‘I’m sorry?’
‘I mean, I didn’t know her. She died shortly after I was born. Complications of some kind, I don’t know. My father didn’t talk much about it. He couldn’t. It really broke him up. He was very reserved, very suspicious in many ways. He came to the promised land, you see, fled his own country, and he was interned here when the war began, and mother died, and when he was released, he had a hell of a job getting hold of me to bring me up. He taught me to tread very softly, to suspect people’s motives, never to answer the door after dark, keep myself to myself …’
‘He didn’t teach you all that well!’ laughed James Dacre.
‘Oh, I’m sorry! I’m going on a bit, aren’t I? It must be the wine …’
‘Don’t be sorry! It’s interesting. So your family came from Austria? You must have had an interesting time chasing up relatives when you lived in Vienna?’
‘No,’ said Trudi. ‘I had no contacts there. My father made no effort himself after the war. Perhaps he reckoned that everyone was dead, I don’t know. As for my mother’s family, all I ever gathered about them was that they disapproved of my father. That was enough to condemn them in my eyes. If he had felt it best to close the book as far as the past went, I could see no reason to re-open it.’
‘Simple curiosity, perhaps?’ murmured Dacre. ‘Look, it’s getting a bit chilly. Why don’t we go inside? If the art doesn’t appeal perhaps we can get a cup of tea.’
Trudi heard herself saying, ‘Why not come home with me? I’m not much of a cook, but I can brew a cup of tea!’
He did not hesitate but said, ‘Thanks. I’d like that. If you’re sure …’
‘Of course I’m sure. It’s only a cup of tea!’
Before they had got out of the car park, she realized she was far from sure, not about the tea but the wisdom of inviting him back. They performed the journey into the suburbs almost in silence. As they approached the house, Dacre said, ‘I think you’ve got visitors.’
Trudi did not know whether to be annoyed or relieved as she recognized Janet’s green Escort in the driveway. Dacre parked by the kerb and Janet got out of her car and came to the gateway to meet them.
‘Hello Trudi,’ she said. ‘I was in Sheffield so I thought I’d just look in on my way home, see how you are.’
Her sharp eyes were quartering James Dacre as she spoke. She probably knows more about him in a single glance than I’ve found out in three meetings, thought Trudi resignedly.
She performed the introductions. Janet and Dacre shook hands. Now there was a short hiatus.
Well, she’s not going to diplomatically retire, thought Trudi. This time her feelings came down heavily for annoyance rather than relief.
‘Let’s go in, shall we?’ she said rather stiffly. ‘And I’ll make us all some tea.’
‘No, look, I was only going to have time for a quick cup anyway. I really ought to be off,’ said James Dacre.
‘Don’t let me chase you,’ said Janet, solidly planted in the driveway.
Trudi gave her a hard look and at least she had the grace to withdraw a couple of yards towards the house.
‘There’s no need to go,’ said Trudi.
‘Of course there isn’t,’ smiled Dacre. ‘I mean, there’s no need here. But I’m telling the truth. I would have had to make my excuses soon in any case.’
‘Well, thanks a lot,’ said Trudi.
‘No need to thank me. We went Dutch, remember? But it’s my treat next time, I insist.’
‘Next time?’
‘If that’s OK? I’ll be in touch.’
As if the literal meaning of his words had suddenly struck him, he leaned forward, brushed her lips with his, climbed into his car and was gone.
‘Come on, beauty. The prince’s kiss is supposed to wake you up, not put you to sleep!’
Trudi turned and said wearily, ‘Oh Janet, you know I like to see you but …’
‘But you wish I’d run under a juggernaut on the motorway? I’m sorry. Mind you, it’s just as well I was here, if you ask me. At it on the pavement like a pair of pooches already, what would you have been like in the hallway? No, seriously, I am sorry to butt in, but I had to see you. I’ve got it, see? Eric Blair’s address! What do you think of that?’
‘Come inside and I’ll tell you what I think,’ said Trudi.
Inside Janet explained. ‘Frank was taking me out to lunch today, but when I got to his office he’d had to go out on a valuation. While I was waiting, I got this idea. I rang the two main Sheffield branches of our mystery man’s bank, said I had an enquiry and gave the account number from the cheque card. First one said it wasn’t theirs, so I laughed and said “silly me!”. But the second said, yes, what was the query? I knew they wouldn’t just dish out information ad lib, so I said that Mr Blair had been into the office of the estate agent where I was assistant manager and put down a deposit on a property he was interested in. Unhappily within hours of his being here, complications had arisen. We needed to contact him urgently, but the stupid junior who had dealt with him in my absence hadn’t got his address. His cheque was the only clue. Could the bank help? They asked for my number and said they’d get back to me. I guessed they were checking it really did belong to an estate agent’s office. They were back on in five minutes, someone rather more important-sounding, saying that they too were eager to get in touch with Mr Blair. Nothing wrong? I said, all upset like I would be if I found I was holding a dud cheque. Oh no, on the contrary, they said. Mr Blair was a customer in very good standing, only a trifle elusive. Should I contact him before they did, perhaps I could urge him to get in touch. And his last known address on their records was …’
Here Janet waved a piece of paper triumphantly.
‘… Well Cottage, near Eyam, Derbyshire.’
She sat back, clearly ready to be overwhelmed in congratulations.
‘Eyam? What’s that?’ said Trudi.
‘It’s a village, idiot. Quite famous, really. Don’t you know anything? It’s the Plague village.’
‘Sounds charming.’
‘Stupid! It was three hundred years ago. The Great Plague was ravaging London. Someone brought it north to Eyam, probably in fleas in a bale of cloth. When the villagers realized it had broken out, they went into voluntary quarantine, no one in or out till the epidemic was over. They died in droves; whole families were wiped out. All so it wouldn’t spread all over the county.’
‘That was noble,’ said Trudi sincerely.
‘Yes, wasn’t it? But from our point of view the interesting thing is it’s only a couple of miles from Grindleford and hardly any distance at all from where Trent had his accident. I rang the local post office and they gave me directions. Look, I’ve got it marked on the map here. It’s outside the village, above it to the north, nice and isolated, it seems.’
She spread out a newly purchased Ordnance Survey sheet and stabbed her finger down on it.
‘That’s great, Jan,’ said Trudi without much conviction. ‘You’ve been very clever. But you could have told me all this on the phone.’
‘Still moping over your lost date, are you?’ said Janet. ‘You’d better get your priorities right! Yes I could have told you over the phone, but I couldn’t take you there, could I?’
‘Take me there? You mean, now?’ said Trudi aghast.
‘When else? Let the thought be father to the deed, that’s my motto. So get upstairs and bring those keys of Trent’s. Yes, keys, girl. To unlock doors with, remember? And better put your green wellies on! We’re going for a walk in the country!’
2
The drive to Eyam took less than half an hour, but it was almost dark when they arrived. The sky above was relatively clear but the sun had set early into a mountain range of cloud looming menacingly on the western horizon.
It was probably a charming little place, thought Trudi. But the chill twilight, the emptiness of the streets, the sense of exclusion she always got from lighted windows plus what Janet had to
ld her of the village’s tragic history, combined to make the clustering houses and winding ways forbidding and sinister.
They drew up in front of a church. The land rose behind it, dark and mysterious, so that the church, whose windows glimmered dimly, stood like a staging post to that gloomy hinterland.
‘We needn’t have come into the village,’ explained Janet. ‘But I thought it best to get our bearings proper. Don’t want to be banging on the wrong door, do we?’
‘You could have stopped somewhere more cheerful,’ said Trudi.
‘The church, you mean? It’s very interesting, that. You should take a look sometime. List of all those that died in the Plague. And the gravestones too, fascinating. Once drove over here with Alan and the kids when they were little. Had a picnic, I recall.’
‘You had family picnics in graveyards?’ said Trudi. ‘What did you do for birthday treats? Visit abattoirs?’
‘Easy,’ said Janet, looking at her curiously. ‘Don’t be so uptight.’
‘I’m sorry. I just don’t feel I want to do this, not at night anyway,’ replied Trudi, more vehemently than she intended.
‘No? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was bothering you so much,’ said Janet, immediately repentant. ‘You know me, I get carried away and I tend to carry everyone along with me! Look, let’s forget it for tonight anyway. I’m sure I spotted a Routiers sign back there. What about a drink, a spot of grub, then back home, and leave our exploring till the sun’s high in the sky?’
Trudi considered, then sighed and shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘All I’ll do is get a couple of drinks in me, then get brave and say, let’s go anyway! So we’ll end up wandering around when it’s pitch-dark and we’re full of Dutch courage. I’d rather go now, stone-sober, while there’s still a glimmer of light, and we’ll be finished while the pubs are still open!’
‘That makes sense,’ said Janet. ‘All right. I think I’ve got it now. Here we go!’
She doesn’t trust me with the map! thought Trudi rebelliously. On the other hand if, with a bit of luck, they got completely lost and had to abort the mission, it wouldn’t be her fault.
Her luck was out. With a rally driver’s panache and sense of direction, Janet sent the car rocketing out of the village up a steep hill. A twist of the wheel took them off the metalled surface on to what felt like a flight of worn concrete steps. They bounced along for several minutes, turned again on to even rougher terrain, then the car came to a halt with a seat belt-testing suddenness. Janet killed the lights.
‘Here we are,’ she said triumphantly.
Trudi looked out. They seemed to be parked close against a hedge under a tree which cut off what light remained in the sky. Of human habitation there was not a sign. Suddenly the glow of those windows in Eyam no longer seemed excluding but most welcoming.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘Here. Well Cottage.’
‘But where?’ said Trudi, helplessly.
‘A hundred yards further on,’ said Janet confidently. ‘I thought it best not to drive right up to the door. You never know. I did tell you to bring your wellies.’
‘Never know what?’ demanded Trudi nervously.
But Janet was already out of the car. She flashed a torch into Trudi’s face.
‘Come on,’ she said.
By the time they had walked the hundred yards, Trudi’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom. Her first glimpse of the cottage made her wish the adjustment had not taken place. It was a squat, single-storey building, crouched beneath a shading yew and flanked by thickets of briar. The rough stone walls were made even more blankly unwelcoming by the fact that all the windows were heavily shuttered. Painted dark brown, these shutters proved on examination not to be wood but metal, and quite impenetrable.
‘At least it means there’s no one at home,’ said Janet. ‘By God, he didn’t mean anyone to get in here, did he? Look at this door. You’d need a road drill to break through that! Good job I made you bring the keys.’
Trudi’s last hope was that the keys wouldn’t fit, but it proved vain. It took two of them to unlock the door, but all too soon it was swinging back on well-oiled hinges.
‘We’re in, Meredith!’ Janet proclaimed triumphantly. ‘Now let’s see what Mr Blair’s been up to in his little hidey-hole.’
The torch beam showed that the front door entered straight into a living room, sparsely furnished with a table, a wooden chair and one armchair.
‘Not exactly a love nest, is it?’
Trudi’s foot disturbed something. Looking down she saw a couple of envelopes which had dropped through the narrow letter box. She picked them up. They were both addressed to E. Blair.
‘Open them,’ commanded Janet.
One contained an electricity bill, long overdue for payment. The other was a letter from the bank in which the manager expressed his unease at such a large sum of money lying fallow in a current account and urged Mr Blair to get in touch.
‘Electricity, is there?’ said Janet. ‘Let’s see.’
She waved the torch around till she found a light switch, pressed it, and a bare bulb on a short frayed flex cast its unflattering light on the room.
There was another door in the wall to the left. It led into a narrow stone-flagged corridor, also lit by a bare bulb. Two more doors faced each other. One opened on to a small bedroom containing a metal bedstead with a thin mattress, the other on to a kitchen with an old pot sink, a cooker, a small kitchen table, a kitchen chair and, incongruous in such company, a large upright freezer on which a red light glowed like a watching eye.
Janet led the way back to the living room.
‘What now?’ said Trudi, oppressed by the place.
‘Let’s search,’ said Janet.
They searched. It didn’t take long, there was so little to search. The bedroom offered even less. They ended up once more in the kitchen. All that required looking into here were the drawers in the table and a cupboard under the sink.
Janet took the drawers. A wooden spoon, a plastic spatula, one knife, one fork.
‘He wasn’t planning on entertaining much,’ she said.
Trudi did not reply. In the sink she had found a pot, a mug and a teaspoon. Now she opened the cupboard. It had no shelves and contained four dully gleaming cylinders. She started as she looked inside.
‘Gas for the cooker,’ said Janet, kneeling beside her. ‘What did you think they were? Bombs?’
But Trudi wasn’t looking at the cylinders. On them rested a small saucepan, a tin of ground coffee and an old metal percolator. She reached inside and drew this out.
‘What is it?’ asked Janet.
‘It is – was – his,’ said Trudi dully. ‘This was Trent’s. He had it when we married. He always said it made better coffee than anything else we got. I didn’t even notice it was missing.’
The Welsh woman put her arm round her shoulders and squeezed hard.
‘Bastards,’ she said inclusively. ‘Come on. I don’t think there’s anything else for us here. I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll toss a few theories around.’
They stood up.
Trudi found herself strangely reluctant to leave without any real clue to what Trent had been up to here.
She said, ‘What about the freezer?’
‘What about it?’
‘If the electricity bill’s not paid, anything in there will go rotten when the current’s switched off.’
‘What are you suggesting? That we pile my boot up with frozen fish fingers and take them home?’
Trudi did not answer but went across to the freezer, pressed down the handle and pulled. The door did not budge.
‘He really was security conscious,’ said Janet. ‘Even protected his fish fingers. Come on, girl, let’s go.’
Obstinately, Trudi ignored her. She examined the bunch of keys she was carrying.
There was a small flat one. She inserted it into the freezer lock and turned it.
‘There,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I’ve done it.’
And pressed the handle and opened the door.
Who shrieked first was hard to say.
But Trudi certainly shrieked longest as the man standing inside the cabinet slowly reached out towards her and touched her with his icy hand.
Then, still shrieking, she flung herself aside as she realized he was not reaching but falling, stiff and solid, to crash full length against the stone-flagged floor.
3
‘We’ve got to tell the police,’ said Janet.
‘I suppose so,’ said Trudi.
They were on their second large Scotches and this was the third time they’d had this conversation, each time with less conviction, since they had fled from Well Cottage and driven madly down the hill back into Eyam. They had stopped at the first pub they had encountered. Neither of them could have given its name. It had been a pub, that was all, offering warmth, light, company, and Scotch.
‘Another?’ suggested Trudi.
‘I’m driving,’ said Janet. ‘Make it a small one.’
Trudi got the drinks.
‘We’ve got to tell the police,’ she said on her return.
‘I suppose so,’ said Janet.
‘Only …’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You know,’ said Janet, regarding her friend closely. ‘You’re a bit of a marvel. Here’s bold, brassy old me still shaking. While you …’
‘I’m still shaking inside,’ said Trudi in a low voice. ‘But it wasn’t so awful when … Well, to tell the truth, I thought it was Trent. When I saw him standing there, I thought it was Trent, come to get me. Once I realized it wasn’t, it was still terrible, but not as terrible as that. Am I making sense?’
‘What’s sense?’ wondered Janet. ‘You were saying, or at least I think you were trying to say, why we shouldn’t tell the police.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we should. I mean, of course we must!’
‘As good citizens? You’re right. Except that I’m a lousy citizen. But we’ve got to tell them. Only perhaps not straightaway.’
Death of a Dormouse Page 11