The Perfect Daughter (3 page)

I turned inland to the lawns and flowerbeds behind the promenade and watched two gardeners planting out pink begonias round the edges of a big floral clock, with the hours picked out in house leeks. More house leeks against a white background spelt out two words on either side of the clock face: HIGH TIDE. Someone would move the hands round, twice a day every day. No getting away from it anywhere. Verona would have known the tides. She grew up with them. She'd have known exactly how far each day the water rose and fell inside the boathouse. Known how long she'd stand there, feet bobbing on the plank, rope round her neck, until the tide went away and there was nothing under her but air and mud. The rope would have tightened before then, though. Tide drawing out of the boathouse, body following, feet first, until the pressure of the rope round her throat … Surely she'd have struggled? It couldn't be in human nature not to struggle. But the commodore's daughter was a girl of strong will, we all knew that.

I was furious with Verona. If she'd appeared in front of me, I'd have slapped her. Of all the vain, selfish, hurtful, self-dramatising things to do. Killing herself was bad enough. Creeping home to do it, so that she'd almost certainly be discovered by her father or mother, was worse. Doing it in that horrible, self-tormenting way meant she'd put something into all our minds that would never go away. A girl, on a summer morning or evening, walking past her house, down through the paddock with the old pony nuzzling her for titbits, the walk out over the reed bed with the tide coming in and only the tops of the reeds showing. The tide draining out of the boathouse and the woman self-pinioned, waiting for it to strangle her. She'd wanted to make an impression on the world – I'd sensed that about her. But the world, in her first few months of trying, turned out to be less easily impressed than she expected. Perhaps the love affair went sour. So she'd turned back to the place that had been kind to her, and destroyed it and the people there more surely than if she'd planted a bomb.

Half an hour to train time. I left the beach, emptied sand out of my shoes and picked up my bag. The police had assumed that I'd stayed overnight with my cousin and his wife. It was a natural assumption, but then they hadn't been there the day before when Verona's body had been carried up to the house on an old door grabbed from the woodpile, covered with a tarpaulin from one of the boats. A gardener and her father did the carrying. They put it down on the gravel outside the front door, so that Ben could make sure that Alexandra was upstairs before they carried it into the house. It was at that point, just before he went inside, that Ben spoke to me for the first time since I'd told him. He turned on the step and gave me a look as blank as slate.

‘She was the perfect daughter before you got to her. The perfect daughter.'

Chapter Three

I
T WAS A LONG JOURNEY BACK TO LONDON
. All I had to read was the newspaper from the day before. Durbar II had won the Derby at twenty to one. The Queen had attended the Derby Ball at Devonshire House. Parliament had shut down for the Whitsun recess – in spite of the fact that everybody expected civil war to break out in Ireland within days – and most of the party leaders had gone away somewhere to play golf. Paddington in late afternoon was full of families with hampers and buckets and spades getting away for the weekend to the coast or the river. I took the tram out to Haverstock Hill, then walked up to Hampstead, telling myself that I had to put Verona out of my mind for a while and concentrate on the job in hand, otherwise a lot of other people would be in trouble. It was reassuring to see a familiar figure lounging on the corner as I turned out of Heath Street.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Gradey.'

When I say he was lounging, I mean he was trying very conscientiously to lounge. I dare say they run classes on lounging and loitering for police officers of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, but Gradey would never have won any prizes. The clothes were wrong too, a navy-blue suit and waistcoat, a bowler hat nicely brushed. He might as well have kept his uniform on and have done with it. I didn't wait to see if he touched his hat to me – sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't – but I was aware of his eyes on my back as I walked along the street. That was what we wanted. It was all part of the plan.

I kept to the pavement opposite my house, stopped and had a good look at it. Things weren't as I'd left them the day before. The blind on the first-floor window was drawn almost all the way down. There was a narrow gap between the blind and the windowsill, just enough to show the top of a table inside and a row of medicine bottles standing on it. Although it was a warm day, a trail of smoke came up from the chimney. On the ground floor, the curtains of the living-room were drawn all the way across. Then, as I watched, one of them was twitched aside and a face looked out warily. It was a young woman's face, round and pale, with the sort of red hair that looks as if it's had an electric shock. Her name was Gwen Hoddy. She saw me, nodded and let the curtain drop back. I crossed to my own front door and knocked. She opened it.

‘Hello, Gwen. Everything all right?'

‘Where have you been, Nell?'

‘Something happened. Did things go alright here?'

She nodded uncertainly and opened the door to let me in. I hesitated on the doorstep, giving Detective Constable Gradey time to get a good look at us.

‘She's upstairs?'

‘Since yesterday night.'

‘Any callers?'

‘No.'

‘I passed Special Branch on the corner.'

‘The plump one in the bowler? He's been prowling up and down all afternoon.'

‘Did anybody see the stretcher come in?'

‘Half the neighbourhood probably.'

I took my hat and coat off and sprawled in the armchair. It was hot in the room with the fire going and there was already an invalid fug to the place.

‘You look tired. Want some tea?'

I said yes please, though it was obvious from the violet rings round her eyes that Gwen was tired as well. She got the teapot and warmed it from the kettle on the hob, moving easily around my book- and paper-cluttered living-room in spite of the iron brace on her wasted leg.

‘Shouldn't Amy be here?'

‘She's on duty upstairs.'

We were speaking in low voices, the way you do in a house where somebody's seriously ill. We said nothing while the tea was brewing. Gwen and the others were owed an apology because I should have been back the night before, but I didn't want to explain about Verona.

‘So June had a bad time?'

She nodded, not looking at me. June Price and Gwen shared lodgings and were inseparable most of the time, except when June was in Holloway. Gwen couldn't take part in the kind of things that got people sent to prison because of her leg, so she probably suffered worse than June did.

‘She's worn to nothing, transparent nearly. Heart palpitations. And she's got abscesses from when they broke her teeth trying to get the tube down. It'll kill her if they get her in there again.'

The boards creaked upstairs. Somebody was moving around in the bedroom. Gwen sighed, poured two more cups of tea, one strong, one weak and milky. I opened the door for her to take them upstairs. When she came down a few minutes later, she was looking worried.

‘How is she?'

‘Restless.'

‘Given her temperament, that was predictable.'

‘She says she hates being passive – hates just waiting.'

‘No choice at the moment.'

‘She expected the police to come yesterday.'

‘Yesterday midday was when the licence ran out?'

Gwen nodded, staring out of the gap between the curtains. I'd have liked to pull the curtains aside, open the window, let some air in, but Gradey might be watching.

‘Why haven't they raided us already, I wonder.'

‘We've been discussing that. We think they may have been waiting for you to come back, Nell.'

‘And charge me with harbouring an escaped prisoner?'

‘Or obstructing the police in the course of. They can always think of something.'

It wasn't a comfortable thought. If that was what they were waiting for, Gradey could have telephoned a message to Scotland Yard by now. A car-full of police might be rumbling up the hill towards us.

‘Gwen, you're not to attack them. Understand? Let them come in, let them search, let them take her away if it comes to it. Just don't lay a finger on them whatever they do.'

She turned away.

‘Do you understand, Gwen? It's an order.'

Still she wouldn't look at me.

‘When I think what they did to her. You too, come to that. Let alone lay a finger on them, I could bloody kill them.'

I put a hand on her shoulder. Her muscles were knotted like … like hemp ropes knotted around feet, swollen from seawater. Gwen flinched, so I suppose my fingers must have tightened. I said I was sorry, moved my hand.

‘You see, Nell. You feel just the same as I do.'

‘Perhaps. Only don't do it. It wouldn't be worth it.'

We sat there, drinking more tea, watching the sky change from bright to dark blue through the gap in the curtains. They usually came in daylight, but they were getting more desperate these days so you couldn't be sure. We let the fire go out. At around ten o'clock Gwen said: ‘Doesn't look as if they're coming today.'

‘Dawn then, probably.'

‘Miss their bloody breakfasts.'

We lit the gas, warmed some soup for the four of us and decided that Gwen would take the night shift upstairs.

‘Do you want to come up and see her, Nell?'

‘Better not. She'll only start arguing again if she sees me.'

Gwen said goodnight and went upstairs with the soup. Amy came down, looking exhausted. She's a dance teacher in ordinary life and weighs about as much as a litter of kittens, with twice the energy, but the waiting was wearing her down. We sorted out our sleeping arrangements. Amy was persuaded to have the chaise-longue. I made a nest of blankets on the rag rug in front of the fireplace. We took our shoes off, but didn't undress. I made sure I'd put my shoes under a chair where I could find them easily when the knock on the door came. You're at a disadvantage meeting police boots in stockinged feet.

*   *   *

None of us slept much. Now and then I heard boards creaking upstairs. Amy lay on her back, arms at her sides, too disciplined. I dozed now and then but the slightest noise brought me immediately wide awake. The only point when I came near deep sleep I imagined I was back in the dark of the boathouse and must have made some noise.

‘What's up, Nell? Are they here?'

I was right. Amy hadn't been sleeping.

‘No. Sorry. Go back to sleep.'

We both pretended. It got light around four. Just after five, horse hooves and wheels outside brought Amy and me to our feet but it was only the milkman. At six Gwen came down, rubbing her eyes.

‘She's asleep, thank God.'

By seven there was so much traffic noise from Heath Street that we wouldn't have heard platoons of police arriving. It was the holiday, of course. There were charabancs of people on outings grinding uphill to Hampstead Heath, motor buses hooting, and children shouting. It looked a dull weather day, but it didn't sound as if that was bothering anybody.

‘Perhaps they won't come when it's a holiday,' Amy said.

Gwen and I didn't answer. Then, just as Amy was talking about having a wash and I was looking for the coffee grinder, it happened. There was a knock on the door. We hadn't heard wheels or tramping feet. It was quite a soft, apologetic knock, not the thundering we'd expected. Still, it froze us. Amy stood, blouse half unbuttoned and slipping off at the shoulder. I noticed the coffee grinder propping up a pile of dictionaries but left it where it was. Gwen's eyes closed and her fists bunched. The only movement came from upstairs. It was bare feet hitting the floor.

I hissed at Gwen, ‘Go up there. Stay with her.'

Gwen went, reluctantly. Whoever it was, standing on the other side of the door, might have heard her going upstairs. I'd expected another knock by now, more demanding, but he was as patient as a cat at a mouse-hole. Amy buttoned her blouse, fingers trembling. This was her first experience of this sort of thing. The second knock at last, a little louder. I prepared my expression of respectable and puzzled householder (not that it would deceive them in the least, but there are conventions about these occasions) and went to open the door.

*   *   *

It threw me. I was totally and completely at a loss. I'd expected a policeman in uniform on the doorstep, several more behind him, a vehicle waiting at the kerb. I'd even expected to be shoulder-charged against the door frame, dispensing with the ‘puzzled householder' formalities. Nothing would have come as a surprise except what I saw. A man in plain clothes. Not the Special Branch's version, but country tweeds that looked as if they should have bits of heather and dog hairs clinging to them. He was tall and thin, with dark eyes set deep into their sockets and a quiff of dark hair falling over his forehead. He held a brown trilby hat in his left hand. His right hand held a plump bunch of lily-of-the-valley. He'd been smiling, but the smile faded when he saw my face. For a few seconds we stared at each other then he handed the lily-of-the-valley to me.

‘Good morning, Nell. I hope I'm not too early.' My hand closed round the cool stems of the flowers. Their scent came to me like something from another world. I could see he was disappointed.

‘You said if I got here early we could go somewhere like Box Hill and walk. But we'll have to be back in time for the opera.'

‘Opera?'

‘Boris Godunov. I managed to get tickets for this evening. Chaliapin's singing.'

From inside, Gwen's voice, sharp and anxious. ‘Nell, what's happening?'