Child's Play (10 page)

Mrs Gwendoline Huby called her
Keech.
Alexander Huby had called her
Keechie.
John Huby generally called her nothing to her face and 'that cold calculating cow' to her back. It irked him greatly to hear old Windypants using her surname as to the manner born, and even more to hear her poncy son drawling out
Keechie
as if he'd got a silver spoon stuck in his gob!

To the Old Mill girls, she was always
Miss Keech
, which was right and proper, for children should be polite to adults, however undeserving; but Huby did nothing to discourage their private conviction, fostered by the more imaginative and better-read Lexie, that this dark-clad figure was really the Wicked Witch of the West.

'Notice the
Beurre Hardy,
Lexie. In all the years I have been at Troy House, I do not believe I have seen a more bountiful crop.'

Lexie duly noted the pear tree. She did not resent Miss Keech's gubernatorial manner, nor was she offended (as her father claimed to be) by such a pedantic style and affected accent in one of such humble origins. But she hadn't liked Miss Keech from her earliest memories of her, and had been consistent in this dislike as in most things.

The feeling, she suspected, was mutual. Only once had it come near to open declaration. On visiting Sundays, the two girls were normally allowed to escape after tea and play in the garden with Hob, the donkey, and the two goats. On wet days, they would descend into the capacious cellar which was used for storage of old furniture and other junk. Well lit and relatively dry, it provided a marvellous playroom for the children. At one end of it was a small oaken door with a Norman arch which looked as if it should have been in a fairytale castle, and Lexie invented various enthralling tales of what lay beyond for her wide-eyed sister. Then one day as she finished one of her stories, she became aware of Miss Keech standing at the head of the cellar stairs.

'Is Lexie right, Miss Keech?' piped up Jane, 'Is there really a magic garden through that door.'

'Oh no, Jane,' said Keech in a matter-of-fact tone. 'That's where we keep the old bodies of everyone who's died here.'

The effect had been devastating. Jane had fled from the cellar and refused ever to go down there again. On wet Sundays thereafter they had found themselves constrained to sit in the dull drab drawing-room looking at dull drab books. Miss Keech had told Jane not to be silly, but Lexie had detected the edge of malicious satisfaction there and knew it was directed at her. She had boldly demanded the key to the oaken door from Miss Keech, ready to explode her own fairytales in the cause of revealing Miss Keech's lie. The woman had produced it without hesitation, saying, 'Of course you may look inside, Lexie. But you must go by yourself. I have no time for such childishness.'

Again the malice. She had known full well that a small girl of eight, no matter how self-possessed, was not impervious to such imaginative fears.

But Lexie had descended alone. Terror had weakened her skinny legs, but something stronger than terror had urged her on. There was no way she could articulate it, but it had something to do with a sense of what was right.

The door had swung open without even a creak to reveal a small inner cellar lined with wine racks, empty since Sam Huby's death. His widow admitted a little sweet sherry in the drawing-room but had no need of wine. As for Lomas's beers on which her fortune rested, she had tasted a light ale once at the age of twenty, and never repeated the disagreeable experience.

Lexie had gone to fetch Jane to show her the truth of the matter, but the words of an adult are stronger than the word of a sister, and Jane had only collapsed in tearful refusal while Miss Keech looked on in silent triumph, knowing she had ruined the cellar for them for ever.

All that had been ages ago, but it had stamped a seal on their relationship. Only once had Lexie had cause to waver in her judgement and that was three years ago when Great Aunt Gwen had had her first stroke. The degree of Miss Keech's distress had amazed everyone.

‘Must know she's been left out of the will!' John Huby had posited mockingly. But the woman's concern and agitation and unsparing attendance on her sick employer had impressed most observers deeply, causing even Lexie to admit a slight modification of her judgement.

'Is Mr Lomas, Rod, ready?' she now asked.

'Just completing his breakfast. Have you time for a cup of coffee? Do step inside in any case.'

It was Lexie's first visit to Troy House since the funeral meats. Externally, the square, grey Victorian building was little changed. The well-kept garden with its gloomy shrubberies still had the goats on long tethers at the foot of the lawn while Hob the donkey grazed nearby, indifferent and free.

Inside, however, there were signs of change, subtle but significant. Several of the doors off the large but gloomy entrance hall were closed for a start. In Great Aunt Gwen's time, no door and few windows were ever closed as this interfered with her animals' right of total access to every part of the house. Also the hall itself was surely not quite so gloomy as before. The heavy velvet drapes which, even when drawn open, still inhibited ninety per cent of the light entering via the stained-glass windows on either side of the door, had disappeared, and on the dark green silk wallpaper two lighter rectangles showed where half-length portraits of King Edward and Queen Alexandra had glowered out of gilded frames these past seventy-odd years.

The kitchen had changed too, but not subtly. There were bright new chintzy curtains at the windows, a new sink unit in stainless steel had replaced the ancient deep crazed pot one, yellow and white vinyl tiles covered the old stone floor and there was a new drop-leaf formica table in bright blue in place of the old solid-state wooden one which had impeded passage for all but the very slimmest. At this table sat Rod Lomas, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.

'Lexie,' he said, 'you must be early.'

'You've got two minutes,' she said.

'Time for another coffee, then,' he replied.

She didn't answer but stared at him with that expression of nervous determination he was beginning to recognize.

'All right,' he said, rising. 'I'll get my jacket.'

He left the room. Miss Keech poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Lexie. The Old Mill Inn girls had always thought of her as old, but today, aged about seventy, she looked somehow younger than Lexie could ever recall. It was perhaps the touch of colour which varied the hitherto unbroken blackness of her clothing; a red silk scarf at her neck, a diamante brooch at her bosom.

'You've got the kitchen nice,' said Lexie.

'Thank you. It's never too late for change, is it?'

Lexie sipped her coffee and did not reply.

Miss Keech laughed, and this was as surprising as the vinyl tiles and the red scarf.

'You must come again, Lexie, and talk over old times.'

This time Lexie was saved from having to answer by Lomas calling, 'Ready!' from the entrance hall.

'Thank you for the coffee,' was all she said as she left, but Miss Keech only responded to this evasion with that surprising laugh once more.

Outside, Lomas, though not particularly tall, made a great business of folding himself into the Mini.

'This is a most selfish kind of car for you to drive,' he complained. 'Can't you afford something larger?'

'I can't afford this,' said Lexie, accelerating to the forty m.p.h. which both her own caution and the car's limitations dictated was the optimum maximum speed.

'But your mad social life demands that you have wheels,' mocked Lomas.

Lexie replied seriously, 'The buses don't run very late from town. And I like to get across to Leeds quite a lot.'

'What excitements keep you late in town and take you across to licentious Leeds?'

'I like to go to concerts,' said Lexie. 'And they've got the opera at Leeds.'

'Good lord!' said Lomas. 'Of course. The will! Auntie Gwen left you all her operatic records. It struck me as odd when I saw that.'

'Odd to leave them to someone like me?' said Lexie.

'Well, not exactly that....'

'It would seem odd, I suppose,' said Lexie. 'But she knew I liked music. She made Dad send me to piano lessons. Dad thought they were a waste of time, but she said a girl should have music. He didn't argue with her, but he kept on at me about the expense.'

'So you've got more reason to be grateful to Gwen than most of us,' mused Lomas.

'Not really. When Dad said it were a waste of time for me to stay on at school, she backed him up there. Education was for men; girls had to settle for accomplishments like drawing and playing the piano, and then get married and settle down to mothering handsome, talented boys.'

'Do I detect a bitter note?'

'Mebbe. But I was grateful about the lessons, even if I got them for the wrong reasons. And I don't play bad. Great Aunt Gwen liked me to play for her, and sing a bit too. That's how I started with the opera.'

'And you drive all the way to Leeds in this antique just to listen to that caterwauling? You're full of surprises, little Lexie. What about
real
art? The theatre? Shakespeare!'

'Yes, I quite like it,' she said seriously. 'But music is different, isn't it? I mean, it takes you out of . . .'

She glanced down at her skinny frame and Lomas felt an upsurge of pity.

'You look jolly nice to me,' he said gallantly.

She looked at him in puzzlement and said, 'Do I?'

'Yes, you do. I'll be proud to have you along as a family claque on my first night next Monday. With Mummy, of course.'

'She's staying that long, is she?'

'You knew she was here?' said Lomas in surprise. 'I didn't know myself till last night.'

'She's been out to the Old Mill to talk to Dad,' said Lexie. 'Jane told me when I got home from my class.'

'Has she now? I've not seen her myself. I just got a message via Keechie inviting me to lunch at the Howard Arms today. She doesn't let grass grow under her feet, does she? And what do you imagine Mummy and your father found to talk about?'

'Don't know. He didn't tell me,' said Lexie, though as Jane had also told her about Andrew Goodenough's visit, she was able to make a guess.

She dropped Lomas outside the theatre. As he got out of the car, he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. It was done too quickly for her to take evasive reaction and her small gasp of surprise only rendered the kiss a little less cousinly. She was careful not to crash her gears as she drove away.

In the office, she found Eden Thackeray already at his desk. He had been in a strange, almost distracted mood the previous afternoon but now he seemed back to normal.

'Lexie, my dear. Would you get me the police on the phone? Detective-Superintendent Dalziel.'

A few moments later Lexie heard a voice like a mastiff's roused from slumber growl, 'Dalziel.'

She put her employer on.

'Hello. Eden Thackeray. Listen, I was just wondering if you could spare the time to have lunch with me. Yes, today. I thought the Gents at one.'

'The Gents?' said Dalziel dubiously.

A couple of years earlier he had been persuaded to apply for membership of The Borough Club For Professional Gentlemen, having been a guest several times and expressed appreciation of the solid fare, cheap booze and plentiful snooker tables. To the embarrassment of his sponsors, some member had exercised his right of the anonymous blackball and Dalziel had vowed never to go near the place again unless through a pole-axed door at the head of a vice-squad raid.

'Yes, I know there was that unfortunate business, but the villain responsible will surely be more pained by your presence than your absence.'

It was the right psychological approach.

Dalziel said, 'Right. One o'clock it is.'

Putting the phone down, he demanded of the empty air before him, 'And what does that cunning old sod want?'

The air did not reply.

In the middle of the morning, Andrew Goodenough turned up for his appointment with Eden Thackeray.

When Lexie took in the coffee and biscuits a few minutes later the two men were already down to business.

'I already have CODRO's agreement to proceed in this business and I have made an appointment to see Mrs Falkingham of WFE in Ilkley early this evening when her assistant, Miss Brodsworth, will be present. I don't anticipate any objection there. I've conferred with the two nearest relatives, Mrs Windibanks and Mr John Huby . . .'

Thackeray coughed discreetly.

'My secretary here is Mr Huby's elder daughter,' he said.

'Oh,' said Goodenough uncertainly. 'How do you do?'

'I'm very well, thanks,' said Lexie. 'Sugar.'

'No.'

After Lexie had left, Thackeray said, 'You may rely on her discretion, I believe. And in any case there can be no clash of interest. I know Huby's solicitor and I do not doubt that his advice has been that to make a claim on his own behalf would be a waste of money. No doubt you will be offering an
ex gratia
compensatory payment . . .'

He smiled. Goodenough smiled back.