Philippa Carr - Time for Silence

“And I thank you,” said the young man. “I thank you all.”

Then he and Robert went back to the guests.

“Just as it was getting interesting!” grumbled Annabelinda. “Really, Rob is a bit of a spoilsport.”

“He was right,” I defended him. “They might have been missed and it could have been awkward for him…as he must be new to all this.”

“I wanted him to stay. It was fun. Oh, well…that’s it. I’m going to my room.”

She went off and Charles and I retired to ours. We did not want to wait for the departure of the guests.

“The syllabub was good,” was Charles’s final comment. “I didn’t mind its being old-fangled stuff.”

I think I, too, shared Annabelinda’s feelings of vague disappointment.

It was not until the next morning that I heard the news. Millie Jennings, one of the maids, told me when she brought in my hot water.

“Oh, such a to-do, Miss Lucinda. The police was here last night. Just midnight, it was. It wasn’t till after all the guests were gone that madam discovered.”

“What are you talking about, Millie?” I asked.

“The burglary, miss, that’s what. It was when madam went up to her bedroom. She found one of the drawers open—her jewelry had been tampered with. They got the police…late as it was. You didn’t hear them then? Sleep like a log, you do, miss.”

“Burglars! Last night! Then it must have been while the party was going on.”

“That’s what they reckon. Some of madam’s emeralds have been taken, so it seems. Just fancy…us knowing nothing about it when all that was going on.”

I decided to get up and find out for myself what had happened, so I washed and dressed as quickly as I could and went down to find my mother. She was in the dining room drinking a cup of coffee.

“Mama, what happened?” I asked.

She lifted her eyebrows. “There appears to have been a burglary last night.”

“So Millie was saying. She said they took your emeralds.”

“Some of my jewelry is missing.”

“And it was while the party was going on!”

“It was a good time to do it, I suppose.”

“Millie said the police were here.”

“Yes…they came last night. They’ll be here again this morning.”

“How could it have happened?”

“Apparently someone must have got in from the back of the house. The window of our bedroom was open so they could have come in that way. I think they may have been disturbed, because there was so much they might have taken. They had been in your father’s study, too.”

“Did they take anything from there?”

“Well, no. There is nothing of value there…except that paper knife with the sapphires set in the handle. They couldn’t have noticed that. It seems they must have been disturbed before they really got started, and thought they’d better get out. You didn’t hear anything, I suppose? What did you do after you’d finished the syllabub Robert brought you? I saw him sneaking out of the dining room with the tray.”

“We just ate it. Oh, yes…and there was someone on the stairs outside the cubbyhole.”

“What?”

“He had spilt something on his jacket and went off to clean it. Then he got lost when he was looking for the dining room. Robert took him back there.”

“Oh, I see. Who was it?”

“Someone called Carl Zimmerman.”

“I remember. He came along with someone from one of the embassies. A rather shy young man. Well, he would be new to all this.”

“Yes. He gave that impression.”

“I meant, did you hear anything suspicious? No noise or anything from above?”

“No. After that I went to bed and I don’t remember any more until Millie came in.”

“I suppose we ought to be glad that it is no worse. I don’t like to think of people’s prowling about the house…especially when we’re all in it. It gives one rather a creepy feeling.”

I agreed that it did.

The police came along that morning. Annabelinda, Charles and I watched them from an upper window. Annabelinda hoped they would question her. She began to wonder whether she had heard something after I had left her on the previous night. It was not that she would deliberately tell an untruth. She just liked excitement, and it was essential to her that she be at the center of it.

She was very disappointed when the police left without seeing her.

It was two days later. The Denvers were about to leave. I was sorry. I liked to feel that Robert was at hand. He was so kind and always wanted to be on good terms with everybody, whoever they were. I had mixed feelings about Annabelinda, as I knew my mother did about Aunt Belinda. We were attracted by them; we liked them, and yet in a way we were suspicious of them. Whenever I heard they were coming to visit us I would grow excited, and when they arrived, faintly irritated. It was due to Annabelinda’s somewhat patronizing manner, the admiration she demanded, the desire always to have attention focused on her and to jostle out of the way those who might attempt to rival her.

My mother knew exactly how I felt, because it had happened to her with Belinda. Yet when they went, there would be a feeling of anticlimax; one would feel a mild depression. Life was less interesting and one would find oneself hankering for their return.

It was almost as though Annabelinda was a part of me—not a part I greatly liked, but one which I found it difficult to do without.

We had just finished breakfast. Sir Robert was saying what a pleasant visit it had been and we must all come to Hampshire and stay with them. My father replied that things were happening in the House and he would be tied there for a while. Then he would have to do a spell at Marchlands. Constituencies could not be neglected.

“It is easier for you to come to London,” said my mother.

“Much easier,” said Aunt Belinda. “Don’t worry, Lucie dear. You will soon have to put up with us again. I know Annabelinda feels the same as I do, don’t you, dear?”

“I love it here in London,” said Annabelinda fervently.

“Well, then, we shall see you soon,” replied my mother.

At that moment Mrs. Cherry, the housekeeper, came into the room in a most unceremonious manner, which was strange for her. She looked agitated. She was holding something in her hand.

“Oh, sir…madam…it’s Jane. She just found these.”

We had all risen, for what Mrs. Cherry was holding in her hand was my mother’s emerald bracelet and ring…those items which we thought had been stolen while the party was in progress.

“Mrs. Cherry!” cried my mother. “Where on earth…?”

My father had gone to the housekeeper and taken the jewelry from her. “Where were they found, Mrs. Cherry?” he asked.

“In the bedroom, sir…caught in the valance round the bed.”

My mother stammered, “It’s…not possible. They were always kept in the case.”

“Jane found them, did she?” said my father.

“Yes, sir. I’ll bring her along.”

We were all astounded. There was no doubt that these were the missing emeralds. How had they come to be caught in the valance around the bed?

My mother kept insisting that she had not worn the emeralds for a week and when she had she was sure she had put them back in their case. How could this possibly have happened?

The fact remained that the missing emeralds were recovered, and the police had to be told.

The general feeling was that there had been no burglary and the emeralds had not been put in their case; instead they had somehow been caught up in the bed valance. Someone must have forgotten to close the window, and when my parents had returned and seen it open they had assumed we had had a burglary.

There was an apology to the police for the trouble caused, a substantial contribution to police charities, and the case was closed.

It was for this reason that I remember so vividly my first meeting with Carl Zimmerman.

I OFTEN THOUGHT HOW lucky I was to have been born into a well-knit family. There had been a wonderful sense of security in those early days to know that besides my parents there were others, such as Aunt Rebecca and her family in Cornwall where I went now and then for holidays. Then there were the Cartwrights—Rebecca’s husband’s people down there. They always made much of me.

Aunt Rebecca was my mother’s half sister and they were devoted to each other; then there was Uncle Gerald, my father’s brother. He was a colonel in the Guards and was married to Aunt Hester, a very energetic lady who was immersed in army life and her two sons, my cousins, George and Harold.

Apart from the family, there were the Denvers, and through them Jean Pascal Bourdon—that fascinating and somewhat enigmatic character about whom, for me, there was an almost satanic aura. He was Aunt Belinda’s father.

Closest to me was my mother, although my father came very near. I admired him deeply. He was a highly respected Member of Parliament. He was always busy, if not in London at the House of Commons, in the country at Marchlands, where he was “nursing” the constituency. When the House was sitting late, my mother used to wait up for him with a little cold supper so that they could talk together about the day’s proceedings. She had done that for her own father, who had also been in Parliament. In fact, that was how she had come to know the Greenhams and had married one of them, for the two families had been friends since her childhood. I had heard it said that she had adopted the habit from Mrs. Disraeli, who used to do it for the great Benjamin.

My father was very highly regarded; his words were often quoted in the newspapers when he made a speech either in the House or at some meeting. Yet, although his party had been in power since 1905, he had never attained Cabinet status. And he never sought it.

In spite of the fact that he was a normal, loving father and completely approachable, there was some mystery about him. For instance, there were occasions when he went away and we were never sure where he was going and when he would come back. Whether my mother knew, I could not be sure. If she did, she would never tell.

“Oh, he’s going on Government business,” she would say, but I, who knew her well, could detect a certain anxiety at such times, and she was always relieved when he returned.

I suppose it was because of this that I felt there was a little part of my father which I did not know, and this made him seem apart from me, as my mother never was. He was a good man and I loved him dearly, but this mystery, vague and intangible, was always there.

I once told my mother that I was glad to be called Lucinda, because she was Lucie and that made us seem like a part of each other. She was touched and told me that she had always wanted a daughter, and the day I was born was the happiest in her life. And how different her life had been from mine. Not for her, in those early days, had there been the security of loving parents and a big family about her.

“Your Aunt Rebecca was as a mother to me,” she had told me. “I often wonder what would have happened to me if it had not been for Rebecca.” In those early days she had not known who her father was, and it was much later when she discovered that he was the well-known politician Benedict Lansdon and that she was Rebecca’s half sister.

Then, having learned of their relationship, she and Benedict Lansdon became very important to each other. She talked of him now and then; she would glow with pride and then be overcome by sadness, for one day when he was about to step into his carriage which was to take him to the House of Commons, he was shot and killed by an Irish terrorist. She had been with him when it had happened.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like to see one’s father killed, to see the life of a loved one snapped off suddenly. I believe she had never really recovered from it. And it had been the beginning of very bizarre troubles, through which she had to pass before she found happiness with my father.

She had been married before but she never talked of that, and I knew I must not ask. In fact, it was only rarely that she could bring herself to mention those days.

She did say once, “Sometimes it is almost worthwhile going through great tribulation, because when it is over you learn to appreciate what true happiness is, and you cherish it as perhaps people cannot who have never known the reverse.”

I was so happy that she had married my father and all that was behind her.

I said to her, “You have us now…my father…Charles and me.”