Ice House

by Walters, Minette

  "Fred's standing guard by the gates," said Phoebe. "It seems the press, have arrived in force. He's keeping them at bay."

  "That reminds me. Anne said to take the phone off the hook."

  Diana stood up and walked over to the mantelpiece, retrieving a dog-end from behind a clock there. She struck a match and lit the crumpled tip. "Already done." She squinted at the pathetic half-inch of tube and puffed inexpertly.

  Phoebe exchanged a glance with Jonathan and laughed. "I'll go and get a decent one from Anne's room," she said, pushing herself out of the sofa. "She's bound to have some lying around and I do hate to see you suffer." She left the room.

  Diana dropped the dog-end into the fireplace. "She's going to bring me one and I'm going to smoke it, and it'll be my second one today. Tomorrow it'll be three and so on till I'm hooked again. I must be mad. You're a doctor, Jon. Tell me not to."

  He walked over, mollified by her sudden need of him, and put an arm round her shoulders. "Not a doctor yet and you wouldn't take any notice of me anyway. How does it go? 'A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.' Smoke, if it helps. I'd say stress is just as bad for you as nicotine." It was like cuddling an older Elizabeth, he thought. They were so alike: in their looks, in their constant search for reassurance, in the ironic twist they gave to everything. It explained so well why they didn't get on.

  He squeezed her arm and let her go, moving back to the window. "Have all the police gone?"

  "Except for the ones at the Lodge, I think. Poor Molly. It'll take her months to get over having her long Johns inspected by the fuzz. She'll probably wash them all several times before she wears them again."

  "Lizzie will calm her ruffled feathers," he said.

  She gave his back a speculative glance. "Do you see much of Elizabeth in London?" she asked him.

  He didn't turn round. "On and off. We have lunch together sometimes. She works pretty antisocial hours, you know. She's in the casino till nearly dawn most nights." It was tragic, he thought, how much there was about a daughter you could never tell her mother. You couldn't describe the exquisite pleasure of waking at four in the morning to find her warm naked body rhythmically arousing yours. You couldn't explain that just to think about her made you horny or that one of the reasons you loved her was because, whenever you slipped your hand between, her thighs, she was wet with longing for you. Instead, you had to say you rarely saw her, pretend indifference, and the mother would never know of the fire her daughter could kindle. "I should think I see more of her down here," he said, turning round.

  "She doesn't tell me anything about her life in London," said Diana with regret. "I assume she gets taken out but I don't know and I don't ask."

  "Is that because you don't want to know or you think she wouldn't tell you?"

  "Oh, because she wouldn't tell me, of course," she said. "She knows I don't want her to repeat my mistake and marry too young. If she is serious about someone, I'll be the last one to know, and by then it'll be too late for me to urge caution. My own fault entirely," she said. "I quite see that."

  Phoebe came back and tossed an opened packet of cigarettes at Diana. "Would you believe they've left that child on guard in Anne's room? PC Williams, the one Molly's taken a shine to. He's had orders to stay there until further notice. Insisted on taking every one of these fags out to have a look at it." She crossed to the telephone and replaced the receiver. "I must have been out of my mind," she went on. "Jane's due in at Winchester some time this afternoon or evening. I told her to ring when she got there. We'll just have to put up with nuisance calls until we hear from her."

  With a grimace, Jonathan opened the French windows and stepped out on to the terrace. "I'm going to take the dogs for a walk. I think I'll try and find Lizzie. See you later." He put his fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle before setting off down the garden.

  Just then the telephone rang. Phoebe picked it up and listened for a moment. "No comment," she said, replacing the receiver. A few seconds later it began to ring again.

  Benson and Hedges cavorted around him, waggling their bottoms and barking, as if a walk was a rarity. He struck out towards the woodland between the Grange and Grange Farm, flinging a stick every now and then to please the scampering dogs. His direction took him past the ice house and he watched with distaste as they made a beeline for it, only to whine and scratch with frustration outside the sealed door. He went on, pausing regularly to turn and scan the way he had come, whistling to the dogs to keep up.

  When he reached the two-hundred-year-old oak, standing majestically in its clearing in the middle of the wood, he took off his jacket and sat down, relaxing his back into a natural concave in the wrinkled bark. He remained there for half an hour, listening, watching, until he was satisfied that the only witnesses to what he was about to do were dogs and wild creatures.

  He stood up, removed the envelope from inside his folded jacket and popped it through a narrow slit into a hollow in the oak's great trunk where a branch had died and been discarded in infancy. Only Jane, who had swarmed with him through the leafy panoply when they were children, knew the secrets of the hidey-hole.

  He whistled up the straying dogs and went back to the house.

  "Can I talk to you, darling?"

  Elizabeth, halfway up the stairs to her bedroom, looked reluctantly at her mother. "I suppose so." She had just got back from the Lodge and was tired and irritable. Molly's unspoken distress over the police search had upset her.

  "We'll leave it if it's riot a good time."

  Elizabeth came slowly down the stairs. "What's the matter?"

  "Everything." Diana gave a hollow laugh. "What isn't the matter? I could answer that more easily."

  Elizabeth followed her into their sitting-room. It was a room like Anne's, but with a very different character, less startling, more conventional, with a gold carpet and classic floral prints in tones of russet and gold at the windows and on the chairs. A dwindling sun fingered the colours with a mellow glow.

  "Tell me," said Elizabeth as she watched Jonathan cross the terrace with Benson and Hedges and disappear through Phoebe's French windows.

  Diana told her and, as the shadows lengthened, Elizabeth 's distress grew.

  Inspector Walsh glanced at his watch and, with an inward sigh, shouldered open the door of Interview Room Number Two. It was nine fifteen. He looked sourly from Anne to her solicitor.

  Bill Stanley was a great bear of a man with ungroomed ginger hair sprouting everywhere, even on his knuckles, and an air of shabbiness. From his card he was with a top London firm, no doubt earning a packet, so the black pinstriped suit, crumpled and frayed at the cuffs, was presumably some sort of statement—equality with the huddled masses, perhaps—although why he chose to wear it over a yellowed string vest, Walsh couldn't imagine. He made a mental note to check up on him. In thirty years of rubbing shoulders with the legal profession, he had never seen the like of B.R. Stanley, LLB. The card was probably a forgery.

  "You can go home now, Miss Cattrell. There's a car waiting for you."

  She gathered her bits and pieces together and stuffed them carelessly into her handbag. "And my other things?" she asked him.

  "They will be returned to you tomorrow."

  Bill unfolded himself from his chair, stretched his huge hands to the ceiling and yawned. "I can take you home, if you'd prefer it, Anne."

  "No, it's late. You get back to Polly and the children."

  He straightened his shoulders and the snap as the bones locked into place was loud in the small room. "This is going to cost you an arm and a leg, my girl—it's goodbye to fifty quid every time I draw breath, remember—so what do you say? Shall we sue? I'm game." He beamed. "We're embarrassed for choice really. Harassment, abuse of police powers, damage to your professional reputation, loss of self-esteem, loss of earnings. I always enjoy litigation cases when I've had a chance to see both teams in action."

  Her eyes gleamed. "Would I
win?"

  "Good lord, yes. I've hit the opposition for six off far stickier wickets."

  Walsh, who had found Bill's wisecracks increasingly irritating, spluttered angrily. "The law is not a joke, Mr. Stanley. I regret any inconvenience Miss Cattrell may have suffered, but in the circumstances I don't see that we could have acted any differently. It was her choice to have you present while she answered questions and, frankly, had it not taken you three hours to get here, this could all have been dealt with very much more quickly."

  "Couldn't make it any sooner, old man," said Bill, poking a finger through his string vest and scratching his bear-hairy chest. "My day for child-minding. Can't abandon the brood to their own devices. They'd slaughter each other the minute I was out of the house. Mind you, you might have a point. Don't relish accusations of sloppiness floating around in open court." He gave Anne's shoulder a friendly squeeze with his great paw. "I'll give you a discount. It's less fun but probably more sensible."

  Walsh gobbled furiously. "I've a damn good mind to charge you both with wasting police time."

  Laughter shook the solicitor's huge frame as he opened the door for Anne and ushered her out. "No, no, Inspector. I do the charging. Indecent, isn't it? I win whichever way you look at it." He escorted her to the front door where a police car was waiting, took her face in his hands and bent to whisper in her ear. "That little farce is going to cost you fifty smackers to one of the AIDS charities, plus an explanation."

  She patted his cheek. "I needed someone to hold my hand," she told him.

  He grunted his amusement. "Bollocks! I'd have been angry if I hadn't wanted to find out what the hell was going on and if I hadn't been waiting for a chance to meet that bastard Walsh." The smile faded from his voice. "Give me a ring tomorrow and I'll come down and talk to the three of you. Murder is a dangerous game. Anne, even for the spectators. It's too easy to get dragged in. Phoebe knows that better than anyone." He put his hand on her bottom and propelled her towards the car. "Give her my love, and Diana too." He waved goodbye, then walked to his own car and set off back to London and his weekly nightshift in a shelter for the homeless.

  Andy McLoughlin lingered in his car on the other side of the road. It was parked in the twilight zone between two pools of orange lamplight and he had seen without being seen. His hands shook on the steering wheel. God, he needed a drink. Had she kissed him? It was difficult to be sure. Did it matter anyway? It was their easy understanding, the way their bodies had leant against each other in uncomplicated friendship that had rocked him. He didn't want her loved. He eased himself out of the car and went inside in search of Walsh. "How did it go?"

  The Inspector was standing at his office window, glowering into the night. "Did you see them? They've just gone."

  "No."

  "Damned solicitor took three hours to get here, arrived sporting a filthy string vest and looking like the hairy man of Borneo. Matter of fact, I'm highly doubtful about his credentials." He took out his pipe. "You were quite right, Andy. It was beef blood. We were being had. Why?"

  McLoughlin lowered himself into a chair. "A diversion. To draw you away from the rest of the house."

  Walsh walked back to his desk and sat down. "Possibly. In that case it didn't work. There wasn't a stone left unturned by the time we'd finished." There was a long silence before he tapped his pipe on a sheaf of letters in front of him. "Jones found this little lot in Mrs. Goode's studio." He pushed the papers towards McLoughlin and waited while the Sergeant skimmed through them. "Interesting, don't you think?"

  "Did Jonesy question her about them?"

  "Tried to. She said it was none of his business, that she'd got her fingers burnt and preferred to forget it, certainly had no intention of answering questions on the matter." He fingered tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. "When he told her he would have to take the letters, she lost her temper and tried to snatch them back." There was a twinkle of amusement in his eye as he lit the tobacco and sucked in warm smoke. "Two PCs had to restrain her while he removed them to his car."

  "And I thought she was the least volatile of the three. What about Mrs. Maybury?"

  "Good as gold. She took herself off to the greenhouse and spent most of the afternoon rooting Pelargonium cuttings while we turned her house inside out and found nothing." Noises of succulent contentment puttered from his mouth. "I've detailed a couple of lads to tout those shoes round the menders. It's a long shot but someone might remember re-heeling them. I don't care what Mrs. Thompson says—let's face it, she's so damn cuckoo she wouldn't recognise her own reflection if it didn't have a halo round it—those shoes are the missing Daniel's. Size eight and brown. Too much of a coincidence."

  McLoughlin forced his pricking eyes to stay open as he reread the top letter. It was undated and very brief. "Monday. My dear Diana, Of course I regret what's happened, but my hands are tied. If it will help I can come out on Thursday to discuss the position with you. Yours ever, Daniel." The address was Larkfield, East Deller, and scored across the page in angry writing was: "Meeting confirmed." The previous letter, a carbon copy of a demand from Diana for an up-to-date statement of Daniel Thompson's business, was dated Friday, 20th May.

  "So when did he go missing?"

  "Thursday, twenty-fifth of May," said Walsh with satisfaction, "the very day he had arranged an appointment with Mrs. Goode."

  "So why didn't you bring her in with Miss Cattrell?"

  "I can only cope with one at a time, lad. She'll keep another twelve hours. At the moment I'm rather more interested in why Miss Cattrell went to such extraordinary lengths to get herself brought in for questioning. Any ideas?"

  McLoughlin looked at the floor and shook his head.

  Chapter 14

  Anne was dog-tired. Her body had been pumping adrenaline for several hours, exciting her brain, racing her heart, keeping her at a peak of almost intolerable stimulation. Her reaction when she sank into the back of the warm police car was immediate and total. She fell asleep, upright at first but ending in a flat ungainly sprawl along the length of the seat when the driver took a bend too fast. Thus, the photographers outside the unlit gates of Streech Grange missed the picture they had been waiting for: Murder Enquiry—Journalist In Questioning Drama. They had seen too many police cars come and go to be interested in one without a passenger. Fred, sitting doggedly on an old deckchair at the padlocked gates, was not so easily fooled. He let the car in, satisfied himself with a momentary flash of his torch that it contained Anne, then with a sigh of relief resumed his seat. His clutch was safely in the nest. When the police car had gone he could retire to bed.

  Barely awake, Anne let herself in through the front door and staggered sleepily across the carpet. Outside, with a new passenger in the shape of PC Williams, now relieved from guard duty, the police car grated away across the gravel. Anne leaned against the wall for a moment to collect her scattered wits. Behind Phoebe's door, she heard the warning bark of the dogs. The next moment, Jane Maybury precipitated herself into the hall and flung herself on her godmother. Together, they collapsed in a heap on the floor where Anne lay, eyes closed, and trembling.

  "My God," said Jane, turning to her mother who had appeared in the doorway behind her, "there's something wrong with her. Jon!" she shrilled with alarm. "Come quick. Anne's ill."

  "I'm not ill," said the shaking body, opening its eyes. "I'm laughing." She sat up. "God, I am knackered. Get off me, you great dollop," she said, giving the girl a kiss, "and get me a brandy. I'm suffering severe post-interrogation trauma."

  Phoebe hauled her to her feet and marched her into the drawing-room while Jane fetched a brandy. Anne folded happily on to the sofa and beamed about her. "What's the matter? You all look as if you've been sucking lemons."

  Diana pulled a face. "We've been worried sick, you idiot."

  "You should have more faith," said Anne sternly, accepting the brandy from Jane. "And how's my goddaughter?" She examined the girl circumspectly while she warmed her glass.
<
br />   Jane smiled. "I'm fine." She was still too thin but Anne was pleased to see that her face had filled out and lost some of its tension.

  "You look it," she agreed.

  Phoebe turned to Jonathan. "Shall we have that celebration we promised ourselves?"

  "Sure thing. I'll raid the cellar. What does anyone fancy? Chateau Lafite '78 or those last bottles of the '75 Champagne? Anne, you choose."

  "The Lafite. Champagne on top of brandy will make me puke."

  He looked questioningly at his mother. "Shall I drive down and get Fred and Molly to join us? It hasn't been much fun for them either."

  Phoebe nodded. "Good idea." She held out a hand to Elizabeth who was sitting slightly apart on the tapestry stool. "You go too, Lizzie darling. Molly can say no to all of us, and does regularly, but she won't refuse you." She looked pointedly at Jonathan.

  "Come on," he said. "You, too, Jane." They went out.

  Phoebe walked over to the mantelpiece. "I wish David had never used the cellar for storing his wretched imports."

  Anne sniffed her brandy. "Why? I bless his memory for it regularly."

  "Exactly," agreed Phoebe dryly, "so do I. It's very upsetting." She glanced at Diana. "Lizzie's worried about something. Is it Molly and Fred?"

  "No. I'm afraid it's me."

  "Why?"

  Diana attempted a laugh which didn't work. "Because I told her I'd be the next one in the police mincing machine." She swung to face Anne. "Why did they take you in?"

  "They found the safe and it had some incriminating evidence in it." Anne chuckled into her brandy. "A bloody carving-knife, wrapped in a bloody rag." She stirred her glass in her hands, warming it. "It was straight out of Enid Blyton, but they all got very excited and I refused to answer any more questions till Bill arrived."

  "You're mad," said Phoebe decidedly. "What on earth were you up to?"

  Mischief lit Anne's dark eyes. "To tell you the truth, I didn't think they'd find the safe, and if it hadn't been for the Sergeant, they wouldn't have done." She shrugged. "Hell, you know me. I always put in an insurance policy, just in case."