A Week in Winter: A Novel Read online

  A

  Weeek in

  Winter

  Marcia Willett

  Thomas Dunne Books

  St. Martin’s Press New York

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  A WEEK IN WINTER. Copyright © 2001 by Marcia Willett. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  ISBN 0-312-28785-2

  ISBN: 0-312-28785-6

  First published in Great Britain in 2001 by

  Headline Book Publishing,

  a division of Hodder Headline 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  To Rachel

  Prologue

  The lone walker on the hill shivered a little. The sun had set long since, sinking gently down, received by plump cushiony clouds above a fiery sea. The glow was all about him, transforming these bleak moorland heights with a golden, heavenly light. Far below, where lanes and tracks weaved and curled their secret ways, shouts and laughter drifted up into the clear air. He paused for a moment, dragging his gloves from his pocket, watching the small figures of men as they prepared to stop work for the day.

  The old house was being renovated. Even from this distance he could see the evidence of it in the yard: piles of timber, a small bonfire still smoking, ladders and scaffolding. A schoolmaster, recently widowed, he’d walked these paths for years, during holidays and half terms, and could remember when the cream-washed walls had been bare granite and the yard full of cows. He’d heard the voices of children as they’d clambered on the swing beside the tall escallonia hedge and seen smoke rising from the chimney on cold autumn evenings.

  Now, an agent’s board bearing green and white lettering leaned at an angle against the low stone wall which bordered the narrow lane, and the workmen were ready to go home. A pick-up idled in the yard whilst someone opened the farm gate, shouting to his companion who came hurrying from the barn. The truck was driven slowly through the gateway, waiting whilst the gate was shut and the man safely aboard before disappearing behind the shoulder of the hill.

  The walker drew his collar more closely about his throat and walked briskly onwards, his face to the west. The house, built at the moor gate, in the shadow of the hills, always reminded him of a poem he’d known from childhood. He murmured it aloud as he trudged onwards.

  ‘From quiet homes and first beginning,

  Out to the undiscovered ends …’

  A sudden gust of cold wind came snaking over the moors. He bent his head against it, still trying to remember the next lines. A handful of chill rain made him blink and he began to hurry, the verse forgotten, his mind now on supper: his landlady’s warm kitchen, hot, strong tea and the comforting smell of cooking.

  He did not see the muffled figure crossing the moor below the house, pausing within the shadow of the thorn hedge, climbing swiftly over the dry-stone wall.

  The clouds gathered overhead and the rain began to fall steadily.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Maudie Todhunter poured herself some coffee, sliced the top neatly from her egg, and settled herself to look at her letters. A rather promising selection lay beside her plate this morning: a satisfyingly bulky package from the Scotch House, a blue square envelope bearing her step-granddaughter’s spiky writing, and a more businesslike missive stamped with an estate agent’s logo—which she placed at the bottom of the pile. She slit open Posy’s card with the butter knife and propped it against the marmalade before plunging her spoon into the rich golden yolk of her boiled egg. Posy’s writing required concentration, decorated as it was with tiny drawings and exclamations, and often heavily underscored.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Posy had written at the side, so that Maudie had to turn the card to read it, ‘that you promised to think about Polonius. Mum’s saying that he’ll have to go to the Dacres. Pleeeze, Maudie!…’

  Maudie shuddered. The idea of housing the boisterous Polonius, a large English mastiff, rescued by Posy during the Easter holidays, filled her with horror.

  ‘I am not a dog person,’ she’d told Posy severely. ‘You know that quite well after all these years.’

  ‘Well, you should be,’ Posy had retorted. ‘Taking Polonius for walks would keep your weight down. You’ve just told me that you can’t get into half your clothes. Anyway, it’s only for term times. I’ve made Mum promise I can have him at home for the holidays if I can find a home for him during the term. Mind you, she’ll be spitting nails if she knows you’ve agreed to have him …’

  Maudie chuckled appreciatively to herself as she spread marmalade on her toast. Selina had fought hard to prevent the alliance between her stepmother and Posy, but their mutual affection had been too strong for her. As soon as she was old enough to be independent Posy had spent as much time as she could with Maudie, ignoring her mother’s sulks, fielding her accusations of disloyalty, bearing with her ability to make life extremely tiresome. Posy was quite bright enough to know that Maudie might well house Polonius simply in order to irritate Selina and she was ready to go to any lengths to keep him.

  Resisting such a temptation, Maudie opened the next envelope. Soft squares of tartan tumbled on to the table. Distracted from her breakfast, her coffee cooling in the big blue and white cup, Maudie caressed the fine woollen samples. She examined them closely, reading the descriptions written on the white labels which were stuck to each square: Muted Blue Douglas, Ancient Campbell, Hunting Fraser, Dress Mackenzie. They slid over her fingers and lay amongst the toast crumbs. Miss Grey at The Scotch House had done her proud as usual.

  ‘Something different,’ Maudie had pleaded. ‘Not dull old Black Watch. Have you still got my measurements?’

  Maudie had been a customer at the Scotch House for many years, and her measurements were kept on file, but it was a while now since she’d ordered any new clothes. She’d been assured, however, that her file was at hand and that her order would be given immediate attention. Meanwhile, samples would be sent at once. Tall, with a generous, low-slung bosom and long legs, Maudie remembered with regret the good old days when clothes could be made to measure without costing the earth. She had a passion for the texture and colour of fabric: supple tweed in earthy shades, nubbly raw silk the colour of clotted cream, fine lawn shirts, crisp white cotton, soft, comforting cherry-red lambswool.

  ‘You’re so … so understated,’ Hector had said once, fumbling for the word. ‘Not like Hilda …’

  No, not like Hilda who’d loved bright floral prints and fussy foulard frocks with pussycat bows; not like Hilda who held it an article of faith that a woman should make the best of herself at all times; who considered it an almost sacred duty to be good-tempered and forbearing at any cost. After a while, when Patricia and Selina made it painfully, cruelly clear that she would never replace their dead mother, Maudie had made it almost a point of honour to be as different from Hilda as it was possible to be.

  ‘Be patient,’ Hector had pleaded. ‘They’re so young. It’s still raw for them and Hilda was such a wonderful mother.’ Everyone had wanted her to know it, voices lowered respectfully, eyes alert, eager for her reaction: a wonderful mother, a wonderful cook, a wonderful wife, a wonderful friend. Even now Maudie still struggled against the resentment which had festered intermittently for thirty years, corroding and insistent, clouding happiness, destroying peace—and now Hector was dead too.

  Maudie gathered up the scraps of material and thrust them back into the envelope.
Outside the window, on the veranda, sparrows pecked at the crumbs she’d thrown out earlier, whilst two collared doves balanced together on the bird table. She swallowed some lukewarm coffee, grimaced and refilled the cup with hot black liquid from the pot. The rain which had swept up from the west during last evening had passed away to the north and the sun was shining. From her table beside the French windows she could see cobwebs, glinting and sparkling, strung about the high hedges which protected the long narrow garden. A few leaves, golden and russet, were scattered on the lawn. The sun had not yet risen high enough to penetrate the dark corners beneath the trees, or pierce the shadowy waters of the ponds, but the big square living room was bright and cheerful. Soon it would be cold enough to light the big wood-burning stove; soon but not yet.

  Maudie took up Posy’s card again. It was odd how the child’s personality flowed out of the thin spiky letters which carried the usual messages of affection, cloaked beneath sharp observations and teasing remarks; odd and comforting. She refused to allow any concessions to Maudie’s advancing years—‘I’m seventy-two, child!’ protestingly. ‘So?’ impatiently—and was now suggesting that Maudie should drive to Winchester to see her new quarters, meet her fellow students and share a pint or two at the local pub.

  We’re in this old Victorian house, she wrote. It’s really fab. You’ll like Jude. He’s doing theatre studies with me and there’s Jo, who’s doing art and stuff. She’s cool. I’ve got this really big room to myself on the top floor. It’s great to be out of Hall and independent. You’ve got to come, Maudie…

  She laid the card aside and looked almost indifferently at the last letter bearing the Truro postmark. Far too early, surely, for the agents to have a buyer. Moorgate still had the workmen in, although they were at the clearing-up stage as regards the house itself. Hector had always insisted that she should have Moorgate. The London house should be sold and the proceeds divided between Patricia and Selina; Maudie would have an annuity and Moorgate—and, of course, The Hermitage.

  Here, in this colonial-style bungalow built at the end of the nineteenth century on the edge of woodland a few miles to the north-west of Bovey Tracey, she and Hector had spent their summers ever since he’d retired from the Diplomatic Corps. Maudie’s father, widowed early and a rather solitary man, had bought it for his own retreats from his desk in Whitehall, and Maudie had always declared that she would live in it in her turn if anything happened to Hector. Her friends had not believed her. ‘Extraordinary,’ they said, now, to one another. ‘Oh, haven’t you heard? Maudie’s gone native in a wooden bungalow down in the wilds of Devon … I know. I couldn’t believe it either. Mind you, she was always a bit odd, didn’t you think? Super fun and all that, oh, absolutely, terrific fun, but underneath … Not quite cut out for the motherly bit and I wonder if she didn’t give darling Hector a bit of a hard time. Well, we all adored Hector, didn’t we? Of course, you never really knew Hilda, did you? Oh, she was a brick, my dear. An absolute brick…’

  Maudie knew what they were saying and revelled in it. Once married to Hector she’d acquired a reputation for tactlessness, for laughing at quite the wrong moment, for a worrying lack of respect for the hierarchy, whilst on the domestic front she was naïve. Dinner parties for twenty diplomats and their wives, organising bazaars, the children’s Christmas party were out of her ken. The men liked her—though some feared her—despite these failings. Those years she’d spent at Bletchley Park during the war and her subsequent appointment as assistant to a well-known research physicist in America lent her an odd glamour which some of the wives resented.

  ‘And that’s what attracted Hector,’ murmured Maudie, picking up the long white envelope. ‘After Hilda’s perfection in the home he couldn’t resist the opportunity for fun. And we did have fun when the girls weren’t around to disapprove and make him feel guilty.’

  There had been more disapproval—especially from Selina—when they learned that Moorgate was to be left to Maudie.

  ‘My whole childhood is wrapped up in that place,’ Selina had declared dramatically. ‘We always spent the summer at Moorgate with Mummy.’

  ‘But what would you do with it?’ asked her husband, trying to suppress his embarrassment. ‘It’s been agreed that Maudie should sell the house in Arlington Road. What more do you want?’

  Maudie had appreciated his partisanship but had no wish to be made out as a martyr.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to stay in London without Hector,’ she’d said abruptly. ‘But you and Patricia will get far more for that place than you will for an old farmhouse on the edge of Bodmin Moor.’ She’d smiled grimly. ‘Or do you feel that you should have both houses, Selina?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t.’ Patrick had been horrified. ‘For heaven’s sake! Hector is being scrupulously fair …’

  ‘To me? Or to the girls?’ Maudie had looked innocently enquiring.

  ‘I meant, well, given the circumstances …’ Patrick had grappled with his confusion until Maudie released him from his misery.

  ‘I shall have my father’s house in Devon and an annuity. Moorgate is my insurance policy. Hector knows that neither Patricia nor Selina would ever use it or afford to keep it without a tenant in it. He believes that the money you’ll get from the sale of the house in Arlington Road will be enough to give you plenty in reserve for almost any emergency. Well.’ She’d shrugged, preparing to leave. ‘Shall I tell your father that you’re unhappy about his plans?’ She’d warded off Patrick’s protestations and beamed into Selina’s sulky face. At the door she’d paused. ‘Of course, there’s always the possibility that you might die first and then all your worries will be over. So taxing, deciding what other people should do with their belongings, isn’t it?’

  Remembering the scene, Maudie chuckled again, briefly, then grew sober. What would Selina say when she discovered that Moorgate was about to be put on the market? The elderly tenants had died and Maudie had brooded long as to whether she should relet it or sell it. Expediency forced her hand. The bungalow needed a new roof and her car should have been replaced long since. She would sell Moorgate and give herself a buffer; it would be a comfort to have a cushion between herself and the sharp realities of life.

  As she slit open the envelope and drew out the sheet of paper, Maudie wondered again what had happened to those investments of which Hector had told her years ago. She hadn’t taken much notice at the time but he had been scrupulous in showing her the extent of his portfolio. He wasn’t wealthy, but she knew that even after the purchase of her annuity there should have been certain shares and investments which had not, after all, been mentioned in his will. Could he have changed his mind and given them to the girls much earlier? As usual she dismissed this recurring thought. Even had he bound them to secrecy, surely Selina could not have resisted displaying her triumph to her stepmother? Yet it seemed impossible to imagine Hector having financial problems which he had hidden from her. She pushed the nagging question aside and read the letter from the agents in Truro.

  …the work inside the house is almost finished and we have already erected a board to tempt any passer-by. However, Moorgate being in such a remote location, we shall mainly be relying on advertising and sending out the particulars … There is some problem about a key to the office, storeroom and cloakroom. This is the area which is approached both through the kitchen and from outside and, whilst it is not a particularly important selling feature, it will be necessary to allow clients to view it. Mr Abbot has been intending to contact you about it since he is unable to renovate this part of the house … Perhaps you would be so kind as to contact me.

  Maudie frowned. Surely she’d given Rob Abbot the full set of keys, having kept one spare front door key for herself and one for the agents? Rob wasn’t the sort to mislay keys. Aged about thirty-five, tall, tough, with a keen sense of humour, he’d appealed to her at once. He’d looked over Moorgate, making notes, cracking jokes, telling her that he’d given up his engineering job in London after promot
ion had made him more of an administrator than an engineer.

  ‘Boardroom politics aren’t my scene,’ he’d said cheerfully. ‘I like getting my hands dirty. So I’ve come West to make my fortune.’

  ‘Well, you won’t make it at my expense,’ she’d answered tartly. ‘I can’t afford to spend too much.’

  ‘You’ll be a fool if you don’t do it properly,’ he’d said seriously. ‘People throw money away. They refuse to spend a few pennies on a run-down cottage and they sell it to a builder who moves in and makes a killing. She’s worth doing up properly, this old place. You’ll get your money back twice over, believe me.’

  She’d listened to him, making tea for them both with an old kettle in the huge, bare kitchen, and then they’d gone from room to room whilst he showed her what might be done. His ideas were simple but good and she decided, with one or two restrictions, that she’d allow him to go ahead if his price were reasonable. He’d encouraged her to visit two other properties he’d renovated and she was privately impressed.

  He’d grinned at her. ‘Wait and see. When I’ve finished you won’t want to sell her.’

  ‘Then you won’t get paid,’ she’d answered. ‘Send me an estimate and I’ll think about it.’

  That had been at the beginning of the summer. Perhaps it was time to make a visit to Moorgate; to meet Rob again and to check out his work for herself. She’d made one visit and meant to go back but the right moment had never yet arisen.

  Maudie decided that now it had. She would drive down to Cornwall, see Moorgate and Rob, sort out the problem of the key. She removed her spectacles, collected her post together and, rising from the breakfast table, went to make a telephone call.

  Chapter Two

  Listening to the enthusiastic voice of the young agent in the office in Truro, Maudie was able to imagine him quite clearly—although she had never met him.