Gone Away

by Hazel Holt

  I got to my feet. ‘It’s awfully kind of you, but I ought to be getting back...’ I picked up the honey and dried flowers that I had laid on the floor at my feet. ‘I shall look forward to trying this lovely honey.’

  He led me out into the hall and opened the front door.

  ‘Say goodbye to Andrew for me,’ I said. ‘I won’t disturb him now if he’s busy.’

  ‘Yes, I will. And, Sheila,’ he put his hand on my shoulder, ‘please come and see us again. Andrew took to you – I could tell that – and I’d like you to see him when – well, when he’s more himself.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I said warmly. ‘Perhaps I could bring Michael, when he’s home from Oxford. Who knows,’ I added, knowing that it could never be, ‘they might become friends

  like you and Jerry were...’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  He stood beside me as I opened the door of my car, and when I drove away I could see him in my rear mirror, still standing where I had left him.

  I somehow found my way back through the narrow lanes and on to the main road. What I needed now was time to sit down and consider what I had learned. I really couldn’t allow my mind to sift through the extraordinary information and impressions I had just received while I was still driving. I stopped at a pub and ordered a plate of hot, com-forting shepherd’s pie and an even more comforting gin and tonic.

  So my first impression of Lee had been the right one. She really was an unspeakable sort of person. That meeting I had with her on the day we went to Plover’s Barrow had lulled me into a sort of reluctant liking. But that was simply Lee exercising her charm to win my approval of her marriage to Charles, because she thought I still had some sort of influence with him. I wondered how many others she had charmed for just long enough to get what she wanted. Now, having seen what she had done to poor Andrew, I could no more have tolerated her than if I had seen her striking an animal.

  It was very terrible, I thought, that the first really strong motives for Lee’s murder I had come across should be there, in that pathetic little household. Certainly Jamie had every reason to hate Lee and to want her dead. The break-up of all he had laboriously built, his own life and, even more, the precarious happiness of Andrew, all depended on the greedy whim of this woman. I could hardly find it in my heart to blame him if he had killed her. And then there was Andrew, who saw things as a child might see them, who was so horrified when he thought that Lee was coming back to torment them that he had run away. Where? He wouldn’t think of it as murder. Jamie and Andrew – each would have killed for the other, with no more thought of any moral prohibiting than a hunted animal would have when it turned on its pursuers.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ The young man from behind the bar came and removed my plate. The pub was empty, and he was disposed to stop and chat.

  ‘Not much doing at this time of the year, even though we are on the main road. Not at lunch-time, that is. Evenings, now, we have Country and Western – they come from miles around, as far as Plymouth sometimes, when it’s something special. We got a good one on Saturday’ – he indicated a large poster on the wall among the reproduction horse-brasses and hunting horns – ‘Chuck Wayne and the Waggoners – they’re great!’

  I indicated my interest in all things Western by a little murmur and said that yes, please, I would like some coffee. He went away and I continued my brooding. I wondered if anyone else in Taviscombe, apart from Mrs Dudley, knew about Lee and Jamie. Obviously Rosemary didn’t, or she would certainly have said something. But in a small town like Taviscombe there would always be somebody who would tell the police all about it, and they would not have the sentimental scruples I had about questioning Jamie very sharply about his movements and motives, and those of Andrew, on the day that Lee was murdered. No doubt when they went through Lee’s papers they would find her marriage certificate and other things that would lead them to that little smallholding. I drove home slowly, worried and confused, wanting to do what was right, but reluctant to hurt those who seemed so vulnerable. When I got back I laid down my purchases on the kitchen table. The bunch of dried flowers had come undone and the fragile, papery blossoms spilled on to the floor. Foss batted one gently with his paw and looked at me enquiringly, but I had no answer.

  For the rest of the day I tried to put the whole thing to one side. I cooked the animals’ fish and made my supper and carefully watched nothing but soap operas and situation comedies on the television. I made a cup of tea and went up to bed, but my mind began churning about again, so I took up my familiar, blue-bound copy of Pillars of the House and lost myself, at last, in the myriad complexities of the Underwood family, until the small print caused my eyes to close and I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke up early the next day, which was just as well, because, not surprisingly, I’d forgotten I’d promised to make a cake for the Help the Aged Bring and Buy sale, which was being held that morning. I quickly threw together a sponge, but alas, when it had finished cooling on the wire rack, it looked decidedly lop-sided. I put an extra lot of jam filling in it and strewed the top liberally with icing sugar and hoped that nobody would notice. Needless to say, it didn’t escape Marjorie Fraser’s eagle eye.

  ‘Oh dear – it seems to have sunk a bit,’ she said, examining it critically.

  ‘What a cheek! Rosemary said indignantly as Marjorie moved away to supervise the making of the coffee. ‘She can’t make cakes at all!’

  ‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but she did bring those marvellous bowls of hyacinths. Did you see, all coming out at once and every single one the same size? I wish I knew how she did it.’

  ‘I expect she speaks to them sharply,’ Rosemary said acidly.

  Then the doors of the church hall were opened and there was the usual serum round the cake and jam stall, which soon looked as if it had been attacked by a swarm of locusts. Even my despised sponge was snapped up, by an elderly man in a deerstalker and a bright blue anorak. As I tidied away the paper plates that the cakes had been on and pushed to the front of the stall the remaining two jars of bramble jelly, I wondered if I should tell Rosemary about my visit to Jamie. My instinct was to keep it to myself. The fewer people who knew about his connection with Lee the safer he would be, and Rosemary could never keep a thing like that to her-self. It was, indeed, very fortunate that Mrs Dudley hadn’t said anything about it to her daughter. But I could understand that she wouldn’t want any-thing to diminish the grandeur of the Hertford family in Rosemary’s eyes, now that she could claim Mrs Hertford as a friend. Telling me was different. Jeremy had been Jamie’s friend – she had always resented that – so she wouldn’t scruple to pass on to me anything that might denigrate Jamie. I marvelled at the complexities of the English class system that could produce such fine degrees of snobbery! So perhaps I shouldn’t tell Rosemary. But I dearly wanted to tell someone, and I knew that Rosemary would be as astonished as I was at the transformation in Jamie’s appearance and in his life-style. The hall finally emptied, and Rosemary and I went into the small, inconvenient kitchen to wash up the coffee cups.

  ‘I’ll wash, shall I?’ Rosemary asked. She looked at the plastic washing-up bowl and made a face. ‘This really needs a good scrub. Oh well, never mind, pass me those cups will you.’

  She started to talk of Lee’s death and how upset Charles would be.

  ‘Well, I don’t know...’ I said slowly. ‘He’ll get over it and he’s well out of it, if you ask me. Lee really wasn’t at all a nice person.’ That was the understatement of the year, but there was no way I could go into details without telling Rosemary too much.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t like her myself, but she might have suited Charles – he always liked his females to be sharp and rather glamorous. And, you never know, she wasn’t that old – they might have had children—’

  ‘Women like that don’t want children.’ said a harsh voice behind us. ‘And heaven forbid that they should ever have any!’
<
br />   We turned round in astonishment to see Marjorie Fraser standing behind us.

  ‘They’re too greedy and self-centred,’ she said abruptly.

  We were disconnected by this interruption, and simply stood there, Rosemary with a dripping dish-cloth in her hand and me with a cup half-way into the cupboard. Marjorie’s gaze swept over us disapprovingly.

  ‘Those tea-towers could do with a good boil,’ she said, and went out, banging the door behind her.

  ‘Weill’ said Rosemary at last.

  ‘Why on earth should she go on about Lee like that?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. She can’t have known her at all well – I mean, would she? They couldn’t have any-thing in common.

  Perhaps she bought her house from Country Houses when she first moved here. I can’t think how else they would have met.’

  ‘I think it was something to do with children.’ I said, and my thoughts turned to Andrew. Had Marjorie somehow heard about him? She moved in the same horsy set that Jamie used to belong to. Word might have filtered through; they were a gossipy lot.

  ‘She’s fond of children.’ said Rosemary grudgingly, ‘I know that. She does a lot with Riding for the Disabled, Anthea told me. I suppose she didn’t have any children of her own, perhaps she couldn’t. Sad to be left a widow with no children.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Rosemary turned to me quickly. ‘Well, you’ve got Michael, and he’s super and very fond of you ... But even if you were all alone I bet you wouldn’t be all sour like Marjorie.’

  ‘Who knows what I’d be like?’ I said seriously. ‘Children do make a difference...’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Rosemary said, her mind darting off, as it so often did, in quite another direction. ‘Did I tell you, Jilly and Roger are going to buy a house! A joint mortgage. Honestly, I daren’t tell Mother, she’ll go on and on about what will the building society think about them not being married!’

  ‘Good for them.’ I said. ‘I like Roger. Jilly’s very lucky. And if they’re buying a house together it sounds as if it’s turning into a stable relationship.’ I tried not to put the phrase in inverted commas. ‘What does Jack think about it?’

  ‘Oh, he’s all for it. He likes Roger too. He thinks they’ll get married sooner or later so why make a fuss. You know what Jack’s like – very laissex-faire! I’m the one who worries all the time.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ I said. ‘Children!’ And some of us have more to worry about than others, I thought, my mind going back to Andrew again.

  Rosemary wrung out the dishcloth and draped it over the washing-up bowl, while I, mindful of Marjorie’s remark, put the damp tea-towers in my shopping bag to take them home to wash.

  ‘It was a bit much.’ Rosemary said, ‘Marjorie butting in like that on a private conversation!’

  ‘Well,’ I said cattily, ‘I don’t suppose she’d let a little thing like good manners stop her if she had something she wanted to say!’

  When I got home I picked up the local paper, which had been delivered that morning, and took it into the kitchen to read while I was having a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I spread it open on the kitchen table, and the first thing that caught my eye was a photograph of Councillor Bradford, making a presentation to a council worker who was retiring after thirty years’ loyal service.

  Now I came to think of it, I was really rather confused as to exactly what Lee’s property deals had all been about. Philip Bradford had presumably approached her about buying up property when he heard of the proposed hypermarket development, and it would have to be done in someone else’s name so that he wouldn’t fall under suspicion. Well, it seemed that she had bought up the property, but in Charles’s name. A double-cross, in fact. Bradford wouldn’t be able to make a fuss because he wouldn’t want it known that he had acted illegally as a councillor, so he had no come-back. But did he know yet what Lee had done? Had she gone on stringing him along, right up to the time she had been killed? If so he must be quite anxious – even more anxious than Charles was – to know what papers the police had found. I wondered how I could find out exactly who knew what.

  Foss, who hated to be ignored, leapt on to the table and walked deliberately over the paper, his long crooked tail waving in my face.

  ‘All right,’ I said resignedly, ‘come on then.’

  Leaving my half-finished cup of coffee, I cut up some ox liver for him. Tris, hearing the saucer being put down on the floor, came rushing into the kitchen demanding food as well. I wondered, not for the first time, how anybody ever got anything done when they had animals or children around.

  When I came to take Tris for his walk it was brilliantly sunny. There was no wind but it was intensely cold, the sort of cold that seems to bite into the very marrow of your bones. I got Tris ready, putting on his fleece-lined plaid dog-jacket, of which we are both rather ashamed, but he is getting on a bit now and needs the extra warmth. The same might also be said about me, so I put on the dreadful old sheepskin coat that I keep only for dog-walking, my fur-lined boots and gloves and a sheepskin hat with ear-flaps that tie under the chin. This is a relic of Peter. We called it Nanook of the North, and Michael and I used to threaten to refuse to go out with him when he wore it. Nowadays I am grateful for the warmth and no longer care about its eccentric appearance. Finally I wound my old college scarf around my neck and the bits of my face exposed to the biting air, so that practically only my eyes were left uncovered.

  With a slightly rolling gait, because of all my cumbersome clothing, I made my way down to the sea to let Tris have a run along the beach. The sky was a glorious pale blue and the sea almost translucent. As we walked along the sand I saw that the little pools left by the tide were already silver with ice – the temperature must have dropped very suddenly. Tris ran wildly about, making little dashes at seagulls, then suddenly stopping to investigate a piece of driftwood or seaweed. The air was so cold and sharp it was like breathing in broken glass, so I buried my nose in my scarf and tried to generate a little warm air. I was leaning against the old break-water for a short rest before turning back for home when a voice behind me said accusingly, ‘I didn’t recognise you, all bundled up like that.’

  It was, of course, Marjorie Fraser, apparently in a better temper, exercising her golden cocker spaniel. She, of course, was neatly and suitably dressed for the cold weather in a Barbour jacket, cord breeches, Newmarket boots and a tweed hat.

  ‘Oh, hello Marjorie – hasn’t it got cold all of a sudden! No more hunting again if this goes on, I suppose?’

  ‘No, it’s been a rotten season – ground’s a rotten season either been like iron or a beastly quagmire.’

  In the bright open air her face looked worn and very lined, so that I felt impelled to ask, ‘Are you all right? You do look tired.’

  ‘Oh – well, yes, I am a bit. I was up most of the night with Satin – that’s the chestnut mare. A bad cough – I shall have to get Hawkins in to have a look at her if she’s no better

  tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Tris and the spaniel were engaged in a joyful game with a piece of driftwood, taking it in turns to toss it in the air and then both rushing after it barking madly. I regarded them fondly.

  ‘Aren’t they sweet?’ I said.

  ‘That Westy of yours is getting too fat,’ she said critically. ‘You’ll have to put him on a high protein diet.’

  There was a short silence while I swallowed my resentment but acknowledged the truth of what she said. It was very still and peaceful; we were the only people on the sands. There is a lot to be said for the seaside in winter.

  On an impulse I turned to Marjorie and asked, ‘Have you ever come across Jamie Hertford?’

  She had been looking at the dogs, but her head jerked round and she regarded me sharply.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just wondered – you’re both horsy, and hunt and so forth.’

  ‘Yes. As it happens, I do
know him,’ she replied stiffly. ‘As you say, we occasionally meet out hunting.’

  ‘Have you met Andrew, his son?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a barely acknowledged affirmative.

  ‘Poor boy, he’s terribly nervy...’

  ‘How do you know them?’ she asked me, almost accusingly.

  ‘Jamie is an old friend.’ I said evasively. ‘He used to be at school with my brother.’

  She seemed to relax slightly and I couldn’t resist probing a little.

  ‘Did you know that he was married to Lee Montgomery?’

  She had turned away so that I couldn’t see her face, but I could sense that she was very tense.

  ‘That woman.’ she said.

  ‘She treated them both very badly I gather.’

  ‘The world is well rid of her – she was...’ Marjorie was clenching and unclenching her hands, just as Andrew had done. The dogs suddenly rushed towards us, nearly knocking me over in their excitement.

  ‘Tessa.’ she called. ‘Heel.’ The dog ran obediently over and sat patiently beside her. The tension of the moment was broken.

  ‘She certainly seems to have been pretty unpleasant,’ I said inadequately. ‘Jamie and Andrew have built a very peaceful little world without her. I can’t get over how Jamie has changed.’

  ‘He’s been marvellous,’ she said with a quiet intensity. She obviously knew much more about their lives than she was prepared to admit to me. ‘He devotes his life to that boy. He knows what it is to make sacrifices for one’s child.’

  She seemed about to say more, but her face suddenly flushed and she bent down to clip the dog’s lead on to its collar.

  Well! I thought. So that’s it! The old Hertford charm was still there. Marjorie might not have admitted it, even to herself, but it was obvious to me that she was in love with Jamie.

  Chapter Ten

  Over the weekend I tried to put everything else out of my mind and get on with some work. I had to finish a study I was doing of Mrs Oliphant’s Salem Chapel. It was for a collection of essays on the nineteenth-century novel, to be published in honour of the eightieth birthday of a distinguished literary critic, so that I had a very definite deadline and really had to finish it by the following week. I worked hard, stopping only to get myself snack meals and – more important – keep Foss and Tris provided with full saucers, so that by Sunday evening I had more or less finished. There were a couple of points I had to check, and as Taviscombe Public Library, although it is excellent for so small a town, doesn’t run to a set of the Dictionary of National Biography, I decided that I would have to go to Taunton on Monday morning to consult the one there.