The tiny pinprick on Deborah Fane’s neck had not even been noticed, because no one had thought there was anything that needed noticing. Aunt Deb’s angina, a known and existing condition, had already taken the pathologist three-quarters of the way to a verdict of heart failure caused by a severe angina attack. In reality, it had been murther – the Old English morthor – but no one had realized this. Edmund had not really expected that anyone would, but it was still gratifying to know that he had not overlooked anything, and that he had foreseen everything.
He had not, it was true, foreseen that the house would be willed to Michael Sallis’s absurd charity, and he did find it sad that Aunt Deborah had not told him about this. Edmund had thought there had been better trust between them – it just went to show you could not rely on anyone. But losing the house was not disastrous, and it would take a few weeks for probate to be granted so there was plenty of time for Edmund to make a thorough and orderly search of the house – several thorough and orderly searches in fact – to assure himself that there was nothing incriminating anywhere.
Still, as he moved about the empty rooms after the mourners had left, he realized that he was constantly glancing over his shoulder as if he expected to see Aunt Deborah watching him from a doorway, her head twisted a little to one side where he had jabbed the hypodermic in…
Sheer nerves, that was all.
The shameful ghosts from the early years in Pedlar’s Yard did not often return, but when they did they always brought back the old fear and the memories of all the nights spent shivering under bedclothes, helpless with fear and misery and despair. How did I stand it for so long?
The fear had not always been there. To start with it had only been a question of avoiding the anger and the drunkenness – and of escaping from the belt with the hurting buckle which was sometimes used on your back and which was used on Mother more often than anyone ever knew. She had never complained, and she had never told anyone about it because there had not been anyone to tell. In those days – it had been the early 1970s – and in that environment, there had not been such things as battered wives’ refuges, or brisk, well-meaning social workers, or even telephone numbers that could provide help. In any case, the Pedlar’s Yard house did not have a telephone. And Mother had had an odd streak of stubbornness. When you married, she said, you exchanged vows, and vows ought not to be broken. Your father married me when no one else wanted me and I was grateful. (And he was very charming when he was younger…)
But Mother had made that other promise as well – the promise that one day they would escape from Pedlar’s Yard, just the two of them.
‘You do mean it, don’t you? We’ll really go there one day? To the house with the lady from the stories?’
‘Yes. Yes, one day we really will go there.’
But Mother had hesitated – she had quite definitely hesitated, before replying, and a new fear presented itself. ‘She is real, isn’t she, that lady? I mean…you didn’t make her up?’ Mother was good at telling stories; once she had said she might have written books if she had not got married.
But it was all right. She was smiling, and saying, ‘No, I didn’t make her up, I promise. She’s real, and she lives exactly where I told you. Look, I’ll show you—’
‘What? What?’ It might be a photograph, which would be just about the most brilliant thing in the world.
But it was not a photograph, it was a letter, just very short, just saying here was a cheque.
‘But there’s the address at the top. You see? The Priest’s House, Mowbray Fen. That’s a real address.’
‘She sent a cheque?’ Cheques represented money in some complex, barely understood grown-up way.
‘Yes, she does it quite often. Does that convince you that she’s real?’
‘I think so. Yes. Only real people can send cheques, can’t they?’
‘Of course.’
So that was all right. The lady was real and the house was real, and one day they would make a proper plan and escape.