No Secrets (MARNIE WALKER Book 6)

by Leo McNeir

  Strangest of all, it flew in the face of the rules programmed into girl babies at birth. Reveal to a man that you’re keen and there’s a good chance he’ll get bored, take you for granted and start looking for the next conquest that proves he really is God’s gift to womankind.

  What did it tell her about Barbara? She was imaginative. She had a sultry kind of style. How would Neil feel about getting a tape like that? Marnie tried to put herself in his position. How would any man feel? Excited, definitely, anxious to see Barbara again – and soon. Flattered. It could do amazing things for his ego. Marnie doubted that was the reason for making the tapes. She sipped the cognac. There could only be one reason. It was becoming more obvious by the minute.

  Marnie’s concentration was broken by the ringing of her mobile. It was Anne, just returned from the post run.

  “Can you come back to the office, Marnie? You’ve got a visitor.”

  “Who is it?”

  Anne told her, but she could have guessed.

  Marnie was back in the office barn in a few minutes, having stowed the box of tapes under the bed in the sleeping cabin on Sally Ann. She wasted no time, anxious not to have Chief Inspector Bartlett coming to look for her. He was standing in the middle of the office with DS Marriner when she opened the door. He wasted no time on idle greetings.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Mrs Walker. I thought we’d reached an understanding that you were going to be open and frank with us.”

  Marnie knew from his tone it would be a waste of breath to offer them tea. “That’s right. But I explained to Mr Marriner that –”

  “We don’t accept client confidentiality as a valid reason for keeping things from us if we ought to have access to them.”

  “I was going to say that I’d gone to London to retrieve certain objects belonging to Neil Gerard.”

  “The objects being?”

  “Love letters from Barbara Taverner.”

  Bartlett frowned. This was not the answer he expected. “What?”

  “That’s why Neil didn’t want his sister to get them for him. I understand they were of a very intimate and personal nature. He obviously couldn’t have them in prison, and he wanted them put away somewhere safe.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  Bartlett turned sharply to look at Anne. She returned his gaze without flinching. Back to Marnie.

  “Then how did Gerard think they could help with his campaign?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe he hoped they’d show how close they were, he and Barbara. Personally I don’t think they would’ve proved anything. They were just old love letters after all. Now we’ll never know, unless you can find them in the flat.”

  “He presumably told you where to find them?”

  “Of course. They were concealed in his collection of CDs and tapes.”

  “Bloody marvellous!” Bartlett fumed.

  Marnie was surprised at his reaction. “What difference does it make? Old letters … they can’t be considered as evidence of anything. And in any case, you got your conviction. Neil Gerard’s inside for life.”

  “You’re missing the point, Mrs Walker. If anything should come to light that has relevance to the case – anything at all – then we want to know about it first. We don’t want it suddenly popping up on the front page of the Sun.”

  “If we’d found the letters, that would never happen, Mr Bartlett. Client confidentiality, remember?”

  “And what if your client thought it suited his campaign to release them via the press? Thought about that?” He turned and walked quickly towards the door, Marriner following in his wake. Pulling on the handle, he looked back. “If you discover anything that might be material to the investigation, you’ll inform me, right?”

  “That’s a promise, inspector.”

  “I’ll remember that. Be very careful not to meddle in police business, Mrs Walker. It could lead to trouble, and you don’t need me to remind you it could be dangerous.”

  “Are you starting to think Neil Gerard might be innocent?”

  “No, but I’ve been around long enough to know there are few certainties in our business. Just watch your step, that’s all I’m saying.”

  The detectives went out leaving Marnie and Anne staring at the door in silence.

  Ralph and Anne had been surprised when Marnie announced that they should “dress for dinner”. Ralph remarked that his dinner jacket and dress shirt were at the cottage in Murton. Anne lamented that her Balenciaga evening gown had been sent back to Harrods for alterations; the hem had been catching on the heels of her hobnail boots. Without argument they had been happy to change into jeans and sweatshirts. They were going for a tootle on Sally Ann.

  “I had to do something active,” Marnie declared. “This Neil Gerard thing is getting me down.”

  “No better way to clear the head than a trip on a narrowboat,” Ralph agreed. “Full ahead both … cylinders?”

  “I think it would be a good idea if we untied her and reversed out of the docking area first, don’t you think?”

  He grinned. “Good point, cap’n. I’ll pass the word to the bosun to er … do whatever bosuns do.”

  Anne was already untying and stowing the mooring ropes. Sally Ann’s engine was thumping away steadily beneath the stern deck as Marnie pushed the heavy gear lever into reverse, and the boat slid out across the main line. She turned her bows north and they picked up to cruising speed for the journey towards Hanford, half an hour or so up the canal.

  When Anne emerged after five minutes in the cabin bearing a tray containing three glasses of Pimm’s and a bowl of green Provençal olives, the cares of life ‘on the bank’ began melting away.

  “Yes!” Marnie exclaimed. “Good decision, bosun.”

  Ralph agreed. “I knew they did something important, these bosuns.”

  Reaching their goal, they tied up on the opposite bank to the towpath alongside a field extending down to the tiny River Tove, invisible in its channel meandering through pasture land. As always, Marnie found it extraordinary that just a short journey on the boat could distance her from the worst of her worries, even if only for a temporary respite. Her lover and her friend both understood this and both knew there was more to the decision to take the boat for a trip than the simple need for a breather on the canal.

  They took the remains of their drinks with them to the galley where Anne, at Marnie’s request, had begun preparations for a variation on a salade niçoise, using pieces of hot smoked salmon instead of tuna and hard-boiled quails eggs, on special offer in the supermarket. As usual they divided up the tasks. Ralph supervised the cooling of the boiled potatoes, Jersey Royales – another offer at Waitrose – and the French beans, plus the warming of a baguette in the oven. Marnie and Anne chopped and prepared little gem lettuce, salad onions, cucumber and cherry tomatoes.

  “Mm …” Anne breathed in deeply, groaning and stretching out her arms. “It smells like mid-summer in here. I’m getting hungry.”

  Ralph checked that the wine, a dry rosé from the Loire valley, was at optimum temperature in the fridge. It was a perfect meal for a mild spring evening to lift their spirits and boost morale.

  Marnie looked up from mixing the vinaigrette, her expression serious. “I want to tell you about the tapes. We’ve got a few minutes before things are ready. I want to get it over with so that we can enjoy supper. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll explain.”

  When they were settled, Marnie leaned back against the workbench. “I’ve listened to the whole of the first tape. I told Bartlett we’d been looking for love letters from Barbara. That wasn’t too wide of the mark. She doesn’t actually talk in those terms, but they are very personal and private. Once I’d got over my initial curiosity I felt quite uncomfortable listening in.”

  “Which no doubt explains why Gerard didn’t ask his sister to find them,” Ralph said.

  “I think so.”

  “He obviously has a gr
eat deal of faith in you, Marnie.”

  “I can’t think why. He hardly knows me. Anyway, the tapes make it clear – at least the first one does – that they were very close. No-one does that sort of thing for someone they’re having a casual affair with. Barbara talks about their relationship on all sorts of different levels, the things they’d said, things they’d done. She talks about Charles, too, seems very loyal to him – yes, I know she was involved with Neil but somehow it reminded me of that old song, I’m always true to you, darling, in my fashion … You know the one?”

  Ralph nodded. “Does anything you’ve heard so far make it clear why she was having the affair – affairs – even though she was obviously not planning to leave Charles?”

  “She mentions how hard he works, how much of his time it takes, his ambition. It’s obvious there were times when she was lonely.”

  “Presumably she wasn’t thinking of ending the affair with Gerard, otherwise she wouldn’t be starting to make tapes.”

  “And going on to make two dozen of them.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of listening to do, Marnie.”

  “Part of me wants to get the whole story, but another part wants to hold back. I don’t want to treat their relationship like a spectator sport.”

  Ralph stood up to bring the conversation to a close. “One thing is clear. You must be the only one to hear the tapes, Marnie.”

  “I want you to hear this one, Ralph.”

  “No. Gerard trusted you. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Just this first one. I need to be able to talk things over with you, to get matters sorted out in my own mind. We can’t do that if you’ve never heard what they’re like.”

  “Let’s eat. We can decide on that later.”

  The evening had clouded over and a light rain was falling when Marnie ran the first tape that night in the sleeping cabin on Thyrsis. She and Ralph listened without speaking as Barbara’s soft voice spoke of that rainy autumn night, while the raindrops spattered the roof and windows of their boat making an eerie accompaniment to her words. Marnie was struck again by the intimacy of Barbara’s tone and the power of her imagination at coming up with the idea of making the tapes. Ralph lay back on the bed propped up on one elbow thinking as he listened that Barbara was extraordinary, that he personally had never known a woman who would do such a thing.

  At the end Marnie switched off the cassette player and pressed the rewind button. “Thanks for listening, Ralph. Now you can see why I wanted you to hear that for yourself. What did you make of it?”

  “I’ve never heard anything like it. Have you?”

  “No. I remember that when Simon and I were first seeing each other, he’d phone me late at night for a chat. The conversations were in that sort of vein, sometimes a bit more amorous. But then he was a man. This seems to have been entirely Barbara’s idea.”

  “Dreamt up in the taxi on the way home,” Ralph observed.

  “Apparently.”

  “There’s no reason, of course, why women would be unlikely to make such tapes. It just seems somehow out of character. I don’t know why. It was interesting to hear it, and sad, too.”

  “I wanted you to listen because I wanted to know what you made of it. just for a second opinion, really.”

  Ralph thought back to the time of his marriage, that had ended when his wife died in her thirties several years previously. “Well, sometimes Laura used to read poetry to me … in bed.”

  “It’s fine, Ralph. You don’t have to explain about –”

  “No, it’s all right. You recall she was a specialist in medieval literature. She liked reading ancient love poems by candlelight.” He grinned. “Once she burned incense in our bedroom to go with a particularly passionate series of poems by a troubadour from Provence. You wouldn’t believe it. We were up half the night –”

  “Actually, I think I can imagine the rest, Ralph,” Marnie interrupted, smiling, putting the cassette player on the shelf above the bed.

  “I don’t think you can, Marnie. You see, we were up coughing and sneezing for hours because of the incense. We ended up sleeping in the living room, Laura on the sofa, me on the floor.”

  “So not the ultimate aphrodisiac, then?”

  “Quite the opposite. We both looked like zombies in the morning.”

  Marnie slipped off her bathrobe and slid naked under the duvet. Ralph emulated her and reached up to turn out the light. In the darkness the sound of the rain against the windows made them both think of an autumn night, a solitary woman in an empty house by the river in Docklands. Ralph reached across and pulled Marnie towards him.

  “You wondered what effect that tape would have on Gerard, Marnie. Speaking personally, there’s not much doubt of the effect it’s had on me.”

  In her attic room above the office Anne could barely hear the rain, her only window being little more than a glazed slot in the end wall. She sat up reading in bed, resting against plump cushions, red, blue and emerald green. Table lamps on either side of the bed gave a cosy glow to the room, accentuated by the sloping roof beams and the oriental rugs lent by Marnie. Her book was on the early period of the Bauhaus, one of her favourite college projects.

  Her eyes had begun to droop and she lay back breathing in steadily prior to turning out the lights and moving the cushions away ready for sleep. A sudden thought jolted her awake, eyes wide open. With a last flurry of energy she pulled back the duvet and crawled towards her book case. Running a finger along the spines, she found what she was looking for and drew out a thick volume, a prize she had won at school. Sitting cross-legged on a rug, she thumbed through the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, blinking to bring the small print into focus. She opened the book wide and flat, making a lap for it in her nightdress, and found what she was seeking, Cymbeline.

  Unfamiliar with that play, she rapidly scanned each page, following the lines with a finger until it came to rest on the key words she was looking for. She read the whole speech to herself and understood what Ralph had meant when he suggested it would not be desirable to recite the end of the quotation. The words were a beautiful elegy. At any other time she would have found them poignant and moving, but in the dimly-lit attic on a rainy night, with thoughts never far from the tragedy that had overtaken Barbara Taverner and was dragging them all along in its wake, they filled her with foreboding.

  … golden lads and girls all must

  As chimney sweepers come to dust.

  31

  Tuesday morning seemed like a return to normality. Ralph was writing a lecture in his study on Thyrsis, like a medieval monk in his cell. Anne was sitting on her giant beanbag on the floor of the attic, mapping out the Bauhaus project, surrounded by text books and notepads. Marnie was at her desk checking the diary. For the coming weekend she had noted: Perfidia to Blisworth boatyard, and wondered how long it would take to move the boat up from Leighton Buzzard. In pencil for Friday she had made an entry: Ralph to All Souls – symposium – back Sunday. What a difference to her previous life in London, she mused. Then, she had had a regular office routine and a regular social life. Compartments. Simple. Now, she had the business to run, Anne’s education and future to take into account, Ralph’s career to follow, all of it circumscribed by activities on the canal. And now, lately, everything was dominated by the Barbara Taverner affair. Listening to that voice on the tape had almost brought Barbara back to life. She was certainly back in Marnie’s life. What are you going to tell me, Barbara? she wondered. Are you going to tell me who …

  The ringing of the phone made her jump. She composed herself rapidly.

  “Walker and Co, good morning.”

  “Marnie. It’s Mike, Mike Brent.”

  Number four on the list of suspects, she thought. “Hi, Mike. How’re things?”

  “Fine. Just wanted to check where we are with Perfidia.”

  “She’s booked in at the boatyard for hull blacking and partial repainting next week. My redec will add another we
ek or two.”

  “Where is she now, exactly?”

  “Does that matter?” Marnie bit her lip. She had not intended to sound confrontational. “Sorry, Mike, I meant are you concerned about her?”

  His voice was flat. “No, just curious, that’s all. I didn’t mean to imply –”

  “Of course you didn’t. And I didn’t mean to be snappy. Sorry. She’s at Leighton Buzzard, Mike.”

  “Right. It’s just that, well, I was wondering …” He paused. “Did you get any people gawping at her on your travels?”

  “Some, yes. What’s on your mind?”

  “The name. It occurred to me it might be an idea to change it, while she’s out of the water. People can be funny about … you know.”

  “That’s why you asked where she was. You were wondering if she was safe?”

  “There are strange folk about, Marnie. See a famous – or infamous – name and they can do silly things.”

  “Like vandalise the boat?”

  “Maybe. Also, if I’m being honest, I’m a bit anxious about our customers.”

  “You think they might pull out?”

  “I imagine them coming back from the other side of the world, telling their friends they’re buying a boat. They tell them it’s called Perfidia. People say, hey, isn’t that the boat in Little Venice where that woman was murdered?”

  “It could put them off.”

  “It would put me off, Marnie. If the name could be changed, now’s the best time to do it. You’ll have her in the boatyard.”

  “Actually, Mike, Braunston have already raised that with me. I’m going to discuss it with Charles. I’ll see what he says.”

  “Good. Thanks. You might mention that the offer from the people on their world trip is the only one we’ve had.”

  “Really?”