She disappeared abruptly, which made Andrew think that to talk to him over the fence she must have been standing on something which raised her high enough to be able to look over it.
Going out of Mollie’s gate and turning in at the Wakehams’, he saw that this was in fact so. Evidently she had been standing on a wooden bench against the fence. It had a rough wooden table in front of it and two garden chairs near it. But Naomi Wakeham herself had disappeared.
However, she emerged from the house almost immediately, carrying a tray with cups, a plate of biscuits and a coffeepot on it. She was a tall, slender woman of about thirty whose fair hair fell in soft loops on her shoulders and whose fine skin was tanned a faint golden brown. She was wearing a loose green-and-white-striped shirt, green jeans and sandals, and looked elegant in a carefully casual way.
She put the tray down on the table.
“Of course you’ll have guessed it,” she said. “Mollie told me you’d once been involved in solving a murder, and I thought—” She stopped abruptly. “Do sit down. How do you like your coffee? Cream? Sugar?”
Andrew sat down in one of the garden chairs. He saw that the garden was very like the one next door, except that it looked more neglected. But this woman’s husband, he remembered, was one of the people who had disappeared, and perhaps she herself was not a keen gardener.
“Black, please, and no sugar,” he answered.
She sat down on the bench. Her movements were lithe and graceful.
“But is it true?” she asked.
“That I once helped solve a murder?” he said. “I suppose you could say so.”
“And do you know a great deal about crime?”
She had poured out coffee for them both, had put her elbows on the table and was resting her chin on her hands. Her gaze was fixed on his face, intently searching.
He felt foolish and began to wish he had not come.
“Virtually nothing,” he said. “I’m a retired plant physiologist and for some years now I’ve been writing the life of Robert Hooke.”
“Who’s he?”
“He was a natural philosopher in the seventeenth century. He was an architect too. In those days people weren’t forced into narrow specialization as they are today. But he’s particularly celebrated for pioneering microscopical work in a variety of fields and was the first microscopist to observe individual cells.”
It was not very kind of him, but he hoped to deflect her from her present line of inquiry by the simple method of boring her.
He failed. She merely waited till he paused, then said, “I’d like to tell you about my husband. You see, for all I know, he’s dead. Even murdered. I don’t really think so, but he might be. And I don’t want to tell the police about it because if he came back and found I’d done that, he’d be furious. And when he’s furious he gets violent and I get frightened. But I’ve simply got to talk to somebody, so you don’t mind if I tell you all about it, do you? You see, it’s much easier to talk to a stranger than to someone one knows. It’s almost like talking—well, to a doctor.”
Andrew recognized the symptoms of someone who revelled in dramatizing herself and decided not to take it too seriously.
“Why not try it out on your doctor, then?” he suggested.
“On poor little Pegler? Oh God, he’d only hold my hand and sympathize. Besides, his wife has just walked out on him, as Mike has on me, so I doubt if he’s in a fit state to bother about anyone else’s emotional problems. No, what I need from some kind person is detachment—detachment, wisdom, experience. So you do understand why I’ve turned to you, don’t you, after everything Mollie’s told me about you?”
“Mollie doesn’t really know me very well,” Andrew said defensively. “It’s Constance who’s my old friend.”
She looked faintly contemptuous. “She’s a very brilliant person, I’m sure, but she’s all intellect, she doesn’t know anything about people.”
“As a matter of fact, she knows a great deal about people,” Andrew said.
She shook her head. “Not really. I expect she can be clever about them and tell you what their neuroses are and that sort of thing, but she doesn’t really feel for them. Mollie’s different. She’s got a warm, intuitive sympathy with one when one’s in trouble. She seems to know what one’s going through without one’s having to explain it all. But perhaps, after all, I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. It’s embarrassing you. Let’s talk about something else. How long are you staying here?”
“A day or two. I’m not sure.”
“And you’ve known Constance a long time?”
“Oh yes, for years.”
“But you’ve never been here before, have you?”
“No, she and I usually meet in London.”
“Why haven’t you married her?”
He thought that he was beginning to understand her. Besides enjoying dramatizing herself, it pleased her to be deliberately outrageous. He decided not to spoil her pleasure.
“At our age it hardly seems necessary,” he said.
“You’ve been married, though, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did your wife leave you?”
“No, she died.”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really am. You mustn’t take any notice of the way I talk. I’ve no tact. I never have had. I’ve a bad habit of saying whatever comes into my head. Was it long ago?”
“About ten years.”
“My husband left me three weeks ago and I’m still reeling from the shock. I feel as if I’ll never get over it. He didn’t even pack a suitcase, you know, though I think he had some money. I drove him to the station in Maddingleigh, as I usually did, and that’s the last I’ve seen of him. And someone at the firm he works for in the City rang up a day or so later and asked me what had happened to him, was he ill or what, and I improvised and said he’d got pneumonia and had had to go into hospital. And they’ve rung up once or twice since then and I’ve elaborated the story a little, but I shan’t be able to keep it up indefinitely and he’ll be sacked and I’ll be left without any money. I’m going nearly distracted with worry.”
“You were on the stage once, weren’t you?” Andrew said. “Perhaps you’d enjoy going back to it instead of relying on such an undependable person.”
An unexpectedly shrewd look came into her big, dark eyes.
“So Constance and Mollie have been talking about me,” she said. “What frightful gossips people are, even one’s best friends. I suppose they told you Mike had gone off with a woman.”
“That seems to be their theory,” he admitted.
“It’s what I’ve let everyone think,” she said. “Of course it isn’t true.”
He raised his eyebrows in a questioning way, but held back from asking her what she meant. She would hurry on quickly enough, he thought, if he was silent.
He was right, for after waiting a moment for him to express surprise, or at least interest, she said with a touch of defiance, “It’s never been a woman. He’s disappeared once or twice before, though never for as long as this, and if it had been because of a woman, I should have known. I know him so well, you see. If he’d been away with a woman he’d have come home shivering with guilt, probably bringing me an expensive present and begging me to forgive him and swearing he’d never do such a thing again. But it was never like that at all. Each time he vanished he just took a taxi home from Maddingleigh one day, walked in here as if he’d just come back from the City as usual, seemed glad to see me, kissed me and asked what there was for dinner. Then he asked whom I’d told about his having been away and I said, ‘Just Mollie,’ and he said, ‘Good girl,’ and told me that if ever he disappeared again I was never to tell anyone about it, least of all the police. D’you know what I think?”
Andrew expressed regret that he did not do so.
“I don’t believe in that job of his in the City,” she said. “I believe he’s working for MI5, or 6, or one of that lot
. And when he disappears, it’s because he’s been sent away to do some special job. Don’t you think that must be it?”
An acute desire came to Andrew to say that he had a pressing appointment elsewhere and to get up swiftly and go. He had come to Lindleham to try to help Constance to make sense of an anonymous letter, not to get dragged into a spy thriller. But he had always been a courteous man and knew that he could not leave in that way.
“Suppose you’re right,” he said, “why should those supposed employers of his keep ringing you up to ask what’s happened to him? They must know all about what he’s doing.”
Her face went sombre. For a moment he thought that she was going to burst into tears. Then he remembered that she was an actress and decided not to let himself feel too moved.
Giving a deep sigh, she answered, “Of course, that’s one of the reasons I’m so worried. If they really don’t know where he is, then it can only be because something’s gone wrong and he’s been murdered, or kidnapped by the Russians, or something. I tell you, it all keeps going round and round in my head till I don’t know where I am. I’m fond of him, you see. Not exactly in love with him anymore, because he’s such an aloof sort of person who doesn’t really want one to care for him, and he has an awful temper if he doesn’t get what he wants, but we got on all right in a sort of way, so I miss him as well as being frightened about the future. And there’s one other possibility that scares me almost more than my idea that he might be working for Intelligence. Because, after all, there’s something rather fine about that, isn’t there? I mean, it could mean he’s working for his country. But this other idea…” She thrust back the fair hair that fell around her face and for a moment stared broodingly before her. “Suppose he’s some kind of crook,” she said. “Suppose he’s been involved with a gang of drug smugglers or something like that all this time. I can imagine it. There’s a very violent side to him, besides his secretiveness, and I’ve never thought he had much moral sense. So suppose he got across someone in the gang and they killed him, and those telephone calls were just to find out if I’d gone to the police about it yet.”
“Why don’t you do that?”
Never before in Andrew’s life had he spent so much effort in trying to persuade people to go to the police.
“But I told you, he said I mustn’t,” she said. “If he comes back and finds I’ve done it, he’ll never forgive me.”
It would be interesting, Andrew reflected, to discover what, behind the screen of fantasy, she really believed had happened to her husband. Probably, he surmised, that he had gone off with a woman. That might be the explanation of his disappearance that she actually found hardest to face.
But it would not be impossible now, he thought, to thank her for the coffee, express the hope that she would soon have some cheering news of her husband and get up and leave.
He was just about to do so when he heard the squeak of the garden gate and saw a young man advancing towards them across the lawn.
He was a very good-looking young man, not very tall, but wide-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with dark hair, dark eyes, wide-spaced above high cheekbones and slightly hollow cheeks. There was something just sufficiently odd about those slanting cheekbones and the slope of the jaw from the broad temples to the sharp chin to save it from being uninteresting. He was wearing narrow grey trousers and a black pullover.
“Nicholas!” Naomi exclaimed, not rising to meet him but tilting her head so that he could kiss her cheek. “I thought you’d gone back to London. You haven’t met Professor Basnett, have you? Professor, this is Nicholas Ryan, the nephew of the old lady Mollie used to look after, and who owns the hideous mansion next door.”
An idea that seemed to come out of nowhere suddenly slid into Andrew’s mind. A moment after he had spoken he wished that he had not, but by then it was too late.
“Is that the house that’s for sale?” he asked.
The young man sat down on the bench beside Naomi. It was not unattractive, Andrew thought, that his ears were a little pointed. When he was older, when there were wrinkles in his smooth olive skin and he had begun to stoop a little, there would be something intriguingly gnome-like about him.
“Don’t tell me you’re interested in it,” he said with a disbelieving grin.
“Well, I’ve got a certain idea at the back of my mind,” Andrew said, “which perhaps isn’t very realistic, but if I just happened to find the right house, I think I might begin to consider it more carefully. It happens, you see, that at my age one’s got to start thinking about the future. One isn’t always going to be fully mobile. One’s going to need help of all sorts. And so I’ve been looking around recently at some of those developments for old people where you can get a bungalow or a flat with a certain amount of service, and where there’s a tolerable restaurant. You know the sort of thing I mean.” Once they had started, the lies flowed surprisingly easily. “But there’s generally a serious snag. To get into any of the better places you have to go on a waiting list, and for some of them you even have to go on a waiting list to get on the waiting list. So I’ve begun to wonder if I might not create my own small-scale old people’s development. If I could find the right house…”
“You’re thinking you might buy a big house and convert it and sell or rent it out in flats?” Nicholas Ryan said. He looked impressed, but was there a glint of mockery in his eyes? “And of course install a housekeeper. You know, if you were serious about this, you couldn’t do better than employ my Mrs. Grainger. She was my aunt’s cook for years and she’s been looking after the house for me ever since my aunt died. She’s a wonderful woman. But perhaps that’s going ahead rather fast. You aren’t really serious about this, are you?”
“I’m not sure,” Andrew replied. “As I was saying, if I found the right house, I might go ahead with it. Getting it all organized would give me an interest in life, for one thing.”
“I thought you were interested in that man Hooke you were telling me about,” Naomi said.
“Yes, but this would be something new. Designing the flats, working out what the needs of a group of old people really are, going into the financial side of it all—oh, I think it might be well worth undertaking.”
Why was he doing this? he wondered. Why did he feel an urge to probe into the lives of these two people? For that, of course, was what he was doing and he knew that it was just what Constance would have wished him to do. She had brought him down here simply to assess the characters of her friends and neighbours, to find out if he felt that any of them was capable of committing the murder of which the anonymous letter had accused Mollie. But he would much have preferred, or at least he believed that he would have preferred, to keep clear of the whole matter. So why was he actually looking for trouble?
“If you’re serious,” Nicholas Ryan said, “I could take you round straightaway and show you over the place. But you’ll find it’s ugly, inconvenient and even a bit damp. There’s no central heating and only one bathroom in that whole huge pile. The two lavatories, one for the family and one for the servants, were originally earth closets, modernized about fifty years ago, with good, solid wooden seats. And even on a lovely day like this there’s a queer chill in the place. Some of the rooms never seem to get warm.”
“It doesn’t sound as if you’re trying very hard to sell it,” Andrew said.
“Well, to a friend of Naomi’s I’d tell the truth,” the young man replied. “Apart from that, I’m telling you nothing you won’t see at a glance. But would you like me to show you over it?”
“Now, do you mean? Would that be convenient?”
“If you’d like me to do that, yes.”
“Then if Mrs. Wakeham will excuse us…” Andrew stood up. He found that Naomi was looking at him with a slightly puzzled frown.
“Remember,” she said, “everything I told you was in confidence.”
“Of course,” he said.
He thanked her for the coffee, and he and Nicholas Ryan walked to
wards the gate.
The gates of Lindleham House were open and in the lane outside them was a blue Mini. As Andrew and his companion turned in at them and started walking up the weed-grown drive towards the house, a woman emerged from it and came briskly towards them. She was in the blue uniform of a district nurse, with a neat little blue hat on her short grey hair. She looked about forty and was small, plump and rosy-cheeked, with plain, blunt features in a round, freckled face and grey eyes that looked strangely enlarged behind a pair of thick, round spectacles.
She gave them a good-humoured smile and said, “Good morning, Mr. Ryan.”
“Good morning, Nurse,” he answered. “Been in to see Mrs. Grainger?”
“Yes, I’ve just given her her injection,” she said. “Poor woman, I’m shockingly late, but we had to cope with an emergency this morning. I suppose you don’t mean to stay here, do you?”
“For good, do you mean?” he asked. “Good Lord, no.”
“I was just thinking that if you were, you could learn to give her the injections. That would save me some trouble. I know she’ll never learn to do it herself. The mere thought of doing it seems to make her come over queer. Some people are like that about injections. Oh well, never mind. We always have a nice chat when I come. I’ve just been having coffee with her. Bye-bye, Mr. Ryan.”
“Goodbye, Nurse. Thank you for coming.”
She trotted on down the drive, climbed into the Mini and drove away.
“You see, Mrs. Grainger is diabetic,” Nicholas Ryan explained. “And she’s past the stage of being able to treat it with diet or tablets. Still as strong as a horse in her way, but actually it makes it a little difficult for her to find a job and why it suits her to stay on here and look after a house that’s generally empty. A woman comes in from Clareham to help her clean, but otherwise she does everything. And that’s very lucky for me, living in London most of the time as I do, as she’s so wonderfully reliable and efficient. As I told you, she was with my aunt for years and of course knew your friend Mollie Baird very well and is very attached to her. But I suppose it wasn’t a very good idea recommending her to you for the sort of thing you have in mind. It’s just that I don’t like the idea of her being turned out of a place where she’s been for so long. But she may be looking for an old people’s home herself some time soon. Now come in and have a drink, then I’ll show you round.”
The Other Devil's Name Page 4
