Dryden cleared some condensation. ‘Yup. Give it a wide berth, they kick.’
The Jubilee had been built on once-flooded land on the edge of the town. The open, puddled fields beyond were home to travellers’ horses. One of them had wandered in, and stood now as bemused and sightless as the cabbie. They left it snuffling the wet grass at the edge of the road and turned into the next street.
They passed two cars up on bricks and an abandoned supermarket trolley containing a soaking blanket and a can of Carlsberg Special Brew. Overhead the streetlamps failed to penetrate the gloom, a necklace of cold amber.
They inched past a parked car, a burnt-out Vauxhall Corsa with a ‘Police Notified’ placard inside its windscreen. The end of the cul-de-sac was a bit more upmarket: from what Dryden could see the fences were up, gardens were neat and the household rubbish was in the bins, not in the road. Number 29 was a ground-floor flat in a two-storey house. The door was solid, without glass, and after knocking Dryden waited a full minute before flipping up the letterbox to peer in. Nothing, but he sensed movement and felt the warmth of central heating within, so he knocked again and waited.
He heard a door open and the sudden sound of Radio Four’s
‘Yes?’ The voice was feminine but muscular, with plenty of confident strength.
‘Miss Hilgay?’
She let him in after he showed his press card. The front room was a surprise. Modern furniture, mostly Ikea, with none of the usual forest of framed family snapshots which seem to trail the elderly like small dogs with coats on.
On the table there was a pile of Labour Party fliers for the forthcoming local election. She’d been sticking them in envelopes and addressing them to post.
This didn’t seem right. Dryden checked his notebook. ‘Miss Viola Hilgay?’
She must have been seventy, more, but she stood her ground, one hand on the bare mantelpiece above the electric fire.
‘They call me Vee. Always have done, I’m afraid – but it’s better than Viola, don’t you think? Terrible affectation. Tea – I was just…’
Dryden shook his head. ‘It was just a brief enquiry about Osmington Hall.’ He told her about the discovery of the body at the PoW camp, the Italians questioned about the spate of robberies in late 1944, and the last unsolved case – the robbery at the Hall.
‘Yes. The police came,’ she said.
Dryden, surprised the local police had matched the stolen goods so quickly with Osmington, cursed silently beneath a smile.
Miss Hilgay bowed her head. ‘Look. I’m going to make that tea – you’ll join me?’
Dryden gave in, dutifully involved in the tiny but time-consuming rituals of ferrying mugs and sugar from the kitchenette to the living-room table.
She drank from a large mug with a picture of Tony Benn on the front. Dryden noticed that despite her confidence her hands shook slightly. Her eyes were green, like his, but one – the left – was sightless. The pupil had glazed over with a milk-white swirl which made it look like a tiny moon, rising between the eyelids.
‘They’re going to evict me,’ she said, slurping the tea.
‘Sorry?’
‘I thought that was why you’d come. I can’t pay the rent any more. They say it’s too big and there’s some one- room places – warden controlled. I’d rather die. I’ve told them they’ll have to carry me out. They don’t care. I’m just waiting for them to turn up. Today, perhaps tomorrow. I told that policeman, he didn’t care…’
The word ‘either’ hung in the air unspoken. Dryden looked out of the window in embarrassment, conscious that the lonely landscape that was his personal space had just been violated.
‘Do you remember the Hall?’ he asked again, ignoring the diversion.
‘Yes. Oh, yes. Very much so, Mr…?’
‘Dryden. Philip Dryden.’
‘I was fifteen when we left. I loved the place, naturally, any child would. I was just lucky it was me. I spent my life exploring it, really. There were a hundred rooms – did you know that?’
Dryden shook his head.
‘That’s what the National Trust says, anyway – they must be counting some cupboards,’ she said, laughing.
‘Anyway, I left in 1949. My father died and left debts – and then there were death duties. My mother and I moved out to an estate cottage; she had some money which was not entailed with the house.’
She dried up, wistfully eyeing the pile of unaddressed envelopes.
‘And what did you do?’
‘I lived off her money when she died. I went to university – very daring, the first woman in the family to break that taboo. Birmingham – another taboo!’
They both laughed. ‘Then I worked for various charities – Shelter, mainly. Then I got old and everyone thinks you’re useless when you’re old. So I’m here, waiting for a bailiff to call.’
She laughed, a real slap-in-the-face-of-life laugh.
‘At the Hall – you were an only child?’
