Gone Away
Page 15
– still, we had to get the next flight out to Germany. All I saw
of London was that God-awful departure lounge.’
‘Poor Charles.’
‘Actually, I tried to phone Lee from Heathrow, but there was no reply. I suppose she was out somewhere.’
‘Yes, I suppose she was.’
‘Poor kid – it all seems unreal, somehow.’
‘The money from that property deal isn’t unreal,’ I said sharply.
I could almost feel Charles’s interest quicken. ‘ Oh, has that been sorted out then? I gathered from Lee that everything was more or less wrapped up.’
‘From what the police have told me, it seems that you’re likely to be a very rich man.’
‘It was a neat little operation,’ he replied. ‘Poor Lee, if only she were still around we could really have had fun...’
I was suddenly furious with Charles for his casual, uncaring attitude.
‘I suppose her next of kin might have a claim,’ I said, dropping a stone into the pool.
‘Her what?’
‘Her next of kin – her husband.’
There was a stunned silence at the other end of the line and I was glad that I was not paying for what would probably be a long and expensive telephone call.
‘But she was divorced.’
‘No. She’d never got around to it. Oh, she was going to, when she thought you’d marry her. But she died before anything was done.’
‘But this Montgomery chap...’
I explained about Mr Montgomery and then about Jamie.
‘I’m afraid she wasn’t a very nice person, Charles. The way she tried to get that last pound of flesh out of Jamie, when she simply didn’t need it – well...’
‘Good God. Jamie Hertford! We – Jack and Ronnie and I
– used to think he was the last word! I can’t believe it. And she – she never mentioned anything. And’ – his voice sharpened suspiciously – ‘that man Bradford? What about him?’
There seemed no point in holding anything back now, so I told him about Lee’s last night at Bradford’s cottage.
‘I’m sorry, Charles, this must be painful for you.’
But I couldn’t really feel sorry for him. I knew that it was only his pride that was hurt. He would soon bounce back and there would be another marvellous girl – someone more suitable next time perhaps. But, what with all the money, I wasn’t very hopeful.
‘That poor chap!’ Charles seemed more concerned now with thoughts of Jamie. ‘Poor Jamie, indeed. You realise that he is the chief suspect, him or Andrew, his son.’ I told Charles about Andrew.
‘Well,’ he said, and suddenly he sounded like the Charles I used to know, ‘if anything does happen to Jamie Hertford, I’ll certainly see that the boy is all right financially. They ought to have some of the money anyway.’
‘I doubt if Jamie would take anything connected with Lee
– even for Andrew’s sake. They just want to be left alone.’
‘Fat chance of that if he did murder her – not that anyone could blame him after the way she behaved. Perhaps he might get off with manslaughter. A good lawyer ... I know just the man. I’ll pay, of course. I feel sort of responsible.’
‘Steady on, Charles. He hasn’t been arrested yet. I don’t think they’ve anything like enough proof – it’s all circumstantial evidence.’
‘Well, let me know. I’m off to Chicago tomorrow, and then to Rio, but Paula will always have a number for me.’
Dazed by all this whizzing around the world, I assured Charles that I’d keep him informed and thankfully said goodbye.
‘So that’s that,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t Charles.’
Foss, who had been stalking round and round the room in the purposeful way he does when he wants to indicate that it’s bed-time, stopped and looked at me in surprise.
‘Oh, Foss, I’m so glad, really, that it wasn’t Charles,’ I said foolishly.
The next morning, just before I had to collect Mrs Aston from the Out Patients department after her physiotherapy, I crossed the road and went to have a look at Country Houses. It was all shut up and there were letters pushed through the letter-box and lying on the floor. Carol must have gone – I hoped she’d got that receptionist’s job. I’d find out next week, when I went for my check-up.
I looked at the photographs of properties, still in the window. They looked dusty and forlorn. In the centre, in pride of place, I saw the particulars of Plover’s Barrow and idly read through the description. ‘Fine property ... two acres of land ... extensive stable block ... some modernisation necessary...’ I stared at the photograph, as if it could tell me what had happened that morning in January. Then, quite suddenly, the picture of Lee lying on the cold, stone floor came into my mind and I found myself shaking, as I had the day I’d found her. My head swam and I had a dreadful feeling of nausea. For a moment I was afraid I was going to faint and I clung to the sill of the window. I tried to pull myself together and breathed deeply, thinking, as one does, that I mustn’t make an exhibition of myself by behaving oddly. After a while I felt better and able to walk on. I crossed the road slowly and went into the hospital to collect Mrs Aston. I found her sitting in the waiting area with a martyred expression.
‘I got through early,’ she said, ‘so I’ve been waiting. Freezing, it is in here, people coming and going leaving that door open. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve caught a cold, sitting In a draught all that time...’
I held the door wide open, so that she could get her walking frame through, deeply grateful to return to normality again.
Chapter Seventeen
A train of thought is a funny thing, the way your mind hops about. Mine is worse than most—‘genuine one hundred per cent grasshopper’, Peter used to say. I was making a cup of tea for Mr Owen. (He’d done Michael’s room so beautifully that I’d got him to decorate the bathroom, which badly needed doing.) I was putting out some chocolate digestives on a plate and humming ‘Little Brown Jug’, which was what Glen Miller was playing up-stairs. That made me suddenly remember that I had, somewhere, a large brown earthenware jug that would be just right for the enormous bunch of pussy-willow, catkins and forsythia that Rosemary had given me the day before, and which were at present reposing unworthily in a plastic bucket. I had a sort of feeling that the jug was at the back of the cupboard under the sink, in among all the unused baking trays and cake tins. I got down on my knees to have a look, and as I did so I noticed that the vinyl floor-covering round the sink unit was coming away in places and really ought to be seen to. It had been down for ages, ever since we had the kitchen remodelled when we moved in. I remembered Peter and I going into Taunton to choose it. I even remembered where we had had lunch afterwards...
A scrap of conversation came back to me, and the elusive thought that had been floating about in the recesses of my mind for the last few weeks came to the surface, and the two fitted together with other pieces of the puzzle, and I was suddenly sure that I knew what had happened at Plover’s Barrow when Lee Montgomery was murdered.
The electric kettle was boiling, so I got up off my knees and made the tea. Only one person could answer the question I had to put, but I was not at all sure what I would do with the answer when I had got it. I gave Mr Owen his tea and admired the new tiles he was putting up behind the bath. I told him that I had to go out for a while and could he make sure that the animals were in if he left before I was back. Then I got into the car and drove out to Bracken.
It was a glorious day. The sun was shining and it seemed as if spring had really arrived at last. The banks of the narrow lane I drove along, up to Marjorie Fraser’s house, were dotted with primroses and celandines, and there was a haze of green on the hawthorn hedges. Spring is my favourite time of the year and it was the sort of day when I usually feel a great lift of the spirits, but as I approached the house I was so overwhelmed by sadness and apprehension that I could hardly bring myself to get out of the car.
‘Forgive me if I go on doing this,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’
It was difficult to frame the question that I had to ask, so I decided to be as blunt as Marjorie herself would have been.
‘How did you know that Plover’s Barrow had a stone-flagged floor?’ I asked. ‘That wasn’t in the particulars in Lee Montgomery’s window.’
She continued smoothing the mare’s coat with the brush and I watched the rhythmic, circular movements for some time and began to think that she wasn’t going to answer me.
‘What a little thing,’ she said eventually. ‘And I suppose there could be some perfectly rational explanation for it, but I’ve had enough. I’m not very good at lying and I don’t think I can go on any longer. Have you worked it all out? The academic mind is supposed to be very thorough. Though I don’t see how you could have done – nobody knows...’
She turned at last and gave me a sharp look of enquiry, and I stared back at her, trying to match her calm manner.
‘I have what I suppose you could call a theory.’ I said.
‘And what is that?’ She sounded so much like her old peremptory self at committee meetings that I found myself speaking in the flat, level tones that I use to read out the minutes of the previous meeting.
‘It was obvious, from that remark about the stone floor, and from your tone of voice when you spoke about it, that you’d actually been to Plover’s Barrow, and if it had been for some perfectly innocent reason you would certainly have said so. And there was another thing at the back of my mind: a shepherd there said that he saw someone riding away from the house about midday on the day that Lee was murdered. He thought it was a man, but he was a long way away and you’re tall...’
Marjorie had finished grooming the horse and had taken a bridle down from a hook on the wall and was polishing the bit.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was at the house that day.’
‘I suppose it was for Jamie and Andrew, wasn’t it?’
‘In a way.’
The spaniel, Tessa, hearing voices, came into the stable. She laid her head on my knee for a moment so that I could stroke her, and then settled down in a patch of sunlight at my feet.
‘I can’t really believe that Jamie killed her,’ I went on, ‘so it had to be Andrew. I don’t know how he came to be at Plover’s Barrow – perhaps Lee told him about it when she spoke to him on the phone. But I can imagine only too clearly how she teased and tormented him until, poor boy, he snatched up that knife and tried to put her out of their lives for ever. I imagine that Andrew must have left some sort of note for Jamie, who came to find him. He would have come in the Land Rover and left it up on the road, coming down cautiously on foot, not knowing what he would find. When he saw what had happened he’d have wanted to get Andrew away as quickly as possible – the boy must have been in a dreadful state. But there was the problem of Andrew’s horse. He was obviously in no condition to ride all that way back, but Jamie didn’t dare leave the horse there, while he went back for the horse-box, in case someone saw it. The only person he could trust to get it back for him was you.’
Marjorie gave a little laugh, and the dog lifted its head and looked at her, but she didn’t say anything. I continued.
‘So he put Andrew in the Land Rover and stopped at that telephone box on the coast road and phoned you. You drove over and left your car, as Jamie had done, walked down, collected the horse and rode it in easy stages back to Jamie’s. Then he drove you back to your car and you went back home. Is that the way it was?’
Marjorie let the polishing rag lie idle in her hand and looked at me with a strange mixture of admiration and contempt.
‘Oh Sheila,’ she said, ‘you really are extraordinary, you simply cannot bring yourself to believe anything bad of anybody, can you. Jamie couldn’t possibly have killed Lee Montgomery, so it must have been Andrew – a poor boy, who didn’t really know what he was doing, wasn’t responsible for his own actions!’
‘It wasn’t Jamie?’
‘No, of course it wasn’t Jamie, though God knows he had reason enough.’ She rubbed at the bridle again, holding it up to the light to see if she’d got all the polish off. ‘It was me. I killed her.’
Her voice was flat and unemotional, but there must have been some quality in it that made the mare suddenly move nervously in its stall and toss its head, and I remembered how the horse had reared and plunged when I had told Marjorie how I had found Lee’s body.
‘I suppose I must explain. I knew I would have to one day soon. The burden of such a thing is very heavy. And, of course, I couldn’t allow anyone else to have taken the blame for what I did.’
‘But why? I burst out. ‘Was it for Jamie?’
‘Partly. That was why I went to see her. Jamie had told me what she had said about the money. I don’t think he meant anyone to know, but he was desperate with worry about Andrew, who had gone off, as you know. I just happened to phone that evening – to see if he’d got the date of the Invitation Meet,’ she continued, looking rather self-conscious, and I remembered how I, too, in the first flush of love, had always found some excuse for phoning the object of my affection.
‘I’d seen the advertisement for Plover’s Barrow in her window, and, as soon as I’d spoken to Jamie, I phoned her office.
I just caught her as she was leaving and arranged to see her at the house the next morning, pretending that I was thinking of buying it. I didn’t want anyone to know I was seeing her – well, I was sure Jamie wouldn’t want it known, and nor did I, for a lot of reasons. I made the appointment for the next morning, partly because I needed to see her as soon as possible, and partly because I knew I would be out with the hunt on that part of the moor that day. I got there just after eleven, a bit late – she was getting impatient and not in a good mood anyway. I knew it was no use appealing to her better nature, so I offered her money. Not as much as she would have got from her share of the sale of the smallholding, but she could have had it at once, with no strings or bother.’
I tried to visualise the scene.
‘What did she say?’ I asked curiously.
‘She was very offensive. She implied’ – here Marjorie found difficulty in forming the words and a deep flush darkened her face – ‘that I was in love with Jamie. She laughed and made some very distasteful remarks...’
I could imagine that very well. Lee would have known just how to hurt and humiliate Marjorie, and she would have enjoyed doing it.
‘Did she say she’d take the money?’
‘Oh yes. She was very greedy.’
‘Then, why...’
‘Why did I kill her? I still wasn’t sure that she would leave Jamie and Andrew alone. She said’ – Marjorie hesitated again
– ‘she only had to lift her little finger to get Jamie back again. I was almost sure that Jamie wouldn’t, but you never know with men – she seemed to have this peculiar attraction, I can’t pretend to understand it – and then he’d have been unhappier than ever.’ She fell silent for a moment and then continued more in her old manner. ‘I told you it was only partly Jamie. That was only the last straw. I have hated Lee Montgomery – overwhelmingly hated her – for two years now.’
‘But you’ve only been in Taviscombe for about a year...’
‘The story goes back six years, really. You probably know I used to live just outside Bristol; my husband was a vet and I helped him in the practice. We had a daughter, Lucy...’ For the first time, Marjorie’s voice broke. ‘I’m sorry, it’s been so long since I spoke her name. She was a marvellous girl, everyone loved her ... Well, one day she was out on her bike when this car knocked her down. The
re were witnesses and the police were called and Lucy was taken to hospital. She had concussion and some abrasions. They kept her in for a couple of nights and then let her come home, and she made a good recovery. The driver of the car was a woman. She’d obviously been drinking, so the police prosecuted. When the case came up she was fined for dangerous driving and had her licence taken away for a year. A year,’ she repeated. She looked at me. ‘Yes, it was Lee Montgomery – Elizabeth Hertford was the name she gave in court. Well, we went on as before for four years and then suddenly Lucy collapsed and within a day she was dead. It was an aneurysm, apparently, a sort of blood clot. These things happen very suddenly and very quickly...’ Marjorie’s voice trailed away, vaguely almost, and then she said, fiercely, ‘They said that the concussion probably hadn’t anything to do with it, that it would have happened anyway, but how could I believe that!’
‘Oh Marjorie, how terrible for you...’
She seemed not to hear me, and went on painfully.
‘We both adored Lucy, David and I, we’d built our entire lives around her. Without her he didn’t see any point in going on – I wasn’t enough, you see.’ She was clasping and unclasping her hands around the bridle until the metal bit into her fingers. ‘He killed himself. An overdose. I don’t know, really, why I didn’t do the same. I suppose it’s the way I was brought up. Suicide is a sin. Murder is too. But an eye for an eye ... and for a child.’
I thought of Michael and wondered what I would have done. And then I thought of Peter who had died too, but surrounded by love and knowing that he had left a son behind him.
‘After a while, I sold up the practice and moved down here. It was a place where we’d all been happy. We used to come for riding holidays – Lucy had a marvellous pair of hands, she would have been really good ... David and I always said we’d retire down here and keep horses. It seemed, almost, something I could do for him.’ She looked at me. ‘Was that very foolish?’