‘And why didn’t you just tell us this?’ said Alec.
Mrs Lipscott gave a carolling little laugh. ‘Oh, Mr Osborne, no one likes to say there’s that in the family.’
‘That what?’ I said.
‘Mania, madness, whatever they’re calling it now. I didn’t want anyone to know that one of my girls wasn’t right in the head.’ I frowned and shot a quick glance to the door where Batty Aunt Lilah had exited with her kedgeree.
‘Oh, but Lilah’s a connection by marriage,’ said Mrs Lipscott. ‘My uncle’s wife. No blood relation at all to me. I couldn’t bear the thought of Florrie-mittens being called nasty names and having to go to some dreary hospital somewhere.’
‘Although it came to that in the end,’ I reminded her gently. ‘More than once.’
‘She wanted to turn herself in, Dandy,’ said Mrs Lipscott, leaning forward in her chair to look pleadingly into my eyes. ‘After Charles, I mean. After Elf we couldn’t take the chance.’
‘So, she’s never run off exactly like this before then?’ I said. She sat up and opened her eyes very wide. ‘We slightly overstated it when we said she had gone to recuperate. We don’t actually know where she is. No one does.’
‘She’ll go to the police,’ said Mamma-dearest, standing up and letting her napkin fall to the floor. ‘She’ll give herself up and be put away.’
‘I don’t think so, Mrs Lipscott,’ said Alec. ‘The police were right there when she disappeared. Almost as though it was them she was running away from.’
Mamma-dearest was shaking her head in a distracted way, fast enough to make her pearls rattle together on her neck.
‘No, no, you don’t understand Fleur,’ she said. ‘If she thought she’d done it she’d never try to duck out of it. Her whole life since Charles and Elf has been one long act of atonement. Taking herself away from men and from her family and living like a nun in that dreadful school. She said she was trying to keep as many girls as possible on the straight and narrow path.’
She went towards the door and paused before going out of the room.
‘Aurora and Pearl know about this, you say? I’m going to telephone to them now. We must find her. I shall never forgive them for keeping all of this from me.’
‘We’re for it, when the other two find out we came down here,’ Alec said once we were alone.
‘Unless Mamma-dearest talks them round,’ I said. ‘What did you make of all that?’ Alec went to the sideboard and began heaping rashers of bacon onto a slice of toast. He squashed the heap down with another slice, picked up this ungainly sandwich in one hand and rejoined me.
‘I’m relieved to hear what counts as “murder” in Fleur’s book,’ he said.
‘Yes, she might well be no more responsible for bodies two to five than she was for the first one. She’s ill, not wicked.’
‘Although we can’t be sure,’ said Alec through a thick mouthful of bacon and bread. ‘Perhaps her being mad – and she does sound mad, doesn’t she? – makes her more likely to have killed, not less.’
‘Killed all of them?’ I asked him. ‘After her father, I mean.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Alec. ‘Or given that what she heard about the Major was no more than an upsetting revelation, and even if Charles and Leigh were an accident – if, mind you, if – by the time she was out walking on a cliff edge with Elf she already thought of herself as a murderess. And her mother just said it herself: she set out to be the wicked girl she believed she already was.’
‘If only we knew who No. 5 is,’ I said. ‘I mean, Fleur must have known her, agreed? How can no one have missed the woman?’
‘We need to find Fleur and ask her,’ said Alec. ‘And here’s a thought, Dandy. Since the police know they’re looking for a particular boat now, they’ve probably found her, or traced part of her journey. Every harbour has a harbourmaster, after all. What is it?’
Clearly, my face was reflecting the sudden sick feeling I had inside.
‘I don’t think I told them,’ I said. ‘Sergeant Turner was being beastly and I know I didn’t tell him. Then Reid was flapping about Cissie and I told him about finding Fleur’s bags and losing them and about finding Jeanne Beauclerc and about them planning to run off and then Jeanne bolting too early and… that’s it. I didn’t tell them about the boat at all.’
‘But the chap who owns it…?’
‘No! That’s the thing. He’s got his eye on the endless mounting up of the late fees. He’ll never tell them. Oh God, what a chump I am.’
‘Do you think Mrs Lipscott would let us use her telephone if we say it’s to help Fleur be found?’
‘Not after she’s spoken to Pearl,’ I said. ‘And think of who we’d be asking to find her!’
‘Could we go to the local bobbies here? Or the coastguard? Nearest harbourmaster?’
‘We could try,’ I said. ‘But would they care? Do you think Fleur’s description – her lines, Reid called it – was broadcast all the way down here?’
‘Doubtful,’ Alec said.
‘I think we need lay it all out for Constable Reid,’ I said.
‘Another trunk call?’ he asked. ‘Let’s hope for a better line.’
‘Perhaps we’d have more chance if we go back and tug his sleeve until he listens. And it’s not as though there’s any tearing rush, is there? She’s been gone since Saturday. If she were going to kill herself she’d have done it by now. If she went and holed up somewhere she’ll still be there for the police to find her.’
Just too late I saw Alec’s eyes flash and I turned around to see Mamma-dearest standing in the doorway. Her face was whiter than her pearls.
‘Have you any idea how you sound?’ she said to me.
‘Mamma-’ I began, but her eyes narrowed. ‘Mrs Lipscott,’ I said, ‘you weren’t supposed to hear that.’
‘I thought you were our friend,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been defending you to Pearl even though you tricked me into thinking she’d sent you.’
‘Not exactl-’ I said.
‘If she killed herself, or if she holed up and can be caught by policemen! As though it’s a game.’
‘We speak very matter-of-factly when we’re trying to get a hard job done well, Mrs Lipscott,’ said Alec. ‘It doesn’t mean that we’re not desperately concerned to see a just outcome.’
‘A just outcome!’ said Mamma-dearest. ‘No matter who gets swept away by it. I think you should leave now, both of you. Just leave us alone.’
As we hustled and jumbled ourselves out of the breakfast room, through the hall and onto the doorstep, and heard the front door slam firmly shut behind us, Alec was almost laughing; but I felt a bulge of misery inside me that I could not bear. To have been thrown out of Pereford and told never to return! To have been cast off by Mamma-dearest with such disgust for me in her face and voice!
‘Don’t look like that,’ Alec said. ‘It’s not the first time we’ve ruffled feathers, not by a long chalk.’
I nodded glumly, but he did not know what I had lost if I had lost the Lipscotts. I bowed my head as the hired motorcar wound down the drive past the roses and brushed lawns and into the avenue, fearing that if I looked I would see a bench or pond or summerhouse and remember a sunny hour spent there with the closest I had ever come to sisters (except my real sister, who fell far short of my imaginings), being told I was clever and beautiful and funny and that my life would be a happy charm. I dreaded the prospect of rewinding our yesterday’s journey all the way, Taunton to London, London to Scotland, those endless empty hours ahead of me for the miserable thoughts to outwit my attempts at control and send me into a fit of self-pity and weeping.