Closed at Dusk (21 page)

But in October, Ruth was busier in her own home. Her eldest son's girl-friend had been thrown out by her parents after she had her baby, and Ruth and George took her in. Torn between The Sanctuary and the needs of the baby and its hapless young mother, Ruth was one more person who said sincerely to Jo, ‘What should I do without your help?'

With Jo's encouragement, Dorothy began to clear out some of the clutter of ages in the pantry cupboards. When she picked out a few items, like Geraldine's Derby chocolate jug, to be repaired, Jo set up a workshop in the library. She moved in an old work table and some bottles and jars and little mixing bowls.

‘Now that I've got a good sticky mess going in there,' she said to William, ‘why don't you let me work on some of the books for you as well?'

He laughed at her enthusiasm. ‘Don't you ever stop?'

Not till I've done what I came here for.

One bleak grey afternoon, when there were only a few hardy couples walking in the garden among the russet leaves that fell faster than the gardeners could rake them up, Jo picked up
A Clerical History of the Western Parishes of the Vale of the White Horse
and brushed a small cloud of dust and spider legs out of it. She painted the damaged leather with Klucel and spirit, then put a piece of paper under the front cover and washed it.

While she was waiting for it to dry she wandered about the room, admiring the painting she had done, and comparing the front and back of the doors to see whether she or Dorothy had gilded the moulded wreaths more precisely. Running a critical eye over a wood panel in the space between the inner and outer doors, Jo saw that the paint with which Dorothy had sealed a vertical dry crack had flaked away for a few inches, as
if one side of the wood had stirred fractionally and opened the crack again.

Why? Had the two panels ever not been completely joined? Was one of them a door? Jo eased a palette knife in carefully. More paint cracked away and the small panel opened a little on what seemed to be a shallow space. Not big enough for a cupboard, but – a hiding place?

Jo's imagination – or Marigold's – raced ahead to some amazing discovery, the reward for all her months of being Jo and working like a smiling slave. Something shocking, secret, scandalous. The tiny jewelled knife that killed the Reverend Hardcastle. The will – the missing will that would wreck lives. Sylvia's lost will that would prove William Taylor had no right to this great house.

By pulling very gently, she edged the panel forward enough to get her fingers inside. The tips touched crumbly wood immediately. It was just a dusty, very shallow empty space, about six inches square.

Jo drew out her fingers and pushed the wood shut carefully. It looked as it had looked before she investigated, like a crack between panels. No one would notice.

At the end of October, Frank Pargeter took his friend Roger to visit the Sanctuary gardens before they closed.

They had been out with a group to watch the water fowl on the lake at Blenheim Palace on a glorious early morning, with the sun breaking through the mist and peeling it away to reveal the splendours of the chimneys and finials and golden orbs that the great sleeping palace offered to the skies. Below, within a shallow bowl of frosted grass, the curving sweep of the lake teemed with life. They had seen tufted duck and great crested grebe and three gadwall asleep under the island dogwood, and two of the new women who were learning to use
their field guides excitedly identified a black-headed gull by a glimpse of its white forewing in flight.

Old hands like Frank and Roger preferred to watch birds alone, not in a group, but they liked to help new members, and it always gave Frank a thrill to see raw newcomers drawn in to the fascination of seeing and
naming
.

To see a bird was a delight. To name it was an unfettering kind of possession, a step closer between man and bird. Frank had observed that many visitors to The Sanctuary were captivated in this same way, by the
naming
of plants and flowers.

Moving his binoculars slowly along the farther shore, Frank caught a flash of brilliant green and blue.

‘Last of the kingfishers.' He showed Roger, who reacted silently, with a smile that trembled a bit since his stroke, his small head in the badge-encrusted woollen cap nodding with slow appreciation.

It had been such a beautiful morning of friendship and shared pleasure that when they halted their slow wandering to lean on the parapet of the bridge and get out the Thermos, Frank found himself confiding in Roger his secret summer delight.

‘Never see any of the little shy birds, do you, when you're in a group?' he began.

Roger shook his head peacefully.

‘Never see any nightingales, would you, old son?'

Roger turned his head towards him.

‘Got to be alone, like I've been.'

Roger raised his brindle furred eyebrows.

‘Now that
my
precious pair have gone back to Africa, I'll take you to their breeding area, if you'll promise not to tell anyone.'

Roger's watery blue eyes were kind and steady. The corner of his mouth trembled. He knew and understood that after the
traumas and dangers of the long migratory flights on which millions of small birds might be shot or trapped or limed by Mediterranean sportsmen, the nightingales must be protected if they came back to The Sanctuary.

‘I trust you, old friend.' Frank put an arm round Roger's bony shoulder. ‘I'll take you there.'

Faye had wanted Frank to go shopping with her in Oxford, but she had dropped one of the heavy brass hand-bells on her toes at Friday practice. So Frank drove Roger to The Sanctuary on Saturday, and paid both entrance fees, reduced for the end of the season.

‘Nice to see you again before we close,' Mr Archer said. Although the gap in the wall had been Frank's favourite way of coming and going, he had paid to come in several times, to make it look all right, and to square his conscience.

Roger still walked with a stick and a trace of a limp, but he was fit again now, and quite nippy. His shorter strides kept up with Frank's lope up the deserted grass slope above the lake. Half-way up where the copse began on the left, Frank always stopped and turned round and raised his binoculars to scan the house and demesne, so that a suspicious watcher of his purposeful ascent might think he had gone for the view. Roger stopped too, and they admired a pair of mute swans, like floating salt cellars.

Then they moved over to the shelter of the trees, and were over the hill into the rough grass, picking their way through the undergrowth until they stood in the sacred spot where Frank had first seen the quick flitter of the nest-builders.

‘Here's where I've lain and watched them. Here's where I've heard them sing.'

Roger was quite moved. Neither of them suggested searching for the remains of the nest. Even an invasion as distant as this might unnerve the nightingales if they came back next spring.

On their way to the cypress walk and the exit, Frank showed Roger some of the sights of the garden: the temple, the mausoleum, the oldest tree in Oxfordshire. Roger was particularly interested in the water-lilies which burgeoned profusely on the downstream side of the arched bridge. He had several species in his pond at home. It was getting late, but he stopped to poke about in the lake with his stick to find out at what depth the lilies were rooted.

Across the evening lawn came the first elegiac notes of the Closing Bell.
All … out
… it rang.

‘Come on, old son.' Frank turned back half-way across the bridge.

All … out
…

Roger had reversed his stick to fish for something. He was tugging at it with both hands. He shouted, and Frank went to help him. Together, they fished out a small sodden corpse, entangled in mud and weeds. A heavy carthorse shoe was tied to its neck with a piece of cord.

They laid it on the grass. Its eyes and mouth were full of black slimy mud. At first they could not see whether it was a dog or a large cat.

Frank crouched to pull away the water weeds. ‘My God,' he said. It was the little dog that everyone had been running all over the countryside looking for after the Festival, the adored pet of William Taylor's daughter.

‘Broken her poor heart, it has,' Josephine had told him later in the tea-room.

The Closing Bell had tolled into silence. Frank cut free the rusted horseshoe with his Swiss army knife and picked up the drowned dog.

Mr Archer had shut up the ticket hut and left. ‘What shall we do?' Roger was distressed. Frank could not see any gardeners about, but there were lights in the ground floor of the
house, so he carried the dog round to the front door and rang the bell. Roger stayed on the drive, poking miserably at the gravel with his stick.

William Taylor opened the door. He wore a sagging cardigan and held a pen in one hand and his glasses in the other. He looked at the dog and at Frank, dripping on the step, without comprehension for a moment.

‘In the lake,' Frank said. ‘Weight tied round its neck.'

Roger was carrying the horseshoe. He stepped forward and laid it on the bottom step. William Taylor took off his cardigan and wrapped the body of the dog in it. He looked about uncertainly for a moment and then stepped back into the hall.

Frank saw the small bundle in the cardigan dripping across the stone flags, before he shut the door and went down the steps to Roger.

Among the twenty or thirty visitors who came on Sunday to say goodbye to the Sanctuary gardens for the winter was Frank Pargeter. He found Tessa with her father and Chris watching Rob trying to paddle a canoe which was staked to the bank on a long rope.

‘I felt I had to come.' The man took a stiff tweed hat off his white hair, which rose and began to blow randomly about at once.

‘Thank you for –' Tessa made a helpless gesture towards the water. ‘For finding my dog.' He remained there looking at them, his green corduroy trousers tucked into clumping footwear like ski boots. Did he want a tip or something?

‘I wanted to come.' In his unhurried voice, the vowels were faintly Oxfordshire. ‘To pay a last visit to your beautiful place. And I –' he looked at Tessa. ‘I thought you might want to see where my friend found the little dog.'

‘We know where the water-lilies are,' Tessa said shortly.

‘And I thought – well, I was so sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I thought I ought to come back and bring you some that was good.'

His sympathetically serious face allowed itself a smile. Tessa looked at him blankly. He said to William, rather diffidently, ‘You know I've been coming here a lot, and I'm afraid I told an untruth, because you see, I had a valuable secret.'

What on
earth
? Tessa frowned. Why do we have to have this?

‘Yes?' William asked politely.

‘It wasn't trees I was studying really. It was birds.'

‘What's secret about that?'

‘The birds I found, Mr Taylor. On the other side of the hill, a good way off in the rough part of the woods. I've been watching a pair of nightingales and their brood all summer.'

‘Why keep it a secret?' Christopher asked.

‘Because if they're disturbed, if the word gets about and people come crowding round, well – they scare easily. As it is,' he looked modestly down at the ski boots, ‘I hope – I do believe that they might come back next spring.'

‘That's great. Thanks.' William was pleased, but Tessa was angry. Bring good news! How dared he think his nightingales could even begin to make up in any way for Charlotte? She got up and went down the bank to pull on the rope and bring Rob in to shore.

‘It's not time!'

‘We're going indoors.'

‘You
said
!' Feebly, Rob tried to push the paddle in the water against the pull of the rope. When the canoe nosed in to the bank, he dropped the paddle in the water and huddled down under the seat, wailing.

Frank Pargeter reached down a long arm and retrieved the paddle from the water before he put on the tweed hat and
went tactfully away, throwing crumbs out of his pocket at a cruising pair of teal.

‘Rob, come
out
.' Tessa put a foot in the light canoe, which rocked perilously. Chris pulled her back, grabbed the edge of the canoe to pull it alongside, and lifted the tense bundle of Rob out on to the grass.

‘I hate you!' Rob attacked his legs with fists and teeth.

‘Early bed,' William said automatically.

After Charlotte, or what was left of her, had been buried in the pet cemetery, the Frank Pargeter affair was being discussed in the kitchen, where Jo was making an early supper of sweet-and-sour pork and vegetable chow mein in the style that Keith had taught her. The family was increasingly free with what they talked about in front of Jo. When the Chinese meal was ready, she was going to stay and eat it with them.

‘Who
is
this man?' Tessa wanted to know. ‘I mean, who is he?'

Since the tragedy of Charlotte had been dragged up again, with her body, from the bottom of the lake, Tessa had fallen into a grumbling depression. ‘He's been hanging about here all summer apparently. He was here on Festival night, because Christopher says he came twice to the hoopla stall, and won a jar of mustard. I think he's round the bend. How can we be sure he didn't drown my Charlotte out of some sick sort of spite and envy, or something. Although God knows, we don't seem to have much to envy.'

‘How can we be sure there ever was a nightingale?' Chris asked William. ‘He conveniently didn't tell you until they'd migrated.'

‘But why would he lie?' William liked Frank, because he was fulsome about The Sanctuary.

‘He admitted to me some time ago that he was a birdwatcher,' Jo said from the stove.

‘You hear confessions in the tea-room?' Tessa said gloomily, hands round her drink on the table, not looking up.