Rachael could hear the fireworks from Baikie’s. Although it was still light she could see the coloured stars exploding above the horizon. She had taken a mug of tea outside because the cottage seemed so hot and airless and there was something unsettling about the boxes and bags stacked in piles in the living room.
Once Constance Baikie had held state there. As cut off from the rest of the world as a ship in the middle of the ocean, she had looked on as people, dressed up in smart clothes, laughed and danced to the wind-up gramophone. Many of the players in the present drama had been present at those parties – Robert Fulwell, Neville Furness, Vera Stanhope. Now the room looked like a transit camp. The next day the cottage would be locked up, the key replaced under the stone urn and it would remain damp and empty until a group of undergraduates turned up in the summer.
Edie was restless too. She would have gone back to Kimmerston that night, but Vera and Joe Ashworth had invited themselves to the cottage for a farewell drink and she didn’t want to miss out. And then she wanted to have things out with Rachael. She’d kept her word and written down the story of Rachael’s father.
‘It’ll be an anticlimax,’ she said again as she handed over the sheets of paper, covered with round, even writing. It had become her justification for not passing on the information earlier – that it was a story so uninteresting that it hardly merited telling. ‘If you imagine your father as an Edmund Fulwell, a drunken adventurer travelling the world in search of sensation, you’ll be disappointed.’ The last line, of course, had been rehearsed.
Rachael refused to read it while Edie was there, hovering, waiting for a reaction, so she set it on the grass next to her mug and lay back in the deckchair to watch the fireworks, pale flares in an increasingly overcast sky. As soon as Edie went inside she picked the paper up.
She only had time to read the first line – I met your father on April Fool’s Day – when she was interrupted by Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth. Vera was wearing a dress of the sort of material turned into stretch settee covers and advertised in the Sunday papers. Joe looked as if he were there on sufferance. He followed behind and carried a wicker picnic basket. They had come round the outside of the cottage straight into the garden.
Inside the basket was a plaid rug which Joe spread on the grass for Vera to sit on, a number of plates covered in tin foil and bottle of champagne.
‘Is there something to celebrate?’ Rachael asked. Vera was in a peculiarly jolly mood and Rachael wondered even if there had been an arrest, if Vera had met the deadline she had set herself. She returned the sheets of paper, face down, on the grass. She didn’t resent the interruption, realizing with surprise that she even felt relieved.
‘Connie always drank champagne,’ Vera said. ‘It seems right to honour the tradition.’ She added wickedly, ‘And Joe’s wife has made us a cake. Not quite the same, but a nice thought.’
‘Sal makes a lovely chocolate sponge,’ Joe said, seeming not to realize that he was being got at. Or too laid back to care.
‘She’ll be glad to have you home a bit more often.’ Edie came out through the French windows with glasses, another bottle of wine and bags of crisps on a wonky tin tray.
‘She’ll be lucky,’ Vera said. ‘Just because you lot aren’t here doesn’t mean we won’t be. She’ll still have plenty of time for her baking.’
‘I wonder what Miss Baikie would make of all this.’ Rachael got up to move the deckchair to a more upright position.
‘The murder? She’d have loved every minute. She loved a drama.’ Vera seemed lost in thought. Rachael expected another reminiscence of visits with her father but none came. ‘Where’s Mrs Preece?’
‘There’s a party at the Hall.’
‘Hardly decent.’ Joe was shocked. ‘The lass hasn’t long been buried.’
‘The upper classes don’t go in much for decency,’ Vera said. ‘Well, we’ll not wait for her or this bottle’ll get warm. You do the honours.’ She winked at the other two. ‘Being as you’re the only man.’
But he seemed dubious. ‘I’ve never opened champagne before. Not the real stuff.’
‘Give it here then. Don’t want you spilling it.’ She had the bottle between her legs, had begun to turn it carefully, when her mobile phone rang.
‘Bugger it,’ she said. ‘Get that for me, Joe.’
He took the phone from her cardigan pocket and flipped it open. After the first words he stood up and took it inside. Vera apparently felt no curiosity. She opened the champagne with a dull pop and poured it into the glasses. ‘Just a splash for Joe,’ she said. ‘He’ll be driving.’
Rachael, sipping, looked at the sergeant inside the house, talking earnestly. She had no intimation of tragedy as she had before Grace’s death. She thought he was probably talking to his wife. They were discussing what time he could reasonably expect to get home. She was passing on news of the little boy. He snapped the phone shut and came to the French windows.
‘Can I have a word, ma’am?’
‘What’s up with you?’ Vera was sitting on the rug, legs apart, skirt pulled above her knees. The glass was already empty. ‘Relax, man, I’m not ready to go yet.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Well, what is it? Spit it out.’
He hesitated, looked at Rachael and Edie. ‘There was a 999 call from Holme Park.’
‘And?’ She saw him looking at the other women. ‘For God’s sake, man, whatever it is they’ll find out sooner or later.’
‘A body.’
‘Who?’
‘No positive ID.’
She was on her feet looking down at Rachael. ‘You’ll have to wait,’ she said. ‘That’s the hardest thing of all. As soon as I find out what’s going on I’ll send someone tell you. I promise. I’ll leave Joe here until someone can relieve him. Or do you want to go back to Kimmerston?’
‘No,’ Rachael said. ‘We’ll wait.’
‘Inside then. Just in case.’
Rachael sat in Constance Baikie’s chair, surrounded by black bin bags and read about her father. At one time she would have thought it the most important thing in her life. Now it was a distraction and she had to force herself to concentrate. It began to rain – large heavy drops which rattled like shingle against the window. She saw that they’d left the rug on the grass but Joe wouldn’t let her outside to bring it in.