‘How is Lucy?’
‘She’s perfectly fine except for that wretched neighbour who sings rugby songs in his bath – I do wish she wouldn’t live in that crazy flat! – but I haven’t phoned you to talk about that, Edmund. I’ve phoned you because Lucy’s been approached by a woman called Trixie Smith.’
‘Yes?’ Edmund spoke rather absently, his attention still more than three-quarters on the farmer’s assertion that not a soul had walked the alleged right of way for seven years.
‘This Trixie Smith – are you listening, Edmund? You sound very vague, I hope you haven’t got a hangover. Your father was always much too fond of a drink, and you don’t want to go the way he went—Anyway, this Trixie Smith is a teacher somewhere in North London, but she’s been studying for a doctoral thesis, and she wants to use the Ashwood murders as a main case study.’
The quiet, well-ordered office blurred for a moment, and Edmund had to take a deep breath before replying. Then he said, ‘Oh, not again. It only needs it to be the anniversary of the murders or for somebody to resurrect one of Lucretia’s films, and they come crawling out of the woodwork. You aren’t going to do anything about this one, are you?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Deborah. ‘I’ve already phoned Ms Smith, as a matter of fact.’
‘You have?’
‘Yes. Rather an odd-sounding person. Abrupt. I said I didn’t know how much help I could give, but you know, Edmund, I was in my teens at the time of the Ashwood murders, so I remember quite a lot about it. Ms Smith – they all like to be called “Ms” these days, don’t they? – says she’d like to talk to me about Lucretia.’ It was typical of Deborah that she never referred to Lucretia as ‘mother’; or perhaps, thought Edmund, that was due to Lucretia herself.
He said, ‘She’ll be a sensation-seeker, that’s all.’
‘I don’t think she is,’ said Aunt Deb. ‘She wants to talk about all the people involved in the Ashwood case, not just Lucretia. I was there that day, and so—’
This time the room did not just blur, it tilted as well, and Edmund had to grasp the edges of the desk to stop himself from falling. From out of the dizziness, he heard his voice say, ‘I didn’t know you were actually there when – on the day it happened. You never told me that.’
‘Didn’t I? But I used to go to the studios with Lucretia sometimes – you knew that.’
‘Yes, but…Don’t you think,’ said Edmund after a moment, ‘that it might upset you to talk about it all? I mean – Lucretia’s death and everything…Won’t it be dreadfully painful?’
‘Oh, not at this distance,’ said Deborah. ‘It all feels as if it happened to someone else. You’ll understand that when you’re older, Edmund.’
A pulse was beating inside Edmund’s head, each hammer-blow landing painfully on the exact same spot, rapping out a maddening little rhythm against his senses, over and over. She-was-at-Ashwood-that-day, she-was-at-ASHWOOD…said this infuriating rhythm. She was there when it happened, she was THERE…
He forced himself to take several deep breaths, but the pulsating hammer blows continued. What-did-shesee…? they said. What-did-she-see-that-day-at-Ashwood…At ASHWOOD…?
‘And it isn’t as if any of this is going to be published and made into a best-seller or anything like that,’ Deborah was saying. ‘It’s a – a scholarly thing that Miss Smith’s going to write. She’ll be dealing mostly with the psychological aspects.’
‘How very modern of her.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic, Edmund, it doesn’t suit you. I suppose you ate too much rich food at the Law Society dinner last night and it’s given you indigestion: it always did make you disagreeable, indigestion…’