Hazel Holt - Gone Away

SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Gone Away


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Sheila Mallory is a middle-aged widow, a published expert on nineteenth-century novelists and is possessed of an insatiable curiosity.
A long-standing friend asks for Sheila’s help when his fiancée vanishes from her home and job in the West Country seaside town where Sheila has lived all her life. She
agrees somewhat reluctantly, but the mysterious circumstances of the disappearance soon intrigue her. Plumbing the depths of the coffee-morning circuit and the long memories
of many a pillar of the local community, combined with her own deductive powers, leads Sheila to a horrific discovery.
Gone Away is an intriguing murder mystery in the classic tradition, and it is also an affectionate and perceptive novel about the lives and manners of a country town whose
tranquil routine is disturbed by violent death.
Hazel Holt’s début as a crime novelist promises much entertainment and satisfaction for lovers of the English detection novel.
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Chapter One
I must say, the first time I saw Lee Montgomery I didn’t take to her at all. She was standing by the bar, buying another round of drinks for the men. Looking at her as she
leaned against the counter, wearing one of those soft fawn suede jackets and beautifully cut trousers, I felt short, dull and provincial, although, until that moment, I’d been
perfectly happy with my good Jaeger suit and my best (uncomfortable) shoes. I could see that Rosemary and Anthea weren’t too keen on her either. They looked up from the
murmured conversation they had been having and raised their eyebrows significantly as I came in.
My old friend Charles Richardson had rung me the evening before.
‘Sheila, dear, I’m back in Taviscombe. Longing to see you. Can you manage a pub lunch tomorrow? I’ve asked Ronnie and Anthea and Jack and Rosemary – all the old
crowd – and I specially want you to come. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
‘She’s rather marvellous.’
All Charles’s girl-friends were marvellous, so I didn’t take much notice when he went on (‘Looks fabulous ... elegant ... witty, vivacious...’) until he mentioned the word
marriage.
‘She runs an estate agency here – the one that’s selling Mother’s house for me ... marvellous business woman ... I’m thinking of giving up my job in the States and coming
home
– I’ll get some sort of consultancy over here ... put some money into Lee’s business ... really want to settle down in Taviscombe ... back to my roots, as they say...’
Charles and I had been at the local county school together
– goodness, it must be well over thirty years ago – and so had the others. Except for Charles, we had all stayed in the small West Country town where we had grown up
and had married locally, within our own little circle. But Charles had gone out into the world. He worked for one of those big multi-nationals and had lived in remote, exotic
places, until he finally settled in America, married a girl from Texas and had two children. The marriage hadn’t lasted, though, and Charles was soon back in the social swim of
Cincinnati as an eligible bachelor. He kept me up to date with all his girl-friends, so much so that I really used to dread the sight of an American airmail stamp. I suppose I
represented home, a fixed point in a shifting world, and, since I had been his first love in those far-off school days, I might be supposed to lend a sympathetic ear to his
romantic entanglements. After his mother died about six months ago, he came back to Taviscombe to sell her house, but there were legal complications and he said he would
be back soon. And here he was, talking about marriage.
I was curious, to say the least, to see the woman who had finally trapped – I found I used the word instinctively – poor Charles. Anthea and Rosemary were saying ‘poor
Charles’ too, as we sat in the pub waiting for the men to order the food, still hanging around Lee at the bar.
She came over and Charles introduced me.
‘This is my dear Sheila,’ he said, putting his arm around my shoulders, ‘whom I’ve told you so much about.’
Her eyes flickered over us both and, obviously dismissing me as any kind of threat, she gave me a warm smile and held out her hand.
‘Indeed he has,’ she said. ‘Never stops talking about you! His oldest friend!’
I smiled back, less warmly, making some colourless, conventional murmur.
As we drank our gin and tonics and ate our bar snacks, I looked at her more carefully. Seen close to, she was nearer forty than thirty. Her hair, I decided regretfully, was
a natural ash blonde, thick and curly, and her eyes were a deep, unusual blue. She certainly looked marvellous and I could see why Charles was smitten. But still. She looks
neurotic, I thought, watching her lighting yet another cigarette and tapping off non-existent ash with red-tipped fingers. She wore several rings, including a wedding ring. Charles
said that she was divorced too, as if that somehow brought them closer together. Her manner towards him was comradely rather than loving – one of the chaps. Perhaps that
was what he found intriguing.
When we all left the pub and walked through the car park, I wasn’t really surprised to find that she drove a dark green Jaguar, not brand new, but obviously expensive.
‘Well!’ said Anthea, as they drove away. ‘She’s certainly got poor old Charles exactly where she wants him!’
‘Just what he needs.’ Jack said. ‘Marvellous woman! Anyway, it’ll be grand having Charles back here again.’
We contemplated this thought for a while.
‘Yes, of course.’ I said doubtfully, ‘though, in a way, it’s part of Charles’s charm – being in faraway places.’
Rosemary laughed. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
Charles returned to America and life went on as usual. I found myself deeply involved in arrangements for our Christmas Fayre for Help the Aged and my thoughts
revolved almost exclusively around lists of cake-makers and who was going to tell Miss Whittaker that she certainly couldn’t run the children’s Bran Tub after the mess she
made of it last year. A middle-aged widow – I’m fifty-four actually – living in a small sea-side town must expect to be deeply involved in local activities. Taviscombe, indeed, is
a town full of widows, but since I am younger and, relatively speaking, more mobile than most of them, I find that rather more is expected of me. When my husband died two
years ago, well-meaning friends involved me in all sorts of voluntary work to ‘take me out of myself, and since I was still quite dazed and numb after Peter’s long illness and
death, I simply did what was put in front of me, as it were, and after a while I found that they were right and that being busy did help.
Peter was a solicitor. Like me, he was born here and he was well-known in the town and had many friends, most of them people he had helped in some way, for he was
a kind, generous and compassion-ate man. After he died I think that Rosemary and Anthea had some idea of my marrying Charles, but, fond as I had always been of him, I
knew that it would never have worked. When you have known one really marvellous person everyone else seems second best, and I didn’t want second best.
Then, of course, there is My Work, as my son Michael irreverently calls it. I write the occasional volume of literary criticism – mostly about the more obscure Victorian
novelists
– and am published by one of the university presses. Not many copies seem to get sold, but they do provoke an enjoyable amount of theory and counter-theory from
other workers in the field, so that a good time is had by all those inhabitants of that esoteric little world of Lit. Crit. Very few people in Taviscombe have read my books,
though several kind friends have ordered them from the library, but they have given me a little local fame and a defined place in our close-knit society: ‘Sheila Malory is very
literary of course, but quite useful on committees.’
In fact, I rather enjoy my Good Works: the Red Cross and Help the Aged, of course (who knows how soon one might want their help oneself?) as well as fetes and
jumble sales and coffee mornings for St Stephen’s Restoration Fund, and Bring and Buy sales for the Friends of the Local Museum Association, not to mention the
Archaeological Society and the Literary Society (where I am occasionally asked to give a short paper). And then, of course, there is Michael. Although he is nominally at
Oxford, reading History, it seems to me that university terms are much shorter than they used to be, since he always seems to be at home requiring three large meals a day and
constant laundry. It will be seen, then, that I lead what might be called a full life.
One morning just before Christmas I was standing outside Boots feeling rather annoyed. My car was being serviced and I had walked the mile into Taviscombe thinking
that I didn’t need much in the way of shopping – just a few odds and ends plus a quick visit to the bank and a long queue at the Post Office (oh the tyranny of the Christmas
Card List). But I had been carried away by the glitter of Christmas decorations and, on impulse, had bought a large and ridiculously expensive box of crackers and other
seasonal fripperies. Last year, after Peter’s death, neither Michael nor I had felt much like celebrations, but this year I suddenly felt I’d like to make it really festive, with a tree,
snapdragon and a Yule log if I could find one. Consequently I was loaded down with inconveniently shaped parcels and facing a tiresome walk. The last of the half-dozen taxis
that were usually parked outside the market had been snapped up by a small but determined woman whose Yorkshire terrier had firmly wound its lead around my legs,
immobilising me at a critical moment. The wind was bitingly cold and I wished I had worn a heavier coat. It might even be a white Christmas at this rate. As I stood there,
wondering, whether to wait for a taxi to return or start walking, I was aware that a car had drawn up beside me and someone was leaning across and opening the passenger
door. It was Lee Montgomery in her green Jaguar.
‘Hop in,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
My first instinct was to refuse. I hadn’t seen her again after Charles had gone back to America. Well, that is not strictly true. I had, when shopping, glanced casually into
the estate agent’s window, peering round the photographs of Attractive Period Cottages and Charming Converted Coach-houses, trying to catch a glimpse of her. In the
brightly lit interior I had seen her blonde head leaning forward as she persuasively spread out details of desirable residences for potential customers. A shadowy figure sat at
another, lesser, desk in the corner, presumably doing the typing and general slave work. But we had not met face to face.
‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘I’m holding up the traffic’
I got in, rather flustered, tossing my packages into the back in such a hurry that I felt I had probably broken some of the more delicate Christmas Tree decorations. This
made me feel even more churlish towards Lee until I pulled myself together and remembered my manners.
‘Thank you. It was so good of you. It’s absolutely freezing on that corner and there’s no knowing when there’ll be another taxi – I think they all go into hibernation in the
winter!’
She laughed rather more than my feeble joke deserved, and I had the feeling that she wanted to placate me for some reason.
‘Look.’ she said suddenly. ‘Are you in a great rush or anything? I mean, can you spare the time to come and have a drink before lunch?’
I must have hesitated a moment too long, because she added, ‘Please, I want to talk to you about some-thing. It’s rather important. Well, it is to me. I’d be so grateful.’
I was immediately curious.
‘Yes, of course. I’d like to very much. Won’t you stop off and have a drink with me?’
‘Well, actually, I’ve got to go up over the moor to collect some keys for a property. It’s out towards Brendon and I said I’d be there by twelve-thirty – the caretaker
can’t wait after then. So if you wouldn’t mind coming with me first, we could go on to the Stag Hunters at Brendon – they do quite good food there too.’
‘That would be very nice,’ I said rather formally.
As we drove she made no further reference to what she wanted to talk about. Instead she told me about her various property dealings – I had to admit that she was very
amusing and her stories were vivid and funny. She seemed quite relaxed now. The moment of tension at the beginning of our conversation had gone and she was sitting easily,
her hands resting lightly on the leather-bound steering wheel. She was wearing those driving gloves that have pieces cut out of the back – the sort worn by what I think of as
Proper Drivers, who know about revs and double-declutching and nought to sixty in however many minutes it is.
‘This is a beautiful car,’ I said as we surged smoothly up Porlock Hill. I reached out and touched the walnut dashboard with my finger-tips. ‘So elegant as well as so
powerful.’
‘I adore it!’ she said, with such a sudden intensity that I turned to look at her in surprise. She gave a little laugh. ‘It represents everything I wanted when I was young.’ she
explained. ‘When I had absolutely nothing. It was the very first thing I bought when I finally got my hands on some money.’ The phrase hung between us and she laughed again.
‘Well, you know what I mean.’
We chatted amiably enough as we drove further into the heart of the moor. She was easy to talk to, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to call her ‘Lee’, a rather
affected, made-up name, I thought, presumably a more dashing form of a pedestrian one.
The sky was iron grey and the moorland on either side of us was raked by wind so that the scrub oaks seemed to be twisted and tormented as if possessed. The sheep
huddled in what shelter they could find and a few ponies stood forlornly by a gate. There was very little traffic and the car swung round the bends of the road as if it, too, had a
life and vitality of its own. We turned off the main road down towards Brendon, but instead of going down the hill she took a sharp turning to the right, along a steep, narrow
lane, and then left at a farm gate.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this way before.’ I said. ‘Where does it lead to?’
‘Oh, only the house. It’s a dead end. Just the house and then open moor.’
We rounded a wind-break of beech trees and turned into a short drive. The house at the end was quite hidden from the road by a dip in the hill, but as we approached I
saw that it was a large stone building, well-built and handsome, with stabling and several out-buildings. There was a lawn outside the front door and a quantity of rhododendron
bushes and shrubs. I commented on them to my companion.
‘They must look glorious when they’re all in bloom. I don’t suppose it’s possible to grow very much in the way of flowers here, though I suppose you could have bulbs
and various types of heather.’
‘It’s a very good property,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come and have a look or would you rather stay in the car? I won’t be long.’
I love looking over houses so I said I’d come with her and got out of the car. The wind took me by surprise – it was miserably cold outside and I hurried after Lee
towards the house. She didn’t go to the front door, but went round the side, past the stable block, to what seemed to be the kitchen door. The back of the house was dark,
overgrown with shrubs and trees right up to the back door.
‘A bit gloomy.’ I said. ‘I imagine all this was servants’ quarters – I suppose it didn’t matter about them having any light. But I suppose there aren’t any servants now.
Difficult to get anyone to stay this far out – unless they’re horsy and want free stabling in return for a little light domestic work.’
We went into the kitchen, which was large and seemed very bleak and empty. The desolation was emphasised by a few abandoned saucepans and kitchen utensils. There
was certainly a lot of modernisation to be done before this could be described as ‘desirable’, I thought. I followed Lee along a passage and out into the main body of the
house. It had obviously been a hunting lodge in the days when such places were built on Exmoor for the stag-hunting season. The rooms were very Edwardian, elegant and
spacious, with high ceilings and handsome fittings on the panelled doors. The wallpaper was patched with damp and the cold struck us in the face as we entered the drawing
room.
The caretaker obviously felt the cold too, since he was anxious to hand over the keys and be off. We heard him drive away and Lee said, ‘Come on, we’ll freeze to death
here. Let’s go and have a warming G and T.’
As we drove away I looked back at the house.
‘Goodness,’ I said, ‘you can’t tell there is a house there at all – it’s quite hidden by the hollow ground and the trees. Does it have a name?’
‘It’s called Plover’s Barrow – after the farm in Lorna Doone I think. Anyway, it sounds good.’
We were both glad to get to the Stag Hunters Inn. There were very few people there so we were able to sit right on top of the log fire and thaw out.
‘It really is a handsome house.’ I said. ‘It could look marvellous if you had it done up. Though it might be difficult to find someone who wanted to be so isolated – it must
be all of five miles from any other house and ten miles from the village.’
‘I hope to get a deal on it,’ she said, ‘a really good deal. That house is going to make me quite a lot of money. Certainly enough to buy me an absolutely smashing
trousseau from Jean Muir. Yes,’ she smiled, ‘that was what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m going to marry Charles.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said rather stiffly. ‘I hope you will both be very happy.’ I tried not to let my doubts about the likelihood of this show in my voice.
‘I know you don’t approve.’ she said. ‘None of you. You all think I’m marrying Charles for his money.’
I didn’t say anything and she went on, ‘Well, in a way I am – at least, the money will be jolly useful. The firm’s cash-flow is what you might call static at the moment.
Things are in a bit of a mess and, quite honestly, I need Charles’s experience as well as his money to help me out of a sticky situation. But that’s not the only thing. I can’t say
I’m madly in love with him or anything like that, but I like him a lot and I’m quite happy to settle for that.
I’ll make him a good wife, you know.’ She looked at me seriously, her deep blue eyes very dark. Then she laughed. ‘We’ll have a lot of fun. I know Charles likes a good
time, and he’ll enjoy having someone to spend all that money on. Anyway, it’s time he settled down. But the fact that he wants to settle down in Taviscombe makes it important
that you, especially, should be on our side, should approve, go on being his friend.’
‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘I don’t think my opinion would be that important to Charles.’
‘Oh yes it would. You mean a lot to him. I was almost jealous of you.’ We both smiled, knowing precisely how her jealousy had evaporated when she had actually seen
me. ‘I want it all to be just right. I want to settle down too.’
For a while I didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem to be much that I could honestly say. I still felt that Charles deserved more than just liking from a wife, but perhaps he
would never really know exactly how Lee felt about him. Like so many men he was perceptive only when it suited him, finding it easier to tuck unpleasant truths away and see
only what he wanted to see about human relationships, which was odd, since he was immensely shrewd in business and had an eagle eye for any imperfection in a commercial
contract. One of the logs fell on to the hearth and startled me.
‘Thank you for being so frank with me,’ I said. ‘I hope it all works out.’ I could see that she had noticed my change of phrase. ‘When are you going to be married?’
‘We haven’t quite decided. I’m going over to Cincinnati for Christmas and we’ll discuss every-thing then.’ She pushed her half-finished steak and kidney pie to one side
of the plate. ‘Do you want coffee?’
‘Well, actually, I think I ought to be getting back. I don’t like to leave my old dog for too long – we both like to have a little walk in the afternoon and it gets dark so early
now,’ I added, thinking how dreary and elderly I sounded.
‘Of course.’ She stood up and pulled on her driving gloves as I gathered up my bag and scarf. ‘Thank you for listening to me.’
As she walked in front of me to the car, I envied her her strength and vitality and her sureness about what she wanted from life. But I didn’t envy her possession of
Charles. In a strange way, in spite of myself, I wished her well.
Christmas came and went, with its customary pleasures and pains. Michael went back to Oxford and I somehow got through those first miserable weeks of the New
Year when it seems that every-thing has died for ever. I had a large, jolly, very American Christmas card from Charles, and a note, just after Christmas, to say that Lee’s visit
had been a tremendous success and that she had met his two young sons and they had all got on wonderfully together. So it seemed that everything was going to turn out to the
satisfaction of all concerned.
One night towards the end of January I had stayed up late, much later than I usually do, to watch an ‘open-ended discussion’ on Channel 4, which had gone on until well
after midnight. I had just fed Tristan, my little dog, and was engaged in the usual chase around the house to catch my Siamese cat, Foss, to put him in his basket, when the
phone rang.
‘Sheila?’
It was Charles, and I wished, not for the first time, that he could keep track of the time difference between our two countries.
‘Charles!’ I said insincerely. ‘How lovely!’
‘Sheila.’ and now I noticed that his voice was strained and anxious, ‘you’ve got to help me Lee’s disappeared!’
Chapter Two
For several moments I couldn’t think what Charles was talking about. From the kitchen I could hear furious Siamese howls which meant that Foss had stopped
thundering up and down stairs and was waiting for his supper.
‘Disappeared.’ I repeated stupidly.
‘Yes. She went back to Taviscombe after Christmas and rang to say she’d got back safely and that she’d phone in a few days to finalise the wedding arrangements we’d
made when she was in Cincinnati. And then nothing. For nearly three weeks I’ve been writing and phoning, but she hasn’t replied to my letters and no one answers the phone
in her flat. And when I ring the office I only get that stupid girl who does the typing, and all she says is that Lee is out of the office on business and she can’t reach her. It’s like
banging my head against a brick wall! Please, Sheila, will you go and see if you can find out what the hell is going on? I’m absolutely desperate.’
‘Well, of course I will. There must be some perfectly ordinary explanation,’ I said. My mind doesn’t function very well late at night and I couldn’t really take in all the
implications of what Charles was saying. ‘Don’t you worry,’ I said in a calming tone.
‘I’m sure it’s all perfectly simple.’ I was aware that I was repeating myself but there didn’t seem anything else to say. ‘I’m sure it’s all right really.’
‘You’ll let me know immediately you find out anything?’
‘Yes, of course I will.’ I was repeating myself again, but I was so tired I couldn’t think of any other words. ‘I’ll go into the agency tomorrow, first thing.’
A circular sort of conversation then took place, with Charles repeating how worried he was and me trying – rather incoherently – to reassure him. After about five minutes
of this I said firmly, ‘This must be costing you a fortune – I’ll let you know what I can find out. Goodnight Charles, take care of yourself,’ and put down the phone.
In a sort of daze I fed Foss, automatically tidied the sitting room and went wearily up to bed. Needless to say, as soon as I had washed my face and brushed my teeth I
felt wide awake and my mind started churning over Charles’s extraordinary story. What on earth could have happened? Had Lee had second thoughts about marrying him?
But I was sure she was not the sort of woman to evade an issue. She would certainly have faced Charles and told him outright that she had changed her mind. I didn’t imagine
that she cared over-much about hurting people’s feelings. But why? It was obvious that she needed the money, and marriage to Charles would be a perfectly agreeable way of
getting it. I hit my pillow vigorously, then sat up, put on the light and had a drink of water. The problem remained insoluble and I had a sleepless night.
The next morning I found myself inventing house-hold tasks that had to be done – little bits of washing, cooking the animals’ fish, repotting a rose geranium – anything to
put off the moment when I had to go and see what I could find out. I was uneasy about the whole affair and reluctant to get involved. Bother Charles, I though.
I approached the estate agent – it was called Country Houses – cautiously. Studying a photo-graph of a Character Country Cottage, Needs Some Improvement, I tried
to peer into the interior, but because of the reflections on the glass I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing for it but to go in.
There was no sign of Lee and the place looked rather rundown and desolate. A girl was sitting at a desk with her back to me, sorting through some mail. As she heard me
come in she turned, and to my surprise I recognised her.
‘Good gracious, Carol! I didn’t know you worked here!’
‘Mrs Malory!’ She seemed equally surprised to see me. ‘Don’t say you want to sell that lovely house of yours!’
Carol Baker was a girl you couldn’t help admiring. She had married young – far too young, I suppose – and her husband, Derek, a worthless layabout Peter used to call
him, had been in and out of trouble for years. They had two small children, and when Carol was seven months pregnant with the third, Derek had gone off to London and
never been seen since. I imagine he lived precariously on the fringes of the criminal world. She had come to consult Peter about tracing him and getting some sort of
maintenance for the children, but he had drawn a blank. Still, Carol was cheerful and hard-working and was managing to bring up the children splendidly. We had both taken
to her and tried to help her in various little ways
– Peter sorted out her DHSS problems and I passed on various items for the children that I picked up in the course of my sale of work and jumble sale circuit. Carol
was, I think, grateful for Peter’s efforts on her behalf (she wrote me a very touching little note when he died) and always seemed pleased to see me. But not this morning. In
fact, she looked rather disconcerted.
‘Did you want to see Mrs Montgomery?’
‘Yes. Isn’t she here?’
‘No.’ Carol hesitated. ‘I’m afraid she’s away on business at the moment.’ She sounded as if she was repeating a formula rather than stating a fact.
‘Oh.’ I said casually. ‘When will she be back?’
‘I don’t know really. Is it about a house?’
‘No, Carol. I’ve come in because Mr Richardson – you know, her fiancé in America – is very worried about her. It seems that he hasn’t heard from her for nearly three
weeks.’
‘Yes,’ she said rather flatly. ‘He has phoned several times.’
‘But don’t you know where she is? She must have said something.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
Her face was expressionless, unlike the Carol I knew who was normally very lively.
‘Oh come on, Carol, she can’t have just gone off – all that time ago – and simply said nothing.’
‘No, she didn’t say where she was going.’
‘Poor Mr Richardson is terribly worried.’ I said. ‘They’re getting married soon – he can’t understand it. Surely you must know something. You know you can trust me.’
She hesitated, and then took a deep breath and said, ‘No – I must tell someone and I know you won’t let me down’
I drew up a chair and sat down beside her at the desk. ‘No, of course I won’t. Tell me all about it.’
‘Well, when Mrs Montgomery came back from America she was all excited and yet sort of nervy, if you know what I mean. She smoked all the time and whenever the
phone went she wouldn’t let me answer it but always snatched it up herself. Well, after about a week, she told me that she was going away for a few days on business. She
seemed ever so keyed up about it so I thought it must be something very important. She said that she didn’t want anyone at all to know she was going to be away – especially
Mr Richardson. She repeated it several times – you know that brusque way she has of talking – she could be quite frightening sometimes. Well – what could I do? He kept
ringing and asking me about her. I had to keep putting him off.’
She sat hunched up, her hands gripping the edge of her desk.
‘I felt really mean, not being able to tell him anything when he sounded so upset, but Mrs Montgomery was so insistent ... She’s not an easy person to work for at the best
of times and you know how difficult it is to find any sort of job in Taviscombe, and I need the money for the children...’
Her voice trailed off again and she looked at me despairingly. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
‘It’s all right, Carol. Of course I won’t let Mrs Montgomery know that you told me anything. But it is very odd, you must admit. Do you have any idea at all of where she
might have gone?’
Carol hesitated. ‘Well, there was something. The day before she went away she had this phone call. It was at lunch-time. I’d gone out to do a bit of shopping and it
started to rain, so I had to come back for my umbrella and she was on the phone. She had her back to the door so she didn’t see me come in, and I heard her say, “Very well
then, Jay, I’ll meet you half-way. Wringcliff Bay – that lay-by on the left coming from you. At twelve o’clock. You’d better make it this time, or else” And then, when I came
up to my desk to get the umbrella, she saw me and put her hand over the phone and said, “What the hell are you doing here, creeping about like that?” She was really angry so
I just said I was sorry and took my umbrella and went away quickly. When I got back after lunch she was nice as pie and said she was sorry she’d snapped at me but I’d
startled her. I sort of felt that she was trying to pass the whole thing off, make out it wasn’t important. But it was, I’m sure.’
‘Jay?’ I said questioningly. ‘You don’t happen to know who that might be?’
‘No. I’ve never heard her mention anyone of that name
– it’s quite unusual, isn’t it, I’m sure I’d have remembered.’
We both sat silently for a while. I felt Carol relax, as if she had transferred some of her problems to me – trustingly, as she used to do with Peter when he was sorting
things out for her. Almost as if she expected me to sort out this particular problem now that Peter was no longer here. I felt a kind of responsibility to her now, as well as to
Charles.
‘Carol,’ I said briskly, ‘let’s try and get all this straight in our minds. When did Mrs Montgomery go away?’
‘Tuesday, January the third. It’s a very slack time with us, just after Christmas, so I suppose she didn’t worry about leaving me to look after the office for a bit – though
I’m sure she didn’t mean it to be this long.’
‘Right. What about her appointments?’
Carol went over to the larger desk and took an engagement diary from the drawer. ‘There isn’t much here, because it’s a new one. There’s nothing down for Tuesday the
third. Look.’ She brought the book over to me and we examined it.
As Carol had said, it was a new diary and the only entry in it was for the following day, Wednesday 4 January – just two initials: ‘P.B.’
‘You don’t happen to know who P.B. is?’ I asked Carol.
She shook her head. ‘No – she must have made the appointment when I was out of the office.’
We seemed no further forward, but I tried to sound reassuring.
‘Don’t you worry, Carol. I’ll ask around, talk to her friends and see what I can find out. If we don’t get any news soon, though, we may have to tell the police.’
‘Oh no!’ Carol was really agitated now. ‘She’d never forgive me if I did that!’
‘But Carol! If she’s disappeared we really ought to inform someone in authority – I don’t think she has any relations and you must admit that it’s very strange.’
She shook her head. ‘No, no, you mustn’t. There might be things she wouldn’t want the police to know about, and she’d surely give me the sack if they came poking
about here!’
‘What sort of things?’
‘I don’t know exactly, but I got the feeling, some-times, she was doing things that weren’t quite right. I don’t know enough about business to know what it was – it’s just
a feeling. But you do see that I daren’t call the police...’
‘It’s all right, Carol. Don’t worry. I’ll see what I can find out myself. We’ll leave it like that. I promise not to go to the police just yet. Cheer up – it’ll be all right.’
I picked up my shopping basket. ‘How are the children? I suppose Brenda’s at school as well now – goodness, how the time flies, I can hardly keep track!’
I chatted away soothingly about the children and she seemed calmer when I left her. But now I was the one who felt agitated.
Outside Country Houses I looked at my watch and realised that I should have been at the St John’s Ambulance headquarters twenty minutes ago to help set up the stalls
for the Bring and Buy sale for the Stroke Club. Rosemary wouldn’t mind but I could expect sarcastic comments from Marjorie Fraser, the rather difficult woman who was
running it.
As I had expected, she greeted me with a bleak smile.
‘I’m so glad you could come after all, I was afraid you might be too busy – I know how many commitments you have.’ That was a dig at me because I had been elected
to the Ladies’ Luncheon Committee and she hadn’t. ‘Rosemary and I have put up nearly all the trestle tables. Of course it is easier with three, but we managed.’
Rosemary pushed her hair back with a rather grimy hand and said, ‘Oh, it was okay. They’re not really heavy – just very dusty. Who used them last? Was it the Scouts?
I do think someone might have wiped them down!’
I apologised profusely and took the other end of the table Rosemary was manhandling. Marjorie Fraser took herself away to boss another group of helpers who had just
come in with cakes and jam and potted plants.
‘More marmalade!’ I heard her say. ‘Oh well, I suppose someone will buy it!’
Rosemary giggled. ‘It really is a bit much. The wretched woman hasn’t been in the town for five minutes and she’s running everything in sight!’
Marjorie Fraser was another relatively young and active widow with time on her hands. She had come from somewhere just outside Bristol where her husband had been
a vet. I don’t know how long he had been dead – in fact I didn’t know a great deal about her. She never volunteered information and I didn’t like her enough to find out. She
had taken a house, in a village outside Taviscombe, with a paddock and stables for her two horses. She was one of those tiresomely horsy people who despise everyone who
is not equally fanatical. She hunted twice a week in the season and all the time she could spare from doing whatever one has to do to horses she devoted to running things.
Quite a lot of people disliked her but were glad that she was prepared to take on the more tiresome tasks, even if they resented her way of going about them. She was a tall,
angular woman with a brisk manner, and Rosemary and I avoided her whenever we could.
We put up the rest of the tables and Rosemary said conspiratorially, ‘Come on, while she’s not looking, let’s escape and go to the George for a pub lunch’
We washed the dust off our hands in the cloak-room, and as we slipped out we could hear Marjorie Fraser’s voice relentlessly going on, ‘It would be most unsuitable to
have instant coffee. And anyway, if we have really good coffee we will be able to charge twice as much...’
We made our escape.
The George used to be a very splendid Edwardian hotel set in pleasant grounds near the sea. Nowadays, in the summer, it is fairly intolerable, with wooden picnic
benches outside which attract a lot of young people with motor-bikes and old cars, but in the winter it can be quite pleasant, if one goes into the Lounge bar.
We hurried past the Saloon bar, raucous with juke-box and fruit-machines, full of young people, mostly those who stay behind after the end of the season, living on social
security in winter-let bed-sitters, waiting for summer jobs again. There seemed to be more of them than ever this year, and as we settled ourselves in a peaceful window-seat in
the Lounge bar, Rosemary commented on how unpleasant it had become in the town, to see them hanging about in noisy groups, even jostling the frail and elderly off the
pavements.
‘What are you going to have?’ she asked.
‘Just a toasted sandwich for me and a glass of white wine.’
Rosemary ordered our food at the bar and returned with two glasses.
‘They’re bringing the toasted sandwiches when they’re done.’ she said. ‘I got you ham and cheese.’
We made those little fluttering noises and protests that all women seem to make when they are settling up any small sum of money, and then Rosemary said, ‘Did you
have a good Christmas? I haven’t really had a chance to ask you, what with Marjorie Fraser banging on all morning. Did you hear from Charles? We had a Christmas card but
it didn’t say anything much, only love. Did that Lee woman go over there?’
I wasn’t sure if Charles wanted me to tell any-one else about Lee’s disappearance, and, honestly, devoted as I am to Rosemary, she is the last person I would ever trust
with a secret, so I simply said, ‘Yes, she did, and it all seemed to go marvellously well.’
Rosemary snorted. ‘Well, if Charles can’t see that she’s only after his money ... Men!’
I laughed, and Rosemary plunged on into other subjects.
‘Can you come and have drinks on Sunday? Jilly’s coming for the day with her bloke.’
‘Jilly’s bloke’ was Rosemary’s attempt at being modern and nonchalant about her daughter Jilly and the boy-friend she was living with in Taunton. He was a nice young
man, from what Rosemary had told me, a police inspector, and there seemed to be no reason why they shouldn’t have got married in what to me was still the normal way. But,
as Rosemary explained carefully, as one repeating a lesson, they felt they wanted a more open relationship.
‘Actually.’ Rosemary said, sounding slightly guilty, ‘Mother’s coming too. Of course, she wants to see Jilly, but you know how she feels about her and Roger – not that
she’s met him yet. It’s that generation, I suppose. Anyway, she’s so fond of you, so if you could bring yourself to come and take her mind off things, as it were…’
1 said that I would be delighted.
‘Oh, bless you! See you on Sunday then, about twelve.’
I went back home and got out the ironing board. A lot of people hate ironing, but I find it very soothing and conducive to thought. I like the feel of the iron sliding over the
material, and the way the creases are magically smoothed away. My thoughts ranged over what Carol had told me. Where was Lee? Presumably she had gone to meet Jay,
whoever he (she, even, people had unisex names nowadays) was. Had she returned from that meeting or had she gone off somewhere with him? And – my thoughts became
circular – where was she now?
Foss suddenly materialised, as he always did when I was ironing, and jumped on to the ironing board, seeking the warm spot where the iron had been. I addressed him as
if he could solve my problem.
‘What on earth should I do, Foss? There’s nothing much I can tell Charles. I suppose he will have to be the one to go to the police if she doesn’t turn up, after all he’s her
fiancé
– more or less. But then, if there’s some perfectly simple explanation, she would be absolutely furious.’ Foss gave a loud wail and lashed his tail across the board in front
of the iron. ‘I know.’ I said, ‘I can go round to her flat. There might be some sort of clue there.’
There was another loud wail, possibly of affirmation. I opened a tin of cat food and put some down for him so that I could have my ironing board to myself again and
finish my task. Then I made myself a cup of tea, and as I drank it I looked at the telephone directory and found that Lee lived in a block of flats by the sea-front. Definitely
desirable and expensive, which meant that they would be guarded by an entry-phone. Fortunately, though, an old friend of my mother’s also lived there, so if I went to see her I
could at least get inside the building.
‘No time like the present,’ I told Foss, and picked up the telephone.
‘Mrs Fordyce? Hello, it’s Sheila. Yes, very well, thank you. And you? Oh, splendid. I wonder – you know you said I could have that recipe for orange curd? Yes, that’s
right. Well, I thought I might make some for the coffee morning next month. Would it be an awful nuisance if I popped in for it tomorrow afternoon? After you’ve had your
rest? That’s so kind. I’ll see you about half past three then. No, I’m afraid I can’t stay to tea. Some other time, yes, of course. Goodbye.’
I put down the phone feeling a bit mean. She was a sociable soul and loved visitors. Since my mother’s death two years ago (Mother and Peter had died within months of
each other – it was a truly dreadful time) she had been rather lonely. There were not very many of her generation left now. But I felt that it would have been very frustrating to
have had to sit there imbibing tea and gossip when I wanted to be doing something
– though I was not sure what exactly I could do, even when I got inside the building. The following afternoon, with the recipe for orange curd safely in my shopping bag, I
got to my feet.
‘So sorry I have to dash. And I’d love to come to tea next week. Wednesday would be lovely. No, don’t get up. I know my way out by now.’
Still chatting, I went to the door and pulled it behind me. Mrs Fordyce’s flat was on the ground floor and I didn’t want her to see me getting into the lift to go up to the top
floor where Lee’s flat was.
The lift jerked to a stop and I pulled back the first of the lift gates. Through the bars of the second gate I could see a man standing, waiting to go down. He was short and
burly, with a red face and a thick grey moustache. He was dressed in country clothes but somehow he didn’t look like a countryman. The olive-green waxed jacket was too
clean, the tweed cap too new and the shoes not sturdy enough. He stared at me intently for a moment, and I instinctively clutched my shopping bag to me in a convulsive
gesture. The sight of this mundane object seemed to reassure him, and he smiled politely as he drew back the other gate of the lift so that I could get out. I gave a little
incoherent murmur as I stepped past him and he closed the lift doors and descended.
This encounter, for some reason, unnerved me slightly, so that I stood for a moment not knowing what to do. Then I moved towards Lee’s flat. There was, of course,
nothing to be seen, just a closed front door. I had a vague memory of people in films and television plays opening locked doors with plastic credit cards, but, apart from my
disinclination to do anything overtly illegal (what would Peter have said?), I wasn’t at all sure that I possessed the technical skill. On a sudden impulse I rang the doorbell. There
was no reply, and I suppose I would have been surprised and disconcerted if there had been. I was still standing there in something of a daze when the door opposite was
opened and an irate voice called out, ‘Now what do you want?’
I turned quickly and saw an elderly lady peering round her door suspiciously. She seemed equally surprised to see me.
‘Oh, I thought it was him again.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That man, who was here just now.’
‘Was he looking for Mrs Montgomery too?’
‘Yes, he’s been several times. Seems very put out to find she’s not here.’
‘I rather wanted to see Mrs Montgomery myself,’ I said, giving her my best WVS smile. ‘Is she away?’
The atmosphere lightened a little, and the elderly lady came out on to the landing to converse more easily.
‘Yes, I think she must be. I haven’t heard her about for quite a while.’
‘Oh.’ I said brightly, ‘what a pity, a wasted journey. I wonder how long she’ll be away? Did she cancel her milk?’
She sniffed slightly. ‘Oh, she doesn’t have any-thing delivered – no milk, no papers, nothing.’ I could tell that she found such behaviour somehow peculiar. ‘She keeps
herself very much to herself.’ I could imagine that Lee would not have bothered to take any trouble with her elderly, unimportant neighbour and would have been totally
unconcerned about the impression she made. Unlike me, who always fretted if I wasn’t on friendly terms with everyone, however peripheral to my life. I suppose it’s a form of
cowardice, really.
The elderly woman added, with the air of one who knows her civic duty, ‘I did push some letters and circulars through her letter-box a couple of days ago – well, they
were sticking out and you never know about burglars and so forth.’
‘Oh well.’ I smiled again. ‘Thank you so much...’ I turned and went towards the lift.
When I got to the ground floor I suddenly thought about Lee’s garage. They were round at the back of the flats, each one numbered. The door of Lee’s was shut, but I
put my shopping bag on the ground and crouched down as if to tie up my shoe-lace. There seemed to be no one about, so I peered in through a crack in the pull-down door.
It was difficult to see in the dark interior, but eventually I decided that the garage was empty. Wherever lee was she must, at least to begin with, have been in the green Jaguar.
It was getting dark now, and I moved away before the outside lights of the flats came on. It began to rain, a cold, bitter rain that penetrated my thin headscarf and sent me
shivering for the shelter of my car, which I had parked by the harbour wall. I sat there for a while, watching the steel-grey waves hurling themselves monotonously on the
shingle, still shivering, as much from a strange kind of numb apprehension as from the cold. Then I switched on the car lights and drove back to my warm, safe house and the
comfort of my animals.
Chapter Three
Rosemary’s drinks party was well under way when I arrived and she looked a little harassed as she greeted me.
‘Oh, Sheila – so glad you’ve come. Mother’s been looking forward to a chat so much.’
She led me over to where her mother was sitting on a sofa by the window. Mrs Dudley was the sort of elderly woman I absolutely loathe. She had been extremely goodlooking
in her youth, and in old age still seemed to care only for her appearance. She was self-centred, snobbish and difficult and made poor Rosemary’s life pretty hellish at
times. Today she was wearing an obviously expensive beige and cream knitted suit
– cashmere, at a guess. Her make-up was considerably more skilful than mine and her hair was elaborately arranged. She indicated regally that I should join her on the
sofa.
‘Dear Sheila, so nice to see you.’ Her voice was breathy and gushing, too young for her age. She often said effusively how much she admired me for devoting myself to
an invalid husband (as if I had ever thought of Peter like that!) and – with a side-ways glance at Rosemary – for being such a support to my mother, who had been widowed at
an even earlier age than I had been. This always reduced me to a state of incoherent fury, and I longed to say, ‘If they had been anything like you, you horrible old bat, I’d have
been off like a shot!’
We chatted for some time – or, rather, Mrs Dudley held forth and I murmured sympathetically. She was complaining about These Young People and how casual and
slovenly they were in their ways, how unlike her day when people cared about how they looked and how they behaved. She gesticulated with her hands, and the light caught
the diamonds on her plump fingers, the nails painted bright coral pink, but with the tips and half-moons left white in the fashion of the 1930s.
‘All this nonsense about Jilly and this young man-a policeman!’ She spoke with distaste, and I remembered how Rosemary had never been allowed to make friends with
anyone her mother had thought ‘unsuitable’. There had been no one more suitable than I – the daughter of a clergyman, whose mother had ‘private means’ – so that for many
years I was Rosemary’s only friend.
‘And why’ – her voice became rather shrill – ‘they cannot get married decently like anyone else I cannot imagine. They seem to have no sense of shame...’ The oldfashioned
phrase rattled round my mind and irritated me, so that, although I agreed with her in some ways, I found myself making excuses for them – these uncertain times,
economic problems, income tax, even…
‘That’s nonsense and you know it,’ she declared roundly. ‘Right is right and wrong is wrong. You would never have done such a thing.’
‘I don’t know.’ I found myself saying, ‘nobody ever asked me to.’
She gazed at me in alarm, as if I had suddenly turned into a stranger, and, indeed, the remark was out of character – or, at least, the character I had always presented to
her.
‘Sheila!’ Jilly was standing behind me and had obviously heard my last remark. She gave me a grateful smile and said, ‘Do come and say hello to Roger. I’m longing for
you to meet him!’
I slipped back into my role of deferential younger person, telling Mrs Dudley how nice it had been to see her and that I’d have another word before I left, and rapidly
followed Jilly across the room.
I could see immediately what had attracted Jilly to Roger in the first place. He was splendidly tall. Jilly, poor girl, was at least five foot ten and had often complained to me
that all the really nice men were half her size! Roger was well over six foot and decidedly good-looking in a fair, open-air sort of way, which was definitely a bonus. I smiled at
him approvingly, for I liked Jilly. She was a cheerful, easy-going girl, who treated me as a contemporary and not a sort of spinster aunt. It is always flattering, as we get older,
to find the children of our friends apparently liking us for ourselves and not just as appendages of their parents.
‘Roger, this is Sheila. I know you’ll both get on. Roger likes books too.’
With this daunting remark she darted away with a plate of canapés.
Roger laughed. ‘After that, what can I say?’
‘What sort of books?’ I asked curiously. ‘Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Maigret? What do policemen read?’
‘Well, this policeman reads Trollope and George Eliot,’ he said. ‘And Charlotte M. Yonge. I was very interested in your article on the medical background in The Daisy
Chain, in the Review of Literature: He smiled at my evident surprise. ‘If you think about it, the Victorian novel is the perfect antidote to twentieth-century violence.’
We embarked upon one of those eager conversations that enthusiasts for a comparatively unknown author find so absorbing, interrupting each other to praise our own
favourite characters and incidents. We were chatting so easily and so comfortably that I found myself saying, ‘Roger, how do the police trace missing people?’
He looked at me sharply and was suddenly a policeman again.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Have you lost someone.’
I gave a little laugh. ‘Goodness, no,’ I said. ‘It’s just that in plays and novels – I often wonder, when it happens there, why the heroine – it usually is the heroine – never
goes to the police, when presumably they could clear the whole thing up, just like that, and do her out of all her adventures!’
He smiled, but his grey eyes were serious. No fool, Jilly’s young man.
‘Well, actually, apart from the obvious things, like checking hospitals and circulating descriptions, there’s not much we can do. Computers make it easier to cover a wide
area, of course. But I think you’ll find that a very large proportion of people who disappear do so because they want to. They don’t want to be found.’
‘I suppose so – poor henpecked husbands going off for a bit of peace, bullied wives. Yes, I can see that.’
‘There are kidnappings, of course, but, honestly, we don’t get many of those. And a few people disappear in connection with certain crimes – fraud and so forth. In
certain financial situations a strategic withdrawal for a time is sometimes necessary.’
He spoke in a dry, almost academic tone, as though about to embark on a lecture, when we were interrupted again. Mrs Dudley had come up behind us and was about
to impose her personality upon this unsuitable young man.
‘Now, Roger, I want to hear all about being a policeman.’ She made it sound as if he wore size twelve boots and a helmet. ‘What made you become one? Was your
father in the police force?’
She led him away and Jilly giggled beside me. ‘If she thinks she’s going to patronise Roger she’s got another think coming! He’ll give her a very brisk lecture about CID
work and then casually let her know that his father was a bishop – I must go and listen!’
On that agreeable note I left the party and drove home in a thoughtful mood. What Roger had said was obviously true. In the light of what Carol had told me, as well as
Lee’s own remarks about the ‘sticky situation’ that she needed Charles’s help with, it might well have been necessary for her to go away somewhere. But where? And why for
so long? And if she needed Charles’s help, why hadn’t she told him all about it, or at least made some sort of excuse for her absence? She must have known that he would
worry if she simply disappeared.
I put the car away and started to make myself a snack lunch
– all I needed after the nuts and olives and cheese straws. As I chopped up mushrooms and tomatoes to fry up with some cold mashed potato, my mind was squirrelling
round as I tried for the umpteenth time to find some logical explanation of the affair. What did I actually know? Lee had been in the office on Monday 2 January, when she’d
had the mysterious phone call that Carol had overheard. She had said she was going away the next day, presumably to meet Jay, whoever he was, at Wringcliff Bay, and she
hadn’t been seen since. It was to be a secret meeting of some sort because she hadn’t wanted Carol to know about it. Presumably that phone call was the one she had been
expecting ever since she had got back from America. ‘Nervy’, Carol had said, so it must have been important to her as well as secret. Was it something to do with the dubious
business dealings, or was it more personal, something to do with her forthcoming marriage to Charles, a marriage that was, one would have though, going to solve all her
problem?
Wringcliff Bay. Why should she meet anyone there? It was an isolated spot, especially in the depths of winter, so obviously there was some good reason why she didn’t
want to be seen with Jay.
A peremptory bark brought me back to the present and I went to the back door to let Tris in, and then got on with my lunch. I tried to put the problem to one side, but
like those twinges of rheumatism that I get nowadays, it remained with me, just below the level of my consciousness, slight but persistent, all day.
Charles phoned again that evening, though at a more civilised hour than last time.
‘Well, Sheila, what have you found out? Where is she? What’s happened?’
I hesitated. There was so little to tell, really. Nothing concrete, that is, only an accumulation of little incidents and a general feeling of puzzlement and unease, and that was
not what Charles wanted to hear. He liked facts, carefully marshalled and preferably on paper.
‘She’s not at Country Houses.’ I said cautiously, ‘and they don’t seem to know when she’ll be back. And she hasn’t been in her flat for quite a while.’
‘But where is she?’
‘My dear Charles,’ I replied with some asperity, ‘that’s what I have spent a great deal of time trying to find out, but I still can’t get any sort of lead.’
For some reason, I didn’t feel I could tell him about Jay and the phone call, partly because I felt sure he wouldn’t know who Jay was anyway, partly to protect Carol, but
mostly, quite irrationally, I felt I must protect Lee herself, who obviously didn’t want Charles to know anything about it. This was ridiculous, since Charles was an old and dear
friend and I didn’t even like Lee, but there was a sort of instinct, a freemasonry of women, perhaps, that made me keep silent.
‘Charles.’ I said suddenly, ‘was Lee in any sort of financial trouble?’
He hesitated for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose I can tell you. There was a sort of cash-flow problem.’ Lee’s word had been ‘static’. ‘As a matter of fact, I lent her some
money. Not a vast amount, about fifty thousand dollars.’
That certainly seemed a vast amount of money to me, though it was dollars rather than pounds, and to someone like Charles who was used to dealing in multi-national
millions I suppose it wasn’t a lot. Still – I remembered Roger’s phrase about ‘a strategic withdrawal’ sometimes being necessary in fraud cases.
‘Well, I suppose it wasn’t a loan exactly,’ Charles said. ‘After all, I’m going to be her partner in the firm, so I suppose you might call it an investment.’
There was just a hint of defiance in his voice, a slight defensiveness in case I should think that he was just another gullible man who had been taken in by an attractive
woman, in spite of his business acumen and sophisticated life-style. Was this, then, the simple explanation? I wondered. Just take the money and run? But that would be very
short-sighted. Charles was a rich man, and there was a great deal more money where that first instalment had come from. Lee was no fool, and when we had talked together
she had certainly seemed determined to marry Charles.
‘Oh, well, yes, I do see that,’ I said hastily. ‘Any-way, I really can’t tell you any more. I’ll keep my eyes open and ask around. I’m sorry, Charles, I know this must be
dreadfully worrying and frustrating for you, being so far away.’
‘I wish to God I could get over myself,’ he said, ‘but I have to be in Rio next week to negotiate this concession – my job depends on it...’
I wondered, if I were in Charles’s position, whether I’d have dropped everything and simply come back to Taviscombe. I expect I would, but then I am not a man, and a
business man at that, and if Charles lost his job Lee wouldn’t want to marry him anyway.
Charles’s voice broke in on my profitless speculations.
‘Please do what you can, Sheila. It means an awful lot to me and you are the only person I can trust to make enquiries
– the others wouldn’t understand. But you have always been so splendid...’
I assured Charles that I would continue to do what I could to find Lee and put the receiver down with the word ‘splendid’ still echoing in my ears.
What on earth was I doing, I asked myself resent-fully, expending all this time and energy on some-thing that, ultimately, didn’t concern me? Because I am ‘splendid’ and
can be relied on to do things for other people? Lee meant nothing to me, and although Charles is an old friend and I am fond of him – was more than fond in my early youth –
why should I allow this to become almost an obsession?
‘Because you are a fool!’ I said out loud. Tris, who was sleeping at my feet, raised his head and looked at me in surprise. But I knew, really, the main reason I was trying
to help Charles solve his mystery. All my life I have loved ‘finding out’ about people and speculating about their lives, so that sometimes it seems that I live vicariously other
people’s lives more intensely than my own. From a very early age I have always invented stories about people I have known only by sight, who have caught my attention in
some way. And sometimes I have ‘investigate.’ them – in my youth even shadowing them in the street, like a private detective in fiction – finding out about them obliquely from
other sources, looking them up in directories or registers. It began as a sort of game, but over the years it has become part of the fabric of my life, adding a kind of richness. If I
were a novelist or an anthropologist I could have called it collecting copy or doing fieldwork, but since I am neither I suppose other people would regard it as an unnatural
curiosity. Peter had always been amused at my ‘sagas’, as we used to call them, and as he gradually became more inactive and housebound he too used to join in my
speculations, bringing his legal mind to bear on logical explanations for unusual behaviour in our various subjects. It was a source of harmless amusement to us in those later
days of his illness. Since his death I hadn’t had the heart to embark on another saga, and Lee’s disappearance was, I suppose, a sort of substitute, an extension of our
fantasies.
The next day brought no answer to the problem, but I briskly told myself that something would turn up and that in a small town like Taviscombe someone would have
noticed something. Mother used to say with a kind of wry resignation that whatever you do in a small seaside town, and even more so in the countryside around, there will
always be someone watching! This is a fact that people from the towns, crowded and anonymous, never seem to understand.
I enjoy supermarket shopping in the winter. Ours is a vast and cathedral-like store, designed really, I suppose, for the jostling crowds of summer visitors with trolleys
crammed with hamburgers, crisps and cans of lager for their self-catering holidays, and their attendant children, alternately grizzling for chocolate or playing noisy games of tag
around the frozen-food cabinets. Out of season there is a feeling of space and quiet, so that one can stand motionless in unseeing contemplation of rows of tinned fruit, one’s
thoughts miles away. It is all very restful.
I had come to rest in just such a fashion when a voice behind me exclaimed, ‘Sheila! What luck seeing you here. I was going to ring you.’ It was Anthea, unexpectedly
sun-tanned and very chatty. ‘Ronnie and I have been in Malta for ten days and we’re longing to tell somebody all about it. We wondered if you’d like to come to dinner next
week – Ronnie’s cousin from Inverness is staying and I know he’d love to see you again.’
I couldn’t help smiling to myself. Now that I was a widow Anthea felt it necessary to provide a spare man when she invited me to dinner, not perhaps with a view to
matchmaking, but more from a need to ‘make up the numbers’ in an old-fashioned way. I remembered Ronnie’s cousin from Inverness from other such occasions – a dim little
man, interested only in bridge and golf and obviously contemptuous of me when I disclaimed knowledge of either of these pastimes.
‘How splendid.’ I said insincerely, ‘I’d love to come.’
Apparently inspired by this, Anthea pulled a can of lychees from the shelf and put it in her trolley.
‘Oh yes,’ she said suddenly. ‘I knew there was something. Poor old Charles had better look out!’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked sharply.
‘Well, that Lee woman. We saw her with another man, miles from anywhere. They seemed very involved, he had his hand on her arm’
‘Where was this and when?’
‘Oh, just before we went away, the first week in January – yes that’s right, it was the Tuesday. We were on our way to have lunch with my sister – you remember Helen,
she lives in Barnstaple, her eldest daughter’s a physiotherapist. Tuesdays are the best day for her. Anyway, since it’s winter and all those dreadful tourists have gone, we
thought we’d go along that little coast road. Well, I mean, you can’t do that in the summer
– the road’s so narrow you have to keep backing all the time, what with all the cars trying to get through to Ilfracombe. As Ronnie says, there really ought to be a
signpost saying that it’s not a through road. It’s downright dangerous with that sheer drop to the sea on one side, and most of the visitors haven’t the least idea of backing a car
– well, I suppose they never have to in the town – they try to squeeze past in the most impossible places. Honestly, it makes my blood run cold, and Ronnie’s language—’
‘But what about Lee?’
‘Lee? Oh yes, well, as I was saying, we were driving along that coast road and you know the bit just beyond the Valley of Rocks, it’s all wooded and there’s an open bit
where you can get on to the cliffs – it’s a glorious view, with the sea miles below and all those rocks and that little bay, what’s it called? Anyway, that Jaguar of hers was
parked in the passing place there, and a Land Rover, and there was Lee and this man walking along the cliff-top, and just as we passed he put his hand on her arm, like I said.
I wanted to stop but Ronnie wouldn’t – men are so stuffy about that sort of thing – so I couldn’t see any more.’ she finished regretfully.
‘How did she look?’ I asked.
‘Look? Well, I don’t know the woman all that well. Actually though, now I come to think of it, she did look a bit agitated. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? I mean,
carrying on like that when she’s supposed to be practically engaged to Charles, and a car coming by – you wouldn’t expect any traffic along that road at this time of the year.
Not that she could have seen who was in it, but for all she knew it might have been someone who would tell Charles what she was up to, and then where would all her
scheming to catch him get her!’
‘How do you mean, agitated?’
‘Well, she shook off his arm quite violently. But then, if you lead a man on you should know what to expect. She’s no innocent girl!’
Anthea’s voice took on a shrill note and I found myself perversely disliking her for her dislike of Lee.
1 felt I needed time and solitude to take in what Anthea had told me, so I simply said, ‘Goodness, how extraordinary!' and turned my shopping trolley as if to move away.
‘You’re more in touch with Charles than the rest of us,’ Anthea said. ‘I do think you ought to tell him about it. I told Ronnie someone should but he said it was none of
our business, but I think Charles should know what’s going on behind his back.’
I made some noncommittal sound.
‘Anyway,’ Anthea reverted to her original theme, ‘do come to dinner. Next Friday, about seven for seven thirty.’
‘Thank you, I’ll look forward to it.’
Thankfully, I moved across to the checkout, although I had by no means finished my shopping, but I had to get away from Anthea’s chatter and try to sort things out in
my own mind.
I walked down the Avenue, past the shops that in the summer sold gifts and cheap clothing, now shuttered and empty. A few of the windows had lettering scrawled
across them: ‘GREAT CLOSING DOWN SALE’, ‘FINAL REDUCTIONS’. There was something sad, even pathetic, about them, on a grey afternoon when the light was
beginning to fade and the world seemed at a very low ebb. I was overcome by a feeling of melancholy, a sort of dragging down of the spirits, and I walked slowly towards the
sea-wall. In times of sadness or stress, or even of bewilderment, I always go down and look at the sea. I rested my shopping bag on the wall and looked at the waves
creaming across the sand and breaking on the shingle and at the sea-birds dipping and delving at the water’s edge. The lights were coming on on the far side of Taviscombe
Bay, and across the Bristol Channel there were smudges of light that were Port Talbot and Margam in Wales.
So Jay was a man and Lee had met him as she had arranged. But what sort of meeting had it been? Anthea’s description of Lee violently shaking off his arm made me
wonder if there had been some sort of struggle. I remembered that stretch of coast very well. We used to go to Wringcliff Bay for picnics when I was a child and my father was
still alive. It was a beautiful little bay, quite secluded, and summer visitors never seemed to find it. I suppose the path down was too steep and overhung with brambles and wild
clematis for them to take the trouble.
One summer, when I was about seven, we had made our way happily down to the beach and I was wandering along the shore looking for shells while my parents were
unpacking the picnic basket. I rounded a rock and suddenly came upon the body of a goat. The wild goats who lived along that part of the coast were famous, and I loved to
watch them delicately picking their way along the rocky cliff-face. It appeared from the stones lying around the body that part of the cliff had given way, and the goat had fallen
on to the rocks below. I had never seen death before but I knew immediately that the creature was dead. In the one look that I had taken before I turned, shuddering, away, I
had seen that its creamy fawn coat was matted with blood and that the scavenging birds had already begun their work.
I went back to my parents but I didn’t tell them what I had seen. Somehow it seemed too private and personal a grief to share with anyone. I ate very little of our picnic
tea, and as we climbed up the cliff-path I looked down and was just able to make out the pathetic little body lying on the sand. Looking across Taviscombe sands with the gulls
crying, as they had done on that day long ago, the picture came back to me, but this time it was Lee’s body that I saw, with the birds wheeling above it.
Chapter Four
I awoke early next morning, and somehow it seemed best to get up and do prosaic jobs about the house to distract my mind from a growing sense of unease. I
deliberately chose my least favourite tasks – scrubbing out the kitchen bin and putting in a new plastic bag, scraping the burnt bits from underneath the grill in the cooker, and,
finally, in a burst of energy, cleaning the stairs with that infuriating vacuum attachment that winds itself round your legs like an insidious python. But all the time I was working I
couldn’t get out of my head the picture of Lee struggling with a man on the edge of the path leading down to Wringcliff Bay.
I switched off the vacuum, and Tris and Foss, who both hate it, materialised and demanded food. As I was opening tins, I made a sudden decision. I would rid my mind
of all my silly fancies by driving over to Wringcliff Bay and assuring myself that of course there was no body lying on the beach. It was a nice bright morning, and not as cold as
it had been for the last few weeks, so it would be a pleasant little outing.
As I drove along the lanes I saw a figure on a horse, and as I approached I realised that it was Marjorie Fraser. She always looked unexpectedly elegant in her neatly tied
stock, navy jacket, cream breeches and beautiful leather boots. From the formality of her attire I gathered that she was going hunting – she had been complaining the other day
that the ground had been too hard to get out since the New Year. I slowed down and drove very slowly and cautiously round her, since her horse was backing and sidling in
what one writer has called ‘the divinely silly way’ of horses. I waved as I passed, and she touched the peak of her cap with her riding crop and smiled at me. She really was
quite a different person when she was on a horse, relaxed, cheerful and friendly, and I pondered, not for the first time, on the strange complexity of all human beings.
As I came up to the top of Porlock Hill I saw that the hunt was already assembling. Since I was born and brought up in hunting country I know all the arguments, for and
against, but, being a fool about animals, I must say that I can’t bear to think of any animal being hunted, for whatever reason. And yet ... Whenever I actually see the hunt, as I
did that morning, I can’t resist stopping to have a look and to admire the picture they make – the beauty of the horses, the elegance of the riders and the fascination of the
questing hounds. And if I catch a glimpse of them in full flight, strung out across the bracken-covered hillside, then I get an irrational thrill and a sort of aesthetic pleasure.
As I drove along the main coast road towards Lynton I came to the turning Lee had taken on that last morning I had seen her, the turning to Plover’s Barrow. On an
impulse, I turned left along it and made my way through the narrow lanes until I came to the entrance to the drive. Feeling rather foolish, and wondering what I would do if
anyone appeared and challenged my right to be there, I drove on towards the house. I caught a glimpse of the chimneys through the bare branches of the trees, and then
something that made me catch my breath sharply. Parked in front of the house was Lee’s green Jaguar.
I drove up behind it and sat for a moment, wondering what to do. I didn’t, somehow, feel capable of consecutive thought, and acted simply on instinct. I got out of the
car, went over to the front door and rang the bell. I stood for several minutes and then rang again, but there was no reply. So I went round the side of the house, as I had done
with Lee, past the stables, and knocked on the kitchen door. Again there was silence. As I stood there, irresolute, there was a strange snuffling, scuffling sound and I swung
round quickly. Just beyond the back hedge was the open moor, and a group of wild ponies, made bold by the winter cold, had gathered by the back gate and were pressing
near, hoping that someone was bringing them hay or other food, as people did in the really hard weather.
This little incident made me pull myself together and think what I should do. Boldly, I tried the back door, but it was locked, so I moved along and looked through the
large, uncurtained kitchen window. For a moment I didn’t take in the reality of what I saw. Lying on the floor was a woman, face down, with a large kitchen knife sticking out
of her back. As I had done with the body of the goat all those years ago, I looked quickly away, but I was no longer seven years old: I was not a child, I had to look again, to
take in the full, unspeakable details of what I had seen so fleetingly.
I forced myself to look through the window. It was Lee, as I had known in my heart that it would be. She was lying stretched out on the floor, her face hidden, but the ash
blonde hair was unmistakable, and on her outflung arm was the heavy gold charm bracelet that Rosemary and I had commented on rather cattily after the first time we had met
her. The straight skirt of her dark grey suit had hitched up as she fell, and one high-heeled shoe had fallen off and lay on its side beside her. I forced myself to look at the knife
that had been driven into her back. It was an old-fashioned, bone-handled carving knife, of the kind that people used to use for poultry – I have one myself, that belonged to
my grandmother.
I felt deathly cold and found that I was shivering uncontrollably. I couldn’t move, my legs simply wouldn’t work. ‘Oh God,’ I found myself whispering, ‘Oh God.’ I
clenched my hands, driving the nails into my palms, to bring some life, some sort of feeling, back into my body. I must have stood there for several minutes – it felt like hours;
time was suspended, as, I felt, were all natural laws. Eventually my brain accepted the evidence of my eyes and told me that Lee had been murdered.
I should, I suppose, have got into the house some-how, broken a window, or something, to make sure that Lee was indeed dead and that there was nothing I could do to
help her, but I am ashamed to say that I couldn’t bring myself even to look through the window again. A violent sense of physical revulsion gripped me, and I turned away. I
went back and sat in my car. It didn’t occur to me that Lee’s murderer might still be around – I knew, even from that relatively brief inspection, that her body had been lying
there for some time, alone in that cold dank house. I drew in a harsh, shuddering breath at the thought.
I switched on the car engine and turned the heater fan full on and, gradually, as the merciful warmth brought me back to life again, I tried to pull myself together. I
remembered that there was a telephone box on the main coast road just before the turning off to Plover’s Barrow. I turned the car clumsily, almost scraping the side of the
Jaguar as I did so, and drove back the way I had come. The phone box was silhouetted against the sky at the top of a steep incline. It looked like the last phone box in the
world.
I got through to the Taviscombe police and was surprised to hear my own voice explaining clearly, carefully and unemotionally what had happened, giving them my name
and describing the exact location of Plover’s Barrow, while all the time my senses were in turmoil and I honestly didn’t really know where I was or what I was doing. The
police sergeant asked me to go back to the house and wait for them – he hoped they wouldn’t be more than half an hour
– if I didn’t mind. I agreed mechanically and rang off.
Now that I had actually done something, made an effort, I felt calmer as I got back into the car. I drove very slowly back to the house, spinning out the time so that I
wouldn’t have so long to wait there alone. I parked in the drive, a little way back from the Jaguar, and waited. After a while I put on the radio, but it was one of those
consumer affairs programmes and I felt that the problem of non-functioning washing machines was trivial and irrelevant in the present situation. It was cold sitting there, and I
got out of the car to walk about a bit to get my circulation going. I approached the Jaguar and tried the door handle. It was locked – Lee was obviously taking no chances with
her precious car, even out here. I looked through the window. On the back seat there was a briefcase, half open, with what looked like property descriptions spilling out of it.
There was also a cream leather dressing case and the fawn suede jacket that Lee had been wearing the first time I had seen her.
I turned away to go back to my own car, but my hands were cold, even with my gloves on, and my car keys slipped through my fingers. As I bent down to pick them up,
I noticed the tyre tracks – there was only one set. As I mentioned before, we had had quite a lot of frost in these first weeks of January. On New Year’s Day it had poured
with rain the whole day – I remember that everyone said what a dismal start to the New Year it was – and the following couple of days had been unseasonably mild. But after
that, there had been a continuous heavy frost, until now, really. The ground was still too hard for my tyres to have made any impression, so Lee must have come here on the
3rd or the 4th. And she must have come alone, or brought her murderer with her. Suddenly I fully realised that Lee was not just dead, but that she had been murdered.
Someone had actually killed her, had driven that kitchen knife into her body, through the resisting flesh. someone had hated her that much. All my new-found calm disappeared,
and I was shaking again, frightened now as well as distressed. I got back into my car and locked all the doors – a futile gesture, I suppose – and sat there with my eyes shut
and my hands tightly clasped together, hunched over the steering wheel, waiting for the police to arrive.
I heard several cars driving up and opened my eyes. There was a white police car and a dark red Sierra. The door of this opened and two men in plain clothes got out.
One of them was Roger. I wrenched open the door of my car and ran towards him, calling his name. He caught me by the arm and led me gently to his car and sat me down in
the passenger seat.
‘It’s all right, Sheila,’ he said, ‘we’re here now. It’s a horrible thing to have happened.’
I said incoherently, ‘I didn’t go in – I couldn’t. I should have seen if I could do anything, but—’
‘You did absolutely the right thing. Much better to leave things exactly as they were.’
‘But she might have been alive. I feel so dreadful about it...’ My voice was rising and I was sobbing. He said soothingly, ‘It’s all right, hang on.’
He leaned over and reached into the back of the car. ‘Here we are then, I’m sure Sergeant Coleford won’t mind if we borrow some of his coffee.’ He unscrewed the cup
of the vacuum flask and poured some out. ‘Now then, try some of this.’ The coffee was very milky, and so hot that it burned the roof of my mouth, but I drank it gratefully and
felt the wave of hysteria that had threatened me receding.
‘Oh, thank you, that’s better – I’m sorry I was so stupid.’
‘Not stupid at all – perfectly natural. Now, you stay here and have a spot more coffee and I’ll come back as soon as I can.’
He got out of the car and joined the others and they went round the back of the house.
I sat there quite calmly. I felt better now, as much from the sudden burst of sobbing as from the hot coffee. Catharsis, I thought, and then despised myself for having such
a literary thought on such an occasion. I allowed my mind to go blank, and sat there, my hands clasped round the warm cup, staring at the activity before me.
After a while Roger returned.
‘Feel better now?’ he asked.
‘Yes, indeed I do,’ I replied. ‘Thank you so much.’
He got back into the car, and I suddenly realised something.
‘Roger, why are you here? I mean, it’s marvellous that it should be you, but why?’
‘Pure coincidence. I was at the Taviscombe station when your call came through, and when I heard your name and that you had found the body, I asked Inspector Dean
if I could come along. I knew what a shock it must have been. People don’t realise – finding someone like that – it’s very traumatic.’
‘I’m very grateful. It was such a shock – though I suppose I might have guessed...’
Roger looked at me keenly. ‘Was she the one who had disappeared?’
I nodded.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘You can always tell – you suddenly became very vague! I think you had better tell me all about it, don’t you?’
So I told him about Charles’s phone call and how strange it had seemed, and how no one had seen Lee since the beginning of January. I didn’t tell him about Jay though,
or about the shady business dealings, because I thought I must let Carol tell him about that herself.
‘There really was so little to go on,’ I said, not quite honestly.
‘Well, there seems to have been enough for you to have come here. Why did you do that?’
I gave a nervous laugh. ‘A sort of instinct, I suppose. I know it sounds silly. But, well, I was driving in this direction and I remembered the turning. I came here with Lee
just before Christmas to pick up the keys from the caretaker – she was hoping to do a good deal on the property.’
As I spoke I felt that my explanation sounded rather thin, but Roger appeared to accept it as perfectly reasonable.
‘Had she any relation?.’
‘I don’t think so. I suppose there is a Mr Montgomery – she’s divorced, I believe. I just know what Charles told me – I only met her a couple of times.’
‘Yes, of course. Well, Inspector Dean will be dealing with all that.’
‘Yes. Roger – I imagine you’ve noticed – but you see there’s only one set of tyre marks...’
He smiled. ‘Very Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I had noticed. Until the pathology people have had a go and we’ve established exactly when she died, we can’t get a proper
picture.’
I felt slightly dishonest, not giving him all the information I had, but the police would find it all out soon enough – I could leave it to them now.
Roger was looking at me earnestly. ‘Now, are you going to be all right to drive yourself? I could take you back and get someone else to collect your car...’
‘Oh, goodness, no. I’m perfectly all right now. It was just the shock – you know.’
He looked slightly relieved, and I realised that although he was not officially involved in the case he wanted to look around for himself.
‘Inspector Dean will want a statement, of course, this afternoon or tomorrow.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll have pulled myself together by then and should be a bit more coherent! I sup-pose I’ll have to telephone Charles – I’m not looking forward to that! Is
it all right if I tell Rosemary?’
‘Yes, certainly. I suppose she might know a bit more about Lee Montgomery.’
‘I shouldn’t think so – I don’t think she knew her any more than I did.’ I had a sudden thought. ‘I tell you what, though, I bet old Mrs Dudley – you know, Jilly’s
grandmother – knows something. She knows absolutely everything about everybody in Taviscombe – preferably something to their discredit!’
Roger grinned. ‘I can well believe it!’ he said. ‘Right, then, off you go. Have a good stiff drink when you get back and a long chat with Rosemary – very therapeutic –
shake off the horrors!’
He saw me into my car and waved cheerfully as I drove off. As I went along the drive I looked in my rear mirror and saw him heading purposefully for the house. It
wouldn’t surprise me, I thought, if he somehow got himself attached to this investigation. I hoped he would, because I had a high opinion of his competence and I wanted this
horrible mess to be sorted out as soon as possible.
The bright winter sun had vanished, and as I drove back swirls of mist and low cloud hid the moor on either side of the road. It was dank and clammy and deeply
depressing. Even with the car heater on I felt cold, right down into my bones. Somehow I didn’t feel ready to go back home. I wasn’t ready yet to explain what had happened
or face Rosemary’s excited questioning.
I drove into the deserted picnic area at the top of Porlock Common and turned off the engine. Every-thing was quiet and still. The silence felt almost as tangible as the
mist around me. The trees and brown grass were sodden with moisture, everything looked totally dead. Not far away I heard a faint sound. It was the thin note of a horn. The
huntsman was blowing ‘Gone Away’.
I was just considering the dreadful irony of this when I heard a crashing and clattering around me and several horsemen trotted by. I was aware of someone on a horse
stopping near my car. I wound down the window and saw to my dismay that it was Marjorie Fraser. She dismounted and led her horse towards me. It was uncertain of the car
and kept shying away.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘I thought that was your car and I wondered if you’d broken down or something.’
My first, totally unworthy thought was that I wished she would mind her own business and leave me alone. The last thing I wanted at this moment was Marjorie Fraser
being helpful and organising.
‘No, I’m quite all right, it’s not that.’ I had no intention of telling her what had happened, but I found myself blurting out, ‘The fact is – I’ve just found Lee Montgomery’s
body – she’s been murdered!’
Marjorie’s horse suddenly plunged and reared and she had to give all her attention to holding him. When he was quiet she tied him to a fence and came over to me. She
put her face in through the open window of the car and looked incredulously at me.
What did you say you had found?’
‘Lee Montgomery – do you know her? She was going to marry our friend, Charles Richardson...’
‘Yes, I’ve met her a couple of times.’ Marjorie’s face was grim, the corners of her mouth turned down – I couldn’t imagine that she and Lee would have been much in
sympathy with each other. ‘Her body did you say?’
She seemed to imply that I was having some sort of delusion. ‘Yes, at a place called Plover’s Barrow – up and over the hill. She’d been stabbed.’
‘What on earth were you doing there?’ There was a familiar hectoring note in her voice – the sort of voice that made your hackles rise, Rosemary said – that she used
when she was ‘determined to get to the bottom of all this’ at committee meetings.
I had just decided resentfully (a state of mind she usually reduced me to) that I really wasn’t going to allow myself to be cross-examined by Marjorie Fraser, when
another rider called out to her and she went over to speak to him. When she came back I had switched on the engine and simply said, ‘I have to get back now – I’ll tell you all
about it later,’ and made my escape.
The irritability that that little encounter induced did me good, and I felt much more normal as I drove home. I went into the house, and it seemed incredible that everything
should be just as I had left it that morning. Tris rushed to greet me, leaping up as high as his short legs would let him. Foss strolled negligently downstairs, yawning after a long
sleep all morning under the duvet on my bed. I patted Tris and rolled him over on to his back, and he barked delightedly. I snatched Foss up to me and held him against my
face. He purred loudly and then, impatient, struggled and wailed to be put down.
‘Come on, you two,’ I said. ‘Let’s open a tin.’
Chapter Five
I had a call from the police station early the following morning asking me to go and make a statement at twelve o’clock. It was my day for the hospital run and I had to
take old Mrs Aston in for her physiotherapy at ten o’clock, so I had plenty of time. As I helped her out of the car and balanced her on her walking frame, she said, in her usual
plaintive way, ‘Will you be able to stay and take me back? You never know how long it’s going to be. They say half an hour, but it could be any time and it’s ever so cold in
that passage...’
Swallowing my irritation, I assured Mrs Aston that of course I would call and take her back home, as I always did, and she tottered off into the Out Patients department.
The back of the hospital was almost opposite Country Houses, and as I looked across the road I saw a police car driving away. A light was on so I thought I would just
pop in and see how Carol had got on with the police. She looked startled and frightened as the door opened, but when she saw that it was me a look of relief flooded over her
face.
‘Oh, Mrs Malory, I’m so glad to see you. I was going to ring you!’
‘They’ve told you the dreadful news then, Carol? About poor Mrs Montgomery?’
‘I really can’t believe it – well, you never think, do you, that something like that can happen to someone you know! And to think that she was lying there like that all this
time ... it’s really awful.’ She looked at me in great distress. ‘It must have been terrible for you, finding her like that. When they told me it was you I thought, poor Mrs Malory,
what a terrible thing, finding someone like that!’ She seemed more upset at the idea of my finding the body than that Lee was dead.
‘It was a terrible shock.’ I said, ‘but the police were very kind and helpful. I suppose they wanted to know when Mrs Montgomery was last in the office.’
Carol fidgeted with some papers. ‘Yes, well, I didn’t tell them much – just that she hadn’t been in since January the second. And they looked at the appointment book
and saw the entry for January the fourth. That’s all really.’
‘But didn’t you tell them about the phone conversation, about Jay?’
She looked defiant. ‘I’m not going to get mixed up in all this,’ she said. ‘You know what the police are like.’
‘Oh Carol, really, you must give them all the help you can. You want them to find out who did this terrible thing, don’t you? And what about those property dealings that
you thought were a bit dodgy – you must tell them about that.’
‘No fear! They’d only think I had something to do with it, and if she’s not here any more they’ll want someone to blame. They’ll fit you up as soon as look at you, that’s
what Derek always said!’
I tried to reason with her, but it is difficult to persuade a person who has lived with someone on the wrong side of the law, as she had done when she was married to
Derek, to trust the police.
‘Honestly, Mrs Malory, I just can’t.’ She looked round nervously, though we were obviously quite alone. ‘Look, I’ll tell you but you must promise not to let them know I
told you.’
I felt very uneasy about this compromise and wished passionately that Peter was here to advise me. But Carol was adamant and I supposed this was better than nothing.
‘Well, all right then, Carol. Tell me what you know.’
‘It was that Mr Bradford—’
‘Councillor Bradford?’
‘Yes, that’s him. I heard bits of phone conversations and heard them talking sometimes. She didn’t know I was listening half the time, or when she did she probably
thought I was too stupid to put two and two together.’ Carol had certainly disliked Lee, I thought. And Lee had seriously under-rated Carol.
‘What was it all about?’
‘I’m not really sure, but it seemed to me that Mrs Montgomery was buying property for him, but not in his own name. That’s illegal, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is. Whereabouts was this property?’
‘All in the same area – just outside Taunton. There was an old garage that had been closed down for quite a bit – very run-down – and some cottages and a small farm
and a bit of land. I don’t know if that was all. As I say, I had to piece it all together. And, he never came here – not after the first time. She sent me out then, to get some
stationery – just to get me out of the office. Anyway, like I say, he never came to the office again. He rang sometimes and I think he went to her flat.’
I had a sudden thought. ‘Is he a shortish man with a red face and a grey moustache?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Do you know him?’
‘I think.’ I said evasively, ‘that I must have seen his picture in the Echo.’ And, indeed, now I came to think of it, I remembered smudgy newsprint photos of a man, very
like the one I had seen coming away from Lee’s flat that day. ‘Councillor Bradford, Councillor Philip Bradford – P.B.! Do you think he was the person she was meeting on the
fourth?’
Carol seemed less excited than I was at this piece of deduction.
‘I shouldn’t think she’d have put it in her appointments book if it was him – she never put anything on paper about all that – not in the office. There’s nothing here now,
anyway. I went through all the papers while she was away.’ She looked slightly shamefaced. ‘Well, I had to protect myself. If there had been anything – well, I couldn’t afford
to get mixed up in it – not with the children and all. You understand that, Mrs Malory.’
I thought of how relatively lucky I had been, of the kindness and loving support I had had when Peter died, and there had always been enough money for Michael and for
me. Who was I to judge Carol?
‘Yes, of course I understand,’ I said gently. ‘Which reminds me. Mr Fordyce, the dentist, you know, at the end of the Avenue, is looking for a new receptionist. I saw his
wife the other day and she said that Molly, who’s with him now, is leaving – her husband’s moving to Yeovil, I think. It might be worth while giving him a ring and asking. You
can give me as a reference if you like.’
I felt a slight qualm at the thought of giving a reference to someone who was withholding information from the police, but I told myself stoutly that Mr Fordyce was hardly
likely to put Carol in the same position that Lee had done! And after all, in the long run, Carol was doing what she was doing for the sake of her children. Surely no one would
blame her for that.
Carol’s enthusiastic burst of gratitude embarrassed me, and I drew on my gloves and got up to go.
‘And you won’t let the police know anything I told you – about the phone call and the property deals?’
‘Not for now – I expect they’ll find out about them from someone else, anyway,’ I said with an air of false assurance.
I collected Mrs Aston, who was complaining that there was no coffee machine in the waiting area like there was ‘up Taunton’, and drove her back to her cottage. There
was just half an hour before I had to go to the police station so I went into the Buttery for a cup of coffee and tried to decide exactly what I was going to tell them.
I was glad to see that there was no one I knew in the Buttery, but I took my coffee (having regretfully resisted a Danish pastry) into the far corner away from the window
and sat with my back to the door, just to be on the safe side. I badly needed to get my mind clear before I saw the police. Since Carol hadn’t told them about the phone call or
about Councillor Bradford, then neither would I. My conscience was definitely uneasy at withholding information, but to tell them about it now would only get Carol into
trouble. Still, they’d be getting into Lee’s flat and perhaps there they would find papers about the property deals and even some reference to the mysterious Jay. And there
seemed no point in my telling them some-thing as vague as Anthea’s sighting of Lee and that man by the cliff-path. Anyway, if I knew Anthea she’d be off hot-foot down to the
police station with that little tit-bit as soon as she heard the news she couldn’t resist! All I needed to do, then, was to tell them about Charles and his anxiety and about my
meeting with Lee before Christmas and our visit to Plover’s Barrow. Put like that it seemed fairly straightforward. If they thought my reason for going back to Plover’s Barrow
yesterday was a bit peculiar, then I hoped that they would just put me down as a slightly neurotic, middle-aged female and not question it too much.
Inspector Dean was a small, wiry man with thinning dark hair. His manner was brisk and cheerful and he greeted me as an old acquaintance.
‘Mrs Malory, how nice to see you again. Mrs Dean and I had the pleasure of meeting you and your husband a few years ago at a Law Society Dinner. I was so sorry to
hear about your husband – it must have been a very trying time for you.’
I had a vague memory of the occasion and of meeting a jolly little woman in royal blue crepe, and I triumphantly salvaged a piece of information from my memory.
‘Your daughter was just going up to Oxford, wasn’t she, to read Chemistry at my odd college. How is she doing?’
He looked pleased and said, ‘Oh, very well. She got a very good result in her finals and they want her to stay on and do research. Her mother and I are very pleased, as
you can imagine.’
‘Isn’t that marvellous. You must be so proud. Doesn’t time fly! My son is up at Oxford now – I was so glad that Peter knew he’d got a place before he died.’
The Inspector pulled out a chair for me and offered me a cup of coffee.
‘No thank you, I had one just before I came.’
‘Right, then, I suppose we’d better get a statement from you about this nasty business.’
He called in a constable, who sat at the end of the table prepared to write. I told him as succinctly as I could about the phone call from Charles and how I had offered to
make enquiries for him and had drawn a blank, and how, after the second call, I had suddenly thought about Plover’s Barrow. ‘A sort of hunch, really’ – I used the word
deliberately, as being suitable for an investigation. I didn’t feel I could get away with ‘a woman’s intuition’, yet, in a way, that’s what it was that had made me turn left along the
road to Plover’s Barrow when what I had in my mind was Wringcliff Bay.
He questioned me closely about my encounter with Lee and our visit to the house before Christmas and I repeated, word for word, what I could remember of our
conversation.
‘So you think that Mrs Montgomery had definitely decided to marry Mr Richardson, then?’
‘Oh yes – well, she seemed determined to let me know that.’
‘And she thought that you might be hostile?’
‘Not hostile. Just a bit anxious for Charles’s happiness, if you know what I mean. I’ve known him since we were children, and all his friends – well – we wondered if she
was the right person to make him happy. But it was his life, after all...’
‘Yes, I see. But you didn’t really like her?’
‘I hardly knew her – I suppose she just wasn’t my sort of person, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I see. Well now, we’ve had a preliminary pathology report, and as far as they can judge she was killed around January the fourth – the house was cold so the body
didn’t deteriorate as it would have done in the summer.’
‘I shouldn’t think that house would ever be really warm.’ I said irrelevantly, ‘I did feel bad that I didn’t try to get in and see if she really was dead – but, honestly, it was
such a dreadful shock...’
‘Just as well you didn’t, Mrs Malory. It was best that nothing was disturbed.’
‘Did you find any clues? Can you tell me any-thing?’
‘No fingerprints on the knife, if that’s what you mean – but then everybody knows about wearing gloves nowadays – all that detective fiction.’ He gave me a brief smile.
‘But it’s early days yet and we’re still feeling our way.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Now then, Mrs Malory, perhaps you could give me some idea of what you were doing on January the fourth.’
I had become so used to the idea of myself as a detective that to be considered as a suspect startled me considerably. My astonishment must have been very apparent
because Inspector Dean said soothingly, ‘We’re just clearing the ground.’
I gave a slight laugh. ‘Of course. And I did discover the body, didn’t I. In a detective story that would make me a prime suspect.’
I fished in my handbag and found my diary.
‘Hang on – January the fourth. Michael was still on holiday, so we went into Taunton to the sales to try and get him some respectable underwear. I do believe he cleans
his bike with some of his shirts! Yes, and then after that, on our way back from Taunton, I dragged him to tea with my old aunt who lives at Bishops Lydeard. We didn’t leave
there till well after six. Just under an hour to get back – yes, I remember, I was rather cross because I’d missed my favourite soap opera! And we spent the rest of the evening
quietly at home.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Malory. That’s fine. I’ll just get the Constable here to type it out for you to sign. If there’s anything else, we’ll be in touch.’
‘Inspector-just one thing ... Did she die straight away – I mean, did she lie there suffering? I shall have to tell Charles, and it would be so much kinder if...’
‘It would seem that death was more or less instantaneous. Whoever did it knew just where to put the knife, or if he didn’t then it was a lucky guess – well, lucky for him!’
‘You say “him”?’
‘Well, a manner of speaking, really. Though the blow seems to have been struck from above, by someone taller than she was, and she was of medium height.’
‘I see. Tell me – will Roger – Inspector Norton be involved in the investigation.’
‘We will be reporting back to Taunton CID, certainly, and we use their computer facilities and so forth. Yes, I expect he’ll be in touch about it.’
‘I just asked – he was so kind and sympathetic yesterday. He is sort of a friend of a friend,’ I said confusedly.
Inspector Dean chose to ignore this explanation – as well he might – and simply said, ‘It must have been a very nasty experience for you, especially as you knew the
lady.’
‘I suppose I feel rather awful because I didn’t really care for her as a person – I’m only really sad because of poor Charles.’ A thought struck me. ‘Will you be in touch
with him in Cincinnati? I mean, I was going to ring him tonight – I couldn’t bring myself to do it last night, I’m afraid – will that be all right?’
‘Yes, indeed – you go ahead and we will be in touch when we know just what we want to ask him about all this.’
The Constable returned with my statement and I signed it, feeling slightly as if I were committing perjury. I wondered again what Peter would say – a legal document was
very sacred to him.
Inspector Dean held out his hand. ‘Goodbye Mrs Malory. Thank you very much.’ he said in a friendly but non-committal way.
As the glass doors swung to behind me, I stood on the top step and drew in a deep breath of fresh air, not only to dispel the warm stuffy air of the police station, but also
to savour an almost irresponsible feeling of freedom. I got into my car and drove sedately away.
As I got into the house the phone was ringing. It was Rosemary. I had told her briefly the night before what had happened and she had been loving and sympathetic. But I
hadn’t wanted to go over and over the ground with her and had pleaded tiredness and rung off quickly. I prepared to fend off her questions again, but it was she who wanted
to be brief.
‘Isn’t it sickening?’ she said. ‘I was longing to have a real chat with you about it all, but I’ve got this miserable virus thing that’s going round and I feel absolutely awful.
And the thing is, I promised to drive Mother to the chiropodist this afternoon. Could you be an angel? I know she could get a taxi, but you know how mean she is about things
like that. Besides, it’s getting difficult to find a taxi-driver in Taviscombe she hasn’t quarrelled with. I’m awfully sorry to have to ask you at such short notice...’
I assured Rosemary that I didn’t mind in the least and arranged to pick up Mrs Dudley at three o’clock.
‘Take care of yourself,’ I said, ‘and go straight back to bed
– Jack can perfectly well make his own supper when he comes in!’ ‘Well, he’ll have to,’ Rosemary said. ‘The thought of food is absolutely unendurable:
‘Is there anything I can get you in the way of shopping while I’m in the town?’ I asked.
‘There probably is something, but I’m not really capable of rational thought at the moment ... Oh dear, sorry, I have to dash again!’ She rang off abruptly.
I ate a quick sandwich and changed into a suit more worthy of Mrs Dudley. I drove her to the chiropodist and hung about for half an hour and then collected her and
drove her back to her large house on the outskirts of Taviscombe. She was very full of the praises of the chiropodist. He was a new man in the practice, and according to Mrs
Dudley a vast improvement on the others. I wondered how long this enthusiasm would last – it was unlikely to be long. Soon, like all the other ‘marvellous little men’ she had
discovered, he would be ‘absolutely useless’ and she would be looking around for someone new.
‘Now then.’ she said, ‘you must come in and have a cup of tea.’
I protested that I had other things I must do, but she waved them aside and I found myself in the familiar drawing room where Rosemary and I had had so many tea-times
together, desperately trying not to catch each other’s eye so that we wouldn’t giggle.
A round table was laid with a lace-edged cloth and I noticed that I was now deemed worthy of the best Royal Worcester china.
‘Oh good, Elsie’s got everything ready.’ Elsie was the downtrodden little woman who had been Mrs Dudley’s slave ever since I could remember. She must have been
well on into her seventies, but still looked much as she did when Rosemary and I were children. She came in now with the silver tea-pot and hot-water jug and exclaimed with
pleasure at seeing me again. I asked after her little dog, and her face lit up as she embarked on a rambling story about how he had learnt to open the kitchen door himself.
(‘Would you believe that Mrs Malory!’) Mrs Dudley cut her short. ‘We’re ready for the tea-cakes now, Elsie.’ And Elsie scuttled away to return in a few minutes with hot
buttered tea-cakes on the green dish with the raised design of cherries round the edge that I always used to covet.
Having tea with Mrs Dudley was like slipping back in time to another world, which would have been delightful if only one didn’t have to listen to her conversation, which
was largely malicious gossip about practically everybody in the town. I tried to concentrate on the excellent food (two sorts of jam and three kinds of home-made cake as well
as the tea-cakes
– at this rate I wouldn’t need any supper). But suddenly she had my full attention.
‘Rosemary told me about that Montgomery woman being murdered – she says that you found her. I could hardly believe it. Rubbish, I told her, a nice girl like Sheila
wouldn’t go getting herself mixed up in a dreadful thing like that!’
‘Not mixed up exactly, Mrs Dudley.’ I said. I tried to explain as factually and unsensationally as possible what had happened, and fortunately I mentioned Charles’s name
and she was immediately diverted.
‘Well, he’s well out of it. And I’d tell him so to his face. She was obviously only after his money. A very hard sort of woman
– you know what these so-called “business women” are.’ ‘Did you know her at all?’ I asked. ‘I made it my business to go and have a look at her when
she first set up that estate agent place. I went in and asked about details of houses – said I was considering something smaller, though of course I wouldn’t dream of living
anywhere but here. We came here when we were first married, you know ... Where was I? Oh yes, that Montgomery woman. Very smarmy – sly I would call it. Wouldn’t
trust her an inch. Just what I expected. Which is what I told Mrs Hertford.’
‘Mrs Hertford?’ I was now completely confused.
‘Well, yes, of course.’ The breathy voice sank to a whisper and she leaned forward confidentially. ‘The Montgomery woman was her daughter-in-law, you know.’