‘Your room I think,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to be tickled to death.’
There were no physical fireworks and the earth didn’t move, but when they finally drew apart, the residual headache had completely vanished and she felt a glow of relaxed well-being she had not known for months. Perhaps for years.
‘OK?’
He wasn’t asking for compliments, she realized, merely commenting on her self-absorption.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I imagined this, you know.’
‘Imagined?’
‘When you said you’d pick me up last night. I started to imagine this.’
‘And did it live up to your fantasies?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said gravely. ‘I stopped myself imagining. It didn’t seem decent. But it feels good. Yes, at the moment I feel so good I’ve no room to feel guilty.’
‘What have you got to feel guilty about?’ he wondered.
‘Oh nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing special, I mean. But I know myself. Or at least I’m getting to know myself. And eventually I’ll start thinking about Trent and then I’ll feel guilty.’
She giggled, a sound almost as unexpected to herself as to Dacre.
‘What’s funny?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. This was my first time at this, you see, and it just struck me that probably rule number one is, don’t start talking about your husband two minutes after your lover has just, well, finished.’
He considered.
‘No. That’s rule number two.’
‘And what’s number one?’
‘Make quite sure that your lover has in fact finished before you start talking at all!’
It was corny, but when he embraced her again she realized it was true. This time their coupling pushed her far beyond well-being towards something fiercer, a journey she had begun to make that time with Trent on their last picnic in the Vienna woods. Perhaps if she had made that journey sooner, broken the pattern of domination and submission in bed at least, perhaps then they might have … Downstairs the doorbell rang.
‘Damn!’ she cried. ‘Why do policemen have to start so early?’
She sprang out of bed. It was absurd but she felt sure that Workman would pick the lock or smash the door down if she didn’t open it, and come running up to the bedroom in search of her. Dragging on her dressing gown she ran down the stairs. The bell was still ringing. Workman must be leaning on the button.
Bloody man! she thought, but not very angrily. She was feeling too good to be angry, too good to worry that she probably looked a mess.
No, not a mess. She probably looked like a woman who’d just got out of bed with a passionate man, and she found she didn’t care about that either.
She made herself slow down in the hallway. The bell stopped ringing as she started to unlock the door. Through the frosted glass panel she could see the outline of only one figure. Perhaps the Austrian had gone home.
She composed her face into an unwelcoming blank and began to open the door. The second the catch was free, the door was thrust back towards her with great force and a figure rushed in, forcing her sideways against the wall.
‘Where is she? Come on! Where is she?’
It was Frank Carter, his amiable face distorted with anger.
‘Frank! What’s the matter? What’s happened?’ she cried.
He did not answer but regarded her with an expression of disgust. She realized her dressing gown had fallen open and now she drew it tightly around her as Carter turned and, crying, ‘Janet! Janet! Are you there?’ went running up the stairs.
Doors opened and banged shut. Then suddenly there was silence.
Distantly she heard James Dacre’s voice say quietly but menacingly, ‘Can I help you, friend?’
A moment later, Carter came down the stairs, his anger clearly unabated.
‘What’s the matter, Frank? Has something happened to Jan?’ demanded Trudi fearfully.
‘Bitch,’ he said, ‘You came back into her life, that’s what happened. Bitch!’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Trudi. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Yes, why don’t you tell the lady what’s going on?’
James Dacre had slipped into his trousers and shirt and was halfway down the stairs, moving with great quietness for a bulky man.
‘Who the hell are you anyway?’ sneered Carter.
‘Frank, this is James Dacre, a friend of mine. James, this is Frank Carter, my friend Janet’s husband. Frank, where’s Janet?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ he demanded. ‘She walked out last night. I was sure she’d be here.’
‘What happened, Frank? Why did she walk out?’
The anger was beginning to slip from him, not because he wanted it to go, but because he did not have the kind of emotional machinery which could sustain a high head of rage for long. Twice he had spanned himself to fury point, once the previous night and again this morning. But the lasting imprint on his inner being was bewilderment and shock.
‘We quarrelled,’ he said. ‘She left.’
‘Why? What did you quarrel about? Why did you think she was here?’
‘Because of this,’ he snapped.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. From it he took a photograph and handed it to Trudi, reverse side upwards.
On it was scribbled, ‘What do you think your old lady gets up to when she visits her slag chum in Sheffield?’
Trudi turned the photograph over and looked at it.
Immediately she was back to the previous night with the air thickening and eddying round her reeling head like mist round a ruined tower. This time she forced herself back to light through the darkness, though leaning back against the wall for its needed support.
The photograph came back into focus.
It showed Janet, naked, leaning forward across a bed, her face twisted with pleasure but still instantly recognizable. Behind her, and apparently entering her from behind, was a naked man.
His face appearing over her shoulder was even more contorted with delight, but it was just as easily recognizable.
It was Trent Adamson.
3
It took surprisingly little time to convince Carter that Trudi knew nothing of Janet’s whereabouts. Just as violent rage was too foreign to his make-up to be sustainable for long, so the need for the comfort of sympathetic conversation was too strong to be long denied.
They sat and drank coffee round the kitchen table and Carter talked.
‘It came second post so I didn’t get it till I got home last night. Janet was out. She goes to a townswomen’s group on Mondays. So she says.’
He looked at his listeners with the dark-ringed bitterness of a man into whose life doubt has just come.
‘I just sat looking at the photo from time to time. I couldn’t believe it, you see. I’d just sit and have a drink and after a while it didn’t seem possible, then I’d take it out and have another look, and then it started all over again!
‘She came home after nine. I’d drunk quite a lot. I’m not a big drinker.’
He glanced at Trudi as if for confirmation. She nodded and said, ‘No, you’re not.’
‘I started soon as she got in. I asked her where she’d been, who she’d been with. I was yelling. Pretty soon she was yelling back. You know Janet.’
He fell silent for a moment as if studying that assertion.
‘I said … all kinds of things. I told her I should’ve known that only dirty tarts would let themselves get picked up through a dating agency.’
He passed his hand over his face. Trudi felt Dacre glance towards her at this revelation, but she did not meet his eyes. She was watching Carter who was now fingering the photograph, face down on the table, as if to draw the strength of self-justification from it.
‘She said I must be having a brainstorm and she was going to ring the doctor.
‘Then I showed her the photo.
‘It was a real shock to h
er, I could see that. She went white. She didn’t say anything. I yelled at her. She still didn’t speak. I hit her.’
He looked at the palm of his right hand as if it didn’t belong to him.
‘That’s when she left. I heard the car drive away. I just sat and drank some more. It got to midnight. She hadn’t come back. I knew she wasn’t going to come back. I wanted to know where she was. I was …’
His face screwed up in the effort of recalling his feelings.
‘I was worried,’ he said. ‘I was angry. I felt sick. I wanted to know that she was OK, I wanted to yell at her some more, I wanted to … I wanted to hear her say it was all a mistake. Not her. A fake. I don’t know …
‘Anyway, all I could think of was, she might be here. With you. Because of what it said on the back of the photo.’
His fingers touched the message.
Trudi said, ‘Did Jan see what was written there?’
‘What? I don’t know. Maybe. Perhaps not though. I don’t think she turned it over. What’s it matter? I looked up your number. It was in the address book by the telephone. And I tried to ring. All I got was the engaged signal. I tried for an hour. Nothing!’
Trudi glanced at Dacre who said, ‘It was me. I left the phone off the hook. Didn’t want to risk you being disturbed.’
Then in his stern voice, he added to Carter, ‘Mrs Adamson was ill last night. The doctor said she had to rest.’
Carter regarded him indifferently.
‘Is that so? I tried again at six this morning. Still engaged. So I thought I’d come and see for myself. I just wanted to talk.’
‘Yes, you looked and sounded like a man who just wanted to talk,’ said Dacre ironically. ‘Well, now you’ve searched the house and talked to Mrs Adamson, I hope you’re happy that she knows nothing about your wife’s whereabouts or indeed any of this business.’
He tapped the photo with his index finger. Carter looked up from it to Trudi who said, ‘Honestly, Frank, there’s been nothing like that when Jan visited me. Nothing.’
‘She’s stayed the night often enough. Last Friday she rang up and said she was staying with you. Did she?’
‘Oh yes. That’s right.’
‘And what did you do that night, eh?’ he asked harshly.
We went to Eyam and found a body, thought Trudi.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘We just sat and talked. Really, Frank.’
Dacre intervened again.
‘The man in the picture, do you know who he is?’
‘Oh yes. Well, at least I’ve seen him.’
Trudi, despite being seated, felt the wave of faintness sweeping over her again.
‘Who? Who?’
‘It’s her brother,’ said Carter, amazingly. ‘No, it’s probably not, that’s just what she said, the bitch. But that was my first thought. Her own brother! You see how easy I was to fool!’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ said Trudi.
‘Shortly after we started going out together, I ran into the two of them in Manchester,’ said Carter. ‘They were having a drink together. I remember she was surprised to see me. Well, she sort of hesitated, I recall, and then introduced this man as her brother, Jack. There was no reason to lie, not then anyway. We hadn’t got ourselves fixed up properly then. We were both free agents. But I see now she was looking ahead, planning for the future. A great planner, Janet!’
He laughed and said, ‘When we were making our wedding arrangements, I remember I said, “Hey, what about your brother Jack? Shouldn’t we ask him?” and she looked at me as if I was daft for a moment and then said, “Oh no, he’s working abroad just now, he couldn’t possibly make it.” God, what a fool I’ve been! Here, do you know him? Come on, Trudi, you can at least tell me that? Have you ever seen him around when you’ve been with Janet?’
He stared half accusingly, half appealingly, at Trudi. She felt James Dacre’s gaze on her too.
‘No,’ she said with an effort she hoped was concealed. ‘I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him in my life.’
And suddenly she recalled how very much Trent disliked having his picture taken and how assiduous he had been at removing photos of himself from display.
Perhaps if I asked nicely, Frank would let me have a print taken from this one, she found herself thinking madly.
Finally Carter left, mainly because James Dacre practically shepherded him through the door.
‘If she gets in touch, you’ll let me know?’ he pleaded as he went.
‘If I hear from Janet, I’ll certainly tell her she ought to let you know,’ said Trudi.
Finally he went. James Dacre, who had gone to his car with him, came back into the kitchen.
Trudi said, ‘I’m sorry. You must be convinced you’ve strayed into a madhouse now. If you decide that this is the last straw, I’ll understand.’
He regarded her steadily and said, ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘The man in the photograph. You knew him. I could tell.’
‘Could you?’ she said, with as much indifference as she could muster. ‘I must get dressed before the next act begins.’
‘Who was he, Trudi?’ said Dacre sternly. ‘Who was that man?’
She said wearily, ‘James, you’ve had two orgasms inside me and I’ve had a very pleasant feeling, but that doesn’t mean you own me.’
He looked ready to accept her challenge for a moment then he relaxed and said, abashed, ‘I’m sorry. I was just … I’m sorry. I’d no right to ask that question.’
‘Well, as long as we’re agreed about that, I’ll make you even sorrier by answering it,’ said Trudi, as she went by him through the door. ‘It was my husband, James. My dear departed husband, Trent.’
4
James Dacre stayed only long enough to make and drink a cup of coffee. He was kind and sympathetic, like a teacher with a child who has fallen in the playground, but there was a distance between them. He made no further direct reference to the events of the morning or of the previous night, but glanced at the kitchen clock, said he had an urgent business appointment and he’d be in touch later. And left.
It seemed to Trudi that the revelation about Trent had really been the last straw for him. It gave her another reason for regretting having made it.
The full enormity of the implications of the photograph had not sunk in till she was alone. At first she tried to control her response by fitting the pieces together like a private detective. She now recalled Janet’s disproportionate shock at Trudi’s Boxing Day revelation that Trent had been having an affair, and her relaxation (now seen as relief) when she discovered that it was Astrid that Trudi was talking about.
She recalled also that it was Trent who had urged her to make contact with Janet once more. It was when she tried to puzzle out his precise motive for this that she found she was drifting out of the saving limits of cerebral induction into the trackless wastes of trauma.
Trent and Janet! How long? The photograph had been taken in the last few years: those passion-contorted faces had been middle-aged: but when were the seeds of the relationship sown? She felt something in herself close to death as her mind ran back over the years to those very first days. When she first met Trent, he’d been Janet’s boyfriend, hadn’t he? Or at least, the object of her aspirations. How far had things gone between them? Janet had concealed her disappointment, though not her amazement, when Trent turned his attention to her dormouse friend. And then she had been assiduous in promoting the ‘romance’. Never had she given the slightest hint that she had slept with Trent, but she had flown regularly with him till he gave up his job in England, and Trudi had heard lurid office stories about the good times flight and cabin crews had on overnight stops abroad.
After their marriage and the move to the Continent, Trudi had rarely returned to the UK, but Trent was frequently away from home. Indeed, as he moved from flying to executive status, his trips seemed to become more rather than less frequent. Did they
take him to England? Occasionally perhaps. Or perhaps often. Her own interest in their duration and destination had never been great. It wasn’t that his domination of her life didn’t remain complete. On the contrary, it was so complete it didn’t even require his physical presence, merely the certainty that, however far he went, good old Trent would always come back.
So; Trent and Janet; her husband and her best friend (oh, how banal!) lovers perhaps for the past twenty-five years! Had they talked about her, mocked her appearance, her sexual performance? Or worse, had they perhaps talked kindly of her, affectionately, even pityingly, as of a much-loved family pet?
Rage, revulsion, disbelief; flight, suicide, revenge; her mind went reeling between emotions and courses of action till she felt herself spinning back through the months to that day she got news of Trent’s death. Like a perfectly timed cue, the doorbell rang. She went to answer it, certain she would find a policeman standing on the step.
She was right. But not a young constable this time, nervously twisting his cap in his hand.
‘Come in, Inspector Workman,’ she said.
His arrival was like a switch, lighting up the present once more. Whether his departure would return her to the shadows she could not foresee. But for the moment she was calm, alert, self-contained.
‘Herr Jünger isn’t with you?’ she said.
‘He’ll be along shortly,’ said Workman. ‘But I thought I’d get here first and have a little chat. Are you all right this morning, Mrs Adamson? You gave us a fright last night.’
‘I thought it was the other way round.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. Herr Jünger’s English is good, but he hasn’t quite got the fine control working, has he?’
He smiled tentatively, inviting her to join him in the old English pastime of being amused by daft foreigners. She found herself smiling back.
‘Will you have a cup of coffee?’ she asked.
‘That’d be lovely.’
As they drank their coffee seated in the lounge, Workman came to the point, or the alleged point, of his visit.
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