Dark Room

by Minette Walters

  "She was going on holiday with Leo," said Charles quietly, "but she didn't say anything about moving out of her flat. Not to me anyway." He looked irresolutely at his wife.

  "She didn't tell you anything, Charles, because she knew you'd disapprove." Caroline mopped her red-rimmed eyes. "She had an abortion ten years ago. She didn't tell you about that, either, did she? And why not? Because you'd have ruined her life for her." She crumpled the handkerchief between her palms. "Well, it's ruined anyway, but it might not have been if she'd been able to talk to you as a father instead of a priest. Everything had to be kept secret in case you preached at her."

  Her husband stared at her, the planes of his face bleached white with shock. "I didn't know," he murmured. "I'm sorry."

  "Of course you're sorry. Now," she added bitterly. "I'm sorry too. Sorry for her, sorry for the baby, sorry for me. I'd like to have been a grandmother." Her voice broke on a sob. "It's such a waste. It's all such a waste." She turned to the Superintendent. "We have a son, but he's never wanted to marry. He wanted to be ordained like his father." Her eyes filled again. "It's such a terrible waste."

  Cheever waited while she fought for control. "You implied that you knew Meg was moving out of her flat, Mrs. Harris," he said at last. "Could you tell us about that? Where was she going?"

  "To live with Leo. He had a house. It made more sense for her to move in with him."

  "Do you know where the house is?"

  "Somewhere in Chelsea. Meg was going to give me the address when she came back from France. Don't Leo's parents know?"

  Frank sidestepped the question. "They're very shocked at the moment."

  There was a painful silence.

  "Have you met Sir Anthony and Lady Wallader?" Cheever asked next.

  Caroline's mouth puckered tragically. "We never even met Leo," she said. "How could we have met his parents? It was all so quick. We had an invitation to Jinx's wedding sitting on the mantelpiece, and then Meg phoned to say Leo wanted to marry her instead." She shook her head in disbelief.

  Charles stirred on his chair. "She rang on the Saturday morning," he murmured quietly, "the eleventh, I believe, and I was rather upset by the news. I wondered what sort of a man Leo was to abandon his fiancee so close to the wedding in order to take up with her best friend." He lifted his hands in resignation. "She told me that she'd known Leo far longer than Jinx had, and that he'd only proposed to Jinx because of some silly row they'd had. 'He wanted to spite me,' she said." He paused for a moment. "I forget sometimes that she's a grown woman-was a grown woman," he corrected himself, "and yes, I can see now that I tended to preach, but it was so clear to me that this man was not to be relied upon, and I'm afraid we had a terrible argument about him. I said his behavior was neither mature nor honorable, and that if he was prepared to treat Jinx so shabbily, then Meg would be wise to have nothing more to do with him." His voice faltered slightly. "I'm afraid she hung up on me and we never spoke again, although I believe Caroline tried later the same day." He turned to his wife. "That's right, isn't it?"

  She wrapped her arms about her thin body and hugged herself tightly. "You know it is. You were listening." She gave a shuddering sigh. "She wouldn't hear me out either, but at least we didn't scream at each other. I said, why had she never mentioned him before if she'd known him so long? And she said there were a million things she'd never mentioned. It was her life and there was no rule that compelled children to tell their parents everything. I blame her father," she said in a drained voice, turning her shoulder to freeze Charles out. "She couldn't leave home quick enough to get away from him, so of course there were things we would never know."

  The Superintendent absorbed this in silence, careful to keep his face neutral. "When did she tell you she was moving in with Leo?" he asked after a moment.

  "During that telephone call. 'We're going to live together until we get married,' she said. 'Leo has a house in Chelsea and I'm moving my stuff in now, but I don't want you to tell Dad because I can't take any more lectures.' Then she said they were going to France until the fuss died down and that she'd phone her answering machine regularly for messages." She fingered her handkerchief, pulling out the crumples. "She said we'd stop worrying once we met Leo, and promised to bring him down as soon as they came home. And I said, what about poor Jinx? And Meg said Jinx would survive because she always has. Then we said good-bye." She held the handkerchief to her eyes.

  To Frank's ears, this description of Meg was an unflattering one and he wondered if Mrs. Harris was aware of the picture she was painting. "Tell me about Meg," he invited. "What was she like?"

  Her sad face brightened. "She was a beautiful person. Kind, thoughtful, very loving. 'Don't worry, Mummy, I'll always be here'-that's what she used to say." The tears welled again. "She was so intelligent. She could do anything she set her mind to. 'I'm going places,' she always told me. Everyone adored her."

  Frank turned to the vicar. "Is that how you saw her, sir?"

  Charles glanced at his wife's rigid back. "She had faults, Superintendent, we all do. She was a little self-centered perhaps, rather too careless of other people's feelings, but yes, she was a popular girl." He folded his hands in his lap. "Our son, Simon, could give you a better idea of what she was like. He's worked in various London parishes over the years and saw far more of her than we did. As Caroline told you, we effectively lost her when she went to university. She used to come down two or three times a year, but other than that we had very little contact."

  "Is he still in London, sir?"

  "No, he was given a parish of his own two years ago. It's a village called Frampton, ten miles to the northeast of Southampton." He lifted the cuff of his cassock to look at his watch. "But he'll be at the vicarage in Littleton Mary by now. I thought it would be easier for us if he came up."

  "Easier for you, you mean," said Caroline unsteadily, swinging round to face him. "You think he's going to take your side."

  Charles shook his head. "There's no question of anyone taking sides, Caroline. I hoped we could support each other."

  Her cheeks blazed suddenly. "There's been too much secrecy. I can't stand it anymore." She reached out a claw to clutch at the Superintendent's sleeve. "I knew we'd lost her," she said. "I prayed we'd only lost her to Leo, but in my heart of hearts, I knew she was dead. I kept asking myself why Jinx had tried to kill herself." Her eyes rolled alarmingly and Frank glanced towards the WPC for assistance, but Caroline went on in an unsteady voice: "She did the same thing after Russell was murdered, you know, but that time she tried to starve herself to death. If it hadn't been for her father, she'd have succeeded. This is Jinx's doing, Superintendent. She won't have her men taken away from her."

  "You're talking nonsense, Caroline," said her husband severely.

  "Oh, am I?" she snapped. "Well, at least I'm not a hypocrite. You know the truth as well as I do. We're talking about jealousy over Meg, Charles, something you know all about."

  He pressed his hands to his face and breathed deeply for several seconds. "I really don't think I can continue, Superintendent," he said unexpectedly. "I do apologize. Can I urge you to talk to Simon? I'm sure he's the best person to give you an objective view of this sorry business."

  Fraser, who was sitting a few yards apart, looked up and caught Cheever's eye. "Sorry business" was a peculiarly cold-blooded way to describe a brutal murder, but then it hadn't occurred to either of them at that stage how much the Reverend Charles Harris had disliked his daughter.

  THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC-1:00 P.M.

  "Are you busy, Dr. Protheroe?"

  He glanced up from his desk to find Jinx hovering, poised for flight, in the doorway, a look of indecision in her dark eyes. "We're very informal here, you know. You can call me Alan if you want."

  The idea of anything so intimate appalled her. "I'd rather stick with 'Dr. Protheroe,' if you don't mind."

  "Fine," he said indifferently. "Come in then."

  She stayed where she was. "It's not
important. I can come back later."

  He gestured towards a vacant armchair. "Come in," he said again. "I could do with a break from the paperwork." He stood up and walked around the desk, ushering her in and shutting the door behind her. "What's up?"

  With her escape route barred, Jinx accepted that the die was cast. She crossed the parquet flooring, but instead of sitting down, took up a position by the window and gazed out across the garden. "My father phoned to say he wants me out of here. I wondered why. Do you know?"

  "No," he said, resuming his seat and swinging round to look at her back.

  "Did you phone him about the police visit?"

  "No."

  She turned round to study his face closely, and nodded in relief. "Then I don't understand," she said. "Why does he want me to leave?''

  "I suppose it may have something to do with the fax I sent him." He reached inside his top drawer and removed both the fax in question and the reply he had received that morning. "Read them," he invited. "My extraordinarily anodyne letter is typical of a hundred more on file, so why should your father find it threatening?''

  She perched on the edge of the armchair and read both pieces of paper before handing them back to him. "What was your brief?'' She chewed nervously on the side of her thumb.

  "What he says. To let you recover at your own speed. He didn't want psychiatrists meddling."

  Why not? What was there to fear from psychiatrists this time? What did Adam think she could tell them? What could she tell them? "Then it must be your invitation to talk about Russell's death," she said slowly. "Wild horses wouldn't make him do that, and certainly not with me present."

  "What's he afraid of?"

  "Nothing."

  Why did she keep lying to him? he wondered. And why this need to protect her father when it was so very clear she thought he'd murdered her husband? "There must be something, Jinx, or it wouldn't require wild horses to drag it out of him," he said reasonably.

  "There's nothing," she insisted. "It's just that as far as Adam is concerned, Russell didn't exist. His name's never mentioned. The episode is forgotten history."

  Protheroe mulled this over. ' 'You obviously think your father views your tragedy as a 'forgotten episode,' " he said thoughtfully. "But is that how you see it too?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Tell me about your father's background," he suggested, next. "Where did he come from?"

  She spoke in quick, jerky sentences. "I only know what Betty's told me. Adam never talks about his past. He was born in the East End of London. He was the third of five children. His father and two older brothers were merchant seamen and all died when their ships were sunk in the North Atlantic. His younger brother and sister were evacuated to Devon while he remained with his mother to face the blitz. His education was minimal. He learned more from the black marketeers working out of the docks than he ever learned in school. By the end of the war he had amassed a list of contacts abroad and enough money to set up as an importer. The first goods he shipped in were silks, cottons, and cosmetics-they arrived on his seventeenth birthday. He doubled his money overnight by flogging the lot on the black market, and he's never looked back. He began life as a crook-knew the Kray twins very well. That's all I know."

  He believed her. If Adam Kingsley was anything like she described him, he was a man who compartmentalized every aspect of his life. Rather like his daughter. It would be interesting to discover whether he, too, closed doors on dark rooms and threw away the keys. The chances were high that he did. "As far as Adam was concerned, Russell didn't exist," Jinx had said.

  "What happened to his mother?" Protheroe asked now.

  "I don't know. He didn't have much to do with her after he married my mother. As far as I can make out, neither family approved of the marriage."

  "And the brother and sister? What happened to them?"

  "They went back to London after the war, presumably to live with their mother. The only thing Adam has ever said on the subject is that he's always regarded them as strangers because he and they grew up apart."

  "Does he still feel like that?"

  She slipped down into the chair and laid her head against the back of it. "He hasn't spoken to either of them for over thirty years. Uncle Jo emigrated to Australia and hasn't been heard of since, and Aunt Lucy married a black man. My father severed all his ties with her the day she walked up the aisle."

  "Because her husband was black?"

  "Of course. He's a racist. Betty used to know Lucy quite well when they were all younger. She told me once that Adam tried to stop the wedding."

  "How?"

  With shaking fingers, she lit a cigarette. "Betty was very drunk. I'm not sure she was telling the truth."

  "What did she say?''

  She took quick pulls on the cigarette, considering her answer. "That Adam tried to scare Lucy's fiance off with a beating," she said in a rush, "but that Lucy went ahead and married him anyway. It might be true. He really does hate black people."

  Alan watched her for a moment. "How do you feel about that?"

  "Ashamed."

  He waited. "Because your father's a bully?" he suggested.

  She could taste hot, sweet bile in her mouth and drew in a lungful of smoke to mask it. "Yes-no. Mostly because I should have sought Lucy and her family out years ago and made a stand-but I never did."

  Veronica Gordon was right about the eyes, he was thinking. What the hell was going on inside her head, that she could look so frightened and sound so composed. "Why not?"

  She turned her face to the ceiling. "Because I was afraid the whipping boys would be punished if I did."

  "Meaning your brothers."

  "Not necessarily. Any whipping boy will do," she said flatly. "If I'd sought out my aunt, then Betty would have been taken to task because she knew Lucy as a child and would have been accused of being the instigator. But it's more often the boys than not."

  "Are we talking literally or metaphorically? Does your father physically beat your brothers?"

  "Yes."

  "So was Russell another whipping boy, do you think?" he asked mildly.

  He caught her unawares and she stared at him in shock. "My father didn't kill him," she said, her voice rising. "The police ruled him out very early on."

  "I was talking metaphorically, Jinx."

  She didn't answer immediately. "I don't think you were," she said, lowering her gaze, "but it doesn't make any difference anyway. Russell was never punished for my shortcomings."

  "No," he agreed. "I suspect you were punished for his." He toyed with his pen. "How much do you know about your mother? Why did both families disapprove of the match, for example?"

  "Her people were middle-class and my father's were working-class. I presume it was straightforward snobbery on her side and inverted snobbery on his, and I don't suppose it helped that he made money out of black marketeering." She was silent for a moment. "I know he adored her."

  "Did he tell you that?"

  "No, he never talks about her."

  "Then how do you know?"

  "Because Betty told me. Her name was Imogen Jane Nicholls, she was the only child of a doctor, privately educated, and very much a lady, and he has photographs of her all over his office walls."

  He thought of the name on Jinx's file cover. Jane Imogen Nicola Kingsley. "Do you look like her as well?"

  "Of course I do," she said with a kind of desperation. "Adam set out to re-create her."

  He couldn't fault the desperation-it was there in her voice-but he doubted it had anything to do with her mother. "Even your father can't perform miracles, Jinx," he said with a touch of irony, as he watched the ash on her cigarette lengthen and curl. "I suspect that little scenario is more in your stepmother's mind than his. We all need ways of coming to terms with a partner's indifference. None of us is immune from pride." He nudged the wastepaper basket towards her with his toe. "You should know that."

  THE VICARAGE, LITTLETON MARY-1:15 P.M. />
  Fraser watched Cheever's courteous and sympathetic handling of this devastated family with a far more willing admiration than he had felt for Maddocks yesterday. The Superintendent knew as well as he did that there were some strange undercurrents at work, but never for one moment did he pressure either of the Harris parents into saying what they were.

  They drove in convoy back to Littleton Mary, with Mrs. Harris and a motherly WPC in the leading one, and himself, Cheever, and Mr. Harris in the car behind. There was little conversation. The vicar clearly found talking difficult, and the Superintendent was content to leave him to his thoughts. Where "initiative" was Maddocks's watchword, "patience" was Cheever's.

  In retrospect, of course, Fraser had to ask himself whether Maddocks's insensitive approach wouldn't have been more appropriate, for it was Cheever's willingness to take his time that gave rise to the events that followed. Maddocks would have squeezed every last drop of information out of them, irrespective of the trauma they were suffering, and Charles could not have conspired with Simon to keep the information about Meg and Russell's affair to themselves. But would justice have been better served, Fraser always wondered, if they'd known about it then instead of later?

  As they drew up behind the other car in the vicarage driveway, Charles Harris touched a hand to his dog collar as if seeking reassurance. "Could I suggest that I have a quick word with Simon first," he said rapidly, "just to explain why you're here, and then perhaps you could talk to him outside away from his mother? It's important you get a clear picture of Meg, and I'm afraid you won't get that if Caroline is listening."

  The Superintendent nodded. "I'll ask WPC Graham to take Mrs. Harris inside. Sergeant Fraser and I will wait here."

  It was five minutes before Simon emerged, his thin face looking very drawn. He ushered them round the corner of the house to some chairs grouped about a table on the lawn. "Dad's asked me to tell you about Meg,'' he said, sitting down, "but I'm not sure-'' He took off his glasses abruptly to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry," he said, struggling for composure. "It's all been a bit of a shock." He breathed deeply over the tears that were crowding his throat. "I'm sorry," he said again.