Farthing (31 page)

I hadn’t mentioned the baby before. I wasn’t sure. I knew, but I wasn’t sure, if you understand the difference. I wouldn’t be sure for weeks. David looked stricken, and just sat there, not eating or doing anything. I shoved the rest of my sandwich into my mouth and I got up. I went into the drawing room through the French windows and rang the bell. Lizzie came almost at once. “Tell Harry to get Manzikert and Clontarf saddled up,” I told her. “We’ve decided to go riding straight after lunch.”

“Yes, madam,” she said.

I went back out to David. “We have to go,” I said.

“You should never have married me,” he said.

“I love you, silly,” I said. “And it’s more the other way around, if it comes to that—it’s my relations who are trying to frame you, not yours me.”

“You think it’s your relations?” he asked.

“I think it’s Mummy,” I said. “Now eat. Goodness knows when we’ll get the chance again. We need to give Harry ten minutes to get the horses ready.”

David bit into a sandwich as if he thought it would choke him. “My clothes,” he said.

“We can’t wear riding clothes, because we’d look fools on the train. I’m all right in these slacks.

You’ll be all right too, but you need a jacket, and you may have things upstairs that you need. I put this jacket on because it’s old, and hanging in the closet, and if the police have been through our bags, they won’t have it listed. There’s a leather jacket in the closet too. It’s huge. If it fits you, you might want to wear it.”

“All right,” he said, expressionlessly.

“It was Hugh’s,” I said, trying to buck him up a bit, and besides it was perfectly true.

“How Hugh would have loathed this!” he burst out.

I nodded, and then I didn’t feel organized and excited the way I had. I just wanted to bawl.

David finished his sandwich, very resolutely, and went into the house to change and get hold of whatever he wanted to get hold of. I sat stuffing the rest of the sandwiches, partly because I was ravenous, and partly because I didn’t want anybody to be suspicious. Poor Mrs. Smollett would have started preparing her nursery tea for us already, but we’d never eat it. By teatime we might be in Portsmouth.

David came back, with the jacket casually over his arm, folded so the inside showed and the outside didn’t, so it could have been anything. I’d never have thought of that in a week. He put his arm in mine as we walked down to the stables. We couldn’t take any clothes, or anything. It was all very well for that day, but I could see us as very shabby fugitives in no time.

Harry had the horses ready. Manny was delighted to see me. David and Clonnie looked at each other much more suspiciously. David didn’t really care about horses and riding, though he never let on, because it was one of the things he thought of as English. If he’d gone to school in England he wouldn’t have felt that way. Being Jewish in an English public school is like having a stammer or a limp; it’s a social handicap you can live down with time and personality. He’d have been more naturally English—and after all, he was English, he was born here. It was the French school trying so hard that made him feel so very passionately attached to things most people don’t give two hoots about.

We mounted up, and Harry offered David a gun, exactly the way he’d offered Daddy one on Sunday.

“No,” David said, very definitely.

“There’s nothing worth shooting,” I said.

“No, you’re right, there really isn’t,” David said. “Nothing.”

We waved at Harry as we rode off. We went up to the woods, and, without hesitating at all I led the way through the forbidden gate, onto Adams’s land, along past the hedge where the Bolshevik must have

been hiding on Sunday, and down to the road. From there it would have been simpler to just ride on to

Farthing Junction, but I’d developed a dread of meeting Inspector Carmichael and Sergeant Royston on their way here, so I cut across country on bridleways, which was nicer for the horses anyway.

When we’d got nearly to the station, I realized the big weakness in my plan. “What should we do with the horses?” David asked.

We couldn’t leave them at the station. We also couldn’t leave them running loose. It took ages, and we missed a London train, which we didn’t want anyway, before we found a field with good grazing and reasonable hedges, where they could stay safely until someone found them. I took off their gear and left it under the hedge.

We saw a few people as we were riding along, but those on horses just said “Good afternoon,”

and rode on, and those on foot, farm laborers mostly, just touched their caps. Fortunately, only one person came along as we were putting the horses in the fields, and I knew him, he was an absolute village idiot from

Farthing Green. I told him we were going to London, and he made riding motions.

We went to the station separately. I bought a first-class day-return ticket to Winchester. I’d decided that was more plausible than Southampton. “Yes, Miss Lucy,” the stationmaster said.

“Have a nice afternoon now.”

Then David came in and bought a second-class single to London. He wasn’t recognized, as far as he could tell.

There’s only one platform at Farthing Junction, fortunately, or this plan might not have worked.

We both stood on it, and when the two o’clock slow train to Portsmouth via Southampton came puffing in, we both got onto it. I went straight into the first-class bathroom and made up my face. If I absolutely caked myself with powder, which meant doing my mouth and eyes as well, because otherwise I looked a fright, I could cover up the cut. I had some stuff in a little bottle which was meant to be dabbed onto the bags under your eyes, and I used that quite lavishly and then powdered on top. I looked like someone with rather bad taste, but there are more of them around than there are women with cuts across their cheeks. I had to do my eyes three times, because the train would go round a bend just as I was getting my mascara on.

I came out at last and joined David in second class. When the conductor came around, we both bought singles to Portsmouth from Weston Colley, which was the next station back towards London, before

Farthing Junction. This was my idea, because although it cost us more money, it could make us safer.

Even apart from his knowing me, the stationmaster at Farthing Junction would be bound to remember us, or anyone who bought a ticket. So few people got on the train there that he’d probably remember every one of them, for a day or two at least. But the conductor was a busy man, who sold a lot of tickets to a lot of people. If we seemed ordinary he probably wouldn’t remember us at all after half an hour. He’d still have the stubs of the tickets, but by the time the police came to look at them, if they weren’t from

Farthing Junction, they might not work out that they were ours.

The conductor didn’t appear to pay the slightest attention to us, which was good. Until we were past

Winchester I was nervous, because I was half afraid I’d see someone I knew, but I didn’t. In Winchester a woman got on with a basket of ducklings, which she must have bought at the market. Lots of other people got on, but all of them strangers. I was wishing I’d brought a book or even a newspaper, because we had nothing to do but fret. We couldn’t talk, not properly, because we weren’t alone and I might have mentioned something I shouldn’t.

Most of the people got out at little halts, including the woman with the ducklings. More people got on—it

was quite crowded by the time we came into Southampton. The train waits there for ten minutes, so I got out and rang Abby from the coin box on the platform. David stood with his foot in the door of the train, ready to hold it for me if it tried to start. I went into the red box with my two pennies ready and somehow

I managed to press Button A and Button B and put my coins in in the right order.

“Talbot’s Academy for Young Ladies,” someone answered the telephone.

“Could I speak to Mrs. Talbot, please?” I asked.

“Certainly, who’s calling?” the voice inquired.

I didn’t want to give my name, just in case. “This is Phillipa Potts,” I said, making it up as I went.

She went away and fetched Abby. “Mrs. Talbot here,” she said.

“Oh Abby,” I said. “It’s me. I’m in terrible trouble. Can you hide me for a day or two?”

“Have you run away from your husband, Lucy?” she asked.

“No, he’s with me—we’ve run away together. It’s terribly serious trouble, Dachau-level trouble.

I’ll tell you when I see you. But can we come?”

The train started raising steam then, and nearly everyone was on. I don’t know what I’d have done if she’d said no, but I knew she wouldn’t. When she’d been my governess we’d often talked about the

Jews in the Reich and what happened when you had to run. Dachau-level trouble would make
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her realize how serious things were.

“Yes, of course, though I don’t know how well I can hide you, child,” she said. “We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

“I’m in Southampton, and I’m getting on the train right now,” I said, because David was beckoning to me. I practically flung the receiver down. I dashed back to the train, only to find that it was a false alarm and the train waited another few minutes getting up steam and procrastinating before it finally chugged out for Portsmouth.

28

Carmichael persuaded Royston, without much difficulty, to stop at a country pub just outside Alton for a late lunch. The landlady was profusely apologetic that she couldn’t give them anything but bread and cheese. The bread was homemade and there were three kinds of cheese: one sharp cheddar, one Stilton, and one new soft cheese, almost as mild as butter. She also gave them the best beer they’d had all week, and they told her so.

“You could taste the hops in that,” Royston said. “Wouldn’t mind stopping there again, sir,” he added, as they set off once more.

“If we have to come this way again, sergeant,” Carmichael said. He hoped and believed they would never have to, at least not to Farthing. The road unwound before them like a reel to a fish, and Royston followed it mile after mile, dodging villages, spinneys, fields, coming closer and closer to Farthing, where

Carmichael had no wish to be. He hoped Mrs. Kahn had understood. She wasn’t such a fool as she seemed, he thought, despite the hand clapped to the mouth and the awkward little laughs.

“I’d never have imagined Kahn and Lady Thirkie being in conspiracy together,” Royston said, as the road became the green lanes of the Farthings.

“Maybe she killed him and left him in the car and Kahn found him and arranged him,”

Carmichael suggested. It was the only scenario that fit, and he could have believed it if not for the star. If Kahn had bought a star, he would not have given his name and address. If Kahn had been mad enough to go into

Nazi France in the first place, he thought, though he must speak French as he was educated there. He had friends there. Mrs. Kahn might not have known. But he wasn’t a fool. Even if he hadn’t been planning this, if he’d been there for some other reason and wanted a star, he wouldn’t have given his own name.

“But if she meant it to look like suicide, why would she arrange for Brown to shoot at Lord Eversley the day after?” Royston asked.

Carmichael shrugged. “Maybe it was suicide; maybe she meant to send Thirkie riding and had told

Brown to kill him, and the joke bit was just what he told Agnes Timms so she would respect him.”

“I think she was telling the truth,” Royston said.

“I’m sure she was, but he could have lied to her,” Carmichael said. “That’s actually the simplest hypothesis so far. Thirkie finds out about his wife’s adultery, and she arranges to kill him. He kills himself before she can. Kahn finds his body and arranges it so as to make the murder look political. Brown shoots at the wrong person. I don’t suppose he’d have known Thirkie. Even if his girlfriend worked for

Lady Thirkie before they married, he’d have just been going for a man on a horse.”

“With a .22?” Royston pointed out. “And Kahn’s motive is still very puzzling.”

“He saw a man he hated dead and decided to humiliate him in death,” Carmichael suggested, not believing it even as he said it.

Royston frowned. They came into Clock Farthing as the clock was striking a quarter past four.

“But he must have known he was bound to be suspected.”

“Playing practical jokes with corpses is wasting police time, but it isn’t a hanging offense.”

“But getting involved at all made him suspected of murder,” Royston objected.

The bobby on the gate recognized the car and flagged them down. Royston pulled up. “What’s up, constable?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Kahn went riding after lunch and haven’t come back,” he said. “The housekeeper sent a servant down to tell me. The stablemaster and some of the other servants are checking the woods in case of an accident, and I told them to telephone to Winchester for more police.”

Carmichael couldn’t simulate surprise, or any of the emotions he knew he would be expected to feel at the news. It was the most he could do to keep relief off his face.

Royston, on the other hand, was genuinely astonished. “Run!” he said. “But why would they have run?

Well blow me down! I’d have laid odds he didn’t do it, despite the warrant and the evidence.”

“Running means guilt, does it, sergeant?” Carmichael asked.

“What else could it mean, sir?”

“Fear,” Carmichael said.

“That’s the same thing,” Royston objected. “Well, nearly.”

“If they’re innocent they’ve nothing to be afraid of?” Carmichael asked, ironically.

“Yes, that’s right,” the bobby put in. “Just like Mr. Normanby said in his speech on the wireless last night.”

They drove up to the house, and had hardly parked when the housekeeper, Mrs. Simons, came rushing up to them.

“I hear they’ve run,” Carmichael said, getting out of the car.

“Not only that, but they’ve stolen several things!” she said. She was pink-faced with excitement, clearly enjoying the drama.