Last to Leave

by Clare Curzon

  ‘Do they match?’ she asked. ‘Has Littlejohn’s report come through already?’

  ‘Your notes from the PM are sufficient,’ Yeadings said sombrely. ‘According to Jessica Dellar’s dentist she’d broken off two upper front teeth in a riding accident when she was thirteen. He had rebuilt them himself and said the work was distinctive.’

  He looked from one of his sergeants to the other. ‘So, there’s no way our body could be Jessica. And there’s nothing to suggest who else it might be. Even DNA will be useless until we have something to compare it with.’

  He waited for his announcement to take its effect, then, ‘It means we have an extra case on our hands. Because now Jessica Dellar is officially a Misper.’

  ‘It’s a reprieve for her mother,’ Z said instantly. ‘I’ll go round and let her know the good news. She’ll be so thankful.’

  ‘It may not be such good news in the end,’ Yeadings warned her. ‘Although it’s unlikely they’ll find another body in the burnt-out house, we have to consider the vandalized condition of the canal narrowboat. That may have been part of an unsuccessful plan to injure or kill her earlier. And, as reported, it occurred in the same hours of darkness as the torching of Larchmoor Place. It’s possible whoever was out to get her was successful with the second attempt.

  ‘Jessica Dellar may still have been a victim of murder or abduction. And since the Senior Fire Officer has decided the outbreak was arson, our original case looks like premeditated murder with criminal disregard for the lives or safety of others.’

  7

  On Sunday, ignorant of all that had happened at her uncle’s after her departure, Jessica Dellar rested her elbows on the balcony’s rail and gazed out across the lagoon. It was immense, stretching west and east until lost in early morning haze, and so vast that she could imagine that at either end it sloped downwards as the global horizon.

  The water’s surface barely stirred, limpid and almost colourless beyond the fish-traps’ black verticals staked out in receding horizontal rows to the west. And directly across from her, the distant shoreline, with the Doge’s palace and San Marco miniature and unreal, was a shimmering thread of opalescent light.

  From the end of the balcony she could look down into the convent garden next door. Above the ancient, stained terracotta of the roof rose a demure little square bell-tower of bleached wood from which a bell tolled a single note, calling the faithful to early Mass, sounding medieval in its mixture of secure orthodoxy and irksome restrictions.

  Mother still went defiantly to church, but it was something Jess had given up after Dad died. She supposed all the Dellars would be trooping off as customary to the village service, Claudia dominating the choir’s contraltos and Miranda, the idiot savant, performing prodigiously on the organ: Dellars en masse pretending to recognize a greater power than the Family!

  She turned back to the lagoon panorama. What a place to be sent to. But not to stay. Venice was too rich and romantic for everyday living. To stay was surely to remain entranced, slowly sink with it almost imperceptibly, millimetre by millimetre, back into the sucking lagoon.

  Last night the water had looked infinitely deep, inky dark, the boat’s bows cutting out a violet-white curve that flew along the gunwales. She had thrilled to the choppy movement as they sped through the blackness, stopping only at Murano for a few passengers to land. It was a stage-set, a night scene from Barcarolle except that the stone buildings looked menacing, each ancient block sparsely lit by a single globe high under the roof, the glow scarcely reaching to the shadowed water. This was a place for masked assassins and poisoners and vendettas. She’d been bound for another island: Lido, which, she remembered, was quite different.

  All the same, there was no knowing what lay in store for her ahead. Already, over the past twenty-four – no, thirty-six – hours she had found herself increasingly out of her depth. Too many instant decisions. Certainly too many obscure instructions. Used to flouting convention, she preferred to have control over events. This time she’d obediently leapt in, eyes closed. She didn’t really know how deep the water might be.

  She supposed events were bound to get out of hand when she accepted old Carlton’s invitation to his birthday weekend. She hadn’t intended going, but Charles Stone had insisted, although it meant turning down a better alternative. Still, she’d thought Eddie might be there, and she’d something important to ask him, tell him, whatever.

  In the event there hadn’t been an opportunity, because Jake was being such a weedy limpet that she’d played him along, and it took a rise out of Ma to let her see that. She’d thought there’d be opportunity enough to talk with her brother next day.

  The essential thing was that Eddie should be told before he returned home. But things had got out of hand, happening so fast, without warning: so still he had no idea.

  She had let Charles Stone have the last word. ‘Keep in with your family,’ he’d as good as ordered. ‘When all else fails in life, a family is still there for you. In any case I need to be sure where you are for a few days. Stay until Monday. I will be in touch.’

  At the time she’d taken it at face value, but later she realized that the cliché about family was totally un-Charles. And then she’d been sure: he was up to something. But, of course, when wasn’t he?

  That had been on the Tuesday, so when Eddie rang next morning to ask what she intended doing about the family rally, she’d said, ‘I guess I’ll go. What are you giving the old boy?’

  ‘God knows,’ he’d said. ‘The coffers are almost empty, and anyway we’ve few tastes in common. Maybe a book.’

  And because she didn’t trust the phone line she hadn’t simply warned him then.

  Clever-clogs Eddie. Empty coffers or not, he’d turned up at Carlton’s with a superb first edition copy of Three Men in a Boat. The stick insect uncle had almost clasped him to his bosom.

  Her own offering, a silver paperknife, was more modest and lay still unopened with all the other gift-wrapped presents on the octagonal table in the drawing-room. The plain brown paper bag containing Eddie’s offering had so clearly revealed the shape of a book that Uncle Carlton couldn’t resist opening it there and then. Full marks, Eddie. Give the boy a scooter.

  Not that Eddie was the sort to curry favour. He simply enjoyed others’ pleasure. If she’d been able to choose a sibling from everyone she’d ever met it would have to be Eddie. Steady Eddie, so unlike herself although they were twins. Even Ma felt comfortable with him, whereas her own escapades put an almost permanent strain on mother-daughter relations, Kate trying so hard, and so obviously, not to be openly judgmental.

  So how had the ‘party’ evening scored overall on a scale of one to ten?

  Barely four-ish. Uncle Carlton and Aunt Claudia had been in their element, of course, holding court. Their nephew Robert, only slightly less bouncy than usual, had plugged his new book and successfully presented his new love. His widowed father, Matthew, had drifted through the necessary greetings-and-eatings in a mild-mannered way until the bridge table came out, and then he reverted to the natural predator he’d been for half a lifetime as a QC, seeing it as his divinely bestowed function to fill Her Majesty’s prisons with his rivals’ clients.

  The others of his family sprig had mingled in their several different ways, daughter Madeleine over-conscious of her hot flushes, her husband Gus from habit buttering up the ladies, and her stepson Jake peacocking away as though he’d been brought up in a corridor of mirrors. For herself, she’d had only a brief word with Eddie, frozen off Gus, been a trifle provocative with Jake and had the satisfaction of turning him down at her bedroom door despite his beseeching spaniel eyes and hand-on-heart gestures behind Eddie’s back.

  About the outsider Marion Paige, Jessica had yet finally to make up her mind. They’d met before and she’d admit to strong prejudice. And she hadn’t cared for the hard stare she’d given poor Miranda, who’d been no more negative than she customarily was.

  At least it
hadn’t rained to keep them penned mustily indoors. As she’d sat that night at her open bedroom window the pleasant breeze of the afternoon was turning into a sneaky wind tugging at fronds of Virginia creeper which encroached on the window panes. The old shutters had started to rattle in their iron hasps. She had turned away to undress and became aware of a square white envelope pushed under the door.

  That idiot Jake doing the Romeo thing, she’d supposed; opened it and found a printed message: The pool after midnight.Magnus.

  That could only be from Charles Stone. Nobody else knew the jokey name she teased him with. Silly, really: Charlemagne, Carolus Magnus, Holy Flipping Roman Emperor, because he could be so high-handed and needed taking down a peg or two.

  So was he staying somewhere near and had sent someone to deliver the note? It was only on Tuesday he’d flown out to Washington.

  At already a quarter to one the house appeared silent. Glancing again from the window she could see only three lit windows reflected on lawn and shrubbery.

  A carafe of water was already supplied beside her bed so she hadn’t the excuse of going for a drink. But, ostensibly fetching something to read, she could creep down to the study passage and let herself out there.

  The rusty bolts were stiff and she loosed them slowly to keep down their screeches. Two more bedroom lights went out as she crossed the cracked flagstones of the terrace and circled to the house’s rear. Here all the windows were in total darkness, and the moon, in its last eighth, gave her little light through the archway of overgrown trees.

  Towards the end of the semicircular path she could make out a gleaming surface which would be the pool. Not water, she found, but the shabby, bleached blue plastic which covered the empty hole for eight months of the year. At near sight she found it was stained with mould, sagging under an accumulation of twigs and leafy rubbish from recent rains. The whole scene was creepy, dingy and deserted.

  The little cabin, once used for bathers to change in, was in sad disrepair, with a fallen branch lodged in the broken thatched roof, and the edges of the hole black with rot. For a secret tryst the place was ideal for privacy; but so dismal. It was impossible to imagine the immaculate Charles making love to her here.

  Cautiously she circled the little ruin. Nobody stood waiting under the thatch’s overhang, but a whisper reached her as someone lying on the bench beyond sat up and started uncertainly to rise. In dappled moonlight she made out the thin form of a young man, little more than a boy perhaps, and he staggered as if in pain. She reached him as he swayed on the point of falling.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He shook his head, grasping at her wrists for support. ‘Hide me,’ he begged. ‘I work for him.’

  ‘For whom?’ she insisted.

  ‘Your husband. Charles Stone.’

  This was no moment for arguing her status. The man was clearly ill. ‘Look, sit down. What’s wrong?’

  He slumped again on the bench. ‘I was shot at, coming here. From a passing car. They got away. It’s only a flesh wound.’

  She looked at him in disbelief. His eyes were sunken in deep pits of grey, and a sheen of sweat beaded his forehead. She doubted he’d make it on foot as far as the house, and she couldn’t support his weight alone. And, of course, she’d left her bloody mobile back in her room.

  ‘We must get you to hospital. Can you wait here while I call for an ambulance?’

  ‘No ambulance. No hospital. See. I’m padded.’

  He meant bandaged. His English was adequate but the accent was foreign. She began to doubt him. He’d made that mistake about herself, so he couldn’t know all that much about Charles’s affairs. On the other hand his injury wasn’t an act. As he pulled back one edge of his green knitted jerkin she could see the open shirt and the bloodstained handkerchief below the right shoulder. So who had fixed that for him but not informed the authorities?

  ‘Hide me,’ he said again, more faintly. ‘Nobody followed, but if they come back, they will search.’

  ‘Why should they?’ Her voice sharpened with suspicion.

  ‘You know who they are, don’t you? It wasn’t random.’

  ‘Enemies. His. I come to help you. Secretly.’

  She stared at him a moment. Quandary-bloody-plus.

  So she did the obvious thing and ran for Eddie. His was the one light still on, and he rose from reading in bed as she knocked and entered.

  ‘Jess, what now?’

  She said she’d gone out for fresh air and there was this injured man in the garden. He’d sworn someone was after him and he had to lie low. He was too ill to walk unaided and she couldn’t get him into the house on her own.

  Stated baldly like that it sounded crazy, but the full truth, with mention of Charles, would have been worse. And Eddie knew as well as anyone that she was always getting involved in harebrained situations.

  His reaction was instant; terse and sceptical. ‘It’s the police he’s running from, idiot. And he expects you to grant him free entry to rob the house. We’d best go down and see how far he’s got with it.’

  He reached under his pillow to arm himself with a heavy torch. It looked the business, and she began to feel all options might be covered. If this nameless young man really came from Charles she’d somehow make Eddie help him. And if he was a phoney …

  The unknown boy was still stretched out on the bench. ‘What’s your name?’ her brother demanded, bending over him and shining the light on his haggard face.

  ‘Nicholas. I am shot.’

  It might have been Niklaus, she thought. A more or less international name. He certainly wasn’t native English.

  ‘Let’s be having you then,’ Eddie offered unexpectedly. ‘Where’s the wound?’

  Jess pulled back the edge of the crumpled shirt to reveal the bloodstained area. Her brother made a soft humming sound. ‘Can’t risk a fireman’s lift then. Jess, are you up to helping with a bandy-chair?’

  He steadied the man on to his feet and they slid their arms behind, fingers locking on to each other’s wrists. Gently they eased him into position so that he sat on their hands, his left arm reaching for Eddie’s far shoulder and the other lying useless in his lap.

  ‘What now?’ Jess panted as they re-bolted the door, gained the study and closed the curtains. She switched on some lights.

  Eddie had the young man laid out on the floor. ‘Does Claudia have a First Aid box?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. There used to be one in the kitchen, but I’d question anything in it being sterile.’

  ‘Whatever. Fetch it. I need to change the dressing.’

  She went without a word, using the torch to avoid switching on the corridor lights. In the kitchen the second of the heavy old wooden drawers yielded a circular toffee tin with a Red Cross label peeling off the lid. There was also a half-full bottle of disinfectant. She took both along to her brother.

  The two men appeared to have been talking together. Whatever was said, Eddie appeared now to have accepted the young man’s story. There was no further mention of police.

  ‘He has to lie low until first light,’ he said decisively. ‘Then I’ll get him away by taxi. In the meantime, let’s shift him to the cellar. No one’s going to walk in on him there. Carlton’s already removed all the wines they need for the weekend. I carried them up for him a couple of days ago.’

  They managed the man between them. When Eddie had fixed the new dressing and roughly arranged a low hammock out of fruit nets, Nick appeared more relaxed.

  ‘The bullet’s gone right through,’ Eddie said. ‘It barely touched the ribs. He’ll be all right for a few hours, but to ease things, we just need this.’ He selected a bottle from the claret rack, opened it with a corkscrew hanging nearby and brought it across to the other two. There was only a single wineglass for them all to drink from, so they passed it round like a loving cup, the Dellar twins only sipping, and the stranger relishing the wine as a painkiller.

  ‘
I’m also leaving you the torch,’ Eddie said, ‘but lie still as long as you can. I’ll be back before sun-up.’

  All of that had taken place in the early hours of Saturday morning. Definitely odd. Not least because of the calm way Eddie had accepted it all. And getting even odder from then on. Back in her attic room Jessica had lain down again, resolved only to catnap and be ready for when Eddie took the man away; but there was too much adrenaline at work for her to sleep.

  They shouldn’t have left Nicholas alone. Anything might happen and he was powerless to look after himself. Suppose he drank the rest of the bottle, then tried moving around on the uneven flagged floor. She couldn’t lie here in comparative comfort while …

  Slipping on sweater, jeans and trainers, she stole again downstairs to let herself into the cellar.

  That was when the real nightmare began.

  At the foot of the back stairs she felt wind blowing in from the far side of the house. Not one of the normal Larchmoor draughts. The front door had been propped open with a chair. ‘Eddie,’ she called softly. He must be out there waiting for the taxi.

  The sound came from immediately behind her, a soft shuffle and a drawn breath. Instantly hands swept round and clamped on nose and mouth, pulling her backwards off balance. She flailed helplessly, couldn’t breathe, felt herself falling back against a hard body, then a sharp kick behind the knees brought her down. Squirming on the hall tiles, she tried to tear at the hands bearing down on her face. She felt the savage satisfaction of flesh ripping under her nails. If he raped her, killed her, at least she’d marked him. There’d be evidence …

  A low voice threatened. ‘Scream and I cut your throat.’ Cold steel pricked at her cheek.

  She believed him. And it wasn’t Nick’s voice. This was one of the men who’d tried to kill him. She shivered and lay still.

  8