What he was saying made perfect sense, but what a sorry, silly little mess it was. Surely they could have done better than that. Could not Gregory have broken through the walls Lena put up between him and Clemence? Could he not have seen that his devotion to Cara, while it bathed his own daughter in warmth and light, did Clemence damage? I could well believe that Lena had spent her life pouring poison into Clemence and twisting her little mind into horrid shapes, and although I had never thought it before, I could see he was right about what lay behind the mask – prim, cold piousness – but if all Gregory had ever given her was his name he was as much to blame.
‘And you see now, don’t you, Dandy my dear, why I say Lena is not actually as bad as all that. There was something wrong with her somewhere deep down, something missing where the rest of us keep our morals, but harm her own child? She would never have done that. That, perhaps, is the only thing she and I shared. We each of us would have gone to the ends of the earth for our girls. We each of us would forgive any wrong.’ He shook his head and spoke even more softly. ‘The only thing we had in common. We loved our little girls.’
The three of us sat in silence for a while until, the sun having moved behind a tree on the lawn, the room started to feel chilly and my toes sticking out of their plaster cast in their little sock began to nip with cold.
‘So Alec,’ said Gregory, in a brisker tone, ‘it is yours for the taking. All of it. And please don’t spend your life in mourning. I should like to think of this place ringing with children’s footsteps, even if they are not to be Cara’s children after all. The Edinburgh house you will probably sell, I expect. Terribly dull kind of a life for a young woman, and I don’t expect that you will feel the same compulsion as I did to keep your wife dull and quiet for fear of what she would do if you let her have her head. Choose wisely, when the time comes.’
‘I hope, sir,’ said Alec gallantly, squirming a little, ‘to be an old man myself before any of this becomes a matter of concern.’
‘Well, I’m afraid you will be disappointed then,’ said Gregory, in the same brusque voice. ‘I have nothing left now and I have no intention of going on. I’m an old man anyway, but however short my time is it’s too long to spend missing my girl and thinking of all the things I could have done better. I shan’t do it here, of course, or anywhere else that will make a mess and a fuss for you, but you must prepare yourself for it soon.’ After a long pause, he spoke again. ‘I would like to see her grave, though. I would like that very much.’ And then, businesslike and chilling: ‘Alec, let’s you and I meet at the cemetery at ten tomorrow morning and you can take me to see her grave.’
Alec and I stared at each other glumly, each hoping I think that the other had something to say to him that might change his mind. After a few minutes of silence we rose to leave and drove back to Gilverton without speaking.
‘You stupid woman,’ said Cara, wagging her finger at me as she wheeled past me in the glittering ballroom. ‘You stupid woman,’ she called over the shoulder of her partner, possibly Alec, before he bore her away. She was wearing some kind of shroud, but a shroud encrusted with diamonds from the neck to the hem and all of the dowagers gathered around the dusty windows of the ballroom amongst the palms whispered greedily and reached out to touch her as she passed. ‘You stupid woman,’ she shouted from the far end of the room, bellowing to make herself heard above the din that was drilling into my head, making the chandeliers tinkle and causing little falls of dust from the ceiling. The noise grew louder and louder and I noticed now that it was not music after all, but footsteps. It sounded as though dozens of tiny little feet were spattering back and forth on the stone passageway above our heads, thundering about in all the rooms around us, drumming up and down the felt-covered stairs and clattering around and around in the echoing hall below.
I lay still, waiting to see if it made as much sense awake as it had in the dream, and then, realizing that it did, I clapped my hands, threw back the bedclothes and pulled the bell. It was seven o’clock. Three hours before they were to meet at the cemetery, and just enough time, if I was lucky.
Grant appeared, shiny-faced and frowning in her night-clothes, a frown which deepened as I told her to get Drysdale to bring the car round right now and to help me on with some clothes, any clothes, and it did not matter which.
‘I’ll just run your bath, madam,’ she said, to give her an excuse to leave the room and indulge her huff.
‘I’ve no time for a bath,’ I said. ‘Help me with this damn leg, Grant, please. I’ll have two baths when I get back.’
Fifteen minutes later, I was in the car at the front door just in time to see Hugh open a shutter in his room and stare blearily out at me.
‘Pallister,’ I said, leaning out of the window and fixing him with the best haughty stare I could manage – Pallister had of course considered himself obliged to dress and present himself to see me off, for how could he have felt chagrined at the trouble I was putting him to if he had not made sure to be put to it? ‘Pallister, since you’re here. Please will you try to contact either Mr Duffy or Mr Osborne or ideally both. Tell them I am coming to town. Tell Mr Duffy to wait for me.’
Pallister blinked pompously. He is the only person I have ever known who can do this.
‘And where might I find the gentlemen, madam?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea where Mr Osborne is,’ I said. ‘Try his mother in Dorset and see if she knows. Wake my husband to get Mrs Osborne’s number if you need to.’
With this shocking suggestion, I swept away.
Nothing could have pleased Drysdale more, even at this hour, than to be told to drive to Edinburgh as though his life depended on it, and I had to stop him five minutes into the journey and move into the front seat for fear I should be sick in the back. He got me there, though. I sat with my fingers crossed that we should not meet some zealous policeman on his way into work on an early shift, but he got me there. We drew up at the cemetery at ten minutes past ten. I got myself out without waiting and hobbled on my cane to the far gloomy corner where I could see the two figures, heads bowed, at the foot of the grave.
‘Alec! Mr Duffy!’ They turned and I saw that not only Gregory Duffy’s but Alec’s face too was wet with tears which neither of them troubled to wipe away.
‘Did Pallister ring you?’ I asked, but knew at once from their puzzled expressions that he had not – had not even tried, I would bet – and so if I had only been another half an hour, Gregory Duffy would have walked away and we might never have been able to find him. I determined to award Drysdale a huge tip, and to ‘get’ Pallister, as my boys say, the first chance I had.
‘What is it?’ said Alec.
‘Did you tell Mr Duffy anything else this morning?’ I said. Alec shook his head, still puzzled I think, but also with a growing look of relief. My heart swelled with pride, or with something anyway, to think that even though he did not know what it was I had thought of, knowing I had thought of something was enough to relieve him. I leaned my cane against my leg and put out my hands to take Gregory’s in mine.
‘Mr Duffy, Lena lost her temper, more than that – went mad – because she found out a secret that Cara had been keeping for years. You don’t know, do you? Lena’s life had gone wrong, you see, because she had the affair and so when she saw someone who had made the same mistake getting away with it and being rewarded with everything Lena thought was hers… Or maybe when she thought that her girl, who was good, was to be overlooked in favour of a girl who had been bad… I’m not explaining this very well and, you know, none of it matters.