Closed at Dusk (24 page)

‘With you, of course.'

‘Don't be childish. Are you still fretting for Angela Stern? Is that what's wrong?'

‘Angela and I aren't going to see each other any more.'

‘I don't mind either way. It doesn't matter.'

Clever Dottie. That attitude might have sent some men haring up to London. With William, it ensured that he would not.

William continued to be vaguely uneasy, and Dottie a little abrupt and scratchy. One evening she swore that she had smelled the death lilies again.

‘It's your imagination.' William went up to the bedroom with her. ‘You've got it on the brain.' He moved all over the room. ‘There's not a trace.'

‘Then I'm going mad.'

She slept in another room. In the morning she agreed that perhaps she had imagined it. A few days later, she made quite a bad mistake in the clinic, misdiagnosing the cause of a child's hyperactivity, and came home nervous, and upset with herself.

‘You've been working too hard.' William tried to reassure her. ‘You deserve a break.'

‘I deserve nothing. I don't even deserve my job, if I make such a hash of it.'

About the middle of November, the lowering sun would strike through the pillars of the temple to flood the cat-goddess, who had symbolized to the Egyptians solar warmth and light.

This year, it struck the empty pedestal.

‘Poor Bastet,' Dorothy said. ‘I do miss her. I used to think she caught the last warmth of the sun, and held it until the next spring. Do you think I could ask Chris to make us another goddess?'

‘Wouldn't be the same.'

Dorothy said quickly, ‘You didn't like the hare he made?' putting criticism into William's mouth. ‘You don't think he's any good.'

‘He couldn't get the same elegance.'

‘I don't see why.'

‘Dottie.' William grabbed her arm. ‘You're arguing for the sake of arguing.'

‘What? Yes, so I am. How awful.'

She smiled, and he kissed the smile. ‘Forget the cat.'

‘I can't.'

‘All right, in the New Year we'll take a trip. Get Christmas over, then we'll go to wherever you like – Florence, Siena. I'll find you another cat.'

‘Shall we? It would be good to get away.'

Good to get away. That had never been a reason for going anywhere. Usually the best part of a trip abroad was coming home.

Dorothy and Jo were painting the library frieze, so that the room could be used at Christmas. When Tessa brought Rob for the weekend she found them both up on ladders.

‘That looks like fun,' Tessa called up. ‘Can I help?'

‘Takes skill.' Her mother came down the ladder to embrace them both, while Jo, painting the plaster ferns and swags with an aching arm, fantasized what might happen to a ladder, so that Tessa would fall off and break her neck.

Tessa was going to Norwich with her boss. ‘I'll try and get down on Sunday night,' she said. ‘Otherwise, Rob will have to miss school, and I'll come as soon as I can on Monday. Have you got appointments, Mum? I'll have to get a train back to London to pick up the car.'

‘Look, Tessa.' Jo was still at the top of her ladder. ‘I'm going to London on Monday.' It was hair and eyebrow and eyelash time. ‘I could bring Rob up to your house, and save you the drive. If you trust me.'

‘Trust you? Heavens, you're a better driver than I am, and certainly better than Chris. He day-dreams. Would you really? I wouldn't want it to be a nuisance. Rob talks all the time in the car, when he's not being sick.'

‘You can talk as much as you want,' Jo called down to Rob, ‘and we'll stop at the service station and get choc ices.'

‘Freez-O-Pops.' Rob stood at the bottom of the ladder, foreshortened to a dwarf needing a haircut. ‘Can I climb up? Why not? You come down then, Jo. I want you to see the goats.'

Jo came down and pulled a sweater over her painting overalls. Dorothy was showing Rob and Tessa the tiny secret cupboard between the doors. Rob would not put his hand in there. He backed away with his shoulders hunched. Tessa and her mother were mystified at his fear, so Jo felt pretty sure that he had not told anyone about Charlotte and the dumb waiter.

He did not seem to hold that against her. He went happily out with her to the small paddock, where they put out hay for the donkey and the goats, which was one of Jo's jobs on these winter afternoons. The pale cream billy goat with flecks of emerald in his eye did not pick up his own hay. He let the donkey take an overflowing jawful, and then pulled swags of it out of the donkey's mouth.

Rob was delirious. He had not seen the goat do that, so Jo said, ‘I taught him,' and Rob shrieked with joy and clung round her waist and tried to pull her to the ground. She let him, and they rolled about in the cold wet grass, then jumped up to climb the gate and race to the house round the back paths and the walled garden, for cocoa and marshmallows.

William and Dorothy had people to dinner, so Rob stayed with Jo in the kitchen, until his grandmother took him up to bed in the room next to hers.

‘I'm sorry, Jo.' She came down. ‘He won't settle till you go up. Don't stay long. It's late.'

Jo could have stayed all night with the little boy. He was a very up-and-down child, but for some reason, he was being blissfully easy. Because his mother wasn't here? While Jo sang to him one of the funny repetitive songs from her teaching days, he lay wide-eyed, the sheet under his chin, mouth closed over the outsize teeth, soft and rosy.

Jo had always known that her baby would have been a boy, if the callous treachery of Tessa and Rex had not torn him bloodily from her too soon.

It was weeks since she had thought about her boy. Perhaps because William's anguish had revived her defeated maternal longings, she felt a powerful love for this skinny little boy in the bed who clutched her hand and said, ‘Another! Another! Sing the fried-potato song.'

He did chatter all the way to London. He told feeble jokes from school, and they sang and played games. Jo was sorry when they turned into Brackett Road and found a parking space near the top of the hill. But going through the gate of number 47 and walking up the path and ringing the bell by the yellow door was breathtaking. At last Marigold was going inside the house where Tessa lived, was going to violate it with her presence and penetrate its charming secrets.

I love your house. Can I see the kitchen? Can I see upstairs?

Go ahead. Forgive the mess (it would be casually immaculate).

On the doorstep, Rob held Jo's hand and asked, ‘Are you going to stay with us?'

‘No, darling.'

‘I want you to stay!' He looked up at her anxiously, but when the door opened, he dropped Jo's hand and rushed at Tessa and clung: ‘Mummy Mummy where you been I missed you Mummy hullo my Mummy!'

‘Thanks so much, Jo.' Crouching, Tessa smiled up over his agitated, butting head. Her hair was a fall of amber light. ‘Come in and have some coffee.'

‘No thanks.' Marigold could not go into the house. Although she had been longing to make its intimacies hers, she could hardly take in the details of the red-carpeted hall, the pictures
and green plants, Chris's soft brown hat on a peg, the steep curve of the white stair rail.

Tessa's face, and her soft enfolding body and caressing hands incited Marigold to such a blinding agony of rage and envy that she could not move forward, could only say something about an appointment and back away, shut the door, stumble down the steps and out of the gate, away from the house where Tessa still had everything.

Gasping sobs without tears took away her breath as she struggled up the hill and fell into the safety of her car. If Tessa had looked out of the window, she would have seen that she did not drive away at once, and might have come out to see why, and found her with her arms on the wheel and her head down, fighting pain.

Gradually, her breathing slowed, her heart stopped pounding, the instrument of torture that clamped her head eased its grip. She drove away through the narrow streets where the parked cars of people like Tessa cared nothing for the passing cars of outsiders like Marigold.

Waiting at a red light, she was calm again, and in charge of herself. Her brain floated in a flat clear light of controlled intelligence. She knew now what she was going to do.

Death was not the purest revenge. Tessa must suffer, as Marigold had suffered. Nothing else would do.

It was not Tessa who must be killed. It was her child.

‘What are you doing at Christmas?' Dorothy asked.

‘I don't know. I might go to my sister,' Jo said without enthusiasm. ‘And Alec's family have invited me.'

To be normal, she had to pretend she had friends or family to go to, which she didn't, looking like this. She had dropped everyone when she dropped the public Marigold, and nobody knew where she was.

Nobody cared, presumably. Marigold's family was only two aunts and a few cousins who had never been close. After Rex weeded out her teaching colleagues, who bored him, most of her friends had been people she had known with him and not wanted to see after he had murdered her life, even if they were on her side.

Presently, she invented a letter from Alec's mother, saying that they were all going to Canada after all, to spend Christmas with Frances and Don.

‘Why don't you go?'

‘Winnipeg? Too cold. And they haven't asked me. I'd rather stay here anyway.'

Dorothy was touched. ‘You must have Christmas dinner with us.'

Keith, back at Cambridge, was much better. ‘Another bloody clan gathering,' he groaned, but he was glad to be back at The
Sanctuary, and glad that the family was together at Christmas. They all were.

Make the most of it, Marigold gloated, while Jo was saying to everyone, ‘How lovely to see you!' Marigold was going to ensure that none of them would ever enjoy Christmas again.

Harriet had brought her bull terrier, roughly the same shape as she was. Jill and Rodney had brought the spaniels. The house was full of dogs, getting underfoot, jostling for best place at the fire.

‘I can still see my poor little Charlotte everywhere,' Tessa said dolefully to Jo. ‘Bossing the other dogs, barking at the ducks, dashing into the kitchen every time someone lifts the lid of the biscuit jar.'

‘You must miss her dreadfully.' Jo made the right kind of face. ‘Will you ever get another?'

‘I'd never find a dog like Charlotte. And the hurt's too great when they – if something happens.'

‘Poor Tessa. I am sorry,' Jo said sincerely, while Marigold sniggered to herself over the bowl of turkey stuffing.

In the evening there were presents for everyone, including Jo. William and Dorothy had bought her a picture for her cottage. Rob gave her a lop-sided bowl he had made with Chris. Tessa gave her a charm for her bracelet.

‘A little silver teapot. That's lovely.' Shows me where I belong.

After Christmas dinner and William's traditional toast of ‘All's well', repeated by everyone with more or less conviction, Lee joined Keith at the piano.

‘Time gone by … played a game …' they sang, then some of Keith's music, and other songs they both knew. Lee tried to make Matthew join her in a love song. His voice was terrible. He struggled, then laughed and retreated. ‘You two get on with it.'

Softly and sweetly, they sang an old Christmas love song.

‘They are wonderful together.' Jo tried that on Matthew to see if he minded. He agreed with amiable enthusiasm. To him, Keith was only a pale, skinny boy. He did not see that the boy was on fire.

They were still singing when Jo said she must go home, and went upstairs to the bathroom on the nursery floor.

Annabel was tucked up, neat, plump, still smug when asleep. The baby wallowed in an old-fashioned cot. Rob, with the blankets flung off the cabin bunk, breathed heavily through his mouth, flushed, his tousled hair damp. He often looked feverish when he was asleep.

Marigold covered him up. How was it done? The bedclothes pulled up and held down? The smothering pillow? A towel stuffed into the open mouth? It was almost too easy, with a child.

I'm sorry, Rob. To her amazement, tears welled up in Marigold's eyes and the great lashes blinked to catch them.

The drawing-room door had opened, and she could hear the piano. Feet were on the staircase. Jo left the room, opened and shut the door of the nursery bathroom, and started down the stairs.

Later that night, she came back to The Sanctuary.

Although the frieze was finished, they had not been able to use the library after all, because the radiators were tepid and the chimney had not been swept.

Keith took Lee into the library in the morning to show her Sylvia's secret cupboard. He was drawn to this grandmother who had died when he was little, the memory of her eccentric and romantically macabre.

They went in by the door from the dining-room. Lee stopped to look at the books. She was wearing slick American trousers
and a massive soft sweater whose rolled collar flopped round the base of her long slender neck. She put on big owlish glasses and stood on the library step-ladder to read titles higher up. Her feet in soft red ballet slippers were small for her height and very narrow.

Leaning sideways, she lost her balance and reached out to Keith. Her hand on his shoulder sent a charge through him powerful enough to electrocute a fifteen-stone murderer. He pulled her down and lunged at her, grabbing handfuls of her and the voluminous sweater, mashing his face against hers, because she turned her mouth away.

‘Listen.' He held her, breathing hard. ‘I know I'm too young, and I'm sick and funny-looking …'

‘Keith.' Lee looked at him with stern compassion. ‘Your Uncle Matthew and I are going to be married.'

‘I didn't know that.' He dropped his hands. He felt himself gaping.