartan disregard for comfort as downstairs. The door on the right was closed. Frances lifted the latch.

To Laurence’s surprise this room was much lighter than the rest of the house. Its thin curtains were cleaner than anything else they’d seen in the small cottage and a rag rug on the floor had once been bright. A metal bed with chipped paint was neatly made up. A crocheted blanket lay diagonally across it and the wall above it had been decorated with pictures. A glazed pottery bowl and zinc jug were on a washstand. By the door a coat and a couple of dark-coloured garments hung on a peg. Two other pegs were empty.

Frances moved to a painted chest of drawers. Laurence was rooted to the spot; he felt like an intruder into Maggie’s life. Frances held up a framed photograph, a faded shot of a young woman. The girl, not much older than Maggie herself, though noticeably prettier, was poking her head through a painted backcloth of a woman in a crinoline and bonnet.

‘Her mother?’ he said quietly. Frances nodded.

The other photograph was of a stiff-looking man in uniform. Maggie had placed a paper poppy in the papier-mâché frame. The only other ornament was a Coronation mug. Frances made a face and pulled open a drawer. All it contained was a toffee tin, a pair of fabric gloves and something in folded wool. It was a matinée jacket for an infant: old and slightly felted. Frances looked puzzled.

‘Hers?’ he guessed. ‘From when she was a baby?’

Underneath was an album with cardboard covers. She handed it to him. Inside, on the first pages, the pictures were missing, sticky corners their sad memorials. On the third page was a picture of what were almost certainly Maggie’s parents at the seaside, about to go bathing; opposite was a picture taken in a studio, again of Maggie’s parents, her mother holding a baby, presumably Maggie, and a smiling older man.

As Frances and Laurence bent over it, Frances said in wonderment, ‘It’s Walter,’ then stopped and listened, self-conscious, her hand over her mouth, but they could hear nothing from the room below. The man wore a white shirt, a jacket and trousers and a flat cap. He looked trim and handsome, probably in his early forties. The younger man was dark like Walter but in this picture it was still obvious that Maggie now looked more like her mother than either of her male relatives.

Frances laid the album back in its place and opened the drawers below. The third held a cardigan, a figured blouse, a flannel petticoat, a couple of other undergarments, some lisle stockings and a long-sleeved nightgown. Frances crouched down and touched each item, then moved them minutely as if searching beneath the clothes, her expression thoughtful. He turned away, feeling uncomfortable, and looked out of the window towards the Hall whose chimneys could just be seen behind a clump of trees.

Behind him he could hear Frances get to her feet again and reopen a drawer. When he turned, she had in her hand the decidedly battered toffee tin. On the front was a picture of two puppies. She eased off the lid and held out the tin to him. He took out a service medal that had
J. Petch
inscribed on the back. There was a French coin, which perhaps Maggie’s father had brought back on leave, and an irregular piece of terracotta stone with incisions in some sort of rough pattern. At the bottom of the tin lay a small photograph that was obviously of her mother as a very young woman, with her married and maiden names on the back.

Beneath were a handful of letters. One was a Valentine card decorated in violets with
To Rosaline from her ever faithful, J.
Maggie’s mother in happier times, he thought. Two were written to ‘my dear old dad’. From the military addresses he judged they were from Joe Petch’s time as a soldier. The third began ‘My Dear Joe’. The signature was ‘Rosaline’. More fragments from Maggie’s lost childhood. He didn’t want to intrude further on the family’s privacy and he handed the tin back feeling uncomfortable. Frances replaced the lid and put it away in the drawer.

‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the wall with a rueful expression. Immediately above the bedhead was a print of a radiant Christ, feeding small birds and animals, and around him a vast array of unlikely acolytes: cuttings from magazines in which bow-lipped, doe-eyed film stars melted before the camera, or were caught in role. He recognised Lillian Gish and a blush-tinted Mary Pickford in velvet and white swansdown. However, he had no idea of the identity of the actress in eighteenth-century dress who cowered before a villainous-looking bewigged nobleman, nor of the girl in a blazer, draped over a Crossley shooting brake. Maggie had also stuck advertisements on to the brown wallpaper. Instant transformation was promised to the user for brightening lotion and cold cream.

He was still taking in this modern pantheon as Frances picked up from the bed a small stuffed rabbit with all its nap rubbed off, gently put it aside, then raised the counterpane and single pillow. Nothing.

There was a bible on a milking stool by the bed and beside it a jam jar with some twigs of dried-up apple blossom. Laurence imagined Maggie picking them from the orchard next door and the thought of her setting them carefully by her bed in this sparse room made her loss seem more acute. He picked up the bible and opened the soft black cover. There was a printed Sunday-school sticker on the flyleaf that said
Joseph Walter Petch, St Barbara’s, Easton, 1891.

‘Her father,’ Frances said as he tipped it towards her. Just above the bedhead was a tinted picture postcard of Calais. He pulled out the rusty tack with a thumbnail and turned it over. The postmark was January 1917. It was to Maggie from her father: a few brief words in big letters.

‘Im glad your learning to read,’ he’d said, ‘so soon you will be able to read to gramps because his eyes are bad. But where I am you couldnt read any books because they dont talk English. Be a good girl and when I get back to Easton you can have that puppy. Heres a hug to his favourite girl from your old dad.’

Frances sighed as she read it. He replaced it over the dark rectangle of wallpaper that marked its place. She was still looking at it, biting her lip.

‘We ought to go down,’ he said.

The silence unnerved him; was the old man just sitting downstairs, listening to them picking through his granddaughter’s things? Did he understand why they were doing it or did he think it was gratuitous curiosity?