Fearful Symmetry (7 page)

Dotty’s teabags and Tupperware container of milk stood in front of the bread bin next to the electric kettle, an old-fashioned and highly polished model. It looked from the outside to be quite serviceable, but following with her eyes the thick black snake of flex stretching from the back of it, Sara saw that the plug had been gnarled by fire into a melted little fist of black rubber. Traces of smoke from the single socket a few inches above the worktop lay in greasy grey licks across the wall, where the paint had begun to blister. Sara lifted the kettle lid. The crusted black element sat surrounded by flakes of burned limescale that had been seared off the insides.

‘Found the bags?’ Dotty was in the doorway. Her eyes rested on the kettle and she sighed. ‘Awful, isn’t it? I can’t bear to think about it.’

‘What happened to it?’

Dorothy Price sighed again. ‘After the explosion she somehow managed to get out of the door here and up the steps, and someone found her right outside by the railings. She was hysterical, in the end she collapsed on the pavement. According to the police, she must have had the kettle on, because by the time the woman ran back in here to call an ambulance, it had boiled dry and a fire was starting in the socket. The kettle doesn’t switch itself off, you see, it’s so ancient. Luckily she managed to deal with it all right, apart from the mess on the wall. If poor Imogen had made it any further along the crescent and the woman had phoned from somewhere else, the whole place could have gone up.’

‘You’ve had to clear everything up, then?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘In here. After the explosion, the fire and all the breakfast things, her teapot, whatever. It’s all been cleaned up. It’s all immaculate, except for the kettle.’

‘Oh, no, that’s just Imogen for you. The neighbour wiped round after the fire, I suppose. And the police came after that and cleaned up the worst of the, er, you know, the evidence. They went through everything, even the rubbish bin. All they found was breakfast debris, of course, and I don’t see how that’s supposed to help.’

‘Well, I suppose they look at everything. But they haven’t any idea who did it yet, I suppose?’

‘No. Oh, no. Imogen fought plenty of little battles, but nothing serious. Or so I used to think. But, no, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a random thing.’

‘How, random?’

‘You know, like these nutcases you hear about. Like that fellow with a grudge against Sainsbury’s, for instance. Setting off bombs. I think it’ll be someone like that. Wait and see. Meanwhile, the police go through waste bins.’ She sighed.

Sara, for a reason she did not quite understand, decided to keep her friendship with the detective chief inspector to herself, even though it prevented her from defending him.

Dotty went on sadly, ‘So she’d finished breakfast, and with Imogen that meant everything was instantly washed and dried and put away. She was like that. I worked for her, you know, until she retired. She was headmistress of Combe Down Academy, you know, the girls’ boarding school? We’ve dropped the ‘for Young Ladies’ now, of course. I’m still there. Bursar now. I was just the admissions secretary in Imogen’s day.’

‘Is that when you became friends?’

‘Heavens, no, I was much too young and scared of her then. No, it was long after she’d retired, about six years ago. I believe I ran into her in Waitrose. I got the impression she was a bit lonely. So I called in to see her from time to time after that, regularly.’

‘I am so sorry. It must be awful losing a good friend, especially like this.’

Dotty prevaricated. ‘Oh, well. Yes, and now there’s the funeral to arrange, and one wonders what she would have liked. I’ve asked Canon Hart-Browne to officiate. Do you know him? Adam Hart-Browne, at Bathford. Not her parish, but he knew her years ago.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, it’s hard, having to guess what she would have liked. I suppose we were friends, although I think I always thought of her as the headmistress. She had her faults, of course, who doesn’t? We’re not here to judge. I suppose we can all be difficult, can’t we? You know, I should get back to the books. Are you getting us that tea?’ She disappeared.

When Sara returned ten minutes later from upstairs with two mugs, Dotty flopped into one of Imogen Bevan’s armchairs and rubbed her eyes. Neither her purposeful banging of dusty books, nor little exclamations over funny titles, nor her tidy, organised piles could dispel the air of redundancy surrounding the things that a dead person has no further use for.

‘I’m not taking any of this away, of course. We haven’t got probate yet, the valuers haven’t even been in. I was just curious to see what there was. It’s mine now, you see. She’s left me all the contents.’

Sara looked round the room. The books, such as fill secondhand, rather than antiquarian, bookshops, took up two bookcases. There was a nest of little tables, a small cabinet containing several paperweights of Caithness glass, a set of four cranberry glasses and one small decanter. There were ornaments of brass over the fireplace, two blue and white plates and one doleful Staffordshire dog whose broken ear appeared to have been glued back on with a small spadeful of toffee. There were a few fairly pleasant pictures, a practical clock. The matching furniture was well upholstered in disastrous sage Dralon, in excellent condition and unprepossessing. There were no sentimental reminders of a lifetime’s teaching, no hideous, well-loved, handmade offerings from any one of the thousands of children who must have passed through her hands. Nothing in the room spoke of any quirkiness or irrational taste, no inspired or impulse buy, not a single crazy moment in seventy-four years when Imogen Bevan had said to herself,
Gosh! I must have that, and it will remind me of this wonderful day for ever and ever
. Sara felt sorry for Dotty. While there was nothing wrong with any of the stuff, it seemed to her entirely resistible, merely an unlooked-for responsibility. You just wouldn’t want nearly all of it.

As if she had read her mind, Dotty said, ‘I don’t think I even want it. Poor Imogen. It feels odd, sizing up her things. I keep thinking she’ll pop up and tell us off for our impertinence. She was quite a character.’

‘She had her faults, you said.’

Dotty gave a resigned smile. ‘Well, yes, but it’s a little late for all that, isn’t it? I think we all just accepted it when she was head; it was only afterwards I started to notice. She always had some squabble or other going with someone—with a shop, or one of the neighbours or the Oxfam lot. Always something. I think it kept her going, just like the school did before she retired. I suppose she needed to control everybody. I didn’t come as often as I could, but I don’t think anybody else came at all.’

‘But she saw other people, didn’t she? Didn’t she do lots of things?’

‘Oh, plenty. She did lots. But I don’t think she had proper friends, except me. I was amazed when she asked me to be her executor. When I agreed to it, I had no idea what was in the will.’

Sara tried not to look curious and failed.

‘Imogen left the house contents to me, but she’s left everything else to the school. The lot, mainly the proceeds from the flat. It’s to set up a trust for a sixth-form travel scholarship.’

Dotty’s voice began to thicken. She fished out her hanky and pushed up her glasses, dabbing at her eyes.

‘From her, of all people. A travel scholarship. But I suppose that’s where her heart was, in her school. She wasn’t easy, but the thought of someone harming her like that—it’s so cruel. Imogen never meant to be cruel, she was just single-minded. They’ve got to catch him, whoever he is. He’s got to be punished. Poor, poor Imogen.’

‘Why would the kettle be on,’ Sara asked abruptly, ‘if she’d had breakfast?’

Dotty looked up, surprised. ‘The kettle? What does it matter now? A little socket fire won’t affect the value of the flat. Look, thank you for the tea, very welcome. I expect that was all Imogen was doing, making herself another cup of tea.’

Sara didn’t think so. Imogen Bevan did not sound like a person who would have allowed herself unscheduled refreshment so soon after breakfast. But she thought, a little sadly, that she might easily have been boiling a kettle to attend to some pressing item of domestic control: clearing the sink with soda or scalding a colony of ants on the patio to assist them out of this world and into the next, perhaps. And she would almost certainly have been a cloth boiler. What an epitaph: Here Lies the Body of Imogen Bevan, Now She’s Boiling Cloths in Heaven. But as Sara took her leave, she refrained from making this observation to soft-hearted Dotty, not because she seemed anxious to get on, but lest it provoke a new outburst of hymn singing.

CHAPTER
9

T
HE NEXT DAY,
Sara felt it was suddenly possible, even imperative, to talk to Andrew—her Andrew, not the near stranger who had met her at the airport. The need to hear his voice had nothing to do with the Bevan enquiry, less still to do with Herve’s arrival in Bath in two days’ time. Possibly it was just that: a need to hear his voice. She called him at work.

It was like having a second chance. It was so easy, so lovely, the way he had immediately taken her call and spoken so eagerly in his burry voice. She loved how he could be at once so relaxed with her, even when speaking from his office, as if nobody else existed and nothing else but his conversation with her were of any importance. She asked about progress in the Bevan case.

‘There’s a piece going in tonight’s
Chronicle
. We’re getting somewhere. It definitely looks like the animal rights brigade: a nasty revenge attack, though probably not meant to be fatal. We’ve got to find the guy and of course he’s done a runner. Could be anywhere, but we’ll get him.’

He was absurdly touched that she had rung. ‘Thanks for asking. Sara, about the other night—’

She stopped him from apologising by trying to apologise herself. He wouldn’t let her, so then she tried to stop him stopping her. They ended up laughing.

‘All right, then, it was your fault,’ he said. ‘All your big-cellist-superstar fault. Absolutely.’

‘Oh no, you’re the cellist. You’re a great cellist. For a detective, that is.’ There was a brief pause during which they both realised that he would be coming over the minute he could get away.

‘Sara? I can make it in about an hour.’

‘Good. Andrew?’

‘Yes?’

‘For a lesson?’

‘At least.’

‘At the very least.’

An hour later, the rush of excitement that had started with the telephone call had not subsided, in either of them. Hardly able to conceal his joy at seeing her, Andrew decided to play it for laughs. At seven o’clock he strode theatrically into Sara’s house and dumped his cello case, while she stood aside in the doorway, her eyes shining.

‘Cut that out, Poole,’ she said. ‘Cuts no ice round here.’

Andrew growled, swung round suddenly, grabbed Sara round the middle and swung her easily over his shoulder. Ignoring her shrieks, her not very serious kicks against his chest and her ineffectual fist blows on his broad back, he stalked off with her to the music room.

‘Say sorry.’

‘Never,’ she said, her voice upside-down, her dark hair almost sweeping the ground.

He swung her round twice, very quickly.

‘Say sorry.’

Buckling now under his own laughter as well, he swung her round three times.

‘Say sorry, you overrated old tart.’

‘Oi! Less of the “old”.’

‘Give in?’

She shrieked as he began another turn.

‘Give in?’

‘In a minute. Right now I’m being sick in your back pocket.’

He swung her down and set her on the ground in front of him. Her arms remained round his neck, so while she, still laughing, got her breath back, he drew strands of hair off her face and out of her mouth. He bent to kiss her.

She slipped out of his grasp, saying, ‘Sit there.’

Andrew sprawled himself on the black linen sofa in the middle of the music room and watched Sara, barefoot, as she crossed the pale floorboards to the shelves covering the whole of one wall. She pressed the Play button on the compact disc player and turned. The volume of sound that blasted from the speakers behind her was so huge that Andrew almost dived across to cover her ears and save her from it. Then a ripple of sensation which started at the base of his spine began to spread up his back. The hair on his neck rose. Her eyes were on him. She seemed hardly able to move, but then walked almost unsteadily over to the armchair and unfolded herself across it, opposite him.

‘Messiaen. Turangalîla-symphonie,’ he mouthed. She nodded, a little disappointed. She had been hoping that this would be new to him so that she would be revealing a new delight. Andrew stretched out on the sofa and watched her. The music ripped at the air all around them and they stared at one another as if seeking safety, at the same time luxuriating in the wide-open danger of Messiaen’s vast, harmonic fields.

It was too loud for talking and in any case they had always felt the same kind of response to such music. What was there that could possibly need saying so urgently that it would merit interrupting a sound like this, music that was also in its way speaking, and no less compellingly for doing so without words? Talking could wait. Long ago they had agreed that some music couldn’t be kept in the background. There were pieces, and this was one of them, that reduced all talk to babble. So they listened.

But Andrew began to wonder if she was planning to play him the whole thing, which he calculated at around one and a half hours. He almost wished them back in the old vinyl and cassette days, because then Sara would have to get up to change the record or turn the tape round and he could then stand up, break the atmosphere somehow, make her understand how frantic he was for them to make love. Sara was trying to concentrate on the music but, not knowing how to read Andrew’s face, was instead wondering why he seemed so relaxed. Shouldn’t he be as excited as she was, to be lying here like this, with both of them knowing what would happen next?

Then it dawned on her that she’d blown it. That last time, when she had rejected him, she hadn’t been thinking straight. But what Andrew was doing now was showing her there were no hard feelings, but that as far as he was concerned the offer was closed. For him, the moment had passed. Mixed with her dismay that for her the moment had arrived too late, was the pressing question of what the hell she should do next.

She got up and stopped the music. Silence rang around them. ‘Right, let’s be having you,’ she said brutally. Andrew blinked. ‘What have you been practising? You have been practising, I hope, when I was away?’

They both needed reminding that she was not a cello teacher. She was an international cellist. If he was gently making it clear he wasn’t going to open himself up to rejection a second time, then she was making it clear, less gently, that he would not have to because she was certainly not desperate enough to lose any dignity over him. He was here for a lesson and that was just fine with her. He had wanted her, he had let her know it and she had rejected him. He did not want her anymore, and she did not care.

Andrew rose, brought his cello case from the hall and opened it on the floor. Sara crossed the music room and arranged two upright chairs and music stands at the far end. Andrew carried over his cello and bow, sat down and began to tune up, as she glided over to the shelves which held her library of music. In the large room their silent choreography achieved their joint object, which was to avoid touching or looking at one another. She brought some volumes over from the shelves and placed them on the closed lid of the grand piano. As she leafed through them, Andrew played scales. He felt, even with his back to her, that all his disappointment and longing, mixed now with an unplaced fury that things were going wrong again, must somehow be beaming out at her through the back of his head. With her back turned, the only thing that Sara could have said with honesty was that it was wonderful to hear his cello in that room again. So she said nothing.

She placed four single sheets of music on the stand. Andrew looked at it, sat back sarcastically and breathed histrionically, ‘Oo-err! Don’t think I’ll be up to
this
!’

Still furious, he screwed his face into a mocking, lugubrious leer and launched into ‘Resurrections des Autres’ by Herve Petrescu. Sara sat in the other chair and watched him, refusing to react. The look on his face now was that of someone with a sore tooth chewing on tinfoil. Why was he playing the fool now, when all she wanted to do was kiss him? She tightened her lips round an escaping smile. The music went on. Sara shifted in her chair and listened hard to Andrew’s playing, trying to forget his mouth. ‘Resurrections’ was an early work which Sara had found to be, on first playing it, almost cheeringly comprehensible. But now Andrew was doing such things to it . . .

He began to concentrate on what he was doing. Sara watched him and listened, feeling mean for giving him this to play when he had quite clearly been working hard in her absence. His playing had always been technically fairly sound; now it was close to assured. The tuning, even in this chromatic, edgy stuff, was faultless. At one time he had tended not to shape his phrases sufficiently; now it seemed that he was bringing out of this music all the potential it held and at the same time showing that potential to be slight. Most of all, he had authority. Andrew’s playing commanded attention, as if a voice running under the music were insisting that you stop and listen. He was a musician. He always had been, but now he played as if he really knew it, bowing with an artist’s delicate strength, the tricky fingering simply an interesting test of agility for his long, powerful left hand. And although the achievement was his (and she was not a cello teacher), Sara felt a surge of pride.

Watching him, it seemed absurd that she had once tried hard to get rid of Andrew. He had contacted her out of the blue soon after she had come to live near Bath three years earlier, and practically invited himself to her house. Then, for weeks, he had bombarded her with requests that she agree to give him lessons. Eventually she assented, his quiet determination having so impressed her, or perhaps worn her down. But had she, at the time, really believed that she was taking him on entirely on the grounds of his talent, or had she even then found his brown eyes mesmerisingly sexy? Had she just been sorry that despite his early and prodigious musical talent his unadventurous parents had forced him into a ‘proper’ career in the police? It had never quite been sympathy alone that was aroused by contemplation of his body, his long limbs astride his cello, his broad shoulders. Andrew’s rapid promotion and success in the police force had been gratifying, but his frustrated musical ambition was still in quiet spate in him, like an underground river. His marriage added another clot to the thickening discontent in his life, and Sara was almost sorry about that, too. But after nearly three years in which their lives had been periodically intertwined to the point of confusion, whatever she and Andrew might or might not mean to each other now was not something she cared to analyse today.

As Andrew travelled on through ‘Resurrections des Autres’, Sara could hear that he was exposing the piece for what it was. He played quite artlessly, exploiting every phrase for what he could find in it, but giving the music no extra help with tone, colour or dynamics as she almost unconsciously might have done. Very eloquently, his playing revealed that all that was actually there in the score was a succession of tricksy intervals between the highest and lowest notes on the instrument, adding up to banality in abundance. He reached the end of the piece, rested his bow on one knee and gave a patient sigh. There was silence.

He turned to look at Sara and in a faint, tired voice said, ‘What . . . utter . . .’ Sara looked back at him and together they intoned, ‘
balls
.’

Sara brought her Stradivari cello, the Christiani of 1700, from its case in the corner. After tuning it she began on the piece herself, seeking earnestly for the music’s rewards, which must surely be in there somewhere.

After a moment, Andrew stopped her, serious-faced. ‘It’s not just us, is it? It really is balls. Quite pleasant, faintly interesting . . . balls.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said, sighing, laying down her bow. ‘Poor Herve.’

‘Doesn’t bode too well for the protégé and his community opera. Your pal Cosmo Lamb. Is he any better?’

Sara’s mystified face told him she had never heard of Cosmo Lamb. When Andrew explained she said, ‘Oh, I don’t take any credit for him. Or the blame, if it turns out that way,’ she added quickly. She explained about leaving Helene’s number with Herve in Prague. ‘I thought he might have a student or someone who’d be interested. I’m glad he passed it on. Although he wasn’t slow to call in the favour, I can tell you.’

‘Well, I suppose we’ll see what he’s like. Valerie’s certainly impressed.’ The train of thought depressed him. ‘Christ, a community opera. Why the hell did I ever allow myself to get caught up in it?’

Sara said nothing.

Eventually Andrew answered his own question. ‘It’s Valerie. I shouldn’t have agreed. Then there’s Helene Giraldi and the girl. I mean, it’s not that I’m not sympathetic, but a
community
opera? Community balls, if you ask me. Not to mention all the rest of them.’

‘Oh, now,’ Sara said. ‘Don’t be snobbish about amateurs. Actually, Helene Giraldi was pretty good once upon a time. It can’t be that bad.’

‘No? Try this. The “community” opera is to be based on the life of Beau Nash. The “community” so far is nowhere in sight, so all the main parts are being sung by five people. “Current thinking” includes three costume changes for the chorus, once we find one, who come on every five minutes either as dishonest servants, pretentious Bath gentry or leprous invalids.’

‘Could be worse,’ Sara said, leaving unanswered the question of how.

‘The chorus,’ Andrew went on, ‘it is anticipated, will consist of Boy Scouts and Brownies, none older than eleven. Beau Nash will be played by Phil.’

Sara raised her eyebrows.

‘Phil is Chinese.’

She bit her lip. ‘I see. And you feel perhaps Bath audiences are not yet quite ready for a Chinese Beau Nash?’

They both stared rather hopelessly at the music on the stand.

‘Andrew, I was at James’s flat yesterday. I met this woman, Imogen Bevan’s executor.’

‘Oh, yes. Red hair. Interviewed her. Nice woman.’ Andrew sighed. ‘Sara, please don’t go on thinking about it. You’re not really supposed to know anything about it, you know. I shouldn’t even discuss it.’

‘I know, but why was she so quick to get round there and sort out her stuff?’

Andrew closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘You have such a suspicious mind. Dorothy Price works at a busy school. This is their busiest term. She wants to get on with sorting out the contents before half-term because come October she’ll be flat out writing the school panto and whatnot. She asked us if it was all right for her to go in. I can promise you, Sara, there’s no mystery here. It’s just a routine police matter to track down Brendan Twigg and charge him.’