The Thin Woman Page 13

  “Poor Uncle Arthur, he did not have an easy life,” sighed Aunt Sybil. “You know he was widowed early?”

  “Did Abigail Grantham suffer a lingering illness?” “Oh no. Quite the reverse. At the time, you understand, I was very young and not then living in this house, so I remember nothing except that she went very suddenly. I came for the funeral, and that stands out in my memory but nothing about the cause of death. Just between us, perhaps it was a blessed release, for Uncle Arthur, too. Abigail, to put it as nicely as possible, was a bit of a social liability. Not out of the top drawer. And then, she was not the best influence on Merlin. Under her care he was growing up rather rowdy.”

  Aunt Sybil was such an infernal snob, I thought, but then her sagging cheeks puckered and I felt sorry for her. Had she resented Merlin’s freedom to be naughty, while she had to be good to please? “So long ago,” she murmured. “A few years after Abigail’s death my parents died and Uncle Arthur took me into his home. Of course there was a little money which he managed for me, but I know he would have treated me the same if I had been a pauper. He was such a good man—always wearing the knees out in his trousers praying. And now,” she squared her shoulders and I had to admire the courageous set of her heavy jaw, “another new start. And with more tree time on my hands I have decided to take up some hobbies. Being of an artistic nature I’ve always been interested in sculpture, so I’ve decided to do each member of the family a head of Merlin for Christmas. I’m working in papier-mâché as I have so many old newspapers. What do you think”—she fixed her vague no-colour eyes disconcertingly on my face—“of my using a clear varnish instead of paint, to retain the literary symbolism?”

  I could see myself whiling away a dull moment reading Uncle Merlin’s head.

  “And I’ve also decided to take up swimming,” she continued before I was forced to comment. “Only last week I read about a woman of ninety-six who attempted a Channel crossing. She didn’t make it but she did make a big splash in the papers and I am almost thirty years younger. Such an inexpensive hobby, too.” She bent and picked up one of the tangled balls of wool. “I can knit myself a costume and with a pair of water wings from Woolworth’s I will be all set.”

  She was certainly eccentric, but I had to give her a tremendous amount of credit coming to terms with grief by diving into the swim of things. Dorcas would approve.

  What I wanted to dive into was lunch so I was delighted to be met by a taste-tingling aroma as I entered the kitchen at Merlin’s Court. French onion soup! And with the added virtue, so the resident chef informed me, of possessing so small a number of calories they could be counted on one hand. Naturally, I would not get the toasted au gratin slice or the lemon pancakes with lingonberry sauce for dessert.

  “Show-off!” I said, skimming bowls like Frisbees across the table. “While you have been puttering about the kitchen doing what women have been doing since time began, with no thanks at all, I have been searching for old family records. Looking for clues to the Number One Clue.”

  “Any discoveries?” Ben turned down the heat under his soup.

  “Only that Merlin’s parents, Uncle Arthur and Aunt Abigail, aid not have the kind of marriage that is made in heaven, that Uncle A. liked Sybil more than his own son, so she believes. Merlin in his young days was a bit of a mischief.”

  “In his old days, too.”

  The kitchen door swung inwards, nearly catching me in the back. “Fe! Fi! Fo! Fum! I smell something good enough for an Englishman.” Everyone seemed to be getting the same message at once. The back door opened and in trudged Jonas, water running off his macintosh onto the floor.

  “Dorcas,” I said, after I had introduced her to the gardener, “let me take those shirt boxes. You needn’t have brought them down. They should have gone out the window with the other rubbish. I was only joking about the collars being antiques.”

  “Don’t think you would want these boxes thrown out,” rasped Dorcas. “No collars in this lot. Full of old photographs.”

  “Give them here!” Ben outgrabbed me, literally tearing the box out of poor Dorcas’s hands. The three of us huddled together. Only the gardener remained oblivious, sucking noisily on the soup Ben had poured for him, head bent.

  “That’s her!” Dorcas pointed to a brown, spotted snapshot. As she leaned forward a strand of limp red hair fell across one eye, giving her a piratical appearance. “The woman in the portrait and here’s the name and date written on the back. Abigail Grantham.”

  CHAPTER

  Ten

  This revelation, though interesting, hinted only that the treasure might in some way be connected with Abigail. Ben suggested the theory that she had hidden a hoard of jewellery before her death to prevent her husband passing it on to a second wife. I disagreed. According to Aunt Sybil, Abigail had not come from money and from the look of Uncle Arthur (his photos depicted him just the way I had imagined—middle hair-parting, waxed moustache and all), he was not the man to have squandered his money draping his wife in diamonds and pearls.

  After spending the better part of the afternoon discarding other equally feeble brainstorms, we decided that our best course of action was to await the arrival of Clue Number Two. This is not to say that the next few weeks were idle or dull. The Reverend Mr. Foxworth called several times. He was such an attractive man, but I am not a girl who can afford to be caught with a grimy moustache and her hair in a duster. As the days lengthened and warmed into spring, Dorcas and I continued our onslaught against grime. At times I grew tired of smelling like a bottle of all-purpose household cleaner, but by mid-May our accomplishments began to justify our efforts. I had contacted Mr. Bragg, the solicitor, to arrange for the release of funds for repairs and redecorating. Far from chiding me for my eagerness to spend money before the end of the probationary six months, he admitted that the value of the property would be vastly increased by the application of my professional talents.

  One thing I did not want was to continue working in the dark (literally). The gas lighting downstairs was ruining my eyes, and I telephoned the electricity board and made the necessary arrangements. Not only did we get proper illumination, but I was able to purchase that marvellous modern convenience, the vacuum cleaner, and plug it into action. Dorcas was a tower of strength. I began to feel guilty about her pushing herself so hard. The house, in its present state of decay, even with the progress we had made, was too much for one fat woman and one skinny one. Early one morning I told Dorcas to hand over her dustpan, no questions asked, fetch her coat, and go out to the car. This was the maids’ day off.

  “Am I invited?” Ben came out from the dining room, looking rumpled but disquietingly attractive in a frayed seaman’s sweater. The only times he spoke to us during the mornings were when he had a bad case of writer’s block. At times Sister Marie Grace was a great trial to her creator.

  “Sorry, this is a hen party, but don’t despair, we will be home for dinner. How about another triumph from the chef? I wrote a sonnet to that last beef roulade in my diary.”

  “I suppose you could call that one of my finer achievements,” Ben smirked.

  “Makes me feel terribly inferior, but keep up the good work.” I tied on a head-scarf and made a face at the fatuous creep. “While you are at it, whip up some of those delectable potato scones. I know I can’t eat them, but the smell is terrific.”

  The day was so blue and clear and the breeze coming off the sea so fresh and tangy I felt like a child playing truant. Dorcas also was in high spirits, even her outfit was jaunty. She sported a navy and yellow jersey over trousers patterned in rather atrocious pyjama stripes.

  “Where to, driver?” she asked as the car slid tidily into its parking place and we made ready to disembark.

  “The Labour Exchange. I want to arrange for two charwomen to come up to the house every day for a couple of weeks to take us over the hump.”

  “Thought we were managing okay,” protested Dorcas rather dolefully.

  “So
we are,” I agreed. “But I want us to move on to more exciting projects. The attics are jammed with pieces I may want to move downstairs. We have already been in the house over a month, and there is an incredible amount to be done before our time runs out. I am itching to redo the kitchen, and you were saying the other day you would like to dig up the old herb garden. And then there is the moat half full of muddy rainwater and still floating debris.…”

  Happily discussing future plans, we went through the Roman arch into the square. To our delight we found the day had presented us with another bonus. The area was crowded with wooden stalls. Men and women were hawking their wares, and elbow-shoving shoppers eagerly bartered over each held-up item. This was market day. “Want two quid for that, do yer?” bawled a red-faced woman with rollers poking through her head-scarf. “Come off it, mate! ’Alf the buttons is missing and the collar’s on the wrong way round. Flaming cheek!”

  Dorcas and I were tempted to linger, milling with the crowd, but business had to come first. We inched our way through the jostling throng and headed for the Labour Exchange, where we were treated like visiting royalty and given the names of several worthy matrons who would be happy to work on a temporary basis and could be trusted not to steal the silver. Having set the wheels of industry in motion, we visited the bank and armed with cash went down the road to the grocery.

  Our duty done, my friend and I were free for the pursuit of pleasure. We were drawn back to (the market area, fascinated by the patter of the stallsmen. All were artists in their own right.

  “ ’Ere, you! The lovely lady with the gobs of long brown ’air!” A scrawny man with greasy black sideburns and eyes small and shiny bright as shoe buttons was standing behind row upon row of shampoo in bottles ranging in size and colour. He waved a wiry, tattooed arm in my direction. Mesmerized, I moved in front of two giggling schoolchildren, hoping that the eyes of the whole crowd were not upon me.

  “That’s the way, love, don’t be shy. Nice ’air, wery nice,” the man said to the crowd. “But, and no offence to the lovely young lady, wery dry. Been washing it in turpentine, ’ave you, duck?”

  The crowd roared as I stood rooted to the spot with Dorcas panting in my ear.

  “Which is a shame and all, but no reason to give up ’ope.” My Svengali reached out and grabbed a large bottle in the shape of a mermaid, full of purple liquid. “Yours at a price, ladies and gentlemen, it would be wicked to refuse. Stand back, please, no pushing an’ shoving. Only six bottles left, an’ this one is for the little darlin’ ’ere. And the best bit o’ news yet is that this fantastic shampoo is fully guaranteed to make your ’air grow an extra inch a monf.”

  “More likely to make it all fall out in one day,” stormed Dorcas, outraged, and receiving for her intervention a ribald cheer from the mob.

  “I’ll take a bottle.” Hastily reaching into my purse I handed over a pound, explaining to anyone who cared to listen that it was my birthday in two days’ time, and I might as well buy myself a present. Dorcas, not appeased, hustled me through the milling crowds when I bumped into a tall woman with a long greasy pony tail; at least I thought it was a woman. I really only saw the back of her—him—and a flash of gold earring.

  “Haven’t drunk anything out of that bottle, have you?” Dorcas slipped her arm through mine. “Look a bit queer.”

  “Just hungry,” I said. The clock tower struck noon. The Hounds and Hare was the change of scene we needed. Brassy called over the bar to us that the ’ash was burnt but the meat pudding melted in the mouth.

  “Suits me,” said Dorcas. Demonstrating magnificent restraint, I ordered a salad and we headed for a window table. I was beginning to find discipline brought its own satisfaction, not very filling of course. And I was learning to savour every mouthful, even the Espresso coffee which, like the ’ash, tasted burnt.

  Dorcas dropped three sugar lumps into her cup and our food arrived. “Uncle Merlin should have given you more time. Typical man to think if the world was made in seven days it could be put right in six.”

  “Well, he did give us months, not days. The trouble is the days are galloping by.” I lowered my voice because I always eavesdrop in restaurants and for some reason today I had the paranoid feeling that others in the crowded room shared my habit.

  “Speaking of time passing, is your birthday really the day after tomorrow?”

  Reluctantly, I admitted it was. Before this confession could lead anywhere, Brassy wandered over to our table. She had mentioned us to Granny, unlocking a floodgate of memories about her days in service with the Granthams. If it would not be imposing or out of our way a short visit would be greatly appreciated, as Granny rarely went out of the house these days.

  We stopped at a florist in the square and bought a bunch of daffodils. Granny lived in one of the lopsided terraced houses on the coast road beyond the village. The door was opened by a peachy-faced little dame whose hair, still more brown than grey, was neatly knotted at the back of her head.

  I was sure Dorcas was thinking as I was that if we could look this well at eighty-odd we wouldn’t be doing badly.

  No explanations of who we were or why we had come seemed necessary, and the daffodils were gratefully accepted. We were promptly seated by a crisp red fire in the front parlour with its photographs on the sideboard and crocheted doilies on the polishea wood. A plate of rock buns appeared (to have refused, one would have to be moronic) and we were told tea would not be a minute. In spite of the oceans of coffee I had just drunk, the sight of the black kettle sizzling on the hob was enchanting. I loved this little toadstool house. It was like slipping between the pages of a children’s book where the hostess was a comfy little dormouse sitting beside her fire in dimity dress and white starched apron and cap.

  As a young kitchen maid up at the house Granny must have worn such a costume. When we addressed her by her married name, Mrs. Hodgkins, she insisted we call her Rose. She had been twelve when she went to work.

  “Those were hard days,” said Dorcas.

  The old woman bent to scoop tea leaves from a small canister into the earthenware pot and filled it with steaming water from the kettle. “Times weren’t easy, but I was fortunate in having a good mistress. Most days Mrs. Grantham was down and in the kitchen when I arrived, and more days than not she’d say, ‘Set yourself down by the stove. Rose, and have yourself a cup of tea.’ Made me cry sometimes how kind she was. One day I came hobbling in, barely able to lift me feet, the chilblains was that bad what with the cold and wet shoes. Told me to take off me stockings she did and put on this ointment and a bandage. A great hand she was for mixing up remedies. The cook was furious, I remember that, because I was sent off to the morning room to sit and mend sheets. Though what the missus wanted with a cook I never did know. I’ve worked many places since, but I never met another like Mrs. Grantham for coming up with something different. A great one to experiment, she was. Sent a recipe to me mum, she did, for fudge that you couldn’t undercook or overcook, delicious it was.”

  “And Mr. Grantham?” I put out my hands to take a cup.

  “Dreadful man.” Rose did not apologize for not mincing words. “The big-I-am type, puffed out like a parrot, always wanting to impress the neighbours. Most people in them days received afternoon callers once or twice a week, but Mr. Grantham insisted the mistress be at home every day of the week. My word, she did used to get vexed having to be dressed up and sitting in the drawing room for hours on end, entertaining them dowagers and debutantes. She’d rather have been baking or gardening or out flying a kite with Master Merlin.”

  “Did they quarrel?”

  “The mister and missus? Did they ever!” Rose straightened a doily on the arm of her chair. “Everything was show with Mr. G. I mind a time a great lady come to the house, got stuck in a storm, she had. Motorcars didn’t like bad weather in them days. And oh! you should have heard his nibs carrying on because the missus took her ladyship into the kitchen instead of the drawing room. They talked r
ecipes and remedies and such. ‘Dead common,’ he called the missus, but her ladyship couldn’t have taken no offence for she sent a thank-you letter and a little present—an Easter egg, for little Merlin, I suppose. I remember all that because it was about the time Mr. G. got the notion to have the missus’s picture done. Not because he was so devoted but because it were the done thing. Trouble was he weren’t prepared to cough up for a proper artist—got a boy from the village, Miles Biddle. I remember his father was a clerk at the bank. Nice lad but his pictures was proper dreadful.”

  “So that’s who did it. We were curious about the artist—we have the painting, but it was not finished.” I looked at Dorcas for corroboration, but she was busy stirring her tea.

  “The rows that painting caused. The missus wasn’t good looking. Weren’t her fault, except according to Mr. G. what he wanted was one of them ladies in tall white wigs with them bits of black confetti stuck on their faces—like Marie Antonetti before they took her head off. Said the missus looked more like a servant than mistress of a big house. Joan the parlour maid told me that bit (she was cleaning dust out of the drawing room keyhole, so she said), then mister got started on Miles Biddle, would have it that the lad didn’t know his place.”

  “Really!” I said. Perhaps Aunt Sybil couldn’t help being a snob; it was a genetic fault.