Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

The police interviewed everyone that night. Everyone except Hannah and Emmeline. Teddy made sure of that. It was unfortunate enough they’d witnessed such a thing, he told police officers; they didn’t need to relive it. Such was Teddy’s influence, I suppose; the officers acceded.

It was of little consequence so far as they were concerned. It was very late at night and they were anxious to get back to their wives and their warm beds. They’d heard all they needed to. It was not such an unusual story. Deborah had said it herself, there were young men all over London, all over the world, who found the adjustment back to ordinary life an ill fit after everything they’d seen and done at war. That he was a poet made it all the more predictable. Artistic types were prone to extravagant, emotional behaviour.

Our tour group has found us. Beryl bids us rejoin the party and leads us to the library.

‘One of the few rooms not destroyed by the fire of 1938,’ she says, clip-clipping purposefully down the hall. ‘A blessing, I assure you. The Hartford family owned a priceless collection of antique books. Over nine thousand volumes.’

I can vouch for that.

Our motley group follows Beryl into the room and spreads out. Assorted necks crane to take in the domed glass ceiling and the shelves of books reaching all the way into the loft. Robbie’s Picasso is gone now. In a gallery somewhere, I suppose. Gone are the days when every English house had works of the great masters hanging freely on the walls.

It was here that Hannah spent much of her time after Robbie died: full days curled up in a chair in the silent room. She didn’t read, merely sat. Reliving the recent past. For a time I was the only one she’d see. She spoke obsessively, compulsively, of Robbie, recounting to me the details of their affair. Episode after episode. Each account ending with the same lament.

‘I loved him, you know, Grace,’ she would say. Her voice so soft I almost didn’t hear.

‘I know you did, ma’am.’

‘I just couldn’t…’ She would look at me then, eyes glazed. ‘It just wasn’t quite enough.’

Teddy and Deborah accepted her withdrawal to begin with-it seemed a natural consequence of having seen what she’d seen-but as the weeks passed, her failure to acquire the stiff upper lip that was her nation’s renown grew tiresome.

Everyone had an opinion as to how she should behave, what should be done to restore her spirits. There was a round-table discussion one night, after supper.

‘She needs a new hobby,’ said Deborah, lighting a cigarette. ‘I don’t doubt it was a shock to see a man top himself, but life goes on.’

‘What sort of hobby?’ said Teddy, frowning.

‘I was thinking bridge,’ said Deborah, flicking ash into a dish. ‘A good game of bridge has the ability to take one’s mind off just about anything.’

Estella, who’d stayed on at Riverton to ‘do her bit’, agreed that Hannah needed distraction, but had her own ideas as to what kind: she needed a baby. What woman didn’t? Couldn’t Teddy see what he could do to give her one?

Teddy said he’d do what he could. And, mistaking Hannah’s compliance for consensus, he did.

To Estella’s delight, three months later the doctor declared Hannah pregnant. Far from taking her mind off things, however, she seemed to grow more detached. She told me less and less of her affair with Robbie, and eventually stopped calling me to the library at all. I was disappointed but, more than that, worried: I had hoped confession would free her somehow from her self-imposed exile. That by telling me everything about their liaison, she might find her way back to us. But it was not to be.

On the contrary, she withdrew from me further; she took to dressing herself, looking at me strangely, almost angrily, if I so much as offered assistance. I tried to talk her round, remind her it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t have saved him, but she only looked at me, a bemused expression on her face. As if she didn’t know of what I spoke or, worse, doubted my reasons for saying such a thing.

She drifted about the house those last months like a ghost. Myra said it was like having Mr Frederick back again. Teddy became even more concerned. After all, it wasn’t just Hannah at risk now. His baby, his son, the Luxton heir deserved better. He called in doctor after doctor, all of whom, fresh from the war, diagnosed shock and said it was only natural after what she’d seen.

One of them took Teddy aside after his consultation and said, ‘Shock all right. Very interesting case; completely out of touch with her environment.’

‘How do we fix it?’ said Teddy.

The doctor shook his head ruefully. ‘What I wouldn’t pay to know.’

‘Money’s no object,’ said Teddy.

The doctor frowned. ‘There was another witness?’

‘My wife’s sister,’ said Teddy.

‘Sister,’ said the doctor, noting it on his pad. ‘Good. Close are they?’

‘Very,’ said Teddy.

The doctor pointed his finger at Teddy. ‘Get her here. Talking: that’s the way with this sort of hysteria. Wife needs to spend time with someone else who experienced the same shock.’

Teddy took the doctor’s advice and repeated invitations were sent to Emmeline, but she wouldn’t come. She couldn’t. She was too busy.

‘I don’t understand,’ Teddy said to Deborah after dinner one night, ‘How can she ignore her own sister? After all Hannah’s done for her?’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Deborah, raising her eyebrows. ‘From what I hear, it’s as well she stays away. They say she’s become quite vulgar. Last to leave every party. Getting about with all the wrong sorts.’

It was true: Emmeline had thrown herself back into her whirlwind social life in London. She became the life of the party, starred in a number of films-love films, horror films; she found her niche playing the misused femme fatale.

It was a shame, society types whispered eagerly, that Hannah couldn’t bounce back the same way. Strange that she should take it so much harder than her sister. It was Emmeline, after all, who’d been going around with the fellow.

Emmeline took it hard enough, though. Hers was just a different way of coping. She laughed louder and she drank harder. Rumour had it, the day she drove her car into the tree out at Preston’s Gorge, police found a bottle of brandy open on the seat beside her. Teddy had that hushed up. If there was one thing money could buy back in those days, it was the law. Perhaps it still can; I wouldn’t know.

They didn’t tell Hannah at first. Deborah thought it too risky and Teddy agreed, what with the baby being so close to term. Solicitors were called in to make statements on Teddy and Hannah’s behalf.

Teddy came downstairs the night after the accident. He looked out of place in the drab servants’ hall, like an actor who’d walked onto the wrong stage set. He was so tall he had to duck his head to avoid knocking it on the ceiling beam above the last step.

‘Mr Luxton,’ said Mr Hamilton. ‘We didn’t expect-’ His voice tapered off and he leapt to action, turning to us, clapping silently then raising his hands and motioning as if conducting an orchestra in a very fast piece of music. Somehow we formed a line and stood, hands behind our backs, waiting to see what Teddy would say.

What he said was simple. Emmeline had been involved in an unfortunate motor-car accident that had taken her life. Myra clutched my hand behind my back.

Mrs Townsend shrieked and sank onto her chair, hand across her heart. ‘The poor dear love,’ she said. ‘I’m all atremble.’

‘It’s been a terrible shock for all of us, Mrs Townsend,’ said Teddy, looking from one servant to the next. ‘There is, however, something I have to ask of you.’