Lorna Gray - The Antique Dealer’s Daughter

‘You needn’t have come at all,’ remarked the old man tersely while revealing for the first time the first glimmer of the parent beneath. He was fond of his son. That weakness in his hand wasn’t fading though. It suddenly struck me that it was perhaps deliberate that the Captain was keeping us loitering in the lee of the staircase. A few steps more would confront the old man with the open door into the younger son’s study and I thought I knew by now what effect it had. To lay it before the old man like this just as soon as he’d arrived would be an awful welcome.

‘Hold on a minute, Emily.’ I must have moved impulsively to shut it because the Captain put his hand out. I think he thought I was running away. His gesture held me there while he said to his father, ‘Do you want your cane? I’ve taken it upstairs already. Emily? Perhaps you might …?’

Perhaps he’d understood me after all. And perhaps he knew his father well enough to know that it wouldn’t help to let the old man know why we were, in effect, managing his entrance to his own home. I nodded my agreement and turned to slide through the gap between the Captain and the painted triangle that screened the space under the rising stairs. Then the Colonel’s voice addressed me so that I turned again and found myself briefly faced with the panel of glass beneath the stairs that proved to be a historic gun cabinet. Sporting guns from the ages were locked inside, gleaming with oil, and an awful lot of rotten old shooting sticks with deer’s feet for handles.

I was turning again to face the Colonel as he asked, ‘Do I understand correctly that you saw both these men? This fellow today and the man who struck Bertie? Has your stepfather remembered anything useful, by the way?’ This last question was barked at Danny.

Danny shifted the weight of the little dog in his arms – who was now hanging like a deadweight in protest – and said blandly, ‘Not really. To be honest, now the excitement’s worn off and people have stopped fussing over him, the only thing Pop can really remember with any clarity is the sight of Miss Sutton’s face looming over him on the path.’

‘Poor man,’ I sympathised automatically, before I’d thought. But really I was wondering why Danny had said it like that. Why he’d felt compelled to add this little mention of my part in Mr Winstone’s collapse in the manner of an amusing aside and yet I could tell in an instant that it meant something to the Captain. I couldn’t read Danny’s face because his eyes were downcast as he ran his free hand over the dog’s head in an easy caress, but I could read the Captain’s. He was staring at me as though he’d just discovered a lie while he said clearly, for his father’s sake, ‘Well, it doesn’t seem anything important was taken today. Do you want to step outside with Hannis, Father, and give your orders about where to take your many bags?’

And then the impasse was broken by a flurry of movement which bore the old man to the door and outside and the Captain to the study door. He shut it decisively. A hand gripped the handle firmly while his eyes followed the departure of his father and then as soon as he was sure the Colonel was out of earshot, his attention rounded onto me. I was hoping for an easing of tension; a recognition at the very least of our mutual charade. I wasn’t prepared to meet suspicion. And I wasn’t remotely happy to perceive the tone in his voice when he said, ‘What are you doing here, truly? I mean who are you? What is your profession?’

I gaped. The lie he thought he’d discovered was very specifically mine. It made me bluster, ‘I beg your pardon? What have I been doing? I’ve been here talking to you on the telephone, I should think, and running errands, that’s what.’ His head tilted. He expected an answer to each of his questions. I added a shade tartly, ‘I haven’t got a profession. Formerly I was a chemist’s assistant. In Knightsbridge.’

‘And your father? What does he do?’

The rapidity of his hard questions was strangely shocking. It was the unfriendliness of them. I understood that he didn’t know me and might wish to understand better who had been letting herself into his father’s home, but I didn’t know what this particular course of his suspicion meant. I told him, ‘He’s a supplier of antiques to the nobility. Or, at least, he was. He’s trying to retire.’

‘So he’s also a person with a former profession. I see. And this cousin of yours?’

‘Cartographer.’ Surprisingly, this was given by Danny Hannis. We’d both thought – the Captain and I – that Danny was already outside, but there he was, bending on one knee before the front door, dragging a string from his pocket to act as an improvised lead for the dog. Without lifting his head he added, ‘At least, that’s what she is when she’s not being a strange solitary soul living in the shadow of her dead mother.’ Now the head lifted. ‘You know her. She’s the daughter of old Steward Jones. He clipped our ears for poaching fish from his pond and when he died old Mrs Jones retired to the cottage in the valley. That was about the time you last spent a long spell at home … I mean, it was about ten years ago.’

I expected the Captain to soften a little at this laying out of my credentials. But he didn’t. He listened impassively while Danny told me cheerfully, ‘I meant to say. Your cousin’s bicycle was left in my workshop after her accident and she asked me to give it to you. Said it might be useful. It’s outside the kitchen door, leaning against the far wall. She’s set to be let out tomorrow so you can tell her that you got my note and managed to get eggs and milk as directed.’

Then his mouth twitched in a manner that implied either sympathy, solidarity or ridicule before he swiftly escaped outside to receive his orders from the Colonel, leaving me to fight a battle with the Captain that I couldn’t even imagine a need to begin.

I tried to establish a little more clarity as the Captain moved to ease the front door closed. I said reasonably, ‘Don’t you think it’s time we called the police?’ Then I added haplessly in the face of his stare, ‘Isn’t that what one normarily does at a time like this? When one isn’t being whatever it is you suspect me of?’

I actually expected him to smile at that, particularly given the way my brows furrowed in the wake of spotting my own little peculiarity of speech. But it turned out the illusion I’d been suffering that I understood his idea of calm was made of very brittle stuff. I didn’t know this man at all. And didn’t want to. I thought I preferred the sort of soldier who smirked and guffawed.

This man manufactured a stare that made it seem he thought I had run mad. It was a very strange defence. I was helpless as he said, ‘No police.’

I said quickly, ‘I appreciate that you want to protect your father but why are you—?’

I meant to ask why he was systematically belittling the pretty fundamental loss of all my clothes, let alone the seriousness of my account of an invasion into his house, but he interrupted with a very bland question of, ‘Do you understand?’ Then I had to stand there feebly while he pursued his own course. ‘I expect you think I’m overstepping my authority here but, really, you foisted that role upon me when you decided to embroil any passerby who happened to be in the vicinity in the rescue of my father’s driver.’

We were back to unhappy mentions of Matthew Croft again. I whispered his name.

The sunlight through the glass beside the doorframe touched one side of the Captain’s face. It should have softened his features but it didn’t. ‘Spot on,’ he said. ‘Since you got there so swiftly, I imagine you must have already digested every sordid detail of my family’s history with that man, so you cannot be at a loss now to understand why at this moment I’m here when I ought to be in London and why I couldn’t possibly allow you to wreak further havoc in this house. Haven’t you done enough?’