Farthing Read online

  The fair woman was sitting in a little pink frilled basket chair. She was the one who reacted most immediately to the announcement. She jumped to her feet and spun to face Carmichael. She had very blue eyes, pink cheeks, pink lipstick, and an expression that said she welcomed any distraction. She was wearing rather plain clothing that implicitly rejected all attempts at lace and ruffles and which stood out in that room as almost masculine. Carmichael recognized her from newspaper photographs as Lucy Kahn but wondered, now he saw her in person, what could have led her to throw herself away on a Jew? A possibly murderous Jew, at that? Oh well, they said love was inexplicable.

  "Mrs. Kahn?" he said. "I'm sorry to intrude, but I was hoping to have a few words with Lady Thirkie."

  "Oh that's quite all right," Mrs. Kahn said. "This is Lady Thirkie, and this is Mrs. Normanby." She indicated first the woman on the bed, and then the woman at the window. Then she went over to the bed and touched the shoulder of the woman there. "Angela? Here's a policeman to speak to you." To Carmichael's surprise, he saw that Angela Thirkie was crying. How could his first glance have failed to notice the tears leaking out of her eyes and streaming down her cheeks? Or had she just begun to cry?

  "Have you come to take me to my husband?" the weeping woman asked. "I haven't seen him yet, you know."

  Carmichael swallowed hard. The corpse had never been a pretty sight, and it would be worse now that Green would have been poking about at it. Besides, it would be in Winchester by now. "I don't think—" he began.

  Mrs. Kahn deftly intercepted the conversational ball. "Are you sure it would be a good idea in your condition, Angela?" she asked. "I have heard of children being marked when their mothers saw horrors when they were in the womb. You wouldn't want that to happen."

  "No." Lady Thirkie seemed struck by this. "No, you're right. But how will you identify him if I don't see him?"

  "There's no question of the identity of the dead man," Carmichael said, quietly filing the information that Lady Thirkie was expecting. "His face has been known to the nation ever since 1941."

  "Of course," Lady Thirkie said. "I hadn't thought of that."

  "There's only a question of identifying a body if it turns up somewhere unusual surely," Mrs. Kahn said, unexpectedly, with a little laugh. "I mean Sir James was in his own bed, there isn't any question . . ." She trailed off, her hand over her mouth.

  The woman by the window, the sister-in-law, turned to them for the first time. She was wearing some kind of red shirt with a flounce down the front. "I shouldn't think there could be any doubt that it was James," she said in a doleful tone.

  "No, no doubt at all," Carmichael said. "In any case, formal identification has been done by Mr. Normanby, so there's no need to cause any of you ladies any anguish."

  "By Mark?" Mrs. Normanby snorted and turned again to the window.

  "I believe Mr. Normanby found the body," Carmichael said, feeling he was missing something in the crosscurrents of the room.

  "But—" Mrs. Kahn began, and put her hand to her mouth again. Carmichael waited patiently. "I didn't know he'd found him," she said, rather feebly, after a moment. "He told us that Sir James was dead. I didn't realize he'd actually seen the body."

  "Seen and identified," Mrs. Normanby said, grimly. "Good for Mark; how kind of him to spare the weaker sex this burden."

  "Oh do be quiet, Daphne," Mrs. Kahn said, with real irritation in her voice.

  "Who killed him?" Lady Thirkie asked. She was still crying, Carmichael noticed.

  "We don't know yet, but we intend to do our best to find out," Carmichael said, as he had said many times before in similar circumstances.

  "And then they'll hang, won't they, whoever they are?" she said, with a strange kind of relish. Carmichael wondered if she was mad, not the kind of deranged people sometimes temporarily became through grief, but genuinely and long-term cuckoo. Possibly she and her sister were both mad, hereditary madness—though why would two rising politicians have married them if that were the case? They'd been heiresses, but a man wouldn't want to taint his children. Could she have killed him, if she were mad? He looked at her hands, which were big and broad. If she had ever been wearing any lipstick it had worn off.

  "Do calm down, Angela," Mrs. Kahn said.

  "Where were you at the time of the murder?" Carmichael asked.

  Lady Thirkie gave a little squeak. "Me? But what was the time of the murder?"

  "Sometime between one A.M. last night and nine this morning," Carmichael said.

  "Well, I was asleep . . . and then I got up and went to church, to Early Communion."

  "What time is Early Communion?" he asked.

  "Eight-thirty," Mrs. Kahn put in, seeing Lady Thirkie floundering.

  "My maid woke me," Lady Thirkie said. "She woke me and told me it was time, so I got dressed and went down, and I met Lord Eversley on the stairs."

  "That would have been at about eight-fifteen," Mrs. Kahn said. "I was in the front hall with my mother when Lady Thirkie and my father came down."

  "Did all the guests go to church?" Carmichael asked.

  "Very few of them went to the early service," Mrs. Kahn said. "Most of them prefer Matins, at eleven-thirty."

  So the house hadn't been almost empty for that hour as he'd been imagining it. What a pity.

  He turned back to Lady Thirkie. "So from one A.M. until just before eight-fifteen, you were asleep in the blue room, and after that you were in church."

  "Yes . . ." she said.

  "You didn't hear anything unusual, either in the night or early this morning?"

  It took a moment for the significance of this question to sink in. Carmichael could see her understanding it when, several moments after he finished speaking, she actually flinched. "You mean it was there? In the dressing room? That's where it happened?" she asked, her voice rising. Where, Carmichael wondered, had she expected her husband to be in the small hours of the morning? "You mean I was there when the murderer came in? I just lay there, sleeping, while the anarchist killed James? Why, he could have come in and murdered me too!" She began to sob noisily, almost wailing.

  "I'm very sorry to have distressed you, Lady Thirkie, but please understand that any evidence I can find, anything at all, might make it easier for me to find out who killed your husband," he said.

  "I didn't hear anything," she sobbed.

  Mrs. Kahn put her arms around her, wearily. Mrs. Normanby, still by the window, turned and looked at Carmichael. "I think you'd better go," she said. "You can ask any other questions another time. My sister is too upset to be any more help to you now."

  "Very well." Carmichael wasn't sorry to leave the stifling atmosphere and the wails. He wanted to talk more to all three women, or he wanted to get more information from them, at least, but he didn't need to do it immediately. He withdrew to the corridor and stood there for a moment taking deep breaths. Where next? Two possibilities immediately suggested themselves: the stables, or the gunroom—male preserves both, where he could be reassuringly free of either feminine wails or feminine ruffles. Laughing at himself, Carmichael strode off in search of Royston.

  7

  Sukey came by at last and tapped hesitantly on her own door. The afternoon had been an interminable drag. The sisters had spent it alternately sniping at and ignoring each other. We'd had a visit from the rather nice, though probably Athenian, Inspector from Scotland Yard. Angela had shown almost as much distress that Sir James had been killed in the dressing room as that he was dead at all, though she didn't quite faint. I opened the door to Sukey with a great sense of relief. If nothing else, I was hungry enough to eat a horse, without even cooking and skinning it. I'd even have eaten the saddle.

  Sukey stood there in one of her dresses that Hugh had once unkindly dubbed "pincushion frocks," velvet with lace trim. "It's nearly time to dress for dinner," she said, in an apologetic whisper. "I was wondering if I could tiptoe in and get a few things. I won't disturb you."

  I stepped out into t
he corridor and closed the door. "I want my dinner too," I said.

  "I had thought trays," Sukey said. "Angela can't possibly appear."

  "No, she can't, but I can't stay in there with her. I don't think Daphne should either. Honestly, Sukey, trust me. Daphne is absolutely the wrong person to be with her sister now."

  Sukey frowned and stroked the velvet of her sleeve—I'm sure she does it without knowing she's doing it, because I once heard her complain about the nap being gone there and saying it was inexplicable. Sukey's rather like a cat in some ways, a slightly fussy cat like a Burmese or a Siamese, and that stroking always reminds me of a cat licking its fur. She likes to have everything in its place, she likes lace and velvet and bobbles, but she's a superb manager. She's absolutely devoted to Mummy, they're cousins, and they've been together since they were girls, and while Sukey's title is "secretary-companion," the "companion" added to show she's a lady and not a hireling, she actually organizes a tremendous amount for Mummy, the house, and political things as well. She keeps Mummy pointed in the right direction. Sukey stays on top of everything that's going on and kind of briefs Mummy so Mummy can just sail through. They're like a swan: Mummy's the part on top of the water gliding along effortlessly and Sukey's the part below the water kicking frantically. I know Mummy couldn't do without her, and what's more, Mummy knows it too. She doesn't pay her a tenth of what she's worth, and she couldn't, no matter how much she paid. You can't buy devotion.

  "Then who is there?" Sukey asked. "I'd do it myself, but there's so much else that needs doing. Can't you stay?" This last she said imploringly, but I shook my head.

  "I've been there all day, and I'm at screaming point," I said. "How about Lady Manningham?"

  Sukey put her head on one side, just exactly like a cat. "I could ask her," she said. "Are you sure Daphne wouldn't . . ."

  "They're tormenting each other about who Sir James loved better," I said. There was no sense in keeping anything from Sukey at this point, even though that meant it would go straight to Mummy. "It seems Daphne walked into his dressing room and found the body, which looks like a spot of Bognor to me."

  "Oh dear," Sukey said, distressed. "You're quite right. Run along and get dressed. I'll ask Kitty Manningham to sit with her. Perhaps we should call Doctor Graham to come and take a look at her."

  "That might be a good idea," I said. "She says she's going to have a baby in December and that Sir James knew."

  "My goodness," Sukey murmured. "The poor thing!" I knew at once that she meant the baby and almost laughed because that was so much my own reaction.

  Sukey patted my arm and scuttled off in search of Lady Manningham. I walked as fast as I could to my room to change, knowing full well that not even a murder would be sufficient to get Mummy to consider sitting down to dinner in day clothes acceptable behavior.

  David was in the room, dressed and waiting for me. I kissed him, almost threw off what I was wearing, scattering garments heedlessly about the floor, and dragged on the dress someone had taken the trouble to lay out for me. It happened to be the purple thing from the Worth collection. It's not really purple, it's lavender with a purple creeping-leaf design all over it, and I remembered after I had it on that it was floor-length, which meant my hair had to go up. I fixed it up just anyhow, sticking about ninety pins in it because I'd just washed it and it didn't want to lie quiet. When I was looking at it in the mirror I remembered about the day before, and looked at David over my shoulder again. He was watching me, and smiling, but under the smile I could tell he wasn't one bit happy.

  I picked my amethyst chain out of my casket. It's a single amethyst on a gold chain, with amethyst ear-drops to match, and I love them because they're the first thing David gave me after we were engaged. It wasn't my birthday or anything, just an ordinary day in Grosvenor Square, with Mummy being bloody; and rain, hard London rain that's so much dirtier and wetter than rain in the country. I hadn't been expecting David, he just dropped by, and seeing him was like the sun coming out, and he gave me this little box, and I opened it not knowing what, and there they were. Every time I see them or touch them I remember that. I bought the Worth dress to go with them, if you really want to know.

  "Will you do my clasp up?" I asked, and then when David had done the clasp and still had his hand on my neck I turned and hugged him.

  "What's the matter?" I asked. I had no idea, because I hadn't seen him since early breakfast, having spent all day since church stuck in Sukey's room trying to deal with Angela and Daphne.

  "Just the usual," David said. "Well, except that your mother and several of the guests seem to think I'm guilty of this murder." He said it quite casually and as if the whole thing was absurd, which of course it was, but he didn't really take it as lightly as just the words sound written down. He's actually super-sensitive to slights and so on, but he manages to hide it from most people most of the time by seeming to be very thick-skinned. Few people will be really blatant; although some will, of course, like Mummy, only too often. When this sort of thing happened, David cared enormously but he'd never say, because in some ways David always has to be more English than the English just because he's Jewish—he feels he has to be more stiff-upper-lipped and keep the side up better than anyone.

  I did react, I know I did. It was fury, at Mummy, and at the rest of them, whoever they were, for being so stupid, so prejudiced, so unthinkingly vile as to think that just because David was Jewish he was likely to be a murderer. If I'd never known David I might have carried on thinking all these people were basically good people, with odd little quirks perhaps, but I'd never have understood how foul they were. David took the blinkers off for me, and I've never been sorry, because who would want to go around in a world that's like a very thin strip of pretty flower garden surrounded by fields and fields of stinking manure that stretch out as far as the eye can see? And it's not as if those people are the only people in the world, though they may imagine they are.

  It might surprise you that I'd spent all day with Angela and Daphne, talking almost entirely about the murder, with excursions to Bognor and Athens, excuse me, adultery and homosexuality, without really once wondering myself who had done it. I'd even heard Angela ask the Inspector in her histrionic way, without stopping to connect up the fact that if there had been a murder at Farthing then there must also be a murderer here. Everyone else was ahead of me, and I suppose it was in fact frightfully dim of me, but I'd thought about Sir James alive and Sir James dead, and Angela and Daphne, but not at all about who might have killed him or why.

  "Did they come right out and say so?" I asked.

  "They hinted around the edges of it in a terribly well-bred way," David said. "I could pretend to ignore it." ("English hypocrisy," David said once, after three bottles of wine, "can be a wonderful thing. People who hate and despise you, and who in the Reich would put you in a slave labor camp or kill you, in England bother to pretend that they're not really sneering." And he meant it, too— meant that it was wonderful, I mean.)

  "Let's go home straight after dinner," I said. We could, because we'd driven down, and we could just pop straight into our little twoseater Hilton and drive back to London without anybody or anything getting in our way. We could be home in our flat by midnight at the latest. The thought of it was a tremendous relief; not just the thought of being at home, but getting away from Farthing, from all of this. We didn't have to stay. I'd already done whatever duty to Mummy I needed to. I wouldn't have come at all, if it had been up to me. I'd have thrown her insistence back in her face. It was David who felt that if it was so tremendously important to Mummy that we be here, we'd do better to oblige her. I still didn't know why she wanted us. I think David had felt that it was in some way a peace offering, that she had invited us both so insistently, but I know Mummy better than that. In any case, if it was intended as an olive branch, then it was a very thin one with ragged leaves and no fruit at all.

  "There's nothing I'd like better," David said, with an extremely k
issable wistful expression. "But the police have asked that nobody leave for the time being. To ensure that nobody does, they've locked the gates and put a bobby on them."

  I kissed him quickly, then went to the window and stuck my head out. I couldn't see the gates, of course; that wasn't why I did it. It was just that I needed to get my head into the fresh air because all at once I felt totally trapped. I always felt that a little at Farthing. It isn't claustrophobia, not in the usual way anyway. It's partly Mummy, and the sort of bashes she organizes—feeling as if I'm back in her power. It's also partly the physical fact that Farthing is so deep in the country that it's hard to get away from, even though it's only two hours from London. That's why I'd insisted on driving down, when we could easily have gone by train to Farthing Junction and been picked up from there, the way most people did. Now, despite taking precautions, despite having the Hilton with us, we really were imprisoned here, unable to get away. I felt that terrible crushing feeling in my chest, as if I were fourteen again, with Hugh newly dead and Mummy and Daddy leaning everything on me as if it were all a huge stone that was going to grind me under it. I took deep breaths out the window for all I was worth, but even the sweet May air with the scent of bluebells and lilies of the valley didn't help very much.