by T A Williams
As for Rachel Turner herself, he had heard Stan the Gardener referring to her as the Great Dictator. Paddy called her the Fuhrer, but not to her face. There was no denying that she had definitely inherited a power gene from somebody. Paddy’s voiced opinion as to her parentage was unlikely to stand up to closer investigation. All the inhabitants of the Berlin Bunker would have been dead, burnt and buried years before her conception, but it did not stop him spreading the rumour. She had managed to make herself very unpopular in a remarkably short space of time. Duggie knew that, sooner or later, it would fall to him to have it out with her. He was not looking forward to it one bit. He knew it could turn ugly. Alas, he had no doubt that it would. Very ugly indeed.
Mo, on the other hand, was proving to be a great asset. He now felt sure that she would be able to replace Ms Turner, as and when the manager could be persuaded to leave. That, of course, was the conundrum. How could he get rid of somebody who had enough information about the Salon to bring the whole edifice crashing down around his ears? He decided to bide his time. By the spring, the mad rush to get everything open would be over. He should have more time on his hands, and Mo herself would be that much more clued up. If only he could get rid of the manager without the sort of recriminations she had threatened, and that he feared.
His musings were interrupted. He smelt a whiff of perfume and felt a hand gently pinch his bottom. He turned to see the lovely Tessa from the reception desk at his side. Her hair was swept up high and her neckline plunged so low it seemed to go down forever.
‘Evening, boss.’ She gave him a look which, only a couple of months previously, would have reached deep into his trousers, if not his heart. Now, deeply satisfied by his maturing relationship with Tina, he was able to give her a cheery smile and talk shop. If there was a tinge of disappointment in her eyes, it would not last long, of that he was sure.
‘Hi, Tessa. I have been wanting to see you to congratulate you on the poster. Magnificent.’ She curtsied elegantly. She had followed his words to the letter, and had produced a terrific poster announcing the opening of the club. It was already up on the website. It would be printed and distributed as soon as Christmas was over, in time for the grand opening. It was in full colour, set on a background of the manor, complete with cedars. It consisted of judiciously edited highlights from many of the letters, faxes and emails they had managed to get from world-famous sportsmen and celebrities. The fact that all declined the invitation to visit had been suppressed in favour of the positive bits. Pride of place was given to Tiger Woods, via his secretary, who: sends you and all your team his very best wishes. Lee Westwood also appeared with the words: I wish you well and hope Toplingham goes from strength to strength. Ah yes, he thought happily to himself, the power of the written word. He bestowed an avuncular kiss on Tessa’s cheek, and set off in search of his other half.
As she watched him go, Tessa gave a little puff of resignation. She turned back in the direction of Ben, the fitness instructor from the gym. He had been following her conversation with the boss from a discreet distance. Catching his eye as she walked up to him, she held out a hand. ‘Thank you for asking. I’d love to.’ She headed back towards the dance floor, dragging her far from unwilling dancing partner behind her.
Roger and Linda were, by this time, dancing happily together, a few feet away from Duggie and Tina. In spite of his hesitation, Roger found that he was enjoying himself more than he had expected. All in all, it was turning out to be a splendid evening.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.’ He leant forward and kissed Linda on the cheek.
She gave him a bright smile in return. ‘We’re lucky people!’
Just then, Tessa and Ben squeezed into the crowd beside them. Linda waved cheerily and Roger gave them a little bow of greeting. As his eyes dropped towards the floor, there was a blood-curdling scream. Time stood still, as the whole evening disintegrated around them. His warm feeling of happiness melted away. In its place was cold dread. He raised his eyes to a scene of carnage.
Tessa was desperately clawing at the side of her head, blood gushing out through her fingers. She opened her mouth in anguish. Blood poured out, over her chin and down the front of her dress. The room stood still. Everybody turned towards them in slow motion. As the disco music carried on thumping, she slumped towards the floor. Ben only just managed to catch her head as she fell.
She lay writhing in agony on the floor, knees curled up to her chest, her hands clenched tightly across her face. Bright-red blood pulsed through her fingers, spreading into a puddle around her on the floor. Mercifully, the music stopped. In the sudden silence, the only noise was Tessa whimpering.
Duggie had his mobile out in seconds, but it was a quarter of an hour before the ambulance arrived. By then, in spite of their best efforts, she had lost a lot of blood. The paramedics bandaged her up and rushed her back to hospital. As they left, the driver spoke to Duggie in serious tones.
‘I’m afraid we have had to inform the police of this. It looks very much like the young lady has been shot.’
‘Shot?’ Linda and Roger echoed the word as the driver disappeared at a run. Within seconds, the ambulance sped off, blue light flashing. They heard the siren start as it reached the end of the drive. ‘Who on earth would wish to shoot Tessa?’ As the ambulance disappeared, so another blue light appeared in its place and hared up the drive. The police were here already. The party dissolved in shocked silence. Some people left, others collected into little huddled groups, all trying to understand what had just happened.
‘And you are sure, Mr Scott, that she had no enemies here or elsewhere, to the best of your knowledge?’ The taller police officer had been laboriously working his way through the paperwork. It was all handwritten and would all need to be transcribed onto the computer back at the station. He knew from experience that Christmas Eve was never a quiet evening, but a shooting in Toplingham was definitely unusual. Sixpence lodged in the throat from the pudding or maybe a bit of turkey bone, but real bullets?
‘No enemies at all, officer. She was … is, a lovely girl. I can’t think of anybody.’
‘What about friends, Mr Scott? Any of your staff particularly close to her? Who was with her just before the incident?’ Duggie was able to point the policeman at Ben from the gym.
In spite of his muscular frame, the lad looked deeply shocked. ‘I was, officer.’ The policeman took down his details and asked about her movements prior to the attack. She’d just arrived on the dance floor. Whereabouts on the dance floor?
‘We were just squeezing in over there, right beside Professor Dalby.’
The policeman noted the spot on a simple sketch. His colleague was just beyond, studying the gaping windows through which the cold winter night was returning to dampen their spirits and chill them all.
‘When you say, “beside” Professor Dalby, which side do you mean?’
As the policeman asked the question, both Roger and Duggie were simultaneously hit by the same horrific thought. She had been directly in a straight line from the window to Roger. So, in all probability, she had not been the intended target. Duggie spoke out, a fraction of a second before Roger himself. The logic was inescapable.
‘Officer, I am afraid it would appear that the poor girl had the misfortune to be in the line of fire of a would-be assassin. Somebody was outside the window, trying to succeed in doing what he already tried to do a month or two ago. She wasn’t the target. Roger… the professor was.’
Clearly the startled policeman had no knowledge of the brake-line cutting incident and they had to explain it all to him. The name of Chief Inspector Cocker brought home to him that he was involved with something more sinister than an unfortunate Christmas accident. He looked across to Roger, who was nodding.
‘Do you agree with this version of events, professor?’
It was Linda who answered, her face pale from the realisation that she had so nearly lost her beloved Roger.
‘It was
as he gave a little bow to Tessa. His head dipped and the shot missed him by a fraction and hit her.’
‘It also missed you by a fraction, Linda.’ Roger was equally sobered by events.
As the younger officer went for a careful look around outside, his colleague spoke urgently on his radio. Duggie looked across at his friend, and voiced the concern they all felt.
‘Somebody is still out to get you, Rog.’
Chapter 37
Two days after Christmas, Roger was trying the huge bunch of keys uncovered in the grandfather clock by Jasper. Apart from the one which had successfully opened his uncle’s desk, and a few internal door keys, there were another dozen or so still to be identified. In particular, he was fascinated by the three hefty, long shaft keys, each of which was almost the length of a fountain pen, and a lot heavier.
Linda had gone round to her mother’s for the morning. The rest of the staff had gone their separate ways for the Christmas break. Henri, alone, was somewhere in the building. He had refused to leave, denying the existence of any family, either in the UK or back in France.
Thought of families reminded Roger of his meeting with Tessa’s mum the previous day. The poor lady was understandably distraught. They had met at the hospital where, mercifully, Tessa’s condition was described as much improved. The bullet, luckily only calibre 0.22, had gone in through her ear. It had torn her earlobe to pieces, but missed anything vital, before lodging in the inside of her jaw. The operation to remove the bullet had been successful and the prognosis was good. The handsome middle-aged lady, so similar to Tessa in appearance, was naturally terribly worried, and also seriously perplexed. Roger was both of those things himself.
He had accepted the logic of the assumption that he had been the original target of the attempted shooting. The thought of a potential assassin sneaking about in the shrubbery was frightening, not least as there was a lot of shrubbery around the manor for somebody to sneak about in. He had to accept the fact that, in all probability, it was the person responsible for sabotaging his brakes a few weeks earlier. But who on earth could it be?
All in all, it was a very worrying time. In fact, it was only as long as he promised to stay away from windows, that Linda had been prepared to leave him on his own that morning. She had gone, with some trepidation, to discuss wedding arrangements with her mum. She had given him strict instructions to keep Jasper at his side at all times and not to open the door to anybody, till she returned with lunch.
He started with his big bunch of keys at the top of the building. He tried every door on the way back downstairs. The security door at the entrance to the Salon defeated him. He reminded himself yet again to get the code from Duggie. After all, there might be a fire or some other emergency. He checked the rooms down the corridor on the other side of the stairwell. This was the east wing. They were all unlocked and open. None of his keys fitted any of the doors. The decrepit state of these rooms indicated a lot of work would still be needed to bring them up to scratch. He drew a similar blank on the first floor. Finally, back downstairs in the kitchen, he sat down at the big central table and scratched Jasper’s ears. He tried dangling the big keys in front of the dog’s nose and commanding, ‘Search.’ But to no avail. The dog licked them along with his hand, but made no appreciable effort to hunt anything out.
‘You are useless, dog.’ He chided the big hound, but elicited no more than a wag of the tail. He removed the three large keys from the rest of the bunch, so he could study them closely. No clues as to their identity were visible. He thought about making a cup of tea. Then, mindful of Linda’s instructions, he decided not to hang around down there. There was always the risk that the would-be murderer was lurking in the rhododendrons. So, instead, he and Jasper walked back up to his uncle’s old study on the first floor. He unlocked it, and set about hunting through all the old papers in the hope that he might find some reference to some other building. Maybe his uncle had owned another house somewhere, which had gone unnoticed.
After a long, but fruitless, search he stood up and went over towards the window. Remembering Linda’s instructions, he stood back a few feet from the glass, so as to be less visible from outside. Even so, he still had a clear view. Outside in the gardens, a wintry sun had finally broken through the clouds. Steam was coming up from the borders and beds around the house, as the sunlight gently warmed them. Although all the leaves had by now dropped from the deciduous trees, there was still a lot of greenery all around. Holly trees produced occasional bursts of colour. Huge clumps of mistletoe hung from the tallest trees on the boundary some half a mile away. If he stood on tiptoe, he could just make out the shape of the cathedral beyond. It was a magnificent view. He fully understood why Thomas of Toplingham had chosen this very spot for his home.
Then, suddenly, through the light mist seeping up from the bushes, he noticed something for the first time. At the far end of the car park, towards the area where the groundsmen kept an enormous compost heap, he spotted what might have been a construction. It was a square shape, and just visible through the bare branches of an overgrown clump of trees and bushes. He and Jasper rarely walked up there now, since the time Jasper had decided to chase a rabbit into the compost. He had emerged the colour and texture of a grow-bag, and had received a good talking-to, followed by a bath. Now, as the hard frost of the last couple of weeks had finally removed the last of the leaves, it really did look as though there was something there, in the little copse. Roger looked at his watch. It was only mid-morning. He was on his own and bored.
‘Jasper, old chap. We are going for a walk.’
He neatly side-stepped the charge of the excited dog, whose understanding of that particular word was instantaneous. The fact that he had been expressly forbidden to leave the house was something he conveniently forgot. He trusted that he would be able to go out, investigate and return before Linda reappeared from her mother’s. What the mind doesn’t know, the heart doesn’t grieve over.
He locked the desk, grabbed a jacket and headed for the door, the bunch of mystery keys in hand. Outside it was a fine afternoon, with no sign of would-be assassins. The sun had done enough to make the temperature almost pleasant – as long as you were wearing a thick coat and avoided the shade.
‘Do not, under any circumstances, go in the compost heap.’ He spoke to the dog sternly, in the hope that the message would sink in. Together, they peeled off the track and pushed through a rhododendron bush, in the general direction of whatever it was he had seen. It was quite clear that nobody had been along here for months, or years. Even Jasper had to struggle to make headway through the damp brambles and nettles. Within seconds, Roger was soggy and cold from the knees downwards, but he had started, so he’d finish. He pushed on behind the dog, who was in his element. At last, on the other side of a particularly resistant holly bush, he found it. He came face to face with a squat, low building. He stopped and took stock.
It was a pillbox. One of those hefty concrete constructions built during the war that still litter strategically important parts of southern England. It was little taller than his head. From the wedge-shaped opening facing him, it was clear that the walls had been designed in the probably vain hope of deflecting fire from a Tiger tank. The outside was almost completely covered by a thick coat of ivy and brambles. A layer of grass, small bushes and even an optimistic fir tree grew out of the flat roof.
He started to make his way around the outside, in the hope of finding a door. Within a minute or two, he made two discoveries. The first was that there was a doorway just around to his right. The second was that the area in front of the opening was clear of brambles. A faint, but nonetheless discernible, path led off from it. Clearly somebody else knew of the existence of the pillbox. He scrambled through the last of the brambles into the clearing, and took a close look at the door.
The entrance went in and turned sharply, presumably to reduce the risk of enemy bullets coming straight through the door. The door itself, although showing dis
tinct signs of age, was clearly of very solid steel construction. More interestingly, there was a large keyhole, whose general dimensions and shape looked a good match for one of his keys. And such was the case. The second key he tried turned the lock. He pulled the door open. It opened outwards, easily and noiselessly. The key, when he withdrew it from the lock, was sticky with fresh grease. Curiouser and curiouser. He stepped aside, and let the dog lead the way into the dark interior. He then followed, stopping just inside the entrance, to let his eyes acclimatise to the gloom within.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw that a certain amount of light was creeping in through three slits in the walls. There was a long, low horizontal slit, facing south towards the sea. It did not take too much effort to imagine a gunner sitting in there, apprehensively listening to the rumbling of enemy armour, coming up from the coast. The other two slits were quite familiar to anybody who had studied medieval warfare. They were narrow, vertical slits cut, wedge-like, into the concrete. They were no doubt designed for use by men with rifles, or other small arms. It was damp and musty but, to his considerable surprise, it was absolutely full to bursting with furniture. He surveyed the shapes around him. Soon he began to make out elegant dining chairs, a couple of lovely Regency tables and a number of cupboards, chests and dressers. Almost all the pieces served to support cardboard boxes, which had been stacked on top of them.
Bemused, he went over to one of the boxes and pulled it open. The sticky tape put up very little resistance, as the damp had already got to it. He reached in and pulled out a handsome soup tureen, made of blue and white porcelain. Holding it towards the light of the doorway, he quickly made out the familiar crossed anchors of none other than McKinnon Marine. Beneath it, the box was packed with plates, all the same design and sporting the McKinnon Marine crest. The next box was the same, as was the one beyond. It would appear that a considerable part of the contents of the manor had found their way here. For protection, for storage or maybe for less worthy purposes?