by Sarah Rayne
What would Richard have done in this situation? It was impossible to visualize him physically tackling the madman, but it was certainly possible to imagine him working out some kind of subtle trap. For a moment, Richard was with Antonia so vividly that she could almost hear him saying, ‘I’ll teach the sick bastard to frighten you half to death!’ She could see his eyes glowing with fury for the cruel mind that had fashioned the hanging rope and played the other tricks.
Donna was extremely pleased at how well this part of the plan had gone.
It had been quite tricky to set it up–trickier than the cat ploy, which had been a suddenly seen, quickly seized opportunity–and certainly trickier than playing the part of a visitor to Quire last week and unobtrusively placing the Caprice sheet music on the spinet in the hope it would stay there long enough for Weston to find it. But she had managed it and it had worked beautifully.
As she drove away from Quire House, she smiled to think how predictable this murderous bitch actually was, and how predictable she had been all along the way. Even renting Charity Cottage–the cottage that Donna had forced on her, like a conjurer forcing a playing card.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The playing card had been prepared a long time ago, of course. Five years ago, to be precise. Quite soon after Antonia’s trial, Donna had quietly and unassumingly set about joining several charity organizations attached to the hospital where Antonia had worked. She used a false name, and explained to people that she had not a great deal of money but that she would like to help.
She had been welcomed enthusiastically of course, and after a year or two she became quite well known for her work. Absolutely tireless, people said. A real godsend to the Friends of the Hospital, to the fund-raising committee for the new scanner, to the campaign for more ICU and HDU beds. Always willing to organize flag days, charity discos, sponsored walks or swims. Pure gold. We’ll have to invite her to a few official things, by way of a thank you.
The invitations to the few official things snowballed–Donna made sure they did–and she got to know people on the hospital’s staff quite well. After a time it was easy to form several convenient friendships with a few of the bitch’s former colleagues. Antonia’s name was quite often mentioned, especially in the first year or so, when people were still in shock. A dreadful thing, they all said. How on earth would she cope with eight years in gaol?
Donna listened politely to this, and to people saying what a loss to the hospital Antonia was and what a good and committed doctor of psychiatry she had been. Great company as well–those terrific supper parties she and Richard used to give, oh dear, life could be so cruel, couldn’t it?
Antonia Weston had not been a good psychiatrist, and Donna did not give a damn if she had been good company or the most boring person in the world. Weston was going to die for what she had done to Don, and she was going to die alone and terrified, as Don had.
Two years later, moving the plan along, Donna took a long lease on Charity Cottage, using the name of Mrs Romero–her grandmother’s maiden name. She posed as a widow, modestly affluent, who travelled a good deal, but who wanted a base in England. She would be at the cottage at infrequent intervals, but would keep the place clean and safe between times. The Quire House Trust had only just been formed and was still in its infancy, so the letting of Charity Cottage was dealt with by agents in Chester who did not care if the place was lived in every day or only an hour every year, providing the rent was paid.
Donna paid the rent promptly, sending a cheque every month from a specially created building-society account so her real name never appeared. It was quite a drain on her resources, but she did not mind because she could not risk the cottage being let when Weston was released. She needed to be sure Charity Cottage would be available.
She stayed there at intervals so people would not wonder why it was empty for such long periods, and she made sure she was seen in Amberwood, although she kept her distance from people. During the winter months she set up a time switch for the lights so anyone seeing the place from the road would assume it was occupied. She kept the inside aired and clean and the little fenced-off garden neat.
At the hospital she kept her ear to the ground for mentions of Antonia’s release.
It was as well she did this, because one summer came the news that the bitch was being released early. Good behaviour, remission and time served prior to the trial, said people at the hospital. It had all been added up and what it amounted to was that Antonia would be out this coming autumn–the end of October, in fact. Wasn’t that marvellous? She would need a few weeks to recuperate of course–somewhere to readjust to the world–but perhaps by Christmas…They went about beaming, and Donna hated them for liking Antonia so much. She hated the dumb-witted, insensitive prison authorities who were letting a murderess walk free after only five years.
She almost panicked at the short time this gave her to finalize her plan. Barely two months. Was it long enough? It would have to be.
As September drew to a close, she ended the lease on Charity Cottage. It was not very likely the agents would find anyone to take the place at this time of year. Before handing in the keys, she had two extra sets cut, using one of the big, while you wait key-cutting places in Chester, and paying cash, so she would be able to get back into the cottage whenever she wanted. And she would want.
After this, she began to slide the name of Charity Cottage and Amberwood into conversations within the hospital network, saying offhandedly that a friend had mentioned the area, referring to it as a wonderfully peaceful part of the world, a marvellous place to heal wounds–somewhere to go if you were recovering from an illness or a bereavement or a divorce.
Or a prison sentence.
She was as sure as she could be that these carefully casual references reached people who had known Antonia and who had stayed in touch with her. Some of the clerical staff and the therapists who worked at the psychiatric clinic occasionally wrote to Antonia, and one or two of them had visited her a few times. Dr Saxon, the consultant psychiastrist who had been Antonia’s immediate boss, had certainly visited her. Donna thought Jonathan Saxon had rather fancied Antonia at one time, although if you listened to hospital gossip, you would have to believe that Jonathan Saxon had fancied most of the females in the hospital at various times. Donna did not care if he screwed every female in sight providing he knew about the marvellously peaceful cottage, and providing he mentioned it to Antonia.
Apart from the bitch’s earlier than expected release, the plan was proceeding almost exactly as Donna had hoped. The only thing she could not predict with any confidence was whether Weston would take the carefully prepared bait. Donna was not given to praying, but during those weeks there were several times when she almost did. If her plan failed at this stage she would have to start all over again. But it would not fail. It must not.
It did not fail. The timing worked, and Donna’s own psychology worked as well. Less than a week after Antonia Weston’s release, she heard from one of the therapists that the bitch was renting Charity Cottage for a few weeks.
Antonia had walked straight into the trap Donna had so painstakingly set. Now all she had to do was keep a careful watch, and move the various stages of her plan along.
She kept watch by the simple expedient of parking her car at a big new garden centre about three quarters of a mile away, and walking up to Quire House each day, going openly through the gates in the wake of ordinary visitors. It was easy to step off the main drive and take the footpath that wound through the trees. Quire had not yet entered the world of CCTV cameras, and if anyone had challenged her, Donna would have assumed the mien of a rather thick visitor, apologetic at having missed the ‘Private’ sign. But no one did.
She watched the cottage from the concealment of the trees, which was tedious, but had to be done. There was a brief alleviation of the tedium quite early on when she was able to let the large inquisitive cat into the cottage and unwrap food from the fridge for him.
It only took a few moments and although it was a small incident Donna thought it would unnerve Weston. On the fourth day her patience was rewarded more substantially. Shortly before four o’clock Antonia set off across the park, carrying a large envelope. Donna waited to make sure she was not coming straight back, and then slipped into the cottage, the rope looped around her waist under her anorak.
She was wearing gloves, of course, and she had tied her hair under a scarf and then drawn up the hood of her anorak. You had only to watch a TV crime programme to know how very precise forensic science was nowadays, a single hair could be enough to identify a suspect, and she did not intend to be caught.
It was easy to pull out a kitchen chair, stand on it and tie the rope to one of the old ceiling beams near the door. Fashioning the noose was the best part of all; it looked amazingly real and startlingly sinister. She got down from the chair and dusted the seat, even though she was wearing cheap mass-produced trainers which were unlikely to be traceable. Then she returned the chair to its place. Yes, the rope looked all right, and the time of day was a bonus: it was nicely dark–that oddly macabre dusk-light you got at this time of year. She had closed the curtains so Weston would come into an unlit room.
Donna moved the rope back and forth experimentally. It was tied quite tightly to the beam and the movement pulled on the old ceiling timbers, making them creak softly. It was quite a spooky sound, and it brought a forgotten memory with it: the memory of how the kitchen joists had always creaked in just that way when someone walked across the floor of the bedroom directly overhead, and of how Don, before that last summer, sometimes pretended the cottage was haunted and made up scary stories about ghosts. There was definitely something in the far corner of the kitchen, near the door, he used to say. You had only to go in there to feel it. Occasionally he sounded perfectly serious about this, but Donna knew the cottage was not haunted, of course. Even so, it was still quite eerie to stand down here and hear the ceiling beams creak as the rope swayed gently back and forth…
You did not abandon a plan you had spent months putting together and years polishing, but nor did you close your mind against an improvement. Donna gave a final look round the room, checked she had locked the garden door, pocketed the key and went quickly out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
It was a bit of a gamble to hide in the cottage when Weston came in and saw the noose, but Donna did not think it was much of one. She thought Weston would be so frightened when the rope began to move–apparently of its own accord, but really, of course, from the pressure on the joists overhead–that she would not search the cottage by herself.
But if by any chance she did remain there, Donna could get out unseen through the window in the back bedroom. At some stage of its history the cottage had been extended to join the kitchen to the old wash-house and make it one big room; the extension had a flat roof which was directly below the bedroom window, and there was a tough-looking drainpipe which she could climb down.
But it probably would not be necessary to do that and, in the event, it was not. Antonia ran out of the cottage, and Donna gave her a couple of minutes to get clear and than went down the stairs. Her heart pounding, she pulled the chair out again, and reached up to unfasten the knots. The rope slid down into her hands like an obedient snake, and she folded it under her jacket and went out through the garden door, locking it behind her.
Driving towards the motorway link road and the anonymous service station motel where she would spend the night, she was looking forward to the next move. She already knew which of Quire House’s occupants would be part of Antonia’s destruction.
After Antonia Weston left, Godfrey Toy had asked Greg Foster to look in the cellars for any more papers marked either ‘Forrester’ or ‘Latchkill’. No, it did not matter precisely what, just anything labelled with either of those names. He had not really expected Greg to find anything, and was delighted when he came shambling back an hour later with a bundle of what looked like letters and some kind of ancient account book. Godfrey tucked them tidily into a cardboard folder, and decided to walk across to the cottage tomorrow to give them to Miss Weston.
He was just about to lock up his office when Oliver arrived home a day earlier than expected. Godfrey was pleased because he never felt really comfortable alone in Quire. He was still prone to dreadful nightmares and could not drive past that terrible old mill without first talking himself into doing so.
He pottered up to Oliver’s rooms to be told how the buying trip to the ex-headmaster’s house had gone. It was disappointing to hear that the hoped for Bernard Shaw letters had not materialized, although Oliver had never expected much of that. A too enthusiastic nephew, he said in the disparaging way that had gradually become natural to him over the last five years, but that Godfrey always found upsetting. The letters had no more been written by Shaw than the morning’s note to the milkman, said Oliver, and the Marlowe folio had been a mid-Victorian reprint.
Godfrey had gone back to his own flat, feeling quite glum. He exchanged a word with Raffles who had wandered in, and started to put together his supper. The prospect of walking over to Charity Cottage tomorrow cheered him up, and while the potatoes were cooking he poured himself a glass of Madeira. He liked Madeira, and he sang the fruity old Flanders and Swann song to himself while he drank it–the one about, Have some Madeira, m’dear–and tried to imagine how it might feel to put on a mulberry velvet smoking-jacket and embark on a seduction, although actually he had no idea how you went about seducing someone and mulberry was not his colour anyway.
It was at this point that Oliver knocked on the door to tell him about the extremely peculiar events at Charity Cottage.
Godfrey was so upset to hear about Antonia’s distressing experience (she had already ceased to be Miss Weston in his thoughts), he abandoned the Madeira and potatoes in favour of a gin and tonic, and listened to the whole tale. At the end of it, he said he hoped Oliver had been sympathetic, and vanishing rope trick or not, oughtn’t they to invite Miss Weston to stay at Quire for tonight?
Oliver said he had been as sympathetic with Miss Weston as the situation had warranted, and that they could not be taking in flaky female holiday-makers who turned up out of the blue and had bizarre hallucinations all over the place. He also added that in future it would be better if Godfrey refrained from making absurdly trusting arrangements with unknown ladies to catalogue the contents of Quire’s cellars. Good God, this Antonia Weston might be anyone, said Oliver, and went up to his own flat and banged the door on the world, leaving Godfrey to a disconsolate and solitary supper, which he ended up sharing with Raffles.
He hoped he would not have nightmares when he went to bed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
For two nights after Thomasina killed Simon, she suffered fearsome nightmares.
In them Simon was trapped and frenzied, clawing at the heavy steel doors of the kiln room, screaming for help…Dreadful. Thomasina tossed and turned in the big wide bed that had been so wonderful when Maud had been there with her, and tried to push the nightmares away. But they clawed deep into her mind, causing her to wake in the small hours, gasping and covered in perspiration.
The days were easier, and once she began to spread the story of Simon’s puzzling disappearance, starting with that gossipy old Reverend Skandry, she felt better. Probably an official search had better be set in motion quite soon, but if–when–Simon’s body was found, nobody would be especially surprised because Thomasina had prepared the ground by saying she and Simon had discussed opening up the mill. Everyone would believe he had gone to take a look at the old place. In the meantime, Thomasina asked Mrs Minching to keep Simon’s room cleaned and aired, because no doubt he would turn up sooner or later.
Other than this, Thomasina went about her normal tasks, carrying trays of food up to Maud, visiting neighbours, letting it be known that Maud was on the road to recovery from influenza, although not yet quite up to visitors. She talked to Maud very carefully about her hea
lth, although that was difficult because Maud thought it embarrassing to refer to the monthly cycle. Mrs Plumtree, who had explained about these things when Maud was thirteen, had emphasized that it was not a matter to be talked about, except perhaps with a doctor or a nurse if the need arose.
Surely there could only be one reason for Maud being sick in the mornings: Maud had conceived. Quite soon Thomasina would explain her plan for a secret marriage and tragic widowhood. Maud would go along with it; she would understand what a scandal it would be if she did not. She might not actually want to allow Thomasina to adopt the child after its birth, but Thomasina could apply a little firm persuasion when the time came. It occurred to her that Maud was becoming so strange it might be necessary to remove the child from her care anyway.
But if Simon was still alive, the whole thing would start to go very wrong indeed. Supposing the nightmare turned out to be true and he was able to talk? ‘My cousin hit me over the head with an iron bar, and shut me in the kiln room and left me to die…’ Would anyone actually believe that?
But the nightmares and the worries were only nervous reaction. Even if Simon had not been quite dead, he could not survive for very long. Even if he had shouted for help until his throat burst, no one would have heard him, and no one could have got into Twygrist anyway, because Thomasina had the only set of keys.
On the morning of the third day after her attack on Simon, Thomasina, who prided herself on never being ill or feeling out of sorts, went down to breakfast feeling very unwell indeed.
The nightmares had persisted, and last night there had been the hoarse dark whispers she had heard inside Twygrist.