IN THETBURY HALL the only running water came through the roof when it rained. In Break House it came through the modern installation of lead pipes, though admittedly it usually ran either steam-and-cold or cold-and-cold, the gas geyser being something of a prima donna.
I washed my face and hands and quickly changed my dress before joining Martha in the sitting room. Agnust had installed her with a generous measure of Martell cognac in an armchair, thoughtfully selecting one facing away from the window.
‘You must think me awfully feeble,’ Martha said, stubbing out her Little Queen.
As weak as an Australian, Ruby affirmed, being inordinately proud of having beaten Wombat Walter, the Tasmanian champion, in an arm-wrestling competition.
‘Not in the least,’ I assured Martha. ‘It was a shocking death.’
‘But you were calmness personified.’
‘I did not feel it.’
My visitor put her drink on the low table before her and I was tempted to pour myself something equally inebriating.
‘I was rude about your maid,’ she admitted, though I did not think that she had been especially, ‘but she is a treasure in a crisis.’
And a tribulation the rest of the time, I thought uncharitably.
‘She is a good woman at heart,’ I told her, though I had heard the same said about Janit Parstay, who had buried two husbands and her sister-in-law alive because she had accidentally purchased a job lot of coffins in an auction and did not want to let them go to waste.
Martha fiddled with her necklace.
‘I feel ashamed,’ she confessed. ‘Compared to what happened today my problem seems trivial indeed.’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘it reminds one of the fragility of life and the importance of safeguarding what we value. You appear to have lost a cherished friend and I believe, at the very least, that you are entitled to know why. Can you come back tomorrow?’
Martha lay her cigarette holder in a hinged, black-lacquered papier-mâché box and put it away.
‘Are you sure?’ she checked. ‘You must have far more important matters to worry about.’
‘Nothing urgent.’
What? Ruby Gibson demanded. I am seconds away from death. How much more urgent can it get?
‘Shush,’ I said unintentionally aloud and hurried to shut the window and cover my mistake. ‘The man who invented hurdy-gurdies has a lot to answer for.’
‘I did not hear him,’ Martha said.
‘He is just untuning up.’
How do I get myself into these muddles?
By wool-gathering, Miss Kidd replied, rule raised to rap my knuckles. How I would have loved to have the chance to tell her that I was paid to daydream now. Much as I disliked her, she had not deserved her ghastly fate. Come to think of it, being a real and – as far as I knew – living person, she had no rightful business invading my head.
‘Would the same time be agreeable?’ Martha asked, and I tumbled out of the clouds back into the real world.
I could have pretended to consult my diary, but that was the sort of thing that head waiters did in overpriced and under-frequented restaurants.
‘Perfectly,’ I agreed as she picked up her handbag. ‘But by all means finish your Martell.’
‘It was very kind of your maid to give it to me but I have not touched it.’ Martha stood. ‘I’m afraid I do not care for brandy.’
‘Neither do I.’
It had been a present from Ted Wilton, my agent, who had been given it by a grateful client and did not like it either. I was reminded of a vase that I had sent to my godmother. It had been passed along a chain of recipient-donors for nine years before she received it from a neighbour for her birthday and gave it back to me for Christmas.
‘Why did that poor woman say that somebody would kill you?’ Martha remembered, through her shock.
‘I think she was confused,’ I replied. ‘I had never seen her before.’
I accompanied Martha to the door.
‘It was not an accident when you collided with that cabby, was it?’ she asked more lightly.
‘I am only glad that I had not put a bonnet on,’ I told her. ‘It would have been ruined.’ I touched my scalp. ‘My head is slightly bruised but I console myself with the belief that his snout feels a great deal worse.’
Martha laughed and took the hand that I offered her, but also leaned forward to kiss my cheek.
‘God bless you, Lady Violet Thorn,’ she said, and there was a time when I believed that he had.
I could have a phial of an extra-powerful acid that eats away the steel in seconds, Ruby suggested so suddenly and loudly that I almost choked on my Beeman’s.
But that is what you used to dissolve the bars in that Tasmanian prison, I reminded her crossly, coughing the gum up into its wrapper.
This is not going to be another ‘Bones of Borneo’ fiasco, is it?
She had never let me forget how I left her being boiled in a pot by head-hunters.
I never did finish that story, but was mortified when Grantham Hogarth’s highly successful Hydrangea Devine was placed in the same peril and escaped in exactly the way that I had discussed with Ted Wilton.
‘You cannot copyright what you have not written,’ Ted told me shamelessly when I complained.
Coincidentally he also represented Mr Hogarth’s more lucrative interests. ‘Besides which, I gave you the idea of the carnivorous zebras disposing of a corpse.’
‘And if I ever use that device I shall be grateful,’ I promised.
‘Well actually you can’t now,’ he informed me. ‘I mentioned it to Grantham and his book comes out next month.’
Agents, Ruby scorned. They may only take ten per cent of your royalties, but along with publishers they take one hundred per cent of your soul.
You should be grateful to them that you have one, I told her. Had her adventures not been printed, she would have gone the way of Baroness Bournemouth, Barnaby Brighton and all the other heroes languishing in the limbo of my manuscript chest.
Let us out, they clamoured, little realising what a ruthless proof-reader might do to them.