A Corpse in Shining Armour (14 page)

‘Would ten o’clock suit you? Excellent. Did you walk here, Miss Lane? May we offer you a ride back in the pony gig? The driver
is going to the village in any case.’

This was the polite dismissal I’d expected an hour ago. I gratefully accepted the offer of the gig and Robert Carmichael said
he’d go and have it brought round to the front door. That was hardly a librarian’s job. I sensed that he wanted to see me
off the premises and have a serious word with his employer. Lady Brinkburn and I lingered for a while, looking at some of
her books on botany, then followed him out of the library. She pointed out a flight of polished wooden steps next to the library
door.

‘That leads straight up to my own rooms. So convenient. When I have trouble sleeping I can come down to my books without disturbing
anybody.’

Her tone was surprisingly intimate. It was as if she were playing some kind of game with me, inviting an advance in friendship,
but ready to draw back.

She and the spaniel came with me to the front door. The pony gig and driver were waiting but there was no sign of her shepherd
of books. She saw me into the gig beside the driver and waved me off, the perfect hostess.

All the way up the drive and on to the road, I wondered what she wanted from me. Was she grasping the opportunity of using
anybody reasonably intelligent from London to add to the gossip about the family? The other possibility was that she knew
exactly who I was and why I was there. If she knew I’d come to judge her sanity and the worth of her evidence, her move would
have more point to it. Mr Lomax and I had assumed that Mr Whiteley hadn’t noticed me at the inquest, but suppose he had and
then had happened to see me when I arrived, or even have somebody from the village describe me? If so, Lady Brinkburn’s invitation
to tea had been anything but impulsive.

Before we came to the village, I realised I might be wasting an opportunity. A relatively modest establishment like Lady Brinkburn’s
would only run to one driver. This one was a plump and red-faced man, genial-looking. I made some comment on the state of
the roads and we got into conversation. It wasn’t easy, with the noise of the wheels, so I had to speak at the top of my voice.

‘Do you drive to London much?’

‘Not if I can help it. They all drive like madmen up there. Run straight into you as soon as look at you. I’ve had enough
to last me a twelvemonth.’

‘You’ve been up recently, then?’

‘Just a week ago, in the old landau, with their armour.’ He flicked the reins and added, ‘And him. Not that I knew it at the
time.’

‘Simon Handy?’

‘Yes. I said to the policeman, “Do you think I’d have driven a corpse up there if I’d have known? Do I look like a bleeding
undertaker?”’

‘Policeman? When?’

‘Day before yesterday. Didn’t look like a policeman, but reckoned he was. All those questions. Had I gone straight to London?
Had I stopped anywhere and left the crates without anybody looking after them? I said, sarcastic like: “Oh no, I went by way
of Wigan and Manchester.” Of course I went straight there, or straight as I could in London. I was driving up and down Oxford
Street three or four times, looking for the way into Bond Street.’

‘And did you bring Simon Handy’s body back again on Saturday?’

He looked as if he were going to spit then thought better of it.

‘No, I did not. Somebody from London did that.’

Once we’d turned into the track to the cottage he had to concentrate on steering among the ruts and potholes, so there was
no chance to ask anything else. When we reached the turning point he got out to help me down, then spun the gig in an expert
circle and went back up the track, waving to me with his whip.

There was no sign of Tabby at the cottage. Plenty of things showed that she’d been active in my absence, from breakfast plates
roughly washed, a broken cup on the table, a pile of sticks for kindling by the door. I decided there was enough time for
me to walk into town before supper. I needed to keep my communications with London open, and though I wasn’t expecting any
letters yet, I could at least find the mail office. It was a walk of two miles or so, but I discovered a footpath that cut
through fields to the old bridge. The mail office was next to the Bear and still open. I made myself known and, to my surprise,
was handed a letter that had arrived that morning. It was on scented pink paper with a silver wax seal, addressed in curly
feminine handwriting. Evidently from neither Mrs Martley nor Amos Legge, the two people I thought might write to me. When
I sat down on the edge of a horse trough and broke the seal, the first three words solved the mystery.

My Dear Elizabeth…

Celia. The date on the top was Saturday’s so her letter must have followed me down.

It really is too provoking of you to be called to the country, just when you and I had met again. Is it some sick old aunt?
If so, I only hope she leaves you a fortune in her will to make up for being such an inconvenience. It could not have come
at a worse time. When I reached home after the party where we met on Monday night, Philip gave me such a lecture for being
out late. Then, in the morning, he thought I looked pale so would insist on calling the doctor and the doctor said I must
lie on my couch and not move a finger for days and days or the baby might suffer. So what can I do? I really had no idea that
this whole process was so achingly tedious. Why is one not warned? So here I am, being waited on like a Sultana in a harem
(is it really Sultana? It sounds more like something from a pudding, but Philip says that’s right) positively forbidden to
move. My only refuge is to write letters like this one and have my friends visit with the latest gossip, which I’m glad to
say they do. A propos of which, I have a bone to pick with you, my dear. Why didn’t you tell me when we met about what happened
at the Eyre Arms? I assure you, the whole town is talking about it. The Brinkburns, of course, but you as well. Is it really
true that you put on armour like the woman in that long and rather tedious poem, challenged Miles and knocked him out of the
saddle?

I groaned. I should have known that my moment of foolishness would be gossiped up into something quite ridiculous. After cursing
myself, Amos and all the people in society who had nothing better to do, I read on. Wafts of perfume rose from the pages.

In any case, you have made a conquest in every sense. They say that Miles has been asking everybody about you. You know, if
things turn out one way, you could do worse. He’s the younger son, of course, but more than comfortably provided for and certainly
one of the twenty most handsome men in London. (Some people say one of the ten, but the list keeps changing.) A sudden thought
–is he why you left town so suddenly? I wonder. It can sometimes be good tactics to absent oneself for a while after provoking
a man’s interest, but two or three days are enough unless he is staying somewhere remarkably quiet and without distractions,
like a Scottish castle, in which case he may be safely left for a week or two.

I felt like scrunching the letter up and throwing it in the drinking trough, but the smell of it might have frightened the
horses, so I read on.

But, of course, things are complicated by La Rosa. Stephen seems to be behaving very oddly in this respect. Nobody has seen
him for three or four days. He has not been practising at the Eyre Arms and has missed two dinners, an opera and a ball–
all of which he was expected to attend with Rosa. She went to the dinners with some old male cousin, but wasn’t to be seen
at the ball or the opera. It is practically unheard of for an engaged man to desert his fiancée like this at the height of
the season, unless he’s an officer called away to the army, and even then the best regiments can be quite accommodating. They
say Rosa is absolutely furious with him, and so should I be in her shoes. Perhaps she’s hoping that Miles will turn out after
all to be The True Heir. (Isn’t there a play called that?) Of course, that might be disappointing news for you, if I’m right
in my guess. I often am proved right. Philip says I have an instinct. In any case, if it really is your aunt, I do hope the
old lady gets better or dies very quickly, so that you can return to town and to your affectionate friend who misses you and
wishes very much that you were here to entertain her in her captivity,

Celia

By the time I got back to the cottage I’d walked myself into a better temper and was even ready to laugh about Celia’s fantasies.
She was right about one thing. Stephen’s absence from fashionable London was puzzling. If ever there was a time to brave it
out, it surely was now.

There was still no sign of Tabby and I was beginning to worry. The back streets and yards of London were her element, but
the country was new to her. She might have got lost in the woods, fallen in the river. The sun was well down towards the treetops
before the sound of a voice singing came along the path from the village. The voice was not beautiful and the song was a bawdy
tavern ballad that a girl her age shouldn’t have known. (I probably shouldn’t have known it either.) Still, in my state of
worry, it was sweeter than a nightingale.

‘Tabby, where in the world have you been?’

She looked surprised at my annoyance.

‘Up at the houses. Polly said I could go and look at her bees if I wanted.’

‘Polly?’

‘The woman who came and cleaned this morning. She keeps thousands of them in a sort of upside-down basket thing in her garden.
She says they make honey. Was she pulling my leg, do you think?’

‘No. Tabby, it was kind of Mrs Todd to invite you, but I was worried. If you’d left a note for me…’

She gave me an angry look. I deserved it. Where in the life she’d led could she have learned to write or read?

‘You didn’t tell me I was supposed to stay here,’ she said sullenly.

Which was true, because I’d assumed she’d be too intimidated by her new surroundings to go far.

Our supper was ham and eggs fried in a pan over the fire, the slices of ham plumper and pinker than in London, egg yolks golden
as the evening sunlight coming through the window. Tabby ate with appetite, elbows on the table, egg on her chin. The fear
that she was missing had started me worrying about what I was doing to her. It was all very well taking her with me on a whim.
As far as I’d thought about her future, I’d supposed that working for me for a while might ease her path into proper domestic
service, with her knees under somebody else’s table and a roof over her head. In time, she might even rise to the heights
of a real lady’s maid. Now, obeying her casual request to pass the salt, watching her hack at the loaf of bread, I knew that
was as unlikely as water running uphill. Tabby had never learned deference, a far graver defect in a servant than lack of
reading and writing, and I was not the person to teach it to her. Instead, once her hunger was satisfied, I let her rattle
on about her visit to the village. She seemed to have struck up an instant friendship with Mrs Todd.

‘Five children, she’s got. She said she wanted to stop at four, only her husband wouldn’t. He works at the public house. It’s
his brother what’s married to the woman whose sister was friendly with the one what got killed.’

‘With Simon Handy?’

I was trying to keep up with this tangle of relationships. As far as I could make out, we were talking about Mrs Todd’s husband’s
brother’s sister-in-law.

‘Yes. I told Polly about what happened here last night. She says it might have been his ghost walking, because of being shut
out of the churchyard like that.’

She looked at me triumphantly.

‘Did you mention that he was rowing a boat as well?’

She disregarded it.

‘Polly says it gives her the shivers, with her living right next to the churchyard, in case he decides to walk in on her one
night. She says she wouldn’t have him in the house when he was alive, but she doesn’t know what she could do about it now
he’s dead.’

‘She didn’t like him, then?’

‘Nah, she said nobody liked him, except her husband’s brother’s wife’s sister–Violet’s her name–and even then they were
always quarrelling because he wouldn’t give her any money for herself or his kids.’

‘What children?’

‘Violet’s.’

‘By Handy?’

‘Yes.’

‘So was Handy married to Violet?’

‘Not in the church, no. That’s what Polly said to her: that she couldn’t do nothing about it in any case because of them not
being married in church.’

My head was spinning.

‘Let’s go outside,’ I said. ‘Put the plates in the sink and you can wash them in the morning.’

We sat on the bench by the porch. The flowers of the evening primroses were still glowing yellow in the dusk as if they had
their own source of light, the warm-animal smell of them filling the air.

‘So you were there when this woman Violet came to talk to Mrs Todd?’ I said.

‘Yes. She came when we were looking at the bees. Polly wasn’t any too pleased to see her, you could tell that. She said they
shouldn’t be arguing in front of strangers.’

‘They argued?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Polly and me were out in her garden, then Polly looks over the wall and says, “Here comes trouble.” This woman comes in,
hair all over the place and petticoat trailing in the dust, goes straight up to Polly and says, “What are we going to do about
it then?” So Polly says she doesn’t know what she’s talking about–only you can tell she does really–and Violet says, “You
know very well. Getting that wall put back in its proper place.”’

‘Meaning the churchyard wall?’

‘Yes. Violet says, “Lady or not, she can’t do that,” and Polly says, “She can, and she’s done it.” Violet says she had no
right, and Polly says her husband owns all the houses in the village, so she can do what she likes.’

‘What did Violet expect Mrs Todd to do about it?’

‘Violet had this idea that all the men in the village should go out at night and put the wall back where it had been. She
wanted Polly to tell her husband to help. Polly said it was a daft idea and she wouldn’t. That’s when she told Violet she
had no rights anyway, because of not being married in church. Violet started shouting at her about having no respect for her
own flesh and blood. Polly said, “You’re not my flesh and blood, and Handy certainly wasn’t. He didn’t even come from round
here. In any case, he was only ever in your bed when he couldn’t find a warmer one.”’