by Joan Smith
‘Take your time,’ he said quietly.
Loretta looked up, taking in the detective’s features for the first time. He had fair hair and skin, grey eyes which lacked expression; it was a face she found impossible to read. But – he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say.
‘Since Peggy’s missing,’ she said slowly, ‘the obvious person is Mick. She wouldn’t have gone with him voluntarily, I’m sure of that. But what if he came here to get her back, and Clara tried to stop him? He might have taken the jewellery to make it look like a robbery. But–’ she stopped, realizing she had been thinking aloud.
‘But?’ Bailey prompted her.
‘I was just thinking about the gun,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Somehow ... well, I just can’t see Mick as the sort of person who’d carry a gun. He was violent, yes. But with his fists, or maybe a knife ... not a gun. Though these days...’ She trailed off. She had a nagging feeling that she’d forgotten something, and it didn’t feel as if it had anything to do with Mick. What was it? She cast her mind back over the last few days, trying to pin down something that was floating just beyond reach of her conscious mind. Then, ‘Oh! How could I forget... Inspector, Clara was being threatened! Phone calls, letters, they started as soon as she allowed the peace women on to her land. Look’ – she had seen a momentary flicker in Bailey’s light eyes – ‘I don’t know what your feelings are about the peace camp, and I don’t want to know. What I’m telling you is fact. Clara was getting anonymous letters and phone calls – most of them were silent, the phone calls, I mean, but she said someone read the burial service to her once. And someone threw paint at the house on Saturday night – you know about that, of course?’
Bailey nodded. Loretta wondered whether to tell him about the voices she and Clara had heard in the night, but something held her back.
‘She showed you these letters?’
‘No.’
‘You hear any of the phone calls?’
‘No, but I haven’t been here very long ... She was keeping a list of them somewhere, a sort of log. I expect you’ll find the letters when you search the house.’
‘So you’re suggesting that the people behind these letters and phone calls are responsible for Mrs Wolstonecroft’s death?’
‘I don’t know! You asked me a question, and I’m doing my best to answer it. You must admit, it’s a very odd coincidence that Clara got all these threats and now she’s been killed.’
‘Miss Lawson, there’s a world of difference between sending anonymous letters and shooting someone. Crime statistics show that the sort of people who make threats very rarely carry them out –’
‘But what about Saturday night – the paint? That was real enough! What if that was a warning, and now –’
‘Sorry, you’re way off beam there. We charged three eighteen-year-olds with criminal damage’ – he looked at his watch – ‘several hours ago. They left the station just before we got your – Mr Herrin’s call. I don’t think any of them’s likely to have nipped straight back here and shot Mrs Wolstonecroft on the way home. The time’s wrong, for one thing, and two of them had their dads with them.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Loretta felt cheated; she had more or less decided to trust Bailey, and he’d been holding out on her.
‘No, and I think you’ve been reading too many spy novels, Miss Lawson.’
‘And you’ve been watching too many gangster movies! You seem to think Peggy’s some sort of moll, sucking up to Clara just so she could let her husband into the house. And it’s Dr Lawson, I told you at the start.’ She was sick of people who couldn’t remember her name or get her title right; as soon as the words left her lips, she regretted them, but it was too late. Bailey’s expression – hostility – was for once all too easy to read, and she knew she’d blown any chance she’d had of persuading him of Peggy’s innocence. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’
A young PC appeared, edging into the room in a state of suppressed excitement.
‘Excuse me, sir – sorry to bother you – but I found this.’ He whisked something pink from behind his back and placed it triumphantly on the table in front of them. Loretta gasped; it was a barrel bag identical to the one she had described to Bailey earlier.
‘It was in the bushes at the side of the garden, just before you get into the trees.’
‘Well done.’ Bailey was on his feet, drawing on gloves. Holding the very tip of the zip fastener, he slowly eased the bag open. His hand darted inside, and reappeared holding a small square object in a gilt frame. Loretta recognized it at once as one of the paintings from Clara’s sitting room.
‘Probably realized it was too easily identified,’ Bailey said, putting the picture down next to the bag. ‘Looks like your friend Peggy’s got some explaining to do,’ he went on, turning to Loretta. ‘I take it this is her bag – the one you were telling me about?’
Loretta nodded miserably.
‘You can go now, Dr Lawson. Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll be in touch if we need to speak to you in the next day or two.’
She was being dismissed, and the detective was already building up a case against Peggy.
‘Look, Inspector Bailey –’
‘Chief Inspector.’
‘All right, Chief Inspector. I really don’t want to quarrel with you. I’m sure you want the person who did this caught as much as I do.’ She wasn’t expressing herself very well; shock and exhaustion had taken their toll. ‘I just think you should –’
‘Thank you, Dr Lawson, I can assure you I know how to do my job.’
His gaze had dropped from her to the bag on the table in front of him. He picked it up and shook it; it seemed to be empty.
She turned unhappily to leave the room.
‘Oh, I forgot.’
The sound of Bailey’s voice made her turn. ‘One of my men found this on the floor in your bathroom.’ He tossed a cassette tape on to the table. ‘Don’t want you to accuse us of holding on to your property unnecessarily.’
Loretta reached across and took the cassette, wondering when she’d dropped it. She remembered carrying a shoebox containing tapes up to the bedroom – perhaps it had fallen out then. She put it in a trouser pocket, too tired to think. Bailey hardly acknowledged her goodbye, and she returned downcast to the hall.
She decided to wait for Robert, a decision she later regretted since it meant she was still sitting on the bottom stair when Clara’s body was removed from the house. The corpse was carried to a waiting van on a stretcher, covered up, of course, but its awkward contours impressed her as an indelible image of lifelessness. It wasn’t Robert’s fault that Loretta was present at this unhappy juncture, but Colin Kendall-Cole’s; Bailey had asked to see Robert after Loretta, but Colin had made a great show of looking at his watch and muttering about his important appointment.
‘Sorry, old chap – sure you understand,’ he had said, looking from Robert to Bailey with an apologetic shrug.
Robert hadn’t bothered to argue, telling Loretta afterwards that he simply hadn’t the energy. In fact, as she drove him back to Flitwell just before one in the morning, he seemed even more exhausted and dispirited than she. As she drew up, he shook himself out of a reverie and gave her a bleak look.
‘I can’t – it seems unreal.’
Loretta was once again oppressed by an uncertainty as to how she should respond. Was Robert the sort of man who’d welcome physical closeness in grief, as she would? Or would he prefer to face his thoughts and feelings alone? She placed her hand tentatively on his, and read her answer in his lack of response.
‘I’d better get back to the cottage,’ she said in a low voice, making it clear she didn’t expected an invitation to stay.
‘Sure you’ll be all right?’ He squeezed her hand at last, as though grateful for the space she had established between them.
‘Oh yes. It’s probably the safest place in Oxfordsh
ire tonight,’ she said with a determined attempt at lightness. There must be more police per square foot than anywhere else in the county.’
‘See you tomorrow.’ Robert opened the door and climbed out.
She drove quickly back to the cottage, observing as she parked the car that Baldwin’s was still ablaze with light, and that dark shapes were moving about the garden.
She put her key into the lock and let herself into the cottage, finding that the light had been left on in the kitchen. Sitting on the table was the Le Creuset casserole in which she had been cooking the lamb; its contents were blackened and stuck to the sides and bottom. Whoever had moved it from the hob – a policeman, she presumed – had been too late to save the food. It hardly mattered; her appetite had long ago disappeared.
She bolted the front door and went into the bathroom, pausing to check that the door in there was locked before climbing the spiral staircase to the bedroom. It was still a warm night, and she opened the small window in the roof, letting in the faint scent of flowers she had noticed hours before. She dropped her clothes on to a chair, pulled on a night-shirt, and lay on top of the bed cover, her eyes fixed on the sloping ceiling. After a moment, she leaned across and turned off the bedside lamp. Her first night in Keeper’s Cottage and Clara’s last on earth: the thought, sentimental, uselessly melodramatic, refused to be banished from her head as she lay in the imperfect darkness. She tensed her body and tried to relax it limb by limb, at the same time taking long, slow breaths. Even so, sleep remained elusive; for what seemed like hours she lay restless, occasionally disturbed by voices in the garden, despairing of ever getting to sleep.
Chapter 5
Loretta awoke next morning to a pounding on the front door. Running downstairs in her night-shirt, she found Ellie and Here on the doorstep. Here’s expression was grave; Ellie was flushed and voluble.
‘Loretta, is it true? The police won’t tell us anything, they won’t let us near the house. Is it true?’
Loretta was borne back into the kitchen by the force of Ellie’s anxiety. She pushed her hair back from her eyes, which were puffy and sore after a night of, at best, fitful sleep, and braced herself for another interrogation.
‘Loretta, please – Betty in the post office says Clara’s dead – I just can’t believe it! Say it isn’t true!’
Ellie was gripping the back of a chair with both hands, her eyes wide with fear. Loretta was trying to think of the right words with which to confirm the news when Here intervened.
‘Wait a minute, lovely.’ He placed a restraining hand on his wife’s arm. ‘Loretta looks all in.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Loretta said distractedly. ‘Let me make you some tea.’ If she was going to have to go through the whole dreadful story, she would need something to sustain her. She peered round the room, noticing again the charred remnants of the previous night’s meal.
‘Leave it to me,’ said Here, pulling up a chair and guiding Loretta into it. ‘Take it easy.’
A sob broke from Ellie, who fumbled in her jeans and brought out a large, crumpled handkerchief. ‘It is true, isn’t it? Clara’s dead.’ She sat down suddenly, blowing her nose hard. Here went to her side and helplessly stroked her hair. After a moment he moved away and got on with the job of making tea. The brief silence in the room was broken by a wail from outside, followed by a scratching noise on the other side of the front door. Loretta got up and opened it, whereupon Clara’s cat started forward and wound in and out of her legs.
‘Bertie, you poor boy,’ she said, guessing that the animal hadn’t been fed since the previous day. She went to the fridge, took out a carton of milk, and poured some on to a saucer. The cat’s loud purr began before the saucer reached the floor, and he lapped it eagerly. When he’d finished, he went to Loretta’s chair, jumped on to her knees and curled himself up in a ball. Here placed three mugs on the table and filled them with tea.
‘OK. Loretta, you up to telling us what’s happened?’
Loretta nodded and sipped her tea. It was too hot, and she put the mug back on the table. Speaking in a low voice, she gave a concise and unadorned account of the events of the previous evening, leaving out distressing details like the body’s sprawling posture.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Here shook his head from side to side. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Do you think Peggy did it?’ Ellie asked abruptly.
‘Of course not!’ Loretta was horrified’ ‘But I am afraid she’s been taken away against her will. By her husband.’
‘Where was Jeremy Frere last night?’ Ellie’s second question was as sudden as her first.
‘Now wait a minute –’ Here began, but Ellie ignored him.
‘Don’t they say most murders are committed by members of the family? I wouldn’t put anything past that cocky little bugger,’ she said viciously. ‘D’you know where he was?’ She looked fiercely at Loretta.
‘In London, I suppose?’ Loretta said vaguely.
‘You suppose?’ Ellie pounced on her like prosecuting counsel.
‘Honey, Loretta can’t be expected to know his exact movements,’ Here protested.
‘Sorry.’ Ellie sighed and wiped her nose. ‘It’s no good glaring at me, darling, I’m upset.’
Loretta returned to the point. ‘Peggy said something about Jeremy going to London when I saw her yesterday afternoon. The police wanted to know how to get hold of him, and Robert thought he was in the London phone book. He’s got a flat over the gallery or something?’
‘Or something,’ Ellie said grimly. ‘What the papers like to call a love nest, I think. He never spends a night alone if he can help it. Poor Clara.’ Her resentment against Jeremy was clearly a long-standing one.
‘OK, no one’s denying he gave Clara a rough time. But that ain’t the same as bumping her off. Anyway, say he is involved, why steal his own wife’s jewellery? He’s her next of kin, right?’ Here’s tone was quietly reasonable.
‘To make it look like a burglary. That’s what people do, isn’t it?’ Ellie appealed to Loretta. She thought for a moment, then drew her breath in sharply. ‘Oh God, what about Imogen? Has anyone told her?’
‘The police were going to send someone to see her at Sussex,’ Loretta said. They said they’d go first thing this morning.’
‘Right. That’s why there was nothing on the news,’ Here said. ‘They inform the relatives first. Christ, what a thing.’
‘She’d better come and stay with us,’ Ellie said firmly. ‘She won’t want to be over there’ – she nodded in the direction of Baldwin’s – ‘on her own. Or with that creep.’
‘Sure.’
They lapsed into silence. Loretta shifted awkwardly in her chair, anxious not to disturb the cat.
‘You got a radio?’ Here was looking at his watch. ‘There might be something on the twelve o’clock news.’
Loretta pointed across the room and Here got up to turn it on. They listened to a Central Office of Information announcement about the danger of forest fires in the current spell of good weather, followed by a warning that it was illegal to pick certain types of wild flowers. Then the news began, with Clara’s murder the second item.
‘Detectives in Oxfordshire have launched a murder hunt after the body of Mrs Clara Wolstonecroft, the well-known author and illustrator of children’s books, was found at her home in the village of Flitwell.
‘Mrs Wolstonecroft’s body was found around ten o’clock last night by a neighbour. Police say she’d been shot. Mrs Wolstonecroft, who was fifty-one, was the winner of last year’s Beatrix Potter Award for services to children’s literature. A police spokesman said several leads were being followed.’
‘No mention of Peggy,’ Loretta said, relieved. Perhaps Bailey really was keeping an open mind?
‘She was so proud of that,’ Ellie said. ‘The award,’ she explained, seeing Loretta’s blank look. ‘They don’t give it every year, it’s not like the Booker Prize. It only goes to people who are really good.’
>
She thought for a minute, then spoke again.
‘What now?’
‘I guess we wait,’ Here said resignedly. ‘Well, hell, what else can we do?’ He got up and turned the radio off.
Both women were staring accusingly at him. Ellie made an impatient gesture with her hand.
‘I don’t know. It just seems wrong to – to sit around and do nothing when–’
‘OK, but what do you suggest? We don’t have the resources of the cops. I don’t see we have any choice.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Oh! What if Imo’s trying to contact us? We should be at home!’
Ellie swallowed the last of her tea and headed towards the door. Here followed, turning to speak to Loretta.
‘You all right here on your own? Want to come back with us?’
‘Thanks, Here, but I won’t. I’ve got things to do here. I’m fine, really.’ She needed time to think, and she might as well tidy up the cottage while she was doing so. She got up, letting the cat slip gently to the floor, and saw them out.
Ten minutes later she was lying in a hot bath waiting for the warmth of the water to relax her muscles. From a chair on the other side of the small room Clara’s cat stared intently at her, occasionally blinking his deep yellow eyes. He seemed to expect her to do something.
‘What can I do?’ she asked, half to herself and half to the cat. She was bitterly aware of the irony of her situation; less than a year before she’d stumbled on evidence of a violent crime in a borrowed flat in Paris and, for reasons which seemed compelling at the time, had failed to go to the police. The results of that decision had been so disconcerting, and so painful, that Loretta had resolved to waste no time in alerting the authorities in the unlikely event of ever again finding herself in a remotely similar position. This time she’d cooperated fully – apart from the business of the midnight voices, and she could imagine Bailey’s reaction to that little revelation – and where had it got her? She couldn’t help worrying about his attitude to Peggy; the fact that the girl hadn’t been mentioned on the news didn’t amount to much when she came to think about it.