Death in Disguise Page 19

  Christopher poured fruit juice, Arno crumbled a barley cake, Heather had carved herself a slice of marmalade the colour of treacle toffee and laid it to rest on some burnt toast. Ken, on Hilarion’s instructions, was just about to retire to the garden with a straightened-out metal coat hanger to dowse for whatever etheric traces of the Master’s spirit might remain, a sortie he referred to as Operation Karmalight.

  May sat at the head of the table, proud shoulders drooping, wonderful hair loose and unbrushed. She had been crying and her eyes were still bright and swimmy. Without make-up her face looked haggard. She looked ten years older; a faint facsimile of her former self. Arno’s heart almost broke at the sight and he had never loved her more.

  She had been up most of the night with Tim. Arno had taken over at four o’clock. When he came downstairs he had left the boy still in bed lying in a rigid foetal loop, arms locked round knees, eyes screwed tight shut, refusing to acknowledge wakefulness.

  Janet said, ‘Shall I make some more tea?’ No one replied. Heather asked where Suhami was.

  ‘She won’t come down,’ said Christopher. ‘She blames herself for bringing him here and can’t face anyone.’

  ‘Poor child.’ May got heavily to her feet. ‘Someone should go to her.’

  ‘You won’t get in. She talked to me through the locked door.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Subsiding, May looked inquiringly at Janet and said, ‘Trixie’s not here either.’

  ‘No.’ Janet’s pulse ticked a little faster at this supposition that she would be the one to know why. ‘She’s still asleep. I looked in on my way down.’

  ‘It’s for ourselves we grieve of course.’ May’s face twitched as she returned to the subject on all their minds. ‘For him it’s over. He is in the ranks of the illuminati.’

  ‘And already born again,’ said Heather with a watery smile.

  True though this might be, no one was much comforted. It was too soon. The total awfulness of not only the matter but also the manner of their Master’s demise lowered a dark pall around their heads. Forced to believe, no one could quite believe. It was simply incredible. Like finding blood on the yellow brick road. Only May, still convinced that an immense supernatural force had spirited her teacher away, escaped this added dimension of despair. ‘We must undreary our minds,’ said Heather. ‘I’m going to make a supreme effort—it’s what he would have wanted.’

  ‘You’re right!’ Ken jumped up as springily as his gammy leg allowed. ‘There’s a lot of loving needed here today. And I vote we start things off with a heart-centred hug—check, Heather?’

  ‘Check.’ His wife got up and the couple stood facing, arms locked round each other’s waist.

  ‘Direct eye contact.’

  ‘Heads together.’

  ‘Full body contact.’

  ‘Breathe slowly and gently.’

  ‘…slowly…gently…’

  ‘Flow of compassion…’

  ‘My heart chakra to yours…’

  ‘Flow…flow…’

  ‘Squeeze.’

  ‘Release.’

  They broke apart, smiling. Ken’s trousers looked better already. No one else had gone in for the heart-centred hug. Arno drank a little juice and broke off a bit more barley cake. ‘I think what would help—what would also help I should say,’ he glanced apologetically at Heather, ‘is to keep busy. I mean after a… After something like this aren’t there all sorts of things to organise?’ He was remembering his mother’s death and friends and relatives endlessly coming and going. The letters to be answered, the funeral tea.

  ‘Be a post mortem I expect,’ said Christopher. ‘There’s not much we can do till that’s over and the body’s released.’

  This blunt remark caused May to gush fresh tears. Arno reached out to take her hand but at the last moment his courage failed and he let his own freckled paw lie in mute but companionable support a finger’s width away. The thought occurred to him that she might (absent-mindedly, of course) take hold of it and he came over quite wobbly.

  ‘For now I suppose we should carry on with our usual routine. It’s what the Master would have wanted. In the long run…’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Ken. ‘The long run.’

  ‘I suppose what he means,’ said Janet, ‘looking at it from a practical viewpoint, is what will happen to the house?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ May looked bewildered.

  ‘Well, May,’ Janet’s voice softened. ‘Assuming The Manor was his to leave, he might not have left it to the community.’

  There was a long disturbed silence while this new idea spread its ripples amongst them. Then May spoke. ‘He must have. We were his family—his next of kin. He said that to me once.’

  ‘To me also,’ said Arno.

  ‘Don’t either of you know how the house is entailed?’ asked Christopher. ‘You’ve been here longer than anyone.’

  Arno shook his head. He was feeling rather depressed at the rapidity with which this ‘nuts-and-bolts’ conversation had taken off. ‘We discussed everything else. Administrative matters, setting up courses, funding. But that just never seemed to come up.’

  ‘There was no need for it to come up,’ said May. ‘Until now.’

  ‘Did he have a solicitor?’

  ‘He’s never spoken of such things. His bank—The Lodge’s bank I should say—is the National Westminster in Causton.’

  ‘Ask them, May,’ said Ken, ‘next time you go in. You handle the accounts after all. They know you.’

  ‘Certainly my signature is accepted,’ admitted May. ‘But only on communal matters. I don’t see why they should tell me anything about the Master’s personal business.’

  ‘At least they could tell us if there was a mortgage.’

  ‘A mortgage!’ Ken was dismayed. ‘Gosh—I’d never thought of that.’

  ‘He was so other-worldly,’ sighed Heather. ‘It’s just like him never to have made a Will at all.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Arno. ‘He’d have considered us and left his affairs in order.’

  ‘He would certainly,’ said May, ‘have considered Tim.’

  ‘Our continuation here though,’ argued Christopher, ‘doesn’t just rely on who owns the bricks and mortar, surely? All communities whether secular or religious need a guiding spirit to which they can conform. Ours resided in him. Who else here can lecture as he did, recharge people, give spiritual advice?’

  ‘I’m a qualified counsellor.’ Heather looked quite pouty. She had five framed certificates on the walls of her room including one for successfully completing a course in Venusian Temple Disciplines.

  ‘Christopher’s right,’ said Janet who was fully conversant with Heather’s idea of counselling. The procedure usually consisted of Heather sitting rather complacently while her ‘client’ explained the problem. Then, after pointing out that all disease, whether mental or physical, was the external result of internal spiritual ignorance she would briskly offer an astrally oriented solution. After the recipient had paid their bill and left, Heather complained they’d drained her dry.

  ‘After all,’ continued Janet, ‘we are the laity here. Our tasks have been mostly practical. Making things and running things. I feel our numinous gifts may be a bit on the skimpy side.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Ken.

  Arno interrupted an uncomfortable pause. ‘Has anyone looked in on Mrs Gamelin yet?’

  ‘I should let her rest,’ said May. ‘It’s still barely eight. She’ll probably sleep for some time. I gave her a betony tisane.’

  ‘God, that woman is in such need.’ Heather braced her shoulders and held the bridge of her nose between thumb and little finger in a manner that suggested some wonder-working power source coiled within the cartilage. ‘I really don’t know if I can cope.’

  ‘No one’s asked you to cope, have they?’ said Janet. She got up and poured some more tea.

  In the end it was May who attended to Felicity. At nine o�
��clock she gently opened the door of the Oriel room, peered round and saw, beyond a foamy explosion of grey stuff in the middle of the floor, a narrow figure in a satin slip perched on the edge of the bed staring at the wall.

  Felicity was in a turmoil and feeling very strange. She was trying to understand her state of mind. To separate at least one strand of emotion, draw it out, have a good look at it. But no sooner did she pinpoint one singular sensation than it bolted, swept away in the rush of half a dozen more. It seemed a long while since her arrival at the Manor House. She had not closed her eyes until the dawn and then only fitfully which no doubt contributed to the mental chaos.

  At first the extraordinary and frightening events of the previous evening had touched her not at all. Things had seemed very bright, and clear and interesting, but also somehow unreal as if they had taken place on a stage some distance away. Or behind a thick glass wall. (She had taken a third line in the downstairs cloaks before going into the Solar.) Then, shortly after the police arrived, the effect wore off and fear, mess and muddle came roaring in, sweeping away this protective viewpoint. Self-knowledge loomed. She became aware that she was somehow involved in terrible things and that she looked ridiculous, having allowed Danton to turn her into a sideshow whilst she paid massively for the privilege. The click of the door made her jump and she stared at May whom she did not remember.

  May was carrying a delicious cup of steaming tea. Visitors’ rations (Earl Grey bags, coffee beans and other decadent goodies) were always to hand in a special cupboard. She had slipped in a few drops of a gem remedy to aid Felicity’s recovery. May placed the cup on the bedside table, sat down and took Felicity’s hand.

  Felicity looked dreadful. Her face was a splodged mess as if a child had gone to town on it with mixed crayons. Yesterday’s excessive mousseing, spraying and gelling had left her hair a lifeless mat. May stroked Felicity’s hand, smiling encouragingly and, after a while, persuaded her to drink.

  Felicity tried but her mouth was trembling so violently that her teeth chattered against the rim of the cup and the liquid spilled. May went back to the hand-holding. There was not much else she could do at the moment, given Felicity’s emotional state and feeling far from robust herself. Gently, gently was the way. That a great deal of help was needed, May could see—for Felicity’s aura was quite splintered. One of the worst cases May had ever come across.

  After a while May approached the open pigskin case. She was looking for some fresh underthings, intending to run Felicity a bath, and found a large pink and gold jar of cream. Using this, she cleaned Felicity’s face with slow rhythmical movements. After the third attempt the wastebasket was full of tissues and Felicity’s original ivory pallor was revealed.

  May returned briefly to her own room, rummaged in the fluorescent bowels of her wardrobe and found a silk robe in deepest blue. (No colour refreshed the spirit more.) Then she picked up a tub of mallow shampoo and a fluffy towel, and returned to wash Felicity’s hair.

  This proved much more complicated than cleaning her face even though Felicity bent meekly over the basin and kept quite still, holding a face flannel to her eyes. For a start there was so much of the stuff. The hand basin was full of it. May felt she was wrestling with a lion’s mane. This was partly explained when, at the second wringing, a large piece of the back section came away in her hands. Briefly horrified (had she discovered a mallow allergy?) May then realised the hair was false. She wrang it out, draped it over the back of a chair and carried on shampooing. So much awful gunge. How could anyone bear to have all this ticky-tacky on their head? Eventually the water ran clear. May wrapped Felicity’s hair in the soft towel and patted it gently. Then she combed it back and tied it with a piece of Kumihumo braid from her pocket.

  ‘Now,’ May bent down until her face was level with Felicity’s and smiled, ‘doesn’t that feel better?’

  Felicity made a sad little sound, like a hungry kitten.

  ‘There, there,’ said May. ‘Now I suggest…’ she took Felicity’s arm, ‘that you lie down until just before lunch time. Then you can have a bath and something very light to eat.’

  Felicity sat down numbly on the bed and gazed at May with dark, pain-filled eyes.

  ‘It’s all right. Everything will be all right now. We’ll look after you.’ May leaned forwards and kissed Felicity on the cheek.

  While these tender ablutions were going on, Janet was washing up, banging her hand-made cereal bowls around as usual in the stone sink. As she slopped water about she wondered about lunch. Suhami’s name was on the rota but she had still not emerged and it was now ten o’clock. It was going to be a disorganised day, the first, Janet suspected, of many. The utter finality of the Master’s death struck her with renewed force and she was sure that no matter how hard they all struggled to carry on as normal, things at the Manor House would never be the same again.

  What would happen to them all? Where would they go if the house did prove to be no longer available? Would they try to live together somewhere else? Would she want that?

  Janet knew she had no gift for the vigorous meddling in other people’s lives that seemed to be the commune’s definition of friendship. Philosophically, too, it was a struggle to conform. She was not at home with wild inexactitudes or fantastic suppositions and thought it sentimental to pretend all problems could be solved. Also she liked a bit of a grouse now and then, which was much frowned on. Only the other day, making some mildly derogatory comment on the weather, she had received a lecture from Heather on the lines of how she should be grateful she was not blind, or suffering from multiple sclerosis in a tower block.

  Irritated by these recollections, Janet decided to break the house rules and make some real coffee. Stimulating uplift—that’s what she was in need of, and to hell with pancreatic cancer. Or was it liver fluke? She would take some up to Trixie as well. And perhaps some biscuits.

  In the visitors’ cupboard she found a commercial and sinfully inorganic packet of Uncle Bob’s Treacle Delights. She ground some beans, inhaling with pleasure, and undid the biscuits. The wrapper, with a fine relish for the cultural cross-reference, showed a Chinese girl in a sombrero with corks dangling from the rim. Janet selected a blue flowered plate for the Delights, put it back, got out a little glazed mustard number with a spray of crimson blossom, put that back and finally settled for a pale pink trellised-edged look. She carefully arranged several syrup-coloured biscuits in overlapping circles then, while the coffee brewed, snipped an Albertine rose (a perfect match for the plate) from outside the kitchen window.

  Entering the hall with her laden tray, stomach looping an apprehensive loop as she anticipated rousing Trixie from slumber, Janet came to a full stop. There, at the bottom of the staircase, were May and Arno talking to a huge man in a speckled suit. As Janet hesitated, May and the man turned and went upstairs.

  ‘Who was that, Arno?’

  ‘The Gamelins’ solicitor.’ His eyes were already slipping after May and he brought them back to Janet with an effort. ‘Something awful’s happened. At least I suppose normally one would say it was awful. I can’t help wondering if it’s a blessing in disguise. He was found dead this morning in his hotel room.’

  ‘What…Guy?’

  Arno nodded. ‘Apparently he’d asked to be called at nine. The maid took some tea up and he was just lying there. Hadn’t even gone to bed. They seem to think it was a heart attack.’

  ‘How dreadful.’ Even as she made the expected response Janet knew that she was glad. He had been a terrible man. Avaricious and unkind. The world was well shot of him. And what a piece of news to offer Trixie. What a sweet token of a gift! Better than the real coffee and Uncle Bob’s Delights. Better even than the rose. Arno was saying something else.

  ‘May thought Suhami might be better able to receive the news. Her mother is still not quite…’ He trailed off tactfully but Janet was already climbing the stairs.

  Trixie was not sleeping after all but curled up on the window seat
and smoking again. ‘Has the post come?’

  ‘Yes.’ Janet put the tray down on the chest of drawers. She wondered if Trixie was looking for another letter in a blue envelope. ‘Were you expecting something?’

  ‘Not really.’ Trixie was wearing an apple-green silk dress. Her face was unmade-up, the skin thick and smooth like cream. Inside her arms, Janet could see yesterday’s scarlet pinch-marks transformed to little violets as the bruises came out.

  ‘I’ve made you some real coffee.’ She filled two mugs.

  ‘You’ll be for it. We’re in a caffeine-free zone here.’

  ‘And opened some biscuits.’ Janet put her own mug aside and took the tray over to the window. The rose now looked rather silly not to mention superfluous. She had forgotten Trixie already had a bowlful. ‘Drink it while it’s hot.’

  Trixie told her not to go on and Janet accepted this routine castigation with the patience of one who knows it is within her power to spring a big surprise. She made some headway into her own mug. Heavens—she’d almost forgotten how utterly delicious the real thing tasted! Was a squeaky-clean colon worth the sacrifice? ‘Is it OK?’ she asked timidly.

  ‘Lovely. It’ll warm me up.’

  Janet didn’t understand. The sun was streaming in and Trixie was bathed in it.

  ‘Is there any news? I mean from the police.’

  ‘They’re here now. With the Gamelin solicitor.’ Janet paused, her gaunt ardent face cloaked with anticipation. This was the moment. Still she hesitated, for the news could only be given once and then her purse would be empty. She could not tantalise, coyness not being her nature. In the end she just blurted it out.

  ‘Guy Gamelin’s dead. He had a heart attack.’

  She remembered always what happened next. Trixie jerked violently upright as if she’d received an electric shock. The coffee spilled down her apple-green dress and bare legs and the mug clattered to the floor. She gave a wild shout, which was cut off as she clapped her hands over her mouth. Then she cried, ‘Oh God—what am I going to do?’ and started to scream.