After Clare (12 page)

Marta Heeren's alleged fondness for the boy wasn't referred to. Novak knew he would have to speak to her, but she clearly wasn't in any fit state to be questioned at the moment. He stood up, nodded to Willard who closed his notebook with a smart snap, and thanked them all. ‘I think that's as far as we can go for now. We shall be continuing with our investigations, of course, and we'll let you know if anything else transpires.'

After leaving them all outside on the terrace, Marta had blundered through the library and into the hall, where she came to a halt and gazed wildly around as if she didn't know where she was, uncertain where to go. Today was the morning when one of the village women turned out her bedroom, lunch was being prepared in the kitchen, and trying to find privacy in one of the secluded corners of the library, with everyone still on the terrace, wasn't possible. There were a dozen other places in the house where she could have hidden herself, so many in fact that the choice seemed an impossible one in her confused state, and in the end she simply sat down on the big oak settle, where for only the second time in her adult life she burst into tears. Peter! Oh, Peter! Why did you have to come back here?

Peter, slim and lithe, with smooth olive skin, eyes like black obsidian and thick eyelashes any girl would have given her soul for . . . He had reminded her, when she had first seen him, so much of Dirk when he was the same age.

As a little girl, Marta had not taken to her new stepmother, Florence Vavasour, who had married her widowed father, a big, stolid Dutchman. Florence was a tight-lipped woman who did not believe in spoiling children, but it was not for taking her mother's place that Marta resented her: she did not even remember her mother, who had died when she was a baby. She had felt excluded, no one now noticed her or wanted her affection, and she tried to gain attention by naughtiness: getting her pristine clothes dirty, savagely destroying and defacing the few toys and picture books her new stepmother allowed, baffling her father. That changed when Marta first saw her little stepbrother in his mother's arms, a newborn baby with an angry red face, tiny starfish hands and unbelievably delicate, pearly fingernails. Where jealousy might have been expected, from precisely that moment on she had loved him with a fierce protectiveness that had lasted all their lives.

Was it only this memory of caring for Dirk that had made her love Peter, or the fact that Dirk, a grown man, no longer needed her quite so much?

How long she sat there, she didn't know, but presently she managed to pull herself together and dry her eyes. Her heavy face fell back into its usual stoic expression, and after a moment or two she thought she might be ready to go into the kitchen and get on with her wine-making.

But just as she prepared to go, Dirk and the two policemen came into the hall as Dirk escorted them to the front door. Novak and his sergeant hadn't noticed her in the shadows at the far end, but Dirk had seen her and now came towards her. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Maartje, Maartje.'

The sound of her real name, now only ever used by him, nearly upset her again. It had always been she, the big sister, who had looked after, comforted and protected him, but Dirk for his part was more tender with her, more understanding, than he was with anyone else. They had always supported one another, and always would. She would never let him down. It would be all right.

She let his hand stay where it was for a moment, then drew away. She didn't like to be touched by anyone, sometimes not even by Dirk. She took a breath. ‘Run along now,' she said, standing up. ‘I expect you have your work to attend to.' Like a small boy, he obeyed. It was his instinctive reaction to his older sister.

Nellie Dobson, who came in daily from the village to cook, had brought one of her grandchildren with her – it was little Violet today – and Marta could hear her prattling in the kitchen. She pushed open the kitchen door and went to the table, where she sat with Violet on her knee and felt the warmth of her small body, and smelled the baby smell of her hair while she showed her how to pick over the elderberries with her fat little fingers.

‘I suppose I can go and change now,' Rosie said, after the police and Dirk had disappeared. Hugh, too, rose from his chair.

Emily said, ‘Please, Hugh, stay a moment, if you will.'

Rosie left them and they sat for a while without speaking. The August garden, at the end of a long, hot summer, was beginning to look exhausted, the trees heavy with leaf, some already yellowing, the first steps towards the year's gentle slide into autumn. Only the Hecate tree stood far off, dark and unchanging, its black-green shape silhouetted against the sky.

Hugh looked expectant as Emily turned to him. Perhaps he was hoping for the talk she had promised when she first arrived, and which he had, with admirable patience, not pressed her for.

‘There's something on your mind, Hugh.'

He grunted but didn't say anything for a while. ‘You noticed. Yes. In a way, I feel responsible for all this.'

‘You? How?'

‘Responsible in that I brought them to Netherley, Edmund and his son.'

‘Which doesn't mean,' she replied after a moment, ‘that you should blame yourself for the boy's death. Who is Edmund Sholto?'

‘He lives in one of those two cottages belonging to Steadings – you remember them, just outside the gates, where old Mrs Cantor used to live. When she died and her cottage became vacant, I offered it to him. He had bought a bookshop, specializing in antiquarian books, in St Albans, that's how I came to know him.'

‘Of course.' Emily knew Hugh's interest in books had always extended beyond the actual publishing of them. He possessed a fine collection of old and rare volumes, and some valuable first editions. Bookshops drew him like a magnet.

Sholto had come to the area after his wife had died following a long illness, which had been a particularly harrowing time for both him and their young son. Peter was about ten when they left Cornwall, and Edmund wanted to get right away from it all, for both their sakes, make a new start. He decided to settle in St Albans, where he found good schools for Peter and a bookshop for sale, with accommodation attached. But, added Hugh drily, having a passion for books doesn't necessarily bring in a living. Edmund had been a schoolmaster and was in no way a man of business. The bookshop did not make money and he was lucky enough to sell it before it collapsed completely. It was then Hugh had offered him the vacant cottage.

‘That was an act of kindness.'

‘Kindness?' He raised an eyebrow. ‘Self-preservation, more likely. There's no one else in Netherley I can talk to with the same degree of compatibility.' He rose to go.

She knew he hadn't told her everything. If she pressed him, he might tell her what he was holding back, but she felt she had no right. There were many things she hadn't told even Hugh, dearer to her than anyone else, and never would.

When the prospect of working for Dirk Stronglove had first been mooted at Dee's wedding, Val had scornfully dismissed the idea. He told Poppy he would have to be desperate to take on that sort of job. ‘And I don't believe I'm that far gone, not quite, not yet.'

‘Since when have you been able to afford to be so high-minded? Lots of men would simply
jump
at such an offer. It's only a temporary thing, anyway, isn't it?'

That had certainly been made quite clear in that first brief chat he'd had with Stronglove. ‘True. Until he finishes his current book, while he makes up his mind whether to have his eyes operated on or not. Poor devil, what a decision to have to make! He's quite keen to have someone working with him who might have an understanding of what he's about – actually, he's quite impressed by Oxford, me reading English and all that.'

‘There you are, then.'

‘Haven't you been listening to a word I've said? I can't take it.'

But his protests had been token, because Poppy had been quite right. He wasn't in a position to reject any reasonable job, especially one which offered a decent remuneration, as this one did. And despite what he had said, here he was, living in at Leysmorton because Emily had suggested that was the only thing for him to do, Netherley being miles from any main line station, and Val not having any transport. Yesterday, Dirk had suddenly announced he needed a day off to give himself a break, and Val was free to do the same. So he had taken the opportunity to come up to London to collect more of his belongings – and to see a man he knew about the purchase of a second-hand motorcycle. On a borrowed bicycle, he'd ridden over to Kingsworth Halt to catch a train which eventually brought him to London.

He had been thankful, when he'd come to see Poppy in her smart little London shop,
to find Xanthe Tripp absent. Waiting while she left him in order to accept delivery of several large parcels that had arrived at the same time as he did, he looked around, feeling he was in Aladdin's cave – though one for initiates. One had to admit, Poppy really had flair, even if the ornaments, fabrics and furnishings bore no resemblance to anything anyone looking for comfort would wish to have in their home – apart from some rather nice cream leather sofas. He knew that Mrs Tripp's interest was less in the artistic side of the business and more in finding clients who wanted to keep in the swim and leave the stuffy old pre-war ideas behind. There were apparently plenty of those, but regrettably few who could afford to implement this and follow the fashions of the moment.

‘How is work at Leysmorton, then?' Poppy asked as the door closed behind the delivery man. ‘I trust you're managing to survive without prostituting your art?'

‘No sarcasm, Pops, please.' He paused. ‘It was old Emily who recommended me to Stronglove, I'm sure of it.'

‘Indirectly perhaps. She and Hugh.'

‘She's obviously decided we both need looking after – this job for me, and I hear she's commissioning you
to redo her library. Can that be true?'

‘Yes, what fun.'

There was a slight pause. ‘I'd be very sorry to see the Leysmorton library looking anything like – this,' he observed cautiously, casting another glance around at strange, angular lamps and sleek, streamlined furniture, fabrics in violent colours, ‘and sorry if you're asking too much. It's jolly decent of her to try and help us, after all.'

‘It's not entirely up to me. I
do
have a partner, you know.'

‘I do know,' he said, his tone sharpening.

‘Don't be tiresome, Val. Give me a little
credit
. There won't be any drastic changes to the library, and I'll see to it that we certainly won't overcharge. She's – actually, she's really rather an old dear, isn't she?'

‘Lady F?' Val raised an eyebrow at this very different tune Poppy was now singing.

‘All right,' she admitted, flushing as she bent to retrieve a stray piece of thread from some newly made, wavy-striped black and white curtains, presumably meant to resemble zebra skin. ‘Maybe I was wrong, perhaps one shouldn't judge a person before you've met them properly. And she
has
wangled you that job and everything . . .'

Val let it pass. ‘What's your opinion of Stronglove?' he asked abruptly.

‘I don't know him well enough to have one. I used to see him occasionally when I stayed with Dee in the school hols and that's about it.'

‘He calls me his amanuensis.' He laughed shortly. ‘Better than dogsbody, I suppose, which is what I really am.'

‘Does it matter
what
he calls you, ducky, when he's paying you so well?'

‘Not if you look at it like that, I suppose . . .' He wished they didn't both have to be so aware of money, but it was difficult not to be when you'd been as hard up as they had for so long. He shrugged. ‘Oh, it's not so bad, really.'

In fact, in many ways he felt sympathetic to Dirk, struggling to finish a book while coping with the problem of his failing eyesight. So far Val had been able to work with him better than he had thought possible, although Stronglove had a high opinion of himself, a result of the acclaim brought to him by his books, which in Val's lofty view did not rate highly in the literature scale. But since working on the new book with Dirk, he had to admit to a grudging admiration and respect for the craftsmanship and hard work which made them so successful.

‘I'm no good at dictation,' Dirk had said right at the beginning, ‘too many second thoughts and the need for alterations and crossings out. You'll have to do what the young chap who worked for me before the war did – decipher the scrawl my handwriting's become and get it all into reasonably good shape. Anyway, I don't suppose you do this shorthand malarkey – but I hope you do know how to use a typewriter?'

Val had replied diffidently that he had taught himself to type. He didn't feel it necessary to explain that he'd tackled this during the writing of his own novel. Stronglove hadn't mentioned that he knew about his attempt at authorship – though Val was sure he must have been told about it – and Val himself certainly wasn't ready to discuss it, not at this stage anyway.

Although his new employer was touchy about his work, and often in a strange mood, as if he had something on his mind, almost certainly due to the operation hanging over him, Val had decided that, all in all, the job wasn't turning out so badly. Apart from bringing in some money, there was an added bonus in the shape of Rosie Markham. So far, he'd managed to exchange little more than pleasantries with her because she and Lady Fitzallan, working in the garden together, had always looked too busy and absorbed to be interrupted for long. It was a state of affairs he intended to remedy.

‘What did you want to see me about, Val, coming so far out of your way? You came over here specially and you must have had a reason for that.' Poppy looked pointedly at a black ceramic disc without numbers, only white hands, and flicking back a wing of black hair regarded him narrowly. She looked as glossy and enamelled as the clock. ‘Come on, I haven't got much time.'