‘It’s his chest,’ Venetia said, ‘the smoke has made his asthma worse.’
‘Never mind all that,’ said Miss Selby, taking charge, ‘we need to call the fire brigade, and for an ambulance to come, the police too.’
‘Lucien needs to go and see matron,’ insisted Venetia, ‘hischest is bad from all that smoke.’ He was wheezing even more now.
‘Both of you should go,’ said Miss Selby. ‘You,’ she said to Mr Grafton, ‘stay here with Terry while I go and make the necessary telephone calls.’
‘Why do I have to stay with the body?’ said Mr Grafton.
‘Because I’m Lady Constance’s deputy and I’ve asked you to,’ snapped Miss Selby. ‘Come on you two,’ she said, looking at Venetia and Lucien. ‘Go and see Mrs Buckle and then I expect the police will want to talk to you.’
‘Heavens to Betsy, just look at the state of the pair of you!’ cried Edie when they knocked on her inner sanctum. ‘What have you got yourselves into now?’ But then hearing the wheezing and rattling coming from Lucien’s chest, she frowned and guided him towards a chair. Instructing Venetia to go and wash and then make some hot sweet tea in the small kitchen, Edie focused her attention on Lucien.
It was when Venetia went to turn on the taps at the sink in the small kitchen, she saw that her hands were smeared with blood: Terry’s blood. It must have come from his head when he’d hit it on the hearth. She scrubbed her hands, then scrubbed them some more. She looked in the small mirror Edie kept on the wall in the kitchen and saw that her hair and face were covered with black smuts, as well as more blood where she must have put her hands to her face at some point.
Bile rose up to her already stinging throat and dipping her head low, she tried to wash her face, cupping her hands under the tap and then rubbing her cheeks hard with soap. But as hard as she scrubbed her face, she doubted she would ever feel like she had entirely washed away the nightmarish events of that day. It would be the same for Lucien, she suspected. She just hoped that he wouldn’t do anything silly, like admit to pushing Terry.
Remembering that Edie had told her to make some hot sweet tea, she dried her face and filled the small whistling kettle, then found some mugs, tea, milk and sugar, and did it all with shaking hands and her stomach churning. She couldn’t stop thinking about Terry and that horrifying moment when his eyes had opened. Had it been a final death throes spasm or had he been coming round from being unconscious all that time? And what if they’d just made another mistake when trying to find his pulse, and he was now fully conscious and telling Mr Grafton the truth of what had happened?
Terry was officially declared dead later that night, when his body was taken away. They were told that there would be a postmortem carried out and Edie briefly explained to Venetia what that meant.
‘It’s to find out what the cause of death was. It’s just a formality.’
‘Will we have to answer more questions?’ Venetia asked anxiously.
She was sitting up in bed in the sick room; the other beds were unoccupied and she was glad of that, it meant she had Edie to herself. Lucien’s already weakened chest had been so severely affected by the smoke he had been taken to hospital in the ambulance Miss Selby had called for. They had wanted Venetia to go as well, so she could be properly checked over, but Venetia had said she was fine and would be happier staying at the Hall where Edie could keep an eye on her. She hadn’t felt fine, but she hadn’t been about to admit that. Poor Lucien had stood no chance in arguing that he was OK, it was clear to everyone that he was in a bad way and would likely stay in hospital for some days. She had been tempted to go so she could be near him, but had decided it would be better for her to stay behind so she would hear what was being said about Terry’s death.
‘You might have to answer a few more questions, maybe make a statement as well,’ Edie answered her. ‘I’m no expert, of course, but I should think there’ll be an inquest, the result of which will probably be that it was a terrible accident.’
‘An accident,’ repeated Venetia at length, ‘because he drank too much and … and somehow knocked the clothes horse into the fire. That kind of accident?’
‘Yes,’ said Edie. ‘A simple accident. Just one of those things.’
‘So atragicaccident,’ Venetia further suggested.
‘Well, perhaps not so tragic,’ said Edie, patting Venetia’s hand. ‘He wasn’t a nice man, was he?’ The pressure on Venetia’s hand increased. ‘He’d made life very difficult for Lucien, and for you too. Maybe,’ Edie said slowly and gazing straight into Venetia’s eyes, ‘it’s a blessing he’s no longer around.’
Venetia swallowed and then winced. Her throat felt even more sore than it had earlier. Previously it had felt like it had been rubbed raw with sandpaper, now she’d swear a cheese grater had been taken to it. ‘I don’t know whether it’s right to say it’s a blessing,’ she murmured, dropping her eyes from Edie’s all-seeing gaze, ‘but it’s certainly going to be better without him. He was a bully. A nasty bully.’
‘I know he was,’ Edie soothed, ‘you don’t need to tell me that. I know his type. I came across plenty like him during the war in London. When my neighbours and I were bombed out, there was this ARP warden who loved the power the uniform and tin hat gave him. He used to strut about like he owned the place. We none of us trusted him as far as we could throw him, and we were proved right when we discovered he was helping himself to stuff from bombed-out houses and selling it. He was caught red-handed one day and given a lesson by a couple of lads home on leave that he wouldn’t have forgotten in a hurry.’
Venetia wanted to believe that what Edie had shared with her was just another of her wartime stories, but she suspected therewas more to it than that. Should she confess to Edie, tell her everything that had happened, including what Terry had done to Lucien that afternoon, which would be breaking the promise she’d given to Lucien that she would never tell anyone what she’d witnessed? But if Edie knew everything, would she then protect them from the police?
It was Mr Grafton who worried Venetia most. It had been the way he’d looked at her and Lucien, like he hadn’t believed a word of what Venetia had said about trying to rescue Terry.
She then remembered what Mr Grafton had said –‘God, this is the last bloody thing we need! A fire and a death on top of everything else!’What else was going on then, that was so bad?
‘Edie,’ she said, ‘is everything all right here at Hope Hall?’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
She told Edie what Mr Grafton had said.
The woman tilted her head to one side as if giving the matter her serious consideration. ‘How interesting,’ she responded, ‘and it rather confirms what I’ve been thinking for some time. But now,’ she said, and rising from her chair, ‘I think it’s high time you went to sleep. If you need me, I’ll be in my room.’
She waited for Venetia to lie down and then she kissed Venetia on her forehead. ‘Sleep well and don’t worry about anything,’ she said softly, ‘it’s all going to be all right for you and Lucien, I’ll make sure of that.’
But it wasn’t all right. A few days later Edie broke the news to her that Lucien had gone missing. He’d left his hospital bed, and no one had seen him since. This coincided with the return of Lady Constance and her husband, back from their extended honeymoon. And that was when everything went from bad to worse.
