I took a deep breath. ‘They’re going to think that Dad is guilty of bad things. They’re going to think that Dad hurt Mummy.’
He glared at me in such abject horror that I said hastily, ‘But once they’ve heard what you have to tell them, they won’t think that any more, Charlie. They’ll understand what happened, and then they won’t think bad things about Dad any more.’
He was breathing hard, I wasn’t sure he had understood me.
‘Shall we go through it first, Charlie? Just to make sure we’ve got it right. Well—to make sure I’ve got it right, really. Is that okay? You don’t need to say anything. Just let me do the talking, and you just stop me if I get it wrong. All right? Just stop me with a shake of the head. That’s all I need—just shake your head.’
He was still in a daze, but he was listening now.
‘Okay. Mummy dropped you at Granny’s,’ I began slowly. ‘You had tea.’
I waited quietly for a second or two. Charlie was utterly motionless, his head low, his eyes fixed on the table.
‘But you’d forgotten something. You went back home to get it. Along the marsh path.’
He was so still now that he might not have been breathing.
‘You saw Mummy there with Edward Woodford…’
He began to gulp air, his head jerked slightly, for an instant I thought he was going to deny it, but his head did not move.
‘You didn’t think it was right for Edward Woodford to have Dad’s land, you knew Dad didn’t want to sell it, so you came back and opened the sluices.’
When I paused this time it was with a sharp sense of anticipation. But he didn’t move, he may even have nodded slightly, and I continued with the sense of having reached the downhill stretch.
‘Then…Granny saw the flood. She tried to find Dad to help close the sluices.’
Again I paused, again the small tense figure made no sign. I reminded him gently, ‘Just shake your head if I’ve got anything wrong, Charlie.’
His chin rose a fraction, his shoulders eased a little, but still he didn’t shake his head.
‘And while Granny was waiting for Dad to arrive, Mummy came over and went out on the marsh to try and close the sluices herself.’
Unexpectedly, he spoke. His voice seemed to come out of the ground, it was so faint. ‘I wanted to help her.’ Tears were close behind, another sudden stream, and he dropped his head again. ‘I wanted to help.’
‘Of course you did. Of course, Charlie. You mustn’t blame yourself.’
‘I only wanted to help!’
‘Of course.’
But for the moment he was inconsolable. I found another tissue. When he had blown his nose and his breathing had subsided a bit, I said, ‘You wanted to go with Mummy and help her close the sluices?’
He nodded fervently.
‘But she wouldn’t let you go with her?’
His dismay was an answer in itself.
‘You saw her go off to try and close the sluices?’
He nodded.
I said, ‘You’re doing fine, Charlie. Just fine. Just tell me if I’ve got the rest right. Dad came over much later, after Mum had been out on the marsh for some time?’
Charlie half raised his eyes and gave a slight nod.
‘And when Dad went out to the sluices, did he go alone?’
‘Granny…’
‘Granny went with him?’
He nodded instantly.
I smiled gently. ‘This is very important, what you’re telling me, Charlie.’
He met my eyes at last.
I said solemnly, ‘Now all we have to do is go and tell the police.’
He gave a small dip of the head, and the relief swept over me like a balm. At long last we were home and dry.
Chapter Twelve
The rain had not let up and the roads were covered in mirrors of shifting water. Just short of the entrance to Wickham Lodge a small lake had formed in a dip. I negotiated it cautiously and was just turning in through the gates when the red Mercedes came screaming out of the tunnel of laurels and, failing to see me until the last minute, braked with a violent lurch, swerved slightly and halted just inches from the gatepost.
Through the blur of the wipers I saw Edward throw up both hands and cast his eyes heavenward in an appeal for deliverance from the idiot drivers of the world.
He backed up a little then eased his car between mine and the gatepost.
I motioned for him to wind down his window.
Lowering it no more than an inch, he called, ‘Can’t stop.’
‘I must talk to you. It’s very important.’
‘Can’t stop!’ he repeated as if I were deaf or stupid, then, looking away implacably, he raised the window and charged off in a shower of gravel.
The anger swept over me in a white hot sea. Reversing rapidly, yanking the wheel hard over, I shot back into the lane in time to see the Mercedes speed through the lake at full pelt, sending up great arches of spray. Jamming my foot flat down, I set off in pursuit, taking the lake at a rate that left the wheels planing and the steering dead in my hands.
Edward drove like a madman, but by then I was touched with madness too. I hung on grimly through the high-banked bends, keeping the bobbing red tail of the Mercedes in my sights, relying on Edward’s course to warn me of an approaching car. Once I brushed the grassy bank, once I felt the back wheels slip, and once my heart hammered against my chest as I saw the Mercedes lurch across the road almost out of control.
Reaching the main road at last, Edward turned left then almost immediately left again into the lane that led to his shooting land among the inland hills. He slowed a bit, then a bit more, until he was meandering along at a ludicrously leisurely pace. I knew this game: he was pretending he didn’t care, pretending that his childish tantrum had never happened. But my own anger was still burning bright and, coming up close behind him, I hung on his bumper, I almost touched him. Only when he gesticulated at me did I fall back to a sensible distance, feeling petty and foolish.
Passing through the low-lying hills, reaching the long wooded valley where he raised his pheasants, Edward paused in front of a five-bar gate and jumped out to open it. He was back in his seat and driving off again before I had the chance to stop him. I followed him down a leafy track to a clearing of dripping trees with a dark hut and a row of pheasant pens.
‘You are the absolute end!’ I declared as we emerged from our cars.
‘Whatever the hell it is, I just don’t want to know, that’s all.’ He pulled a cap out of his pocket and jammed it on his head.
‘I said it was important.’
‘What’s important to you probably involves the Deardens, and I don’t want anything more to do with them, thank you very much. I was very fond of Grace, and now she’s dead, and I don’t want to hear any bloody sob stories.’ He stomped off past the hut to the pens and ran his hand along the mesh, examining it for damage.
I strode up behind him. ‘I came to tell you that someone saw you that afternoon. With Grace.’
He frowned, not understanding, or perhaps not wanting to understand. His fingers plucked at the wire.
‘That last afternoon,’ I repeated impatiently. ‘Someone saw you together.’
His glance flickered briefly. ‘So?’
‘I assume…making love. You were making love?’
He shifted awkwardly, he was on the point of denying it, but at the last moment he tightened his mouth and sighed harshly in affirmation. ‘Bloody great!’ he growled. ‘People creeping about, spying. Nothing better to do in this damn village! Who the hell was it, anyway? Have they dared to come out of the woodwork? Bet they bloody haven’t!’
I hesitated and, catching this, he gestured impatiently. ‘Well?’
I examined my feet for a moment. ‘It was the child.’
His expression did not change. He stared at me blankly, as though I were a moron who’d got it hopelessly wrong. ‘He wasn’t there.’
‘He’d forg
otten something. He came back from Maggie’s.’
‘Nonsense! He couldn’t have.’ Edward wore the bloody-minded look I knew so well.
‘He came by the marsh path.’
‘No, no!’ he insisted fiercely.
‘Well, he did, I’m afraid. And he saw the two of you together in a situation which upset him very deeply.’
Edward turned away abruptly with a truculent gesture. ‘We would have heard. We would have known! Oh, for God’s sake—Grace locked the bloody doors!’
‘There must have been a spare key,’ I suggested. ‘Or Charlie saw you through a window.’
‘No, no! It’s all rubbish. Complete bloody rubbish!’ This sort of stand-off was typical of Edward, who always aimed to block out unpleasantness by sheer force of willpower and obduracy.
I grasped his arm, I forced him to face me.
‘Charlie was the one who opened the sluices. He went and opened the sluices because of what he saw.’ I shook his arm slightly. ‘Because of you and his mother.’
Edward recoiled, his lips tightened into a thin white line. ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he did believe me, I could see by the revulsion in his face. ‘You’re just saying it to get your precious Will off the hook! You’re making the whole thing up!’ He turned on his heel and strode along the side of the pens, dragging his hand savagely along the mesh.
I followed more slowly. The rain had drenched my hair and had begun to seep down my neck. Edward swung a kick at a section of loose mesh and cursed, ‘Bloody foxes!’ He kicked the wire again, and this time his kick was full of pent-up anger. Finally he stood hunched and still, waiting for me to catch up.
‘How do I know it’s true?’ he said defensively.
‘The boy told me.’
‘Well, he could be lying, couldn’t he! Put up to it by his father!’
‘Children don’t lie.’ Then, because it was the moment for all sorts of truths: ‘You should know that.’
His head snapped rounds he glared at me with a mixture of shock and uncertainty.
‘Children tell small fibs to avoid blame sometimes,’ I went on, ‘but they never lie about traumatic events. They simply don’t have the imagination.’
The word ‘traumatic’ got to him, and perhaps I had meant it to. He kept thinking about that, he got more and more emotional. ‘Christ. Christ.’ A last wrestle with his doubts. ‘You’re sure? Absolutely sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the sluices?’ he asked in a fading voice.
‘It was Charlie.’
Turning his back on me, he moved away a couple of steps and faced the dank dark wood. I heard him gasp, once he sighed, now and again he shook his head fiercely.
Swinging rounds he cried fiercely, ‘We never usually met at her house! Never! Christ—another man’s house! And everyone knowing my car! It was crazy. We never met at her house, not until that afternoon. I mean, never. It was her idea, Lex! Honest to God, her idea.’
I didn’t say anything.
He shuffled back, driving each foot hard into the ground, sending up small eruptions of mouldy like a small boy shambling through leaves. ‘I should never have agreed! Never!’ He shuddered with fury and self-disgust. ‘Jesus…Jesus…’ He leant his elbows on the edge of the cage and dropped his head in despair.
‘The phone call,’ I said. ‘Grace never gave a name, did she? She never actually said it was Will opening the sluices?’
Edward’s head came up with a jerk, he searched his memory feverishly. ‘She—I thought she—’ Breaking off, he clutched a hand to his forehead as if he were going mad. ‘She said…She said he was opening the sluices. She was so furious, she was cursing so much, I didn’t hear properly…I thought it had to be—’ He closed his eyes as the full impact of his mistake came home to him. ‘God. I never dreamt…’ He added in a tone of self-justification, ‘How could I? She was so angry, so furious! I thought it had to be Will. I mean, the way she spoke, the language she used. You know—bastard things like that. I thought…God…’
‘It’s not too late to put it right.’
He was still deep in his memory. ‘There was one moment when…well, I thought I heard her say “bloody little bastard”, but, well, I didn’t think anything of it. She was babbling so much, sort of raving, that I thought I must have got it wrong. I mean, she was so furious, Lex. Sort of hissing under her breath and rushing about picking up her car keys, her jacket, all that stuff. It was hard to make any sense of what she was saying.’
‘But you heard her say “bloody little bastard”?’
He nodded slowly.
‘You’re sure?’
He exhaled unhappily, and nodded again.
‘You can put this v/hole thing right,’ I said again.
‘You mean, go back to the police?’
‘Explain that you got it wrong. It often happens. People often change their statements.’
His expression hardened, he said darkly, ‘But Will was still around, wasn’t he? On the bloody marshes. I mean, he met up with her, didn’t he? Don’t tell me he didn’t!’
I made him face me again, I made him look me in the eye. ‘Will arrived later,’ I said slowly and deliberately. ‘A long time after Grace. He wasn’t there, Ed. He wasn’t there when you heard the screaming. He was still on the road and it can be proved he was still on the road. The Range Rover wasn’t there when you got to Reed Cottage, was it? You didn’t see it there?’
He looked defensive, and I guessed he’d said something about this in his statement.
‘You told the police you saw the Range Rover?’
He was angry at being caught out: the small boy again. ‘They kept asking me if I’d seen it,’ he admitted crossly. ‘I thought I had. It was pretty murky, you know. And I wasn’t that close.’
‘These things happen. Just say you made a mistake, that you realize his car wasn’t there after all.’
For an instant he looked as if he’d argue. ‘Who did I hear, then?’ he asked helplessly. ‘Who was screaming?’
‘Grace and Maggie.’
He set this against his memory and grappled with it.
I said, ‘You heard female voices, I take it.’
He caved in with a harsh sigh. ‘Yes, yes. So what happened, for God’s sake? What happened to Grace?’
‘Grace went out onto the marshes to try and close the sluices. She went on her own. She never came back. She must have stumbled, fallen.’
His gaze met mine. ‘Alone?’
‘Maggie was too ill to help. Too weak. And they’d just had a fight. And I mean a fight.’
‘How could she have fallen?’
‘Very easily, I think. Those gates are heavy. It takes a lot to wind the mechanism. I almost keeled over myself.’
He looked at me closely, searching, as he was always driven to search, for signs of honesty and straightforwardness. ‘I’ll go to the police,’ he agreed finally in a tone of near despair. ‘I’ll tell them I got it all wrong.’
Knowing what a big thing this was for him, knowing how hard it was for him to admit to even the smallest mistake, I said, ‘It’s the best thing, Ed.’
‘What about the child, though?’ he asked, in a gruff voice. ‘He’s not going to get dragged through a whole lot of stuff by the police, is he?’
‘I think he wants to tell them what happened. I think it’ll be a weight off his mind.’
Edward shifted awkwardly. ‘Yes, but…not the bit about Grace and me, for God’s sake.’ Another uneasy movement. ‘It would be too…unfair.’ His eyes slid up to my face and away again, and once more I saw the small boy at the barn door. ‘It’s not that I care a damn about what people think of me!’ he declared hurriedly. ‘I don’t give a bugger! It’s just…well, you know…Not fair on the child. Shouldn’t have to…’ He finished the sentence with a sharp gesture.
‘I’ll try to find a way round it. Come to an arrangement with the police.’
He examined my face again. ‘You can do that?’
<
br /> ‘I would think so.’
He snorted slightly, he lifted a hand and dropped it again. ‘Good.’ Appearing to notice my dripping hair for the first time, he added, ‘You’re wet,’ and we began to walk back towards the hut.
‘Tell me about Grace that day,’ I said. ‘Tell me what sort of mood she was in.’
‘Mood?’ He thought about that. ‘Well…a bit hyper. A bit edgy.’ Then, in the tone of someone who’s fixed on just the right word: ‘Touchy. Yes—touchy, you know? My doing, it seemed. I’d told her I couldn’t go to London. Phoned and told her the day before, and she wasn’t at all happy about that. Sob stuff. Ruffled feathers. That’s how she’d got me round there. Managed to make me feel guilty. Said there was something important she had to tell me.’
‘And was there?’
‘No,’ he scoffed. ‘No, it was all the usual stuff. How Will was spending all her money. How he had other women. How she had to get out. How she—’ He broke off, looking embarrassed. ‘How she couldn’t live without me.’ He gave a derisory grunt at the absurdity of this notion, having long ago judged himself unworthy of anything resembling devotion. ‘The Gun Marsh was meant to be the urgent thing. But we’d been through that before, it was nothing new. She said she wasn’t sure she could get Will to sign the transfer. Well, I knew that score all right. She was trying to dangle it in front of me as a sort of bait. Trying to get me to promise things—you know, in exchange for getting Will to sign. Well, I wasn’t having any of that, Lex. I don’t like being crowded. The Gun Marsh had nothing to do with Grace and me anyway. It was business. She just couldn’t get that straight. It was business.’ He added with a touch of his old ruthlessness: ‘I wanted Will to settle on my terms or not at all.’
‘So you talked about other things?’
‘Oh, she wanted to talk about the future—she always wanted to talk about the future. When we’d be together, all that sort of stuff. Wanting me to name the day when she’d move in. Laying on the pressure, boxing me into a corner. Virtually had us married off, for God’s sake! Oh, don’t get me wrong, Lex. I mean, it wasn’t that—that—’ Unable to articulate the thought, he circled a hand in frustration. ‘I mean, I was fond of her, Lex. Very fond. We had good times together and all that. Seeing her in London, away from everyone—that suited me fine. Just fine. Couldn’t see why we couldn’t leave it at that—you know? Just go on the same way. Not doing anyone any harm. ‘ The mention of harm made him wince with some expression I had never seen in him before, something like remorse or regret. He hung his head.
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