Max stretched and looked at his watch. He’d done as much work on the canvas as he could for now, and he needed a break. Since it was almost lunchtime, he decided to phone Rona and suggest she met him at the Bacchus. It would do her good to get away from the house. Thank God they’d the prospect of the Tynecastle visit next week. With luck, by the time they returned, this mad woman would have been found and they could get on with their lives.
There was no answer on the landline, which surprised him; Rona hadn’t said she was going out. He tried her mobile, but it went to voicemail, surprising him still further. Where the hell was she? He decided to ring again in ten minutes.
But ten minutes later, he met with the same results. Irritated by now, he tried Lindsey’s office, only to be told that Miss Parish was lunching with a client. No go there, then.
Max frowned, considering his options. Under normal circumstances, he’d have shrugged and let it go. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and, slightly uneasy, he elected to go home and check for himself.
‘Rona!’ he called, as he let himself into the house. ‘Are you there?’
There was no reply, but Gus came bounding up the basement stairs to greet him.
‘Where is she, boy?’ he asked, bending to pat him. Unusually, the dog evaded his hand and ran back down the stairs. Max shrugged and went up to the study. The computer screensaver was on, which was odd; when Rona finished work, even for the lunch break, she invariably switched it off.
Increasingly anxious, he called again, glancing into the en suite to check she’d not been taken ill, but like the rest of the house, it was empty. And she was still not answering her mobile.
He went back downstairs, to find Gus waiting for him in the hall. Again, as soon as he saw Max, the dog turned and ran down to the kitchen. Perplexed, Max followed, stopping short on the threshold. The patio door was open.
Thoroughly alarmed now, he ran outside. But the garden, surrounded by high walls and paved throughout, offered nowhere to hide, and while it was patently obvious no one was there, the watering can stood abandoned by one of the tubs. Rona always, but always, replaced it by the tap when she’d finished using it. Gus, who had followed him, barked encouragingly, thereby adding to his unease, since he normally barked only when the doorbell rang.
Max returned to the kitchen, and, with a sense of shock, saw what had escaped him on his dash outside: Rona’s mobile was on the table. Which explained why she’d not answered – but not why she’d left the house without it.
He paused to take stock, mentally listing the anomalies which were now building up. 1) Rona had gone out without her mobile – something she never did. 2) She’d left the back door open. 3) The computer hadn’t been switched off. 4) The watering can was out of place. 5) Gus was behaving strangely. Any one of these things would have been uncharacteristic, to say the least. Taken together, they were seriously disturbing. God, what was going on?
There had been no cry from downstairs, no pounding of angry footsteps, and Rona steadied her breath. As she’d hoped, the broken window had gone undetected. For the rest, her only chance was to remain calm – as, she admitted ruefully, she’d told herself in similar situations before. So when Karen returned, balancing the tray and eyeing her cautiously, she was again seated on the bed, and made no move as it was placed on the dressing table.
It bore a plate of sandwiches and two glasses of the lemonade that, Rona remembered with a pang, had been a speciality of Barbara Franks. Karen must have found it in the fridge. A bread knife was also ominously in evidence, but the door hadn’t been relocked, perhaps because it was difficult to juggle with the tray. Or perhaps she considered the knife sufficient deterrent.
Rona nodded at the bare patch on the floor, and forced herself to say conversationally, ‘Whose blood was on the carpet?’
‘Mine,’ Karen replied. ‘Father lashed out, hitting me in the face, and making my nose bleed. It went on for some time.’
Lashed out? While he was being murdered? Rona feared the sandwiches would stick in her throat, but when Karen passed her the plate, she’d no choice but to take one. Had something been put in them? she wondered fleetingly, but it seemed unlikely; Karen was tucking in herself, and there were no separate piles, which might have raised suspicions.
She said, ‘At what point did your father lash out?’
Karen sighed. ‘You want the ‘i’s dotted and the ‘t’s crossed, don’t you? I suppose that’s what comes of being a journalist. Well, as I said, we argued the matter back and forth, but they refused to see my point. Eventually we went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay there, on that bed, weeping for David and Timmy and letting the rage boil up inside me.’
Through the broken window, Rona suddenly heard Gus bark, and her heart jerked. She looked fearfully at Karen, hoping she wouldn’t register the increase in volume, but she was lost in her story. Why was Gus barking? Was Max there? Oh God, let Max be there! Let him find her!
Karen was saying, ‘I must have been half-dozing when I heard my parents’ door open, and Father go downstairs. It was five o’clock, and already getting light. I wondered if Mother was awake, and if so, whether she’d be more amenable to apologizing if Father wasn’t there. So I tapped on her door and pushed it open. She was sitting at the dressing table. She didn’t turn, but our eyes met in the mirror, and her very first words lit the touch-paper. Would you believe she asked if I’d come to apologize, for the things I’d said the night before.
‘I said something like, didn’t she realize she’d taken away my life by denying me my memories, and she said she was amazed that I wanted them.
‘I screamed at her to admit she wanted to control me, that it wasn’t for my sake, but theirs, that they’d kept me in the dark.’
‘And at that she lost her temper, something I couldn’t remember happening before. She yelled that if I was determined to know, then she’d tell me, and of course they didn’t want my memory to come back! I might let something slip, then they’d be back in the same position they were in, in Canada.’
Karen paused and took a deep breath. ‘Then she said, “Don’t you think we’ve had enough of being labelled the parents of a murderess?”
‘I saw her eyes widen in the mirror as she realized what she’d said. She hadn’t meant to, but it was so clearly how they’d been thinking, that I just lost control. I seized the dressing-table mirror and cracked it over her head. It was like history repeating itself, like killing David all over again.
‘And, like the last time, I knew Father would come up and see what I’d done. So I had to act first. I crept downstairs, the mirror in my hand, and down again to the kitchen. He was sitting at the table with a mug of coffee – I can still smell it. He half-turned, and, like Mother, said, “Come to apologize?”
‘So I lifted the mirror again, but he saw the movement and flung out an arm – either to deflect me, or defend himself. His fist landed on my nose, and the pain of it almost blinded me. I could feel the blood coming, and before he could get to his feet, I lashed out, and this time made contact with his head.’
She paused. ‘I’ve just thought of something curious; there was no blood with either of them, but there’d been a lot with David. But admittedly the lamp had shattered and cut him quite badly, whereas the mirror didn’t break. Either that, or both my parents had thick skulls.’
The sheer callousness of that took Rona’s breath away, and with it, her last hope of talking Karen round.
‘I went back upstairs,’ Karen said expressionlessly. ‘The blood was soaking into my nightdress and some of it dripped on the stairs. Back in my room, it took me a while to stop the bleeding, but eventually I managed it. I washed quickly to get rid of the blood, then, when I was dressed, I wiped the mirror to remove fingerprints, and replaced it on Mother’s dressing table. She hadn’t moved; she was just sitting there with her head bowed, as if she was thinking. A pity she hadn’t thought more clearly when she was alive.
‘And that’s abou
t it, really. I took what I needed with me in a carrier bag – the police would check the suitcases – and left the front door open, to make it seem someone had broken in.’
Max ran down the path and looked up and down the street, in a vain hope of seeing Rona coming home. It was deserted; everyone would be at lunch. He turned and went dispiritedly back inside. Should he call the police? They took little notice of missing adults until some time had elapsed; could he convince them that the accumulation of happenings was significant? Oh God, Rona, where are you?
Gus was awaiting him in the hall, and yet again, on seeing him, galloped down the basement stairs, barking. Max frowned; was the animal trying to tell him something? He followed him down to the kitchen, and Gus promptly ran outside. Again, Max followed, and to his astonishment, the dog started jumping up at the dividing wall, barking excitedly.
‘Seen a cat, old boy?’ he asked. Then his eyes went beyond the wall to the next-door house, and he was suddenly on high alert. Surely those curtains hadn’t been drawn this morning? Nor, most definitely, had the window been broken.
He turned and dashed back upstairs, out of the door, and up the next path, where he saw, to his amazement, that there was a key in the door.
His impulse was to crash in, shouting Rona’s name, but he restrained himself. Instead, he went stealthily up the stairs and paused outside the room where the patch of blood had been. Voices were coming from it – and one of them was Rona’s.
His hand closed silently round the door knob, and very gently he turned it. Then, when it had gone the full extent, he pushed the door violently back on its hinges, and launched himself into the room, not knowing what he would find.
Everything happened at once. Rona was seated on the bed, but between her and the door was someone who could only be the mysterious Louise. Her face, turned towards him, was frozen in surprise, and at the same moment Rona lunged forward, giving her a violent push which knocked her to the floor and at the same time catching up an evil-looking knife from a tray.
‘Quick, Max! Outside!’
He allowed himself to be pushed from the room, and Rona pulled the door shut behind them, managing to turn the key just as Karen, regaining her feet, hurled herself at the door, rattling the handle and banging repeatedly against the panels.
Max reached for Rona, and they clung together, gasping for breath. Then she pulled away and gave him a shaky smile.
‘I think you’d better phone the police,’ she said.
So it was over. They remained on guard until the police arrived, and escorted Karen out of the room and down the stairs. Max and Rona followed, and as they reached the hall, an orange streak came racing towards them. Rona bent swiftly, and scooped the ginger cat into her arms.
Karen, totally calm now, looked back over her shoulder. ‘Give her to Harry,’ she said. ‘A belated peace offering.’
And allowed herself to be led down the path to the police car.
Next Door to Murder Page 25