Yet she was alive. She had to be.
‘I never wanted you to marry that woman, did I?’
Peg Helmsley, as she made this grand understatement, held out her silver-handled cane and thrust it in the air towards him, like a sword. Years ago, when Archie had first given his mother the news of his engagement, Peg had forbid it absolutely. He was nothing but a young subaltern and couldn’t expect a penny from her. What’s more, she’d disapproved of Agatha’s Peter Pan collars. Showing off her neck! Peg was from a strict Irish Catholic family, one of twelve children. The bare-necked Agatha, who’d already been engaged once before, might as well have been a chorus girl. When they’d gone ahead and married, despite her objections, Peg had burst into tears and had taken to her bed for days.
‘You can hardly blame this on Agatha,’ Archie said. Part of him did blame Agatha. If only she’d handled his affair with a stiff upper lip, like she was raised to do. Then all he’d be contending with, as far as his mother was concerned, was the unavoidably violent reaction she’d have upon discovering Nan.
Peg lowered her cane. Her second husband, William, was off on a walk. It was just the two of them, Archie and her, the perfect time for a confession. She stepped close to her son and closed her hand in his lapel.
‘You haven’t done something dreadful, have you, Archie?’
‘Good God, Mother. Of course I haven’t.’ He stepped back so sharply the old woman lurched forward unsteadily. Archie took his mother by the elbows and helped her into a chair.
‘I’ve had to stop William bringing in the papers,’ Peg said, with an indignant thump of her cane. ‘A person could have a stroke, couldn’t she, reading about her own family in the papers. It’s a humiliation, is what it is. Oh, if Agatha isn’t dead, I will be so cross with her.’
Archie sank onto the settee across from her. He would have nodded in agreement if it hadn’t hit him so hard, his own mother believing he could kill his wife. But then his answer, Of course I haven’t, wasn’t precisely true. He had done something dreadful to Agatha, and that had spurred her going missing. He remembered the marks on her wrists and his callousness towards them. The one and only thing he hadn’t done to his wife, at this point, was murder.
At home in the evening, Archie smoked his pipe and poured whisky after whisky until sentimentality overtook him. He climbed the stairs to Teddy’s room, where she lay sleeping with deep, untroubled breath. It was the first he’d seen of her all day – perhaps several days – the two of them rattling in different corners of the house, her caretaking not Archie’s duty. He sat down on the bed. Peter lay beside her. Archie would have stroked Teddy’s brow but he didn’t want to wake her, so instead he picked up the stuffed rabbit Agatha had given her and sobbed into the velvety fur.
Teddy lay there, eyes closed shut so he wouldn’t know she was awake. It made her uncomfortable, having Archie there. Hearing him cry, for goodness’ sake; fathers weren’t meant to cry.
Not that she felt afraid of him. She didn’t feel afraid of anyone. Thanks to the life Agatha and Archie gave her, Teddy never did find out what men can be.
Back to morning:
It rained in Harrogate, too, pelting the windows of the Timeless Manor. After breakfast, Finbarr, Agatha and I walked upstairs, Agatha continuing on to the top floor to write. I wanted to return to the bedroom but Finbarr shook his head. ‘They’ll worry about you at the hotel. Best not to draw too much attention. Unless you’d rather leave England with me today?’
‘Of course that’s what I’d rather do,’ I said in a tone that indicated clearly it’s not what I would do.
He drove me back to the hotel in Miss Oliver’s Bentley. When I walked into the lobby, Mrs Leech proved him right by saying, ‘There you are, Mrs O’Dea. We were almost ready to set the hounds out after you.’
‘So sorry,’ I said. ‘I do love walking in your beautiful countryside.’