The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (6 page)

‘Pull up a chair,’ William said. ‘I’m only working out some costs for timber.’

Julian remained standing, shifting a little from foot to foot. He was a good man, Laurence thought, and an intelligent one, but awkward. He suspected he was far happier doing practical jobs than making conversation.

As if to bear him out, Julian started to speak, then stopped, narrowing his eyes as if concentrating.

‘I’m driving to Marlborough any minute with Frances and your wife and Nicholas, for paint and Lydia’s medicine. The boy’s keen to go for a ride in the motor car.’

He thrust his hands in his pockets. The dog looked at him hopefully.

‘It’s Kitty.’ He rubbed the scar on his jaw as if it irritated him. ‘I’ve been thinking, since that well turned up in the end cottage.’

William nodded but said nothing.

‘She was only little,’ Julian said. ‘We looked everywhere. But it’s not impossible if you’re clearing stuff or lifting floors...’

William exchanged a brief look with Laurence before speaking.

‘It was a very long time ago,’ he said. ‘Not that it probably feels like that for you—’

He was interrupted by Julian. ‘The thing I can’t let go of is that she is
somewhere.
She wasn’t just magicked away. She was a real child.’ His voice was carefully controlled but the look he gave them was of pure bewilderment. ‘Either she wandered away or someone took her. Either she’s dead or she’s alive. Either she is still in Easton or she’s not.’

‘Even if she were once here, there might not be anything to find,’ Laurence said, quickly. He knew how fast bodies broke down in certain conditions, especially if they had been injured before death.

‘But if you should find anything, not Kitty necessarily—’ His hand went down to the dog. ‘Anything a bit queer. I need to be the first to know. Think what to do.’

‘There was never any clue, though?’ William said. ‘No rumours? No reason to think she never left here? Nothing said to the police?’

‘Things were different then. Local people might well have kept their mouths shut. Back then, estate business was kept on the estate. There were one or two who muttered that the effort wouldn’t have been made for a cottager’s child, one or two who thought the police were hard on Jane Rivers, the nanny, a local girl. Maybe some foolish talk that Lydia was a foreigner. And Frances too. But it was between themselves. They weren’t keen on talking to strangers.’

Laurence’s gaze went to Julian’s disfigured hands, one finger nervously tracing the damaged flesh as it must have done countless times.

William moved slightly and his chair creaked. The dog panted, her eyes watching her master. Laurence noticed for the first time that it was cold on this side of the house. Out in the yard stood the car that David had driven to fetch him from the station, obviously newly polished. A pony trap stood upended against a side wall. As far as he knew, no horses were kept now.

The dog barked sharply. They glanced up to see Frances in the doorway, holding a tray. Julian seemed embarrassed.

‘You all look as guilty as sin,’ Frances said airily. ‘I’ve obviously stumbled on a nest of plotters. But Mrs Hill insists you need tea and Lydia has sent me to fetch Julian.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Julian clicked his fingers for Scout to follow him, but his eyes were almost pleading with them.

‘We’ll take care,’ William said to him. Frances raised an eyebrow at Laurence as she went out.

When Julian and Frances were out of earshot, William spun his chair over to the battered dresser and pulled out a drawer. Leaning over the arms of his chair, he reached down with a practised arm and pulled out a silver flask, which he held up to Laurence.

‘A mind sharpener,’ he said. He tipped the liquid into Laurence’s tea and then, more generously, into his own. ‘Irish forebears,’ he said.

His face was suddenly serious.

‘Given that Lydia’s clearly not strong, would Julian tell her if Kitty’s fate did come to light?’ He picked up his cup and drank. ‘Would it help, when she’s survived so long by believing the child’s alive, to find a few pitiful bones? Possibly it would help, perhaps she’d like to bury her properly, but it depends on the circumstances. Anything that suggested she’d been trapped would be unendurable. If it were Nicholas, I think I’d go mad.’

The first sip of tea almost made Laurence gag and he swallowed hastily.

‘I thought at first as he was talking that Julian was desperate to know,’ he said, ‘though it seems a hell of a long time to still be wanting—or expecting—an answer.’ He reflected on the intensity of Julian’s request. ‘But then he didn’t actually say that. I think it’s more that he genuinely believes we might find her and was warning us. And that he’s scared of that happening.’

‘Because of the effect on Lydia?’

‘Possibly.’ Then Laurence added, ‘Do you think he wants clarification? So the estate can be properly his?’

‘Easton?’ William said. ‘I think it’s hardly entered his head. Unless he’s uncommonly disingenuous and I don’t believe for a minute that he is. In fact, I suspect he didn’t even realise it might look like that to us. He’s not stupid but until just now I wouldn’t have said he was a complicated man. He simply tries to do the right thing.’

Laurence nodded. ‘Do you think she’s dead?’

William shrugged. ‘What’s the alternative?’ Then he said slowly, ‘I saw a painting once. Well, a print. My nanny had it in her room. It used to terrify me. A gypsy family stripping the clothes off a wealthy child they’d abducted. Would someone steal a child for profit?’

‘How would they chance on Kitty Easton? A child who lived deep within a rural estate?’ Laurence said.

William’s idea was the most appealing of the options, largely because it left her alive, but it was also far the least likely.

‘And it would hardly be a spur-of-the-moment thing. How would they get her away? Or, indeed, if they killed her, dispose of the evidence?’

‘A grudge, then?’

‘A child isn’t a pet mouse. It needs care, concealment. If it was a grudge, then her chances weren’t good from the start. And she was old enough to tell someone where she lived, surely? And what her name was?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ William said. ‘If she was killed here, then it had to be somebody local. Somebody who already knew of a place where they could hide her body.’

‘But a place that other people didn’t know about...’

The sound of footsteps echoed down the stone corridor. Their eyes turned to the door. It was Eleanor.

‘We’ve probably emptied the Kennet of tiddlers. I’ve dissuaded Nicholas from having them fried for high tea.’ She regarded them with mock suspicion. ‘What are you two actually up to?’

William looked amused. ‘Up to?’

‘Laurie? My husband may be happy to blur the line between truth and fiction but I’m sure you’ll tell me?’

She perched on the end of the table, gingerly moving one of William’s plans to the side, with an ominous air of having settled.

‘God damn it,’ William said with affection. ‘You see what I have to put up with? A woman who can read my mind? Who would hang a man on a thought?’

‘Actually I wouldn’t hang anybody. It’s inhumane. It’s corrupting. It’s just vengeance...’

William raised his hands in the air in mock surrender. ‘See, here I am, a poor cripple, and a sitting duck for political lectures.’ Eleanor went over to him and kissed him on the forehead, then assumed a villainous face and a vaguely foreign accent. ‘But ven the day comes you vill do vat you know to be right, my darlink. Anyway I’m off to Marlborough.’

She gave a theatrical wave goodbye, then suddenly spun around.

‘Still, you smell of whisky. And in the middle of the day. Tut tut. Tell me if it’s all going to be downhill from now on.’

William laughed. Laurence thought how lucky they were, despite everything. Outside in the sunshine once more, Eleanor pressed her face up against the window and made a face before walking away. She was in such good spirits these days. The country life seemed to suit her and company, of course. Was it difficult at home, with just her and William and Nicholas and their restricted life? Was she lonely?

He turned back to look at the house plan again.

‘So Kitty slept here,’ he guessed, pointing to the bedroom nearest the one labelled ‘Nanny’ in the east wing. ‘Nursery, bedroom, nanny, nursemaid’s room, schoolroom. All in a row.’

‘I imagine so.’ William was next to him. ‘So from there she left the house by either the front or the back stairs.’

‘The back, I imagine,’ Laurence said. ‘Much nearer.’

‘You are probably right, except...’ William stroked his moustache. ‘If she simply woke up and wandered off, she might be more likely to try to find her mother.’

Laurence was about to agree when William said, ‘Except personally I much preferred my nanny to my mother.’ He smiled. ‘But then I was the fourth child of six—five boys and my sister, Lilias, and I think the novelty of motherhood had worn off by the time I arrived. My mother longed to be an artist and was rather perplexed by all these children around the place.’

‘Is she still—?’

‘Yes. Seventy-two. Indomitable. I think I went up in her estimation when I captured Eleanor. Military heroics rather passed her by but she was a great one for the modern woman.’

‘And your father?’

‘We lost him a few years ago,’ William said, more sombrely. ‘My eldest brother was gassed at Ypres. Died, rather slowly, in a convalescent home at Hastings not long before you met us. Bad year. My father had always suffered from bouts of melancholia. He never really got over losing his first-born and went into a decline. Set out walking one January day, fell through the ice on a nearby pond and drowned. The rest of us all made it through. Well, the youngest, Gordon, was still at Harrow, but it had never seemed to console my father.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘My mother seems to have an easier time of it without him. She has a gallery near Berkeley Square.’

Then, more briskly, he returned to the plans in front of him, waving away the smoke from his pipe.

‘Once she was downstairs, there were any number of ways Kitty could have left the house.’ He tapped the various entrances and french windows. ‘She could even have been bundled out by a window.’

‘I assume the doors were locked?’

‘Julian’s certainly a stickler for it now.’

They both looked up as David opened the back door and smiled tentatively.

‘Ah, forgot the time,’ William said. ‘We’re going to check the maze.’

David seemed relaxed as he stepped behind William and moved to manoeuvre the chair over the step. ‘The yew’s shooting up. We’ve lost only four plants,’ he said, ‘and a couple of maybes. I reckon by the time my little one can walk, there’ll be a proper hedge there. I wish my ma could have seen it.’

‘Was she from West Overton? Isn’t that where you come from?’ William asked.

‘Born, bred and buried,’ David said. ‘Never even been to Swindon—and proud of it.’ He laughed.

‘She must have missed you when you went to London.’

‘It would’ve broken her heart or had her take me for a lunatic, but she was dead before then. Perhaps that’s why I went. It took a war to make me see I’d been a lunatic to leave.’

Laurence remained behind, looking at the plans stuck to the wall. The two men were still chatting easily as David rolled the chair unevenly across the stable yard. A dog, presumably Scout, barked in the garden. Somewhere in the house there was the muffled squeak of a sash being raised.

He thought that while he was alone he would go over to the church and make a more serious assessment of it. Going up to his room, he fetched his torch, measure, compass and a small notebook, and stuffed them in his pocket. As he came downstairs he found a man standing in the hall, holding his hat in his hand and looking around as if trying to recognise where he was. A battered leather case stood by his side. In the split second before the stranger realised he wasn’t alone, a certain wariness crept over his face. Even though the man was unknown to him, his expression was one that Laurence had seen before.

He went over to the stranger with his hand out.

‘Laurence Bartram,’ he said.

The stranger smiled and his face was transformed. ‘Patrick Easton,’ he said, shaking Laurence’s hand warmly. ‘Which you may have guessed.’

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ Laurence said. ‘I think everybody was expecting you this evening. Lydia’s resting. The others are on some jaunt to Marlborough.’

Patrick looked amused. ‘I am much earlier than I said I’d be. Actually it’s rather good to make my entrance undeclared. If we could rustle up some tea I’d actually treasure a rest. It may be a lovely day here but the crossing was rough yesterday and the car I’ve borrowed was rougher still.’

‘I think Maggie’s gone home,’ Laurence said, ‘but I’ll go and sort out some tea. Why don’t you sit in the library?’ Then he added, ‘It feels rather strange to be inviting you to relax in your own home.’

‘It’s not my home,’ Patrick said. ‘It was never mine, Mr Bartram. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave my case here, then come and play kitchen maids with you in the scullery.’

Rather to Laurence’s relief, tea turned out to be a complicated process which did away with the demand for instant conversation. Vast kitchen cupboards contained fish kettles, huge jelly moulds and silver chafing dishes—a culinary armoury from times long past—but failed to reveal any china suitable for a simple tea. Between them they eventually unearthed an ancient teapot, black with tannin inside, two delicate but chipped cups and saucers and, under a beaded muslin in the larder, a large jug which held what Laurence hoped was fresh milk. As they brought the rather battered tray into the library, Laurence looked out; he could just see William and David moving out of sight at the far end of the maze. He thought David was laughing.

Patrick shivered theatrically, although he still had a thick woollen scarf wound around his neck. He moved to the fireplace, which was laid for the evening, kneeled down and took some matches out of his pocket. Laurence watched him light the paper spills.

Later, Laurence came to think of Patrick’s default expression as sardonic and often challenging, possibly defensively so, but his first impression was that there was something ascetic about him. He looked like a man who did not eat enough—his cheeks were hollow, his shoulders slightly stooped, his skin sallow. Patrick’s hands, long fingered and tanned by the sun, seemed incongruous when holding a small teacup decorated with yellow roses. As he sat, his eyes moved perpetually, apparently taking in the room. His gaze stopped at the portrait of a uniformed Digby and an odd expression, partly affection, Laurence thought, but tinged with some other, more complicated emotion, crossed his face.