Authors: David Roberts
‘I met his sister, Mrs Garton, once very briefly. I liked her.’
‘Between ourselves, she is worth two of him but I shouldn’t say so. Garton was always good to me and I am truly grateful. He has retired now.’
‘And you are a partner?’
‘I am but I may have to give it up. I spend so much time at the House. The Prime Minister has said . . . but you don’t want to hear about me, Lord Edward.’
In contrast to her brother, Maggie was silent. Verity, who had not noticed her in the Abbey, was shocked by her disfigurement and imagined she must be shy. She made up for it by talking rather wildly about her trip on the
Queen Mary
with Benyon but it was a relief to her when they reached Mrs Cardew’s flat. Edmund’s and Maggie’s mother proved to be a woman of considerable charm who was clearly devoted to her children. She was rather stout and when she embraced Maggie the girl almost disappeared. She emerged laughing and adjusting her hat.
‘Mother, please! This hat cost a fortune! Don’t crush it.’
It was pleasant to see how affectionately they teased the old woman. Edward asked Mrs Cardew about Benyon, explaining his and Verity’s connection.
‘That’s so like Inna,’ she exclaimed when Verity described how Lady Benyon had helped her overcome her ‘block’ when she was writing her book on Spain. ‘She was one of my closest friends but alas she is dead. As soon as Blackie brings me the
The Times
in the morning before I get up, I read the death notices. I expect to see my own there soon,’ she smiled.
‘Mother!’ Cardew expostulated. ‘You talk as if you are in your dotage. You are only as young as you feel. She has so many friends,’ he said, turning to Verity. ‘Tomorrow you are going down to Swifts Hill, aren’t you, Mother? You always like going there. Do you know the Castlewoods, Lord Edward?’
‘I don’t but, as it happens, Verity will be staying with them at the same time as you are there, Mrs Cardew.’
‘My dear, how wonderful,’ the old lady said, smiling at her. ‘Perhaps we can travel together. There’s a train from Victoria at 3.28 that will get us to Swifts Hill in time for tea. But how silly of me . . . you don’t want to be lumbered with an old woman like me.’
‘Not at all,’ Verity said. ‘I would very much like to come with you if I may. The truth is I haven’t seen Ginny since we left school and I am a little scared of meeting her husband.’
‘Oh, Simon’s a charmer. You will get on very well with him. He has an eye for a pretty girl. Not that I am saying he is other than devoted to Virginia . . .’
‘That’s settled then,’ Cardew said. ‘It would be a weight off my mind, Miss Browne, if you
would
accompany my mother. It’s a long journey and she has not been well . . .’
‘Oh pish, Edmund. I have just had a summer cold which I have not been able fully to throw off. Dear Virginia swears that the air at Swifts Hill – so much cleaner than here in London – will clear it up in no time.’
‘And I am sure she is right,’ her son said. ‘It will do you the world of good.’
Verity found his concern for his mother admirable but slightly suspect. She had never had a mother but imagined that she would be less patronizing than Edmund. She guessed Mrs Cardew must be seventy-three or four. She was hardly at death’s door and why was Maggie so silent? Was it just shyness? She shook herself mentally. She was becoming cynical, she thought. ‘I am staying with friends in the King’s Road, Mrs Cardew. I will pick you up in a taxi . . .’
‘Lord Edward, you are not accompanying us?’
‘No, I was not invited and in any case I have another engagement.’
‘Too bad,’ Cardew said. ‘You should know, Mother, that Miss Browne is a distinguished journalist. A foreign correspondent, I think they call it. Isn’t that right, Miss Browne?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Verity said, reluctant to be flattered, ‘but I certainly work for a newspaper – the
New Gazette
.’
‘So you must know Lord Weaver?’ Mrs Cardew inquired.
‘He employed me. Is he a friend of yours, Mrs Cardew?’
‘Edmund sees a lot of him, don’t you, dear? He is one of the old monster’s “young men”.’
‘Oh, Mother, where do you pick up those expressions? You have been reading the
Daily Express
. I am certainly not one of his “young men”, Miss Browne, but he has been good to me. He, too, was kind to us when my father died. Lord Weaver sent many of his friends my way so I owe him what little success I have had as a stockbroker.’
Maggie seemed to want to change the subject because, to Verity’s surprise, she broke her silence. ‘Lord Edward, have you heard whether the police have caught the man who killed poor Mr Pitt-Messanger?’
‘I know nothing more than I have read in the newspapers, Miss Cardew. As far as I know they have not charged anybody, but it’s early days yet.’
‘Quite terrible!’ exclaimed Mrs Cardew. ‘Sacrilege I call it, though I have to admit I could never stand him.’
‘You knew Pitt-Messanger?’ Edward asked in surprise.
‘I knew him, yes, but not well. He was an obstinate old man and he led that poor daughter of his the most awful life. I hope you will tell me, Maggie, if I turn into a tyrant.’
‘Mother!’ the girl protested, taking her hand and squeezing it.
‘He was a tyrant?’ Verity asked.
‘Maybe I am exaggerating but he was so obsessed with his work, he had no time to look to his children.’
‘Children? I thought there was only Maud?’ Edward queried.
‘There was a son – Edwin, I think his name was. He ran away to sea when he was fourteen or fifteen and has never been seen since.’
‘How romantic,’ Verity sighed.
‘Possibly, but to make a child run away from home, you have to have done “unromantic” things to him.’ Mrs Cardew looked fierce. ‘I don’t know the ins and outs of it but I know something very unpleasant happened.’
‘And now poor Maud is all alone in the world,’ Maggie sighed.
‘It’s the best thing for her,’ Mrs Cardew said sharply. ‘If it is not too late for her, as I fear it may be, she can set about living her life.’
‘Her father treated her badly?’ Verity inquired.
‘He made her his companion, secretary, housekeeper, dogsbody. He took her on all his digs.’
‘That must have been interesting,’ Edward put in. ‘I remember reading he made some wonderful finds in Assyria.’
‘He uncovered the grave of a great king,’ Cardew said, ‘but there were all sorts of problems. I can’t remember the details. One of the young men who helped him on the dig claimed he, not Pitt-Messanger, had made the find and kicked up a bit of a stink about it. Fortunately for Pitt-Messanger, his accuser died fairly soon after – of cholera, I think – and the scandal died with him.’
‘Yes,’ Edward recalled, ‘there were pictures of some of the treasures he had uncovered in the
Illustrated London News
. . . a dagger and some jewellery. Amazing!’
Verity looked at him with surprise. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in archaeology?’
‘I have a small collection of my own. Don’t you remember that Etruscan vase I managed to smash?’
‘But no body . . . no skeleton,’ Cardew said.
‘What did you say, dear?’
‘Sorry, Mother. I just said it was odd there was no body. I mean, usually an ancient grave is robbed of its treasures but they don’t bother to disturb the corpse. On that occasion the opposite seems to have been the case.’
‘I imagine the bones just turned to dust over the centuries,’ Edward put in.
‘Of course! Anyway, why am I talking about corpses?’
2
They were met at the station by the Castlewoods’ chauffeur dressed, Verity thought, like von Stroheim, the film director – leather jacket and trousers, peaked cap and long, black boots. A porter rescued Mrs Cardew’s two suitcases from the goods van and Blackie, her maid, who appeared to be even older than her mistress, appeared from third class with Mrs Cardew’s jewellery bag, which was her special care and never left her sight. The chauffeur, who tipped his cap and said his name was Barry, relieved Verity of her new suitcase and she was glad to be able to look him in the eye. She knew from the
Queen Mary
that servants judged you by the quality and quantity of your luggage. She wondered if Barry was his first or last name but found herself unable to ask.
As she followed Mrs Cardew into the back of the Rolls, she began to worry that she might not have brought enough smart clothes. The Virginia she remembered from school had had no interest in clothes and wore her school uniform with such disregard for decency that she was frequently in trouble with the form mistress. Even the headmistress, meeting her once in a corridor, had sent her back to the dormitory for having holes in her stockings. However, Verity reminded herself, Virginia was now married to a millionaire and no doubt dressed with the help of a maid. She lay back on the soft leather and sniffed that delicious scent of wealth.
It was an odd inconsistency of Verity’s that, though in principle she disapproved of chauffeurs, ladies’ maids, Rolls-Royces and all the other appurtenances of wealth – and would not know what to do with a lady’s maid if she had one – she enjoyed being the guest of those for whom all this was completely natural. As the car set off – so silently she was hardly aware they were moving – Mrs Cardew’s Pekinese, Lulu, climbed on to her lap and she thought once again how nice it would be to have a dog. A delicious languor overtook her and, without meaning to, she slept.
It was little more than five miles to Swifts Hill and though the ancient Rolls travelled at a stately twenty-five miles an hour, it felt as if she had only closed her eyes for an instant when Mrs Cardew touched her on the arm and said, ‘Do look, Miss Browne. Your first view of Swifts Hill . . . isn’t it a dream?’
Mrs Cardew tapped on the glass partition and asked Barry to stop the car for a moment. Verity ought to have known what to expect because she had only recently been reading about it but the photograph in
Country Life
had not done it justice. Swifts Hill had originally been a medieval castle rebuilt for Henry VIII in the 1520s. Young Prince Edward was lodged there for a time but Queen Elizabeth had no use for it and it fell into disrepair. When Simon Castlewood bought it in 1933 nothing remained but the walls of the great hall. The Castlewoods began by rebuilding it as he and the Swedish architect imagined it must have looked in its first incarnation complete with minstrels’ gallery. At huge cost the hall was capped with a magnificent oak roof – an elaborate ‘false’ hammerbeam construction. Then, in daring and powerful antithesis, the Castlewoods added a modern house attached to the hall by a low curved building surmounted by a cupola made of concrete and glass. The main part of the new house was circular and quite unlike anything yet built in England.
Thoroughly awake now, Verity could hardly wait as they crunched up the drive and crossed the bridge over the dry moat. As she walked through the glass doors into the triangular entrance hall she was struck by its airy simplicity. Light streamed through the glass roof and was absorbed by a huge circular carpet. On it several very modern-looking and possibly uncomfortable chairs were grouped around two small tables. A huge vase of flowers stood on a pedestal in the centre of the room re-minding Verity, momentarily, of the foyer of the Ritz in Paris. The hall was lined in wood and decorated with marquetry panels showing scenes of Venice, clearly a favourite city of the owners. Two staircases led out of it up to a gallery which encircled the hall below it. Magnificent bronze-framed glass doors led through to rooms on the ground floor. Verity could not help noticing the coin-operated telephone booth and the cloakrooms to one side of the hall. It confirmed her impression of being in a hotel lobby and she had to smile.
As she looked around her there was a whooshing sound and in swept Virginia carrying in her arms a Pekinese which, Verity subsequently discovered, was called Halma. She dropped it on the carpet where it began to yap at Mrs Cardew’s Lulu which, understandably, yapped back. The noise was deafening but Virginia seemed not to hear it. She kissed Mrs Cardew, calling her Emily, and then turned to Verity. Holding her first at arm’s length, she studied her face and then embraced her. Just as Verity thought she would never be released, Virginia thrust her away but still held on to both her hands.
‘My dear Crumbles – how wonderful to see you after all this time! And who would have thought you would be so famous. Let me look at you. Yes, I do believe you are the same devil-may-care rapscallion who gave poor Miss Haddow several nervous breakdowns before she finally gathered up enough courage to expel you. Your dear father was heartbroken. I remember him arriving in his green Rolls-Royce to take you home with him. I admired you so much, you know. You never shed a tear though I do believe your lip trembled when we said our goodbyes. You strode out with your chin in the air. Indignant – that’s what you were. As though Miss Haddow had done you wrong when in fact she had gone to so much trouble to keep you on the straight and narrow. “That poor motherless girl,” she said to me. “She needs all the love we can give her.”’
Virginia paused for breath which enabled Mrs Cardew to say, ‘Crumbles! Is that what they called you at school, Miss Browne?’
‘I had quite forgotten,’ Verity said, blushing, ‘and, Ginny, I absolutely forbid you to use that name again.’ In her imagination she saw Edward doubled up with laughter.
‘But why Crumbles?’ Mrs Cardew persisted.
‘She used to take biscuits and cakes to bed with her. She was always hungry though she never got fat, which was so annoying.’
‘You make me sound ungrateful, Ginny. How was I to know Miss Haddow was . . . doing her best for me? She never said so. I just thought she was a bully and an old fuss-pot.’
‘I’m sorry, my dear! Here I am gossiping about old times and you are hardly in the house. Shall I show you to your rooms or would you like a cup of tea first?’
They opted for tea and were led through glass doors into the drawing-room. It was unlike any which Verity had seen before. It was entirely false and yet, for all its theatricality, conveyed Virginia’s personality which was wholly sincere: exuberant, impetuous and enthusiastic. Verity looked about her in amazement. ‘Ginny – what an extraordinary house! It’s so light and . . . uncluttered . . .’