The Company She Kept Read online

  Abigail said nothing more, but followed in his wake, reluctantly, albeit she had her own reasons for wanting the interview over as quickly as possible.

  Roz Spalding turned out to be ordinary enough, a pleasant-faced, capable-looking woman in her late thirties with a sleek, short haircut. The house was comfortably, though by no means luxuriously, furnished, with toys and children’s comics on the chairs and a smelly old dog to welcome them. No children were in evidence – only a photograph of a most beautiful child, a boy of about six or seven, with his mother’s fair hair and Spalding’s dark eyes.

  Kite apologized to Mrs Spalding for disturbing her, though they were here at this hour at her request, since she had said on the phone she had to be out of the house by nine-thirty. He noticed books, papers and a small personal computer were spread over the surface of a large table in front of the window.

  ‘Angie Robinson?’ she repeated. ‘That’s a name I haven’t heard for years!’

  Kite said, ‘A woman has been found dead and we’ve reason to believe it may be her. We want someone to confirm this and we’ve been told you knew her.’

  ‘Dead, Angie? Good heavens, was it an accident?’

  ‘I’m afraid the woman we’re trying to identify has been murdered, Mrs Spalding,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Well, yes, I did know her, but as I said, it was years ago, and even then she wasn’t much more than an acquaintance. What made you come to me? No, don’t tell me, it was Nick who put you on to me!’ Her cooperative attitude changed abruptly and she became uptight and close-lipped. ‘He’d no right to do that! In any case, it’s so long since I saw her, I doubt if I’d recognize her.’

  ‘If it’s the same person,’ Kite began, ‘she had a distinctive birthmark ...’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

  ‘Your sister, Sophie –’

  ‘No! You mustn’t ask Sophie!’ As if realizing that her voice had been needlessly sharp, she added lamely, ‘She hardly knew her, either.’

  ‘We’re not asking either of you to identify her, Mrs Spalding. Only to know if you can tell us who can.’

  ‘Sorry, I know you’re only doing your job.’ She thought for a moment then said, ‘The best person would be Madeleine Freeman – Dr Freeman.’

  ‘The same Dr Freeman who’s been in the Advertiser a lot recently about the Women’s Hospital?’ Abigail said, attempting to regain Roz Spalding’s cooperation.

  The other woman, hearing her speak for the first time, looked at Abigail as if her presence hadn’t registered until then. And as she looked, her gaze intensified, her colour gradually heightened. Their eyes met and locked and Abigail’s jaw began to ache with the effort of keeping her expression neutral and her eyes from straying to the photograph of the child. Damn! she thought, I should have left things as they were, melted into the background, I should have had the sense at least to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Really got the bit between her teeth about that, hasn’t she – Dr Freeman?’ Kite put in, looking from one woman to another and wondering what was up. That week’s edition of the Advertiser had prominently displayed a photograph of Madeleine Freeman above yet another protest article about the decision to close the local Women’s Hospital, a small but revered and time-honoured institution that was staffed entirely by women, for women.

  ‘With good reason,’ Roz Spalding said abruptly, dragging her gaze from Abigail’s face. ‘The women of this town need somebody like her to champion them.’

  ‘Mm,’ Kite mumbled wondering why he’d been so foolhardy as to embark on this particular voyage, which he’d found to his cost was all too likely to be a stormy one. He’d already had enough of it at home, having been unwise enough to remark to his wife that he didn’t see any reason for keeping open a reputedly uneconomic unit when there were equally good and easily accessible facilities at the County, the town’s main hospital.

  ‘And where you’re just as likely to be treated by some man who basically has no idea what you’re on about,’ Sheila had replied coldly.

  After the sound of the police car engine had died away Roz went back to the correspondence papers she was marking. She had to have them finished ready for posting before she drove up to the hospital anyway, and concentrating on them would keep her mind off the last few minutes. She’d grown used to bringing a fierce concentration to her work lately. It helped, in some very small measure, to have at least one tiny corner of her mind not entirely taken over by the huge and all-encompassing pain, to feel that there was something at least that she could do. It didn’t always work and today was one of those times. She told herself that she had no right to be hurt by what had just happened, but that didn’t help, either. She pushed her chair back and went to make herself some coffee.

  Staring out of the window with her hands clasped round the mug for warmth – her hands, like her heart, seemed perpetually icy these days – she tried to picture Angie Robinson, as she’d been all those years ago. Silly and totally self-centred, teetering about on high, stiletto heels, always patting and fiddling with that candy-floss bleached hair. Tolerated, poor girl, but never liked. And convinced this was because of the naevus on her face and not due to her own nature – though where, Roz wondered now with the greater charity of maturity, did one end and the other begin?

  What had she been doing since then, what had they all been doing since Flowerdew? How long ago was it? Well, Sophie had begun working there when she left school – it must have been thirteen, or even fourteen, years ...

  CHAPTER 5

  When she first started work at Flowerdew, Sophie had found that Kitty’s sitting-room was perpetually bathed in a dim, greenish light that filtered through the canopy of willows, reflecting the lake which almost lapped the old rosy-pink brick walls at the front of the house. Olive green, glassy and mysterious, it was sometimes so swollen from the rains that the tiny island in the middle was completely under water.

  Which long-gone Flowerdew could have had the foolishness to construct a lake in such close proximity to the house? Sophie had wondered, until she learned that the lake had come first, being a natural backwater of the river which flowed along behind the boundaries of the property. The first Flowerdew had built his house too near the water. There was a permanent feeling of dampness indoors. Things left too long in unaired cupboards acquired a patina of mould, there was often a moist sheen on the flagstones of the hall, and always this dim, aqueous light in the rooms facing the lake.

  On the eve of Irena’s departure Sophie had been there almost a year. That night Kitty, who was at last beginning to admit that she was, after all, seventy-seven, was allowing Jessie Crowther to shoo her off to bed without too much protest. She could at times be overbearing and a little autocratic, and lately she had lost some of the vitality and sense of fun that had already made Sophie come to love her, that made her seem ageless, despite her disabilities. She’d even been talking about going back to Tunisia, where the climate would be better for her arthritis. Now, bidding them good night, she prepared to go upstairs and drink a last glass of mint tea before bed, leaving the rest of them to their coffee.

  ‘Irena, my dear, we’ve already said our goodbyes. You’ll be gone before I get up in the morning but I wish you well. I wish you very well. Write soon. Good night, everyone, God bless, and sleep well.’ As she left the room, Kitty’s hand rested affectionately for a moment on Sophie’s head; it would have broken the girl’s heart to know that this was the last time she would ever see her.

  The departure of the two old women left the five of them, as well as Irena herself: Sophie, Madeleine – and Angie Robinson, who always tagged along in Madeleine’s wake whenever she could; Felix; and Tommo, having let himself be persuaded to leave his solitary cottage for once to join in the party. If party it could be called, this farewell dinner for Irena.

  It was Madeleine who’d suggested to Irena that she was wasted here, that her talents could be used elsewhere, Madeleine who’d brou
ght to her notice the job of translator in a London firm which was expanding its export trade with Germany. It seemed to be a job tailor-made for Irena, whose German was much better than her English, which varied from very good to unintelligible, and who spoke Polish and one or two other Middle European languages as fluently as her native Czech.

  But Irena, as was to be expected, had ignored the suggestion and went on in her usual noisy, head-on fashion. After all, why should she leave the cushy number she had here?

  She had a greedy nature, eager to take what she could get, and at Flowerdew she had a berth for life. Then without warning she announced that she had applied for and been given the position and that she was about to depart the following week. There was an oddly satisfied look about her but she would not explain her change of mind. Kitty likewise refused to add to the speculation that she must at last have had enough, and indicated to Irena that her presence was no longer welcome, though Felix murmured privately to Madeleine that he thought Kitty must have bribed her.

  Madeleine’s large, short-sighted eyes widened behind her spectacles. She always thought the best of everyone and things like that never appeared to enter her mind.

  ‘Kitty’s not exactly poor,’ Felix went on. ‘And who’d want a daughter like that hanging around the place?’

  Madeleine was speechless. She had looked first at Kitty, then Irena. There wasn’t a trace of resemblance – was there? Lots of people had lively dark eyes like Irena’s, including Irena’s father. In any case, she happened to know that Kitty had other plans for her money. She looked across the room to where Kitty was sitting with Sophie, and smiled to herself.

  Whatever the reason was for Irena’s abrupt turnaround, Kitty, no longer harassed by the threat of violent moods and indigestible cooking, looked as though a weight had been taken from her shoulders, if slightly guilty. But Irena would be all right. Instinctively one knew that. She would always land on her feet. She was a born survivor.

  When Kitty and Jessie Crowther had at last gone upstairs, an awkward silence fell languidly upon the rest, a hiatus which none of them had the energy or the will to break through, a lethargy that was partly induced by the heavy meal and the wine to which none of them was accustomed. Even Irena was oddly subdued tonight, as if she regretted the sudden decision to leave what must have been a quiet oasis in her thirty-nine years of nomadic, rootless life. And yet, watching her as she lolled back in her chair, in an ungainly, unaware posture with her knees too far apart, it was impossible to believe her capable of such sentient feelings. Had she been a man, she would have been handsome, the image of her father, Miloslav Bron, who had stood to be photographed with Kitty and Alfred Wilbraham in the desert. As it was, her features were too heavy for a woman. She was swarthy and stocky, with coarse black hair and thick, fiercely black eyebrows, the suspicion of a moustache on her upper lip.

  Sophie sank gracefully back into her chair after pouring the coffee, an unconscious but undeniable contrast to Irena. Two pairs of men’s eyes followed her. The sexual tension, the vibrations of love and jealousy between the three of them were almost tangible. It was late summer and the windows were open to the soft evening dusk of a sudden and unexpected heat wave: to the lake at the front and the courtyard at the back, where Kitty’s white doves cooed softly beyond the low-silled windows, where apricots glowed like golden moons on the espalier trained against the brick wall. The last of the day’s heat had brought out the thick scent of damask roses and great waves of fragrance wafted into the room.

  Which of them was it who dropped the suggestion into the silence? None of them remembered afterwards. Was it Sophie, dreaming in her pale floating dress, her hair a curtain to her shoulders, aware of young Felix’s eyes hungrily on her and Tommo’s studiously turning the other way whenever they met hers, who brought the conversation round to the mystery of the future? To where they would all be in ten years’ time?

  Irena laughed. She had an excited, throaty laugh that was oddly disturbing. ‘Such foolishness! To tempt Fate! But if you are really wishink to know, there is a Ouija board in the attic.’

  No one asked how she knew this. It was naturally assumed that Irena, with her acquisitive instincts, being what she was and having been at Flowerdew for a year and a half, would have penetrated its secrets from attic to cellar. Despite the cool reception of her suggestion, she went on pressing it and eventually they were all, apart from Tommo, half way persuaded to try. Even Felix, because Sophie wanted it and Tommo did not.

  If only they hadn’t. If only they’d listened to Tommo’s objections.

  ‘Oooh, yes,’ cried Angie in the little-girl voice that was irritating beyond endurance, though she usually went against Irena on principle. Her dislike passed over Irena’s head; she was impervious to what anyone thought about her, in particular Angie, whom everyone knew was only tolerated by Kitty because of Madeleine: Angie, who was already set into the mould she’d chosen for herself and would keep long after she’d outgrown it – blonde and bouffant of hairstyle, short-statured, mini-skirted. Poor, scarred Angie who was sharp and sly – and much cleverer than she wanted anyone to suspect.

  Sophie added her persuasions and in spite of initial misgivings, a subtle excitement began to pervade the room as the idea caught on and lifted the inertia, promising to give some purpose to the rest of the evening. They all looked to Madeleine as final arbiter. Of them all, she was the one most likely to have her feet on the ground and indeed was already looking at her watch and beginning to make signs of leaving. Angie said with a pout, ‘But you’re not on call this evening, Maddie. There’s no need for you to go.’

  ‘All the same, I have to start work early in the morning ...’

  ‘And please, not Maddie,’ she would have added to anyone but Angie, hating the diminutive. But Angie could get away with murder as far as Madeleine was concerned and now

  Madeleine shrugged good-naturedly and said all right, if that was what they all wanted.

  ‘Doesn’t that girl drive you mad?’ Sophie had once heard Kitty ask her, daring to ask what no one else would, but Madeleine, who was kindness itself, had just smiled. ‘Oh, Angie’s all right. We understand each other, and I’m used to her.’

  Now, in response to her friend’s plea, she stayed and it was Tommo who stood up, saying in his abrupt way, ‘I’m off. I’ve no patience with all this. It’s childish – and dangerous, what’s more. And if you’ve any sense, Sophie, you’ll go home, too.’

  Their eyes met and for a long moment held. Sophie wavered; then, contrariwise, smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t know. What’s wrong with a spice of danger?’

  Flippancy in her infuriated him, she knew, though he’d only himself to blame. There was a lot of unreadable angst about Tommo which she had tried to understand but, questioning him, gently probing, she had been snubbed. ‘You’re not mature enough to take your own emotional problems on board, never mind mine,’ he’d replied with unthinking cruelty, and though he’d been immediately contrite, neither could forget. He turned away now, and without another word, went out via the window, striding over the low sill. In the ensuing silence, his heavy footsteps could be heard crossing the flagstoned courtyard and presently the latch of the gate was heard to click.

  ‘Well, who’s going to get this Ouija board, then?’ Sophie asked brightly.

  ‘I will go,’ volunteered Irena, lumbering to her feet. ‘I am knowink where.’

  ‘Well, go quietly and don’t wake Kitty,’ Madeleine warned, ‘you know how lightly she sleeps – quietly, Irena!’

  ‘That woman,’ declared Felix as Irena stomped out as noisily as if Madeleine hadn’t spoken, ‘is not merely irritating, she’s impossible.’

  ‘Go easy on her. It is her last night. We owe her that,’ Madeleine said. Felix was arrogant and rude, but he was only twenty. All the same, he needed an eye kept on him; you never knew which way he would jump.

  ‘I shall never understand how Kitty sticks her. She’s too easily put upon.’ Which was rich, coming fr
om Felix, but it had occurred to Sophie, too, although somehow she felt that there was more than Kitty’s kind-heartedness involved. There was something about Irena that made her shiver, almost a sense of menace underlying that infuriating smugness. If it wasn’t too fanciful one might almost be persuaded to think she had some hold over Kitty.

  She was gone some time and when she did arrive back, it was minus the Ouija board. ‘Ach, I do not remember where I saw it and is too dark to look now,’ she declared, shrugging.

  ‘Well, that’s it, then!’ Madeleine looked relieved but Sophie, envisaging the rest of the evening which must be got through somehow, was not to be put off.

  ‘We can use a tumbler and the Scrabble counters,’ she said, but by the time the tiles had been found and a glass produced Madeleine was again looking at her watch and Felix had lost interest. Angie was half apprehensive, half eager. ‘Do you think we should?’ She giggled nervously.

  ‘Of course we should!’ Sophie was determined not to give up now that they’d gone this far, switching on a lamp and beginning to arrange the letters of the alphabet in a circle round the polished rosewood table.

  The dusk had closed in. A small breeze ruffled the water on the lake; drawn by the light, moths and other small insects flew in, recklessly immolating themselves against the lamp. Sophie was suddenly conscious of the adjoining room, with its red walls and its mementoes of ancient Carthage and hideous sacrificial rites. She sometimes thought the room was less of a workroom for Kitty than a shrine to Alfred. Angie hated all mention of it and Sophie herself was often uneasy with it, for less superstitious reasons. She gave a quick glance to see that the door was firmly closed and shivered, wondering for the first time whether they had embarked upon something they didn’t understand. But it had gone too far by now; they were all seated round the table, five fingertips already planted upon the base of the upturned glass. Angie was excited, her other hand fiddling with her hair, drawing the flick-up at the side further across the livid mark on her face, Madeleine was endeavouring not to look embarrassed at having condoned this, Felix still had that superciliously amused expression imprinted on his face; his pale, cold eyes looked glassy, almost colourless. He’d definitely had too much to drink – but perhaps they all had. Especially Irena.