Loretta Lawson 01 - A Masculine Ending

by Joan Smith

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ he said. ‘But why don’t you let me cook it? Tell me where the shop is, and I’ll go.’ After an amicable wrangle, they agreed that they would get dressed and go shopping together.

  ‘We can have showers later,’ Loretta promised. Jamie was already pulling on his trousers; Loretta rummaged in her dressing-table drawer for clean socks to wear with an old pair of trousers.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the hall,’ Jamie said. ‘My coat’s still in the drawing-room.’

  Loretta finished dressing and was about to leave the room when she caught sight of the unmade bed. Force of habit compelled her to stop and straighten the quilt.

  As she got to the bottom of the stairs, Jamie emerged from the drawing-room. The smile froze on Loretta’s face as she caught sight of his expression: his eyes were wide and staring, like those of a cornered animal.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he blurted out, skirting past her to the front door. ‘I’ve just remembered … something’s come up …’ His look was almost one of revulsion. He wrenched open the front door, and was out of the flat before Loretta could speak.

  ‘Jamie, wait -’ she began, but he was already slamming the door behind him. For a moment, she was rooted to the spot. What had come over him? Everything had been going swimmingly only a moment before. Fighting back shocked tears, she ran to the front door. She was just in time to hear the street door slam, two floors below. She ran down the first flight of stairs, and then turned and dragged herself back to the flat. Feeling as though she had been punched in the stomach, she staggered into the drawing-room and sank on to the sofa. Their empty glasses were still on the coffee-table, reminding her of the night before. Why had he looked at her like that? She hadn’t coerced him in any way. He had been as eager as she. A thought struck her, and she leapt up to peer into the mirror over the mantelpiece. Had he changed his mind about her in the cold light of morning? She looked tired, she thought, pushing her hair back from her face, but not markedly different from the previous evening. Not enough to make him suddenly aware of the difference in their ages. Her eyes stared back at her from the mirror, aghast. She was behaving like a reader of Woman’s Own. If Jamie was the sort of man who cared that much for looks, he wasn’t worth having. She sat down again, hugging herself with both arms. A second explanation occurred to her, one she liked no better than the first. ‘After all, they were very close friends,’ a voice repeated in her head. She recognized it as that of the girl Natasha at Bridget’s party. She had believed Jamie when he told her that Puddephat’s passion for him was not reciprocated. Had she been right to do so? Wasn’t it possible that his sexuality was much more ambivalent than he had let on? He wouldn’t be the first homosexual man to go to bed with a woman in the hope of proving he wasn’t gay. The thought made her shudder. Huddled on the edge of the sofa, she stared sadly into space. Her right hand crept up to cover the lower half of her face, as if to protect it.

  Chapter 11

  Loretta was lying miserably on the bed, in an unsuccessful attempt to catch up on her sleep, when the phone rang an hour later. She sprang up to answer it: perhaps Jamie was ringing to explain his abrupt departure.

  ‘Good morning, it’s me,’ said a hearty voice. ‘I’m back in London.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ Loretta said grumpily. Tracey was the last person she felt like speaking to.

  ‘Got out of bed the wrong side?’ he asked teasingly. ‘Or are you having a late lie-in?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Loretta shortly. ‘I just thought you were someone else.’

  Thanks very much,’ Tracey said sarcastically. ‘I take it you haven’t seen the Herald yet?’

  Loretta admitted she hadn’t. She remembered picking it up when she went downstairs to make tea, but she’d put it on the kitchen table without looking at it. ‘I suppose you’ve been doing your John Le Carré stuff again?’

  ‘Len Deighton, more like,’ Tracey reproved her. ‘D’you remember Funeral in Berlin? I actually rang to tell you there was an attempt on my life yesterday morning. As you’re still technically my next-of-kin, I thought you ought to know.’

  In spite of her misery, this news startled Loretta. ‘What?’ she gasped.

  Her reaction seemed to gratify Tracey. ‘Don’t worry, I’m all right,’ he said graciously. ‘But I have to admit I was shit scared at the time.’

  It must have been a pretty alarming experience, Loretta thought, to have wrung this admission out of Tracey. ‘What happened?’ she demanded.

  ‘I got a lead on two more spies this week,’ he began, ‘working for the Government in Bonn. I was rushing round double-checking the details all week, and the plan was that Bill and I would confront them yesterday morning. Bill’s my photographer, by the way. So we left Bonn in a hire car, on the way to the house of the first one. Then this car tried to force us off the road into a ditch. It was a big black Merc, tinted windows, the lot. I thought we’d had it, quite frankly.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Loretta, unconsciously holding her breath.

  ‘It wasn’t me who got us out of it, it was Bill,’ Tracey admitted. ‘He turned on all the lights, hazard warning ones as well, and kept his hand on the horn. You should have seen us - we were careering along like a fire engine. By chance - at least, they said it was by chance - a cop car came up from behind and the Merc took off. But it was a pretty close-run thing.’

  ‘Did you get its number?’ enquired Loretta.

  ‘False plates,’ Tracey said succinctly.

  ‘And what about your spies? Did you get to see them?’

  ‘Oh yes, and we got great pictures,’ Tracey enthused. ‘You should have a look at the paper. It’s all over the front page.’

  ‘But what happens now?’ Loretta asked anxiously. ‘Have you asked for police protection?’

  “Course not,’ Tracy said scornfully. They won’t try anything now we’re back in England. No point. But I must say it’s nice to get some sympathy from you for a change. How are you, by the way? What news on the dismembered don?’

  ‘He wasn’t dismembered,’ Loretta objected. ‘Not unless you’ve been keeping something back from me.’

  “Fraid not, I just liked the alliteration,’ Tracey said cheerfully.

  ‘Well, I have managed to get to know Puddephat’s wife,’ Loretta said warily. Talking about Puddephat reminded her uncomfortably of Jamie. ‘And it turns out that she’s R - she wrote the letter I found in his rooms. Puddephat used to call her Ron, short for Veronica. But I still don’t know what he did to make her write it. Or whether it was bad enough to make her kill him.’

  ‘Most murders turn out to be domestic affairs,’ Tracey said cheerfully. ‘The husband commits some sin like not helping with the washing-up, and the wife sticks a knife in his back. You’d be surprised at what a dull business murder really is. Your cunning killer with a cool head and a phial of untraceable poison is heavily outnumbered by the ranks of disgruntled wives and husbands. I’d say Veronica is suspect numero uno, no doubt about it.’

  Loretta suddenly recalled that she hadn’t spoken to Tracey since the release by the police of Puddephat’s unfortunate academic rival. ‘I seem to remember you thought much the same thing about Theo Sykes, and he had nothing at all to do with it,’ she pointed out.

  ‘So I gather,’ Tracey said breezily. ‘But then I always had my doubts about that one.’

  Loretta decided she hadn’t the energy to respond to this provocation. Instead, she changed the subject. ‘What are you doing now you’re back in England?’ she asked. ‘Won’t life be a bit quiet after all this excitement?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’m having a few days off,’ Tracey said. ‘I thought I’d head off to Bath. D’you remember Eddie Russell, used to be a feature writer on the Herald?’ Loretta did. Russell had left the paper two or three years before to start a news agency in the West Country. ‘I’m going down to stay with him and his wife,’ Tracey went on. ‘It’s a nice part of the country, and I could do with a few long
walks and a change of scenery.’

  As he spoke, an idea came to Loretta. Tracey’s remarks about Veronica, flippant though they were, had succeeded in making her very uncomfortable. The more she got to know Puddephat’s widow, the less Loretta liked the idea that Veronica was the killer. But wasn’t there an area of Puddephat’s life which remained to be investigated? Who was to say what suspects might not turn up if someone did some serious digging into the Melanie Gandell business? It was just as well she had resisted the temptation to antagonize Tracey by poking fun at his obsession with espionage.

  ‘Are you driving down to Bath?’ she asked. Tracey said that he was. ‘Could you do me a favour?’ she continued. ‘It wouldn’t take you much out of your way. Only about twenty miles or so.’

  ‘Depends what it is,’ Tracy said cautiously.

  ‘I’ve got the address of the house where Melanie Gandell lived,’ Loretta explained. ‘I’ve been thinking of going down there myself, but it’s difficult for me to get time off near the start of term. In any case, the whole thing would be easier for you than for me. You could say you were looking into Puddephat’s death for the Herald, and you were trying to contact her relatives for a feature on the case. It would be much more plausible than if I turned up on the doorstep with some cock-and-bull story.’

  There’s no guarantee they’d talk to me,’ Tracey objected half-heartedly. She could tell from his voice that he was not averse to the idea. Perhaps he’d be glad of something to do while he was in Bath. Whatever he said about wanting a few days in the country, she knew from experience that he was easily bored.

  They may not even live there any longer,’ she pointed out. ‘In which case, all you have to do is get their new address for me. I’ll do the rest. Please, John,’ she coaxed.

  ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘Give me the address you’ve got. I’m driving down tomorrow, but I can’t promise I’ll have time to do it on the way. It might have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday.’

  That’s quite all right,’ Loretta assured him. It would be a relief to know that something was being done, and that she could sit back and wait for results for a day or two. ‘Ring me when you’ve got something.’ She put the phone down, and went to the kitchen to look at the Sunday Herald. It had really gone to town on the spy story, she discovered. The main headline asserted that the paper had broken up a spy ring. Another, in smaller type, sent a shiver down her spine: ‘“Herald” Men Pulled Out After Murder Attempt’, she read. She sincerely hoped that Tracey would take care of himself over the next few days.

  The temptation to ring Jamie was, Loretta found, hard to resist. Surely, she kept saying to herself, there must have been some sort of misunderstanding, something that could be sorted out if they had a rational discussion? Her hand hovered over the phone, and each time drew back. She could not bear to have either of the explanations she feared put into words. On Tuesday morning, she received a letter which reminded her that she had not yet heard from Tracey.

  It was from the convener of the Fern Sap collective, and its purpose was to summon her to another meeting in Paris - an emergency one this time. Far from approaching settlement, the row over masculine endings was now threatening the very existence of Fern Sap. The members of the collective in favour of the radical position had collected sufficient signatures to force a meeting this very weekend, and they had issued an ultimatum: either their position should be accepted, or they would leave. They had even drafted a manifesto, a copy of which the convener enclosed with the notice of meeting. It denounced everyone who opposed the change, including Loretta, as ‘wishy-washy reformists’ and ‘linguistic fascists’; it ended by announcing their intention, if the collective did split, of setting up a rival journal under the title Mother Tongue. The convener apologized for the short notice at which the meeting had been called but pointed out that, under the rules, her hands were tied. Loretta sighed: she could raise little enthusiasm for what was clearly going to be another acrimonious session. It looked as though a split was now inevitable; the only question left to be resolved by Saturday afternoon would be whether or not to persevere with Fern Sap after its desertion by half the collective. But if she was going to Paris, shouldn’t she make another visit to rue Roland to look for clues? The thought of returning to the flat made her shudder. In any case, what was the point? She knew from Andrew that someone had done a very thorough cleaning job. on it.

  She had almost decided to send her apologies when two more thoughts occurred to her. As a founder member of the Fern Sap collective, could she really abandon the journal to its fate without a fight? The second was less altruistic; if she travelled both ways by air, she would be able to treat herself to a free day in Paris on Sunday. She deserved it after the blow her self-esteem had just suffered at the hands of Jamie Baird. She looked out the previous week’s copy of Time Out, and circled a couple of adverts for cheap air fares. She also opened her desk drawer, and wrote a postcard to Bridget.

  She was feeling guilty about not getting in touch with her friend, but feared that the subject of Jamie might come up if she spoke to her direct. ‘Very many thanks for the party, and apologies for not writing earlier,’ she scribbled shamefacedly. ‘Off to Paris for another meeting this weekend. Will ring when I get back. In haste, Loretta.’ She found a stamp in her purse, and posted it on the way to work.

  The phone was ringing as she came up the stairs to her flat that evening. On picking it up, she heard Tracey’s voice, and felt a little surge of excitement: was he about to give her a completely new lead, one that would take her well away from Veronica Puddephat? Her hopes were immediately dashed.

  ‘Not much to report, I’m afraid,’ Tracey admitted. ‘I drove over to Buckland Dinham this afternoon - it’s a pretty place, by the way - but I didn’t get very far.’

  ‘Couldn’t you find the cottage?’ Loretta asked with a heavy heart.

  ‘Oh, I found it all right,’ said Tracey. ‘It’s a big house, as a matter of fact, I don’t know why it’s called Cherry Cottage. I suppose it may have started as a farm cottage, but it’s been extended and modernized out of all recognition. It’s right at the end of the village, more or less on its own. The road goes across a bridge, and it’s on the other side of the stream, on the left. I parked the car in the drive and knocked, but no one was in. I had a pretty thorough look round, but it was definitely deserted. So I drove back into the main part of the village, and went into the village shop. It’s one of those places that sells everything you can think of - free-range eggs, newspapers, vegetables, the lot. I told the woman behind the counter that I’d stopped off on my way to Bath to visit some friends I hadn’t seen for ages. I said they didn’t seem to be in, and I was beginning to think they might have moved away from the village. She was very helpful, asked me their name - I gave her both to be on the safe side, Grant and Gandell - but they didn’t ring a bell. She couldn’t remember what they were called, the people in Cherry Cottage, but she thought it was a name beginning with B. Apparently they don’t have their papers delivered, and don’t do much shopping in the village -1 could see why, from the prices she was charging - so she doesn’t really come into contact with them. Mind you, she’s only been at the shop a twelvemonth. So it could be that this Grant woman lived there before her time. But that doesn’t help you very much, does it?’

  Loretta agreed that it didn’t. ‘But thanks for trying,’ she said, remembering her manners.

  Tracey heard the despondency in her voice, and tried to cheer her up. ‘Look, I’ll be back in London on Friday,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we meet for dinner and talk it over? If we both put our minds to it, we may be able to come up with another way of tracking down the girl’s relatives.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Loretta explained. ‘I’ve got to go to Paris for another Fem Sap meeting.’

  ‘Good God,’ exclaimed Tracey. ‘You’re a glutton for punishment. Haven’t you had enough of Paris? We’re still trying to solve the last murder you got involved in there!’
<
br />   ‘Thanks, John,’ Loretta said bitterly. ‘That’s just the kind of helpful comment I can do without. I’ll phone you when I get back.’ She rang off, and stared moodily into space. What was she going to do? She was left with nothing but her suspicions about Veronica Puddephat. Did she really want to press on with a course that might implicate the woman in her husband’s murder? On the other hand, hadn’t she some sort of duty to bring the killer, whoever it might turn out to be, to justice? She was still wrestling with this dilemma when the phone range again. Of all people it had to be Veronica herself.

  ‘Oh, Loretta, thank God you’re in!’ she cried, breaking into sobs. ‘It’s on Thursday, and I don’t know how I’m going to bear it.’

  Loretta guessed at once that Veronica was talking about the funeral. Uncomfortable though she felt at talking to the object of her suspicions, she couldn’t just put the phone down. Calming Veronica down, she managed to elicit that the ceremony was to take place at the little church in Hallborough which Puddephat had attended when he lived in the Red House. There was to be a considerable group of mourners -the dead man’s colleagues, his widowed mother, several members of Veronica’s family, and anyone in the village who had known him by sight and could find an excuse to take the afternoon off. ‘Not to mention the press!’ Veronica added, threatening to break into further sobs.

  The press?’ queried Loretta. ‘Are you sure?’ The story had dropped out of the papers in the last week or so, presumably for lack of developments; it also seemed in bad taste for reporters to turn up at somebody’s funeral.

  ‘Oh, yes’, Veronica assured her. They’ve been ringing me, and Daddy, and the vicar.’ Loretta was appalled. She could quite see why Veronica was distressed. At the same time, she was becoming more and more nervous; any minute now, she thought, she’s going to ask if I can come to the funeral. How on earth could she get out of it? But Veronica took her by surprise. ‘It’s not so much the funeral I’m afraid of,’ she said, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. ‘It’s afterwards. When everyone goes away. I’ll be all alone. I’m frightened, Loretta! I don’t know what I’ll do.’ The drift of what she was saying was unmistakable: Loretta felt a trap closing in on her.