The Judgement of Strangers (16 page)

Toby stared at her again, and they exchanged smiles. ‘OK. We’ll run through the rain instead.’ Then he remembered me. ‘But I can bring back the umbrella for you, David.’

‘No need, thanks. But I may not run. Walking’s more my style, these days.’

The two of them ran ahead – darting up the steps behind the pavilion and tearing ragged tracks through the long grass of the croquet lawn. I followed them up to the terrace where I had had coffee with Toby and Joanna. Sexual desire had sensitized me to the presence of desire in others. It was quite clear that Rosemary was attracted to Toby, and that he was attracted to her.

The two of them entered the house through one of the French windows that opened on to the terrace. ‘Jo!’ I heard Toby call. ‘Visitors!’

I went after them. The room beyond was large, light and well proportioned, a double cube at least twenty-five feet long. As well as two pairs of French windows on to the terrace, there were two tall windows looking out on the drive. In the Bramleys’ time this had been the residents’ lounge.

‘I’m afraid it’s still a bit of a mess.’ Toby grinned at Rosemary. ‘Any time you want a job as a housekeeper, you have only to ask.’

I hesitated just inside the door, aware that a puddle was rapidly forming around my feet.

‘Come on in,’ Toby said. ‘A little water won’t hurt the place.’

The size of the room dwarfed its contents – G-Plan furniture, two easy chairs, a mattress, several tea chests and a roll of carpet. Beside the empty fireplace was a record player – a series of expensive-looking boxes linked by wires – and several cartons of long-playing records. Ghostly traces of the Bramleys remained – pale patches marking the sites of pictures and furniture. There were cigarettes and whisky on the mantelpiece. Propped against the wall behind them was a large mirror with an ornate gilded frame and a long crack running diagonally down the glass. Our footsteps were loud on the bare floor and left trails of wet prints across the boards.

Toby was at the door. ‘Let’s find some towels, shall we? This way.’

He led us into a short corridor which ran down to the central hall by the front door. I had been here often enough in the Bramleys’ day, but now the place felt and looked like a different house. The clutter of wheelchairs had gone from the foot of the stairs. The carpets, pictures, and shabby furniture had departed, and so had the smell of powder, perfume, disinfectant and old age. I was aware of empty rooms around and above us, of the cellars beneath our feet, of silent, enclosed spaces, of damp, musty smells.

In the hall, the emptiness stretched up to a skylight like a glass tent on the roof of the house. The panes were cracked and stained with bird droppings. To our right, a pitch-pine staircase divided in two at mezzanine level and ran up to a galleried landing.

‘Damn,’ Toby said. ‘There’s a leak. I’m not surprised.’

A puddle had already gathered on the black-and-white tiles of the floor.
Plop – plop – plop
. I watched a silver drop describe what looked like a curving path from skylight to floor, where it shattered.

‘Jo,’ Toby called, and his voice bounced up the stairwell. ‘Jo, where are you?’

I heard feet pattering along the landing above our heads. Not pattering: bare feet thudding on bare boards. Suddenly the footsteps stopped and Joanna’s pale face appeared twenty feet above us, hanging over the rail of the banisters.

‘What is it?’ She sounded out of breath.

‘We need towels,’ Toby said. ‘David and Rosemary were caught in the storm, and so was I. There are clean ones in that room by the bathroom. Inside the blue trunk.’

The head vanished. A moment later Joanna came down the stairs with an armful of towels. She was wearing a dark-blue halter-neck T-shirt, which clung to her body, and a long wrap-around skirt. Her feet were grubby, and the toenails were decorated with green nail varnish, much chipped. She handed round the towels. When she came to me, she raised her head. Our eyes met, and I saw that her eyelids were puffy.

Toby towelled himself vigorously. ‘I’m sure that Jo could find something for Rosemary to change into. As for you, David, I could see what –’

‘There’s no need,’ Rosemary interrupted. ‘Thank you. I’m quite warm. I’ll soon dry out.’

‘I’m all right as well,’ I said to Toby.

He grinned. ‘To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I’ve got anything that would fit you.’

‘Hadn’t you better ring the police, Father?’ Rosemary suggested.

‘The police?’ Joanna’s face was stiff like a mask, the green eyes murky. ‘What’s happened?’

‘We found some fur and something that might be blood on the waste ground near your garden,’ I said. ‘We think it may have something to do with that business last night.’

‘The cat?’ She hugged herself and, still staring up at me, murmured, ‘That’s horrible.’

‘There’s a phone along here, David,’ Toby said from the other side of the hall.

I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring fashion at Joanna and followed Toby into a small room facing the front of the house. The Bramleys had used it as an office. It was furnished with a scarred dining table, a pair of kitchen chairs and a row of empty shelves screwed to the wall. On the table was an ashtray and a telephone.

Toby left me alone. I rang the operator, who put me through to the police station. I asked for Sergeant Clough, and after a few minutes he came on the line. I told him what Rosemary and I had discovered.

‘Well, that’s very interesting.’ There was a pause, filled with a click followed by a hissing noise: Clough was lighting his pipe. ‘I’ll make a note of it. No sign of the cat’s head, I suppose?’

‘No.’ I wondered whether to tell him about Vanessa’s theory but decided against. It was a safe bet that Clough would not be interested in speculations about Lady Youlgreave’s bird table. ‘Aren’t you going to send someone out to look at the place?’

‘In an ideal world, yes. But we’re very stretched at present, Mr Byfield, very stretched.’ Another pause, another click, another hiss. ‘We have to allocate resources as we think best. We do have one or two slightly more important cases than this business with the cat. And – if you don’t mind me speaking plainly – we can’t even be sure that what you and your daughter found has any bearing on it. I can’t help feeling my inspector would say it was all a bit of a wild-goose chase. I’m sorry, sir, but you know how it is.’

I agreed that I knew how it was, though of course I didn’t. I didn’t much like Clough, but I had to admit, if only to myself, that the man probably knew what he was talking about.

‘But let us know if anything else turns up, Mr Byfield. No harm in it, is there, and you never know.’

We said goodbye politely and I went to find the others. They were waiting in the big room with the French windows. Rosemary and Toby were kneeling on the floor and leafing through a box of long-playing records. Joanna was by the fireplace with a cigarette in her hand, staring in the mirror at my reflection in the doorway.

‘Are the police coming?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Rosemary looked up, her face flushed. ‘Why ever not?’

‘They don’t think it sufficiently important.’

She stood up. ‘That’s terrible. Of course it’s important.’ She turned her head sharply to look at Toby, and her hair lifted from her shoulders. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Policemen aren’t like other people,’ he said. ‘Their minds are mysterious.’

‘But it could be a vital clue,’ Rosemary persisted, talking not to me but to Toby. ‘Did you know that Audrey is going to pay the vet to do a postmortem?’

He shook his head. ‘You said there was a tuft of fur?’

Rosemary nodded.

‘If they put that under a microscope,’ he went on, ‘they’d be able to match it up with the hair of the cat. Well, I expect they could, anyway.’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘Modern science is wonderful. I suppose we’d better go and fetch it.’

‘Now?’ Rosemary said.

‘The sooner the better.’ He flashed a glance at me and then a smile at Rosemary. ‘Otherwise we’ll dry out and then get wet again. And if we leave it, anything might happen. The rain could wash it away. Or …’ He paused and licked his lips. ‘Or the person who did it might come back to tidy up.’

‘We must go. It’s only fair to Audrey.’ Rosemary looked at me. ‘Don’t you agree?’

Before I could answer, Toby said, ‘It can do no harm, at least, can it? And who knows, it might actually do some good.’

I looked at the mirror, but Joanna had turned her head so I could no longer see the reflection of her face. ‘Surely you’ll wait until the rain has stopped, at least?’

‘Better not,’ Toby said. ‘Anyway, Rosemary and I can take an umbrella. Why don’t you stay and have some tea with Joanna?’

Rosemary pushed a strand of damp hair from her cheek like a cat grooming her face with a paw. ‘No point in us all getting wet.’

The two of them were already at the door. I sensed Rosemary’s excitement. I had never seen her like this before. Her body was taut, and in every movement there was an awareness of its possible effect on Toby.

He threw a glance at his sister. ‘You’ll be OK?’

It seemed a strange question. Why should she not be all right in her own home in the company of a middle-aged priest?

Jo nodded, dropping her cigarette end in the empty grate.

‘On second thoughts,’ Toby went on, ‘it’s a bit late for tea – must be after six. Why don’t you see if David would like a drink?’

Then he and Rosemary were gone. I heard their footsteps in the corridor. Toby said something and Rosemary laughed in reply, a quick, high, gasping laugh. A door slammed in the distance. The big room filled with silence. The only sound was the patter of the rain. Joanna stared down at her hands and flexed her fingers. Automatically, I fumbled in my pocket for cigarettes. The packet was damp but the contents were dry.

‘What would you like to drink?’ Joanna said, without looking at me.

‘Nothing just now, thanks.’

She looked up at me and smiled, which transformed her face, filling it with warmth and charm. ‘You won’t mind watching me, will you?’

I shook my head, smiling, and lit a cigarette. She fetched a glass from the cupboard by the fireplace and poured herself an inch of whisky from the bottle on the mantelpiece. And I watched.

‘Let’s sit down,’ she suggested.

She led the way to the nearer French window, the one we had not used when we came in from the terrace. Two armchairs faced each other on either side, standing on bare floorboards. An upturned tea chest between them served as a table. Joanna sat down and, holding the glass in both hands, sipped. Colour filled her face. The skirt parted. I watched as the triangular gap extended, riding up her legs to an inch above the knee. I looked away; I remembered who I was and where I was; I remembered Vanessa.

I sat smoking, staring outside at the rain pounding down on the flagstones of the terrace, sending up a fine, grey spray. Beyond the terrace, the long grass of the lawn swayed and bowed beneath the onslaught; and the trees of the garden rustled and trembled in agitation.

‘Can I have a cigarette?’ she asked. ‘I’ve finished mine.’

I gave her a Players No 6. When I bent down to light it for her, for a moment our faces were very close. Her eyes were outlined in kohl, and she wore a faint but insistent perfume which made me think of Oriental spices. There was a fine, fair down on her cheek; and I knew that if I touched it it would be softer than anything in the world. I hastily straightened up and blew out the match.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she said.

Joanna had a talent for catching me off guard. I stared at the hissing curtain of rain and wondered if the question had anything to do with our truncated conversation the previous evening, when she had hinted at difficulties just before we found Lord Peter’s body.

‘I don’t know about ghosts,’ I said at last, ‘but I certainly believe that there are phenomena which don’t fit into the accepted scheme of things.’

She leant forward in her chair. ‘Like what?’

‘Any parish priest comes across odd events which can’t be explained. People tend to call us out when there’s a hint of the supernatural.’

‘Like plumbers? To deal with spiritual leaks?’

‘In a way.’

‘Can
you
explain them?’