by Nicola Upson
‘Neither,’ Archie said. ‘It’s all far too energetic for me. I think I’ll just sit in the sun and read the papers.’ He glanced over to the Hitchcocks’ table. ‘I doubt there’ll be a shortage of entertainment. Apart from anything else, I want to know what happened to the nun.’
‘Perfect,’ Lettice said, getting up. ‘You can bring us up to date over lunch.’
3
Rhiannon Erley knocked softly on the bedroom door. There was no reply, but she knew that Gwyneth would not be asleep. She opened the door and walked quietly over to the bed, where Gwyneth lay on her side, looking out across the estuary. Her face was hidden‚ but Rhiannon could picture its expression all too well: that look of longing, sadness and fear was as familiar to her as her own features. She sat down on the edge of the mattress and put the cup on the table. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. Gwyneth nodded. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me.’
‘You can’t be with me all the time, I know that.’ She searched for Rhiannon’s hand with her own, never once taking her eyes off the horizon. ‘But you’re here now.’
‘I’ve brought you some tea.’
Gwyneth sat up and sipped the drink, but Rhiannon knew that she was doing it to please rather than out of any genuine enjoyment. She looked at her friend’s exhausted face, haggard in the morning sunlight and drained of any colour except for the bruising around her eyes, and felt as though she were trying to revive a ghost. ‘He came to look for me,’ Gwyneth whispered, her voice so low that Rhiannon could barely make out the words. ‘When I heard your car, I thought it was him again. I thought he’d come back to finish what he started.’
‘Henry can’t hurt you now,’ Rhiannon said, surprised by the confidence in her own voice. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’ Gwyneth looked searchingly into her face, and must have found the reassurance she needed because she smiled. ‘You’re shattered, Gwyn. You know you have to rest.’ The routine was second nature to her. She encouraged Gwyneth to lie down again, and gently stroked her hair until she slept.
4
‘Lydia knows all about last night. I’m sure of it.’
Marta frowned. ‘What can she know?’
‘That I didn’t spend it with Archie and you didn’t spend it on your own.’ After the public performance of breakfast it was a relief to Josephine to be able to talk to Marta alone, free from the worry that her face would give her away. ‘She made a comment about blankets and confusing people. She must have seen us.’
They were beyond the hotel grounds now, and Marta bent down to let the dog off his lead. He barked gratefully at her and scampered off into the woods. ‘I don’t know why you’re worried. Lydia knew you were coming to see me last night. You said she told you to call in.’
‘Call in, yes. Not run around Portmeirion in the rain like a lovesick teenager.’ Marta raised an eyebrow, and her obvious amusement provoked Josephine into continuing a subject that she might otherwise have dropped. ‘She came to see you this morning, didn’t she?’
‘She came to fetch me for breakfast‚ but I wasn’t ready,’ Marta said calmly. ‘There’s nothing unusual about that. Lydia knows by now that early mornings and I don’t mix. It’s fine, Josephine. Trust me.’
‘And I didn’t leave anything behind?’
‘Nothing tangible, no. You were impressively thorough in your departure.’ She made Josephine look at her and spoke more seriously. ‘Don’t do this. There’s no need.’
Oddly, Josephine found Marta’s confidence less reassuring than the solidarity of a shared fear, but the thoughts running through her head belonged to the sleepless hours of a long night, not to a day that shone with promise, and she tried to brush them aside. The trees and shrubs that graced the shoreline were not as exotic as some of the species found elsewhere on the peninsula, but were no less beautiful for their familiarity. A sandy path cut deep through sweet-smelling gorse, whose flowers gave the sunshine a run for its money, and clusters of pink, white and purple-blue hydrangea grew in such profusion that the heads seemed almost too heavy for their stems. All along the water’s edge, a thin ribbon of rocks covered in wild thrift provided a subtle but welcome relief to the dark green mass of woodland. Alma’s dog ran ahead, alert to the slightest rustle of a leaf, and they watched as he danced playfully around a border terrier; Bridget appeared from the opposite direction and reclaimed her dog with an apologetic wave, but she turned away into the woods before they had a chance to speak.
After five minutes or so, they came to a promontory where the path forked, with one strand following the line of trees and the other going down onto the sands. There was a curious circular building on the headland, small and rough like the bottom of a tower that someone had forgotten to finish; a black umbrella was caught in the low-hanging branches of the tree next to it, an incongruous reminder of the previous night’s storm. ‘Let’s wait down there while Jenky tires himself out,’ Marta said, pointing to an outcrop in the rock. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have his energy this morning.’
They sat down on the springy turf, enjoying the strong scent of the grass which was, for Josephine, pure summer. ‘No sign of a boat yet,’ she said, shading her eyes and looking back towards the hotel.
‘Perhaps Lettice is a bit rusty.’
‘Or perhaps they’re waiting for Ronnie to change. She’s the only person I know who wears a designer dress to a village cricket match, and I can’t imagine that taking to the water will be less of an event. Anyway, it would be just like those three to bump into someone else they know and forget about the boat altogether.’
‘Don’t knock it. Just enjoy the peace while it lasts.’ Marta lay back and closed her eyes, her hand resting casually on Josephine’s leg. ‘Have you decided what you’re going to start work on next? You said your publisher had asked you to write a biography.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Some Scottish bloke I’d never heard of. McTavish, or something like that.’
Josephine laughed. ‘Said with typical English ignorance. I think you mean Claverhouse. Or John Graham, First Viscount Dundee, to give him his full title.’
‘Well, it was close.’
‘I can tell you went to the sort of school where no one has to learn anything unless they want to.’ Marta refused to rise to the bait. ‘I suppose not knowing who he is does him less damage than most historians have managed,’ Josephine conceded. ‘He’s either Bonnie Dundee or the bastard who drowned two old women in Galloway.’ She brushed a lock of blonde hair gently away from Marta’s forehead. ‘Are you asleep already? That doesn’t bode well for the sales.’
Marta opened her eyes. ‘Of course I’m not asleep. I’m just listening to your voice. It was the first thing I loved about you.’ Josephine smiled and leant forward to kiss her. ‘So‚ are you going to take the commission? You obviously feel strongly about the man.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure how I feel about writing a book which is someone else’s idea. And anyway, non-fiction’s such a lot of work: all that research and objectivity, no nice chunks of dialogue or convenient coincidences to get you out of a hole. I’d rather lie in the sun and make something up.’
‘You could write it as a novel.’
‘Mix fact and fiction?’ Josephine asked, and Marta had to laugh at the disapproval in her voice. ‘How would that help restore the reputation of a much-maligned man? No one would know what was true and what wasn’t.’
‘Exactly. That’s the fun of it. And a biography would only be your interpretation. At least calling it fiction is honest.’ Before Josephine could argue, there was a tirade of barking from just above their heads. ‘Being a dog owner isn’t very peaceful, is it?’ Marta said. ‘I don’t believe for one moment that Alma had any calls to make; I think she just wanted a rest.’ She called the dog but he sat belligerently at the top of the rock, refusing to come any further. ‘Oh God, is that a shoe next to him?’ she asked, squinting against the sun. ‘I’d better find out what he’s up to.’
She climbed back to the path, and Josephi
ne watched as she collected the shoe and looked round for someone to apologise to. Then she disappeared from view and the barking stopped. After a couple of minutes, Josephine followed her up the rock to see what was happening. She found Marta leaning against the small stone structure, looking as though all the strength had been drained from her body. Her face was deathly white, and she was plainly in shock. She had clipped Jenky’s lead back on, and the dog seemed as subdued as she was. When she saw Josephine, she came forward to meet her, anxious to stop her going any further. ‘Don’t look in there,’ she said, but Josephine ignored her, hell-bent on sharing whatever had shaken Marta so badly.
She stood slightly to the side of the narrow entrance to avoid blocking the light and lowered her head to look inside, noticing how effortlessly the smell of decay – hoarded year after year – could overpower the sweetness of a single summer. It was immediately obvious to her – from the dress rather than from the girl’s bruised and beaten face – that she was looking at the waitress from the band, and her words to Archie came back to haunt her: whether the girl had looked for trouble or not, it had found her in the cruellest of ways. Her body had been positioned to be found: anyone continuing along the path instead of going down to the sands as she and Marta had done would have seen her instantly. A shaft of morning sunlight shone directly through the doorway, as if deliberately placed to illuminate every vile detail of her degradation‚ and Josephine found it hard to imagine a more perfectly composed scene of horror.
Inside, the curious lookout point resembled something halfway between a hermit’s cell and a medieval torture chamber. The girl was slumped against the wall opposite, arms outstretched, wrists tied with her own stockings to two of the old iron rings which were set at regular intervals into the stone. Her dress was torn and pushed up to her waist, and there was blood all over her thighs and matted in her pubic hair – such a lot of blood that Josephine wanted to weep, not just for the violence of the attack but for the inhumanity of how the body had been left. It took every ounce of self-restraint she had not to go over to the girl and cover her shame. A dog’s lead was wound around her neck and the leather cut deeply into the skin, embedding itself so thoroughly that it could only just be seen; in places, there were scratch marks on her neck where her fingers had clawed frantically at the ligature. A pair of lace knickers had been stuffed into her mouth, a grotesque and humiliating gag, and her lips were dark and swollen. Small, circular areas of bruising were visible on her shoulders and chest, and Josephine tried in vain to close her mind to the realisation that they were bite marks. The belt from a raincoat acted as a blindfold for unseeing eyes, and she was struck by how effectively that one act removed all traces of the girl’s personality. In a final gesture of mockery, someone had drawn a clumsy, grotesque smile around her mouth with lipstick.
She had looked on death only once before: then, it had surprised her with a peace which she had always believed to be a cliché designed to give solace to the living; here, it was a violent wrenching from the world, a scream of pain and humiliation which endured long after the final breath was taken. She felt Marta’s hand on her arm, and allowed herself to be pulled away. ‘It’s the waitress from the hotel,’ she said.
‘Yes, I recognised her.’ They stared at each other in silence, and Josephine saw her own impotent fury looking back at her. The pure, melodious song of a blackbird filled the air, and she wanted to scream at it to stop. ‘Go and get Archie,’ Marta said quietly. ‘I’ll stay with her.’
Josephine shook her head. ‘I’m not leaving you here on your own. We’ll both go.’
‘We can hardly leave her on her own, either,’ Marta snapped. ‘It’s not right.’ Instinctively, she wiped the lipstick from her own mouth. ‘The world and his wife will be along here when the village opens, and she’s been humiliated enough.’
‘I know, but if you seriously think I’m going back to the hotel without you when whoever did this might be sitting in those trees now, watching us, you must be mad.’ Josephine struggled to rein in the fear that had made her react more angrily than she meant to. ‘Of course it feels wrong to leave her, but she’s beyond help. I won’t let you put yourself at risk.’
‘You don’t have any choice.’
Josephine sighed and took the lead from her hand. ‘Fine. You go back to the hotel and I’ll stay here with the dog.’ Marta began to object, as Josephine had known she would. ‘Come on,’ she said gently. ‘It’ll only take us a few minutes.’ Still, Marta stood rooted to the spot. Josephine saw the expression of grief on her face, and realised that it was only in part for the stranger whose body she wanted so badly to watch over. Marta’s own daughter had been murdered two years ago‚ and her stubbornness now, Josephine guessed, was a reaction to having failed to keep her safe. ‘You’re thinking about Elspeth, aren’t you?’ she asked quietly.
Marta nodded. ‘Is that how she looked?’
‘I don’t know, Marta. I didn’t see her.’
‘But Archie must have said something.’
During their time together, Marta had pressed her over and over again for every detail of Elspeth’s death, always suspecting a darker truth than the one she was being told. ‘He told me that she lost consciousness almost immediately,’ Josephine said, imagining what torment that small word ‘almost’ must be. ‘She would have known very little about it. I promise I’d tell you if it were different.’
‘So she wasn’t hurt like that?’
‘You know she wasn’t.’
‘I don’t though, do I? I don’t know anything about her because I wasn’t part of her life.’ Josephine held her close, waiting for the tears to subside. Eventually, Marta said‚ ‘I’d give anything just to be told that she was never alone, Josephine. Does that sound ridiculous?’
‘No, it doesn’t sound ridiculous. And I can’t argue with it.’ Reluctantly, she handed the lead back to Marta. ‘I won’t be long.’
5
Archie finished reading about the uprising in Spain and dropped his newspaper onto the grass, glad to put the world down with it. He had moved to one of the deckchairs by the swimming pool; from there, he could watch the antics on the terrace without any danger of being caught up in them. The only new arrivals from Hitchcock’s party were Danny Lascelles and Astrid Lake, who had come down from the village within a couple of minutes of each other and made a great show of saying good morning. Archie wasn’t surprised that the gathering was incomplete: Bella Hutton didn’t seem the type to breakfast in public; and, after what he had drunk last night, Leyton Turnbull deserved the sort of head that would keep most people in bed until noon. In fact, there were very few people about now that the girls had made a move, and once or twice he caught Hitchcock looking anxiously around at the remnants of his weekend, wondering where his audience had gone.
Archie watched, amused, as his cousins and Lydia chatted down by the quayside, making elaborate preparations to take to the water without actually getting into the boat. Josephine and Marta would be halfway to Harlech before anyone caught up with them, but he guessed that they wouldn’t miss the company. He wondered how he would have felt when he saw Josephine’s happiness at breakfast if he had not been marvelling at his own, then put the thought from his mind; it was far too early to start relying on Bridget for his emotional welfare, and not fair on either of them.
The clock in the Bell Tower chimed the half-hour. He settled back in the sun and closed his eyes, and was just drifting off to sleep when he heard his name being called. Bridget was on her way across the lawn with Lytton and Carrington‚ and he got up, delighted to see her; his smile faded when he noticed how upset she was. ‘Archie – thank God you’re here. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘What’s the matter?’ She seemed to struggle for words. He sat her down and said calmly‚ ‘Bridget – tell me what’s happened.’
‘There’s a body in the dog cemetery. I think it’s Bella Hutton, but it’s hard to tell.’
‘Hard to tell?’
/> ‘Yes. Her face . . .’ She stopped and made an effort to control her voice. ‘She’s been killed, Archie. I didn’t go right up to her; her dog was upset, and I didn’t want trouble with these two. Anyway, to be honest, I wasn’t in a hurry to go any closer. But I saw enough.’
‘And you’re sure she’s dead?’
‘Jesus, Archie, nobody’s make-up is that good.’ Her sarcasm was defensive, an antidote to fear and shock. ‘What a stupid question. Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I believe you,’ he said, remembering Bella’s parting shot last night and what Hitchcock had said about murder. ‘I just don’t trust that anything around here is quite what it seems this weekend.’ Would the director really pull a stunt like that? he wondered. Probably, but he doubted that Bella Hutton would collude in it. The nun was a possibility: he didn’t believe for a moment that she was genuine – no one with heels like that was holy – and if she was on the payroll, she could just as easily turn up today as a corpse. He was torn between going to the cemetery first to see for himself or acting immediately on Bridget’s word. In the end, he chose the latter: if this turned out to be an extreme practical joke, it would do Hitchcock good to be charged with wasting police time. ‘Go into the hotel now and find James Wyllie,’ he said. ‘Tell him in confidence what’s happened. Get him to call the police and close the village on my authority.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They open the gates at ten thirty?’ Bridget nodded. ‘With a bit of luck, not many people will have come in yet. Make sure James understands how important it is that he keeps this absolutely private. Nothing to his staff or any of the guests. If word gets out that there’s a murdered Hollywood star in those woods, we’ll have the press and the public trampling through them in no time‚ and all hell will break loose. What’s the quickest way up there?’
‘There’s a path that runs behind the hotel.’ She outlined the route for him and put her hand to his cheek. ‘You will be careful, Archie?’