Woman Who Spoke to Spirits Read online

  Lord Dunorlan has, after what seems a small age, moved to his desk. He is drawing out a cheque book, inking his pen. He writes swiftly, blots the cheque and, rising again, comes across to Lily.

  ‘This is, I believe, the correct amount for the balance I owe you. Thank you, Miss Raynor, for an efficient and discreet service.’ He manages a smile, but it is like the grin of teeth in a fleshless skull.

  Lily gets to her feet, tucking the cheque inside her file. A swift glance has told her it is right to the penny. She nods her thanks. She cannot think of a thing to say, and every sense tells her that Lord Dunorlan is longing for her to go so that he can give in to his sorrow. He tugs at a long, embroidered bell pull beside the hearth and very swiftly the footman appears. ‘Show Miss Raynor out, Forshaw,’ says Lord Dunorlan. Lily, needing no second invitation, hurries out of the room. She barely notices Forshaw opening the door onto the street, and for once his superior expression and his attempt to diminish her go entirely unnoticed.

  Lily heads left down Chelsea Bridge Road and then right onto the Embankment. It is a longer walk back to Hob’s Court this way but she doesn’t hesitate to take it. She badly needs the solace that the river always provides.

  By the time she leaves the Embankment to turn up World’s End Passage, she is feeling calmer. She has been telling herself very firmly that she will be no use in her new profession if she becomes too emotionally involved in the problems of her clients. Lord Dunorlan should have known better, she thinks. He may be elegant, sophisticated, influential, possessor of a country estate in Sussex and an utterly wonderful house in one of the best areas in London and extremely rich, but, when all’s said and done, he’s old and his wife is young. What, Lily asks silently as she lets herself into No. 3 Hob’s Court, did he expect?

  She takes off her jacket and hat and files away Lord Dunorlan’s papers, having first removed the cheque. She will pay it into the bank this afternoon, before the first of her appointments. She has advertised for clerical assistance, and today is expecting the last two on her shortlist. If the first four are anything to go by she is doomed to disappointment, but she is determined to remain optimistic. She is not in a position to offer much in the way of wages, but then the work that her new assistant will be required to do is not arduous: it will, in short, consist of the myriad small tasks for which Lily doesn’t really have time (or, if she’s honest, inclination), such as filing, correspondence, tallying the petty cash and taking cheques to the bank, plus making the tea and watering the pot plants.

  Lily hears clattering and splashing from the scullery right at the back of the house, at the end of the long passage that runs beside the front and back offices, past the foot of the stairs and through the kitchen. It is, she remembers, one of Mrs Clapper’s days. Mrs Clapper comes in three times a week to do the heavy, and it sounds as if she is presently engaged on the weekly wash. Overriding the scents of bleach and soap – and a sort of wet smell in the air – is the appetizing aroma of steak and kidney pudding, so Mrs Clapper has clearly had time for a bit of cooking.

  Lily has inherited Mrs Clapper from her grandparents, whose house this once was. She is a small, fiery woman of indeterminate age, gunmetal-grey-haired, wiry and strong, and possessed of some of the most extreme opinions Lily has ever come across. She is a hard worker and loyal to Lily as ‘the last of the Raynors’, as she will insist on depressingly phrasing it. One of her extreme opinions concerns Lily’s lodger, the ballet dancer, for there seems to be something about the frail-looking yet steel-cored Avdotya Aleksandrova that just gets under Mrs Clapper’s skin.

  ‘I see the Little Ballerina’s not had time to tidy up after herself again,’ Mrs Clapper greets her employer in her most censorious tones as Lily goes through to the kitchen in search of some of the steak and kidney pudding. ‘Left the necessary in a right state, she did, and her unmentionables soaking in the sink. Downright dirty, I call it.’ She gives a violent nod as if in confirmation of her utterance. ‘As if the rest of us want to gaze down on you-know-what in the pan and private, personal garments covered in bodily fluids!’

  Mrs Clapper’s complaints are justified, Lily reflects. She too has wondered why the Little Ballerina can’t make use of the stiff-bristled brush that stands soaking in a solution of chloride of lime beside the lavatory and, since Lily herself would not dream of letting anyone else see her own used undergarments, she cannot understand any other woman doing so.

  ‘Yes, I know you do,’ she says mildly in reply to Mrs Clapper’s angry remark. ‘But she pays her rent on time, more or less, and I need the money.’

  Mrs Clapper sniffs. She has been known to say that she can’t understand for the life of her why Lily gave up the nursing. Mad, she calls it, and she can’t see the sense of it, really she can’t.

  Lily doesn’t want to deal with this conversation right now and, since it’s clear that Mrs Clapper is winding herself up for it, deflects her by remarking that the steak and kidney pudding smells wonderful and is it ready yet?

  It is a little after half-past two. Lily has been to the bank and is now seeing the fifth out of her six interviewees. This one is indeed much like the first four, and Lily mentally rejected her after the first couple of minutes. Mrs Green – she is reluctant to vouchsafe her Christian name – is a timid little widow dressed in musty and mothball-smelling black, her pale face screwed up in an anxious frown and the red patches of psoriasis on her hands, wrists and neck. Lily, while telling herself not to be uncharitable and that poor Mrs Green didn’t choose to have the complaint, nevertheless can’t help the instinct that makes her pull away from the bleeding cracks on the back of Mrs Green’s right hand and the fine shower of skin flakes that flutters down every time she scratches at herself, and she does this with nervous frequency.

  But her main reason for deciding not to employ Mrs Green is that she can’t spell, her writing is barely legible and the prospect of doing arithmetic, even the simplest of sums, throws her into a bolt-eyed panic. ‘I could probably manage the filing,’ she offers with pathetic eagerness, ‘since I’ve done that before and I’m all right if I have the halferbet written up somewhere close-handy.’ She smiles, revealing rather a lot of gaps between her brownish teeth.

  Mentally translating, Lily realizes that halferbet means alphabet.

  She manages to find an excuse for rejecting this penultimate person on her list – she mutters something about arithmetic really being rather crucial – and, to salve her conscience, presses into Mrs Green’s gently bleeding hand the price of the omnibus fare home.

  Now she awaits the last applicant.

  There is a brisk drum roll of tapping on the office door, and even as Lily calls out, ‘Come in!’ it is pushed open and the final interviewee stands before her.

  The first surprise is that F. Wilbraham is a man.

  There is no reason why he should not be, Lily thinks frantically, but all the other applicants (including the seven whose letters didn’t encourage her even to invite them for interview) have been female. She knows this because each one either signed their letter with a female Christian name or, like Mrs Green, with the prefix Mrs.

  F. Wilbraham, she recalls, signed like that; to be exact, as F. P. D. M. Wilbraham, and, she now appreciates, not one of that imposing series of initials stood for a woman’s name. She just didn’t expect that a man would have applied for such a lowly and, far more significant, poorly paid post …

  F. Wilbraham is still standing before her. His smile is growing a little pained. She tries to take him in without its being obvious: he is tall, broad-shouldered, he has dark blond hair worn quite long and, she thinks, trying to peer without making it apparent, hazel eyes. His features are well-formed, with a strong nose, an important jaw and a wide mouth with the sort of curved creases around it that suggest he smiles readily. He is very well dressed – black top coat and trousers, white shirt, neatly tied cravat with a sparkly pin – but, looking more closely, she sees that the garments, while clean, are rather wel
l-worn.

  Perhaps the reason why F. Wilbraham is prepared to consider a post of such poor remuneration has just been revealed.

  She clears her throat, indicates Mrs Green’s recently vacated chair on the opposite side of her desk and says, ‘Won’t you sit down, Mr Wilbraham?’

  Felix Wilbraham pulls the offered chair further from the fair-haired woman’s desk – he has long legs – and sits down. She is still staring at him with that frown, as if something about his appearance disturbs her. Has she noticed how worn his cuffs are? Has she spotted the careful darn just above the ankle on his right trouser leg? Has she observed how the good cloth of his coat is shiny from all the pressing? Her blue-green eyes are intent behind the small, round spectacles and he has the feeling she doesn’t miss much.

  But it is not she who he must impress. ‘I have an appointment with Mr Raynor,’ he says, ‘concerning the post of clerical assistant which you recently advertised. I have the letter here.’ He reaches inside his coat but she shakes her head.

  ‘No need to show it to me, Mr Wilbraham, since it was I who wrote it.’ Well, of course it is, Felix thinks, you being the clerical assistant and—

  Then, about half a minute too late, he understands and straight away wishes as hard as he’s ever wished anything that he could call back that reference to Mr Raynor.

  For if this woman is the clerical assistant, what need has the World’s End Bureau of a second one? And, if this putative male proprietor really exists, where is he? There are only the two rooms, and, seated before the desk in the first of them, he can see a similar desk in the second, through the open door, and there’s nobody sitting at it.

  There is nothing for it but to admit the mistake. ‘I apologize,’ he says, bowing his head briefly. ‘You, of course, are L. G. Raynor.’

  ‘I am,’ the fair-haired woman agrees.

  She is still frowning. Then she draws forward a file and opens it to reveal his own letter of application. ‘Let us begin with your name, please, Mr Wilbraham. You have four Christian names, I see?’

  ‘Felix Parsifal Derek McIvie,’ he supplies unthinkingly. He has been rattling off his burdensome forenames all his life.

  She is writing, very neatly and swiftly, as he speaks. He can’t be sure but he thinks he sees a tiny twitch of her lips.

  She echoes softly, ‘Derek.’

  ‘I know, it sits ill, doesn’t it?’ he agrees. ‘It’s the name of my grandfather in the Commercial Road who, for want of a more euphemistic term, deals in scrap metal. But he’s the one with the money, and my parents were trying to ingratiate themselves.’

  She has stopped writing and now raises her head to stare at him. ‘The position requires a good hand, numeracy, a certain familiarity with the keeping of accounts and banking procedures in general. Would that be problematic?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  She is making notes. He wishes he could see what she’s writing. ‘Why, can you tell me, do you wish to be engaged in a clerical post?’

  Because I’m hungry, about to be thrown out of my digs, the money’s running out and there’s very little else for which I’m qualified, is the honest answer. But he can hardly say that. ‘I like the idea of a new challenge,’ he says brightly. ‘The work sounds very interesting, and—’

  She holds up a hand to silence him. ‘It’s clerical work, Mr Wilbraham,’ she reproves him gently. ‘Correspondence, filing, the preparing of invoices. Necessary to the smooth running of the office, I grant you, but scarcely a challenge, unless the very act of adding figures together and remembering in what order the letters of the alphabet fall are obstacles that must daily be overcome.’

  He grins, assuming that the remark about the letters of the alphabet was a joke. Then, noticing her serious expression, he straightens his face.

  ‘I can assure you of my ability in those areas,’ he says. ‘I had the benefit of a Marlborough College education.’ There is no need to add that he’d left under the most thunderous of dark clouds, nor the reason for its having formed. Anyway, it was proved later that the barmaid had been lying.

  ‘Good,’ she mutters. She is once more making notes. Looking up, she says, ‘Do you have any languages?’

  ‘Latin and a bit of Greek, and I speak French quite well, although I’m not so good with reading and writing it.’

  ‘Good,’ she says again, with a little more animation this time. ‘Do I take it, then, that you have spent time in France, to have developed a facility with the spoken language?’

  ‘Yes,’ he confirms. ‘I was secretary cum companion to an elderly, widowed countess –’ oh, he thinks, I’m sorry, Solange, for calling you elderly, but if I tell this perceptive and observant woman that you were barely eighteen years older than me, witty, clever, and with those peculiarly attractive looks that make the French call a woman who possesses them a jolie-laide, she’ll jump to entirely the wrong conclusion, except, of course, that in fact it’s entirely the right conclusion – ‘and, after her death, I cared for her son.’

  ‘If she was elderly, then surely her son was of sufficient years to care for himself?’

  Good God, thinks Felix, but she’s sharp. ‘The son was –’ he thinks of the right word to describe the erratic, exciting, wild, self-centred and utterly charming Henri-Josef – ‘not entirely responsible,’ he says.

  She nods. ‘I see.’

  He is quite sure she does.

  She is writing again. She writes for quite some time, giving Felix the opportunity to glance around the office. Apart from the desk, the two chairs and a couple of what he assumes are filing cabinets, there is little else apart from the extensive arrangement of small, square drawers formed into one large item of furniture that virtually fills the length and height of one wall. It is made of glossy wood, obviously old and much used, for the wood has a subtle and attractive patina. He has seen something like it before, and after some thought, realizes it’s the sort of thing found in an apothecary’s shop; a pharmacy, as they are nowadays called. Now he has come up with this, he realizes that he has been detecting a faint, slightly medicinal, slightly herbal, slightly spicy and altogether pleasant aroma since he entered the office.

  Without pausing to ask himself if it is wise, he exclaims, ‘This used to be an apothecary’s shop, didn’t it?’

  Her head shoots up. There is quite a long pause, and then she says, ‘It did. It belonged to my grandparents, and the business had been in the family for a hundred and fifty years.’ She points out of the bay window that faces out onto Hob’s Court. ‘If you look closely, you can still see the darker-coloured brickwork over the window and above the door where the sign saying Raynor’s Pharmacy was affixed until a few months ago.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty years!’ he echoes admiringly. ‘You didn’t wish to continue the tradition?’

  With surely more asperity than the question demands, she says, ‘No I did not.’ And returns to her note-taking.

  After a further long time of her writing and him staring around the office, she finally puts down her pen, folds her hands on the desk and says, ‘Do you know, Mr Wilbraham, precisely what constitutes the business of the World’s End Bureau?’

  ‘No,’ he admits. He wonders now why he didn’t ask her straight away, hoping very much that it won’t count against him. ‘A domestic engagement bureau, perhaps? Lady’s maids, second footmen and butlers?’

  She smiles thinly. ‘No, not that.’ She pauses. ‘It is an investigation bureau.’

  ‘Investigation into what?’ He is intrigued.

  ‘To date, I have found a runaway son, returned a very irritating and snappy Pekinese to its distraught owner, discovered that the thefts of small amounts of money in a hardware shop were not in fact done by the youth who had been accused but by the proprietor’s wife, who wanted a new bonnet, reassured one man that his wife was not having a love affair and broken the news to two more that their wives were. Oh, and located the father of an illegitimate child born to a woman who very much need
ed his financial support.’ She frowns. ‘There are more, but those, I believe, are a representative sample.’

  He is studying her with new interest. At first glance he had thought her plain – the fair hair is very firmly secured in its neat bun, the high-necked blouse and the businesslike waistcoat and skirt in fine, dark cloth are well tailored but not very feminine, and just visible under her hem is a very peculiar pair of boots that look like something a stable boy or a gardener might put on for the dirty jobs, although hers shine like glass from careful polishing. Her expression – severe to the point of disapproving – does not flatter.

  But once or twice animation has lifted the serious lines of her face, with its broad forehead, sharp cheekbones and firm chin; when she remarked upon the absurd inclusion of Derek among his grandiose Christian names, for example; when she spoke with such enthusiasm of her recent cases. At such moments he has noticed a sparkle in her bright eyes, and her generous mouth has very nearly stretched into a real smile.

  ‘I can see why you have found the need for clerical assistance,’ he says. He has done his best to come up with the most diplomatic and flattering thing he can think of, for he has decided he really wants this job.

  She is studying him again. It really is quite disconcerting, for he has absolutely no idea what she is thinking. Wisely appreciating that any further remark he might make to advance himself as precisely the man for the job would do more harm than good, he keeps quiet.

  Then she says – and to his ears the words are like the opening line of the jolliest, happiest song – ‘When do you think you would be able to start work?’

  He almost says, Now! Immediately! But instinct tells him not to look too eager, nor to give the impression that he is worryingly free of responsibilities and commitments. He frowns, as if thinking hard. ‘Let me see,’ he muses aloud. ‘Today is Tuesday …’ He waits for perhaps twenty seconds, then says, ‘I believe it would be convenient to begin next Monday.’