The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (23 page)

‘That wouldn’t have stopped anyone murdering anyone,’ Eleanor said. ‘The quicklime must have been just an afterthought, surely?’ She turned to William but, without waiting for his response, went on briskly, ‘I don’t know why we’re talking like this.’ She fixed Laurence with an accusing stare. ‘It’s going to be Maggie, however hard it is to take that in.’

She paused and Laurence tried to fathom her troubled expression.

‘It would be easy to discount Kitty,’ she said, almost with relief, ‘because she has extra digits.’

‘Kitty?’ William looked astonished.

‘It’s an awfully long shot, but she could, just, be Kitty, couldn’t she?’ Eleanor said slowly, obviously still thinking. ‘If she had survived when we all, except Lydia, thought she had died? And somehow—who knows why—come home?’

She glanced up suddenly. Julian stood in the doorway. He had a bottle of brandy in his hand but he didn’t put it down. He looked even worse than he had earlier.

‘I’ve been over to the church. The police are taking her to Swindon,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Maggie ... They think she was ... Her head was injured. The doctor’s come to see Lydia now. She’s in a bad way. A very bad way. They’ve informed Walter. Patrick was there. And David’s completely rattled. And some police chap is coming up to speak to us after he’s had some words with David.’

He had an air of bewilderment, the man of order who found himself in chaos.

‘They know it’s Maggie, then?’ William said, his eyebrows raised, when the footsteps had faded away.

Eleanor didn’t answer. She stood up straight almost as if she were bracing herself for a fight.

‘Come on, William,’ she said. ‘I think we should join Julian.’

‘I’ll push,’ Laurence said, but she seized the wheelchair as if it were a prized possession and he a potential bandit. Laurence just followed her out into the dark hall.

‘I was going to check the yews,’ William said fretfully. ‘David was going to come down with me. I need to check them. They shouldn’t stand in water. They’re prone to root rot.’

‘I’ll go down,’ Laurence said. ‘I’ll do it now—it will only take five minutes.’ He wanted to be outside in the fresh air and away from the stifling atmosphere of the Hall.

As the wheelchair rumbled unevenly away on the old brick, William tipped his head back. ‘Thank you.’

Laurence didn’t want to go through the library or the drawing room in case he had to stop and talk. He stepped out through the garden door and instantly the smell of growing things hit him. The sky was still grey with unsettled clouds but the worn paving stones of the terrace were already drying after the most recent downpour. As he passed down the side of the house, he noticed the jasmine was wonderfully abundant. He stopped for a second and breathed in deeply but it too carried the scent of decay. He felt soiled, although he had washed his hands with coal tar soap as soon as he got in. He wanted to wallow in a bath of scalding water and scrub himself until he had removed every taint of death. He walked to the end of the terrace. All the rain that had fallen over night was already tinging the heat-scorched grass with green, and the borders were heavy with drooping and broken blooms.

David had just staked the fallen delphiniums and had moved the ramps that allowed William to reach the maze, so that the grass wasn’t damaged. He was sorry that David had taken on himself so much of the blame for Maggie’s disappearance at Wembley. It could only get worse now. Laurence had hoped that once the baby was born things would change, not just for David but for all of them. It would be the first child to be born at Easton since the war. But now, with the grim discovery of the morning, any change seemed likely to be for the worse. He hoped Susan was not a fanciful woman.

For a few seconds he thought of Louise. The last time he had seen her, she had been womanly in pregnancy, her face half hidden under a deep-crowned summer hat, her arm, in palest blue, tucked through his, in khaki, and her delicate ankles peeking out beneath the swooping hem of her dress. He remembered her pleasure when two soldiers had saluted him as they walked on to the crowded platform to the train, carrying him back to the front. Yet he had been embarrassed by her affection and her delight, even by her swelling belly. He had never seen his child; he had never seen Louise again. But that last image and that last shame would stay with him for ever.

He descended the shallow steps. The maze plants looked healthy, the water well drained around their roots. He bent down and touched them; the needle-like leaves smelled resinous. They were all healthy enough.

He passed through what would be the entrance, framed by the two graceful nymphs, and walked along the paths. Beyond the curves of the embryonic hedges, Aphrodite stood, her stone draperies touched with lichen like yellow gauze. He made himself follow William’s pattern to the centre and sat down on the bench David was building around the goddess. It calmed him. A faint wind caught the nearest trees. The sky was dark, with more rain approaching beyond the stand of elms at the field end of the garden. They would soon be able to run the generator again.

He was bracing himself to go in when he heard a voice. He looked up. It was Frances, waving. She walked across the lawn towards him as he stood up stiffly and retraced his steps. He could still easily have stepped over the lines of yew but he conscientiously followed the route of the maze. She reached him as he stood in the entrance, her hair blown around her face.

‘There’s a policeman,’ she said. ‘Inside. He needs to speak to you as you were the one who found her.’

They were walking fast now and the first fat drops of rain caught them as they reached the door.

‘The doctor’s seen Lydia. She was too weak to send him away. He’s given her some medicine but he’s worried about her, not just because of this latest collapse. He says she needs a thorough examination, probably with a specialist. He thinks she may have bleeding into her brain. Susan’s coming down to help us with her.’

She left him at the library door. He had expected to see everybody else gathered in there but he found only Julian and a police sergeant.

‘This is Sergeant Stevens,’ Julian said, ‘of the Wiltshire Constabulary.’

‘Sir.’

The man had the stocky and florid look of a music-hall comedian but his expression was serious.

‘I just need to ask you a few questions about how you came to find the deceased.’

He held a notebook in his hand, with a pencil attached by a string, and now he turned over a page as if it were a ritual. Then he looked at Julian.

‘If you don’t mind, sir...’

‘Oh yes. Of course. You’ll want to speak to Captain Bartram by himself.’

When he’d left, the room was very quiet. The rain spattered against the windows and Laurence felt chilly. He shuffled slightly to ease his back.

‘Please feel free to sit down, sir.’

He subsided into an upright chair. The sergeant seemed to be studying him.

‘May I take your full name?’

He gave him his name, address and occupation.

‘You’re not a schoolmaster at present, then, sir?’

‘No. I am taking up a new position in September.’

‘Are you Mrs Easton’s house guest, sir?’

‘Well, I suppose I am. Although I came to advise my friend—Mr Bolitho, the architect—with the restorations.’

‘So I understand.’

The man looked up from his pad, and the official note dropped from his voice.

‘Unfortunate village, Easton Deadall. Lost too many good men.’ He paused. ‘And I was newly in the force when the child went missing before the war.’ The noise of his pencil moving laboriously over the paper was clearly audible.

Abruptly, Laurence said, ‘Do you know how the woman died?’

‘Early days for that, sir.’

Laurence nodded, aware that his question had been foolish.

‘Can you tell me how you came to find the body of the deceased and may I ask you if you moved her at all?’

‘Good God, no,’ Laurence said, louder than he intended. He couldn’t imagine how anyone who didn’t have to would be prepared to touch the sad bundle of decayed flesh and hair that had lain at the heart of Easton.

‘You were sure in your own mind that she was dead?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Perhaps this policeman had not actually seen the body.

‘You saw service in France, I gather?’

‘Yes.’

His eyes met those of the police officer and the other man’s glance dropped to his page. He knew.

‘So, sir?’

He started to explain the whole circumstances of his discovery. Occasionally the officer nodded and Laurence assumed what he was saying tallied with the account he’d already had from David.

‘Who else but you knew of this entrance?’

‘Nobody. I mean, I didn’t even know myself. I found it that day. That’s why we opened the door.’

The policeman looked down and turned back some pages. ‘You were with David Eddings, who is employed on the estate as a man of all work?’

‘That’s right.’

‘The architect, he’s unable to move about?’

‘He has a wheelchair. He can move it himself for short distances if the surface is smooth, but usually someone has to push it.’

‘He was absent when you were in the church?’

Laurence nodded.

‘And Mr Patrick and Mr Julian Easton?’

‘They weren’t there then. Mr Julian Easton had been away but he arrived in the church shortly afterwards.’

If anything, Julian had taken it best, Laurence thought. He could have sent Patrick for help but instead he had sent the shocked David, removing him from the vicinity of the corpse.

Laurence couldn’t understand why he had himself been so unsettled by the sight of the pathetic remains. It was not because they were of a woman. Two or three times he had seen the corpses of women in France, one of whom was still holding her baby, also dead. Perhaps it was a good sign that he was shaken; maybe enough years had elapsed for him to have regained a human response to death.

‘You thought it was a young lady straight away?’

‘Yes. Female anyway.’

He was about to add that he had thought immediately that it was Maggie, when slowly something began to dawn on him. He could visualise Julian standing in the church doorway, and David in that oddly stiff posture out in the aisle. He himself was hunched by the descending steps, below the statue of Magdalene, his mind unable to move fast enough to let him respond to the enormity of finding the body. As he’d heard the door open and looked up, Julian’s face had been cast in relative darkness with the light behind him. As he moved towards them, and his expression could be seen, it was one of concern, which shifted to alarm in response to David’s shout, ‘We’ve found a body.’ He had not been close enough at that point to see the remains himself and yet, after years of looking for Kitty, now that they had finally stumbled across a corpse, he had simply said, ‘Who is it?’

Stevens asked a few more desultory questions: whether Laurence had seen any strangers, male or female, in the vicinity, and, inevitably, about the circumstances in which Maggie had gone missing. Laurence thought that he was himself the stranger here, but it was obviously unlikely to be a stranger who had placed the body in the vault below the church. The church was never locked and services were rarely held there, so somebody had to know not only that the vault existed but how to reach it.

‘How soon will we know?’

The policeman, putting his notebook away, shook his head. ‘It depends whether there’s any personal possessions with the deceased. Any kind of identification. That would make it easy. Otherwise if the body isn’t recognisable it’s up to the doctor.’

Laurence nodded. ‘It’s very hard for Walter Petch.’

‘Indeed, sir.’

He realised he was supposed to leave. There were other more useful observers of life at Easton.

Chapter Thirteen

In the early hours of the morning, three days later, Laurence was woken by noises on the landing: whispered voices and footfalls. He listened for a while but there seemed to be no urgency in the exchanges, although later he thought he heard a car. But when he came down to breakfast nothing was laid up in the dining room. Only Eleanor was about, sitting in the kitchen, clutching a cup of tea in both hands, huddled up to the range. When he saw her, his first instinct was to leave but she said, ‘Don’t be such an ass, Laurence. We’ve known each other too long for this show of propriety. I know you saw me the other night. I saw you. But it’s all right. It’s over.’

‘I’m not judging you,’ he said, knowing it was not the truth. ‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘Anyway, probably not as much as I judge myself.’

‘Was it serious?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice and her lower lip trembled. ‘For a few brief days. But impossible.’ Her eyes met his over the rim of her cup. ‘You know all about impossible.’

‘Yes.’

‘It only began when we went to Stonehenge.’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘And Lydia’s so ill. She got much worse in the night.’ She was on the verge of tears. ‘The doctor came back. He’s spoken to some man in London—she used to consult him apparently. She hasn’t woken up. I’m not sure they expect her to. Julian says the doctor told him her heart is weak and she’s had some kind of apoplexy. She’ll stay here, though.’

She glanced up as Patrick came in and then turned away quickly, her chair scraping the floor as she got up.

‘I’m going to help Frances,’ she said, leaving her cup on the table.

Patrick looked boyish, his hair ruffled, but there were dark circles under his eyes.

‘Yet this is hell, nor am I out of it,’ he said. ‘Poor Lydia.’ His sigh was almost one of exasperation. ‘Nobody can say her name without “poor” before it any more.’

Laurence looked at Patrick, thinking that there was nothing on earth he wanted to say to him now, but the sound of a car distracted him from a sharp retort.

Patrick was gazing out of the window. ‘Good Lord,’ he said, ‘it’s an actual Black Maria. I hope they haven’t come to arrest us.’

They watched Sergeant Stevens get out, followed by another, younger man who was not in uniform. Nobody moved until Frances appeared.