The Scandal at 23 Mount Street (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 9) (25 page)

‘It was all right, I suppose,’ said Barbara. ‘Fearfully hot, of course. I was nearly bitten by a snake.’

‘Dear me,’ said Angela.

‘The fellow said it was a good thing it didn’t get me, because my arm would have swelled up like a balloon and they’d have had to amputate to stop the venom going to my heart and killing me.’

‘Goodness,’ said Angela. ‘Why did it go for you?’

‘Oh, because I tried to pick it up, I expect,’ said Barbara. ‘Gerald gave me the most awful wigging.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Angela.

There was a pause. They both stared straight ahead.

‘I see you got off, then,’ said Barbara at length.

‘Yes,’ said Angela.

‘Your husband sounds like he was an ass. Good riddance to him, I say.’

‘Er—’ said Angela, unsure as to whether she ought to agree or not. She knew vaguely that one ought not to encourage children to show disrespect to their elders or to the dead, but on the other hand she was fairly sure that one ought also to teach them to speak the truth. She struggled with this for a second and then gave it up.

‘Well, I didn’t do it, of course,’ she said, ‘so they had to release me in the end.’

‘Yes, I read all about it in the newspapers,’ said Barbara.

‘I hoped you wouldn’t,’ said Angela. ‘I thought Nina would keep you from seeing them.’

‘She tried, but I sneaked out and bought them whenever I could. I had the right to know what was going on, didn’t I?’

‘We didn’t want you to be upset,’ said Angela.

‘But why?’ said Barbara. ‘I’m not a child any more. I’m fourteen now. That’s practically grown-up.’

Angela looked sideways at her. Could this really be the tiny child she had given up all those years ago? She had grown so tall and strong, so stout-hearted and so determined, and she had become all this despite never having known her parents. Perhaps she had never needed Angela at all—never would need her. What could a mother offer her, now, that she could not provide for herself? Angela drew a deep breath. The subject could no longer be avoided.

‘If you were reading the papers—’ she began, then stopped, for she could not bring herself to go on. How to say it?

Barbara came to her rescue.

‘I expect you’re talking about what that woman said in court,’ she said as carelessly as possible.

‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘Have Nina and Gerald mentioned anything?’

‘No. They said better to wait for you.’

‘Oh,’ said Angela. It was cowardly of her, she knew, but she had half-hoped that the Ellises would have talked it all out with Barbara by the time she arrived so that she would be spared the necessity of explaining and excusing herself.

‘Is it true?’ said Barbara.

‘Yes,’ said Angela, and found that it was not as hard to say as she had expected. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Because for a long time I thought you were better off not knowing,’ said Angela. ‘I wasn’t married to your father, you see, and I thought you’d be happier if you never knew that. People can be rather tiresome about that sort of thing, and I didn’t want you to have to suffer cruel remarks about it.’

‘Were you ashamed of me?’ said Barbara. She was fiddling with her wrist-watch and not looking at Angela.

‘No!’ said Angela quickly. ‘I was never ashamed of you—only of myself. I should have liked so much to have kept you with me, but it would have been very hard on you to grow up without a father, and Nina and Gerald were so kind to me and so keen to have you that it seemed the best thing to do. Then I married Davie, and—’ here she could not bring herself to say, ‘—and he didn’t want you,’ so she went on hurriedly, ‘—and then when I came back to England and you were growing up, somehow I couldn’t tell you then, either. You’ll come into quite a lot of money one day, you see, and I wanted you to have all sorts of nice things—a proper coming-out, and the chance to wear pretty dresses and meet nice young men and marry one of them without people whispering behind their hands and sneering about it.’

‘But I don’t care about things like that,’ said Barbara in surprise.

‘Not now, but you will one day,’ said Angela. She looked down at her gloves. ‘I always meant to tell you sooner or later—truly I did, but somehow it never seemed quite the right time, and the longer it went on the more difficult it became. But it was all for nothing anyway,’ she went on bitterly, ‘because everybody knows about it now. The whole country, in fact. I’m so terribly sorry, Barbara. I certainly never meant this to happen. I’d give anything for you not to have been dragged into it.’

Barbara did not reply, but picked industriously at a finger-nail.

‘Did you love him?’ she said at length. ‘My father, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘Very much. We were to be married, but he died shortly before the wedding. For a long time I thought I should never get over it.’

‘Nina would never tell me much about him,’ said Barbara. ‘I know he was her brother, of course, but she said there was no sense in talking about the past when it couldn’t bring him back. And she wouldn’t say a thing about my mother, except to say that she was dead. I thought perhaps she hadn’t liked her much, but now I see why.’

‘Nina and Gerald have been good friends to me. To us both,’ said Angela. ‘I can never repay them for what they’ve done. And you’ve been happy with them, haven’t you?’

She asked this anxiously. She knew she had not been a good mother, but she had sincerely wanted Barbara to be happy and had done her best to ensure that she would have a comfortable life with Jack’s family.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Barbara. ‘They’ve been jolly decent, really. I mean, I know I’m troublesome and all that—’

‘No you’re not,’ said Angela. ‘I know they’re very proud of you and think of you quite as their own.’

‘But I’m not, am I?’ said Barbara. ‘I’m yours. Or I ought to be, at least.’

This could not be denied, and Angela knew not what to say. They were silent for some minutes, watching the robin as it busied itself about in the garden, then Barbara went on, still in that careless tone:

‘I used to wonder about my mother quite often when I was very young. I’d try to imagine what she was like, but it was difficult when I didn’t have even a photograph and when nobody would tell me anything about her.’

‘How did you imagine her to be?’ said Angela.

‘Kind, mostly,’ said Barbara. ‘I thought she’d be kind, and not be too cross about things like mud on the carpets and jam in my hair. Nina gets terribly annoyed about things like that.’

‘Yes, I expect she does,’ said Angela.

‘Then for a while I had the idea that perhaps she was still alive, and I used to stare at anyone who visited and wonder whether she was really my mother, and whether everyone was keeping it from me. But I got into trouble for staring so I had to stop.’

She was now squinting very hard at the top branches of a nearby sycamore tree.

‘Of course, I stopped wishing years ago,’ she went on. She hesitated, and then said, half-unwillingly, with a brief glance at Angela, ‘But then you came, and I’d only ever had letters from you before, and they said you’d returned from America for good, and you were such a sport whenever we met, that—’ she broke off. ‘Perhaps I did wish, then,’ she said. ‘Just a little bit.’

‘I wished too,’ said Angela quietly.

‘Did you?’ said Barbara, looking at Angela properly for the first time. ‘What did you wish for?’

‘Lots of things. Mostly I wished that Jack hadn’t died, and that I hadn’t had to give you to someone else, and that we could have all been happy together as a family.’

‘I’d have liked that,’ said Barbara. ‘Perhaps I wouldn’t have kept getting into trouble as I do now.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Angela, with a small smile. ‘It is a dreadful pity Jack’s not here. He’d have known how to manage you. How to manage us both, in fact.’

‘I didn’t think you needed managing,’ said Barbara. ‘I thought you were supposed to be awfully capable.’

‘Sometimes I wonder,’ said Angela. ‘I don’t seem to have made a terribly good fist of things lately.’

She hesitated, wondering whether she had any right to ask the question, and how she would feel if Barbara wanted nothing more to do with her. After all, the girl had every right to be angry at what had happened.

‘Look here,’ she said at length, ‘I’ll quite understand if you want to say no, but I’d like to be your mother now, if you’ll have me.’

Barbara looked up, and Angela, feeling rather an idiot, went on:

‘I don’t say I know much about it—quite the contrary, in fact. Nina’s much better at that sort of thing than I am—’

‘No she’s not,’ said Barbara quickly. ‘She couldn’t possibly be.’

‘Well, I’m willing to try,’ said Angela. ‘If you’ll have me,’ she added again.

‘Of course I will,’ said Barbara.

‘Good. Then that’s settled,’ said Angela, although quite
what
was settled she was not entirely certain. Truth to tell, she was not a little concerned that Barbara might propose moving in with her at Mount Street there and then, and she felt some trepidation at the thought of what that might entail. What did children eat, exactly? Fortunately, Barbara had more sense and experience in such matters than Angela did.

‘I suppose you’ll want me to stay at school,’ she said.

‘Oh, naturally,’ said Angela. ‘But you can come to me in the holidays.’

‘But what about Nina and Gerald?’ said Barbara. ‘I’m very fond of them, of course. I shouldn’t like to desert them. Perhaps you could share me.’

‘Well, I dare say we can come to an agreement,’ said Angela with a sense of relief that she would never have admitted. She would not, after all, have to learn how to be a mother to a fourteen-year-old girl all at once. The Ellises would help her as they always had, and she could learn it all gradually.

There was an uncomfortable silence which threatened to become downright embarrassing. Then Barbara jumped up.

‘I say, come and see the den Tom and I made last summer,’ she said. ‘I think there are rats living in it.’

‘How splendid,’ said Angela, who was not fond of rats.

She stood up and they made their way across the garden, and they spent some time poking about. Barbara was chattering away about what she intended to do once she got back to school, and Angela was glad of the distraction, for she had spent too much time alone with her own thoughts lately. The question of whether she ought to go to the police had unexpectedly resolved itself a week ago, when news had come that Edgar Valencourt had been shot and killed in Paris. He had evaded the police easily enough, but could not escape his enemies, it seemed. A number of witnesses had seen the altercation, heard the gunshot, seen the body fall into the Seine, and there was no doubt, therefore, of what had happened. His body had been recovered some days later and identified by a relation of his, and the newspapers were full of congratulatory stories about his demise. Angela had read the news, apparently unmoved, and when Freddy had called to see how she had taken it, had assured him that she felt nothing. It was what he deserved, she said, and she was only pleased that it had happened this way, for at least now she should never have his hanging upon her conscience. Whether Freddy believed her or not cannot be said, but her self-possession was by now complete and she would never admit weakness, and so he was forced to be content with that.

It was getting colder now, and the thought of a warm fire was inviting, so they turned and began to walk slowly towards the house.

‘I wonder what I’ve missed at school,’ said Barbara. ‘Violet says that Miss Bell has saved up two months’ worth of maths prep for me. I hope she was joking.’

‘You’ll have to catch up,’ said Angela, feeling a pang of guilt at the work Barbara had been forced to miss.

‘Oh, I’m sure I shall,’ said Barbara carelessly.

‘I hope there won’t be too much teasing about—’ said Angela hesitantly.

‘About you, you mean? Don’t worry, if there is I’ll know what to do about it.’

‘I hope you don’t mean to get into trouble,’ said Angela.

‘Of course not,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you think I’m stupid enough to do it in front of the mistresses?’ She saw Angela’s look of alarm and grinned. ‘I was only joking,’ she said. ‘I dare say the Everard female will be a pig, but I’m used to that. I just ignore her these days. I had a very kind letter from Mam’selle, by the way. She didn’t say anything about it, but I’m sure all the teachers know.’

‘Mam’selle has known for a while,’ said Angela. ‘She guessed when I was there in October.’

‘Did she?’ said Barbara in surprise. ‘However did she do that?’

‘I dare say she thinks we look alike,’ said Angela.

‘Really? I can’t see it myself, although people do persist in thinking you’re my aunt. I wonder if that’s the reason.’

‘I suppose it might be,’ said Angela. She was thinking of Callie Vandermeer, who had at last returned to America with her baby. Callie had not been so fortunate as Angela, who had had friends and money to help her through her trouble fourteen years ago, and yet she at least had kept her child in the end, while Angela had felt forced to let hers go. What an irony it was that it had been Angela herself who had found Callie and rescued her. And what a pity that Callie had been unable to influence Davie quite enough to prevent him from doing what he had done, for had he been a little less obstinate, there was no saying that she might not have been the making of him in the end, since it seemed to Angela that Davie had had a genuine affection for the girl. As it was, Callie had been left with nothing but a broken heart and a hungry mouth to feed. Still, she was back with her family now, and it was to be hoped that she and the baby would do well.

They stopped by a pond and peered into its muddy depths. Having succeeded in quashing all uncomfortable thoughts that morning in her worry about the difficult conversation that had lain ahead of her, Angela was now more than a little disconcerted when Barbara suddenly said:

‘I
am
glad they found out who really did it in the end, and let you go. But don’t you think it’s the oddest thing that Edgar Valencourt, of all people, should have turned out to be the murderer? I mean, it’s the most tremendous coincidence.’