Broken Music Read online

  Grev laughed shortly. ‘Well, of course, they’re all arrogant, these Teutonic types. Obsessed with the unshakable sense of their own superiority.’

  ‘A sweeping statement, that, isn’t it?’ commented Steven, peering over his glasses.

  ‘True, though. Why otherwise would they be arming themselves to the teeth,’ Grev went on, ignoring the interruption, forgetting his previous wish to have the subject dropped, ‘spoiling for war?’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t be in it,’ Marianne said, smiling at him. ‘Grev’s a pacifist,’ she announced to the others. ‘Aren’t you, Grev?’

  ‘I won’t fight, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Not even for your country?’ asked William, colour touching his cheeks. Issues were rarely complicated with William. Choices were between what you saw as right, and what you knew to be wrong. If it came to fighting for the honour of his country, William would be there with no questions asked. Perhaps because of this, Nella had sensed something not quite right growing between her brother and his friend Kess this summer: a dissension that sprang partly from the uneasy political situation, but also, now that William was up at Oxford and Rupert working with his father’s business interests in the City, both spreading their wings, meeting new people and imbibing new ideas, it seemed to her questionable whether their undemanding schoolboy friendship would survive. They were two very different personalities and their camaraderie had developed mainly through the close quarters of school for so many years, and through participation in the same, mainly sporting, activities. They had lived closer together than many brothers and now, if things came to ahead, they were likely to find themselves on different sides. She believed this was not a thought either had brought out into the open.

  Grev was saying shortly, ‘Not for anything would I kill another human being, William. It’s my belief that is totally wrong. Ask your father. He agrees with me.’

  They all fell silent, knowing that was the last thing William would do. He said stiffly, ‘No sane man wants to kill another human being, but don’t the ends sometimes justify the means? What do you think, Steven?’

  Steven said nothing for a while. Then he said mildly, looking from one to the other, ‘Oh, I’m not qualified to give opinions on that subject. I wouldn’t be allowed to fight anyway, with my eyesight.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ Grev shrugged to indicate the matter was over and dropped down next to Marianne. Her mass of red curls was loosely gathered into a knot as a gesture to it being officially ‘up’, and he teasingly extracted one of the long pins that held it, twisting the strand of hair which was released, letting it curl around his finger.

  She turned her head sideways and gently took his hand and released the curl, looking at him under her lashes, her mouth curving in a slow smile.

  ‘Here he comes!’ Grev murmured as Rupert swam towards them with a powerful crawl. Reaching the shallow edges of the lake, he waded out and sat on the grass, dripping and raking water out of his hair.

  Grev said stiffly, ‘I don’t suppose you know this, but I should warn you the cliff at the bottom end of the lake goes right down beneath the water, and there are some pretty dangerous rocks not too far beneath the surface.’

  Rupert shrugged. ‘Yes, you can see them when the sun is out. The water’s very clear.’

  ‘Well, as long as you’re aware.’

  Rupert only smiled, then he said suddenly, ‘That Gypsy boy’s there again.’ And sure enough, there he was, further along the bank, under the trees, whittling a stick. ‘Does it not make you uneasy, being watched all the time?’ he demanded when nobody seemed to find his remark worthy of comment. He looked round at them all, his eyes coming to rest on Marianne, and on Grev, who had pulled out a second hairpin so that another long curl fell against her neck.

  ‘Give it back, you tiresome boy,’ Marianne demanded with a laugh. She held out her hand for the hairpin, but he held it teasingly out of reach. Rupert’s eyes rested for a moment on her glorious hair, glittering in the sun, then he stood up abruptly.

  William said suddenly, ‘Pin your hair up, Marianne. You might as well be a Gypsy yourself.’ He was sometimes very strait-laced, William, and took his responsibilities as elder brother seriously, but he was rarely sharp. There was a silence. Marianne’s eyes widened in hurt surprise, then dropped, and she twisted her head until Grev let go, and she could pin her hair more securely.

  Rupert wasn’t looking at her anymore, but was busily making signs to the Gypsy. If the boy saw him, he took no notice and went on sitting where he was. In the end, Rupert cupped his hands and shouted to him to be off.

  ‘Leave him alone, Kess,’ William said, more easily. ‘He’s doing no harm.’ Grev shrugged and turned the other way, staring impassively out across the lake.

  ‘He’s trespassing,’ Rupert said. ‘Spying on us. And I suppose, of course, you’re going to let him get away with it? How very English!’ He added with a smile and a raised eyebrow, ‘My father would have these Gypsies, these Zigeuner, driven off his lands.’

  ‘What is there to spy on? Besides, I know him,’ Grev said. ‘He’s Daniel Boswell, his family has travelled to these parts for years.’ He stood up, and deliberately strolled the hundred yards or so towards the boy, and when he reached him, stopped to speak. Far from ordering him away, his gestures implied he was inviting the Gypsy to join them. Rupert flushed under his tan. But the boy shook his head, stood up in one graceful movement, whistled to his dogs and disappeared into the trees. Grev came back and flung himself down on the grass again.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ Steven asked.

  ‘I asked him to join us,’ he said blandly, as if it were not the last thing any Gypsy would have done, ‘but he says he has better things to do.’

  ‘Poaching, no doubt.’

  ‘Only for the pot, Rupert, I hope, and he’s welcome to that.’ He selected one of the wild raspberries which Amy had set out so enthusiastically to gather, though after half an hour, hot, scratched and insect-bitten, she had given up; the fruits were so tiny, however hard she picked, the small basket never seemed to get any fuller. All the same, the results of her labours were delicious, sharp-sweet, ripe and juicy. Holding the berry delicately between his long musician’s fingers, Grev dipped it into sugar and held it out for Marianne. Obediently, she opened her mouth and her small white teeth closed round it. Their eyes met and held. A slight tinge of colour touched her cheeks. Then she laughed and, looking at Rupert, he deliberately picked up another of the fruits and fed it to her. Rupert jumped up and dived into the water, swam showily to the other side, and when he reached it, Nella saw him begin to climb to the same high ledge again.

  With held breath, they all watched as he dived and emerged safely once more, then climbed to poise himself for yet another dive. Nella closed her eyes and lay back, unable to watch anymore. The sunny afternoon had become sultry and full of tensions, with Marianne somehow at the centre. She realised, with a shock, what had actually been going on for weeks. Marianne and Grev, a perfect pair, their heads bent together over the piano. But also Marianne with Rupert, playing tennis, laughing together. And come to that, Marianne with Steven, discussing a book his mother had given her, which she had found difficult to understand. Mrs Rafferty was at last growing impatient with her. Marianne was neither offended nor deterred. But neither did she make any progress into authorship. She went on endlessly scribbling in her notebooks, with nothing ever coming to fruition, so perhaps Mrs Rafferty was right to be impatient.

  Did Marianne, wondered Nella, opening her eyes and staring at her sister, see these young men who surrounded her merely as romantic characters, grist to her mill…or was she, perhaps, just flirting a little? More than a little – pitting them one against the other? Marianne?

  Rupert dived again, another perfect dive, followed by another climb. It was evident he intended to go on until he dropped from exhaustion – or killed himself. Even William was looking alarmed. He met Grev’s eyes and they began to pack up th
e picnic things. Nella helped them. They shouted to Rupert to tell him they were leaving and after another defiant dive, deprived of an audience, he followed.

  Afterwards, Nella only saw the Gypsy again in the distance. There was no doubt it was pleasanter, knowing he wasn’t hovering in the background.

  The same tribe of Gypsies, with their brightly painted caravans, their exotic womenfolk, colourful clothing and gold earrings – worn by the men, as well as their women – had been an intermittent part of the village life for as long as Nella could remember, their comings and goings, like the seasons, in accordance with some mysterious pattern known only to them. They were objects of curiosity, tolerated as long as they didn’t set up camp too near the village, if not trusted an inch by anyone: even the unworldly Father Dorkings had locked up the silver and emptied the poor box daily when they were around. While feeling sorry for the filthy, hungry-looking children with beseeching black eyes, whom their Gypsy mothers taught to hold out begging hands, the village women were careful not to leave their doors open behind them when they went indoors for a few coppers to buy clothes pegs and sprigs of lucky white heather. Snared rabbits and a poached pheasant or two were a hazard of life when they were about – and nothing more, after all, than certain villagers were known to be guilty of – and they were useful, though unreliable, at pea-picking and potato-harvesting. But tolerance grew thin when clothing disappeared from washing lines, even in broad daylight, and vegetables were pulled from the gardens, cows milked during the night. That was a sign for the Gypsies to disappear again.

  As they had, at the first sign of trouble, the day after the tragedy. Silently packed up and disappeared in their horse-drawn caravans with their scruffy, wild dogs running behind, leaving no trace of themselves except the ashes of their fires. No one had ever expected them to have the face to come back.

  Chapter Ten

  Although a detective sergeant, as he was at the time of Marianne Wentworth’s drowning, Herbert Reardon hadn’t been let into all the finer details of the investigation. The salient facts had remained indelibly in his memory, but now he needed to find out more. Enquiries told him where he might find the inspector who had been in charge of the case: now retired and living in the Quarry Bank district on the other side of Stourbridge.

  This was familiar country, the area where he’d been born, and he knew where to leave his motorcycle, in a little-used alley at the end of the steep street where Henry Paskin lived with his sister. He gave a delighted, tow-headed urchin a silver thrupenny bit to keep an eye on it. He felt a distinct pang of nostalgia for his own childhood – though truth to tell, he’d been glad enough to leave it behind – as he stepped around a group of pinafored little girls playing hopscotch on the pavement and watched a ragged-trousered lad trying to shin a lamp post, where no doubt he would remove the gas mantles out of mischief, if he managed to get to the top. Reardon grinned and ignored him; it was no business of his to stop the little varmint, now.

  Henry Paskin’s sister was standing on a pair of wooden steps that were placed on the pavement outside one of the brick-built terrace houses that lined the street, vigorously polishing glittering windows that showed starched white lace curtains inside. The doorstep had been ferociously whitened, and the brass doorknob and letter box polished so you could have parted your hair in the reflection.

  A thin, sharp-featured woman with a red nose that indicated she might have digestive problems and a short temper, Emily Paskin wore a crossover pinny to protect her clothes, and a sacking apron to protect her pinny. What hair was not covered by a dust cap bristled at the front with metal curling pins. He stood, waiting until she should acknowledge him, not anxious to disturb her in her work, knowing how women like her could be when they were interrupted from ‘getting on’, having had his ears boxed many a time by the aunt who’d taken care of him after his mother died, just for that.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded presently, knowing he was there, but not stopping her attack on the windows, except for a sideways look, swiftly averted, that was becoming very familiar to him.

  ‘Miss Paskin? I’m looking for your brother, Henry,’ he returned, after this less than welcoming salutation.

  ‘’E’s out.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘Gawd knows.’

  ‘No idea when, Miss Paskin?’

  ‘What d’you want with him?’

  ‘I’ll tell him that when I see him. Is there anywhere where I might find him?’ he asked, resisting the impulse to tell her more plainly that it was none of her business. She was beginning to annoy him considerably.

  ‘Up the cut, fishing, where else? Spends half his life there, he does, anent the Delph Locks. And don’t you go ’ticing him down the Glassmakers,’ she called after him as he thanked her as politely as he could and made his escape.

  The filthy canal, a pram wheel protruding through other rubbish onto its oily surface, looked an unappetising place in which to seek your dinner. He’d thought his senses blunted by what he’d had to eat out there in the trenches, but he wouldn’t fancy any fish that came out of that lot, Reardon thought, as he parked his motorcycle and slithered down the bank at the side of the bridge on to the well-trodden towpath.

  Henry Paskin was sitting on the canalside on an upturned wooden box, his pipe in his mouth, bundled up in an old coat, with a floppy flat cap pulled well down over his eyes and his rod propped beside him. He might have been asleep but for the occasional puff of smoke from the pipe that protruded from under the cap brim. Reardon stopped beside him. ‘How do, Henry.’ He wouldn’t have dared call him Henry in the old days, but the war, and the fact that neither was now in the police, were great levellers.

  Henry lifted his cap brim, and stared. ‘It’s Herbert Reardon,’ Reardon said.

  ‘Young Bert.’ After a second, a great paw was extended. ‘God Almighty, what they done to yer, old cock?’

  ‘Same as was done to a lot more,’ said Reardon, and sat down beside him, amongst the dried stalks and stems of last year’s weeds, and the trampled and dusty grass.

  ‘Bloody war. Oh ar. That bloody war.’

  No more would be said on the subject, but that suited Reardon. The direct approach, typical of Paskin, who had been too old himself to fight, made him feel much better. It was the sympathy, or the embarrassment, that got you down. He’d always liked working for Henry, who was slow and broad-spoken, who liked people to see him as a plain, Black Country bloke, and laid the accent on thick – when he remembered. He lifted his elbow a sight too often, but he was the best policeman Reardon had known. ‘How d’you find me then?’ he asked.

  ‘Your sister told me you might be here – with a bit of reluctance. Seemed to think we’d end up in the boozer.’

  Henry grinned. ‘Her ain’t so bad, our Em. Don’t mean half of what her says.’ He paused and pocketed his pipe. ‘Looked after me like a mother, since Ada went, and her knows I haven’t touched a drop since then, believe it or not. What yer after, then, Bert?’

  Reardon watched his mittened hands dive into his fishing basket and rummage about amongst the lines and hooks and maggot tins, presently emerging with a bottle of cold tea, which he handed to Reardon, and a hefty packet of doorstep sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, which he proceeded to divide. ‘Have one of our Em’s sarnies. Plenty for both on us.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Reardon’s hands were already numb. A cold, sneaky wind crept along the canal and a dankness floated up from the water. He took a swig out of the bottle and passed it back, wishing he had his own Thermos. ‘God, it’s perishing out here. How do you stick it?’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ Henry shrugged. ‘Well?’

  ‘Remember that last case we had, before the war, that young woman in Broughton Underhill?’

  ‘Ar, I do.’

  Reardon put him in the picture and Henry chewed and listened and then became serious. ‘Whose damfool idea is it to rake all that up?’

  Reardon avoided a direct answer. ‘I don’t
know about raking it up – was it ever rightly settled?’

  Henry raised his eyebrows but didn’t press his question. Silently, he wrapped the remains of his sandwich in the newspaper, extracted his pipe and a rubber pouch from his pocket, knocked out the still-smouldering dottle and with deliberation repacked the pipe and lit it. Clouds of rich tobacco smoke wafted across the scummy surface of the canal.

  ‘It weren’t up to me, Bert, that. I were pulled off the job by old Tightarse Gifford,’ he said at last, referring to their revered superintendent at that time. ‘You know as how he was always one for a quiet life. Retired now and writing his memoirs, last I heard,’ he added with a sardonic laugh. ‘Mind you, for once, I thought he had it right. We was all of a mucker at the station what with the war starting and orders coming from here, there and the next place, didn’t know where we was at – and there were nothing to say it weren’t an accident, so what were the use of hanging on?’

  Reardon finished Em’s sandwich: full-bodied, tasty cheese, plenty of it, and sharp pickle, when he’d anticipated a filling as thin and begrudging as Em herself. She was rising in his estimation. ‘Trouble is, there’s not many believe the accident theory, Henry.’

  ‘So they’d rather believe it was suicide, then?’ Henry shook his head. ‘Come on, cock, that won’t wash. Suicide’s a stigma nobody wants.’ He paused, eased his belt with his thumbs. He had grown a paunch, despite allegedly being off the beer. ‘Specially when it involves a young wench like that. ’Tain’t right, young ’uns going afore the old folk.’ Reardon remembered it wasn’t only his wife, Ada, that Henry had lost, but also a son at Gallipoli, and that was probably why Ada had died too, of a broken heart, it was said. ‘Mind you, I’m not sure I believed she’d fallen in, all accidental like, meself.’

  ‘So you do think it was suicide?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Although you’ve seen – we’ve all seen – youngsters doing away with theirselves for no reason anybody in their right mind can see. Feelings run high when you’m that age. Every little trouble seems a big ’un.’