The Company

by Sally Spencer

  It was early evening as I walked up the High Street, and in the distance I could hear the birds singing their last serenade of the day. As I passed the neat Georgian houses of my childhood, I tried to analyse my confused feelings as best I could. There was hatred, of course, for the woman who had killed my brother and my father. And there was bitterness, too. But above all, I thought, I was still plagued by a feeling of total incredulity – I simply still couldn’t believe that Lydia had killed for the reasons which logic and fact told me must have driven her.

  As I turned on to Smithy Lane, I remembered the night John had tried to tell me the truth, and I’d been so wrapped up in my own misery that I hadn’t been listening. But would it have made any difference if I had heard his confession – would I have been able to alter the chain of events?

  I didn’t think so. By then, the chain had been so strongly forged that only a truly drastic occurrence – the death of either Paul or Lydia – could have broken one of its steely links.

  I walked up the path to Lydia’s front door and knocked. It was the housekeeper who answered my knock.

  ‘I’d like to see my sister-in-law, please,’ I said.

  The housekeeper sniffed. ‘I’ll see if Mrs Conroy is in.’

  She retreated down the hallway, returning perhaps a minute later.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said.

  She led me into the garden where I’d first met Bill Harper. Lydia was sitting at an expensive wrought-iron table, a cocktail in her hand. She was wearing a simple, yet chic, kingfisher blue dress, and around her neck there was a single row of expensive pearls. She looked every inch the part she had always wanted to play.

  She did not get up to greet me.

  ‘The only reason I’ve agreed to see you at all is to tell you how displeased I am with you,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Displeased with me?’ I echoed.

  ‘Certainly. The police have been through everything in my house – peering in my cupboards, running their big, sweaty hands over my precious things. Well, I blame you and your grubby little chief inspector friend for that. And he, at least, will be made to pay for it. I’ve already rung the chief constable – who happens to be a personal friend of mine.’

  ‘And what did he say?’ I asked.

  ‘As a matter of fact, he wasn’t available at the time I called, but I made his people promise me that he’ll ring back as soon as he can.’

  ‘He won’t ring you back, Lydia,’ I told her. ‘And the reason he won’t be returning your call is because he knows it’s all over for you.’

  ‘What do you mean – all over?’ Lydia demanded haughtily. ‘You’re not making any sense at all.’

  ‘I talked to Paul Taylor this afternoon.’

  Her eyes, which had only been angry and superior up to that point, suddenly hardened – and I got a sense of what Paul Taylor must have felt that morning of the crash.

  ‘So you talked to Paul, did you?’ she said. ‘And what did he have to say for himself?’

  ‘He said that while he stayed in your room at the health spa, you drove to Bristol and sabotaged the brakes on the BMW.’

  She laughed. ‘The poor pathetic fool! Everyone knows I couldn’t tell one end of an engine from another.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve gone to great pains to establish that over the years,’ I said, ‘but I’ve been up to Lancashire, remember. I know about Linda Smith, who was an even better mechanic than her father.’

  Lydia paled.

  I think that until that moment, she’d almost forgotten about my journey to her old home – even though she’d tried to kill me for making it.

  And why should she have remembered it? What had happened there, had happened in a distant place which was connected with a past she had almost convinced herself had never existed. So maybe Linda Smith had planted a bomb – that had absolutely nothing at all to do with Lydia Hornby Smythe.

  But now here I was, suggesting that it was Linda who was real, and Lydia who was the fake – and the idea terrified her.

  ‘Have you … have you told anyone in the village that I – that Linda – used to be a grease monkey?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’ve told the police.’

  ‘Do you mean that grubby little Welshman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ Lydia said dismissively. ‘He doesn’t count for anything round here.’

  ‘Did you really plan to marry Paul Taylor – or did you just say it to keep him quiet until you got the chance to kill him, too?’ I asked.

  ‘I should have shot him in that hotel room,’ Lydia said. ‘I should have shot him and claimed he was trying to rape me. People would have understood. I would have been a heroine.’

  Poor Paul!

  She’d had to seduce him, if only to stave off the inevitable.

  And he had gone along with it, because his conventional upbringing compelled him to do everything he possibly could to try to convince himself that he was really a heterosexual.

  ‘I think I know why you had to kill them when you did,’ I said. ‘It was because you could see that Grandfather was dying, and you were afraid that the second he was decently buried, John would go through with his plan to resign and move to Greece.’

  ‘He had no consideration for me,’ Lydia said bitterly. ‘No thought at all of the position I hold here.’

  Images of John’s wedding day flooded my mind.

  Dialogue ran through my brain as clearly and unfalteringly as if I was listening to a tape through headphones.

  John, sitting hunched on my bed, as if all the cares in the world were pressing down on his powerful shoulders.

  ‘I think this whole thing is a mistake.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I just don’t think it’s going to work.’

  ‘But you must have a reason. Has Lydia done something or said something which has led you to believe …’

  ‘It’s not about Lydia. It’s about me.’

  My father, sitting at the breakfast table, looking uncomfortable when I’d asked him what he knew about Lydia.

  ‘Not a great deal.’

  ‘And haven’t you even tried to find out?’

  ‘John’s an adult.’

  ‘But even so …’

  ‘… and therefore perfectly capable of taking his own decisions. Besides …’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘I’m so relieved that John is getting married at all.’

  And then, of course, there had been Philip at the reception, leaving the girl he was with in order to boast to me.

  ‘I’ve only just met her, but I’ll have her before the night is out. Probably have more luck than your brother John will.’

  ‘And just what do you mean by that?’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’

  ‘Know what? Is this something to do with Lydia?’

  ‘Well, bugger me. And I always thought you were the smartest out of the three of us.’

  But all that had been as nothing compared to the way I’d misread the signs during the last few weeks of my brother’s life.

  ‘When John said he was in love, I thought he meant he was in love with you,’ I told Lydia. ‘He talked about “us” when he mentioned moving to his Greek island, but you weren’t part of that “us”, were you, Lydia?’

  ‘I could have given him everything, if only he’d worked with me,’ Lydia said. ‘He could have been Sir John in a few years – and I would have been Lady Conroy. But he was prepared to sacrifice all of that – just to follow his animal instincts.’

  ‘He fell in love,’ I said, ‘something I don’t think you’ve ever experienced. To you, John was never any more than a ticket to getting what you really wanted. And you knew what he was like, even then, didn’t you? That’s why you wore clothes which disguised your figure, and had your hair cut so short – all so you’d look boyish for him.’

  ‘You’d been a great disappointment to
the family,’ Lydia said, taking obvious pleasure from knowing how much she was probably hurting me. ‘You were the one who was expected to get married, because you were the one best able to bring the next generation of Conroys into the world. When it became obvious you wouldn’t do it, John took the responsibility on himself – even though that was the last thing he wanted personally. Shall I tell you what he was like in bed?’

  ‘No, that isn’t necessary,’ I said.

  ‘He couldn’t get it up, however hard he tried – and each time he failed, he’d cry like a baby, and say he was so sorry. As if I cared! As if sex ever really mattered to me!’

  ‘And the strange thing is that, in his way, I think John really did love you,’ I said. ‘But it was nothing like the love he came to feel for his new partner. Paul might have been weak, and sometimes even unfaithful, but that didn’t matter to John – because he knew he’d found the real thing.’

  What a complicated life the three of them had led, each of them knowing what was going on, yet none of them being able to admit it – John because of what it might have done to Grandfather, Lydia because …

  ‘Can you imagine what it would have done to my position here in the village if I’d allowed the two of them to go off together?’ my sister-in-law asked. ‘I’d have been nothing but a laughing stock. Everything I’ve worked for all these years would have been taken from me overnight. It simply wouldn’t have been fair.’

  Yes, as the abandoned wife – a woman who had not only lost her husband, but had lost him to another man – she would have been nothing but a joke to all those people she sat on committees with. But being a widow was quite a different matter – there was a certain cachet in being a widow.

  ‘The police will be here in a few minutes,’ I said. ‘You’d better get ready for them.’

  ‘The police?’ Lydia repeated. ‘You mean that nasty little Welshman? Why would he come here?’

  ‘To arrest you.’

  Lydia threw back her head and laughed. ‘Arrest me? It’s true he’s searched my house, but do you seriously think he’d be allowed to arrest me? I told you before, the chief constable is a personal friend of mine. The Lord Lieutenant of the county has drunk cocktails in this very garden.’

  She was still laughing as I stood up and walked away.

  Owen Flint was waiting in the lane outside with two constables.

  ‘Are you glad you talked to her?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think I am,’ I said. ‘Hate’s a very destructive emotion to carry around with you, and it’s hard to hate someone who lives so much in a fantasy world that she’s lost both her sense of responsibility and any feelings of guilt.’

  Owen popped a sweet into his mouth.

  ‘Half an hour ago, I arrested your cousin Philip for the murder of Bill Harper,’ he said. ‘The forensics are absolutely rock solid. Do you have any idea why he did it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘But whatever reason he gives you, you can be sure of one thing – as far as he’s concerned, it won’t be his fault that Bill’s dead.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Marie was not in Oxford. I knew that for a fact – not simply because she never answered her phone, but because, since my return from Cheshire, I had spent two more long nights in a rented car outside her flat. And she never appeared.

  As I sat there, on the third night of my vigil, watching her front door through tired, prickly eyes, I was haunted by memories of a phone call I had received an emotional lifetime earlier – the one that Jill’s father had made to me.

  It wouldn’t be Marie’s father who made it this time, of course. It couldn’t be, since he had recently died. But perhaps some other caring relative from the other side of the water would think it a kindness to ring me.

  ‘Mr Conroy?’ the call would go.

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘I’m Marie O’Hara’s cousin, Siobhan.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve never met, but she’s told me so much about you that it’s almost like you were one of the family.’

  And all the time she was talking, I’d be thinking, ‘Why doesn’t she get on with it? Why doesn’t she say what she’s got to say?’

  Finally, she would. ‘I’m afraid there’s been an accident. Marie’s … well, there’s no easy way of putting it … Marie’s dead.’

  Yes, that was how it would happen.

  And it would happen because I hadn’t been there with her – just as Jill’s accident had happened because I hadn’t been there with her!

  I told myself I was thinking like the lunatic I had once officially been – that I couldn’t have saved Jill then any more than I could save Marie now – but it didn’t help. I was obsessed with the longing to protect her, yet I had no idea of how to even find her.

  If only she’d ring me!

  If only she’d tell me where she was!

  But she didn’t ring, and it wasn’t until the end of my third night’s watch that I realized what I was going to have to do if I was ever to have a chance of finding out where she’d gone.

  It was eleven thirty in the morning. Andy McBride and I sat in the bar of the Bulldog, on St Aldate’s. I was sipping lethargically at my now tepid coffee. Andy was looking moodily into his glass of orange juice. Neither of us had spoken a word for several minutes.

  It was Andy who finally broke the silence. ‘You’ll never manage it on your own,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have to do it alone,’ I told him, ‘because I’m not prepared to take you along and run the risk of you going back to prison.’

  Andy shrugged. ‘Och, I’m noo stranger to a prison cell. There’d be nae hardship there for me.’ He grinned. ‘An’ think of what great publicity it’d be for ma new book.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Just tell me how it’s done, and I’ll do it on my own.’

  ‘Tell me all I need to know aboot becoming a publisher,’ Andy said. ‘You’ve got five minutes.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly begin to explain …’

  ‘Exactly – an’ no more could I explain housebreaking in five minutes. It’s a skilled job we’re talkin’ aboot here, and you wouldna have a snowball in hell’s chance on your own.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Let me do this, Rob – please.’

  There was a begging look in his eyes I simply couldn’t resist.

  ‘All right,’ I agreed.

  Andy drained his orange juice ‘Well, if we’re gonna do it, we’d best get it over wi’.’

  ‘Now?’ I said, shocked. ‘Hadn’t we better wait for darkness?’

  Andy gave me the same professional look of pity that Marie had given me outside the crumbling terraced house in Bristol, where we found Paul Taylor.

  ‘I’ve always worked in daylight,’ he said. ‘The more folk there are aroond, the less chance there is you’ll be noticed.’

  ‘Don’t we need some tools?’ I asked.

  ‘Like what?’ Andy asked, grinning again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly. ‘Skeleton keys or something.’

  Andy reached in his pocket and produced a bunch of odd-shaped keys.

  ‘Like these?’ he asked.

  ‘Where did you get them from?’

  ‘I borrowed them from an “acquaintance”.’

  ‘And how long have you been carrying them around with you?’

  ‘Ever since you told me that Marie had’na come back to Oxford.’

  Either by luck or judgement, the first key Andy tried opened the front door of the house on the Banbury Road.

  ‘Piece o’ piss,’ he said softly to me. ‘You’d think a private detective like her would be more security conscious.’

  Marie had taken more precautions with her own flat, and for two gut-wrenching minutes I stood in the corridor while Andy tried a series of keys on both the standard and the security locks.

  And then we were in – right inside the place which, despite all the other things that Marie and I had shared over the previous two years, she had n
ever allowed me to see.

  At first sight, it was innocuous enough. The main room contained the kitchenette and the living area. There were three other doors leading off it, presumably to the bathroom and two bedrooms.

  ‘The first ninety seconds you’re in a place, you’re as safe as hooses,’ Andy whispered. ‘Every minute after that, your risk doubles.’

  I looked around me – two armchairs, a television, a filing cabinet and a large table with Marie’s computer on it.

  ‘Check through the filing cabinet and I’ll see what’s on the table,’ I told Andy.

  ‘It’d be a big help if we knew what we was lookin’ for,’ the Scot said.

  But the problem was, we didn’t know. I could only hope that we came across a memo she’d written to herself, a set of directions she’d taken down over the phone, or a sketch map of a place she intended to visit – something, anything which might tell me where my Marie had gone.

  I sifted through the papers on the table. There were reports for clients, receipts for petrol, bills for restaurants outside the Oxford area – and an envelope with a Limerick postmark which dated it as having been sent only a few days earlier.

  I took the single sheet of paper out of the envelope.

  My dearest Marie, it began.

  I quickly scanned the rest of the text. The writer said that everyone was fine and missing her, that the dog had had puppies, that the milk yield was up from the previous month, and that preparations were well underway for the annual fête.

  At the bottom of the letter were the words: I’m always thinking about you. Your ever-loving Dad.

  Her dad!

  ‘My father’s died,’ she’d told me. ‘We weren’t very close, but I still feel guilty.’

  Lies, all lies!

  Her father was alive, and from the tone of the letter, they had a very affectionate relationship.

  How many other falsehoods had she fed me? I wondered, despairingly. How little of what she’d said to me had ever been true?

  Had she been smiling when, over the phone, she said she loved me – almost amazed at how easy it was to fool me?