The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (32 page)

‘What about Lydia?’ he asked again.

‘She’d hate me to be talking about this but what does it matter now? She was having a miscarriage. She was losing the baby. Again.’

‘I’m terribly sorry. My wife lost two babies like that. It’s hard.’

She looked at him oddly. ‘Probably not because you’d shaken her or deafened her permanently with a hard slap to the side of her head. Or taken her by force.’ She went very pink. ‘His marital right, of course.’

He couldn’t look away from her, her eyes shining now with anger and distress. He was stunned.

She said, ‘Yes, he did do all those things. And that’s just what she owned up to. Not necessarily that night—she had trouble with all her pregnancies—but that’s how she lived: always making excuses. Everybody trying not to see. Julian taking the furthest room away from their bedroom. Patrick going abroad at the first opportunity.’

‘And you?’

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. ‘Digby was so charming—genuinely, I mean. Such a huge character, who made things happen. He was funny, made you feel special. People would do anything for him. But sometimes when they didn’t—later on—then he wasn’t so nice. It was so subtle you’d have to have known him well to see it at first. He had a couple of fits, which Lydia tried to keep secret.’ She made a face. ‘Recently I’ve wondered about the way he changed, the way his charm and energy slipped away and the anger grew. Was that the infection too? Who knows? It changed Lydia, but with Digby it might just have been drink. He was always a frightened man underneath, I think—even the best of him was all about trying to keep people amused and loving him.’ She pressed her fingertips to her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I don’t mean to be melodramatic.’

After a pause, which he hoped was long enough, he said, ‘When Lydia was ill that night, how did you know? Did she tell you?’

Despite her earlier frankness, he thought he might have asked her something she felt uncomfortable with, because she was a long time answering and she didn’t look up when she did.

‘No. But you have to understand how it was. The next morning, Lydia was embarrassed, but she was also frightened. Her child had disappeared. At some point she must have been cleaning herself up, but anyway Digby had woken and found her gone. When we couldn’t find Kitty, he had Lydia by the arm, saying, “And where were you when someone was stealing our daughter?” As if it would have made any difference if she’d been asleep next to him. He was mad with anger and mostly fear, I think.’ She screwed her face up a little. ‘Usually he was so careful but he didn’t even mind that I was watching. His fingers were digging into her. So I said, “She was with me. I didn’t feel well.”’

‘But she wasn’t?’

Frances shook her head. ‘When he’d gone she told me about the nightdress she’d been wearing and she begged me to get rid of it. She was distracted and ashamed but I expect she knew how it might look, and even if it didn’t look that way she didn’t want the humiliation of the police going through her soiled linen. She couldn’t get out of the house but I was unimportant. I could. Before the police had even come, she gave it to me and I cut it all up into tiny strips and I walked over to the kitchen garden incinerator and burned it all, bit by bit, so the fire wouldn’t be damped down. I waited until I was certain it was all gone. Then I burned the dead cuttings and leaves that were waiting by the incinerator, on top. Everybody was so frantic, looking for Kitty, that nobody noticed me.’

She started to shake her head to a question Laurence hadn’t even posed yet.

‘Of course it entered my head—more how it would look than that she could have done something. But she would never, never have hurt Kitty.

‘However, there was one odd thing. She said there were stained sheets down in the laundry, too, that I’d need to deal with. But there weren’t any. They’d gone.’

Chapter Seventeen

Before going out the next day Laurence went in to see Patrick. He was in bed and awake but lying back on his pillows. He seemed delighted to see Laurence.

‘You saved my life,’ Patrick said, sitting up and putting out his hand to shake Laurence’s. ‘Thoroughly embarrassing. First Julian has to be saved by David, now you save me. Easton men all thoroughly in debt to heroes. What does one say? Yet I hope you might suspend my promise to you to leave Easton for ever ... the cave paintings you see...’

‘We got out of there together,’ Laurence said. ‘Frankly on my own I’d still be down there gibbering. How are you feeling?’ ‘Bodily rather wrecked and mentally rather mad. I keep thinking it’s a dream, what we saw. I can’t even tell anybody because I haven’t got the words straight yet. I want to go back and check in case it was a hallucination.’

‘It was real.’ Laurence smiled. ‘Please don’t go down there again. Not without proper assistance and certainly not with me.’

‘It’s a promise, old chap.’ He lay back. ‘I hardly know where to start with it but I think I’ll ask Sir Arthur’s advice. Then try to get a team together from Oxford.’

‘Get better first.’

‘Yes. I’ve been pretty reckless, suicidally so at times, but I’m going to see a decent man in Harley Street—one that dreadful old buffer Dr Smallwood recommends—and lead a more temperate life. No doubt you’ll congratulate me on this conversion.’ Suddenly he looked slightly discomfited.

‘It’s as if Easton finally gave me a gift. Something terrible and beautiful and mysterious. My life’s work, I suppose, stretching ahead.’

Laurence said, ‘I’m glad. And glad I was with you to find it. I’ll never ever forget that moment.’

He sat for a few minutes watching Patrick, who seemed close to sleep. When Patrick opened his eyes again, Laurence said, ‘I’m still off to London, tomorrow now, but I wanted to ask you something.’ ‘You’ll be back?’ Patrick looked anxious.

‘Of course. In two days.’

‘Now I’m in your debt, I am bound to reveal all.’

‘What was Digby’s chauffeur like?’

Patrick looked puzzled. ‘Good God, that came out of nowhere. Eleanor said you’d been involved in some sleuthing before.’ He shook his head in mock admonishment. ‘I think you’ve got a taste for it. You’d be a damn good archaeologist.’

‘Thank you.’

‘He was an out-and-out rotter, if you ask me. Handsome fellow. Digby liked him. Digby liked rogues. But not a man you could trust. And I’m not sure he wasn’t a bad influence on my brother, bizarre though that may sound. The rest of the servants and estate staff didn’t care for him. Except for the poor nanny, of course, who was sweet on him from the day he arrived.’

‘Was he sacked?’

‘No. He saw the way the wind was blowing. I think he wanted to escape any commitments to the nanny, Digby was probably impossible, the other servants had never liked him and life as he’d enjoyed it at Easton just stopped. No jaunts, no glamour. Nothing for a man like him. Went off to London.’

Laurence nodded. ‘And did what?’

‘Without sounding like a member of the
ancien régime,
I really don’t keep a list of where servants go after they leave Easton. Probably to pimp for his expensive sister.’

This time it was Laurence who was surprised. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘You would have been if you’d met her. Before his marriage, Digby was keen on the odd night at one of London’s more discreet establishments. Well, we were none of us averse; even Julian came along.’

He watched Laurence with the odd focus that he sometimes had, as if Laurence was an interesting artefact that he couldn’t quite place.

‘You don’t look as shocked as you might,’ he said.

‘For God’s sake, I do know what the inside of a brothel looks like.’

Laurence thought of the queues of cheerful soldiers, supervised by military policemen and surprisingly unembarrassed, waiting their turn in a French
estaminet
. The ladies inside, despatching men with admirable speed, were reputed to be as old as most of their mothers—grandmothers, one soldier had said. The same man said it reassured his wife to know his needs were being looked after. Officers went to Paris, paid a great deal more, stayed a great deal longer and enjoyed younger and more versatile girls. The outcome was much the same: anticipation, disappointment and, afterwards, anxiety.

He had once joined three other junior officers at a place on the rue Chabanais where the girls were exquisite, the champagne real, the Moorish rooms elegant. Afterwards he was relieved that he had been too drunk to perform; two of his friends had to see the MO within a week. The third had been killed the day after their return. His lasting memory of vice was of a gloriously comfortable bed, and hot and cold running water.

‘Robert’s sister or so he called her—I was always doubtful—was the madame at a house in Chelsea,’ Patrick said. ‘Perhaps Digby met him there, I never quite knew. But a nice man? No. Once he saw the world had turned against Kitty’s pretty nursemaid, any engagement thered ever been was off.’

‘Nobody suspected him of being involved?’

‘No. In some ways he was Digby’s rock. In fact...’

‘In fact?’

Patrick looked thrown for a second. ‘Nothing—speculation.’ ‘I’d still be interested to know.’

Patrick exhaled. ‘You never give up, do you? Dogged Bartram. I was only going to say you probably know a letter was delivered, wanting money. Digby was furious, yet both hopeful and afraid. He seemed paralysed by indecision. The letter had given him four days to find the amount they demanded. Julian went to the bank for him. Lydia wanted him to tell the police but in the end she gave him some of her jewellery to sell. The evening of the deadline I was in the bathroom and saw him cross the stable yard to the car. Robert was waiting. Not Julian, not me, Robert. Digby had a Gladstone bag. Robert had the car’s engine running. I wondered later whether Robert, who always had some scheme going, had persuaded Digby they could catch them, whoever they were, rather than hand over the money. Whatever happened, it failed. The next day Digby had changed. Before, he could be up and down ... Afterwards, something had broken in him.’

‘And the police?’

‘Quite obviously he hadn’t told the police. Not until later. They were not best pleased. That was very much Digby’s style: acts of derring-do and the terrible need to win all the time, even faced with a missing child.’

‘Did you think the demand for money was—?’

‘Julian? Lydia? No, not for a minute. Whatever they’d done that night was a catastrophe but not an attempt at gain. It was somebody cruel or greedy, taking advantage. It was all over the newspapers. It could have been anybody in England or simply a particularly malign hoaxer.’

‘I’ll leave you,’ Laurence said. ‘I don’t want to exhaust you.’ As Laurence left the room, Patrick said, ‘Thank you. I would never have got as far as the paintings on my own. But I’d rather not tell people while Lydia’s ... you know?’

Laurence nodded.

He was glad to get out of the house. He remembered when his mother was dying that there had been a sort of limbo when she was unconscious and sinking slowly towards death. Occasionally he had felt impatient, even bored, and then, swiftly, guilty. But his mourning had begun weeks before she finally breathed her last. The emotion he felt afterwards was at least partly the product of relief.

He had been up to see Lydia earlier. The windows were open and Susan had got David to cut some delphiniums and stocks. She was setting them down by the window as he entered. Lydia, who had loved flowers so much, lay unaware of all this. It seemed to Laurence that the vase of flowers really served to camouflage the stale smell of the sickroom. The slight body in the large bed was that of an elderly woman now. Her hair was greyer since he’d last seen her, her collarbones protruding through her nightdress. Her lips, slightly parted, were dry and her yellow skin was stretched over her facial bones. Frances had sat next to her, tenderly unfolding her swollen fingers and rubbing cream into her dry hands.

There was nothing to say and nothing that needed to be said. He just sat on the other side of the bed, watching the two sisters. It was peaceful and he thought Frances was glad to have him there; his presence was largely for her. An hour or so later, Eleanor came up to relieve him and as he left the room he knew he might not see Lydia again.

The first time he had seen Ellen Kilminster’s cottage, Frances had been with him. This time he went alone and he took Julian’s bicycle. He jumped off when he saw Mrs Kilminster standing in the garden. She was feeding hens. Her youngest child was clutching a cat and sitting on a simple swing. He could tell at first from her apprehensive expression that the mother didn’t recognise him.

‘Laurence Bartram,’ he said, keeping his distance and then pointing, needlessly, in the direction of the Hall.

She smiled, her face relaxing. ‘Mr Bartram, I’m sorry, I’d seen you but I didn’t know you close up.’ She paused, uncertain of what to do. ‘Do you want to come in?’ She had a pleasant voice softened by her local accent.

‘No, thank you, but I’d like a quick word if I may.’

Her look became wary again.

He put his hand on the low gate and eventually she nodded.

‘I don’t know what I can tell you,’ she said.

‘May I sit down?’ Laurence said. A small bench stood by the house. ‘My back’s not very good.’

She nodded again. ‘Maisie, you run off and play,’ she said. The girl made a face but tipped the cat off her lap and wandered off behind the cottages, hitting flowers with a stick.

‘Have they found her?’ she said, suddenly.

It took him a second to realise she meant Maggie. He shook his head.

‘Did you think the body was Maggie when you first heard?’ he said.

Ellen Kilminster sighed. ‘Well, it made sense. Maggie had gone, a dead woman was found in the church.’ Then she said, sounding distressed, ‘I’ll box her ears for worrying us so when she comes home.’

He wanted to take her hand and tell her it would all be all right. Instead he looked across the small, well-kept garden, the vegetables and bright flowers, some slightly battered after all the rain, and knew he could never promise her that.

‘She was growing up,’ Ellen said. ‘There was no life here for her, not even in service. And she was all talk of the pictures. She’d never even been to a picture house but she was daft about actresses. Thought she could go to America.’