The War Widow

by Lorna Gray

  The realisation made my lips form the sound of his name. “Adam …”

  After a brief steadying intake of breath, he supplied the rest. “You’re sorry. I know.”

  That mocking note was back.

  It made me laugh a little. His arms tightened painfully, as if to crush this feeling into me. Then he let me go.

  He hurried down the stairs, took his daughter firmly by the hand despite her protests and moved in a throng of people down the hall and out onto the street.

  In my turn, I squared my shoulders, took myself at a rather more sedate pace down the stairs into the now vacant hallway, and turned left to meet Jim in the kitchen.

  Chapter 25

  “Why, hullo, Kate. You look well.”

  Jim Bristol’s greeting was warm, friendly and I think he would have risen to embrace me had my decidedly uninviting stance not stopped him in his tracks. Instead he settled on climbing to his feet like a well-mannered boy and reaching into a trouser pocket. He pulled out a police warrant card and dropped it onto the kitchen table.

  That ever present cheerfulness didn’t falter as he watched me slowly reach out a hand to pick up the folded leather. The greying pasteboard inside indicated that it belonged to the Gloucestershire Constabulary, that the bearer held the rank of Detective Sergeant and I examined it thoroughly before deciding it was authentic and setting it carefully down again. I remarked pleasantly, “Well at least you were honest about your first name.”

  He looked sheepish, but only for a moment. His surname was Fleece. Then he put out a hand and pocketed the warrant like it was a trophy. “Don’t be too hard on me, Kate Williams. Or is it Miss Ward?”

  I only glared. He smiled back at me as he reclaimed his seat; handsome and as ever unabashed.

  Then abruptly he conceded a little truth. “You gave me the worst day of my life, Kate.”

  It made me take my place at the table. He watched me draw out the chair opposite him and then he added, “When you abandoned me on the Birmingham train, and I couldn’t find you when I finally got back into town, I got into a bit of a panic and thought they’d got you. Forgive me if I say that whatever you suspect them of, you don’t know the half of it. I left messages for you anywhere that I could think of. One of them was here. After a comedy act of mis-timed calls, Adam and I finally spoke yesterday just before lunch. I gather you’d already filled him in on the more grisly details. He called me very early this morning and told me about this.”

  I saw then that the letter lay open on the table by his hand. He picked it up and read it again. “‘Any later and we risk ruining the little girl’s next family outing.’ Nice, isn’t it, how they’ve carefully avoided actually putting their threat down in plain black and white. Makes it all so much harder to build a case. Not,” he added with a sudden hush in case May should have accidentally reappeared, “that I intend to let that stand in my way. Not now that I’ve got you.”

  “Oh?” I enquired with a polite lift of my eyebrows.

  There was a rustle of feet in the passage behind and Mrs Francis bustled in, making a big show of squeezing past in the space between my chair and the sideboard. I was sitting in the chair Adam had used on that first night. For once the older lady didn’t scowl at me. Instead she took herself to the heavily cosied teapot by the stove and poured a fresh cup. Then, to my increasing surprise, she set it down on the table before me. She very pointedly didn’t offer more tea to Jim.

  Jim was watching me. He remarked thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’m only wearing the disguise of a policeman today but I guess you never can be too sure.”

  I gave in and stopped glowering. In the hallway outside, the front door rattled as it was opened and then shut.

  Mrs Francis waggled a tea towel at me. “You’re lucky. When the boy delivered a letter for a Mrs Williams yesterday, I was all set to turn you out of the house with a flea in your ear. I thought Adam finally had run mad and had taken it upon himself to make off with somebody’s wife.” Her lips pursed as that man stepped into view and paused there to lean a shoulder against the doorframe. She scolded, “You introduced her as a Miss! You said she was a stray. When that letter arrived I thought you must both be in hiding from an irate husband.”

  Adam’s smile was a little worn. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t exactly understand it myself that first night.”

  Jim spoke from the other end of the table. “You’ve done the right thing, Hitchen. That man is one of the best in the force. He’ll keep them all perfectly safe.”

  “That was another policeman?”

  Jim smirked in response to my question. “You’re not very good at spotting us, are you, Kate?”

  There was something faintly unnerving in his bold gaze that was rather too reminiscent of the deliberately applied charm I had encountered at the foot of the waterfalls at Devil’s Bridge. It made me flush.

  Adam left his doorway and stepped into the room. For all his earlier confidence, he was clearly not very happy. He caught my glance, shrugged off my concern and took a cup and saucer from Mrs Francis. “Thank you,” he said.

  He took up position behind the chair next to mine. He took a mouthful of his tea, scalded his lips and then said across its brim to Jim, “So, are you going to finally explain why to all intents and purposes you had me commit kidnap three days ago?”

  Jim’s smile faded. Abruptly businesslike again, the policeman fixed his attention on Adam. Adam met his gaze squarely. Even seated, the policeman’s bearing and unceasing self-assurance made Adam seem very much the minor guest at this meeting, even though this was his kitchen and the hands that cradled the teacup were by no means weak. The cup was lifted for another tentative sip and I wondered if Adam was aware of the comparison being forced between them. I also wondered if, like me, he too was being toyed with.

  “So, Adam,” Jim began. “You had no idea there was more to Kate’s behaviour beyond the natural grief for Mr Williams’ demise until you arrived back here on Sunday night?”

  “You know I didn’t. We’ve been through this already.”

  Jim’s mouth twitched. “Humour me.”

  Adam sighed and dropped a hand to lean his weight upon the stout wood of the chairback. He set his cup down upon the tabletop and flicked a quick glance downwards at me. He didn’t like to revisit what had been said lately about my grief both to me and to others. And while for me the fact he had known of Rhys’s death was somehow less vital now – eased as it was by the relatively plausible connection of living in the same town – he was aware we had yet to discuss how he had known me well enough to recognise me as the man’s former wife. The detective, I could perceive, had already probed this detail and been satisfied. At this moment all Adam could do was reiterate what he’d made plain before; that all along the most he had understood about me and my behaviour until the moment of our arrival here was that I was utterly worn out by Rhys’s death, and showing it.

  “I didn’t,” he added very carefully indeed, “even understand her when she told me about it that night. It was only when I picked up the note Nanny had left about an hour or so later, telling me you’d called and giving the number of your station in Gloucester that I really began to grasp the full story. You’re lucky I went with my hunch and decided you weren’t quite the brute I’d had described.”

  “I’m a brute, Kate?”

  Jim’s expression was that of one who was just after the facts. I didn’t believe it for a moment.

  Gripping the back of his chair with both hands, Adam said for me, “Well, Jim, you did bully her, pursue her, hand her over to Clarke and Reed and capitalise on a dead-of-night invasion into her hotel room to increase my belief she was cracking up so yes, you are a brute. Why exactly were you pursuing her anyway? Why didn’t you just say something? Why didn’t you tell us who you were?”

  Jim was unmoved. He retorted idly, “Concealment is rather the general idea of being undercover, wouldn’t you say? You can’t go dealing out your real identity to anyone,
not to friend and not to foe.”

  It suddenly struck me then. The policeman was not here to play the part of tame detective. He wanted to use us, not make us like him. Somehow the discovery was liberating.

  He told me, “For your information, Kate, it is your own fault I didn’t realise early on that you fell firmly on the side of friend. You popped up into the middle of a very complex operation and instantly took to trampling all over it in a manner that made it look suspiciously like you were in cahoots with those two men, Clarke and Reed. Every act of yours might have been perfectly geared towards setting up a clandestine meeting with them. So you weren’t the only one who got frightened out of their wits when Clarke collared you on the pier. You were supposed to be helpfully implicating yourself so that I could make the first in a long line of arrests and instead you gave me the second-worst day of my life. You looked back as they led you past.”

  Jim spoke quickly across the other man’s sudden sharp movement. It was accompanied by a hissed intake of breath. Jim was saying, “Luckily you gave them the slip, although unluckily that meant you gave me the slip too. I was existing in such a high state of nerves by the time you reappeared, that I spent most of the night drifting back and forth past your door on some pretext or other, just in case. When you then said something, or whimpered or whatever it was in your sleep I’m afraid I completely overreacted. I thought they’d somehow got in there with you.”

  Adam’s hands moved restlessly on the back of his chair. “So that was how I ended up being called on to rescue a woman from her own bed covers? She didn’t cry out at all? At least not until two men burst in through her door in the dead of night barely hours after two other men had given her the fright of her life?” Adam’s question was delivered with flat disbelief. I think he was remembering how he’d been privately blaming me for not being strong enough in the wake of my ex-husband’s death. I was remembering the way he’d held my hand that night.

  Jim was unrepentant. “In my defence, Kate, your name had been brought to my attention long before you pitched up in Aberystwyth. I first wondered about the innocence of Mrs Kate Williams about eight or nine days before, when the reports of your husband’s apparent suicide first reached me.” He leaned in to rest his elbows upon the tabletop. “Did you happen to notice that when the policemen called at your house to inform you of your husband’s death, they took particular care to establish the date of your last visit to the gallery?”

  I shook my head.

  Jim’s eyebrows lifted. “And you didn’t think that it was a touch odd that the police came in person to tell you, when under such circumstances it might have been rather more normal for the ex-wife to learn of her husband’s demise through the family?”

  “No,” I said. I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me. It had seemed perfectly natural at the time. A little gesture of humanity from the authorities at a time of loss. Which showed how ludicrously naïve I was. It was a miracle I’d survived this thing at all.

  There was a smell of burning toast. Mrs Francis began crashing about rescuing it. Over the clatter of drawers as she hunted for a new tea towel, Jim said easily, “Amongst other things, your visiting constables were able to confirm that you’d left your husband in …” Here he reached into an inner pocket on his jacket and drew out a notebook. He flicked laboriously through a few pages until he found the one he wanted. “Let me see … late December 1945 and you only saw him again in late 1946 when your divorce was finalised. You haven’t been back to Cirencester since.”

  My remark was dry. “You’re very well informed.”

  A quick twitch of a smile. “As I say, the police constables who visited you were given a very specific set of questions. They were tasked with eliminating you from our investigation.”

  “The investigation into Rhys’s death.”

  He didn’t reply because he was already adding, “Crucially, we were able to confirm that you weren’t here in Cirencester between autumn last year and March this year.”

  Rhys had died about two weeks ago in Aberystwyth. This wasn’t an investigation into his death. Whatever Jim thought he was looking for, Rhys’s death had ranked as nothing more than a postscript. I couldn’t help wondering what mine would have been.---

  Perfectly calmly, Jim slipped his hand into that inside pocket again and drew out a brown envelope. Within it was another envelope, an ordinary white letter envelope this time, and this one contained a small portrait of the sort that had smoky edges and belonged in a silver frame. It was accompanied by a single fold of paper that was covered in handwriting. He opened the latter and laid it flat on the table before me. “Read it if you please.”

  Adam and I dutifully leaned in.

  It bore the date 12 September 1946 – it was a little over a year old. It was a note in a clear, steady hand and written by a man by the name of Richard Langton who was a war invalid – judging from the fact his address was a London military hospital – and most of it was personal in the extreme. It relayed to the reader the news of a second injury, this time to the heart. I wondered how this Richard felt about having his private affairs carried about the country to be pored over by strangers.

  The remainder wasn’t quite so raw, however, and it said:

  Anyway, to answer the real point of your note: Rather belatedly, here is the name as promised of the family contact at that gallery in Cirencester. He helped source some of Mother’s choice artworks. Presuming he’s still active and hasn’t packed up or died, Benjamin Dillon is probably just the person to help.

  As soon as Jim saw that we had reached the end, he asked me, “Do you know the name Langton?”

  Suddenly there was eagerness in the policeman’s manner, though his style of speaking didn’t change. The gallery this Richard Langton described was my gallery. Benjamin Dillon was my uncle. This was that same uncle who had gifted me training, experience and a home before retiring to his daughter’s house in West Bromwich many years before this letter was written.

  I lifted my head and caught Jim in the act of quietly examining my face. He said, “You ask why it was important we established you weren’t at the gallery a year ago? This letter is why.”

  “Is this him?” I reached out a tentative hand towards the photograph.

  With a wave of his hand Jim indicated I could take it. The person contained within the oval edges of the sepia print was young, younger than me, and utterly charismatic. I’d never seen him before in my life. I lifted my hand to show the portrait to Adam and he reached out a hand and took it from me. He examined the photograph for a moment and then he too shook his head.

  Across the table Jim watched as Adam reset the portrait upon the tabletop. The policeman said slowly, “In March this year we recovered a collection of artworks that had been looted locally during the Blitz. The man who had them had been tasked with finding a buyer but he was no thief. And no expert on the value of artworks either. Someone else had that dubious honour and until this letter came to light we hadn’t the faintest clue who that might be.”

  Jim paused for emphasis. I looked up at him sharply. I was almost laughing at the ludicrousness of it. “You think Uncle Ben is a thief?”

  Jim didn’t smile. “During the war, several grand townhouses in this area were hit by looters. The collection we unearthed in March represented the spoils from just one of the houses but I believe the same man was behind all of them. I think our thief is the sort of man who would know some pretty high-class people and I think he used the chaos gifted by the Blitz to send in a little team to create a little bit of ‘bomb damage’ of their own and relieve these people of a number of cultural gems. I think our thief lacked the means of disposing of his stolen hoard and so he recruited a series of middlemen to do it for him. And if this letter is a clue, your gallery is where he did it.”

  “Sure he did,” I remarked hotly. Before me the man in his photograph was beaming lazily. “And now you think that since Benjamin Dillon is a notable art dealer with the right s
ort of experience of handling fine paintings, he’d have known precisely what to take. And he has an open invitation to some of the grandest houses in the country. But you’re also overlooking the fact he’s got all that because he’s one of the best dealers there is. He wouldn’t need the petty contacts of an ignorant middleman to get his artworks out of the country. And besides all that, he retired in 1939 … He hasn’t been here.” A sudden realisation made my voice become very cold. “But then you already knew this, didn’t you? You didn’t say that the name in that letter is the clue, but the gallery he owns.”

  Jim’s manner was just as hard as mine. If there had ever been any doubts about the authenticity of his latest persona of a policeman, they were swept away now. He replied coolly, “You’re quite right. Benjamin Dillon hasn’t lived in Cirencester since he handed over the reins of the gallery to a young and enthusiastic woman who happened to be his niece … And her husband, of course. Isn’t that the case, Kate Williams?”

  I sat back so that my chair creaked, shaking my head. Not because it wasn’t true but because of the lunacy of it. I said vaguely, “It just gets worse …”

  From her corner by the stove Mrs Francis startled all of us by proving that she’d been listening very attentively indeed. She had the letter in her hands. “Why can’t you just ask this Richard fellow? Surely he can tell you who he met?”

  Unexpectedly, Jim smiled. “Richard Langton is just another person whose life was very nearly robbed of everything he holds dear by his proximity to what is, not to put too fine a point on it, a toweringly murderous greed. The person who was caught with all the contents of a Cheltenham grandee’s art collection was Richard Langton’s brother. This brother’s message is penned on the reverse of that letter.”

  There was a crinkle of paper as Mrs Francis hastily turned it over and then a short while later she slipped the paper down onto the tabletop before us. On the reverse of the neatly penned letter, a bold confident scrawl declared: ‘At long last I am in a position to help you, now that Richard has finally recovered his wits enough after that ruinous conquest to remember to send the name … I would, by the way, be very happy to lend a more personal style of assistance should you wish to have support during the negotiations. If this Dillon fellow haggles excessively over that particularly foul and yet valuable muddy painting of yours, you know I’ll help.’