Araminta de Vere was pretty surprised to see me sitting at the dirty grey table in the visiting room, rather than Agent Walker. But at least she didn’t turn round and demand to be returned to her cell.
Denied a regular appointment at the hairdressers, her hair had lost some of its colour and the squat Farrah-Fawcett style had been cut short and blunt so she’d now got more of a Susan-Boyle-prior-to-X-Factor look going on.
She settled her big horsey behind onto the bolted-down chair and grunted. ‘I suppose you’ve come to find out if I’m sorry. To see me weep and wring my hands and get down on my knees and plead? Well, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. That’s not Araminta de Vere’s style,’ she said and thumbed her grey sweatshirt.
I’d forgotten how she referred to herself in the third person. And how crazy she was. My hopes of getting any coherent information started to fade.
‘No, actually,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’ve already assumed you have no regrets. I bet you’d do the same again if you had to. Family reputation and all that malarkey.’
I thought she’d pick me up on my slang but she didn’t. Prison life was making her less spiky.
‘Oh right,’ she said, and pulled down her sweatshirt and crossed her arms. ‘What do you want then?’
‘I want to know what happened when you chased Celeste that night. I want to know who the man was.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I did wonder if you’d remember that part.’ She tossed her Susan Boyle back and said to herself, ‘Makes no odds I hazard. Araminta can tell. But cooperation will be looked upon favourably, one hopes.’
Oh blimey. This one hoped she hadn’t actually lost the plot altogether.
‘All right then,’ she said and bared her teeth. ‘What do you want to know?’
I thought about it and said, truthfully, ‘Anything you can remember.’
‘Will you tell your lawyer about me?’ Her eyes narrowed, foxily.
‘Oh yes,’ I replied, not that I had a lawyer. But if I ever did, for whatever reason I engaged them, I would tell them that Araminta de Vere was a crazy old bat.
‘Araminta, deal-broker,’ she said, and her wonky smile widened. ‘Well, you know what? I’d seen them together earlier in the week. Celeste and he. Outside the museum. Though it had been closed that day. I knew your grandfather was away.’ She sent me a forehead full of frowns. ‘No doubt on one of his barmy investigations, so Celeste had obviously taken the opportunity to get her fancy man in. Though that’s not what she called him, when I stopped to say hello.’
‘No?’ I said feeling my heart beat a little faster.
‘Called him her “partner”. Ridiculous term, I always thought. Like it was a business enterprise.’ She peered down her nose, waiting to deliver the motherload. ‘He was pushing you in your pram.’
The image blew across my brain: Celeste laughing, long dark hair like Ethel-Rose, pink lips, her hand crooked through that of this man, who for some reason I had dressed in a gaberdine suit like the one I had found hanging in Septimus’s wardrobe. In his hands the man was gripping the handle of a big old-fashioned pram with a pretty fabric hood. And he was smiling. I could have got lost in the picture but I didn’t have long and needed to really stay on task. ‘Did Celeste give him a name?’
Araminta paused, as if surprised by the question. Then she said, ‘It was foreign. And when he greeted me he was exceptionally polite. He had an accent. Possibly French.’
Wow, I thought, but pushed on. ‘And what was his name?’
I watched her squint her eyes and reach back into the past. ‘It was possible it began with an “A”,’ she said and unfolded her arms so she could tap the side of her Boyle. ‘Anton?’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘Or Andre? Antoine? Something like that.’
I held my breath. ‘Surname?’
Araminta’s eyes snapped back to me. ‘Oh she wouldn’t have said that, oh no. Not one for formalities was your mother.’
It felt strange hearing her say those words: your mother. It had back in the summer when Araminta had been bashing my head on the floor. It did now, as she sat opposite me, an inmate.
‘And what was he like?’ I mused out loud, omitting the unvoiced ‘my father’, if that indeed was what he was. Not just some passing boyfriend. Or ‘partner’.
For some reason this irritated her. ‘Like?’ she said, pushing her lips together like a stewed prune. ‘Like? I don’t know.’ She shook her head in short sharp jabs. ‘Can’t recall,’ she said flatly.
‘Oh come on, Araminta,’ I said in exasperation. ‘You must remember. That day – it changed everything. It was memorable.’
‘I suppose so.’ She paused. I was surprised by her cooperation. ‘Well, he was tall. And well-dressed. Dark hair. Quite fastidious I thought. Not the type you might think Celeste would go for, she had always had a taste for a wilder kind of man.’
‘What colour eyes?’ I asked, flashing my own at her to see if they prompted any memories.
‘Oh I don’t know. It was such a long time ago.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Well go on. What happened?’
‘I didn’t see them for long. Maybe a minute or two. But I had the impression they really weren’t happy about seeing me.’
Completely understandable. I mean, who would be? I thought, then quashed it. I needed to keep her on side. ‘So then later? Before the accident?’
She screwed her face up and sniffed. ‘I think I told you about that in summer.’
‘Tell me again,’ I said. My voice sounded hard. But the command in it produced compliance.
‘All right,’ said Araminta. ‘Well, you know, that afternoon, when I found out from padre what had gone on with the girl, Celeste, and he’d told me about the whole sordid story, well obviously, I was shocked, mortified really, you see. And when I realised he’d let the girl go … Well, you can imagine, can’t you, we couldn’t have that. All our dirty linen ready to be aired by that, that,’ she caught sight of my face and moderated her tone. ‘That woman,’ she said with more prudence than I would have imagined her capable of.
‘So,’ I kept the anger out of my voice and nudged her on. ‘You got into the car to find her and went down to the Witch Museum?’
‘That bloody place,’ she said, lips stiffening. ‘If only it had never been built at all!’
I was careful not to betray any more feeling so repeated. ‘Did you get to the museum?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘As I was approaching, Celeste’s car shot out of the drive. He was in the passenger seat. She was going very fast. I hung back, at first, then followed them down Hobleythick Lane. It was a terrible night. Oh, the weather was awful. One of the trees had already come down in the village near the vicarage. The wind was up and there were leaves flying all over the place.’
I nodded. Same as Dad had described.
Araminta sucked her teeth for a moment. ‘It didn’t take me long to see they were heading for Chelmsford. The new road hadn’t been built then, and they were bombing down towards the brook. I guessed they were going to go into the police station to tell them what had happened. Couldn’t let that happen, could I?’
Just to egg her on I shook my head. ‘I understand.’ Though it pained me.
‘Now it might come as some surprise to you, but I did not have murder on my mind. I thought I would buy Celeste. Everyone has their price, as they say. Some more than others.’
Buy my mother indeed! Like she was something that could be owned. Like her silence was buyable! My lips pursed.
‘As they were turning the bend on Piskey Lane, I put my foot down and accelerated. Booted them right up the bottom,’ she said and laughed.
I clenched my teeth determined not to react, but wait and listen and learn.
‘Only had to do it once,’ she continued. ‘That old banger wasn’t much cop and went spinning round and round across the road. When it started careering over the grass, down towards the brook, I parked my own and got out. Started running towards it because I thought it might fall straight in. But it hit a tree. There was a tremendous bang and that’s what stopped it. Smoke started coming out of the bonnet. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there. Then I heard you crying.’ She nodded at me and for a moment her face looked less nutty than before. It reminded me she was a mother too. ‘When I reached the car, I saw you in there. Still strapped in. You were all right. But both Celeste and the man were out for the count. And there was …’ she paused, ‘… there was blood on the windscreen.’
‘Did you check to see if they were alive?’ I asked but she shook her head.
‘Did think about it, but then I realised this might be a gift from God. A good way to solve the problem.’
My stomach turned over. How on earth could she think that divine intervention? She was deluded. Completely mad. Prison was where she belonged. For as long as possible.
‘And I thought the car might blow up,’ she went on oblivious to my dark machinations. ‘So I got you out and then got Araminta out of there as soon as I could. Dropped you off, like I said, at the Witch Museum.’
I leant forwards on my elbows and rubbed my head. ‘And that’s it?’ I wasn’t sure I could cope with any more.
‘And that’s it.’ She re-folded her arms.
‘Not much to go on,’ I said out loud and regretted it, for as I looked into her face I saw she knew instantly what my plan was.
‘Oh no, no,’ she said and wagged a finger at me. ‘Not now. Not after all these years. You can’t possibly think of finding him.’
‘Might be my father,’ I said and shrugged.
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ she said with a sincerity that completely took me off my guard.
Why would she warn me off? I wondered. After all, like she’d said, she had nothing to lose. ‘Why not?’ I regarded her with close attention.
‘Because your mother drowned in the brook,’ she said simply.
‘I know,’ I returned.
‘There was no one else there,’ she said. ‘After I left, there was only him.’
‘What?’ I said, as her meaning dawned. ‘You think he might have pushed her in?’
She shrugged. ‘He wasn’t there when they found her, was he?’