Alec was staying at the George. We had planned to meet there for luncheon if our allotted jobs were finished on time and for tea if not, but since I left Clemence at a quarter past two I could not be quite sure which it was to be. Luncheon at the George does not have quite the ring of sobriety and respectability that ‘tea at the George’ evokes. Tea at the George goes along in the imagination with pantomimes, stiff taffeta petticoats and the smell of mothballs from Nanny’s best winter coat and so I was torn between a desire to share my morning’s gleanings as soon as I could and a desire to be too late, so that it was tea blameless tea that we shared. I supposed, irrationally, that our lunching together would bring Renée Gordon-Strathmurdle to town, to the George, and to the adjoining table as though on a pulley. And what if it did? Luncheon was hardly breakfast in bed. The only explanation for these twinges of conscience was that spying and snooping on those who thought me their friend – and doing it for a fee! – was interfering with my judgement regarding all kinds of innocence and guilt.
Confirming, as always, that the world operates quite independent of my desires, the waiter assured me that ‘my party’ was still there and led me to a quiet table at the back of the dining room where Alec sat, not quite concealed behind a parlour palm, but with that general idea.
‘I’ve lunched already,’ I said as I sat, waving away a menu. Then I turned to Alec. ‘And I’ll bet you can’t guess where?’
‘Two mugs of soup in the back shop of the jeweller’s?’ said Alec, playing along. He could see that I was bubbling over with something.
‘Tell me yours first,’ I said firmly, determined that my meeting with Clemence should be the finale.
Alec had made no progress at all.
‘I dined at Posso last night,’ he began. ‘Dalrymple’s place, you know, down in the Borders, but Chrissie Dalrymple had nothing to offer. She hasn’t seen or spoken to Cara since Christmastime. A little coolness, I imagine, arising from not being asked to be a bridesmaid.’
‘Well, what does she expect?’ I said. Chrissie Dalrymple towered over Cara and was stones heavier, with a round pink face and bright yellow hair that stood out all around like a thatched roof. I should not have wanted her in my wedding photographs either.
‘Yes,’ said Alec, clearly not following. ‘They were school friends, though, and as thick as thieves, united in their dislike of Clemence, Cara always said. Clemence was just a year above and fearfully haughty as a result, I gather. Anyway, I had thought if Cara had anything she didn’t want to get around her current set, but which was pressing too heavily on her to be kept quite secret, an old school friend would be just the thing. As it was, I achieved nothing except indigestion from too much high game and sympathy.’
I could well imagine. Chrissie Dalrymple would have been cock-a-hoop to have Alec, newly eligible, descend.
‘She told me not to feel that I had to answer her letter of condolence when it arrived, if I preferred instead to come back to Posso and chat again in person.’ Alec spoke with the bleak panic of a man accidentally drifting closer than he cares to towards a girl of greater determination and less politeness than himself. I tried to hide my smile as I answered.
‘That’s a thought, though, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Letters of condolence? I mean, one always is quite desperate for something different to say, isn’t one? And the last conversation one had with the – in this case temporarily – departed would be a natural source of material.’
Alec summoned a waiter and asked if any letters had arrived for him during the morning.
‘Of course, my mother might not be sending them on at all,’ he said. ‘I might have them to look forward to whenever I go back to Dorset. Anyway, while we’re waiting – this morning I had coffee with three very good friends of Cara’s whom I have met upwards of half a dozen times but whom I still think of interchangeably as Boo, Koo and Shoo. Do you know who I mean?’
‘Booty, Koo and Sha-Sha,’ I said, laughing again. ‘Yes, I know them very well, but how spine-chilling for you, darling.’ Alec nodded fervently.
‘I had thought that grief might have tempered them somewhat, and they are very shaken, but all it meant was that they were even more inclined to throw their arms around me and each other and had lost all sense of conversational restraint. If I hadn’t known she was going riding afterwards, I should have said the tall, dark one was drunk.’ The waiter, approaching with a large stack of letters, caught this most unfortunate snippet, and put them down on the tablecloth with rather a smack.
‘Good old Mother,’ said Alec. ‘I paid extremely close attention to their outpourings, Boo-boo and Co-co I mean, and was on the lookout for any sign that one might have something to say to me she might not want the others to hear, but I’m fairly certain there’s nothing. I went as near as I dared to asking. So, neither Cara’s oldest chum nor any of the current gang seem to suspect a thing.’
He picked up the pile of letters and began to leaf through them absently, then suddenly stopped and sat very upright staring at one of the envelopes. He let the others fall to the table and held this one up in front of his face.
‘It’s from Cara,’ he said and turned it towards me. There was his name and address written in the same, rather faint, rather loopy hand, familiar now from the two letters we had both pored over at the gallery and again in Gatehouse. Without another word, Alec slit open the seal with a table knife and began to read out loud.
‘“Dear Alec, I hardly know how to begin to say how sorry I am.”’ He gave a high-pitched exhalation of breath that was almost laughter. ‘Dated the day before yesterday,’ he said, and I felt my eyes fill with tears.
‘“I hardly know how to begin to say how sorry I am,”’ he read again. ‘“I am almost too shocked and bewildered to know how to write this letter and I hope you will forgive me if I am clumsy as a result. Your suffering is without a doubt fathoms deeper than mine, but believe me when I say that I loved Cara… enough… to understand -”’ He broke off and stared at the letter, frowning. ‘“I loved Cara enough to understand what you must be feeling in these first days of your loss and grief.”’ He turned the letter over and looked at the back of the last sheet. ‘“With my deepest sympathy, Christine Dalrymple.”’
I hied the waiter and demanded that some brandy be brought. Alec’s face was the colour of gutter snow under his freckles, and his hand scrabbled around his lapel for several seconds before he managed to extract Cara’s two letters from his pocket and shove them towards me.
It was remarkable, so much so that I considered for a moment whether Chrissie’s letter of condolence might be from Cara after all and be in some kind of code. A further moment’s examination, however, showed me that only the handwriting was identical, the brains behind the two had little in common. Were Chrissie Dalrymple ever in a position to break off an engagement the recipient would be lucky to get away with fewer than ten pages.
The brandy, to which the waiter had added a measure of port off his own bat, quickly brought Alec back to a more usual colour. He shook his head over the letters again and again, and I had cause once more to wonder about his feelings for Cara and also whether he believed in his heart that she was safe, for all the conviction that logic had put in his head.
‘But it’s not really so peculiar,’ I said. ‘Girls’ schools are notorious for jamming one and all into the same mould. Well, no more than boys’ schools I daresay. In fact, you know, my own boys are much more like each other after three terms at school together than when they were just two brothers. Last hols Hugh had occasion to slipper them both for -’ I broke off, confused. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘This can hardly be of any interest.’