The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (33 page)

She looked exasperated, as if Maggie were still a small child. ‘But she was an ordinary girl. Her mam, now, she was a beauty. Joe met her in Swindon. Cycled over twice a week. She had books and a piano. He thought he was marrying above himself, which he was, probably, if she’d not run off. And she, poor woman, I think she did love Joe at first. But she can’t have reckoned on living with old Walter and being stuck out here. She had the look of a trapped animal.’

‘She went off with a gypsy, though? That wasn’t likely to be much more comfortable?’

Ellen shrugged and looked into the distance.

‘You were brought up at Easton, did you know about the vault?’

She shook her head. ‘The police asked. No, I don’t reckon nobody did. Not living, leastways, and I never heard talk of it before. I haven’t been in the church for years. Not since the old vicar was here and that would be before the little girl went.’

She paused.

‘Don’t think I’m bad, but I can’t do all that any more. I don’t know what I believe, but it’s not that. Some women here, they go and they say a prayer or leave a bunch of flowers for their sweethearts, but it’s not for me.’

This time her sigh was audible.

‘Bert was so proud to go. The lads, we all went to see them off from Salisbury after training. Mr Easton hired a charabanc.’ She pronounced it ‘charabang’. ‘Even old Walter came along though he was moaning about being left to do all the work while they were gallivanting.’

A bee buzzed past Laurence’s face and she lifted a hand to sweep it away from her own.

‘They were on parade. Ever so smart. Mr Easton and Mr Julian on horses—Easton horses: Lightning and Ace of Spades, which Mr Julian called Ace. They never came back either. Poor horses.’ When she screwed her eyes up, lines ran deeply from their corners.

After a while she said, ‘B Company, them and lads from West Overton and a couple of other villages round here. Bert was made up to NCO in training and had a section. Joe Petch did too and Ivor Baines, and Fred Deacon as had been footman when Mr Easton married.’

She sat very still. He could hear children playing a short distance away. A breeze ruffled the leaves of the apple tree and spun the jam jar of honeyed water she’d hung to catch wasps. He looked at her sideways, trying not to stare, but she was gazing into space. She was still young despite a few grey strands in her neat hair.

‘Of all of them it was Baines that I couldn’t believe was gone. He was the strongest man you ever saw. Known for it—cow-tipping or tug-o’-war. He was in the team that beat Pewsey and Marlborough, and they’d got some big lads and more to choose from. My Bert now, he wasn’t built large, I could see things could happen, but Ivor...’ She looked at him almost accusingly. ‘How could that be?’

Laurence thought of Pollock. Pollock was vast but it was all blubber; it just made him a bigger target. The hopeless soldier had fought under him for two years, and finally he had fought for Pollock, lying back on a steep, wet slope, holding him in his arms, trying to keep them both from the stinking yellow water of a shell hole. The stretcher-bearers had wanted to leave him.

‘He’s buggered, ’scuse my French, sir. Hop on the rig, let’s get you to the aid post—we’ll never even get him off the ground. Do us all an injury. He’s stone cold, sir. No point to it.’

But he’d made them take Pollock, both stretcher-bearers straining and cursing, while he’d limped behind, shuddering, his arm around an orderly’s shoulder and the man’s grip firm around his waist. He assumed Pollock went into the great pit waiting behind Rosières.

‘Mr Julian said Bert didn’t suffer. A bullet just like that. Didn’t know anything.’

She turned towards him and a beautiful smile lit up her face.

‘And that’s what he’s told all the other women. The way Mr Julian’s told it, not a man in B Company ever knew a second’s fear or pain. One minute they were here at Easton Deadall, next minute they were in France, doing their duty, the next—in paradise.’

He smiled back at her. She was no fool.

‘I expect your husband wrote?’

She made a wry face. ‘Never much of a one for letters,’ she said. ‘There was this army form you could tick—things like: all well, am shot, am in hospital, am coming on leave soon. That sort of thing. He always just ticked it.’

She looked amused. ‘We got our news at first through old Walter. There’s a joke—Walter can’t scarcely read his own name. Yet his boy Joe was always good at his books. Me and my sisters were at school with him. He was the first to read. So anyways, Joe wrote his dad letters from France. Well, old Walter never let on he couldn’t read, always said his eyes weren’t too good. So Joe would write and Walter would come trotting over and I’d read them to him. First couple of months it was all news. Then the letters got shorter and then they stopped. And Walter was the first to get the telegram, same day as Mrs Easton, postie said. He didn’t have to read that. He knew.’

He felt he was watching a display of emotion, only just controlled, yet all around was peace.

‘I wanted to ask you about your sister.’ He had expected her to tense up at a personal enquiry but instead her hand flew to her face.

‘Oh no, it’s not Jane, is it? They don’t think that woman’s Jane?’

He’d simply wanted to see whether Ellen Kilminster had any information on Robert the former chauffeur, but realised instantly what she was saying. Even as he started to reassure her, he was thinking, what if it
was
her sister? It was as likely as any other solution. The body was of a woman who had given birth but it was not impossible the nanny had had a child since leaving Easton Deadall. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Jane Rivers had been brought up on the estate and had worked at the Hall. If anybody knew about the church, she might well, given her familiarity with the inside and the outside of the big house.

‘No. No. The police think it’s a stranger,’ he said, thinking that it wasn’t entirely a lie because he hadn’t been told otherwise.

‘But nobody from here saw the body.’

‘The police have measurements, physical details.’

‘But then they’d need Jane’s to compare.’

‘Do you want me to ask?’ he said, knowing that he was giving the impression he might be some kind of conduit to the police. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘See her? Not for years. But we write once or twice a year. Not recently though. She’s had it hard since she left here.’

‘Do you think she was badly treated?’

She didn’t answer for a few seconds. ‘Not really. With Kitty gone she didn’t have a job. She was leaving in the autumn that year to get married, and anyway, Mr Digby thought she was molly-coddling Kitty. Wanted her to have a governess. I can see why the police and Mr Easton were suspicious. She couldn’t say why she didn’t hear them take the child, only that she’d not been feeling well that week. But she loved Kitty as if she was her own. Used to bring her here sometimes, lovely little thing. So polite. Shy. If Bert spoke to her she’d bury her head in Jane’s shoulder. I don’t think Mrs Easton thought Jane had done anything amiss but Mrs Easton always did what Mr Easton said.’

She rolled her eyes, like a schoolgirl.

‘But then there was Robert,’ she said.

‘Robert?’ He gave no sign he knew about Robert.

‘Her fiancé. Robert Stone. The Eastons’ chauffeur. He must of known she had nothing to do with it but he kept his distance. It broke her heart. When she got to London she kept thinking he’d come, that perhaps it’d been difficult for him here, him wanting to keep his job and everything, but he never did.’

‘One last question—and I’d be very grateful if you could keep it to yourself. Did your sister ever think anyone in the family was involved in the little girl’s disappearance?’

This time Ellen Kilminster gave him a long, appraising look.

‘Like who?’ she said quite boldly, but when he just shook his head, she backed down.

‘No. Jane said she couldn’t bear to see Mrs Easton in such a state. Once the police said she could go, she was off. Found work as a machinist. But then she was too ill with her nerves to work.’

Distress returned to her face.

‘I do hope they can be sure it’s not Jane. I’ll write but she doesn’t always answer quick.’

‘Look, if you like, I mean, I’m going back to London,’ he said. ‘If you want I’ll look her up. I won’t bother her, just make sure she’s all right.’

She looked dubious for a second.

‘Where she lives isn’t exactly...’

‘No. Absolutely. I’ll go there when I arrive.’

Suddenly she became brisk. ‘I really need to go now, Mr—?’

‘Bartram. Laurence Bartram.’

‘I need to get up to the house to fetch the mending. And Ethel’s starting today. But I’ll get you Jane’s address first.’

He stood outside the door as she went inside, listening to the gentle clucking of her hens, and feeling it had been somehow underhand to get the address he had originally wanted, but feared she wouldn’t hand over, by making her anxious about Jane. In minutes she returned wearing a faded hat and a cotton coat. She handed him a bit of paper.

‘Thank you.’

Then she said, ‘It’s been nice having someone to talk to, funny as it seems.’

‘Your cousin’s coming back soon, I gather?’

‘Not mine,’ she said. ‘Bert’s. Victor is Bert’s cousin. Mr Julian was very kind to Victor.’ She looked reflective. Td’ve liked to’ve seen him after the war. To talk to him about my Bert. But before I knew it, Mr Julian had given him some money and set him up with some farmer he knew in Australia, and it was as if my kiddies were the only Kilminsters left. But still, I’ll be ever so glad to see him.’

Her whole face lit up. ‘Mind you, Mr Julian’s none too pleased that he’s coming back, though he’s given him a cottage. Will Victor have to pay him back, do you think? He says he never settled, always felt homesick for Easton. He’s got a girl—a wife—an
Australian
one.’ She looked as if this was extraordinary in itself. ‘He’ll be coming back for good, he says, and he can be a real help on the estate. Victor was a hard worker.’

She put her hand up and tucked a stray lock of hair under her hat.

‘And his wife’s expecting so that will be company for Susan.’ ‘How did Susan meet David?’ Laurence asked, hoping that, in the context, his question seemed like a bit of a distraction.

She smiled. ‘Biscuits. She was in a factory made biscuits for our boys in France. The way she tells it, the girls used to put cheeky messages in the tins, sometimes, if they were unmarried, with their names on. Susan being Susan, she doesn’t put anything a bit . ? ? Well, you know what these girls can be like, all egging each other on. Susan just writes she hopes the man who eats the biscuits goes on all right and she’s put good luck in with the ingredients and hopes God will take care of him. A whole year later he finds her at the works. He was a widower—married a London girl and lived there before he was a soldier. But he’d kept the note and everything. I’ve seen it, Susan’s got it now.’

‘Golly,’ he said, wondering unromantically what sort of less happy surprise might have been waiting for David in the biscuit factory.

‘She never put a note in before, she says, just the once—she says it was fate.’

‘And he was a sapper?’

‘I think so. Not with our lot, anyways.’

She looked uneasy and he thought he was asking too many questions. She was clearly an intelligent woman.

He picked up his hat from the seat beside him.

‘I’m sorry about Mrs Easton,’ she said. ‘They say she’s not got long?’

She watched his face. He hesitated briefly but he didn’t think she was an idle gossip.

‘No, she’s in a coma. I don’t think she’ll recover. She’s been ill for much longer than any of us realised.’

And at that she nodded, said goodbye and headed off in the direction of the Hall. She didn’t wait to see if he was going her way, Perhaps, he thought, she didn’t want to be seen with him.

In fact it suited him that she had gone as he didn’t want her to see him going from cottage to cottage, seemingly interrogating the villagers. Yet he also wanted to speak to old Petch—he had been at Easton the longest. And he wanted to look at the letters he had been too foolishly fastidious to pore through last time. Now that it seemed likely Maggie was alive, surely her most likely destination had been to find where her mother lived. It was just possible she had discovered her address.

He was glad Petch opened the door fairly swiftly and relieved that he evidently recognised him. Petch himself looked older but more alert than when he’d come before.

‘You got news about Maggie?’ the old man said. Laurence cursed himself, as he had at the Kilminsters’, for not realising what Petch’s first thought on seeing him might be.

‘No. I’m sorry. I’m sure she’ll be back soon. It must be a tremendous worry.’

The old man looked at him sceptically. ‘Leastways, she’s not bin rottin’ in the church. You want to come in?’

‘If I may.’

Petch shrugged.

They sat on either side of the cold fireplace in the small room.

‘I bin finishing the old chimney at Kilminster’s. Mr Julian wanted it done before Victor comes back.’

This was the longest sentence he’d ever heard Petch speak.

‘I done a good job.’ He was nodding his head.

‘Is that what you did here as a young man?’ Laurence said.

Petch stared at him as if uncertain whether to trust him with the information. Eventually he nodded.

‘Did all sorts but stone’s my trade. Was apprenticed mason over at Salisbury.’ For a minute the loose folds of his face seemed to ease. ‘But my pa died and my mam needed me home. Mrs Easton—old Mrs Easton—she had me carving little creatures like I done there.’

‘You did the ones on the terrace? But they’re beautiful.’ Laurence was astonished.

Walter straightened up and looked directly at him. ‘She says that. She says they were better than ones she’d seen in London. She loved flowers and animals, she did. Joe never had the feel for stone—he preferred the gardens—and Mrs Easton took him on when he were a lad o’ fourteen. But Joe could lend a hand: we did the new privy and wash-house out back before he went.’