I learned that in civilian life he was an antiques dealer. Paul, perhaps sensing my disappointment at finding that I wasn’t the only guest, explained that the family needed to sell some valuable coins. Rowland, who specialised in coinage, was to sort and price them with a view to finding a purchaser. And he wasn’t only interested in coins. His gaze ranged over furniture, pictures, porcelain and bronze; his long fingers touched and caressed as if he were mentally pricing them for sale. I suspected that, given half a chance, he would have pawed me and assessed my second-hand value.
My grandmother’s butler and cook, indispensable small-part characters in any country-house murder, were respectful and competent but deficient in seasonal goodwill. My grandmother, if she gave the matter any thought, would probably have described them as faithful and devoted retainers, but I had my doubts. Even in 1940 things were changing. Mrs. Seddon seemed to be both overworked and bored, a depressing combination, while her husband barely contained the lugubrious resentment of a man calculating how much more he could have earned as a war-worker at the nearest RAF base.
I liked my room; the four-poster with its faded curtains, the comfortable low chair beside the fire, the elegant little writing-desk, the prints and watercolours, fly-blown in their original frames. Before getting into bed I put out the bedside light and drew aside the blackout curtain. High stars and moonlight, a dangerous sky. But this was Christmas Eve. Surely they wouldn’t fly tonight. And I thought of women all over Europe drawing aside their curtains and looking up in hope and fear at the menacing moon.
I woke early next morning, missing the jangle of Christmas bells, bells which in 1940 would have heralded invasion. Next day the police were to take me through every minute of that Christmas, and every detail remains clearly in my memory more than fifty years later. After breakfast we exchanged presents. My grandmother had obviously raided her jewel chest for her gift to me of a charming enamel and gold brooch, and I suspect that Paul’s offering, a Victorian ring, a garnet surrounded with seed pearls, came from the same source. I had come prepared. I parted with two of my personal treasures in the cause of family reconciliation, a first edition of A Shropshire Lad for Paul and an early edition of Diary of a Nobody for my grandmother. They were well received. Rowland’s contribution to the Christmas rations was three bottles of gin, packets of tea, coffee and sugar, and a pound of butter, probably filched from RAF stores. Just before midday the depleted local church choir arrived, sang half a dozen unaccompanied carols embarrassingly out of tune, were grudgingly rewarded by Mrs. Seddon with mulled wine and mince pies and, with evident relief, slipped out again through the blackout curtains to their Christmas dinners.
After a traditional meal served at one o’clock, Paul asked me to go for a walk. I wasn’t sure why he wanted my company. He was almost silent as we tramped doggedly over the frozen furrows of desolate fields and through birdless copses as joylessly as if on a route march. The snow had stopped falling but a thin crust lay crisp and white under a gun-metal sky. As the light faded, we returned home and saw the back of the blacked-out manor, a grey L-shape against the whiteness. Suddenly, with an unexpected change of mood, Paul began scooping up the snow. No one receiving the icy slap of a snowball in the face can resist retaliation, and we spent twenty minutes or so like schoolchildren, laughing and hurling snow at each other and at the house, until the snow on the lawn and gravel path had been churned into slush.
The evening was spent in desultory talk in the sitting-room, dozing and reading. The supper was light, soup and herb omelettes—a welcome contrast to the heaviness of the goose and Christmas pudding—served very early, as was the custom, so that the Seddons could get away to spend the night with friends in the village. After dinner we moved again to the ground-floor sitting-room. Rowland put on the gramophone, then suddenly seized my hands and said, “Let’s dance.” The gramophone was the kind that automatically played a series of records and as one popular disc dropped after another—“Jeepers Creepers,” “Beer Barrel Polka,” “Tiger Rag,” “Deep Purple”—we waltzed, tangoed, fox-trotted, quick-stepped round the sitting-room and out into the hall. Rowland was a superb dancer.
I hadn’t danced since Alastair’s death but now, caught up in the exuberance of movement and rhythm, I forgot my antagonism and concentrated on following his increasingly complicated lead.
The spell was broken when, breaking into a waltz across the hall and tightening his grasp, he said: “Our young hero seems a little subdued. Perhaps he’s having second thoughts about this job he’s volunteered for.”
“What job?”
“Can’t you guess? French mother, Sorbonne-educated, speaks French like a native, knows the country. He’s a natural.”
I didn’t reply. I wondered how he knew, if he had a right to know. He went on:
“There comes a moment when these gallant chaps realise that it isn’t play-acting anymore. From now on it’s for real. Enemy territory beneath you, not dear old Blighty; real Germans, real bullets, real torture-chambers and real pain.”
I thought: And real death, and slipped out of his arms, hearing, as I re-entered the sitting-room, his low laugh at my back.
Shortly before ten o’clock my grandmother went up to bed, telling Rowland that she would get the coins out of the study safe and leave them with him. He was due to drive back to London the next day; it would be helpful if he could examine them tonight. He sprang up at once and they left the room together. Her final words to Paul were: “There’s an Edgar Wallace play on the Home Service which I may listen to. It ends at eleven. Come to say goodnight then, if you will, Paul. Don’t leave it any later.”
As soon as they’d left, Paul said: “Let’s have the music of the enemy,” and replaced the dance records with Wagner. As I read, he got out a pack of cards from the small desk and played a game of patience, scowling at the cards with furious concentration while the Wagner, much too loud, beat against my ears. When the carriage-clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven, heard in a lull in the music, he swept the cards together and said: “Time to say goodnight to Grandmama. Is there anything you want?”
“No,” I said, a little surprised. “Nothing.”
What I did want was the music a little less loud and when he left the room I turned it down. He was back very quickly. When the police questioned me next day, I told them that I estimated that he was away for about three minutes. It certainly couldn’t have been longer. He said calmly: “Grandmama wants to see you.”
We left the sitting-room together and crossed the hall. It was then that my senses, preternaturally acute, noticed two facts. One I told the police; the other I didn’t. Six mistletoe berries had dropped from the mixed bunch of mistletoe and holly fixed to the lintel above the library door and lay like scattered pearls on the polished floor. And at the foot of the stairs there was a small puddle of water. Seeing my glance, Paul took out his handkerchief and mopped it up. He said: “I should be able to take a drink up to Grandmama without spilling it.”
She was propped up in bed under the canopy of the four-poster, looking diminished, no longer formidable, but a tired, very old woman. I saw with pleasure that she had been reading the book I’d given her. It lay open on the round bedside table beside the table-lamp, her wireless, the elegant little clock, the small half-full carafe of water with a glass resting over its rim, and a porcelain model of a hand rising from a frilled cuff on which she had placed her rings.
She held out her hand to me; the fingers were limp, the hand cold and listless, the grasp very different from the firm handshake with which she had first greeted me. She said: “Just to say goodnight, my dear, and thank you for coming. In wartime, family feuds are an indulgence we can no longer afford.”