They were roughly six car-lengths from the home. ‘Do you think she did it?’ said Freddy, quietly.
‘Of course not.’
‘She did hate him though.’
‘So? You hate your wife and your boss. Do you plan to murder them?’
‘I don’t hate Theresa. I intensely dislike her.’
‘I just can’t imagine Mum doing such a thing. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and—’
‘Maybe he took her gin away.’
‘Oh, shut up, Freddy.’
‘Prised it out of her vice-like alky grip.’
‘Shhh.’ Two car-lengths away now. The reporters were still watching, but not with much interest. There were a dozen or so public photographs of Tabitha with her parents, but most were ancient; Christmas family portrait shots of the Joan Crawford variety: oh, how her father had hated – positively loathed – posing for those! His sarcastic quips to the photographer: ‘Look how fucking wholesome we are!’ His whisky within reach on the bureau, just out of shot. The most recent picture of Tabitha with her mother, published in Tatler in 1958, showed them at the Royal Opera. Tabitha’s face was partly obscured by her hair, deliberately so, and of course she looked so much younger, with her once-cherished jawline and a pair of lips unstripped of their rosy melanin. It was possible these reporters wouldn’t even recognise her.
And they didn’t.
‘Morning,’ said one of them, a young man – a child, practically – with his hair worn in bleached-blond curtains.
‘Morning,’ said Tabitha.
The female reporter was looking down at a clipboard, a steaming cup in her gloved hand.
A care worker let them in, glancing peevishly at the reporters before closing the door with admirable placidity. The home was warm, as it usually was, and this sudden change in temperature set off a tingle in Tabitha’s toes.
‘They’ve been here since six,’ said the carer, whose name might have been Lindsey.
‘Eager little beavers,’ said Freddy, kicking the welcome mat to shake the snow off his shoes.
‘The police were here earlier, too,’ said the carer. ‘For questioning.’
‘Yes, we were informed by the manager,’ said Tabitha.
‘Cup of tea?’ said the carer.
‘Coffee,’ said Freddy. ‘Strong, three sugars.’
‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Tabitha. ‘Can we see her?’
‘Of course. She’s in her room. Fancied some alone time – can’t say I blame her. Give us a shout if there’s an issue.’
‘Can I have some biscuits with my coffee?’ said Freddy.
A playful smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do, my love. Two tics.’
‘She prefers men to women,’ said Tabitha, beginning to climb the stairs. ‘I can always tell. I hate women like that.’
‘I love women like that.’
Her mother’s room was on the second floor at the back of the house, with a view of the garden. She was often found in an armchair by the window, reading a large-print book through her pearl-handled magnifying glass, a plastic beaker full of sherry – sometimes gin – on her tray-table and a cigarette smouldering in an ashtray next to the whining, squealing hearing aids she refused to wear. The carers had tried to ration her alcohol once and she’d threatened to go on hunger strike (which was laughable), and the senior carer decided that since Mrs Dawes was still in full possession of her faculties, she was free to drink herself to death.
She was in her armchair now, looking out of the window. Her book lay closed on the carpet, the magnifying glass placed on top. She looked like she always did – fat and sunken with one oedemic leg propped up on a footstool, but her silver hair immaculate and all her best jewellery on, a floral silk scarf tied around the neck that hung fat and super-soft like a post-pregnancy apron. An uneaten breakfast of poached eggs on toast was on her tray-table, pushed away. With warped fingers she held her beaker of sherry tight to her stomach, as if afraid someone was going to take it away. The room smelled of bananas going bad.
‘Tabby, darling. I’m so glad you could make it. Freddy, oh! I didn’t know you were coming. Come and have a drink! Tabby, where’s your brother?’
‘Still in the States. How are you feeling?’
‘Bloody awful.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘The bastards keep sneaking round the back to try to get photos of me. They won’t leave me alone.’
‘Empty your bedpan over their heads,’ said Freddy.
‘What did he say?’ said her mother.
‘Nothing.’
Freddy leaned in closer. ‘I said, empty your bedpan over their heads.’
She laughed. ‘I should, shouldn’t I? Only I don’t have a bedpan, darling. I have my own en-suite lavatory. Sherry?’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Freddy, grinning. ‘But I will.’
Tabitha made a point of looking at her watch – it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, for God’s sake – but Freddy didn’t notice. He took the sherry from the cabinet and poured himself a glass. Hanging above the cabinet was an original Hannah Gluckstein of an androgynous woman in a beret. On the opposite wall was a Romaine Brooks watercolour – not a very good one – and underneath, a bookcase full of her mother’s books.
‘Top me up, there’s a good boy,’ said Bettina, holding out her beaker. She gave her daughter a defensive look. ‘Well, it’s either drink or cry. Don’t judge me – I’ll be dead soon.’ She picked up her cigarette from the ashtray and took a puff, her jaw wobbling as she let the smoke out. ‘They won’t leave me alone, darling, honestly – it’s awful. I feel like Quasimodo up in his bell tower. I think they’ve been throwing gravel at the window. Mind you, better the BBC than those fatheads at ITV. They’ve been here since early this morning, darling. In the snow. Honestly. It’s either drink or cry. Drink or die.’
Tabitha sat down on her mother’s bed and lit a menthol. ‘You can hardly blame them, Mum. It’s juicy stuff.’
‘It’s absolute horseshit. What would I be doing with a gun? Really? Your father would—’
A smattering of tiny stones hit the windowpane and her mother startled, spilling her sherry onto her crotch.
Chapter 2
September 1921, Wadley House, Brighton
It couldn’t be – he wouldn’t bloody dare. She opened her window and squinted out into the granular black night. He wouldn’t dare though. He’d have to be blasted off his father’s spirits, throwing stones and shouting his head off like that, with Heinous Henry just yards away, him with his nose like a beak, like a huge disgusting puffin’s beak, rummaging around in everyone’s business, plucking out grubs.
‘Who’s there?’ It might even be one of the drunks from the munitions factory her father owned, someone recently fired. One of them had once shat into the bird bath and lopped all the rose heads from their stems.
‘I would speak with you!’
It was him. Bart. Under the giant oak with his back to the trunk and his whole form in shadow.
‘“Love grew apace, rocked by the anxious beating of this poor heart, which the cruel wanton boy took for a cradle!”’
He was doing Cyrano de Bergerac again. ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘Go home!’
‘Never in a trillion years!’ Yes, drunk. His late father had left behind an impressive collection of liquors and spirits, the bottles carefully arranged, labels facing out, on top of two large bureaus in his dank and terrifying study. Some were imported from countries as far away as Japan and South Africa (and some dating back to the eighteenth century). Bart’s mother Lucille had felt reluctant to part with them or drink them, so there they still stood, testament to Frederick Dawes’s passion for accumulating rare and exotic fancies, the big joke being that he’d been teetotal; he might as well have been a cripple who collected running shoes or a whore who collected chastity belts. Bart was always taking a nip here and there of the less rare stuff. And he was annoying enough when sober.