Skelton liked Saturdays. There was a routine to them that hadn’t changed much in two or three years; a comforting spell of ordinariness that stood in contrast to the mayhem and murder he dealt with all week and brought reassurance that, at least as far as his family was concerned, all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
He got up first, saw to the fires and made tea. Mrs Bartram arrived just after seven and started putting out the breakfast things.
Then Mila got up. For three or four years, she’d been teaching a Saturday morning archery class at the Lambourn Academy, a posh local girls’ school. In the early days she had nurtured a hope that from the spoilt brats in her charge she 170could forge a race of Bolshevist Amazons equipped to do battle. These days, though, her primary goal was to stop the girls giggling when they missed the target and dispel the notion that hopelessness in any physical endeavour was proof of their femininity.
‘It’s still quite foggy out,’ Skelton said. ‘Will they hold the class if it’s too foggy to see the targets?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought seeing the targets would make much difference one way or the other to their ability to hit them.’
Elizabeth came down dressed for her ballet class and executed a few pliés, using the back of a dining chair as her barre, while twittering about the previous afternoon’s triumph like a diva after a Covent Garden first night.
Lawrence had his piano lesson on Saturday morning but here there had been a change to the routine. Emrys, who had taught him since he was six, reckoned that he showed promise and had recommended a teacher who could take him to a more advanced level. This was Mr Pilsudski, an affable Pole, who came to the house in an ancient Humber. Emrys had also advised them to acquire a better piano, so they’d ditched the barely tuneable upright and replaced it, at ruinous expense, with a Broadwood baby grand, which now lurked, a threatening presence, in the big bay window.
By nine, breakfast was done, Mila and Elizabeth had left the house and Lawrence was in the front room learning a new piece with Mr Pilsudski. Mrs Bartram was in the kitchen making pies. 171
Skelton started putting his coat on for his Saturday morning walk, then realised that Mr Pilsudski might be gone by the time he got back and needed paying. He went up to his study, wrote out a cheque and sealed it in an envelope.
‘Sorry for interrupting,’ he said, sneaking into the front room. ‘Just wanted to make sure you got this.’
He put the envelope on top of the piano.
‘Your son has beautiful hands,’ Mr Pilsudski said. ‘And I can see where he gets them from.’
Skelton looked at his hands. He’d never taken much notice of them. Like the rest of him they were thin and spidery.
‘Hold out your fingers. Like this. Stretch. Now put them here. You see … all the way from C to E, with no effort. The right hand in the piece we are studying is in octaves. Lawrence is having a little trouble maintaining the stretch and despairs that he will ever be able to stretch a tenth. But a little more growing and he will have your hands. Stretch a little further … no, keep your thumb where it is on the C. Look, Lawrence, all the way to F and then, a little further, G. Have you ever played the piano, Mr Skelton?’
‘Not really, no.’ Skelton said. ‘We never had one when I was a kid. But I have got a cousin who plays the banjo and another cousin who’s apparently attained some renown on the piano accordion.’
‘You should learn. You have musician’s hands. You should learn the piano and the cello. See, my hands. Oh, I can stretch a tenth and beyond and beyond, but they are like hammers, like shovels. I have the power, but I work so hard to achieve 172any sort of delicacy, any sort of lyricism. Your hands, and your fingers, so long, so thin, so elegant … they are precision instruments. The power comes from the wrist, you see, but the delicacy, that must come from the fingers.’
Skelton tried a few delicate notes on the keyboard. Mr Pilsudski smiled and nodded encouragingly. Everybody likes the idea that they have a great gift that has never been properly nurtured. Perhaps, Skelton wondered, he had missed his vocation and, if only his mum and dad had given him the opportunity, he could now be the toast of the concert halls playing for the crowned heads of six continents.
He tried a few more notes. Mr Pilsudski smiled again. Lawrence wrinkled his nose. ‘Are you going for your walk, Dad?’
All week, Skelton had been having difficulty opening and closing the front door. It was easy to see where it was sticking. There was a mark on the sill where it had scraped. He reckoned that if he could slip a sheet of very coarse sandpaper underneath and work the door backwards and forwards, he’d have the problem solved in no time.
There was no sandpaper in the conservatory nor in the shed at the bottom of the garden, so he started his usual Saturday morning walk with a trip to Brigland’s, the hardware shop in the village.
‘Wouldn’t the door just push the sandpaper away?’ Mr Brigland asked.
Skelton thought about it. ‘You could be right. I’d have to stick it down somehow. I wonder, is there a sort of glue that 173can stick sandpaper to a door sill for an hour or so, then stop sticking so it can come up without leaving a mark?’
‘No,’ Mr Brigland said.
‘What about tacks? I could nail it down, then, when I was done, take the nails out and fill the holes in the sill with … is there something you could recommend that would fill nail holes in a door sill without it showing?’
‘Sawdust mixed with glue, I suppose, might do the trick.’
‘Where would I get the sawdust from?’
‘You usually get it by sawing up some wood.’
‘I’ve got some wood.’
‘Well, that’s a start … is that lady trying to get your attention?’
Skelton turned. Outside the shop a woman in a green suit and matching hat with a feather was examining some buckets. As soon as he turned, though, the woman left.
‘I thought she was looking at you.’
‘I don’t see why.’
Skelton quickly agreed that the sandpaper was a bad idea and that Mr Brigland should pop round himself with his tool bag and do the job properly.
He walked his usual route, down Brickett’s Path to the woods and then back home along the lanes. There had been a mist earlier, but it had mostly cleared leaving an attractive haze that blurred the greens, reds and browns like an Impressionist painting.
The names of trees, plants and birds were a mystery to him. Particularly birds. They’d had birds in Leeds when he 174was a kid, but there had never been a perceived need to tell one from the other. Since moving to the countryside, he had noticed that some of the birds you saw were bigger and/or more colourful than the ones you got in Leeds, and now and then it occurred to him to look them up in a book, but only in the same way as it sometimes occurred to him to buy an overcoat that fitted properly or find out how electricity works.
Just before the woods, he paused by a gate and filled his pipe. Behind him, about fifty yards distant, he caught a flash of green and saw the hat with the feather. Was the woman following him?
He wondered whether he should be afraid. People who feel that they or their loved ones have been wrongfully convicted have been known to blame their solicitors or barristers. According to Holland in Bedford, Tommy Prosser had physically attacked three solicitors and put one of them in hospital. Could the woman in green be an avenging wife or mother concealing a weapon in her handbag?
The woman was small. He was tall. Just in case, he picked up a muddy fence post, then threw it away because he was being silly and called out, ‘Hello, can I help you?’
The woman popped her head around a tree just for a second.
Skelton walked back towards her hiding place.
‘Hello.’
The woman appeared again.
‘You’re Mr Skelton,’ she said. 175
‘That’s right.’
There was a long pause. Twice the woman looked back the way she’d come wondering whether she should retreat, then, with great decisiveness she advanced.
‘I’m Mrs Clayton,’ she said.
Skelton remembered the name – the woman about whom the other mothers had been gossiping on the night before after Elizabeth’s play. For decency’s sake, he pretended not to.
‘Have we met?’ Skelton asked.
The woman reached into her handbag – easily big enough to contain a knife or gun – took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her nose.
‘I just wanted you to know it wasn’t what they all think it was,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, you have me at a loss,’ Skelton said, keeping up the pretence if only for the sake of form.
‘I work at Bowman’s in Maidenhead.’
‘I don’t think I know it.’
‘We sell vacuum cleaners.’
‘Is this about the late Mr Musgrave?’
‘It wasn’t like they say it was. I was seeing him, but there was never any funny business going on. It was all a matter of the heart and the head … never anything—’ She broke off and dabbed at her nose a little.
‘If we walk on to the main road,’ Skelton said, ‘there’s a bench there by the bus stop. We could sit and have a chat, if that’s what you want.’ 176
‘I’d like that very much,’ Mrs Clayton said. She was close to tears.
The bus only ran once every two hours on a Saturday, so there was nobody waiting. Cars and motorcycles buzzed by from time to time but otherwise it was a good spot for a chat.
Skelton lit the pipe he’d filled at the gate.
‘I admired him,’ Mrs Clayton said. ‘I admired the man. I’ve been reading all these silly stories in the papers about the lies he told all those other women and to be honest I don’t think any of them knew him at all. They’ve just made it all up to get their names in the paper. Or if they did know him, it was only a bit of flirting. He was a terrible flirt. Anybody could see that. But I always saw that as a professional skill. Part of his salesmanship. And he probably made up the silly stories to amuse. Part of the flirting. But none of them can have been that close to him. You see, I knew the real Harold Musgrave.’
‘I’m sure,’ Skelton said, trying to sound sincere.
‘He was a very brave, very decent man. He was a war hero. But I’m sure you know all about that.’
‘Er … not really …’
‘He was a lieutenant in the Hussars.’
‘I knew he’d served but—’
‘He was in France. Saw terrible things. Then he was wounded. In the head. At the side here. Shrapnel. Nearly killed him. He had a lump at the side of his head. Quite obtrusive, really. It was the first thing I noticed about him, to be honest. The first time I saw him coming towards the shop, 177it was pouring with rain, but he wasn’t wearing a hat. And I thought he must have lost it. And I asked him, and he said he could never wear a hat because of the lump on the side of his head, and I said, where did you come by that then, and that’s what got us talking. And I told him about losing my husband and he was very concerned, very sympathetic about that. I mean it was a long time ago now – fourteen years – and you do get over these things. But that’s what I mean. We talked. That’s what we did all the time. We talked. He’d take me out to this place down by the river where we could sit out and chat, and then when the colder weather came, he’d book a room there so we could talk there, because you can’t really talk properly in a public place where people might hear, can you? But there was never any funny business.’
Skelton wondered whether her definition of ‘funny business’ would exclude sexual congress or include straightforward congress but exclude any variation. But he didn’t ask.
‘He wrote poetry, did you know that?’ Mrs Clayton said.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘He used to read me his poetry.’ She stared into the middle distance and recited in a deep, sing-song voice.
‘O come, dearest Emma! the rose is full blown, And the riches of flora are lavishly strown; The air is all softness, and crystal the streams, And the west is resplendently clothed in beams.’
‘That’s lovely,’ Skelton said.
Mrs Clayton didn’t seem to hear but continued: 178
‘We will hasten, my fair, to the opening glades, The quaintly carved seats, and the freshening shades; Where the fairies are chanting their evening hymns, And in the last sunbeam the sylph lightly swims.’
She paused. Skelton waited until he was sure she had finished.
‘That’s lovely,’ he said again. He wondered whether it was a good poem or a bad poem but had no criteria by which to judge. His own knowledge of poetry was limited to the ones he’d learnt at school. Perhaps Musgrave hadn’t written the thing at all but learnt it out of a book. Again, no idea.
‘I miss him such a lot,’ Mrs Clayton said and dabbed again with the handkerchief.
The chill, which had seemed so attractive for walking, wasn’t so good for sitting. The bench was in deep shade and there was a not entirely pleasant smell of bushes. It was a difficult conversation to end.
‘I just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression about him or about me,’ she continued.
‘Of course.’
‘And although I have no reason to be ashamed of anything I’ve done, I am a very private person. I know there’s gossip, but I really don’t know what I’d do if it got any further or got in the newspapers or got mentioned in court.’
Was she, like Lord Rosthwaite, about to offer him a bribe?
‘Of course. I promise I’ll not breathe a word of this conversation to anybody.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. 179
She clearly found the conversation as difficult to end as he did, so they sat in awkward silence for a while.
A bird began to sing nearby, loud and beautiful and clear. Skelton caught a glimpse of it on a fence post – brown with spots on its chest. He made a mental note to look it up in a book when he got home.