I simply adore your books. So does my son. And my husband used to insist on never travelling without at least two of your books. But come, do sit down. There are so many things I want to ask you about.’
Oh well, thought Mrs Oliver, not my favourite type of woman, this. But as well her as any other.
She allowed herself to be conducted in a firm way rather as a police officer might have done. She was taken to a settee for two across a corner, and her new friend accepted coffee and placed coffee before her also.
‘There. Now we are settled. I don’t suppose you know my name. I am Mrs Burton-Cox.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, embarrassed, as usual. Mrs Burton-Cox? Did she write books also? No, she couldn’t really remember anything about her. But she seemed to have heard the name. A faint thought came to her. A book on politics, something like that? Not fiction, not fun, not crime. Perhaps a high-brow intellectual with political bias? That ought to be easy, Mrs Oliver thought with relief. I can just let her talk and say ‘How interesting!’ from time to time.
‘You’ll be very surprised, really, at what I’m going to say,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘But I have felt, from reading your books, how sympathetic you are, how much you understand of human nature. And I feel that if there is anyone who can give me an answer to the question I want to ask, you will be the one to do so.’
‘I don’t think, really …’ said Mrs Oliver, trying to think of suitable words to say that she felt very uncertain of being able to rise to the heights demanded of her.
Mrs Burton-Cox dipped a lump of sugar in her coffee and crunched it in a rather carnivorous way, as though it was a bone. Ivory teeth, perhaps, thought Mrs Oliver vaguely. Ivory? Dogs had ivory, walruses had ivory and elephants had ivory, of course. Great big tusks of ivory. Mrs Burton-Cox was saying:
‘Now the first thing I must ask you—I’m pretty sure I am right, though—you have a goddaughter, haven’t you? A goddaughter who’s called Celia Ravenscroft?’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Oliver, rather pleasurably surprised. She felt she could deal perhaps with a goddaughter. She had a good many goddaughters—and godsons, for that matter. There were times, she had to admit as the years were growing upon her, when she couldn’t remember them all. She had done her duty in due course, one’s duty being to send toys to your god-children at Christmas in their early years, to visit them and their parents, or to have them visit you during the course of their upbringing, to take the boys out from school perhaps, and the girls also. And then, when the crowning days came, either the twenty-first birthday at which a godmother must do the right thing and let it be acknowledged to be done, and do it handsomely, or else marriage which entailed the same type of gift and a financial or other blessing. After that godchildren rather receded into the middle or far distance. They married or went abroad to foreign countries, foreign embassies, or taught in foreign schools or took up social projects. Anyway, they faded little by little out of your life. You were pleased to see them if they suddenly, as it were, floated up on the horizon again. But you had to remember to think when you had seen them last, whose daughters they were, what link had led to your being chosen as a godmother.
‘Celia Ravenscroft,’ said Mrs Oliver, doing her best. ‘Yes, yes, of course. Yes, definitely.’
Not that any picture rose before her eyes of Celia Ravenscroft, not, that is, since a very early time. The christening. She’d gone to Celia’s christening and had found a very nice Queen Anne silver strainer as a christening present. Very nice. Do nicely for straining milk and would also be the sort of thing a god-daughter could always sell for a nice little sum if she wanted ready money at any time. Yes, she remembered the strainer very well indeed. Queen Anne—Seventeen-eleven it had been. Britannia mark. How much easier it was to remember silver coffee-pots or strainers or christening mugs than it was the actual child.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, of course. I’m afraid I haven’t seen Celia for a very long time now.’
‘Ah yes. She is, of course, a rather impulsive girl,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘I mean, she’s changed her ideas very often. Of course, very intellectual, did very well at university, but—her political notions—I suppose all young people have political notions nowadays.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t deal much with politics,’ said Mrs Oliver, to whom politics had always been anathema.
‘You see, I’m going to confide in you. I’m going to tell you exactly what it is I want to know. I’m sure you won’t mind. I’ve heard from so many people how kind you are, how willing always.’
I wonder if she’s going to try and borrow money from me, thought Mrs Oliver, who had known many interviews that began with this kind of approach.
‘You see, it is a matter of the greatest moment to me. Something that I really feel I must find out. Celia, you see, is going to marry—or thinks she is going to marry—my son, Desmond.’
‘Oh, indeed!’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘At least, that is their idea at present. Of course, one has to know about people, and there’s something I want very much to know. It’s an extraordinary thing to ask anyone and I couldn’t go—well, I mean, I couldn’t very well go and ask a stranger, but I don’t feel you are a stranger, dear Mrs Oliver.’
Mrs Oliver thought, I wish you did. She was getting nervous now. She wondered if Celia had had an illegitimate baby or was going to have an illegitimate baby, and whether she, Mrs Oliver, was supposed to know about it and give details. That would be very awkward. On the other hand, thought Mrs Oliver, I haven’t seen her now for five or six years and she must be about twenty-five or -six, so it would be quite easy to say I don’t know anything.
Mrs Burton-Cox leaned forward and breathed hard. ‘I want you to tell me because I’m sure you must know or perhaps have a very good idea how it all came about. Did her mother kill her father or was it the father who killed the mother?’
Whatever Mrs Oliver had expected, it was certainly not that. She stared at Mrs Burton-Cox unbelievingly.
‘But I don’t—’ She stopped. ‘I—I can’t understand. I mean—what reason—’
‘Dear Mrs Oliver, you must know … I mean, such a famous case … Of course, I know it’s a long time ago now, well, I suppose ten—twelve years at least, but it did cause a lot of attention at the time. I’m sure you’ll remember, you must remember.’
Mrs Oliver’s brain was working desperately. Celia was her goddaughter. That was quite true. Celia’s mother—yes, of course. Celia’s mother had been Molly Preston-Grey, who had been a friend of hers, though not a particularly intimate one, and of course she had married a man in the Army, yes—what was his name—Sir Something Ravenscroft. Or was he an ambassador? Extraordinary, one couldn’t remember these things. She couldn’t even remember whether she herself had been Molly’s bridesmaid. She thought she had. Rather a smart wedding at the Guards Chapel or something like that. But one did forget so. And after that she hadn’t met them for years—they’d been out somewhere—in the Middle East? In Persia? In Iraq? One time in Egypt? Malaya? Very occasionally, when they had been visiting England, she met them again. But they’d been like one of those photographs that one takes and looks at. One knows the people vaguely who are in it but it’s so faded that you really can’t recognize them or remember who they were. And she couldn’t remember now whether Sir Something Ravenscroft and Lady Ravenscroft, born Molly Preston-Grey, had entered much into her life. She didn’t think so. But then … Mrs Burton-Cox was still looking at her. Looking at her
