Person or Persons Unknown

by Anthea Fraser

  At twelve thirty she left him at the King’s Head and walked up the cobbled path to Parsonage Place and the house where, for a month, she had stayed two nights a week while she gathered her material. And eventful nights they had been.

  Will was at school, but it was good to see Nuala and her father again and hear their news.

  ‘We’re keeping the articles, of course,’ Nuala told her eagerly. ‘Every now and then, I come across bits that I told you about myself – the Goose Fair, for instance, and celebrations for the Royal wedding. It’s quite exciting!’

  ‘You were an invaluable source!’ Rona assured her.

  When it was time to go, she was touched with sadness. They’d become good friends during her stay, and although Buckford was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Marsborough, in the normal course of things they were unlikely to meet again.

  ‘If you marry the bank manager, send me an invitation!’ she called from the gate, and both Jack’s laugh and Nuala’s heightened colour told her she’d hit the mark.

  ‘You can count on it!’ Nuala promised.

  They’d covered most of what Rona wanted during the morning, and by four o’clock were ready to leave.

  ‘You’ve whetted my appetite with this place,’ Andy admitted. ‘I might well come back under my own steam. Plenty of scope if I need something to enter for a competition.’

  ‘It’s picturesque, certainly,’ Rona agreed as they left the old town behind them, ‘but a bit too claustrophobic for me. I much prefer Marsborough, with its wide, tree-lined streets and elegant buildings.’

  Andy shot her a sideways glance. Small wonder she had reservations about the place, he thought, considering the traumas that had accompanied the writing of the articles. Still, she’d never mentioned them to him, and he wasn’t going to bring them up now.

  ‘Probably because it’s home,’ he said.

  Three

  Rona spent the next day in front of a screen at Chiltern Life, sorting through photographs to accompany the four as yet unpublished articles, and periodically checking her preferences with Barnie. The first two had been well received, and, whether fortuitously or not, a rise in circulation had coincided with publication of the second. Complimentary letters had also been received, and Barnie congratulated her on her suggestion of printing them as a pull-out, complete with binder in which to keep them.

  ‘You’re getting ’em hooked, girl!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘We should do more of this.’

  It was on the Friday evening, as Max was preparing their meal, that the phone rang. Rona lifted it, but before she could speak, a high, staccato voice broke in. ‘Rona Parish?’

  Rona frowned. ‘Yes?’ she said cautiously, lifting her shoulders in reply to Max’s inquiring eyebrows.

  ‘This is Zara Crane. We met at Gavin and Magda’s.’

  ‘I remember.’ A picture came to mind of a pointed little face and a thick braid of red-gold hair.

  ‘You were kind enough to agree to discuss a – project I have in mind.’

  That didn’t correspond with Rona’s memory. ‘I don’t think I—’ she began, but Zara again cut in quickly.

  ‘It’s taken me all week to pluck up the courage to phone you,’ she said. ‘Would it be at all possible to meet tomorrow morning?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rona said firmly, ‘I prefer to keep my weekends free.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sounded quite downcast. ‘The trouble is, I’m at work all week.’ A pause. ‘I could meet you about four thirty, though?’

  Anyone would think she was doing me a favour, Rona thought irritably. ‘You’ll have finished work by then?’

  ‘I’m a schoolteacher, at Belmont Primary. Do you—?’

  ‘I went there myself,’ Rona told her.

  Zara gave a relieved laugh. ‘Well, that makes things easier! We live just round the corner from the school, in one of the town houses. Could you possibly come over, so we can discuss things?’

  ‘Zara, I’m not at all sure—’

  ‘Don’t worry about the publishing angle,’ Zara hurried on. ‘I’ve thought it over since we met, and I can’t see it would do any harm. It might even help. Shall we say Monday? The address is fourteen Grosvenor Terrace.’

  It seemed she wouldn’t take a refusal. ‘I’ll come,’ Rona said, ‘provided you realize I’m not committing myself to anything other than a discussion.’

  ‘All right, but as I said, I think you’ll be interested. Four thirty on Monday, then?’

  ‘Four thirty on Monday,’ Rona confirmed resignedly, and rang off.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Max asked curiously, sprinkling salt into the casserole.

  ‘Remember that young couple at the Ridgeways’?’

  ‘Whom you thought you’d discouraged from contacting you?’

  ‘The same. It seems I wasn’t discouraging enough.’

  ‘Well,’ Max remarked, ‘you’re always saying ideas come from the most unlikely sources, and you’re in need of one at the moment, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose that’s true. She’s a forceful young woman, that. Used to getting her own way, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Takes one to know one!’ Max commented, and ducked as she threw a tea towel at him.

  Number fourteen was halfway along the terrace of mock-Georgian town houses, and since there was a vacant parking bay close by, Rona slid into it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the house bore more than a passing resemblance to her own, genuine, Georgian home, though it was considerably smaller.

  Zara, wearing a blue tunic and grey flannel skirt, opened the door before the bell had stopped ringing.

  ‘Thanks so much for coming!’ she exclaimed breathlessly.

  Inside, any similarity to home disappeared. There was no basement in this modern house, and the ground floor consisted of a kitchen-diner, glimpsed through a half-open door, and an integral garage. Zara showed her upstairs to the sitting room, which took up the whole of the first floor. Another flight led presumably to the bedrooms and bathroom.

  The room in which she found herself owed its light, open aspect to three sash windows overlooking the front of the house. The roof of the school was just visible between the houses opposite.

  ‘You certainly haven’t far to commute,’ Rona commented, taking the seat indicated.

  ‘No, it’s very convenient. Excuse me a moment, while I bring up the teapot.’

  Rona looked about her, at the magnolia walls, the pale blue upholstery and the collection of china dogs on the mantelpiece. Her quick glance detected no photographs and the walls were devoid of pictures. The adjective that came to mind was ‘antiseptic’, though she couldn’t have said why.

  Zara returned with the teapot and seated herself opposite, beside a small table already bearing a tray with mugs, plates, and what looked like a shop-bought sponge cake.

  ‘I know I bulldozed you into coming,’ she began disarmingly, with an apologetic little smile, ‘but I really am desperate for your help.’

  Rona raised an eyebrow and accepted the mug and plate handed to her, shaking her head at the proffered sugar bowl. Zara cut the cake into alarmingly large slices, and she perforce took one with a murmur of thanks.

  Zara sat back in her chair and stared down into her lap, twisting her wedding ring round her finger. The silence lengthened, and Rona, increasingly impatient to learn the object of the visit, was about to speak when she looked up, squared her shoulders and said without preamble: ‘I was adopted as a baby. My parents didn’t tell me till I was ten, but to be honest it didn’t make much difference. Even when I was eighteen, and could have done something about it, I didn’t try to trace my birth parents.’ She paused. ‘I think my attitude was, If they didn’t want me, I don’t want them, either. It’s only in the last few months, since I became pregnant, that it seemed important to find out about myself.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Rona murmured, but Zara was already continuing.

  ‘My parents were against the idea from the sta
rt, and did all they could to dissuade me. But when they realized I was set on it, they finally told me what they’d known all along, that my mother was dead and my father’s identity unknown. “So you see,” they said, “there’s really no point in bothering.”’

  ‘That is bad luck!’ Rona sympathized. ‘A double blow.’

  ‘Yes.’ Zara bit her lip. ‘I could have been the result of a one-night stand.’

  She looked up, meeting Rona’s compassionate gaze. ‘Still, I was determined to go ahead, and as my adoption papers were no help, I sent off for my original birth certificate, to find out my mother’s name and where she’d been living. The weirdest part was that my name was given as Amanda Jane. Amanda Jane Grant, and my mother was Gemma Grant.’ She shook her head wonderingly. ‘I don’t feel at all like an Amanda. It’s as though we’re two different people.’

  After a moment’s reflection, she went on. ‘So then I sent off for her death certificate. I was adopted at six months, so I sort of assumed she’d died having me.’

  This time she was silent for so long that Rona prompted, ‘But she hadn’t?’

  Zara shook her head, and, reaching down beside her chair, retrieved a piece of paper which she handed across.

  As Rona had anticipated, it was a death certificate. Skipping over names and dates, her eyes flicked immediately to the portion headed Cause of Death, totally unprepared for the stark words that leapt up at her: Asphyxiation by ligature.

  ‘Oh God!’ she said softly. ‘Zara, I’m so sorry. What a shock for you.’

  Zara said rapidly, ‘The address given – in Stokely – is the same as that on my birth certificate, two months earlier. Well, Tony and I scoured all the press archives we could find. The papers had been full of the story: police interviews, house to house enquiries, Lord knows what. They were anxious to trace the baby’s father – my father – but a friend told them he’d moved to Australia with his family months before. He’d not even known Gemma was pregnant.’ She flashed Rona a glance. ‘I think of her as Gemma – it’s easier, somehow.’

  ‘So if it wasn’t him, who did kill her?’

  ‘As far as we know, they never found out. The verdict at the inquest was “murder by person or persons unknown”. Does that mean there might have been two of them?’

  ‘I think it’s just a legal phrase,’ Rona said.

  ‘Well, we checked through the rest of the year, hoping they caught someone later, but the story just died away.’

  ‘What exactly happened to her?’ Rona asked tentatively.

  ‘The friend she was sharing with – Selina someone – found her in the bath, with her tights knotted round her throat. I was screaming in my cot in the next room. They thought it might have been a burglar, but nothing was taken. She’d left the door on the latch for Selina.’

  After a minute, Rona leaned forward and passed back the death certificate. ‘It’s a terrible story and I’m very, very sorry, but I don’t see where I come into it.’

  Zara smiled wanly. ‘When I heard you’d unearthed two murderers, it seemed like the answer to a prayer. I – hoped you might unearth me a third.’ And as Rona stared at her, aghast, she added with a terrible little laugh, ‘And when you’ve done that, perhaps you could find my father.’

  ‘I take it you’re not serious?’ Rona’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘But I am, Rona! This has made all the difference, don’t you see? My birth parents didn’t abandon me as I’d thought; my father never even knew I existed, and my mother kept me, even though she was only twenty and on her own. I owe it to her to find out who killed her.’

  ‘But after – what – twenty-five years? If you’re really determined to go ahead, you should get in touch with a private investigator. He’d—’

  ‘No,’ Zara broke in determinedly. ‘I’d much rather you did it – you’d go at it from a different angle. Magda said you write biographies; you must know how to dig out buried facts.’

  When Rona, her head spinning, remained silent, she leaned forward, her hands clasped between her knees. ‘Will you help me? Please?’

  ‘Zara, how can I?’

  ‘You’ve done it before,’ Zara said stubbornly.

  ‘But that was just luck. And as for your father, there are agencies whose job it is to trace birth parents. I’m sure—’

  ‘They’d need a name first.’

  ‘For that matter, so would I.’

  Zara’s eyes dropped. ‘If you’re wondering about the fee,’ she said awkwardly, ‘I have a savings account; it won’t be a problem.’

  Rona flushed and shook her head. ‘That doesn’t come into it. If I decide to go ahead – and it’s a big “if”, because there are all kinds of considerations to take into account – it’ll be Chiltern Life who signs my cheque.’

  She met Zara’s wide, uncomprehending gaze. ‘You did say I’d be free to publish my findings?’

  ‘Well, yes – yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Then the first thing I’d have to do is discuss the ins and outs with my editor. I’d need to be sure he’d take it. He might agree if, for instance, we ran a series on people searching for their birth parents. There are plenty of them, though I hope for their sakes they don’t come up with situations like yours.’

  ‘How soon could you let me know?’

  ‘The end of the week?’

  Zara gave a small sigh. ‘I’d hoped to have an answer today, one way or the other.’

  Rona shook her head. ‘And even if I go for it, there are no guarantees. For a start, this is quite different from the other cases I stumbled into. In the first one, the death had been written off as suicide, and in the second, someone else had been charged with the murder, so the police weren’t interested in either of them. But from what you say, this case remains open, and even if they’re not still actively working on it, they wouldn’t thank me for butting in.’

  Briefly, she thought of her confrontation with DI Barrett in Buckford. Thank God Stokely would be in a different division.

  ‘It’s my bet they’ve forgotten all about it,’ Zara said bitterly.

  ‘Well, as I said, I’ll have to weigh up the pros and cons before coming to a decision. I still think you’d do better to employ someone whose job it is to do this sort of thing.’

  A sudden thought struck her. ‘Have you told your parents you’re approaching me?’

  Zara shook her head. ‘First, I wanted to see what you’d say.’

  ‘I’d probably need their cooperation.’

  ‘But they don’t know anything! That’s the trouble!’

  Privately, Rona thought they might know more than they realized – or, at any rate, admitted. Her mind elsewhere, she ate the last of the cake on her plate. There was no denying she was intrigued by the story, but Barnie’s reaction could be iffy – he erred on the side of caution – and she was only too aware what Max’s would be.

  She refused Zara’s offer of more tea and rose to her feet. As Zara also stood, Rona was momentarily aware of the rounded shape beneath her tunic. Whether that baby would know anything of its maternal grandparents might depend on her. It was a responsibility she wasn’t sure she wanted.

  It would have been natural, being in the neighbourhood, to have dropped in on her mother in the adjacent street, but Rona, though torn by guilt, had no wish to see her. Instead she drove quickly back into town, along Guild Street and up Dean’s Crescent North to Farthings, the little house where Max had his studio and where, before going to see Zara, she had left Gus.

  Between Farthings and the house next door was an alley leading to Max’s garage, and she turned the car into it. A gate in the wall to her right gave access to the tiny piece of ground that served as a garden, and as she got out she could hear Gus barking a welcome. She tried the latch but the gate was bolted.

  ‘Sorry, boy,’ she told him. ‘I’ll have to go round the front.’

  The solid wooden door opened directly off the pavement, opening on to a small passage with doors to left and right a
nd another, standing open, straight ahead. Through this Gus now came skittering, paws sliding on the polished boards, tail wagging as though he’d endured a week’s absence rather than a couple of hours’. Rona bent to fondle his ears.

  ‘Hi!’ she called up the steep, open staircase.

  ‘Hi!’ Max responded. ‘Come for the hound?’

  ‘Yep, but I’d like a word, if you can spare the time.’

  It was an unwritten rule that she didn’t disturb him during working hours, nor he her, unless it was urgent.

  ‘Yes, I’m knocking off now. Come on up while I finish off.’

  Leaving Gus in the hall, she went up to the studio that spread across the entire upper level. It had originally been a loft, but the carpenter next door, who had done a lot of work for Max when he first bought the cottage, had transformed it, putting in skylights and opening up dark corners.

  As her head and shoulders emerged above the stairwell, she saw him drape a cloth over the easel, and knew better than to ask to see his work. He’d show it to her when he was ready.

  ‘I need to get things ready for the class,’ he said, ‘but fire away; I can listen while I’m doing it.’

  She walked to the window and looked down at the street, not many feet below. It was homecoming time; men and women with briefcases, and old ladies with shopping baskets, were making their way along the narrow pavements, and Guild Street, running along the end of the road, was now clogged with traffic. Behind her, she could hear Max setting up the stools and easels for his students.

  ‘I have a problem,’ she said, her eyes following two boys cycling, to the peril of pedestrians, on the opposite pavement. ‘You know I went to see Zara?’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Max replied. ‘She wants you to investigate a murder!’

  Rona spun round. His back was towards her, but when she didn’t respond, she saw his shoulders stiffen before he turned slowly to face her.

  ‘Joke!’ he said heavily. ‘Rona, that was a joke. Right?’

  For a minute longer they stared at each other. Then he let go of the stool he was holding and it fell with a clatter to the floor. ‘God Almighty!’ he said explosively. Then, turning towards the stairs, ‘We’d better go down and you can tell me about it. I have to get supper, anyway.’