The Perfect Daughter (30 page)

‘Do sit down. You'll excuse my not getting up, but if I do they'll be all over the place and I'll forget which ones I've done and which I haven't.'

There were a few black-bordered cards on her lap and some more letters. I settled on a big footstool, opposite her.

‘Condolences?'

She nodded. ‘We should have replied to them by now. It's more than a month.'

‘I'm sure people don't expect replies.'

‘Ben says they do. These things have to be done properly, don't they?'

‘Why?'

She stared at me. I hadn't expected her to take any notice of what I'd said, but her mind was working on it.

‘Why properly?'

‘I don't see that it matters either way. If it helps you…'

Without taking her eyes off me she picked up a black-bordered letter from her lap and held it by its corner between finger and thumb. She tore it just a little at the edge, then waited like a child expecting somebody to shout at her. When nothing happened she tore a strip carefully down the edge, then round the corner, along another edge and round another corner, slowly converting it into a spiral that trailed down her skirt. Silence, except for the sound of paper tearing and a shut-out Siamese complaining from the corridor. She concentrated hard on ending the spiral in a neat disc of paper, then held it up at arm's length and let it go. We both watched as it landed in a tangle on the floor and quivered gently.

‘Is that right?'

‘Yes, I think so.'

‘Only I don't know what's supposed to be right, any more.' She started on one of the cards, then dropped it and picked up another letter. ‘Would you like a sherry? There's a glass over on the sideboard.'

I fetched it, poured from the decanter. She signalled with her eyes that I should top up her glass as well.

‘Thank you – Nell. It's very nice of you to call.'

She'd registered who I was then, but she didn't mean it about being nice. The last time she'd seen me was when I came up from the boathouse after finding Verona's body. She was in no state to notice me when she left the inquest.

‘Are you on your own here?'

‘Apart from Jenny and Mrs Tell. Adam had to go back to Dartmouth to get ready for the war.'

She said it matter-of-factly, watching as another spiral quivered to the floor, then took a sip of sherry and started tearing another letter.

‘War?'

‘Ireland or the Balkans or somewhere. Adam will be killed and Ben will be probably be killed too and then it will be all over.'

I could have argued about Ireland, pointed out that naval officers and cadets would hardly be at risk in the Balkans, but there was a mad, blank certainty about her.

‘I'm sure they'll come back to you.'

‘Verona didn't.'

The spirals were piling up now. She was working faster and faster. I wondered whether I should stay for a polite time, then go without asking any questions.

‘Verona didn't, did she?' More urgently, looking at me as if she wanted an answer.

‘I think perhaps she did.'

‘To hang herself, yes. Home to hang herself.'

Over the last few days I'd come round so firmly to the belief that Verona had been murdered that it was a shock to remember she was still officially a suicide. Tread carefully.

‘I think there might have been more to it than that. I think she came back here for another reason.'

Alex dropped a half-torn letter and stared at me. ‘What do you mean?' Her voice was harsh, quite different from the dazed tone so far.

‘I've seen a letter she wrote, to friends near London. She said she was going away for a few days because there was something she must put right.'

‘The baby. She must have meant she was going to get rid of the baby.'

‘No! No, I'm sure it wasn't that. She was happy about the baby.'

Even if the Hergests had been lying about other things, the evidence of Kitty Dulcie and the neighbour at Yew Tree Cottage was on their side in that respect.

‘You knew that, did you? She talked to you?'

‘No.'

‘You knew her better than I did. Everybody knew her better than I did.'

‘No. Listen, I hardly knew her at all, but I've been talking to people who did. It wasn't the baby, I promise you that.'

‘Put right. What did she mean?'

‘I don't know. I thought you might.'

‘She was nineteen. She was expecting a baby. She was doping – my daughter was. How could she put that right?'

‘I don't think she was doping.'

‘Ben said the doctor at the inquest—'

‘She had morphine in her body. We don't know she injected it
herself.
'

Alex took a long gulp of sherry and looked at me. I still didn't know if what I was doing would help her but it had gone beyond drawing back.

‘If she didn't—'

‘She came here. This was probably the place where she had to put things right. Have you any idea what it was? Was there anyone here she was close to?'

‘Outside the family? A lot of friends. Prudence of course, the families we sailed and picnicked with.'

‘Anybody special? Anybody she might think she'd … well … done wrong to by loving somebody else?'

She looked angry at first, then shook her head. ‘There were plenty of young men who wanted to be special, mostly young officers – danced with her, sent her flowers. We'd … we'd laugh about them sometimes, the two of us. She didn't love anybody yet – not like that. She wasn't ready.'

More or less what Admiral Pritty had said. Alex picked a letter off the table, read a few sentences then started another spiral.

I said, ‘There was an older man.'

‘In London?'

‘Yes.'

‘The baby?'

‘Yes.'

‘I hope he rots in hell.'

No careful spiral this time. The letter went to the floor in jagged pieces. She grabbed a handful and wrenched at them together. She must have ripped a fingernail because there were smears of blood on the paper.

‘I trusted you to look after her, Nell. I didn't want her to go to London, but I thought you'd look after her.'

‘I don't think Verona wanted to be looked after in that way.'

‘She was no more than a child.'

‘She was quite a lot more.'

‘What do you mean?'

All the way down in the train I'd wondered if I could tell her about Verona's spying activities. I'd have to put a patriotic gloss on it if I did, hide some of the nastier details like how she used me to find out about my friends.

‘Alex, did she discuss with you what she was going to do in London?'

She looked at me. The look and the tone of her voice when she answered told me a lot I needed to know. ‘Art school.'

‘It wasn't just art school, was it?'

Her fingers stopped their tearing. ‘What did she tell you?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You're lying, aren't you?' The tone wasn't angry, just weary.

‘No,' I said, ‘Verona didn't tell me anything.'

She looked at me and decided to believe it. Her face went slack with relief. ‘They didn't tell me anything either.' The relief was not having to live with the intolerable idea that Verona might have trusted me more than her.

‘They?'

‘The three of them: her and Ben and Archie.'

‘Archie Pritty, her godfather?'

‘Yes.'

‘You guessed what was happening?'

‘I knew there was something. There was…' She went quiet, looked out at the expanse of water, then quickly away again. ‘There was a kind of excitement about them.'

‘Her and Ben?'

‘The three of them. Then when this art school business came up I expected Ben to say she couldn't go. He did at first – but that was for my benefit, I could see that. He gave in too quickly. Ben doesn't give in. You know…'

There was one of Ben's model ships on her writing table, a delicate little three-master, probably one he'd served on in his cadet days. She picked up a paperknife and used it to pull the model towards her by its rigging. ‘You know how it is in the Navy. Sails shot away, sheets dangling, half your crew dead. Never pull down your colours. Sink if you must, but never pull down your colours.'

Her voice was calm and conversational, but all the time she was ripping and stabbing with the paperknife, cutting the intricate threads of the rigging, tearing the miniature sails to shreds. When she'd finished she looked at the wrecked ship with satisfaction and put it back on the table, exactly where it had been.

‘So when he said she could go if she wanted to, I knew for certain. It was a secret among the three of them and she wasn't allowed to tell me. Ben thinks I talk too much, you see. He thinks artists talk too much. Well I am, aren't I?'

‘What did you think she was doing?'

‘Secret work at the War Office.'

‘What sort of secret work?'

‘Secretary, I suppose. After all, they couldn't have just anybody typing letters and filing things. They'd need girls from a background like Verona's.'

‘Was she trained as a secretary?'

‘They'd have trained her. Those first letters of hers from London, when she was working so hard and didn't come home for Christmas, I thought they were training her.' Her head was down, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. I could see she meant what she was saying, still had no idea of Verona's real work. ‘Then, when … when it happened and we found out about the things … about the … about the doping and the baby … I thought it was because they'd made her work too hard. A breakdown, I thought. People have breakdowns, don't they? Even young people?'

‘Yes. Yes, they do.'

‘Was that it, Nell, do you think? They made her work too hard and her mind broke down?'

‘Something like that, yes, I think so.'

I was looking at her hands when I said it, wondering what they might do next. I looked up and her eyes were on me, as cold as Burton's in the railway carriage.

‘You are
lying
, aren't you? You don't think so at all.'

*   *   *

I had to make the decision there and then, and I still don't know if I made the right one. I didn't think Alex was mad, or no more mad than I might be in the circumstances. Or no more mad than I might be by the end of this. I told her almost everything. There were a few things I left out, like the identity of the lover and how Verona had used me, but I gave her the rest, from Yellow Boater and the other watchers to the railway carriage where Burton had accused me of her murder. She listened, quite still and quiet. All the time the white sails were moving around on the estuary but the tide must have been going out while I told her, because by the end of it the mud banks were shining in the sun.

‘She didn't kill herself?'

‘No.'

Her head went down in her hands. She started shaking. I knelt down beside her. ‘Thank you. Thank you for that.' She was crying. ‘It was thinking that she didn't come to me. She was in such trouble, but she didn't come to me.'

She sat there for a long time. After that we walked round the garden, on the landward side away from the view of the boathouse and the estuary. A couple of half-grown Siamese followed us, but she didn't look at them or even talk very much. She seemed calmer but dazed, and when she asked another question it came as a surprise.

‘Those men, the watchers you called them, what did they look like?'

‘They come in all shapes and sizes. Why?'

‘I think they might be watching me.'

‘What!'

‘One of them came here the other day.'

‘When?'

‘I think … Saturday, probably.'

‘What happened?'

‘It was Jenny's day off so it must have been Saturday. Mrs Tell let him in. To be honest with you, I wasn't feeling very well. So many people … condolences, silences, you know … sometimes I couldn't remember who on earth they were. So I told her to show him in. He was quite gentlemanly, not what you'd expect. He had a pleasant voice, I remember, a deep voice. I thought at first he must be a friend of Ben's I'd forgotten meeting, then he said we hadn't met but he was a friend of yours and since he was in the area, he thought…'

We'd been walking along the drive. I stopped, and she stopped too, stumbling against me.

‘He said he was a friend of
mine
?'

‘Yes. I thought it was odd, but…'

‘Can you remember his name?'

‘I don't know. There've been so many names.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘Quite tall, dark-haired, clean shaven. His face was tanned. That was why I thought he might be one of Ben's golfing friends at first.'

‘What did you talk about?'

‘What do they all talk about?' Then, after a pause. ‘Verona. We talked about her, about her here before she went away. I think … I think I quite liked talking to him at the time, but after he'd gone away I thought it was odd he'd called if he was just your friend and now … now I wonder if he was … one of those.'

She was staring at me. I felt sick and scared.

‘Are you sure you can't remember his name? Could it have been Musgrave? Bill Musgrave?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't know. Mrs Tell might remember. Was he really a friend of yours?'

‘I think so. Yes.'

Alexandra was puzzled, but too dazed by all that had happened to her to be very curious. We went back into the house and found Mrs Tell, the housekeeper. She confirmed that it had been early on Saturday afternoon when the gentleman called and she was quite clear about his name. It was Musgrave.

Chapter Twenty-three

I
WALKED BACK INTO SHALDON, THE VILLAGE ON
the far side of the estuary from Teignmouth. The ferry was in midriver. I sat down on the shingle to wait for it with the sun hot on my back, and watched an old man in a fisherman's jersey repairing a lobster pot. I asked him if it had been a good season so far.