Secrets of the Heart

meaning.’ Enraptured by the flight of his electronic bees, he adjusted the dial. ‘An historic house can’t look after itself.’ His tone was one of reproof.

They made for the drawing room and Mr Harvey measured and paced with his tape-measure and dictated notes. Occasionally he became transfixed by a crack or a fissure, by the tilt of the stone fireplace and, in particular, the long windows overlooking the terrace.

Eventually he pronounced, ‘Proper restoration is always expensive, but it depends what you want. A total overhaul or just bits and pieces.’

‘Can you pick and choose what to preserve?’ Agnes fingered a curtain, which had been bleached by the light. ‘I would have thought not.’

Mr Harvey’s machine hummed in agreement. ‘I’d like to view the cellars and storage areas.’

The cellars ran the length of the house and were dark, cold, and bled damp. Agnes led the way. ‘This one was known as the women’s cellar,’ she explained, embarrassed that anyone should have had to work in such conditions, ‘where they did the pickling, spicing and meat curing. The men’s cellar, where the wine and beer was kept, is through that door.’

The measuring and humming and dictating began all over again. If Mr Harvey was of a careful disposition, he was also a showman. He paused, milking his moment, and ran his hand over the brick on which a blotched mural had been painted in mould. ‘It’s a big story of rising damp, Miss Campion.’ To emphasize the tragedy, he stamped his feet on the flint cobbles and showed her where the ooze created a lustrous setting around the cobbles.

Agnes went quiet. She knew death had been here, an uneasy death, or so it had been reported in the records. A-swagger with riches racked up from exploiting trade in cardamom, muslin and jute in the East India Company, Archibald Campion had been hot to build a grandiose Victorian wing. Driving their spades into the earth to set the foundations for the wing, the estate workers had hit a pile of human bones. ‘There was no question that they were human,’ noted Camilla Campion, Archibald’s wife, ‘and some were horribly charred. We were afraid that we would catch a putrid contagion.’ The conclusion was, she reported, shocked, that these bones were the relicts of plague victims, denied proper burial in the graveyard.

Unquiet their death and, thus, unquiet their souls: they beat their anguish and disturbance against the brick and silence.

Mr Harvey was upset by what his inspection revealed. His machine snapped to a halt. ‘I’m afraid that, over the years, the external soil level has risen. It requires to be stripped back and a damp course inserted.’

‘I’d better get you some coffee, Mr Harvey, and we can discuss the options.’

While they sat and drank it in the kitchen, Mr Harvey reeled off a verbatim report in which the word ‘defective’ featured heavily. The roof timbers were defective. The brickwork was defective and had the additional problem of soot disease – ‘Sulphuric acid, Miss Campion, caused by a mingling of fumes and damp air, which penetrates the brickwork.’ Further defects included damp in the roof and an almost certain infestation of lyctus and death-watch beetle, and the ivy growth on the Victorian wing.

‘I know that,’ said Agnes. She looked down at her untouched coffee. ‘What are we talking?’

Mr Harvey shifted into a comfortable position on the chair and totted up sums under his breath. ‘Thousands.’ He peered at her face. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Campion. Once you’ve reached fifty or so anything else on top seems immaterial.’

At last Mr Harvey announced that he had done. With doom in her heart, Agnes accompanied him to his van, parked by the kitchen garden. He tapped the wall. ‘These I like. Put me in front of a wall,’ he said, ‘and I can tell you such things about it. Like this one.’ He pointed. ‘English bond. Not to be mixed up with Flemish bond.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Agnes, with gallows humour.

‘I noticed when I drove up that your boundary wall over by the river is knapped flint and brick. Used in Hampshire and here since Roman times. Needs repairing.’ He took a final squint up at the house. ‘Bucket repointing on the brickwork,’ he said, ‘and you’ll probably have to stipple it for the weathered effect. Otherwise, you’ll have the heritage people down on you.’ He inserted himself into his van. ‘Guttering? Well, needs completely replacing. Cast iron, I’m afraid, but we might get away with fibreglass for the hopper heads.’

Then, mercifully, Mr Harvey drove carefully away.

The house was bleeding to death and, for the moment, she was powerless to provide a transfusion.

Within an hour, Peter Bingham was on the phone to report that he had had a telephone call from a London estate agent, who wished to know if Flagge House was for sale. A housing association and a developer, who specialized in converting older properties into multiple-occupancy, had both expressed interest.

‘Stop there,’ said Agnes. ‘Have you been speaking to Mr Harvey? Whether you have or you haven’t, the answer is the same.’

While Agnes dealt with Mr Harvey, the sisters were upstairs practising packing for the Sound of Music holiday. Or, at least, Maud was. The bedroom was chilly, and when a depressed Agnes joined them, she scolded them for not turning on the electric radiator that she had bought in an effort to head off Maud’s fires. Shoes clacking on the wooden floor, she crossed the room and turned it on.

Outside, the river ran strong and fierce, still swollen with spring rain.

‘We wanted to save you money,’ said Bea, edging closer to the heat.

Maud sailed about the bedroom, dropping pieces of clothing here and there and shuffling, to no point, through a discarded pile of blouses and stockings. Patient Bea waited on the sidelines and, every so often, stepped in to restore order.

‘Only one suitcase, dear, don’t you think?’ Bea sorted the stockings into colour-coded heaps.

‘You were always so bossy,’ said her elder sister. ‘Always.’

Bea’s busy hands did not stop. ‘Was I? Dick didn’t think so. He liked the way I kept house.’

Maud’s large eyes were veiled. ‘Dick,’ she said spitefully, ‘was a saint.’

Bea dropped the stockings and plumped down on the edge of the bed. ‘Yes, he was, wasn’t he?’ The characteristic serenity had cracked, and she showed her distress. And I miss him so.’

Agnes sat down beside Bea and slid her arm around her shoulders. ‘What do you miss most?’

Bea picked at the folds in her skirt. ‘I miss… I miss the journey. We moved forward… I can’t explain quite what I mean. But, whatever it was, it ended when he died.’ The concertina of material twitched between her fingers.

Not to be outdone, Maud was still rattling through her clothes. She held up a blouse against her chest, threw it down, picked up an alternative. ‘The buttons are off this one.’ She swung round and accosted the pair on the bed. ‘Where did this… journey with Dick begin? Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you lived all your married life in Shaftesbury. Or are you speaking in some kind of code?’ Her voice crescendoed with echoes of a child’s rage.

Agnes squeezed Bea tight. ‘Darling Bea.’

Bea held out her hand for Maud’s blouse. ‘Give it to me. I’ll mend it.’

Maud clutched it hard to her chest. ‘Will it make you feel better?’

‘Maud!’ Agnes summoned her patience.

‘Give me the blouse, dear.’ Bea turned so pale that Agnes was alarmed.

‘Have you taken your pills, Bea?’ she asked.

Maud gave the blouse a final inspection and tossed it over to her sister. ‘There.’

Agnes retrieved it from Bea’s lap, folded it and laid it to one side. ‘You can sort it out later. You are all right, aren’t you, Bea?’

‘Oh, yes, dear. Of course.’ Bea was looking more her normal self. She seemed embarrassed by her revelations and twisted her wedding ring up to her knuckle. ‘Don’t mind what I say. I was confused. But the habit…’ she considered ‘… of being with someone has to be unlearned.’

‘Alors.’ Maud hovered in front of her sister. ‘Marriage is there to be endured, like bank managers and politicians, because there is nothing else.’

‘Maud, that’s foolish,’ murmured Bea.

‘I may be many things, but not a fool.’ In a rare gesture, Maud placed a hand on Bea’s shoulder. ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that I missed John.’

There was a lull in the jealousies and hostilities.

Julian rang the day after. ‘Agnes? I’ve been thinking. Would you like to come sailing at the weekend? I’ll tell you