Honeymoon Suite

by Wendy Holden

  CHAPTER 53

  ‘This salad’s amazing,’ Rachel said that Friday night, positioning some more beside her pasta.

  The salad was George’s. He had urged Nell to take whatever she wanted from the vegetable garden. She and Juno had picked the lettuces earlier that evening, after the two Londoners had arrived in their Land Rover.

  All five types were in the salad, along with some fresh peas that Juno had podded with enthusiasm. ‘This is great!’ she had declared, popping open sheath after sheath and delighting in the tightly packed row of little balls within. ‘They look like tiny green toes!’

  The peas, quickly boiled and tossed while warm in the olive oil and balsamic dressing, were sweet and delicious. Everything was delicious, Nell felt, glancing around from time to time at the kitchen in the candlelight. She loved the way it looked blurred, shadowed – and wonderfully romantic.

  She could still sense Dylan’s presence. The feeling of him in the cottage was so strong Nell marvelled Rachel hadn’t detected it too. Perhaps she was preoccupied; her talk so far had been about her imminent law exams. After that, Nell gathered, there would be interviews at the various chambers she wanted to join as a trainee barrister.

  It was unusual for Rachel to share her worries; she was the most self-sufficient person Nell knew. But the competition for places was apparently ruthless and Rachel was obviously nervous that, as a single mother who studied in her spare time, she would have little chance against the sleek twentysomethings who’d been through Oxbridge and had every type of parental support.

  ‘It does look good in here,’ Rachel remarked, finally switching out of exam mode.

  ‘I’m still not sure what to do about curtains,’ Nell said. The ones in her flat had always looked slightly wrong; the hooks popping out of the track all the time.

  ‘Get some blinds,’ Rachel advised, twirling up her spaghetti. ‘I’m thinking of getting some in the flat. Thinking of getting the whole place done up, in fact. Now that I’ve had such success doing up your place.’ She grinned at Nell, who gave her a sharp look back.

  ‘I thought you’d just had it painted. You had painters in. That’s why I couldn’t go back with you last week, remember?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rachel frowned with mock recollection. ‘Silly me.’

  Nell looked at her. ‘So you were telling porky pies.’

  ‘White lying,’ Rachel admitted with a cheerful shake of her burgundy curls. ‘I knew it was better for you to stay here.’

  ‘And definitely better for us,’ Juno now interjected. She had, until this moment, been deep in her latest Agatha Christie, twirling her pasta up with her free hand and reading intently despite her mother’s instructions to stop because the candles were bad for her eyes. (‘Mu-um! People read with candles for hundreds of years!’)

  ‘How’s the book going?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Good,’ said Juno. ‘No one knows who the poisoner is, but I’ve got a good idea already.’

  The word ‘poisoner’ made Nell’s thoughts fly to Dan in the hospital. Dylan had explained the mysterious circumstances of his illness. Now she explained it to the others.

  Juno was so electrified that she dropped her fork. ‘Poisoned! How exciting!’

  ‘Not for him, the poor thing,’ admonished Rachel.

  ‘Can we see him?’ Juno begged, eyes wide through the glasses that shone in the candlelight. ‘When you next go to see George? I’d like to ask him some questions about who’s poisoned him.’

  Would that be a good idea? Nell pictured a helpless Dan undergoing a fierce cross-examination by a determined ten-year-old Miss Marple. ‘I don’t think he knows.’

  ‘Of course he knows!’ Juno rebutted this argument with a wave of her pasta-laden fork. ‘People always know who’s killed them,’ she added.

  ‘You mean people are always murdered by someone they know,’ Rachel corrected. ‘Which, I have to say, is borne out in real life. I’ve been studying a lot of cases where it’s happened.’

  Nell could almost physically see her thoughts flying back to her exams, and reached a hand over to press that of her friend.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, and meant it. Rachel had steely determination, which she had obviously passed on to her daughter.

  On the subject of Dan, Juno was like a dog with a bone. There was no chance, Nell could see, that she was going to pass up the possibility of meeting a real-life poison victim.

  ‘Please can we see him? Please? Please?’

  ‘Well, he’s in the same ward as George,’ Nell allowed. ‘And so I guess you might be able to. It depends.’

  ‘On what?’ demanded the child, keen as ever for specifics. Whatever job Juno grew up to do, Nell thought, it would certainly be done properly.

  ‘Well, he might be asleep. Or not want to talk. Or,’ Nell said, trying to stop a certain note of anticipation entering her tone, ‘he might have other visitors.’

  Letting Juno see Dan, now she thought of it, would kill two birds with one stone. She could arrange it so Dylan would be visiting Dan, and then Rachel could meet him.

  ‘Other visitors?’ Rachel looked at her levelly. You haven’t been seeing him, surely, that look asked.

  Honestly, wait until you meet him. You’ll love him, Nell’s look answered.

  You have some serious explaining to do, said Rachel’s deep frown.

  Nell glanced at Juno, whose glasses were, once again, directed to her book. Tell you later, she silently mouthed.

  ‘Tell her what later?’ asked Juno, without looking up.

  CHAPTER 54

  ‘I can see him!’ Juno hissed jubilantly, as they entered George’s ward the next day.

  ‘Yes, in the middle,’ Nell murmured back. ‘With the white hair and the dark eyebrows.’

  Juno turned to her, her expression incredulous. ‘Not George!’

  ‘Mr Farley to you,’ interjected Rachel, who was a stickler for politeness. ‘In a rude world, manners get you further than almost anything else,’ Nell had heard her telling her daughter.

  ‘How do you know which one is Dan?’ Nell asked, intrigued.

  Juno regarded her gravely through her glasses. ‘Process of elimination. Dan’s a gardener, so he must be the big tanned one whose feet stick right out of the end of the bed.’

  ‘Oh just drop it, will you?’ Rachel was irritated. ‘Being boring,’ she added, ‘is almost as bad as being rude.’

  Rachel was tired, Nell knew. She was herself. They had been up late the night before. Explaining the latest stage of the Dylan story had been immensely difficult, not least because there were aspects that could not be revealed. His identity as a writer. His real name.

  Rachel had not been impressed that Nell had seen him again, despite her warnings. Still less that she had slept with him.

  ‘Jesus, Nell. Do you never learn?’ she had wailed.

  She had not even been persuaded by Dylan’s efforts with a drill.

  ‘He’s a man who put up three flat-pack beds,’ Nell pleaded. ‘With Chinese instructions. Surely that says something for him.’

  ‘Yes. That says is that he must really have wanted to get into your knickers.’

  ‘Can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt?’

  In the firelight, Rachel’s eyes glittered. ‘I’m going to be a lawyer. Doubt’s not my thing.’

  Nell was silent. The cosiness of her sitting room, with its little chairs and dancing firelight, had been the perfect setting for intimate exchange. Rachel had even brought a scented candle, whose expensive orange and cinnamon aroma had eddied deliciously around them as they talked. But all it had scented was their disagreement. It was clear that Rachel’s suspicions had only deepened.

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ she had suggested at that point. Stalemate had been reached. Rachel would
just have to meet Dylan and see for herself what a wonderful person he was. She could not fail to be convinced after that.

  With all this riding on it, the visit to George’s ward was a terrifying prospect. Rachel said nothing as they drove to the hospital in the Land Rover. Juno, on the other hand, could hardly contain her excitement. She had her notebook in hand, and a pencil. ‘I’m going to ask Dan all about his poisoning,’ she announced.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Rachel said firmly. ‘Not only is it an utterly tasteless thing to do, but the last thing the poor man’s going to want is to be woken up by some ghoulish child asking him questions about how he almost died.’

  ‘I could start by asking him something else,’ Juno suggested. ‘Such as how he felt about saving George – Mr Farley, I mean’s – life.’

  Dan was sitting up and looking cheerfully around him. He saw Nell and waved enthusiastically. ‘There, you see!’ Juno exclaimed, her grey eyes blazing in triumph behind her glasses. ‘He wants us to come and talk to him.’

  ‘You don’t know him, so you can’t,’ Rachel hissed.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Juno said, tossing her straight, side-parted bob. ‘No one knows anyone to start with. You just have to introduce yourself. Besides,’ she added to her mother with unarguable logic, ‘you don’t know George.’

  ‘Mr Farley to you,’ Rachel interrupted.

  ‘You don’t know Mr Farley,’ Juno went on, ‘and nor do I. But Nell’s going to introduce us.’

  Nell had certainly intended to, but when they arrived at George’s bedside it was empty.

  An icy flash of shock went through her. Had George been taken to the home already? Or . . . worse?

  ‘Well, he’s obviously somewhere around.’ The voice was Juno’s. Nell stared at her.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Juno gestured confidently at the bed. ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. All the sheets are still on and his reading glasses are on the bedside table.’

  Nell felt a hot wash of relief. ‘Miss Marple strikes again,’ said Rachel dryly.

  ‘So,’ said Juno, sitting down and looking brightly at Nell and her mother. ‘What are we going to do now?’ She made a great show of twiddling her thumbs. ‘How long must we sit here?’ she demanded, crossing and uncrossing her arms and legs and sighing. Her parody of childish boredom fooled nobody; both Rachel and Nell had seen her reading without moving for hours.

  ‘I’m going to find out where George is,’ Nell announced. ‘Just hang on here a minute, can you?’

  Quick as a flash, Juno seized her chance. ‘Can you introduce me to Dan?’ she asked Nell. ‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘I just did a useful bit of deduction, didn’t I?’

  Nell looked at Rachel for permission. ‘Dan’s really lovely. And he seems to be up for some visitors.’

  Rachel’s breast in its burgundy cardigan heaved in a sigh. Nell could read the doubt in her eyes. She knew Dan’s romantic history; it had been part of last night’s story, although the version she had told Juno had been expurgated.

  ‘That girl,’ Rachel groaned. ‘If she wants it, she’ll get it. Once she makes her mind up, there’s no putting her off.’

  Nell gave her friend a look. ‘I wonder where she gets that from.’

  Nell was late, Dylan saw as he entered the ward. She was not there; neither, for that matter, was George. Perhaps the two of them had gone for a walk, or to the patients’ day room for a change of scene.

  Dan, on the other hand, had company. A petite woman with a vivid little face, bright lipstick and curly hair tinted a purplish red was sitting by his bed with a serious-looking child in spectacles. Who on earth were they? Relatives? Friends? Dan never spoke about either; admittedly, he rarely spoke much about anything.

  Dylan had observed that most children who came to the ward immediately got out their smartphones or tablets. Few of them ever conversed with whatever relatives they were ostensibly visiting. This child in glasses, however, seemed to be not only deep in conversation with Dan, but taking notes.

  ‘A box of chocolates!’ she was gasping as Dylan arrived. ‘That has to be it!’

  ‘What d’yer mean?’ Dan was asking, raising himself on one massive elbow.

  ‘Well,’ the child explained earnestly, ‘it’s a sort of classic situation in a murder mystery story. The killer puts the poison in a box of chocolates.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Dylan sat down. The small red-haired woman gave him a direct, assessing look.

  ‘I’m Rachel,’ she said. ‘And this is Juno. I’m guessing that you’re Adam.’

  He nodded, relieved at this evidence that Nell had kept his identity secret. This, presumably, was the scary friend. He wasn’t sure he liked the way she was looking him up and down.

  ‘You look familiar,’ Rachel said eventually. ‘I feel sure I’ve met you before somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t think so.’ Dylan dropped his gaze and cursed those extra-big photographs on the All Smiles book jackets. At least he had had his beard then.

  He could feel her still staring at him, beadily. Small as she was, and tall as he was, she made him feel uncomfortable. He wished Nell would come back, and provide some sort of a buffer. Where was she? He looked around, willing her to appear.

  ‘Nell’s gone to find George,’ Rachel guessed his thoughts with alarming ease. ‘I understand you work with Dan,’ she added, throwing a much warmer smile at Dylan’s bed-bound colleague. He, at least, seemed to have this terrifying woman’s approval.

  ‘He does that,’ Dan corroborated warmly. ‘Best partner going, ’e is.’ Dylan threw him a grateful look.

  ‘And Nell’s the best girl going,’ Rachel instantly asserted.

  ‘She is,’ Dylan agreed hastily.

  ‘And she speaks very well of you.’

  ‘That’s nice of her.’ He immediately regretted sounding so flip. It was nerves but it sounded provocative.

  Rachel’s reaction was to tip her chin back and regard him from under her lashes. ‘I hope you’re worthy of her.’ She sounded profoundly doubtful.

  ‘I hope I am too. I’ll try to be, don’t worry.’

  He spoke in absolute earnestness, but her expression remained sceptical. ‘You make sure you do,’ she warned. ‘If you hurt her, you’ll have me to answer to.’

  ‘Hurt her?’ Dylan shook his head, smiling in amazement. The prospect was more than unlikely, it was impossible. ‘I’d rather die.’ ‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that,’ was Rachel’s dry response. ‘There are enough people in hospital here as it is.’

  Juno and Dan were still discussing the poison theory.

  ‘So,’ the little girl was saying to the enormous gardener, ‘he puts his evil mixture in the chocolates . . .’

  ‘That can’t ’ave ’appened,’ Dan robustly rebutted. ‘That’s not real life, that sorta thing. It were summat else what made me poorly.’

  ‘It does seem a bit far-fetched, in real life,’ the child soberly agreed. ‘But you get it a lot in books. And plays. It was in one I saw the other night, in fact. At the Chestlock Theatre. Murderous Death, it was called. One of the characters killed another by putting poison in a box of chocolates.’

  Dylan had not been listening closely; merely pretending to do so to avoid talking to Rachel. But Juno’s words electrified him.

  Murderous Death? Wasn’t that the title of the play Caradoc Turner had just been in? Juliet Turner’s recently returned husband?

  He felt his mind flicker and readjust like a railway station announcement board. Had Caradoc discovered what Juliet and Dan had been up to in his absence? Had he decided to get revenge through the means practised in the play?

  No. Of course not. No one would do that in real life. Would they?

  The child had turned to her mother for corroboration. Dylan li
stened, expecting to hear Rachel dismiss the idea out of hand. Laugh, even. But her small, clever face seemed thoughtful.

  ‘It’s quite far-fetched,’ Rachel said eventually. ‘But not impossible.’

  Dylan could not let this crazy theory go unchallenged. ‘But surely,’ he said, ‘it’s only the sort of thing that happens in . . .’

  He was about to say ‘the fevered imagination of authors’ but stopped. Fortunately, at that point, Nell came back into the ward.

  ‘All smiles!’ Rachel exclaimed, sending Dylan’s heart somersaulting painfully in his chest. But she meant Nell’s happy expression as she came down the ward with old George holding on to her arm.

  Apart from the lion’s roar of the engine, the way home in the Land Rover was a subdued affair. Nell stared disappointedly out through the windscreen.

  They had left Chestlock now and were back in the countryside, rattling down lanes fringed with cow parsley and past fields shaggy with summer growth. Tractors were baling hay in the meadows, ploughing neatly spaced lines through the thick, pale grass.

  The air flowing in over the diesel fumes was heavy with warm scent. The road ahead baked in the sunshine, then dived into tunnels of shadow beneath heavily leafed summer trees. It was all so very beautiful, Nell thought. If only Rachel would warm to Dylan, she would be completely happy.

  Her hopes that her lover and her friend would like each other had come to nothing. Rachel was being diplomatic, but Nell sensed she was underwhelmed. And, just as depressingly, she suspected Dylan didn’t like Rachel either.

  ‘Adam’s hot,’ Rachel had just allowed, ‘but he’s not quite my type.’

  Nell had hoped they could all have supper together at Beggar’s Roost, but Dylan had pleaded that he was tired. Nell knew this was an excuse. She had had just as little sleep, and for the same reasons, yet had never in her life felt so awake and alive.

  Hang on. What had Rachel just said? Nell yanked herself out of her reverie. ‘Say that again?’