Assassins at Ospreys

7

The Letter

‘Ingrid? Do you know Ingrid?’ Beatrice appeared surprised.

‘I met her in Hay-on-Wye,’ Antonia reminded her.

‘Of course you did. Sorry, my dear. I’ve got so much on my mind. Oh, yes, she still lives here, but now that Len’s moved in, she’s planning to move out.’ Beatrice Ardleigh gave a sigh. ‘I am so sad. I am deeply grateful to her. She did everything for me, you see. We’ve lived together for – what is it? Nearly thirty years? Goodness, that’s a terribly long time, isn’t it? She never allowed anyone to come near me. Never.’

‘Not even your doctor?’

‘Dr Aylard found her quite difficult.’ Beatrice held her cigarette away from her eyes. ‘Once she pushed him out of my room. Well, Ingrid saw me through all my indignities. When I couldn’t sit up and had to lie down all the time. When I couldn’t go by myself to the loo. It is so easy to be dismissive and say, “Oh, one of those feverish female friendships,” I am sure that’s what people are saying, but it was so much more than that. Whenever I felt down and wanted to have a little cry, Ingrid sat beside me and held my hand. She read to me. She’s particularly good with voices. She sang me to sleep. Honestly. She fed me, mopped my brow, brushed my hair, bathed me, gave me massages. She dealt with all my correspondence -’

‘She reads your letters?’ Payne interrupted.

‘Used to – I mean she did it until recently. Not any more – not since Len’s been around. But before that she acted as my secretary. She was also my nurse, nanny – mother, if you like – guardian angel! All rolled up in one! I was Ingrid’s baby, her very special little girl. I know this sounds ridiculous and strange, but she lost her child, you see. She was seven months pregnant when it happened. It was going to be a little girl, apparently. Claire.’

‘Claire?’

‘That was the name Ingrid intended to give her little girl. She had been listening to “Clair de Lune” on the radio when the accident happened. She’s got all those photos in her room – various little girls – blonde and demure-looking. She said they were her nieces, but, you see, she hasn’t got any sisters. Once she was off guard and she said, “That’s Claire, my daughter.” Some of the photos are actually magazine cuttings. Photos of fair-haired girls modelling children’s clothes.’

‘You mean she pretends they are her daughter?’ Payne’s eyebrow went up. ‘ She imagines they are her daughter?’ ‘Yes. Yes. She could never get over the loss of her baby. She keeps having conversations with Claire in her head. She sends a monthly cheque to the Convent of the Poor Claires. She keeps listening to “Clair de Lune” -’ Beatrice broke off. ‘Oh, I know – I know – it’s totally mad. You poor things – the look on your faces! Well, losing the baby was a most devastating blow for Ingrid. She was quite unable to come to terms with the fact she’d never have another child too. To cut a long story short, I became a – a substitute. I allowed her to mother me. I don’t care what people think. Great shame it all has to end like that.’

‘She didn’t like the idea of you marrying?’

‘She didn’t. She was distraught. She made a ghastly scene.’ Beatrice shut and opened her eyes. ‘It was quite frightening. Honestly. She said some truly appalling things to me. She made me cry. I didn’t really see why the three of us couldn’t be happy together. I honestly didn’t. Len said he didn’t mind at all; he is an angel… I misjudged the situation completely, it seems. I must be terribly naive. Ingrid took it all rather badly. “You don’t really expect me to cohabit with you?” How she screamed! She seemed out-raged. She made it sound as though I’d come up with some really improper suggestion.’

‘You haven’t made up?’

‘I am afraid not. She’s still extremely cut up. She won’t speak to Len. Pretends he’s not there. She calls him “the interloper”. She hates Len. She is very, very cross with me. She keeps saying I betrayed her. She calls it an “act of treachery”. She said I was “the most selfish, the most ungrateful, the most unappreciative person who ever lived”. She hates me. I did try to explain – to reassure her. I did my best, believe me.’ Beatrice’s voice shook. ‘I made it clear that nothing had changed, but she didn’t want to listen. She was beyond reason. I did want to discuss things openly and rationally, the way sensible people do, but she just sat and stared in her inscrutable manner.’

‘Where is she?’ Antonia asked.

‘I have no idea.’ Beatrice stubbed out her cigarette and looked at the clock. ‘She went out over three hours ago. It’s freezing cold outside. Where does she go? She has no friends. Not a single friend. Can you imagine? She mistrusts people. I do hope she’s taken the train to Oxford and gone to the cinema and is not roaming the streets, brooding.’

‘Does she go out often?’

‘Quite often, yes. Lately, that is. She slips out without a word. And here’s an odd thing – we hear her but never see her. She seems to time her exits very carefully. We hear the stairs creak or the front door opening or closing. And she always comes back after we have gone to bed. I thought it was my imagination, but then Len noticed it too – and he is not particularly imaginative… Ingrid’s exits and entrances invariably take place when Len and I are together, either here, watching something on the box, or in our bedroom. We tend to spend a lot of time in our bed-room.’ Beatrice gave a coy smile. ‘Call me a stupid fool, but each time Ingrid goes out, I tend to imagine the worst – that she would do something silly. She did say once that the idea of suicide was never too far from her mind.’

The chink of china was heard, the door opened and a beaming Colville wheeled in a trolley laden with tea-things. Four cups, a large silver teapot, a muffin dish, a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches and a chocolate cake. ‘She is often troubled by suicidal fantasies,’ Beatrice went on. ‘I am telling them about Ingrid, darling.’

‘Ah. Ingrid.’ Colville’s smile faded and he shook his head.

‘She told me that at times suicide seemed not only frighteningly real but the only option. Varied and violent methods of ending her life keep presenting themselves to her – Darling, would you pour? At first it was the usual stuff – sleeping pills, cyanide, exhaust fumes, but then she said she had started considering slitting her wrists with the blades of a Gillette sensor razor or cutting her throat with an X-Acto knife… Another drop of milk, please… Now that’s too much! Honestly!’ For a moment Beatrice looked furious. ‘I am sorry, Len, but you know I don’t like my tea drowned in milk. Can I have another cup?’

‘Yes, of course, darling. So – so sorry. I didn’t mean to -’ Colville appeared greatly flustered. ‘Here you are. Sorry, darling.’

‘Thank you.’ Beatrice leant towards Payne. ‘What is an X-Acto knife? I’ve been wondering. Is it an army kind of knife?’

Payne admitted he had no idea.

‘Ingrid once went so far as to try a beam in her room to see if it would be strong enough to support a noose. And on another occasion she considered driving off a cliff.’

‘People who talk so much about killing themselves never do it,’ Colville said a shade regretfully. ‘Did you show Miss Darcy the letter?’

‘I haven’t yet. I was about to. Would you be an angel and turn on the lights?’

Again Colville did as asked. ‘Better hurry up and do it before she comes back.’ He glanced at the clock on the mantel. ‘Remember what happened the other day?’

‘I certainly do.’ Beatrice took a sip of tea and grimaced. ‘Darling – sugar. Why is it that you always forget?’ She looked at Antonia and said gravely, ‘I owe you an apology, Antonia. May I call you Antonia?’

‘Of course you may.’

‘And you must call me Bee. Well, I have a confession to make, Antonia. I detest fibbing, I really do – but I did tell you a fib the other day when I spoke to you on the phone.’ ‘About the letter?’

‘Yes.’ Beatrice picked up one of the two books that lay on the little table beside her. From between its pages she drew out an envelope. ‘I meant to tell you the truth – but Ingrid came into the room just then, so I couldn’t. I didn’t want her to know who the letter was from, so I told you I didn’t know the man from Adam.’

‘You said his name was Ralph.’

‘Yes. Ralph Renshawe.’ Beatrice pronounced ‘Ralph’ over-emphatically as Rafe. ‘Many years ago he and I were engaged to be married. I was extremely young. Practically a child. It turns out he lives at a big house not so very far from here, can you imagine? A place called Ospreys. It’s a listed house. There is a wishing well in the back garden that goes back to the seventeenth century, apparently. I read a piece about it in Homes and Gardens. We’ve been practically neighbours all this time and neither of us the wiser! Life is so strange. Anyhow. I want you to read the letter. I rely on your wise counsel.’ She handed it over to Antonia. Payne moved closer. He thought he detected a slight medicinal smell emanating from the envelope.

The letter was written in a faint, shaky, hardly legible hand. It began:

This is a communication from the past you never expected and almost certainly did not want. I hope you will read it. And before you rip it up and drop it in the bin, I must tell you that I am dying. This is the literal truth: I have been given a month at the most. I do not deserve any sympathy and I do not expect any…

It was not a long letter. Eventually Antonia looked up.

‘What do you think?’ Beatrice held her hand at her bosom. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’

Antonia said slowly, ‘You and Ralph Renshawe were engaged to be married. He was driving you in his car. There was an accident. It was entirely his fault. He had been drinking. You had a head-on collision with another car. He wasn’t hurt but you were. Your injuries were extremely serious. You became paralysed from the waist down. You spent a very long time in hospital.’

‘Six months,’ Beatrice whispered.

‘Ralph visited you only once, then disappeared. You never saw him again. That happened thirty years ago. He went to Nova Scotia, then to Calgary, where he married a very rich woman -’

‘He married an oil heiress,’ Colville said stiffly. ‘There was something about it in the paper – years ago. She must have left him all her money. The price tag put on Ospreys was just over eight million pounds.’

‘Len knows all about houses. If you are interested in buying or renting a house, he is your man,’ Beatrice said. ‘All right, darling, I won’t embarrass you, I promise. Oh, how I wish we weren’t so worried about money! Sorry, darling!’ Colville had harrumphed again. ‘Well, nobody believes me when I say we are as poor as the proverbial church mice.’

She really was most indiscreet. Must be a nightmare, being married to her, Antonia thought, shooting a sym-pathetic glance at Colville.

‘I suppose appearances can be jolly deceptive,’ Payne murmured, glancing round the comfortable room with its crackling cosy fire.

Beatrice laughed exuberantly once more – as though he had made some risque joke. ‘Honestly,’ she breathed. ‘I am afraid Daddy’s money is running out – and poor Len’s come an ugly cropper in his business dealings -’

‘Bee,’ Colville said warningly.

‘Well, I admit I am scared,’ she declared. ‘Honestly! I think I might end up like some sort of an Emma Bovary of the impoverished squierarchy! I know I am being silly.’

Antonia went on, ‘Soon after he inherited his late wife’s fortune, Ralph Renshawe came back to England and bought Ospreys. He was then diagnosed with cancer. He has been told it is terminal, inoperable. He is dying. He is consumed by guilt. His reason for writing the letter is to beg your forgiveness.’

‘It’s all so – so operatically melodramatic, isn’t it?’ Beatrice rolled up her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine Ralph filled to the brim with remorse and shaking in fear of eternal damnation. I simply can’t. Thirty years ago he was completely different – hard as nails. Now he mentions God in every sentence he writes.’

‘He mentions a priest,’ Antonia said.

‘Yes. His very own personal padre, it seems.’

‘He is a Catholic then?’

‘He wasn’t a Catholic when I knew him. He wasn’t any-thing. He looked down on all religions. He said there was no God. Do you think there is God, Hugh?’

‘Yes,’ Payne said. ‘Indubitably.’

‘When I hear a person of subtle intelligence express such positive views, I feel terribly encouraged. But sometimes I do wonder.’ Beatrice gave a mournful sigh.

Payne had been examining the envelope. He tapped the letter with his forefinger. ‘Renshawe asks you to visit him. Says it would mean a lot to him if you did.’

‘Oh dear, yes. I have no idea what I should do about it. I haven’t written back or anything. I thought you might be able to give me some advice. I am in a quandary. Len thinks I shouldn’t.’

‘You shouldn’t,’ Colville said. ‘Let him rot. He wrecked your life.’

Payne looked at him. ‘Did you know him, Colville?’

‘I did. Not at all well. Long time ago.’ There was a silence but Colville said no more.

‘How does Ingrid come into this?’ Antonia asked with a frown.

‘Well, she came into the room that day.’ Beatrice lowered her voice. ‘Just as I’d started telling you about the letter. I couldn’t possibly give you any details with her in the room. I lost my nerve. Ingrid would flip if she knew that Ralph is not only alive but living just round the corner from here as well. She’d go and – I don’t want to think what she might do. I really don’t.’

‘She’d kill him, that’s what she’d do,’ said Colville.

‘Why should she want to do that?’

‘Well, you see, Antonia, I told her that Ralph had left for Nova Scotia, which was true, but I also said he’d died there,’ Beatrice started explaining. ‘I told her I’d read his obituary in the paper. She seemed frightfully disappointed. She said he’d had an easy escape. So much hatred! It can’t be good for her, can it? I read somewhere if you hate too much, you develop cancer. Ingrid still flies into rages at the mere mention of his name! Honestly.’

She loves that word ‘honestly’, Payne thought. Was there an antigram? He did some quick mental arithmetic. There was. Honestly – on the sly! How very interesting.

‘I personally don’t bear Ralph any grudges. I honestly don’t,’ Beatrice went on. ‘I did suffer, I know. I suffered awfully. My life was turned upside down by the accident, but it’s never occurred to me to want to kill him. Not even in my darkest hour.’

‘You are easily the nicest person who ever lived,’ Colville said.

She shook her head resolutely from side to side. ‘No, I am not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

No, she is not, Antonia thought. You fool.

‘I happen to be well adjusted, that’s all. Ingrid is not. Ingrid has always inhabited an agitated universe. Awful things keep happening to her. Let me give you an example. When she was a girl she had a pet owl called Cassandra and she doted on it, but one day the poor wretched thing swallowed the end of the cord for the window blinds. It was found swinging in the breeze upside-down – hanged! Can you imagine? Ingrid was distraught.’

‘I think she killed that bird,’ Colville said. ‘The way she killed those two bitches.’

‘Darling!’ Betrice protested. ‘Well, Ingrid is volatile. She was diagnosed as manic-depressive well before she lost her baby. She told me all about it. She said she tended to brood for hours on end on something trivial. She was prescribed all sorts of powerful drugs. Demerol? Then of course she had the nervous breakdown and that was – mega. They feared for her life. She kept harming herself. She wrote a frightfully disturbing poem called “Madrigals for Mad Girls”. She started having delusions. Once she imagined her doctor was Ralph in disguise and she tried to stab him in the eye with the paper knife from his desk. She underwent all sorts of very special treatments and it took her ages to recover.’

‘She never recovered,’ Colville said emphatically. ‘Au contraire.’

‘I know she’s been particularly horrid to you, darling, but do try to be fair.’ Beatrice sighed. ‘She still takes anti-depressants – when she remembers, that is. Her room is full of pills. Well, taking care of me seemed to help her. Len is not convinced, but she did get better for a while. She put on weight. She started taking an interest in clothes and flowers and things. We went places. That picture on the mantelpiece – Len, would you be so kind? Thank you, darling. Look at us! Just look at us. We are at Cliveden. Doesn’t Ingrid look in the pink?’

‘She certainly seems different from the time I met her,’ Antonia admitted.

The photograph showed a radiant Beatrice in her wheel-chair, a mink coat draped around her shoulders, clutching a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and a plumper, smiling Ingrid, her eyes a little puffy, in a Yum-Yum haircut and encased in a silk magenta-coloured trouser suit with an embroidered front.

‘She looks like an ornament the Astors might have brought back from their travels in the Mysterious East,’ Payne murmured.

‘Yes! Doesn’t she just?’ Beatrice leant towards Antonia and whispered, ‘Your husband says such clever things.’

Colville’s smile, Antonia observed, was beginning to look as if it had been left on his face by an oversight.

Beatrice had become wistful once more. ‘We had such good times. All right. She’s deteriorated since.’

‘Tell them about the bitches,’ Colville prompted.

‘Ingrid had two dogs,’ Beatrice began after a pause. ‘A golden retriever and a pit bull – Pip and Taylor – both bitches, as it happens. She had them put down for being “control freaks”. She explained the dogs had been putting her under an awful lot of pressure. The funny thing is that Ingrid is something of a control freak herself. You saw her in Hay-on-Wye, Antonia. You noticed the way she acted? I am infinitely grateful to Ingrid, mind, but sometimes it did feel as though she’d injected me with some paralysing fluid. I am probably being fanciful, but every so often I’d get this most peculiar feeling. How can I explain it? As though I’d been cocooned in an undetectable glaze of fixative. Goodness, that does sound weird, doesn’t it?’

Payne murmured, ‘Perhaps she did inject you with something?’

‘I bet she did,’ said Colville. ‘She gave Bee all sorts of injections – vitamins, painkillers and so on. She had plenty of opportunity to do something to her.’

‘Well, there were times when I did feel my power of choice diminishing – my rational judgement about things weakening -’ Beatrice broke off. ‘My main worry at the moment is that Ingrid might do something terrible to Ralph if somehow she were to learn that he isn’t dead but living next door.’

‘What’s the connection between Ingrid and Ralph?’ Antonia was frowning. ‘And how did Ingrid and you meet?’

‘Oh, didn’t I say? I am hopeless at explaining things. Sorry, my dear. It was the accident. The accident brought us together,’ Beatrice said. ‘I was in hospital – bedridden. The worst time of my life! Ingrid paid me a visit. She sat beside my bed and stroked my hand. She said she intended to take care of me. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, it honestly did, at least at the time. I knew at once she was looking for a substitute, but that didn’t really bother me much.’

‘A substitute? What substitute?’ Payne looked puzzled.

‘For her dead child of course,’ said Beatrice. ‘ She lost her baby, you see. In the accident.’