‘Are you sure about that, sir?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘She’s rather a fine person, you know. I’ve always admired her courage.’
Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 10.00 a.m.
The telephone rang in Jinx’s room, fraying her nerves with its jangling peal. She pushed herself out of the chair and reached reluctantly for the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘It’s your father, Jane. I’m sending the car to collect you.’
Fear ripped through her like burning acid. What did he know? There’d been no mention of Meg and Leo in the papers or on the television news. Her fingers clenched involuntarily round the receiver, knuckles whitening under the strain, but her voice was calm.
‘Fine,’ she said, ‘send the car by all means, it’s no skin off my nose. I never wanted to be here in the first place. But I’m not coming home, Adam. I’ll tell the driver to take me back to Richmond and, if he refuses to do that, then I’ll call a taxi and go to the station. Is that what you intended to achieve by this phone call?’
There was an ominous silence at the other end.
‘Leave things as they are or I promise I’ll discharge myself.’ Her voice hardened. ‘And this time, you’ll lose me for good. Do you understand, Adam? I’ll take out an injunction to prevent you coming within a mile of my house.’ She slammed the receiver down with unnecessary force, and sank on to the edge of the bed as the strength seeped like sawdust from her knees and thighs. She felt the beginnings of a headache sawing away behind her eyes, and squeezed her temples tightly with shaking fingers.
The flash of memory that burst in her brain was blinding in its clarity. Meg on her knees, begging . . . please . . . please . . . please . . . She looked in confusion on her friend’s terrified face, felt a corresponding rush of terror drive her own heart into a frenzy, before nausea sent her staggering into the bathroom to retch in agony into the lavatory. Shaking violently, she lowered herself to the tiled floor and, as she laid her cheek on the cold ceramic, she clung in desperation to the fact that, despite all her friend’s faults, she had loved Meg Harris.
But it was an hour before the shaking stopped.
The White Hart Hotel, Winchester – 10.10 a.m.
‘We know very little about your daughter,’ said Superintendent Cheever to the Reverend Harris and his wife. ‘As I explained, we had some difficulty finding you. There is almost nothing of a personal nature in Meg’s flat, and we can only presume she was in the process of moving out of it.’
He had baulked at driving them to the police station and the sterility of an interview room, opting instead for a small upstairs parlour in a hotel near the mortuary, where Fraser and a WPC could sit unobtrusively in the background taking notes. He had abandoned the flamboyance of silk bow-tie and silk handkerchief in favour of sombre black, and he looked to be what he really was – an ordinary man in ordinary surroundings, unthreatening and rather kind. Mrs Harris sat hunched in an armchair beside the half-open window, a cup of tea, untouched, on the table next to her. Her husband sat on a hard chair next to her, clearly unsure whether to comfort her or leave her to come to terms with her grief alone, holding his own grief in check for fear of making things worse for her. Cheever felt sorry for both of them, but he reserved his deepest sympathy for Meg’s father. Why was it, he wondered, that men were expected to disguise their feelings?
‘She was going on holiday with Leo,’ said Charles quietly, ‘but she didn’t say anything about moving out of her flat. Not to me anyway.’ He looked irresolutely at his wife.
‘She didn’t tell you anything, Charles, because she knew you’d disapprove.’ Caroline mopped her red-rimmed eyes. ‘She had an abortion ten years ago. She didn’t tell you about that either, did she? And why not? Because you’d have ruined her life for her.’ She crumpled the handkerchief between her palms. ‘Well, it’s ruined anyway, but it might not have been if she’d been able to talk to you as a father instead of a priest. Everything had to be kept secret in case you preached at her.’
Her husband stared at her, the planes of his face bleached white with shock. ‘I didn’t know,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Of course you’re sorry. Now,’ she added bitterly. ‘I’m sorry, too. Sorry for her, sorry for the baby, sorry for me. I’d like to have been a grandmother.’ Her voice broke on a sob. ‘It’s such a waste. It’s all such a waste.’ She turned to the Superintendent. ‘We have a son, but he’s never wanted to marry. He wanted to be ordained like his father.’ Her eyes filled again. ‘It’s such a terrible waste.’
Cheever waited while she fought for control. ‘You implied that you knew Meg was moving out of her flat, Mrs Harris,’ he said at last. ‘Could you tell us about that? Where was she going?’
‘To live with Leo. He had a house. It made more sense for her to move in with him.’
‘Do you know where the house is?’
‘Somewhere in Chelsea. Meg was going to give me the address when she came back from France. Don’t Leo’s parents know?’
Frank side-stepped the question. ‘They’re very shocked at the moment.’
There was a painful silence.
‘Have you met Sir Anthony and Lady Wallader?’ Cheever asked next.
Caroline’s mouth puckered tragically. ‘We never even met Leo,’ she said. ‘How could we have met his parents? It was all so quick. We had an invitation to Jinx’s wedding sitting on the mantelpiece, and then Meg phoned to say Leo wanted to marry her instead.’ She shook her head in disbelief.
Charles stirred on his chair. ‘She rang on the Saturday morning,’ he murmured quietly, ‘the eleventh, I believe, and I was rather upset by the news. I wondered what sort of a man Leo was to abandon his fiancée so close to the wedding in order to take up with her best friend.’ He lifted his hands in resignation. ‘She told me that she’d known Leo far longer than Jinx had, and that he’d only proposed to Jinx because of some silly row they’d had. “He wanted to spite me,” she said.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I forget sometimes that she’s a grown woman – was a grown woman,’ he corrected himself, ‘and, yes, I can see now that I tended to preach, but it was so clear to me that this man was not to be relied upon, and I’m afraid we had a terrible argument about him. I said his behaviour was neither mature nor honourable, and that if he was prepared to treat Jinx so shabbily then Meg would be wise to have nothing more to do with him.’ His voice faltered slightly. ‘I’m afraid she hung up on me and we never spoke again, although I believe Caroline tried later the same day.’ He turned to his wife. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
She wrapped her arms about her thin body and hugged herself tightly. ‘You know it is. You were listening.’ She gave a shuddering sigh. ‘She wouldn’t hear me out either, but at least we didn’t scream at each other. I said, why had she never mentioned him before if she’d known him so long, and she said there were a million things she’d never mentioned. It was her life and there was no rule that compelled children to tell their parents everything. I blame her father,’ she said in a drained voice, turning her shoulder to freeze Charles out. ‘She couldn’t leave home quick enough to get away from him, so of course there were things we would never know.’
The Superintendent absorbed this in silence, careful to keep his face neutral. ‘When did she tell you she was moving in with Leo?’ he asked after a moment.
‘During that telephone call. “We’re going to live together until we get married,” she said. “Leo has a house in Chelsea and I’m moving my stuff in now, but I don’t want you to tell Dad because I can’t take any more lectures.” Then she said they were going to France until the fuss died down and that she’d phone her answer-machine regularly for messages.’ She fingered her handkerchief, pulling out the crumples. ‘She said we’d stop worrying once we met Leo, and promised to bring him down as soon as they came home. And I said, what about poor Jinx? And Meg said Jinx would survive because she always has. Then we said goodbye.’ She held the handkerchief to her eyes.
&nb
sp; To Frank’s ears, this description of Meg was an unflattering one and he wondered if Mrs Harris was aware of the picture she was painting. ‘Tell me about Meg,’ he invited. ‘What was she like?’
Her sad face brightened. ‘She was a beautiful person. Kind, thoughtful, very loving. “Don’t worry, Mummy, I’ll always be here,” that’s what she used to say.’ The tears welled again. ‘She was so intelligent. She could do anything she set her mind to. “I’m going places,” she always told me. Everyone adored her.’
Frank turned to the vicar. ‘Is that how you saw her, sir?’
Charles glanced at his wife’s rigid back. ‘She had faults, Superintendent, we all do. She was a little self-centred, perhaps, rather too careless of other people’s feelings, but, yes, she was a popular girl.’ He folded his hands in his lap. ‘Our son Simon could give you a better idea of what she was like. He’s worked in various London parishes over the years and saw far more of her than we did. As Caroline told you, we effectively lost her when she went to university. She used to come down two or three times a year, but other than that we had very little contact.’
‘Is he still in London, sir?’
‘No, he was given a parish of his own two years ago. It’s a village called Frampton, ten miles to the north-east of Southampton.’ He lifted the cuff of his cassock to look at his watch. ‘But he’ll be at the vicarage in Littleton Mary by now. I thought it would be easier for us if he came up.’
‘Easier for you, you mean,’ said Caroline unsteadily, swinging round to face him. ‘You think he’s going to take your side.’
Charles shook his head. ‘There’s no question of anyone taking sides, Caroline. I hoped we could support each other.’
Her cheeks blazed suddenly. ‘There’s been too much secrecy. I can’t stand it any more.’ She reached out a claw to clutch at the Superintendent’s sleeve. ‘I knew we’d lost her,’ she said. ‘I prayed we’d only lost her to Leo, but in my heart of hearts, I knew she was dead. I kept asking myself why Jinx had tried to kill herself.’ Her eyes rolled alarmingly, and Frank glanced towards the WPC for assistance, but Caroline went on in an unsteady voice: ‘She did the same thing after Russell was murdered, you know, but that time she tried to starve herself to death. If it hadn’t been for her father, she’d have succeeded. This is Jinx’s doing, Superintendent. She won’t have her men taken away from her.’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Caroline,’ said her husband severely.
‘Oh, am I?’ she snapped. ‘Well, at least I’m not a hypocrite. You know the truth as well as I do. We’re talking about jealousy over Meg, Charles, something you know all about.’
He pressed his hands to his face and breathed deeply for several seconds. ‘I really don’t think I can continue, Superintendent,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I do apologize. Can I urge you to talk to Simon? I’m sure he’s the best person to give you an objective view of this sorry business.’
Fraser, who was sitting a few yards apart, looked up and caught Cheever’s eye. ‘Sorry business’ was a peculiarly cold-blooded way to describe a brutal murder, but then it hadn’t occurred to either of them at that stage how much the Reverend Charles Harris had disliked his daughter.
Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 1.00 p.m.
‘Are you busy, Dr Protheroe?’
He glanced up from his desk to find Jinx hovering, poised for flight in the doorway, a look of indecision in her dark eyes. ‘We’re very informal here, you know. You can call me Alan if you want.’
The idea of anything so intimate appalled her. ‘I’d rather stick with Dr Protheroe, if you don’t mind.’
‘Fine,’ he said indifferently. ‘Come in then.’
She stayed where she was. ‘It’s not important. I can come back later.’
He gestured towards a vacant armchair. ‘Come in,’ he said again. ‘I could do with a break from the paperwork.’ He stood up and walked around the desk, ushering her in and shutting the door behind her. ‘What’s up?’
With her escape route barred, Jinx accepted that the die was cast. She crossed the parquet flooring but, instead of sitting down, took up a position by the window and gazed out across the garden. ‘My father phoned to say he wants me out of here. I wondered why. Do you know?’
‘No,’ he said, resuming his seat and swinging round to look at her back.
‘Did you phone him about the police visit?’
‘No.’
She turned round to study his face closely, then nodded in relief. ‘Then I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why does he want me to leave?’
‘I suppose it may have something to do with the fax I sent him.’ He reached inside his top drawer and removed both the fax in question and the reply he had received that morning. ‘Read them,’ he invited. ‘My extraordinarily anodyne letter is typical of a hundred more on file, so why should your father find it threatening?’
She perched on the edge of the armchair and read both pieces of paper before handing them back to him. ‘What was your brief?’ She chewed nervously on the side of her thumb.
‘What he says. To let you recover at your own speed. He didn’t want psychiatrists meddling.’
Why not? What was there to fear from psychiatrists this time? What did Adam think she could tell them? What could she tell them? ‘Then it must be your invitation to talk about Russell’s death,’ she said slowly. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t make him do that, and certainly not with me present.’
‘What’s he afraid of?’
‘Nothing.’
Why did she keep lying to him? he wondered. And why this need to protect her father when it was so very clear she thought he’d murdered her husband? ‘There must be something, Jinx, or it wouldn’t require wild horses to drag it out of him,’ he said reasonably.
‘There’s nothing,’ she insisted. ‘It’s just that, as far as Adam’s concerned, Russell didn’t exist. His name’s never mentioned. The episode is forgotten history.’
Protheroe mulled this over. ‘You obviously think your father views your tragedy as a “forgotten episode”,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But is that how you see it, too?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Tell me about your father’s background,’ he suggested next. ‘Where did he come from?’
She spoke in quick, jerky sentences. ‘I only know what Betty’s told me. Adam never talks about his past. He was born in the East End of London. He was the third of five children. His father and two older brothers were merchant seamen – and all died when their ships were sunk in the North Atlantic. His younger brother and sister were evacuated to Devon while he remained with his mother to face the blitz. His education was minimal. He learnt more from the black marketeers working out of the docks than he ever learnt in school. By the end of the war he had amassed a list of contacts abroad and enough money to set up as an importer. The first goods he shipped in were silks, cottons and cosmetics – they arrived on his seventeenth birthday. He doubled his money overnight by flogging the lot on the black market, and he’s never looked back. He began life as a crook – knew the Kray twins very well. That’s all I know.’
He believed her. If Adam Kingsley was anything like she described him, he was a man who compartmentalized every aspect of his life. Rather like his daughter. It would be interesting to discover whether he, too, closed doors on dark rooms and threw away the keys. The chances were high that he did. ‘As far as Adam’s concerned, Russell didn’t exist,’ Jinx had said.
‘What happened to his mother?’ Protheroe asked now.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t have much to do with her after he married my mother. As far as I can make out, neither family approved of the marriage.’
‘And the brother and sister? What happened to them?’
‘They went back to London after the war, presumably to live with their mother. The only thing Adam has ever said on the subject is that he’s always regarded them as strangers because he and they grew up apart.’
‘Does he still fe
el like that?’
She slipped down into the chair and laid her head against the back of it. ‘He hasn’t spoken to either of them for over thirty years. Uncle Jo emigrated to Australia and hasn’t been heard of since, and Aunt Lucy married a black man. My father severed all his ties with her the day she walked up the aisle.’
‘Because her husband was black?’
‘Of course. He’s a racist. Betty used to know Lucy quite well when they were all younger. She told me once that Adam tried to stop the wedding.’
‘How?’
With shaking fingers, she lit a cigarette. ‘Betty was very drunk. I’m not sure she was telling the truth.’
‘What did she say?’
She took quick pulls on the cigarette, considering her answer. ‘That Adam tried to scare Lucy’s fiancé off with a beating,’ she said in a rush, ‘but that Lucy went ahead and married him anyway. It might be true. He really does hate black people.’
Alan watched her for a moment. ‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Ashamed.’
He waited. ‘Because your father’s a bully?’ he suggested.
She could taste hot, sweet bile in her mouth and drew in a lungful of smoke to mask it. ‘Yes – no. Mostly because I should have sought Lucy and her family out years ago and made a stand – but I never did.’
Veronica Gordon was right about the eyes, he was thinking. What the hell was going on inside her head that she could look so frightened and sound so composed? ‘Why not?’
She turned her face to the ceiling. ‘Because I was afraid the whipping-boys would be punished if I did.’
‘Meaning your brothers.’
‘Not necessarily. Any whipping-boy will do,’ she said flatly. ‘If I’d sought out my aunt, then Betty would have been taken to task because she knew Lucy as a child and would have been accused of being the instigator. But it’s more often the boys than not.’
‘Are we talking literally or metaphorically? Does your father physically beat your brothers?’
‘Yes.’
‘So was Russell another whipping-boy, do you think?’ he asked mildly.
The Dark Room Page 17