Dead and Gone

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘We’re so sorry about your sister,’ said Thanet as he and Lineham pulled out chairs and settled themselves. ‘And I really do apologise for this, but I’m afraid that there are, inevitably, questions to be asked.’

  She caught her lower lip beneath her teeth. ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she whispered.

  How often had he heard this from those caught up in the aftermath of a violent death? Thanet wondered. ‘But sadly, it’s true,’ he said. ‘So while last night is still fresh in your minds . . .’

  ‘I do understand,’ she said, and Thanet saw Prime’s hand give her shoulder a little squeeze of approbation. ‘What, exactly do you want to know?’

  Thanet glanced at Lineham. Take over. He wanted to think, to observe these two. They intrigued him.

  ‘If you would tell us about yesterday?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘What, all day?’ said Prime, speaking for the first time, eyebrows climbing his bony forehead.

  Thanet approved of Lineham’s tactics. Talking about the earlier, innocent pleasures of the day would help Jane to relax. It did. By the time they had reached their return from Leeds Castle around 6.30 p.m. she had relinquished the coffee mug and was sitting back in her chair, one hand clasping Prime’s on her shoulder.

  ‘One small point before you go on,’ said Lineham. ‘Did you see Mrs Mintar when you got back?’

  ‘No,’ said Prime.

  ‘I assume she was changing,’ said Jane. ‘She’d obviously done most of the preparations for supper. There were various dishes laid out on this table, with cutlery and dishes on trays, ready to be carried out.’

  ‘Did you notice if she had been doing any watering in the courtyard?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  Prime also shook his head.

  ‘Though I think I’d have noticed if the well had been uncovered,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t think it was, but I can’t be sure.’ She looked to Prime for confirmation but he again shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, I really don’t think I would have noticed if it had been.’

  Their account of the evening tallied with Mintar’s and Lineham took them through it at a brisk pace until they reached the point at which they rose from the table. Then he followed the pattern which Thanet had set in his interview with Mintar and asked them to proceed in detail.

  They glanced at each other.

  ‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘we all picked up something to carry to the kitchen, to help clear the table. Ginny went first and we followed.’

  ‘Along the corridor which leads from the terrace to the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes. We deposited the various bits and pieces on worktops or the table then Ginny started to load the dishwasher. I offered to help, but she refused, said she could manage. ’Jane pulled a face. ‘She was fussy about things like that. You know, all the different dishes had to go in their allotted places, and the cutlery had to go in with knives on the right, forks on the left, spoons in between.’

  ‘She was careful about detail, then.’

  ‘Yes. And very tidy-minded. That was why . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, that was why I was surprised, later, when we were all looking for her and I came in here, to find she’d left the job half done. That was when I first began to get worried, to think that there might be something wrong.’

  ‘Was it you who finished clearing up later?’ said Thanet.

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t sleep, so after you’d gone I thought I’d tidy up. Ginny hated coming down to a mess in the morning. I . . . I thought she’d be pleased to find I’d finished up for her.’ Jane’s voice shook. ‘Stupid, really. It was as if, by assuming she’d turn up, I’d make it happen.’ Her gaze drifted to the window. ‘Well she did, didn’t she?’ Tears filled her eyes and spilled over. ‘I really still can’t believe it,’ she said again, shaking her head.

  Prime shook a tissue out of the box on the table and handed it to her. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘Sorry.’

  Lineham waited a few moments, then said, ‘If we could go back to where you all put the dishes down . . . What did everybody do then?’

  Jane was still dabbing at her eyes. ‘Let me see.’ She looked to Prime for help.

  He narrowed his eyes, obviously thinking back. ‘Ralph left straightaway, went to his study, I presume. He’d excused himself from swimming, said he had work to do. Then all of us except Ginny went back and collected the rest of the stuff from the table, took it into the kitchen. Then Howard and Marilyn went off to change and so did we.’

  ‘Where were Rachel and her fiancé?’

  Jane didn’t exactly wince at the mention of Agon, but her expression hardened. ‘Still on the terrace.’

  ‘When you went back, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. To put it crudely, they were having a good snog.’

  ‘You don’t approve of Mr Agon, Miss Simons?’ said Thanet.

  She pulled a face. ‘Slimy toad. I most certainly do not. The sooner Rachel dumps him the better.’

  ‘You all toasted their future in champagne, I understand?’

  ‘Yes. It was as brief and joyless a “celebration” as I have ever experienced. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Rachel, she must have realised how her parents felt – how we all felt, for that matter. But I imagine Ralph thought he really must at least go through the motions.’

  ‘After what happened with Rachel’s sister, you mean?’ said Lineham.

  ‘You know about that? Yes.’

  ‘So, to get back to what we were saying, what time would you say it was when you went up to change?’

  They agreed that it was probably between 9.50 and 10.

  ‘And when you got back down?’

  Prime hesitated. ‘It must have been about a quarter past.’

  Now that was interesting, thought Thanet. Up until now they had been consulting each other all the time, but suddenly it seemed to him that they were studiously avoiding looking at each other. He wasn’t sure if Lineham had noticed this or not.

  He had. ‘A quarter of an hour’s a long time, to change into swimsuits?’

  Prime shrugged. There was no hurry. We chatted.’

  What about? Thanet wondered. There was a stiffness in Prime’s voice and although his arm still lay across the back of Jane Simons’s chair she had released his hand. Had they quarrelled? And if so, had it been over something which had happened at supper?

  ‘What about?’ said Lineham.

  Prime pursed his lips, wagged his head from side to side. ‘This and that. The evening. The other guests. The engagement. Nothing very significant.’

  ‘How can it possibly matter what we talked about up in our room?’ said Jane. And there, too, was an edge which had been absent before.

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t,’ said Lineham. And perhaps it does. The words hung unspoken in the air. ‘So when you got to the pool, who was already there?’

  Thanet noted the glint of relief in Prime’s eyes before he answered: ‘They were all there except for Ginny – and Ralph and Frances, of course.’

  ‘That would be Rachel and her fiancé and Mr and Mrs Squires.’

  ‘That’s right, yes.’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you to wonder where your sister was, Miss Simons?’

  ‘Yes, of course. That was why I asked if anyone else had seen her.’

  But she wasn’t being completely frank, thought Thanet. Her eyes had that evasiveness, that veiled look which frequently denotes an attempt to lie by a person who is by nature honest.

  ‘So you were the first person to notice she was missing.’

  ‘Yes. But we didn’t realise she was, at that point. Missing. We just thought she’d been delayed for some reason.’

  ‘Then we thought she might have changed her mind about coming for a swim, didn’t we?’ said Prime.

  ‘That’s right.’

  It was interesting that once again they were united in their responses, Thanet thought. They evidently thought that the tricky area had been successfull
y negotiated.

  ‘But we did think it was odd she hadn’t come out to say so,’ said Jane.

  ‘And then someone suggested she might have gone to bed,’ said Prime.

  ‘Not that anyone took that seriously. She never went to bed early and anyway she’d never have done so without excusing herself to her guests. So then Rachel went to look for her.’

  ‘What time would this have been?’

  Again they consulted each other with a glance.

  ‘A quarter to eleven?’ said Prime.

  She nodded. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Around half an hour after you got back downstairs, then.’

  Again a flash of constraint before this time they nodded in unison. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But when Rachel came back, said Virginia wasn’t in her room or indeed anywhere in the house, as far as she could tell, we began to feel concerned,’ said Prime. ‘We decided we’d have to look for her. So we all went and threw some clothes on and began to search. The rest, you know.’

  But Jane Simons hadn’t exactly thrown some clothes on, thought Thanet, remembering how well groomed she had appeared last night. Even in what was beginning to seem an emergency she had been determined to look her best. Perhaps that was an uncharitable view. Perhaps she didn’t feel able to face the world without her full armour on.

  The door opened and Rachel came in with her father. She was still wearing the blue silk kimono, now tightly belted around her narrow waist. Although she was very pale and, like Jane, her eyes were red and swollen, she looked fairly composed. ‘Daddy says you’ll need to speak to me,’ she said.

  Thanet and Lineham had risen. ‘It can wait, Miss Mintar,’ said Thanet. ‘There’s no rush.’

  ‘I’d rather get it over with, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you, darling,’ said her father.

  ‘No!’ Then, more gently. ‘Thankyou, Daddy, but I’ll be quite all right by myself.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Daddy, please. I’m not a child any longer. Just go, will you?’

  Jane Simons and Prime were already on their feet. Their relief was obvious. ‘We’ll go too,’ she said. ‘If there’s anything else we can do to help . . .’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Thanet waited until they had all gone and Rachel was seated at the table. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He sat down opposite her and said, ‘You’re sure about this?’

  She shook back her long blonde hair. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. We’ll make it as brief as possible.’

  ‘Take as long as you like.’ The blue eyes filled with tears and she dashed them angrily away with the back of her hand. ‘I want to do everything I can to help.’

  FIVE

  Rachel would find sympathy hard to cope with, thought Thanet. Best to be brisk and businesslike. ‘Now, I understand that you and Mr Agon arrived here last night as the others were finishing their coffee. What time would that have been?’

  ‘Around half past nine, I should think.’ She was twisting a strand of hair round and round a forefinger.

  Thanet took her quickly to the point where they all split up to change. ‘I understand that you and your fiancé were the last to leave the terrace?’

  There was a brief spark of joy in her eyes before she agreed that that was so.

  It had probably been the first time that anyone had referred to Agon as her fiancé, Thanet realised, and like every newly engaged girl showing off her engagement ring, she was pleased that their new status had been acknowledged. As her aunt had said, despite the spurious celebration last night she was bound to be aware that her family was less than delighted about her choice of husband.

  ‘So what did you do, after the table had been cleared?’

  ‘I went up to my room to change.’ She was still very tense, hanging on to the hair wound around her finger as if it were an anchor.

  ‘And Mr Agon?’

  ‘He changed in the pool house.’

  ‘Which way did you go into the house? Through the corridor to the kitchen, or through the sitting room?’

  ‘Through the drawing room. It’s the quickest way into the hall.’

  She wasn’t correcting him, Thanet realised, just using the habitual way in which the family referred to that room. ‘What about when you came back down?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘And the others? Which way did they return?’

  The brief, factual exchanges were beginning to have the calming effect Thanet had hoped for and now she released the lock of hair and sat back in her chair, frowning a little as she thought back. ‘Well, Marilyn and Howard came through the courtyard, obviously, the same way they had gone. Jane and her man came through the—’ She stopped. ‘No, hang on. They came back separately. I remember wondering why they hadn’t come together. I saw him come through the French windows in the drawing room but she wasn’t with him. She turned up a few minutes later.’

  Thanet and Lineham exchanged glances. Prime and Jane Simons had certainly given the impression that they had returned to the pool together.

  ‘And did she come through the drawing room too?’

  ‘I didn’t notice, I’m afraid. I assume so. I just saw her getting into the pool, that’s all. She asked me where Mum . . .’ At this first mention of her mother, Rachel’s fragile composure slipped. She swallowed, pressed her lips together and took a deep breath. ‘She asked me where Mum was. Until then none of us had really noticed she wasn’t there. And we still weren’t worried. We knew how keen she was on leaving the kitchen spick and span. We just thought she was taking longer because she was clearing up.’

  ‘Was it usual for her to clear everything away so thoroughly before guests had left?’ Thanet tried to be tactful, not to sound critical. In his book it would have been downright rude.

  ‘Not if it was a proper dinner party, no. But last night it was very informal, just Howard and Marilyn around for supper . . . Then when we suggested a swim, that made it even more so.’

  ‘Yes, I see. So who was in the pool when you got back?’

  ‘Just Matt.’

  ‘And who arrived next?’

  ‘Let me think.’ Now that they were no longer talking about her mother she had settled down again. ‘Howard, I think. Yes, Howard. He came just after me. Then Marilyn, then Jane’s boyfriend. Jane was last, as I said.’

  ‘The Squires didn’t arrive together either?’ Thanet groaned inwardly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was there much of a time lapse between them?’

  ‘I honestly didn’t notice.’ She gestured helplessly. ‘We were fooling around in the pool. If I’d known it was going to be important . . . It was only a few minutes, I should think. But I don’t really know.’ Once again she was becoming agitated, twisting her hands together.

  Thanet said, ‘Never mind, it doesn’t really matter,’ intending to calm her down. Instead, his words had the opposite effect.

  ‘But it does, doesn’t it?’ she burst out. ‘Matter. It’s only just dawned on me. Dad didn’t say . . . I assumed it was an accident, but I wasn’t really thinking straight. It couldn’t have been, could it? There’s no way Mum could have fallen over that parapet. Someone . . . Someone must have . . .’ She stared at him wildly. ‘And you think it was one of us, don’t you? That’s what all these questions are about. And . . . And . . .’ She stopped.

  Thanet opened his mouth to speak, trying to find words of reassurance – but what reassurance could he possibly give?

  Before he could say anything Rachel said, ‘But why? Who could possibly want to hurt her?’ She put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. ‘No, I can’t believe it, I just can’t.’

  ‘That’s what we have to try to find out.’

  There was a silence while she digested what had they had been saying. Then she looked up again. ‘And all this stuff about who came back to the pool and when .
. . It could have been any one of us, couldn’t it? We all came back separately.’

  ‘So it seems,’ said Thanet with a sigh.

  ‘So . . .’ She twisted her head to gaze out of the window as if trying to see back into the past. Then, eyes full of misery, she looked back at Thanet and whispered, ‘Not knowing who and why and how . . . It’s going to be awful. I don’t think I can bear it . . . All that uncertainty . . . And at the end of it, nothing will bring her back, will it? She’s gone. Gone for ever, just like Caroline.’

  ‘Your sister. Yes. Your father told me about that.’

  ‘Oh, Dad. What does he care?’ Her tone was bitter.

  Thanet was surprised. Until now Mintar and Rachel had seemed to be on good terms. ‘What do you mean?’

  It seemed that the mention of Caroline had resurrected past feelings of resentment. ‘He behaves as if she never existed.’

  ‘That wasn’t the impression he gave us.’

  ‘No, well, he wouldn’t, would he?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He wouldn’t want to be seen as an uncaring father. Bad for the image. When the police told us that as she was over age and had gone willingly – she left a note, you know – d’you know what he said? “Well, that’s it. She’s made her bed and she must lie on it. I wash my hands of her.” How Victorian can you get? And he’s never referred to her again to my knowledge, not once, in four years.’

  Truly incredible behaviour in this day and age, Thanet had to agree. But he could now understand why Mintar had been uncomfortable, talking about Caroline. It wasn’t just that the hurt had gone deep, perhaps he blamed himself for not having tried harder to find her before the trail went cold, especially if her loss had affected his wife as much as he had seemed to imply. ‘That doesn’t mean to say he didn’t care.’

  ‘Huh! Funny way of showing it!’

  ‘He certainly seems to care for you.’

  ‘I’m all he’s got left now, aren’t I? But I used to come pretty low in the pecking order, believe me. Mum came first, then Caro, then me. When Caro went I moved up a notch, that’s all. And now . . .’ She was silent a moment and then said, ‘If he cared, why didn’t he do something about it?’