Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
‘On to the Great North Road we go,’ said Sally as they left London. ‘I am renaming my Hornet Black Bess in honour of the occasion.’
‘That was Dick Turpin’s horse?’ asked Gwen.
‘Correct. According to legend, he rode all the way from London to York in fifteen hours. We could do it in five.’
‘That poor horse,’ said Gwen.
‘Turpin was ultimately hanged for being a horse thief, so maybe there was some equine vengeance exacted.’
‘I’ve grown quite weary of vengeance of late,’ said Gwen. ‘Let’s talk about anything else for a while.’
‘Gladly. How is Ronnie doing? Did you have a good visit this weekend while I was toiling away in the broadcast mines?’
‘I didn’t see him this weekend,’ said Gwen guiltily. ‘Iris and I were off tracking down a possible witness.’
‘And we’re already back to the vengeance,’ he said. ‘You’d better bring me up to speed.’
By the time she was done, he was shaking his head sadly.
‘Poor Sauce,’ he said. ‘She died alone and in shame. I don’t even know if bringing out the truth about what happened would serve to reclaim her reputation.’
‘You know, I’ve never even thought about that as a goal,’ said Gwen. ‘The entire time I’ve been thinking about catching whoever did this to Tony. But he wasn’t the first victim in this story, was he?’
‘From what that Mrs Dorter told you, there may have been many victims whose stories never saw the light of day,’ said Sally. ‘Their predators may have been punished by other means, but one could hardly say those girls got any form of justice for what happened to them. And they never will.’
She was silent for a long while. He glanced over to see tears running down her cheek. He reached over and squeezed her hand for a moment.
‘At least the world is safe from those two wolves now,’ he said.
‘That’s not why—’ she began. Then she shook her head. ‘Sorry. A bad memory. Nothing to do with any of this. Could we stop for a quick lunch? I’m famished, and I need to fix my face.’
‘Of course.’
He pulled off the road in Biggleswade and found a small tea shop where they had sandwiches. When they got back on the road he stopped the car at a junction for a moment, looking at the fingerposts pointing towards different towns. Cambridge was to the right.
‘Do you want to pay your alma mater a quick visit on the way back?’ she asked, noticing him looking at it. ‘I’ve never been there. You could show me where you and Iris were moulded.’
‘You’ve never seen Cambridge?’
‘The Bainbridges were Oxonians,’ she said.
‘So were the Brewsters. I went to and from Oxford many times with my parents when they were either dropping off Thurmond or collecting him, and I now associate the place with my resentment for not being allowed to go. Plus, those rides were usually filled with Thurmond and me punching each other in the biceps in the back seat, despite his supposedly being too mature and me being too ladylike for that behaviour. But we had no close Cambridge connections back then, so I’ve never been. Have you been back?’
‘Not since the war,’ he said. ‘I really haven’t had the … not the desire to go. What would it be? The courage.’
‘Why courage?’
‘There is a reunion for my class coming up,’ he said. ‘I thought about attending for a split second, then rejected the idea.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m terrified of finding out how many of us, of my friends and colleagues, won’t be there because they didn’t make it through the war.
I don’t think I could take that right now.
I’d spend the entire time mourning the ones I lost, despising the ones who avoided going and finishing with an aftertaste of guilt for having survived.
And I wouldn’t be able to talk about my own war because of the damn Act, so I’d stand around, holding my sherry, and lie about my career in Supplies. ’
‘You could talk to me now,’ said Gwen quietly. ‘I’ve been cleared for it, according to the Brigadier.’
He gripped the steering wheel tightly for a moment, then got his breathing back under control.
‘Maybe someday,’ he said. ‘When I’m ready for you to hate me.’
‘I could never do that, Sally.’
‘You might, though,’ he said. ‘It may be better if we rip the plaster off quickly and find out what’s underneath.’
‘Please, not today,’ said Gwen.
‘No, of course not today,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s save Tony first. His bandages are real.’
They drove on.
‘Will Ronnie go to Oxford?’ he asked.
‘He’s seven, Sally.’
‘Decisions like that are made prenatally in some families.’
‘All of his grandparents – well, the three living ones – expect him to attend Oxford,’ she said.
‘As if I had no say in the matter. What am I saying? As if Ronnie had no say. As far as I’m concerned it will be his choice.
He can go to Oxford, or Cambridge, or the Sorbonne, or rodeo school in Wyoming if he wants.
He’s already wealthy and in line for a lordship someday.
There’s no need for him to make old school tie connections if he doesn’t want them. As for the rest of my children—’
‘Wait, what other children? I haven’t noticed any crawling about since we’ve got involved.’
‘Hypothetically speaking.’
‘How many hypothetical children are you hypothetically going to have?’
‘That would depend on when I hypothetically start having them,’ said Gwen. ‘One is no longer young.’
‘You’re not even thirty yet.’
‘No, but it looms,’ she said gloomily. ‘From there, it is only a short leap into decrepitude.’
‘You do own a mirror, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale, et cetera, et cetera.’
‘Cleopatra died young.’
‘Older than you, self-inflicted, and she still looked good, by all reports. Don’t keep any asps about and you’ll be fine. Is Ronnie amenable to the idea of sharing his life with siblings?’
‘He’s in favour of it,’ said Gwen. ‘He wants a captive audience of smaller admirers who will do his bidding.’
‘When does he come home from the country?’
‘August. I’ll be taking time off from work for two weeks.’
‘Perhaps I could take him out to see a cricket match or something when you need a break,’ said Sally. ‘An all-male expedition.’
‘He would love that, Sally,’ said Gwen. ‘So would I.’
They arrived in Kimbolton, passing the castle.
‘Which of the six died there?’ asked Sally.
‘Catherine of Aragon,’ said Gwen. ‘I saw the room they kept her in when we stayed there.’
‘You stayed in the castle?’
‘I’ve stayed in many castles,’ said Gwen. ‘They’re much more exciting when you’re a child and don’t care about the temperature of the room in which you’re sleeping. There’s the road east. Take that next right.’
Sally carefully followed her directions as they headed into the countryside.
Eventually, they turned onto a long driveway that brought them to a sprawling brick mansion.
The original building was two storeys tall and dated from the sixteenth century, but every fifty years or so some ancestor of the Caters must have decided he needed more space, so another building was appended to the first, some lengthwise, some crosswise, as if generations of architects had been playing a long game of dominoes.
‘It’s a bit of a jumble, isn’t it?’ commented Sally as he parked the Hornet near some other vehicles in front of a large entrance on the left side of the building.
‘It’s not bad,’ said Gwen. ‘It’s certainly big.’
The door was answered by a maid.
‘May I help you?’ she asked.
‘Mrs Gwendolyn Bainbridge and Mr Salvatore Danielli,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘We have an appointment.’
‘Certainly, Mrs Bainbridge,’ said the maid. ‘You are expected. Please come in.’
She led them to a room that took up one entire side of the house, with a twenty-foot ceiling and one entire wall taken up by glass panels overlooking the grounds.
The room itself was filled with furniture that dated to different eras, each piece having in common only that in each of those eras the owners had overpaid.
The maid showed them to a pair of nineteenth-century high-backed armchairs that had some vaguely Indian motif.
‘I will inform Lady Cater of your arrival,’ she said, and left, closing the double doors behind her.
‘I think every place I’ve ever lived in could fit inside this room at once,’ said Sally.
‘Speak softly,’ said Gwen. ‘The ancestors are judging us.’
He glanced over his shoulder at a wall holding an array of paintings of the various Lord Caters, some in wigs and stockings, some in uniforms and plumed hats, the most recent in tailcoats, leaning against cannons or horses or grand pianos, depending upon which background matched the outfit.
‘Bruce didn’t make it to the portrait portion of his life,’ observed Sally.
‘It’s only the men,’ said Gwen. ‘None of the ladies merited preservation or display. I don’t even see a photograph of the current family anywhere.’
The doors opened and the maid stepped in.
‘Lady Francesca Cater,’ she announced.
The woman who entered was small, almost doll-like in her appearance. Her make-up gave her skin a porcelain smoothness – so brittle it looked as if it could shatter if she smiled broadly.
There did not appear to be much risk of that happening.
The two rose to meet her, and she reared back, startled as Sally reached his full height.
‘Gracious!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re quite the specimen, aren’t you?’
‘How do you do, Lady Cater?’ he said in his most genteel tone. ‘Salvatore Danielli, BBC.’
‘And I’m Mrs Gwendolyn Bainbridge,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘We spoke on the telephone yesterday. So good of you to welcome us to your home. It is quite lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lady Cater, gesturing for them to sit again. ‘It was good of you to come all the way from London. We don’t get as many visitors nowadays as we did before the war, especially with our children having grown up and gone out into the world.’
‘I can imagine this must have been quite a lively place back then,’ said Mrs Bainbridge.