by Unknown
After Bella had gone, I lay on the dust-sheeted sofa in the sitting-room, an alarm-clock stationed on the floor beside me. It was set to go off at half past five. If I was on the road by six, I could be in Clifton by eight. Not that I expected to need an alarm to wake me. Tired though I was, sleep seemed a remote contingency. Fear and elation stalked my thoughts, stretching my weary nerves. I felt if I could only rest and reflect on what Bella had told me, the answer would emerge, as logical as it was obvious. What was the final link in the chain connecting Sir Keith Paxton’s hidden jealousy with Paul Bryant’s manufactured guilt? What purpose could be served by setting a murderer free?
I did fall asleep, of course, though not for much more than an hour. But that was time enough to dream of Louise. She was waiting to meet me as I walked along Offa’s Dyke. The sun was setting behind her and I couldn’t see her face clearly. She was standing a few yards beyond an artist’s easel, set up directly in my path, with a canvas ready for use on its frame. But the canvas was blank, save for the tentative pencilled outline of a figure that seemed to dissolve as I approached. I tried to speak, but couldn’t seem to. I knew I had to warn her of something, but what it was I couldn’t remember. Then she turned and walked away down the slope. I ran after her, but the gap between us only widened. There was a line of trees at the foot of the slope. I sensed I had to overtake her before she reached them in order to avert a catastrophe. But there was nothing I could do to stop her. She entered the trees without looking back. And vanished from my sight.
Then the alarm was buzzing angrily close to my ear. With a jolt, I sat up and stabbed at its button until silence returned. The trees were still visible to my mind’s eye, the patch of shadow she’d stepped into still tantalizingly close. But as the ghostly shapes of the shrouded furniture emerged from the darkness around me, the trees slipped away, until only the faintest trace of a memory—the lightest breath of a breeze between their leaves—remained.
A blank canvas. Ready to picture the future she’d never lived to shape. Like her diary. An empty space that would never be filled. “Can we really change anything, do you think?” I could remember the words, but couldn’t re-create the voice. There seemed to be nothing I— Then it came to me, so suddenly and forcefully it was as if somebody had struck me in the face. The diary. Of course. If Paul was lying, then every detail of his obsessive pursuit of Louise was also a lie. Even his meeting with her in the Covent Garden café. It hadn’t happened. Yet Sarah had shown me the proof that it had happened. In her mother’s own handwriting. Thursday April 5: Atascadero, 3.30. A forged entry? Or a clever manipulation of a genuine one? Either way, Paul couldn’t have had access to Louise’s diary without— “Sarah.” I spoke her name aloud as I rose from the sofa and headed for the door.
C H A P T E R
TWENTY-TWO
It was a cold wet dawn in Bristol, too bleak and early, I’d have guessed, for Sarah to have gone out. But there was no response to my persistent prods at her bell in Caledonia Place. And only a recorded answer when I tried her number on my car-phone. I went back to the door, intending to use the keys Bella had given me to go in, but a well-dressed middle-aged woman emerged as I approached and fixed me with a suspicious glare.
“Are you the person who’s just been ringing Sarah Paxton’s bell? I live in the flat below and couldn’t help wondering when you were going to give up.”
“Well, it was me, actually, yes. I’m a friend of Sarah’s.”
“Really? Well, I know for a fact that she’s gone away. So you’re wasting your time, aren’t you?”
“Apparently so.” I smiled uneasily. “Any idea where she’s gone? Or for how long?”
“None at all, I’m afraid. Excuse me.”
She bustled off to her car, but lingered ostentatiously after opening the boot, clearly reluctant to leave while I was lurking around her front door. In the circumstances, there was nothing for it but to retreat to my own car and drive away.
I could have doubled back straightaway of course, but I decided to wait and see what I could glean from Anstey’s first. I parked on the circular road round Clifton Down and gazed along the gorge at the suspension bridge, its familiar shape blurred and distorted by the runnels of rainwater on the windscreen. How often did Sarah come up here, I wondered, and study the same view? How often did she imagine she could see Rowena leaning against the railings in the middle of the bridge and staring back at her? As now I almost did myself.
By nine o’clock, I was at Anstey’s offices in Trinity Street, explaining to a bemused secretary that I was a friend of the Paxton family, trying to contact Sarah on a matter of extreme urgency. The news that Sarah wasn’t at home clearly embarrassed the poor woman, who until now had been happy to believe her absence was due to flu. “She phoned in sick on Monday morning. As far as I know, we haven’t heard from her since.” She wanted me to wait for the senior partner, who usually arrived by nine thirty, but her confirmation that Sarah had lied to me about the course in Guildford made such a delay unthinkable. Did she know where I could find Sarah’s boyfriend? Yes, she did. “You mean Rodney Gardner. He’s a solicitor too. But not with this firm. Haynes, Palfreyman and Fyfe. In Corn Street.”
I’d met Rodney just once, at The Hurdles a year before. He remembered me as well as I remembered him: not very. Which turned his natural caution into acute wariness when he received me in his office at ten o’clock that morning.
“Why exactly are you looking for Sarah?”
“A family matter.”
“But you’re not family, are you?”
“Does that make a difference?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, I may as well tell you. Her father’s died.”
“Good Lord. How?”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Well, not really, no.”
“She’s not been at work since Monday. She told them she had flu. But she’s not at home either. So, where could she be?”
“I’ve no idea.” He fiddled with the ribbon marker of his desk diary for a moment, then said: “To be honest, I’m the last person you should be asking. Sarah and I had a . . . disagreement . . . about a month ago. We haven’t spoken since.”
“What did you disagree about?”
“It was a stupid business really. But . . . baffling. I’d been getting a bit resentful of the number of times she couldn’t see me. She always seemed to be working. Even at the weekends. Well, the parents-in-law of one of the partners here, Clive Palfreyman, have retired to the Isle of Wight. Clive and his wife went to see them one weekend and met Sarah on the car ferry back. When they asked what had taken her to the Island, she said she’d been visiting a client in Parkhurst Prison. Clive mentioned it to me and asked if the client was some local villain we might have heard of. Sarah had been pretty tight-lipped, apparently. Well, she’d said nothing to me about it. Not a thing. And when I raised it with her, she was too quick to plead confidentiality for my liking. I had a quiet word with one of her colleagues later. We play a weekly game of squash. He was more or less adamant that Anstey’s had no client banged up in Parkhurst. She had to be lying. But why? When I confronted her, she flew completely off the handle. Accused me of spying on her and God knows what. Said if that was how I was going to behave, it’d be best if we stopped seeing each other. And that’s what we did.”
“You haven’t seen her since?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I was going to try and patch things up this week. I’d bought her some rather expensive earrings for Christmas. But then I heard about Shaun Naylor’s appeal. And something clicked. I remembered which prison they’d said he was in. Albany. On the Isle of Wight. Just down the road from Parkhurst. And I wondered if . . .”
“That’s who she’d been to see.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I wondered. Which would be weird, wouldn’t it? I mean . . . why should she?”
If Sarah had helped Paul concoct his confession, as I was beginning to think she mus
t have done, maybe she was hiding—though what from I couldn’t imagine—at his house on Bathurst Wharf. I walked from Corn Street back through the unrelenting rain to Queen Square, where I’d parked the car, then on to the quay where I’d seen Rowena for the last time six months before and across the swing-bridge to her former home.
By the time I reached the door I was sure something must be wrong. It stood open to the wind and wet and a grey-haired woman in housecoat and wellingtons was peering in over the threshold. As I approached, a man appeared beyond her in the hallway: Inspector Joyce.
“Mr. Timariot,” he said, spotting me immediately over the woman’s shoulder. “What brings you here?”
“Well, I . . .”
“Looking for Mr. Bryant?”
“Er . . . yes. Obviously.”
“You’re out of luck.” He stepped onto the pavement and erected an umbrella. “My sergeant will lock up, luv,” he said to the woman. “He’ll drop the key back to you. Thanks for your cooperation.” Then he moved past her and walked slowly towards me, frowning suspiciously. Until the brim of his brolly snagged on mine and he pulled up abruptly. “That’s the next-door neighbour,” he said. “Bryant leaves a key with her. When we couldn’t raise him, we thought we’d better take a peek inside.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. He’s not there. But it doesn’t look as if he’s gone for long. Anxious to contact him, are you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Heard about his father-in-law?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I have. That’s why I’m in Bristol. To offer Sarah my condolences.”
“You mean she’s still here? I should have thought she’d be in Portugal by now, trying to find out what happened. I wouldn’t mind knowing myself.”
“An accident, I believe.” Grateful for the excuse he’d unwittingly supplied me with, I added: “But you’re probably right. Sarah must already be on her way to Portugal. Stupid of me to expect to find her at home, really. I only came on here in case—”
“She was with Bryant? Not very likely, is it?”
“Probably not.” Irritated by his habit of interrupting me, I made an attempt to put him on the defensive. “And why are you looking for Paul, Inspector?”
“Because Naylor’s release on bail seems to have coincided with a crop of fatal accidents. And coincidences make me twitchy. I just wanted to make sure Bryant hadn’t met with one.”
“I don’t follow. Sir Keith’s death hardly constitutes a crop.”
“No. But there’s been another since then.” He paused, relishing, it seemed, the chance to study my expression while I waited for him to continue. “Vincent Cassidy’s surfaced. Literally. In the Thames, night before last. Dead as most of the fish.”
I could have told him all I knew then. And perhaps I should have done. But I was determined to find Sarah and demand an explanation from her before I carried tales about her to the police. “An accident, you say?”
“It’s what the coroner will probably say. No fixed abode. Plenty of drink and drugs in the bloodstream. Sounds a simple case of drowning, doesn’t it? He could have got the head wound hitting a bridge pier on the way in. Naylor was still in custody at the time, so we can’t go accusing him of anything. I expect we’ll have to settle for accidental death. Same as Sir Keith.”
“And this happened on Tuesday?”
“Monday, more likely. The pathologist reckons he’d been in the water about twenty-four hours.” Monday was the day Cassidy had phoned me. He’d sounded desperate. And now it seemed he’d had good reason to be. Smith and Brown were covering their tracks—with merciless efficiency. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh . . . no reason.”
“I generally find there’s a reason for everything.”
“Do you? Tell me, Inspector, you are absolutely certain Paul Bryant murdered Oscar Bantock and Louise Paxton, aren’t you?”
“We’d hardly have let Naylor go if we weren’t, would we, sir?” He looked at me scornfully. “And you wouldn’t have changed your statement if you had any doubts.”
“But what convinced you?”
“The accumulation of detailed knowledge. As you once pointed out, we always keep a few things back. And Bryant knew what a lot of them were.”
“Such as?”
“I can’t go into that.”
“Just give me one example. I know about the diary. There must have been more.”
“Of course there was, sir.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, all right,” he said impatiently. “Bryant knew what Lady Paxton was wearing. I mean every single garment. He described them accurately. Colour, fabric, the lot. Now how could he—unless he really did watch her take them off?”
“I suppose he couldn’t.” But my mind was already pursuing a different answer. Louise’s clothes would have been returned to her family at some point. Sarah would probably have looked after that. She’d have wanted to spare Rowena and her father the task. So, she’d have known exactly what her mother had been wearing.
“Then there was his description of Bantock’s face after he’d killed him,” said Joyce, warming to his theme. “‘Smeared in multi-coloured flakes of paint.’ Well, that’s just how it was. It’s what Jones said—the postman who found him. ‘Like it was covered in hundreds and thousands.’ But it was never mentioned in court.”
“Surely Jones might have talked about it subsequently.”
“Of course. We thought of that. We had Jones in to take a look at Bryant. He’d never set eyes on him before in his life.”
“I see.” And so I did. I saw precisely how it could have been managed. Jones had never met Paul. But he might have met Sarah. And she might have persuaded him to reminisce about the scene at Whistler’s Cot. But Joyce wouldn’t have asked him if she had. The idea would never have crossed his mind.
“Besides, those meetings with Lady Paxton he listed—complete with dates, times and places. There were too many to fake. Far too many. And every single one checked out.”
“Did it?” Sarah had been ideally placed to supply dates, times and places, of course. Even corroborate some of them herself. And she’d have realized they could risk inventing a few incidents that a living person would know to be untrue—so long as that person was sure to be disbelieved. “Not every one, surely. I thought Sir Keith denied having the row with Lady Paxton Paul claims to have overheard in Biarritz.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Joyce said with a cynical smile. He looked round. The door to number thirteen was closed now and a bedraggled figure I took to be his sergeant was sheltering from the rain beneath the first-floor bay. “OK, Mike. Go back to the car. I’ll join you there.” The sergeant nodded and hurried away.
“Where do you think Paul’s gone, Inspector?”
Joyce shrugged. “Christmas shopping, for all I know. He’s free to go wherever he likes. Until Naylor’s been acquitted. The neighbour’s going to ask him to phone me as soon as he gets back, though. Just to put my mind at rest.”
“They said on television Naylor’s appeal wouldn’t come to court until March.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a long time to wait.”
“For Bryant, you mean?” Joyce glanced over his shoulder at the empty rain-streaked windows of number thirteen. “Oh, he’ll sit it out patiently enough, I reckon.” Then his brow creased into a frown. “That’s not what’s worrying me.”
“What is, then?”
He shook his head. “To be frank, Mr. Timariot, I’m not quite sure. There’s something wrong here. But I can’t for the life of me work out what it is.”
Why had they done it? The question circled giddily in my mind as I ran back to Queen Square, jumped into the car and started for Clifton. Why should they have wanted to do it? It made no sense. Yet clearly, to them, it did. They’d planned this. They’d plotted and prepared it. Every step of the way. But I had no more inkling than Joyce of what they were trying to achiev
e.
I was already pursuing them, though. Whereas he didn’t even know they’d fled. At Caledonia Place, I let myself in without bothering to try the bell again and went straight up to the second-floor flat.
Then nothing. As I closed the door behind me, only the motionless air of unventilated normality revealed itself. The flat was clean and tidy. But there was clearly nobody at home. I moved slowly from room to room, half-expecting something to happen, some meaning or significance to spring out at me from Sarah’s domestic orderliness. But it didn’t. Her pictures were still on the walls. Her saucepans still hung in line on the hooks above the kitchen worktop. Her coats and dresses still filled the wardrobes. She could have walked in at any moment and it would have seemed no different from all the other times she’d walked in at the end of a working day.
Except she wasn’t going to. The certainty grew as the silence encroached. She wasn’t coming back. Wherever she’d gone—why ever she’d gone there—retreat wasn’t possible. I stood in the lounge, staring at the photograph of her and Rowena with their mother that was still in its place on the mantelpiece between the carriage clock and the china rabbit. Louise’s gaze seemed to be directed at me now, not some indefinable point beyond the camera. It hadn’t changed, of course. But I had. She’d invented the stranger on Hergest Ridge for Sophie’s benefit, because she’d known Sophie would believe a fictitious affair more readily than the truth. What must she have thought, then, when she met me there? What must have gone through her mind?