Daniel had suspected, at their first and only meeting, that Rosemary Howard didn’t altogether enjoy the restraints imposed upon her by her son. Her manner and appearance at this second visit confirmed the suspicion. She had taken great trouble with her face, and somebody had done the same for her hair. She looked sprightly, even excited, like a small girl excused school.
Neither she nor her somewhat starchy nurse were at pains to hide their feelings. The latter welcomed him with, ‘I’m so glad you came back. A change of company does her all the good in the world.’ And Mrs Howard herself elaborated with a flash of the bright blue eyes, by adding, ‘I always like it when Andrew goes to London. I’m sorry he was so rude to you the other day—I thought we’d have a little treat to make up for it.’
The treat, brought in by the nurse who lingered to take a glass with them, was champagne, a vintage Bollinger, and exactly what any sensible person who could afford it would enjoy at eleven o’clock in the morning. Would it also, Daniel wondered, loosen the old lady’s tongue a little? She would never divulge everything, but on coming near her, now as before, he was quite sure that all kinds of odds and ends of information lay within his grasp, and that one or more of them, unconnected as far as she was concerned, could link together and complete the broken chain of reasoning in his own mind.
However, once the nurse had withdrawn she surprised him by smiling at him over her glass and saying, ‘I never asked before, but I’ve been wondering ever since you were here with your sister—just why are you so interested in the past, in that old letter of mine?’
Like Kate, Daniel always had a variety of excuses on the tip of his tongue, but he decided that in her present highly lucid condition the truth, or part of it, might provide a beneficial shock. ‘Did it never strike you as odd that so soon after she’d told you of her suspicions and the steps she proposed to take, she fell downstairs and was killed?’
The old woman nodded and put a hand up to her chest in a gesture which he remembered. ‘Yes, of course it did. That’s why I was … so terribly relieved when you told me how the letter had fallen behind some panelling and been lost.’
In for a penny, in for a pound, Daniel said, ‘You mean you were afraid Mark might see it.’
‘Yes. Though I didn’t mention his name in it, did I?’
‘No.’
‘All the same, if what she said was true, he would have realized she had … suspicions about him.’
‘Perhaps he realized anyway.’
‘I’ve often wondered. But at least I … I wasn’t in any way responsible, was I?’
‘No, you weren’t.’
She gave him one of her bright bird-like glances. ‘This is a very odd conversation.’
Since they had just agreed, though not in so many words, that Mark Ackland might possibly have killed his mother, Daniel was thinking the same. He raised his glass. ‘Must be your beautiful champagne.’
‘It is good, isn’t it? My husband’s favourite.’
‘Odd or not, I was only answering your question. Kate and I are interested because we’re pretty sure Grandmother didn’t die by accident. We’d like to know the truth.’
‘I’ve always found the truth rather dangerous myself.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He leaned forward. ‘Mrs Howard, when we were here before, my sister asked you outright what it was Grandmother had said to you. She’s like that, very outspoken …’
‘Just like dear Lydia.’
‘I didn’t think it was a sensible question—so I wasn’t a bit surprised when you evaded it.’
‘You’re an observant young man. And surely I told you how strangely she was talking?’
‘Yes, you did. But she was always like that when she was angry.’
‘Oh, but I’d never seen her so … so uncontrolled. I really was very worried.’
Daniel kept quiet and held his breath. He had at least guided her back into the past, and hoped that her memories would now take over.
‘I even asked that nice girl who worked for her whether she’d been in this condition for long. I mean, I had an awful feeling she ought to be in a home. Most of it was nonsense, pure nonsense.’
She nodded to herself and fell silent. Daniel had to nudge her again: ‘In what way?’
‘My dear, she was saying that Mark shouldn’t have stayed away all that time, never even coming back to see her. Heavens above!’ She gestured with her empty glass. ‘Didn’t she throw him out of England in the first place? She didn’t want him to come and see her, she wouldn’t have spoken to him if he had—and I told her as much. So then she lost her temper with me and called me a coward. As if that had anything to do with it!’
Daniel leaned forward and topped up both their glasses. She nodded thanks, but was now completely caught up in that fraught weekend. ‘And then she went on and on about Helen. I must say I never liked Helen, too pleased with herself by half, but it wasn’t “all her fault”, and that’s what Lydia kept saying—“Of course, it’s all Helen’s fault.” Well, it wasn’t, and I told her so. Mark was an impossible man, and Helen coped with him remarkably well. But Lydia wasn’t having any of that, oh no! Helen had only married Mark for the money, because he was heir to Longwater. That was what she wanted, and come hell or high water that was what she intended to get.’
‘But,’ said Daniel, genuinely puzzled, ‘Helen had already got Longwater years before.’
‘I told you—she simply wasn’t making sense. And then she kept going back to that time in Italy. So long ago, I couldn’t see how it had anything to do with it. I mean, we all knew—at least I did—-about his bad behaviour. Bad! It must have been appalling if even Gerald and I heard about it from our own Italian friends—by no means members of the “jet-set” as I believe it was called in those days.’
‘You said there was a law-suit.’
‘More than one, I imagine. And then he fell or jumped out of that window in Venice, didn’t he? Or perhaps somebody pushed him. Anyway he landed in a cobbled yard, not a canal.’
‘News to me.’
‘Oh yes. Broke his leg—badly. They thought he might lose it, but some clever Italian surgeon patched it up with a metal plate or something—he still limps a bit, doesn’t he?’ She took a mouthful of Bollinger. ‘We gathered that Helen had her moments too.’
‘Lovers?’
‘That was the story. Lots of men wanted her to leave him and marry them.’ But, thought Daniel to himself, Helen wanted Longwater and the fortune which went with it, and ‘come hell or high water that was what she intended to get’. Mm!
‘But you see,’ Rosemary was now saying, ‘they went too far, those kind of people always do. The whole thing turned sour on them.’
‘The, er … jet-set wasn’t amused any more.’
‘To put it mildly. They’d outstayed their welcome, all their welcomes. So they lost most of their so-called friends—acquaintances really.’
‘And that night Grandmother kept going back to this?’
‘Harped on it. Quite bewildering!’ Frowning, she sipped her champagne, and then added more thoughtfully: ‘I think one of the reasons I couldn’t understand what she was driving at was that she didn’t want me to understand. She did and she didn’t, do you know what I mean?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘I’ll tell you another thing—she never really trusted me, not completely. She often used to say I was a bit silly. Well, compared to her I probably was. She thought I chattered too much without forethought. I expect I’m doing it right now, but I don’t care any more.’
‘You’re saying that even if she’d really wanted to tell you what was on her mind she might have … pulled back from it.’
‘You’re a bright boy, that’s just what I mean.’
‘She was like that with everybody—about the family most of all.’
‘Oh heavens, the family! I know you’ll forgive me for saying this, dear, even if you’re an Ackland yourself, but quite frankly your blood isn’t that special; my own family’s a lot more aristocratic, and I told her so.’
‘Brave of you.’
‘She didn’t like it.’
‘I bet she didn’t.’
The old woman withdrew her eyes from the past which seemed to lie outside the windows somewhere above the English Channel, and looked at him directly. ‘Can you understand how she was talking a kind of sense which was also nonsense?’
‘And then getting angry because one couldn’t understand.’
‘Yes, yes. How well you knew her.’
‘She used to do it to me even when I was a little boy. But children are pretty quick, I learned how to read between the lines.’
‘I never did. And after a while I got so angry with her I didn’t care—that night was no exception. But I shouldn’t have been angry, I’d never seen her so … yes, so wild, and I’d known her for over thirty-five years. I’ll tell you how concerned I was—when I heard she might have thrown herself down those stairs, done away with herself, I could almost believe it. And that’s a shocking thing to admit about an old and dearly loved friend.’
‘You thought she was that … unhinged?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And of course, it’s why you advised her to keep her mouth shut. You said in your letter, people would just dismiss her as a batty old woman.’
‘Yes, and I was right, they would have done.’
‘Yet Sally, the companion, says she was as bright as a button up to the day she died.’
‘That’s as may be … Yes, why don’t we finish the bottle? That’s as may be, my dear. She died … was it five days later? All I’m saying is that on the evening I’m telling you about she was … really, out of her mind.’
‘With anger?’
‘Partly. Or perhaps entirely, she had a terrible temper.’
‘She certainly had.’
Rosemary Howard studied him for a moment in silence. ‘You’re both young, you and your sister. I … don’t expect you to take my advice any more than Lydia did. She called me a coward. Perhaps I am.’ Her head fell suddenly against the back of the chair. ‘Oh dear, I’m going to drop off. Age is boring, but … I did enjoy the champagne.’ A veiled glance from the blue eyes. ‘Please take care. Better to be a … a coward and alive than … Lydia wouldn’t have agreed, would she?’
Daniel took her frail, cold hand and pressed it. ‘Thank you, Mrs Howard, thank you very much.’
She smiled faintly. And then snored.
He turned out of her room and said goodbye to the buxom nurse who was reading a newspaper in the kitchen; once more he noted what different women both she and her patient were when the dreaded Andrew was absent. Before returning to Tom and the Land-Rover he walked for a few minutes among the pines; stood staring at children running along the beach, but without seeing them, his mind elsewhere.
At their first meeting he had suspected that the old lady was being purposely misleading, out of loyalty to her old friend or out of fear. This time she had spoken more openly; had perhaps told him all she knew insofar as she understood it. He had learned a lot of things, but nothing which struck him with the lightning-flash of revelation. He hadn’t even realized until now how much he’d been looking forward to such a flash. Instead of which he felt baulked, deflated, and without any good reason.
Such null reactions were rare in his life; they irritated him, and it was an irritated face which Tom, looking up over an old James Bond paperback, saw emerging from among the trees.
Daniel clambered into the passenger seat and sat there, inert, staring straight ahead.
Tom ventured, ‘No good?’
Tom didn’t think he’d ever heard his brainy friend say ‘I don’t know’. Never before; it was unnerving. Eyeing the woebegone expression, he felt great sympathy, but was entirely unable to find words that could express it. This was nothing new; he wasn’t much good with words. After a time he asked, ‘Where do we go now?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘Home, I suppose. Stop at some pub on the way for a bite and a beer.’
His mind seemed to be marooned in an impenetrable fog; but after they’d driven a couple of miles he thought he detected a slight shifting of the murk, and for a moment he almost caught a glimpse of an interesting shape before visibility again receded to zero.
After six or seven miles he became convinced that there was in fact something there, it wasn’t pure imagination or wishful thinking. He forced his retentive memory to rerun the entire conversation over the bottle of superior champagne, starting with their tacit and surprised realization that they could both suspect Mark of having killed his mother; passing over the tangle of uncertainties and repetitions which had followed; passing over the unsurprising fact that Grandmother Lydia had not altogether trusted her old friend (whom did she altogether trust?) and thought her a tittle-tattle; ending with Rosemary’s warning: ‘Please take care. Better to be a coward and alive than … Lydia wouldn’t have agreed, would she?’
He found no clue. The shape in his fogged brain still lurked just out of sight. He was sullen and silent, digging into himself. Tom, upright, sunny and ebullient, drove carefully and sometimes sang softly in his pleasing baritone.
The fog lifted with breathtaking suddenness in the middle of their gloomy snack at the Pear Tree in Brocklebank; Daniel let out a gasp, dropped his hunk of game pie into Tom’s pint of beer, upset his own glass all over the table, and turned with wide, wild eyes. ‘Dear Jesus Christ, of course!’ No longer sullen, his face was alight, on fire.
Tom nodded, pleased; this was more like the old Daniel. Pity about his pint!
‘What did she say? Oh God, what was it, what was it?’
Tom stared, smiling; was in fact way ahead of him; his understanding was acute, if normally unexpressed. ‘You want to go back and ask her, right?’
‘Tom, I must!’
The big young man glanced at the watch on his brawny wrist. ‘What if your favourite lawyer comes home from London fighting mad?’
‘It’s a risk we’ve got to take. Come on!’
‘Three minutes. I’m getting another pint, it was a drop of all right. How about you?’
‘Hell, no! I mean, thanks, Tom—we’ve got to go.’
‘Three minutes.’ In fact he sank his pint in one, and by the end of three they’d embarked on the return journey to Bournemouth; Tom driving fast, Daniel thinking furiously and occasionally muttering under his breath.
There was no sign of the maroon Mercedes outside The Pines, but neither was there any longer a sense of happy relaxation within. The nurse’s face froze in horror when she saw who the visitor was. Apparently Andrew Howard had called from London ‘in a terrible state’, asking if Mr Daniel Ackland had paid a call. On hearing that he indeed had (‘I couldn’t lie to him—he’s a lawyer, he always finds out anyway’) he had been speechless with fury; she was sure that this was the end of her present job—such a nice job too, and they got on so well together, she and Mrs Howard, when he wasn’t around.
Tom, who had stayed with the Land-Rover, could see that there was some kind of altercation in progress and came over to join them at the door. Daniel was saying, ‘I must speak to her again, only for a few minutes. Five minutes.’
‘No, no! Please go away. She’s having her afternoon rest, she’s asleep.’
‘I’m not asleep,’ came Rosemary’s voice, very alert. ‘What’s going on? Who is it?’
Daniel laid a hand on the nurse’s arm and said, ‘Tom here will look after you if Andrew appears.’ And, while she was turning to bestow the usual glance of feminine appreciation upon Tom’s size and strength, he slipped past her, across the hall and into Mrs Howard’s room. She was lying on the bed, propped against many pillows, and the blue eyes were bright. ‘Oh, it’s you again, dear. How nice! A bit too early for tea, I’m afraid.’
‘I only want to clarify one thing, one small thing.’
‘You played a naughty trick on my son, didn’t you?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Do him good, he’s far too bossy. What do you want to ask me?’
Daniel tried to compose himself. It was essential that there should be no leading questions; the information must come directly from her. ‘When you and Grandmother were arguing about family …’
‘All that silly snobbishness!’
‘I agree. Can you remember exactly what you both said?’ He could almost feel Andrew thundering towards them, all guns blazing, but managed to add, ‘Take your time.’
‘Well now, let me see …’ The pause was endless. ‘She was boasting about the Acklands, and by that time I was absolutely fed up, we’d been at it for hours, I was exhausted. I said something like, “Lydia, we’ve done the family over and over again—and anyway the Acklands aren’t all that well-bred.” I said, “To be honest, my own family’s a lot more aristocratic.” And she said, “Oh Rosemary, don’t be such a nitwit, I’m talking about the blood …”’ She looked up at him sharply. ‘No, wait a minute! She’d got back on to Mark cheating your father, and she said, “But there is proof, it’s in the blood,” and it was then I said my family was more aristocratic than hers, and she lost her temper and told me I was a damn fool …’
At this moment sudden and unmistakable noises-off betokened the arrival of her son.
Daniel, eyes shining, grasped her cool hand and said, ‘Thank you, oh thank you!’
‘But I’ve hardly told you …’
‘You,’ shouted Andrew Howard from the door, ‘are going to find yourself in a court of law.’
Daniel swung around as fast as his crutches would allow. ‘You think so.’
‘I damn well know it.’
‘Good. Because then you can explain what happened when you went to see my grandmother three days before she was killed on that staircase.’
Andrew’s stupefaction was momentary but unmistakable. ‘She wanted to consult me on a family matter. At my mother’s recommendation.’
‘Yes. And she changed her mind, didn’t she? She saw right through you and she didn’t trust what she saw—I don’t blame her.’
‘Unjustifiable nonsense!’
‘That’s why you were so keen to get your grubby hands on the letter—she didn’t trust you and she shut up like a clam. But that didn’t stop you running over to Longwater House there and then, telling my Uncle Mark she intended to cause trouble.’
‘I’ll have you for slander, defamation …’ He pointed at the gaping nurse. ‘I have witnesses.’
Daniel went closer to him, face very pale. ‘Slander, my foot! This is going to be a trial for murder and you’re going to be an accessory after the fact!’
Master Howard’s mouth opened. No sound emerged. Then he lunged forward, fist raised. The nurse screamed. Tom, moving with the speed which so distinguished him on the rugby field, grabbed the plump lawyer from behind with both arms and lifted him clear off the floor. Andrew kicked out backwards, and Tom, by way of reprisal, raised one knee and thumped him hard in the groin. Andrew howled. Tom released him and pushed him backwards on to a sofa where he lay gasping like a stranded fish.
Rosemary Howard, suddenly strident, said, ‘Andrew, can this be true? Did you really go over to Longwater and betray Lydia’s confidences?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You’re lying, dear. I told you—I remember telling you before you went to Woodman’s. The strictest confidence. Lydia Ackland was my best friend.’
‘It’s nothing to do with you, Mother.’
The pale blue eyes blazed for a moment. ‘It’ll be something to do with me if I change my will and leave it all to World Wildlife.’ She waved at Daniel as he hobbled out of the door, Tom bringing up the rear. The last they heard was her voice, not at all the voice of a helpless invalid, saying, ‘You’d better tell me the truth, my boy, or you may regret it.’
Daniel, heading for the Land-Rover, said, ‘Thanks, Tom. My God, if he’d hit me I’d have gone down like a ninepin—he’d probably have kicked me to death.’
‘Pleasure’s mine. He’s a real sod, that one!’ He glanced at Daniel’s face and smiled. ‘Got what you wanted, didn’t you? Written all over you.’
‘I’ll say! But why the hell didn’t I see it before? It was there all the time, staring me in the face. I’ve got to tell Kate.’