He shook his head. ‘Quite crazy. Forget it. Just thinking aloud.’
‘What were you thinking? Tell me. I want to know.’
He hesitated, then with obvious reluctance said, ‘Well, it suddenly occurred to me that ‒ er ‒ well ‒ if any chap should know how to fix a machine to do ‒ er ‒ well ‒ anything ‒ well ‒ he should.’
I gaped. ‘You’re not suggesting he’d blow up his new car? For God’s sake, why?’
‘Don’t look at me like that! You mustn’t be angry with me. I’m too shot to pieces to know what I’m saying and you did insist. I don’t know the answers to anything this morning. It’s just that as yesterday you’d given me the impression you’d given him another thumbs down and he looked as sold on you as he’s always been ‒ and ‒ and ‒ I suddenly thought having no car would give him an alibi for hanging on down here.’
I was very angry but managed to batten it down as I was sorry for him. ‘Duckie,’ I said gently, ‘if David wanted an excuse for staying on, to send up his car in flames would be the last he’d use. He might not have got clear in time. He’s already gone up in flames once. His back and chest are covered in scars and I’ve seen ’em.’
He flushed to the roots of his dark-red hair. ‘I ‒ I’d no idea. When?’
‘Four years ago.’
He averted his face and gazed into the fire until the pallor returned to his tense face. ‘The year Susie and I married.’ He blinked furiously. ‘Her mother told me this morning she rang you yesterday. You ‒ you must’ve been the last person she spoke to.’
‘Yes.’ I prayed he wouldn’t ask what she had said. My prayer must’ve been heard.
‘Was this long after I’d gone?’
‘No. A few minutes later. About a quarter to twelve.’
He nodded vaguely. ‘I’d stopped to fill up in Harbour just about then. I know as the chap at the garage was just telling some woman she’d missed the eleven-forty bus into Cliffhill and I gave her a lift. Chatty woman. Talked non-stop. Can’t remember what she said or who she was.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go. I don’t want to be late for lunch. My mother-in-law gets in such a tiz about meals. And I’ve got to call in on the Astead police first. Just routine details, the chap said.’
I looked into the fire. ‘I’m afraid it is routine for them.’
‘That’s what the chap said,’ he repeated.
I stood up and picked up his driving coat. ‘Don’t forget this.’
‘No. I can come back and see you here, can’t I?’
Again I saw no alternative. ‘Of course.’
There was no one around in the hall or yard when I saw him off. I was thinking about police routine and noticed one of the doors of the three garages that had previously been open and empty was now shut. When I got back in, Mrs Evans-Williams had reappeared and was fussing over the books on the counter. She told me David had asked her to tell me he was back and in his room writing letters and that the le Veres had decided to come back for lunch and have a quiet afternoon. ‘Pity you’ll not be in as they’d have enjoyed your company. Your packed lunches are ready for whenever you want them.’
The packed lunches were news to me. Welcome news. I felt far too emotionally mangled for Angie le Vere’s overpowering artificiality. I murmured something trite about it being a nice day for a picnic.
‘As Mr Lofthouse said when he asked for the packed lunches. And I think’ ‒ for once she stopped dithering and her pinched face was extraordinarily sympathetic ‒ ‘he feels you need a little bit of peace. As dear Johnnie was just saying, you came to us to rest and really you’ve had so little.’
I let that go and asked after Johnnie.
‘Much better, thank you. He had a splendid night and a really good lie-in this morning. I put my foot down. Don’t you dare cross that yard, I said, until lunchtime. But I mustn’t keep you as you’re going out ‒ oh, yes, please tell Mr Lofthouse not to trouble to let us know about dinner. As you’re residents, if you are too late for the main serving we can arrange something to suit you.’
I said truthfully that was nice to know as I wasn’t sure of our plans for the rest of the day.
I went slowly up the stairs and along the passage. Angie came out of her room as I reached the door and clearly hadn’t heard me. Before she did the quick change, from her expression she had walked out of the room in a blazing temper. ‘Sweetie, hallo!’ She smiled widely with her lips. ‘Renny’s a bit fagged so we’ve decided to skip the sporting life for the rest of the day.’
‘Renny,’ announced Renny’s voice from the room, ‘is using his intelligence for once.’ She held back the door for me to see him lying under a rug on a bed, reading a paperback. He lowered the book and pushed his glasses on to his forehead. ‘The time has come for old Johnnie and I to accept we’re a couple of old crocks due for the chimney corner.’
I smiled at him. ‘With every respect, Renny, I’d say that any old crocks who can be out from dawn to dusk for days on end, outshoot everyone around and only need the odd half-day off before getting back into the action, won’t be due for the chimney corner for at least another thirty years.’
His heavy, fleshy, mottled face creased in a charming smile. ‘Dear lovely little lady, thank you kindly for your kind words. How well I understand why young Einstein has rushed back twelve thousand miles to be at your side. Kindness in a woman’ ‒ he glanced at his wife ‒ ‘is much more rare than rubies.’
Angie flicked back her hair defiantly. ‘It’s no use bitching at me because I’m hopeless with sick people, Renny. If you wanted a nurse you should’ve married one. You knew all I knew about was acting ‒ and don’t tell me I was lousy at it as I know it!’
I wasn’t going to stand on the sideline while they fought it out. Before Renny could answer, I told Angie I had one of her scarves and how I’d come by it. ‘Mike Wattle seems a nice kid.’
‘An absolute sweetie!’
‘Pleasant. Solid wood between the ears, but pleasant,’ Renny allowed. ‘Run dry, eh?’
‘Unless he found the leak after we left him.’
‘Doubt it, as he was on his machine at dawn this morning.’ Renny replaced his glasses, picked up his book and studied the pages intently, probably as he was holding them upside-down.
Angie came with me for her scarf but, fortunately, didn’t linger. She flapped her eyelashes at the twin beds. ‘You are a clever little sweetie. Saves so much trauma and chat, separate rooms. Bless you for salvaging this scarf. I adore it. See you at lunch.’
‘I’m afraid not. We’re having a picnic.’
That smile reached her eyes. ‘How fabulous for you both! See you!’
I waited a minute or so, then knocked on David’s door. ‘Not locked, Rose. Come in,’ he called.
I opened the door. ‘How’d you know it was me?’
He wasn’t writing letters. He was lying on his bed blowing smoke rings. ‘Forgotten my gun-dog ears?’
‘Yes.’ I leant against the door. ‘You forgot to tell me we’re off on a picnic.’
‘Didn’t forget. No chance. Any objections?’
‘None. All for it.’
He got off the bed. ‘Hellish as that?’
‘Worse.’
‘Wept on your shoulder?’
‘Metaphorically, though it mayn’t have looked like that to you.’
He was puzzled. ‘Why to me?’
‘Didn’t you look in and back out smartly?’
He shook his head. ‘Haven’t been near the lounge since my bloke ran me back. The Audi was still outside. I didn’t think my busting in on the scene would help either of you so I came up here. After asking for our lunches.’
‘Clever of you to guess I’d want out.’
‘Didn’t take much intelligence to guess he’d pull out all the emotional stops and what that would do to you or anyone else with a front seat in the stalls. It’s only the non-English who think the English unemotional and there’s nothing like sudden death for ri
pping off the lid.’
‘Ain’t that the truth. Must’ve been Renny. Francis said some man.’ I drifted over to the room’s one window, looked out on the marsh, and was glad it had been Renny. He wasn’t emotionally involved with me and being an experienced middle-aged man he’d know that at such moments such things tended to happen and a few moments later to be forgotten. ‘What did your insurance man say after seeing it?’
‘Very much what he said yesterday. One variation. He can’t get a replacement inside of a week.’
‘Come back to Endel when we leave here.’
‘Let’s deal with that later.’ He joined me at the window. ‘Where shall we picnic?’
We could see the sea over the wall. The tide was going out, the sand appearing and glittering in the bright sunshine. I didn’t want to look at one dyke, but I loved looking at the sea. ‘Have you any idea where Harry’s taken the guns today?’
‘Yes. Renny said same spot as yesterday as it was such good value.’
I grimaced. ‘Not for the ducks. Anyway, that’s nor’-east. That’s the Harbour Wall down there. Sou’-east. Let’s just nip down in the car and take ourselves over it on to the beach. Or do you hate looking at the sea?’
‘Suits me, so long as we get one thing straight first. No paddling. I’m not having my feet drop off from frost-bite.’
‘Deal. Paddling’s out.’ I opened the window and leant out to scan the marsh. ‘So are all those threatened poachers, from the serenity of the birds. They’ve got the place to themselves like yesterday morning. Not, as I said from the start, that I’d expect to see any around in daylight.’ I shut the window. ‘Have you noticed how everyone here seems to have lost interest in poachers since Johnnie was shot?’
He had removed his jacket to add a couple of sweaters.
He surfaced red-faced. ‘They have had one or two other things on their mind,’ he ohserved mildly. ‘Wish I’d me long-johns.’
I laughed. ‘I could lend you some tights if you can get your size elevens into them.’ I made for the door. ‘Don’t forget the woolly muffler and spare socks.’
‘For that you don’t borrow me balaclava.’
We left the car in a parking place against the sea wall and climbed the steep narrow concrete steps on the inland side. It was a glorious autumn rather than November day, and even on top of the wall there was a breeze no stronger than the flapping of gentle wings. From up there the outline of the old harbour was especially clear. The unusual warmth of the sun had raised a faint haze about a foot high over the low land between the stranded arms. ‘The ghost of the lost sea back again,’ said David. ‘Long time since I’ve seen that. Think we’re in for a mist tonight?’
‘I’d say that haze’ll go when the sun goes.’ I turned to the sea. ‘The tide can’t go much further out and the turn may bring in a change of weather.’
The steps running down to the beach were nearly as sandpapered as the slanting stretch of pebbles that banked the wall and were washed clean at high tide. Beyond the pebbles a silvery band of sand roughly 200 yards wide curved the isthmus. We were at the centre of the indent and on either side the land formed two ends of a shallow horseshoe, then curved away. Beyond the curves and out of our sight, the wall was much further from the sea and between the beach proper and wall were the dunes tufted with sea-grass and reeds. There were very few rocks off Harbour, and those few were only visible at low water and were no longer considered dangers to shipping. It was the sea that was the danger, because of the hidden power of the cross- and undercurrents.
The sea was at peace with the land that day. The water was a soft clear grey, lazily lapping the sand. The gulls jostled for footroom on the handful of rocks and ranged the lengths of the two massive terracotta pipes running out from beneath the wall and over pebbles and sand into the sea. The pipes were the outlets of the dykes in Harbour Marsh and wide enough to swallow with ease the body of a sheep, or a big man, and wash the body out to sea either for eternity, or until, and often weeks later, it was returned unrecognizable by some incoming tide.
After we had lunched against the wall, David turned down his overcoat collar. ‘Warm for the first time since I set foot on beautiful broken-down Britain,’ he murmured sleepily. He settled himself more comfortably, folded his arms, closed his eyes, and from his quiet breathing was asleep almost immediately. I kept an eye on his unguarded face as he had forgotten to take off his glasses, and noticed how, even when relaxed, his face remained quite disconcertingly intelligent and solidly sensible. Of course, Francis didn’t know him well and Francis had been right off-balance. Nevertheless Francis was intelligent; how, after one look at David’s face, could anyone with intelligence imagine David would be stupid enough to risk his life, or serious injuries, just to give him an excuse to stay at the inn a few more days? Had Francis known David as well as I did, he’d have known David could take, and once had taken, a calculated risk on his own life to save mine and won the gamble. If he had to, he’d do that again for me or anyone else. Not for anything less. How could Francis ‒? Then I had to remember he hadn’t known what he was saying or doing this morning ‒ and I hadn’t known him, at all.
Odd, that sensation that he was stranger. Worse than odd to think of Sue this time yesterday.
I stared at the gulls on one drain. I didn’t see them. I was seeing the great main outlet of the Ditch at Norharbour, the seaside town on the tip of the mainland just opposite the extreme north-east tip of the marsh. If Sue’s body had not been found so quickly, within hours it would have sunk into the slime at the bottom and then, eventually, it would have been carried down the Ditch through the outlet that ran far out into the sea. Would Gordon know that? Almost certainly. I knew he had lived in Cliffhill at least a year and it was common local knowledge that the Ditch drained out at Norharbour like a young river and had the widest outlet of the marsh.
‘What’s up with the smell, Rose.’
I started. ‘Thought you were asleep.’
‘Just thinking. I do it best with eyes shut.’
‘Like me sketching. I wish I’d brought a block.’
‘Oh, aye?’ He felt into his pockets and produced the block, sketches and pencils I’d dropped yesterday. ‘You name it, Lofthouse has it.’ He looked at the sketches. ‘These are damn good.’
‘Not really. I’m not being modest. Take a better look and you’ll see they’re more caricatures than sketches. I can see a likeness because I can caricature. That’s what’s fooling you.’
‘I didn’t know you could caricature. Do faces?’
‘Sometimes. Some come off, some don’t. I used to do them at school to the joy of my form and rage of the art master.’
‘Do me.’ He struck a pose. ‘While I’m holding still, as a quid pro quo you can tell me what’s on your mind.’
I didn’t need to look at his face as I had it in mind. I concentrated on the block. ‘Mainly, Francis this morning.’
‘Uh-huh? What did he say that’s dug deep?’
I told him all but one item.
‘So he’d caught on? Can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve never thought him a fool.’
I glanced up. ‘Would you’ve put up with it?’
‘No. Not even from you. Turning the other cheek isn’t one of my kicks. First one and I’d pack my bags for good. But I’ve never fancied the life of a pseud country gentleman. For those that do, it seems a good life. He fancies it more than a bit, doesn’t he?’
‘I’ve always thought so. But I’ve always thought he was too hooked on Sue to know what time it is.’
He grinned. ‘Don’t let it throw you, love. You always were a bloody awful judge of a bloke. Let’s see that one. Hey! You are good! But I can’t have a jaw that size.’
I considered this and shook my head. ‘No. Yours is bigger.’
‘I’ll ignore that as I’m hellish impressed. I’d no idea you’d this talent.’
I sniffed. ‘I’m not just a pretty face.’
‘I’ll say you
’re not! Think of all that lovely lolly. Do another ‒ Francis. You’ve just done me without one look so you can do him from memory as you’ve just seen him.’
‘I’ll try.’ A couple of minutes later I stopped drawing. ‘No. I’ve gone wrong. I’m making him look like Johnnie.’ He looked over my shoulder. ‘You are, rather. Shove on a moustache for fun ‒ go on.’
‘Right.’ I shaded it in, then smiled. ‘Daft. I must’ve had Johnnie in mind.’ I pulled off the page and was about to rip it in half when he took it from me. ‘Why do you want it?’
‘Amuses me. I’m easily amused. Do Renny.’
‘Half a minute.’ The gulls had caught my attention. A cloud was hovering over what seemed a long dark shadow floating at the distant water’s edge. ‘What’s that down there?’ I stood up for a better look. ‘See those gulls over something being washed ashore?’
He gazed with narrowed eyes. ‘Too far for my short sight. I can just see a kind of shadow. Probably a cloud.’
‘There aren’t any.’ I walked further down the pebbles. ‘It looks ‒ oh God!’ I caught my breath, sharply. ‘David! I think it’s a body being washed up ‒’ I raced down the pebbles on to the sand. I had gone about a hundred yards when I heard him shouting. I didn’t bother to glance or stop. I could now see clearly the long dark object floating just under the water that seemed wrapped in a dark blanket. I was so sure that it was a body that for some irrational reason I must save from the sea that I forgot where I was and the dangers of running on untested sand anywhere on that coast. I remembered both facts less than five seconds later. In those seconds my wellingtons sank to their turned-down tops and I couldn’t get either out. I didn’t use too much force on the effort. My common sense had belatedly returned and my immediate reaction was more fury than fear. Everyone said there were no longer quicksands off Harbour. Everyone hadn’t told the birds. It was then I noticed there wasn’t one on the patch of sand around me.
David’s shouts made my head twist back. ‘Keep off!’ I yelled. ‘I’m on quicksand!’
He was racing towards me. ‘I know you are, moron! Keep still and don’t struggle!’
Marsh Blood (The Endel Mysteries Book 2) Page 11