Farthing Read online

  It was early, but I'd been to enough weekend houseparties at Farthing to know that there wouldn't be any hot water unless I was quick, so I jumped up and went down the hall to nab a bathroom and wash my hair. I always wash my hair on a Sunday morning—it isn't penance or anything, not any more than having hair like mine is a penance anyway, it's just that I need to do it every week and doing it on Sundays means that I don't forget. I came out of the bathroom swathed in towels—we have wonderful soft emerald-green towels that came as a wedding present from dear practical Aunt Millicent.

  I was walking back to our room, to wake David and see if he wanted a bath before the hordes descended on the water, or possibly if he might like to make love (now that I'd got myself so beautifully clean since our delightful lovemaking of the night before), when who should I see but Mummy. I stopped dead with astonishment and my mouth probably fell open. Now Mummy had absolutely no reason to be on our floor, because it's only nurseries and guest bedrooms, and apart from that it was only a little after the crack of dawn. If it had been a quarter to six when I went into the bathroom I doubt it was even seven yet. I can be a long time washing my hair, and other parts of me, but not really that long. Other people, other hostesses of large weekend houseparties, might well be up at seven and stalking about the guest floors. Mummy never was. She had Sukey to see to all that, and the housekeeper, and if there's one thing Mummy believes in it's delegation. She never woke before ten and was never seen before noon. I don't think I'd ever seen her before eleven in my life before, not unless she'd been up all night to that point anyway.

  "Good morning, Lucy," she said, her chin in the air. She was dressed, and not dressed as she had been the night before. She was wearing quiet Sunday morning church-going clothes, pastels and pearls. But there was something strange about her make-up that made me wonder—in fact, for a moment there in the corridor I was absolutely sure that she was having an affair with one of our guests, right under Daddy's nose.

  "Good morning, Mummy," I said, and she swept past me and off down the corridor like an old-fashioned ship of the line going into battle.

  The next thing of any significance was early breakfast, which David and I were a little late for. Mrs. Collins always lays on a special early breakfast on Sundays for those who want to go to church. David didn't want to go to church, of course, but he came down with me and nibbled at toast and tea. I left him there chatting away to Tibs Cheriton about geology. David was born with a wonderful ability to make even the most boring people become interesting in his presence. I think he does it by really taking an interest in them, in what interests them, and they shine by reflection. I've known Tibs all my life but I don't think I've ever exchanged three words with him that weren't entirely conventional platitudes, but David, who had never talked to him before that breakfast as far as I know, could zoom in and find the secret passion that would open him up like that.

  Church-going at Farthing is obligatory, for Christians at least. But Tibs decided talking to David was more interesting than early communion, and said he'd go to Matins later. I was being crafty myself, because for one thing early communion only lasts half as long as Matins, for another because there aren't any hymns, and I detest hymn singing, and thirdly because I knew Mummy would go to Matins, because she always did. Of course I was wrong about that, because while I was putting my hat on in the hall she came downstairs with a prayer book in her hand, pulling on her gloves.

  "Going to church, Mummy?" I said, my heart in my boots, because I'd been looking forward to the quiet little walk down into Clock Farthing, and now I'd have her company for that and for the service as well.

  "Of course, darling," she said. "Isn't anybody else coming?"

  "David's not, and Tibs is waiting for Matins," I said.

  "Isn't anybody else up?" she asked. "What a lot of heathens we've invited. They might as well all cut the tops off their willies and turn Jew."

  "Honestly, Mummy!" I said, writhing, but she's impossible, she knows she is, she makes a profession out of being impossible and impervious. She did know she was hurting me and insulting David, there's no doubt about that. She isn't a fool. But she didn't say it to be insulting, the way somebody else might. She just said it because she wanted to say it and she didn't care if it hurt me—like the difference between someone aiming a gun at you and someone just shooting out of the window without looking. I've sometimes wondered if Mummy doesn't suffer from trains of thought getting loose the way I do, but I've never dared suggest as much to her.

  Anyway, as I said that, Daddy came down, and just behind him, Angela Thirkie, and behind her Sir Thomas and Lady Manningham, who were almost strangers to me. The church bell began to ring. Hatchard, who had been there all the time, of course, listening to Mummy abuse the Jews in front of me, bowed and opened the front door for us.

  Outside, one of the chauffeurs, a new one since I left home, a swarthy smiling man, was opening the door of the Bentley for Mrs. Richardson the cook, and two of the upstairs maids who were RC and driving over to mass in St. Giles at Farthing Green. The other servants, except the Baptists like Hatchard, who would make do with an evening service in a blue barn called Bethel in Upper Farthing, were waiting to follow us down to church. If it had been an ordinary quiet weekend they'd have gone on their own, no doubt. I remember times when I was a child when Daddy and I went down to early communion and the servants slipped in later. Sometime during the war, which coincided with me going away to boarding school, so I missed the change, church-going became more formal. Before that, things were quieter, too, I think; afterwards it seemed that almost every weekend we were in Farthing at all we had guests.

  The service was traditional and very English and very sweet, just the vicar and one server and the words people have been using to worship since King James, or Henry VIII, or whoever it was wrote the prayer book. (It must have been King James—surely a bad husband like Henry VIII could never have written all those lovely sonorous words?) It was a beautiful day, I don't think I mentioned that, and the windows were all open and there was a marvelous smell of bluebells, although the Altar Guild flowers on the altar were formal and dull. I remembered decorating the altar once when it was Mummy's turn and she was in St. Tropez, using armloads of tulips and daffodils, and it was such a pleasant memory that for once I didn't even mind the din of the clock, though I noticed Lady Manningham jump when it struck the three-quarter.

  After church I felt in a mood to be charitable with all the world, even Mummy, even if she wasn't charitable to me. David said she couldn't forgive me for being a girl, especially now that poor Hugh was dead, but I think in fact that while she would have preferred a "spare" male heir, she wouldn't have minded me being a girl so much if I'd been the right kind of girl—one who cared about the things she cared about. She always treated me as if I was a dress that had come from the shop with one sleeve too long and the other too short and completely the wrong kind of sash. She used to look at me as if to say, "Now is this a complete waste or can I make something out of it?" At that point, the day of the murder, she much more often seemed to be thinking I was a complete waste. Yet I was only there at all that weekend because she'd absolutely insisted, pulling all the stops out. Otherwise David and I would have been in London having a much more pleasant weekend. I'd have popped out to church in St. Timothy's with Myra and come back to wake David as I had the week before.

  I was so deep in this pleasant reverie of my own real everyday life that I'd walked almost halfway back to the house before I started to pay any attention at all to the others. Daddy was walking with Angela Thirkie, talking about the countryside. Mummy was walking with Sir Thomas, talking about servant problems. This left me with Lady Manningham, whom I barely knew. She was quite young, much younger than her husband, and she was looking at me timidly as if she would like to have a conversation but didn't know where to begin. "Isn't it a glorious day," I said, insipidly enough.

  "Beautiful, yes, and such lovely countryside," she said.

/>   "The gardens were laid out by Nash," I said, slipping easily into my old role as daughter-of-the-house. "We have his plans for the gardens. There are also some very interesting sketches the young ladies of the family made of them soon after they were planted. The trees, of course, were saplings. It seems strange to me sometimes that we are seeing them as Nash meant them to be seen, when he himself could only imagine them in their full glory."

  "That is strange," she said, struck by the observation. "So much we do casts such long shadows. Do you plant more trees?"

  "When one dies or is blown down my father always plants a new sapling," I said. "And when Hugh and I were children we used to plant acorns, hundreds of them every year. It was a project of ours, and we'd think of our descendants marveling at the oak forests."

  But Hugh was dead, and my putative descendants wouldn't be Eversleys or grow up here. That was just as true when I was a child and would have been true whoever I married. After Daddy dies the estate and the title will go to cousin Alfred, though I was due for most of the money and plenty of other bits of land that aren't entailed on a male Eversley heir.

  "Tom and I live in quite a small house," Lady Manningham confided. "We don't have any family property like this. Tom's a bit of a self-made man."

  "One of the best kinds," I said, entirely sincerely.

  "He was made a baronet for services to industry," she went on, encouraged. "I thought it quite silly at first, being Lady instead of Mrs., but being here has made me see it in quite a different light. I mean people have always been ennobled for serving their country; it's just a matter of how and what, isn't it?"

  "I think one of my ancestors was ennobled for doing something unspeakable for Henry VII," I said, truthfully enough, and then repented of it when I saw how she was trying to cover up her look of horror. "No, seriously, you plant some acorns for your descendants," I said, and she put her hand on her stomach in that way that newly pregnant women always do, with that look. I raised my eyebrows, and she put her finger to her lips and nodded, so I just smiled. She was a much nicer person than Mummy usually invited along to her bashes, though I suppose it was Sir Thomas who had actually been invited, and Lady Manningham had just come along as his wife.

  She looked away, clearly seeking for some different topic of conversation. I was glad enough, because however pleased I was, and I was, that she was knocked up, I couldn't help feeling envious, because it was what I was so longing for myself at that moment. It was all very well David saying it was nice to be on our own for the time being and that there was plenty of time, and he was right, of course, but I did so want to start a family right away, and couldn't help being cross sometimes that stupid nature wasn't cooperating.

  "So, you still go to church," Lady Manningham said.

  "Yes," I said. It was the only possible answer unless I wanted a long conversation about things that were none of her business, such as David's lack of particular religious feeling and my non-conversion to Judaism. If she'd known anything about the religion at all she'd have been able to tell I hadn't converted the day before when she was introduced to me and saw that I wasn't wearing a hat. I was wearing one that morning, of course, I'd just been to church, but I hadn't taken up covering my hair as Jewish women do. However, she clearly didn't know a thing. If anything, I go to church more often than I would if I hadn't married David. I'd always gone at Farthing, naturally, everyone goes to church in the country. But now I went regularly in London as well, which I'd let slip to some extent before. It somehow seemed more necessary to point up my Christian identity, which I hadn't even been aware of before meeting David, not in contrast to him, but to make it perfectly clear to other people.

  I'd been pretty intent on this conversation, and hadn't been listening to the others—and if I had I'd only have heard Mummy on the servant problem, a theme of hers I knew very well indeed. But then Angela raised her voice and began to recite Browning's "Oh to be in England." I know it has some different proper name, "Thoughts of Home" or something, but that's what everybody calls it. She recited it with grace notes and quavers in the voice and dramatic pauses and everything Abby taught me to hate, and it took her all the rest of the way up to the house—and she hadn't finished when we got there. It didn't make it any easier that all the things Browning was rhapsodizing about were around us then, or that it was in fact May, which meant that Browning had got it wrong, though I suppose it's not all that surprising considering that he was doing it in Italy or Greece or wherever it was, and his wife missing her spaniel. Abby told me about them, eloping abroad, but somehow it was the spaniel that stuck in my mind. I can picture it now, very soulful eyes, rather like Angela Thirkie, but more forgivable in a spaniel somehow.

  Mark was standing out on the terrace, looking awkward. He was smoking a cigarette, which seemed a strange thing to do on the terrace after breakfast. He raised a hand when he saw us coming, but Angela didn't stop reciting, so he stood and shuffled and looked awkward and tried to break in a few times without success. Mark Normanby was Angela's brother-in-law, married to her sister Daphne, so I suppose she thought she needn't take any notice of him, though he's something frightfully high up in the government, and incredibly clever, and incidentally terribly gorgeous, in a touch-me-not way. Mummy looked restless and I thought she was about to quote, "Mary has delighted us long enough," the way she always used to do with me when she was tired of my recitals, but thank goodness Angela wound down at last.

  "Good morning, Mark," Mummy said, and would have gone past him into the house, but he raised a hand to stop her.

  "Something rather unpleasant has happened," he said. "I was waiting here to catch you on your way back from church."

  "Unpleasant?" Mummy's elegant eyebrows went up under her hair, and she pronounced the word as if it came in two distinct crisp sections, separating it like the segments of an orange.

  "There's been an accident, well, an accident or something. It's rather awful," Mark said.

  "What's the matter?" Daddy asked. "Who is it?" He'd guessed at once that it must be one of the guests, and so had I.

  "It's James actually," Mark said, looking at Angela.

  "Is James ill?" she asked. It was a natural enough thing to say, I suppose, but her voice sounded very unnatural. It might have been the voice of someone who realizes that she's been making a fool of herself reciting "Oh to be in England" when something Mark Normanby could describe as "rather awful" has happened to her husband.

  "Not ill, no . . . well, the thing is that he seems to be dead," Mark said, and that's when I had my uncharitable thought and Angela fainted dead away and was caught very neatly by Daddy.

  4

  The door was opened by a very grand butler.

  "Scotland Yard, I presume?" he asked, inclining his head a trifle. Carmichael handed him his card. The butler inclined his head a fraction more over it.

  "Mr. Yately asked to be informed when you arrived," the butler said. In response to Carmichael's questioning look, he amplified. "Mr. Yately is the police inspector they sent over from Winchester."

  "Very well, show us to Mr. Yately," Carmichael said.

  The butler opened the front door and let them into a splendid paneled hall. There were wooden doors leading off in all directions and a curving staircase leading upstairs. The brass of the door handles gleamed. There was one window immediately above the door, which allowed light to fall on an old portrait of a lady in a ruff, accompanied by a little dog, also in a ruff.

  By some magical mechanism known only to servants, the butler had summoned a footman. "Show these police gentlemen to the dressing room of the blue bedroom," he instructed. Carmichael liked the ambiguity of "police gentlemen." Everything about Farthing subtly suggested wealth and privilege and class distinctions very carefully maintained. Then here he came, tramping in police boots to disturb the hierarchies as they were laid down by bringing in an entirely orthogonal power. In civilian circumstances, he would be recognized here as on the very lowest rank of gentry,
and Royston would be sent to the servants' entrance, wherever that was— which he must find out; it might be important.

  The minion bowed, took a step towards the stairs, and looked inquiringly at Carmichael. Carmichael, with a quick exchange of glances with Royston, followed obediently. The butler vanished through the door under the portrait, which Carmichael tentatively labeled as likely to lead to the servants' quarters. He must get hold of a floor plan, or have one drawn up. That would be a job the local police would probably be sufficiently competent to manage.

  "So, where is everyone?" Royston asked the footman.

  The footman looked outraged for a moment, then presumably remembered that he was talking to a policeman. "Her ladyship is resting in her room." Carmichael immediately placed him as a local. His accent was only a little smoother than Betty at the gate. "His lordship is in the library with some of the guests. Most of the other guests are in the drawing room. Miss Lucy—Mrs. Kahn I should say—and Mrs. Normanby are looking after Lady Thirkie, who is having hysterics in Miss Dorset's room. Miss Dorset was in the kitchen talking to the staff when I left, sir."

  "And who is Miss Dorset?" Royston asked.

  "Miss Dorset is her ladyship's cousin, and her secretary-companion," the footman said.

  Poor relation, Carmichael mentally appended, but surely a secretary-companion shouldn't be talking to the servants, even if she was one of the family? Carmichael was more interested in Mrs. Kahn, anyway, who he remembered, now that he heard the name, from a minor fuss in the newspapers the previous autumn. "English rose plucked by Jew," the Daily Express had screamed, and even the Telegraph had asked more quietly, "Should the daughters of our aristocracy be permitted to mingle their blood with the trash of European Jewry?" Lucy Eversley, yes, he remembered now—there had been photographs, nothing especially pretty, but very determined, which he supposed she'd have to be to come from this home and marry a Jew. Surprising that she was still invited down here for weekends.