The Shortest Journey

by Hazel Holt

  ‘I know. I mean, I’m lucky that Michael is so marvellous – when I think of Thelma! – but there have been times, when Mother and Peter died and Michael was away in Oxford, when I don’t think I could have got through if it hadn’t been for the animals.’

  We looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘Idiots, aren’t we?’ I said. ‘Still, I’d rather be silly about animals than be like the Thelmas of this world. But, oh dear, poor Mrs Rossiter.’

  ‘She comes round sometimes to see him. She sits here on this sofa with him on her lap and has a little weep and I make us a cup of tea and I think she goes away feeling better.’

  ‘I’m sure she does.’

  ‘She was round here last week.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Last Monday, was it? Yes, that’s right, because that was the day I had to take Pixie to Mr Hawkins to have her booster shot and she was waiting on the doorstep when I got back.’

  ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘Funny you should ask that.’ Ella said. ‘She seemed a bit agitated, a bit emotional, if you know what I mean. She didn’t stay long, but when she hugged Sandy here it seemed as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. It was worse, almost, than when she brought him. And a funny thing – she made me take some money for his keep. I didn’t want to – well, you know how I feel; as long as I can manage on my little pension – but she was so insistent that in the end I took it, but it didn’t feel right…’

  ‘I honestly don’t know how you manage,’ I said, ‘what with the price of cat food, not to mention Kittylitta. But did she say anything? Mrs Rossiter, I mean.’

  ‘Nothing special, it was just her manner, really. Why?’

  I told Ella about Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s almost as if she knew she wouldn’t be coming back. Coming to see Sandy and going away so upset like that.’

  ‘It does seem strange. But she couldn’t have gone off somewhere deliberately without telling anyone where she was going. You know what she was like; she wouldn’t have made people upset like that for the world. Besides, where could she have gone? She only had Thelma and her sister in Scotland, and we know she’s not with either of them.’

  We sat silently for a moment and then Ella said, ‘Well, whatever happened to her, poor soul, at least she knows that Sandy’s well cared for.’

  She got to her feet and put the marmalade cat back on to my lap.

  ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ she said.

  I sat absently stroking his fine head and considered what Ella had told me. If Mrs Rossiter had gone off somewhere to take her own life, most probably she would have gone to say goodbye to Sandy and she would certainly have been very emotional. If, on the other hand, she’d gone to meet someone in Taunton, as Mr Cooper’s story seemed to imply, then perhaps she had expected to be away for some time. But in that case, why had she acted so out of character and said she’d be back for tea when she must have known that she wouldn’t?

  The problem seemed insoluble. I looked round the room at the cats. Each was sitting in what was obviously its ‘own’ place. Some were dozing, some were regarding me with interest and curiosity, some were occupied with their own mysterious feline thoughts, but all looked perfectly content, accepting their lot with equanimity. I thought how much better adjusted they were than their human counterparts, also in their last refuge, at West Lodge. But then what they had here was not just food and shelter and impersonal care, but Ella’s love, and that, of course, made all the difference.

  After I left Ella’s I went into Stevens’s to buy a bottle of fertiliser for my tomato plants. Stevens’s is the last really old-fashioned shop we have in Taviscombe. It is basically a proper ironmonger’s where men in brown overalls will still sell you half a dozen screws, that is, if you are prepared to wait upwards of half an hour while they engage other (male) customers in mysterious conversations which abound in phrases like ‘medium-sized mole’ and ‘laminated five-by-two’. In addition they have a gardening section, where proper tools like bill-hooks and scythe-heads are all jumbled up with modern gadgets for trouble-free gardening and great sacks full of broad beans, peas and runner-bean seed. Round the corner are shelves of kitchenware and plastic cups and plates for picnics, as well as the boxed sets of glasses, plated toast racks and gift packs of ovenware which usually feature prominently among the presents at a Taviscombe wedding.

  I was threading my way cautiously around this section of the shop (the display shelves were piled so high that one was in constant danger of bringing the whole thing crashing to the ground) when I found myself face to face with Ivy.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Malory! Fancy bumping into you. I was going to come and see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Ivy, how nice. Was it something special? Though, of course, you know I’m always glad to see you.’

  ‘It’s for a reference.’

  ‘A reference? But – what for – I mean, I thought you were quite settled at West Lodge. I’m sure Mrs Wilmot would be very sorry to see you go.’

  Ivy made a sound halfway between a snort and a sob.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t – she’s given me the sack!’

  ‘No! She couldn’t!’

  ‘Well, as good as – and it’s so unfair, Mrs Malory!’

  Her voice rose and there were tears in her eyes. Other customers turned their heads to look at us curiously.

  ‘Look, Ivy,’ I said hastily, ‘why don’t we pop into the Buttery, it’s just across the road. And you can tell me all about it over a nice cup of tea.’

  When we were settled at a quiet table with our tea and a slice of orange cake for Ivy (‘I shouldn’t really, I don’t want to spoil my tea – but it does look so tempting) she was a little calmer.

  ‘Now then, Ivy, tell me all about it. Whatever happened?’

  ‘Well, it was when Mrs Rossiter went off like that. You can imagine what a stew everything was in, with the police there and Mrs Rossiter’s daughter laying down the law – you know the way she does – and Mrs Wilmot in such a state. Talk about bad-tempered. I said to Maureen (she helps Cook in the kitchen), Maureen, I said, you’d think it was our fault Mrs Rossiter’s gone off the way her ladyship goes on at us. We can’t seem to do anything right.’

  Ivy cut her cake into a number of minute pieces and conveyed one of them neatly to her mouth.

  I said soothingly, ‘I expect she’s been very worried, but it does seem hard that she should take it out on you.’

  ‘That’s right. Anyway. It was on the Tuesday that Mrs Rossiter went and what with one thing and another I didn’t get to give her room a good clean until the Thursday. Well, the police said we shouldn’t touch anything and they went through all her things – looking for clues, I suppose, though I don’t think they had any call to look through the poor lady’s diary. Not that they found anything, just appointments with the dentist and people’s birthdays. I don’t suppose the poor thing had much else to put in her diary anyway, in that miserable place! Where was I? Oh yes, well, I gave the room a good hoovering and I was just going to dust round when her ladyship came in. You know how she is, she always has to stand there and watch you working, just to see if she can find fault. Well, as I say, I was standing there with the duster in my hand when she suddenly said, “What’s become of Mrs Rossiter’s ivory figurine?” I expect you know the piece she meant, Mrs Malory; it’s that little statue of a deer. She used to keep it on the top of her desk with some photographs.’

  ‘Yes, I know the one you mean.’

  ‘I said, “I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps it’s slipped down behind the desk.” So we pulled the desk out but it wasn’t there. Then she flew into quite a rage and as good as accused me of stealing it. “What will Mrs Douglas think!” she kept saying. Though it seems to me, Mrs Malory, if your poor mother’s gone missing like that you really won’t be bothered if an ornament’s been mislaid!’

  I thought that Thelma’s reaction would depend on the value of the figurin
e. ‘“The police will have to be told immediately,” she said, and I said, “Well, perhaps they’ve taken it, because they were the last people in Mrs Rossiter’s room, not me.” Then she really flared up and said that if I was going to be impertinent I would really have to go. Well, you know me, Mrs Malory, that’s not me at all. I didn’t mean the police had stolen it – I thought it might have been evidence or something. Oh, I was upset! So I said that I was certainly not going to stay in a place where I was accused of stealing and I walked right out. You’d have done the same, Mrs Malory. And I haven’t been back. Maureen put my bits and bobs together – my overalls and my old shoes that I keep there – and brought them round for me the next day. And I won’t go back, Mrs Malory, not if she was to go down on her knees. Anyway I’ve got this job at Brockwell Lodge – it’s a lovely place, used to be a gentleman’s residence – and not so many patients either. Captain and Mrs Fairweather (he used to be in the Navy) run it and they’re ever so nice. Well, they know how things should be done, they were brought up to it, like your dear mother. They were ever so pleased to have me but, of course, I wasn’t going to ask Mrs Wilmot for a reference, which is why I was coming to see you to ask you to speak for me.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Ivy, I should be delighted. I think the Fairweathers are very lucky to have got you.’

  Privately, I feared that Brockwell Lodge would probably last no longer than many similar residential homes for the elderly which had mushroomed in Taviscombe in the last five or six years. They tended to be run by ex-Service people, some, like the Fairweathers, full of good intentions, genuinely wanting to give value for money but often hopeless at managing the business side of things, gradually losing their capital and finally selling out at a loss. There were others run strictly for profit by the more unscrupulous, who provided only the minimum that would get them by the Ministry Inspectors; grim places where unsympathetic relatives left their now burdensome parents to wait for death. There were quite a few of these. However, I didn’t feel that this was the time to voice my feelings about Brockwell Lodge to Ivy.

  ‘I’ll write a reference tonight so that you can take it to Captain Fairweather tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Mrs Malory. They know I was at West Lodge, but I didn’t tell them exactly why I left. I just said that I didn’t get on with Mrs Wilmot. Well, that’s true enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s all right, Ivy, I’ll skirt round that point. It’s funny, though, about that little figurine. No,’ I said hastily as she seemed about to interrupt me, ‘no, of course I don’t think you took it. But I wonder what could have happened to it. Was anyone else in her room – apart from the police, I mean – anyone you didn’t know?’

  She took a sip of tea and, finding it rather hot, blew delicately into her cup. She put the cup down carefully in the saucer and said, ‘Not after she went, no.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, there was that man – I’ve only just remembered him, this very minute – with you asking that …”

  ‘What man?’

  ‘It was about ten days before poor Mrs Rossiter went off. In the afternoon, just after dinner – they have it at twelve, you know, so it’s over quick and her ladyship can have hers at one on the dot. Anyway, I’d just given Maureen a hand with the clearing up – not that it was my job, but they were shorthanded – and I went to that big cupboard in the kitchen to put some things away and I saw the packets of light-bulbs they keep there, and so then I remembered that her ladyship had told me to put a new bulb in the passage, just by the stairs, you know. It’s very dark in that corner, quite dangerous for the old people. So I was just going along to do it when I saw this man and he asked me if I could tell him the way to Mrs Rossiter’s room.’

  ‘What was he like? Young or old?’

  ‘Well, that I couldn’t say, Mrs Malory. Like I said, that corner’s very dark and he had his back to the light from the front door, where he’d come in.’

  ‘What did his voice sound like?’

  ‘He was a foreigner, that I can tell you. He had a very funny accent, quite strong it was.’

  ‘What sort of accent?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know that! All sound alike to me, foreigners do!’

  ‘Did he find Mrs Rossiter’s room?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, I told him which way to go and later on, when I was passing her room, I heard voices.’

  ‘I wonder who he was?’

  ‘That I couldn’t say, though I wondered at the time if he wasn’t something to do with one of those overseas missions. Well, Mrs Rossiter always went to church regular, twice a day some Sundays.’ She took another sip of her tea and said reflectively, ‘I thought he might be a missionary.’

  ‘Whatever makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, when I was passing the door I thought I heard Mrs Rossiter saying something about Christian duty. Not that I was eavesdropping, mind, that’s not me, Mrs Malory, as you know, but she was talking about Christian duty and the foreigner said it was the last chance to save something or someone, I couldn’t rightly say which. I suppose it was these poor famine victims that you see on the television, it breaks your heart to see them, poor little mites. And Mrs Rossiter was very generous. I expect he’d come to ask her for money for the mission.’

  ‘I suppose it might have been ... And that’s all you heard?’

  ‘Oh yes, like I said, I was just passing the door – I was going to get that end room ready for a new lady – you know poor Mr Robson passed on? A merciful release, you might say, but his poor daughter was ever so upset. Such a nice woman, she was always very pleasant to me.’

  ‘Ivy, I do think you ought to tell Mrs Wilmot about this man.’

  Her lips set in a firm line.

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Malory, I couldn’t do that. I shan’t cross that threshold again.’ She looked at me triumphantly, pleased with her dramatic statement.

  ‘Well, the police, then.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t go to the police! They’d ask me why I wasn’t still working there. They might think I’d stolen that little statue. No, Mrs Malory, I’ll let well alone, thank you very much.’

  She picked up a few remaining crumbs of cake on her plate delicately with her finger and put them in her mouth.

  ‘Well, I did enjoy that. I’d better be on my way or Benjy will think I’ve deserted him.’

  Benjy was her budgerigar. I enquired after his health and she said, ‘Oh, he’s lovely, Mrs Malory, such company. I don’t know what I’d do without him!’

  Ivy had been a widow for many years, much longer than me, and I reflected that the replacement of a loved one with an animal (or a bird) seemed a very Anglo-Saxon solution; somehow I couldn’t see the French or the Italians doing such a thing.

  When we parted I made my way slowly down the Avenue to where I had parked my car, wondering what, if anything, Ivy had heard. A foreigner – a man with an accent – talking to Mrs Rossiter about religion ... I really couldn’t make head or tail of it. He could be from a foreign mission, though somehow that didn’t seem quite right. I was still feeling rather dazed from the continuous flow of Ivy’s conversation and my mind was even woollier than usual. Actually, I’m never at my best in the late afternoon. I usually pick up about suppertime, after a small glass of something. Perhaps later on I would be able to make sense of the information that had come my way.

  My key was in the car door when I remembered that I hadn’t bought my tomato fertiliser after all. With a sigh, I turned round and made my way back up the Avenue.

  Chapter Six

  That evening I was sitting looking mindlessly at a programme about Impressionist painters on the television. Tessa was sitting heavily on my feet and Foss and Tris were edging me gradually off the sofa as they jockeyed for the best position. I gave a sudden exclamation which made Foss jump down hurriedly from the sofa and then turn to look at me reproachfully.

  I looked again at the screen, where a large close-up of Van Gogh’s ‘Cornfield at Arl
es’ caused me to say aloud, ‘Of course – Dutch! Marion’s husband.’

  Certainly Van, or whatever he was called, was the only foreigner I could think of in connection with Mrs Rossiter. And certainly he – or Marion – had a very strong motive for wanting Mrs Rossiter out of the way before Marion’s mother died. He could perfectly well have come down from Scotland to see her. No one knew him in Taviscombe except Thelma, and she wasn’t likely to be there. He could quite safely call, pretending that he just happened to be in the area and wanted to give her news of her sister.

  Foss jumped back on to my knee and began to knead my skirt with his claws. I always wear an old tweed skirt when I’m on my own in the evenings and so many threads have been pulled that the front has taken on the quality of fine mohair. I stroked Foss’s soft dark head and continued to work out my theory, if such it could be called. While he was there, Van could have arranged to meet her in Taunton – for lunch, perhaps – so that she would genuinely have thought that she’d be back for tea. Then, when they met, he could say that he’d just heard from Marion that Maud was much worse, dying, in fact, and was asking for her sister. He’d have a car ready and would say they needed to leave at once and he’d telephone West Lodge when they stopped on the motorway. That would have been the scene that Ed Cooper saw in the car park in Taunton.

  I wasn’t sure who the woman could have been. Not Marion; presumably she would have been at her mother’s bedside. Perhaps one of their daughters? They must be quite grown up by now. Then events could have followed the grim scenario I had considered before. A lonely spot in the Quantocks, somewhere Mrs Rossiter could have got to herself by bus or taxi, and then (my mind shied away from this) they disposed of her so that it would look like an accident when she was discovered. All they had to do was to make sure that the body would be found before Maud died and they would inherit the larger part of old Mr Westlock’s immense fortune.

  The picture on the television now was the haunting self-portrait of Van Gogh, his head bandaged and his eyes enormous with defeat and despair. It seemed too painful to contemplate so I pressed the remote control and banished the image from the screen, but I couldn’t so easily banish the pictures I had conjured up in my mind of Mrs Rossiter in danger and in fear.