Every space on the wall was inhabited by a portrait of the beautiful girl taken in her youth. Each was a formal oil painting in quite an old-fashioned style – the girl with the long golden hair holding the halter of a white horse, gazing down at a vase of yellow irises or peering into the stream, the rolling front lawn and the red brick walls of Haughten Hall rising above her. Her hair was loose in each portrait and styled in quite a childish fashion and she wore long flowing day dresses, which gave her that classical look the upper classes seemed to favour, as she posed with doves, ornate hand mirrors and boughs of apple blossom.
‘Oh yes,’ said Sir Howard suddenly. ‘Here, there is a mention of your daughter.’
‘Don’t!’ I said. ‘I don’t want to know.’
But he continued, ‘“Daughter of former MP Sir Howard Caldwell, the beautiful Iris Caldwell, disappeared from Haughten Hall when Sir Howard went to investigate a small fire in the stable.”’
I leant my forehead on the windowpane, glad of the cold glass, and stared out across to the common.
‘“It was to be a joyous day as Miss Caldwell waited at Haughten Hall for the arrival of May morning. She was due to start the revelry at dawn…”’
I swallowed hard because I knew what was coming next and did not care to hear it again. I could not bring myself to look at him but he continued talking and I gazed out of the window trying not to listen.
Like all the windows at the back of the house, this one was long with a view over the stable yard and the small kitchen garden. Behind this was a small lawn and then a fence that had been sunk into a ditch so that the unbroken view stretched beyond the grounds of Haughten Hall and drew the eye between small clumps of trees and up on to the tussocks of grass where Missensham Common met the horizon. It was a view that often soothed me, for I thought that if Nell was indeed dead, then she would be out there somewhere among the delicate blooms of gorse and singing birds.
‘“…bloodied petticoat unearthed from the foxholes on Missensham Common”,’ Sir Howard concluded.
‘You said there was mention of Nell,’ I said.
‘Nell?’ He looked up, saying the word as if for the first time, and cleared his throat.
‘Oh, Nell, of course, yes – here we are. “Iris Caldwell’s servant, a local girl called Nell Ryland, also disappeared on that day. Both the girls were fifteen years old, believed murdered”.’
The last word seemed to hang in the air and my view of the common began to shimmer and blur. Then the door opened with a bang and Dora stumbled across the room with a rattling tea tray and started to set out the cups on the coffee table. I could not meet her eyes and I sensed that Sir Howard could not either. She left the room without a thank you or even a glance.
I wiped my eyes on my handkerchief and stuffed it hastily back into my sleeve. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was indeed all so long ago, and as you say, it is not as if anything new has come of this. We have dwelt too long on this already and moping won’t help.’ I crossed to the table and poured the tea, which was hardly brewed and still watery, the china tinkling in my trembling hand. ‘Custard cream?’
He did not answer, so I put a biscuit in his saucer and took the tea over to his desk.
‘You know we have always been such a great comfort to each other throughout this, Howard. You know there are those who blamed me. I should have checked on Nell that morning before I went to the church. I could have discovered that all was not well so much earlier, but you never blamed me.’ I put my hand on his shoulder.
‘I don’t blame you, Agnes,’ he said. ‘You must know that.’ But his shoulder shrank from my touch.
‘I know you think that Nell could have had a bad influence on Iris,’ I said. ‘After all, her transgressions were well known in the village.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that, nor have I ever given you cause to think it. I never heard of Nell being trouble to anyone.’
‘But the drunkenness,’ I began, ‘and the arrest—’
‘You exaggerate, Agnes,’ he said. ‘They are youthful mistakes of little consequence. You must not forget she was your daughter.’
‘They might be seen as youthful mistakes now,’ I said, ‘but don’t forget those were different times and she had her father’s memory to uphold. Of course there was also the expulsion from school and the…’ But here he did not need to stop me, because there were things that I could not say out loud, things that even after all these years, I could neither admit to him nor myself.
‘You said that you saw the film that was shown in the church hall, Agnes,’ he said quickly, his manner changing.
I nodded.
‘Roy said the image was grainy but that people thought it Iris on the village green at daybreak, with a man.’
‘I would say that it was definitely Iris,’ I said, ‘and I think it probably was daybreak on May Day morning because I remember there was some footage of the blacksmith’s yard that was played just before it. They were tying oxeye daisies on to the willow arch and they would not have done that until the morning of May Day. Roy seems to think that the film is grainy because it was shot in the first light of day. The sun is only just coming up because the oak casts a long shadow over the grass at sunrise.’ I spoke quickly because I knew they were details that he was not concerned with, and I waited for his next question, the one I dreaded.
He did not hesitate. ‘Was it Sam Denman who was walking with Iris on the film?’
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I would say that it was him.’ It was something that I was not happy admitting, but I was more comfortable saying it to Sir Howard than to an officer of the law who would record my words in a pocketbook. Then I added, ‘But Roy will interview Francis Elliot-Palmer again. He must be the one who shot the film and so will remember if it was Sam who he saw with Iris that morning.’
‘Well, you know that I was never sure about Sam’s involvement,’ he said, ‘but now it would appear that he is guilty after all because the chap has absconded. Roy tells me that the police have already been to Waldley Court today, to that little dump that he has been squatting in.’
‘I’m sure they have,’ I said wearily.
‘The chap had a lot of fight in him,’ Sir Howard continued. ‘He led them a merry dance. Even managed to spook his horses so that they galloped off over the common before the constables could get out the car. There was a scuffle and he managed to escape from three strong officers, all without his boots on and in his nightclothes. He has not yet returned and I doubt that he intends to.’ He jabbed his finger towards the window, in the direction of Waldley Court on the far side of the common. ‘That is an admission of guilt if ever I saw one.’
‘Sam would have run when he saw the constables whether he was guilty or not,’ I persisted.
He turned away from me and went back to the newspaper on his desk, shaking out the creases vigorously.
I could not bear hostility between us. ‘Let’s not quarrel,’ I said. Sir Howard was the only one who understood me because he had suffered the same loss, and I had always thought that we felt the same pain, even if he handled it differently. I went to put my hand on his shoulder again, but he leant away from me absentmindedly and turned his gaze back to the newspaper.