A curse of confirmation emanated from the small back room that the Motleys had transformed into a makeshift kitchen and the door crashed open to reveal a stout woman of indeterminate age who had obviously already used up what little patience she allowed herself each day. Employment in a household which thrived on colour and changing fashions had cut no ice with Mrs Snipe: her uniform
– black alpaca dress, bibbed apron, worsted stockings and house slippers – was as familiar up and down the country as that of a policeman or nurse and, apart from the length of her skirt, she could easily have been serving toast to a Victorian household.
‘If you were hoping for kidneys, you can forget it,’ Mrs Snipe announced in what would, at any normal volume, have been a west country burr. ‘It’s cockled ’em with the heat. I expect you wanted fish, Miss Josephine, but the fact is there isn’t any, so it’ll have to be bacon and eggs, and you’ll be lucky to get those by the time that thing’s finished with ’em.’
Josephine was not easily intimidated, but there was something about Dora Snipe which turned the normal guest and housekeeper relationship on its head, so she smiled and nodded and accepted what was on offer. Her familiarity with Number 66 had not made her any less wary of the Motleys’ cook. The sisters had never known life without her, yet Mrs Snipe had remained an enigma throughout the thirty-odd years that she had been with the family, first in Cornwall and now in London, where she ‘did’ for Ronnie and Lettice and was housekeeper to their cousin, Archie, to whom she was devoted. As she banged a rack of perfectly browned toast 34
down on the table and returned to the kitchen to beat her new arrival into submission, the front door slammed and there was a squeal of joy from the hall. ‘Darling, how absolutely gorgeous to see you! We’ve been so looking forward to your visit, and don’t you look well!’
Josephine smiled as Lettice blew into the room towards her, dragging in her wake her long-suffering fiancé, George, and four large carrier bags. ‘Trust you to bring a mystery with you,’ Lettice said cryptically as she hugged her friend and threw the morning paper onto a chair, where it soon disappeared under a pile of shopping. ‘Life’s always so much more exciting when you’re south of the border. I’m sorry we weren’t here to welcome you properly this morning, but it’s the Selfridges shoe sale today and you have to get there early if you’re to stand any chance of finding a pair.’
‘Don’t they sell them in pairs, then?’ Josephine asked, exchanging an amused and sympathetic wink with George as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
‘Oh no, dear, that would take all the fun out of it,’ said Ronnie, who was born with her tongue in her cheek. ‘It’s a shilling a shoe but you’re not so much paying for footwear as for the chance to spend a morning as some sort of modern-day Cinderella.’
‘Except that this Prince Charming usually ends up having to carry home enough leather for the entire pantomime,’ George chipped in good-naturedly.
As always, Lettice took the teasing with good grace and found refuge in her breakfast. Buttering her toast thickly on both sides but, with uncharacteristic self-denial, confining the Silver Shred to the top, she looked cheerfully at her sister. ‘You’ll be smirking on the other side of that ravishing face of yours when Lydia’s got through her third pair of brogues in the first week. You know how clumsy she can be if she has to dance.’ Turning to Josephine, she added: ‘We called in at the theatre to pick up the mail. A letter each for Ronnie and I, but that whole bag is yours.’
Josephine groaned and walked over to the sack of correspondence that Lettice had jabbed at with her toast. ‘You know, I hardly have to read them these days,’ she said, taking a handful of 35
letters off the top of the pile. ‘I can tell from the handwriting on the envelope which category they’re going to fall into: complimen-tary and undemanding – they’re the ones I always answer; pedantic and smug – usually with suggestions as to how I might strive for greater historical accuracy next time; and worst of all, the invita-tions – they’re what I use to save on coal. God help me when the Mary Stuart brigade springs into action.’
‘How is the casting going for Queen of Scots?’ Ronnie asked.
‘Have they found Lydia her Bothwell yet?’
‘No. Lydia and I both think Lewis Fleming would be perfect, but I gather there’s another pretty face on the horizon whom Johnny would prefer,’ Josephine replied, ‘and we all know what that means. Swinburne, his name is, but the only thing I know about him is that he’s made quite an impression at Wyndham’s recently.
Anyway, that’s one of the things on the agenda this afternoon.
Johnny’s asked Fleming to stand in as Richard for the matinee so we can go over and thrash it all out with Aubrey. After all, it’s his money. They’re hoping to open in June, but now that Johnny’s got it into his head to try for a film of Richard, it’s all a bit up in the air. And I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to direct Queen of Scots, work on a film and tour as well. Even our young meteor can’t be in three places at once.’
‘He told me the other day that he was hoping to get out of the tour by persuading Aubrey to send Fleming instead,’ said George who, as an actor himself and the Motleys’ self-appointed manager, was no stranger to dealing with egos considerably more fragile than his own, and with characters much less placid and kindly.
‘But there isn’t a chance in hell that he’s going to get out of that contract: Bordeaux in the provinces is a licence to print money but, just for once, Johnny’s underestimated the value of his name on the bill. The public recognises only one Richard and it wants the real thing, not the reluctant Pretender.’
‘You’re getting your historical dramas a bit muddled, darling,’
said Lettice. ‘But it sounds like Josephine’s in for a ghastly afternoon. All those boys do when they get together is bitch and squab-ble and talk about money.’
36
‘Trust me – I’m more than a match for them with the bitching and squabbling as long as we get to the money eventually,’
Josephine laughed. ‘By the way, what did you mean about my bringing a mystery with me?’
‘Oh, there was some nasty business at the railway station last night,’ said Lettice, whose grasp of real-life tragedy was never quite as acute as her ability to bring it to the fore on stage. ‘The papers are beautifully melodramatic about it this morning, but we don’t want that to ruin our breakfast. What I’m dying to know,’ she continued, casting a sly glance at Ronnie, ‘is what you thought of Lydia’s new find. You’re always such a marvellous judge of character, and I expect she came to meet you? The two of them are practically inseparable at the moment – we’ve never seen anything like it. I gave it three weeks before Lydia started sniffing round somewhere else and Ronnie said a fortnight. George, bless him, reckoned a couple of months but men have no idea how gloriously fickle we can be when we’re bored. Anyway, as far as we can make out, we’re all wrong: she doesn’t seem to have even thought about anyone else. At times I’d have said she was almost happy!’
Josephine agreed. ‘I wasn’t with them for very long, but Lydia did seem happy. And it wasn’t that sickly new-love happiness, either. I have to admit, coming down on the train I was dreading that – it’s always so embarrassing when you’re stuck in the middle of it. It was contentment as much as happiness and I’ve never seen that in Lydia before – she’s always been too restless.’
‘And Marta?’ Lettice asked again, determined to have her verdict.
‘Well, she’s another beauty, certainly. And she seems very nice,’
she finished, conscious of delivering the sort of anti-climax which would never stand up to the Motleys’ relentless gaze.
‘Nice? What sort of word is that for a writer?’ demanded Ronnie indignantly. ‘We know she’s nice, we can see that for ourselves, but we rely on you for something a little more sophisticated. What do those big dark eyes tell you?’
‘That she’s got big dark eyes,’ Josephine said, with a native 37
matter-of-factness that even the Motleys could not penetrate.
‘You surely don’t believe all that nonsense about reading character in the face, do you? I only ever use that when I’ve got myself into a bit of a hole with the plot and need to move things along.
To be honest, she really didn’t say very much at all and that in itself is a good thing, if you want my opinion. But what she did say seemed awfully – well, nice.’
‘Talking of the strong but silent type, our dear cousin telephoned at the crack of dawn to make sure you were all right and to say he was coming over this morning,’ said Ronnie, realising that any further probing would get her nowhere. ‘He sounded a bit out of sorts, actually. When I told him that Lettice and I hadn’t thought for one moment that he’d be able to wait until dinner to see you, he quite snapped my head off. That’s the trouble with policemen: they’ve got no sense of humour.’
In perfectly timed acknowledgement of Ronnie’s observation, there was an impatient knocking at the front door. ‘I expect that’ll be him now,’ she said, as Mrs Snipe glided past to admit the caller with all the momentum of a galleon in full sail. ‘We’d better stop having such a nice time or he’ll arrest the lot of us.’
When the housekeeper returned, the man who followed her did seem distinctly at odds with merriment. Certainly, he bore scant resemblance to the Archie Penrose who, in spite of his cousin’s unjust reproach, usually left his job firmly behind when he came to call on the Motleys and blended beautifully into the chic eccentric-ity of their studio.
‘Good God, Archie, you look absolutely awful,’ said Ronnie, who excelled at speaking her mind, while Lettice responded with the greatest solace she knew: ‘Is Mrs Snipe getting you something to eat?’ she asked, pushing the toast rack, now a shadow of its former self, towards the empty place at the breakfast table.
Josephine shared the Motleys’ concern at Archie’s mood, but not their surprise. During a friendship that had spanned almost twenty years, she had come to realise that there were two sides to this complex individual: the handsome, gregarious entertainer, whose warmth and intelligence made people from all walks of life 38
instantly comfortable in his company and who was genuinely interested in everyone he met; and the detached, serious observer, whose liking for his fellow man did not blind him to the baser motivations of the human mind or to the pain which underpinned more relationships than most people cared to acknowledge. While she enjoyed and admired the former, Josephine’s emotional affinities were instinctively towards the latter and, although Archie protested that these were qualities which Scotland Yard demanded of him, the truth of the matter was that in his work he found a natural outlet for a view of the world which had already taken root in his soul.
Penrose waved away all offers of food but gratefully accepted a cup of coffee. ‘I need to talk to Josephine,’ he said, looking at her for the first time. ‘In private, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about us – we only live here,’ muttered Ronnie as Lettice poked her hard in the shoulder and sent George to gather up the shoes.
‘Just ignore her, darling, we’ve got to go out anyway. Lydia needs a few alterations done in time for this afternoon. In spite of the plague, it would appear that Anne of Bohemia is putting on weight.
Some people just have no self-discipline when it comes to food.’
Right on cue, Mrs Snipe reappeared and, ignoring Archie’s protestations, placed in front of him a plateful of perfectly cooked kidneys and something that looked suspiciously like a kipper. As the Motleys bustled round, fetching coats and scarves and the various bits of costume that they needed for the afternoon, Josephine looked questioningly at Archie. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked quietly.
‘In a minute,’ he said, waiting for the sisters to leave. She carried on opening her mail, glad to have something to do, but her attention kept straying back to Archie. She watched as he ran his fingers idly up and down the handle of his coffee cup, lost in his own thoughts and, for a moment, the gesture took her back to the summer of 1919, when they had met for the first time after the war and his face had expressed the same concentrated sadness as it did now. By that time, the initial bond between them – her lover and Archie’s closest friend – had been dead for almost three years, 39
killed helping another officer at the Somme, and Archie had finally come to see her in Scotland. She would never forget the pain in his voice as he described to her how, in the midst of that senseless slaughter, all for the sake of a few yards of mud, Jack Mackenzie, a young private from the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, had responded to a cry from no man’s land. There, another soldier, who had lain motionless near the German wire for nigh on two days and was believed by the British troops to be beyond all aid, had, in defiance of nature, regained consciousness and called for help. Following all the instincts of his training – which was medical, not military –
Jack had left his trench and walked the short distance to where the man lay. Armed only with a handkerchief, which he waved in the direction of the higher ground held by the enemy, he arrived unscathed and was allowed to dress the wounds as best he could, giving the soldier a drink and reassurance that a stretcher party would be sent to gather him safely in under the cover of darkness.
His mission accomplished, Jack turned to go back to his own trench and was shot in the back by a German sniper before he had taken half a dozen steps.