The Homecoming

by The Homecoming (retail) (epub)

  ‘It isn’t what it seems,’ he insisted again.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind, I’m phoning Detective Superindendent Richards. He’ll get to the truth, I’m not sure I can.’

  Glyn didn’t reply. He was looking across to the corner of the room where the large brass-bound box had been placed. ‘I looked in there,’ he said softly. ‘All those things, they were for us, weren’t they? Pillowcases, sheets, cutlery and china. All for our home.’

  ‘History, Glyn Howe,’ she said firmly. ‘They’ll stay there in case I decide to find a flat of my own. Handy they’ll be if I do. They won’t be wasted and they aren’t causing me any distress seeing them there. It’s glad I am that I’ve escaped from a man I thought I knew but who’s surrounded in mystery. I don’t like mysteries, Glyn. Never did.’

  ‘I found this too,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. He opened her wardrobe door and pulled out a man’s jacket. Expensive but grubby. ‘Matthew’s isn’t it? Been here, in your room, has he?’

  ‘No he hasn’t. Not that it’s any business of yours! I promised to mend the sleeve and fix a loose button. Anything else you want to know?’

  ‘Yes. Can I have a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘Not until I make you believe that I was only here to try and help.’

  ‘To make sure I don’t go to the police, more like!’

  ‘I’ve no fear of that, but I think it’s best to keep things as quiet as possible, it might be safer that way. Whoever came here that night, he wouldn’t want much encouragement to come again if he failed to find what he was looking for, or, if he knew we’d found what he had hidden.’

  Lydia put the jacket back in the wardrobe and went down to make coffee. Her mind was a jumble of half thought-out facts. How could she accept that the body at the castle and the robbery connected with it had something to do with Glyn? That sort of thing didn’t happen. It simply did not happen.

  When she was calmer, she decided that for the moment she would accept Glyn’s word that he was searching for, and not planting something. But the medals had obviously been left there by someone and Glyn pleaded with her not to mention their discovery to the police.

  ‘You could be in danger,’ he said, looking at her, trying desperately to convince her. ‘I don’t know what went on at the castle, but somehow you’re involved, possibly only because you and I found the body of Rosie Hiatt and went to the police. Please, love, don’t tell anyone, we’ll get rid of the medals somehow and try and forget the whole nasty business.’

  After a serious discussion on the best and safest way of disposing of the the medals, they decided to send them back to the police anonymously.

  ‘What about returning them via the local paper? That way we’d make sure their return was publicised,’ Glyn explained. ‘Then the thief, whoever he is, will know that they are no longer here and he’ll have no reason to break in to get them back.’ Lydia nodded agreement.

  ‘We tell no one, right?’ Glyn added firmly.

  Again, she agreed, but there was a residue of doubt. She was not fully convinced by Glyn’s explanations, but wanted an end to it and, involving the papers in the return of the medals might just achieve that.

  * * *

  The tall man was angry. He stood looking up at Lydia’s window in the darkness. The news on the local paper about the medals being returned had been headline news that evening. There had been no mention of them being found in Lydia’s bedroom so it was unlikely that the police were watching the place, but he knew from previous experience that the police didn’t always impart all their information.

  Contrary to Molly’s opinion, he did go in at night. The bolt had fortunately been forgotten and the lock gave him little trouble. He went up the stairs with hardly a sound. Through the living room and up the stairs, he stopped and listened at Annie and Billy’s room and heard the soft breathing that told him they were sleeping. Then, moving like a shadow to the room where Lydia slept, he stepped inside and stood for a moment looking down at her sleeping peacefully. He wasn’t in the room for more than thirty seconds and came out carrying Matthew’s jacket.

  * * *

  Telling Molly was essential. If Lydia didn’t talk to someone about her fears she felt she would explode! She explained about finding Glyn searching her room and the discovery of the medals.

  ‘He must be telling the truth,’ Lydia said. ‘I can’t really see Glyn Howe in the role of thief and I certainly can’t see him digging holes and burying the body of a local prostitute when he was little more than a child! No, we have to believe him. So, who did put the medals in my room, and why?’

  ‘He must have thought it the safest place.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it was a good choice. Although the police still question Dad from time to time and fill his mind with panic at the thought of being arrested, they aren’t likely to search my room again. If they did find it they would look to my father for explanations, wouldn’t they?’ Lydia shivered at the thought of her father being further implicated.

  ‘They’ve probably lost interest, unless you tell them about finding the medals, that is. And,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘it was Glyn who talked you out of that, wasn’t it Lydia?’

  * * *

  Lydia and Matthew continued to meet and it was almost impossible not to discuss the events of the past weeks. He asked if there was any news, although, being the brother of the victim, he was able to make enquiries himself. As always it was she who did most of the talking. ‘Trying to persuade him to tell me what the police told him, was like drawing teeth!’ she told Molly. ‘I don’t think he does it deliberately, he just isn’t a chatterbox like most of us.’

  ‘Best you behave the same, Lydia,’ Molly warned. ‘Lovely he is and I know you’re getting very fond of him, but he is only here for a few more weeks and he hasn’t said anything about what happens then.’

  ‘He’s fond of me too,’ Lydia defended.

  The two friends were sitting in Stella’s front room, now a smart new shop. Molly had called to see how the work was progressing and was waiting, unknown to Lydia, until the time she had arrranged to meet Tomos. Although Lydia knew the affair was continuing the girls rarely discussed it.

  The shelves had been admired and the displays discussed and conversation had dwindled. Both girls were thinking of Tomos, Molly anticipating their meeting with excitement, and Lydia contemplating the end of Tomos and Melanie’s marriage with some sadness. So, when someone knocked on the shop door they were both startled to see Melanie standing there. Molly’s instinct was to run. Lydia felt her face colour expecting this to be a confrontation, with Melanie demanding that Molly stay away from her husband. But the expression of Melanie’s face was without anger. With some trepidation, Lydia let her in.

  ‘The shop isn’t open yet, Melanie. Not till Monday.’

  ‘I only wanted a word,’ Melanie said, glancing at Molly as if hoping she would leave. ‘In private, like.’

  ‘Just off.’ Molly slipped on her coat and left by the shop door, calling to Stella as she closed the shop door behind her.

  ‘It’s about Tomos,’ Melanie said, and Lydia’s heart gave a lurch. This was it. The affair between Tomos and Molly had been discovered. She took a deep breath then asked, ‘Tomos? Not ill, is he?’

  ‘No, but there’s something wrong.’

  ‘In what way, Melanie?’ Lydia was going to stall as long as she could.

  ‘That’s the trouble, I don’t know. He spends a lot of time away from the house.’

  ‘Meeting the boys for sure. Nothing more likely than that. Glyn and he still keep in touch with their mates, don’t they? You don’t mind him having a little drink, do you? I don’t think you’ll cure him of meeting his friends for a drink and a gossip. Worse than women they are.’ Lydia knew she was gabbling, but she had to delay Melanie asking the one question she was dreading. She’d have to lie and that didn’t come easily to her.

  ‘I think he’s gambling,’ Melanie sa
id. ‘I think he’s spending hours in people’s houses playing cards and gambling.’

  It was such a relief Lydia almost laughed aloud.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Melanie went on, ‘I don’t know where he’s getting the money. He works fewer and fewer hours, giving Glyn all the time he asks for, so where is he getting the money?’

  ‘Have you thought that he could be winning?’

  This time Lydia did allow herself a chuckle. ‘They don’t all lose do they? Perhaps he makes enough to cover his needs in a few hours and gives the rest of the work to Glyn, knowing how desperate he is to earn it?’

  ‘The business should be more important than a few card games. Why is he losing interest like this?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘I can’t. You see,’ Melanie added softly, ‘I’m half afraid that he’s having an affair and not gambling after all. What would I do then?’ She hesitated a moment then added, ‘You would tell me if he was, wouldn’t you, Lydia?’

  The words Lydia had been dreading had been spoken. She was so undecided about what to say, her thoughts scattered and she pretended a cough to give herself time to calm down. Melanie was a friend of sorts; related they’d have been if she and Glyn had married. But Molly was also a friend, for as far back as her memory would go.

  ‘What would I do?’ Melanie repeated mournfuly.

  ‘Kick him up the backside, and out of the house so fast his feet will catch fire!’

  ‘That’s the problem. It’s his parents’ house. It would be me who’d have to go. I’d come out of this marriage with nothing to show for the years. Back to my family, back home to Mam and Dad. What a come-down. I don’t think I could face that, Lydia.’

  Lydia’s mind jumped. Her immediate thought was not sympathy for Melanie or for Molly and Tomos in the mess they had made of their lives, but for herself. She knew so little about Matthew. What if he were married and she became ‘the other woman’? She abandoned her plans to work and instead, closed the shop and took Melanie to a cafe for a coffee and the largest cream cake they could find. She had no solutions to offer, only more puzzles.

  * * *

  Matthew spent a lot of his time walking the hills and cliffs around the coast and Lydia would occasionally receive a postcard explaining where he was and how soon he would return. He always turned up when he promised and their reunions were blissful. He would bring a present, and for a short time he would be full of talk of places he’d seen and people he’d met and small adventures he’d had. She was reminded of the way she and Glyn were when he had leave from the Navy. It almost made the partings worthwhile, but not quite.

  For the first evening, usually spent at a restaurant with good food and good wine, he would chatter animatedly, then as the evening reached its end, he would withdraw again into the uncommunicable young man she was beginning to love. He still lived at the same small hotel on the seafront, but rarely invited her there. He explained that it was rather shabby and not the sort of place he wanted to spend their time together. She didn’t question this, it was all a part of the quality of his attention. ‘Nothing but the best,’ he told her. ‘Nothing but the best for my best girl.’

  As he had during the time he walked in the Brecon Beacons, when Rosie’s body was found, he carried a small one-man tent on his travels and ate in cafés or built a fire and cooked something from the supplies in his rucksack.

  ‘I could live like this indefinitely,’ he told her one day. ‘Pity of it is that I have to earn money. At least teaching gives me more time to enjoy the freedom of the hills, and it’s then I’m most happy.’

  ‘Not when you’re with me?’ she teased and he smiled that special smile, his deep-set eyes glowing with what she suspected, and hoped, was the beginnings of a lasting love. She almost envied him his casual and easy existence, but not completely. The idea sounded romantic and when he invited her to go with him one weekend she was tempted, ‘But,’ she explained, ‘I don’t think I’d feel very happy sleeping in a tent, I find the house frightening enough at present.’

  ‘Why is that?’ he asked. And that was when she forgot caution and told him all that had happened.

  He listened quietly, watching her and nodding occasionally but not interupting. Then he smiled and said, ‘So, that’s why you’ve been evasive when I’ve asked for the return of my jacket?’

  ‘Who could have taken it, Matthew? It was a good one but even so, breaking in and taking a jacket no one could have expected to find? I don’t wear men’s jackets and my father, well, you know how casually he dresses, I don’t think he’s owned one for years.

  ‘A tramp? Why look for a complicated explanation when a simple one is more likely? He probably didn t need to go any further than the living room.’

  ‘It was hanging in my wardrobe.’

  ‘You probably forgot where you left it. Wasn’t it in the living room beside the sewing box ready for mending? An opportunist thief could have come in, seen it and taken it. There’s a lot of winter left for those sleeping rough.’

  ‘I have a good memory, Matthew, and I definitely didn’t leave it in the living room. It was in my wardrobe. Certain of that I am.’

  ‘Talking about memory, have you remembered anything else about the night my sister was found?’

  She shook her head. ‘That policeman, Richards, still calls occasionally but I think he’s just being kind, and making sure I’ve recovered from that awful night. No, I don’t think there’s anything else. I’d have remembered before now.’ But in this she was wrong.

  * * *

  The shop opened to business the following Monday morning. Tomos had called to take Annie to Stella’s as usual but this time, Lydia went with them. There was a bunch of flowers on the taxi seat when she helped her mother in and Annie took them and smiled. ‘These for me then?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Annie, they’re for your daughter. A good luck wish from me and our Glyn.’ Tomos took the flowers from Annie and handed them to Lydia with a bow. ‘Good luck, love, and,’ he added in a whisper, ‘thanks for stalling with Melanie the other day.’

  ‘I didn’t want to,’ Lydia said grimly. ‘I feel sorry for her and I think you should tell her and get things sorted before she finds out from someone else. Cruel that would be and whatever you and she feel – or don’t feel – for each other, Melanie doesn’t deserve that!’ The flowers no longer gave her pleasure and as soon as she went inside, she threw them into the dustbin. She didn’t want thanks for lying to someone over something that should have been settled months ago!

  In spite of the sour start, the day went well. Several people came to buy wool and patterns and many more came to see what ‘Lydia Jones, Quality Knitwear and Wool’, intended to stock. Lydia had a fright when she saw Superintendent Richards coming in, but he was smiling and his visit was purely innocent of worries. He simply ordered three pairs of hand-knitted socks from Stella. Glyn came to put the finishing touches to a glass-fronted shelf he had made, and invited her out for a snack at one o’clock. She refused.

  ‘I have to go shopping to get something for dinner, and besides, Auntie Stella and I want to discuss the morning’s business,’ she told him briskly. To Stella, she said, ‘Glyn can keep his lunch. It would probably be a small bag of chips anyway, that’s all he can afford these days, in spite of working every moment he can.’

  ‘He worked here for nothing, remember,’ Stella reminded her. ‘Sundays, and evenings after Annie left. He said he didn’t want to disturb her with the banging and sawing and drilling. Thoughtful of him. He’s a very kind man, Glyn Howe. I just hope that whatever it is that’s bothering him will soon be sorted.’

  ‘What’s bothering him is this woman he’s found! Making him work and provide a house for her she is. I was prepared for us to start off in Mam and Dad’s front bedroom, so he could invest in his family’s business, but that wasn’t good enough for him, was it?’

  ‘You do believe in this Cath, then?’

  ‘Oh, I
don’t know what to believe. I only know that it no longer concerns me!’

  When Tomos brought Billy to collect Annie and take her home that first day, Lydia didn’t go with them. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I want to check on a few things first,’ she told her father. It was as they were clearing a space ready for a new delivery they were expecting the following day, that Lydia found Glyn’s wallet.

  ‘Look at this! I wonder who it belongs to? It’s a man’s wallet by the look of it. Perhaps Tomos dropped it when he carried Mam through?’ She opened it to see if there was anything to identify the owner and saw that it belonged to Glyn. Unable to resist, she pulled out some papers, and a bank statement was among them. His account held over ten thousand pounds.

  Chapter Eight

  Lydia was both alarmed and angry on discovering that Glyn, who was working so hard and insisting he was short of money, had ten thousand pounds in a bank account. She was tempted to tell him she knew, face him with it to see if he would explain. Then she accepted the fact sadly that it was no longer her business. He had said goodbye and announced that he had fallen in love with someone else, so what he did was no longer of any concern to her. Although with the burglaries of sixteen years ago being re-investigated, and the uneasy suspicion that he was somehow involved, there was an air of anxiety about the discovery that he owned such a large sum of money.

  ‘Best you say nothing,’ Stella advised. ‘No fault on him if he’s saving hard. There’s nothing terrible about a man working and saving for something he wants bad, now is there?’

  Unconvinced, Lydia nodded and tried to dismiss the vision of the bank statement from her mind. Besides being startled to know how much he had saved, it was also hurtful. The money he had put aside had been intended for their future home, hers and Glyn’s. To know it was being spent on another woman, someone she hadn’t met and knew nothing about, made disappointment add fresh pain.