An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (27 page)

“Poor Hugo.”

“Never poor Hugo. I’m not unhappy. The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven’t a chance of getting.”

Cordelia thought that he was young, well-off, clever, even if not clever enough, handsome; there wasn’t much that he would have to forgo on that or any other criteria.

She heard him speaking: “Why not stay in Cambridge for a week or so and let me show you the city? Sophie would let you have her spare room.”

“No thank you, Hugo. I have to get back to town.”

There was nothing in town for her, but with Hugo there would be nothing in Cambridge for her either. There was only one reason for staying in this city. She would remain at the cottage until Sunday and her meeting with Miss Leaming. After that, as far as she was concerned, the case of Mark Callender would be finished for good.

Sunday afternoon Evensong was over and the congregation, who had listened in respectful silence to the singing of responses, psalms and anthem by one of the finest choirs in the world, rose and joined with joyous abandon in the final hymn. Cordelia rose and sang with them. She had seated herself at the end of the row close to the richly carved screen. From here she could see into the chancel. The robes of the choristers gleamed scarlet and white; the candles flickered in
patterned rows and high circles of golden light; two tall and slender candles stood each side of the softly illuminated Reubens above the high altar, seen dimly as a distant smudge of crimson, blue and gold. The blessing was pronounced, the final amen impeccably sung and the choir began to file decorously out of the chancel. The south door was opened and sunlight flooded into the chapel. The members of the college who had attended divine service strolled out after the Provost and Fellows in casual disarray, their regulation surplices dingy and limp over a cheerful incongruity of corduroy and tweed. The great organ snuffled and groaned like an animal gathering breath, before giving forth its magnificent voice in a Bach fugue. Cordelia sat quietly in her chair, listening and waiting. Now the congregation was moving down the main aisle—small groups in bright summer cottons whispering discreetly, serious young men in sober Sunday black, tourists clutching their illustrated guides and half-embarrassed by their obtrusive cameras, a group of nuns with calm and cheerful faces.

Miss Leaming was one of the last, a tall figure in a grey linen dress and white gloves, her head bare, a white cardigan slung carelessly around her shoulders against the chill of the chapel. She was obviously alone and unwatched and her careful pretence of surprise at recognizing Cordelia was probably an unnecessary precaution. They passed out of the chapel together.

The gravel path outside the doorway was thronged with people. A little party of Japanese, festooned with cameras and accessories, added their high staccato jabber to the muted Sunday afternoon chat. From here the silver stream of the Cam was invisible but the truncated bodies of punters glided against the far bank like puppets in a show, raising their arms
above the pole and turning to thrust it backwards as if participating in some ritual dance. The great lawn lay unshadowed in the sun, a quintessence of greenness staining the scented air. A frail and elderly Don in gown and mortar board was limping across the grass; the sleeves of his gown caught a stray breeze and billowed out so that he looked like a winged and monstrous crow struggling to rise.

Miss Leaming said, as if Cordelia had asked for an explanation: “He’s a Fellow. The sacred turf is, therefore, uncontaminated by his feet.”

They walked in silence by Gibbs Building. Cordelia wondered when Miss Leaming would speak. When she did, her first question was unexpected.

“Do you think you’ll make a success of it?” Sensing Cordelia’s surprise, she added impatiently: “The Detective Agency. Do you think you’ll be able to cope?”

“I shall have to try. It’s the only job I know.”

She had no intention of justifying to Miss Leaming her affection and loyalty to Bernie; she would have had some difficulty in explaining it to herself.

“Your overheads are too high.”

It was a pronouncement made with all the authority of a verdict.

“Do you mean the office and the Mini?” asked Cordelia.

“Yes. In your job I don’t see how one person in the field can bring in sufficient income to cover expenses. You can’t be sitting in the office taking orders and typing letters and be out solving cases at the same time. On the other hand, I don’t suppose you can afford help.”

“Not yet. I’ve been thinking that I might rent a telephone-answering service. That will take care of the orders although, of course, clients much prefer to come to the office and
discuss their case. If I can only make enough in expenses just to live, then any fees can cover the overheads.”

“If there are any fees.”

There seemed nothing to say to this and they walked on in silence for a few seconds. Then Miss Leaming said: “There’ll be the expenses from this case anyway. That at least should help towards your fine for illegal possession of the gun. I’ve put the matter in the hands of my solicitors. You should be getting a cheque fairly soon.”

“I don’t want to take any money for this case.”

“I can understand that. As you pointed out to Ronald, it falls under your fair-play clause. Strictly speaking you aren’t entitled to any. All the same, I think it would look less suspicious if you took your expenses. Would thirty pounds strike you as reasonable?”

“Perfectly, thank you.”

They had reached the corner of the lawn and had turned to walk towards King’s Bridge. Miss Leaming said: “I shall have to be grateful to you for the rest of my life. That for me is an unaccustomed humility and I’m not sure that I like it.”

“Then don’t feel it. I was thinking of Mark, not of you.”

“I thought you might have acted in the service of justice or some such abstraction.”

“I wasn’t thinking about any abstraction. I was thinking about a person.”

They had reached the bridge now and leaned over it side by side to look down into the bright water. The paths leading up to the bridge were, for a few minutes, empty of people. Miss Leaming said: “Pregnancy isn’t difficult to fake, you know. It only needs a loose corset and judicious stuffing. It’s humiliating for the woman, of course, almost indecent if she happens to be barren. But it isn’t difficult, particularly if she isn’t closely
watched. Evelyn wasn’t. She had always been a shy, self-contained woman. People expected her to be excessively modest about her pregnancy. Garforth House wasn’t filled with friends and relations swapping horror stories about the antenatal clinic and patting her stomach. We had to get rid of that tedious fool Nanny Pilbeam, of course. Ronald regarded her departure as one of the subsidiary benefits of the pseudo pregnancy. He was tired of being spoken to as if he were still Ronnie Callender, the bright grammar school boy from Harrogate.”

Cordelia said: “Mrs. Goddard told me that Mark had a great look of his mother.”

“She would. She was sentimental as well as stupid.”

Cordelia did not speak. After a few moments’ silence Miss Leaming went on: “I discovered that I was carrying Ronald’s child at about the same time as a London specialist confirmed what the three of us already guessed, that Evelyn was most unlikely to conceive. I wanted to have the baby; Ronald desperately wanted a son; Evelyn’s father was obsessional about his need for a grandson and was willing to part with half a million to prove it. It was all so easy. I resigned from my teaching job and went off to the safe anonymity of London and Evelyn told her father she was pregnant at last. Neither Ronald nor I had any conscience about defrauding George Bottley. He was an arrogant, brutal, self-satisfied fool who couldn’t imagine how the world would continue without his issue to supervise it. He even subsidized his own deceit. The cheques for Evelyn began to arrive, each with a note imploring her to look after her health, to consult the best London doctors, to rest, to take a holiday in the sun. She had always loved Italy, and Italy became part of the plan. The three of us would meet in London every two months and fly together to Pisa. Ronald would rent a small villa outside Florence and, once there, I
became Mrs. Callender and Evelyn became me. We had only daily servants and there was no need for them to look at our passports. They got used to our visits and so did the local doctor who was called in to supervise my health. The locals thought it flattering that the English lady should be so fond of Italy that she came back month after month, so close to her confinement.”

Cordelia asked: “But how could she do it, how could she bear to be there with you in the house, watching you with her husband, knowing that you were going to have his child?”

“She did it because she loved Ronald and couldn’t bear to lose him. She hadn’t been much success as a woman. If she lost her husband, what else was there for her? She couldn’t have gone back to her father. Besides, we had a bribe for her. She was to have the child. If she refused, then Ronald would leave her and seek a divorce to marry me.”

“I would rather have left him and gone off to scrub doorsteps.”

“Not everyone has a talent for scrubbing doorsteps and not everyone has your capacity for moral indignation. Evelyn was religious. She was, therefore, practised in self-deception. She convinced herself that what we were doing was best for the child.”

“And her father? Didn’t he ever suspect?”

“He despised her for her piety. He always had. Psychologically he could hardly indulge that dislike and at the same time think her capable of deceit. Besides, he desperately needed that grandchild. It wouldn’t have entered his mind that the child might not be hers. And he had a doctor’s report. After our third visit to Italy we told Dr. Sartori that Mrs. Callender’s father was concerned about her care. At our request he wrote a reassuring medical report on the progress of the pregnancy.
We went to Florence together a fortnight before the baby was due and stayed there until Mark arrived. Luckily he was a day or two before time. We’d had the foresight to put back the expected date of delivery so that it genuinely looked as if Evelyn had been caught unexpectedly by a premature birth. Dr. Sartori did what was necessary with perfect competence and the three of us came home with the baby and a birth certificate in the right name.”

Cordelia said: “And nine months later Mrs. Callender was dead.”

“He didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking. He wasn’t really the monster that you imagine; at least, not then. But in a sense we did both destroy her. She should have had a specialist, certainly a better doctor than that incompetent fool Gladwin. But the three of us were desperately afraid that an efficient doctor would know that she hadn’t borne a child. She was as worried as we were. She insisted that no other doctor be consulted. She had grown to love the baby, you see. So she died and was cremated and we thought we were safe forever.”

“She left Mark a note before she died, nothing but a scribbled hieroglyphic in her prayer book. She left him her blood group.”

“We knew that the blood groups were a danger. Ronald took blood from the three of us and made the necessary tests. But after she was dead even that worry ended.”

There was a long silence. Cordelia could see a little group of tourists moving down the path towards the bridge. Miss Leaming said: “The irony of it is that Ronald never really loved him. Mark’s grandfather adored him; there was no difficulty there. He left half his fortune to Evelyn and it came automatically to her husband. Mark was to get the other half on his twenty-fifth birthday. But Ronald never cared for his son. He
found that he couldn’t love him, and I wasn’t allowed to. I watched him grow up and go to school. But I wasn’t allowed to love him. I used to knit him endless jerseys. It was almost an obsession. The patterns got more intricate and the wool thicker as he grew older. Poor Mark, he must have thought that I was mad, this strange discontented woman whom his father couldn’t do without but wouldn’t marry.”

“There are one or two of the jerseys at the cottage. What would you like me to do with his things?”

“Take them away and give them to anyone who needs them. Unless you think I ought to unpick the wool and knit it up into something new? Would that be a suitable gesture, do you think, symbolic of wasted effort, pathos, futility?”

“I’ll find a use for them. And his books?”

“Get rid of them too. I can’t go again to the cottage. Get rid of everything if you will.”

The little group of tourists was very close now but they seemed engrossed in their own chatter. Miss Leaming took an envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Cordelia.

“I’ve written out a brief confession. There’s nothing in it about Mark, nothing about how he died or what you discovered. It’s just a brief statement that I shot Ronald Callender immediately after you had left Garforth House and coerced you into supporting my story. You’d better put it somewhere safe. One day you may need it.”

Cordelia saw that the envelope was addressed to herself. She didn’t open it. She said: “It’s too late now. If you regret what we did, you should have spoken earlier. The case is closed now.”

“I’ve no regrets. I’m glad that we acted as we did. But the case may not be over yet.”

“But it is over! The inquest has given its verdict.”

“Ronald had a number of very powerful friends. They have influence and, periodically, they like to exercise it if only to prove that they still have it.”

“But they can’t get this case reopened! It practically takes an Act of Parliament to change a coroner’s verdict.”

“I don’t say that they’ll try to do that. But they may ask questions. They may have what they describe as a quiet word in the right ear. And the right ears are usually available. That’s how they work. That’s the sort of people they are.”

Cordelia said suddenly: “Have you a light?”

Without question or protest Miss Leaming opened her handbag and handed over an elegant silver tube. Cordelia didn’t smoke and was unused to lighters. It took three clicks before the wick burst into flame. Then she leaned over the parapet of the bridge and set fire to the corner of the envelope.