“Alas, he was holding one of mine that allegedly escaped. After dumping Jangles on the floor, the man immediately took to quizzing me about my health. Naturally I informed him that the only medical assistance needed would be to get my cane removed from his bum. He was gone in a flash.”
Mrs. Spencer checked the other window.
“Don’t see anyone now,” she said. “Maybe Tom scared him off.”
“It was probably some tramp,” Win offered. “Who heard there’s an old duchess around and figured he could swindle you for a pound or two.”
“Who you calling old, Seton?”
Mrs. Spencer paused and crossed both arms over her chest.
“Oh, you’re right,” she said with an exhale. “It probably was some filthy drifter looking to make a fast quid.”
“Nothing more,” Win agreed with a nod.
Though he and Mrs. Spencer both felt satisfied, Pru sensed the true explanation was not so simple. Whether the man was there on behalf of Edith, or the mental hospital, or some different entity altogether, it didn’t matter. At that precise moment Pru understood, without the slightest hesitation, that her time at the Grange would soon come to an end.
Sixty
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
FEBRUARY 1973
“She hardly talks about Sunny,” Win said, sliding a half-bitten pencil behind one ear.
A week had passed.
No further men showed up looking to compile medical dossiers. Not a single constable appeared at the door. Things seemed calm, even as Pru’s insides coiled and turned. It was all she could do to stop herself from grabbing Mrs. Spencer and pleading for her life.
I beg of you, keep on your best behavior! Or they’ll replace me with someone who can handle the job!
And she would’ve done it too, had Pru felt at all assured that Mrs. Spencer wanted her to stay. More likely she’d cackle and promptly toss Pru’s baggage out onto the pavement. Cheers and good luck!
“Why won’t she discuss him?” Win said. Sunny, the latest topic he tormented himself with. “They were together for eons. Before the marriage. A dozen years after. Yet she treats him like a slightly dim and irritating neighbor best left ignored.”
“I’m not sure that’s wholly unique,” Pru said. “When talking marriage.”
“She chased him for decades, though! Relentlessly! From the time she was a young girl!” Win slammed a pencil onto his desk. “That’s it. I’ve determined Gladys Deacon is incapable of love.”
“She’s had fifty-plus lovers and that’s the conclusion you’ve made?”
“Lovers and love are two vastly different concepts. She’s too cold for true love. Too calculating.”
“Come on, Seton,” Pru said. “Mrs. Spencer has been in love. She’s fallen out of love and she’s also had her heart broken more than once. You can’t blame her for being a little cynical.”
“Who, exactly, did she ever love? Other than herself, of course.”
“Jesus, you really are thick,” Pru said. “Allow me to quote from your research. ‘You are not a person to me. You are an état d’esprit et d’ame.’ In English: you are my spirit and my soul.”
“Bloody hell. You’re back at it with the Berenson rubbish,” Win said, turning away from his typewriter and toward her. “Why are you so hung up on him?”
“I’m not hung up on him, but the duchess was. ‘Her spirit and her soul.’ Surely you can see it.”
“It’s all for show. GD’s an unmitigated bootlicker. You know this. She called Berenson’s wife a honey bear or some treacle. It’s part of the veneer. She always ingratiates herself before moving in for the kill.”
“She is indeed a sweet-talker,” Pru said. “When she wants to be. But the buttering up of Mary was a case of keeping one’s friends close and her enemies closer.”
“I can’t buy it.”
“Mrs. Spencer called herself Maenad when she was with Berenson. Maenad. A mythological creature frenzied with wine and lust.”
“And he called her ‘mannequinlike and repellent.’”
“Yeah, after it ended,” Pru said. “You’ve seen the love letters.”
“As well as the thistle she mailed him to demonstrate her prickly disposition.”
“Okay, then, whom did she run to after the war ended?”
“Her mother’s corpse. Dead in the salon at the unicorn castle.”
“And after that?”
“She went to find her sister,” Win said.
“Exactly. She showed up at Edith’s door, not to break the sad news of their mother’s death, which she’d already done via telegram, but to coax Edith into helping her find Berenson, who’d gone to America for good by then.”
“You’re right, she did try to find BB,” Win said. “But you’re looking at it the wrong way. Distraught by the war’s fallout, GD first went to her mother, who was already dead. And then she went to her father. Her de facto father in the form of Bernard Berenson, since her real one was long since gone.”
“Jesus!” Pru said and smacked her hands on his desk. “Cut it out with the father figure nonsense. You’re using it as an excuse. Fifteen years’ difference. That’s nothing.”
“I wouldn’t call it nothing. It’s a whole person. An almost-debutante.”