by J F Straker
‘We can rake it later,’ she said. ‘Come on in and meet the parents.’
Mrs Nicodemus was a heavy-looking woman: not tall, but with prominent bosom and buttocks. Johnny found her intimidating; she had her son’s loud voice and handsome but severe countenance, and wore heavy tweeds and flat shoes. Colonel Nicodemus had once been plump but was rapidly thinning; the visible skin hung in folds. He had lack-lustre eyes and moved sluggishly, and when he spoke, which was seldom, the words slurred into one another. But he showed a desire to be friendly, and that, Carole told Johnny later, was a plum for him; in general her father took an automatic dislike to strangers. Mrs Nicodemus was less friendly, Johnny thought; she was polite, but showed no interest in him. ‘It’s just her manner,’ Carole explained, when Johnny said he got the impression he wasn’t completely welcome. ‘What with running the house, and Daddy, and the Women’s Institute, and the Golf Club, and doing most of the gardening — they used to have a man twice a week, but they can’t afford him now — and being a J.P. and a school governor, she — well, she just hasn’t time for outsiders.’
‘I wonder she has time even to breathe,’ Johnny said. ‘But I don’t fancy that ‘outsider’ crack. I’d rather hoped I was getting to be an insider, if you see what I mean.’
Carole smiled. ‘Keep working at it. You never know.’
‘I will. I just don’t want your mum putting the mockers on me, that’s all. Where’s Knickers?’
‘He’s playing golf.’
After coffee they walked the half-mile to the village, where Johnny introduced himself to the local nick and arranged with a Sergeant Allen to accompany them to the estate agent’s office. For a small village it was a large office, with a manager and two assistants; all three of whom were happy to have their fingerprints taken, but could offer little help in the inquiry. There was no Paul Dassigne on their books, the manager said, so it was probable that the gentleman had collected the handbill personally, without leaving his name or address; that was often the case with people who were interested in just one particular property, and did not wish to be inundated with particulars of others. As for the fingerprints — well, if none of theirs was on the handbill, that would suggest that it had been handled by Mr Cross, who had unfortunately died earlier in the week. Quite sudden, it was; a heart attack. The funeral had been yesterday.
They lunched off beer and meat pies at The Forester, the more sophisticated of Branleigh’s two pubs, and then walked through the woods to Branleigh Court.
The Court was a small Elizabethan manor house, built of red brick, with lattice windows and numerous gables. It was a pity, Carole said, that Sir John and his wife were away, or they could have looked over the house. However, as with most of the later houses of that period, the window-panes were of clear glass, and Johnny was able to peer through them to admire the tapestried or oak-panelled walls, and the magnificent stucco work on some of the whitewashed ceilings. What he saw of the furniture did not impress him. Neither did the formal gardens, arranged in rectangles and divided by broad walks, with box and lavender hedges. Like the orchard, they were heavily overgrown with weeds, and the hedges needed trimming. To Johnny, the whole estate looked sadly in need of attention and repair. Carole agreed. But one couldn’t blame the Diamonds, she said. They did what they could, but they just didn’t have the money.
‘Diamond?’ Johnny said. ‘You mean he’s Sir John Diamond?’
‘Yes. Didn’t I say? Roger Diamond was his younger brother. Oh and Colin Browne’s his stepson. Lady Diamond was a Mrs Browne before she married Sir John.’
Beyond the gardens a small chapel, surrounded by a graveyard, stood in the field that separated Branleigh Court from Forest Lodge. The graveyard was a wilderness, the tombstones almost totally obscured by weed and long grass, and covered with a carpet of moss. The chapel windows were boarded up; a service hadn’t been held there for at least fifty years, Carole said, and it was now used as a storeroom. Most of the furniture from Forest Lodge was stored there, she thought.
They had to pass the Lodge on their way back. It had originally been four separate cottages, Carole told him, built to house workers on the estate. Roger Diamond had converted them into something rather special, and had added a wing at one end. The woodwork, fittings, and decorations were all out of this world, she said. He must have spent a small fortune on the place.
‘Odd, that,’ Johnny said. ‘I mean, there’s the Court, practically falling apart for want of a few extra quid, and all that money being lavished on a few old cottages. Doesn’t seem right, does it? I mean, they were brothers.’
‘It would take more than a few pounds to restore the Court,’ Carole said. ‘And they didn’t exactly click, those two. Roger resented Sir John being the elder son and inheriting the title and the estate — particularly the estate, I think. Anything old and beautiful, and he really went for it. But he wasn’t spending money on the Court. It wasn’t his, you see.’
‘He’d have inherited it, wouldn’t he? Or is there a son?’
‘No, there isn’t. But I suppose he thought that was looking too far ahead.’
They were in the woods now. The track was narrow, and he took her arm and held her close.
‘And Sir John?’ he asked. ‘How did he feel about his brother?’
‘I don’t know. But Daddy thinks he envied Roger his money. Particularly as Roger didn’t seem to do anything with it. Not after he’d restored and furnished the Lodge.’
‘You mean he just frittered it away? Wine, women and song? All that jazz?’
‘Oh, no! He wasn’t like that at all. He led a very quiet life, really.’
Johnny was puzzled. ‘I don’t get. I mean — well, in the first place, why swindle the firm if he had no particular use for the money? And in the second, if the stuffs just stashed away in some bank, couldn’t the firm recover it? So why did they have to go bankrupt?’
‘I don’t understand either,’ she said. ‘I doubt if anyone does. But apparently there isn’t any money. Just a few thousands, according to the lawyers. Or is it the accountants?’
The Nicodemuses dined early. That was fine with Johnny; a day in the country had made him hungry. Not even the discovery that Mrs Nicodemus’s cooking wasn’t up to his mother’s standard (or even to Mrs Sansom’s) could curb his appetite. There was also the exciting prospect of an evening alone with Carole. She had mentioned during the course of their walk that her parents were early bedders. Maybe she hadn’t intended that to be taken as an invitation to dalliance. But he was hoping she wouldn’t object if he interpreted it as such.
She had been right about her parents. The Colonel retired after dinner, his wife an hour or so later. But Johnny had reckoned without Nicodemus. Nicodemus, it seemed, was in no haste for bed, he preferred to stay and watch television. On instructions from Mum? Johnny wondered. Whatever the reason, they sat disconsolately through ninety minutes of an ancient Western; and when that was over Nicodemus switched to variety on another channel. It was about then that Carole started to nod. Johnny, who disliked Westerns, and variety even more, watched her with growing despair. It was diabolical that an evening should be so wasted. There had been times in the past when he could willingly have clobbered Nicodemus. But never so willingly as now.
Halfway through the variety show Carole jerked into semi-wakefulness, blinked at the two men, and said she was sorry, but she could no longer keep her eyes open and was going to bed. Seconds after she had departed Nicodemus smothered a yawn and stood up. ‘Might as well follow suit, eh?’ he said. ‘Or did you want to see the end of this?’
Johnny said curtly that he thought he could bear to leave. Only the obligations of a guest prevented him from saying a lot more.
Normally he was a sound sleeper. But not that night. He felt restless and frustrated, and he kept dozing off and then waking again. It was in one of the wakeful periods that he thought he heard a noise from downstairs. For a while he lay still, wondering if it had been a leftover from
a dream, waiting for it to be repeated. But no — real or imaginary, it was unlikely to be repeated. If it were imaginary it hadn’t happened. And if it were real...
As he groped for his slippers it occurred to him that maybe he should wake Nicodemus. It was Knickers’ house. Only Knickers wouldn’t exactly thank him if it turned out to be a wet cow, to quote the Boozer. As it probably would; there had been no further sound. Anyway, he wasn’t sure which was Knickers’ room. He’d look a right Charlie if he knocked up the parents instead. That would really put the mockers on his guest rating.
It was with this thought, rather than the fear of warning a dubious intruder, that he crept down the stairs. The landing light gave illumination to the hall, and outside the dining room he paused to listen. Unless he were mistaken, it was from the dining room that the noise had come. But it was quiet enough now. He went in and switched on the light.
No one was there. To his stranger’s eye the room was as he had last seen it; nothing had been disturbed, nothing was missing. Well, that was what he had expected, wasn’t it? Yet now that he had bothered to come down he might as well make a proper job of it. This was a biggish house, and he could have been mistaken about the dining room.
He made a quick tour of the ground floor, bumping into furniture in his anxiety not to switch on too many lights. But his search produced nothing. That was no guarantee, of course, that an intruder had not come and gone, although as far as he could discover no doors or windows had been forced. But there was no intruder now. He went into the sitting room and slumped into an armchair. Sleep was far away. Had he not been in some awe of Mrs Nicodemus he would have gone to the kitchen and made tea. Instead, he picked up a copy of Country Life and began to flip the pages. It wasn’t his favourite periodical, but it was the only one handy.
Sleep was not as inaccessible as he had supposed. It was a sudden draught on his bare ankles that roused him. He became aware that the door was open, that someone had come into the room. The magazine slid from his lap as he struggled to his feet.
‘Who the —’ His balled fist relaxed. ‘Carole! What on earth —’
‘Shush! Not so loud; you’ll wake the parents.’ She closed the door and came over to him. Was it you I heard lumbering about down here?’
‘Yes.’
‘I guessed as much when I found you weren’t in your room. What’s the matter? Couldn’t you sleep?’
Johnny explained. But his mind was more on the girl than on what he was saying. She wore a white shortie nightdress, and over it a robe of near diaphanous material that looked to provide little warmth or concealment. Her legs were bare, her feet encased in multi-coloured moccasins. This, he thought, was the dream he should have had; not vague, disturbing noises in the night. Except that this was better. This wasn’t a dream. This was for real.
‘Why did you look in my room?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Were you — I mean, what did you have in mind?’
‘I wasn’t planning to hop into bed with you, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Vehemently he repudiated the thought. ‘I happened to hear someone moving about down here, so I decided to wake you and Humphrey.’
‘Did you wake him?’ he asked, alarmed.
‘No. Not when I found you weren’t in your room. It didn’t seem necessary. I mean, I realized it was you I’d heard.’ She yawned and stretched. ‘I’d love a cup of tea. How about you?’
‘There’s only one thing I’d like more.’
She blushed, and drew the robe tighter about her. It in no way impeded his vision. ‘You’ll have to settle for tea,’ she said. ‘This is a respectable house.’
They made tea, and came back to the sitting room to drink it, sitting side by side on the settee. They sat close, the scent of her in his nostrils, his pyjama-clad thigh touching her near-naked one. Excitement mounted in him; he itched to put his hands on her, to do all the things he had already done many times in imagination. But he held back. He wasn’t going to rush it. It was only two o’clock, they had all the hours till dawn. And a girl like Carole would expect a more sophisticated approach.
It was not until she put down her cup, leant back against the cushions, and closed her eyes, that he kissed her. It was a reasonably chaste kiss — a feeler to see which way the wind was blowing. Then he sat back to watch the effect.
She opened her eyes and smiled. ‘Um!’ she said. ‘Nice.’
He decided the wind was blowing in the right direction. Sliding one arm between her and the settee, he pulled her to him and settled his mouth firmly on hers. The response was eminently satisfactory. Her lips were soft and yielding, a hand crept up round his neck and cupped his head to hold him. When his eager fingers began to untie the laces at her throat her free hand moved to grip them. But she did not pull away. A conventional display of modesty, he decided, and not to be taken seriously. He was seeking to disengage his fingers from hers when a cushion landed heavily against his head. Startled, he released her and sat up.
Clad in pyjamas, and without a dressing gown, Nicodemus stood between the settee and the door. His expression was grim.
‘Sorry to seem inhospitable, Inch,’ he said stonily. ‘But if you must rape my sister I’d be obliged if you’d do it elsewhere.’
5
Breakfast was an uncomfortable meal. The Colonel did not appear, but the rest of the family was there, and to Johnny’s guilty conscience it seemed that conversation between four people round a table had never been less frequent or more stilted. Nicodemus stayed mute and invisible behind the Observer, stretching out an occasional hand for toast or butter or coffee. His mother, who appeared to have as healthy an appetite as her daughter, divided her attention between the Sunday papers and the food on her plate, which was plentiful. Johnny’s one consolation was that he believed her preoccupation to be unconnected with the incident of the previous evening. Knickers wouldn’t have told her; she was just being herself. Carole and he exchanged a few commonplaces, accompanied by uneasy conspiratorial grins. But it was difficult to talk naturally in such a frosty atmosphere, and for the most part they too were silent.
He’d had a few awkward moments in his time, he reflected — they more or less went with the job — but last night’s had just about capped the lot. He’d been so startled that he’d just stood and gaped, twisting his pyjama trousers so that — well, one never knew with pyjamas. Why didn’t they have zips? But Carole had looked remarkably composed. Don’t be an idiot, Humphrey, she’d said. Rape, indeed! Haven’t you ever kissed a girl in her parents’ home? No, maybe you haven’t. Maybe that’s why you’re so stuffy about Johnny and me. After which she had defiantly kissed Johnny full on the mouth, pecked at her brother’s cheek, and gone back to bed, leaving Johnny to explain how they’d come to be there.
It hadn’t been easy. But Carole’s little tirade had given him time to collect his wits, and he thought now that he hadn’t done so badly. He hadn’t been abject, he hadn’t even apologized; that would have been to admit he’d done wrong. Instead, he had stressed that the meeting had been fortuitous, not clandestine. As for the embrace Knickers had interrupted — well, Carole was a damned attractive girl, it was only natural he should want to kiss her. Fair enough, Nicodemus had said; but from where he’d stood it had looked as if Johnny was aiming at a hell of a lot more than a mere kiss. As for the meeting being fortuitous — well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. He had only Johnny’s word for that. Are you calling me a liar? Johnny had asked. His indignation must have rung true, for Nicodemus had said no, he wasn’t saying that; he was just puzzled that he hadn’t heard the noise Johnny and Carole claimed to have heard. After that tempers had cooled slightly, and when eventually they had gone upstairs they had gone together. Johnny had supposed that the incident was closed. Well, maybe it was. But not, it seemed, forgotten. Not by Nicodemus. Not if his attitude that morning was a criterion.
Mrs Nicodemus put down her paper, swallowed a mouthful of coffee, and looked at Johnny.
‘What time had you tho
ught of leaving, Mr Inch?’ she asked loudly. ‘Before or after lunch? I have the meals to organize, you see.’
Johnny felt like saying he would be leaving almost immediately. But Carole intervened. ‘Make it after lunch, Johnny,’ she said. ‘Then you can give me and Humphrey a lift.’
From behind the Observer Nicodemus said gruffly, ‘I’m not going back. Not today.’
‘Oh!’ Carole shrugged. ‘Well, I am.’
Mrs Nicodemus stood up. ‘Just so long as I know. Are any of you going to church this morning?’
Nicodemus didn’t answer. Johnny looked hopefully at Carole. She said, ‘Well, I don’t know, Mummy. I mean, Johnny’s here on business, really. Was there anything you wanted to do, Johnny?’
He tried to think of something. Not really. Except that I’d very much like to have a look at those numbers Roger Diamond showed your father. Remember you told me about them?’
‘Of course.’ She stood up. ‘Daddy wouldn’t mind, would he, Mummy?’
‘I shouldn’t think so, dear.’ Mrs Nicodemus was clearing the table. ‘Although I fail to see how they can interest the police.’
‘I’m not saying they do,’ Johnny said. ‘But I’m an individual as well as a policeman, Mrs Nicodemus. However, if you’d rather I didn’t see them —’
‘No, no. That’s all right. Show him the diary, Carole.’
Carole had already opened the desk. She said, ‘It’s not here.’
‘Rubbish, dear. It must be. I put it there myself. Last night, after your father had finished with it. Here! Let me look.’ Mrs Nicodemus dumped toast-rack and marmalade on the trolley and went over to the desk. After a search she said, ‘That’s odd. You’re right, Carole, it isn’t. Where on earth can it have got to?’