Echoes of Silence Page 23

  Passing the open door of Freya’s room, she had stepped inside for a moment, which had been another mistake. The pathos of the stripped bed, the absence of all the inconsequential clutter with which Freya had liked to surround herself hit her harder than the funeral itself had done. Sooner or later, they would have to sort through her personal effects, what jewellery she had left …

  ‘I want you to have this back,’ Elf said at last, uncannily picking up her thoughts. ‘I’ve worn it ever since we spoke, in case I saw you.’ She unfastened the gold chain around her neck and slipped off the black opal ring suspended from it. ‘It’s yours by rights.’

  Polly refused to take it. ‘Freya never cared for jewellery, never wore much, did she, except a few favourite pieces? If she gave this ring to Dot, she wanted her to have it, and Dot had a perfect right to give it to you, like you said.’

  Elf sat down suddenly on the edge of the stripped bed that looked so strange and hard and uncomfortable without its sumptuous lilac spread. She looked down at her right hand, clenched into a fist around the ring, without saying anything for a while. ‘Oh, Lord, Polly, didn’t you know … didn’t any of you suspect? Freya didn’t ever give Dot anything. Her jewellery was always in such a muddle, costume jewellery mixed up with what was left of the real stuff, you know what she was like. Always misplacing things, no idea what she really had. It was easy for Dot to pinch things, this ring, plus a whole load of other bits and pieces as well, I have to say.’

  Polly was stunned. ‘Did you know that when she gave it you?’

  ‘No. I thought she was telling the truth. She gave it me, trying to win me over, but it was twenty-eight years too late. When …’ Her voice shook. She took a deep breath. ‘OK. When she finally admitted she was my mother.’

  The room went very quiet. It was full of dim shadows, only one small lamp switched on. Outside, it had become very dark. Elf’s face had taken on that tight, pinched look again that might very well become permanent as she grew older, that made it possible to see the resemblance to Dot.

  ‘How long have you known?’ Polly said at last.

  ‘Officially, about six months, but long before that, really. Nobody would ever tell me anything about my origins, even when I was growing up and beginning to ask questions, as you do. Which of course made me even more curious. Then gradually, I knew. Just feelings I had, absorbing hints and facts and putting two and two together … but long before I suspected Dot might be my mother, I knew. Philip was my father. You’d guessed that, hadn’t you? I asked him outright one day and he told me the truth, but even then he wouldn’t say who my mother was. I decided there must be some awful, compelling reason why I wasn’t to know. And then I came across an old family snapshot … and you know what they say about curiosity.’

  Came across. More likely looking for, searching, needing to know. Polly wanted to hug her, to banish the cold tightness and the bitterness from her shut face, but she feared Elf was in no mood to respond to that kind of sympathy.

  ‘It was the only photo I’ve ever seen of Dot,’ she went on, ‘and I just knew. It was like looking at a slightly distorted view of myself.’

  ‘The snap taken on the beach at Filey? I saw it for the first time the other day. Soon as I saw it, I knew, as well.’

  ‘Did you? You’ve been sharper than I gave you credit for.’ A crooked smile robbed the words of malice. ‘Well, it explained a lot, didn’t it? Why she’d come to live here permanently, supposedly to look after the little orphan babe – God, can you imagine a more unsuitable child-minder? Why she always seemed to like me that little bit better than the rest of you – though that’s not saying much, is it?’ Her defences were down, all the hurt and confusion was surfacing. She added bitterly, ‘It would have made a difference to me to have known all this. I – I used to think Freya was my mother.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes I did, for years. And I despised both her and Philip for not admitting it. When he eventually brought himself to tell me he was my father, ages after that fuss about Peter, we became better friends for a bit … I think he was actually on the verge of openly acknowledging me, and then, Beth died, and we were back where we started.’

  Polly, who had sat down on the dressing stool, feeling in need of its support, turned an arrested face to her. She had a sudden premonition, as if some terrible revelation were about to take place. With an effort, she reorientated herself. ‘Beth? What did she have to do with it?’

  ‘That day she disappeared, when we were all frantically looking for her, I found – well, what I found was her red woolly glove, all wet with snow, half-way up the middle staircase.’

  Polly’s mind whirled. ‘But that means she wasn’t playing outside all the time. She must have come back into the house.’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you! Didn’t you hear what I said? I found the glove on the middle staircase! On the way up to Philip’s rooms!’

  The shadows seemed to move in, enveloping them in an endless silence, until Polly said, ‘Why? Why didn’t you ever say?’ Though even as she spoke, she knew why. And for the first time understood something of that compulsion people had to shield those whom they loved, the dilemma they faced, to speak or not to speak, the impossible choice. Because how could you live with yourself either way?

  ‘Didn’t you even tell him you’d found it?’

  ‘Not in so many words. But he knows what I suspect, must do. Why else do you think he bought the shop, the flat? Unless it was to keep my mouth shut?’

  ‘Perhaps he gave them to you just because he loved you.’

  Elf began to laugh, a choking, hard little laugh that was only a breath away from tears. ‘You think he’s given them? To me? Oh, that’s rich! He might just have wanted to make amends, but not that much. The only name on both sets of deeds is Philip Graham Denshaw. I’m merely the tenant.’

  Polly stood up and switched on the central light. It was a low wattage bulb, its output not sufficient for the big room, and the light it cast was dingy and miserable. The colour whipped up in Elf’s cheeks by her ride here had faded to the extent where Polly was alarmed by her extreme pallor.

  ‘A fine heritage I have, between the two of them!’ Elf said bitterly. ‘Philip, so pathetic, and Dot …’ Her voice broke. ‘Polly, I know it’s wrong, but all those years without one iota of affection – I can’t – I just don’t even want to begin thinking of her as my mother!’ Unstoppable tears began to pour down her cheeks. She looked utterly lost. Then angrily she scrubbed at her face. ‘So what makes me feel I have to act so bloody protectively towards them?’

  A bond, a blood-tie, however hateful, was the only possible answer, and yet …

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ Polly said helplessly. She only knew that she, too, would have felt the same, shamingly, had it been her misfortune to have Dot as a mother.

  After the funeral, Richmond had gone straight back to the station to have another look at the forensic reports. He studied them carefully for a while, then rang the lab and asked to speak to Marianne Turner, the woman who had dealt with Wyn Austwick’s clothing. He knew her fairly well, a pretty young woman with owlish spectacles, wheelchair-bound, who took her job seriously enough for it to be quite on the cards that she might be doing some overtime at the lab. She wasn’t, however, so he had to spend time finding out her home number. She answered on the third ring and he apologised for disturbing her weekend.

  ‘I take it it’s important, or you wouldn’t have interrupted United v. Spurs.’ The swelling roar of television football sounded in the background.

  ‘Sorry about that, I’ll be as quick as I can. It’s about that smear of face powder found on Austwick’s jacket …’

  ‘Pressed powder. It’s lanolin-based, which means it contains a certain amount of grease, so it’s difficult to remove, as any woman who gets it on the collar of a jacket will tell you.’

  ‘What I’m wondering is, would she have been wearing make-up when she was on her way into hospital?’r />
  ‘Depends on how vain she was, I suppose. Or possibly, I suppose, how much wedded to routine she was, so that she used it automatically. If she did wear it, she’d have been ordered to remove it immediately, or I’m no judge of nurses. Doctors aren’t keen on trying to assess their patients’ pallor or otherwise when they’re daubed up with make-up.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘The mark might have been made previously, of course, but I doubt it. She’d have been blind not to notice it, being it was right across the front of her jacket lapel. She was naturally very pale-skinned? I’m assuming that, not having dealt with the corpse myself, only the clothing.’

  He held his breath. ‘No. She was sallow. Yellowish, really.’

  ‘Ah. Then we’re possibly talking transfer traces,’ Marianne said briskly. ‘If she’d that kind of complexion, I doubt she’d have worn that shade of powder. She’d have looked a bit clownish. It’s just about the lightest one you’d ever find – made for someone with a very pale complexion.’

  Which was the answer he’d expected. He released his breath and thanked Marianne, apologising again for interrupting her match viewing, went home and made himself a substantial sandwich. He didn’t see there was anything further he could do, over the weekend, except collect his thoughts and ideas together, test his theories and see whether they hung together as well as he had begun to dare hope that they would.

  Half-way through his sandwich, the telephone rang. It was Polly Winslow. ‘I’m at Low Rigg. I think you’d better come up here,’ she said. ‘Quickly.’ Her voice sounded urgent, slightly breathless.

  ‘All right, hang on. I’ll be there.’

  He raced for his car, tried to contact Manning, without success, and had to be content with leaving a message for him. The weather had worsened, his wipers were scarcely coping with the snow driving across the windscreen, his tyres were skidding on the new layer of snow. He was half-way there, headlights making a narrow tunnel of the twisting road, already narrowed by banked snowdrifts either side, before he realised he hadn’t even asked Polly what it was all about.

  It was fully dark by the time he reached Low Rigg hamlet. Lamps glowed behind curtains in the windows of the cottages. The Moorcock was brightly lit and its cramped car-parking space, despite the bad road conditions, already occupied by several cars, the drivers either fools or optimists. His car’s ventilation system pulled in the smell of frying chips as he passed, reminding him of his abandoned sandwich.

  He thought he wasn’t going to make the last steep pull up to the big house, but the heavy Volvo proved itself up to it. Lights were on all over the house, casting blue shadows against the snow when he turned in through the gates. She must have been waiting for him, the door was opened immediately to his ring. She took his hand in both of hers, in a warm, spontaneous gesture, and drew him inside, showing him again into the yellow room after he’d stamped the snow from his boots. This time there was no fire, and the barely adequate heating made him realise the necessity for it. The house already had a dusty feeling of abandonment and when he saw Polly herself properly, he knew something was gravely wrong.

  ‘Sit down, you’re trembling,’ he said, putting hands which were strong and steadying on her shoulders. She raised her eyes to his face, and in that brief moment of contact they both, at last, allowed the knowledge of mutual attraction to vibrate between them, a promise that there might be something beyond this black moment.

  It lasted no more than a few seconds then, driven by some inner compulsion, she turned away, waved him to a seat and began her story.

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to be patient with me, and hear me out, but I promise you won’t think it’s a waste of time when you have.’ Courage was a tenuous thing, and she seemed to think if she paused she might lose it. The words came tumbling out as she related what had passed between her and Elf. He listened quietly, unsurprised. From that moment at Freya Denshaw’s graveside, when he had seen Dot Nagle and Elvira Graham standing close together, there had been no doubt in his mind about the relationship between the two women. Not because of any strong facial resemblance, feature by feature – there was some, perhaps, but not to any remarkable extent. Yet, imagining Dot as she might have been thirty years ago, her tightly permed grey hair as dark and sleek as Elvira’s, without the heavy, ageing make-up, he had had no doubt that these two small, slightly built women were closely related.

  And Philip Denshaw was certainly, as he’d suspected, Elvira Graham’s father. Stranger liaisons occurred, but surely, Richmond thought, some better way of coping with the situation which had arisen when Dot found herself pregnant could have been arranged, other than bringing his illegitimate child and her mother here to Low Rigg Hall. A partial explanation occurred to him, one he knew some women found difficult to accept, revolving around the concept of fathers loving and desperately needing their children every bit as much as their mothers did. Philip Denshaw, for all his faults, loved children … one could, perhaps, sympathise with his need …

  And then Polly, swallowing, told him about Elf finding Beth’s glove.

  For a long time, he said nothing. Then he nodded. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In his own rooms, playing music. Not answering the door. But wait,’ she said, as he began to lever himself up. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t finished, yet.’

  This was extraordinarily difficult. Impossible. She couldn’t hide it from him, nor spare him pain. And this time, she felt unable to touch him, either, unable to communicate her sympathy, not even by a hand laid on his, as she had before. Now, it would seem an intrusion. This was a private grief, in which she had no place. But to let him go in, unprepared – no. In the end, she told it in bald phrases, like inadequate subtitles on an emotional foreign film drama, words which could in no way convey the impact of the unbelievable pictures still scrolling themselves in her mind.

  Dot had still been sitting in the luridly lit dark when she and Elf had gone into the kitchen, unable to reach Philip, hoping he might respond to a plea – or a command – from Dot to open the door. The old joke about Dot being able to make Philip do anything, if she so wished, had taken on rather different overtones now that the truth about their one-time relationship was out in the open.

  Polly had switched on the centre kitchen light, like most of the lighting in the house, mean and not equal to the job. Dot blinked, her face losing its rosy glow as Elf shut the door on the glowing coke interior. There was a strong smell of bleach, a sure sign that Dot was upset. At no other time did Dot willingly apply herself to cleaning, but in all crises of her life, she went for the bleach bottle, swabbing the sink, scrubbing the big deal table, even the floor, so that her hands stank permanently of it. The kitchen had reeked of it for weeks after Beth disappeared.

  ‘Oh yes, I knew she’d come back inside,’ she said casually, when told about the glove. ‘She came into the kitchen. I was making an apple pie for the supper.’

  Oh, those apple pies! Dot’s specials, to be avoided at all costs - pallid pastry, burnt round the edges, apples only half-cooked, too much or too little sugar, depending on how she felt at the time. Polly wondered what had happened to that particular one, had anyone forced themselves to eat it? She said slowly, ‘You never mentioned she’d been indoors.’ ‘Nobody asked me.’ She began to hum, tunelessly, under her breath. Another bad sign, like the bleach.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ Polly said to Elf, but Elf showed no signs of wanting to be involved. She had backed away and was standing with her back to the dresser, hands clenched round the knobs of the top two drawers, as if for support. ‘Go on,’ Polly said to Dot.

  ‘She kept snitching bits off the edges as I was rolling out. I told her to give over, she’d make herself poorly eating raw pastry but she took no notice, so I slapped her wrist.’

  ‘Slapped her wrist!’ Any child brought up at Low Rigg knew Dot’s slaps on the wrist, or anywhere else. ‘Some slap, it must have been!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her!�
� Dot said sharply, offended and unremorseful. ‘A clip round the ear when they’re misbehaving never did any child any harm that I’ve ever heard of.’ She was talking about it as if she were discussing the weather, and as if it had about as much importance to her. She sounded indifferent, but she couldn’t meet their eyes.

  It was at this point that Polly began to wonder if Dot was quite sane, if she hadn’t been more than a little mad for a long time. At this point too, she and Elf had exchanged looks, and the truth flashed between them, both of them knowing that it wasn’t Philip Beth had had to fear, while Dot unconcernedly lit another cigarette, as if all this had nothing to do with her. The stink of cigarette smoke, mixed with the pervading odour of bleach, was sickening.

  ‘But it was more than that – you must have really hit her! Hard. Several times!’ Polly looked at her with growing horror. ‘What did you hit her with?’

  She closed her eyes on nightmare, a familiar scene made surreal. A snowy day, just like today, freezing cold outside, warm in the kitchen … ‘You were rolling out pastry!’ she said.

  The rolling pin, the same one which had been in use in this kitchen as far back as she could remember, for generations, maybe. Her grandmother, rolling sheets of oatcake and leaving them to dry over the creel. Herself as a child, the rolling pin too cumbersome in her small hands, nearly as big as she was, but determinedly using it to flatten leftover dough and stamp it out with a thimble into hard, grey little dolls’ biscuits. And Dot, regularly employing the same stout rolling pin for bashing steaks into tenderness before cooking. Her stomach churned. She gagged. Elf, too, traumatised into silence, had her hand to her mouth, her eyes were huge above it.