Nobody spoke, nobody moved. More slow seconds ticked by, Drew still rigid at the head of the table, staring at the empty doorway. Then abruptly he swung round to face his brother-in-law,
“How could you be so callous? You must have known.”
“Dear God,” exclaimed Felix. “The chap’s been dead two years now. Surely we can breathe his name again.”
Gwen jerked back to life. “But you can’t expect Tansy not to be upset. Brian was her only son.”
Tansy’s son? The quaint old thing so perfectly fitted the stock maiden aunt image that I had categorized her blindly.
Felix was still not satiated. “Brian can’t have been much of a loss to his dear old mum,” he sneered. “I mean he ... well, he wasn’t exactly a saint.” A glance of vindictive amusement was flicked at each of his sisters in turn. “You’ll bear me out on that, won’t you?”
“Perhaps,” said Drew seriously, “that very fact makes it all the harder for her to bear. When Uncle Alec died, Brian was all she had left. Now she hasn’t got any decent memories of either of them.”
“She’s got you, though,” said Felix nastily.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’re the golden boy, according to dear Aunt Tansy. You simply can’t do wrong in her eyes.”
Sitting in on a family quarrel wasn’t my idea of fun. I got to my feet.
“Shall I begin clearing up the mess?” I asked Corinne. “I expect Miss Pink will give me something to use.”
Corinne didn’t even hear me. Or chose not to. It was Gwen who saved me from looking foolish.
“Good idea, Kim,” she said. “I’ll scrape up the bits .and you fetch a damp cloth. The door to the kitchen is by the stairs.”
I was only too glad to escape.
The kitchen was empty. Dishes were piled on the counter awaiting washing up, but otherwise everything was spick and span. There was no floorcloth in sight. Nothing I could use.
A crackle of gunshots guided me to Miss Pink’s sitting room. I tapped politely, and then rapped hard. Her impatient voice called me to come in.
Miss Pink was poised on the very edge of her armchair.
“Half a tick, lovey,” she instructed, a finger raised. “I don’t want to miss this bit.”
I waited until the shooting was over. Then I asked her for a cloth. “There’s been a slight accident in the dining room.”
“Oh dear! What’s happened?”
“Some trifle was spilt,” I said evasively. “It won’t take a minute to clear it up.”
Staccato western voices were backgrounding our conversation. The sheriff was forming a posse.
“Do you want me to come?” Miss Pink asked uneagerly, and I saw the relief in her eyes when I told her no. “Well, lovey, you’ll find a clean cloth in a drawer by the sink. On the left, second one down.”
I wasn’t hurrying. I wanted to allow good time for the emotional temperature in the dining room to drop a few degrees. But in fact, when I got back, everyone except Gwen had disappeared. She was down on her knees, coping with the carpet.
“I think I’ve got the worst of it up,” she said in a fiat, matter-of-fact voice. “If you could just give it a rub over.”
While I worked on the sticky patch with my damp cloth, she got to her feet and stood watching me. I sensed her discomfort.
After a bit she burst out, “Sorry about that scene just now. Felix can be a damn fool sometimes.”
“I didn’t know your sister had a son,” I remarked, merely for the sake of something to say.
“We-don’t talk about him,” Gwen said. Her voice tensed up. “Brian was a ... he was a thoroughly bad lot. His death affected poor Tansy terribly. She’s never been the same since that awful day.”
“Has your sister been a widow for very long?”
“Oh, it’s years now. Alec Hearne died when Brain was only three.” I could feel Gwen making a big effort to talk calmly. “It was a blessing in disguise, really, except that the wretched man left poor Tansy penniless. Nothing but debts. My brother and his wife at once offered Tansy a home at Mildenhall, and then within a few months of her coming both of them were dead. So Tansy stayed on here with her baby son to keep the place going for Drew until he came of age.”
“Then the two boys were brought up together?” -
“Well, not really together. Drew was a good bit older than Brian, you see—about nine years, I think. Brian was only just twenty-four when he was drowned.” The tightness in her voice was building up again. She finished off quickly, “We don’t like to talk about it, though. It upsets my sister.”
But Tansy wasn’t the only one who got upset at a mention of Brian’s death. And the conspiracy of silence at Mildenhall seemed to be like a festering sore.
I sat back on my heels and looked up at Gwen. “There, I think it will dry out now without leaving a stain.”
We went through to the drawing room then, and that too was empty. I wondered where everyone had gone. There seemed no sense of a collective family life in this curious household.
Gwen made a beeline for the liquor cabinet.
“God, I could do with a nip,” she said heavily, adding with entirely false gaiety, “A wee drop of the hard stuff.”
Without bothering to ask me what I wanted, she splashed out two very stiff measures of excellent brandy.
“That’s far too much,” I protested. “Just a very small one for me, please.”
“Get along with you, my dear. It’ll buck you up.”
I didn’t argue any more; there was no need for me to drink it all. But when a few minutes later Drew came into the room, the jumbo-sized brandy became a silent indictment. What would he think of me? Furtively I slid the glass on a small table and drifted away, trying to disown such alcoholic immoderation.
Gwen was frowning with deep anxiety. “How’s Tansy now, Drew? Is she all right?”
He didn’t reply in words. With an uncertain, unhappy shrug, he moved across to the windows and stood staring out into the gathering blue dusk.
Gwen watched him morosely, not saying anything more.
I wondered if my presence was inhibiting Gwen and Drew from talking. But somehow I didn’t think so. I suspected there was no real easiness between them, no comfortable relationship.
There was no comfortable give-and-take relationship between any of the people at Mildenhall, I decided. And was it all because a man had drowned here, two years ago?
Two years! Yet still the mention of Brian Hearne’s name wrought consternation. I’d seen Tansy rush from the room in near hysteria. Drew had been afraid, I felt sure; and Corinne and Gwen too. Grimly, silently afraid. A stunned fear. And Felix and Verity, outside the circle of sudden alarm, had in some curious way been just as certainly involved.
The tight silence of the drawing room was broken by Miss Pink, who came racing in with the trolley.
“Here’s the coffee,” she announced breathlessly. “I’ll just leave it here. I want to get back ...”
‘Where are the others?” Gwen asked her.
“In the music room I think, lovey. I’ll pop in on the way and tell them to come in here if they want coffee. And I’ll leave the front door on the latch, so Mr. Wayne can come straight in ...”
She scurried off across the hall, pulled hard by her beloved television.
“It keeps her happy,” said Drew, with a faint and rueful smile. “And we might not be able to hang on to her without it.”
“Yes, you’re surprisingly isolated here,” I said, grasping what looked like a safe conversational thread. “I hadn’t realized there were still such remote spots in Sussex. It’s very lovely, of course, but I suppose for some people it must seem a bit quiet.”
Drew looked at me as if I’d made some fatuous comment. “Oh, Pinky doesn’t mind the quiet.”
Well, I was only trying to be pleasant.
Drew and Gwen fell back into forbidding silence, ignoring the coffee. I felt thoroughly discomfited. A drop of brandy would have suited me right then, but I wasn’t going to pick up that knock-out dose under Drew’s very eyes.
Patiently, I had another try at getting some small-talk going. “You’ve got a music room then. Are you a very musical family?”
Gwen prodded at her spectacles. “It’s a relic from my grandparents’ days. I can just remember the elegant soirées they used to hold each week when I was small.”
She drained her glass, sighed at the memory of happier times, and immediately awarded herself another stiff peg.
“Nowadays my wife uses the music room to practice,” Drew said slowly. “She is, or rather was, a professional singer.”
“How interesting.” At last I’d got him to say something comparatively normal. “What sort of thing did she do? Opera, or ...?”
“No. I suppose you’d describe it as show business.” With a curious note of bitterness, he added, “She gave up her career in order to marry me.”
Gwen chipped in, “Corinne used to be on television quite a lot. Of course, she’s got the right looks, hasn’t she? That’s what counts above everything.”
Was Gwen deliberately implying that Corinne had a second-rate voice? Or was it a case of in vino veritas? Gwen seemed to be getting just a bit tipsy.
The others came in then, Corinne and her brother and sister. They gathered around the trolley and poured their coffee. Not one of them troubled to ask if anyone else wanted a cup while they were about it.
“And how’s poor old Tansy?” Felix drawled.
I saw a spark of anger bring quick life to Drew’s eyes.
“I think this had better be understood here and now,” he said in a controlled voice. “I don’t expect that name to be mentioned again in this house. It causes too much distress all around.”
“Whose name would that be?” inquired Felix innocently.
Drew ignored the interruption, “Brian is dead, and nothing can be gained by talking about him.”
“Hear, hear,” Gwen grunted.
“Perhaps it might suit some people to keep quiet,” Felix suggested slyly. His eyes flicked around the room, but so quickly that I couldn’t decide whether he was singling out anyone in particular. “But it’s not much of an epitaph for the poor chap, is it? ‘Here lies the body of Brian Hearne, out of sight and out of mind.’ ”
“Drop it, Felix,” said Verity uneasily.
“But I was only—”
“I said drop it.”
The arrival of Drew’s assistant brought a breeze of normality into the room. Bill Wayne was fair-haired and stocky, with the clean-cut look of an outdoor man. As we were introduced he grinned at me with cheerful open-eyed interest.
“Drew didn’t warn me about you,” he said, “or I’d have smacked on some of the old after-shave.”
Gwen had remembered the coffee at last. She brought two cups over, and Bill settled in the chair next to mine, crossing his legs comfortably.
“So you’re a friend of Gwen’s, then?”
I nodded, without attempting to elaborate. Until I’d had that private talk with Drew, I could hardly discuss with anyone else my real reason for being here.
“And is this your first time down at Mildenhall?” he asked, probing gently.
“Yes. As a matter of fact I’ve only just got back to this country. I’ve been in the United States.”
“Lucky you! I’d love a chance to have a look-see at some of their big trout farms. Fabulous set-ups, by all accounts.”
“You’ve got quite a place here, I believe?”
“It’s not bad. And getting better all the time. Drew and I seem to make a pretty good team. He knows about the business side, and I know all about fish.” Bill shot me a sizing-up look. “How about letting me show you round in the morning?”
“Well, I’m not sure ....”
He misunderstood my hesitation and reached out an arm to attract Gwen’s attention. “You don’t mind if I take Kim on a conducted tour of the trout farm tomorrow morning?”
“Good idea.” By now she had recovered her good spirits, but her voice was noticeably thickening. “Damn fascinating—all those little blighters swimming around for all they’re worth.”
“But Gwen,” I pointed out, “I’m supposed to be having a talk with Drew sometime.”
“Eh? Oh, that’s all right. It’s just a matter of discussing terms now.” She grinned at me triumphantly, showing lots of teeth. “I told you it would all work out, didn’t I?”
Gwen could crow; she’d trampled the opposition, and won. But I couldn’t see it her way. I’d never accepted the convenient theory about the ends justifying the means.
Whatever Bill Wayne had made of Gwen’s remarks, he took them as permission to escort me round the fish farm.
“I’ll call for you about ten, then. Okay?”
“Well.... I guess so,” I said doubtfully.
Drew was coming over to join us. He chatted the bare minimum of time that courtesy demanded, and then carted Bill off.
I didn’t much care for the company I was left with. By now Gwen was talking too much and too loud. She was well past seeing that Verity and Felix were having great fun at her expense.
I glanced at my watch. Only ten past nine! At least another hour before I could believably claim it was bedtime.
Rather to my surprise Corinne came floating over and sat down right beside me. She gave me a glittering smile,
“You want to watch Bill Wayne, you know.”
Quite deliberately I didn’t catch on. “I beg your pardon?”
“Bill’s not half as innocent as he looks.”
I hadn’t thought he did look so innocent, myself. He’d acted like a man with a wandering eye for women. I’d warmed to Bill mainly because he seemed refreshingly normal in this strange household.
I shrugged, smiled, and changed the subject. Corinne was really due an apology, anyhow.
“I’m sorry Gwen didn’t talk things over with you and your husband before bringing me down to Mildenhall.”
“You won’t be able to do anything for the child,” she snapped.
I stayed patient. “I really do think it’s worth trying, Mrs. Barrington. We can get excellent results with young children, as long as it’s tackled before the stammering habit becomes too firmly established.”
“I tell you Jane has always stammered. It’s just one of those things we have to accept.”
It was no good arguing with her. I’d met plenty of parents with pre-molded ideas, convinced that nothing at all could be done for their offspring.
I smiled at her winningly. “At least, Mrs. Barrington, you won’t object to me trying my best with Jane, will you?”
Her shrug was meant to indicate bored indifference. “You seem to have impressed my husband with your patter. If he’s willing to waste his money, it’s all the same to me.”
With that charming reflection she stood up quickly, swung around on elegant heels, and glided away from me,
It was almost as if she didn’t want Jane to be cured, I thought. As if she wished her daughter to remain pathetically handicapped for life.
It was almost as if she hated her own child. Poised now by the white marble fireplace, she was staring across the room at me, her eyes sparking with cold emeralds. I felt like an exposed target for Corinne’s venom. Needing a shield, I reached for the drink I’d abandoned earlier, the huge glass of brandy Gwen had poured for me. I took a couple of carefully casual sips.
For five minutes longer I sat it out, trying to blend myself in with the inanely giggling trio at my elbow. Then I’d had enough. However absurdly early the hour, I was going to bed.
Quite against my will I flicked another glance at Corinne. Her eyes still glittered green ice. They were fixed now, not on my face, but on the glass I still held in my hand.
Hastily I put the wretched thing down, muttered brief goodnights, and retreated to my room.