Neither of them heard the sitting-room window break, or smelled the first wisps of smoke as they seeped through the floorboards. Only Pyewacket, snug on his cushion in the chair in the kitchen, raised his head, wrinkled his patrician nose, sneezed, then shot swiftly out of the cat-flap in the kitchen door.
It was only when the smoke-detector in the kitchen started pulsing its shrill alarm that Margaret at last blearily opened her eyes. The air was thick with acrid fumes and her eyes began to smart and stream.
Dazed and disorientated, she struggled through the smoky hell to where she thought the door might be. She fought the blackness, lashing out as if it were a circling foe, waiting for her to weaken, but her lungs were starting to labour in a desperate attempt to draw oxygen from the foul air. She could not get her breath; she staggered, and as she fell surrendered to the lurking dark which rushed in to engulf her.
9
Rod Vezey put his head in his hands and groaned.
‘A nutter,’ he said. ‘Oh dear God! Are you really telling me that we are going to have to question women – middle-class, I-know-my-rights-and-may-I-just-have-your-number-before-we-start-officer women – when the one we want won’t even know when she’s lying?’
He was seated at a desk in the shabby office of the sergeant whose patch included Stretton Noble, in the nearby small town of Burdley. Flimsy, garish paper-chains were looped incongruously from the corners of the room to the white plastic central lampshade, and below an improbable tinsel tassel dangled to swing in the dusty current of air from the radiator. It was half past nine, but as yet full daylight had not penetrated the dirty ribbed glass in the window.
Opposite him, Robert Moon looked like a man whose self-image has been severely compromized. Wearing a hand-knitted fisherman’s sweater and baggy cord trousers borrowed from Ted Brancombe, he appeared dishevelled and unkempt; he had not shaved, and without his usual expression of cheerful composure he looked much older, the lines of age and exhaustion clearly marked. He seemed unable to sit still; he changed his position in the chair, fiddled with paperclips, got up to untangle a twisted sash cord at one of the windows. He was clearly exercising tight control, but every so often his fingers beat a betraying tattoo of frustration.
With an obvious effort, he forced himself to give Vezey’s question his usual measured response.
‘Yes, I think that is entirely possible. Well, yes and no, perhaps. From what Margaret told me before – ’ He broke off, then continued, ‘the woman knows that something is going on – something alarming and evil which she is powerless to prevent – though she can only guess at what it is, and certainly will have no precise knowledge of how it happened. She’s obviously going to be in a very overwrought state.’
‘Unlike every other woman in the place, you mean?’ Vezey groaned again. ‘Have you any idea how many of them there are in Stretton Noble who meet your specifications?’
‘A fair few, I daresay.’
He spoke tersely, with the air of one deliberately distancing himself from a problem which is not his concern. Standing by the window, his fingers again drummed out his irritation on the sill.
Vezey got to his feet. ‘I’d better get on. I’ve got a briefing to give in ten minutes, and they won’t be happy when they hear it’s a kid-gloves job.’
‘You mean, they prefer it when they can beat them up round the back of the station, no questions asked?’
It was such an entirely uncharacteristic remark that Vezey turned round to stare at him. The tension in the atmosphere had become so marked that even a lifetime’s dedication to dismissing the inconvenient emotions of others did not equip him to ignore it.
He said, awkwardly and against his better judgment, ‘How is she – your sister?’
Robert swung round, his eyes glittering.
‘I thought you’d never ask. Oh, she’s fine, given that someone tried to kill her and very nearly succeeded. Of course, we won’t be sure her eyes are unharmed until they take the pads off today, and her throat’s so raw that she can’t really speak. It was the formaldehyde, you see, in the fabric of an old sofa, and the fumes came up through the floorboards straight into her bedroom. Nasty stuff, but they don’t think her liver and kidneys have been damaged, so that’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘And you’re blaming us? Somehow we should have stopped it? You know better than that, Robert.’
The opposition and the appeal to his common sense triggered the response he needed to make.
‘Blame you?’ he exploded. ‘You knew there was a pyromaniac loose in a small village, but you all went home at tea time. Of course I blame you. But I blame myself a lot more.’
Wisely, Vezey did not mention manpower or priorities. ‘You got her out,’ he said.
‘Only just. It was minutes before the smoke alarm got through to me.’
‘You can hardly blame yourself for sleeping heavily.’
‘Oh, can’t I?’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘You must know very little about psychology. Didn’t they make you take classes in it?’
‘I’m not going to let you pick a quarrel with me, Robert, no matter what you say.’ Vezey crossed to the door. ‘I’ve got a lot to do –’
‘You certainly have. In my professional capacity, I must warn you: this is only the beginning. Perhaps the first killing wasn’t planned, but the fact of poor old Tom’s death would breach a barrier in her mind. With the attempted murder last night she’s crossed the Rubicon. It may not be fire next time – though it may be, who knows? – but case histories often chart fire-raising as part of the progression towards direct violence.’
‘It’s got top priority now. I’ve been taken off my other cases and we’re throwing everything into it.’
‘There’s a proverb I’m trying to remember – something about stable doors –’
At the sneer, Vezey’s lips tightened. He turned to the door and opened it, but said only, with obvious restraint, ‘I understand that you are distressed. I can only assure you we are doing all we can. And now, if you will excuse me…’
Moon had twisted the sash cord into a tight knot: he flung it at the window which it hit with a thud.
Then his shoulders sagged.
‘I’m sorry, Rod,’ he said tiredly, rubbing his hand across his face. ‘I know that was unfair. I just can’t see things straight this morning.’
Vezey closed the door again, though his hand still rested on the handle.
‘It’s a funny thing, family,’ Robert went on. ‘We all lead our own, very separate lives. I see Margaret, what – twice, three times a year? But almost my first memory is being told it was my job to look after her. And I was there, in the room next door to her, when she nearly died.
‘I want whoever did this put away, Rod. I can dress it up in fancy clothing, if you like, and I can even make it sound quite professional and caring: it’s just as important for herself that she be stopped as it is for the safety of society, blah, blah, blah. I can spout that sort of claptrap indefinitely.
‘But what I actually want is for this person – this damaged, frail, vulnerable person who probably has every psychological excuse in the book – to be punished for what she did to my sister.’
Rod Vezey was not given to flights of fancy, but he had a brief, vivid picture of a small stout schoolboy in shorts and spectacles valiantly standing between his smaller stout sister and the vicissitudes of childhood. Not much had changed.
Sancta simplicitas! He, who for his own preservation had excised any trace of the sacred simplicity of family feeling, knew a pang of acute regret.
He said, with uncharacteristic gentleness, ‘I didn’t cut all the psychology classes. You don’t need me to tell you that yours is a perfectly healthy reaction.
‘Go back to the Brancombes’, have something to eat, then get some sleep. Thinking is your best contribution to this investigation, and you’re too tired to think straight. I’ll be in touch.’
***
Jean Brancombe had neat, rounde
d ears, small quick hands, russet-grey hair and large, anxious brown eyes. With the imagined addition of a tail and whiskers, her resemblance to a fieldmouse would be complete.
She tended to dart about restlessly, powered by short bursts of energy, her little fine-boned body quivering with the exertion, and her demands upon herself were relentless. While Ted, her husband, had what amounted to a genius for placidity, she existed in a state of permanent nervous exhaustion.
The family Christmas – twenty-two of them round a festal board groaning under the weight of lightly-disguised cholesterol – usually left her almost prostrate, and Ted normally forbade further excitements for a month.
But the events of the week had made rest impossible and her driven scurrying became more and more frantic. She had started getting up at night in her dressing gown and wellington boots to prowl round the barns, so temptingly full of combustible hay and straw, until Ted discovered what she was up to.
‘I’m putting my foot down,’ he said, and Jean, as she always did when Ted put his foot down, complied. But he couldn’t stop her lying awake, twitching at every sound, from the movement of cattle in the fields to the unexplained crackle of a twig in the shrubbery under their bedroom window.
And now this. She had gathered Robert up, of course, with her usual warm-heartedness; it was actually a relief to have somewhere to direct her nervous energy.
After frying him a lavish breakfast she had made the pastry for the steak-and-kidney pie for lunch and popped the meat, along with the rice pudding (half-milk, half-cream, with flakes of butter on the top to make a nice thick skin) into the bottom oven of the Raeburn. Now she was ready to trot along to the vicarage – she never seemed able just to walk – to get some things to take to poor Margaret.
It was drizzling and miserable, but a little crowd had gathered to view the aftermath of the latest village drama. There were about ten adults and half-a-dozen children watching the activity as if it were a side show; Jean knew most of them and paid the petty coinage of meaningless exclamation as she worked her way purposefully through their ranks.
Apart from the blackened, broken window on the ground floor and the smoke-streaks up the wall, the house looked surprisingly normal. There were men in the garden; one crouching on the path below the window, two in earnest discussion, another taking measurements and writing them down in a fat black notebook.
At the garden gate, a uniformed constable stood guard. He looked down at her, his youthful complexion turning pink as he almost visibly wrapped himself in the dignity of office, striving to project authority towards someone who had more than once caught him scrumping apples in her orchard.
‘Good gracious, Tommy Compton, is that you under that cap?’
One of the children sniggered, but Jean, oblivious, twittered on happily.
‘Well! Your mother told me you’d gone and joined the police force, but this is the first time I’ve seen you in all your glory. Let me look at you – yes, very smart! And they do always say poachers make the best gamekeepers, don’t they?’
A volley of stifled giggles came from the children, now listening with undisguised glee, and the young man’s face proclaimed an even deeper shade of embarrassment.
Jean tidied him to one side.
‘Now I’m just popping in to sort out some things to take to Miss Moon in hospital, all right?’
He opened his mouth, but before he could find his voice she was hurrying up the path. He shut it again hastily, aware of his young tormentors and reluctant to afford them more amusement by futile protest. There would be other, less inhibited lines of defence if these were deemed necessary.
But Jean encountered no further opposition. Apart from the area of fire damage, the house would not hold useful evidence, and the detective in charge was quite prepared to accede to her request.
‘Her cleaner’s upstairs already, starting to clear up,’ he said, and was startled to be put aside with a force totally unexpected from one of such small stature and nervous appearance.
‘Is she, indeed!’ said Jean, and with the light of battle in her eyes shot up the stairs.
Minnie Groak jumped guiltily as, entirely without warning, the bedroom door was flung open. She had just settled down to a comfortable and luxurious rummage through Miss Moon’s bedroom drawers. She had been saving the best till last, but now realized the folly of her strategy; anyone might have guessed at the Boots’ cosmetics and the Marks and Spencer’s knickers, but now she would never know what riches her trawl through the vicar’s correspondence files in her study might have yielded.
‘And just what do you think you’re doing here, Minnie Groak?’
Mrs Brancombe stood in the doorway like a small avenging angel, the flaming sword all but visible as she prepared to expel the other woman from her anticipated paradise.
Minnie’s eyes fell. She was afraid of direct confrontation, an uneasiness rooted in her schooldays when, caught out in some pernicious piece of tale-bearing, she had suffered condign punishment. There was a whine in her voice when she spoke.
‘I’m sure I don’t know why you should go asking me like that, Mrs Brancombe. I came here out of the goodness of my heart, and who else should come and sort things out for the poor lady, I should like to know?’
Jean eyed the open drawers pointedly, but retreated from direct accusation.
‘Well, Minnie, if you really want to be helpful you could get a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush and start cleaning the kitchen walls and floor; there’s a lot of hard work needed down there.’
Minnie smirked triumphantly.
‘Well I would of, naturally, only the policeman said I might be in the way. But I could go and clean out her study – ’
But Jean’s blood was up, and she had no hesitation in quashing this attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
‘I think Miss Moon would prefer to do that herself. If you really want to do your Christian duty, the church needs a bit of cleaning and tidying for Sunday. It’s my day, but I have to get some things Miss Moon needs in hospital. I’ll give you the key. Be sure to lock up after you, and someone will be round to get it back from you tomorrow.’
Routed, Minnie accepted it meekly and Jean supervised her departure. Now she must see to it that the police never admitted that wretched woman again.
***
Margaret had forgotten how much afraid she had been of the dark as a child, forgotten over the comfortable adult years when darkness was a benison before the greater blessing of sleep. She had forgotten how thickly-peopled with demons that darkness had been.
As she lay now, blinded as yet only by the benign, soothing pads they had bound across her eyes, she discovered that the demons had never been truly vanquished. Beneath the shell of her stated optimism they gnawed like rats at the soft underbelly of her fear.
Last night she had made all the right noises while the hospital staff repeatedly sluiced her streaming, burning eyes and made her sip some liquid which did something to alleviate the raw agony of her throat. They were, they had said, practically sure there would be no permanent damage, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they, and practically wasn’t quite sufficient reassurance when you were lying with nothing to do except consider the worst-case scenario.
She made an effort to control her thoughts. This was just a more dramatic example of 3 a.m. despair, and there were few people who didn’t know all about that. But then, perhaps if you were – blind (she forced herself to shape the word) daylight never came to reduce the Giants Despair of darkness to human scale.
There was no means of knowing how long she had been lying awake, or what time it was. She could have slept for one hour or ten; it could be daylight or the middle of the night. She could be alone, or someone could be watching her in silence. And how could she tell who it was, whether it was a nurse, or a friend, or the fiend who had tried to kill her last night, returned? It was all she could do not to scream.
***
Minnie was fu
ming as she pushed through the group still hanging about the gate, ignoring the eager questions of a couple of women she knew. If Jean Brancombe thought that she, Minnie, was going to go and do her chores for her, she had another think coming. Still...She fingered the key in her pocket speculatively.
You never knew what might be kept in the church. Miss Moon quite often saw people in the little vestry, and if the key let her in there...
Well, she didn’t mind doing a bit of dusting, after all. Not if it was going to help out. She was a fool to herself, she knew that, and she would get no thanks for it. But then, she should be used to that after all this time. Blessed is she who expecteth nothing, for she shall not be disappointed, as her mother always said.
She had begun to feel positively virtuous by the time she arrived at the church.
It was the key to the side door that she had been given, and she went round by the little path, shielded from the road by the low branches of two ancient yew trees.
There was a parcel lying on the doorstep. It was fairly small, wrapped in brown paper; taped on to the front was a piece of paper with the direction, ‘Rev. Margaret Moon, Vicar, St Mary’s Church’, printed on it. Minnie picked it up, opened the door and went in.
She paused as the chilly stillness of the empty church struck her almost like a blow, but only briefly. With the parcel in her hand she headed straight for the vestry door. She had every excuse now; obviously she must place this parcel on Miss Moon’s desk. She had the key ready in her hand, large, solid and old-fashioned.
There was no point in even trying it. She could see that the lock on the vestry door was small, neat and modern, a thoroughly efficient mortice lock, to thwart modern thieves who knew all about the value of ecclesiastical plate.
Thwarted herself, Minnie sat down on the nearest pew with a sense of injustice. Here she was trying to be helpful and people treated her as if she wasn’t to be trusted. Jean Brancombe could have given her the key to the vestry and then she could have put the parcel in and dusted the room a bit for poor Miss Moon.
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