by Granger, Ann
‘Petra’s forgiven him,’ Kit said bleakly.
‘I know.’
‘She told you?’ Kit stared at her.
‘No, she doesn’t have to tell me. I know my child.’ Mary Stapleton sipped her coffee. ‘Will you have a piece of my fruitcake? I must say it turned out rather well. Sometimes they sink in the middle, but this one didn’t.’
‘Is all this,’ Kit asked in a low, tight voice, ignoring the invitation, ‘what you told the copper who came to see you?’
‘I was going to tell you about that, wasn’t I?’ Her mother had got up to fetch the battered old cake tin that Kit remembered so well. It had a Victorian Christmas scene on the lid, much scraped and faded now. It showed carol singers standing knee-deep in snow. How long ago childhood seemed and how carefree.
‘His name was Stubbs,’ her mother continued, returning with the tin. ‘Detective Constable Stubbs, like the artist. You know, the one who painted all those horses. He was plain-clothes, the detective, I mean. He was a very nice young man and, by a stroke of luck, I’d not long taken this cake out of the oven. He ate two pieces, even though it was still a bit warm. I hope it didn’t give him indigestion.’
‘And you told him you had nothing but kind thoughts about Gervase, and didn’t make up any nasty notes threatening him harm,’ Kit said crossly. ‘Sorry, Mum, but really, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the only person left who sees Gervase for the waste of space he is!’
‘If you’d spoken like that to the police, they would have thought you’d concocted that note!’ her mother said crisply. ‘Although I like to think that neither I, nor you, would ever have done anything so pretty and vicious. We know now it was Muriel Pickering responsible for all of it. That did shock me. But if you thought Gervase had a bad childhood, well, you never knew old Major Pickering. He was a tyrant. But for Muriel to behave as she did … I can’t bear to think of her striking down that young man and lighting the fire.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘She was always an unhappy woman and she let it eat into her, with what terrible results!’
‘All right, all right,’ said Kit, ‘I do get the message.’
Her mother smiled. ‘How is the cake?’
‘Very good, one of the best you’ve done in a long time.’
‘Yes, I thought so.’
After a pause Kit said sadly, ‘I wish Muriel had let well alone and not done the horrible things she did. I wish the fire hadn’t brought Gervase back; and now I wish he’d just go back to Portugal.’
Her mother looked at her downcast eyes and miserable face. ‘I dare say he will, if he has no reason to stay here. But before he does, do think about making your peace with him, Kit, won’t you?’
Chapter 23
For a brief time Gervase had the Foscott house to himself. Serena had collected Charlie from school and taken her into Cheltenham to keep a dental appointment. Reggie was at work. Gervase had switched on the fake log fire in the hearth to boost the inadequate central heating and draped himself over the chesterfield to tackle the Daily Telegraph crossword. When he heard a car draw up outside he thought that, now Serena had come back unexpectedly early, her first action on entering the room would be to turn off the fake logs, just when the additional heating was beginning to make some impression on the atmosphere. He folded the Daily Telegraph with a sigh, slid off the chesterfield and went to the window.
When he saw Kit getting out of her car he blinked, at first unable to credit his eyes. Then he went to pull open the front door as she approached.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hello,’ said Kit, standing rigidly some four feet away as if at the barrier marking an exclusion zone. ‘I came to see how you are.’
‘I’m fine and I’m not contagious. Won’t you come in?’
Kit sidled past him into the hall and halted there.
He stood back and gestured towards the room he’d quitted. ‘I’ve managed to get one spot in this fridge of a house just about warm enough for human existence.’
‘OK,’ said Kit, and followed him to the dusty drawing room. She sat down awkwardly on a chair and it twanged under her.
‘All Serena’s furniture is like that,’ said Gervase. ‘Would you like a drop of Reggie’s whisky? It’s decent malt. One of his clients must have given it to him.’
‘I’m driving. Well, all right. Just a small one, lots of water,’ Kit said. ‘Thank you.’
As she accepted the tumbler he handed her, she repeated her enquiry after his health.
‘I’m all right,’ he told her, retaking his seat on the chesterfield and slouching back. ‘My head’s still sore but there’s no damage to anything that matters, no brain damage. I suppose you’ll tell me there’s not a lot of brain there to harm.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Kit said crossly. ‘And don’t make me angry because I’ve come here to be pleasant!’
‘I look forward to it,’ said Gervase with a smile.
But his eyes were sad, and Kit saw it. She thought ruefully that she probably wouldn’t have seen it, before her talk with her mother. She would just have thought he was being flippant again. Whereas he was protecting himself in the only way he could. Mum is right and he’s wretched. Well, he should be! Damn! cursed Kit silently. Damn, damn, damn it all!
Then she thought, but so am I wretched, and it’s getting us nowhere. Mum and Petra are right about that, too.
Aloud she said, ‘Petra and my mother both think I should bury the hatchet – and no jokes about that, please, either.’ She sipped her whisky and water.
‘Suits me,’ Gervase said. ‘But it’s no use saying you forgive me if you don’t … because it won’t work, Kit. You were always the most honest of beings and lying doesn’t become you.’
‘I didn’t say I forgave you. And I’ve got a question for you before we can discuss this any further.’
‘Go ahead,’ he urged when she fell silent again and stared into her glass.
‘Did you really ever think I set fire to Key House?’ Kit raised her eyes to his surprised face. ‘You did ask at The Royal Oak if I knew who did it. Then, when we were at Petra’s cottage, you asked if I’d pushed that stupid note under your door.’
Gervase had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Yes, I did. That upset Petra, didn’t it.’
‘It upset me, you idiot!’ Kit burst out, leaning forward. ‘Did you really imagine me concocting anonymous letters or, even worse, creeping round with a box of matches? Perhaps you thought I’d killed that poor man, too?’
‘No, no! Of course I didn’t. Look.’ Gervase put down his glass to hold up both hands, palms outwards, in a gesture of appeasement. ‘I asked you to be honest with me and I’ll be honest with you. When Reggie first informed me of the fire – when I was still in Portugal – I did, just for a mad minute or two, wonder if you’d finally taken revenge. I never thought you’d killed anyone. I was never crazy enough even to imagine you might kill me! If Pietrangelo had been attacked by someone else earlier, you could have lit the fire without realising he was lying unconcious in the building. The place was used by dropouts. Perhaps you hadn’t seen him …’ Gervase let the sentence trail away as it was obvious every word made things worse.
‘Great!’ returned Kit through gritted teeth.
‘But as soon as I saw you again, when you walked into the lounge at The Royal Oak to tell me off for calling on Petra, I knew you were the same Kit as ever was, and you hadn’t done it.’
‘You still asked if I’d written the letter, in front of my sister!’ she accused him.
‘Well, all right, I still asked about that although of course I knew it wouldn’t be your style. I told Campbell you wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Oh? Discussed it with her? Was I top of her list?’
‘No – how do I know? I just said to her she could count out the Stapleton family.’
‘Mum too?’ Kit’s face had turned an alarming shade of red.
Gervase held up his hands placatingly. ‘Do calm
down, you look as if you’re going to throw some sort of fit. I agree it was stupid of me to ask you about the letter in front of Petra. As you are fond of reminding me, I do stupid things. But I’m not going to be like Poppy Trenton, apologising to anyone who will listen for a careless remark to Muriel Pickering. I shouldn’t have asked you but I still, somehow, wanted to hear you say you hadn’t done it. Call it a desire for reassurance. Call it whatever you like. I’m not going to go on apologising for that.’
There was a silence. ‘And the crash that put my sister in a wheelchair or forces her to creep round on crutches? Is that also to be written off as another piece of stupidity?’
‘No!’ Gervase said savagely. ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot, Kit! That’s entirely different. There isn’t a day of my life—’ He broke off.
After a moment Kit said quietly, ‘I do realise that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said just then.’
‘I should have said this, you shouldn’t have said that – are we going to continue this conversation on those lines indefinitely?’ Gervase asked crisply. ‘Because if so, it will be extremely boring, get us nowhere, and you are going to have to manage it by yourself, one sided.’
‘No. But any other conversation will have to mean both of us trying to understand.’
‘Put your cards on the table, Kit,’ Gervase invited. ‘Let’s see what I’m supposed to try about.’
‘Fine. It isn’t just about realising how you feel or my forgiving you. My problem is that I can’t forget, Gervase!’ Kit burst out wildly. ‘How is that possible when I see my sister every other day, and even if she has forgiven you? I suppose you might say, if she is the injured party and she’s found it in her heart … then I, as a mere bystander, ought to find it in mine. But it’s somehow easier to forgive than to forget.’
‘Neither can I forget,’ Gervase told her. ‘So what do we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ whispered Kit miserably. ‘I want everything to be as it was once, but one can’t go back, can one?’
‘One can go forward,’ Gervase said, after a moment.
‘That’s what my mother and Petra keep telling me. It’s not that I don’t want to do that. I will try. Truly, Gervase, I will. But I find it very hard. It’s like crawling up an icy rock face and slipping back down all the time.’
After a moment he asked quietly, ‘Do you hate me?’
‘No, I don’t hate you.’ Kit sounded tired. ‘I thought I did once, because I was so furious. But I don’t. I don’t want us to be enemies, or go on fighting. If that’s burying the hatchet, then consider it buried. But to be friends again as we were … Much as I want that, how can we get there?’ She raised a sorrowful face to his.
‘I’m glad at least you don’t hate me. I’ve never wanted us to be enemies, Kit, God knows, quite the reverse. Can we call a truce, start again from there?’ Gervase raised his eyebrows in question and, a couple of seconds later, his whisky tumbler.
‘We can start from there,’ said Kit after a moment, and joined in raising her tumbler in salutation to whatever future lay ahead.
Of all places to eat, thought Carter, those located in motorway service stations, though no doubt offering an excellent opportunity to rest and refresh oneself, remained probably the least inviting to the eye. The arrangement for returning Millie to her mother was that he would bring his daughter here, a convenient halfway point between their places of residence, and Sophie would collect her in a ceremonial handover. He and Millie had arrived early and Mille had demanded a burger. So now Carter sat gazing over a sea of plastic table tops, with a cup of tea in front of him, while Millie ate her burger and chips. From time to time she offered him a chip. But then, she’d also offered MacTavish a chip. MacTavish was propped against a menu card and gazed at the scene in his usual critical fashion. You and I, MacTavish, Carter mentally addressed the bear, are probably in agreement for the first and only time. Make the most of it.
He ought to be making the most of the last fifteen or twenty minutes he was able, if lucky, to spend with Millie until her next visit. But as usual he was stuck for something to say to her. It wasn’t that there was nothing he wanted to say, but he couldn’t find the way. At a nearby table sat a family of five, all of whom looked as if they had eaten nothing but burger and chips for their entire lives, and who were managing to tuck into yet more, while conducting a lively discussion at the same time. It was more of an argument than a discussion, perhaps, but they were communicating.
‘I hope you haven’t been bored, Millie,’ he said now, avoiding MacTavish’s beady gaze. ‘I’m sorry I had to go to work and leave you with Auntie Monica. But you like her, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Millie. She stopped eating to suck at the straw sticking out of her milkshake. ‘Did the old woman really kill that man?’
‘You’ve been watching it all on local television news, I suppose?’
Millie nodded enthusiastically. ‘I thought that man, Gervase, had done it. But then the old woman tried to kill him as well. Are you sure that man Gervase didn’t kill anyone?’
‘I’m sure, Millie.’
Gervase left someone in a wheelchair for life, thought Carter. His actions as a young man probably set Muriel on the path to murder. But he hadn’t killed anyone. He’d messed up lives, including his own. Perhaps the best you could say was that he hadn’t killed outright.
Muriel might have taken the path to murder anyway. One couldn’t overlook the sudden demise of the tyrannical Major Pickering, found floating in the river with his fishing rod beside him. Not difficult to creep up behind him and give him a good shove. But that was the secret of a successful murder: no one ever suspects it. Or not until thirty years later when there’s no evidence and speculation is all it can remain. Perhaps it planted a seed of confidence in Muriel’s mind. You can do it and get away with it. If she did, of course, push her old dad into the river. He must put that idea out of his head. No evidence, Superintendent Carter! he told himself sternly. No hard evidence, no investigation. Only in books do detectives have the time and funds to chase down hunches.
‘There’s Mummy’s car!’ announced Millie, pointing past him towards the plate-glass window.
Carter turned round and saw a blue Mazda easing its way into a parking slot.
‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘We’d better go out and meet her.’
‘I’ve finished,’ said Millie. She scrambled to her feet, collected MacTavish and her pink tote bag and trotted beside him out into the car park.
Carter was carrying her suitcase. He saw Sophie getting out of her car and at the same time felt Millie’s small hand slip into his free one. He looked down at her and they exchanged smiles.
‘Hello, darling,’ exclaimed Sophie, swooping on Millie and hugging her. ‘Hi, Ian, everything OK?’ They exchanged chaste pecks on cheeks.
‘Everything’s fine,’ he told his ex-wife.
‘Daddy’s been investigating a murder!’ Millie announced gleefully.
‘Oh, really?’ That twitch of Sophie’s right eyebrow that Carter remembered so well.
‘Always something happening in the world of crime!’ he said cheerfully.
‘So I discovered.’ Sophie’s voice was icy now.
‘But Millie had great fun with Aunt Monica, didn’t you?’ he asked his daughter.
‘Oh yes. I thought I knew who the murderer was. He was staying at a hotel near Auntie Monica’s cottage. But it wasn’t him, after all, it was an old woman. She tried to kill the man I thought was the murderer. He looked like a murderer.’ Millie paused and added regretfully, ‘I met him; but I didn’t meet the real one.’
‘Let’s be thankful for small mercies,’ Sophie said.
‘She learned all about it on the local television news,’ Carter explained. ‘I didn’t talk about it with her.’
‘I’m sure. Well, we must be off. Thank you for taking care of her at such short notice.’
‘Any time. She is my daughter.’ He heard his voice harden
and added hurriedly, ‘My good wishes to Rodney. Was New York fun?’
‘Oh, yes, thanks. It was well worth it. Rodney had lots of meetings. Come along, Millie.’
Carter kissed his child goodbye and watched her led to her mother’s car. As she was scrambling into the back seat, he heard her voice clearly floating towards him.
‘And Daddy’s got a girlfriend. Her name is Jess.’
Sophie straightened up and turned to look at him.
He waved a hand from side to side signalling, he hoped, that this wasn’t so. All he got was another twitch of that right eyebrow.
‘And she’s a police inspector …’ were the last words he heard from Millie as the car door was closed smartly on her.
It was Tom at the door of her flat again.
‘Now what?’ asked Jess unkindly. ‘You can come in provided you’re not going to ask me to solve all the problems of your love life.’
‘Haven’t got one any more,’ said Tom simply, taking her words as an invitation to enter. ‘Madison has dumped me. Well, she’s made up her mind to take the research post in Australia and until she leaves, she’s going to be far too busy to make time for me.’
‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ Jess said contritely. ‘I shouldn’t have been so unkind to you. I’m really sorry, too, that things didn’t work out between you and Madison.’
‘I’ve got over it,’ said Tom. ‘It’s been a learning curve. I am not indispensable in Madison’s life, or in any other female’s, but I do hope I still have you as a friend.’ He looked at her hopefully.
‘Of course you do.’
‘Good,’ said Tom, ‘then let’s go out for a curry.’