Читать книгу In the Event of My Death - Emma Page - Страница 10

CHAPTER 5

Elmhurst, home of the Dalton family for over a century, stood in extensive grounds, sixty acres and more, on the outskirts of a village close to Cannonbridge. Over the last thirty years, developers had turned hungry eyes on the Elmhurst land, rapidly becoming a prime site as the town advanced steadily nearer. More than one entrepreneur, with plans for a high-class development in mind, had approached the local authority to discover its views. Planning permission would undoubtedly be granted and would be welcomed locally.

Bernard Dalton had received a number of offers. The figures mentioned rose as time went by, occasionally making spectacular leaps. But Bernard had never for one moment contemplated selling, and his widow was of precisely the same mind.

Grace Dalton had been a spinster of forty-six when she married Bernard. She had worked for the firm since leaving secretarial college; she had been Bernard’s personal assistant for several years. She had never had a boyfriend but kept house for her widowed schoolmaster father until his death, two years before her marriage.

Bernard had consulted neither his son nor his daughter when he contemplated remarrying; he would have been astonished at such a suggestion. Nor would his children have dared to voice any contrary opinion they might have felt.

The second marriage had been highly successful. Grace had continued to play a significant part in the affairs of the firm until Bernard’s retirement. She had also served as a magistrate and parish councillor and had taken an increasing interest in charitable work. But she had been forced to give up these activities after being laid low two years ago by a serious heart condition, complicated by other health factors. She had made a fairly good recovery but had suffered a setback the previous autumn. She had been strongly advised to take things very easily indeed in future, and was conscientiously obeying orders. ‘With care, she could live another two or three years,’ her doctor had recently told Matthew Dalton. ‘But, there again, she could go at any time.’

With the very quiet life Grace led nowadays, the Elmhurst staff, indoor and outdoor, was greatly reduced from what it had been in the days before Bernard’s retirement. The gardens, though far from neglected, were no longer kept up to the same high standards, everything now being geared to simplicity and ease of maintenance. The head gardener, Gosling, managed these days with the help of a couple of stalwart village lads; he even acted, when required, as Grace’s chauffeur, though that was rarely necessary now, when she went out so little.

Gosling’s father-in-law had looked after the Elmhurst gardens before him. He was an old man now, widowed, living with the Goslings in their cottage in the grounds. Mrs Gosling had been born in the cottage. She had worked in the house from leaving school, continuing after her marriage, whenever her family duties permitted. Now that her children had grown up and left home, she put in a few hours most days, as she was needed.

When it became clear to Grace two years ago what her future would be, she moved out of her first-floor bedroom and took over instead a downstairs room with glazed doors leading on to a patio, sheltered and secluded, where she could sit out in warm weather. A small adjoining room was converted into a bathroom. On this fine Monday morning, the February sun, though cheering to the spirits, was nowhere near strong enough to permit the pleasure of sitting out.

Shortly before noon, Dr Surridge called to see her. It was a measure of her sustained progress that he called now only once a week, putting her name by no means first on his list. Grace had a good deal of faith in Dr Surridge, a genial man in his middle fifties, with a calmly reassuring manner. He had been her doctor since taking over the practice three years ago, on the retirement of old Dr Wheatley.

Today Dr Surridge was well pleased with his patient. As they sat talking after his examination, Grace lay on her sofa, comfortably propped against a pile of cushions, the position she always adopted now when resting or sleeping. She still retained her air of command. Her steel-grey hair, long and thick as ever, was carefully dressed, high on her head; her blue eyes still sparkled, her pink and white skin was still soft and smooth.

‘I rang Dr Wheatley yesterday evening,’ Dr Surridge told her. ‘He’s all set to take over in ten days’ time.’ Dr Surridge and his wife were shortly flying off to Australia for three months. Their schoolteacher son had gone out there some time back on a year’s exchange. He had met an Australian girl, married her, decided to settle out there. Their first child had been born a few months ago.

Dr Wheatley had been happy to act as locum for Dr Surridge during shorter holidays in each of the three years since his retirement and was greatly looking forward to this longer spell. He was a childless widower whose work had been his whole life and he often found the long hours of unaccustomed leisure hung heavily.

And Grace was looking forward to seeing him again. He had been not only her doctor but her good friend, as he had been also to Bernard and Bernard’s first wife.

When Dr Surridge left Grace’s room at the end of his visit, he found the housekeeper, Dorothy Nevett, waiting for him in the hall, to ask how he had found Mrs Dalton. Dorothy was a native of Cannonbridge, a stockily-built spinster a few years from sixty. She was highly competent at her job, a woman to be reckoned with, as might be seen in her determined countenance, the stubborn set to her jaw. Her greying brown hair, short and straight, was cut without concession to fashion. She had worked at Elmhurst since leaving school, starting out as a kitchen maid in the time of Bernard’s first wife.

Dr Surridge gave her his report. He had a high regard for Miss Nevett’s nursing ability. She had helped to nurse the first Mrs Dalton, and later, Bernard, in his last illness. The doctor believed she could have taken up nursing professionally and been very successful at it.

‘Would it be all right if I went off for a day or two this coming weekend?’ Dorothy asked as she walked with him to the door. ‘I haven’t spoken about it yet to Mrs Dalton, I thought I’d check with you first. I feel I could do with a break. I thought of leaving on Friday morning and coming back Monday afternoon, I’d get back before supper. Mrs Gosling would be in charge – and of course, Jean would lend a hand.’ Jean Redfern was a girl of twenty who acted as a general help to Grace, carrying out a variety of duties. The tone in which Miss Nevett referred to her displayed a certain coolness.

No, Dr Surridge had no objection to Dorothy going off for a few days. ‘You’ll be going to the caravan?’ he asked chattily.

She nodded. ‘My friend will be there for the weekend.’ Dorothy owned a little caravan by the coast in Dorset, in conjunction with her lifelong friend, Alice Upjohn, a spinster like herself. The caravan was kept on a small farm. ‘It’s in a sheltered spot,’ she added. ‘It should be very pleasant down there just now, if the weather holds.’

As soon as the sound of the doctor’s departing car reached Grace Dalton’s ears, she touched a button on the console she had had installed when she moved into the room; it enabled her to summon assistance, day or night. One press for the housekeeper, two for Jean Redfern. She pressed it twice.

In a very short time, Jean came along with her customary swift, noiseless tread, from the garden room where she had been doing the flowers. A quiet girl with an unassuming manner, pretty enough in an everyday fashion, nothing in any way striking about her appearance. She was the illegitimate child of a woman named Redfern who had worked as a maid at Elmhurst from leaving school until five years ago when she had married an American widower she had met on holiday and had gone to live with him in the States.

Jean had come into the world as the result of a brief association between her mother and a travelling salesman with a roving eye and a persuasive tongue. When Jean’s mother – barely eighteen at the time – realized her predicament she tried to kill herself, but the attempt was frustrated by Dorothy Nevett who got the truth out of her and then went straight to her employers. The Daltons were very kind to the girl, who had no family to turn to. They kept her on and looked after her. She was at first determined on an abortion but they managed to talk her out of it. When the baby was born she wanted it put up for adoption but they persuaded her to keep it.

Jean was a well-behaved child, quiet and secretive. She lived in the servants’ quarters and was never in any way a nuisance in the household. She learned very early the useful skills of compliance and self-effacement; the Daltons were scarcely aware of her presence. As she got older, both her mother and Dorothy Nevett saw to it that she learned to perform little tasks about the place.

Bernard Dalton had been dead twelve months when Jean’s mother met her American and jumped at the chance to marry him. She asked Grace if she would allow Jean – then fifteen years old – to remain at Elmhurst until she finished her schooling; in return Jean would continue to do whatever she could in the way of household tasks. If Grace wished to employ her on a formal basis after she left school, well and good; if not, Jean could leave and look for employment elsewhere.

Grace readily agreed and Jean’s mother went blithely off to America. Grace saw to it that Jean kept in touch with her mother, but in spite of her efforts the correspondence soon diminished to an exchange of letters at Christmas. The marriage produced children Jean had seen only in very occasional photographs.

Grace did her best to persuade Jean to stay on at school, take some kind of training, but Jean wasn’t interested. Nor did she show any inclination to leave Elmhurst and go out into the world on her own. Before long, she had established herself as a very useful extra pair of hands about the house; she was always pleasant and willing.

Her position in the household began by degrees to alter. Grace started to make use of her in a more personal way, take greater interest in her; her footing became more like that of a companion help. This alteration found little favour in Dorothy Nevett’s eyes. Dorothy was a firm believer in knowing one’s place in life and sticking to it. She was deeply opposed to any attempt to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. And she was more than a little resentful, though she attempted not to show it, of what she saw as the girl’s favoured position in the household – a girl who had, after all, been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

In her last year at school, Jean had taken classes in shorthand and typing. When she left school she began to assist Grace with her correspondence, proving herself meticulously careful, reliable and conscientious. Grace wanted her to take a proper secretarial course to qualify her for a good post in the business world but Jean quietly and stubbornly resisted.

She had helped with nursing Grace over the last two years and here she had been a good deal less resistant when it was suggested she might take a course. She had been one of those Nina Dalton’s enthusiasm had swept into enrolling. Nina had found a place for her in a course held in Cannonbridge and she had acquitted herself very creditably.

There had been one brief period three years ago when Jean had caused Grace some real concern. She had met a boy two years older than herself, a good-looking drifter. She had fallen in love with him, wanted to marry him, there and then. Grace had put her foot down very firmly and the boy had drifted off elsewhere. There had never been another boyfriend.

Today, when Jean went along to Grace’s bedroom in answer to her summons, Grace gave her directions about various tasks, then she asked how Jean was getting on with her reading. Grace had drawn up an improving reading list and was encouraging Jean to plough her way through it.

As Jean was leaving the room again, Grace asked if Mrs Gosling was in the house and was told she was. Would Jean send her along?

Mrs Gosling came hurrying into the room a few minutes later, a cheerful, motherly woman with a ready smile. Grace asked how her quilting was progressing – Mrs Gosling was an expert quilter and at Grace’s suggestion had embarked on a set of cushion covers to be given as one of the prizes in a raffle in aid of the new hospice. She told Grace she was now working on the final cover and hoped to finish it in a couple of days. Grace was delighted; the draw was to take place next week. Grace had long been a supporter of the present Cannonbridge hospice and had helped from the start to raise funds for the new building, even in her invalid state, encouraging everyone connected with her to join in.

When Mrs Gosling had gone off again, Grace lay back and closed her eyes. She was feeling somewhat fatigued; time for a little rest before lunch. Inside a very few moments she had slipped into a pleasantly somnolent state in which the chirruping of the garden birds, the distant sounds of the household, mingled together in a lulling murmur.

By two-thirty lunch was over, the kitchen restored to order and Mrs Dalton settled down for her nap. Dorothy Nevett was up in her room on the top floor, enjoying an hour or two of leisure. She liked having her room up here, so beautifully private; she had had the whole floor to herself since the staff had been reduced. She paced about the room, her head full of the phone call she had received yesterday evening from her friend, Alice Upjohn.

Alice had lived next door to Dorothy when they were children; they had sat next to each other in school. When Alice was thirteen her father was transferred on promotion by his firm to a branch down south and the family was uprooted. But the two friends kept in regular touch, by letter in the early years but later spending holidays together.

When Alice left school, she began work as a clerk in a local government office; she continued living at home. The years slipped by. When she was forty-five her father died and her mother’s health soon afterwards began to deteriorate; she spent her final years in care. The house was sold to pay the nursing home fees and Alice moved into a small rented flat near the home; her mother lingered on for several years.

Alice had recently been offered early retirement in a cost-cutting exercise and had immediately accepted. She would be finishing work at the end of March; she would have a pension and a lump sum.

Dorothy and Alice had long shared a dream of buying a little cottage to retire to, in their favourite resort on the Dorset coast. As soon as Alice accepted the offer of early retirement, before saying a word to Dorothy, she contacted estate agents in the resort but quickly discovered that prices were way out of reach. Then she had an inspiration. She got on to every solicitor in the area and came at last upon what she was hoping for: a small cottage still to be disposed of at the tail-end of an estate, the executors ready to let the property go for a very reasonable sum if the transaction could be speedily put through. Alice’s lump sum, together with her savings and what she had inherited from her mother, would provide her half of the purchase price, as she had joyfully informed Dorothy over the phone yesterday evening. What about Dorothy? Could she provide her half?

Dorothy had her savings, she’d always been thrifty, but they were nowhere near enough. Then perhaps she could raise a mortgage for the balance, Alice suggested. ‘We’ll have to decide very quickly,’ Alice had gone on to say. ‘We’ll never get another chance like this.’ She had liked what she’d been told about the cottage but hadn’t yet had a chance to view it. ‘Try to get away for the weekend.’ she urged Dorothy over the phone. ‘If we find it’s what we want, you’ll have a few days after you get back to try to raise the money.’

Dorothy had approached Grace at lunchtime to ask if she could take a weekend break but she had said nothing about the cottage. Grace had readily assented.

Dorothy halted in her pacing to pick up from the top of her bureau a long frame holding three photographs of Alice: as a schoolgirl of thirteen, with dark curly hair and a shy smile; as a young woman, on their first holiday together; and the mature Alice, a few years ago, on another of their long succession of shared holidays, her figure almost as slender, her smile little changed.

She replaced the photograph, took down a jacket and left the room. She went quietly down the back stairs, out by a side door into the garden. No sign of Gosling. She spotted a garden lad at work in a greenhouse; he gave her a wave as she went by. She walked rapidly through the cultivated gardens, striking out for the fields and woods where she could stride about undisturbed, to think out her thoughts.

How would her bank or building society be likely to look upon an application for a mortgage from a woman of her age, in her financial situation? Two years ago, when Grace Dalton was sufficiently recovered to be able to look calmly at her future, she had sent for Dorothy and told her she was making a new will. It had long been understood between them that Dorothy would retire at sixty with a pension, in recognition of her long and faithful service. Grace had asked if Dorothy would now forget about leaving at sixty and would agree instead to remain with Grace until the end, whenever that might be. In return she would receive a larger pension, together with an additional benefit – a lump sum based on the total number of years she had worked at Elmhurst. If she agreed, she would receive these new entitlements, even if Grace were to die within a very short time.

Grace hadn’t been coy about mentioning actual figures and Dorothy’s eyes had opened wide when she heard them. She had needed no time to think the offer over and had at once accepted.

But that was two years ago now. Dorothy had believed then that Grace wouldn’t last out the twelvemonth. But the doctor spoke now of the possibility that she might with care live a few more years. Suppose she did manage to raise a mortgage and they did buy the cottage: how would Alice relish living there on her own for that length of time? She frowned in thought as she wheeled about in the dappled sunshine of the woodland.

How long, realistically, was Grace likely to live? That was undoubtedly the question.

Dusk was falling on Monday evening, a week later, as Dorothy reached the crossroads marking the final stage of her journey back from Dorset to Elmhurst. She usually enjoyed driving but today she had found the journey wearisome. It had been altogether a tiring weekend, with so much to weigh up and ponder.

The cottage had turned out to be even better than she had hoped; it would do them beautifully. Not too small, a decent stretch of garden, neglected now, but they could soon put that to rights. They had found a surveyor to go over the cottage and he had been able to assure them the property was structurally very sound. A few repairs would be needed but nothing too expensive. He foresaw no difficulty in raising a mortgage.

She frowned out through the windscreen as she drove through the light-splashed twilight. It was her own share of the purchase money that now presented the only remaining stumbling block. The solicitor had agreed to give them a week to reach a decision. Next Monday evening she was to ring Alice at 7.45, to tell her if she would or would not be able to raise the money. She had fixed on that precise time in order to be certain of making the call without being overheard. Mrs Dalton would be settled down after her supper, watching TV or reading, maybe listening to music or to the radio. Jean would either have gone out or be glued to the TV in the staff sitting room, absorbed in the latest instalment of her favourite soap opera.

First thing the following morning, Tuesday, Alice was to phone the solicitor, to give him a straight yes or no.