Fran had not expected to receive any gratitude for booking a table at the Golden Ball and organizing a taxi to convey them there from her mother’s house for a birthday lunch, but it was still galling when her mother chuntered about the expense.
‘I cannot see how you can afford this sort of thing on your income, Frances. You must learn to avoid needless extravagance, or you will very soon find yourself in difficulties.’
‘Don’t be silly, Mummy. It’s meant to be a treat for your birthday. Please do relax and try to enjoy yourself. Look at this lovely menu.’
‘It’s all so expensive.’ The disapproval in her mother’s tone was unabated. ‘It came to me over the weekend that you might have been planning something of the sort, and I tried to telephone you, but I could get no reply.’
‘I was away … staying with some friends in Nottinghamshire.’
‘Really? I wasn’t aware that you had any friends in Nottinghamshire. I do wish you would keep me appraised of things like this. I was really quite perturbed when I could not get hold of you on the telephone. I wondered if you had been taken ill or something. Who are these people in Nottingham?’
‘I was staying with Miss Henrietta Venn. I got to know her through a friend in the Robert Barnaby Society.’
‘Is she a respectable person? Why have you never mentioned her to me before?’
‘Of course she’s respectable. I didn’t mention her because it didn’t occur to me that you would be interested.’
‘Naturally I am interested. You seem to forget that you are all I have left in the world. Why didn’t you tell me you were going away to Nottinghamshire?’
Because I am an independent, grown-up woman and I have no intention of keeping you posted on my every movement, Fran thought. Aloud, she said, ‘Goodness, Mummy, you make it sound as if Nottinghamshire is at the ends of the earth. Oh, look, they have Dover sole on the menu – one of your favourites.’
Her mother was not to be so easily deflected. ‘A woman in your position has to be careful of her reputation. Have you called on Mr and Mrs Chancellor yet?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t got round to it,’ said Fran, who privately had no intention of ever calling on these old acquaintances of her mother. Since separating from Michael and moving to Bee Hive Cottage, she had not even bothered to have any calling cards printed, as she considered the whole palaver of formally making and receiving calls a huge bore and completely outdated.
‘Do try to decide what you want to eat, darling. The waiter will be across any minute and you’ve hardly glanced at the menu.’
‘Oh dear,’ laughed Mo, when Fran told her about the episode of the birthday lunch while they were having tea at Fran’s cottage the following day. ‘Was she like that the whole time?’
‘Well, no, not the whole time. She did soften up a bit after eating her dessert, dabbing her eyes, as is customary on these occasions, and saying she could never really enjoy a birthday again now that Geoff and Cec weren’t there to share it.’
‘Oh dear,’ Mo repeated in a completely different tone of voice.
‘I know it seems mean of me, but it just made me crosser. She thinks that I don’t understand how hard it is to lose your sons in the war, but it never seems to cross her mind that I miss them too. Or that she might be kind enough to remember once in a while that I don’t need to be forever reminded that a surviving daughter is only a poor third prize.’
‘I take it you didn’t mention Michael and Winnie’s expected child? Or that you are thinking about getting a divorce?’
‘How could I? It would have been a terribly unkind thing to do on her birthday.’
‘Agreed. When will there be a good time to tell her?’
‘Never! But I can’t leave her to find out via some third party. That would be even crueller. I’ve decided to wait until I know for sure what I’m going to do. Once I’ve made up my mind, then I’ll either break the news about the baby, or else tell her about the baby and the divorce at the same time – to get it over with in one fell swoop, as it were.’
‘You still haven’t decided about the divorce?’
‘No. But I have been looking into it. After I’d finished with the birthday celebrations, I had an appointment with Mr Long, the solicitor in Ulverston, and he explained what is entailed. He said it can all be done fairly quietly, but there are a couple of complications. As you know, the couple can’t be seen to want a divorce or to be colluding in any way in order to get one. So Mr Long said that since Michael has obviously gone off to live with Winnie and there’s a babe on the way, we can’t go down the road of a put-up job, with Michael being caught staying at a hotel with some floozy. Instead I have to write to Michael, telling him that I want him to come back to me and then when he doesn’t return to the marital fold, I can divorce him on grounds of his desertion and adultery with Winnie.’
‘I bet her family won’t like that.’
‘Too bad. That’s the deal, take it or leave it. If she didn’t want to be cited in a divorce, perhaps she shouldn’t have run off with someone else’s husband.’
‘Quite. You said there are a couple of complications.’
‘The other is that before we can get the decree absolute, we have to keep the court convinced that there’s no collusion, so my behaviour will be under scrutiny as well.’
‘It’s so ridiculous,’ Mo declared. ‘The law lets people marry each other perfectly freely. If people can decide to be together without the interference of a blasted judge, then why on earth shouldn’t they be equally free to part when they both want to? The divorce laws in this country are incredibly stupid!’
‘I know. It’s utterly illogical and completely horrid,’ Fran agreed. ‘For most people, it means that in order to get a divorce they have to involve themselves in a level of deceit that’s an absolute anathema to anyone who is halfway decent. But if one wants a divorce, that’s the way it is. Apparently someone called the King’s Proctor will be keeping an ear to the ground and if there is any rumour that I am romantically involved with someone else, that’s it – no divorce.’
‘Which means you and Tom would have to stop seeing each other.’
‘Not because there is anything going on between us,’ Fran said bitterly, ‘but because some nasty-minded person called the King’s Proctor might think there was something going on.’
‘The King’s Proctor,’ Mo mused. ‘The name puts one in mind of some kind of unpleasant medical procedure.’
‘As if the King would be remotely interested in what anyone was doing in their private life,’ Fran said. ‘I expect His Majesty is far more interested in his stamp collection.’
‘Stamp collection?’
‘Yes, didn’t you know that the King collects stamps?’
‘No, I didn’t. What extraordinary bits of information you sometimes come up with. Talking of which, how is the investigation going down in Nottinghamshire?’
Fran spent a few minutes bringing her friend up to date, concluding with the information that according to the newspapers an inquest into the death of Alice Elizabeth Ripley had been opened and adjourned, and her husband had been formally charged with her murder and remanded by the magistrates’ court.
‘Not much point in having an inquest,’ Mo remarked. ‘Given that the police have already leaked the findings of the analysis and arrested Mr Ripley for murder.’
‘It’s just a formality,’ Fran said. ‘It will probably be postponed until after Mr Ripley has been tried and then the coroner’s jury just has to replicate the trial jury’s verdict. In the meantime, Tom and I are supposed to be finding out what really happened.’
‘Well, the vicar is odds-on favourite,’ Mo said cheerfully. ‘With the Ripley daughter a good outside bet and Saul, the ghostly farm labourer, currently at 1000 to 1.’
‘It’s all very well making a joke of it, but I feel awfully responsible. It’s as if we’ve made a sort of promise to help when actually we aren’t in a position to do anything of the kind. Neither of us is even on the spot any more, and Tom rang last night to say that he can’t get away until the end of this week after all.’
‘Can’t you go back to stay with his aunt?’
‘She’s told me I’m welcome at any time, but I don’t see what good going back there will do. I can’t just go around questioning people, the way the police would.’
‘Why not? People often employ private detectives to investigate things on their behalf.’
‘Don’t be silly, Mo. Tom runs a wholesale fruit-and-vegetable business and I am … well … a sort of housewife without a husband, I suppose.’
‘I don’t imagine there are any special qualifications for setting up as private investigators. If you were able to tell people that Florence Ripley has commissioned you to investigate on her behalf, that would give you the perfect excuse to contact whoever you want and ask them questions. I bet a lot of local people would cooperate if they thought it might help the Ripley family – and even if some said “no”, you wouldn’t have lost anything by it, as those sorts of people wouldn’t have talked to you anyway. Why don’t you get Florence Ripley to agree to it?’
‘Goodness, I don’t know. It seems very forward and it can’t be right, pretending to be detectives.’
‘Investigators,’ Mo corrected. ‘You wouldn’t be pretending because you are investigating. That’s why you went down there in the first place, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. I’ll talk to Tom about it when I telephone him again tonight.’