Bright Hair About the Bone Read online

  Esmé handed back the postcard. “So what have we got? Daniel’s in trouble. Hating something about Burgundy—a well-founded sentiment in the light of what was to happen—and suspecting that something was about to go badly wrong, he encourages—no, requires—you to inveigle a Scotland Yard Inspector into accompanying you to this benighted spot. Once there you are to locate this Uffington woman—a phantom—who will obligingly lead you further down into the awful maze. Am I getting this right? Well, it’s quite clear then, Letty. I see no problem. There’s only one action you can, in all conscience, perform, isn’t there? More tea? You pour.”

  “Oh, right. And what action do you have in mind?”

  Letty, with cup in one hand and teapot in the other, could do nothing to prevent her friend from making a sudden lunge across the table to snatch her letter of recommendation to Charles Paradee.

  “You tear this to shreds! I’ll do it for you. And you go nowhere near this wretched Fontigny. You write a polite note to this Paradee person telling him that, after all, you find you will not be available to come and dig with him. I don’t want to hear a second body’s been found oozing its lifeblood away into a medieval gutter!”

  CHAPTER 5

  Sir Richard Talbot lounged in his favourite armchair, the remains of a glass of Talisker at his elbow, the latest Buchan novel on his knee. After a good day’s hunting and a congenial dinner, he should have been at ease. Fretfully, he poured himself a second whisky and calmed himself with the familiar gesture of holding up the cut-glass tumbler to the glow of the fire, the better to admire the amber liquid. His agitation persisted and he glowered across the hearth rug at the cause of his state of unease. Four narrowed eyes returned his glower.

  “You can’t hide behind that glass for much longer, Daddy,” said Letty. “You’re going to have to give us your answer. Just say yes and we’ll leave you in peace to go back to your shocker.”

  “Pay no attention to her, Sir Richard! You know what she’s like! Say no, or there’ll be another coffin coming back from France,” insisted Esmé boldly.

  Sir Richard looked at the two earnest faces on the sofa opposite and sighed. Why these two had remained such firm friends over the years was a mystery to him. They never agreed about anything. He’d not bothered to count the occasions on which he’d been called on as final authority to decide which one of them was right, only, having announced his decision, to be set upon by both of them. Laetitia, tall and fair-haired, had all the stalking elegance of an egret when seen next to her small friend, who was as bright-eyed and neat as a robin. He decided to bluster a little more. Sometimes they got bored and left him alone if he went on for long enough.

  “One more word and I’ll ship the pair of you off to darkest Burgundy and have you chained up like Andromeda—to a postbox! You deserve it! I can hardly begin to believe what you’ve done today. If that young thug Dalton takes it into his head to open his mouth—and we all know how discreet he can be—bang go my dining rights in several colleges. You ought never to have made contact with this American and offered your services, which I’ll bet is what happened. I don’t believe a word of all that nonsense about a post being advertised, my girl. My suspicion is that you approached this Paradee and said you’d go and work for no recompense and he replied saying thank you very much and requesting testimonials. Am I right?”

  Laetitia’s cross face told him all he needed to know. “I curse Daniel for putting such ideas into your head, Letty, and I’m not at all convinced that you’re reading him aright anyway. It all sounds a bit thin. Two full stops indeed! Where’d you get hold of all this School for Spies stuff? What rubbish! And what about poor Andrew Merriman, who was gracious enough to nurse you through a year’s apprenticeship in Egypt? You’re getting him to vouch for you too? How did you manage that?” Catching a deepening of Letty’s colour, he groaned. “Oh no! More blackmail! Well…it can’t have been difficult, I suppose. Andrew would always be a very easy target for blackmail. Dash it! More fences to mend!”

  “But, Daddy! We owe it to Daniel to do as he asked us with his last words, don’t we?” She thrust the postcard at him. “Won’t you listen to him? One last time? We’ll never hear his voice again! Are you silencing him forever?” After an hour of explaining, cajoling, and reassuring, it had come down to this. She had no more tricks left. But her father had always listened to Daniel.

  He took the card and silently read the words again. Finally he looked up. When he spoke, his voice was husky with emotion. “Soppy old thing! Very well…I concede. We’ll hearken to what the old reprobate has to say. But, my girl, we’ll stick to the letter of what he says or we’ll take no action at all. Is that agreed?”

  Letty nodded solemnly, disguising her satisfaction at hearing a sally port creak open.

  “Then it all comes down to Mr. Plod, the Policeman. The character stipulated by your godfather. I would never allow you to go abroad, not even as far as Deauville…” He considered for a moment. “…and perhaps rather particularly not Deauville, without a reliable escort. You find yourself a suitable companion—and I’m not offering any assistance here, you’re on your own!—and you can go. There will, of course, be certain requirements…”

  “Requirements? What sort of requirements?” Letty asked with misgiving.

  “The lucky candidate for this journey to Hades and back must be elderly—a retired officer of experience and heavy with years, sufficient years to put him beyond the range of your allurements and blandishments, my girl! He should be the male equivalent of the College bedders—what is the phrase? De aspecto horribile. That’s it.” He laughed, beginning to enjoy himself. “Ugly as sin! And he must have an unblemished record, be in full possession of all his faculties, able to speak French, and willing to take on the guise of chauffeur and general factotum for a spoilt young English miss. I’m prepared to offer a remuneration of five pounds per week plus living expenses. Overgenerous perhaps, but the sum reflects the particular demands of the position. There you have it. Daniel’s own words, clarified and expanded a little by me. I’m sure my friend would have wanted nothing less than this,” he added piously.

  Esmé chortled. “In other words—no, you won’t go, Letty! A victory for common sense. Well done, Sir Richard!”

  When the two young women arrived next morning in front of the colonnaded façade of the Fitzwilliam Museum and tethered their bicycles to nearby iron railings, Esmé turned towards the steps and the entrance.

  “No. This way,” said Letty, pointing towards Downing Street. “Something to do before we go in, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Now, I ask myself: How disappointed am I to postpone the pleasure of gazing at ancient potsherds, rusty arrowheads…loom weights?” said Esmé with heavy sarcasm. All Letty’s attempts to make her friend see the fascination of ancient articles dug from the earth had so far been unsuccessful, but she never stopped trying. “So—where are you taking me?”

  “To the police station.”

  “Letty! Why?”

  “Because that’s where we’ll find policemen,” replied Letty patiently. “And if we ask the right question of the right officer, that’s how we’ll find a retired policeman.”

  Esmé scampered angrily after her friend as she crossed the road into Downing Street, heading for St. Andrew’s Street. “If you think you can track down ex-sergeant Ebenezer Gotobed to his retreat in Garlic Row and talk him into going to France with you, you’re barmy, Letty! He’ll be far too busy with his pigeons and his leeks. And I very much doubt that Mrs. Gotobed would be able to spare him. I’m sorry I spoke slightingly of the loom weights! I adore loom weights! Can we go back and admire them now?”

  She was still complaining when they arrived in front of the imposing and uncompromisingly austere police headquarters.

  “I’m not going in there,” declared Esmé firmly, looking up at the heraldic carving over the mighty front doors. “I’ve heard about this place! Don’t they have something in there called the Spinning House? W
hen the Proctors arrest unaccompanied young ladies of the town, they lock them up in it without telling their families. And make them do hard labour!”

  “I think it’s closed down. And anyway—we don’t look like tarts of the town exactly, Esmé. I rather think it was the fact of being accompanied by male members of the university that got the Proctors excited and the young ladies into trouble. But, just in case…” Letty patted her bag, “I’ve got my cards with me.”

  But Esmé noticed that she straightened her hat and tucked away a stray lock of hair.

  As they hesitated outside, peering through the open double doors into the oak-lined, marble-tiled interior, a group approached from the direction of the city centre. Two burly policemen were dragging along between them a third man. Esmé’s attention moved at once from the smart getup of the constables to the abject appearance of the down-and-out they were hauling along with such little ceremony. He was frail, grey-bearded, and unkempt. His clothes were second-or even third-hand and seemed to consist mainly of an overlarge greatcoat and shabby boots. Tramps and beggars were a common enough sight on the streets even now, eight years after the war, and Esmé was always being reminded to pay no attention to them.

  “Letty! Look! You must speak to them!”

  Letty’s eye swept over the group. “They’re just constables, Esmé. And they’re busy. They won’t do. We’re going to have to go inside to get our information.”

  “No! Look properly! They’re being beastly to that poor old man. Can’t you see? His nose! It’s bleeding! They’ve been hitting him.”

  “I do believe you’re right. Well, why don’t you go and remonstrate with them?”

  “You know very well they’ll take no notice of me! Oh, he’s limping! They’ve been kicking him!” Esmé’s pity was turning to anger. She pointed an accusing finger in their direction. “Go for them, Letty!”

  “Really, Esmé! Where is this going to end? You had me rescue a three-legged tortoise from the market, the runt of a litter from the puppy van, and the knife-grinder’s asthmatic donkey, and now you’re trading up to human flotsam and jetsam.” She sighed. But Esmé noticed that while she was speaking, Letty’s back had straightened, her chin had come up, and she was watching the three men coming towards them with a searching eye.

  The two girls positioned themselves side by side, blocking the pavement in front of the constables and their prisoner.

  “May I help you, ladies?” one asked as they halted in surprise.

  “You most certainly may, Officer. Release that gentleman! We, as members of the public whom you serve, take exception to the manner in which you are handling him. Observe, Miss Leatherhead, would you, the nosebleed, the limp in the left leg, the bruise appearing on the left cheekbone.”

  Esmé moved closer to the prisoner, dutifully observing the alleged wounds as they were itemised, and tut-tutting primly.

  “May I suggest, ladies,” said the constable, exquisitely polite, “that if you are easily affronted by scenes of this nature, you do not loiter in the doorway of the local nick? A pleasant walk in the Botanic Garden may well be more in tune with your sensibilities. They do say as how the peonies are a sight to behold at the moment.”

  “Oh, I dare say, Officer,” agreed Letty. “Unfortunately, we have business with the Chief Inspector. I have been charged by my father—Sir Richard Talbot, Justice of the Peace…you are aware of Sir Richard?—with the delivery of a most urgent message. Here’s my card.”

  One officer wiped his hand on his trousers and took the proffered card, glancing at it briefly. He nodded lugubriously at his companion.

  “And now, perhaps you would care to enlarge on the problem you are having with this man?”

  “He’s a down-and-out, ma’am. No visible means of support. Picked him up in the graveyard behind St. Mary the Less. Just routine. We’ll take him in to the desk, book him, and he’ll be sent up Castle Hill to spend a week in the House of Correction.” He gave a conspiratorial grin. “That should convince him it’s time to move on away from Cambridge.”

  “If ’e can still move, after a week in the Correction!” chortled the second constable.

  Letty flinched but retained her polite smile. She shook her head. “Something tells me you may have misconstrued this matter, gentlemen. Can you be quite certain that he is penniless? Or have you merely assumed as much from the state of his, er, toilette?” She reached a gloved hand into the pocket of the man’s filthy greatcoat. When she pulled it out again, a silver half-crown piece glittered between her thumb and forefinger. “There! Visible means of support! The price of five days’ accommodation at sixpence a day. You ought to have declared it,” she reprimanded the tramp. “They’ll add wasting police time to your charges if you’re not more careful.” She dropped the coin back into the man’s pocket.

  The policemen looked at each other glumly over the prisoner’s head. Then, without a word exchanged, they released him. “Very well, ma’am,” said the spokesman. “Have it your way. I hope as how he’s properly grateful for your intervention. Cell’ll keep for another day or two. Now, we’ll go and inform the Governor that you are expecting to see him. Perhaps you could wait in the lobby?”

  “Inform the Guv?” muttered the second in a voice he intended to be overheard. “Sound the alarm you mean! Poor old sod! Wonder if he has any idea what he’s in for?”

  The girls were left on the pavement looking uncomfortably at the newly freed man. The tramp didn’t jump for joy at the unexpected release or amble away but stood quietly staring back at them. Finally, he fished around in his pocket and held out the half-crown. “I couldn’t be quite certain that I would find the coin in there,” he remarked. “It seems to come and go at will. And may I say that I am, indeed, properly grateful?” His voice was low and without accent. A surprisingly pleasant voice, Letty thought. She shook her head and gestured that he was to keep the coin.

  Esmé rummaged in her bag and produced a clean handkerchief. He did not refuse or make a fuss but took it gracefully. “Ah, yes. It seems I resisted arrest! Unconsciously—literally—for I was sleeping when they came upon me in the Saxon graveyard. Oh, no need for concern, Miss—I managed to roll with the punch. The nose was broken many years ago.”

  “What on earth were you doing in a graveyard?” Letty asked.

  “Lying in the sun on an ancient tombstone, amid the wild grasses, sheltered by the old walls of Peterhouse. It brings peace to my bones and is much to be preferred to a hammock in the Mill Road shelter. But I must not detain you from your meeting with the Inspector.”

  “Oh, I think I can say we’ve decided to put that off for the moment,” said Esmé with some confidence, sensing her friend had been distracted from her purpose. “Miss Talbot and I are actually just off to the Fitzwilliam to look at loom weights, aren’t we, Letty? We’ll walk back with you to St. Mary the Less—it’s on our way. If we run into any more predatory policemen, I’ll unleash Letty again.”

  He gave her a smile which managed at once to convey sadness and a sense of humour. “Then I will be proud to accept. But may I suggest the slightest detour? If you will follow me—I suggest a good few paces behind…being downwind of me is, I admit, most challenging—we will walk through Petty Cury and I will find the means of repaying your contribution to my welfare.”

  As they walked along behind him, Letty remarked to Esmé. “Old soldier, wouldn’t you say? The minute he started to walk in front of us his back straightened, did you notice? What on earth do you suppose he’s planning to get up to in Petty Cury? Rob a bank?”

  He stopped and waited for them to draw level with him outside the bookseller Heffer’s shop. Then he pointed to a box containing a job lot of mixed secondhand books on display on a trestle table by the door. “Have you got a shilling in your purse, Miss?” He spoke to Esmé.

  “Yes, I have,” she said, producing one.

  “Then pick up that leather-bound book—yes, that one—and check that the price pencilled on the front page is
indeed one shilling.”

  “Yes, it is.” Esmé inspected the dull brown book with its spare gold lettering with misgiving. “Walden? Thoreau? Which is the author and which the title? It says 1854 on the spine…can this be of any interest?”

  Catching the concentrated look of longing on the tramp’s face and a quickly controlled twitch of his dirty fingers towards the book, Letty decided to compensate for her friend’s ignorance. “Certainly, Esmé. Henry David Thoreau—the truest American who ever existed, according to Emerson, and I suppose he would know. The author spent some time living a rough life and a solitary one in the woods by a lake at a place called Walden…somewhere in the wilds of New England, I believe…and this is his account. My father was very taken with it. He was inspired by the book to go off camping in the Lake District, muttering, ‘Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplicity, simplicity.’ He was back within a week seeking out complexity.” She glanced at their escort. “The solitary life has appeal only for a very particular sort of person.”

  He did not rise to her bait but said to Esmé, “Take it inside, Miss, and buy it, will you?”

  Shrugging and uncertain, Esmé did as he asked. She returned moments later with the book in a brown paper bag.

  “Good. Now, has either one of you got a pencil eraser?”

  “I have one,” said Letty, producing her diary and tiny eraser-tipped pencil.

  “Rub out the one-shilling marker. Now, put it in your handbag, Miss Laetitia, go upstairs to the first floor, and ask to see Mr. Hilton. He is the buyer of antique volumes. Hand him your card and say you wish to offer this book for sale. It is from your father’s library and is surplus to requirements as he has another. Mr. Hilton will ask how much you want for it and you will say five pounds. After some well-mannered huffing and puffing on both sides, you will emerge with two pounds and ten shillings.”