Angel With Two Faces (2 page)

Clean-living Harry might not have been, but popular he most certainly was. The small church was packed with mourners – people who had worked alongside him, fishermen he had shared a drink with, and young women who had fancied their chances with his charm and good looks. Harry was an estate worker like his father before him, but his warmth and affability had ensured him a welcome in the village that usually kept itself quite separate from Loe, and he had managed to bridge the gap between land and sea in a way that was rare. That his death should touch a whole community was perhaps no surprise, but Archie sensed Morwenna falter as she entered the church and he guessed that she had been taken aback by the size of the crowd and the strength of feeling for her brother. He heard someone encourage her gently to move on, and the procession passed down the central aisle towards the chancel. As they reached the altar, Christopher Snipe – a boy of sixteen or seventeen and the youngest of the bearers – missed his footing on the top step and the coffin dipped perilously at the
back, shooting one of Harry’s riding boots on to the floor. Archie steadied the weight while Christopher recovered himself, and the body was delivered on to the bier without further mishap, but the mistake earned the boy a glare of reproach from his father, who clearly believed that someone born into the undertaking trade should have known better. Still frowning, the undertaker returned the boot to the top of the coffin and melted away into the congregation as only those of his profession knew how. Christopher sat down next to his father, flushed and embarrassed.

The other bearers found seats that had been saved for them, and Archie slipped into the front pew next to his cousins and his uncle William. ‘Nice catch,’ whispered Ronnie, while her elder sister, Lettice, leaned over to give his arm a reassuring squeeze. By now, the Reverend Motley was in full flow from the pulpit, and the words of the thirty-ninth psalm drifted over Archie’s head as he glanced round the church. It must have been two years or more since he had last been in here, but he was sure it had not seemed as neglected and depressing back then. Heat made everything look tired, but the shabbiness of the interior was not just down to the wilting flowers. Many of the windows had been boarded against the storms, which gave the building a permanent air of abandonment; even those which remained uncovered were damaged and dirty, and the ledges were covered with sand which a probing wind had blown through cracks in the glass. Constant exposure to the weather had removed several slates from the roof, and a bucket – incongruously placed at the back of the altar, amid more familiar receptacles of worship – testified to the need for repair. The wood of the pews was dull and unnourished, and even the service books were faded and torn. It seemed that
Jasper’s constant whining was justified: the church
did
require more money, although Archie couldn’t help thinking that the vicar’s appeals for generosity might be better heeded if he and his wife moderated their own standard of living and led more by example.

The lesson was over at last, and Nathaniel Shoebridge, curate of St Winwaloe’s, stood to give the eulogy. Shoebridge was due to take over the living of the parish when Jasper Motley retired at the end of the year; judging by the state of the church, that was something of a poisoned chalice, but Archie had heard good reports of the young man’s dedication, and his appointment was generally looked on as a welcome change to the current regime. As one of Harry’s oldest friends, and part of a family which had farmed on the Loe estate for generations, there was no disputing Nathaniel’s right to carry the coffin, although the friendship between the two men had apparently cooled of late. Archie wondered if they had settled their differences before the accident, and watched with interest as the curate walked nervously up to the lectern.

For Shoebridge, the pulpit was usually as reassuring as a desk to an office worker, but today he felt confined by it; the familiar, hexagonal space seemed somehow narrower, and its polished, heavily carved wood closed in on him like the sides of a coffin, making it difficult to breathe and threatening to stifle his words. Nervously, he glanced up from the lectern and saw a church full of disparate people with disparate memories turned as one towards him. The shyness of his youth came flooding back, and he felt strangely suffocated and exposed at the same time.

His first words were barely audible. ‘Like most of us here, I’ve known Harry for many years,’ he said, aware that
his audience was relying on him for an eloquent expression of sorrow which they could share in and claim as their own. ‘His loss has been difficult for us all to come to terms with.’ He paused, trying to control the anxiety in his voice and speak normally, but the speech ahead of him – even though it had been carefully prepared to mask his emotions – seemed an impossible mountain and he wondered how he was ever to get through it. There was some muttering from the back of the church and he pressed on, concentrating on one sentence at a time and trying to blot out the silent presence of the dead man at his side. ‘Harry had an important place at the heart of our community,’ he said, rushing his words but no longer caring if they were a disappointment. ‘He was honest and hardworking, a loving brother to Morwenna and Loveday, and a good friend to many of us.’ Even to his own ears, the tribute seemed oddly impersonal, as if he were conducting the funeral of a parishioner he had never met. The adjectives he used were inadequate, second-hand accolades for a man whose vitality had dominated a room, and, rather than making things easier for him, the banality of Nathaniel’s respect stuck in his throat. As he faltered at the simplest of phrases, he could see the congregation growing increasingly bewildered at his failure to dispel the stark reality of the coffin and replace it with an image of Harry as he had been in life – warm, generous and fiercely loyal; memorable from the most casual of meetings, and impossible to forget after a lifetime of friendship.

Flicking his pale blond hair back from his eyes, Nathaniel turned gratefully to the book he had brought with him, glad to be able to take refuge in someone else’s words and hoping that he might be able to give them the strength and conviction which his own had lacked. He had chosen a passage from
Tennyson to read, a section from
Idylls of the King
which he loved because it brought together everything he valued most: the stories and legends he had grown up with; the sense of community that drove him on; and the spirituality which now gave him his greatest solace. ‘And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge,’ he began tentatively.

The familiar lines gave him confidence and, for a second, he dared to hope that he might redeem himself after all, but his optimism was short-lived: he made the mistake of looking away from the page, long enough to see that Morwenna was staring up at him from the front row – accusing, disappointed, unforgiving. He continued hurriedly,

At last, it was over. Nathaniel left the pulpit quickly, making no effort to hide his relief. He glanced apologetically at Morwenna and Loveday as he walked back to his seat, acknowledging that they – and Harry – had deserved better from him.

Loveday giggled and slipped from the church, breaking the silence that followed the concluding prayers, and Archie noted
how intently Christopher Snipe watched her leave. The girl’s laughter was unsettling in such close proximity to death, and the mourners – embarrassed and unsure of how to react – looked at each other across the aisle or smiled awkwardly at Morwenna. The tension that had begun with Nathaniel’s eulogy was infectious, and everyone seemed thankful to follow the coffin outside, knowing that the end of the service was in sight.

Small-leaved Cornish elms clustered round the churchyard, revealing flickering glimpses of the sea beyond. The funeral party followed the line of trees round to the rear of the church, where a pile of freshly dug earth marked a new burial place. Loveday was already at the graveside. As they drew near, Archie heard a gasp from one or two of the mourners and had to hide his own surprise when he saw that Harry’s grave was lined throughout with bluebells and primroses, woven carefully into moss and netting to create a living wall of colour where only darkness and soil should have been. The gesture was obviously Loveday’s last gift to an elder brother who, since their parents’ untimely death, had been the most important person in her world; it was an act of love, and it should have been touching – beautiful, almost – but Archie could only think of how many hours the girl must have spent in the grave to do it. Its aesthetic impact could not dispel the image in his mind of a child’s hands working obsessively so close to the dead. A brief look round was enough to tell him that he was not the only one to be disturbed by it, and it was left to Morwenna to embrace her young sister and acknowledge her pride.

As the mourners gathered by the grave, Archie noticed several of them glance instinctively towards their own dead in different parts of the churchyard, remembering other funerals
and other losses. Christopher and his father threaded strips of webbing efficiently under the coffin, ready to lower it gently into the grave. ‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed,’ Jasper Motley continued half-heartedly, ‘we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Archie wondered how many of the people gathered here actually took any comfort from those familiar words. For him, there was a much greater resonance in the sound of a handful of earth hitting the coffin of a man who would never see thirty.

With heads bowed for the final prayer, Archie looked at his watch and realised that Josephine’s train was due to arrive in less than an hour. Because he was expected at the wake, Ronnie had volunteered to collect her from Penzance station and, if she left now, she would be almost on time. As the mourners dispersed, he caught his cousin’s eye through the crowd and signalled to her to get a move on.

‘Do you have time to come back to the cottage?’ Archie had not seen Morwenna come up behind him, and the urgency of her voice took him by surprise.

‘Of course,’ he said. He leant forward to kiss her and offer what futile words of comfort he could find, but she brushed them quickly aside and turned away from approaching well-wishers so that only Archie could hear her. ‘Good, because there’s something I need to say to you in private – something I could never tell anyone else.’ With no further explanation, she took Loveday’s hand and led her firmly away from their brother’s grave.

Josephine Tey sat on a pile of suitcases and waited for her lift, perfectly happy to bask in the sun and do nothing. The broad promenade by Penzance station offered glorious views along many miles of coastline, and she gazed contentedly across at the hills which stretched westwards towards Land’s End, then back across the broad sweep of Mount’s Bay to the Lizard. Even on a Sunday, the traffic of boxes filled with flowers moved relentlessly from the boats to the railway station, connecting the flower gardens of the Scilly Isles with the markets of England’s capital in time for the start of a new week, and turning Penzance into a suburb of Covent Garden. The atmosphere was welcoming and relaxed, and she felt instantly at home. If this was what life in Cornwall was like, she could easily get used to it.

She was sorry not to have travelled down by car with Archie as intended, but his enforced change of plan had left her no time to alter her own arrangements and, in any case, she had no wish to hover in the wings of a stranger’s funeral – first visits to other people’s houses were difficult enough, no matter how close the friendships. So she had kept her luncheon appointment with her London publisher, stayed overnight at her club in Cavendish Square and caught the 10.30 Limited from Paddington, feeling for once like a proper holidaymaker. The sound of Land’s End had a distant, far-away feel which
appealed to her fascination for foreign travel, and she had thoroughly enjoyed the journey: it was no hardship to look out over a constantly changing landscape at one of the most beautiful times of year, and the occasional flash of a naval uniform in the corridors had been a pleasant distraction. All in all, she was thoroughly satisfied with the Cornish Riviera Express; it was hardly surprising that the county was no longer a remote, unapproachable land but a Londoner’s playground – and a popular one, too, if the number of smart couples and robust families on board her train was anything to go by.

Ronnie made her presence felt as soon as she came into view, hooting irreverently all the way along the street before bringing the Austin to an inch-perfect halt in front of Josephine. She jumped out and rushed round to the passenger side, and Josephine noticed some bewildered onlookers trying to reconcile the black of her funeral clothes with the joyful expression on her face. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t had time to change,’ Ronnie said as she hugged her friend, ‘but I was under strict instructions from my dear cousin not to keep you waiting.’

‘You don’t need to apologise for wearing mourning, only for looking gorgeous in it.’ Josephine ran her eyes admiringly over Ronnie’s outfit. ‘You and Lettice ought to start a new sideline in widows’ weeds. I can see the advertisements now – “Grief with Grace”. It might even make your fortune.’

‘You look pretty damned good yourself for someone who’s just got off at the end of the line,’ Ronnie said, throwing the cases into the back of the car. ‘Most people start to wilt at Exeter.’

‘Oh, I don’t know – there’s a certain attraction in getting as far away as you can.’ Josephine smiled. ‘I think it might suit me.’

Ronnie raised an eyebrow, knowing how impatient Josephine was with her home town, which simultaneously claimed her as a famous daughter and resented her success. ‘Has Inverness been as welcoming as usual, then?’

‘A little
too
welcoming if you must know. Every time the papers review one of my plays or even mention my name, I find myself running furtively from the shops to the bus stop, desperately trying to dodge another stream of invitations. If the various societies and committees had their way, I’d be too busy embracing my clan ever to write another word.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder as Ronnie slipped the car into gear and moved off. ‘Actually, I made the mistake of accepting one last month,’ she continued. ‘My old school was putting on an adaptation of
Richard of Bordeaux
in honour of – I quote – “the most illustrious foot to step out of Inverness for two hundred years” – and they asked me to introduce it. I telephoned to find out if they wanted the rest of me or just the foot and, if the latter, was it left or right, and ended up agreeing out of sheer devilment.’

They reached a junction, and Ronnie tried to pull herself together. ‘Wait a minute while I concentrate on this bit,’ she said. ‘If I don’t go the right way here, we’ll end up in Newlyn and I don’t see what either of us has done to deserve that.’

Josephine smiled, amused by a sudden image of her glamorous, city-minded friend against a backdrop of steam trawlers and fishermen. ‘That’s the trouble with you West End types – you can’t face a fish until it’s on the grill at the Savoy. You should be ashamed to call yourself Cornish.’

‘Oh, it’s not the fish I object to, it’s the artists. It used to be a charming little place. Now you can’t move for easels clogging up the street and people in smocks trying to capture the
“Newlyn style”, whatever that is. It’s a proper little industry – two hundred canvases shipped up to Burlington House every year, and you should see what’s left here for the tourists. No, give me a mackerel any day – they might stink, but at least they serve a purpose.’

Pleased to see that being on home territory seemed to have little effect on Ronnie’s outspokenness, Josephine let her concentrate on the roads and took the opportunity to get a better sense of Penzance. They passed along a residential street lined with unelaborate stone houses, the ordinariness of which was compensated for by unexpectedly luxuriant displays in the gardens. Rhododendrons and fuchsias flourished in corners and doorways, and more exotic planting was evident in spiky green leaves which peeped out from the terraced rear courtyards. ‘All this reminds me of the continent,’ she said to Ronnie, surprised at how very un-English everything seemed.

‘It’s practically Cannes, dear – well, compared to where you’re going to be staying it is. I should warn you – there’s plenty of peace and beauty on the Loe estate, but not much night-life.’

‘I don’t want to disappoint you, but it’s the peace I’m here for. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything much lately, and I really must get down to some work. I’m hoping that a few long walks and a bit of sea air will do the trick.’

‘Lettice said you’re doing another crime novel.’

‘That’s the plan. Having to give evidence in a murder trial rather dampened my enthusiasm for real-life drama, so I thought I’d go back to pure fiction for a bit.’ The words were lightly said, but she knew that Ronnie would not be fooled. Last year, during the run of Josephine’s most successful play,
Richard of Bordeaux
, the violent death of a young fan had
affected Josephine deeply, and all that had happened subsequently still haunted her. There had been moments during the last few months when, had it not been for her friendship with Archie and his cousins, she might have given in completely to the feelings of guilt and sorrow which had hounded her since Elspeth’s murder. The trial, and the necessity of having to confront people for whom she felt such strong and differing emotions, had been one of the worst experiences of her whole life; at the end of it, the person responsible for so much grief had been brought to justice, but she had been surprised to discover how little consolation that gave her and that, in turn, led her to question everything she thought she believed in. It was unlike her not to be able to find refuge from sadness in her work, but theatre – for the moment at least – was too closely connected with a sense of loss for her to find any joy or purpose in it.

‘My heart’s just not in it right now,’ she admitted, more seriously this time, ‘and there’s no point in doing anything if you’re going to be lacklustre about it. The publishers have been baying for another shocker ever since
The Man in the Queue
, and with
Queen of Scots
not being quite the success that everyone hoped for, it seemed a good time to give in to them.’

‘Well, you know Lettice and I are helping out with the local drama group this week and amateur theatricals always bring out a murderous streak in us, so just ask if you’re stuck for a plot line.’ They were on the open road by now, although Ronnie was still driving so slowly that Josephine half-wondered if there was something wrong with the car; caution behind the wheel was something she would have expected more from Lettice than her sister. ‘I do hope you’re going to come out and support the Winwaloe Players on Tuesday night.’ She laughed
as she saw the expression on Josephine’s face. ‘They’re giving their
Jackdaw of Rheims
.’

‘Isn’t that a poem?’

‘Not by the time they’ve finished with it. Actually, they’re really rather good, and the theatre alone is worth the trip.’

‘So I hear. Archie said it was right on the edge of a cliff and absolutely breathtaking. Whose idea was that?’

‘A woman called Rowena Cade. She’s barking mad, of course – well, you have to be to carve a theatre out of a rock, don’t you – but in the best possible way. She started it about three years ago, and we got roped into helping with the costumes for the show that our lot put on there. We’ve done it ever since – it’s really rather magical as long as the weather holds.’ Ronnie reached behind her and took a flask and a bag of shortbread from the back seat.

‘Do I detect the Snipe at work?’ Josephine asked. Having often stayed with the Motleys in St Martin’s Lane, she was familiar with their formidable cook, who had travelled with the sisters when they made the permanent move from Cornwall to London just after the war, and who also kept house for Archie. Much to everyone’s surprise, the change had suited Dora Snipe and she took instantly to city life, returning only for the occasional holiday and to ensure that standards had not dropped in her absence.

‘You certainly do. She’s taken control of her old kitchen with a vengeance, and she found time in between the wake bakes to make you these.’

‘Good God, does she do funerals as well?’

‘Oh yes. In fact, it’s a bit of a family business. The undertaker – Jago – is her brother-in-law.’

Josephine took out a biscuit and ate it thoughtfully. ‘What
did
happen to her husband, by the way? I don’t think I ever knew.’

‘No one does. She came to us thirty-odd years ago, and she was on her own by then. She never talks about her marriage, and the only thing anyone seems to know is that it ended when it was still very new.’

‘But she was widowed?’

Ronnie shrugged. ‘Would you be brave enough to pry? The one thing I can say with any certainty is that she’ll have got a good deal on the burial if he
did
die.’

Intrigued, Josephine poured some tea from the flask, grateful now for Ronnie’s sedate pace. ‘How’s Archie?’ she asked. ‘I can think of better starts to a holiday than carrying a coffin.’

‘Bearing up, if you’ll excuse the pun. Lettice and I always dread any big occasion taking place while we’re at home – weddings, funerals, christenings, they’re all the same. Everyone’s got such a history, you see – they’ve lived and worked together on that estate for generations, and that makes for very strong alliances, and even stronger grudges. It’s like being part of some sort of brotherhood, I suppose – if you imagined something midway between Camelot and Dennis Wheatley, you’d have it about right.’ They both laughed. ‘Most of the time, it’s all perfectly normal. The estate’s big enough for everyone to have his role, and there’s something rather fine about the way they all work together to keep it going. But when we’re gathered together under one roof, it all gets a bit tense and incestuous.’

‘Not unlike the theatre, then,’ Josephine said wryly. ‘It must be home from home for you.’

‘I’d never thought of it like that, but now you mention it,
there are some similarities. I have to say, though, it was a very strange do today, even by our standards. The young lad, Christopher – the Snipe’s nephew, in fact – he nearly dropped the coffin; the curate bungled the eulogy; and, to cap it all, when we came out of the church desperate to get the man safely in the ground, his little sister had tarted the grave up to look like a florist’s showpiece. We rounded the corner and there she was – grinning over six feet of bluebells. All very Lady of Shalott. I could have died, but I’m eternally grateful to you for saving me from the wake. It can only have got worse.’

Josephine pictured the scene with a shudder. She had a hatred of funerals, and in particular of flowers on graves. ‘If anything happens to me, I don’t want a petal in sight,’ she said. ‘But are you seriously telling me that someone let a child decorate the inside of a grave?’

‘Loveday’s not exactly a child. I suppose she’s about fourteen, but she’s always been precocious and her outlook on the world can be a little – well, fanciful. To be honest with you,’ Ronnie added confidingly, ‘I don’t think she’s quite right in the head, but nobody would ever say that. They just accept her for what she is. The parents are both dead, but there’s another sister – Harry’s twin – and the three of them were devoted to each other. I dread to think how this has affected them.’

‘What happened to Harry, anyway? Archie said there was an accident, but he didn’t have time to tell me much.’

‘Well, Harry’s always been one of those daredevil types, but this time his luck ran out. The stupid boy rode his horse into the lake and drowned.’

‘What happened to the horse?’ ‘He swam safely to the other bank. Trust you to think of that first.’

‘Well, I’ve always thought the phrase “daredevil type” was another way of saying “irresponsible bastard”,’ Josephine said tartly, ‘so my sympathies are firmly with the horse. Don’t you think it’s a little selfish to get yourself killed like that?’

‘I know what you mean, but don’t say it out loud when we get there – you’ll be lynched. Everyone loved Harry, and they certainly won’t have a word spoken against him now he’s dead.’

‘Let’s ask the older sister in three months’ time shall we?’ retorted Josephine scornfully. ‘I don’t think I could ever forgive someone who left me so unnecessarily, no matter how much I loved them – and I’m financially independent. From what you say, she’s got a tough time ahead.’

‘Pa will look after her – he always has. And Jago – he and his wife were good friends with the parents, and he’ll do what he can for Morwenna.’ They turned off the main road and followed a narrow lane which ran closer to the sea. Ferns of every description lined the roadside, and the hedgerows were filled with campion and bluebells – as beautiful in their natural setting as they had been sinister a few moments before. ‘Pa won’t tell you this himself, but he saved Loveday’s life when she was a little girl,’ Ronnie explained. ‘There was a fire at their cottage one night a few years back – a spark must have caught in the thatch and it went up like a beacon. Pa saw it across the park and got there as soon as he could with a couple of men from the stables. He found Loveday crouching by the stairs while another man dragged Harry unconscious from his room, but it was too late for the parents – they both died in their beds.’