The Nightingale Sings Read online

  ‘Obviously Josephine is still so excited by everything that she can’t put it all into words, isn’t that right, poppet?’ Mark sat himself down on the arm of Josephine’s chair and took one of her hands. ‘Mrs Rosse,’ he announced with a slow smile. ‘You wondered if this is where we intend to live and in reply I really should tell you that this is in fact where we are living.’

  ‘I see,’ Cassie said, endeavouring to keep her face set so as not to show her surprise, a surprise she knew would be quite unwarranted in the times in which they were all living. ‘I understand.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you do, Mrs Rosse,’ Mark continued, refilling his own glass as he spoke. ‘The point is Josephine and I were married on Monday.’

  ‘On Monday?’ Cassie heard herself exclaiming.

  ‘You have some objection to people getting married on Mondays?’ Mark asked with a too-easy laugh. ‘I do hope not, because myself – I’ve always thought Monday to be a very hard done by day. I like to think of Monday as a renascence. The start of something wholly new.’

  ‘Yes, Mark,’ Josephine said, as if by way of a full stop. In return, Mark put his arm round the back of her chair, as if staking out his territory.

  ‘Why?’ Cassie said as she leaned back in her chair. ‘I mean, I don’t understand. Why?’

  ‘Because we love each other, Mrs Rosse?’ Mark replied as if he was guessing at a riddle. ‘Why else?’

  ‘I meant why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me know, Josephine? And – and Mattie? All of us. I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t see what there is to understand,’ Mark wondered before Josephine could reply. ‘You knew we wanted to get married.’

  ‘Yes, I knew you wanted to get married,’ Cassie agreed. ‘It’s just as Josephine’s mother I would have quite liked to be there.’

  ‘We didn’t think it fair. With everything that’s happened to you, suddenly to throw our wedding at you as well. So we thought we’d simply just go and get married then perhaps celebrate it afterwards. When all was once more right with the world.’

  Cassie looked at the man standing before her, wondering why it was that she found it impossible to believe anything he said. ‘Jo,’ she said, unable to disentangle her feelings. ‘Is this true? Because if it is you know I would still have wanted to be there. That finally you – you and Mattie – finally you both are more important to me than anything else?’

  ‘It’s quite true,’ Josephine said, unable however to hold her mother’s steady look. ‘Maybe we read it wrong, but the intention was right. We really thought it would be just one more thing for you to deal with. You wouldn’t have just let us get married quietly, which is what we wanted.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Cassie demanded.

  ‘Come on. You’d have thrown an enormous great wedding at Claremore, and really that was the last thing you needed. Particularly right now.’

  ‘Look,’ Mark said easily, smiling at Cassie. ‘I’ve booked us a table for dinner at Olivar’s, by way of celebration. Please. I’m sure you’ll understand when we’ve talked it over fully, Mrs Rosse. Now, Josephine, poppet? Do you need to get anything or go anywhere before we go?’

  ‘No. No, I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Cassie said, getting up from her chair. ‘I need to go to the bathroom. Come along, Jo, you can show me the way.’

  ‘Don’t be too long, you two,’ Mark said warningly from behind as Cassie hurried them both from the room. ‘We’re running a little late already, poppet. And you know how I hate being late anywhere.’

  Cassie almost ran up the flight of narrow stairs until they were on the landing. Pushing the half-open door of the bathroom wide she took Josephine’s hand and pulled her into the room with her, closing and locking the door behind her.

  ‘So what’s going on, Jo?’ she demanded. ‘And don’t tell me nothing. What in hell do you mean running off and getting married without telling me? Let alone inviting me?’

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ she said, sotto voce. ‘This has nothing to do with Mark. This is my doing, not his. Mark would have waited, I promise you he would. He wanted to wait until you said we could get married, but I didn’t let him.’

  ‘Why?’ Cassie asked, feeling more wounded and bewildered than she could have believed possible.

  ‘Because I’m pregnant.’

  ‘OK,’ Cassie heard herself agreeing, while some other part of her tried to cushion the shock of Josephine’s being pregnant by a man she disliked so entirely. ‘So you’re pregnant. But that’s no reason to get married, is it? Least not nowadays. I know you think I’m old-fashioned, but there was no need for you to get married because you were pregnant. If you hadn’t wanted to get married I’d have looked after you. You know I would, sweetheart. You know that I’d have taken care of you.’

  ‘Supposing I hadn’t wanted you to?’ Josephine shook her hair back and turned to look at her mother. ‘Suppose when I found out I decided this was something I could handle all by myself for once? Can’t you see that?’

  ‘No, I can’t see that at all. You’re my daughter.’

  ‘And Mark is my husband.’

  ‘He wasn’t then. Not when you found out. You didn’t have to rush off and marry him.’

  ‘Yes I did. Because of you.’

  ‘But I’ve just told you,’ Cassie insisted. ‘There was no need to get married because of me.’

  ‘It wasn’t because of you as a person,’ Josephine replied, looking her mother in the eyes. ‘It was because of what had happened to you. Because of what you found out when your mother died, that your father and she had never got married, and that you were a bastard.’

  The word lay between them now, bleak and offensive, and there was nothing Cassie could say. All she could think of was herself shouting at Josephine’s father all those long years ago. It was New York and she was just twenty.

  ‘But I’m a bastard, Tyrone. You can’t marry a bastard!’

  And Tyrone’s kindness, and his answering laugh. ‘Who says I can’t! I’d like to see who’ll stop me!’

  ‘Everyone will stop you. I’m a bastard.’

  ‘So what! So bloody what!’ And he had married her, notwithstanding.

  ‘Jo—’ Cassie began, wanting to explain, only to be interrupted by a sharp knock on the door.

  ‘Sorry, ladies,’ Mark called from the landing. ‘But we really do have to go!’

  ‘Call me tomorrow, will you?’ Cassie whispered to her daughter, as she pretended to wash her hands. ‘I’ll wait in to hear from you.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ Josephine replied without conviction. ‘I’m OK. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Cassie repeated with a sad smile. ‘You just wait, Jo. Just you wait till that baby of yours is born, and then try telling me not to worry.’

  Nine

  These were the times Cassie found it hardest being alone, the times when she had to close the door on yet another empty hotel room in yet another town or city. These were the times when she longed for the company of a man, not for what he could do for her physically but metaphysically. Certainly there were times when she also wanted to be made love to but somehow by turning her mind back to the years she had spent with Tyrone she could put that want aside more easily than she could the need for male companionship. She loved male company. The right man could bring out the best in Cassie as even the most sympathetic of her women friends could not, which of course was the way it should be, Cassie always reasoned. As far as she knew from what she was told by her men friends and what was written about her in newspapers and magazines she was still both attractive and eligible, not just financially but as a woman, although Cassie knew as well as any woman that success and money added greatly to their allure. It gave women a patina, a gloss and a desirability because it gave them a majesty and an independence which seemed to act like an aphrodisiac on men. It also brought women like Cassie into contact with the type of men they would rarely if ever
otherwise meet, the men who were at the top of their own professions, the men who headed their own empires, the men who were stars in their own rights.

  Not all of them were acceptable company. Many of them were quite the opposite, vain, aggressive men whose only interest was in their own history or their next move, but others were very interesting, dangerously so some of them, able to imbue the atmosphere of their encounters with a sense of risk that was intoxicating, and while Cassie never allowed herself to be either fooled or carried away at these moments none the less she took great enjoyment in them. They were yet another challenge.

  But of all the men she had known since Tyrone had died, only two had been lovers, and only one of those had she loved. The man she had not loved but by whom she had been so nearly duped was the sadistic Jean-Luc de Vendrer, while the man she had loved but not enough to marry had been Frank, the eldest brother of her dearest childhood friend Mary-Jo Christiansen who was now a nun somewhere out in Africa. All her other encounters had been part and parcel of long-established friendships and although deeply felt had never for one moment looked like evolving into affairs let alone marriage.

  But now for the first time for a very long time she wished she had someone by her side again, someone who would have guided her through the difficulties she had encountered that evening and then taken her back to their hotel first to talk her down and then to take her to bed. She had spent too much time on achievement in the last years, she thought, looking round her beautifully furnished hotel room, and too little on living, but then perhaps since Tyrone’s death achievement for her had become a replacement for living.

  The phone rang as Cassie was sitting staring at the unopened bottle of Martell cognac she had placed in front of her ten minutes earlier.

  ‘Hi,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve been ringing you.’

  ‘I’ve been out, Mr Benson,’ she replied, recognizing the deep, drawling voice immediately. ‘I do have a life, you know.’

  ‘Thought you might like to hear the result of the autopsy. Carbon monoxide poisoning, time of death about six p.m.’

  ‘Yes? So what’s new?’ Cassie moved the bottle six inches closer but left it unopened.

  ‘There could be a little more to it than that.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d feel like telling me over a drink,’ Cassie wondered, and then wondered why she’d asked. I can’t be that lonely, she told herself. It can’t be that bad that I have to ask someone I barely know let alone hardly like to come and drink with me. Surely not.

  ‘Suits me. I do most of my telling over a drink,’ she heard Joel reply.

  ‘On second thoughts maybe it’s a little late.’

  ‘Half past ten? This is the time I wake up. Hold the front page. I’ll be with you in about fifteen minutes.’

  The cork was still in the brandy bottle when he arrived in her room. The first thing Cassie noticed about him was that he’d changed his clothes and was now dressed in a faded pair of old black rather than blue cord trousers and a much darned blue wool crew-neck jumper. He still had his old tennis shoes on, however, only now he was wearing them with socks. He’d also washed his hair and obviously only recently because it was still damp and slicked straight back.

  ‘I used to stay here as a kid with my grandfather,’ he said as he walked in. ‘It was very good in those days.’

  ‘It’s very good now,’ Cassie assured him as she closed the door behind him. ‘I never stay anywhere else.’

  ‘Don’t you have any Scotch?’ he asked when Cassie offered him cognac. ‘I don’t drink that. Stays with me for too long.’

  Directed by Cassie to a sideboard Joel fished around in its contents and found an unopened bottle of whisky.

  ‘Actually it’s not true about cognac,’ he said, unstopping the whisky bottle. ‘The reason I don’t drink it is because it’s too easy. I drink too much whenever I drink cognac. Which is why I don’t drink it very often. Is that what you drink?’

  ‘I don’t usually drink anything, except wine really,’ Cassie replied. ‘And champagne.’

  Joel looked at her but didn’t ask. Instead he poured her a glass of cognac, himself a large glass of whisky, and then sat down in a chair opposite her with his long legs stretched out wide apart in front of him.

  He raised his glass in silent toast, drank, and then stared at the ceiling. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So if you were going to kill yourself, would you do it at tea time.’ He made it a statement, not a question, as if it could only be answered one way.

  ‘If I was going to kill myself I don’t suppose it would matter what time it was,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘No, it would,’ Joel argued. ‘Because it does. There’s a study on suicide, several in fact. Prime times are midday, early afternoon, but most of all and hardly surprisingly night time. Late night, middle of the night. Even first thing in the morning. Very few at tea time. Hardly any at all, in fact.’

  ‘How do you know this, Mr Benson?’

  ‘I know it. And call me Joel. No, I think if Mr Waldron deceased was planning his own deceasement he wouldn’t have done it at tea time. Tea time he’d usually be having his bacon and eggs. Not at all the sort of time methodical rose gardeners like him do it. I’d have put him down as a late night or a first thing in the morning job. The first more likely. Half a bottle of whisky, some pills maybe, then into the garage and goodnight world. Wouldn’t you?’

  He suddenly stared at Cassie, catching her eyes directly with his. For a moment Cassie couldn’t speak.

  ‘I don’t know anything about suicide,’ she replied.

  ‘Never felt like trying it?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe. No, not really.’

  ‘I’d be night time. I couldn’t do it when the sun was shining. Or when it was light.’

  ‘Have you ever been tempted?’

  Joel thought for a moment, sticking his tongue in one cheek and then the other. ‘When my mother died I was a bit chewed up. She was good news, my mother. Used to ride point to point without a hat, blond hair streaming in the wind. Won the Ladies race at the South and West Wilts four years running. Taught me everything I know about horses. And race riding. But I didn’t actually want to kill myself. I simply felt suicidal.’ Joel raised his thick eyebrows very high and drank some more whisky.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on after a moment. ‘To get back to Mr Waldron. I get this feeling he was bumped off. Somewhere else around about the unholy hour of tea time, then taken back chez lui dead of night, et voilà.’

  ‘You mentioned your theory to the police?’

  Joel shook his head and stretched his legs out even further. ‘They’ve always managed without me before,’ he said with a sudden short smile. ‘You see the point is, no one saw Mr Waldron deceased come home that afternoon. None of his neighbours, most of whom are net curtain detectives.’

  Cassie smiled. ‘I never heard that before,’ she said. ‘Net curtain detectives. That’s neat.’

  ‘People in roads are like that. They see everything yet no-one saw Waldron’s car. So I’m told. Someone heard a car though, according to my source. Sometime after midnight.’

  ‘Could have been Mr Waldron deceased.’

  ‘Dead men don’t wear plaid and they don’t drive cars. By midnight, Mr Waldron had been deceased for at least six hours. Now, much as I take your word about this place, I don’t really like drinking in hotels. So let me take you to this club I know. In Covent Garden. It’s very good. You’ll like it.’

  Cassie did. There was a small dance floor by a bar in a dark brown panelled room, every available inch of whose walls was hung with black and white sporting prints. The bar was like an American bar, high stooled and highly polished, stocked with drinks it seemed from every corner of the world. There was food to be had too, fresh sea food, home-made pasta, chilli con carne or well fried or grilled steak, with what Joel informed her were excellent French fries. There was also crème brûlée among the half dozen puddings, one of Cassie’s admitted weaknesses, and since she had
eaten nothing at all earlier and now found herself ravenous she was only too happy to agree to eat. As they ordered they sat up at the bar drinking whisky sours and listening to the music being played by a first-class piano trio accompanying a tall pale-faced singer with raven black hair and an hourglass figure wondrously contained by a sparkling red sequinned body-hugging long dress.

  ‘You’re right, this is good,’ Cassie said after they’d ordered. ‘London’s all too short of places like this.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joel agreed. ‘There really aren’t enough clubs, are there? Bars, whatever – where people our age can go out to enjoy themselves and feel comfortable.’

  ‘This feels comfortable.’

  ‘I hate hanging out in places where everyone’s the same age as your children.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Then why the reference?’

  ‘I was being emblematic.’

  ‘You never married?’

  ‘I married. My wife – ex – she didn’t want children. Just a career. Want to dance?’

  ‘Would you have liked to have children?’

  ‘Yes. Now come on out and dance.’

  He was a good dancer. Cassie thought he might be because underneath the apparent shambles she had already sensed a natural elegance, but even so she was surprised at quite how good he was. She was also surprised at quite how much she enjoyed dancing with him, and how much she liked the way he held her, with his arm held just firmly enough around her waist and her right hand held up against his left shoulder.

  ‘How come everyone here’s wearing ties?’ she said, leaning back to look at his face. ‘And that there’s a notice to that effect but they let you in as if you own the place?’

  ‘Probably because I do,’ he replied. ‘The pianist is my brother. We own this joint jointly.’

  Over a mouthwatering dinner of the best calamari in a provençal sauce Cassie had tasted in an age, followed by a small and succulent beef fillet cooked in brandy and shallots, they talked. Or rather Cassie talked. Even more accurately, Joel got Cassie to talk. Although naturally taciturn, he was extremely adroit at steering conversations in the direction he wanted and then in making the other person stick to the subject. Not that Cassie was aware for one moment of the skills he was deploying. She talked because the ambience was right and because she suddenly felt at ease with the man sitting next to her on the banquette. At first she had been deterred by his somewhat abrupt manner and almost monosyllabic responses, but the more they talked the more she found him to be much more honest company than many more loquacious men that she knew. She liked the way he never let her off the hook. If she hinted at something he would persist until the hint became a theory, a fact, or an opinion and if he considered anything she said an exaggeration he would quietly but persistently make her re-examine her claims until they assumed more realistic proportions.