This Way Out

by Sheila Radley

  ‘If we meet anyone, I’ll do the talking,’ Richard said as he strode ahead. But as Derek followed, with the other two close behind, he felt considerably more apprehensive about the coming conversation with them than about any chance encounter with a neighbour.

  They rounded the churchyard wall unseen, skidded down through the spinney behind the Five Bells, and sneaked into the pub through the back door. The landlord, mumbling with suppressed curiosity, showed them into a little-used room that smelled of rising damp. While he fetched their drinks his wife, tiptoeing reverentially, served them with platters of gnarled rump steak and oven-ready chips, garnished with peas from the freezer and squishy tomatoes.

  Derek couldn’t eat; couldn’t have eaten, even had the meal been appetizing. Richard sawed up his steak for him, unasked, but all Derek did was sip whisky, push the food about with his fork, and watch his children refuel themselves.

  He was fond of them, as he hoped they were of him, but he found it difficult to relate to any of them. He privately deplored the casual expletives and the taste for beer that Lyn had brought home from medical school; he resented being organized by Richard; and he simply couldn’t come to terms with being addressed as ‘Dad’by such a whiskery man as Tim, who looked exactly like the sepia family photographs of his own great-grandfather.

  Derek and Christine had done their best to give the three of them – as well as Laurie – a happy childhood. But in comparison with some unharmonious couples they knew, who had centred their emotions on their children, he and his wife had always and unequivocally given their devotion to each other.

  Christine mattered to him far more than Tim or Richard or Lyn. If, as he suspected, they were ganging up on him because he’d lost the dog, he could comfort himself with the knowledge that what he’d done had been entirely for his wife’s ultimate benefit. With any luck, Sam would be found. And Derek was still convinced that when she’d had a chance to get over the horror of what that bastard Packer had done, Christine would be thankful for the freedom he had won for her.

  What his children had to say, initially, was mild enough. They were frustrated because they could do nothing useful, and embarrassed by the Hardings’hospitality. Richard and Lyn both had exams to face, Tim was in the middle of erecting barriers round part of a Suffolk beach that was a breeding sanctuary for the little tern, and now that they had all done what they could to comfort their mother they were anxious to get away as soon as possible.

  ‘We thought we’d push off tomorrow,’ said Richard. ‘But we’ll be back next weekend to see Mum – if you’re still here, that is. And of course we’ll be at the funeral, whenever and wherever.’

  Tim growled agreement. ‘But before we go, Dad,’ he said, wiping beer from his whiskers, ‘we want to know what your plans are.’

  They were all looking at him.

  ‘Plans?’ said Derek.

  ‘You must have been making some, for Mum’s sake,’ said Lyn impatiently. ‘What are the two of you going to do now?’

  In fact, his plans had never extended beyond getting rid of Enid. He had supposed that, once the funeral was over, he and Christine would be able to return to normal almost immediately. That had been the whole idea, to regain their home for themselves for as much – or as little – as remained of Christine’s life. But now that Packer had fouled things up, Derek could see that his wife was going to take longer than he’d imagined to get over her mother’s death.

  ‘It’s difficult to plan anything,’ he explained, ‘until the police let us have the Brickyard back. But I think I’ll take your mother for a holiday as soon as possible, somewhere in Devon or Cornwall, just to give her a chance to recuperate. Then perhaps I could leave her with her Long cousins in Swindon while I come back to work. I’ll have the house redecorated while she’s away – the hall and our bedroom, anyway, and of course your grandmother’s room. That’ll have to be completely refurbished.’

  Lyn drew a sharp, audible breath. All three of them were staring at him as though they couldn’t believe their ears.

  ‘Refurbished?’ she exploded. ‘Christ – have you gone completely our of your mind?’

  He stared back, affronted. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You can hardly go on living at the Brickyard after Gran has been murdered there,’ said Tim gruffly.

  ‘And even if you could,’ said Richard, ‘Mum certainly can’t.’ His shoulders sagged; he suddenly looked very young. ‘We’ve lost poor Gran, and we’ve lost our home as well. It’s good-bye to the Brickyard for all of us.’

  Derek was speechless.

  It had never occurred to him that there would be any problem about continuing to live at the Brickyard. But it wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t thought of it. If only that bastard Packer had carried out the plan and quietly smothered Enid, Derek was sure that Christine would have had no qualms about going on living there.

  The family were right, though. After what she’d seen last night, Christine would find the house unbearable. The village too; probably the whole area. So now, in her state of health, she was going to have to go through all the harassment of trailing about the countryside viewing other properties, and then the upheaval of moving. Poor, poor Christine – what she was being put through … and all on account of that devil Packer! God, what he wouldn’t do to him if ever he saw him again –

  Derek pushed aside his plate. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry – I just didn’t think.’

  ‘You never do think, do you?’ To his astonishment, Lyn began blazing at him from across the table. ‘At least, not as far as Mum’s concerned. You never bother to take her feelings into account. You’re simply planning to do what suits you, and assuming that it’s in her best interests as well as your own.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘Oh yes, it is, I’ve seen it happening before. You think of her only in relation to yourself, never as a person in her own right.’

  Derek was hot with indignation. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m devoted to your mother.’

  ‘Oh yes – you’ve always made a big thing about that, haven’t you? All right, I know you care about her, Dad. But you don’t even begin to understand her. F’r instance, you’ve obviously no idea how shattered she’s been by that mastectomy. Don’t you realize what a devastating thing it is for a woman?’

  ‘Of course I realize it. God knows I’ve done everything to reassure her that it doesn’t make her any less attractive –’

  ‘Attractive? To you, you mean?’ Lyn slammed back her chair in disgust.

  ‘There you go again! That’s absolutely typical. Can’t you see that it’s not the way you feel about her that matters, it’s the way she feels about herself? She’s been a deeply unhappy woman – and I’m furious with you for not letting me know as soon as she found the lump in her breast. There was probably no need for her to have a radical mastectomy. That hospital’s notorious for doing it as a matter of routine on every breast cancer patient. If only you’d told me I’d have come home right away and discussed the alternatives with her – and kicked up a fuss at the hospital if necessary. Why didn’t you let me know, Dad? Why didn’t you give me a chance to help her?’

  ‘Because it was nothing to do with you, Lyn,’ said Derek sharply. ‘It was a matter for your mother and myself.’

  ‘“And yourself”! It’s her body, not yours – and not some out-of-date consultant’s either. Well, all I can say is, thank God for Sylvia Collins – at least Mum’s now got someone sympathetic to talk to.’

  ‘Except that you can’t go on staying with Mrs Collins indefinitely,’ pointed out Richard. ‘And Mum won’t want to go back to the Brickyard even for one night. You could always use Gran’s flat in Southwold, I suppose – only it’s too far from your office. So where will you go?’

  Derek propped his elbows on the table and rested his aching head on his one good hand. Lyn’s attack had been so unexpected, so bloody unjust. She’d got it all
wrong about him and her mother, but he was too weary to argue with her. And how the hell could they expect him to make any decisions, when he was still in shock after the horror of last night?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. They could see the bandages on his left hand – didn’t they understand that it hurt? Couldn’t they leave him alone?

  ‘And the other thing we need to sort out, while we’re here,’ growled Tim, ‘is what happened yesterday afternoon. How did you come to lose poor old Sam? Why on earth did you take the dog for a walk in the forest in the pouring rain – and in your office suit? What exactly were you doing yesterday, Dad?’

  Derek was saved by a loud knock on the door. He hurried to answer it, and found the two detectives there.

  ‘Sorry to intrude, Mr Cartwright,’ said the chief inspector, ducking his head as he came through the low doorway. ‘We’re on our way back to Breckham Market, and we just wanted a final word with you.’

  ‘Final for tonight, that is,’ said Sergeant Lloyd. She smiled at the younger Cartwrights, and Derek reluctantly introduced his family. Hands were shaken, but the detectives refused the offer of a drink.

  ‘We’re giving a press and television conference later this evening,’ explained the chief inspector, ‘and appealing for possible witnesses to come forward. Better steer clear of alcohol until that’s over.’

  ‘Do you suspect anyone?’ asked Lyn.

  ‘No, it’s early days yet. But at least we’ve got a possible lead. Someone noticed a man with binoculars hanging about beside a parked car by the bridge on the Doddenham road, on the day before Mrs Long’s death.’

  Derek’s mouth went dry.

  ‘Couldn’t it have been a bird-watcher?’ he said.

  The sergeant turned her head. ‘Did you see him, too, Mr Cartwright?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just that you said he had binoculars – and that’s quite a well-known spot for bird-watching.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ muttered Tim.

  ‘As it happens,’ said Sergeant Lloyd, ‘the person who saw him thought he was a bird-watcher. Apparently he was wearing all the gear. But he’s described as a small man, and he was looking towards the field path from which we think the murderer approached your house, so we’d very much like to talk to him.’

  ‘Or to anyone else who might have seen him, or who noticed his car,’ said the chief inspector. ‘If he had no connection with the murder, we’d like to eliminate him from our enquiries.’

  Derek took several deep breaths in an attempt to steady his heartbeat. The standard police phrase had an ominous ring to it, but there was no need to panic. Even if anyone could remember any details of the car, Packer had said that he had since changed the number plates. No one could possibly trace the man that way. Relax.

  ‘What we came to see you about, though, Mr Cartwright,’ said the chief inspector, ‘is your dog.’

  ‘My dog?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid we’ve had no sightings from our patrol car. What I thought, though, since Mrs Cartwright is so concerned about him, is that we might give him a mention to the press. We do our best to keep reporters away from the family, as you know, but they’ve got a job to do and no doubt they’ll be glad enough to use the lost dog story. If you’d like us to release it, that is?’

  Derek swallowed, trying to moisten his mouth. ‘Er – yes. Yes, of course – please do.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Chief Inspector,’ said Tim, standing squarely opposite his father. ‘We’ll all be grateful if Sam can be found. What we don’t understand – we were just saying this to Dad when you arrived – is how he ever came to be lost.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Derek. ‘I didn’t want to lose him.’

  ‘Nobody said you did,’ argued his first-born, looking more patriarchal than ever. ‘But what bothers Mum – and us – is why on earth you took him all the way to the forest in the pouring rain.’

  ‘I told her: it wasn’t raining when I set out.’

  ‘And you were wearing your office suit, so she said.’

  ‘I was going to visit a client.’

  ‘You don’t have personal clients,’ said Richard.

  ‘Not exactly a personal client – a bank manager, a useful contact.’

  ‘On a Saturday afternoon?’ said Lyn.

  ‘Yes – just a social call, really. He’d invited me to visit him at his home, near Fodderstone.’

  ‘Fodderstone?’ said Tim. ‘That’s on the other side of the forest from Two Mile Bottom.’

  ‘Who said anything about Two Mile Bottom?’

  ‘You did,’ said Lyn. ‘You told Mum that was where you lost Sam, at our old picnic place.’

  Derek had forgotten. He glanced at the detectives, and saw that they were listening with undisguised interest. Sweat sprang out on his hairline, and he had to will himself not to wipe it away.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said. ‘She must be confused. I told her I took Sam for a run there, before the rain started. It was later, on the way back from Fodderstone, that I let him out of the car and he went chasing off after a rabbit. It wasn’t my fault –’

  ‘Could happen to anyone,’ intervened the chief inspector, curtailing the family argument. He reached for the latch of the door. ‘Let’s hope we can get the beagle back for you, with the help of a bit of publicity.’

  ‘Ah yes –’ said the sergeant. ‘There’s just one detail I forgot to ask you, Mr Cartwright. Was your dog wearing his collar when he ran off?’

  ‘Er –’

  ‘You told Mum he was wearing it,’ said Tim sternly. ‘A tartan collar,’ he explained to the sergeant.

  She raised one eyebrow at Derek, seeking confirmation.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, by now slightly desperate. ‘I’d forgotten.’ Then he turned on his children, his patience snapping: ‘Good grief, d’you think I’m a computer? Do you imagine I’ve got total recall? If you’d been through what I went through last night –’

  From the corner of his eye he saw the detectives leave the room. God, what a fright that had been! But they didn’t suspect anything, surely? No, of course they didn’t. There was no reason why they should.

  It was just that interested look of theirs that he couldn’t get out of his mind. Had they noticed the give-away sweat on his forehead? What were they saying about him? Had it occurred to them that there might be something significant about the dog’s disappearance on the very day of Enid’s murder? Because once they made that connection –

  ‘Derek Cartwright’, said Sergeant Lloyd as she sat in the Chief Inspector’s car and fastened her seat belt, ‘is a very worried man. What do you make of this dog incident, Douglas? What’s he covering up?’

  Quantrill snorted, half-disapproving, half-amused.

  ‘What I think,’ he said, ‘is that Cartwright took the chance of making a Saturday afternoon visit to a secret girlfriend, with dog-walking as an excuse. Now the animal’s lost, what’s putting him in a muck sweat is that his family is just about to find him out.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Derek would have preferred to avoid his children the following morning, but they insisted on making a search for Sam before they left and they needed him as a guide. They also needed to use his car, because Tim’s pick-up truck wasn’t big enough for the four of them.

  The Sierra was in its usual place at the front of the Brickyard, under the old cart shed where Derek had left it on Saturday evening when he returned from the forest. Now, though, it was blocked in by police vehicles. The very young constable who had escorted him round the house the previous day hurried out with an apology, and began to clear their way.

  Derek stood alone in the yard, blinking dazedly in the sunshine after another dream-disturbed night. His damaged hand felt easier, but Tim had commandeered his car keys. The constable moved a police Rover, judged that there was now enough room for Tim to reverse and turn the Sierra, and beckoned him out of the shed.

  What was happening, there on Derek’s own prop
erty, seemed to him totally unreal. He felt choked with worry; less – at the moment – on account of Packer’s crime than on account of the unexpected and wholly unfounded charges his children had levelled at him last night.

  Since he had no way of disproving what they thought, except by telling the truth about what he had done on Saturday, he had said nothing. As a result, his children despised him for being unfaithful to their sick mother. And if Christine had come to the same conclusion – which would account for her withdrawal from him – then the basis of their marriage had already been destroyed. God, what a mess everything had turned out to be … And all he’d ever intended was to make life easier for Christine because he loved her.

  ‘You’ve got some nasty scratches on your bodywork, Mr Cartwright,’ observed the very young constable as he signalled Tim to stop reversing the car. ‘Recent, too.’

  He bent to examine the driver’s door and Derek joined him, not really caring about the scratches but feeling that he ought to show an interest. Tim lowered the window, and stuck out his bearded head for an alternative view; Lyn and Richard walked up from the gateway to see what was happening.

  The slate-blue car was badly in need of a wash. Its Saturday journey through the wet countryside had left it sprayed with mud. And there, on the driver’s door, in paw-prints and scrabbles and long raking scratches, some of which went right through to the metal, was clear evidence that Sam had frantically objected to being abandoned.

  Derek heard himself gulp.

  The constable, thank God, seemed not to think the marks suspicious. He took a good look at them, and agreed with Derek’s gabbled improvisation: yes, the dog might well have returned to the car while his master was searching for him, tried to get in, and then rushed away again when he heard himself being called from elsewhere.

  Tim and Richard and Lyn glanced their disbelief at each other, and then stared at their father with hostility. But at least they said nothing in front of the policeman.

  They told Derek exactly what they thought of him as they drove to the forest but he stuck to his story, hoping fervently that the beagle would be found and that some at least of the family pressure would be taken off him. But when all four of them had called and searched for an hour or more, hurrying up and down grassy rides and blundering through thickets in vain, it became clear that Sam was irretrievably lost.