than five minutes, he saw Deirdre’s swish car go by, and saw her gaily waving as she passed his house. He hoped she would be discreet. In his long experience of working undercover, he knew they must be alert to the unexpected. If it
Deirdre thought how lovely the Hall looked, as she drove up to the grand front and then round to the stable yard at the back. Gus had thought it a good idea not to park so obviously outside the front door, but Deirdre had argued that if there was a risk of Beattie returning early she could make a quicker getaway from the front. Gus had insisted, and so she agreed.
As she turned off the engine and began to open the door, she stopped. She was doing nothing wrong! All this skulduggery was quite ridiculous. There was absolutely no reason why she should not visit her old friend. If Miss Beatty had gone to market, so what? Either she would be admitted by Theo, or by Rose Budd in the house with him as usual. It was a perfectly normal course of events.
No it wasn’t. Her commonsense reasserted itself. There was a primary reason for her visiting Theo. It was to find out as much as she could from him about the Blakes, and Miriam in particular. A reunion with an old lover was a bonus. It would be important, she knew Gus and Ivy would both argue this, to make it possible to visit Theo more than once, and if the old dragon so much as suspected, let alone found Deirdre ensconced with Theo, Beattie would find a way of putting a final stop to it.
Why did she shiver at this thought? Deirdre shook herself and made for the kitchen door, which was now standing open with a smiling Rose welcoming her in.
KATYA WALKED BESIDE Ivy, feeling somehow relaxed for the first time since she had been working at Springfields. She was not unhappy there, and was well aware how lucky she had been to find work so soon after arriving in England. Her parents back in Poland were pleased and proud, and she received a stream of letters and cards from her large family back home. But still she had not relaxed. She could not understand much of what was said to her, and she still found her English classes hard going.
But now, strolling along with this funny, sharp old woman, she began to look about her, see how lovely the trees and flowers were, breathe in the air which, compared to the industrial town she had come from, was like champagne. At least, she supposed it was. She had never drunk champagne, though that nice Mr. Halfhide had promised her a glass very soon.
“Now, in we go,” Ivy said, turning through the lych-gate and into the churchyard. Either side of the path, pink floribunda roses and bushy lavender scented their way up to the church door. “Hope it’s unlocked,” Ivy said. “So many vandals these days, most churches are locked unless there’s a service or people doing the flowers and brasses.”
“
“Candlesticks and crosses-oh, you’ll see, my dear. I’ll explain.”
“And
“Criminals,” said Ivy. “Like the Communists,” she said firmly.
Katya had still not understood, but meekly followed Ivy into the dark interior of the eleventh-century church.
“We could do with some light,” Ivy said loudly, and, as she had hoped, the vestry door opened and the vicar came towards them, smiling broadly. He had met Ivy when she first arrived at Springfields, and at first his heart sank. But then on better acquaintance he realised that she was a lonely old woman, far from everything familiar in her life, determined to survive and make a place for herself in Barrington. “I think she’s being very brave,” he had said to his wife. “We shall be kind to her.”
Now he went into the bell tower and switched on lights in the body of the church.
“Thank you, Vicar,” Ivy said, and marched up to the chancel, beckoning Katya to follow her. To Ivy’s dismay, she saw Katya genuflect and cross herself in front of the altar. Oh dear, she was one of those, was she. Well, Ivy reassured herself, she could soon persuade her out of all that nonsense. To Ivy, God was a solid being, always there to be consulted, one she respected but was not averse to criticising if she thought He had made a wrong decision. When no one was listening, she talked to Him as if to a benign but certainly not omnipotent friend. She could imagine His chuckle as the Polish girl bobbed up and down and muttered something incomprehensible. Poor God. Ivy was quite sure English was His chosen language.
“Now then, Katya,” she said, “come and look at this.”
Katya followed Ivy towards the left of the altar, where a large and impressive seventeenth-century memorial plaque was fixed to the wall. A family crest framed in stone curlicues headed an inscription in Latin, which Ivy asked the vicar to translate. It was the usual lord of the manor stuff, but underneath was something quite chilling. Katya drew in her breath sharply.
“What happened?” she said.
Two kneeling figures, sculpted in high relief, with their hands together in prayer, and their long draped clothes beautifully moulded, faced the altar. The sculptor had been skilled, and the hands were delicate, one with a ring quite visible. But they had no heads. Where their heads should have been were two empty spaces.
“How terrible!” said Katya, turning quite pale.
Then Ivy asked the vicar to tell the story of how in the English Civil War, when Noncomformists and Catholics were at each other’s throats, a band of soldiers had entered the church on horseback, clattered up the aisle, and with cheers of triumph had knocked off the idolatrous heads of the Catholic squire and his lady. Their stone victims had crashed to the floor, but remained unbroken. So the soldiers had thrown them from one to another, until finally they used the stone pillars as targets and the heads broke into a hundred pieces.
“But that was so long ago!” said the vicar, seeing a tear rolling down the girl’s face. “Now we are a pleasant, peace-loving community, each one of us doing our best to be good Christians with our fellows.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Ivy, and walked back down the aisle. To her surprise she heard a few tentative notes on the organ. She looked back, and saw Katya had stopped and was gently fingering the keys.
“Please!” said the vicar. “Do play if you would like to. The organ has just been restored, and needs to be played. Come, Miss Beasley,” he said, beckoning her to the front pew. “We can have a private recital. Please,” he repeated, “do play for us.”
He could see that Katya did not need much persuading, and as they sat listening to the magic notes of a Bach prelude, he smiled at Ivy, closed his eyes, and companionably rested his hand on hers. She removed it immediately.
ALL WAS GOING well at the Hall. Rose had a quick chat with Deirdre, explaining that Theo did not know she was coming as she’d not wanted to disappoint him if things went wrong.
“You look much younger than Mr. Theo,” she said cheerfully to Deirdre. “A real cradle-snatcher he must have been!”
Deirdre saw through this flattery, but felt pleased and reassured, as Rose had intended. The years had put weight on Deirdre, and crow’s-feet wrinkles around her eyes were at odds with her carefully coloured hair.
They went through the hallway and stopped outside the tall double doors of the drawing room. As Rose put a finger to her lips for silence, Deirdre felt a quiver of nervousness. Supposing he didn’t remember her? Or did, and had no desire to see her again?
Rose opened the door quietly, and said, “Mr. Theo, you have a visitor.”
“But how about our Scrabble, my dear?” Deirdre heard the voice, and marvelled that she would have known it anywhere.
“Later, Mr. Theo. I promise. Now, let me introduce…”
She drew Deirdre into the room, and Theo Roussel leapt to his feet like a young man.
“No need to introduce us!” he said. “Deirdre, my dear,” he said, and hurried over to take her hand. They looked at each other without speaking, and did not notice Rose Budd quietly leaving the room.
LATER THAT EVENING, when David came home from work and demanded from Rose to be told all about it, every detail, she willingly settled him down with his supper and said, “It was like a film. Honestly, David, if the drawing room had dissolved into a beach scene with those two skipping into the sunset, I’d not have been surprised. Couldn’t have been better.”
