by Joan Smith
Loretta sat up and added more water to the bath. Lying back, she tried to think the thing through logically. If Peggy wasn’t the killer, or in cahoots with that shadowy entity – and Loretta considered herself a sufficiently good judge of character to be sure she wasn’t – what were the other possibilities? A vision of Peggy dragged protesting from the scene of the crime by her husband was so uncomfortable that Loretta sat up and reached for the soap to dispel it. But wasn’t she jumping the gun? Wasn’t it just as likely that Peggy had left the house of her own accord in the afternoon or early evening? Perhaps she had gone back to London, or set off for her mother’s house in – no, Loretta remembered that Peggy had been careful not to mention where her mother lived. Or was it her mother’s sister? But, if that was the case, surely Peggy would come forward as soon as she heard about the murder? Much as Loretta distrusted Chief Inspector Bailey, he’d done nothing so far to frighten Peggy off. Unless – unless Peggy suspected Mick had had something to do with the killing ... Loretta leaned over the side of the bath and pulled a towel from the mahogany towel rail. She dried herself briskly and pulled on trousers and a T-shirt. It was all so frustrating.
She returned to the kitchen, made another cup of tea, and half-heartedly opened a packet of biscuits. She ought to eat something, but her appetite had completely deserted her. She nibbled a chocolate digestive, still trying to make sense of what had happened. The most obvious suspect, surely, was Mick. He had reason to hate Clara – Loretta vividly recalled the loathing in his eyes as he lay pinned to the ground at the peace camp on Monday – and was known to be violent. But how did that tie up with the sustained campaign of intimidation against Clara in the days before her death? The idea that the threats had nothing to do with the murder was something Loretta couldn’t bring herself to accept. And yet – she now knew the identity of the perpetrators of at least the paint-throwing incident, and she had to agree with Bailey that the three youths he’d mentioned were unlikely to have popped round to kill Clara immediately after being bailed. On the other hand, even Bailey hadn’t suggested the boys were responsible for all the hostile acts directed against Clara and the peace camp; Clara’s decision to invite the peace women on to her land had upset an extraordinary number of people, ranging from the landlord of the Green Man to the local police chief to Colin Kendall-Cole. Now there was a thought: what had the MP been doing at Baldwin’s last night? He said he’d come to reason with Clara about the camp but, if he knew her as well as he claimed, he must have known he was embarking on a futile exercise. And he’d certainly been on the scene very soon after the murder. Loretta was beginning to get excited when several points struck her. Kendall-Cole had been searched by the police in her presence, he’d even handed over his car keys without a protest, and there’d been no sign of the murder weapon or the missing jewellery. Nor did he have an obvious motive. Was it really plausible that a Conservative MP, right-wing though he was, would up and shoot one of his constituents because he had a political disagreement with her? It was certainly a new twist to the concept of extra-parliamentary activity. Now she came to think of it, there was even some indirect evidence to support Colin’s story that he’d been summoned to the house by Clara; according to Peggy, Clara had been so infuriated by Colin’s article in the Telegraph that she’d phoned the paper to complain. It was perfectly possible that, getting no satisfaction from that quarter, she’d rung up the MP and demanded to see him. Reluctantly, Loretta moved Colin down her list of suspects. It was a pity; remembering his high-handed behaviour, and the way he hadn’t even bothered to register her name, she’d rather relished the idea of his being cautioned and led away.
She got up, threw a half-eaten biscuit into the bin, and began to stack dirty dishes in the sink. The question of motive was troubling her. If Clara’s death really was connected with the threats against her, and therefore with her role as protector of the peace camp, shouldn’t Loretta consider the possibility of some sort of conspiracy against her? But by whom? She recalled Clara’s suspicions about the involvement in the attack on the camp of the local residents’ group – what was it called? RALF, that was it. Somehow she couldn’t visualize an alliance of local estate agents and farmers sitting in the back room of the Green Man, orchestrating Clara’s removal. What about the Americans? Didn’t they have the most obvious motive to get rid of Clara? Loretta turned off the taps and dried her hands. Conspiracy theories made her uneasy. In spite of her hostility to the presence of American bases on British soil, she couldn’t really believe they’d go as far as murder to get rid of the peace camp. Yes, they were sometimes brutal; she remembered reading a leaked memo in the newspapers in which an American division at Greenham had boasted about running over a peace protestor outside one of the gates. And they were certainly abnormally sensitive at the moment in the wake of the barrage of criticism of their raid on Libya. But an actual murder? In any case, killing Clara wouldn’t necessarily bring about the eviction of the peace camp at Dunstow – that would depend, presumably, on who inherited the land. Loretta was sure Imo’s attitude to the peace camp would be far more sympathetic than Jeremy’s. She wondered how she could discover the contents of Clara’s will, if it existed. Ask Imo? That seemed the simplest thing, although Loretta was anxious not to add to the girl’s distress. She made a mental note to inquire if a suitable opportunity presented itself.
She wandered aimlessly round the kitchen, pausing to straighten the towel and drying-up cloths hanging on the rail in front of the Aga. What was she thinking of? Clara as the victim of political assassination? Her imagination was too vivid. Wasn’t it just as likely that Clara had disturbed a common or garden burglar who, in line with the general trend towards more violent crime, had reacted with unexpected savagery? Loretta considered for a moment, then sighed. This line of reasoning, instead of cutting down the number of suspects, made it impossibly wide. Anyone could have walked quietly across the garden, unobserved by herself and Robert in the cottage. Herself and Robert? Had she any grounds for excluding him from her list of candidates? Had Robert slipped into Baldwin’s, shot Clara twice, then sauntered casually over to Keeper’s Cottage? After all, it was on his prompting that she had gone to the house to speak to Clara. Was this a daring ploy on his part to ensure that she, and not he, would discover the body?
Loretta smiled uneasily and pushed her hair back from her forehead. It was preposterous! Robert, cool, intelligent Robert – he couldn’t possibly be Clara’s killer. But – was that why she had drawn back from spending the previous night with him? Had the suspicion already been there, ticking away in her brain since then? No, of course not. Her decision to return to the cottage had been due solely to her anxiety not to intrude upon his grief. In any case, he hadn’t got a motive. She had no more reason to suspect Robert than she had Jeremy. And she was inclined to dismiss Ellie’s remarks about the latter on the grounds of her obvious prejudice against him; he, like Robert, had no obvious motive, especially as he was a successful art dealer in his own right. On top of which, there was no evidence that he was anywhere near Baldwin’s at the time of the murder. It was hopeless.
As Loretta reached this conclusion, there was a loud knocking at the front door. She opened it, and was startled to be addressed in the warmest tones by a complete stranger.
‘Loretta! My poor love, what you must have gone through!’ The woman lunged forward and kissed her on both cheeks. I absolutely had to come straight over and make sure you’re all right!’ She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Shh, don’t say a word. It’s the only way I could get past the law.’ She pulled a face and jerked her head backwards in the direction of Clara’s garden, where two uniformed PCs were regarding her suspiciously from just beyond the hedge. ‘Can I come in? Thanks.’ Her voice rose again as she bore Loretta before her into the room. ‘Darling, what a thing to happen!’ She turned, gave a cheery wave to the observers outside, and closed the front door. She advanced on Loretta, right hand outstretched.
‘Adela L’
Estrange, Daily Mail. Well, freelance really, but that’s who sent me. Sorry about that, those beasts won’t let anyone from the press get near you.’
Loretta took in her visitor’s swept-back blonde hair, her earrings which resembled gilded birds’ nests, and her expensive black linen suit.
‘How did you–’
Ms L’Estrange was putting her handbag on the kitchen table. ‘I was in the area – friends have a cottage down the road, well, it’s not a cottage really, not like this.’ She glanced round the kitchen, conveying an unspoken message of surprise that anyone could live in such cramped conditions. ‘Yes, I was in the area, and obviously I had to come. I was on the phone to the newsdesk as soon as I heard about it. Such a loss, such a loss. Now why don’t we sit down and you can tell me all about it?’
By this time Loretta had collected her wits. Pointedly, she remained standing.
‘How did you know my name?’
‘Your name? Oh, I made a few inquiries on my way here, always pays to do your homework, you know.’ She gave a rich laugh, which set the earrings shaking madly. Loretta watched fascinated, half-expecting a baby bird to tumble out. Then the woman’s smile faded and she leaned across the table to clasp Loretta’s hand again. ‘I know – I know what you’re going through.’ Her tone was low and vibrant. ‘Losing a friend – it’s, oh, it’s the worst thing. Last year I ... I lost a dear friend – someone I’d been at school with.’ She lifted her head and gazed liquidly at Loretta, groping for a chair with her free hand and sinking into it.
‘Actually, I didn’t know Clara very well. What did your friend die of?’
‘Oh – it was cancer.’
Adela looked taken aback; Loretta was about to ask her to leave when a thought occurred to her.
‘I suppose you’ve talked to the police?’ she asked. It would be useful to know what sort of line Bailey was giving out.
‘Of course. I had a long chat with Inspector... Bradley this morning. But what our readers want is the personal touch – what Clara was really like, as a woman, that is.’ She paused, and Loretta forbore to point out that she could hardly say what Clara had been like as a man. ‘The personal touch, that’s what I’m after. I want our readers to feel as if they’ve met her, as if they’ve lost a friend. That’s where you can help me, Loretta. Don’t you want to do that? For her?’
Loretta sat down and gave what she hoped was a brave smile.
‘I’ll help you as much as I can,’ she said. ‘But what did Inspector Bailey tell you?’
‘Oh, just the outline,’ Adele said, brushing aside the correction. ‘I gather there’s some jewellery missing from the house, and they haven’t found the weapon. But tell me, Loretta, what was she really like?’
Loretta considered. It looked as though Adela wasn’t going to be much use to her, but she couldn’t see any harm in answering the question.
‘She was marvellous,’ she began, watching as Adela made marks in an otherwise empty notebook. ‘Kind, intelligent, independent – an admirable person, if you know what I mean. Take this business of the peace camp. A lot of people were–’
‘Peace camp?’ Adela looked startled.
‘Yes, it’s just up the road. Hasn’t anyone told you about that? You should go up there and talk to some of the women, I’m sure they’d have something to say about Clara. It’s outside the base, RAF Dunstow. Though it’s really American. In fact, some of the planes that bombed Libya flew from it. That’s why Clara was so against it. She felt passionately about it.’
‘And she – I don’t understand. What was her connection with this – peace camp?’
‘It was on her land,’ Loretta explained.
‘I see. Actually, it wasn’t so much that sort of thing I was after – politics and all that. I mean, one person votes Labour and another Tory, but it doesn’t tell you about them as people, does it? Now, am I right in thinking there’s a daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Name? Age.’
Loretta told her; the information was readily available and Adela might as well get it right.
‘And the husband? It’s her second marriage, I gather?’
‘Yes.’
‘And... not a very happy one?’
Loretta looked up sharply. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Oh, I expect it’s just gossip, you know how these things get inflated out of all proportion...’
‘I don’t think I do.’
‘Well, it’s common knowledge that they don’t – sorry, didn’t – get on. There isn’t a party in London that Jeremy Frere isn’t at, and he usually accompanied, if you know what I mean.’
Loretta stared at the journalist, wondering what she was getting at. Was this an attempt to needle Loretta into revealing that Clara had enjoyed a lurid secret love life? She began to get up.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. As I said, I didn’t know Clara very well.’
‘If you’re sure ...’ Adela tailed off, not at all put out. If she made a habit of asking questions like this, Loretta thought, she must be used to being rebuffed. ‘While I’m here, there is one more thing...’ She stopped, her hand on the catch of the front door. ‘D’you happen to know the truth about all those rumours?’
‘Rumours?’
‘About Jeremy Frere’s gallery.’ She spoke as though Loretta was a wilfully stupid child. ‘You must have heard. They say it’s in a lot of trouble, last two exhibitions didn’t go very well. In fact’ – lowering her voice – ‘I’ve heard the Larry Schmidt stuff absolutely bombed. I mean, I’m not surprised. No one really goes for that brutal realism stuff any more, do they? You haven’t heard – aah! Get it off! Get it off!’
Loretta bent down and detached Bertie’s claws from the skirt of Adela’s suit. The cat wriggled and tried to regain his foothold, but Loretta held him tight.
‘Take it away, I can’t stand cats! Look what the wretched creature’s done to my dress! You ought to do something about it, it’s obviously dangerous!’
‘No, he isn’t,’ Loretta objected, picking up Bertie and hugging him. ‘He’s just choosy about his friends.’
Adela L’Estrange stared at her for a moment, then pulled open the door with a ‘hmmph’ of displeasure.
‘Sorry to have troubled you, I’m sure,’ she said, retreating down the path towards Baldwin’s. Loretta watched her pick her way across the lawn in her stilettos, pondering the remarks Adela had just made about Jeremy Frere’s financial situation. Only half an hour ago she had more or less ruled him out as a suspect on the grounds that he had money of his own. But if Adela’s information was correct, the situation now looked rather different.
Except – except that, if Jeremy Frere was involved in his wife’s murder, what had happened to Peggy? Loretta let the cat slip to the floor and returned to the chair she’d been sitting in. That Mick might have forced Peggy to leave with him was one thing; Jeremy Frere, on the other hand, had no reason to abduct her. If he had killed his own wife, why stop at someone else’s? Unless he was intending to use her as a hostage in the event of the police tracking him down? Loretta shook her head, embarrassed by these ridiculous thoughts. Casting Jeremy as a crazed kidnapper was just as ludicrous as her earlier theory that Clara was the victim of a political assassination. No, if Jeremy Frere was the killer – and there wasn’t a shred of evidence to suggest he was – then Peggy’s absence from the house must be coincidence.
Loretta suddenly felt very weak, and sat down. The sour smell of last night’s ruined meal was making her feel sick, and the walls of the small room seemed to be pressing in upon her. The feeling that she had to get out of the cottage was overwhelming, and her hand was on the catch of the front door before she stopped to consider where she might be going. What she needed, she told herself, was other people – somewhere she could blend in with the mass of humanity as it went about its everyday business. That, and food; lacking though her appetite was, it was now well over twenty-four hours since she’d eaten. Although the
rest she’d come to Oxfordshire to find was plainly out of the question, there was no point in neglecting her other bodily needs. Oxford couldn’t be more than six or seven miles away, and she’d certainly find plenty of people there – the city was notoriously over-crowded. And there was bound to be some sort of place where she could get food, even though it was getting towards the end of the lunch hour. She slipped briefly upstairs to pick up a jacket and returned to the kitchen to find her bag; a miaow from Bertie, who had positioned himself in front of the Aga just as he used to in Clara’s house, reminded her that she ought to stock up on cat food. It seemed unlikely that the police over in Baldwin’s would realize that the cat needed feeding.
She opened the front door, and immediately became aware of raised voices outside. She looked across in the direction of Baldwin’s and spotted a figure in the midst of an angry confrontation with a uniformed policeman. It took her only a moment to recognize Jeremy; seconds later he glanced towards the cottage and caught sight of her.
‘Can you believe it?’ He strode up the path towards her and stopped on the far side of her car. ‘They won’t let me into the house – my house, I might add, as Clara’s next of kin. What is this, a police state? I thought this was supposed to be a free country! They won’t even tell me how long they intend to lounge about in there, drinking my Laphroaig, I don’t doubt!’
He glared at her, spots of colour on his pale cheeks. It occurred to Loretta that he might have been drinking. Her initial feeling of guilt on being confronted with the object of her recent suspicions instantly evaporated; there had been no word from Jeremy about Clara, nothing about Loretta’s unhappy role in the previous night’s events, only this selfish tirade against people who were, after all, getting on with a rather unpleasant job.
‘I’m sure they won’t keep you out any longer than necessary,’ Loretta said coolly. ‘Is there anything in the house you need urgently? You could try asking them to bring it out to you.’