Last Nocturne (6 page)

She hadn’t mentioned any of this when she wrote to her mother.

Nor had she mentioned the other member of the family, the son of the house, Guy Martagon, except in passing, mainly because her contact with him had been so far limited. He wasn’t much at home, and they met only occasionally when she was coming down to breakfast and he was striding across the hall in his tight breeches and riding boots after his morning ride in the Row, when he would give her a polite but distant good morning. Or when he was going out, impeccably dressed in his city clothes. Lean, loose-limbed, elegant, moody. Kind in a big-brotherly way to his sister, who adored him, it had been hinted that he was a problem to his mother. On the only occasion Grace had had the chance to observe him properly – a low-key dinner party at which she’d been present, where the guests weren’t important – she’d sensed a held-back energy, fancied she’d glimpsed on his dark face a bitter sense of time being wasted. Across the table, in the candlelight, he waved away dessert and occasionally spared a social smile for mousy little Miss Cadell, who had been put next to him and was doing her best, under her mother’s eye, to be fascinating, and failing miserably, poor thing. Guy’s thoughts were obviously elsewhere and he wasn’t being very successful in concealing it. Aware that she’d been staring too long, Grace had picked up her spoon and turned to her syllabub, and when she looked up again, she saw that Ginny Cadell had now been claimed by the elderly man on her left, and that Guy Martagon was leaning back in his chair, in his turn ironically observing her, Grace. She hoped she wasn’t turning pink. Then she became aware of his mother’s sharp assessing eye also resting on her for a moment, before being turned dismissively away. A spurt of indignation that Mrs Martagon clearly saw no threat to her son in the person of Grace Thurley was followed by amusement. As if she would
wish
to have designs on him!

Dulcie had spoken of her brother’s recent history and Grace could see that the life he was leading now must seem tame after fighting the Boers and thereafter following manly pursuits in Tibet – or was it India? – where he’d spent so many years, only interrupted by his father’s death. But surely nothing was preventing him from going back, if that was what he wished? The family affairs must surely now be all in order and he could return and look to his heart’s content for the source of the Brahmaputra or the Tsangpo or whatever the river was they sought. The yaks and camels out there wouldn’t care if he glowered all day long.

And meanwhile, her lowly position in the house meant Grace would be spared the necessity of having much to do with him.

So that when he came into the study a few minutes after she had returned to her desk from that dissatisfied perusal of herself in the looking glass, she felt only mild annoyance at being interrupted, and answered his good morning coolly before returning to her duties, while he wandered, frowning, over to the bookcase and began to inspect the shelves.

She picked up a sheaf of papers. It wasn’t so much Mrs Martagon’s inability to keep track of her correspondence, social arrangements and appointments – not to mention bills and accounts, or forgetting birthdays, even those of her children – as her reluctance to be bothered with any of it, which made for the chaos which had faced Grace when she arrived. Edwina’s idea of method was to push her correspondence, after it had been read (and sometimes before, if it gave any indication of being tedious), into whatever drawer happened to be handy, and then to forget about it, eventually causing the sort of desperation which must have forced the writing of that letter to Grace’s mother. The last person to help Edwina out, she of the crockery-smashing episode, now had Grace’s ardent sympathies. She must have been sorely tried. Sometimes she felt like emulating her when it came to keeping track of everything, to arranging dinner parties and soireés, and making sure there were no clashes between Edwina’s many invitations, and that her Saturdays-to-Mondays at the country houses of various friends were organised well in advance. All this untidiness accorded ill with Mrs Martagon’s personal fastidiousness, her insistence on being faultlessly groomed at all times. She was perfectly turned out on every occasion, smelling deliciously, not a hair out of place, but presumably leaving the same sort of disarray in her wake for her maid to tidy up as Grace found herself having to deal with on another level.

She looked up from trying to decipher a scrawl across an engraved invitation on thick cream card, which she finally interpreted as ‘Do not accept on any account’, to find that Guy Martagon was watching her, leaning against the door frame, his arms folded across his chest.

‘I can see why my mother thinks you’re a paragon, Miss Thurley. Method and order are foreign to her way of life. Anyone who can make sense out of the chaos and confusion she creates has my deepest respect.’

More than a little put out at being regarded as a paragon, Grace flushed. No young woman likes to be seen as having attributes generally regarded as finicky and spinsterish, and Grace was no exception, especially when she was reminded of her mother’s remarks about her resemblance to Miss Grimshaw. Setting things in order made life easier all round, but she knew she could very soon get sick of running after Edwina, picking up loose ends – which no sooner were straightened out than ravelled themselves back into chaos. But she smiled, and perversely tucked back the tendril of hair into its secretarial tidiness, and went on with what she was doing.

‘What happened to all my father’s papers? That’s a new desk,’ he said abruptly, the frown back on his face.

‘So I was told.’ And very glad indeed was Grace that it wasn’t the one over which Eliot Martagon had been found slumped, his hand clutching a gun and blood seeping from a wound in his temple. She wasn’t overly squeamish but she did think that might have been too much for her. There must have been a great deal of blood (not to mention other, even more horrendous substances) for the thick-pile Indian carpet was still new enough to be shedding hairs onto the polished floorboards surrounding it. Like his possessions, all physical signs of Eliot Martagon’s suicide had been scrupulously removed; nor, it seemed, as Grace’s mother had suggested, had it left a stain on the family name. Rather was it a sense of loss which breathed on the very air. The house was haunted by his absence.

‘I was told his solicitors took all the relevant papers. If there are any still left they may be in that cupboard over there,’ she suggested, picking up an estimate from Gillows for recovering a sofa in the drawing room, and putting it to one side.

He crossed to the narrow cupboard with the quick stride which always seemed to speak of a contained nervous energy, and rattled the knob. ‘Locked, of course. Do you know where the key is?’

‘No, but your mother may have one.’

‘And you think she could find it if she had?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘The solicitors, you say? I’d better see old Hardisty again. He’ll know what happened to the keys. On second thoughts, though…’

He walked over to the mantelpiece and removed the lid of a blue and white Chinese ginger jar, fished inside and eventually turned round, holding up a finger from which a bunch of keys dangled. After trying a couple, he found the one which opened the cupboard. Grace saw it was crammed with piles of ledgers and files, papers tied together with tape. ‘Maybe something, somewhere in here,’ he murmured, almost to himself. ‘Would it upset your concentration, Miss Thurley, if I went through the contents?’

‘Not in the least. But give me half an hour and you can have the room to yourself for the rest of the afternoon,’ she answered, not being able to envisage where she might make room for him to spread all those papers without a great deal of trouble.

‘I’d prefer to get on with it now.’

‘After I have cleared my desk, if you wouldn’t mind,’ she answered equably.

He met her gaze with one of his own, but she didn’t waver. The strong features, the aquiline nose, marked him as his mother’s son, but his eyes were a brilliant grey, fringed with thick, dark lashes any girl might have envied. He also had a chin which spoke of a man used to having his own way, but this time he didn’t insist. ‘Very well. I’ll wait until you’re ready, then you can give me a hand.’

Grace stood her ground. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m due to take lunch at twelve-thirty with your sister before we go out, and I must clear these papers for your mother first.’ She heard a sound that might have been a laugh, but when she looked up and saw his expression unaltered, she thought she must have been mistaken.

‘Ah. I’d forgotten – it’s my mother’s musical afternoon, isn’t it?’

‘The first of them.’ There were to be six in all, which Edwina had planned to be held at weekly intervals, charity affairs for which all the tickets had already been sold. Although they were to be quite modest occasions, organising the events and the artistes, not all of whom were professionals, had been a nerve-racking experience, and Edwina had declared herself a perfect wreck. She couldn’t think why she had put herself through it – although everyone knew she was always prepared to give of herself in the interests of helping those less fortunate than oneself. Of course, dear Grace had been quite a help.

Grace had seized the opportunity, while Edwina was basking in her success, to request the afternoon off.

‘You’ll be exceedingly sorry to miss such a pleasure, no doubt,’ Guy said. This time there was no mistaking the smile.

In fact, Grace fully intended to make quite, quite sure that she and Dulcie would be out of the house from two-thirty until five-thirty at the least, though she didn’t think it wise to say so. She’d already spent an hour that morning arranging little gilt chairs in the big drawing room while the currently fashionable trio which had been engaged were practising: a pale, intense Slav at the piano, who played with histrionic gestures and a good deal of noise; a lady cellist and a violinist; all of whom would make their music to a pretentious audience who mostly neither understood nor appreciated music and would probably carry on quite audible conversations during the entire performance. However, things had not gone quite according to plan and Mrs Martagon was in an impossible mood. The flowers from Yvette, her usually reliable florist, today had not pleased her. Monsieur, her temperamental and expensive French chef, was also in a pet because special fancy cakes had been ordered from the latest fashionable caterer, which he could have made better, had he been asked, which he had not. In revenge he had declared he must prepare the despised English
sondveechaise
in advance, which meant there was a danger they would dry and curl up – or that Monsieur would give in his notice. Something else was bound to go wrong, and Grace didn’t want to be there when it did.

‘Look here, I’m sorry.’ Guy was awkward, smiling slightly, evidently not accustomed to making apologies. ‘You’re perfectly right, Miss Thurley. I didn’t mean to offend you. Put it down to my time as a rough soldier. I’m afraid I’m sometimes short-tempered and lack patience.’

‘That’s quite all right. I don’t take offence easily,’ she answered coolly, ‘it’s just that Dulcie and I are to visit the exhibition this afternoon at the gallery – the Pontifex—’ She was stopped by the expression on Guy Martagon’s face, from which all traces of humour had abruptly disappeared once more. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘You won’t be going there today, Miss Thurley – nor for some time, I suspect,’ he told her. ‘Have you not heard? We’ve closed the exhibition as a mark of respect—’

‘Respect?’

‘One of the exhibitors is dead. The poor fellow threw himself from a high window yesterday morning.’

There was nothing Julian Carrington enjoyed more at his time of life than giving lunch to a pretty woman – and though it might be overstating the case to call Mrs Amberley pretty, she had enough
je ne sais quoi
to make up for it, to turn heads. He was very aware of the envy of other men as he escorted this chic and graceful lady into the dining room of the exclusive hotel in Jermyn Street, where only the privileged were allowed to dine. Aware, too, of the covert, appraising glances cast at his companion by the expensively costumed and perfumed women from under the inconvenience of their fashionably large and unwieldy hat-brims.

Together they made a striking pair: the tall man, suave and distinguished looking; and his companion, a slender woman with a white skin and heavy black hair which, piled in profusion as she wore it, gave an impression of greater height than she actually possessed. She was past her first youth, and had never been beautiful, but she had clear hazel eyes which sparkled intelligently from under dark and delicately arched brows. Modishly dressed in black, as always of late. Today, perhaps in deference to her companion, the sombre elegance of her outfit was enlivened with ecru lace and a touch of coral colour at the neck, with a matching twist of silk in her becoming hat.

‘I do believe you’re looking better, Isobel,’ he said when they were seated.

‘I
am
better, thank you,’ she answered with a faint smile, drawing off her gloves. ‘Each day a little more so.’

‘Relieved to hear it, much relieved. To mourn for a season is appropriate, to stay in mourning for the rest of one’s life is—’

‘Indulgent?’

‘No, I was going to say sad. Sad to feel that life can hold no more.’

Julian Carrington, a clever and wary man, a banker who was cautious by nature as well as by profession, rarely pressed his opinions. Believing he’d said enough on such a delicate subject, he picked up the menu and ran his eyes quickly over the familiar list of exquisite dishes on offer, while feeling profoundly relieved that here, at last, was something of the old Isobel; she whose smile had once lit a room and drawn so many to her, whose light irony had enabled her to find pleasure and amusement in a life which had often been far from easy. They’d been friends for several years. Hopes of something more had not, alas, borne fruit, but he’d endured his disappointment – though perhaps desolation wasn’t too strong a word to describe the emotion which still overwhelmed him in the rare moments when he was off-guard – buried it with grim fortitude, and had outwardly settled for the neutral, easy friendship she offered.