by Alice Castle
Beth knew she was being a little disingenuous. She had a fair idea why Seasons was here. And if she were completely honest, she’d been expecting something from him. But she’d hoped it would be a tersely-worded email, not the man himself, apparently dangerously close to having a stroke right in front of her in her office.
‘Sit down, Tom. Let me get you some water,’ she said, getting up and edging towards her conference corner. There were rather dusty glasses and one of Wyatt’s branded bottles of mineral water on the table. They’d been waiting patiently there for Beth to organise her first proper meeting. Today, it looked as though their moment had finally come.
‘No!’ said Seasons suddenly, stopping Beth in her tracks.
Both she and Janice looked at the man expectantly, but his head had flopped down. He braced his hands on the back of the chair, seeming to struggle with himself, working out what to say. At least, Beth hoped it was that and not some sort of cardiac incident still brewing. Colin stirred warily over on his blanket, though he thumped his tail when he caught Janice’s eye. She smiled at him reassuringly and he put his head on his paws again.
‘This is all very well, Tom, and it’s, um, good to see you after all this time, but I do actually have some things to be getting—’
‘Beth. Please,’ said Tom.
Her bursting into speech seemed to have been the cue he was waiting for. Typical, thought Beth. He’d always been one of those alpha males who loved the sound of his own voice and could never resist interrupting a woman. Well, she didn’t work for him anymore. Janice was her line manager, and to all intents and purposes he was supposed to be on sabbatical. She could speak if she wanted to, in her own office.
‘I’m sorry, Tom, but I’m pushed for time,’ she said more forcefully. ‘I’m not sure what this is about, but unless you’d like to talk right now, I’ll have to ask you to make an appointment and, erm, come back another time.’ Beth’s wide-open, slightly terrified eyes met Janice’s, and the other woman nodded her encouragement. This gave Beth the strength to carry on. ‘So, Tom? What’s it to be?’
At that, the man sat down heavily opposite Beth. Immediately, her desk seemed distinctly Lilliputian, an impression intensified when Seasons dropped his hefty forearms onto the wooden surface and then steepled his fingers under his chin. He eyed Beth. The hectic flush was still spread across his jowls, but he was now just this side of tomato. Nevertheless, Beth shrank away. Janice moving further into the room and taking the seat next to Seasons helped a lot. Over in the corner, Colin stirred, raised an ear, then seemed to slip back into standby mode which, to the uninitiated, looked exactly like a nap.
Beth didn’t want to keep repeating herself, but she’d had enough of this. She cleared her throat, ready for another attempt to get Seasons to explain himself or leave. Again, he seemed to sense that she was going to speak and dived in to forestall her.
‘I’ve been wondering about all this for months, Beth. Well, years now. Since you first started at Wyatt’s, in fact. Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, Beth Haldane?’ he said, dripping venom as he lingered on her surname. ‘It’s all about your father, isn’t it?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There was silence in the office. Not the comfortable sort of pause you get between old colleagues; not even the little thinking-space you might expect when someone’s asked a rather challenging question. This was the sort of humming, highly-charged silence which fell when a diver was about to jump off a high board, or a jury was waiting to deliver its verdict.
Of all the questions Beth had been expecting from Seasons, it had certainly not been this. She looked at him, her jaw slack. Meanwhile, Janice was staring over at her, eyebrows sky-high in enquiry. Beth turned her gaze slightly so she didn’t have to catch her friend’s eye. Janice hadn’t actually spoken, but Beth could almost see her words hanging in the air. ‘What on earth is he on about?’
Now it was Beth’s turn to pause. And even to sweat. She sat there, in her swivel chair, her mind whirling with possibilities, with things she could say, with explanations. None of them was easy. None of them seemed to cover the magnitude of what had been going on. Her own armpits began to prickle, and she could feel her face growing hot.
Seasons, now returned to his normal shade of underdone-pork, was clearly rejoicing that the pressure was off him. ‘Not such fun when it’s you in the hot seat, is it, Beth? Cat got your tongue? Or, should I say, moth-eaten dog?’
That was enough. It was all very well Seasons attacking her. To an extent, after what he’d been through, she could understand it. But having a go at Colin was beneath contempt. Beth burst into speech at last.
‘Look, I can see how you might take all this personally…’
‘All this? What do you mean by that?’ Instantly, the man was jumping down her throat, demanding clarification. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
Beth squirmed in her seat. ‘Well, there’s been a lot going on in Dulwich. And you’ve often been at the centre of it… probably through no fault of your own,’ Beth tacked on hastily. Seasons harrumphed and seemed to be about to say something else. Beth continued quickly.
‘Look, I know your wife, well, ex-wife, was involved with the first case I had to investigate, right here at Wyatt’s. And things that I brought up then might well have, er, caused you pain. But it’s not fair to say that was my fault. I didn’t encourage your wife to, um, do whatever she did…’ Beth stumbled on, only for Seasons to interject again.
‘No-one’s saying you did. And I’m not concerned with that matter—’
Beth had no compunction about interrupting the man. He’d asked for answers. Now he could jolly well listen to them.
‘Then your girlfriend, later on. When there was that, ahem, matter I looked into in Herne Hill. Well, that was all very unfortunate, wasn’t it? But again, not my fault,’ said Beth as forcefully as she could, shaking her ponytail for emphasis. ‘And then, last week…’
Now they were really coming to it, Beth decided. She wasn’t sure whether to continue, as the tell-tale red tide was sweeping up Seasons’ face again. His blood pressure must be going through the roof, and this was after his scarlet-faced eruption into her room in the first place. If he wasn’t on medication already, he certainly should be.
Beth wriggled again, but it was impossible to get comfortable in her chair under such an angry gaze. Even Janice, her stalwart friend, was looking decidedly askance, as though she knew there was a secret at the heart of all this that Beth wasn’t getting to. Beth decided there was nothing for it but to go on.
‘Your mother. Look, I’m sorry she turned out to be the poisoner. But the evidence was insurmountable. She tried to kill my mother twice, she tried to poison me. And she did kill off my mother’s poor old bridge partner, Alfie Pole.’
This wasn’t news, to Janice or to Seasons. The handcuffs had been slapped on in public, and Mrs Hadley, with her blonde helmet of hair, had been led off to the Camberwell police station by Harry in full view of the entire Bridge Club. Presumably, Seasons had since visited her in custody, arranged lawyers, all that stuff.
Beth leaned forward and tried to look as sympathetic as she could. After all, the man didn’t choose his mother. It wasn’t his fault she was a homicidal maniac. But Beth did think Seasons’ judgement on marriage partners and girlfriends was seriously flawed.
‘I’m sorry you seem to have been involved, however tangentially, in so many of the mysteries I’ve got roped into. But the fact that people around you seem to have a distinct propensity to kill is just not my fault. Is it?’
Beth looked from Janice to Seasons and back again, hoping for understanding, for support, for clemency. From Janice, she got confused sympathy. The woman looked as though she was blundering through foggy woods, trying to find her way, and having only limited success. She’d pricked up her ears at the mention of Seasons’ mother. Although the arrest itself was common currency in Dulwich, no-one knew the full inside story of the brid
ge poisonings yet.
Beth took a steadying breath and went on. ‘That’s right, Janice. As you know, Tom’s mum, Rosemarie Hadley, was behind it all. She masterminded the poisoning. Harry is still trying to work out exactly why. I won’t go into everything because it’s a live investigation, but it’s clear that she had some strange grudge against, well, against my mother.’
Seasons, as before, looked ready to burst a corpuscle or two. But, looking her right in the eye, he took his two meaty paws and slapped them together in a slow handclap, the sound reverberating around the room like gunshots.
‘Oh, very good, Beth. Very smart. But then you Haldanes always are, aren’t you? Distraction. Such a clever technique. But let’s come back to the central issue. Not my mother, as you well know. No, all along, it’s been something quite different behind all this, hasn’t it? I’ll say it again. Your father.’
Janice turned her head to look at Beth again, and shrugged her shoulders. What on earth was all this about? It was clear she didn’t have the first clue.
Beth, sitting in her beloved swivel chair, wished for a mad moment that she could simply corkscrew round and round, faster and faster, until she took off, and flew out of here, across the immaculate Wyatt’s lawn, down Calton Avenue, up the high street, and back to the blessed safety of Pickwick Road. She wanted to shut herself into her tiny house and never come out again. But there was a problem – how would she get Colin back? He was too enormous and much too badly co-ordinated to get onto the chair with her. She couldn’t leave him, could she? It was tempting, but as she looked over at his unsuspecting chocolatey head, she knew the answer was no.
She was going to have to tough it out. Explain everything. People always said it felt better to get stuff off your chest. Beth didn’t believe it for one second, but it looked as though she was about to find out if it were true.
She cleared her throat. And then shrugged her own shoulders. ‘All right, then. Yes, it’s true. My mother has always said that there was a reason why my dad died so young. And that reason was – your father.’
Opposite her, Janice took a sharp breath in, but Beth continued, fixing Seasons with an angry grey-eyed glare. ‘Your father, Geoff Seasons, was my dad’s boss at the accountancy firm. Dad was just a middle-manager, really. He wasn’t a high flier. He was a nice, kind man, who always did his best. But that wasn’t good enough for your bully of a father, was it? He always had it in for mine. Made him work late. Criticised his figures. Undermined his confidence. Made him feel a failure. And then, when Geoff himself made a catastrophic mistake, who did he blame it on? Dad. He harried him, night and day, until my dad died of a heart attack. When I was only eleven. If you think I’m going to forget about that, if you think I’ll ever stop thinking about my father and how he suffered, and how you and your family deprived me of so much, then you’re wrong.’
‘So you admit it?’ said Seasons, a perverse delight spreading across his pudgy face. ‘This has all been about revenge. All the accusations, all the scandals you’ve dragged my name into, all the charges made—’
‘No! No. Not at all!’ Beth sat up straight in her chair, and shouted Seasons down. ‘Not a bit of it! Your family is guilty as charged. Your wife, your girlfriend, your mother, the whole lot of them. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. And more to the point, there’s no doubt in the Crown Prosecution Service’s mind. This has not been a vendetta. Not a bit of it. Though it might suit you to think it was,’ Beth said, exhausted now, and suddenly afraid to catch Janice’s eye.
What on earth would her friend think of her now? There was so much she’d never told her. She hadn’t concealed it, exactly. It had just never come up. Maybe she should have said, when she’d first met Seasons at her job interview so long ago… but back then, she’d never expected to get the position. She’d been astonished when she was told she’d beaten off hot competition from a stream of better-qualified candidates.
She thought quickly, and finally decided to put a long-held suspicion into words. She’d never have a better opportunity than this. And she didn’t have much left to lose. ‘I think you recognised my name when you interviewed me. But I didn’t know you. My mother never really said who Geoff was. As far as I was concerned, he was just Dad’s nasty, mean boss. I didn’t know his surname. But you! You’ve got ten years on me, at least. I bet you knew everything about my dad, and the part your own father played in disgracing him. There aren’t many Haldanes in Dulwich. Did you choose me for the job on purpose?’
It was Seasons’ turn to look uncomfortable now. Janice, meanwhile, switched her gaze to him and gawped as though she’d never met him before.
‘You certainly weren’t the best candidate,’ sneered Seasons. ‘God, you were a shambles. Tongue-tied, incoherent, badly dressed… it brought back all the times when my father had to haul yours over the carpet for his latest shoddy bit of work. I admit, it amused me to think I could have you here, where I could keep an eye on you. But there was something else.’ Seasons stopped short, seeming almost embarrassed.
‘What? What was it? Surely you’re not going to stop there, after all the awful things you’ve said?’
Seasons looked up and caught Beth’s eye. ‘I suppose the truth is, I felt sorry for you. Your dad might have been a bit ineffectual, but his death was a shock, I admit. I don’t think my father had been expecting him to just peg out like that. I know he felt… responsible. I suppose when you walked into my office that day, well, I saw a way to make amends. It was clear that you weren’t doing brilliantly financially. I thought you could cope with being the number two in a department as obscure as the Archives Office. Little did I know what was going to happen to your boss. And, at the time, no-one knew you’d stumble on that discovery about Wyatt’s involvement in slavery, and make the archives a much bigger deal than they’d ever been before. No, back then, it seemed like there wasn’t too much danger of you messing up. But I’ve been paid back handsomely for my philanthropy,’ he said bitterly.
Beth didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, it explained her lingering sense of surprise that she’d ever landed such a great job in the first place. But it was hard to believe it had been thanks to Seasons’ benevolence. There had been other people involved in the choice, and some of them – including the headmaster, who was no fool – must have given her the post on her merits. She had to cling to that thought. Being beholden to this horrible man would have been too much.
‘I can see it might look like I’ve, somehow, had it in for you. But I can assure you that has never been the case,’ Beth faltered. ‘There’s history between us, that’s a fact. But you can’t deny that your family has been involved, up to the hilt, in all these cases that have come my way. That’s not my fault. And it’s nothing to do with what happened in the past.’
‘You keep telling yourself that,’ said Seasons with a curl of his lip. ‘I know you’re just seeking revenge. Your father was a weak man, and you’re a coward. Why don’t you just come out and say that you’ve got it in for me and my family?’
‘But I haven’t,’ Beth said simply, her palms upwards. ‘It isn’t true. The stuff with our fathers is just coincidence. I must admit, it looks odd when you dredge it all up into the light of day, but I haven’t thought about it for years. On the other hand, the stuff involving your family members is actually happening now – your mother, for instance. Why don’t you just admit that she, and the rest of them, are all guilty of what they’ve been accused of?’
There was another weighty pause. Then Seasons spoke again, more quietly this time.
‘Maybe they were forced into it. By circumstances. By this place.’
‘What, by Dulwich itself?’ said Beth sarcastically.
‘Why not?’
A heavy silence fell. Beth tried to catch Janice’s eye, she wanted to gauge how all this was going down, but her friend seemed to be looking very busily at her shoes. Finally, Seasons sighed, then spoke again. His voice was so quiet this time that it took Beth a w
hile to decipher what he’d said.
‘It’s time I got out.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘But I can’t believe it was that evil Seasons’ mother! And that the reason behind all of it was just spite,’ said Katie, her eyes wide. For once, she hadn’t even complained about coming to Aurora’s for coffee after dropping the boys. ‘I’ve been itching to know what went on. But every rumour I’ve heard has been madder than the next.’
‘Well, this time the explanation really is pretty cuckoo. But I suppose the main thing is that it’s been a whydunit, not a whodunit this time. If I’d just been more on the case, I could have realised much sooner that it must have been Mrs Hadley – Seasons’ mother. Although my mother was sure she’d seen her at the time Alfie was drinking the poisoned tea, it was one of the other women who have the same helmet hairdo. They all look the same from the back. And then Harry caught her red-handed on her third attempt.’
‘But is what they’re saying true?’
Beth stirred her coffee. ‘What are they saying?’ she asked quietly.
Katie didn’t speak for a moment. She looked around the empty café, the low energy lightbulb and subdued autumnal sun outside doing their best to illuminate her soft blonde hair. Beth hoped fervently she’d never take to hairspray in years to come.
‘Well – that you brought it all on yourself. I’m sorry, Beth,’ she added quickly, before her friend could break in. ‘But that’s the story. You had a grudge against Seasons, so you got his wife, girlfriend, and mother into trouble. Because he was mean to your dad?’
Beth sighed. ‘Wow. Look, I know you’re not a gossip. But can you do your best to counteract that? I truly didn’t connect Seasons’ father with my dad. He was the one who chose to employ me. And then, let’s just say, he’s not a great judge of character.’