The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (38 page)

As he moved closer she bent slightly backwards, keeping her balance with her fingers splayed out delicately on the rosewood surface. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him. Part of him was conscious of her slight, warm body in his arms. Her face was damp when he kissed her. As he did so more vigorously, he was conscious of her hair falling down. He pulled out a single pin that threatened to impale him. He kissed her again and her lips opened. Coals shifted in the grate, making him jump, but Louise seemed oblivious and kissed him back.

The taste of her excited him more than he could ever have imagined. He could feel her tongue, not resisting now but soft; it seemed an undreamed-of intimacy and he could taste the sweet Madeira of her mouth. When he moved his hand to her breast, it was as if he had suddenly developed nerve endings where none had ever existed before. He felt the rough lace and tiny pearl buttons under his hand, felt her small breasts rising and falling.

They both subsided on to the window seat. Louise’s eyes were closed as her lips placed gentle kisses on his cheeks. He undid two buttons of her blouse, fumbling ineptly. She made no attempt to stop him. Another two, then three more. Her blouse gaped, revealing the ribbon and tucks of a lawn liberty bodice. Her pearls lay across the hollow at the base of her neck. He kissed her and followed her hairline, lifting her heavy hair. She smelled almost animal. When he slipped his hand into her blouse, he could feel her nipples hard through the fine cotton.

The woman in his arms was so unlike the Louise he knew, who had allowed him some kisses but who had always drawn back if they went on too long, and he had never known any other woman. Watching his hand as if it did not belong to him, he moved it again and as the cotton was pulled taut by his fingers, he could see the outline of her flesh beneath.

An ache that was almost a pain threatened to overwhelm him. He pulled her down on to the floor, still expecting that at any second she would return to her senses. Her skirt had ridden up a little, and he gazed briefly at her slim legs in their white stockings, one knee slightly raised, then followed its curve with his hand. Louise sighed deeply. Her skirt moved upwards with his cuff, exposing naked thighs. He kissed her more hungrily, even as he wondered for the first time when her aunt and uncle might get back.

After that, it was all a blur. He was touching her in ways he had only ever dreamed that he would when they were married. The textures and sensations were simultaneously strange and utterly familiar. She was making small movements against his hand, her breath coming quickly. His arm was under her head.

He fumbled at his trousers, even more clumsy with his own buttons than he had been with hers. And then he was on top of her, pushing her thighs apart and trying to enter her. It was awkward and he heard her whimper of discomfort. Yet he was like a man possessed, forcing himself on. He had a sense of being far deeper inside her than could ever be possible, as if he was totally safe and enfolded. Almost as soon as he felt himself gripped by her, the pent-up energy in him exploded and he heard himself cry out. As spasms gripped him, he looked down. Her eyes were wide open and with a look almost of horror.

The minute he’d finished, he rolled off. She seemed about to cry again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

He didn’t know what else to say. She was doing up her blouse with trembling hands. He wanted to touch her and assure her that it would be all right, to tell her how beautiful and wonderful she was, but the moment passed. Then to his alarm he heard the front door open, distantly down the hall. Louise had heard it too. She jumped to her feet, searched for her pins and feverishly pushed the weight of her hair back into an untidy pile. By the time her aunt and uncle entered the room, they were both sitting sedately in chairs, well apart. Her aunt looked at them suspiciously but her uncle was full of his usual bonhomie. Louise made her excuses after a few short exchanges, and she and her aunt retired to bed. Laurence went through the motions of conversation with her uncle.

Over the following weeks they never mentioned the evening again. It was as if an act that should have brought them closer together, which Laurence had found exhilarating and extraordinary, albeit shameful, had left them strangers. A month or so later she told him she thought she was pregnant. A few weeks after that, they had a quiet wedding, during which both her parents and her aunt and uncle looked at him reproachfully. Louise, though happy in her pretty dress and her flowers, was disappointed at being cheated of a big celebration and embarrassed by her own thickening waistline. He felt ashamed.

Outside their proper little world, with its rules and conventions, the armies of Europe were mobilizing. By the time Louise miscarried, shortly after their honeymoon, it was obvious that a far wider world was about to reach them. As Louise wept at Maskelyne’s and Devant’s dreaming widower, she had just four years left to live, while he was about to see more death, destruction and horror than he, or anyone, could have imagined that night. It seemed appropriate that that old world, and what had seemed to them like innocence, had vanished in a magician’s illusion.

He had almost forgotten Julian’s presence. It was the sound of a thud in a distant part of the house that brought him back to the present. He looked down at his glass—he had never had a great head for alcohol. Julian too had started at the faint noise and began talking as if he’d never fallen silent. Or perhaps he had been talking all along and Laurence had forgotten to listen?

‘...and when we left the show, Digby was all fired up because he’d loved the spectacle, but he was irritated by Patrick explaining how the tricks worked. He changed the subject to Maskelyne’s tips for winning at cards; he’d read his book and thought he couldn’t lose.

‘Patrick was pretty blotto, he was only eighteen and not used to it. I was less so. We went off to some gaming club of Digby’s and the idiot tried some of Maskelyne’s tricks there. But of course they were wise to him and, anyway, a child could have seen what he was up to. Because he’d been there before and was quite a good customer, and probably because his efforts were so crass, they simply tried to escort him from the club, but Digby started shouting and flinging his arms about, knocking chairs over.’

Julian shook his head. He glanced at Laurence almost as if pleading with him to understand that Digby was more honourable than his account revealed.

‘He was as strong as an ox when he was riled. I was worried someone who knew him would tell Lydia.’

He paused. Points of firelight played on the cut glass.

‘Patrick was half amused, half distancing himself, but he was trying to keep us out of a fight. Anyway, it turned out the chauffeur knew this house, in Chelsea. Run by his sister, of all things. Digby’d been before. We were welcomed like old friends. It was a very superior brothel. We’re hardly through the door when two girls are all over Digby. Digby was always a man of the world but it was two days before his marriage to the most beautiful, sweetest girl in the world. I hated him then.

‘Digby went off with two blowsy whores.’ His voice was shaking. ‘Crashing into the French furniture. Breaking a glass. I imagine it all went on his bill.’ His voice was full of remembered anger. ‘Patrick had gone up with a very young, slender girl—she was perhaps sixteen—red hair, loose, looked younger with all her paint on. She was giggling—I could hear her all the way upstairs. Patrick gave me his look as he went up behind her—as if he was simply amused, a spectator, not like Digby. Some swarthy girl was trying to sit on my knee. She was solidly built, with thick wiry hair. I could smell her, animal like, under her perfume. She had a strong accent—Spanish or Portuguese, perhaps. She was wearing a peignoir. She picked up my hand, pressed it to her breast. Rubbed herself with my fingers. They brushed a crucifix.’ He looked almost ill, retelling it all. ‘I took my hand away, she put it back. It was like that game we had in the playroom. Perhaps she took it as a slight. She picked up my hand again and then she noticed my hands and crossed herself, dropping them as if they were diseased.’

He looked down at his scars. When he spread his fingers, the deformity was more obvious and more ugly. A bony nub showed the site of the missing finger and a thick web of skin stretched between it and his index finger. The rudimentary surgery had left stiff-looking whorls and ridges.

‘I pushed her away and refused any alternative girl the madame of the house tried to offer me. I sat and drank expensive champagne until Patrick and Digby reappeared.

‘Two days later Digby and Lydia were married at St George’s, Hanover Square. A Friday. Bad luck, the servants said. Lydia looked as beautiful as I’ve ever seen her—and then she was gone: to Paris and Florence.’

The door to the library suddenly swung open. Frances stood there, with frightened eyes. Laurence’s first instinct was that, like him, Julian thought Lydia had taken a turn for the worse.

‘The police are here,’ Frances said. ‘They want to speak to Julian.’ Inspector Thomas came in behind her, leaving the door open. An unfamiliar uniformed officer was standing in the hall. The inspector spoke before Julian had a chance to rise from his chair.

‘Mr Julian Easton,’ he said, looking Julian straight in the eye. ‘I have come to ask you to accompany me to the police station at Devizes to answer questions in connection with the death of Mrs Nancy Ennals of Stoke Newington, London.’

Am I being arrested?’

‘No, sir.’ The inspector’s face was sombre. ‘But you may wish to ask your solicitor to be present.’

‘It’s not necessary,’ Julian said.

Frances looked horrified. ‘No. Julian would never...’

But Julian just walked across to the inspector, interrupting her.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’d better go. Could you get my hat, Frances?’ Frances made no move, as if frozen. Then she made a tiny noise of distress and went out. They heard raised voices in the hall.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Patrick burst into the room, breathless and untidy. ‘For God’s sake, it’s a bit late, isn’t it? Frances says you’ve arrested Julian.’

‘Not arrested, sir. Not at this juncture. We just want a formal talk with him.’

‘But he can’t choose not to?’

‘It would probably be unwise, sir.’

‘Who on earth is this woman? Why was she here?’

‘We are hoping your brother may be able to help us with that.’

Laurence expected Julian to protest but he just stood there with a half-smile on his face. Frances, standing in the doorway with Julian’s hat, appeared stunned, but it was Patrick whose face crumpled.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Julian would never hurt a woman or anybody, come to that. You’ve made a mistake. Don’t take him away.’

Laurence thought he was about to grasp hold of his brother and pull him back.

The inspector turned to Julian. ‘By the by, I expect you will be glad to hear, sir, that we have located Margaret Petch. She has been given the wherewithal for a train ticket home although I gather she is worried that you will not want her back here.’

At what must have been one of the worst moments of his life, Julian’s whole face was filled with happiness.

‘Maggie,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’ His voice flooded with relief.

‘Where was she?’ Patrick asked.

‘No doubt she’ll explain to you, sir, and we’ve only had it from our colleagues down south. Apparently she had an argument with the grandfather who didn’t want her to go to London. So she decided to find her mother. It seems she’d tried to look for her mother every year at the Mop Fair, despite the old man forbidding it.’

He took out and opened his notepad.

‘Scudamore was the name of the fairground family your cook had it in her head the mother’d gone off with. Then Margaret saw their ride in a
London Illustrated
photograph of the Wembley fairground. The fair folk had their fun, gave her the runaround and took a bit of money off her, but of course eventually they said they’d never heard of her mother. By then she’d missed you and was scared to come back. She’d still got a little money.’

He looked pointedly at Patrick.

‘Courtesy of Mr Easton. Which got her as far as the south coast but she was caught trying to get on a boat to France without a ticket.’

‘France?
Laurence asked, astonished. ‘Going where?’

‘Bapaume,’ the inspector said. ‘Apparently her father’s buried there. Your driver said he told her when they were at the exhibition. Nobody previously had ever got round to informing her he had a grave.’

Laurence thought there was the faintest accusation in the inspector’s tone.

‘Fortunately a sergeant at Portsmouth, a former military man himself, took pity and paid her fare home. One of my men will pick her up at the station. She’s very apologetic. Very embarrassed at causing so much trouble.

‘But now,’ he looked firm but sympathetic as he took Julian’s arm just above the elbow, ‘I must ask you to come with us, sir.’

Laurence had known as soon as he saw Inspector Thomas that it must be the bag in the cistern that had provided identification for the body. He felt as if he had betrayed Julian.

‘It’s better this way,’ Julian said. ‘Look after Lydia.’

He went out, suddenly sober and calm. He had feared something, Laurence thought, and now that it had come to pass, that fear had evaporated.

Frances stood looking at Laurence and Patrick. She was trembling.

‘I gave her money to buy fripperies at the exhibition,’ Patrick said, defensively. ‘I didn’t mean her to take off.’ And then almost without pausing, he added, ‘God, what a mess. They can’t suspect Jules. I know he’s not involved with this. What can we do?’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Who is this damn woman? I’m going to ring old Vereker. Julian needs a solicitor.’

The door banged open and David stood there, looking wild. He hadn’t even bothered to knock first. His boots left a muddy trail behind him.

‘Why’ve they taken Mr Easton?’

None of them spoke for a second. Then Patrick said, ‘They’ve identified the body. They seem to suspect him of ... involvement in her death.’