by Lorna Gray
Finishing the dregs of my tea, I crossed to the kitchen to retrieve my boots. It was only after I had dragged on the first and was halfway through the second that I realised I was resting against the broken chair. Which seemed suddenly to have become undeniably solid. On an impulse, I went to the cupboard with its broken hinge.
Perfect.
Outside, the yard showed little evidence of the drama which had unfolded in the middle of the night, although the burnt remains of the broom handle still lay where it had fallen. Scatterings from the muckheap were weaving a trail across the road and where Davey had thrown himself desperately over the gate, I found a little snag of blue cloth hanging gently in the still air. Of Freddy and Matthew there was no sign.
I wandered down the little line of stables and barns, greeting the residents as I passed and noticing that all of a sudden the yard was somehow looking considerably less wintery. It was almost as if the season had abruptly come to a decision; the snow was rapidly retreating, my neat little swept-up piles were shrinking to leave slushy puddles and a treacherous lake across the cobbles in their place, and, defying my doubts about the weather, water was running off the rusting roof with such vigour that it was creating a glittering little cascade into the trough.
I was just sliding the last bolt home on a happily breakfasting pony when I heard a muffled crash from one of the old cow-sheds that lay behind the stables. It was followed by a steady stream of swearing and, slipping up the three steps out of the far end of the yard, which once must have led into another building but now acted as a minor waterfall whenever it rained, I finally located Matthew.
He was irritably waving a bashed thumb in the air to cool it while Freddy hastily folded away the hinged bonnet of my father’s old car with the very apologetic air of one who had just accidentally knocked its support. Beside them, the tatty old tarpaulin which normally protected the car lay in an untidy heap and beyond, in the gloom of the mouldy old cow-shed, I could make out the dull gleam of leather seats behind the dirtied glass.
“Were you going to ask, or did you just presume that you could use it?”
Matthew looked up sharply from his inspection of the engine to find me watching from the doorway. He gave a sheepish grin. “I’ve already taken so much from you, I figured what was one more thing.”
Returning his smile shyly, I moved closer and peered down into the engine. “What are you doing to it?” I had just noticed the blanket lying folded on the back seat. He had not made it far then, when Freddy had taken to sneaking out with the remains of our supper.
“Well, being a conscientious person, your father, whenever he last used it, drained the radiator and isolated the battery which by the mercy of heaven still has some charge. All I have to do is give her a bit of a clean-up, a dash of oil and she’ll be good to go.”
I nodded, implying I knew exactly what he was talking about. My father had insisted that I learn to drive but in the years since his death I had been perfectly happy to leave the car slumbering in the shed to dream of its youthful adventures. I was far more comfortable with the living warmth of horses than the roar of engines, but the remembrance of my father’s abiding love for the machine and the sentimental feeling that it somehow kept me closer to him had, until recently, made me ignore the rather more practical demands of living on the cusp of poverty. I suppose, put simply, it represented some of my most tender memories, and it was one of the few things of his that I had been determined to keep until necessity had at long last forced a decision.
Now though I realised that I was looking upon it quite without sadness or loss and I was startled to discover that something had changed. I could recognise that I no longer needed to live on the memory of family to preserve my happiness, and could even revel in the solitude of my future. But, beyond that, there was another influence that I had not even realised was missing. Something altogether more fleeting and hesitant – vaguely familiar, but entirely unexpected. Matthew.
“Is this what you wanted?” Freddy emerged from the gloomy interior of the shed. He was dragging a large petrol can behind him and it was clearly very heavy, but I knew better than to injure his pride by offering to help.
With one gruff word of thanks from the man, the boy almost burst with cheerfulness, and I suddenly realised that Matthew must be the first male influence in his life who was actually bothering to treat him like an equal. No one knew where his parents were and his uncle had been an indolent man whose sudden and unexpected fits of fury were hardly likely to inspire much affection. Whereas now Freddy was moving around Matthew with the same sort of wide-eyed admiration as might be expected from someone mixing with a member of the nobility. The slightest hint of that man’s approbation was enough to make the boy positively glow with joy, and, I realised with some irritation, Matthew had exactly the same effect on me.
“Hello?”
A voice drifted up from the yard. It was accompanied by a crash which could only have been Beechnut’s teeth lunging over her stable door and my eyes were wide as they turned to meet Matthew’s sharp questioning glance. Without a word, he slipped away into the thick mouldy dark of the cow-shed.
“Hello?” called the voice again and I hurried towards the steps. A familiar head popped through the gap. “Here you are, Miss Phillips – I hope you don’t mind the interruption?”
Before I could deflect him back down onto the yard, Inspector Woods had stepped up through the old weathered doorway.
“Good morning,” I said cheerfully, fervently hoping that my voice would not betray my sudden tension. “What can I do for you?”
He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder as the fury in her stable crashed about her box again. “I just wanted to ask you a few more questions. I hope you don’t mind?” He came closer without leaving me time to form an answer. “Well, well, is that a Morris Minor? A 1930 saloon …? Lovely – I think my wife used to have one of these.” The Inspector pushed past me to run his fingers along the edge of the bonnet, taking in the style of the running boards and the square cobwebbed grill.
Then he looked up to smile across the engine at Freddy. It was his light genial smile and instantly my nerves were on edge. “What are you doing with her?”
Freddy flushed crimson. “We’re just fixing her up…”
I interrupted smoothly, harmlessly chattering, “I’ve just sold it, you see, so we’re making sure everything is as it should be before the new owner comes to collect it. Don’t worry though, he’s bringing his own fuel. We’ve no intention of running foul of the rules about sharing rationed petrol!”
“Ah, I see. Well, Freddy … it is Freddy, isn’t it?” The Inspector gave him a warmer smile and I had the very strong suspicion that he was recollecting the Colonel’s description of Idiot, and quickly forming his own judgement.
Freddy nodded warily. “Yes sir.”
“Freddy,” I said sternly, “would you go and check whether the ponies have finished their breakfast, please?” I tried to keep the urgency out of my voice, but even if I had, the heightened colouring to Freddy’s cheeks as he eagerly grasped at this escape was probably enough to give us away. A hard chill began to settle in the pit of my stomach.
“No, wait a minute.” The Inspector stopped him with a smile like that of a benevolent grandfather. “We didn’t get a chance to speak the other day. I’m Inspector Woods. Miss Phillips may have mentioned me? No? Oh, er, well, I’m the man in charge of the hunt for Jamie Donald’s murderer and I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don't mind. You do understand that you must tell the truth to the police, don’t you, Freddy? You can get into a lot of trouble if you lie.”
Freddy shot me a nervous glance. All at once, he looked suddenly painfully young. “Yes sir.”
The Inspector nodded approvingly. “Well then, have you seen anyone hanging about looking suspicious?”
“Suspicious, sir?”
“You know the sort, skulking about, looking like they’re up to no good.”
The boy shook his head mutely
, making a small uncertain scuff with his shoe against the tarpaulin by his feet. The heavy ancient canvas creaked noisily. “No, sir, nobody.”
“You do know we’re on the lookout for a murderer, don’t you? Have you seen him anywhere?”
There was the tiniest of hesitations, then the quiet voice said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a murderer, sir. I wouldn’t know what one looked like.”
Oh God, Freddy, don’t get smart with him.
The Inspector gazed at him steadily, assessing this response while the boy fidgeted about like a hare in a spotlight. Then he calmly said; “Have you seen Matthew Croft recently, Freddy?”
The boy jumped like he had been stung. Then his eyes turned to mine and they were white and wide with fear. My heart sank.
“It’s all right Freddy. Just tell the truth.”
There was a long pause, then at last, reluctantly, a very indistinct mumble of; “Yes sir.”
If anything the Inspector’s smile only grew friendlier. “And when was that, Freddy?”
There was a crash as I knocked the support out from under the flaps of the bonnet.
“So sorry,” I said hastily, trying to fold them out of the way again. As it happens, it had actually been completely accidental but I could not have been more obvious if I had tried. Terrible, inescapable, there was a desperate feeling that the game was well and truly up.
The Inspector’s hands reached past me to twitch the support back into place. The amiable smile had not altered, but he was watching my face with those intelligent grey eyes under the unlikely forest of eyebrows and he said, “I’ve noticed something, Miss Phillips. Something you’ve said and now Freddy has said.”
“What’s that, Inspector?” By sheer strength of will I kept my voice calm and my gaze steady.
“You both happily tell me that you haven’t seen the murderer.”
“That’s because we haven’t.”
“Most people say that they haven’t seen Matthew Croft. But I notice that you don’t … At first I thought it was just the phrasing, but I’m beginning to think that your choice of words isn’t quite as accidental as you would have me believe.”
I said nothing.
“Miss Phillips,” he said flatly. “Do you believe that Matthew Croft is our man?”
I had to speak then, and at long last I said, “No, Inspector. I do not believe he is a murderer.”
I think that even though he had been expecting my answer, he was still surprised. Those thick eyebrows rose a fraction. “Do you disregard the reports of what happened, Miss Phillips? Have you not seen the terrible story in the press?”
I had the strong impression that although he was talking quite normally, his brain was making some extraordinarily rapid calculations. I spoke slowly and very deliberately. “I don’t take a paper, Inspector, and I sold my wireless, so I don’t know what they’re saying – although I can imagine it isn’t pretty.”
He gazed steadily at my face before suddenly dropping eye and hand to the oily rag that lay abandoned across the radiator grill. He straightened it into tidy folds. Then he looked up at me again, saying, “That’s very interesting, Miss Phillips. So on what are you basing this opinion?”
“On what I know of him.”
“Even though you told me that he was nothing to you?”
“Even so, Inspector,” I confirmed woodenly.
He gazed at me thoughtfully through narrowed eyes and I felt my cheeks flush. He was not smiling any more and when he spoke it was intensely muted as though he were speaking only to himself. “Interesting … I had been given to understand that you were inclined towards another. But perhaps I was mistaken …”
My lips compressed into a tight line at this. I would have liked to have pretended that I didn’t understand him, but I grasped his meaning only too well. My heart was beating in slow painful strokes. I knew I had to make some answer, or at least shrug it off with a laugh, but my mind was scrabbling desperately to find what I could possibly say to this without adding to the wealth of evidence he was collecting against me. And all the while, at the back of my mind I was wondering if Matthew was listening. Surely he would have had the sense to disappear … Surely.
With the calm precision of a hunter closing in for the kill, the Inspector said, “So, Miss Phillips. Back to the original question …”
And stopped.
With scarily uncanny timing, a car’s headlights turned into the sodden trackway behind the stables, momentarily glaring white off the moisture-rich air before grinding to a noisy halt at the end of the row of cowsheds. I could not honestly say which it was that hit me hardest, whether relief or crushing dismay when I recognised it for John’s car. He climbed out; he was wearing an immaculate pair of pale trousers and jacket, not obvious attire for trapping a fugitive, and with a cheerful lift of the hand, began picking his way through the mud and slush towards us.
The Inspector stayed silent. He was observing John’s approach with what could only be described as mild disinterest and my nerves frayed a little nearer to the very tip of hysteria as that man took all the time in the world to reach us, all trace of the limp gone.
Finally he arrived and, somehow, I managed to greet him quite sedately. “Good morning John. You’ve met the Inspector before, haven’t you?”
John smiled and nodded his hellos, casting a curious glance at me which took in my flushed cheeks and far too cheery smile. After the briefest of hesitations, his gaze slid smoothly onwards, across Freddy and beyond to the Inspector; “Am I interrupting?”
To my absolute stupefaction given how much I must have given away, the Inspector gave a shake of his head. He smiled benignly. “Not at all, Mr Langton. In fact,” here he examined his watch, “I must be off. Goodbye Freddy, Miss Phillips; I’ll go this way if I may – I don’t like the look in that horse’s eye. Mr Langton.”
With a merry smile to Freddy and a nod which encompassed the rest of us, he turned and set off down the track behind the stables. I stared after him, watching him blur a little as he worked his way through the puddles, barely breathing while re-running and re-examining everything I had said, only to come back again to the one peculiar question of: he’s leaving?
For a moment exposure had seemed inescapable. And yet now he was going, abandoning his advantage…Was it possible that John’s arrival truly had been enough of a distraction?
Even as the hope touched my mind it faded again. Of course he knew.
And what now? A pouncing crush of policemen, an arrest and an agonising wait for the inevitable…execution.
Think, Eleanor. Think. The tumult of fears span ruinously in my mind and only one thought would surface from the chaos time and again: failure.
It was a few moments before I realised John was attempting to quiz me about the Inspector’s visit.
“So, Eleanor, what did he want? Checking up on you? Checking that you aren’t fraternising with murderers after all? I’m afraid I let slip about your shady past with Croft.” John was teasing me, his open expression friendly and quite understandably amused, and yet equally, knowingly straying so close to the raw truth as to be almost hateful.
I snapped at him distractedly, actually brought to laughter by the frustration of it all. “Oh John! I do wish you’d stop going on about that, it was a very long time ago and really doesn’t matter any more.” I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying, although for once it was the happy truth. The Inspector had just reached the end of the track.
“Yes, I can see that it doesn’t,” John said slowly. He was looking at me again, thoughtfully examining my face as though he was reading something there, although Lord knows what he was finding except a person whose nerves were being stretched to the very limit of endurance. He flashed his bright smile. “You seem different somehow, you know. You look softer around the edges, and very pretty if you don’t mind me saying. Ellie, can I just …?”
“Sorry, just a minute, John,” I cut across him impatiently. “There’s just so
mething I need to quickly ask … Inspector!”
I very nearly ran as I splashed away down the track after the retreating man. As I drew closer I noticed that a shabby police car was tucked inconspicuously in the lee of my stables and it was apparent that its driver had been undertaking a certain amount of illicit snooping while his superior had been keeping us neatly out of the way. The Inspector paused to wait for me, lifting his hand to the other in some sort of signed question and I thought I saw the uniformed policeman give a faint shake of his head. A negative.
I slithered to a soggy halt. “Sorry, Inspector … I just wanted to ask you something.”
He turned to face me with the air of one who had been held up one too many times already today. “About the case?”
“Not as such, no.” I paused to catch my breath; oddly I felt a little faint. My heart was racing now, beating wildly in my throat. I coughed and tried to calm myself; “Have you heard anything about a Simon Turford, Inspector? Or a Davey Turford for that matter?”
He was too experienced to permit himself to look puzzled, but his usually smooth façade clouded a little. “Turford? No, I don’t think so. Should I have?”
I hesitated, then plunged in headlong. “They were here last night messing about. I … I seem to have got on the wrong side of them.”
“And this worries you? Are you …?”
“No – no, it’s not that exactly, Inspector. It’s just that I have never seen them before, I don’t think they’re local, and now suddenly they’re working in the Park.” I paused, still struggling to control my breathing. “It just seems a bit odd, that’s all.”
“Ah.” I saw him drop another glance down to his watch. I was not convinced that he had actually been listening at all. “I will add them to my enquiries. Try not to worry, Miss Phillips, they’re probably just migrant farm labourers with too much time on their hands. And now—” A brief fleeting smile that faded as he gazed at me, “may I ask you something?”
I swallowed, then nodded. My throat was dry. “Of course.”
“Do you know where Matthew Croft is?”