Farthing (3 page)

Carmichael’s heart sank at the thought of the work involved. “A party?” he repeated.

“Well, yes,” Betty said. “A garden party in the afternoon, and then dinner and a dance in the evening, some weekend guests and some just coming in for the festivities. That’s the usual way when Lady

Margaret’s entertaining.”

“How many people?” Carmichael asked.

Betty shook her head. “I couldn’t say. Maybe not so many as sometimes.”

“Did you hear cars arriving after you went to bed?” Royston asked. “You might have seen lights on your bedroom ceiling.”

“Oh yes, ever so many,” Betty agreed promptly.

Carmichael was wiser in the ways of the country than Royston. “What time did you go to bed?”

he asked.

“A quarter after eight,” Betty said. “There’s one good thing to be said for the big clock—it certainly keeps you straight about time.”

Carmichael couldn’t help but agree. He and Royston exchanged a glance, and he shook his head a fraction. He couldn’t see much purpose in interrogating Betty any longer. “Well, we’ll let you go back to your dinner,” he said.

She went, with a few looks back at them as Carmichael opened the gate. “Walk or drive up, sir?”

Royston asked.

“Before she mentioned the circus, I was thinking walk, to see if there might be tracks. Now, I suppose we might as well drive.”

“There still might be something to see,” Royston said.

“Got a hunch?” Carmichael asked. Royston was famous, or notorious, for his hunches.

Sometimes they were useful. Often enough they were a waste of time.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t, sir,” Royston said awkwardly, locking the car and pocketing the keys.

“You can say what you like about hunches, that they’re good or bad, that you should follow them or shouldn’t, but the one thing you can’t say is that someone shouldn’t have them.”

Carmichael swung the iron gate open with an ear-splitting creak that set the crows rising out of an elm tree in the parkland beyond.

“Do you have them, sir?” Royston asked.

“Occasionally, sergeant,” Carmichael admitted. “My rule with a hunch is that if it calls for more work, like right now, follow it. If it calls for less or something like skimping, then ignore it. If it’s a case where there are sixteen leads and none more likely than any other and you might as well take them in alphabetical order, then a hunch might well be the back of your mind drawing your attention to something the front of your mind missed.”

The gravel path swept up between two sloping tree-studded fields. There was no sign of the house yet.

The gravel revealed that Betty was right—there had been many cars driving over it, and recently.

It was possible to pick out the tracks of this morning’s Winchester police car as fresher; otherwise they were so overlain and mingled as to be almost indistinguishable. There were occasional indications of footprints, in both directions, including one very large pair heading both up and down. “The Winchester bobby?”

Carmichael hazarded as Royston measured the print.

“Not unless he buys his boots in Savile Row,” Royston said, straightening. “Fourteen inches, and a very aristocratic pattern. Probably Lord Eversley himself. I don’t see many of the guests strolling all this way down.”

“I’ve seen photographs, and I’m fairly sure Eversley’s not a big man,” Carmichael said. “The murdered man was though, Thirkie, great giant of a fellow.”

“Maybe they’re his prints,” Royston said. “Not much help to us then, because whoever made them was definitely alive at the time.”

“Awkward sort of business,” Carmichael said as they continued on up the drive. “Aristocrats, politicians,

that kind of thing.”

“That’s why the locals had the sense to call us in,” Royston said. “Do you think it was a whatsit, a political assassination then, terrorists like Mrs. I’m-not-the-gatekeeper down there said?”

Carmichael looked up at the house, which was just coming into view. If it had ever been a castle, it was no longer. It was a pleasant seventeenth-century manor house of warm red brick roofed in gray slate. It had an open welcoming look to it, perhaps because the rows of mullioned windows glinting in the sunlight gave it the look of a smile. “No,” he said, answering Royston’s question.

“Murders aren’t political, or anarchist, not one time in a thousand. Murders are sordid affairs done between people who know each other, nine times out of ten for personal gain, and the tenth time because someone lost their temper at the wrong moment, the crime passionel as the French call it. I doubt we’ll find that this one will be any different from all the others, except for the elevated surroundings.”

Royston was looking at the house as well, or at the row of half a dozen cars drawn up outside.

“Is that a hunch, sir?” he asked.

“No, sergeant, that’s not a hunch, it’s merely the voice of experience,” Carmichael said.

3

I’ve read through what I wrote and it’s hopeless, isn’t it? All over the place, just like me. Bursting out all over, like June, as Abby used to say, although physically I’m nothing like that at all, very buttoned down, and, well, deb-looking. But my brain bursts out. Maybe I should go back to the beginning and tell how I

met David and what Daddy said all in chronological order and the proper place, because what Daddy said is part of it, and maybe I should have written everything he said, about how our
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children wouldn’t be able to go to Eton and would take Jewish places at Marlborough and Winchester that real Jewish children could otherwise have used. It’s typical of Daddy that he should have appealed to my non-existent children, whereas Mummy kept harping on about how we’d never be able to travel on the

Continent, not that it didn’t cause me a pang to think of never again seeing Paris, or the Riviera.

Anyway, I think what I’m going to do is just muddle on forward and write it all down as it comes and not look back, and then afterwards cut out huge swathes of it that turn out to be heading nowhere, or move them around if that seems to be the best plan. Because if I started in now about how I met David I don’t think I’d ever get to the bits about the murder. And if I try to make myself very neat and disciplined the same thing will happen as used to happen with my diaries, which I began with lofty intentions and which never had a word written in them after January 2nd.

So, to return to that Sunday morning. I woke up in my girlhood bed with David crushed in beside me.

The birds were making a frightful racket outside; one forgets about that in London. It was practically the crack of dawn, and the crack of dawn is terribly early in May, but I was wide awake and not likely to fall back asleep. I listened for a little while and I caught the chimes of the clock over the birds. It was a quarter to something, probably six, I guessed.

It was early, but I’d been to enough weekend houseparties at Farthing to know that there wouldn’t be any hot water unless I was quick, so I jumped up and went down the hall to nab a bathroom and wash my hair. I always wash my hair on a Sunday morning—it isn’t penance or anything, not any more than having hair like mine is a penance anyway, it’s just that I need to do it every week and doing it on

Sundays means that I don’t forget. I came out of the bathroom swathed in towels—we have wonderful soft emerald-green towels that came as a wedding present from dear practical Aunt Millicent.

I was walking back to our room, to wake David and see if he wanted a bath before the hordes descended on the water, or possibly if he might like to make love (now that I’d got myself so beautifully

clean since our delightful lovemaking of the night before), when who should I see but Mummy. I stopped dead with astonishment and my mouth probably fell open. Now Mummy had absolutely no reason to be on our floor, because it’s only nurseries and guest bedrooms, and apart from that it was only a little after the crack of dawn. If it had been a quarter to six when I went into the bathroom I doubt it was even seven yet. I can be a long time washing my hair, and other parts of me, but not really that long. Other people, other hostesses of large weekend houseparties, might well be up at seven and stalking about the guest floors. Mummy never was.

She had Sukey to see to all that, and the housekeeper, and if there’s one thing Mummy believes in it’s delegation. She never woke before ten and was never seen before noon. I don’t think I’d ever seen her before eleven in my life before, not unless she’d been up all night to that point anyway.

“Good morning, Lucy,” she said, her chin in the air. She was dressed, and not dressed as she had been the night before. She was wearing quiet Sunday morning church-going clothes, pastels and pearls. But there was something strange about her make-up that made me wonder—in fact, for a moment there in the corridor I was absolutely sure that she was having an affair with one of our guests, right under

Daddy’s nose.

“Good morning, Mummy,” I said, and she swept past me and off down the corridor like an old-fashioned ship of the line going into battle.

The next thing of any significance was early breakfast, which David and I were a little late for.

Mrs.

Collins always lays on a special early breakfast on Sundays for those who want to go to church.

David didn’t want to go to church, of course, but he came down with me and nibbled at toast and tea. I left him there chatting away to Tibs Cheriton about geology. David was born with a wonderful ability to make even the most boring people become interesting in his presence. I think he does it by really taking an interest in them, in what interests them, and they shine by reflection. I’ve known Tibs all my life but I

don’t think I’ve ever exchanged three words with him that weren’t entirely conventional platitudes, but

David, who had never talked to him before that breakfast as far as I know, could zoom in and find the secret passion that would open him up like that.

Church-going at Farthing is obligatory, for Christians at least. But Tibs decided talking to David was more interesting than early communion, and said he’d go to Matins later. I was being crafty myself, because for one thing early communion only lasts half as long as Matins, for another because there aren’t any hymns, and I detest hymn singing, and thirdly because I knew Mummy would go to Matins, because she always did. Of course I was wrong about that, because while I was putting my hat on in the hall she came downstairs with a prayer book in her hand, pulling on her gloves.

“Going to church, Mummy?” I said, my heart in my boots, because I’d been looking forward to the quiet little walk down into Clock Farthing, and now I’d have her company for that and for the service as well.

“Of course, darling,” she said. “Isn’t anybody else coming?”

“David’s not, and Tibs is waiting for Matins,” I said.

“Isn’t anybody else up?” she asked. “What a lot of heathens we’ve invited. They might as well all cut the tops off their willies and turn Jew.

“Honestly, Mummy!” I said, writhing, but she’s impossible, she knows she is, she makes a profession out of being impossible and impervious. She did know she was hurting me and insulting David, there’s no doubt about that. She isn’t a fool. But she didn’t say it to be insulting, the way somebody else might. She just said it because she wanted to say it and she didn’t care if it hurt me—like the difference between someone aiming a gun at you and someone just shooting out of the window without looking. I’ve

sometimes wondered if Mummy doesn’t suffer from trains of thought getting loose the way I do, but I’ve never dared suggest as much to her.

Anyway, as I said that, Daddy came down, and just behind him, Angela Thirkie, and behind her Sir

Thomas and Lady Manningham, who were almost strangers to me. The church bell began to ring.

Hatchard, who had been there all the time, of course, listening to Mummy abuse the Jews in front of me, bowed and opened the front door for us.

Outside, one of the chauffeurs, a new one since I left home, a swarthy smiling man, was opening the door of the Bentley for Mrs. Richardson the cook, and two of the upstairs maids who were RC and driving over to mass in St. Giles at Farthing Green. The other servants, except the Baptists like Hatchard, who would make do with an evening service in a blue barn called Bethel in Upper Farthing, were waiting to follow us down to church. If it had been an ordinary quiet weekend they’d have gone on their own, no doubt. I remember times when I was a child when Daddy and I went down to early communion and the servants slipped in later. Sometime during the war, which coincided with me going away to boarding school, so I missed the change, church-going became more formal. Before that, things were quieter, too, I think; afterwards it seemed that almost every weekend we were in Farthing at all we had guests.

The service was traditional and very English and very sweet, just the vicar and one server and the
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words people have been using to worship since King James, or Henry VIII, or whoever it was wrote the prayer book. (It must have been King James—surely a bad husband like Henry VIII could never have written all those lovely sonorous words?) It was a beautiful day, I don’t think I mentioned that, and the windows were all open and there was a marvelous smell of bluebells, although the Altar Guild flowers on the altar were formal and dull. I remembered decorating the altar once when it was Mummy’s turn and she was in

St. Tropez, using armloads of tulips and daffodils, and it was such a pleasant memory that for once I

didn’t even mind the din of the clock, though I noticed Lady Manningham jump when it struck the three-quarter.

After church I felt in a mood to be charitable with all the world, even Mummy, even if she wasn’t charitable to me. David said she couldn’t forgive me for being a girl, especially now that poor Hugh was dead, but I think in fact that while she would have preferred a “spare” male heir, she wouldn’t have minded me being a girl so much if I’d been the right kind of girl—-one who cared about the things she cared about. She always treated me as if I was a dress that had come from the shop with one sleeve too long and the other too short and completely the wrong kind of sash. She used to look at me as if to say, “Now is this a complete waste or can I make something out of it?” At that point, the day of the murder, she much more often seemed to be thinking I was a complete waste. Yet I was only there at all that weekend because she’d absolutely insisted, pulling all the stops out. Otherwise David and I would have been in London having a much more pleasant weekend. I’d have popped out to church in St. Timothy’s with Myra and come back to wake David as I had the week before.