Farthing (10 page)

“A text?” Royston looked startled.

“An embroidered biblical text, on the wall?”

“Oh yes,” Royston said, taking the lid off the teapot and stirring it. “In the most horrible blue and red wool. It says ‘Thou, O Lord, seeest me,” except that there are three and no apostrophe in ’see-est,“

es so it looks very peculiar, as if it’s pronounced like a cyst. My sister-in-law had a cyst, once.”

He poured the tea and added milk.

Carmichael laughed.

“The Times says Scotland Yard is making progress and expects to make an arrest soon.”

“On what?” Royston looked startled.

“This case,” Carmichael said.

“How did they get hold of that?”

“On a Sunday, too, very enterprising of them. I strongly suspect that somebody told them. It might have been Betty at the gate, though I don’t actually suspect her of having the intelligence.

It might have been someone at the house, possibly Lady Eversley herself. She likes publicity.”

They both knew it wouldn’t have been the Yard.

“Well, we couldn’t have kept the lid on it forever,” Royston said, philosophically. He put a piece of bacon into his mouth and began to chew.

Carmichael checked that the landlady was out of earshot. “I think we want to get someone in London to search the Kahns’ flat. I’m not really expecting to find very much, but it would be interesting to see what

we did find. I think we’re justified, at this point.”

“New evidence in the night?” Royston asked.

“No, sergeant, I just wanted to sleep on it. You telephone that through as soon as we get in.”

Carmichael ate his last bite of toast and sipped his tea. In his own little London flat, his man, Jack, would undoubtedly be taking the opportunity to sleep in. Jack had once been Carmichael’s batman, and anyone who has ever served in the army took advantage of any opportunity life offered for a late morning. If

Carmichael had been home, Jack would have got up without complaint, at dawn if need be, made him breakfast and served him a perfect cup of Yunnan tea in his Japanese teapot and tea bowl. As it was, Jack got to lie in and Carmichael got to drink Ceylon tea that only wasn’t stewed because he had picked it up quickly enough. Ah well, he had chosen his profession and nobody said that life was supposed to be fair.

“Ready, sergeant?” he asked.

Royston gulped down the last of his tea and gave him a resentful glance. “Just coming, sir,” he said.

The drive out to Farthing was uneventful. It wasn’t such a perfect day as the day before; a few
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clouds dotted the expanse of blue sky. There was also more traffic on the road—a tractor, several farm carts, and the occasional motor car. Motot cars became more common as they approached Farthing itself, until when they turned up the lane leading to the village it was lined with cars.

Press, Carmichael surmised. It must be a slow day. Either that or people cared more about Thirkie than he would have imagined. The bobby on the gate frowned at him as they pulled up.

“Nobody whatsoever is permitted onto the property,” he said, with the air of one who has said it too many times this morning already.

The clock struck nine, and Carmichael waited for it to die away before saying, “Scotland Yard,”

and showing his card. The bobby examined it carefully, handed it back, and opened the gates.

The press, seeing the gates opening, gathered round, calling questions, which Carmichael ignored, and flashing pictures.

“A press release will be issued later this morning,” he told the bobby. “You can tell them that.”

It was a waste of time, but unavoidable in the circumstances. He’d make Yately write it, though he’d have to give it himself.

“Thank you, sir,” the bobby said.

“Is Inspector Yately here yet?” Carmichael asked.

“Not yet, sir, but I’m expecting him very soon.”

This one was more alert than poor Izzard, at least. “Send him up as soon as he gets here,”

Carmichael said. “Keep up the good work, constable. I’m sorry it has to be quite so tedious. I’ll see if we can get them to send refreshments down to you.”

“That would be very welcome, sir,” the bobby said, and saluted smartly as they drove through.

Several cameras popped on the salute.

“Obviously a better class of bobby working in Winchester on Mondays,” Carmichael said as they swept up the drive.

“Poor bastard, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock,” Royston said, parking neatly.

The butler opened the door for them. “Good morning, Hatchard. Has there been any post for me?”

Carmichael asked breezily.

“I believe your mail has been delivered to your office, sir,” the butler said, with the air of someone who has gone out of his way to pay attention to the comfort and convenience of underlings.

“Thank you,” Carmichael snarled.

When they were in the little office with the door shut, he turned to Royston. “When Yately gets here, have him interview Hatchard first.”

“You don’t really think he did it? I talked to him yesterday, and it was all routine.”

“Not for a second, but it’s possible he could have, so Yately can go over his evidence again. He could do with being taken down a peg or two.”

Royston laughed. Carmichael picked up his mail, a substantial envelope postmarked London.

The Yard had come through, again.

“You call to organize searching Kahn’s flat, and I’ll go through this,” Carmichael said, sitting down in the desk chair once again.

“You look like a kid with a Christmas stocking,” Royston said, drawing the phone towards himself.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything interesting in that lot. What are you expecting?”

“Information,” Carmichael said, smiling. “I don’t know what yet, but at present this case is very lacking in hard facts. After you’ve made the call, interview the rest of the servants, the ones you didn’t already do.

We might as well be thorough, and even if they didn’t do anything, they might have seen
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something.”

“Yes, sir,” Royston said, but Carmichael was already deep into his envelope.

9

David and I lay very close together that night with our arms around each other, but we didn’t make love.

We didn’t feel like it, neither of us—that was one of the things where we always felt the same. I was frightened, and I think he was too, but we didn’t talk about it, we just lay there and held each other deep into the night. It wasn’t a thing for talking about in darkness.

I didn’t get up so early the next day, Monday. The bloody birds did wake me, singing their little hearts out at dawn, but I put the pillow over my head and went back to sleep. I half woke again when David got out of bed. When I woke up properly he was up, he’d washed and shaved already, and he was getting dressed. Mummy says it’s frightfully bourgeois to get dressed in the room with your wife. She says she supposes coal miners and people like that have to do it because their houses are so small. I love to watch David dressing and undressing; his body is so beautiful, I love it in all the states. That morning I lay there and watched him covering himself up with ordinary clothes. He saw that I was awake and sat down on the side of the bed to kiss me.

“Don’t get up unless you want to,” he said. “It’s only eight. I’m getting up because I’m fairly sure the police will want to talk to me again.”

They’d talked to both of us the evening before, after dinner, first David, for ages, and then me, quite briefly. They asked me where I’d been between one and nine, and they asked me who I’d seen. I told them I’d been in bed with David, and yes, we shared a bed, and yes, I’d have known if he left the bed because I slept on the outside and it wasn’t a very big bed. It was what they call a three-quarter bed,

four feet wide, only big enough for two people if they love each other very much. When I said that, Inspector Carmichael got a look on his face the way people do when newlyweds say soppy things, but the other Inspector, Yately, the one from Winchester, looked quite affronted. I couldn’t tell if he was strait-laced or hated Jews. I told them about getting up for my bath and seeing Mummy, but they didn’t seem very interested. I didn’t tell them how unusual it was that she was up at that hour, but I did tell them her bedroom was on the floor below. Then I told them about going to church and who came down when, which they wrote down, with times.

“Is there anything they didn’t ask you about?” I asked, sitting up and reaching for my hairbrush.

“I don’t suppose so,” David said, stroking the underneath of my arm almost absently, but in a way that made shivers go through me. “After all, there’s nothing to ask, really. In the time they’re interested in I

was asleep, and then eating breakfast with you and Tibs. Most of their questions were about another thing. I think they think I’m the most likely suspect. The star and so forth.”

“It’s ridiculous,” I said, vehemently. “But darling, are you in serious trouble, do you think?”

He smiled at me, and I could see he meant to reassure me, but I put my hand up to still his hand and let him know that I wanted a real answer. Our bodies were very good at talking to each other, better than our minds sometimes. “I might be,” he said after a moment. “I haven’t done anything wrong, but it would be very hard to prove that. It looks as if someone meant to make it look to someone stupid as if I’d done it.”

“Do you think Mummy knew, and invited us down so you’d be a suspect?” I asked, almost whispering.

I’d thought of this in the middle of the night before.

“That would mean she knew Sir James was going to be murdered,” David said, very reasonably.

“I

know you attribute supernatural powers to your mother sometimes, but seriously, how could
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she have?

Unless she did it herself—and I have difficulty imagining her stabbing a friend.”

“That’s because you haven’t known Mummy very long. Besides, Sir James was an ally, not a friend. But you’re right—her usual style is stabbing them in the back.”

“English police are wonderful,” David quoted, but meaning it too. “They’ll probably find the real culprit soon enough and we’ll laugh to think we were worried. I just hope they do it quickly before there’s too much unpleasantness.”

“Yes, me too,” I said, fervently. I kissed him then, and dropped my hairbrush.

He picked it up and before he handed it back to me ran his fingers over the back. “L, R, E,” he said, reading the monogram. The “R” is my ghastly middle name, Rowena, which Daddy chose, and which he got from

Ivanhoe.

“We ought to get you a new one.”

“That’s the only thing I’ve kept with my old initials,” I said. My new initials, LRK, make me think I ought to put the “u” of Lucy in, and make it LURK and have done with it. “Hugh gave it to me.”

“In that case you ought to keep it,” he said, understanding at once.

“That’s why I have kept it,” I said, taking it from him and brushing my hair again.

“Do you think Hugh would have stood for it?” he asked. “I mean you and me? If he’d lived?”

“You were his best friend,” I said, surprised. I’d always known Hugh would have been on my side through all the family battles, not to mention that it wouldn’t have mattered so much if he’d been alive to

inherit everything.

“Yes, but… It’s a cliche, isn’t it. Letting one marry your sister. He never introduced me to the family.”

“He talked about you in his letters to me.” My hair was all untangled now, and brushed, but hanging loose around my face like a savage or the Lady of Shallott. I slid out of bed and reached for my pins on the dressing table. “That’s how I knew who you were when I met you. He told me you saved his life.”

“Not any more than he saved mine,” David said. “Hundreds and hundreds of times, and then the last time

I couldn’t do anything for him but watch him come down, in a field near Salisbury. It was a different life.

We all felt sure we’d die, but at the same time, curiously immortal. We were like brothers—differences like race and religion and even whether you hated someone didn’t matter.

There was one man there who

I fought in training, said Jews shouldn’t fly aeroplanes, said even that we’d all support Hitler if it wasn’t for the fact that he was persecuting us. We went outside and pounded each other for forty minutes until neither of us could stand up any longer. You can tell by this that we were both Englishmen, incidentally.

Continentals would have fought dirty and finished the thing in five minutes. But in the Battle of Britain, when the Heinkels were thick on his tail, I dived and strafed them to draw them off, knowing he’d do the same for me— and he did, on other occasions. We saved each other’s lives so many times that we lost count, and we still didn’t like each other. But the hate had gone. The hate was all for the enemy then, and in a way the hate had been replaced by a kind of love, but a strange kind, love without liking. The kind you get in families sometimes.”

I didn’t say anything, even when he fell silent, because David almost never talked about the war and I

wanted to hear and I was afraid that if I asked he’d clam up. I got my hair under control and
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started dressing.

“All I’m saying is that the way Hugh and I felt about each other in 1940 doesn’t mean that he’d have wanted you to marry me,” he said.

“He did,” I said, “Almost, anyway. He said that he wished, when I was old enough to marry, that I might find someone as reliable, as honorable, and as kind. I know it almost by heart, I’ve read it so many times.

It’s the last letter he sent me, before he died.”

David had tears in his eyes. “Will you show it to me?” he asked.

“It’s in London,” I said, but that wasn’t any answer. I sat down on the bed and patted the spot beside me so that he’d sit too. The trouble was that what I had to say was something we’d understood without talking, and it was something that people by and large didn’t talk about, though Hugh and I had. The rest of it was that Hugh and I had developed our own private language to talk about it, because the way other people did talk about it always seemed so horrid. Hugh was six and a half years older than I was, and for some brothers and sisters that’s a huge gap and they’re strangers. But we were always very close. The first thing I can remember is toddling into Hugh’s hands, when I must have been about two and him about eight. We’d always talked about everything, from when I was too young to understand how much other people disapproved or didn’t understand. I wasn’t entirely sure whether David was going to approve of my knowing, which was why we hadn’t talked about it before—well, and the subject hadn’t come up before, not like this, not as emotionally. I put my arms around him.