Stranger at the Wedding

by Jack G. Hills

  “Mrs Henderson said that? She was going to keep a beady eye on you?” Martha started to snigger, tried to stop herself and then broke out into a repressed laugh before composing herself and regaining whatever dignity she might have had. “Well let’s face it, her eyes are beady but then they go with her sharp teeth and voracious appetite for Sassenachs.” Martha’s impression of the big bad wolf wouldn’t have won any awards but it made Tammy take a step backwards.

  “Oh my God… do you think the fucking hag meant it? Jesus, I just thought she was just fucking batty…” Tammy blasphemed at the top of her voice. It was a step too far and one that had never resonated around the Monroe house before. The smile vanished in a trice from Martha’s face and her damming stare cut Tammy short. There was something vicious in Tammy’s voice and an evil glint in her eyes that Martha hadn’t seen before… it was a look of someone possessed by evil and then the penny dropped.

  “Tammy, why did you tamper with the stepladder? What have I ever done to hurt you?” Martha asked calmly as she edged backwards towards the door.

  ~~~~~

  Donald left Cornwall and vowed never to return. He knew in his head that never was an overreaction, but after all that had happened, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was as short an interval as his heart would feel comfortable with.

  He’d spent many hours lying in his hospital bed trying to work out who he was and each morning when he’d opened his eyes he’d spent five minutes of peaceful solitude wondering if he’d changed overnight… had his dreams awakened another part of his psyche that had been hiding.

  Then each day, he’d run through his own ever increasing checklist of attributes and traits and each day the results had always been the same, until after weeks of the same routine he’d give up and decided that there wasn’t going to be some giant unveiling of his true self, like there would be of an artist’s latest piece of sculpture.

  Time and the lack of any actual evidence convinced him that he’d been right not to go along with the general consensus… he still felt and thought like the old Donald, albeit with an accent that made him sound like a complete stranger. But the doctors had explained the medical phenomenon and had reassured him that with time there was every chance that his voice would revert to type.

  In the end, the medical staff had acquiesced with their patient’s request… and so for the last month of his confinement and recovery, they’d simply called him Donald. Anyway, as he’d explained to the consultant, Donald was a far better name for someone living in Scotland than Tom and anyway he couldn’t get used to people calling him Tom Cox or Mr Cox… it didn’t sound right, but more importantly he didn’t recognise the man.

  But the psychiatrist, who’d been assigned to monitor his mental recovery from the trauma, had always counselled that a name by itself might not be enough to satiate his inner turmoil and that at some point in the future someone might come forward who could identify him… and if that happened, he’d need to be ready to deal with the consequences. However, no one had come forward. A fact that Donald had hoped was easily explained by reason of there being nothing to find out, although as one of his nurses had so insensitively explained, the morning after he’d awoken from the medically induced coma, the shootings hadn’t made the national newspapers, save for a few column inches in one of the tabloids… and that was on page twenty, just between the story about a dog who could count and sexual foibles of some chap who used to present the weather on the BBC. To the editors, sat in their ivory towers in London, the murders had been nothing more than some tragic domestic incident and anyway Cornwall was further away from London than Scotland was… and nobody in the capital cared what happened north of the border.

  Of course, the killings had made front page of the weekly printed rag together with the local south west news bulletins but then like any good story, after the first day of outrage, it had fizzled away until even the local crime reporters were saying Tom? Tom who?

  Inspector Langford, unlike the press, had been back any number of times for an informal chat and to update Donald on their complete lack of progress. The police, he’d had to admit, were no further forward in solving Mrs Fitzgerald murder than they had been on the afternoon of the shooting. Oh he’d got his theories, he’d told Donald but nothing concrete and certainly no proof. They’d questioned every known criminal and villain in the South West, from Land’s End all the way up to Bristol and across as far as Bath, but there’d been not a glimmer of a crack in the resolute façade of the criminal underclasses… they weren’t sad that the Fitzgeralds were dead but they hadn’t put out any contracts on the pair and the shooter was as much an enigma to them as he was to the police.

  There’d been no wills found anywhere… not amongst Patrick’s possessions nor Rachel’s. A fact, which whilst not exactly solving the crime did tell Langford that neither was expecting to die so soon after getting married. The complexities surrounding their estates would take months, if not years to sort out, Patrick’s solicitor had told Inspector Langford. Strictly speaking… and there were many such phrases used… Mr and Mrs Cox had never separated but then again Mr Cox had been declared legally dead, which had allowed his wife to remarry, thus any of her goods and chattels would have passed to Henri Bouchet but his untimely and unsolved death had meant that everything should by rights now be the sole inheritance of Patrick Fitzgerald but the forensics had proved that he’d in fact died first and therefore all his estate had in essence passed to Rachel Bouchet. Unfortunately her inheritance had lasted a mere minute or two before she too was killed, thus passing the fortune onto her next of kin, which it could be argued was her first husband Tom Cox, if it could be established that the man that she had shot was the said man.

  The only sure fired certainties in the whole sorry mess, were that the insurance company would get its life insurance monies back and John McGovern could sleep easier at night knowing he’d been right all along… even if he couldn’t prove it. Of course the news had come as a double edge sword for Mr McGovern, who even though ultimately correct about the money, hadn’t received a penny of his bonus due to the fact that it was a simple breach of the policy’s terms and conditions that meant the pay-out was invalid. The solicitors dealing with the estates of Rachel Fitzgerald, nee Bouchet, nee Cox and Patrick Fitzgerald would also make a small fortune unravelling the complexities of it all.

  In the meantime, with no executors to take up the reins of estate, the solicitors had appointed a firm of administrators to run the businesses as going concerns for a suitably large annual fee. So it was a case of business as usual and whilst everyone else watched and waited, the insurers, the solicitors and the accountants would take a sizeable rake of the estimated multi-million pound fortune.

  During the final week of his stay in hospital, Donald had taken the advantage of the relative peace and quiet to rethink the meaning of his own existence and whatever life there may be left of it. He’d thought it morbidly ironic that he might at some point inherit the amassed fortunes of people he had no real knowledge of it and who had seemed so intent on snatching away what memories he did hold dear… whilst the perpetrator of his attempted demise had apparently planned and schemed her way to be in a position of sole beneficiary. A position which according to the inspector had lasted for no more than a few minutes before her life had also been cruelly extinguished by an unknown assailant… even the weapon, so thoughtfully left at the scene, had proved to be as clean as the proverbial whistle. But then Langford knew it had been left at the scene to taunt the police and to send a message that the shooter was untouchable.

  More than ironic though, Donald had found the whole scenario a sad indictment of the man, who Inspector Langford had named as Tom Cox. From diaries, hidden away amongst Rachel Fitzgerald private possessions, the inspector had told Donald that he had assembled a picture of a man who in no small way had probably been responsible for the whole sorry mess.

  A picture that the police psychologist had all been too ready
to confirm… adding that it had been Tom Cox’s misogynistic, uncaring behaviour and not his wife’s own latent predilections that had caused to her to react in the violent evil way she had. The tipping point had come with Rachel Cox’s accidental discovery of the texts and emails from someone she’d referred to in her diaries as ‘that Parisian tart’.

  But the psychological picture of Tom Cox was as close as they came to identifying the man, as in one of the diaries, Rachel had also explained how she’d burned every last vestige of the man she’d once called her husband, from the clothes left in his wardrobe to every one of their wedding photographs. And if that hadn’t been sufficient reason to be downhearted, the fact that the DNA samples and results, used to identify Tom Cox’s body had also been returned to Rachel and subsequently destroyed.

  The diaries had been a last roll of the dice as far as Langford was concerned. Like everyone else he couldn’t be sure if the injured man sat in the hospital bed was Tom Cox, but he’d hoped the revelations about the man’s private life and the expert’s explanation as to why the woman had possibly reacted so violently, might just stimulate something deep inside his brain and force him to acknowledge who he actually was.

  But as with every other line of enquiry connected to the case, he’d been disappointed. There’d not been a flicker of a reaction to the new details surrounding the case.

  “So where do you go now with your investigation inspector?” Donald had asked after hearing the latest police theory. He’d thought Langford looked drained and tired and in need of some time off but had been shocked to learn that instead he’d been ordered to take early retirement.

  “Oh the case files will stay active, they always do until something turns up to reopen the investigation but I won’t be around to see it to a conclusion. The powers that be might have forgiven my indiscretion of getting you into the reception… I’ve no doubt that if I’d caught the bugger responsible I’d have been lauded and promoted but since I haven’t… well let’s just say Inspector Morris will have the dubious task of securing a conviction now and I can go about tending my roses.” Langford said with an air of total resignation.

  “You mean Sergeant Morris has been promoted? How’s she taken the good news?” Donald asked feeling guilty over the man’s demise.

  “She’ll do well, very well… because she’s learnt from the best… or as Denise puts it, she’s learnt ‘how not to behave’ from the best!” Langford studied the floor for a moment until he suddenly remembered the other reason for his visit.

  “I nearly forgot, we did solve one mystery thanks to your unannounced entry to the wedding. As a matter of routine we ran Patrick Fitzgerald’s prints and DNA through the system and what do you know we got a hit… an unsolved murder of a prostitute in a Bath hotel bedroom. Seems our Mr Fitzgerald was a bit of a dark horse after all.”

  Although the inspector had been disappointed, for Donald the news had come as a sort of blessed relief, for the new revelations about Tom Cox’s personal life were more than enough reason to leave the man dead and buried in South America and for him to return to Scotland and his beloved Martha.

  But his journey north would be different from the one the inspector had concocted for his presumed alter ego Tom Cox… this time there would be no helicopter ride, no lift off from the Atlantic View Hotel or touchdown at the Black Isle Hotel… this time Donald decided it would be safer to travel alone and take the train, even though the administrator, a formidable middle aged woman named Ms Forsdyke, had informed him that she would be travelling up to Scotland herself soon, to inspect the Black Isle Hotel and from there all the other holdings in the Fitzgerald Group and if Donald wanted a lift, she saw no justifiable reason why he couldn’t hitch a ride in the company helicopter…

  “After all, you might own the whole group… one day.” The administrator had cheerily announced, placing as much emphasis on the term ‘one day’ as she could.

  But Donald had politely declined her kind offer. He could see no reason why a day or two would make any difference but moreover deep down he dreaded what the ride in the helicopter might do for his memory.

  No, he’d thanked the woman for her consideration but informed Ms Forsdyke that he’d take the train instead… but maybe, he inquired hopefully, she might be able to lend him some funds to purchase a first class railway ticket.

  “As you say one day it might be all mine but even if it isn’t, morally some of it must be mine.” Donald had proclaimed.

  “Unfortunately God’s jurisdiction stops at the doors of Truro Cathedral.” She’d replied in a cold and calculating way. “When it comes to jurisprudence, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is God but I don’t think he’ll begrudge you a small advance, however I know he’d prefer his minions not to be too profligate and so I would recommend travelling second class… if that’s alright with you and God of course!”

  In the end she’d advanced Donald more than he would need but only on the understanding that he kept receipts for everything and didn’t bother her again for some time. So, feeling buoyed at prospect of seeing Martha once more, he’d caught the bus into Penzance and from there he’d boarded the Cross Country train service to Edinburgh, where he’d been told by the ticket clerk that he would need to change onto the First Scot Rail service to Inverness.

  As he looked at the number of stations on the first part of his journey, one in particular caught his attention and drew his eyes away from the absurdly long travelling time of nearly eleven hours… he didn’t know why or couldn’t remember why… but the name rang a bell.

  Changing his mind at the last minute and without really knowing why, he bought the more expensive open ticket, which would allow him to get off and back on the train as he wanted. If Ms Forsdyke’s false god didn’t like that then she would have to lump it, Donald thought as he boarded the train and sought out the first class compartment… and that would be something else she’d have to take in her stride.

  The journey was long but passed without incident, except for the fact that by the time the train had reached York it was already running forty-five minutes late thanks to an earlier point’s failure outside Birmingham. By the time they reached Newcastle that had been extended to fifty-five minutes and when the train manager announced that their next stop was Alnmouth, the delay had been stretched to just over an hour.

  And that’s when the bell in his head rang again, but this time the clanging was louder than before, and at that moment he suddenly understood why the village’s name had made him change his ticket, when he’d read it on the departure board at Penzance station.

  The Northumberland village of Alnmouth was Samantha’s hometown… Samantha, the girl who had helped him when he’d first arrived at the Ambleside Clinic and the same Samantha who he’d so abruptly abandoned when he’d transferred to the Wolvercote Clinic.

  Perhaps it was the burden of guilt that he’d carried around with him ever since his time at the lakeside retreat that made him grab what few possessions he had, and rush from the carriage onto the deserted platform… but whatever had prompted such a response, it hadn’t been some carefully thought out plan…

  For it was only as the train disappeared around the bend in the track, that Donald wondered what the time was and why he’d alighted the train with such haste. He’d been travelling for over twelve hours and as the station’s old style clock reliable informed him, it was now approaching half past eight at night and even if he knew where Samantha’s mother lived, it was too late now to appear out of the blue just to say hello and enquire after her daughter’s health and then hop back on the next train.

  The station master, who he’d found warming himself in front of the open fire in the station office, had directed him to the Maltsters Arms in the centre of the village. It was the only place, he’d told Donald where he’d find a warm welcome, clean sheets, a good pint and homely food at that time of night.

  The landlord had been surprised to see his unannounced guest but when Donald h
ad asked about a room for the night and Samantha’s family, he’d kindly provided both.

  “You’re not from around these parts then?” The landlord asked, as he checked the register. “Cromarty? From your accent, I’d have had you down as a visitor from Scandinavia… Norway possibly, but then I’m no expert. But certainly not a Scot.”

  Donald ignored the question of his ancestry.

  “The cottage? Where did you say I could find it?” He asked tersely.

  “It’s the small white place on the edge of the village but there’s only the mother there now.” The landlord said, placing the pint and the pie and chips on the bar in front of Donald.

  “That’s fine, I was only stopping by just to say hello and ask about Samantha.”

  “Samantha? Oh I haven’t seen her for some time… none of us have, which is a pity really because she was a grand lass… unlike her sister. My God if ever there was a devil in disguise it was that one.” The man said, as if confessing some awful sin to a priest.

  “Sister? Samantha never told me she had a sister.”

  “You’ve met her then Samantha… how was she?”

  “She was well… very well in fact, I think.” Donald lied, a little confused by the man’s question. Suddenly the penny dropped and he realised that her family hadn’t told anyone about her daughter’s condition… well he’d decided, it wasn’t his position to tell anyone about how Samantha had been dragged away from the clinic, kicking and screaming in the straightjacket… if the family wanted it kept a secret, he’d abide by their wishes.

  “It was a terrible thing, losing her sister like that… you know them being so close, so alike but then that’s what twins are… close. Especially if they’re identical and those two were so identical in every way… well almost.” The landlord’s words trailed away, as if he’d already said more than he should have but the bar was empty and it had been a quiet week so he wasn’t about to let his only company leave and sit alone at one of the tables. “There was no reason for it and in the end I suppose God was only correcting the mistake he’d made by bringing her into the world but the accident tore the family apart it did.”