“Could I ask you a favour? Just for tonight,” she said in a faltering voice. “I can’t get to sleep up there. Can I stay here till morning?”
“Of course you can,” I said. “I’ll make up the sofa, and you can have the bed.”
She thanked me, relieved, and collapsed on to one of the chairs. She looked around, dazed, and saw my papers spread out over the desk.
“You were working,” she said. “I don’t want to disturb you.”
“No, no,” I said, “I was about to take a break anyway. I couldn’t concentrate. Shall I make coffee?”
“I’d rather have tea, if that’s OK,” she said.
We remained silent while I put the kettle on and searched for a suitable phrase of condolence. But she spoke first.
“Uncle Arthur told me you were with him when he found her. It must have been awful. I had to see her too: they made me identify the body. God,” she said, and her eyes turned watery, a liquid, trembling blue, “nobody had bothered to close her eyes.”
She looked away, tilting her head slightly, trying to hold back the tears.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “I know how you must be feeling.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” she said. “I don’t think anyone can. It was what I’d been hoping for for a long time. For years. Though it may be terrible to say so, ever since I found out she had cancer. I’d always imagined it would happen almost exactly as it did-that someone would come to tell me, in the middle of a rehearsal. I prayed that it would be like that, that I wouldn’t have to see her before they took her away. But the inspector wanted me to identify her. They hadn’t closed her eyes!” she said again in an anxious whisper, as if this were an inexplicable injustice. “I stood there but I couldn’t look at her; I was afraid that she could still somehow hurt me, drag me with her, not let go. And I think she’s succeeded: I’m a suspect,” she said dejectedly. “Petersen asked me lots of questions, with that mock-considerate manner of his. And then that horrible man from the paper, he didn’t even try to hide it. I told them all I know: that when I left at two she was asleep, next to the Scrabble table. But I don’t feel I’ve got the strength to defend myself. I’m the person who most wanted to see her dead, much more, I’m sure, than whoever killed her.”
She seemed to be consumed by nervousness, her hands shaking uncontrollably. When she caught my look she crossed her arms.
“Anyway,” I said, handing her a cup of tea, “I don’t think Petersen is thinking any of this: they know something which they don’t want to make public. Didn’t Professor Seldom say anything?”
She shook her head and I was sorry I had spoken. But I saw the expectant look in her blue eyes, as if she scarcely dared hope, and decided that Latin indiscretion could be kinder than English reserve.
“This is all I can tell you, because they asked us to keep it secret. The person who killed your grandmother left Seldom a message in his pigeonhole. In the note there was your address and a time, three in the afternoon.”
“Three in the afternoon,” she repeated slowly. A huge weight seemed to be lifting from her. “I was in rehearsal by then.” She smiled weakly, as if a long, difficult battle were over. She took a sip of tea and looked at me gratefully over the cup.
“Beth,” I started. Her hand lay in her lap quite close to mine and I had to stop myself touching it. “About what you said before-if I can help in any way with the funeral arrangements, or anything else, please ask. I’m sure Professor Seldom, or Michael, must have offered already…”
“Michael?” she said, and laughed drily. “He won’t be much help, this whole business terrifies him.” And she added rather contemptuously, as if referring to a particularly cowardly species: “He’s a married man.”
She stood up and, before I could stop her, went over to the sink beside the desk and washed her cup.
“Uncle Arthur’s a mathematical genius, isn’t he?” Beth said proudly.
“One of the greatest,” I said.
She took off her hairband, placing it on the bedside table, and shook out her hair. Then she went over to the bed and pulled back the eiderdown. Her hand went to the neck of her dressing gown.
“Do you mind turning around for a moment,” she said, “I’d like to take this off.”
I carried my own cup to the sink. After turning off the tap, I stood with my back to her a moment longer. She said my name, making an endearing effort to pronounce it correctly. She was in bed, her hair spread seductively over the pillow. She had pulled the eiderdown almost up to her chin but one arm lay outside.
“Could I ask you one last favour? It’s something my mother used to do when I was little. Could you hold my hand until I fall asleep?”
“Of course,” I said. I turned off the light and sat down on the edge of the bed. Moonlight seeped weakly through the window, lighting up her bare arm. I placed my palm on top of hers and we interlaced our fingers at the same time. Her hand was warm and dry. I looked more closely at the soft skin on the back of her hand and her long fingers, with their short, neat nails, which she’d so trustingly intertwined with mine. Something called my attention. Discreetly, carefully, I turned my hand so that I could see her thumb under mine. It was oddly thin and small, as if it belonged to a different, more childish hand, the hand of a little girl. I realised that she’d opened her eyes and was looking at me. She tried to remove her hand but I gripped it and stroked her thumb with my own.
“Now you know my most shameful secret,” she said. “I still suck my thumb at night.”
Six
When I woke the following morning Beth was gone. A little taken aback, I stared at the gentle hollow in the bed left by her body. I felt for my watch: it was ten o’clock. I leapt up as I’d arranged to meet Emily Bronson at the Institute before lunch and I still hadn’t finished reading through her papers. Feeling a little strange, I packed my racket and tennis clothes into a bag. It was Thursday and I was due to play as usual that afternoon. Before leaving I glanced once more, disappointed, at the desk and the bed. I would have liked to find a note from Beth, even if only a short one, a couple of lines, and I wondered whether her disappearing without leaving a message was the message.
It was a warm, quiet morning and the previous day seemed distant and vaguely unreal. But when I went out to the garden Mrs Eagleton wasn’t there tidying the flowerbeds, and yellow police tape still surrounded the porch. On my way to the Institute I stopped at a newsagent on Woodstock Road to buy a paper and a doughnut. In my office, I switched on the coffee machine and opened out the newspaper on my desk. The news of Mrs Eagleton’s death was the lead story in the local news pages, with a banner headline reading ‘Former War Heroine Found Murdered’. There was a photo of a young, unrecognisable Mrs Eagleton and another of the front of the house with a police barrier and cars outside. The article mentioned that the body had been found by a lodger, an Argentinian mathematics student, and that the last person to see the widow alive was her only granddaughter, Elizabeth.
There was nothing in the piece that I didn’t already know; the post-mortem, late last night, apparently hadn’t shown anything new. There were details of the police investigation in a separate box. It was anonymous but, beneath the seemingly impersonal style, I immediately recognised the insidious tone of the reporter who’d interviewed me. He stated that the police were ruling out an attack by an intruder, even though the front door hadn’t been locked at the time. Nothing in the house had been touched or stolen. They did apparently have one lead, which Inspector Petersen didn’t wish to reveal. The reporter was in a position to suggest that the lead might incriminate ‘close members of Mrs Eagleton’s family’. And he went straight on to say that Beth was the only immediate relative and would inherit ‘a modest fortune’. In any case the article concluded, until there were any new developments, the Oxford Times echoed Inspector Petersen’s advice that householders should forget the good old days and keep their doors locked at all times.