by Susan Moody
But what about the plot? In this case, the significant events unfolded nearly a quarter of a century earlier: surely there could be no further development. Yet the past has a way of redefining itself as it becomes further separated from the present. Matters which seemed transparent at the time are revealed in murkier colours, and conclusions once unhesitatingly come to can now seem flawed, even irresponsible.
I was fully aware that nothing would bring back my sister, nor restore to me the carefree childhood I had lost; I knew my enquiries were pointless. Yet at the same time, the reactions to them seemed to lead me further and further into a situation far removed from the one I had anticipated. What did I hope to achieve by asking questions to which I already knew the answers?
Nonetheless, the restless human spirit constantly seeks revelation. Not just answers, but answers which satisfy. And I could not rid my mind of Trevor Barnard’s earnest expression, the hostility in his blue eyes as he told us she didn’t do it. ‘She’ being – obviously – Clio Palliser. I should have gone after him, asked how he could be so sure.
His remark was the first slice of doubt slashed into the hard ball of my hatred.
My father rang me from Italy almost as soon as I had closed the door behind me on my return from Weston Lodge.
‘How’d it go, hon?’ he asked, his casual tone making perfectly clear his worry that I might have suffered some further trauma.
‘It was good, Dad. Really good.’
‘You sound … lighter, somehow.’
‘I am. I met some interesting people, too.’ I gave him a brief rundown of the weekend. For some reason, I left out Malcolm Macdonald. I’m not sure I was ready to face the fact that I was unaccountably drawn to the man who had once been my sister’s lover.
But then I was equally drawn to big Gavin Vaughn, though in an entirely different, much more visceral way.
‘So you’re glad you went?’
‘Very. No regrets at all.’
‘And … and your sister? Any – uh – furtherance there?’
‘Dad, I’ve barely drawn breath since I got back. I need to get my head round it all before I can answer the question I think you’re asking.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘How’s the contessa?’ I asked, and we drifted off into a conversation about the villa on the coast south of Rome and a couple of prestigious antiquarian book sales the two of them had been involved in.
‘Lovely weather down here,’ he ended up. ‘Come down and see us.’
‘I’m planning to.’
I couldn’t sleep. Night after night I found myself back in the hall at Weston Lodge, decorated as both Sabine and Stonor had described it, logs burning in the hearth, snow falling outside, the smell of mulled wine and mince pies in the air. The children upstairs, the murderess still in her soundproofed study, my sister writing her last letter home. The night before Christmas Eve, the excitement, the anticipation, the shimmer and twinkle of the big tree, the sparkle of the foil-wrapped presents underneath. And, everywhere, the blood.
It had never before occurred to me to wonder what the Honourable Clio had planned to give Sabine for Christmas. Nor what happened to all those gifts in the aftermath of the tragedy. Were they still mouldering in some forgotten police storage facility, along with the bloodied knife Clio had used, the bloodstained dress she’d been wearing? Brian Stonor would probably know.
Four days after I got back from the weekend, I rang him. ‘You told me to telephone you at any time,’ I said.
‘And I meant it.’
‘Could I buy you a drink some time over the weekend? Or lunch?’
‘A drink will be fine. Name the day and the place, and I’ll be there.’
‘How about next Sunday?’
‘That’s good for me,’ said Stonor.
So we arranged to meet on the terrace of the Festival Hall at one o’clock. Inside if the weather was lousy, outside if it was fine.
So now I leant on the balustrade, looking over the Thames, the Eye to my left (thinking, I’d never been on the Eye and likely never would, since I have no head for heights) and Scotland Yard across the river.
Stonor joined me, carrying two glasses by their stems, along with a bottle of wine, and we seated ourselves on a bench. ‘So what’s on your mind?’ he asked, pouring for us both.
‘Give you one guess,’ I said.
‘How can I help?’
I stared at a passing passenger launch, the amplified voice of a guide resonating across the water, the words blown away from us by the breeze. Eventually, I said, ‘For the past quarter of a century, I’ve carried this … this ugly weight of loss and hatred with me. The loss of my sister, hatred for the woman who murdered her. But now I’m beginning to think there’s more to it. Things I heard while we were at Weston Lodge, things you hinted at … I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’d guess you suspect that what happened was not as straightforward as was made out at the time.’
‘Suspicions are all I have,’ said Stonor.
‘Like what?’
‘I felt that my superiors at the time didn’t dig deep enough into the events surrounding the case. As far as they were concerned, it was all cut and dried: they had their victims, their perpetrator, their motive … Why start casting about for anything more when it was all too clear what had happened? And the suspect herself wasn’t talking.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’ He swallowed an over-large mouthful of his wine. ‘Haven’t, for all this time.’
‘But something about it bothers you.’
A slight pause before Stonor nodded. ‘I think that’s a fair assessment.’ Everything he said seemed to pass through a kind of central processing unit before he actually gave voice to it.
‘What is it you’re uncertain about?’
There was a longer silence, until I said slowly, ‘You’re not implying that maybe the Honourable Clio wasn’t guilty after all, are you?’
His voice was policeman-cautious. ‘I’m implying nothing.’
I ignored that. ‘But if she didn’t do it, who else could possibly have done?’
He shrugged without speaking.
‘But you nonetheless believe there was something odd about the case. Something not quite right.’
After another long silence, he said, ‘Yes, I believe that. But I don’t know – I’ve never worked out exactly what it was.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He looked at his watch. ‘How long have you got?’
‘As long as it takes.’
‘All right, then.’
This is the story he told me:
He’d seen the ad for the bank holiday weekend at Weston Lodge while idly leafing through the Travel section of the Sunday newspaper, his attention immediately caught by the name of the hotel. Weston Lodge, set in the Cotswolds. He read it again. It just had to be the same place, and there was no way he wanted to miss the opportunity of checking it out, though he wasn’t clear quite why. He had no intention of attempting to do a Sherlock Holmes on it; too much time had gone by for there to be any possibility of anything new turning up. On the other hand, perhaps things which had seemed obscure then might look a lot clearer now.
In addition, after too many years of ready-meals and convenience foods, he liked the sound of the gourmet dinners. And the on-site gym might encourage him to start exercising again, get back into shape. So why not? he’d asked himself. The last few years had been tough, what with Rachel’s slow dying, and Hamish suddenly upping sticks and moving to Australia to start a new life.
Stonor had no faith in such concepts. In his experience, the new life usually turned out to be nothing more than an echo, or even a straight copy, of the old one. But the worst thing about his own life, old or new, was the sense which sometimes caught him of being utterly alone. With Hamish gone, if he were to fall down the stairs of the tall narrow house he and Rachel had shared for so long, who would know? If he were to have a
sudden heart-attack or a stroke, who would alert the emergency services? Nobody would know until the smell of his decomposing body alerted the neighbours – like Clio Palliser’s elder brother in his exclusive Hampstead apartment. (Never got anyone for that, incidentally.)
So why not give in to temptation, spoil himself? Change the dull routine of his days, get out of his rut. He might even meet someone there, someone new, someone to start again with. Part of him felt guilty at the mere thought of another woman, let alone a woman who might one day take Rachel’s place. Another, perhaps saner, part felt that there had to be an end to mourning, that he needed to move on. Increasingly, his life seemed to be stuck down a dead end. Or was he, he asked himself in his more optimistic moments, perhaps simply dithering at a crossroads?
The idea of a weekend at the Weston Lodge Hotel triggered something he had not felt for so long that he barely recognized it: a flicker of excitement, an awareness of possibilities. He’d been there before, of course, but then only as an outsider looking in. Now, as a resident, albeit only a temporary one, he’d be able to poke around a bit more, maybe even ask questions he couldn’t ask last time he was there. He had been in his early twenties then, and his memories of the place were edged with blood. While he couldn’t pretend that he had been haunted by that gore-spattered bathroom, the body in the bathtub, the desperate little corpse tucked under the stairs, the case had always intrigued him, and in fact intrigued him still.
He went over to the neat-as-a-pin roll-top desk in the corner of his living room. It had belonged to Rachel’s father and was a big old-fashioned thing, full of little drawers and pigeonholes, with a nice leather top, though the gold tooling had long ago lost its gilt and the wood was stained here and there with spilt ink. He took out his address book, turned to the page for R and found the number for his old guv’nor, Roy Richards. Hadn’t spoken to him for years, he might even be dead – though he’d probably have heard about it in that case. Either way, it was certainly worth a try.
Lilian Richards answered, sounding depressingly old and shaky. ‘What do you want?’
‘Lil!’ he said, pitching his voice too loud, too heartily. ‘It’s Brian Stonor here. Long time no hear, eh?’
‘Brian? Do I know a Brian?’
‘You remember … I used to work with Roy, years ago.’ Now was the point at which she would tell him if Roy was still around or had departed for the great cop-shop in the sky.
‘Roy? Who’s Roy?’
Brian’s heart sank. The poor woman was obviously suffering from some form of dementia. He heard a voice in the background, some kind of struggle for the receiver, then someone else spoke. ‘Roy Richards here.’ The voice was exactly the same as it had always been: firm, brisk, capable.
‘It’s Brian Stonor.’
They spent a few minutes briefly catching up, before Richards said, ‘So what’s on your mind, Brian?’
‘Remember that case years ago, out at Weston Lodge?’
‘Remind me.’
‘Christmas Eve. Kids. Snow.’
‘Oh, yes. Your first homicide, wasn’t it? What’s your interest, after all this time?’
Brian explained that he’d be visiting the place and why, but before he’d finished, Roy interrupted. ‘You’re not seriously expecting to find out anything new, are you? It was an open-and-shut case. She didn’t confess, but she did everything but. ’Sides, look at the evidence, who else could possibly have done the dirty deed?’
‘I don’t know. Somehow I’ve always wondered if justice was really done.’
‘If she wasn’t guilty as charged, why didn’t she speak up?’
‘She couldn’t, Roy. According to the psychiatrists who examined her, the killings caused a psychological trauma. It’s called elective mutism or something similar. She’d had episodes before.’
‘Come on, Brian. She could have put pen to paper. Most people would, faced with the prospect of a lifetime in Broadmoor.’
‘Suppose she didn’t do it? That’s all I’m saying.’
Roy heaved an exasperated breath. ‘You’re not going to bring in the passing tramp or the mysterious twin, are you?’
‘Come on, sir. You know me better than that.’
‘Of course I do. Which is why I’m going to wish you a very good weekend at the place and say goodbye. And if you’re ever down this way, etcetera etcetera.’
‘I’m sorry it’s been so long.’
‘So am I, Brian. So am I.’ Roy put down the phone, but not before Brian heard Lil’s quavering voice wanting to know who Roy was, and what he was doing in her sitting room.
What must it be like to live with a dementia sufferer? Twenty-four hours a day watchfulness, constant vigilance, relentless anxiety, never knowing what lay ahead. And there he’d been thinking that losing Rachel had been bad …
All in all, although he was generally a cautious man, since there was nobody else to think about, he had a good pension, and the mortgage was long since paid off, he felt that for once there was no reason not to indulge himself.
Seeing the first signpost to Weston, his hands tightened on the steering wheel. Twenty-three years on, his wheels were somewhat smarter than the car he’d owned back then. A bit Inspector Morse, truth be told, though he himself went in for racing green rather than Morse’s maroon. A vintage Jaguar Mk II, leather upholstery, polished walnut fascia. It was about the only similarity between him and Morse, more’s the pity: he didn’t really listen to classical music, and he couldn’t abide the taste of beer. Nor were women constantly giving him the eye.
Now it was springtime, and on either side of the road, hedgerows were bursting into green, lambs were springing, catkins quivered from trees all along the line of the river. Very nice. Not a bit like the first time he’d been to Weston Lodge … He relaxed his grip and let the memories of twenty-three years ago flow into his mind.
The day before Christmas Eve, it was. Newly promoted to DC, he’d been called away from the bosom of the family, as his dad liked to put it, though by then the bosom was only him and Dad. Their first Christmas without Mum. Truth to tell, he’d been relieved to leave the house, so that he didn’t have to go on seeing poor old Dad doing his best to act as though he were managing perfectly well on his own, putting on a show for Brian which convinced neither of them.
It was snowing when he set off in his third-hand Cortina – took him a year to save up for it – to drive to Weston Lodge, three miles away. ‘Make it quick, lad … I mean sir,’ the duty sergeant had said. ‘There’s kids involved.’
‘Kids?’
‘Someone’s been murdered, three people, not clear who, but it seems a bit of a nasty business, ’specially so close to Christmas.’
Quick wasn’t an option. By the time he’d negotiated the first couple of miles of narrow lanes that was the quickest way to the Lodge, black ice was making driving conditions extremely hazardous, and it was just over an hour before he slithered into the drive and parked as close to the house as he could. Emergency vehicles were already standing around, and even as he mounted the stone stairs, a pair of ambulance men came through the open front door carrying a stretcher and began sidestepping down the icy steps. A nasty wind had lifted a corner of the covering, and he glimpsed the bloodied body of a young kid. Boy or girl? He couldn’t tell which. He felt sick. Kids dead … He hoped he would be able to act professionally.
At the top of the steps, he’d halted briefly to stare through the wide open double doors at the festive scene within. A vast hall, a big tree sparkling with Christmas lights, presents wrapped in shiny striped paper and coloured ribbons, enormous logs burning in the grate. It was his first murder scene, and he’d paused longer than he should have done, reluctant to go in, so that Inspector Richards had impatiently motioned him forwards into the house, wanting to know what had kept him.
A man in a pinstripe suit was standing in front of the fire, his bloodied hands shuddering every now and then against the seam of his trousers, while a woman in a reddis
h dress sat slumped in a high-backed tapestry sort of chair beside him. Took Brian a moment or two to realize that the dress was actually greeny-blue. Bloodied woman, nervous man, glittering tree: the image had stayed with him for years. He’d been prepared to face the fact of death, but at that stage, the only death he knew anything about was his mother’s, and that had been in hospital, clean and clinical, any pain obliterated by drugs. The cold reality of murder, of living sentient beings reduced to bleeding flesh, hunks of meat, like the slaughterhouse where he briefly worked one summer when he was fifteen, struck him with the chill of a knifing wind. Even now, he felt ill, thinking about what he had seen when Richards sent him upstairs: slashed limbs, ripped hands, a gaping throat almost severed from the head, the unbelievable redness of recent blood.
If the truth be told, he had needed little persuasion to come on this Gala House Party Weekend or whatever it was called. Not just because of needing a break, but for professional reasons. OK, so the case had been wrapped up within five minutes of the police arriving, the trial had been open-and-shut, the murderer had been sent to Broadmoor indefinitely. But he’d always thought that there’d been something a little off about it. He’d never been able to pinpoint it – no sudden flashes of intuition for Brian Stonor, just dogged police work. But there’d been the prickle at the top of his spine every time he mentally reviewed the case: glittering tree, silent wife, uneasy husband. Over the years, he’d learned to trust that occasional prickle, had stood by it, when it made him dig a bit deeper, look a bit harder. It had lifted him up through the ranks, helped him do time with the Met, attain his Chief Superintendency, and then retire back to his roots. With … what was it? Maybe ninety-one per cent of his major cases solved. A pretty good record. But of the other nine per cent, perhaps half still niggled at him, including the Weston Lodge case.
Stepping in through the wide doors this time round, he had stopped. The spacious hall looked very different from the last time he had seen it. Instead of roaring fires and Christmas trees, there were containers full of daffodils and narcissi, huge vases of apple-blossom and lilac, bowls of grape hyacinths. Instead of the curtains of shabby red brocade which had previously hung from floor to ceiling, swags of fresh blue and white linen were arranged around the window embrasures in elaborate contemporary treatments, and on the floor lay a big Chinese carpet of blues and creams instead of that blood-soaked rug with the footprints of a man’s shoes embedded in the stiffening pile. The air smelled of lavender and wood-fires. The seating was covered to match the drapes. A round rosewood table in the middle of the hall held tea things and a bowl of wrapped boiled sweets, as well as the receptionist and her paraphernalia.