He was leading me off the track, I was sure, because he would not pay attention to the diamonds, discomfited perhaps about being Mr Duffy’s heir and fearing that any concern on his part towards the question of the diamonds might be mistaken as self-interest. I felt it increasingly, though, that he was letting his squeamishness overcome his judgement. They had to be important. I had to be able to come up with a solution to the mystery which took the diamonds into account. I resolved not to sleep until I had done so.
Cara, dressed in a frock of pale, striped wallpaper, was up to her elbows in a washtub, suds spilling over the top and down the sides washing the gold colour off the brass bandings. I stepped closer to see what she was washing. Under the water, clear now, the bubbles magically gone, she was rubbing handfuls of diamonds together as small children do with shells on the beach.
‘You see,’ she said, turning towards me and smiling, with the sun glinting through the stray golden hairs which had risen from the sleek cap of her bob in the steam, ‘gone. Quite gone.’ I looked back into the tub and saw that indeed the diamonds were melting in the water, disappearing. And as I watched Cara’s hands, too, were beginning to wear away, until they were down to fingerless stumps like the hands of a burned child I had seen once and never forgotten.
I sat up in bed, glad of the moonlight, glad not to be in the dark where that image might linger, but still I jumped and clutched the covers under my chin as my bedroom door opened a crack. There was a soft knock before it opened further.
‘Dandy?’ Alec whispered, coming right inside and waiting a bit for his eyes to adjust before he moved again. Still groggy and rattled as one is after waking from a dream, I was unable to speak and only blinked and gulped as Alec came to sit on the edge of my bed. He started with a reassurance.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said. ‘And don’t be alarmed: it’s not a social call.’
‘What’s up?’ I asked, recovering my sangfroid. ‘Can’t it wait till morning?’
‘No.’ He stopped and ran his hands over his face, and I could hear the rasp of the stubble which somehow made him sound even more tired than his weary voice.
‘Do you have a glass of water there?’ he asked. I passed it to him and waited for him to speak again.
‘I think I’ve had the whole thing wrong,’ he said.
I sank back on to my pillows with relief, but worse was to come than I had even imagined up to now.
‘This evening,’ he went on, ‘I was arguing that Lena and Clemence killed her, kept the body somewhere, faked their record of a happy holiday with the photographs, and then set the fire to explain her death. But… Well, they’re hardly seasoned arsonists, are they? If there had been a sudden downpour, or if the men managed to put it out and there was a body left to be examined, it would have been obvious that the fire was a cover-up job, and that would mean the noose, for one or both of them.
‘However, if they tried to burn an empty house and put it about that Cara was in there, all they would have to say – if the house didn’t burn, you understand – all they would have to say was that she couldn’t have been there after all. They could even say that she must have started the fire and run away.’ He reached out both his hands towards me and I put mine into them.
‘Tell me about this maid,’ he said. ‘This poor girl who was supposed to have committed suicide most conveniently for everyone and who seems to have departed her life leaving not a ripple.’
‘What about her?’ I asked, whispering again and fighting against the idea forming in my mind.
‘Two things,’ said Alec. ‘Had Dr Milne ever seen her before? And more to the point, did Dr Milne ever meet Cara?’
Chapter Twelve
‘You look knocked up,’ said Hugh, as I went in to breakfast the next morning. He has a particular way of saying this, not quite accusing, not triumphant exactly (and I should be thankful he says anything, I suppose) but there is a silent coda to the remark that always puts me on the defensive.
‘I didn’t sleep very well,’ I said, not looking at Alec but seeing him anyway shifting uneasily in his seat.
‘Well, all this chasing about,’ said Hugh. ‘You should go out for a good long walk with the dog you already have.’ He broke off and began again in much the same vein but in rather gentler tones, as befitting the presence of a guest. ‘Yes, a good walk in the fresh spring air, my dear, and you’ll be right as rain by luncheon.’
‘That would be lovely,’ I said. ‘Are you offering an arm? Or are you busy?’
This suggestion produced the desired result: Hugh huffed, puffed, turned to Alec and said: ‘Would you think me a boor if I showed you the mare after luncheon, Osborne? And asked you to wheel Dandy round the park this morning?’
‘I should be delighted,’ said Alec, and his politeness seemed to sting Hugh into further explanation.
‘Only I must just get my contractors off on the right foot,’ he said. ‘Wonderful chaps once they’re set on their way, you know, but they do need a firm early hand or God knows what might come of it all.’
With everyone thus satisfied, Hugh dropped back behind his newspaper as Pallister came in. Mrs Tilling, our cook, sends up two eggs freshly poached every morning just as I arrive in the breakfast room. I do not know how she gauges the moment of my arrival, for I am often unwitnessed and I trigger no obvious trip-wire en route from my bedroom to the ground floor, but every morning Pallister appears with a chafing dish just as I’m sitting. His disapproval at my being coddled and his being put to such trouble when there are perfectly good eggs under a hot cover on the sideboard is mammoth (as is Hugh’s irritation at the performance, but Hugh always makes sure he is behind his newspaper and no doubt tells himself it is not happening). I cannot remember why and when this ritual began, which probably means it was while I was pregnant and inattentive on account of the all-enveloping haze of nausea, but I look forward to it. I smiled at Alec as I scooped the eggs on to my plate, feeling what a good light it cast me in that my cook loved me even if my husband would rather play in the drains than wheel me about, as he so charmingly put it.
An hour later, we let ourselves into the walled garden. My recent toils in Mrs Marshall’s cabbage patch led me to look at the ground around me with greater interest than I could remember having felt before but April, while so pretty in woods and parkland, is unrewarding otherwise and the borders on either side of the gravel path were in a most undignified state. Great hoops of wire were waiting above the budding plants, great swathes of net suspended between sturdy poles, and bare canes everywhere, so that one felt one had come crashing into an actress’s dressing room and caught her in only her corsets.
‘Now Alec,’ I began, firmly. ‘You had me at a disadvantage last night – I was half asleep, but now I am going to convince you you’re wrong. I left out a few of the more unpleasant details about this servant girl, you see.’ Alec waited silently for me to continue, and I tucked my arm into his before I did, a very mild embrace and one sanctioned by my husband, besides.
‘I’m glad I’m not looking at you while I say this!’ I exclaimed and then I cleared my throat and plunged in.
‘I see,’ said Alec, when I had finished. ‘Yes, I see. But consider this, Dandy. You already know that Dr Milne has been grossly less than thorough in his dealings with this unfortunate creature. Why, there should have been policemen and a proper investigation. So how far do you think he would go? As far as accepting Mrs Duffy’s account of what had happened and dispensing with any examination at all? Might he have done no more than enter a servant’s bedroom, glance at the unknown girl lying there under a sheet and sign a certificate?’