A short ‘phone call and it was all arranged. As he was replacing the device on the telephone table, a pretty young woman put her head out of a door toward the end of the hall. “Sylv!” she said, “Do you want tea? I’ve boiled the kettle,” and then when she realised he wasn’t who she thought he was, “Oh, I do beg your pardon! I thought you were Dr Marks!”
“She’s still in the surgery.” Simon nodded across the hall.
The woman emerged into the hall. “Lucille Hall-Bridges,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m a friend of Sylvia’s. I help with the house.”
Simon took her hand in his. Her grip was also sure and warm. “Detective Frost,” he replied. “Nice to meet you, Miss Hall-Bridges.” She had a recent bruise running from her jaw to just below her eye. It was entering the black-and-purple stage.
“I’ve made a pot of tea,” she was saying. “I don’t know whether anyone will want any, but I do like to feel useful and tea is so…normal-making, isn’t it?”
He nodded, slightly bemused at her chatter. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “Very normal.”
She gave a perfunctory tap on the surgery door, opened it, and disappeared inside without waiting for a response. “Sylv, Walter, I’ve made tea. Would you and your detective like to come into the drawing room?” Her voice faded, presumably as she joined them in the examination room.
There was a pause. Then, “Oh!” he heard her say. “Oh.” She sounded a little shocked. “What’s happened to her hands?” she asked.
“Scraped on the bottom of the pond, I think,” Simon heard Dr Marks say. “She was face down in the water.”
“Oh.” Miss Hall-Bridges’ voice was small. “Sylvia…there’s…she’s…I can feel…do you think…?” Her voice trailed off and Dr Marks spoke over her, clearly afraid they might be overheard.
“Let’s not worry about that now, shall we? The policeman is sending her down to Taunton for a post-mortem. You go and take the tea things into the drawing room. We’ll just cover her up.”
Miss Hall-Bridges emerged from the surgery, looking rather pale. It made the bruise on her cheek stand out. “This way, Detective,” she said, opening a door further down the hallway and gesturing him into a drawing room. “I’ll just go and get the tea things. Please, do have a seat.”
Instead of doing as he was bid, he wandered round the room, looking out through the tall French windows onto the small terrace overlooking the garden. Everything was a bit shabby and aged. The furniture was in the style of the middle of the last century, worn, and there was a preponderance of clocks.
“Dr Marks senior collected them,” Miss Hall-Bridges said, navigating the doorway with a large tray of tea things and seeing him examining a tall, Jacobean-era grandfather-type device. Simon hastened to help her. “Thank you,” she said as he held the door fully open, “it’s a bit awkward with the big tray, but with so many cups…” She trailed off as she put the tray down on a small table.
He considered her carefully as she laid out the cups and saucers. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties, a very chic young woman with daringly modern bobbed hair, although her hemline was a decorous mid-calf. “Let me help,” he said, moving closer.
“Oh, it’s fine,” she said, finishing up as he reached her. “All done. How do you take it, Detective Frost?”
“Milk please, no sugar,” he said, standing beside her, watching. Her hands were deft as she poured milk and tea into a cup. “Thank you,” he said as she passed it to him. She busied herself pouring for the others—three more cups, he noted, presumably one for Mr Kennett as well. It was an unconventional household, he thought to himself.
“Miss Hall-Bridges,” he began tentatively. “I can’t help noticing…What happened to your face?”
She blushed and put her hand to her jaw and then sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s not like it’s not obvious,” she said, pulling her mouth into a rueful shape. “Someone hit me. Last night. Mrs Fortescue, actually.” She met his eye. “We were at her party and there was a disagreement. We…Sylvia and I…didn’t want to be involved with something she and her friends were doing. When I said so, she hit me.”
She bit her lip. “We left soon after that. I don’t know what happened once we’d gone. She was…rather distressed.”
That was interesting. He put his cup of tea down on the table again and fumbled his notebook out of his jacket pocket. “What was it that you didn’t feel comfortable being involved with?” he asked.
She opened her mouth and then closed it again, clearly discomfited.
“Noth…nothing important,” she said, finally. “I…it was rather silly.” She gestured vaguely at one of the comfortable-looking chairs and took a seat on the brocade settee opposite, balancing the delicate china cup and saucer on her tightly-pressed-together knees. “Do sit, please.”
He complied, but didn’t pick up his own teacup. The large ginger cat curled beside her on the settee raised its head and watched him superciliously as he sat down.
“Please, do tell me,” he coaxed her. “It can’t have been that silly, else she wouldn’t have felt strongly enough to strike you.”
Miss Hall-Bridges pulled a face. “Yes, I suppose,” she acknowledged. “It was…she asked Sylvia and I and three other guests to participate in a séance.” She flushed, sharply. “You know…” Her voice trailed off. “Talking to the dead.” She looked at him frankly. “It sounds so stupid saying it aloud like that. But she had a Ouija board and…”
“And?”
“And she was convinced her dead husband wanted to speak to her.” She swallowed. “It was rather awful, actually.” She looked up as Dr Marks came into the room, followed by Mr Kennett. “Wasn’t it, Sylvia?”
“What was?” Dr Marks spied the teapot and made for it. “You angel, Lucy, thank you! Is this yours, Detective Frost? Yes? Here you are!” She passed his cup and saucer across to him and he put his notebook and pencil down on the arm of the chair. “What was rather awful, Lucy dear?”
“Last night,” Miss Hall-Bridges replied. “Detective Frost was asking about my bruises.”
Mr Kennett took his cup and parked himself in a chair a little way away from the others, distancing himself slightly without being distant. He made a small huffing sound as Miss Hall-Bridges spoke. Simon looked across at him. “You weren’t there?” he asked him again.
The other man shook his head with a chuckle. “No, no,” he said. “Not my crowd at all, Detective. Out of my league. And it was ladies only, as far as I’m aware.” He waved his hand at the two women now seated side by side on the settee.
Simon returned his attention to them, drinking his tea slowly. It was rather good. “So,” he said, “the two of you were there. And who else?”
“Her two friends down from town…London…staying with her at the house. Maria and Clara. I don’t remember their surnames. And Harriet Lonsdale, from Fieldsway…it’s a house,” Dr Marks added at his enquiring look. “A mile or so the other side of the village.”
“And what happened?” He looked between the two women carefully.
Miss Hall-Bridges swallowed and looked at Dr Marks before speaking. “Like I was saying when Sylvia came in…we had dinner and then she…Charlotte…wanted us to participate in a séance she had planned.”
Dr Marks patted her hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Lucy dear,” she said practically. “We tried it—” she looked over at Simon, expression frank, “—and it was most odd. We put our fingers on the planchette and it wobbled about a little. Neither of us liked it very much. Charlotte and her two friends are very experienced with Spiritualism, I understand. One of the friends particularly so…Clara. But Lucy felt increasingly uncomfortable.”
She looked back at her friend, who picked up the story. “Yes, it was…” she searched for a word, “…unpleasant. It felt unpleasant. And so I stopped. And then of course everyone else had to stop too. I don’t quite understand why, but that’s what happened.”
“The two of us went out onto the terrace for a cigarette and to let them all calm down. And when we went back in and said we didn’t want to continue…” Dr Marks shifted in her seat.
“…that’s when she hit me,” Miss Hall-Bridges concluded. She drew a deep breath. “It was all rather awful. Charlotte was so convinced her husband was there, wanting to talk to her. And the other two London ladies backed her up. She was horribly upset, wasn’t she, Sylvia?”
Dr Marks nodded. “She was very distressed. We left as soon as we could after that. I was angry she’d had the temerity to actually strike Lucy, distressed or not. Miss Lonsdale left at the same time we did. She was pretty uncomfortable with it, too.” She rose to bring the teapot and milk-jug round and refill everyone’s teacup as she continued. “We parted from her at the bottom of the Lilac Villa drive and went our opposite ways. We came home, I looked at Lucy’s poor face properly to ascertain there was nothing other than bruising…then we went to bed.” She put the teapot back down and picked up her own cup, coming to sit beside Miss Hall-Bridges again. “It was a pretty peculiar evening.”
“Yes,” said Miss Hall-Bridges. “I’ve had better, to be frank.” She raised a hand to her cheek. “Considerably better.”
Simon wrote it all down. “And you slept the sleep of the just until you were roused by the boy coming to call you to the pond this morning?” he clarified.
“Yes,” Dr Marks replied. “Walter was already up, he got to the door before me. And we went down to the pond together.”
“You were in the house?” He turned to Kennett.
“I was in the kitchen,” Kennett replied. “I come over about half past five or six usually. We don’t stand on ceremony, much.”
“So you don’t sleep in the house?”
He looked horrified, brown eyes flaring with alarm. “No, in the old coachman’s quarters, over the old stables. The garage, now, really.”
Simon nodded. Much more appropriate. “But you spend a lot of time in the house?”
“Yes,” he said. “We eat together, and the surgery is here, of course.”
Dr Marks interjected. “We were all part of the same team at Royaumont. Old habits die hard, Detective.”
“France?” Simon said.
She nodded. “Yes. The Scottish Women’s’ Hospital. Outside Paris.”
That made sense.
“And when you came home, you set up shop here?”
“Yes. My father had the practice before the war. And his father before him. It seemed the natural thing to do. Orderly Kennett was due to retire from the army and of course Miss Hall-Bridges had gone home to her parents.”
Simon nodded, closing his notebook, and sliding it and his pencil back into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Well, you have a lovely house,” he said. “It’s good that it’s being used for something.”
He had strong views on people who lived in big houses with lots of money and didn’t do anything with it.
Dr Marks looked at him a little oddly. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that aloud. Kennett was watching him as if he knew exactly what he meant, though. It was a strange household. Not quite proper that Kennett was such close friends with the women. But what was proper these days? Twenty years ago there’d have been a bevy of maids and footmen and by-your-leave and Simon would have been shown in the servant’s entrance at the back and not been offered tea.
He tilted his cup and peered in hopefully, but it was empty.
“Well,” he said, rising to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I suppose I should go and wait for the transport for the body outside in the lane. Although I suppose anyone in the village will direct them.”
He nodded to both ladies. “Thank you for your information about last night,” he said. “I might need to speak to you about it again, but it gives me somewhere to start, at least.” He looked at Miss Hall-Bridges. “I’m very sorry about your face, Miss. I hope it isn’t too painful.”
She smiled carefully. “It’s a bit sore, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
He couldn’t help noticing there was a palpable change in the atmosphere now he was leaving. The natural relief of having both a curious policeman and an inconvenient body simultaneously removed from the premises? Or something more?