‘Is Mrs Duffy able to tell you anything?’ I said. ‘Or Clemence?’
‘Not a thing. They weren’t there. They had gone for a walk on the shore and the young lady stayed at home. Writing letters, they said. By the time they came back round the headland, the place was alight and the men were already there with their buckets. Futile. Futile. These wooden houses.’
‘Awful,’ I said. ‘One can’t imagine. And now an inquiry.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said the doctor. ‘Our Fiscal is a good man. A very gentle way with him. There’s a hard road ahead of the whole family, to be sure, but there will be no unpleasantness at the inquiry to make it worse.’
‘It was a curious thing,’ I ventured, ‘but when Mr Osborne and I arrived, they were so very calm I thought for a minute they didn’t know. And I’m afraid I must have confused them.’
‘Aye, I heard,’ he said. ‘Jim Cairns told me. I shouldn’t worry, though, madam. Shock is a funny one. Why, I saw things in the war you wouldn’t believe.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said, and sipped my tea in silence, uncertain whether the thought which had just struck me was my imagination or not. Did he too think that something was not right? There was a watchful and repressive air about him. Was he warning me that ‘the Fiscal’ would never dream of rocking a boatful of such distinguished ladies? That I should be careful not to either? Or was he right about shock, and Alec quite wrong? I was suddenly convinced that this was the case, and I flushed with shame at the thought of our muckraking. Wicked, repulsive. Poor Mrs Duffy and poor Clemence too; bewildered, so hurt and shocked that they had retreated into a kind of a stupor and all we could do in the meantime was point our fingers and suspect them of something we did not even have the courage to put a name to. Everyone in this village was weeping in sorrow along with them except for their so-called friends. At least Alec had an excuse: he was in shock too, however much he protested. But me? My behaviour? My suspicions? It was too disgusting, and I would have no further part in any of it. The silly misunderstanding about the diamonds – I had forgotten about the diamonds, to be honest – could all be resolved by Daisy without my help.
Chapter Six
The days which followed, while we waited for the inquiry, passed not quickly exactly – there was no rush or bustle about them, nothing at all to do in fact – but rather they passed elsewhere, as though I were asleep and only dreaming the meals and baths and walks and the endless overheard conversations of the townspeople about the shocking thing which had happened in their midst.
‘Obliterated,’ I heard an apronned housewife say to her neighbour as they met at the kerb, pouring out used buckets of floor-water.
‘Pulverized,’ was one word that rose out of the chorus of voices of the schoolchildren dawdling home across the bridge.
‘All away to ash,’ the waitress was saying to a customer as I opened the tea-shop door and entered.
Mr Duffy arrived from Edinburgh but, although he spent considerable time closeted with Alec, he took his meals upstairs in Lena’s rooms with her and Clemence and so I hardly saw him.
I was still too shame-faced to want to spend much time with Alec, who in any case was lodging at the Angel around the corner, the Duffys and I having almost exhausted the accommodations of the Murray Arms.
Clemence kept to her room apart from venturing down to the parlour to read once or twice, sitting with Emma held up right in front of her face. Perfectly reserved, she managed to rebuff any comfort offered, not only my rather awkward advances, but also the doughty cluckings of the landlady, Mrs McCall, who was far too good a woman to let it show, but who I am sure was puzzled by Clemence almost to the point of irritation. Poor Clemence, to be so very unbeguiling to all, and for no reason that one could ever put one’s finger on.
Mrs Duffy, so Mrs McCall told me, did not rise from her bed again and Dr Milne became worried about her, we thought, descending the stairs shaking his head and puffing upwards into his moustache. Strangely, despite my hardly setting eyes on either of the ladies, Dr Milne insisted I stay, continuing to report that Mrs Duffy wanted me there, and this puzzled me. I am not used to thinking of myself as such a tower of strength and comfort that my very presence in the same building can be such a help.
One immediately noticeable effect of Cara’s death that should be reported is that it quashed the nasty feeling of dread I had been suffering. Wretched as I was – and I did suffer to think of her smiling mouth and soft eyes never to be seen again – I was nevertheless at peace. Besides, as the sergeant had predicted, matters moved on apace; not even the fact of the body’s total destruction stood in the way of officialdom and the inquiry was fixed for Friday.
When that day came, Dr Milne sought me out in the parlour after his morning call on Mrs Duffy. I rang for an extra coffee cup and he sat opposite, sipping meditatively and watching me.
‘She wants to talk to you,’ he said at last. ‘And I must say that’s a relief, for I was beginning to worry that she might withdraw altogether, and then there’s no saying how long it would take.’
‘Certainly,’ I said, quailing inside but not showing it. ‘I shall go to her directly.’ As much as I dreaded an interview with Lena, it at least made me feel a bit less foolish and useless.
‘But you must prepare yourself for rather a shock,’ Dr Milne said. ‘She is very distressed, and ill with it. As soon as this is over, I’m ordering her away for a good long rest. I should have said the seaside, normally, but as it is… the Lakes, I think. And if we’re very, very lucky we might avoid a complete breakdown and keep her out of hospital.’
I was startled, not only at the news of what a state Lena was in, but at the calm way the doctor spoke of it, as though breakdowns and hospitals were the daily currency of life. What of Clemence? And Mr Duffy?
‘Her father is deeply saddened, to be sure,’ said the doctor. ‘But he’s a strong man and then of course, he didn’t have the distress of…’ He broke off and seemed to glare at me, summing me up. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘I promised I wouldn’t but I will, and in turn you must promise me not to tell anyone else.’
That again! Passing on a secret he had promised to keep and absolving himself by passing on the request to keep it too. Cara had said how she abhorred the habit, and it struck me that here was a sign of her goodness quite at odds with the ideas we had about her conduct. I tried to signal my unwillingness to Dr Milne, while at the same time trying not to make my disapproval obvious. No one likes a prig.
‘Mrs Duffy was already in a very distressed state, even before this tragedy,’ he said, ignoring or failing to notice my attempts to stop him. ‘A rather unpleasant thing happened recently and I was surprised, to own the truth, at how well she took it. Now, of course, I can see that she was holding fast under great strain, and had no reserves to call on to help her through all of this when it came.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well, I shall bear that in mind, Dr Milne. I don’t need to know any more.’ But he shifted around on his seat, bursting with it, and I saw there was no escape.
‘A matter of only a week or two ago, Mrs Gilver,’ he said at last, ‘only days before the fire, a servant of Mrs Duffy’s died, and in the most upsetting circumstances. She kept it from the girls, as any mother would. Said the creature had gone off home without warning, but it must have been preying on her, and it certainly weakened her nerves.’
I felt immediately chastened. This was something we, Alec and I, knew nothing about and something we could not even have guessed at. How dare we, in all our ignorance, find Lena’s behaviour wanting and pronounce upon it? I caught myself plunging into these ruminations and felt if anything even more chastened. Why must my first thought always be what light some new piece of information threw on my own actions? Listen to what the man was saying, I told myself. Poor Lena.