FROM THE SOUNDS of the door opening and closing and the low conversation afterwards it was obvious that the caller was not a tradesman, postman or telegram boy, for none of those would have got over the threshold without at least a scuffle and Agnust had returned unscathed bearing a silver tray with a white calling card upon it.
‘There’s a lady do wish to speak with you, she do,’ she announced, rubbing her chin, which had been sprouting a few black hairs recently.
Automatically I touched my jaw. Was that a bristle? I was relieved to find that it was a fine kipper bone, though it said little good about my table manners.
‘Did she say what it was about?’
‘She say it do be pers’nal.’
She wants money, Ruby asserted.
‘And she int lookin’ for money,’ Agnust continued.
Definitely money then, Ruby insisted, and I was just about to tell my maid to send the woman away when she added, ‘Oh and one straculiar thing…’
Straculiar meant strange and peculiar, at least it did in Thetbury.
‘And what was that?’
‘She do say she like your books.’ Agnust raised a hand to show that her list of wonders was not complete. ‘All on ’em,’ she marvelled.
‘Then I had better see her,’ I decided for admirers were scarcer than pelicans in Piccadilly Circus.
Perhaps you should display this one in a glass case, Ruby advised.
She was a little crabbity that morning, having had a bad night in her casket.
‘Put her in the front sitting room and I shall be through presently,’ I said, ignoring Agnust’s muttering.
She had a strong aversion to doing as she was told which, I suspected, was one reason my parents had so generously donated her to me.
Alone I checked myself in the mirror, wondering as always why the good Lord had seen fit to give me such a tiny nose. Was that a dot of butter on my chin? Strange how Agnust, who rarely missed an opportunity to scold me, had not drawn my attention to it. I wiped it off, noticing some ink stains on my fingers, though I had not used a pen for two days, but decided that, otherwise, I was presentable.
My visitor was a small woman but, at a couple of inches over five foot, she still had the advantage on me. Aged about thirty-five, I estimated, she had golden-brown hair under a straw boater. They were all the rage that summer, though Gerrund asserted that they made people look like thatched cottages. She wore a simple powder-blue skirt with a short matching coat, over a white shirt and rather a nice rope of cream pearls around her slender neck.
‘Good morning.’ I held out my hand and she shook it firmly.
‘It is good of you to see me out of visiting hours,’ she said.
I rather liked her perfume, but it was probably premature to ask her what it was.
I know what it is, Ruby told me. Expensive.
‘You are Mrs Ryan?’
‘I am,’ she agreed, ‘but I prefer to be called Martha, if that is agreeable to you.’
‘In which case I am Violet.’
She looked about uncertainly.
‘Take a seat, Martha.’
I indicated to the left hand of the two chairs placed at forty-five degrees to each other and before the long sash window. They were box-shaped with high railed wooden arms and upholstered to match my rose-and-trellis wallpaper. The material of my seat had been stretched and sagged noticeably from when Agnust had stood on it in her boots, trying to swat a fly which had been annoying her all morning, only for her to realise that it was something floating inside her eyeball – a dooleybug in local parlance.
‘How lovely and modern.’
The chairs were separated by a small low table, more in fashion since dresses became less voluminous and not as likely to swish off ornaments.
‘William Morris,’ I told her. ‘Not everybody approves. They think his furniture too plain.’
‘Oh no,’ she disagreed. ‘I am half sick of all the fussy over-ornamented stuff with which we cram our homes. After all, we are heading towards the twentieth century.’
‘They are more comfortable than they look,’ I assured her as she sat in one. ‘Those pegs can be repositioned to make them recline,’ I explained, not unlike the shop assistant who had sold them to me.
‘How clever.’
Martha sat, straight-backed, clipping and unclipping her handbag on her lap. It was rather a nice bag, blue of course – for this lady’s outfit was nothing if not coordinated – and embroidered with intertwined tulips.
Before us lay Seraphim Square, the broken remains of the old flint monastery walls running along the left-hand side punctuated by the great cube of the gatehouse with its high arch through which people passed into the gardens. The Splendid Hotel – not such a vainglorious name as it sounded, having been founded by a Mr Walter Splendid – faced it to our right. Straight ahead at the far end was the Pythagorean, a two-storey building, white plastered with faux Greek friezes and a statue of the great man over the portico. It was a club for men of philosophy, science and literature and so I was excluded on every count.
‘Will you take tea or coffee?’ I enquired.
‘Coffee would be lovely,’ she said.
This was a woman after my own heart; an infusion of stewed leaves was always something I drank more from politeness than for pleasure. I went to the bell pull and was about to tug it when Agnust appeared.
She often stood at the door when we had new callers. It was not just nosiness – extravagantly endowed with that as she was – but she had not forgotten the lovely old lady who had stabbed me with a tuning fork in my protectively raised wrist for stimulating her husband. My sin was to use the words heaving and breast in the same sentence, even though they were unconnected and I had been writing about a man.
‘Dint blame me if you dint goo sleep after lunch,’ Agnust muttered and I promised that I would not, though I thought that I was four years old the last time I had been sent for an afternoon nap.
‘Neither shall I,’ Martha Ryan assured my maid with such a twinkle in her hazel eyes that I warmed to her even more.
‘You have a good view of the square,’ she commented when Agnust had gone.
The main market, unsurprisingly, was based in Market Square but some stalls were set up in Seraphim Square – mainly luxury goods and souvenirs or refreshments for visitors. Garish and inaccurate china models of the monastery gates were surprisingly – to me at any rate – popular gifts, but it was difficult to imagine that they would be received and displayed with unalloyed pleasure.
‘And it has a good view of me,’ I said for I did not favour net curtains, ‘but I like to watch the world go by.’
‘Looking for characters?’
‘I try to.’
The eel woman was there. She was not a circus act but the seller of foul-smelling stew from a hubbling-bubbling cauldron that she stirred with a rusty steel ladle. She always set up with her wooden spoons and bowls near the statue of Edmund the warrior king, who was armed only with a cross. In the winter people would gather to warm themselves around her charcoal brazier, but how she withstood the heat in the blazing summer of ’95 was beyond me.
‘I have read one of your novels,’ Martha declared, and my heart dipped like a float when the trout takes a tentative nibble.
One? Agnust had said that it was all of them.
‘Oh yes? Which one?’
‘Death Visits Mars Mansions.’
‘Utter tosh of course,’ I muttered to Ruby’s indignation.
She had tracked a rabid baboon through Hampton Court maze in that adventure.
‘On the contrary,’ Martha Ryan disagreed, ‘I enjoyed it enormously. It kept me up half the night. Ruby Gibson is so clever.’
I most assuredly am, Ruby preened while my visitor continued, ‘I am still not sure how she knew where to find that dagger.’
Neither am I, I thought, heart bobbing back to the surface, but said, ‘I try to keep my readers guessing.’
‘You unquestionably succeed,’ she enthused. ‘I only finished it on Monday and this morning I went straight to Elkin and Lovat’s Bookshop to order the rest of the series.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I hope that you enjoy them.’
‘I am sure I shall.’
Much as I relished the unusual experience of being flattered I decided not to further the conversation for I had the impression that my visitor was procrastinating.
‘I believe there was something personal that you wished to discuss,’ I said and she ran a hand under the arm, surely not checking for dust?
She had long fingers with a wedding ring on her left hand and a good-sized diamond on the other.
‘I feel foolish now that I have come to say it aloud,’ she admitted.
‘There is no need to,’ I assured her, though she might have an excellent reason to be embarrassed for all I knew.
‘Obviously I do not know you,’ she began.
Obviously, Ruby concurred impatiently, starting to pace back and forth in my mind.
‘But I fell into conversation in the Café Cordoba with a lady who is, I believe, a friend of yours – a Miss Hettie Granger.’
‘We have known each other for many years,’ I agreed, omitting to mention that Hettie was to have been one of my bridesmaids.
‘And she spoke very highly of you.’
‘I have a good opinion of her too,’ I said, trying to sweep the memories of Hettie’s escapades under my mental carpet while Ruby was trampling over it.
‘So I am correct – am I not? – to believe that I can rely on your discretion?’
Keep still, I told Ruby and she huffed but froze mid-step like a child playing statues.
My visitor was so obviously agitated that I leaned back a fraction. If you lean forward you may look attentive, but equally you might give the impression you are ready to pounce.
I taught you that, Hefty reminded me, primping his already-primped moustaches.
‘I do not gossip,’ I confirmed, ‘well not about anything told to me in confidence at any rate, unless,’ I added to make it quite clear, ‘an innocent person is in danger.’
If she wanted to make use of my limited literary skills to plot a murder I would need a compelling reason to oblige her. Come to think of it, Martha Ryan might make an excellent murderess in my next book. She was so patently innocent that nobody would suspect her.
I would, Ruby said, almost toppling over. Her eyes are too lustrous.
Shush.
My visitor clipped, unclipped and reclipped the bag, and I nodded in what I hoped was an encouraging way.
‘What did you want to talk about, Martha?’
‘I am not sure,’ she replied unhelpfully. ‘It may be that you can do nothing.’
‘But?’ I coaxed, brushing aside my character’s mutterings about telling her to stop wasting our time and go away.
But find out what perfume she uses first.
‘I have come about a friend of mine,’ Martha began tentatively, and I sighed though not, I hoped, audibly. One of Ruby Gibson’s clients had claimed that he was just enquiring for a pal in The Mystery of Waterworks Road. It had not fooled my heroine for long and it would not do so for one tick of the golden fob watch that hung on a chain around my neck now.
‘Is he or she in trouble?’ I enquired coolly.
‘That is why I am here.’ Martha unfastened, fastened and unfastened the clip again. ‘I do not know.’ She dipped into her bag and brought out one of those silly lace handkerchiefs that women are expected to carry, and which are useless for anything other than waving loved ones off to massacre foreigners.
Agnust entered with tray.
‘Leave it here,’ I told her.
‘Oh and there I was ’tendin’ to take it away again,’ she retorted not quite under her breath and I resolved to have a word with her later, for all the good that would do. I liked sarcasm, but I much preferred to be the sarcasmer doing the sarcasming than the sarcasmee, to coin three words that were probably best left unminted.
‘Shall I pour, milady?’ she asked as if she were offering me her last drop of blood.
‘No I shall.’
‘Lady Violet Independence now,’ she breathed, and Martha watched her leave in surprise.
‘You have an unusual maid.’
‘She is my Habsburg jaw,’ I told her. ‘Not my most attractive asset but I inherited her.’ I poured our coffees. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar.’
‘Thank you.’
She took both as did I.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, folding her handkerchief to drop it back unused. ‘But I feel stupid. I am sure my concerns will sound quite ridiculous.’
Only ‘quite’? Ruby mocked and I resolved to give her a good shaking afterwards. Just try it, she challenged and I abandoned the idea. There are few things more undignified than being trounced by one’s own imaginary characters.
Imaginary? she fumed.
‘Please continue.’
‘Well, Violet,’ Martha began hesitantly, ‘you will not laugh?’
‘Certainly not,’ I assured her, hoping that I could keep my word. It is often the way I find that, when people tell me something will make me giggle, I know that it will not and that I will feel obliged to force a smile but, if they tell me not to, I am stifling a guffaw before I have even heard about some awful mishap.
Martha took a breath.
‘My best friend will not speak to me,’ she said softly.