by Clare Curzon
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Kate said comfortably. ‘I expect someone gave it to her and she decided to pass it on. Girls have such a horror of calories. She may have thought Eddie needed fattening up.’
Or maybe not, Yeadings thought.
Eddie gave a little snickering cough and his eyes came open. ‘Hello, Ma,’ he whispered. ‘Who’s your friend?’
Yeadings introduced himself. ‘I was here when you woke before. Don’t you remember?’
‘Vaguely. Charles was here.’
‘He’s left for Italy. He seems to think Jessica may be out there. Can you tell us a little more about what happened in the cellar?’
As Stone had suggested, he’d come upon the killer breaking his way out. He’d jumped him but the man was burly, armed with a tyre lever he was attacking the chute doors with. A wild blow had laid Eddie out and he remembered the man kicking him aside while he made his escape.
‘But for the fire,’ he said weakly, ‘he might have stayed to finish me off. I was almost blinded. I couldn’t do anything for Nicholas; was cut off by the flames. Managed to crawl out and into the woods. Last to leave.’
He was wretched about his ineptness, and despairing over his sister’s continuing absence. Yeadings gave what comfort he could and then suggested to Kate that they leave him. She had been listening in silence, suffering with Eddie as each detail came out.
‘I’ll be back soon. With Jess,’ she promised, and bent to kiss his forehead.
Watching her leave in Stone’s limousine, Yeadings reached in his pocket for his mobile phone. He pressed out the number of a colleague in the Met. There was a little job he needed done in London and the inspector, ex-Thames Valley, owed him for help with his placement.
Just a chance fancy, he admitted to himself, but sometimes you could hit the jackpot that way.
He hadn’t a lot of faith in Salmon’s new favourite suspect. Beaumont and the DI were at present chasing up Robert Dellar for his shoe size. Only medium height, he might get into a size eight, but, however keen he might be to inherit, Yeadings just couldn’t see him with guts enough to tackle patricide.
22
Because the summons had seemed so imperative, and she hated driving alone, Claudia had chosen to travel up by train. Now, mortified by the outcome of her interview with the superintendent, she contemplated the return journey as an exhausting chore.
Instead of Jake being at least severely reprimanded, she had herself been on the receiving end of a humiliating accusation. Her return was not to be the pleasurable experience she’d looked forward to. She cancelled the intended notion of a celebratory meal and crossed the forecourt at Marylebone station, towards the tube to Victoria for her connection.
As she passed the newsstand of WH Smith, someone clutching an Evening Standard came hurrying towards her.
‘Claudia, is it you? I thought you’d moved down to Sussex? How very nice to see you.’
It was Marion Paige, the young woman Robert intended to marry once his divorce came through. Unremarkable, was how Claudia had classified her; and this was no moment to be obliged to make small talk.
‘I’m on my way there now,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’ve a train to catch.’
‘What a coincidence,’ said Marion. ‘I’m driving down to Eastbourne. That’s quite near you, isn’t it? Why don’t I give you a lift? Then you won’t have to flog across London and risk not getting a seat.’
Although not in the mood for socializing, Claudia conceded it would certainly be less bother. At the far end Marion would surely feel obliged to make a little detour and deliver her to her door, thus saving a taxi fare. Much more convenient. She allowed herself to be persuaded.
It was some years since she had driven in London herself and she felt a grudging admiration for the way the other woman negotiated the traffic. ‘Driving in town,’ Marion said nonchalantly, overtaking a bus and facing down an oncoming taxi, ‘you have to be an animal to survive.’
From then on she had little to say and Claudia was glad to be able to slump in her seat, make a pretence at dozing, and so keep her at bay. Her offer had been acceptable; the woman herself was not.
With the onset of dusk Claudia re-opened her eyes on countryside that was unfamiliar. ‘I always drive by Guildford and Horsham,’ she remarked, implying that any alternative must be an inferior choice. Nothing would have persuaded her to use the M25 with the likelihood of being held up on the Heathrow stretch. It looked as though Marion had the same disinclination.
She was slowing now, indicating to turn into a lay-by as she braked.
‘Where are we?’ Claudia asked.
‘Quite close to your railway line.’ Marion sounded amused. She pointed upwards through the opposite window and Claudia made out the shadowed embankment thick with trees and brushwood.
‘I brought along a thermos. Maybe you’d like some coffee. I’m afraid it’s espresso, but I find that keeps me alert on the road. There is milk if you prefer, but no sugar.’
On the train Claudia would have ordered something stronger, but the offer was welcome. It had been close in the car and she felt a headache coming on. It made her feel doubly disagreeable.
They sat sipping, and still Marion seemed in no hurry to move on. Her hands, on the steering wheel, were tanned and Claudia recalled being told that she had worked for several years in South America, doing whatever geophysicists did. She was wearing quite a splendid square-cut emerald on her fourth finger.
‘That’s an unusual ring,’ Claudia remarked. ‘I suppose you come across a lot of gemmologists in your line of interest.’ From habit she made it sound derogatory.
‘Some, of course. Actually my fiance had this mounted for me. It is rather fine.’
‘Fiance?’ Claudia’s fine eyebrow shot up. ‘Surely that’s a little premature? His divorce isn’t made absolute yet.’
Marion laughed. ‘Just another two months. Then, when all these family scandals have died down …I shall achieve my inheritance.’
That seemed a strange remark. Claudia looked sideways at her and saw she was smiling again, a wry little pulling at the corners of her mouth. That mention of family scandals was quite out of order. Surely she hadn’t been referring to the Dellars? Misfortunes recently, perhaps, but never scandals. She should be more careful of giving offence.
A spurt of anger made her want to wound this smug woman in her comfortable car. ‘Robert is certainly looking for someone different this time,’ she observed in her authoritative contralto. ‘His first was a trophy wife: a silly, addle-pated blonde clothes-horse. Men couldn’t keep their eyes off her.’
‘Whereas I’m a sallow, raddled older woman with little to commend her,’ Marion said almost gaily. ‘Thank you, Claudia. I must plead guilty to some quite off-putting genes. And then I’ve had so much practice at lying low, in every sense, making myself a non-person, letting others, quite literally, get on top of me.’
Claudia felt a flush rising up her chest and neck to flood her face with colour. If she hadn’t misunderstood, the woman’s meaning was utterly salacious.
‘I’m not sure that I understand you.’ Stiffly upright.
‘And I’m quite certain that you don’t.’
Did she imagine then that there was menace in her tone? Claudia moved a little farther apart, conscious of the door frame biting into her shoulder. She hadn’t taken that much notice of Marion when Robert had introduced her, but now there was no denying she was peculiar, possibly unbalanced. Why invite anyone to share the journey down, only to be outright offensive?
She drained the last of her coffee and the dregs tasted bitter against her teeth. Perhaps she should attempt to put the woman in a more normal frame of mind. She handed back the cap of the thermos. ‘Thank you. That was timely. I’m sure we all hope you will be very happy with Robert.’ It seemed an appropriate remark to mend bridges.
Marion chuckled, deep in her throat. ‘Oh, that won’t last long, I assure you.’
Claudia gawped at her forthrightness.
‘Do you really imagine I’d make it permanent? – settle to a lifetime of being patronized by that bombastic little show-off? No, Robert will be glad to divorce me. But it will cost him. Oh, how it will!’
The woman was unbelievable. Once Robert got to know her opinion of him there’d be no marriage. Did she imagine Claudia had no sense of family, that she’d keep silent about a remark like that? Startled and incredulous, she almost missed the next words.
‘Of course I shall be well recompensed for my trouble. It is still a crime after all. As a wealthy man by then, Robert will be most anxious to keep it under wraps.’
At about this time Robert Dellar was returning, late, to his Regent’s Park flat to change for a rather classy reception at the British Museum. Since the impressive new courtyard development, it had become a fashionable place to throw parties.
He parked outside the house. In his haste he was unaware of the two men who piled out of a nearby Toyota and followed him up to his front door. ‘Mr Robert Dellar?’ the heavier of the two demanded, producing a warrant card. ‘I am DI Salmon from Thames Valley police. This is DC Arnold of the Met who is assisting me in my inquiry. You may remember we met briefly after the fire.’
‘Er, probably, yes. Actually, inspector, I’m a bit pushed for time. I am overdue for an appointment and I need to change. Can we do this another day?’
‘No, sir, and I have a warrant to search your accommodation.’
‘You have what?’
Salmon produced the paper and held it under the man’s nose. The dim light of a street lamp failed to make it legible, but it did appear to be an official form.
‘I don’t understand. With regard to what exactly? And what are you actually looking for?’
‘With regard to the deaths of Sir William Dellar and Mrs Madeleine Railton.’
Robert put out a hand against the door post to support himself. ‘You really imagine I should have anything to do with that? Are you implying it wasn’t an accident? Surely a skid caused by oil spillage. They were my father and sister, for God’s sake!’
‘Shall we go in, sir?’
As Dellar shakily removed his key and released the door, Salmon pushed past him. ‘I think you should cancel your appointment. This could take quite a time, and we require you to be here while we look around.’
Rarely at a loss for words, Robert found his protests ignored and retired to the kitchen where he produced a bottle of single malt and settled in high dudgeon while the contents of his cupboards were unceremoniously stacked on the formica-topped table. He trailed behind the invaders as they reduced his scrupulously ordered bookshelves into unalphabetical chaos in the sitting-room and searched among the purely decorative basket of logs beside the ‘live flame’ gas fire. The mock-Persian rugs were dumped on upturned armchairs whose depths had been plumbed, producing only some small change, a lost credit card and a quantity of grit. Elsewhere fitted carpets were allowed to remain in place but other flooring was examined for suspicious cracks concealing hidey-holes. Upstairs, cistern and tank were examined and a panel removed from the side of the bath. In his bedroom all clothing removed from wardrobes and drawers was flung in an unlovely heap on the bed. Two pairs of shoes, size eight, narrow fittings (one showing traces of dried mud) were removed and placed in plastic bags for forensic examination. When they reached the second bedroom, converted for use as a study, Dellar became histrionic about the threatened confiscation of his computer.
‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted, ‘that’s my fucking livelihood you’re taking. I’m a journalist. I need that!’
‘I guess we could arrange for an expert to examine it here,’ Arnold allowed. ‘The station has a couple who work on identifying paedophiles.’
The shame of this implication, however unintended, completed the collapse of Dellar’s resistance. He slid gently down the wall to sit, dejected, with bent knees, on the Berber carpet. Salmon, regarding him with disgust, was amazed that anything so gutless could be involved in murder.
‘Right. We’ll leave it at that then. You say you haven’t a garage, but I’ll need your keys to check on your car. You can watch from the window. We’ll post the keys back through the letterbox. Good-day to you, Mr Dellar.’
Superintendent Yeadings was sliding a new filter into the coffee machine when his call came through from the Met. He halted in mid-operation. ‘Bob, what have you got for me?’
He nodded, scribbling notes on his desk-pad as the info came through. ‘Splendid. That’s a lunch I owe you. Let’s make it soon. Say next week?’
He listened again and laughed. ‘Oh yes, now we’ve got this last detail it should be sewn up by then. Except for the paperwork, of course.’ They groaned in unison, swapped family news briefly and rang off.
Yeadings reached for his log, noted down the time and wrote in this last entry under the previous note on the silver Nissan. Then he turned back to the filter paper.
In the leafy lay-by under the railway embankment Claudia Dellar stared in disbelief at the woman Robert Dellar was expecting to marry.
‘Crime? What crime?’ she repeated. ‘What could Robert be accused of?’
‘Marrying his sister,’ Marion jeered.
It made no sense. Robert was still married to the fashion-plate Shelley. And his sister Maddie was dead. This woman was raving. Surely she wasn’t safe to be with. If only she would stop talking this madness and get on with the journey. Her driving at least had been reasonable.
‘Robert’s sister,’ Marion repeated. Then, emphatically, whispered: ‘His older sister.’ With the same wicked little smile flicking at the corner of her lips, she was watching the other closely now, tempting her to dare to understand.
Claudia had opened her mouth to deny there was such a one; then her voice dried up.
‘His big sister. Half-sister. Matthew’s bastard by you. So what does that make me to you – old woman?’
Claudia closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said through cracked lips.
‘Oh yes. It has taken a long, long time to catch up.’
She paused as much to exert control over herself as for emphasis. ‘You will never know the hell you abandoned me to without so much as a thought. As far back as I can remember – passed from foster parents to care home to foster parents again – I was abused, a punch-bag, a rag doll. And finally I was sent to a man who said what he felt for me was love. Some love!
‘Gareth Paige. His wife was slowly dying but she managed to conceal it from Social Services until I was formally adopted.
‘I wanted to die too. The unspeakable things he did to me. Over the years.’
She leaned back, her clenched hands relaxing on the wheel. ‘You could say he brought me up. He taught me all I know. And he was rich as Croesus; so when I was old enough and he was weak enough, I let him die too.
‘I was all he had to leave his filthy money to. Imagine that. I was free for the first time in my life, eighteen years old, wealthy and worldly-wise. I opted for real education, won a scholarship to Cambridge. I chose work that meant I could travel. But all the time I promised myself that one day … One day, guess what?’
Claudia shuddered. ‘Can we go on now?’ she asked breathlessly.
Marion took her time answering, She swivelled in her seat and stared back with those odd, coal-black eyes which now filled Claudia with dread. Just so must Matthew have looked as he handed down a life sentence.
‘Oh no,’ Marion said softly. ‘This is as far as we go. This is the moment I have waited for all my long, wasted life.’
Driving back from London, DI Salmon answered his mobile phone with a snarl. ‘Sir,’ he corrected himself, recognizing Yeadings on the other end of the line.
‘The shoes are narrow eights, so we’ve got the right one this time. Nothing else apart from them, no; but one of the Met’s computer experts is seeing what they can pull out of his hard disk. His floppies all appear to concern his work, but they’ll be going through those as well.’
�
��Right, so you can turn round and look up an address for me in St. John’s Wood now. Can you take this down?’
Salmon suppressed an expletive, signalled left and pulled on to the hard shoulder. ‘Ready, sir. Got it. With regard to what inquiry, sir?’
‘The same. In fact much the same quest, but with no warrant as yet.’
‘You mean shoes?’
‘Why not? There’s nothing about the sole prints that’s specifically male. It could as easily have been a woman spreading the oil at Woodside. And the lady does happen to own a silver Nissan. It’s possible too that a geophysicist might own a pair of infra-red goggles for night work.’
The silver car was sheer coincidence, Salmon told himself. The super would be stocking up the evidence room like a secondhand Russell and Bromleys. And whoever knew a woman with more than size sixes? Pointless, time-wasting.
He ground his teeth, complied, and started to look for a turn-off to get in the reverse direction. While he drove he pressed in the number DC Arnold had left with him. He’d have to drag the bloody man out of the canteen. The Met would think Thames Valley didn’t know their arses from their elbows.
As for Marion Paige! – the Boss needed his head examined. She’d only recently got to know most of the Dellars. What kind of motive was he dreaming up for her? Unless he imagined she was an old lag Sir Matthew had once sent down for a long stretch.
In the lay-by below the railway embankment Claudia felt the car’s confined space pressing in on her. ‘I – I don’t … I’m not well,’ Claudia faltered, fumbling for the door latch. ‘Need air.’
‘Stay there. I’ll come round and help you out.’
Marion appeared, slightly out of focus, beside her and put a firm, hard hand under one arm to bear her up. She stood, rocking giddily.
‘There; now start walking. It’ll help detox you.’
‘Detox?’ She wasn’t up to arguing. Let it go. She wanted to let everything go, but it was second nature to keep afloat. Float – that was what she seemed to be doing, her legs swinging loosely under her supported frame. And the woman was forcing her uphill. She hadn’t the breath for it. She let her weight swing her back and the pair of them almost fell.