The Silence Before Thunder

by Kathy Shuker

  Jo stared unseeingly towards the stage. What Eleanor was talking about happened years ago; what significance did it have now and why was it bothering her? A bust of Shelley. Yes, given his passion for collecting poet busts, you would have expected Frank to be jealous. Then Eleanor and Frank had left the party soon afterwards. And now Frank had lied about being in Exeter. Was there a missing link here, something obvious that she was failing to grasp? Frank could easily have had time to drive back to Petterton Mill Cove to see Eleanor. But what would have made him do that and then lie about it? The music drifted over her, an instrumental number now, then another singer joined them. Instruments were changed for the final item before the interval and they struck up again.

  It came to her. ‘The magazine cutting,’ she murmured.

  That piece of paper which Eleanor had crushed into a ball and then meticulously smoothed out and kept. The image of it flashed up in Jo’s head, each detail of it suddenly clear in her mind’s eye. She didn’t understand everything it signified yet but it was beginning to slot into place and what she was thinking chilled her. That cutting had been the trigger to this terrible chain of events. And she would bet that Frank knew it too. He also knew that Jo had seen it because she’d told him she had. He would guess that they still had it - Frank knew as well as anyone that Eleanor kept everything.

  Jo glanced across. Eleanor had settled again, her fingers relaxed, one of her feet tapping softly to the rhythm of the music. But earlier that evening it had been obvious to everyone that Eleanor was starting to recall things. Look at the way she had mentioned Frank reciting to his poet busts. Put the magazine cutting in front of her now and she would probably remember a lot more. Frank would know that too. That cutting was important in some way.

  The first half ended; the lights in the room went on and everyone got up. Out in the aisle as they shuffled their way towards the exit to the bar, Jo eased across to Imogen.

  ‘Can you look after Eleanor while I nip back to the house to check on my cat? He’ll be wanting to come in by now.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You won’t leave her alone, will you?’

  Imogen glared. ‘Really Jo. What a question.’

  Jo cut right towards the main exit. She needed to see that cutting again and she wanted it in her possession before Eleanor said anything else. Here and now, in a crowded room and with friends at her side, Eleanor was safe. At the exit, Jo glanced round, seeing no-one, searching for Frank. There was no sign of him; he was probably in the bar already. She slipped out into the darkness.

  A few minutes later a dark shape followed her across the car park to the lane.

  Chapter 23

  Jo’s fingers fumbled as she tried to input the code on the woodland gate. She had hurried and was breathless, anxious too. At one point on the path she was sure she’d heard a noise behind her and stopped, straining every sense to identify what it was. Then with a rustle, a bird had suddenly swept away, wings silently flapping, and she had breathed again. Now she had to do the code a second time to get it to register and blew out a breath of relief as the lock released and she was able to swing the gate open. Cutting through the remaining fringe of trees towards the house, she forced herself to walk more slowly. She was overreacting, panicking; there was no need to rush. It would take her no time to locate the cutting and then she would be out of there and back down to The Mill long before the concert finished. Eleanor was at no risk.

  Still she couldn’t shake off the apprehension. Boundaries had moved, patterns of usual behaviour had been overturned.

  She put the key in the lock on the front door and let herself in. The house was dark and eerily silent as if it too was holding its breath. She chided herself for letting her imagination take hold. Even so, she felt an irrational need to stay silent too, to get this done and not advertise her presence. Still using her torch, she strode the length of the hall and entered Eleanor’s study.

  Flashing the torch beam around the room it was almost a surprise that it looked undisturbed, so normal and innocent. She switched on the small table lamp on top of the bureau. Its warm glow was reassuringly familiar and she went to the patio doors, opening one of them out onto the night and softly calling Sidney’s name. It hadn’t only been an excuse to come back; it was time he came in. She called a second time but there was still no response and she felt another pang of fear. Leaving the door open, she went back into the room.

  The library steps were in the corner. She pulled them out and looked up in the dim light, trying to remember exactly where that book was. Yes, she thought she knew: five shelves up and over to her right. She shifted the steps and climbed, using her torch to check the spines. There it was: Now and Then, the volume of Frank’s poetry. Pulling it out, still standing on the steps, she flicked through the pages. The cutting was there, folded in half. She removed it, replaced the book and returned to the floor.

  Standing examining it in the light from the lamp, it was exactly as she remembered: a waist up shot of Frank in his study with his arm around Louisa. Behind them were wooden shelves most of which were filled with books, some of them clearly leather bound. One of the visible shelves held other display items: a fine brass clock; an elaborately decorated theatrical mask - the sort Jo had seen once in Venice - and a couple of bronze busts. The photographer must have been impressed by the image they created and had arranged it to make sure they were included in the shot.

  Hugh managed to find Shelley. The bust of Shelley. It was special. And there it was in the photo. Jo had seen images of Shelley before and she was sure that the bust on the right portrayed him. She was equally sure it was the one that Hugh Shrigley had bought because that’s what had been bothering Eleanor, gnawing at her subconscious, forcing her to keep reliving that party at Hugh Shrigley’s. It wasn’t proof of anything yet but it was a start.

  She refolded the cutting and was ramming it in the pocket of her jacket when a noise outside made her freeze. She forced herself to turn and slink towards the open patio door.

  ‘Sidney?’ she murmured. ‘Is that you?’

  A man’s form loomed out of the darkness just a stone’s throw away and Jo’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘No, it’s me.’ He took a couple of steps forwards till he was standing in the doorway. The dull light from the lamp illuminated his features just enough to make them clear. Either way, she knew who it was; she would recognise that voice anywhere.

  ‘Frank.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to see you. In fact, I’ve been here a little while. I saw you abandon Eleanor with Imogen and leave The Mill. Then you went off in the dark, all furtive, so I thought I’d follow you and see what you were up to. It’s not like you to behave like that my dear - or perhaps I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.’

  ‘I suspect you don’t know me at all.’

  He pursed up his lips and stretched a smile. ‘Maybe not. Anyway I’ve been watching you here, climbing around Eleanor’s study. Again, it seems a strange thing to be doing at this time of night.’

  He wandered into the room, forcing her to take a step backwards, and glanced around as if seeing it all anew.

  ‘I got the distinct impression that you were looking for something and, indeed, that you had found it,’ he remarked to the room at large. He turned back to her. ‘Does that sound fair?’

  Jo slid her hand into her pocket, reassuring herself that the cutting was still there. Her fingers brushed against the voice recorder. She had been carrying it around all day, just as she had for weeks. Jo slowly felt along its edge and gently pressed the power button. This machine picked up everything.

  ‘What does it have to do with you, Frank? This isn’t your home any more. It never was really. You just boarded here.’

  ‘Ooh, feisty.’ He smiled, not unkindly. ‘You’re wrong, you know, I think I do know you. I always guessed you had some spunk in that straight-laced little frame of y
ours.’ He sighed heavily and wandered further into the room. ‘Oh Jojo, please don’t play games. We both know why I’m here, don’t we, so why don’t you give me that magazine page and let the whole thing go? I don’t want you to be involved in this.’

  ‘In what?’

  He eyed her up, slightly sidelong. ‘Come now. You’re being disingenuous. Eleanor has started to remember, hasn’t she? After all, if it hadn’t been for her, I’m sure you wouldn’t have been skulking round here in the half dark. What were you frightened of?’

  ‘You.’ She admitted it unthinkingly and paused, brought up short by its truth. ‘I’ve tried not to believe it, Frank. I used to think the world of you. You were something like the father I never had. Volatile at times, yes, unreliable even, but kind, clever and gentle. You bothered to spend time with me and teach me things. I thought you cared about me as well as about Eleanor.’

  The challenging gaze faltered; he looked away, emitting a slow sigh.

  ‘I did care for you Jojo.’ He looked back at her. ‘I still do. But you’re getting involved in things you don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t understand. So explain, why don’t you?’ She hesitated. ‘It all started with that bust of Shelley didn’t it? You had to have it, didn’t you, so you pushed Hugh Shrigley off the balcony?’ She was gambling here, guessing, determined to draw him out.

  He threw his head back with an agonised expression. ‘I knew Eleanor had remembered. Hell.’ He thumped a hand against the wall, making a picture rattle on its hanging. ‘Bloody hell.’ He began to pace the room. ‘I’d hoped, I’d really hoped that she’d blank the whole thing. You know…’ Again a heavy sigh. ‘…I never intended it to work out like this.’

  ‘And how did you think it was going to work out? Tell me. I don’t understand. If Eleanor knew about the bust already, why did the cutting make any difference to her?’

  ‘She knew about the bust because she was with me when Hugh took me into the library and showed it off. She didn’t know I had it because she wasn’t there later on. She just guessed what happened and she was wrong. I told her that on that Friday, that God-awful Friday.’

  ‘What? What did you tell her?’

  ‘That it was an accident of course.’

  He stopped pacing, his expression suggesting anger and astonishment that she didn’t know. He’d assumed Eleanor had remembered more than she had. He looked down at the floor then back up into Jo’s face. She could sense his burning need to talk, to explain himself. He began moving again.

  ‘She’d seen that photo in an article she’d been sent and put two and two together and made five. I don’t know how she could think me capable of… After all those years together.’

  He paused, facing a framed photograph of Eleanor on the wall, a picture taken years before at the launch of an early book, and continued to stare at it as he talked.

  ‘We’d left that party, you see, but I told Eleanor I’d forgotten my cigarette case at Hugh’s flat and I went back later without her. I wanted to see if I could do a deal on the Shelley. I’d been hankering after one of those busts for ages and I thought maybe I could swop it for something else I had that he wanted, or maybe pay in instalments - or both. It’s not as though Hugh truly wanted it.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘He only bought it to show me he could. To win. And he’d been drinking; he was tight. He didn’t want to come to any arrangement and I got cross. So yes, OK, I did push him a bit but it was nothing, just a scuffle. The next thing he’d fallen and thumped his head on the corner of the stone hearth.’

  Frank turned away and began pacing again. ‘He’d gone, just like that. Dead. I mean, I didn’t do it to him, he overbalanced, but of course I panicked…and the next thing I knew I was carrying him out onto the balcony and pushing him over the balustrade so the thump on his head would be masked by the fall. Then I got out of there as quickly as I could. Eleanor and I had been in the room earlier so it was easy to explain away my fingerprints. They were private gardens at the back and it was very late. I thought it would be a while till anyone found him.’

  ‘You found the time to steal the bust though.’

  ‘I just took it on the spur of the moment. He wasn’t going to need it any more and he hadn’t shown it to anyone else. He’d saved it to flaunt in front of me.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘You think I haven’t been haunted by it? Of course I have. For years. But time went on and…’ He stopped walking and looked at her. ‘…I couldn’t face admitting what I’d done. I was scared, as simple as that. I didn’t want to go to prison for a foolish argument and a tragic accident. Can you imagine me in prison? Well can you?’

  Jo said nothing. He was convincing, up to a point, and she wanted to believe him but she had seen his performances too many times. He wasn’t an actor but he could turn it on when he chose; his stage persona was someone else, a mask he slipped on when needed. And the story didn’t ring true - surely there’d have been blood left behind from a blow to the head on stone? Yet everyone believed Hugh had simply fallen, drunk, from the balcony, including the police presumably. And then there was Eleanor’s fall. A coincidence too far.

  Sidney chose that moment to stroll in through the door and insinuate himself around Jo’s legs, purring. Glad of the distraction, she bent to pick him up. Seeing Frank, Sidney hissed, shrinking back in her arms. It was a struggle to hold him.

  ‘You were the one who shut Sidney in that shed, weren’t you?’

  ‘What? Don’t be ridiculous.’ He turned away.

  She stroked Sidney, trying to calm him down. ‘What did you tell Eleanor afterwards then? After you’d left Hugh’s apartment?’

  ‘Nothing much. I didn’t know what to say. I told her Hugh was completely plastered and making no sense, that he’d barely let me in through the door. I hid the bust. When the news got out and the police started asking questions, I denied knowing anything about it. Eleanor believed me; they all did. No-one had seen me go in or leave. The people in the flat below said they might have heard someone else at the apartment but they were vague and unsure. I made Eleanor promise to say nothing about me going back. I said I didn’t want to get involved with the police over a tragic accident which I knew nothing about. She kept her word.’

  ‘Then she saw that photograph and warned you that she would have to break that promise?’

  ‘Yes. She said she’d seen the bust and had guessed what had happened. She told me she couldn’t live with what she knew, that I had to say something or that she would.’

  He began pacing again. Sidney kept bristling in Jo’s arms. He spat.

  Frank ignored him. ‘That photograph was a mistake. Eleanor hadn’t been to my flat in years. It was my bolt-hole. I suppose I got blasé about it after a while. No-one else knew about the damn bust and it never crossed my mind that she would see it. I didn’t think.’

  ‘So you came over here and challenged her about it…’

  His eyes narrowed. She saw his guard come up.

  ‘Don’t be absurd. I was in Exeter. We spoke on the phone. Poor Eleanor was distraught and drinking. I could tell from her voice.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Anyway you can’t use any of this against me, Jo. It’d be your word against mine. So if you’ll just give me that magazine cutting, we’ll pretend none of this ever happened and leave it at that.’

  ‘The photograph will be on record at the magazine.’

  ‘But who else will know it has any significance?’

  ‘Eleanor?’

  ‘We’ll have a chat about it, Ellie and I. I think we can iron it out. I honestly think we might even be able to get together again. Louisa and I are finished. Nothing’s been the same since I left Eleanor. I really think we’re bonded together somehow.’

  He took a step towards her, stretching out his hand. She hesitated but the hard look in his eyes didn’t match the light tone of his voice and she didn’t trust him. He knew he had said too much.

  He took another step toward
s her, gesturing impatiently with the outstretched hand. ‘Come on Jo.’

  That was too much for Sidney. He spat again and jumped at Frank, yowling, angry and protective. Jo made a split second decision and dashed for the open patio door, throwing herself out into the night. Behind her she heard Frank swearing at the cat and saw Sidney streak out past her. She started to run, heart thumping. She had to get away. Frank had killed before and now he was a desperate man.

  *

  Jo ran over the patio, out of the arc of light from the study and down the steps to the lawn. She kept moving, on towards where the lawn fell away to the herbaceous border. Beyond that was the fence and an army of trees. It was too dark to see anything. She had her phone with her but didn’t dare switch on the torch and had to trust to memory and instinct instead. She discounted heading for the woodland path to the village - Frank would expect it and she would be too easy to follow.

  He was out on the patio now - she could see his silhouette against the study light - peering into the darkness left and right. Jo weighed up her options. Hiding in the trees would be risky in the dark and she would never be able to move quietly enough on the crackling undergrowth. She edged farther down the lawn. Her eyes were beginning to adjust and she could see faint shapes forming. Then her foot dropped off the lawn into the flower bed, turning slightly, and she bit back a yelp of surprise and pain. She bent over, scrabbling urgently over the soil for a small stone. She found one and straightened up, took aim and threw it towards the trees near the village side of the house. How ironic that it was Frank who had taught her how to throw properly, like a boy. The stone made a satisfying noise as it dropped and she saw Frank turn and move that way. Immediately she started moving again, the other way, towards the eastern side of the garden. Thank God she’d decided to wear trousers and flat shoes that night.