by Clare Curzon
‘You were a historian. Robert told me.’
‘To make me sound respectable. I didn’t get far with it. A second-year dropout.’ Kate had no idea why she bothered to explain herself. Perhaps because just then the other woman seemed the only living thing on the planet.
But she wasn’t prepared to reveal more. That was sacred ground. At the time it had been her only choice. They’d been so much in love, and somebody had had to make the money for them to live on. Michael had gone on to get a First Class in Mods, then his doctorate, while she typed for a solicitor and mugged up at night for her library exams.
It stayed a necessary source of income in his early years as a lecturer at King’s College London, ending only at the birth of the twins. There had been no help from his family because they disapproved of the alliance, and her own widowed mother was dead by then.
‘How about turning in now? You must be exhausted,’ Marion suggested.
‘I need first to ring the hospital.’
‘There’s a phone by Reception. Take a seat there while I get the number.’
‘It’s here.’ Kate pulled a slip of paper from her jeans’ pocket. (Lily Crick’s jeans, she was reminded by their unaccustomed, baggy feel.)
Marion got through to the ward Sister. ‘Mrs Dellar for you,’ she said and handed the receiver across.
The voice on the other end had lost a little of its cool. ‘We’ve been trying to contact you all afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid your son is – has had a relapse. He’s in surgery at the moment. Would you like to come in?’
‘Surgery? But they’ve already operated. He …’
‘That was to save his lung, Mrs Dellar. It appears there’s an aneurism. I can’t tell you more at the moment. Perhaps you should have a word later with Mr O’Keefe, the neurosurgeon.’
‘I’ll come at once.’ Kate laid down the phone. She was barely aware of the other woman beside her. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘I have to go in. They’re operating again. The head injury, I think.’
Marion nodded. ‘Yes, I heard.’ Neurosurgery. It sounded critical; could be final.
As the family moved from table to downstairs lounge Robert paused by the landing window. He saw the two women running out from the hotel doorway. ‘Now what?’ he demanded. ‘I really don’t see why Kate must drag Marion into her affairs. It’s been a strange enough introduction to us, what with the fire on her first night and then bivouacking here.’
‘You can’t blame Kate for being nervy,’ Madeleine reprimanded. ‘her son injured and that madcap girl gone off heaven knows where.’
‘Or with whom.’ He lingered to light the cigar which Claudia’s dominant presence had prevented until then. ‘She was always a law unto herself, that child.’
He watched the silver Nissan reverse rapidly and make for the main road. ‘It looks as if the same baleful influence is working on Marion now. She’s gone off without a word. It really is rude of Kate.’ His tone was petulant.
Madeleine watched her brother puff at the cigar, then pluck with the free hand at his upper lip, making the little beak she remembered from earliest childhood. Then it had been as prelude to a crying fit when she’d deprived him of a toy or sneaked some titbit from his plate, safe in the knowledge that as younger pet she’d be free of nanny’s chiding.
She guessed that he was put out because, in place of easy access to his fiancée, last night he’d been obliged to share a twin room with his father. And she herself was the one to double up with Marion; Gus and Jake being accommodated on settees in the lounge.
‘Tomorrow, first thing,’ Robert threatened dourly, ‘we’ll be on our way. I shan’t forget Uncle Carlton’s eightieth for a very long time.’
The birthday boy himself was displaying unaccustomed obtuseness, demanding that after decaffeinated coffee they should all drive over to Larchmoor Place and survey the remains. Claudia found that for once her veto was to be overthrown.
‘It will only distress you,’ she insisted. ‘And if you’d wanted, you could have gone in daylight. By the time we get there it will be dusk and quite unsafe to go walking around among all the debris. I can’t imagine why you should want to feast your eyes on the ruins of our home.’
‘I want to see how much is left,’ he declared. ‘That is the positive approach. It isn’t enough to accept what we are told by strangers.’
‘Loss adjusters and fire damage examiners,’ she insisted, ‘are professionals, of a kind. We must leave it to them, Carlton. They should know what they are about.’
‘Claudia acknowledging a higher authority,’ Jake whispered, nudging his father. ‘How’s that for a first?’
But Carlton was already demanding transport and for once the outcome wasn’t in doubt. The hotel’s courtesy coach was pressed into service. In their assorted loaned or rescued garb, all climbed aboard with the exception of Jake, who sped ahead on his Kawasaki. Unsurprisingly his matching leathers had survived the previous night’s calamity.
He met them as they rounded the curve of the driveway, grinning as they became shockingly aware of the activity ahead. There were dark figures moving under an erection of arc lights. A crane had been driven over the desecrated lawn and a mechanical digger was parked by a rear corner of the collapsed building.
‘You can’t go any farther,’ Jake told them as they prepared to alight. ‘There’s police tape everywhere. I said we were the owners but they warned me off. A Crime Scene, forsooth.’
‘Crime?’ Claudia questioned. ‘What utter nonsense.’ The air was foul with the acrid smell of wet ash and an added unpleasantness of diesel exhaust. A man came towards them, lifting the blue and white plastic tape to pass under. His eyes sought out Carlton’s bent form supported on Claudia’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I must ask you to stay away at present. The site is unsafe. We are merely carrying out instructions. If there is any possibly that a … a missing person -’ (he skirted the word body) – ‘is still inside, we have to preserve the scene.’
‘Who’s missing?’ Claudia demanded. ‘You can’t mean Kate’s girl. She’s simply gone off somewhere. It’s the sort of thing she does. Her mother was sure of it.’
‘Desperately hoped,’ old Carlton murmured.
‘And what do they mean by a crime scene?’ Claudia pressed the man. ‘The fire was an accident. Everything points to it.’
‘I’m not authorized to answer questions,’ the man said. He turned away, moved off a few paces, then swivelled to watch them as they hesitated before dispersing.
‘Look,’ Gus said, pointing, ‘the old coach-house is still there.’
At a distance of some hundred yards from the house, it had survived with only the loss of the roof and blackened beams. Inside they could just make out the dark hulk of the Daimler covered by sooty debris but possibly intact.
It was the only reassurance they could take away with them. They moved off, still protesting about officialdom, still unwilling to accept any need for the further depredation of the house’s remains.
‘What they haven’t already ruined with water they’ll hack up with their little hatchets,’ Matthew accused, as though they might be wilful children.
Back at the hotel no one felt settled enough for bed. Carlton protested quite firmly when Claudia attempted to shuffle him off upstairs. ‘I prefer to stay down here until the other two return. Marion is a guest, and Kate needs our support at this time.’ He closed his eyes, indicating that the subject was closed.
‘Whatever the outcome,’ he added sombrely.
They ordered drinks. The hotel duty manager provided playing cards and a set of Monopoly. They sorted themselves into two groups and grimly applied themselves to play.
At twenty minutes past midnight a car drew up outside. Robert sprang up and went to remonstrate with his intended. They came back without Kate. ‘It’s bad news,’ Marion said shortly. ‘Eddie’s had brain surgery. He’s in a coma.’
‘Wh
ere’s Kate now?’ Carlton quavered.
‘She’s picked her car up and gone home.’
‘Just as well,’ said Claudia. ‘There wouldn’t be room for her here.’
5
Superintendent Mike Yeadings, immersed in a welter of paperwork required asap by Crown Prosecution for an aggravated burglary which included rape and GBH, had barely raised his head to glance at the early reports coming in of the fire at Larchmoor Place. It was later, shrugging on his jacket prior to going home from a Saturday sacrificed to Thames Valley matters, that he paused to take a second look at printouts of statements taken from family members who had been rescued during the night. He rang through to the inspector dealing with the event.
‘George,’ he said, ‘has this missing young woman turned up after your local fire?’
‘There’s nothing in yet on that, sir. It’s the family’s general opinion she simply got out and ran off. They’re trying her mobile phone but it must be turned off. You expecting this’ll turn into a Misper? She’s not a juvenile, sir. Twenty-two years of age, with a bit of a fly-away reputation by all accounts.’
‘Is that the parents’ opinion?’
‘There’s only a mother, sir. Name of Kate Dellar. She’s in a bit of a tizzy because her son’s been injured. We haven’t had a good chance yet to find out more from her.’
‘Best make that a priority. And keep me posted. From what’s been passed to me the whole thing sounds a bit dodgy.’
‘Will do, sir.’ He dropped the phone. ‘Old Yeadings is sniffing for a new case for Major Crimes,’ he complained to the duty sergeant as he passed through. ‘I bet my new boots he gets on to the Fire Chief himself, over my head.’
Better make sure, Yeadings thought. I’ll drop in on the scene on my way home. Someone will be there, looking over the remains.
He wasn’t disappointed. Fire Officer Barclay was on site accompanied by a familiar squat figure Yeadings knew from the past. So it appeared Special Branch had got the same whiff off it as himself.
Now that the fire’s physical stench reached his nostrils as well he felt sure that this scene of desolation was more than a family misfortune. There were too many oddities involved.
His main unease was confirmed by Percival’s first words. ‘Ah, Superintendent, I thought Sir Matthew Dellar’s name might set your antennae aquiver. It seems he didn’t often visit his brother, and this was a special family get-together.’
Yeadings greeted the two men before agreeing. ‘The Judge hasn’t been retired very long. There are some villains due out about now who once felt they’d a score to settle. He’d be a sight more vulnerable here than at his place at Ascot.’
He turned to Barclay. ‘I’ll be interested to hear what your Investigators turn up. How soon will they be tackling it?’
‘Tomorrow, from daybreak. We could work with lights now but it needs to cool. There’s nothing to gain from digging through the night.’
‘Even with someone missing?’
The Station Officer thrust his hands deep in his pockets and kicked at a scrap of burnt-out fabric on the grass. ‘If the poor lass was in there, another ten hours’ll make no difference. I have to protect my men. Anyone under there, White Watch’ll find ‘em tomorrow’.
‘Let’s hope there isn’t, then,’ Yeadings said fervently. ‘What are the chances it wasn’t arson?’
‘We’ll know when we’ve identified the accelerant. It still just might be accidental. You’d be amazed the stuff people store under their own roofs with never a thought. It was an old couple lived here. They may have overlooked the usual precautions.
‘Well, gents, I’m off if there’s nothing more I can do for you. There’s a lookout posted just in case. Not that there’s owt left for anyone to make off with.’
Yeadings watched the tall, lean fireman pick a way back to his car. ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked the Special Branch man. ‘I thought we might drop in at the Monkey Puzzle and eavesdrop on what the locals are making of it.’
In for a penny in for a pound, he thought. I’ve blown my Saturday anyway. Might as well see the rest of it out and glean some current gossip from another branch of the force.
He let himself quietly into the house at a few minutes before midnight. Nan Yeadings came out on the landing in her nightdress to meet her husband.
‘Well, well,’ she breathed in a low voice so as not to wake the children, both of whose bedroom doors stood open. ‘Nice that you remembered where your home is – eventually. I feared you’d started week-ending away.’
Mike Yeadings looked stricken. ‘Didn’t Zyczynski phone you?’
‘Of course she did, love. I just fancied seeing how it felt – the rolling-pin welcome.’ Her next words were lost in his bear hug.
‘Whassat?’ He sounded weary, pushing his hair off his forehead..
‘I asked if you’d eaten. There’s some chicken korma in the freezer I could microwave. And Sally shelled some early peas specially for you.’
‘Thanks, but I had to take a visitor to supper.’
Nan recognized the tone. ‘An unwelcome one? Who’s being investigated?’
‘It’s nothing disciplinary, thank God.’ He hesitated, but Nan was the soul of discretion, so he admitted, ‘Special Branch.’
‘So what are they hunting on your patch?’
‘It may be nothing, but it seems they’ve an interest in last night’s fire at Larchmoor Place. Or in someone who’d been staying there. They’re pressing the investigation of origin and cause. Station Officer Barclay has already dropped a hint there’d been accelerant used.’
‘Larchmoor Place. Who lives there?’
‘It’s a case of who used to live there. The house is destroyed.’ Yeadings emptied his pockets on to the bedside table and started stripping off his suit, allowing Nan to insert the hanger.
‘It’s the same family who’ve owned it for generations, reduced now to an elderly couple and their unmarried daughter. Name of Dellar.’
‘Not Carlton Dellar, the poet? I heard he lived somewhere round here. There was an article on him in the Bucks Advertiser a couple of weeks back.’
Yeadings, bending to deal with his socks, straightened. He must have missed that issue. Normally he followed the local news with interest, as indication of the social temperatures that nourished crime. From tiny acorns did mighty oak trees grow. Thames Valley police covered the three counties of Berks, Bucks and Oxfordshire. His special interest covered the whole area.
‘Nan, did the article give any hint of where the house might be?’
‘It must have done, because I realized it was only a few miles away, although I didn’t locate it specifically. Are you thinking it put burglarious ideas into someone’s head? I thought poets were notoriously poor?’
Yeadings sketched a balancing movement with his hands. ‘Everybody has something more than somebody else. But it seems the old chap had organized a family get-together for the weekend. Among the guests was his brother Sir Matthew Dellar, less publicized than Carlton, but once one of the most successful, and therefore most scum-threatened, of this country’s senior prosecutors; and subsequently a Queen’s Bencher. As a QC and a High Court judge he sent down some pretty vicious people. We’ve had to provide security for him on a couple of occasions.’
‘Was he hurt in the fire?’
‘He wasn’t, but his nephew’s in a serious condition in Wycombe hospital. There’s also some doubt about the young man’s sister. She’d been given a room, and it seems she slept at least part of the night there, but she wasn’t counted out with the others.
‘Uniformed police have spoken to the family. Their general opinion is that the girl left in the early hours. But she hadn’t her own wheels. So either she went on foot or someone came to pick her up.’
‘Or else,’ Nan supposed slowly, ‘she stayed on and was overcome by the fire. That’s what’s worrying you. Isn’t it?’
‘It looks as though that could have happened. As soon as the groun
d temperature’s dropped we’ll send a dog-handler over to the site.’
Sobering thought. Nan watched her husband’s taut face as he ambled towards the bathroom. He was weary, right enough. It had been a week of long hours, with a hoax terrorist warning for Windsor Castle and a violent racial attack in Reading, but she detected a new unease in him; one he shouldn’t go to sleep on if she could prevent it.
‘We were thinking,’ she murmured innocently when he returned, ‘of taking a picnic lunch to Chiltern Open Air Museum tomorrow. But if you’re tied up with this missing girl …’
Mike grunted. ‘Don’t see why I shouldn’t join you. One of my sergeants can cover it. Whichever has a taste for Sunday overtime. And on Monday DI Salmon will be back from leave, cracking the whip over them.’
With that care sloughed off, Yeadings reached for his pyjamas. Having buttoned the top and with the trousers in one hand he turned sheepishly to Nan. ‘D’you know, I think I will take up that microwave offer. Percival had to drive on to Fishguard, so we ate at six-thirty. There’s been time since to produce a rumbling void.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring up a tray. Only, heaven help you if you’re snoring when I get back.’
On Sunday it was Sergeant Rosemary Zyczynski who drew the short straw, but she welcomed the excuse to cancel a previous engagement. Her only surviving blood relative, the aunt who’d been her guardian from the age of ten, had invited a number of friends for Sunday lunch to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of her marriage. The company would be almost uniformly elderly and feminine, gossipy and inquisitive. Rosemary’s career choice and her unmarried state would be laboriously commented on, loudly, within her hearing. The few men present would be one-time cronies of her uncle and embarrassed by his unresponsive state since the most recent of three debilitating strokes.
With a shade of guilt, she admitted to herself that the prospect of a more lively hare to chase raised her spirits considerably. The Boss had phoned the previous evening to announce Special Branch’s interest in the case and she was happy to hang around while Fire Officer Barclay and a senior man from High Wycombe oversaw sample-recovery. She wandered into the plastic tent erected to house exhibits recovered from the fire scene for initial examination. A civilian forensic scientist representing the police interest was also present, but the insurance company’s loss adjuster had already left after a fleeting visit to what he’d described as a god-awful mess.