There was a Daimler parked beside Bella’s BMW in the drive. Sir Keith, I assumed, had already arrived. When I rang the bell, Sarah opened the door. She’d had her hair cut even shorter since her visit to Brussels. And she’d lost a little weight too. It suited her, though it was also worrying. I doubted if counting calories was the cause.
“Good of you to come, Robin,” she said. “I mean it. Really very kind.”
“Not at all.”
“I’m sorry we’ve not been able to get together since you…” She was nervous, though whether because of meeting me again or because of the reason for our meeting I couldn’t tell. “Well, we’ve both been busy, haven’t we? Come on through.”
The others were in the drawing-room. Bella came forward as I entered and gave me a kiss on both cheeks. I suppose she reckoned that’s how normal people would expect her to greet her brother-in-law, though it took me aback. Then she introduced me to Rowena and Sir Keith.
Rowena was even slimmer and slighter than her sister. She had long fair hair, almost exactly the shade of her mother’s. It cascaded in waves down the back of her dress as far as her hips. Uncut since childhood, I assumed. And an arresting sight. But not quite as arresting as her aquamarine eyes. They gazed up at me as I shook her hand, solemn and unblinking, fixed momentarily on mine. And for that moment her concentration-her absorption-seemed total. As if we were alone together. As if nothing mattered except what we might be about to say to each other.
“Hello,” she said softly, frowning like some cautious but well-bred child. “Sarah’s told me about you, Mr. Timariot. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“And I you.” I wanted to offer her my condolences, but something stopped me. Then Sir Keith was beside us, sliding a fatherly arm round Rowena’s shoulders while he treated me to a firm handshake and a formal smile. The chance was gone.
He was a big man, in manner as much as physique. Grey-haired, broadly built and handsomely weather-beaten. He met my glance with the brisk confidence of somebody whose profession it is to encounter a wide variety of people in difficult circumstances. But there was a diffidence there as well. Our roles were strangely reversed. I should have been the one offering consolation. But his breezy warmth seemed to forbid it. We could laugh or converse or share a drink, it implied. Anything more profound-anything remotely intimate-was territory best left unexplored. Which was only to be expected, I suppose. The ingrained reticence of a certain generation of Englishmen. Yet there was another layer to it, I felt. There was a suspicion of me. I was the last man to see his wife alive-apart from her murderer. I was the stranger who possessed a small piece of knowledge he might have craved. If he’d allowed himself to admit as much. But he wasn’t going to. That was clear. Bereavement was to him an enemy you engaged and defeated, grief a weakness you never showed.
Lunch was one of the more uncomfortable experiences of my life. I sat next to Rowena and exchanged few words with her beyond an excruciating discussion of the weather and how best to cook broccoli. Every other subject that came into my head-Christmas, the Cotswolds, her plans, her pastimes, her present, her future-came back to her mother and what had happened to her. Precisely how to talk about that in a casual and reassuring manner over roast beef and burgundy with a girl who could hardly have looked and sounded less like the average nineteen-year-old sophisticate was a task I couldn’t begin to tackle.
Not that my confusion seemed to communicate itself round the table. Sir Keith held awkward silences at bay with practised aplomb, discoursing on wine, medicine and the law with no particular need of an interlocutor. He even seemed to know something about cricket bats, provoking Bella to display greater familiarity with the history of Timariot & Small than I’d ever have credited her with. Well, I knew the game she was playing. And it looked as if Sir Keith did too. But it wasn’t cricket.
I didn’t disapprove. I was in no position to. You have to lose somebody you’ve been physically and mentally close to for more than twenty years before you know what it leaves you needing and yearning and seeking. Keith Paxton had my sympathy on several counts. He’d suffered what I could only imagine. A theft of something precious but also familiar. A deprivation as undeserved as it was unexpected. And in the face of all that, he’d held on.
As had one of his daughters. But not the other. Her voice wavered. Her hand trembled. Her mind froze. I could see and hear it happening. I could sense her grasp growing ever frailer. This very lunch-this cautious venture into limited society-was for her an ordeal. And a trial still lay ahead. Which I, incredibly, was expected to help her face.
How only became apparent after the meal. Bella went into the kitchen to clear up. Sarah went to help her. And Rowena excused herself. Leaving Sir Keith and me alone together in the lounge. Able at last to speak freely. Man to man.
“I gather Bella’s put you in the picture, Robin.” He’d slipped readily into using my Christian name. “About Rowena, I mean.”
“Yes. I was sorry to hear of her difficulties. But they’re perfectly understandable. The loss of a mother must be hard enough for a daughter to come to terms with in any circumstances.”
“But these weren’t just any circumstances. Quite so. They certainly weren’t.” He sighed and for a moment looked all and more of his age. “If I could get my hands on Naylor… But perhaps it’s just as well I can’t.” He sat forward and pressed his hands together, gazing at the carpet between us as if I were one of his patients he was about to inform of the progress of a terminal disease. “Louise was… quite a lot younger than me. And beautiful. Well, you met her, so you’ll know that. I suppose men in my position always half expect they’ll be left in the end. Ditched for some gigolo or other. At the very least betrayed. Cuckolded. Made a fool of. And the worst kind of fool at that. An old one.”
“Are you saying-”
“No. That’s the point, Robin. It didn’t happen. Louise was loving and faithful. She’d have gone on being both till my dying day. I’m sure of it. More sure now than ever. But I lost her anyway, didn’t I? She didn’t desert me. She was taken from me. Which would be bad enough without… God, I can’t describe how I felt when I heard. I’d been in Madrid for a few days. There was a conference I wanted to attend. When I got back to Biarritz she’d flown to England to buy one of Oscar Bantock’s paintings. I wasn’t surprised. She adored his work. And she was a creature of impulse. That was one of the things I most…” He broke off and smiled apologetically at the iceberg-tip of emotion he’d revealed.
“You don’t have to tell me this,” I said. “There’s really no-”
“But there is. I have to explain, you see. The police phoned me with the news. Frightful. Awful. Unbelievable. But true. And worse-a hundred times worse-for Rowena. They’d been unable to contact me at first. And Sarah was in Scotland, exact whereabouts unknown. So they’d had to ask Rowena to identify her mother’s body. Somehow, that seemed even more horrible to me than what had happened to Louise. You’ve seen what sort of girl Rowena is. It was asking too much of her to shrug off the experience. I only wish…” He spread his hands helplessly.
“Are you sure it’ll do any good for me to talk to her about it?”
“No. Not sure at all. But her psychiatrist thinks Rowena feels responsible for Louise’s death. Guilty for letting her drive to Kington that afternoon. Ridiculous, I know, but deeply rooted. She’s invented signs, danger signals, she should have spotted. They weren’t there to be spotted, of course. If Louise had foreseen what was going to happen to her in Kington, she wouldn’t have gone there. That stands to reason.” Did it? I wondered. Could we be absolutely certain of that? “I can’t persuade her the signs didn’t exist. I can’t prove it to her. Nor can Sarah. Because we weren’t there. We didn’t see Louise that day. We didn’t get the chance.”