It occurred to me then for the first time that there was no sign of the dogs in Lucille's house.
‘Where have you left them?’ I asked Avril. I had a sudden and horrible fear that she had had the poor animals put down, as she had threatened, then realized that it was hardly likely that she could have done so at that time in the evening.
They're tied up in Jane's garden,’ she answered. ‘I haven't made up my mind about them. I haven't made up my mind about anything. I feel very stupid compared with Lucille. Here she's been hit by a horror as bad as anything that's hit me, or perhaps worse — yes, I think much worse — and she just makes it plain that she means to go on living her normal life in spite of everything. Jane's right, she is very brave.’
‘I'm much older than you,’ Lucille said, ‘that's probably the explanation. Things matter less and less as you get old. The young are very vulnerable. We're always hearing about the vulnerable members of society, women, children and the elderly, and I can't make any sense of it. Once you're old enough all you really care about is being comfortable. And that, of course, makes money very important. To be old and poor must be very difficult indeed. But I have no worries of that description. I never have had. I always had more money than my husband, and naturally, I've never depended on Kevin in any way. I shall survive.’
I was sure that she would. She was made of steel. If she possessed any emotions, she had them so firmly under control that she had no reason to fear what they might do to her. I began to wonder if what had helped to twist Kevin's nature had not been an excess of mother-love, as I had supposed, but a lack of it. Perhaps he had had an intuition that he was only one of the comforts that she demanded of life. If he had really turned on her in hatred, as she had said, that did not seem unlikely.
We went on talking for some time, but there was evidently nothing that any of us could do for her. After a while, I made the standard remark that if there was anything that I could do for her, she must let me know, and got up to leave. Avril followed my example, then asked me if she could drive home with me, as she had left the things there that she had used the night before. Lucille thanked us in a stately way for coming, and we let ourselves out and got into the car that I had left in front of the house. The evening was very dark by then and a wind had got up. It was much colder than it had been earlier in the day and there was a damp feeling in the air as if it were trying to rain. Some chestnuts on the far side of the road tossed their dark heads against the sky. There was light and noise in the Green Man next door to Lucille's house.
‘Oh dear, I've just thought of something,’ Avril said as we got into the car. ‘When I've collected my things, I'll have to ask if you'd mind driving me down to Jane's, because I don't think I could face walking, I'm so tired.’
‘Of course I'll drive you down, or Malcolm will.’ I had just noticed someone come out of the door of the pub; a tall, broad-shouldered man, who turned in the direction of the lane up to our house. There's Hugh,’ I said. ‘Have you seen him today?’
Avril gave a sigh. ‘Yes, he called in on Jane and me just before we left to go to Lucille, and Jane, silly creature, ever so tactfully left us alone together and I had the greatest difficulty in stopping him telling me he loved me. I don't believe it, of course. It's Jane he really cares about, but she was always completely wrapped up in Peter, and he only thought of me as a sort of stopgap.’
‘So he isn't the father of your child,’ I said.
She turned her head to look at me silently. I had started the car and we had already overtaken Hugh.
At last she said, ‘No.’ There was another silence, then she said, ‘I suppose Lynne told you about that. I ought to have known she would. She could never keep anything to herself.’
‘Yes, but I'd guessed it already,’ I said.
‘How did you manage that? It doesn't show yet.’
‘Well, in a way it does.’
‘How?’
‘Oh, I don't know. Something about your face and your suddenly wanting to get rid of the dogs. Are you happy about it, Avril?’
‘I don't think I've ever been so miserable in my life.’
‘But isn't it what you've always wanted more than anything else?’
‘Yes, but not like this. This is all wrong — wrong!’
‘Because the father isn't Peter?’
‘So Lynne told you about that too.’
‘Yes.’
‘And are you going to tell everybody about it, including the police?’
‘You know I'm not.’
‘I suppose I do, yes, you'll stay quiet about it. Poor Peter, he was so hurt and humiliated about it. He hated the dogs, because he took them as a kind of criticism of him, which in a way they were, though that didn't occur to me at the time I got them.’
‘Did he know about the child?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She was silent again, gazing straight before her where the long shafts of light from the headlights cut into the darkness. ‘He even knew who the father was. I told him everything.’
‘I think I know that too,’ I said. ‘Isn't he Fred Dyer?’
CHAPTER 8
Avril did not answer. Her silence, as it lengthened out, was as complete an admission that I was right as any answer could ever have been. I left the car in the lane, sure it would be needed immediately to take her down to Jane's, and we walked up to the house together. We found Malcolm and Brian in the sitting room, watching television. Malcolm switched it off as soon as we came in and I explained why Avril had come back with me. She said nothing herself. Silence seemed to have taken possession of her. I went upstairs with her and helped her pack the few things that we had brought over from her house the evening before and went downstairs again. At last, she managed to speak.
‘I want to thank you,’ she said. ‘You've been very kind. I don't know what I'd have done yesterday if you hadn't taken care of me.’
‘I'll drive you down to Jane's,’ Malcolm said.
Thank you, that's very kind.’ There was a flat monotony in her voice; a sound of hopelessness that made me more sorry for her than I had felt till then.
She and Malcolm set off together down the path to the gate.
‘How was Mrs Bird?’ Brian asked as I sat down near the fireplace.
‘As you'd expect, if you knew her,’ I answered. ‘Very brave, very proud. She says everyone's going to blame her for having made Kevin what he is. I'm not sure whether or not she thinks so herself. She didn't deny it.’
‘Do you think she's known the truth all along?’
‘It isn't impossible, but I don't really think so.’
‘What will she do now?’
‘She'll face it out. She'll stay in that house and if people show signs of avoiding her, or pitying her, she'll look through them as if they didn't exist.’
‘You don't think she'll go to those relatives of hers in Canada?’
‘I don't think so. She'll want to stay where she can keep some contact with Kevin.’
‘He'll get life, of course.’
‘Unless he's detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.’
‘It doesn't much matter which it is, does it, as long as he's kept very securely out of circulation?’
I leant back in my chair and for a moment closed my eyes. I was aware of a deadly tiredness and a longing to be able to talk about something that was not murder. But there did not seem to be much hope of that for the present.
Brian was going on, ‘It's curious how unwilling we all are nowadays to say that a person is mad. We've all sorts of other names for it. Diminished responsibility. Mentally ill. Psychologically disturbed. But we're as unwilling to use the old word, mad, as a lot of people are to talk of death. They prefer to say we only pass over.’
‘Like Avril talking of having her dogs put down, not killed. Incidentally, I wonder if she'll really do that.’
I came near to telling him at that moment that Avril would almost certainly get rid of her dogs somehow. To look after them as well as a new
born baby would be somewhat demanding. But I said nothing. My belief that Fred Dyer was the father of the child was quite positive, but I did not feel it was anything that I could talk about, even to Brian. It was to Malcolm that I spoke about it presently, when we had gone up to bed, had switched off the light and had lain side by side in a silence which for some minutes was equally wakeful for both of us.
At last I said, ‘She's pregnant, you know.’
‘Is she?’ he said. ‘I wondered.’
‘What made you do that?’ I asked. ‘It doesn't show yet.’
‘I don't know why I thought of it,’ he said. ‘It just occurred to me as possible.’
‘And it seemed probable that the father's Fred.’
‘Is that certain?’
‘Not a hundred per cent, I suppose, but I think it's so. When I said to her I thought it was, she just went dead silent. She didn't deny it. And it fits in a number of ways. You know how he used to go into the house for a cup of tea and she said herself they used to gossip over it. Well, I think it might be for more than tea that he went in, because apart from anything else, Lynne told me something rather curious. She told me she offered to lend Avril money if she needed it before probate and all that had gone through, but she was a bit staggered when Avril promptly asked her for ten thousand pounds.’
‘I don't think I quite understand the connection,’ Malcolm said. ‘Are you suggesting that Fred demanded ten thousand pounds for making love to Avril? If so, prostitution must be a more paying occupation than I've ever thought.’
‘No, but if Avril thought he and she were going to go away together, she might have needed money quickly. Even if he was blackmailing Kevin, I don't suppose he's got enough put by for the two of them to set off for Australia, which was what he seemed to want to do.’
‘And now he's disappeared without his ten thousand pounds. I wonder if Avril knows where he is. It'll be just as well for her if she doesn't, I'd say. He doesn't seem to be an exactly faithful type.’
‘I wonder if Peter knew about the child, and if so, whether it had anything to do with his murder. You know, I've a feeling that if we found the right way of looking at it, we'd find it was at the heart of the matter.’
‘But with divorce so easy nowadays, it doesn't seem probable.’
‘Malcolm, wouldn't it be nice now to go, say, to Spain or Italy.’ The itch to talk of something that was not murder had at last become too much for me. ‘I've never been to Italy in the spring, when it's supposed to be so wonderful.’
He drew me towards him and kissed me.
‘Very nice. But we've got to see this thing through first.’
‘We're only involved in it, aren't we, because I saw that man at the gate?’
‘Whom you're so sure wasn't Fred.’
‘What do you think — could he have been Kevin?’
‘Possibly, only it doesn't seem to be Kevin's type of murder. No strangling and black plastic bags. It seems to have been a cold-blooded affair, probably carefully planned.’
‘The thing is, Kevin could have had a motive. If Peter had found out the truth about those Edgewater murders, perhaps somehow from Fred, he could have told Kevin he was going to tell the police all about it.’
‘Yes, and I suppose there could be two sides to Kevin's nature. Only how could Peter have got the truth out of Fred? It paid him to be the only person who knew it.’
‘He could have said something accidentally. Anyway, when this is all over, we're going to Italy.’
‘Very well, to Italy. Good night, now.’
‘Good night.’
But I believe it was an hour or more before either of us went to sleep.
Next morning, after breakfast, I set out shopping with my shopping trolley. It was a beautiful morning, with clear springtime sunshine brightening the pale green that was growing richer on trees and hedges. It seemed absurd to think too much of what human beings could do to ruin the loveliness of that brief perfection. For of course, it would be brief. It might be raining by the afternoon. There was a flowering cherry in full bloom in the Askews’ garden. I found myself thinking about the Askews, wondering why we had not got to know them better and if it was our fault. I thought that perhaps it was a matter of age, that we had felt that it would bore them to spend too much time in the company of people as old as Malcolm and me. But perhaps it was the other way round, that they had thought we would find them a nuisance. I decided I would do my best to rectify the trouble, whatever it was. The fact was, I understand myself well enough to realize that I was craving for contact with people who to the best of my knowledge had no connection with murder.
I went to the village shop, filled my trolley with a number of things, then set off for home. But when I reached Hugh Maskell's gate, I paused, then pushed it open and went up to the house. When I rang, there was a sound of footsteps inside almost immediately and Hugh opened the door.
‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be that man Holroyd. I couldn't think who else it could be. Come in and have some coffee.’
We went into his sitting room where the great window that overlooked the patio was wide open, which made it look as if the strange metal object that might be a nude woman was just about to come walking in.
He hesitated and said, ‘I'll shut it, shall I? It's so tempting to have it open on a wonderful morning like this, but it soon gets chilly.’
He closed the window, told me to sit down and said that he would be only a few minutes getting the coffee. I sat down in a chair near the window, and suddenly noticed that on a small table by my side, there was a copy of Romeo and Juliet. I picked it up and started leafing through it, finding that it had been liberally annotated in pencil. I was studying it when he returned from the kitchen with two cups of coffee on a tray. I held the book up.
‘Are you actually still thinking of going on with this, Hugh?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Later. What do you think about it?’
‘It's what I came in to ask you,’ I said. ‘I've a feeling we ought to keep the dramatic society going, but I can't see us tackling Romeo and Juliet now. But we'll have to get back to normal sometime, and something fairly light and cheerful might help to do it. What about something like The Beaux Stratagem?’
‘Too sophisticated,’ Hugh replied. ‘Actually much harder to act than Shakespeare. But we must think about it. As soon as it's decent, we must call a meeting of the society and discuss the position. You realize, of course, we've lost three of our male actors. I know Kevin wasn't actually acting in this last show, but he was useful sometimes, and of course, the work he put in on designing our sets was invaluable. But that reminds me …’ He paused, sipping coffee, then gave an embarrassed little laugh. ‘This is a nice house, wouldn't you say?’
‘Very nice,’ I said, taken a little aback by the change of subject. ‘I've always liked it.’
‘But I'm not sure that I'll be staying on in it. I simply don't know. I can't make up my mind. What do you think, Frances, shall I ever be comfortable living in a house designed by a mass murderer?’
It was a problem that had not occurred to me. One of the reasons why I had come in to talk to Hugh about the problem of the dramatic society, was that it seemed a promising way of escaping from the dread obsession with murder that gripped everyone else I met. But here we were, back to it almost immediately.
‘I don't know, perhaps you won't,’ I said. ‘But you aren't thinking of leaving Raneswood, are you?’
‘I'm not sure that I'm thinking of leaving the house,’ Hugh said. ‘If I can stick it out for the next few months, I might find it developing a sort of legendary quality. People might even come to look at it and want to be shown round it. It wouldn't be exactly like living in a haunted house, but it would be a place with a history.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘if it's just the immediate future that's the problem, why don't you go abroad for a time? That's what Malcolm and I are going to do. As s
oon as that business in the Magistrates’ Court is over and we can get away, we're going to Italy.’
He went to stand at the window, looking out at the metal lady on the patio. A tall, spare figure with broad shoulders, I caught myself thinking. Clap a red wig on his head and gardening gloves on his hands and was it possible … ? Just possible … ? I began to wish I had not come.
I finished my coffee and stood up. He did not turn, but spoke quietly.
‘I've been thinking, you know, that I might be able to bring Avril here and that she would like it. What Kevin did, after all, had nothing to do with Peter's death. At least, I don't think it had. But then I thought that she'd almost certainly want to move much further away, and then I started thinking that perhaps I shouldn't really care about staying on here myself. But suppose she doesn't want me, what do I really want to do?’
‘Have you spoken to her yet?’ I asked.
‘Not really. I tried to, but perhaps naturally, she wouldn't let me. It was a mistake to try.’
‘Yes, I'd leave it for the present,’ I said, feeling fairly sure that Avril had told him nothing of the child, and that there would be no response from her till she had made up her mind what to do about it. ‘Meanwhile, think about our dramatic society and what we can do to keep it going. I'm sure it would be good for us all.’
He saw me to the door, a strangely forlorn figure, it suddenly seemed to me, a very lonely man who just conceivably might do a desperate thing to replace the wife who had died and left him to face an empty life alone.
I dragged my trolley along the lane till I was opposite the Askews’ house. Victoria Askew and the two children were in the garden; the children playing some game with a plastic football, and their mother hoeing a bed of wallflowers. On an impulse, I stopped at their gate and waited until she had noticed me. When she saw me, she came quickly to the gate and opened it.
‘I've been hoping to see you sometime,’ she said. ‘You must have been going through a very difficult time. Won't you come in and have some coffee?’
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