‘Suicide,’ said Alec and whistled. ‘That must have given them pause. I wonder they had the nerve to go ahead with the fire. And I wonder why she did it.’ I looked back at him blankly.
‘But about your Mrs Marshall seeing Cara,’ he said presently and I was glad that the little maid was dropped. ‘Why would they let her bicycle away in the daylight after all the other precautions? The redecoration, the photographs, the letters. These things are all so very careful and elaborate, and Cara rolling along the country lanes would ruin it.’
‘Well then, perhaps she wasn’t “leaving”. Perhaps she had just slipped out on some errand or other.’
Alec thumped his hand down on the black leather of the album, making me start and rattle my cup which was, thankfully, empty by now.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We know she slipped out on an errand. She went to post a letter, didn’t she?’
Once again the letters were taken from his inside pocket and spread out side by side.
‘“If you could pretend to Mummy”,’ he read, ‘“that you came in search of me off your own bat… I think she’s being perfectly ridiculous, but I don’t want to make her any crosser.” She sneaked out to post this to me, Dandy. I’m sure of it.’
‘As we thought. You were never meant to be there,’ I said. ‘I was supposed to turn up on my own and be taken in.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Alec. ‘I’m afraid so. I’m rather afraid Lena was grooming you for the role of the stooge from the time she got her claws into you at Croys. Yes, I’m sure of this now. The second letter was the only one I was ever supposed to see.’
‘Yes!’ I said, suddenly remembering. ‘Lena referred to “a silly letter” when I saw her in her bedroom on the day of the inquiry. And I remember now, when I mentioned about you showing the Fiscal the letters – plural – she flinched.’ I knew this was right, unflattering as it might be to have been cast as Lena’s puppet.
‘I still don’t see what the point was, though,’ I said. ‘All that furious bicycling to deliver such a casual letter. If she wanted to see you badly enough to send it she would have told you to hurry, not said you might like to come when you had a free minute. Why did she not ask you to come straight away?’
‘Oh, Dandy,’ said Alec, suddenly reaching out and taking hold of my hand. ‘Don’t you see? Can’t you?’ I didn’t and couldn’t, but I knew some part of our story would soon have to give way under the weight of all the things that no longer made any sense.
‘I don’t think she knew she had to tell me to hurry,’ said Alec. ‘I don’t think she knew. Back to your reasons for faking the pictures – she was there and if they were all done on the same day, they could easily have been done at the start of the week while she was still there. So it must be the third reason. They had to be done without her knowledge. She didn’t know what was going on.’
‘But the second letter?’ I said, but even while I was speaking I began to wonder. ‘She did write it, didn’t she?’ Alec shook his head.
‘No. Clemence wrote the second letter.’
‘But it’s so perfectly identical,’ I said.
‘As was Chrissie Dalrymple’s letter of condolence,’ said Alec. ‘They all were at school together. Why did we not think of it that day at the George when Chrissie’s letter came? And I should have known from that “C”. Cara always signed herself “Cara” even on a note, but I suppose…’
‘Clemence knew that her handwriting would convince but she wasn’t so sure about attempting a signature?’
‘Precisely,’ said Alec. ‘Now where does that leave us? What exactly are we saying?’
‘We seem to be saying,’ I said, ‘that Cara was not in on the plot. That’s good, in one way, isn’t it? From your point of view, I mean. Doesn’t it make you feel a little better to know that your wife-to-be was innocent – at least to begin with? I do hope she was filled in at some point, though. I mean, I hope Lena and Clemence and whoever came to take Cara away told her what it was all about and got her consent, because otherwise… Well, it sounds too silly for words, but otherwise it’s kidnap.’
‘I have the most dreadful feeling,’ said Alec, ‘that I’d be quite happy to settle for kidnap, Dandy, right at this moment.’
I got up to throw logs on to the fire and was astonished to find, glancing at the clock, that it was after eleven. Hugh, it seemed, would not be joining us at all. I sat down again, rather heavily, and scrubbed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, doing who knew what to my makeup, but the lights were low.
‘So, what if the plan was to kill her?’ said Alec. ‘Let’s just allow ourselves to think it for a while, think it through.’ For I was shaking my head already. ‘Just go along with it, Dandy, please. Kill her at the beginning of the week, dry out the cottage, fake the pictures, fake her presence and make sure the fire was so severe that no one could tell she was dead before it began. That would explain why she didn’t take part in the fakery.’
‘But why?’ I breathed, trying and failing to stop myself from believing such a repulsive idea. ‘Never mind how – and Alec, my dear, the how is a huge obstacle. I don’t mean how was it managed? I mean how could she? It’s unspeakable.’
‘Unspeakable things happen, Dandy. Every day they do. And as for why: to stop Cara from telling me she had stolen the diamonds. To stop me from telling the police. To save the family name -’
‘To cover up a theft!’ I said. ‘For pride? Alec, please listen to me. A mother, any mother, and God knows I’m far from being the Madonna in modern form, but any mother would rather have her two daughters at her side in the workhouse than that one should die so she could hold her head up.’
‘Your opinion does you credit,’ he said. ‘Do you have a better theory?’
‘How about this?’ I said. ‘Cara stole the jewels. Mrs Duffy and Clemence planned the fire to cover her disappearance and were to collect the insurance money for the diamonds. Cara, though, was not convinced until the very last minute that she had to disappear, hence her letter to you saying that she thought she might be able to talk you round.’
‘And did Cara have to get away because she stole the jewels or did she steal the jewels to fund an escape? In which case what did she have to get away from?’
‘Well, I suppose the obvious thing is you,’ I said. ‘Her engagement.’
There was a very long silence at this, and one for which I could hardly blame him.
‘Why not just break it off?’ he said at last.
‘Because you are her father’s heir. We keep forgetting about Cara’s father in all of this, because we’re so sure her mother and sister worked the whole thing themselves. Perhaps she dared not tell her father she wouldn’t marry you.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Alec. ‘Cara could wind Gregory around her finger and frequently did. And why wasn’t she in on the faked photographs? Can you explain that?’
No,’ I said. ‘I can’t. I’m too tired. In fact, we’re both exhausted; we’re probably just seeing shadows.’ Alec shook his head.
‘This isn’t going to go away,’ he said. ‘But you’re right – we are tired. Let’s sleep on it.’
Leaving him to finish his pipe I retired. I had indeed rendered myself comical with eye-rubbing and I was glad Grant wasn’t there to pour silent scorn upon me. (Our arrangement was that on ordinary evenings if I stayed up after eleven I shifted for myself.) I left my frock inside out on a chair in a small act of defiance, and got into bed to lie on my back while my cold cream soaked in, glad to have a little thinking time without Alec there to sway me.