“Girls! This is your cousin from India. Jack Drummond. I say ‘cousin’ because he’s the son of two of your Uncle Joe’s dearest friends: Andrew and Nancy Drummond. Andrew is something big in Bengal. He fought in the same regiment as Joe in the war and was wounded at Mons,” Lydia said airily. “Jackie, this is Vanessa and this is Juliet.” Her two fair-haired daughters came forwards to shake his hand and then give him a hug, murmuring a welcome.
“And here’s your Uncle Marcus.”
“Drummond! Delighted you could come!” said Marcus, responding to the child’s formal stance and outstretched hand. “Now, what about a spot of tea?”
Joe’s eyes were seeking out the dark girl standing a little behind the family group. “I can see you, Dorcas! Come and meet Jackie. Jackie, this is Dorcas, the daughter of Orlando Joliffe, a friend and neighbour.”
Joe watched anxiously as they shook hands and eyed each other warily. As a girl, Dorcas had always had a way with younger children, showing an interest and an instinctive understanding. Could this skill have survived maturity and still be there under the layers of sophistication she had no doubt built up over the years? Joe wondered.
In appearance, she’d hardly changed. The inches she’d put on since his first sighting seven years ago had brought her up to average height for a woman, but she still had the slender, whippet-like figure, the same glossy, dark bobbed hair. Long gone and unregretted were the hand-me-down clothes and worn sandals Joe remembered. The thick red sweater she was wearing suited her but Joe wasn’t so certain about the black cord trousers of mannish cut. Jackie, of course, with his Indian background, would be completely at ease with the sight of women in trousers, from whipcord jodhpurs to silken harem pants.
“Tea? Oh, I think we can do better than that, Uncle Marcus. I saved you some lunch, Jackie,” she told the boy. “Just in case you didn’t find time to stop anywhere on the way down. Did you?” Her voice was lower than he remembered with no trace of the country accent she’d had seven years before.
“I don’t know if we stopped. I’ve been asleep. But I know I’m hungry.”
“Good. Then what do you say to some fish pie? And then cherry trifle-bottled cherries, but delicious-with cream from the home farm. It’s as yellow as a buttercup.”
“Oooh, ahh.…” Jackie turned to Joe for help.
“Well, I don’t know about Jackie, but I’m growing faint at the very thought. Shall I speak for both of us? Lead us to it!”
She smiled and, tucking the child’s arm under hers, led him into the hallway, leaning towards him and talking confidentially. Hurrying to follow behind, Joe thought he caught “… regiment … wounds … hero.…” and an amused look thrown back at him over her shoulder. He was touched by Jackie’s emphatic response to her comments: “No, Dorcas. Uncle Joe was a Northumberland Fusilier.… he told me so.… Daddy was an officer in the Indian Army. And he was wounded at Ypres. Auntie Lydia got that wrong.” Dorcas accepted the correction without demur and took down the tension with a joking remark. Jackie was emboldened to pour more military details into the ready ear.
For the second time, Joe noted that the boy was a stickler for detail. Well brought up, he apparently was uneasy with anything less than the truth. Wherever else, he didn’t get that from his mother! Joe crushed the unworthy thought. This was a quality that could prove awkward over the next few days. But, again, it could be an asset-if carefully managed.
“Ugly little brutes!” Marcus’s voice was gruff. “What a collection!”
He poked at the photographs Lydia had spread at random on the table in the drawing room after supper, not comfortable until he had them in a straight line and equidistant from each other. Sensing his companions’ disapproval, he tried to explain himself. “I mean-look at them! Seven … eight … nine of ’em and all dashed unattractive … Spotty … Skinny … Goofy … Tubby and Big Ears. I know who they are-saw them playing Snow White’s little helpers in the panto at the Lyceum the other day. And will someone tell me why boys of this age always have such big teeth? Looking at this line-up I’m happy I’ve been blessed with girls. Bonny from the day they were born!”
He looked to his wife for approval, but Lydia glared at him and he plunged deeper into the mire: “You have to take your hats off to these schoolmaster chappies-facing up to serried ranks of brats like this just to earn a crust. Imagine being greeted by this lot on the front row on a Monday morning!” Something in his arrangement caught his attention and he picked out one face and thoughtfully placed it on the extreme left of the line.
“Marcus! You’re being facetious! I thought you’d understood! We don’t know who they are or where they are. These poor little sausages could well be victims of some unspeakable crime. These photos were secreted away in the pocket of a notebook of a dubious character violently done to death almost under the eyes of our Jackie!”
“If you say so, my dear,” Marcus batted on. “Though I don’t see what his death has to do with his photo album. Perhaps he owes the racecourse bookies a bundle? The Brighton gangs are notoriously strict about payment of debts. Leg-breaking and worse goes on! I get some of these cases up before me in the Magistrate’s Court after every big race. Or-more likely-he’s got Matron into trouble and she’s wreaked vengeance on him. Grabbed a tongue depressor and inserted it into a soft part? Something on those lines? I can’t see why you and Joe are making such a song and dance over these. Am I the only one to notice the obvious?”
Marcus collected their enquiring glances and shrugged his shoulders. “The tenth photograph!”
They looked again and counted silently.
“Conspicuous by its absence, you’d say. Hey? No sign here of Joe’s nephew, is there? I search for but I don’t find his handsome features in the gallery! If there’s anything going on, your Jackie has nothing to do with it. Not on the menu, I’d say.”
Lydia and Joe exchanged looks.
Married couples, Joe had observed, soon fell into a mutually agreed role-playing arrangement. In this marriage, Lydia was always presented as the clever one, the undervalued mainspring of the family and Marcus her largely ineffectual but indulgent and loving husband. Not all true, Joe considered. He turned to the comfortable figure of Marcus, fair hair glittering with silver in the lamp light, florid features beginning to show the effects of a second brandy. Joe resisted any invitation to patronise or underestimate his brother-in-law. The sharp eyes missed little, the good humour in his remarks often masked a fund of cool common sense.
“So how then, Marcus, would you account for this unusual collection in our victim’s private journal?” Joe appealed to him. “Any theories? Help us out!”
Marcus turned over one of the images. “Oh, right-o. If you like. For a start, they’ve been roughly cut with scissors from a larger print, see here.… And we’re all familiar with this size of head shot. Been taken from the annual class photograph. You know-line them up on the first day of term … shoot ’em … and there they are preserved in the amber glow of happy schooldays forever more. The girls have both got their own class photos in their rooms. Compare them for size in the morning if you like.”
Joe nodded encouragement.
“And, if you look on the back, as I just did,” Marcus went on, gaining confidence, “you’ll see something remarkable, which is to say, nothing at all! The girls-and all the children I know-write the name of their classmates on the back. But as you see, nothing here to identify these fellows. I dare say this Rapson knew exactly who was in his collection but was too discreet to record it. You’ll just have to find other means of identifying them. If you think it will help. Mightn’t be easy. Some of these are much older than the others. The photos I mean. This one here’s in sepia.” He pointed to the one he’d moved to the end of his row. “Pre-war, would you say?”