Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(39)
FRANCESCA GERRARD’S bedroom was tucked far away into the corner of the upper northeast corridor, where the hallway narrowed and an old disused harp, covered haphazardly, cast a Quasimodo shadow against the wall. No portraits hung here. No tapestries served as buffers against the cold. Here were no overt illustrations of comfort and security. Only monochromatic plaster, showing the tracery of age like fine webbing, and a paper-thin carpet running along the floor.
Casting a hasty look behind her, Elizabeth Rintoul slipped down this hallway and paused at her aunt’s door, listening intently. From the upper west corridor, she could hear the rumble of voices. But from inside the room there was nothing. She tapped her fingernails against the wood, a nervous movement that resembled the pecking of small birds. No one called entrance. She knocked again.
“Aunt Francie?” A whisper was all she was willing to risk. Again there was no response.
She knew her aunt was inside, for she’d seen her walk down this corridor not five minutes past when the police had finally unlocked all their rooms. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, feeling slippery under her sweaty hand.
Inside, the air held a smell of musty pomanders, sweetly suffocating face powder, pungent analgesic, and inexpensive cologne. The room’s furnishings acted as companion pieces to the bleak paucity of decoration in the corridor outside: a narrow bed, a single wardrobe and chest of drawers, a cheval glass that cast strange green reflections, distorted so that foreheads were bulbous and chins were too small.
Her aunt had not always used this as her bedroom. It was only after her husband’s death that she had moved to this part of the house, as if its inconvenience and inelegance were part of the process of mourning him. She appeared to be engaged in that process now, for she was sitting upright on the very edge of the bed, her attention given to a studio photograph of her husband that was hanging on the wall, the room’s sole decoration. It was a solemn picture, not at all the Uncle Phillip that Elizabeth remembered from her childhood, but undeniably the melancholy man he had become. After New Year’s Eve. After Uncle Geoffrey.
Elizabeth shut the door quietly behind her, but as the wood scraped against the strike plate, her aunt gave a choked, mewling gasp. She rose swiftly from the bed and spun, both hands raised in front of her like claws, as if in defence.
Elizabeth stiffened. How a gesture, so simple, could bring everything back, a memory suppressed and believed forgotten. A six-year-old girl, wandering happily out to the stable in Somerset; seeing the kitchen maids squatting to look through a fissure in the building’s stone wall where the mortar had worn away; hearing them whisper to her Come and see some nancy boys, luv; not knowing what it meant but eager—always so pathetically eager—to be friends; bending to the peephole and seeing two stable-boys, their clothes strewn carelessly round a stall, one of them on all fours and the other rearing and plunging and snorting behind him and both of their bodies sheened with a sweat that glistened like oil; frightened and recoiling from the sight only to hear the girls’ stifled laughter. Laughter at her. At her innocence and her blind na?veté. And wanting to strike out at them, to hurt them, to claw at their eyes. With hands just like Aunt Francie’s were now.
“Elizabeth!” Francesca dropped her arms. Her body sagged. “You startled me, my dear.”
Elizabeth watched her aunt warily, afraid to contend with any other memories that might be stirred by another inadvertent gesture. Francesca, she saw, had begun to make herself ready for dinner when her husband’s picture had drawn her into the reverie that Elizabeth had interrupted. Now she was peering at her reflection in the mirror as she ran a brush through her thinning grey hair. She smiled at Elizabeth, but her lips quivered to belie whatever air of tranquillity she was straining to project.
“As a girl, you know, I got used to looking in the mirror without seeing my own face. People say it can’t be done, but I mastered it. I can do my hair, my make-up, my earrings, anything. And I never have to see how homely I am.”
Elizabeth didn’t bother to offer a soothing denial. Denial was insult, for her aunt spoke the truth. She was homely and had always been so, burdened by a long, horsey face, a preponderance of teeth, and very little chin. Possessing a gangling body, she was all arms, legs, and elbows, the recipient of every genetic curse of the Rintoul family. Elizabeth had often thought that homeliness was the reason her aunt wore so much costume jewellery, as if it might somehow distract one’s attention from the gross misfortunes of her face and body.
“You mustn’t mind, Elizabeth,” Francesca was saying gently. “She means well. She does mean well. You mustn’t mind so awfully much.”
Elizabeth felt her throat close. How well her aunt knew her. How completely she had always understood. “‘Get Mr. Vinney a drink, darling…. His glass is almost empty.’” Bitterly, she mimicked her mother’s retiring voice. “I wanted to die. Even with the police. Even with Joy. She can’t stop. She won’t stop. It won’t ever end.”
“She wants your happiness, my dear. She sees it in marriage.”
“Like her own, you mean?” The words tasted like acid.
Her aunt frowned. She put her brush on the chest of drawers, placing her comb neatly across its bristles. “Have I shown you the photographs Gowan gave to me?” she asked brightly, pulling open the top drawer. It squeaked and stuck. “Silly dear boy. He saw a magazine with those before-and-after pictures and decided we’d do a set of the house. Of each room as we renovate it. And then perhaps we’ll display them all in the drawing room when everything’s done. Or perhaps an historian might find them of interest. Or we could always use them to…” She struggled with the drawer, but the wood was swollen with the winter damp.