Death on the Downs

Twenty-Four

Gillie Lutteridge’s immaculate ensemble that Friday afternoon was a silk dress the colour of morello cherries. The open neck revealed a cluster of gold necklaces; a single gold chain hung from her wrist. Her make-up and the shape of her blonde hair were, as ever, irreproachable.

Jude, who’d just had a cup at the Hare and Hounds, refused the offer of coffee. Gillie gestured her to a freshly plumped armchair. “I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for you to come up here. I’m just not very good at talking on the telephone.”

“It’s fine. I got a lift from a friend. She was coming up here anyway.” A minor lie, but necessary to put her hostess at ease. Jude was getting used to reading the tiny gradations in Gillie Lutteridge’s manner, and had identified a considerable degree of agitation. “It’s about Tamsin, I take it,” she went on, still easing the passage for Gillie’s revelation.

“Yes. I went to see her yesterday.”

“At Sandalls Manor?”

Gillie nodded. “Miles was away on business, so I risked it.”

“And how’re things going with Charles? Is he making her better?”

There was a shrug, almost of hopelessness. Gillie Lutteridge seemed much less positive than Jude had ever seen her. Maybe, having once broken her façade by crying, Tamsin’s mother felt she no longer had to maintain a front. What was the point, since Jude had already seen through it?

“I don’t know. She seems to get better, she relapses. I keep wondering whether it’s our fault.”

“What?”

“The illness. The chronic fatigue syndrome. I wonder if it’s Tamsin’s reaction to growing up in this house.”

“What’s wrong with this house?”

Gillie’s next shrug was nearly despairing. “There’s so much tension between me and Miles. I think there always has been. Ever since Tamsin was born, really. That…changed things between us. And, as she grew up, she can’t have been unaware of the atmosphere.”

“So are you suggesting that the atmosphere in the house got to her, that that’s what made her ill? As if she’d been infected by it?”

Gillie looked at Jude defiantly. “It’s possible. It seems as likely as any of the other explanations that have come up.”

“But Tamsin wasn’t even living here when she got ill. She was in London.”

“Yes, but maybe she couldn’t cope in London, couldn’t cope with the job. Maybe living with us had kind of weakened her, so that she couldn’t deal with real life.”

“Gillie, Gillie, Gillie…” Jude crossed from her chair and took the other woman’s thin hand in hers. “Chronic fatigue syndrome is a genuine illness. You know that. That’s what you have arguments with Miles about. He’s the one who thinks it’s all psychosomatic. You know it’s real.”

But Gillie Lutteridge was in too reduced a state to be persuaded by her own arguments. “I don’t know. It doesn’t happen to other people’s daughters. I keep thinking it must be my fault.”

“But then you’ve thought everything was your fault for a long, long time,” observed Jude quietly.

Gillie sniffed. Once again tears were not far away. Then she nodded. “Well, it is. Most things are my fault.”

“No, Gillie. You’re not well.”

“Me too?” she asked with a bitter smile.

“You’re depressed if you blame yourself for everything that’s wrong.”

“If that’s the case, then I’ve been depressed for a very long time.”

“Perhaps you have.”

“No, of course I haven’t!” Jude had never heard her speak so sharply. Gillie was quick to recover her usual level tone. “Anyway, we don’t want to talk about me. Tamsin’s the one who’s ill.”

“Are you sure she’s the only one?”

“Yes.” Gillie Lutteridge moved on brusquely. “Tamsin said something yesterday that worried me.”

“What?”

“She implied that she wanted to stay at Sandalls Manor for ever.”

“Ah. Well, I can understand why that would worry you. Given the kind of rates Charles Hilton charges for his – ”

“No, it wasn’t that!” Having snapped at Jude once, Gillie Lutteridge had no inhibitions about doing so again. “It wasn’t to do with Charles, not to do with her illness. It was something else and it had her absolutely terrified.”

“What?”

“Ikmsin said, “Nobody knows I’m here. So I feel safe. As long as I’m here, I feel safe. But if people knew where to find me, then my life would be in danger.””