Lay Me to Rest

by E. A. Clark

  ‘Please – excuse me a minute –’ I ran from the kitchen and managed to reach the bathroom before was I was violently sick. The realization of everything had finally hit me. I would have preferred to jump into a car and drive somewhere miles away but knew that I had to face my sister, admit to her what I’d done, and how I had only myself to blame for my wretched predicament. It was a task for which I felt ill-prepared.

  I splashed cold water on my face and returned to the kitchen, apologizing for my sudden sharp exit. A concerned Mrs Parry, who seemed to have come to her senses, handed me a glass of water.

  ‘Funny thing, pregnancy,’ she said. ‘The sickness can come over you at any time.’

  I smiled weakly and didn’t enlighten her as to the real reason for my sudden bout of biliousness.

  Having recovered from her initial shock, Mrs Parry was as cooperative as she could be, but felt she had nothing of any real significance to share with the officers. Her husband had finally arisen and came into the room looking every bit as irked as he had the previous night. He seemed discomfited by the presence of the policemen.

  ‘Will, the officers say it is definitely Aneira that was found in Tyddyn Bach,’ began Mrs Parry, but the old man looked away, ignoring her.

  ‘What can we do for you gentlemen, then?’ he enquired, almost warily.

  ‘As your wife pointed out, the deceased has been identified as Miss Williams,’ stated the older policeman. ‘We would be obliged if you could tell us anything you know that may help us with our investigation.’

  ‘I told your lot everything I knew when they came knocking last year,’ said Mr Parry, looking irritated. ‘Nothing’s changed since then, apart from you finding a body. The last I saw of Aneira was one night last August when she disappeared down our drive for the last time. What happened after that is a complete mystery to me.’

  He paused. ‘I suppose you’ll be needing to speak to Peter Roberts again, too?’

  ‘We most certainly will,’ said the officer. ‘Do you happen to have any information pertaining to his whereabouts?’

  Mr Parry looked at the man quizzically. ‘Could I have that in plain English, please? I’m only an old farmer you know.’ He winked at me. The policeman noticed and bristled.

  ‘Do you know where Mr Roberts resides currently? We want to speak to him with some urgency.’

  Mr Parry went to a drawer and pulled out a battered red leather-bound address book. He leafed through the pages and handed over the book, opened at the relevant entry.

  ‘There you go.’

  The senior officer nodded to his colleague, who hurriedly scribbled down the address in his notebook.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to Mr Parry, looking and sounding anything but grateful. ‘We will contact the West Midlands constabulary and they will no doubt be able to locate Mr Roberts. Well, I think that will be all for the moment. We shall be visiting the Reverend and Mrs Evans later today, and we will return to speak to you again at some point. Good day to you all.’

  ‘You won’t need to speak to me again, will you?’ I asked, anxiously. ‘Only I’m supposed to be going home today.’

  ‘I don’t imagine so, Miss. Unless you have some vital piece of information that you have neglected to mention?’

  I assured the officer that I had not. He seemed satisfied that I hadn’t been present at the time of Aneira’s disappearance and was therefore free to depart. With that, the policemen left.

  The atmosphere between the Parrys was intense and I excused myself. My thoughts were with poor Marian Williams and how she must be feeling now. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  The weather was fresher than it had been and the sky overcast. I shrugged on a cardigan and went outside for a stroll. I glanced at the police tape round Tyddyn Bach, and my blood ran cold to think I had been sharing the house with a rotting corpse. More police officers, although fewer than the previous evening, had arrived at the cottage. Their forensic team was resuming its unenviable task of removing yet more samples and taking photographs.

  I walked back down and across the field to where I had found the tea caddy. Was it possible that there might be anything else secreted in the old oak tree? I had been so excited that day by the discovery of the box that I hadn’t bothered to look. I intended to find out.

  I groped around once more inside the cavity of the tree trunk but could feel nothing. I was disappointed. But then it occurred to me that my arms weren’t long enough to reach right to its base. The tea caddy had become wedged to some extent a little way up, and so was easier to reach.

  I went back to the farm, but was reluctant to return to the presently uncomfortable ambience of the Parrys’ kitchen. Mr Parry kept several tools in an old outbuilding next to the main house and I wondered if there might be a torch in there. I creaked open the rotting door and entered rather gingerly. It felt cool and damp within and the light levels were very low. The smell of engine oil and Swarfega permeated the air.

  As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I looked about me. Various pieces of rusty, disused farm machinery were scattered about the floor. There was some metal shelving against one wall of the building, containing hammers, nails, screwdrivers, pliers, and such, and – bingo! A large, old-fashioned flashlight. It was unwieldy, but in working order, I discovered after depressing the switch.

  Pleased, I carried the torch back to the oak tree and pointed the beam downwards into the hollow. I peered inside and my heart began to race as I saw that there was something else concealed in the depths of the trunk – and something that could be quite significant indeed.

  *

  I returned the torch to the shed and went back over to the farmhouse, just in time to see Sarah’s car rolling up the drive. The queasiness re-emerged once more. I would have to tell my sister what I had done. To admit my culpability – to say it out loud – would make it all the more real. I was an apology for a human being. I had failed as a wife. How could I raise our child, knowing that I was responsible for robbing it of a father?

  Sarah pulled up just in front of the outbuildings, and climbed from the vehicle. Running over to me, she wrapped her arms around me before I had chance to open my mouth.

  ‘Boy, am I glad to see you!’ she exclaimed. I returned her embrace and began to tremble. What would she think of me?

  Sensing my mood, she looked puzzled. ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Her expression changed from one of elation to apprehension. ‘Is everything OK?’

  I looked at her and promptly burst into tears.

  ‘Oh God, it was my fault; all my fault,’ I managed between sobs.

  ‘Whoa – calm down now. What was your fault? You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘I’ve been so selfish – and now I’m being punished for it. And my baby’s going to suffer because of my stupidity … I’m not fit to become a mother.’

  ‘Come on – you’re going to be a great mum. Your hormones are going into overdrive and it’s making you irrational. Try to calm down – you’re not making any sense.’

  And so it all spilled out. How I had been so obsessed with furthering my career, how I had drunk too much and driven Graham away from the party and in his anger – anger because of me and my stupid, inconsiderate behaviour – he had crashed the car. How could I live with myself after what I had done? I had killed our baby’s father.

  ‘Annie, you can’t blame yourself. It was a tragic accident – nothing more.’ Her attempt to mollify me felt patronizing. In my frustration I rounded on her.

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say. You’re not in my shoes. For fuck’s sake, you’ve never even been in a proper relationship, so how the hell can you know how I’m feeling? I killed the only man I’ve ever loved.’

  Sarah looked hurt. Retreating from me, she marched over and reached into the car, taking out her handbag. Delving into her purse, she produced a well-worn photograph.

  I stared at the picture she was brandishing. It was of a slightly older, slimly built man with dark hair,
probably in his late forties. He was smiling, and had his arm round a radiantly happy Sarah, her face aglow. They were beside the sea.

  ‘This is Joseph,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘His wife has a degenerative brain condition. We’ve been in love for years, but he can’t leave her when she needs him most. It would be too cruel. So I just take what I can, when he can get respite care and get away for a while, and I’m happy with that. We may never be together properly, but I’ll just have to live with it.’

  I broke down once more. To think that Sarah had been nursing such a momentous secret for so long and had felt unable to share it with me. Was I so unapproachable? I had been so wrapped up in myself and my job that I had hurt those closest to me. I felt utterly wretched.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just wanted to lash out at someone. Please forgive me …’

  Sarah relaxed a little. She sighed and put an arm around my shaking shoulder. ‘We’re a pair of idiots aren’t we?’ she said. ‘Must be in the genes.’

  I tried to smile.

  ‘And I’m sorry, too,’ she added. ‘I should have told you about Joseph. And I should have given you a talking-to about Graham. I did try to hint a few times that the two of you needed to talk more, and make more time for each other, but you just seemed to carry on regardless. He adored you, you know. It’s so sad, really. But you can’t blame yourself for his death, Annie. You’re torturing yourself – when it really was just a horrible accident.’

  Sarah’s earnest expression and typical, level-headed reasoning made me stop for a moment and think. Was I perhaps being too introspective about it all? I had indeed been selfish and thoughtless, and there was nothing I could do about that. But ultimately I had no control over Graham’s fate. It wasn’t as though I had sabotaged his car or forced him to leave the party … I was doing myself no favours in dwelling on the circumstances surrounding the accident. It was a cross I would have to learn to bear. I had to try to put it behind me and look to the future for the sake of our baby.

  I looked at Sarah and felt a further pang of guilt for not being there for her when she was clearly struggling with the burden of her secret life with Joseph. Knowing her as I did, I was only too aware that she would be completely torn between her love for this man and the guilt she would feel for falling for someone who was married, even though the situation was clearly so complicated.

  ‘So when do I get to meet this Joseph, then?’ I asked. ‘He must be something very special, to have snared my discerning sister.’

  Sarah smiled wistfully. ‘You’d love him, Annie,’ she told me, her eyes shining. ‘He’s so kind and thoughtful. But I think it’ll be a long while before we can bring our relationship out into the open. He has two grown-up children – a son and a daughter – and I can’t imagine they’d take very kindly to their father publicly flaunting his floozy while his poor wife is still with us. It’s all so – awkward …’

  ‘Floozy? You? And to think – I always thought you were the next Mother Teresa!’

  She gave me that sideways look of hers and grinned secretively. ‘Well, while we’re confessing all – I wasn’t always quite the little angel Mum and Dad would have liked me to be …’

  ‘Oh? Spill, then!’

  ‘Remember that lad who joined the Sixth Form – the one all the girls in your class always swooned over?’

  ‘What, “Raunchy Ryan”?’

  ‘Bet you didn’t know he had a soft spot for your little sister. Where d’you think I used to go on a Friday night when I was supposed to be playing squash for all those months?’

  My jaw dropped in disbelief. Ryan had been quite the heart-throb but rather aloof, and no one ever seemed able to get their claws into him. That he could have been dating Sarah was quite a revelation.

  ‘No! You and Ryan – you didn’t …?’

  ‘Let’s just say we managed to work up a sweat without ever setting foot in the leisure centre …’

  I stared at her and then simultaneously we burst into raucous laughter. Our shared upbringing and memories had created a bond between us that would never be broken. We hugged one another and stood reminiscing for a while, and eventually I took her into the farmhouse, where Mrs Parry was alone in the kitchen preparing a meal.

  ‘Mrs Parry, this is my sister, Sarah.’

  The old lady beamed. She looked from one to the other of us. ‘Well, aren’t you two chalk and cheese! But both such beautiful young ladies.’

  ‘Wait till you taste Mrs Parry’s food, Sarah,’ I said. ‘She’ll soon put some weight on that skinny backside of yours!’

  We laughed. I had begun to relax once more. Which reminded me of something. ‘Mrs Parry, there’s something else hidden in that oak tree,’ I told the old woman. ‘There’s a strong possibility it could be evidence. I think perhaps you should ring the police.’

  *

  The same police officers who had visited earlier arrived in a patrol car. With Sarah in tow, I took them across the field and showed them the cavity in the tree.

  ‘It’s too far down for me to reach,’ I explained. ‘Maybe your arms are a bit longer than mine!’

  The younger policeman laughed. ‘I’ll give it a whirl,’ he said. He reached deep into the hollow, stretching as far as he could. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ll need my secret weapon.’

  Within minutes he had returned from the police car, carrying a metal litter picker. ‘Let’s see if I can’t get to it with this!’ He grinned. He managed to locate the end of the item and pulled it far enough up the inside of the trunk until he was able to grab hold of it with his hand. Pulling it out, he stared at what he had retrieved from the hole.

  ‘It’s a blinkin’ great poker,’ he said.

  ‘And if I’m not much mistaken,’ he indicated with his free hand, ‘that looks like blood.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Peter Roberts was arrested at his home in the West Midlands later that afternoon. He went quietly and made no objection or proclamation of innocence. The poker discovered in the oak tree was identified as the murder weapon, and prints taken from it matched those on file taken from Peter the previous summer.

  Mrs Parry was inconsolable. ‘I just can’t believe it!’ she kept repeating. ‘He was always such a good boy. I loved him as if he were my own.’

  ‘Well, you knew more about him than I did,’ growled her husband, puffing smoke from his pipe as he sat by the range. He screwed up his eyes and stared straight ahead, shaking his head sadly. ‘Marian had the measure of him, though, that’s for sure. He had us well and truly hoodwinked.’

  Peter was remanded in custody. There was to be a preliminary hearing, when he would be charged, at Birmingham Crown Court later in the week. Everything seemed to have happened so quickly; it was all a bit of a blur.

  We ate one of Mrs Parry’s legendary afternoon teas, and then decided we should set off on our journey home. Mr and Mrs Parry tried to persuade us to stay on a little longer, but after everything that had taken place, all I wanted to do was return to the sanctuary of my own home.

  ‘I’ll keep in touch,’ I promised, kissing each of them goodbye in turn. Sarah put my luggage into the boot of the car.

  ‘Thank you for looking after her so well,’ she said to the old couple. ‘It’s such a pity everything’s turned out the way it has. But for what it’s worth,’ she added, turning to Mrs Parry, who was a little tearful, ‘I always thought Peter was a decent person, myself. We can never truly know what’s going on inside someone else’s head, I suppose.’

  I still found it hard to believe that Peter was the monster he seemed to have suddenly become in everyone’s eyes. The events surrounding Aneira’s death were as yet unclear. Presumably all would come to light when the case eventually came to court.

  I hoped that my presence in Tyddyn Bach had been a catalyst in helping Aneira to make herself known, thus giving Marian Williams some closure. At least then my visit had fulfilled some p
urpose. That, and helping poor Anwen to be finally laid to rest with her child. But if nothing else, I knew that I was leaving Anglesey a different person than when I had arrived only a few days earlier. I felt more positive about the future – both for myself and for my baby.

  I turned to wave as we pulled away, hoping fervently that Mr Parry would come to his senses and stop giving his wife such a hard time. The poor woman didn’t deserve to be blamed for what she had done. It was all so trivial in the scheme of things. I looked back at Tyddyn Bach. A trickle of forensic officers continued to come and go from the cottage. I wondered what else, if anything, they might uncover that could help them solve the mystery of Aneira’s final hours. It all seemed fairly cut and dried now, as far as I could tell.

  As we bumped over the cattle grid, Sarah was about to turn right in the direction of the bridge when I had a sudden thought.

  ‘Wait, will you go left? I feel I ought to go and see Aneira’s mother before we leave.’

  Sarah stopped and looked at me. Her expression was dubious. ‘D’you think that’s a good idea? I mean, the woman’s just had some shocking news. Do you really reckon she’ll be in a fit state for visitors?’

  ‘I just feel I should offer my condolences. It may sound odd, but I feel I owe it to her.’

  Sarah rolled her eyes and sighed, but obliged me by taking the road towards the Williams’ house. A winding, poorly tarmacked track from the main road took us virtually to the front door.

  ‘You can stay in the car, if you like,’ I told her as we drew up outside. She watched as I made my way up the path.

  I knocked gingerly and waited. A red-eyed Tudur answered the door. It was an awkward moment.

  ‘Hello, Tudur, I … we just heard the news about Aneira,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Tudur nodded and sniffed. ‘We’re all in a bit of a state,’ he said. ‘It’s been more of a shock to Ianto and me, to be honest. I think Mam’s been expecting this for a long time. Come on in, though.’ He looked over my shoulder. ‘Who’s that you’ve brought with you?’