“I don’t know what you’re on about. What other business?”
“However it is you’re going to try and kill him. Isobel found out, didn’t she? Who through? You? Her father? What do you plan to do? Stab him to death with a garden fork?”
“Don’t talk daft.”
“Well?”
Albert stood defiant. “We’re at war, Ned.”
“So people keep telling me.”
“War means sacrifice. Laying down one’s life if necessary.”
“When appropriate. What’s the plan, then. Poisoned tarts for tea?”
“No!” Albert was shouting now.
“Well, what, then?”
“A bomb!”
“A bomb? Borrowed one of theirs, did you?”
“I made it myself. With nails and bolts, you know, like we did of old, weedkiller and sugar. Only a damn sight bigger this time.”
“You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“I’d get close enough for it to count.”
“How? Wrap it up in fancy paper? Christ Almighty!”
Albert held his ground. “How many men get a chance like this? I had to take it.”
“And Isobel found out?”
Albert was sullen. “Isobel found out nothing,” he said. “I was there.”
“You were where?”
“When Mrs H. tried to get it out of her. They’re giving him this lunch, see. Isobel were invited. Mrs H. asked her round that morning to see if we could find out where. She came up to the Villa first, to check on the party, then walked down. As soon as I saw her go through the Lodge door I followed. I wanted to hear it for myself. I let myself in. You could taste the sharpness between them, like when you bite into a sour apple. “How lovely you are looking,” Mrs H. was saying, “quite captured the Major’s heart,” and I could hear the snap as she bit into a biscuit. She does love her biscuits, does Mrs H.”
“Never mind about the biscuits, Uncle.”
“No. In fact between you both, you and your father have made the van Dielens quite indispensable,” and Isobel said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” already bored and irritated. I could hear the scrape of something, like Marjorie was trying to pull the chair closer. “I’ve heard something very interesting,” she said, her voice hushed like she was afraid someone might be listening, “very interesting. A special visitor is coming, I hear, a very special visitor.”
Isobel was hardly bothering to listen and Mrs H. hummed and hawed and poured herself a cup of tea, holding it God knows how high up, sounded like a man taking a Jimmy Riddle, and then she said, “I know you’ve been told not to tell anyone, and that’s how it should be, but you can tell your old aunt, can’t you? After all, it’s not every day that a little place like this entertains a visitor of such peculiar stature,” and Isobel got impatient, and laughed and said, “Who’s coming then, Santa Claus?” and you could hear it in her voice that she thought Mrs H. had finally lost her marbles and I had half a mind to go in and stop it right there and then, but suddenly it was like Mrs H.’s feelings had got the better of her, this whippersnapper of a girl poking fun at her, lording it over her, and her voice went hard as granite and she spat it out. “Don’t try and hide it from me, girl,” she said, “I know who’s coming. It’s a privilege many of us would have liked to share, to have dinner with such a distinguished guest. Frankly fm surprised the Major hasn’t seen fit to ask me. I am after all about the only one left who’s used to receiving heads of state.”
“Heads of state, what are you talking about?” she said, irritated. “Hitler!” Mrs H. screams. “Hitler, you silly girl. You and your father are dining with the Lord High Executioner Himself, here in Guernsey on his birthday. Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” and Isobel started to stammer and said, no, that she didn’t know, that she must be mistaken, that the Major would have told her. “The Major!” Mrs H. spat the word. “Yes, the Major. Gerhard tells me everything. After the war we are going to be married.”
“Married! You and Gerhard!” I thought she’d given herself an electric shock the way she screamed it and I heard her stand up, with a clatter of plates on the floor, and Isobel gave a little cry too, as if she’d been grabbed, by the hair or by the wrist I couldn’t tell. “See that,” Mrs H. said, yelling at the top of her voice, “see that picture there. That was me, Isobel, me! That was how I looked when I was your age. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at me now, would you, but it’s true. Russell just changed the face slightly so as not to cause my father too much embarrassment. It never crossed your mind that I could have once looked like that. Well, let me tell you I had a better figure than you, I was better company than you, and most likely better in bed than you. Yet look at me now. I have his brains, his wit, and yet he barely notices me because of the one thing I have lost. And you hope to marry him! If he cannot look on me now and see me for what I am worth, imagine what he will think of you in years to come, when you will have nothing! Nothing! Not even a picture like this to remind him!” and with that she got up left the room and finding me in the corridor shooed me into the kitchen. “Best not push it any further,” I said. “Let her think you’re just jealous.” Isobel popped her head round the door and saw me, so I gave her a little wave. The next thing we knew she was running down the pathway and out of the gates. Can’t blame her of course, the way Mrs H. had carried on. But that’s the last we saw of her.”
“And yet she ran back and wrote me the note.”
“Note, what note?”
“She wrote me a note, Uncle. She was frightened. She must have found out.”
He thought back to that time, when he sat in that little room of hers, with Mrs Hallivand eating her biscuits, her wicker basket at her dainty feet.
“Wait a minute. Did Mrs H. go to the house that day?”
“After she met up with Isobel, yes. That afternoon.”
“And what did she have in her bag?”
“The usual stuff.”
“Sugar and weedkiller.”
“That’s right. Hidden under a cloth. It were the last lot.”
“That’s how she found out!” He got up and looked down on the drive. Wedel was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. He looked up and held his cigarette out in invitation. Ned raised his hands and backed away.
“When Isobel got back home her father told me that she had ridiculed her aunt for having this embroidery she’d done, which she’d found tucked in her bag, of the Major standing by the bay or something. At the bottom of the bag, he said. Only it wasn’t at the bottom. It was on top of all that other stuff, the sugar, the weedkiller. She sees the Major on this piece of cloth, lifts it up to take a better look and lo and behold, lying underneath, there they are. The next thing she knows there are voices in the kitchen and she comes out to find you and Mrs H. muttering together like a couple of amateur Guy Fawkes. She knows all about weedkiller and sugar and what you bloody do with them. I told her. Suddenly she realizes what you two are planning. She runs out of the house, forgetting her bike, and dashes home. She daren’t tell the Major. She does the only thing she can, she writes to me, hoping that I can somehow save the island from your lunacy. Only someone gets to her first. Big hands, I’ve been told. And a uniform. How did you come by that, Uncle? Borrow one of the Major’s?”
“What?”
“You were seen tipping her down a shaft!”
“I never tipped no one down a shaft. And I ain’t no murderer.”
“Not much you aren’t, trying to get us all killed.” He touched Albert on the arm. “What would Kitty have thought of all this, Uncle? She’d have hated it.”