The Moment She Left

by Susan Lewis

  ‘It’s in the car. I’ll go get it.’

  As she disappeared, Pamela turned back to Rowzee. ‘You’re acting strange,’ she accused her firmly. ‘So what happened in Devon? Something obviously did, and I want to know what it was.’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ Rowzee assured her, still fondling the dog and loving the way he was pressed against her. ‘Or not in the way you’re meaning it.’ She was remembering how Norma had seemed to think she had a dog. Well, she did now, at least for the next couple of weeks, and it was going to be a joy taking him for long walks on the moors and the beaches, the way she had in the past . . .

  ‘I think I need to speak to Andee,’ she heard Pamela mutter to Bill.

  ‘Here we are,’ Lucie declared, dumping Teddy’s bed full of toys, dry food, towels, lead and shrink-wrapped treats on the floor.

  Though Teddy watched her he didn’t move from Rowzee’s side. Apparently he was more than happy to be here.

  ‘Are you OK, Rowzee?’ Lucie asked, concerned. ‘You seem a bit quiet today.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Rowzee assured her. ‘Just a little tired.’

  ‘She’s been gallivanting around Devon since yesterday morning,’ Pamela explained, ‘and if I know Gina Stamfield more than a few glasses of wine came Rowzee’s way last night, and you know she can’t take it.’

  Though she’d had no more than two glasses at the most, Rowzee decided to seize the excuse to go upstairs and lie down for an hour. Better they thought she was suffering with a hangover than have Pamela start going on about anything else. She wasn’t up to fending her off right now, nor was she very sure about what was happening to her. She’d felt so well yesterday, at least for most of the day, and had been sure that the dexamethasone was doing its thing. Now she could only feel a dark, dragging ache at the back of her skull as she tried her best to remember what Andee had been talking about on the way back. It was important, she knew that, and because of it she’d decided that she must look something up when she got home, something to do with dear Jessica, she thought, but with all the distractions of Pamela and Bill, and now Teddy arriving, she simply couldn’t remember what it was.

  * * *

  As Andee drove back into Kesterly she was trying once again to make some sense of what she’d discovered the day before. Actually it was more of a suspicion that was attempting to settle in her mind, the way suspicions sometimes did before enabling one to form a logical conclusion. Yoder was an Amish name, Gina’s great-grandmother had been Amish – the coincidence couldn’t be ignored, and yet it hardly seemed credible that there could be a connection between this mystery person and Gina’s American ancestry.

  Although Andee had decided not to bring it up with Gina again until she’d had more time to think, she’d got up early this morning to take another look at the prayer book in the hope it might give her some assistance. She’d found no mention of the name Yoder either in print or in the handwritten inscriptions on an inside page. Gina, or someone, had bookmarked a couple of prayers, the first seeming to be about shame, and the second apologising to the Father for not being true. If there were anything to be read into either Andee had had no idea what it was then, and she still didn’t now. However, feeling terrible that she was doing this to a friend, she’d photographed them both just in case they turned out to have some relevance.

  During the drive home she’d asked Rowzee what she knew about the Amish people, but apart from being able to tell her about Gina’s great-grandmother, Rowzee had seemed as much in the dark about this particular community as Andee was.

  After dropping Rowzee at the Coach House Andee had driven on to the Hall in the hope of finding Charles at home, but there had been no sign of him. The fact that Gina knew about the blackmail was something else that was bothering her. Though Gina hadn’t confirmed the existence of a friend as the victim, she hadn’t denied it either, which had left Andee more convinced than ever that Charles himself was being subjected to extortion. Even as she thought it, she was aware of physically shaking her head. It was like trying to connect two live wires, Yoder and Jessica’s disappearance on the one hand; Charles’s blackmail on the other. It just didn’t fit. She was leaping to conclusions without having anything tangible or credible to back them up, only a name and a situation that on the face of it, at least, couldn’t possibly have anything to do with each other. However, her instincts were telling her that there was more, if she’d just allow herself to see it.

  Not for the first time Andee found herself reflecting on closed doors and what happened behind them, particularly those belonging to families. As a detective she’d come across countless tragedies and crimes that no one would ever have dreamt their neighbour, or friend, or colleague capable of. It hadn’t made her so much cynical as sad to be shown, time after time, that even good people could be guilty of the worst imaginable offences. And she knew how far some would go to protect their secrets, or loved ones, and though she hated even to think it, she had to ask herself if this was why Charles was trying to find out the identity of his tormentor. Did he have plans for this person that could end him up in an even worse place than he already was?

  After leaving her car in the parking spot opposite her building, she collected the mail and climbed the stairs to her apartment. Finding the place hot and stuffy inside she opened the windows, letting in a flood of warm sea air and holiday noise.

  Though she had plenty of calls to make she went to make coffee first, and smiled with affection when a text turned up from Rowzee.

  Thank you for being such a good friend to me yesterday. I really enjoyed our chat on the way back. I hope to see you again very soon. With love Rowzee xxx

  Texting back, Andee said, Having you as a friend has brought a lot of sunshine into my life at a time when it seems full of (self-inflicted?) clouds. Let’s make sure to get together again very soon. With love xxx

  No sooner had the message gone than the phone rang, and seeing it was Graeme she quickly clicked on.

  ‘Is Rowzee still with you?’ he asked after enquiring how she was.

  ‘I dropped her about half an hour ago. I think she enjoyed seeing Gina, in fact I know she did, but finding Victor’s son in such a dreadful way has definitely taken its toll on her.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. She’s always been a very sensitive soul, taking things to heart that aren’t even anything to do with her. In this instance, she’ll no doubt feel it her duty to find a way to help him, and provided you can persuade me that there was no deception involved I’ll be happy to support it.’

  ‘I really don’t think there was,’ Andee assured him. ‘If you’d seen the poor man . . . It was heartbreaking to watch a fellow human being suffering such a hopeless and undignified existence.’

  ‘How long has he been like it?’

  Andee frowned as she tried to remember. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she replied, ‘I don’t think we asked, but long enough for a house to have been found and suitably adapted for his mother to take care of him at home. She’s an exceptional woman. Quite New Agey, and very young-looking when she can’t be far off seventy. Rowzee warmed to her greatly, and I’ve no doubt the feeling was mutual.’

  ‘This is good to hear. It’s putting my mind at rest and it’ll give me something positive to tell Pamela when we speak. I expect we’ll want to go and visit the family ourselves. So now, what do I ask next? I have so many questions, about Jenny, the money Blake received, the investigation in London . . . I’m sure you’re too busy to indulge me, but if you’re free to have dinner with me tonight . . .?’

  As a jolt of surprise hit her heart, Andee found herself saying, ‘I’d love to.’ Was she supposed to be doing something else? Maybe she’d arranged to meet Alayna. She should have checked first.

  ‘Great, I was hoping you’d say that. So shall we save this chat until then? I’ll book the Crustacean for 7.30, unless you’d rather . . .’

  ‘The Crustacean sounds lovely.’ It was a restaurant her family often used, but she w
asn’t going to bring that up now, and later she’d just keep her fingers crossed that they didn’t run into Martin.

  After ringing off she checked her last message from Alayna, which said, Can’t wait to see this big picture!! Will text at weekend after Flo goes back to Derby. Flo? Presumably a friend from uni. Was happy to help with the search. Let me know if anything else I can do. Xxx

  Relieved there was no clash for the evening, Andee took a coffee through to the sitting room and sat at the table in front of the window to start making her calls. The first turned into another failed attempt to get hold of Charles, the second was to Blake who was still waiting to hear back from the police about the money, and the third was to Leo Johnson at the station.

  Since there was nothing new to tell him following her meeting with Jenny, and he had nothing significant to report from his colleagues in London, she decided to call Gina to thank her for last night.

  ‘Actually, there’s something I need to tell you,’ Gina confessed before the call ended. ‘I should have told you yesterday, or before you left this morning, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I’m not even sure I can now.’

  Andee said, very carefully, ‘Would you like me to come back to Devon?’

  ‘No. No, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do that. I’ll come there. It won’t be today; I’ve got commitments here. I’ll call when I’m on my way. Have you spoken to Charles since you left here?’

  ‘No. I can’t get hold of him and he wasn’t at the Hall when I called in earlier.’

  ‘Maybe he’s gone back to London. I’ll try to find him. Meantime, thanks for bringing Rowzee. She’s always such a delight, isn’t she? It’s people like her who make the world a wonderful place to be.’

  ‘She loved seeing you too. It gave her a much-needed lift after the shock of finding Victor’s son in such a bad way.’

  ‘That’s so awful, isn’t it? I can hardly stop thinking about it. Poor man. Listen, I’m sorry, I have to go. If you hear from Charles before I do please ask him to call me,’ and forgetting to say goodbye she rang off.

  ‘And you still haven’t heard from him?’ Graeme was saying later, after approving the wine for a waiter to pour.

  ‘Actually, he texted about an hour ago,’ Andee replied, ‘to tell me he was in London, but should be back in the next couple of days.’

  ‘And you’re seeming so relieved about that because?’

  Shaking her head, she said, ‘I’m pretty sure he’s got himself into some sort of trouble, and I’m afraid of what he might do to get out of it.’

  Graeme’s eyebrows rose in a way that made her worry again about how stable Charles might be. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he offered.

  Loving the kindness, she said, ‘I don’t think so, at this stage.’ Should she tell him about the blackmail? It would be breaking a confidence, but did that really matter when they were all such good friends? She decided it didn’t.

  When she’d finished relating what she knew he remained silent for a while, clearly trying to figure out what could be behind the extortion. In the end, he said, ‘And he’s never mentioned any names, or given any indication of what kind of trouble he might be in?’

  ‘I wish he had so I’d have more to go on,’ she replied. ‘But I guess as long as he’s in touch . . .’ She decided to leave it there. After all there was nothing either of them could do tonight to bring Charles back to the Hall, any more than they could force him to tell them what was really going on.

  After taking a sip of wine she found her eyes meeting Graeme’s, and felt the pleasure of being with him eddying through her. It was rare, she reflected, to find someone who really listened the way he seemed to, so effortlessly and yet attentively. Over cocktails earlier she’d told him as much as she knew about what was happening in London, and about Blake’s money, but as it hadn’t amounted to any more than she’d known that morning, they’d soon moved on to other things.

  And so it was now, as with an unspoken agreement, that they allowed themselves to set aside the issues of friends and families, and drift into the enjoyment of simply being together. They talked about the religious paintings Blake had discovered inside an ivory box that Graeme had bought at auction for twenty pounds. They thought it probably dated from the sixteenth century and could easily be Greek Orthodox, or perhaps Eastern European. It was unusual and potentially valuable enough to end up in a museum, which was why Graeme was meeting a contact of his from the Ashmolean the following day.

  She asked more about his business, enjoying the way he recreated the drama of auctions, or described the oddities of collectors, or took her on searches for missing pieces that sometimes turned up on the other side of the globe. There was so much to his profession that she found fascinating that she’d have encouraged him to go on talking all night if he hadn’t insisted they change the subject to her.

  From there the conversation seemed to grow wings, carrying them from one topic to another, moving around the world, or through their lives, or randomly out to the future and the realm of dreams. The wine flowed, the candlelight flickered and their banter grew more adventurous and flirtatious. Andee especially enjoyed hearing about Graeme growing up with the challenges and joys of having Rowzee and Pamela as sisters. Since knowing they were related she’d never doubted how much he loved them, and their closeness as a family filled her with a deep affection for them all.

  ‘I’ve often thought,’ she dared to confess as he walked her along the promenade towards home, ‘about the day I came to tell you I’d decided to marry Martin.’

  ‘As I recall,’ he said sardonically, ‘I was the one who told you you were going to marry him.’

  It was true, he had, because she’d been unable to form the words. ‘I felt terrible, so torn and hardly myself. There was so much going on, I was quitting my job, we’d just found Sophie Monroe, do you remember the missing fourteen-year-old?’

  He nodded soberly. It had been a tragic end for the poor girl, killed, as it transpired, by her own father and stepmother.

  ‘Then Martin was turning on the charm, not only with me, but with the whole family . . .’

  ‘You did what you felt was right at the time,’ he reminded her gently.

  ‘That’s the trouble, it never did feel right, even then. I kept trying to tell myself it did, but it didn’t.’ She remembered only too well how wretched and even cheated she’d felt when she’d walked away from Graeme that day, how deeply she’d regretted not being able to go with him to Italy as they’d planned, or how often she’d longed for it since. It was something she’d tried not to think about, but it had always been there, like a dream that wouldn’t fade with the dawn.

  ‘How are things with Martin now?’ he ventured.

  She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen or heard from him this week. He could be trying to worry or punish me, or hopefully he’s getting on with his life.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Please tell me he hasn’t been in touch with you.’

  With a smile he assured her that her fears were groundless. ‘I can’t help sympathising with him,’ he confessed. ‘I know how it feels to be in his shoes.’

  Remembering that his wife had left him, she decided he could be referring to that rather than to her, and came to a stop outside her apartment building. ‘This is where I live now,’ she told him, feeling absurdly proud of having her own place.

  He looked up at the freshly painted stucco façade and nodded. ‘A good spot,’ he declared. ‘Do you have a view of the bay, or are you at the back?’

  ‘I have a view.’ Her mouth was turning dry and her nerves began fluttering as she heard herself saying, ‘You’re welcome to come and see it for yourself.’

  As his eyes came to hers in the lamplight she knew instinctively that he was going to turn her down and immediately regretted asking. Taking her hand, he said, ‘I want you to be absolutely sure about Martin and where you want to go from here before we consider committing to one another again.’

  Of course he w
as right to say that, even though she was sure – at least about Martin.

  Touching his mouth gently to her forehead, he looked at her again with those droll, knowing eyes and after walking her to her front door, he went off down the street.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rowzee was sitting on a padded bench in the corridor of Kesterly Infirmary’s neurosurgery wing, waiting to be called into Mr Mervin’s office. It would appear, given the hour and the fact that no one else was around, that hers was the last appointment of the day. She could easily imagine how busy Mr Mervin was with so many people’s brains to take care of, but it had been quite a busy day for her too so she was glad of this little sit-down. Not that her commitments could be considered anything like as important as the surgeon’s, but they mattered to her, and they’d matter to Norma, Sean and Jason too when she was gone.

  Her lawyer, the delightful Jamie Flood whose dad had been on the Kesterly cricket team with Victor, had been very understanding about the reasons why she wanted to change her will, and had even offered advice on how to make things more tax-efficient for her beneficiaries. Unfortunately, it seemed she’d have had to live another seven years in order for them to avoid the clobber of inheritance tax, but she hadn’t admitted to Jamie that this was a problem. She’d simply gone along with his suggestions while sending a silent sorry to Norma, Pamela, Graeme and her nieces for the deprivations that would be made by Her Majesty’s Government. Before leaving Jamie’s office she’d added a small bequest for Andee of an amethyst brooch that had belonged to her mother, and a garnet pendant for Gina that had come from Victor’s aunt and Gina had once admired. Pamela and the girls wouldn’t mind those two trinkets going elsewhere, she was sure, and she hoped Andee and Gina wouldn’t be embarrassed. Maybe she should leave them each a note urging them not to be.

  As soon as her appointment with Jamie was over she’d returned to the house intending to walk Teddy for an hour before having to go back into Kesterly, but it turned out he’d already taken off on adventure with Bill.