A Family Concern

by Anthea Fraser

  Rona shook her head, and as Gavin released her, went forward into Magda’s outstretched arms, feeling them tighten about her.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ Magda said, leading her through the open door.

  ‘You sound like your mother!’ Rona told her, with a shaky laugh. Paola King had been of the opinion that most ills could be cured by, depending on the hour of day, a plate of home-made pasta or a cup of cappuccino and the little pastries she called copate.

  ‘Sit down.’ Rona obediently did so, and Magda sat down opposite her, gazing at her intently. ‘Right; now – what’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve had a row with Max,’ Rona said.

  Magda raised an eyebrow. ‘Hardly the first, I imagine.’

  ‘But the worst so far.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  Rona hesitated. ‘That’s why I came here,’ she admitted, ‘but now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘When did this take place? Just now?’

  ‘No, last night.’

  Magda clicked her teeth. ‘And you let the sun go down on it? That’s not like you.’

  ‘It had gone down before we started,’ Rona said, with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘So what have you been doing today? Avoiding each other?’

  ‘Pretty well. I had to go and see someone this afternoon, and suddenly felt I couldn’t go home. Which is why I turned up on your doorstep. Sorry.’

  ‘Lindsey not being available?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then where else would you turn up?’ Magda asked briskly. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘I’ve just had some, but it’s made me thirsty. I’d love a cup of tea.’

  ‘No problem.’ Magda set about making it. ‘Whoever did you have to see on a Sunday afternoon?’

  ‘Kate and Lewis Tarlton.’

  Magda turned in surprise. ‘The jewellery people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Regarding your new series?’

  Rona smiled. ‘More regarding the “flighty wife”, as Gavin called her.’

  ‘The one who went off with her lover?’

  ‘Yes; she left her daughter with a lasting trauma, and I’m not sure Lewis escaped unscathed.’

  ‘Old Robert certainly didn’t,’ Magda said, putting mugs of tea on the table and sitting down again. ‘So where do you come in?’

  And, glad to have something other than Max to think about, Rona told her about Freya’s dreams and that afternoon’s visit to the wood.

  ‘Spooky,’ Magda said.

  ‘It was, a bit.’ Rona sipped the hot tea, and found it soothing.

  ‘Do you think the tree house is significant?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure how.’

  ‘If you told Freya what you’ve worked out, it might be enough to bring the rest of it back.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m happy to leave that responsibility to her family.’

  Magda stood up. ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t want to talk about Max, let’s go and join Gavin. He’ll be glad to see you.’

  Dear Magda; unlike herself over Adele, she never betrayed the slightest hint of jealousy. Not that she’d any cause, though, in her present anti-Max mood, Gavin’s arm round her had been very comforting. Perhaps it was as well Magda had appeared when she did.

  They sat by the fire, chatting and listening to CDs, for a couple of hours before Rona reluctantly made a move. Gavin, possibly primed by his wife when Rona wasn’t looking, had made no reference to Max, so there’d been no awkward moments.

  ‘How are your parents?’ Magda asked, as Rona slipped on her coat in the hall.

  ‘On speaking terms, thank goodness. We’ll be having Christmas lunch together after all. Max has booked a table at the Clarendon.’

  ‘That’s great.’ She opened the front door on to winter darkness, and Rona’s heart, buoyed up by her friends’ company, plummeted again. Perhaps her expression betrayed her, because Magda gave her a quick hug and whispered in her ear, ‘Good luck!’

  Slowly, Rona drove home.

  As she shut the front door, Gus came bounding to greet her, closely followed by Max.

  ‘I was beginning to wonder where you were,’ he said. ‘Have you been at the Tarltons’ all this time?’

  ‘No, I went on to the Ridgeways.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘And told them I’d been with another woman?’

  ‘No,’ she said tiredly, ‘just that we’d had a row.’

  After a minute he said, ‘Thank you for that. Let’s go into the sitting room.’

  Obediently she did so, seating herself on the sofa facing the fire. He followed, and stood looking down at her. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back at all.’

  ‘If you’d checked, you’d have found I hadn’t taken my toothbrush.’

  ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘At least you’ve had company all afternoon.’

  He sat down next to her and reached for her hand. She made no effort to withdraw it.

  ‘Are you prepared to let me explain now?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The first thing I have to say, my love, is that you were right and I was wrong. Adele was making a bid for my interest. But I swear to you—’

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  Calmly and without embellishment, he did so. ‘It came totally out of the blue,’ he ended. ‘I hadn’t seen it coming, but with hindsight perhaps I should have done.’

  ‘It was so humiliating,’ Rona said softly, ‘hearing that horrible man talking like that, and the rest of them sniggering.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart. I wanted to knock his teeth down his throat, but it might have raised the odd eyebrow. However, when you left the room, I made myself crystal-clear. By the time I’d finished, no one was in any doubt that Adele was simply a student who – and here I admit I lied – had called in to collect some sketches she’d left behind. Charlie had the grace to apologize.’ He sighed. ‘I know I should have told you straight away, but you’d always been against her, and I knew the fur would fly.’

  She said in a low voice, ‘I wondered if that was why you made love to me on Friday. Because of a guilty conscience.’

  He pulled her roughly into his arms. ‘You little goose,’ he said against her hair. ‘I made love to you because you mean everything to me, and always have, and always will, and all the Adele Yarboroughs in the world can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘Almost,’ she said, and turned her head to meet his mouth.

  Gerald Fairfax locked the front door of his cottage and walked down the path to the gate, where he paused for a moment, looking up and down the road. In Dean’s Crescent North, he thought with satisfaction, no two houses were the same. Some, like his, had a front path, while others, such as Farthings, where the artist lived, opened directly on to the street. Some were thatched, some steep-gabled, some of stone, some of brick. It was an interesting place to live, and he was glad to be a part of it, rather than lodging at the hotel. He spent enough time there as it was, and he needed his space.

  Nevertheless, he thought with a smile, he was on his way there now, even though it was his evening off. True, he was anxious to see how Darren coped with the new duck recipe, but his main reason for going was to ask his brother’s advice about a Christmas present for their father. Chris was closer to Stephen than he was, and had a clearer idea of what appealed to him.

  He walked slowly to the corner of the Crescent, glancing into lighted windows as he went. He felt no guilt for his voyeurism – if the inhabitants wanted privacy, they should draw their curtains – and enjoyed these brief snapshots of other people’s lives. Occasionally, he amused himself by imagining their daily routines, their places of work and their interaction with each other. He wondered if life on the inside of those windows was as idyllic as it appeared to those on the outside, or whether there were secrets and infidelities, crises and deceits
in even the most united-seeming families.

  Turning into Guild Street, he considered his own. They’d be surprised how much he knew about them – things they considered private to themselves, but which he’d absorbed without conscious effort. He’d been aware, for instance, of Chris’s affair with Coralie Davis, long before it became common knowledge. His grandmother’s secret fear was that she was losing her sight, and he’d added it to his own worry list. His father drank more than anyone appreciated, and was given to bouts of what Gerald suspected was severe depression, though he managed to disguise them pretty well. Only his mother, he thought fondly, had no secrets as far as he was aware.

  Since he intended to see Darren first and offer encouragement on the duck, Gerald opted for the rear entrance. He turned into the kitchen passage, and was passing the small room he used for breaks, when, remembering he’d left some papers there, he decided to collect them en route.

  He pushed open the door, and had taken a couple of steps inside before registering that the light was on, and someone was already there. Though never put into words, it was tacitly agreed that the room was his private domain, which was why he’d left personal items there. Now, to his annoyance, he found himself confronting Ted, one of the waiters, who was staring at him in consternation, his face flooding with colour.

  ‘Oh – Chef! I didn’t know you were coming in this evening.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘I’m sorry – I’d no right—’

  ‘No, you hadn’t,’ Gerald agreed sharply, wondering how often his privacy had been violated, and by how many members of staff. ‘Do you make a practice of coming here?’

  ‘No, really, I just …’ His voice tailed off miserably as Gerald frowningly looked about him.

  ‘So what were you doing? Not relaxing, from the look of it.’

  The man was, in fact, standing in front of the bookshelves, and a closer look revealed that one of the recipe books was slightly out of alignment.

  Gerald moved towards it, and Ted said rapidly, ‘I was just checking something – it’s not important. Please – there’s no need—’

  Ignoring him, Gerald lifted out the protruding volume – a technical tome that could be of no interest – and, aware of the man’s mounting unease, reached into the recess left by its removal. His fingers encountered something soft and silky, and he withdrew his hand to find himself holding a brilliantly coloured scarf. Even as he stared at it in bewilderment, something fell from its folds and rolled under his desk – a shining gold cylinder. Slowly, Gerald raised his eyes and held the waiter’s. Ted had now paled and was moistening his lips nervously.

  ‘Well?’ Gerald said.

  ‘I know I done wrong,’ the man said rapidly. ‘I – was going to return them.’

  At Gerald’s patent disbelief, he went on miserably, ‘I saw them when I was doing room service. It was a spur of the moment thing, I never—’

  ‘Two spur of the moment things,’ Gerald corrected. ‘Which doesn’t sound quite so feasible, does it?’

  Ted’s eyes fell. ‘I’m sorry, Chef. Give me a break, will you? I’ll never do it again, honest.’

  ‘Honest isn’t the word I’d have chosen.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just say you found them?’

  ‘In my room? What are they doing here, anyway?’

  ‘I thought they wouldn’t be missed for a while, but when that notice went on the board, I panicked. I’d taken them home, like, but I brought them back, meaning to sneak them up to the rooms again. But before I could, the police came to question us. I had to get rid of them quickly, so I—’

  ‘Hid them here.’

  He nodded miserably. ‘I know it was stupid, but it seemed the only place.’ He paused. ‘You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ll tell my parents, yes, but it’s out of their hands now. As you say, the police are involved, and until the culprit’s named, everyone’s under suspicion.’

  ‘I didn’t know they were so valuable,’ Ted muttered.

  ‘Stealing is stealing, whatever the object’s worth.’

  He nodded again, and, avoiding Gerald’s eyes, turned and left the room. Gerald bent to retrieve the fountain pen from under his desk. It was a Mont Blanc – one of the world’s most expensive. No wonder the owner had reported its loss.

  The man was sure to be sacked, he reflected, and with Christmas coming up, too. But honesty was essential in hotel work, and they’d never be able to trust him again. Still, that was one thing, thank God, that was not his problem. Abandoning his intention of a word with his sous-chef, Gerald pushed open the door leading to the main part of the hotel.

  Thirteen

  It was late afternoon when the call came, and Rona, having finished work for the day, was making a cup of tea.

  ‘Rona?’

  For a moment, she didn’t recognize the voice, but she was given no time to wonder.

  ‘It’s Kate. The most appalling thing has happened. Oh, God!’ She broke off with a choked sob and Rona, suddenly alarmed, sat down heavily at the kitchen table.

  ‘What is it, Kate?’

  ‘I wish to God I’d never started this!’ Kate was going on hysterically. ‘Damn it, the dreams would have stopped in their own good time. They did before.’

  ‘Kate, what’s happened? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The well,’ Kate said in a whisper. ‘The bloody well.’ She drew a long, shuddering breath, and in the silence the kettle started whistling shrilly. Rona, who’d nearly leapt out of her skin, hurried to turn it off.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said into the phone. ‘Go on.’

  ‘After you’d left yesterday, Lewis decided to take a look at it. He’d been mulling over what we’d said about it earlier, and that if Freya had seen a lovers’ tiff, it would have to have been a violent one, for her to remember it. So finally, to satisfy him, back we went, armed with a powerful torch and tools to prise off the cover.’

  Her voice began to shake again. ‘God, Rona, it was like a nightmare. Because when we got the top off and – peered down, even in the light of the torch we could see something at the bottom.’

  Rona said in a croak, ‘Something or someone?’

  Kate didn’t answer. ‘We hurried back to the house and phoned Robert, and he got in touch with Bruce and Jan, and we all went down. The well’s not very deep – about fifteen feet, I should say, and of course it’s been dry for decades.’

  ‘What was it, Kate?’

  She gave a kind of sob. ‘We couldn’t tell. So we phoned the police, and they said they’d be round first thing in the morning. It was dark by then, and they must have thought, since there was obviously no urgency, that they could work better in daylight.’

  ‘And this morning,’ Rona said clearly, ‘they found a body.’

  ‘A skeleton,’ Kate corrected, ‘with shreds of material clinging to it, and lying on top of it – oh, God! – was a mouldy, decaying suitcase.’ She paused. ‘You know what’s coming, don’t you?’

  Rona nodded, realized Kate couldn’t see her, and said in a whisper, ‘Velma.’

  ‘Almost certainly. And now,’ Kate went on wildly, ‘they’ve taken Robert away for questioning! Everyone’s in a total state of shock. Oh Rona, what have we done?’

  Rona said shakily, ‘So Freya, up in the tree house …’

  ‘I know. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? And to add to everything, they’ve taken a blood sample from her, to compare the DNA.’

  ‘Kate—’ Rona broke off, cleared her throat and tried again. ‘You do realize that if the dream progresses any further, she might see who it was?’

  ‘I almost forgot – that’s why I’m phoning. Lewis says we mustn’t mention the dreams to anyone. If the killer’s still around, and finds out about them, she could be in serious danger.’

  ‘But he can’t still be around, can he? Not after all this time? Surely it was her lover, whoever he was; they had a row, he killed her, threw her in the well, and then
fled. After all, he disappeared at the same time.’ So Gavin had told her.

  Another thought struck her. ‘If Freya’s had to give a sample, does that mean she knows everything now? About being lost in the woods, I mean?’

  ‘Yes; we couldn’t keep it from her.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Shocked, to find the dreams were based on memories, and terrified to go to sleep, in case she sees the murderer’s face.’ Kate paused. ‘Though in fact,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘the dreams were all about sounds, weren’t they? Whistling, shouting, sobbing. She’s never mentioned seeing anyone, or even the possibility of a woman being there.’

  ‘Perhaps it was blotted out at some deeper level.’

  ‘Perhaps. Still, to be on the safe side, don’t tell anyone about them, will you?’ Her voice sharpened. ‘Or have you already?’

  Oh God, Rona thought, yes, she had. Max, of course, and Magda, who’d probably passed it on to Gavin, and Nanny Gray …

  ‘I might have just—’

  ‘It’s sure to ring a bell, when the story breaks. You must get on to them straight away, and tell them to keep quiet. Promise me you’ll do that?’

  ‘I promise,’ Rona said aridly. Then, ‘You’ll be carrying on as normal, though? At the shop?’

  ‘We’ve no option; if we don’t, people will assume we’ve something to hide. It won’t be easy, though; as soon as it gets into the press, they’ll start to talk. In fact, it’s probably already in this evening’s paper, and we’ve had the first of the nationals round. We can only be thankful this blew up on a Monday, when at least the shop was closed and we could deal with it.’

  ‘Was it definitely murder? She didn’t commit suicide, or fall down the well accidentally?’

  ‘There doesn’t seem much doubt, but they need the forensic evidence to be sure. If there’s any left to find.’

  ‘It depends how she died. Blows on the head might show on the skull, and a stab wound could have nicked a bone—’ Realizing what she was saying, she broke off, horrified, but Kate gave a choked laugh.

  ‘I was forgetting you’d had several brushes with murder.’

  ‘Kate, I’m really terribly sorry about all this. If I hadn’t asked to see the woods—’