by Hazel Holt
“Well,” I said, temporising, as I so often found myself doing with Anthea, “no one else seemed willing to take it on…”
“Nonsense. I would have done it myself, busy as I am, if Maureen hadn’t gone on about it so much that everyone had to say yes to shut her up!”
“So what do you suggest we do?”
“I thought perhaps you…”
“No, Anthea, I really can’t. I’ve got so much on. What I will do, if you can get something out of Bruce then I’ll see about getting it printed and distributed.”
“Well,” Anthea said grudgingly, “I suppose that’s better than nothing. I’ll get onto him right away.”
She wheeled her trolley purposefully away and I was left deeply annoyed that I’d let myself in for a tedious and burdensome task. It did turn out to be both those things because when Anthea did finally send me Bruce’s draft I had to do a lot of work on it to make it comprehensible and, indeed, given Bruce’s strong feelings about certain aspects of the Management, acceptable to the general membership. But it was a sort of distraction and, when I finally got it off to the printer, I found my mind turning once again to a thought I did not want to confront.
That last afternoon with Nora had made me realise the strength of her feelings for John. Of course I’d known how she felt, had accepted that she’d felt deeply, but somehow I hadn’t totally grasped the obsessive nature of that feeling. She had put him on some sort of pedestal; he had been her god, her whole life. She had accepted calmly the women in his life, as a mother would accept the minor imperfections in her child, of no importance, not relevant to her relationship with him. And he had fostered this attitude. He had recognised the intensity of her feelings for him and had encouraged them. He had allowed her to build her life around him because it suited him. I was sure that, as much as he had cared for anyone, he had cared for Nora and her father. But there was something else he cared for more – and that was his work.
He had found the interlude he’d spent in Taviscombe a useful period to recover from the disasters he had suffered in London, he’d recouped his forces and was ready to move on. Although she hadn’t realised it, Nora’s usefulness to him was over. If he went to America – and that was where he knew he would be able to pursue what he felt was his true goal – then he would want to go without any baggage. There wasn’t any place in his new life for Nora. There was probably no conscious ruthlessness in his attitude; it would never have occurred to him that it would shatter her life.
When she’d finally realised that he was going without her, when the realisation that he didn’t regard her as a necessary part of his life finally hit her, what would her reaction have been? Deeply upset, of course. But it was possible that she might also have been angry, after all, she’d given him so much, and it must have seemed that, to him, it had counted for nothing. She would have had every right to be angry, angry at feeling used, in the final analysis of no account.
But how angry had she been? Angry enough to decide that if John was going to destroy her life, she would destroy him? It was a possibility. Now that I’d seen the intensity of her feelings for him, I saw that it was, indeed, possible. But Nora was my friend, a very old friend, and, however strong the grounds for such a thing might seem, it was somehow unthinkable that a friend could be guilty of that ultimate crime, murder.
I tried to turn my mind to other things. I went into the kitchen and emptied out the contents of the kitchen drawers and tried to restore some sort of order to their habitual chaos. Foss, as always, attracted by the sounds of any unusual activity, leapt up onto the work-top to join in and, for a while, resisting his help in untangling a ball of string stuck to a roll of sticky tape, and trying to prevent him from batting onto the floor the fuses I was attempting to sort out into packets, I was able to blank out my thoughts. But when I’d got the last box of matches and packet of candles stowed neatly away, and when I’d uncrumpled and re-folded the tea-cloths and dusters and sorted out the cutlery drawer, when I’d done all these things I still couldn’t clear my mind of thoughts of Nora.
I gave Foss a handful of dried food to keep him quiet and then I went through to the sitting room and picked up the phone.
With the phone in my hand I still hesitated, then I dialled the number. There was no reply. Only the answerphone with its bald, recorded message: “If you wish to leave a message on this number, please speak after the tone.”
Chapter Seventeen
I tried phoning again later that day and then the following morning, but there was still no reply. I would have gone round there but the copies of the agenda for the Brunswick Lodge AGM arrived and I had to spend a whole day in the committee room there with a couple of reluctant volunteers sending out copies to the members. We had just finished this exhausting task when Anthea appeared carrying a bundle of papers.
“Right then,” she said. “I’ve got the appeal printed.”
“The appeal?” I asked.
“Yes, you know,” she answered impatiently. “You must remember that we agreed to have an appeal for funds for refurbishing the kitchen.”
“Yes.”
“I told the printer to get a move on and I’ve just collected them so that you can include them with the agenda.”
“But Anthea…”
“I had a few more printed than we have of the agenda so that we can leave some around here for casual visitors who might like to contribute.”
“Anthea,” I said, “we’ve done the agendas. We’ve just this minute finished the last ones. They’re all in envelopes, sealed and with the stamps on.”
“Oh really Sheila, this is too tiresome!”
“Well,” I said crossly “if you’d told us they’d be ready to be included we’d have waited. There’s no way we can do anything about it now.”
One of the helpers got up. “I have to go now, Sheila, to meet the school bus.”
The other one also got up and moved to the door obviously unwilling to be involved in any other activity.
“I suppose you couldn’t open the envelopes carefully, put in the appeal and them stick them down with tape?” Anthea suggested.
“No,” I said firmly. “I couldn’t, and nor can anyone else. I had a terrible time getting anyone to help as it was. And we can’t afford the postage to send them out separately.”
“Oh well,” Anthea said disconsolately. “I suppose we’ll just have to distribute them at the AGM. But it’s not the same.”
I was so annoyed with Anthea that I somehow didn’t feel like going straight home.
What I needed was a breath of sea air to blow my ill humour away. Usually I go down to the sea wall by the harbour, but today I thought I’d go to Porlock Weir and then call in and see how Nora was. The tide was in when I got there, and I stood for a while watching the boats in the small harbour bobbing up and down, pulling at their moorings as if they were anxious to be up and away over the sea that, on this sunny afternoon, reflected the sky and was unusually blue.
As I drove up to Nora’s, I glanced at John’s house, wondering if there’d be any signs of activity on Joanna’s part, but it looked the same as usual. I rang Nora’s bell, but there was no reply. I knocked and then rang again, but there was still no answer. I’d turned to go away when I saw her neighbour, Mrs Collins, coming up the path next door.
“Are you looking for Nora?” she called out.
I went round to join her. “Yes, I phoned a couple of times but there was no answer, so I thought I’d come and see if she was all right.”
“Oh yes, she’s fine, but she’s not here just now.”
“Oh?”
“No, she’s gone off to visit some friends.”
“Really? She didn’t mention it.”
“I think it was a spur of the moment thing.” Mrs Collins came closer and spoke confidentially. “She’s been under a lot of strain lately with poor Dr Morrison going like that. I think she needed to get away for a bit.”
“You don’t happen to know whe
re she’s gone?” I asked.
“Well, with friends she said. I haven’t got an address but, if you need to get in touch, she left a telephone number. I could get it for you.”
“Thank you,” I said, “that would be kind.”
“I won’t be a jiffy.” Mrs Collins let herself in and came back in a few minutes with a piece of paper. “There you are – oh, just a moment,” she broke off at the sound of barking from inside the house. “I’ll just go and shut Barney in, I don’t like him getting out.”
When she came back I asked, “Nora left her dog with you?”
“Oh yes, she always does when she goes on holiday. She said the people she’s going to stay with have a cat and they wouldn’t get on. There you are then.”
She handed me the piece of paper with a telephone number in Nora’s writing. I fished in my bag and copied the number into my diary.
“Thank you so much,” I said and gave her back to piece of paper. “You don’t know how long she’s going to be away, do you?”
“She didn’t know, but she said she’d give me a ring before she came back so I can start the milk again for her – she cancelled it before she went.”
“Well, thank you very much, Mrs Collins. I may not bother her, but it’s as well to have a contact number just in case.”
As I went back to my car I was puzzled. A spur of the moment decision it might well have been, but I was surprised – and just a little hurt – that Nora hadn’t told me she was going away.
I was busy for the next few days. Michael, Thea and Alice were away for a while visiting some friends who’d gone to live in York and I was back and forth looking after their cat Smoke and generally keeping an eye on things. I also had a review to do that I’d been putting off because I knew the author and couldn’t think of a tactful way of saying that she’d written a terrible book. I wished passionately that I’d never agreed to do the wretched thing, but the editor of the journal who asked me was also a friend and needed it in a hurry.
I settled down at my computer and tried to think of an opening sentence but found myself instead thinking about Nora and wondering which friends she’d gone to stay with. The only people I could think of lived in London and the number she had left Mrs Collins wasn’t a London number.
‘The writer,’ Mary Russell Mitford wrote in her Preface to Our Village, ‘may claim the merit of a hearty love of her subject, and of that local and personal familiarity, which only a long residence in one neighbourhood could have enabled her to attain. So it was that the circumscribed nature of her world…’
It was no good; I couldn’t concentrate on what I was writing, or rather attempting to write.
What I wanted to know was not only where Nora had gone, but also why she’d gone away. Was it distress, did she feel she had to get right away for a while from Taviscombe and all its painful associations? Goodness knows she had every reason to feel like that. And yet… I felt sure that if that had been the reason she’d have told me what she was going to do, not have disappeared like that without a word. Especially after our last conversation.
The only other explanation was one I didn’t want to consider. Suddenly I felt I had to talk to her. I switched off the computer and went and found my diary with the telephone number in it. As I dialled the number I wondered what excuse I could give for phoning her. The telephone rang through for a while before it was answered and, for a moment, I was tempted to put down the receiver and forget all about it, but a voice at the other end brought me up sharp.
“Good morning, the Navidale Hotel.”
“The Navidale Hotel?” I echoed in bewilderment.
“Can I help you?” It was a Scottish voice and I suddenly remembered that Nora once said she’d been up to the Highlands for a fishing holiday at a place called Helmsdale.
“Is that the Navidale Hotel, Helmsdale?”
“Yes, that is so.” The voice sounded puzzled. I pulled myself together.
“Could I speak to Miss Nora Burton please?”
There was a pause, then, “I’m very sorry but we don’t have a Miss Burton staying with us.”
“Are you sure?” I persisted. “She’s a middle-aged lady, tall, with dark hair…”
“We have no ladies staying here at present, only some gentlemen for the fishing.”
Another pause. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I must have misunderstood. Sorry to have troubled you.”
“It was no trouble,” the voice said, puzzled to the last.
I put the phone down and sat staring into space. Where had Nora gone, and why had she deliberately tried to mislead people as to her whereabouts? Had she murdered John and was she now in hiding somewhere? Abroad, perhaps. There seemed no way of knowing. I could only wait until she came back. If she came back, that is. I felt I should speak to Roger, see what he thought – certainly if there was any possibility that she was a murderer. I couldn’t think, my mind was so confused; my emotions were all over the place. I got up and went out into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.
I’d just settled down with the tray when the doorbell rang. It was Rosemary.
“Hello, hope I haven’t come at an awkward time,” she said, “but I was passing the end of your lane and I thought I’d pop in and see if you felt like coming to this open-air Shakespeare thing at Dunster Castle. I’ve got a spare ticket. Jack was supposed to be coming with me but he’s got a meeting in Bristol that day and doesn’t think he can get back in time. If you ask me,” she continued, “I think he arranged it specially, amateur productions of As You Like It not really being his thing.” She looked at me critically. “Are you all right? You look rotten.”
I shook my head. “No, I feel rotten actually – something peculiar’s happened. Look, come into the kitchen. I’ve just made some tea.”
As I poured the tea and got out some biscuits, I told Rosemary about Nora going away and about the hotel in Scotland.
“Good heavens, how extraordinary!” Rosemary said. “Why on earth do you think she left that number?”
“I wondered that. She obviously wanted to mislead everyone – perhaps it was the first number that came into her head.”
“But it wouldn’t just have come into her head, not a number of a hotel she’d only stayed in once. She must have gone and looked it up.”
“Perhaps,” I said slowly, “it was because it was a place where she’d been happy…” I shook my head. “I honestly haven’t the faintest idea. Perhaps she wanted people to think she was in Scotland when she was going somewhere quite different. Abroad, even.”
Rosemary looked at me sharply. “You think she may have killed John Morrison because he obviously didn’t need her any more?”
“It’s possible. She was in quite a state when I saw her last – she’d obviously been bottling things up. Oh, I don’t know!”
Rosemary leaned forward. “Look Sheila, I know Nora’s a friend and all that, but if you do think she killed John Morrison then you must tell Roger. Especially now when she’s disappeared.”
“Not disappeared exactly,” I protested.
“Disappeared,” Rosemary said firmly. “I know it’s difficult to believe anyone you know actually killed somebody. I didn’t know Nora half as well as you did, but I know I find it hard to believe too. Still, if you have the faintest suspicion – and you do, don’t you?”
I nodded reluctantly.
“Then,” she said, “you have to talk to Roger.”
“I suppose I must.”
“And he’s very discreet, you know that. He won’t go charging into anything.”
“No,” I said, “you’re right, of course. I knew I had to really, it’s just…well. Just difficult.” I smiled. “Thank you. You always did make me see sense when I was dithering about something.”
“You mean like that time when you couldn’t decided whether or not to go to the Hunt Ball with Tim Cairn-Roberts.”
“That’s right. I was thrilled when he asked me, but he did have that shocking reputation,
and you said I’d be mad to go with him.”
“And wasn’t I right? He got absolutely legless and smashed the windows of the Joint-Master’s Bentley!”
We looked at each other and laughed.
“Yes,” I said, “you’re right as usual. Come on, have another cup, and yes, I’d love to go to As You Like It with you.”
I had some difficulty in getting hold of Roger the next day. He was away in London for a meeting, but he’d get in touch with me when he returned. Feeling somehow comforted that I’d set the wheels in motion, as it were, I went back to my review.
I was sitting doing some mending. It’s a job I hate and one I do very badly, but when the pile of things that has to be attended to gets to a certain height, I nerve myself to get out my mother’s work-box and make some sort of attempt at it. I’d just cobbled together a torn seam in a blouse and stitched back some lace that had come away from the neck of a nightdress, when the phone rang.
“Sheila, it’s Roger. Can I come round?”
“Of course. When?”
“Straight away, if that’s all right with you.”
“Fine, I’ll expect you soon.”
Thankfully I put away the work-box and my mending and tidied up the sitting room.
When Roger arrived and had sat down on the sofa I thought he seemed somehow ill at ease.
“I’m so glad you got my message and could spare the time to see me,” I said. “There’s something I think you ought to know.”
“Your message?” Roger looked puzzled. “No, I didn’t know you’d been trying to get in touch.”
“Then what…?”
“Sheila, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
I felt that dreadful lurch of fear that you get when someone uses those particular words and your immediate thought is for your children. “Who is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”
“It’s your friend Nora Burton.”
I had an overwhelming and shameful feeling of relief. “Nora? What’s happened to her?”