He called to her, but she didn’t immediately answer. He stood there, his back to the house, looking past the kitchen garden to the small orchard on the left and the outbuildings just beyond. Shrubbery, tall with age, partly blocked his view, but there appeared to be a small stable for horses, a coop for chickens, and a longer building where everything from carriages to scythes, barrows, and other tools could be stored. Leading to the buildings was a cobbled walk, to keep boots out of the mud when it rained, and someone had put a tub of flowers to either side.
He walked to the orchard, where plum and apple and pear grew cheek by jowl, and beyond there was another outbuilding, this one low, foursquare, and without grace. Apparently built for utility not beauty, it was one story so as not to be visible at the house over the tops of the orchard trees. A pair of windows was set either side of the door.
Someone had tried to make it prettier, for it had been painted green and there was a lilac avenue leading up the walk to it, three to either side. A silk purse and a sow’s ear, Rutledge thought.
Hamish, regarding it with dislike, said, “The laboratory.”
Rutledge went up to the windows and looked inside.
The workbenches in the center of the floor were too heavy to be overturned, but someone had taken an axe to them, and the rest of the room was littered with glass and twisted metal, broken chairs, and a scattering of tools and equipment. Someone had come in here and destroyed everything that could be destroyed, with a wild anger that hadn’t been satisfied by mere destruction. It had wanted to smash and hurt and torment.
Who had done this?
Gerald Parkinson’s late wife?
Or his daughters, hungry for a revenge they couldn’t exact on their father?
Hamish said, “The elder one.”
It was true. Rebecca Parkinson was riven by an anger that went bone deep, unsatisfied and uncontrolled.
But Sarah might have been jealous enough of her father’s passion to hate the laboratory just as much.
He heard someone calling from the direction of the house and retraced his steps, coming out of the orchard to see the housekeeper standing in the doorway, a hand shading her eyes as she called.
“I saw your motorcar from the windows. Where have you got to? There’s nobody here but me—” She broke off as she heard him approaching and turned his way.
“You mustn’t wander about like this, it isn’t right,” she scolded him. “Policeman or no.”
“I called to you. I could hear you humming in the kitchen,” he said lightly, shifting the blame for his walk squarely onto her for not answering him.
“I was arranging fresh flowers for Mrs. Parkinson’s bedroom and taking them up. I do sometimes. It cheers me.”
“A nice touch,” he said. “You must have been very fond of her.”
“I was that, a lovely lady with gentle manners.” She sighed. “It seems to me sometimes that I can still hear her voice calling to me.” At his look of surprise she smiled wryly. “No, not her ghost, of course not. But her voice all the same, in my head, just as it used to be. ‘Martha, do come and see what I’ve done with the flowers.’ Or ‘Martha, I think I’ll take my luncheon in the gardens, if you don’t mind making up a tray.’ Little things I’d do for her and knew she’d appreciate. But that time’s long gone, and I don’t have anyone to spoil, not even Miss Rebecca or Miss Sarah.”
“Do you recall when Mrs. Parkinson was ill—some years ago when her daughters were young?”
“I’ve told you, it isn’t my place to gossip about the family.”
“It isn’t gossip I’m looking for,” he said, “but something to explain what makes Gerald Parkinson’s daughters hate their father. It might be traced back to her illness, for all I know.”
“I don’t think they hate him, exactly—”
“What else would you call it? I’ve spoken to both of them, and I’d be deaf not to hear the way they felt about him.”
“Yes, well, I expect there’s some hard feeling over poor Mrs. Parkinson’s sudden death.”
“On the contrary, I think it went back longer than that. Sarah Parkinson remembers how happy she was before that illness. But she was too young to understand what the illness was. Or why it changed her parents.”
“Come in, then, I was just about to put the kettle on. You might as well have a cup with me.”
She led the way into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove. He could see that it was already hot, and she said, “I like to cook sometimes when I’m working. Nothing but a bit of warmed-over soup and some tea, once in a while my bread baking for the week. This is a better oven than the one I have in my little house.”
“No one objects, surely?”
“No. At least they’ve never said anything. Once when I’d done some baking I came back and found half my lemon cake gone. It wasn’t all that long ago either. I expect Miss Rebecca was sharpish after working in the gardens.”
“Mrs. Parkinson’s illness?” he reminded her.
“I wasn’t here then, as it happened. I left service to go and marry a scoundrel, and when I came back, looking for work, she took me on again. The interim housekeeper had just left without giving notice.”
“Do you know why?”
“I was told she hadn’t counted on being a nursemaid, but it was more than that, I think. Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson weren’t getting on. He was spending more and more time in that laboratory of his, and she didn’t leave her bed for a good two months after I came back. She’d lost her will to live, I thought, and I tried everything I could think of to bring her back to her old self. It wasn’t until Miss Sarah caught the scarlet fever that Mrs. Parkinson got herself up and dressed and stayed up night and day with the child. I think that was the saving of her, but Mr. Parkinson, when I mentioned it to him, said that even great sorrows don’t last forever. I took that to mean that Mrs. Parkinson had lost a child she was carrying. I don’t know why I thought that, except it was just the sort of thing that would break a woman’s heart. No one ever said, in so many words. But they’d have liked a son, I’m sure, to carry on the name.”
Hamish said, “Truth or only wishful thinking?”
It was something neither parent would discuss with a young girl, but a loss that would send the father to bury himself in his work and leave the mother to mourn for what might have been.
“Do you know if the doctor who cared for Mrs. Parkinson is still in practice?”
“My goodness, no, Dr. Butler died six years ago of a heart condition. His son was going to take over the practice, but then the war came along.”
So much for verifying her supposition.
He drank his tea as the housekeeper rattled on about her work and the family she had served, small anecdotes that she had taken pleasure in remembering through the years.
“I don’t expect you’ve ever seen a photograph of her. When they was first married, Mr. Parkinson said he’d like to have her painted. She was such a pretty thing, Mrs. Parkinson. Fair hair and blue eyes, a real English rose, you might say. It was a pleasure to look at her when she was all dressed up for a party or to travel up to London. Blue was her color, it brought out the softness of her skin, but she could wear most anything. They made a handsome pair, I can tell you. Him dark, her fair…”
When he’d finished his tea, he thanked her and rose to leave.
“I shall have to mention to Miss Rebecca and Miss Sarah that you were here,” she told him as she saw him to the door. “If they ask. And if you could see fit to forget anything I may’uv said out of turn, it would be a kindness. But you being a policeman and all, it’s not like gossiping with the greengrocer’s wife, is it?”