Thorn (26 page)

‘Well, I shouldn't think it was intentional, should you?' said Juliette. ‘We all knew he'd harboured a grand passion for her for years, poor old Shilling. I daresay he was pickled at the time – in fact I remember thinking at the funeral that he was knocking it back a bit. I'll bet he mixed his doses up and poured a triple down her without realising.'

‘And realised when it was too late and panicked,' said Flora, thoughtfully.

‘Yes, and put up that elaborate plot to make it look like murder. Is he going to plead guilty to the manslaughter charge, d'you know?'

‘Oh yes. He's apparently prepared to go to gaol,' said Flora. ‘I think he actually wants to, in fact.'

‘How very peculiar of him.'

‘It's something to do with restitution,' said Flora. ‘Or do I mean penance – no, that's the Catholics, isn't it? Purgatory and absolution. Anyway, he thinks he needs to be punished for what happened.'

‘So he does,' said Juliette. ‘Although I expect they'll find him mad as a hatter, poor old thing.'

‘You think he was mad, do you?' said Flora.

‘Flo, dear, it isn't sane to slosh sheep's blood all over the place and pretend to cook up plots about perforating ulcers,' said Juliette. ‘And I bet if we delved a bit deeper, we'd find he was responsible for the head-thing on the dish as well. Did I say elaborate? I should have said tortuous. Poor old Shilling.'

‘I hope,' said Flora repressively, ‘that you won't talk about all this to Dan Tudor, Juliette. Heads on dishes and tortuous mad doctors.'

‘Of course I shan't,' said Juliette. ‘
Wild horses
wouldn't drag it out of me.'

One would not, of course, talk in any detail about the inquest, and one would most definitely not spill any details about Imogen, poor darling. Juliette could not begin to think what would happen to Imogen now. Being mad and in a coma was one thing, but being sane and in a coma was very different indeed. One rather felt that it was wrong for Imogen to be sent off to Thornacre in view of all the things that were coming to light now. But it was too exhausting to consider what the alternatives were, and so Juliette shelved the problem for the moment and concentrated on deciding between the Jacques Vert two-piece and the Zandra Rhodes mulberry velvet for her date with Dan Tudor.

Having expected Dan to quiz her and having gone to the trouble of preparing a number of polite and evasive answers, it was a bit miffing to discover that what he really appeared to be interested in was the gruesome Ingram ancestresses. Still, anybody was welcome to Sybilla and Lucienne, and Juliette did not in the least mind being seen at Langan's (wearing the mulberry velvet), dining with somebody as good-looking as Dan Tudor.

She enlarged enthusiastically on the subject of the blot on the Ingram escutcheon – ‘Although it's a whacking great gargoyle rather than a blot, of course. They were both mad as March hares, you know. My grandmother used to tell the torridest tales about Lucienne – you do know what she actually did, do you? Oh, you do. And of course everybody's gone about on tiptoe for at least the last ten years waiting for something to happen again.'

‘Why? I mean, why for the last ten years?'

‘Well, because – oh, this is
very
good wine, Dan – because of it being due to surface again. It's all frightfully Galsworthy and Brontë, but somebody counted it up, and about every ninety years there's been a female born in the family who was a bit
peculiar,
although to use the word peculiar about somebody who chops off her brother's—'

‘Couldn't it be coincidence?' said Dan hastily, mindful of the hovering waiter.

‘Whatever it was, they were all waiting for it to happen again, and in fact they all thought it was
me
at one time,' said Juliette, and managed to make an all-embracing, can-you-imagine-it? gesture without going over the top. Dan mentally calculated how much his credit card was good for, and ordered another bottle of wine anyway. He thought Juliette was not exactly drunk, but she had reached the confiding stage. Juliette registered with approval that the waiters did not ignore him. It was very gratifying to dine with a man who could summon waiters and taxis without thinking about it. Integral authority. Authority was immensely sexy. This was a very good evening. Juliette mentally wriggled her toes in delight, and allowed Dan to refill her glass.

‘Do go on, Juliette.'

Juliette rested her elbows lightly on the table and curled her hands round the wine glass, regarding Dan across the rim. ‘I wouldn't normally breathe a word to a
soul,
' she said; ‘but you were there at Edmund's funeral, weren't you? And you saw it all. Well, you covered the thing up, didn't you? So courageous, I thought, because it was really too blood-curdling.'

Dan said, ‘What happened afterwards?'

‘Well, for a long time people scurried about and got into little huddles and whispered anxiously about what ought to be done. Elspeth had to be given sal volatile – she was the one who was sick into the eighteenth-century whatnot – and George – that's Elspeth's husband, pink and jowly and a bit grumbly, but a pussycat really, although Aunt Flora says he's got a woman in Maida Vale, and all I can say to that is that if
I
was a man and married to Elspeth,
I'd
have a woman in Maida V—'

‘What happened to Imogen?' said Dan.

Juliette sent him a sudden unexpectedly shrewd look. ‘I suppose this is on the level, is it? I mean, you aren't some squalid little tabloid reporter, trying to get an inside story?'

‘I'm a writer and I have done work for newspapers,' said Dan. ‘But they've mostly been Sunday colour supplements because I mostly write biographies and profiles. I promise you I'm not a tabloid reporter trying to dig up an unpleasant story, Juliette.' He paused, and then said, ‘But I do admit that your family interests me very much, although not from the point of view of gutter-press sensationalism.'

‘Lucienne and Sybilla,' said Juliette, nodding. ‘I often thought there might be a book in it. I don't suppose you'd do anything without consulting us?'

‘No, of course not.' Dan paused. ‘Juliette, what happened to Imogen?'

‘I think,' said Juliette, glancing round, ‘that we need a tad more privacy than we've got here. Just a tad.' They looked at one another. Dan waited, and after a moment Juliette said, ‘Suppose we adjourn to my flat.' Dan heard the unmistakable invitation in her voice, and felt, with a feeling of wry despair, the mental hand caressing the mental thigh.

As he paid the bill he wondered how many more Ingram females he would have to take to bed to find out the truth about his beleaguered heroine.

Juliette curled up in a corner of the chesterfield in her sitting room, tucking her feet under her. She had kicked off her shoes and the short mulberry velvet skirt had ridden up rather a lot. Her legs were very good indeed and Dan caught himself wondering if she was wearing tights or black stockings.

They had a pot of coffee, and Juliette set out a bottle of brandy and two glasses and switched on the electric fire. The red glow reflected in the half-full bottle and in Juliette's short glossy hair, and the room was warm and intimate. She embarked on the story of how Imogen had crept out to the cemetery – ‘although what took her there we'll probably never know' – and on to the exhumation. ‘And the trouble is, Dan, that we all thought she was raving mad and responsible for serving up the head-thing at the funeral, and so when she fell into this profound sleep they arranged to cart her off to Thornacre.'

Dan felt as if he had been plunged into black, icy water. He said, ‘Imogen's in Thornacre?'

‘Yes. And really, it's utterly tragic, Dan, because Royston and Eloise – oh dear, poorest Eloise – never let her have any kind of life at all, and now it doesn't look as if she ever will have any.'

‘Really?'

‘They always insisted she was delicate,' said Juliette. ‘She wasn't, of course.'

‘No?' said Dan, and Juliette waved a hand dismissively.

‘My dear, strong as a horse. But Eloise used to throw these ghastly attacks of migraine or something to keep Imogen at her bedside. Sofa-side.
Malade imaginaire,
or,' added Juliette with another flash of acumen, ‘
malade à la convenance
.'

‘Didn't Imogen need to work? What about a job or a career?'

‘She left school when she was seventeen at Easter,' said Juliette. ‘I think the school wanted her to go on and try for university, but Royston blocked that at once. Great-Aunt Flora thought she could take some kind of business course and go into Ingram's – she's an absolute darling, Great-Aunt Flo – and even old George said he would be very happy to take her into his own office as a secretary or trainee buyer. He's something to do with china exporting, and he said there was a genuine opening, not just a nepotism one. They blocked all that as well: “No, it would be far too much for the child, she gets so exhausted after even the slightest exertion . . . None of you has the least idea . . .” And Eloise lay back on one of her couches, put her hand to her head and said she would
try
to manage if Imogen left them, but it would be so very difficult, and all this bickering was giving her such a headache.'

Dan smiled. The mimicry of Eloise Ingram was extremely good.

‘So then I had a go,' said Juliette. ‘I suggested Imogen helped some friends I have who run one of those home dinner party set-ups – you know the kind of thing,
haute cuisine
brought to the door and you serve it up on your own plates so your guests think you're Elizabeth David or Peter Stringfellow. Now that she really would have liked, and she could have done it on a part-time basis as well. She enjoyed cooking, poor child. It was probably the only thing they let her do.'

‘It didn't take her out of the house,' said Dan, thoughtfully.

‘Yes.' Juliette was pleased to find him so perceptive.

‘And now she's in a coma.'

‘That's what Thalia says. Stupor, the doctors are calling it, although I can't see that it makes any
difference
to the poor darling.'

‘And Sterne's treating her?'

‘Yes.'

Dan reached for the coffee pot again.

‘It's empty,' said Juliette. ‘But I can make some more if you want.'

‘Actually I'd quite like another cup if it's no trouble.' Hot coffee might chase away the cold dread that the word Thornacre had induced.

‘None in the world. Come and help me.' She went out to the kitchen and Dan followed her.

He made the first physical approach over the coffee grinder, partly because she clearly expected it and partly because the kitchen was so small that avoiding physical contact was impossible, but also because he suddenly found himself wanting to dispel the tainted memories of lovemaking with that other Ingram female. Being in bed with someone different, someone
normal,
might do that.

Juliette was blessedly normal, and her response was immediate and gratifying. Her mouth opened under Dan's and she moved forward at once, so that they were pressed hard together. She was taller than most girls, nearly as tall as Dan, and for several minutes they stood locked thigh to thigh in an increasingly passionate clinch. Dan began to slide his hands beneath the sensuous mulberry velvet, and Juliette gasped with delight and then reached down to pull at her skirt. There was the snapping open of buttons, and a rustle of sound as the skirt slid to the floor. She stepped out of it and kicked it out of the way, and Dan registered that it was black stockings rather than tights after all. They were held up by garters and she was wearing silk underwear.

Juliette freed her lips from his for a moment to say in a voice husky with amusement and passion, ‘The coffee grinder's still running.'

‘Well, turn it off. And then come back into the sitting room. The sofa—'

‘Screw the sofa,' Juliette said. ‘Let's do it here.'

Dan supposed they could always drink instant coffee afterwards anyway.

It meant another silent exit from another unfamiliar flat in the small hours, and it meant another phone call to Interflora. Dan used a different branch this time. He did not really mind the Belsize Park florists viewing him as a lecher, but two lots of flowers to two different ladies in as many days might look boastful.

He sat brooding over a late breakfast. If Oliver had still been here he would have been convinced that his younger brother was an irreclaimable lecher. It was as well he was not here. Dan poured another cup of tea and carried on thinking.

Imogen, his inspirational heroine, Rosamund's role model, was in Thornacre – or if she was not, she was on the way there. Dan had read the stories about the place and he had seen the photographs, and listened to the rumours. One newspaper had called Thornacre the site of the most outrageous ill-treatment in any English institution for nearly a quarter of a century. Another had hinted at sexual abuse of patients. There had been rumours of corruption as well – blatant and consistent stealing of patients' belongings, and falsifying of records as well as concealing deaths so that pensions and allowances could be drawn by the unscrupulous nurses and auxiliaries. One of the doctors – Dan could not recall his name – had just committed suicide, to a fresh blaze of publicity and speculation.

And now Imogen was there, just as Rosamund was. It was nature imitating art. Or it was art imitating nature. Dan was unable to decide which way round it was; he was unable to decide if he had been influenced by the recent publicity about Thornacre and used it, or whether there was some other, more supernatural explanation.

At length, he pushed the thing to the back of his mind and sat down at his desk to deal with the current chapter. Rosamund's consciousness was now satisfactorily shrouded so that she could not argue against Margot's machinations, and Margot was beginning the systematic transfer of Rosamund's fortune to her own bank account. Dan had finally managed to fathom a shred or two of the medical tomes, and had chosen the drug methaqualone, which the evil and lascivious Dr Bentinck had administered for its sedative and hypnotic qualities, and which had sent Rosamund into a death-like coma and thus entangled her in the complex strands of Margot's plot. But neither Margot nor Bentinck knew that the dashing and heroic Adam Cadence had discovered what was afoot, and was even now poised to drive hell for leather to the remote Northumberland village where Rosamund's grim asylum was situated.