The cufflink lingered like a bad smell in Lydia Langstone’s mind. It was there when she went to bed on Saturday evening, and it was still there when she woke up on Sunday morning. It was part of the reason she decided to go to Frogmore Place.
Not to move back in, not to return to the life she had left behind less than a fortnight earlier. One couldn’t go backward, she was beginning to learn, however much one thought one could. Life was like a motor car with only forward gears, rushing faster and faster into the future.
This would be a flying visit. She had not realized how cold a place like Bleeding Heart Square could be. She needed more clothes, and much warmer ones. She had also remembered the pearl necklace, once her grandmother’s and now hers. It was kept in the safe behind the boring painting of a horse that hung above the fireplace in Marcus’s study. There was a sporting chance that Marcus had forgotten to take it to the bank. It was insured for over a thousand pounds. She had already been obliged to pay a second call on Mr. Goldman in Hatton Garden in order to dispose of a gold charm bracelet.
As for the cufflink, she knew that probably hundreds of men were wearing identical BUF cufflinks in London alone. Nor was there reason to believe that the attack on Rory Wentwood on Friday night had anything to do with herself. But the fact remained that Marcus had recently joined the British Union of Fascists, and he was the sort of man who takes a childish pleasure in proclaiming his membership of masculine associations; his wardrobe was full of striped ties, coded sartorial statements to those in the know.
He was jealous by nature too, and capable of violence. Lydia thought this wasn’t because he loved her but simply because he disliked it when anyone tried to take his possessions away-again like a child, this time with his toys. During their engagement, at a hunt ball at a neighbor’s house, a drunken subaltern had maneuvered her into the morning room and tried to kiss her. Marcus, almost equally drunk, had followed them in, given the silly boy a bloody nose and thrown him out of the house, much to the delight of the servants.
It was a long step between a drunken fight at a hunt ball in Gloucestershire and what had happened on Friday in Bleeding Heart Square. But it was at least possible that Marcus or somebody watching on his behalf had seen her with Mr. Wentwood and drawn quite the wrong conclusions. Marcus was good at getting things wrong. And if he had had something to do with the attack, she might be able to find a hint of it at the house, perhaps a letter from one of his like-minded friends or even an orphaned cufflink. If nothing else, looking for a clue and failing to find it was better than doing nothing but wonder and worry.
Sunday morning was the best time to visit Frogmore Place. The house was shut up, Marcus had told her, and he was living at his club. The servants would have gone back to Longhope; the Langstones did not maintain two separate staffs. There was a caretaker, Mrs. Eggling, but she was religious, and on Sunday went to church twice a day, morning and evening.
Lydia was still, in theory at least, the mistress of 9 Frogmore Place, and she still had her latchkey in her handbag. She was perfectly entitled to march up the steps to the front door, let herself in and take away any or all of her own possessions and also those in her charge for those hypothetical future generations of little Langstones. She would be within her rights if she commandeered the services of Mrs. Eggling to help her. But she didn’t want to advertise her presence, partly because of wanting to snoop among Marcus’s possessions but more because she had broken with that part of her life. If she had to revisit her past, she preferred there to be no witnesses, no accusing glances, no one to ask questions, no one to try to persuade her to stay, and above all no danger of bumping into Marcus.
A bus took her as far as Marble Arch. She walked the rest of the way. Marcus’s car was not in Frogmore Place or in the mews at the back. At the house the blinds were drawn over the windows. She ran up the steps to the front door, inserted her key and let herself into the hall.
Inside, the air was cold and slightly damp. The grandfather clock still ticked and a collection of cards lay on the salver on the pier table at the foot of the stairs. Next to the salver was the crystal vase, lacking its usual flowers but still with an inch of brown water in the bottom. Mrs. Eggling was growing slack.
All the doors were closed. The inner doors to the principal rooms were locked when the house was unoccupied. She walked slowly up the hall to the cupboard under the stairs. Inside, concealed in a recess, was a row of hooks holding the spare keys. Lydia took the one for her own bedroom and climbed the stairs through the silent house. It was only after she had passed the first-floor landing that she remembered the pearls. She would need the study key for that. No matter-she would fetch the clothes first.
She unlocked her bedroom door and let herself into the familiar space beyond. The blind was down and the curtains were half drawn. The dressing table had been cleared of its usual litter of silver-backed brushes, mirrors and little pots. Why had she once needed so many expensive objects to make herself presentable to the world? No one had yet put dustsheets over the furniture. Perhaps Marcus thought that covering the furniture would lend an unwanted impression of permanence to his wife’s departure. One had to think of the servants, Marcus was always saying, which made life so complicated. One had to think about what they would think and what they might say to other servants.
Lydia did not remove her hat and gloves. She lifted the empty suitcase onto the bed and opened it. From the wardrobe she selected a gray knitted frock with clear, pale blue buttons and a heavy coat, a dark navy blue that was almost black. She turned to the chest of drawers and dug out three pairs of woollen combinations and a knitted camisole. She needed stockings too, and stays. She studied the jumpers available, debating the merits of fawn cashmere or a tawny yellow silk, but decided in the end to squeeze in both of them. It was a struggle to close the lid of the suitcase.
She smoothed the coverlet where the suitcase had been and left the bedroom, locking the door behind her. It was possible that no one would know she had been here, not unless her maid went through her clothes. Lydia’s mind ran ahead to what she would do next: leave the suitcase in the cupboard under the stairs; collect the key to the study; look for the necklace and search Marcus’s desk in case there was anything that linked him to the attack on Mr. Wentwood.
On the final flight of stairs to the hall, just as she was deciding that she should also look in Marcus’s bedroom, she heard the familiar sound of a key turning in the front door and the faint screech as the tumblers turned and the bolt withdrew into the lock.
There was no time to think. Burdened with the suitcase, she ran back to the first-floor landing. She staggered past the doors to the study and the drawing room to the lavatory at the end. This door was never locked when the house was empty. She put down the suitcase and slid the bolt across as quietly as she could. A familiar thud came from downstairs. Someone had closed the front door.
Lydia pressed her ear against the lavatory door and listened. All she heard was the uneven rhythm of her own breathing. The window was small and barred. Nothing much larger than a monkey could climb out of it. She was safe in the short term-unless somebody tried the door-but she was trapped.
Her mind jumped from one possibility to another: it was unlikely to be Mrs. Eggling-she used the basement door; even less likely to be a burglar, by broad daylight and at the front door; so that meant it was almost certainly Marcus. On the whole she would have preferred it to be a burglar.