by Sara Craven
She took a last look round, then headed downstairs to make the salad. She was just going into the living room when she heard someone coming up the path. Logan back so soon? She could hardly believe it, but she flung open the door to welcome him and found herself confronted instead by a strange woman.
Aunt Hes hadn’t mentioned any newcomers to the village, and something told Briony that this woman wasn’t a local, anyway. There was an indefinable air of the city dweller about her. Her clothes were a little too smart, her shoes a little too elaborate for Kirkby Scar.
There was tension in the woman’s face, beneath the carefully applied make-up, and the hands were clutching an expensive handbag so tightly that her knuckles showed white.
She said, ‘Mrs Adair? Are you Mrs Adair?’
There was doubt in her voice as if she suspected she was the victim of a hoax. It was the first time Briony had been addressed by her married name, and it should have been a great occasion, but somehow it wasn’t. She supposed the woman must be a local after all, because no one else knew they had come here.
They had carefully let it be known in London that they were going abroad.
Briony said slowly, ‘Why, yes. Can I help you― Mrs …?’ She let her voice trail away on a question. If this woman was some sort of welcoming committee, then she had to make her welcome, whatever her private feelings. And for no reason that she could explain, Briony wished with all her heart that this stranger would go away, or that Logan would return, preferably both.
‘My name is Chapman― Marina Chapman.’ She peered at Briony, and it was an unpleasant sensation. ‘You’ve heard the name, perhaps?’
Briony thought rapidly. ‘1don’t think so.’ She lifted her shoulders apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. Should I have done so?’
‘Your—husband hasn’t mentioned me?’
‘No.’ Briony was trying to be polite, but her bewilderment was deepening. So this Mrs Chapman wasn’t a local busybody come to report on the newlyweds, or she would have said she was a friend of Aunt Hes’s.
‘No, probably not,’ Mrs Chapman’s lips twisted. ‘May I come in?’
Briony wanted to refuse. She had the strangest impulse to slam the door and close this woman out, but good manners insisted she should stand aside and let her walk past her into the house. She opened the parlour door and ushered her in. The room felt close and still, and slightly chilly. A fly was buzzing at the window and she went across to release it and admit some air, but dank mist swirled in, and she closed the casement again hastily.
She turned to face Mrs Chapman. ‘We’ve only just arrived, but I think there’s some coffee in the kitchen, or tea if you prefer. My husband isn’t here just now. He’s gone to fetch somethings that we forgot. I hope he won’t be long because the weather’s getting worse all the time. I’d forgotten how quickly the mist could come down. Did you bring a car?’
She was aware that she was babbling, and that Mrs Chapman was standing just inside the parlour door, watching her steadily, her expression almost inimical.
Anger came to Briony’s rescue. She said with sudden heat, ‘Look here, Mrs Chapman, I’d be glad if you could tell me what you want and then go. We are on our honeymoon.’
‘I’m quite aware of that, Mrs Adair. And I know your husband isn’t here because I watched him leave. I wanted to see you alone, you see. I wanted to tell you the kind of man you’d married.’
Briony said, ‘You’d better go.’ She had some wild idea that Mrs Chapman might be one of Logan’s discarded mistresses, but she was obviously much older than him and not a type that Briony thought would have had much appeal for him. She moved forward, but Mrs Chapman was standing her ground between Briony and the door.
She was fumbling in her bag now, producing papers, newspaper cuttings, Briony saw.
‘Not until you’ve seen these.’ She threw them down on the table in the centre of the room, spilling them across its polished surface. Briony looked down at them, puzzled, her attention caught in spite of herself.
She began to read the ones on top. They seemed to concern an inquest on someone who had committed suicide, she realised. There was a picture of a man, probably the deceased, and other pictures too, some of a woman. This woman.
‘My husband,’ Mrs Chapman said flatly. ‘He killed himself.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Briony. She felt wholly inadequate in the face of the grief and rage she seemed to feel emanating from this woman. She was like one of the Furies from an ancient Greek tragedy, a figure of vengeance, only the Furies had also been known as the Kindly Ones, and there was nothing kind about Marina Chapman as she stood there, her eyes fixed relentlessly on Briony’s face.
‘He shot himself.’ Mrs Chapman went on after a pause. ‘And your husband drove him to it.’
‘Oh, no!’ Briony said quickly. ‘You’re wrong. You must be wrong. 1—’
‘He drove him to it.’ Mrs Chapman repeated relentlessly.
‘With his prying, and his endless, endless bloody questions. Harry got desperate. He had the answers, all the answers, but your husband never gave him time to think, time to answer. He was always phoning, or on the doorstep. And every day these stories in the paper― just the one he worked for at first, and then all the others. Then they all came gathering like vultures, asking questions, printing their vile lies― lies your husband told them about Harry. Then the police. Harry was a good man― a good man!’ Her voice became high-pitched with her insistence. ‘He didn’t do these things. He hadn’t defrauded anyone. He could have explained everything. But your husband never gave him a chance. He dragged his name in the mud, and still he wasn’t content. Always questions. No bloody peace—ever!’
Briony put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear any more!’
‘My Harry didn’t want to hear any more,’ Mrs Chapman said. ‘But your husband made him. And he was only the first― the chief jackal, the leader of the pack. Filthy scavengers the lot of them, nosing through dirt!’
Her tone was hysterical, and Briony was afraid suddenly.
The woman sounded almost unhinged, and they were alone in the house.
She said, ‘Mrs Chapman, won’t you sit down, and let me get you something― a cup of coffee. Then we’ll talk about this. You say your husband was a good man― well, I feel the same about my husband and . . .’
‘But you don’t know him, do you?’ said Mrs Chapman. ‘You’ve only known him a few weeks. It was in all the papers― a whirlwind romance, they called it. And you’ve only been married a matter of hours. What do you know about him? Only what you want to know. That he is an attractive man― oh, I’ll grant you that― that he makes you feel good in bed?’ She saw the sudden flare of colour in Briony’s pale cheeks and laughed harshly. ‘God, don’t you even know that yet? What an innocent! No wonder .. .’ She stopped.
‘No wonder what?’ Briony asked numbly.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ The older woman’s voice was dismissive. ‘All that matters is that you should know the type of man you’ve married. Someone who’s hunted down an innocent man― made his life a hell on earth. Someone who’d sell his own mother― or you― for a good story with his name on it. Do you know that
everything he wrote about poor Harry—every lie,every vile insinuation had his name blazoned on It― as If he was proud of it.’
Briony heard herself say, ‘You must be wrong. There must be some mistake.’
‘There’s no mistake. Your husband murdered mine as surely as if he’d taken the gun in his own hand and pulled the trigger. And how many other lives has he destroyed ― this “ace investigative reporter” ?’ She spat the words as if they were slime. ‘Who else has he trampled over to make his headlines― to get himself noticed― make his way to the top? Who else has been hounded and persecuted until he couldn’t take any more?’ She broke off, her voice suddenly choked with sobs.
Briony turned .away. There was something vaguely indecent in this grief following on the heels
of near violence and she felt nauseated. Almost inconsequennally, she noticed that the mist had thickened still more, and it was now hardly possible to see more than a few yards from the window.
Behind her, Mrs Chapman stirred. She was clearly trying to regain her tenuous hold on her composure.
She said, ‘I’ll go now, Mrs Adair. I’ll leave the cuttings. They’re only duplicates. I have a full file at home. But I felt you had a right to know, and that it was my duty to warn you if no one else would. I wish you well, believe it or not, and I hope that you find― love is enough, because you’ll never be able to trust him.’
Briony, standing motionless by the window, heard the front door close. She saw Mrs Chapman, her head slightly bent, walk down the path towards the gate, then the mist swallowed her up.
Briony began to shake. She turned and gathered up the scattered cuttings, intending to take them into the living room and put them on the fire, but almost in spite of herself began to examine them, turning them over. From each one Logan’s name seemed to scream out at her in bold black type, even on the report of Harry Chapman’s death. Found in the study of his house, the report ran, with head wounds. Briony shuddered, pressing her balled fist against her mouth. Who had found him? she wondered.
Marina Chapman? A housekeeper? She had seen a picture of the house they lived in. It was the sort of sprawling neo-Tudor mansion which made some sort of living-in help essential.
She went slowly through the cuttings until she found the report of the inquest. There were in fact several of them culled from different newspapers, some rather sensational in treatment. One of them reported in detail some remarks made by the coroner while a verdict of suicide was being returned. Phrases like ‘respected member of the business community’― ‘intolerable pressures’― ‘unwarranted persecutions by the less responsible sections of the Press’― ‘gutter journalism’― ‘terrible tragedy’ seemed to leap out at her, burning at her brain, as she tried to assimilate them. They were repeated to a greater or lesser extent in the other cuttings. The coroner’s words had obviously made a strong impression on those present, as they had been intended to. She read them again, more slowly. There was only one way that they could be interpreted― as an attack on Logan and the campaign he had mounted against the dead man. She began to search through the cuttings for a date, and found one at last. This must have been about the last story Logan had worked on before he joined the Courier, she realised, and began to feel sick. Had this story been his passport to Fleet Street and a top job on a top newspaper? Was this what Marina Chapman had been getting at? And slowly and reluctantly, she began to remember all the things her father had said in the past as well.
She had no idea how long she stood there motionless by the table, the cuttings still clutched in her hands, her mind whirling on a terrified treadmill of revulsion and rejection, but when at last she came to herself with a slight start she was chilled to the bone, and wondering what had recalled her. Some distant noise― the slam of a car door perhaps― indicating that Logan had returned.
She gave a little choking cry and flung the cuttings down on the ground before she turned and ran out of the room. Her sheepskin coat was lying across a chair in the living room and she snatched it up on her way towards the kitchen. The bolt was still undrawn on the back door and it resisted her first efforts. She struggled with it, fright warring with frustration within her. She was conscious only of the need for flight-the knowledge that she couldn’t face Logan or the demands he was now legally entitled to make of her, feeling as she did. She didn’t even flinch as the bolt suddenly gave way, scraping her finger painfully and drawing blood. She felt as if she was bleeding to death inside as it was.
The mist closed around her as she dived through the back door, thrusting her arms through the sleeves of her coat and dragging its warmth around her. She ran past the overgrown vegetable garden, and the ancient shed, and ducked beneath a sagging wire fence on to the open fellside.
She knew her way to the huddle of stones at the top of the fell almost by instinct. She had spent a number of holidays at the cottage with Aunt Hes in the past, and a climb to the top of the fell had always been part of it like a pilgrimage. She’d intended to make Logan walk up there with her. Apart from the fantastic view, it had always been a special place for her, and she wanted to share it with him. Now she was frantically glad that he would not know where she had gone in the mist or where to follow, thankful that she had a refuge where she could hide until she could think clearly and decide what she must do.
She was breathless and gasping when she reached the top, with a painful stitch in her side. She leaned against one of the rocks for support; pressing her hand against her body, until the worst of the pain was past. Then she sank down on her haunches, her back against the rock, and began to steady her ragged breathing. There was quite a wind blowing, and the mist was patchier here on top of the fell. Briony huddled further into her coat.
She dropped her head into her hands and tried to think, but words and phrases she had read in the cuttings kept intruding. There had been a photograph too of Marina I and Harry Chapman on their wedding day, and a shudder went through her as the full irony of that came home to her.
She told herself ‘It can’t be true. Logan wouldn’t do that. The Coroner must have meant someone else.’ But even to her own ears, it sounded pitiful, and totally lacking in assurance.
For the fact was that she knew very little of what Logan might or might not be capable of doing. She remembered some of the things he himself had told her, and how they had sickened him, but he had filed his copy just the same. He hadn’t packed journalism in with disgust and chosen a less fraught existence.
And what about all the things he hadn’t told her― of which the Harry Chapman episode might only be one?
She had first met him after all at the awards party, and he’d been given the ‘Journalist of the Year’ title.
He’d claimed it meant nothing, but she knew that no one was even considered for such an award for merely covering flower shows and Women’s Institute meetings.
Before she had ever laid eyes on him, she had read his work, and known it to be tough and hard-hitting.
She had heard her father on the power of the Press so many times, she had come to regard it as a secret joke, but it had never occurred to her that the power might be such that it might drive a man to lift a loaded gun to his head and pull the trigger. That, Briony thought, was an abuse of power. And she could not even make the excuse that Logan had been made to write what he did. He could have refused as a matter of principle.
But he hadn’t refused, and the fact remained that Harry Chapman was dead― suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed. And she was married to the man who had disturbed that balance. The pressure on Harry Chapman had come from Logan.And from others.
But what had Marina Chapman called him? ‘The leader of the pack’.
At the small reception which Aunt Hes had given for them at her flat, Hal Mackenzie had been unusually ebullient, his arm round Logan’s shoulders and hers. ‘Look after him, sweetheart, because he’s the best. Where he leads, the others follow.’
At the time she’d felt a swift glow of pride, in no way dispelled by Logan’s mocking and self-denigrating retort, but now she felt cold and empty at the memory.
She’d seen a television film once about wild dogs, and how they hunted down their prey in packs, concentrating on the weakest quarry, the one most likely to break under pressure.
She shivered, crouching under her sheltering rock, then tensed slightly, peering downwards through the swirl of the mist. A glimmer of light had appeared, and she knew what it was Logan had returned to the cottage and had put the lights on. Probably he was going from room to room, looking for her, maybe believing that she was hiding from him to tease him. She wondered how soon he would find the scattered cuttings on the parlour floor and realise the truth, and what he would do when the realisation did dawn.
I
t was dark now, and the chill and the damp were really getting to her, and there was a darkness inside her too, while below her the light in the cottage stared up like an accusing eye. But why should I feel accused? she thought. I’m not the guilty one. And she heard ringing in her ears Marina Chapman’s harsh gibe, ‘What an innocent !’ She put her hands to her face and began to cry, harsh choking sobs which tore at her throat and chest. She sank further down on to the ground, uncaring about the icy dampness which seemed to seep into her bones. The unyielding earth was a comfort and a support, and the most she could hope for in a world that seemed to offer no hope at all.