The Homecoming

by The Homecoming (retail) (epub)

  He held her almost like a lover, pressing her against him and looking down into her wide, terrified eyes. ‘If you hadn’t interfered this wouldn’t be necessary,’ he whispered. ‘Want to know why, do you? You’re going to die anyway so I suppose it won’t hurt to satisfy your curiosity. Then you can die happy, eh?’ He was holding her and preventing her from escaping, but nevertheless she managed to kick him. He threw her down with a grunt of pain and fastened a rope around her ankles before dragging her closer to the gaping hole.

  ‘It was you remembering seeing the stupid hat. That was your death sentence. My wife knitted it for me and it was a bit of a joke. Awful it was, the pom-pom so garish I was teased about it. Your memory of seeing it near Rosie’s grave might not have been enough, but I couldn’t take a chance. I was there, I saw Matthew run away and went in to see what he’d been doing. I knew I hadn’t time to remove the body, although I knew who it was. I moved the tools after you and Glyn Howe had gone, to confuse things, muddy the waters a bit. I wasn’t too worried at the discovery of her body. After all, I hadn’t buried her.’

  Lydia pleaded with her eyes as he shone the torch at her to see the effect of his words. She would promise never to say a word if only he’d give her back her life. If only he would take off the gag and listen to her.

  ‘Rosie was a prostitute,’ he went on in an almost conversational tone. ‘She threatened to tell everyone that the child she expected was mine. I found out later that she’d tried the same story on others – including your father. But at the time I was convinced I was the only one. She was rubbish. Not worth wrecking my career for. When I saw your father arguing with her, I finished off what she had started. Yes, she did try to kill herself, but she wasn’t making a very good job of it, stabbing at her wrists ineffectually. I helped her that’s all. You can hardly call it murder, can you, when I helped her commit suicide?’

  Lydia tried to say, ‘Please,’ but all that came out was a low moan. He kicked her and told her to be silent. From the expression on his face, seen in the light of the torch and the brightness reflected from the pure, unsullied snow surrounding the dark scar of the grave – her grave – she could see he was enjoying the telling.

  She was shivering with cold and fear. There was satisfaction on his face but, she thought with mounting terror, no mercy.

  ‘It was pure good fortune being given the investigation. It made everything so easy. I’ll show them a knife, any rusty old knife, there’s plenty I can pick up in the allotment sheds. I’ll say it was the one you found, a rubbishy thing and clearly nothing to do with the death of Rosie. They’ll believe me.’ His tone had changed again. He seemed to be thinking aloud.

  She began to kick, to scrape the ground with her heels, determined to leave some mark but he only laughed.

  ‘I’m going to forget to lock the gates when I leave. Already Neville Nolan and his little band of ruffians are planning to do some sledging here tomorrow. I gave them a hint that I’d look the other way if they want to come into the castle and have some fun. Any signs of us being here will be obliterated. Good idea, eh? Snowball fights, dancing on your grave, now there’s a thought, eh? Kids are entitled to some fun.’

  She tried again to plead but very little sound came out.

  ‘This snow will leave the ground soggy for a while, then the frosts will harden it and by the spring there won’t be a sign of you.’

  He lifted her by the shoulders and dragged her a few feet towards the hole in which he intended to bury her. Then he stopped and swore. Someone was approaching. Lydia tried to struggle, to kick him, tried to call out until her throat threatened to burst. But she was too securely tied.

  Then there were torches. Inside the castle. Their beams swinging here and there, gradually getting nearer. Disappearing as the holders of them looked into the rooms and passageways. So close, so certain to see them.

  Then the lights snapped off and she began to sob. They had given up. Tears glistened and made even the faintly glowing night sky disappear from her sight so she was surrounded by dazzling darkness.

  Then, a roar of rage and two figures hurled themselves at her captor and the gag was removed, and hands were untying her feet, and Glyn’s hands were chafing hers, holding her tight. He was murmuring soothing words, telling her he loved her, and she cried like a child.

  The gates clanked as they were opened, and powerful lights revealed the scene. A furious Richards was held in a grip by Matthew whose tight-lipped face was a mask of fury. He had no need to hold the man so tight, he had knocked him out with one blow but he couldn’t let go, needed to feel him there, in his grasp: until one of the others took him gently, assuring him that, ‘It’s all right now sir, we have him secure. He won’t get away,’ and Matthew gradually released his hold on the man who had killed his sister.

  It was to Stella’s house they went, once more the wool shop acting as the first aid post for incidents at the castle. It was there, being plied with cups of tea and endless biscuits that the full stories were told.

  After she had been seen by a doctor, the police gave Lydia a lift home with Matthew and Glyn, who insisted on seeing her safely in.

  Sensing that he was not needed, noticing the way Glyn fussed and Lydia enjoyed it, Matthew left, promising to call the following morning. He knew he wouldn’t. Lydia was not for him. The way she and Glyn looked at each other told him that. He went back to the hotel to pack his bag. Tomorrow, once he had notified the police of his intentions, he would return to pick up his other life and plan a future without Lydia. For a while he had hoped. But whoever said, ‘you can never go back,’ was right – at least in this instance. It would have been better for everyone if he had stayed away.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be getting home too?’ Lydia said to Glyn, stifling a yawn. ‘Won’t Cath be waiting for you?’ Her mind rang with the echoes of his words when he found her only a few short hours before. He had said he loved her, but now, back down to earth, she knew that was the joy of the moment, of finding her in time, with the realisation in the forefront of his mind of what would have happened if he’d arrived even a few minutes later.

  ‘Cath, my Cath, is always in bed at seven,’ he said then, looking at her strangely.

  ‘At seven? Is she ill?’

  ‘Little girls need to get to sleep early. She has a hot drink, then it’s teeth cleaned and a story, before settling down to sleep.’

  ‘Oh, you’re talking about little Cath, I meant your Cath, her aunt.’

  ‘Little Cath is my Cath. Her father was a close friend of mine, and when Cath’s mother died, he had to leave the Navy to make a home for her. They only had a couple of small, rented rooms. The three of us who served with him; Trevor Beacon, Danny Tremain and I decided that, as there was no insurance, no house or anything, we would give him twenty-five thousand pounds to get a business going. It isn’t much, but it will enable him to borrow enough to buy a house of sorts and start a garden maintenance business. He’s a genius with engines. Again, it won’t be much, but it will be enough to keep them together.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, hope beginning to grow. ‘Then you and Cath aren’t – you and she don’t…?’

  ‘We all agreed that if we were going to do something like this we had to make sure we weren’t doing it for the glory. We don’t want anyone to know. Doing it so people would admire us would have been wrong. Everything would have been tainted and spoilt.

  ‘We did it because we wanted to help a little girl who might otherwise have a very lonely and unhappy life. We are her uncles. Uncle Danny and Uncle Trev and me – Uncle Glyn. So far she has ten thousand from me – no, that savings account isn’t mine, it belongs to Cath. The others have savings unofficially in her name too. We aren’t attempting to give the same amount, just giving what we can to reach our target as swiftly as possible. A few more months and we’ll have done it.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I’d hoped that once we’d saved enough, you and I might
start again without my having to explain. You’re the reason I’ve been so desperately grabbing any opportunity to earn money. I was so afraid of losing you. But with Matthew arriving on the scene that became a forlorn hope. I knew it was too late.’

  ‘You should have trusted me, Glyn.’

  ‘I know that now. But when I thought I might, Matthew came into your life and it seemed that it didn’t matter anyway.’

  ‘For a while I thought I might learn to love Matthew, but it never really happened. Poor Matthew, I treated him badly. I pretended to feel more than I did, to cover my hurt. Glyn, you should have told me.’

  He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you now, it’s just that I couldn’t go on with the pretence that I don’t love you.’ He held her close and felt her shivering.

  ‘I’ll never forget that man tying me up and threatening to bury me in that hole,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s all right, love. It’s all right. Let’s pretend it was only a nightmare. I’ll be near you every moment I can, to make sure you don’t suffer another unhappy moment for as long as you live.’

  ‘So far as little Cath is concerned, your secret is safe,’ she promised. ‘I hope one day, when the other ‘uncles’ have learned to trust me, little Cath will accept me as her friend, too. A girl needs a few aunties as well as a Dad and three uncles, doesn’t she? But no one will know how you and the others helped her.’ She touched his lips with hers to seal the promise. ‘It’s sufficient for me to know you haven’t found someone you love more,’ she said with a contented sigh.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by Severn House

  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

  57 Shepherds Lane

  Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © Grace Thompson, 1997

  The moral right of Grace Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781911591023

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Look for more great books at www.canelo.co