‘And now?’ Andy asked. He looked at her shrewdly. ‘Now that you’re killing time until Mal gets back? Wouldn’t it be worth doing a bit of detecting now?’
‘Do you know, I really ought to have a go,’ Tess said slowly. Last time I talked to Ashley he said I should stop driving myself mad with fears that Mal would get shot trying to escape, and concentrate on the future, or on something which was really going to happen. I was wondering what to do over the next couple of days, so why not investigate a bit further? If Ziggy was my father, and I suppose he must have been, then I really would like to know more about him.’
‘Good. Then we’ll go visiting, shall we, find out what sort of a man he was? Someone must know, twenty years isn’t that long a time.’
‘Twenty-five years,’ Tess corrected him. ‘I’ll be twenty-five in June.’
‘Yes, all right, twenty-five,’ Andy conceded. ‘And so often, one thing leads to another. You might start trying to find out about Ziggy, and end up finding out about your mother, as well. How she died, why your father was so secretive about his first marriage – that sort of thing.’
‘Yes, I might,’ Tess mused. She looked affectionately at Andy, taking in his spectacles, the way his hair bunched on the crown of his head, the gentle charm of him. ‘Andy, you’re one of the nicest people I know, you really don’t change one bit. But how busy are you? I’d love to go detecting with you, but you’re usually home for such a short time, and I wouldn’t want to hog your company. How long will it be, this time, before you have to whizz off?’
Andy smiled back at her. ‘I’m at your disposal for three days at least, then it’s London again, I’m afraid. Look, we can make good use of the time and start tomorrow. Why don’t we visit Mrs Whatsername – I know, it was Yallop, I remember because there’s a fellow called Yallop in my platoon, he comes from Norfolk as well. We can easily find out where she lives, people in villages all know each other. In fact if you just said “Ziggy”, someone would be bound to tell us his history. What about it, Tess? I bet Mrs Yallop would absolutely love to talk to you and me about times past. Old people love reminiscing; you should hear Aunt Hannah when she gets going!’
‘Tomorrow sounds ideal,’ Tess said, suddenly sure that Andy was right and visiting Mrs Yallop was a good thing to do. ‘When shall we meet?’
On the bus joggling along towards Blofield, with Andy sitting beside her, a large bunch of chrysanthemums across his knees, Tess pondered on what they might discover, and asked herself why she had allowed Andy to talk her into investigating again, when she’d let sleeping dogs lie for so long. But the fact was, she knew, that she would have done anything which would take her mind off Mal and the possibility that he might be killed in some terrible way. What was more she also acknowledged, at last, that it had been a reluctance to upset the apple cart which had stopped her from questioning Peter years ago, when Ashley had first told her about her dead mother and the mysterious Ziggy. She hadn’t wanted to hear, from Peter’s own lips, that he wasn’t her father.
I buried my head, like a stupid ostrich, and then Daddy was killed and I lost the chance of finding out the proper way, she told herself now. He would have told me the truth once I was old enough to understand, I’m sure he would. I convinced myself I didn’t want to hurt or distress him, but was that really true? Wasn’t it
me
that I didn’t want to hurt or distress?
The bus rumbled to a halt and the conductor called ‘King’s Head!’ Tess got to her feet and she and Andy jumped off the step, thanking the conductor as they did so.
‘Shall we go to the churchyard first?’ Andy said. ‘So far as I can remember we cross the road at some point. Hey, mind, those aren’t puddles, they’re solid ice.’
‘So they are,’ Tess said, very nearly finding out the hard way and keeping her feet with difficulty. ‘What’ll we do in the churchyard, though? Looking at the graves isn’t going to tell us a thing.’
‘It’s an excuse for going to see Mrs Yallop – we say we came over to put some flowers on your mother’s grave, and got talking, and . . . well, you’ll see when we beard the Yallop in her den.’
‘Oh, so that’s what the flowers are for,’ Tess said. ‘I thought it was a sweetener for Mrs Yallop.’
‘Well, actually they are for her – old people appreciate a little gift. But putting flowers on a grave is an acceptable sort of thing to do,’ Andy said. ‘You should always try to do what’s expected, then you don’t take people by surprise. People hate being taken by surprise, it puts their backs up and when you want something from them, even information, you should try to start off on the right foot. Ah, there’s a local. Let’s see if he can tell us where Mrs Yallop lives.’
Tess followed Andy’s eyes and saw an elderly man sprinkling a mixture of sand and salt on the pathway of his bungalow. When they drew level with him Andy leaned over the gate.
‘Morning, sir. Nice morning.’
‘Morning,’ the old man said. He straightened, one hand on the small of his back. ‘Bitter night. As hard a frost as we’ve had this year. Come off the 10.50, did you?’
‘That’s it,’ Andy said. ‘My friend nearly measured her length crossing the turnpike. She skidded on a frozen puddle.’
The old man laughed. ‘Aye, when the ice is clear it’s deceptive. Going to take a look at our parish church? It’s a fine building. Don’t miss the pews – the carvings are unique, y’know. There’s two old fellers, some gargoyles – I call ’em gargoyles – and of course the poppyheads, real as you please. And the west window, and the brasses . . . yes, there’s a great deal to see. There’s a wall monument to Edward Paston and his family, they died at the time of Henry the Eighth, so they say. You won’t be able to go up to the bell-tower, unless you’d like to wait a minute while I finish off this path and fetch a coat, but one of the bells was cast when William Shakespeare was a lad – think of that!’
‘Goodness,’ Tess said, since Andy seemed rather overcome by this rush of information. ‘But we won’t trouble you to take us up the tower because we’re going to visit a – a friend of my mother’s before we go back to the city. Her name’s Yallop, but I’m afraid we don’t know her address.’
‘Oh aye, that’ll be Betty Yallop, she lives in the Alley. It’s the last cottage before the big house. You can’t miss it. It’s along the Street, on the right, just past the Post Office. D’you know the Swan public house? Well, that’s just a tiddy bit further along, if you come opposite it, you’ve gone too far.’
He chuckled at his own joke and threw another handful of salt from the bag in his hand on to the pathway.
‘Thanks very much,’ Andy and Tess chorused just as the old man took a deep breath, no doubt to continue with his lecture on Blofield Parish church. ‘Well, we’d best be getting along.’
They walked quickly down the road and went under the lychgate and along the mossy path to the great north door. ‘We’d better go in, just in case he’s watching. I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings,’ Tess murmured. ‘Just a quick visit, then we can cut up the Alley and back to the main village that way.’
‘But she lives on the Alley, so why do we have to cut back to the main village?’ Andy asked puzzled. ‘That was what he said, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, but the Alley is cut in two by the Turnpike road, and this end is more like a footpath, really, which goes from the church as far as the main road. When you cross over, the Alley starts again, and the houses are there. See?’
‘Not really,’ Andy said, examining the canopied monument to the Paston family. ‘If it’s that simple why did he come out with all that tarradiddle about the Swan and the post office and so on?’
‘Because he thinks of it like that,’ Tess said patiently. ‘It’s quicker for him, living on the corner of Stocks Lane, to go straight up, over the Turnpike and into the Street. It probably hasn’t occurred to him that the Alley has two ends!’
‘Oh, I see,’ Andy said doubtfully. ‘Right, we’ve been in here several minutes. Let’s go.’
Mrs Yallop lived in a small, very old cottage built of crumbling, apricot-coloured bricks and surrounded by a tiny, overgrown garden. In order to get up the short path Ashley and Tess had to push their way through the crisply frosted veronica and hypericum bushes which overgrew the bricked pathway, whilst the beds were starred with the spears of frost-defying bulbs. The cottage and its garden were closely surrounded by ancient, leafless elms in which rooks and crows had nested in considerable numbers, and as Tess unlatched the gate the inhabitants overhead rose in a cloud, cawing and calling, swooping low to take a look at them, for all the world as though they considered the house and garden as much their property as their shaggy, swaying nests.
Reaching the green-painted front door Andy knocked, and Mrs Yallop answered the door so promptly that Tess suspected she had been watching them approach. She was a skinny, severe-looking woman with very clear blue eyes and thick grey hair cut in as vaguely nineteen-twenties bob. She stared at them.
‘Yes? If it’s insurance . . .’
Tess cleared her throat, then glanced appealingly at Andy. He rose to the occasion.
‘Morning, Mrs Yallop. No, it’s nothing to do with insurance, it’s a personal matter. I’m Hubert Anderson and this is Tess Delamere. You don’t know either of us, but you used to know Tess’s mother, I believe – she was Leonora Meadowes before she married. She – Leonora that is – died when Tess was only three so she can’t remember much about her. We wondered whether you’d mind telling us a bit about her?’
‘Leonora Meadowes? Yes, I call her to mind.’ The blue eyes scanned Tess shrewdly. ‘You’ve a look of her, I’ll give you that. Pleased to meet you both, I’m sure. You’d best come in, then.’
The two of them followed the old lady into a narrow hallway and were shown into a small living-room with a low ceiling and a log fire – unlit – in the grate.
‘Sit yourselves down,’ Mrs Yallop said, indicating a chintz-covered sofa. ‘I’ll just put a match to the fire – I was just about to light it, I always do after breakfast. It’s powerful cold, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Shall I light the fire?’ Andy said diffidently. ‘I don’t need matches, I’ve got my lighter.’ He produced it, and whirled the little wheel with his thumb until a flame shot up, blue and gold.
‘Well, thank you,’ Mrs Yallop said. ‘It draws well, that fire, I don’t ever have to persuade it. I shan’t be a moment, I’ll just put the kettle on.’
She headed for the doorway but Tess cleared her throat and she stopped short.
‘Umm . . . we brought you some flowers. Would you like to take them now, and put them in water? She held out the armful of gold and bronze chrysanthemums. ‘It’s a bit of luck that your curtains are autumn colours,’ she said chattily. ‘These will look really lovely in that dark-green vase in the window.’
‘I always have flowers indoors, fresh out of my garden,’ Mrs Yallop said rather defensively, but as she held out her arms for the bouquet her face softened and she began to smile. ‘Not that there’s much around this time of year, even my snowdrops are thinking twice about showing colour in this frost. Of course when Hubby was alive he kept me going all through the winter with chrysanths, but I can’t give ’em the attention they need. As for buying flowers . . . have you seen the price of ’em in the shops?’ She hissed in her breath. ‘I’ll just get that tea, then we can talk.’
She went over to the little round table in the window and picked up the green vase, then left the room. Andy, who had been kneeling before the grate, sat back on his heels as the flames caught hold. ‘There!’ That’ll be blazing in two minutes and I do love a log fire.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Said flowers would go down well, didn’t I?’
‘Know-all,’ Tess said equally softly. ‘Should I have offered to help get the tea?’
‘No, because if the kitchen’s still untidy from breakfast she wouldn’t like you to see,’ Andy said. ‘Come and sit down . . . I imagine the sofa’s for visitors and that lovely old rocking chair with all the cushions is for the householder.’
They were barely seated, however, before a clatter announced the arrival of Mrs Yallop, with a small, highly polished trolley on which she had arranged all the paraphernalia of tea-making, a cake on a blue willow-patterned plate and the green vase, now filled with chrysanthemums.
‘Here we are, all ready,’ she said, bringing the trolley to a halt beside the rocking chair. ‘Now who takes milk? Sugar?’
Tea poured and served – Tess declining cake, Andy accepting a large slice – Mrs Yallop looked across at Tess.
‘Well, Miss, I knew your mother as a child because I taught at the village school as a pupil teacher for a bit, and she was in my class. Later, I didn’t see so much of her.’
‘Do you have any photographs?’ Tess asked. ‘I – I believe she was friendly with your brother, Ziggy, when she was young.’
‘Ah, Ziggy,’ Mrs Yallop’s face softened as it had when she took the flowers. ‘He was the youngest of us, the only boy. I brought him up, you could say. It was the way of things then, the eldest girl would take on the youngest child, and that was me and Ziggy. Yes, now you mention it of course Leonora and Ziggy were about the same age so they’re probably in the same school groups. I wonder if I might find up a few photographs . . .’
She got carefully to her feet and went over to a bureau which stood against the wall, presently returning with a small cardboard box.
‘Here we are! Ziggy at the village school – he’s in the back row and Leonora is just in front of him, she’s got a ribbon in her hair.’
For the first time, Tess looked hungrily at a photograph of her mother as a child and saw what Peter must have seen – the likeness to herself. Apart from the old-fashioned clothing and the fact that Leonora’s hair was pinned back from her face, the photo might have been of Tess when she was eight or nine. But it wasn’t only at Leonora she was looking. Ziggy took the eye. He was a curly-headed boy with one stocking wrinkled down and a wicked grin. So far as she could judge she did not physically resemble him, but that was scarcely surprising since she was so like her mother.
‘Ziggy was ten then, which would make your mother about the same,’ Mrs Yallop said. ‘And this one was taken when Ziggy first got his motor bike – you can see how proud he was of the wretched thing. I hated that motor bike, I knew it was dangerous, knew he’d do something rash, but you can’t tell lads anything, they have to make their own mistakes. Why, if it hadn’t been for that dratted bike . . . but there you are, it was all a long time ago.’