Lorna Gray - The Antique Dealer’s Daughter

‘I haven’t actually.’

‘What?’

‘Heard the full sordid details.’ That startled him. He’d thought I was finally admitting darker intentions. It seemed he was absolutely failing to understand me too. It was unexpected. This was not a common experience for me. I told him with a greater sense of sympathy for the feeling that was driving him here, ‘Barely anyone has said a word. And besides, I haven’t asked. I have no interest in knowing what happened in that room or what Mr Langton did. And I don’t want to hear any unpleasant insinuations about Mr Croft either.’ I lifted my chin rebelliously, just in case he meant to defy me there. ‘Based solely on my own brief dealings with that man, I have to tell you that I actually quite like him.’

That, suddenly, made the Captain smile. In the midst of his worries about his father, I’d made him laugh. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I suppose I’d better not ask what opinion you’ve been forming about the rest of us.’

It was a concession of sorts. Then he gave a little sigh and tension fled too. A hand lifted to run through dark hair. He said with considerably more gentleness, ‘Look, please try to see what’s happened here from my point of view. I don’t really mean to accuse you of anything. I believe you really have acted in good faith. It’s just that I’ve come here at great inconvenience because of something that was said by a young woman I’ve never met and now she’s announced that we have to add an intruder to the list. If you knew how the past few months have been for my father you’d know just how horribly convenient that sounds.’

A strange chill went through me as his head lifted and he told me frankly, ‘Now, I can’t stop you from reporting the loss of your case to the police, and I certainly will be encouraging Mr Winstone to report his assault. In fact, he’s probably already done it, so I hope you’re ready to give a full and thorough witness statement when our local constable comes knocking. But,’ he added, becoming severe again, ‘be aware that you never had access to this house. Tell them you were robbed outside, tell them it took place anywhere – on the moon if you like. But do not mention this house.’

He continued by making a rough list. ‘Don’t mention your food in the kitchen, the telephone conversation with me in my brother’s study or any of it. Please. I really cannot have the police calling on my father. It’s bad enough that Bertie’s attack loosely connects my father to Matthew Croft. I can’t have it made worse by having this house in an official report. You have no idea of the distress it will cause when it gets out. Which it will inevitably do. Please?’

Now he’d surprised me. I’d expected him to claim my silence with threats. Instead he’d dared to trust that the high significance he placed upon his father’s needs would rank as sufficient justification for overriding mine. In a last show of defiance, I muttered to my shoes, ‘I’ll send you the bill for replacement clothes, shall I? Since I won’t be depending on the law to return them.’

I looked up in time to see a different kind of concentration flicker behind those eyes, followed by perhaps the first instinctive feeling I’d seen him reveal that day and it wasn’t violent at all. There was the smallest glimmer of warmth. I’d obviously just revealed some part of me too. ‘Do that. And Emily?’

‘What?’

‘Did you really say ‘normarily’? You do know it isn’t a word, don’t you?’

‘It’s an accidental contraction of normally and ordinarily,’ I said bravely. This was something that happened whenever I got myself into a position of trying to speak my mind and only ended in entangling myself instead. It irritated me that I’d slipped into doing it now. ‘I can’t help it. You’ve already scored your victory. Do you have to make me feel like a child too?’

I’d like to pretend I managed make a grand exit then and left him staring dumbfounded at my magnificent wake from his place in the stairwell. But instead I glanced back briefly as I reached the passage towards the dining room and, to be honest, there was something awfully humbling about seeing this man wreathed in all that sunshine while his father and a man and a dog bickered cheerfully about luggage behind the glass outside, turning alone to face whatever fresh battle awaited him within the bright, pretty setting of that study.

I have often wondered if I am the sort of person who tends to make things unnecessarily dramatic with the force of my own emotions. But lately I have tended to believe it is more complicated than that. I think that sometimes it is my better feelings that keep me from making bigger mistakes. I didn’t march back to the bus stop to idle away three hours until the second and final bus of the day came. I didn’t feed the resentment from my ejection from the Manor or use it as an excuse to relieve all the other stresses of the morning either. I’m already a woman who is haunted by the grander wrongs I have encountered in life – there are plenty of real opportunities to feel wretchedly at fault if one only looks for them after all – and I certainly didn’t need to add to the burden by participating in the more immediate idea of tit-for-tat that grows all too often from smaller trespasses upon basic civility.

I suppose the simple truth was that I was haunted enough by things that I couldn’t control, so I certainly didn’t wish to add to the list by including things I could. So instead I shed the lot by feeding a few scraps to the goat as I’d promised, then I wheeled the bicycle gingerly down the hill back to my cousin’s cottage and took the water jug from the cool of the kitchen to find the spot in the stream above the ford where the sheep didn’t spoil the banks.

The hour that followed began with an introduction to yet another man. This one wasn’t balding and wasn’t attacking anyone either. He was robust and friendly and he was interrupted in the act of propping his motorcycle against the verge outside my cousin’s gate as I returned with a brimming jug.

Constable Rathbone accompanied me inside. He was flushed after his race down the track from the other direction – the route that rose from the cottage through dark green trees and a gate onto a lane – and his hair had been swept into chestnut curls around the base of his helmet by the wind. He was here, as the Captain had foreseen, because Mr Winstone had reported his assault early this morning and this proved that it was a good job I’d put off racing for that bus because it really would have been suspicious if the main witness had taken off before she’d even left a name and forwarding address.

The constable sipped my tea and took notes while I recounted a simple statement of what I had found on Mr Winstone’s garden path. The kitchen was an inferno because I’d had to light the stove to boil the kettle and the room was only made bearable by the breeze that was wafting in through the open front door. Through the course of the policeman’s questions I learned that he was a true upholder of the law and by that I mean he gave the impression he might be very efficient at setting-to with whistle and truncheon if he were called to suppress a civil disturbance. I had a suspicion, however – and it was borne out by the fact that he had not yet visited the supposed site of the attack – that when it came to the investigation of a crime, his training only went as far as recording the bare facts of the case ready to hand over the lot to a detective from the county force. I supposed PC Rathbone might prove to be capable of rising to the task of arresting his man if the brute were to be caught in the act of doing something irrefutably guilty. But quite honestly the good Constable Rathbone didn’t give the impression that he had any idea of actually going in hunt of him.