Julia (19 page)

Mrs. Huff, moving with a stiff efficiency that recalled Miss Pinner, and which Julia only now recognized as arthritis, pulled open a door at Julia’s left and revealed a musty parlor. Brown overstuffed chairs faced each other across a mottled carpet. Beside each rose a hairy plant. “Please to wait here until I return. It will not be long.”

“Is there a Mr. Braden?” Julia stood uneasily beside one of the fuzzy chairs.

“He died in the war,” Mrs. Huff said, and was gone. The door clicked behind her.

Julia did not want to sit in the chairs; they reminded her of some sticky plant that trapped insects and then digested them. She turned in the dark little room and began to pace, too excited to take in the room’s furnishings, which seemed to hang in the dusty gloom. Her steps took her to a wooden bookcase; Julia looked at the titles, odd in some way, uniformly stamped in gilt on the thick spines. Then she saw that they were all in German. She ran her hand along the books, and her fingers came away black. Wiping her fingers on a tissue from her bag, Julia walked in small circles on the dark carpet. Surely it was Turkish? Her grandfather had owned a carpet much like it. She became aware of a pressure in her bladder. Where was the bathroom? It was only the excitement, she knew, and it would soon pass away if
she could take her mind off it. She began to pace more rapidly; if the pressure increased, she would have to sit cross-legged in one of the awful chairs. Then her steps took her immediately before a small canvas, and she stopped pacing, puzzled by its familiarity. It was not a painting she had seen before, but surely she knew that arrangement of uptilted table, pipe, and gash of newsprint. Braque—it was a Braque. She peered at the little painting more closely. It had to be a reproduction; but when she read the signature she saw the buttery raised strokes of paint. Surprise dissipated the urgency in her bladder.

She turned about just as the door opened. Mrs. Huff beckoned stiffly with one hand, smiling. “Mrs. Braden will see you now. Please follow me.”

“This painting—I can’t believe it!” said Julia.

“Please to come. I know nothing about painting.”

Julia hurried from the room, propelled by the silvery, lulling voice. Mrs. Huff gestured toward the staircase, smiling, and then began to ascend. Julia followed. When she had passed through the darkened archway, she saw Mrs. Huff opening a door halfway down a lightless hall. Julia had time to notice rows of paintings lining the walls, but the obscurity within the corridor effaced them. She went hurriedly through the door Mrs. Huff was holding open for her.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Lofting,” said the large gray-haired woman dressed entirely in shining black who had risen at Julia’s entrance. “I am Greta Braden and it was I to whom you spoke on the telephone. Please take the chair to your left. I think you will find it comfortable. Thank you, Huff.” The door closed softly behind Julia.

She found herself staring at a painting encased in a gold frame from which depended a sliding red velvet drape, now
pulled to one side to reveal a fleshy naked woman whose skin seemed to absorb all the room’s light. It was, unbelievably, a Rubens. The rest of the bedroom shared with its occupant the atmosphere of elegance gone down in neglect. The flocked wallpaper, once red-gold, had been darkened by grime to a mute shade of brown. Books and newspapers lay over the floor, many of the papers yellowing with age. On the worn black velvety expanse of material covering the massive bed lay a tray holding the ruins of breakfast. Mrs. Braden’s large angular face seemed to have caught dust in every fold. The gray hair was stiff with grease. Looking at her, Julia was not sure that Greta Braden was quite sane.

“You wish to talk with me about my son. Why is that, Mrs. Lofting?”

Julia sat on the chair Mrs. Braden had indicated, and felt the cushions slither beneath her weight. Now she was looking at a photograph, hung on the wall above the huge bed, of a small frail-looking boy in spectacles. Beside it hung a second photograph, of a tall, gaunt man wearing pince-nez and a Norfolk jacket.

“That was Geoffrey,” said Mrs. Braden. “My husband stands beside him. What is your interest in me, Mrs. Lofting?”

“I saw Heather Rudge two days ago,” said Julia, and saw the woman’s body stiffen inside the shiny black shell of her clothing. “She was abusive and disturbed, but she did mention that I might speak to you.” Overriding a curt, dismissive gesture from Mrs. Braden, Julia hastily added, “I am not working for Heather Rudge, not in any way. You see, I recently bought the Rudges’ former house. I was—I was recovering from a long illness. Something about the house demanded that I buy it. Since then I’ve been looking into the past of the Rudge family—the past of the house. It’s been something
like a compulsion—I want to know everything I can find out about them. I don’t think the truth ever came out about your son’s death, Mrs. Braden. There’s a lot more, but you might think I was crazy if I said it all. The chief thing is, I have to find out about the Rudges.”

Mrs. Braden was looking at her very shrewdly. “And then you will perhaps write about what you find?”

“Well,” said Julia, afraid to risk expulsion by uttering the wrong answer, “I’m not sure about that.…”

“Twenty-four years ago I would not have talked to you,” said Mrs. Braden. “Especially if you mentioned the name Rudge. Now much time has passed, and I have waited for someone to speak the truth about my son’s death. Many have gone unpunished. When my tragedy happened, the police would not listen to me. I was a foreigner, a woman, and they thought me suspicious, foolish. They ignored me, Mrs. Lofting. My son’s death has gone unavenged. Now do you understand why I am speaking to you?”

“I … I think so,” said Julia.

“My world is in this room. I have not left my house since twenty years. I have become old in this room. Huff is my eyes and ears. I care for nothing but my husband’s collection of paintings, his memory, and my son’s memory. Even Huff does not know everything about my son’s murder—doesn’t that word sound awesome and terrible to you, Mrs. Lofting? Do you know what murder is? That it is the greatest crime against the soul, even the souls of the living? It is an eternal crime.”

“Yes … I feel that,” Julia breathed. “But what I need is proof. Or knowledge more than proof.”

“Proof
.” The older woman expelled the word from her mouth as if it were rotten meat. “I need no proof. That man the police executed was a harmless vagrant. He was a simple
man, a child himself. He liked to talk to the children. What proof did the police have when they killed him?”

“So you
are
convinced he was innocent,” Julia said.

“Of course, of course! Listen to what I am saying to you. There were no secrets between Geoffrey and myself, Mrs. Lofting. I know what they did to him in that park. Those others tortured him daily. They made his life a hell because he was sensitive and because he had asthma. And because he was partially German. They called my son the Kraut, the Jerry, the Hun. They were all bad children, those others.”

“And you knew Mrs. Rudge?”

“That one. She laughed at me. She scorned me. I begged her to help me for Geoffrey’s sake, but she was blind and foolish. She could not see what was happening within her own house. She could not see she was defending a monster. I have no doubt about what happened to my son, Mrs. Lofting. The Rudge girl mutilated him and then killed him. And the others helped. Now. Do you think that I am wrong?”

Julia gently touched the sheeny material of Mrs. Braden’s sleeve. “What did Olivia look like, Mrs. Braden? Can you describe her?”

The reply destroyed her expectations. “She was just a girl. Her exterior was unimportant. She looked like one of a hundred girls. She has been dead as long as Geoffrey. You must be aware of that.”

“I am aware of it, yes, but there are reasons—I have to know what she looked like. Did she have blond hair? How tall was she?”

“Those are foolish details. Blond, yes, she may have been blond. But you couldn’t tell she was evil by looking at her, Mrs. Lofting.”

“That’s the same word her mother said.”

Mrs. Braden smiled. “That stupid woman,” she said. “That rude common little fool. No, Mrs. Lofting, you must not dwell on the wasted lives of the Rudges. You must find the others. You must make them confess.”

“I have to find them,” Julia agreed. “I know some of their names. Minnie Leibrook and Francesca Temple and Paul Winter.…”

“And John Aycroft and David Swift, yes. And the Reilly boy. You surprise me, Mrs. Lofting. Those were the children who helped Olivia Rudge kill my son. If you want your proof talk to them. And I can help you.”

Julia waited tensely, unable to guess what would come.

“Some of them have died. None of them have prospered. As you can imagine, Mrs. Lofting, I have been interested in the lives of this group. I have ‘kept up,’ as you would say. I can tell you that the Reilly boy disappeared in America, your country, ten years ago—he is lost. John Aycroft killed himself when his business went bankrupt. Minnie Leibrook died in an automobile accident while drunk. Francesca Temple was very wise and became a nun. She now lives in the Slaves of Mary convent in Edinburgh, under a vow of silence. Paul Winter became a professional soldier, as was his father, but was cashiered by his regiment. He lives in a flat in Chelsea. David Swift ruined his family wine business and lost his wife in a freak accident—she was electrocuted. He lives above a pub in Upper Street, Islington. Talk to those two men, Mrs. Lofting. If you can make them talk, you will have your proof.”

Julia was stunned. “How did you find out all this?”

Mrs. Braden flexed her shoulders, making the cloth creak. “My eyes and my ears. Huff. I pay Huff very well. She has
many talents. I will ask you to leave now, Mrs. Lofting. But first I will give you some advice. Be very thorough. And be careful.”

“Well, careful is what you’d better be,” Mark said that evening. “I never heard such a tacky idea. You mean you really intend to march up to those two people and grill them about a twenty-four-year-old death? For which a man has already been executed? Look here, have another drink instead and forget all about it. God knows what you’d be getting into.”

“I’ll have another if you let me pay for it. Please, Mark.”

“If you insist, I reluctantly accept.” Mark had counted his money a few minutes before in the men’s room, and knew that the last round had left him with sixty-three pence. He owed twenty pounds to a colleague, and when he’d paid that, his next check from school would leave him just enough to pay his rent and buy a month’s food and drink. Still, he supposed, he could always put off Samuels for another month—maybe he could put him off until the second term. He watched hungrily while Julia withdrew a small purse from her bag and took from it a ten-pound note. With a start of anticipatory pleasure, Mark realized that he already thought of Julia’s money as his own. “That’s sweet of you, darling,” he added. He took the note from her fingers.

When he came back from the bar with the two drinks he put the pile of bills and change on the table between them. He said, “Are you bothered about the change?”

She looked up at him, startled. “Why, do you need money?”

“Just something to tide me over. I’ve had a tight month.”

She pushed the bills at him, her face beautifully focused on his. “Mark, please take it—please. Do you want any more?
It’s silly of me to have so much when you don’t have enough. Really, do you need more?”

“We can talk about that later,” he said. In the soft light which filtered through to the back corners of the pub, Julia looked much better, he thought. Her face still seemed milky from lack of sleep, but she was more confident, vibrant, like the Julia of old, before Magnus had sunk his claws into her.

“Are you feeling well, Mark?” she asked.

“Just a headache. It comes and goes.” He adjusted his face to put on his most endearing expression, what an old girl friend had called his “sheep in wolf’s clothing face.” “I have to say,” he went on, “that I think you should just drop the whole business right now. I don’t think you should have upset yourself by visiting those two old grotesques. I don’t understand your worry about Kate. You still have Kate, my love. Kate is part of you. She can’t hurt you. I blame Magnus for planting all that fear in you. I could kill him for what he’s doing to you. You should have let Perry what’s-his-name go to the coppers.” His headache had tightened up a notch, but he kept his face steady, putting, if anything, more warmth into his eyes.

“You hate Magnus, don’t you?” Julia sounded faintly startled.

“Magnus is a bastard.”

“I do think of you as my protection against him. It was magic, how you appeared that time I fainted. And you and Lily are the only people I can talk to about what’s been happening to me. If it weren’t for poor Mrs. Fludd, I probably wouldn’t be able to talk about it at all. Did you hear about her?”

Mark nodded, and his headache made the pub swirl. “Lily told me. Too bad. Funny old girl.”

“
She
saw something, and she knew she was in danger.
I think she was killed so she couldn’t tell me what it was. Mark, I’d think I was going crazy if it weren’t for her—I have to make her death mean something.” Julia took a big swallow of her drink. “She was murdered. I’m sure of it.”

“She walked in front of a car, didn’t she? That’s what, manslaughter, not murder.”

“Why did it happen, though? And if it was a straightforward accident, how did she know she was in mortal danger? Mrs. Fludd said there was a man and a child—I’ve been thinking all along that they were Magnus and Kate, I thought Kate was haunting my house, but there’s another possibility. Of course the man is Magnus, I know that much—he’s completely irrational—but the girl might be someone else. That girl I saw. And that’s why I have to see those people.”

Mark rubbed his temples. “I think you’re making a mistake. I think you should forget about the whole business.” Julia had got an exalted, excited look which rasped on his nerves.

“What did Mrs. Fludd say to you that night? I have to know, Mark. It might help.”