Besides, no one would suspect a respectable citizen like him of the crime of rape.
A crime. It was a crime. He had committed rape and that was a crime.
But she’d asked for it, wearing those tight jeans and loose sweater with only those tiny pants below, and leaving the doors unlocked. She’d invited it, almost as blatantly as Dorothea Wyatt. If it ever came to it, all he need do was say so – her word against his. Who would believe her, a divorced woman and morally suspect, if she ever accused him? All he had to do was deny what she alleged and declare that she had made certain proposals which he had refused, claiming that her accusations came from spite.
It wouldn’t happen, though; there was no means by which his identity could have been suspected.
Ronald felt triumph, working away as usual in the shop; the triumph of achievement. When Dorothea Wyatt came in during the afternoon on her way back from Middletown, where she’d bought a small fluted jug in the market as an excuse for calling to ask his opinion of it, he felt quite calm. She knew the jug was nothing special, unmarked and probably Victorian, but pretty, and cheap at the price if it could be used to restore harmony between her and Mr Trimm.
They discussed it together and agreed that it was attractive.
There were no new jugs in since her last visit. He told her that Nancy had several at home which she was repairing, and Dorothea said she’d pop in again before too long.
She went away, smiling. It could all be forgotten now.
Ronald was smiling too, when she left.
He bought the Middletown Evening News before he went home. There was nothing in it about an assault on a local woman.
Valerie was exhausted when she returned from visiting her parents. All day, she had been haunted by visions of the children being attacked, although they were never out alone in the dark. But it needn’t be dark: a child molester might waylay them on their way to the Mounts’ farm; might spring on them from a barn; might lure them from the school playground. And Primrose Cottage, which she had loved for its isolation, was just the place to appeal to the lawless.
Her parents, though absorbed by their own problems and frailties, had exclaimed at her pallor, and she explained it away by mentioning Timmy’s earache, which had only just cleared up, and which had meant some broken nights, and by inventing a stomach upset. It wasn’t so far from the truth. Her father gave her a ten-pound note when she left.
She stopped at a hardware shop on the way back to the bus and bought two strong bolts for the garage, an extra chain for the cottage and some further bolts and padlocks for its doors.
She met the children outside the school. Through the shop window, Ronald Trimm saw them all crossing the road together. The little girl skipped along beside her and the boy held her hand. She’d not turned a hair.
By the time Valerie did go to the police, on Friday, she could offer no evidence at all to support what she said, and she would not agree to see the doctor. She’d washed, she said, and would not admit to bruises that might be examined.
8
When Ronald took out his magazines, after he had done the books on Friday evening, he was smiling as he gazed at the glossy pictures. A lot had happened in a week.
Gazing at a naked redhead, he thought first of Dorothea, and then of Valerie. There was no doubt about which was the better memory. He closed his eyes and was able to imagine that he felt Dorothea’s clutching hands again and heard the echo of her moans. Valerie, when she stopped struggling, had kept saying, ‘No, no, no,’ over and over again in a strange sort of voice, and it hadn’t been at all the same; it was difficult, and so quick. You’d have expected it to have been better with her; she was younger. But Dorothea Wyatt had wanted it, whatever she later said, and Valerie hadn’t. That was the truth.
Ronald did not go to the Plough that evening, but he drove down the lane to the Manor House and stopped outside, the van’s engine ticking over. Several cars were parked in the drive; Dorothea had company. He did not linger.
Nancy was pleased to see him home in good time; she’d made a steak and kidney pudding. They’d just finished eating when Keith Norton from next door came round, looking rather grave.
Letting him in, Nancy patted her hair into place and pulled at her skirt. She had not finished clearing away the dishes.
‘I’m afraid the place is in a fearful mess,’ she said, edging him towards the armchair that faced away from the dining recess.
‘Looks all right to me, Nancy,’ said Keith, sitting down and placing his large feet neatly together on the hearthrug. You hardly dared tread on Nancy’s carpets.
‘Is something wrong, Keith?’ Nancy asked.
‘Well . . . not exactly. It’s just that I met Dave Gower this evening – you know Dave, Detective Sergeant he is now, at Tellingford. Used to be in Middletown. Said some woman reported being attacked. Raped.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Nancy, folding her hands together. ‘Well?’ It was no concern of theirs.
‘The police think she’s making it up. Women do, it seems. Get hysterical and imagine things,’ said Keith Norton. ‘But it makes me a bit worried about Lynn, going off to school these dark mornings. Silly, probably. I just wondered if you’d mind running her along to school, Ron, for a week or two, till it gets a bit lighter and this scare blows over. You often do give her a lift, as it is. Fussy, I expect, but you’d feel the same if you had a daughter.’
‘I’m sure I should,’ said Ronald carefully. ‘I’d be glad to take her, Keith.’
‘It means such an early start for her, if she comes with me, you see,’ said Keith. ‘And the school isn’t open then, anyway. She’d have to hang about outside.’
‘But in the morning?’ Nancy queried. ‘Could it happen then? An attack of that kind, I mean?’
‘Could happen any time, Nancy,’ said Keith. ‘Evil doesn’t wait for the dark. But, as I said, the police don’t think there’s anything in it.’
‘What do the police do, in a case like that?’ Ronald asked. His voice sounded perfectly normal in his own ears. ‘When they think it’s not true?’
‘Oh well, they have to go through the motions a bit, I think,’ said Keith. ‘Take a statement, that sort of thing. But they’re not going to waste time over it. They’ve got plenty of other things to look into.’
‘I see,’ said Ronald. ‘Where’d it happen? Do you know?’
‘Dave didn’t say exactly – just said they’d had the report,’ said Keith.
‘Well, it’s all very unpleasant,’ said Nancy. ‘You’re quite right to be concerned about Lynn.’
When he had gone, Nancy set about clearing away, murmuring to Ronald about how upsetting it was to be caught with the plates still on the table. ‘Another five minutes and it would all have been out in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘What will he have thouRonald, heart pounding, felt an urge to shout, ‘For crying out loud, what the hell does it matter? They’re only dishes and Keith eats too.’ But all he said was, in fact, ‘It was wise of him to come round, Nancy, and make arrangements for Lynn. Seeing that he’s worried.’
‘Fancy people doing such things,’ Nancy said. ‘Or making them up, if they haven’t happened. How very unpleasant.’
While she washed up, Ronald turned on the television. There was a programme about the migration of birds, and he sat staring at it, not taking it in. He’d had a bad fright. But at least he knew what had happened, and that the police would be taking no real action. He soon grew calmer, and began to enjoy the prospect of Lynn as his daily passenger.
Nancy came into the room at the moment a nest was being constructed on the screen. Birds made very little fuss about all that business, she thought, unaware of the reason for much of their noisy springtime song. Some species were so unrestrained, so gross – especially men. She looked fondly at Ronald. He’d not troubled her now for a very long time.
That evening, Dorothea was having a dinner party. She did this sometimes to pass the time, and also to ensure that her friends wo
uld not forget her and would invite her back. Her guests were Bill Kyle, her solicitor, who lived in the village, and his wife Eileen, and another couple from over beyond Middletown. Then she’d rung up George Fortescue and asked him, to make up the table; there weren’t many unattached men around, and they’d all been friends for years. He’d fit in better than Colonel Villiers, who was over eighty but still quite a racy old boy, or the vicar.
George had demurred at first. It would upset his evening’s jog.
‘For God’s sake, George! Where’s your sense? Wouldn’t you rather have a decent meal and a bit of company than go hammering round the lanes all on your own in the rain?’ said Dorothea.
Put like that, it had seemed unreasonable to refuse. As promised, the meal was good; Dorothea had always been an accomplished hostess. There was an excellent claret to go with the pheasant.
George was about to follow the other two couples when they left at a quarter to twelve, but Dorothea detained him. This was the part she hated – being left, after a convivial evening, on her own.
‘Have another brandy, George,’ she said. ‘I want one.’
She was not drunk, but she had reached a pleasant feeling of detachment, as though she floated somewhere above her own body, watching its actions from a soft cloud. There was no need to get drunk when she wasn’t alone.
‘We needn’t clear up,’ she said. ‘Mrs Simmons is coming tomorrow.’ She could not face the aftermath of a party and, although Mrs Simmons did not normally come on a Saturday, now and then she would, to oblige.
‘Very well,’ said George, who certainly had no wish to spend the next hour in an apron in Dorothea’s kitchen.
She poured them each brandies and they sat facing one another in the sitting room, Dorothea on the settee and George in a wing armchair.
‘Doesn’t get any easier, does it, George?’ she asked.
‘What doesn’t?’
‘Being alone. I’ve been at it longer than you, and I’m no better. Worse, if anything.’
‘Poor Dorothea,’ said George inadequately, and then added, with scant tact, ‘Of course, it’s different for me. Angela will come back.’ But Harry, in dying, had not rejected Dorothea, as Angela had rejected him.
‘It’s sad for you. I hope she does,’ said Dorothea. ‘Harry and I had such a good thing, you know. We got on so well. I miss it.’
‘So do I,’ said George, but he had a feeling they were not talking about the same thing.
When he’d finished his brandy, he rose to go. Dorothea stood facing him by the fireplace. She smiled at him.
‘Silly old George,’ she said, putting her arms round his neck. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Valerie knew the police didn’t really believe her, though the constable who took her statement was quite kind.
‘You should have called us at once, love,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know. It was so late – I felt ill, awful. And it’s so far to a phone,’ she said dully. ‘Then there were the children. And he didn’t . . . well, he had the knife, but he didn’t stab me, or that sort of thing.’
‘He might, the next person,’ said the constable.
She’d gone into Tellingford herself, on the bus, hoping to avoid the police coming out to the cottage, but they sent her home with a woman police constable and Detective Constable Cooley, who drove her in his own Ford Escort and who wanted to see the place where the alleged attack happened.
‘It did happen,’ she told Cooley. ‘I’m not making it up.’
‘I’m not saying you are,’ said Cooley. She certainly wasn’t hysterical, this one, and she wasn’t accusing a specific person, but all this about dark clothes and a woollen hood was rather fantastic and had to be suspect.
‘He knew I’d got children,’ she said, standing in the garage while Cooley looked around. ‘He said he’d hurt them, if I didn’t . . .’ Her voice trailed away as she saw that Cooley was pointing to a corner where Timmy’s fairy bicycle and Melissa’s small cycle stood.
She looked relieved at that.
‘Oh, of course. I was afraid he might be—might be someone from round about here,’ she said.
Cooley made her explain where she had been when the attack came, and how it happened. She tried to speak calmly. The man could have been standing behind her, watching her, for some time; that was terrifying to think of. She told Cooley and the policewoman how the sander had lain on the floor all the time, still whirring. She’d watched it, stared at it, while it went on.
Had he worn gloves, Cooley asked.
She didn’t think so. She’d seen the knife, held in front of her face, but she’d looked away from it, down at the floor.
Cooley wanted to believe her. She seemed a nice enough girl. But she lived alone, apart from the children, and he knew well enough that women developed strange fancies; she might simply crave attention. He sifted among the ashes in the big fireplace that was seldom cleared and where she said she had burnt her clothes. He came across definite traces, finding the zip from her jeans. This didn’t have to make the rest of her story true.
She’d left the chest she’d been working on unfinished, too, but, if Ronald had turned up to collect it the next day, as they’d arranged, he’d left no message. It was ready for him now. Beautifully smooth all over, there were no prints on it at all but a few of her own.
Long before it was dark, now, Valerie began locking up. The children were intrigued by all the bolts and chains she had fitted to the doors.
But she did not want to frighten them.
‘There have been some bad men about,’ she said. ‘Burglars. If we lock everything up, they won’t be able to get in and they’ll go off and try somewhere else – that’s if they were so silly as to come here at all. We haven’t got anything worth stealing.’
‘We have,’ said Timmy. ‘We’ve got my new bike.’
His fairy cycle, fourth or fifth hand, was his Christmas present from his grandparents.
‘That’s true,’ said Valerie. ‘So we’d better keep it safely locked up.’
The children thought it quite a joke, entering with enthusiasm into the new ritual. A week ago, Valerie would have mocked at her own fears. Crowbury was populated by respectable citizens and the few incidents of vandalism that had occurred in the centre of the village – broken windows in the village hall, graffiti on some walls – had been perpetrated by youths who had ridden in from Tellingford or Middletown on their motorbikes.
Valerie knew she would never work at night in the garage again, no matter how much was outstanding.
The children had gone up to the Mounts’ farm to play on Saturday morning, and Valerie was out there working when Ronald called. Since it happened, she’d been unable to sleep and had worked early in the morning, finishing not only the chest but some other pieces Ronald had left. The mornings were safe, she was sure; that sort of evil man must be a creature of night who would not come out with the dawn.
Ronald was curious to see her, to discover what signs she bore of what had happened. And he hadn’t collected the chest she’d been working on; it had seemed rather pointless. Besides, there was a chance he could have endangered himself by going back so soon. He should be safe now.
He found the garage door locked when he tried the latch. He could not hear the sander but he could see that the light was on inside.
Valerie heard the door rattle and called out sharply.
‘Who is it?’
Ronald felt excited.
‘It’s Ronald Trimm,’ he called.
‘Oh – just a minute,’ came the answer.
He heard the sound of bolts being drawn and a chain unhooked; then the door was opened. He noticed at once that Valerie looked pale and there were shadows under her eyes; she seemed ugly now.
‘Sorry – there’s been a prowler round, so I’m keeping everything locked,’ she said, and then added defensively, ‘I left it open on Thursday, though, when you said you’d come for that chest, bu
t I hadn’t managed to finish it. I expect you saw that.’
Ronald had made the excuse to his customer that the outworker had let him down. Now he responded smoothly.
‘Yes. It was too bad of you, Valerie,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s ready now?’
‘I wasn’t well that night,’ said Valerie in a tight voice. ‘Here it is. I’ve done some more things, too.’
She showed him two pale, softly gleaming chairs and a box. He could find no more fault with her, and together they loaded the furniture into his van which was drawn up outside. She picked up a broom while he counted out her money, and swept up some shavings into a pile ready to clear them away. Ronald put the notes down on the old deal table she used as a workbench, and added two extra pounds. Now he’d paid her for it, he exulted. She’d not been worth more.
‘There’s a bit extra this week,’ he said. ‘I expect you can do with it. But don’t let me down again, Valerie, there’s a good girl.’
‘Oh – thank you,’ said Valerie flatly. She picked up the money as he turned to go. It was little enough anyway, for all that scraping and rubbing and paring, and she had her materials to buy, the chemicals, wire wool and glass paper. It was not nice to be patronised, but she was in no position to be proud.
Ronald heard her locking the door up after him. If he came at night again, and told her who he was, she’d let him in – not otherwise. So it could not be repeated.
But he didn’t want it like that again. It had all been too quick and furtive. He’d have to find somebody else.
9
Last night had really been very embarrassing.
George, getting ready for his day’s golf, thought about Dorothea. He was playing in a foursome, teeing off at nine o’clock; he’d be at the club for lunch and have a second round in the afternoon, so the day should be pleasant.
But last night! Dorothea had clamped herself to him, soft and clinging. She’d nibbled his ear, of all things. George was extremely shocked. He had detached her, and pushed her back, none too gently, until she subsided on to the sofa.
Hand of Death Page 7
