The Woman in the Wood

by Lesley Pearse

  Abandoning the oilskin coat and sou’wester, he put the raincoat he’d worn beneath it, his other clothes and shoes into a plastic bag, along with his money, blew some air into it and then sealed it tightly. All he needed now was to find a suitable place to swim ashore and wait for darkness before jumping in, leaving the engine running.

  The sea was icy cold, and he certainly wasn’t looking forward to jumping in wearing only his underpants. It didn’t help that he didn’t know exactly where he was. He’d been to Cornwall hundreds of times, but aside from one day trip out of Falmouth to fish, he’d never seen the rugged coastline from the sea.

  Looking towards the shore he couldn’t even see anything like a church steeple or other landmark, and the tiny villages he went past didn’t look familiar from the sea. He also hadn’t realized how many little coves there were. He was afraid if he struck out for one of them at night the waves might dash him on to the rocks, which looked lethal enough to tear him to ribbons.

  He carried on sailing, all the time looking to his right for a suitable, accessible cove or beach. He thought again about that mad old witch from the woods. This was all her fault. If she’d kept her nose out, no one would ever have suspected him. He wouldn’t have had to take Maisy, and Hugo wouldn’t have become involved either.

  ‘Damn you,’ he muttered. The police would go through his office with a fine toothcomb now, assisted by his partners, and if they were to dig deeply enough they were going to find many irregularities, and links to men who shared the same interest in children.

  He wondered how Deirdre would cope with the flak. She had been the perfect wife for him: stunningly attractive, warm and sociable, but dim, so dim she never realized he thought of her as little more than a household appliance. He wasn’t sure what being in love actually meant, but he certainly didn’t love her. He’d chosen her for her looks, the perfect smokescreen for his real sexual interests. She could be a good hostess, a reasonable cook, she didn’t ask too many questions and as long as he kept her in spending money she never grumbled.

  Finally he saw a small sandy cove that looked promising. Nobody on the beach and no houses overlooking it. He went right past it slowly, checking for rocks under the water and scanning the entire cove to be absolutely certain there was no one around. He then turned around and went back.

  The third pass was to be his last. On reflection he had decided jumping in after dark was a very bad idea, and he took the boat further out so it wouldn’t crash on to the rocks of this cove. He slipped off Hugo’s jacket which he’d put on when he’d taken his own clothes off, then shoved it into the cabin. The wind was very cold, and the thought of plunging into the sea was frightening, but he had no choice. Leaving the engine still running, he picked up his plastic bag, leapt up on to the seat at the stern and jumped.

  The sea was so cold he felt his heart might stop, but he struck out in a fast crawl, pushing his bag in front of him. He glanced back to see the boat had already disappeared from view. Now he had to concentrate all his energy on reaching the shore.

  It was further than it looked, and once his feet finally touched ground, he had difficulty in wading out on to the beach because he was shivering so badly. Getting out of the wind under the shelter of some rocks, he opened up his bag and fished out a small towel, removed his wet pants and dried himself quickly.

  He was dressed in less than two minutes. It felt so good to have warm clothes and shoes on again, but the hard part was coming – finding somewhere to stay where he wouldn’t be seen.

  It was nearly seven and it would be dark soon. He took a narrow path up through the rocks and as he climbed he wondered where he was and how far it would be to the nearest town. Ideally he wanted to find a caravan site. Easter had passed and some people towed their caravans down to Cornwall to park them up for the summer season. He could break into one and hole up there while he planned what to do next.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, there’s that wretched policeman again!’ Violet Mitcham exclaimed as she looked out of her bedroom window.

  Janice, who was helping her sort out some old clothes to send to a jumble sale, joined her employer at the window. ‘Duncan and Maisy don’t need any more questions, or any further talk about Grainger,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness they’ve gone to see Grace.’

  It was a week since Maisy had been found, and she had come out of hospital three days ago. Being back with her brother had made both of them feel better, and as it had been raining almost constantly during that time they were happy to stay indoors and avoid the nosy parkers and journalists. Many village people had come to the house with cake, biscuits or a casserole, and though it appeared kindly, all they really wanted was to see the twins and hopefully get some juicy gossip to take back.

  Janice had reported yesterday that she hadn’t seen any journalists in the village, so they were all hoping the story was losing its interest.

  Alastair had had to drive back to London for work last night, but as he’d hugged his children goodbye he’d said he didn’t want to leave them. That meant more to the twins than anything else. Finally they felt they had a real father, one who talked to them, showed them affection and wanted to understand them. They both told him they understood about Jenny, the woman he was seeing, and at some stage they’d even like to meet her, though Duncan admitted to Maisy he still felt that was a bit wrong while their mother was alive.

  When the new day began with blue sky and sunshine the twins had begged to go and see Grace, and somewhat reluctantly Grandmother had agreed. As Duncan’s wrist was still tender and Maisy had her arm in plaster, they couldn’t ride their bikes, but if they walked they could take a short cut through some fields into the forest and not through the village.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go down and see what the policeman wants,’ Violet said grudgingly. ‘He’ll only come back again.’

  Sergeant Williams realized he wasn’t welcome when he wasn’t invited in. His face grew a darker red and he seemed almost tongue-tied.

  ‘What is it?’ Violet said in irritation. ‘Spit it out for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘It’s Peter, the boy with Duncan – he died early this morning.’

  ‘Oh dear, no! How awful for his parents,’ Janice said. ‘Do come in, you can’t stand on the doorstep to tell us such a sad thing. What exactly did he die of?’

  Williams took off his helmet and came in. ‘Pneumonia, they think, he’ll be having a post-mortem. The poor lad wasn’t very robust to start with, according to his parents. But keeping someone in a damp cellar when they already have a weak chest is a recipe for disaster.’

  Violet merely waved her hand towards the sitting room for him to go in. ‘You surely weren’t going to blab this out to my grandson?’ she asked indignantly. ‘Don’t you think he’s been through enough?’

  The policeman shrugged. ‘He’ll find out soon anyway – better that it came from me.’

  ‘I don’t agree, so it’s just as well he and Maisy are out. I will tell him at an appropriate moment. Now if that’s all, we have things to do.’

  ‘There is something more.’

  ‘Yes? What now?’

  ‘We think Grainger is in Cornwall, not France.’

  ‘And it’s taken a week to work that out?’

  Janice turned away slightly, dying to laugh at how sharp Violet was being. The poor policeman was squirming.

  ‘The boat belonging to Hugo Fairbanks was found smashed on rocks at first light this morning. The investigation team are checking it over, but the initial opinion was that he was either washed overboard or jumped, and the boat kept going.’

  ‘So you don’t know if he’s alive or dead?’

  ‘No, Mrs Mitcham. But we think it’s more likely he’s alive and hiding up somewhere.’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Violet exclaimed. ‘You don’t think he’s coming back here, do you? Are you keeping an eye on his wife?’

  ‘I can’t see any reason he’d come back here; no one is going to help him. As f
or his wife, she’s in shock over what he’s done. People say she must have known, but in her case I really don’t think she did.’

  ‘She is a bit thick,’ Violet sniffed. ‘He brought her here to tea once and she didn’t understand what a pastry fork was for. She looked at it as if it was an exhibit from Mars. But I sympathize with her not realizing what her husband was – he took me in completely. I thought he was kind, honest and an exemplary solicitor. However, if Deirdre loves him, as I’m sure she does, she is likely to help him regardless of what he’s done.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Detective Inspector Froggatt, who interviewed her at length, said she was beside herself with anger and disgust. But we are monitoring her phone calls just in case it transpires she’s as cunning as him. The DI asked me to remind you all to be cautious. He doesn’t think for one moment Grainger is stupid enough to come to your house, but it’s as well to be prepared.’

  Janice was listening to this with horror, wishing they hadn’t let the twins go out today. She wished too that Alastair hadn’t gone back to London last night. They would all feel more secure with him in the house.

  ‘Well, if you’ve no further horror stories for us, then we’ll let you go,’ Violet said. ‘Please pass on our heartfelt condolences to Peter’s parents. I would be grateful for their address; Duncan should write to them.’

  When Williams had gone, Violet followed Janice into the kitchen. To the housekeeper’s surprise, the old woman began to cry.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said, dabbing at her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. ‘Just imagine that was Duncan. Whatever would we do?’

  20

  ‘So how has Duncan really been?’ Grace asked Maisy when her brother went outside to throw a ball for Toby.

  The twins had been with Grace for nearly an hour, and although Duncan had been jovial, acting like nothing bad had ever happened to him, Grace wasn’t fooled.

  ‘He’s been having terrible nightmares. Janice told me she stayed with him all night on one occasion; she said he was too scared to close his eyes. He won’t talk about what he went through. Mr Dove said that until he does the memories won’t start to fade. He suggested that if Duncan finds it hard to actually say it aloud, he could try writing it all down – not necessarily for anyone to read, but to help himself.’

  Grace nodded. ‘That sounds like good advice, and Mr Dove understands about horror. He was wounded in the jungle and lay there for two days before his comrades could come back to get him. What hell he must have gone through.’

  Maisy shuddered, imagining snakes and the like slithering past while she was in agony. ‘What my brother really wants is to come out here and stay with you. He’s got the idea that chopping wood, digging and doing other jobs for you will make him better. He really doesn’t want to talk, or see people.’

  ‘How well I understand that,’ Grace sighed in agreement. ‘But I suppose your grandmother won’t allow it?’

  ‘I think she might if I ask her,’ Maisy said. ‘But what about you? Are you sure you would like that?’

  Grace smiled. ‘There was a time I would’ve buried myself alive rather than have anyone here with me. But you two are special. And I’d like a crack at getting him to tell me what happened. Physical hard work is good for troubled souls as well – it brings back the appetite and helps you to sleep well. It’s also the busiest time of year for gardens – weeds springing up overnight, seeds to be planted, new beds to be prepared.’

  ‘Then I’ll ask Grandmother when I get back.’

  ‘But what about you, Maisy? Your bruises are fading, but probably not the fear of what you expected to happen to you.’

  ‘I’m fine, really fine. I didn’t go through anything nearly as bad as Duncan did. The trouble is, I don’t quite know what to do with myself now. Should I go back to Brighton or stay here with Duncan? I don’t mean right away, but in a few weeks.’

  ‘Until the plaster on your arm comes off, you won’t be much use looking after small children. I think Duncan will need you close for a while too.’ Grace smiled. ‘But for all I know there might be a young man in Brighton?’

  ‘There is, well, there was, but he hasn’t tried to get in touch with me. Although I didn’t give him the telephone number at Nightingales, when he read about Duncan being found and me being snatched, you would’ve thought he’d have gone to see Mr and Mrs Ripley to ask after me.’

  ‘Yes, you would,’ Grace agreed. ‘Young men, and young women for that matter, are fickle creatures. Was he special?’

  Maisy shook her head. ‘No, he was nice, but not the man of my dreams.’

  ‘What’s the dream man like?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I haven’t given him that much thought, really. It’s how someone makes you feel that counts. I did meet a boy ages ago before I went to Brighton – he made me feel weak at the knees, and I so much liked being with him – but his parents didn’t like what they knew about my family. Besides, he was going off to university.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound as if he had a mind of his own,’ Grace pointed out.

  ‘Maybe he was too easily swayed by his parents then, but my friend in Lyndhurst rang me when I got out of hospital, and she told me he joined in the search for me, and told her how much he regretted listening to his folks. He also rang her again to say how relieved he was to hear I’d been found. He asked if she thought he should ring the house and speak to me, but Linda said she wasn’t sure, better that he waited till she’d spoken to me.’

  ‘Ah ha.’ Grace smiled. ‘Could this be why you say you feel fine now?’

  ‘It helped,’ Maisy admitted. ‘He’ll have gone back to university now. But you never know, in the summer holidays I might run into him. Speaking of running, we ought to go now. We were told not to be too long as they worry.’

  Maisy called to Duncan to ask him to come and say goodbye.

  He was silent on the way home, and Maisy guessed he was brooding about Grainger again. ‘I told Grace I was going to ask Grandmother tonight about you coming to stay out here,’ she said. ‘I think it will be good for you.’

  Duncan stopped walking for a moment and turned to her. ‘Yes, I do too. I really understand now why Grace wanted to live in the forest. There’s something cleansing about it. The quiet and the smell of damp soil, and looking up at the sky between the trees, makes you feel very small, but protected.’

  Maisy looked up and she could see what he meant. No one looking at you or judging you, the wild flowers, trees, weeds, insects, birds and animals all living together in harmony. The silence was good too; it let you think and kept your brain safe from being bombarded with advertisements, small talk and gossip.

  She wouldn’t want to live in the forest herself, it would be too creepy at night, but she could understand its appeal for her brother. Every now and then she would recall his face when she’d shone her torch down into that cellar. The look in his eyes had told a story of immeasurable pain and humiliation. It was no surprise he wanted to be away from people, and maybe the forest would help him, if not to forget, at least to push it down into a place he didn’t have to visit.

  They talked a little on the way home about their father and his lady friend. Apparently her name was Jennifer Dottridge, she was thirty-nine, and she’d married her childhood sweetheart Kenneth when she was eighteen, in 1941, when he’d had leave from the army before going out to Singapore.

  She didn’t see him again until Christmas of 1945 because he was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell and put in a prisoner of war camp. He weighed only five stone when the camp was liberated, with infected ulcers on his legs and malaria. The doctor who saw him at the time of liberation was astounded he had survived. But he never really got well again; the malaria kept coming back and he had many digestive problems.

  Alastair had explained to the twins that Jenny had had a brief honeymoon with her strong, healthy sweetheart, and then he was gone, only to return five years later a mere shadow of the man she married. She was the
breadwinner, housekeeper, nurse, organizer, counsellor and everything else, while he had sat in a chair wrapped in his own thoughts, sometimes not even aware of who she was.

  ‘I can see the parallels now to our parents’ marriage,’ Duncan said thoughtfully. ‘It was a good job really that Jenny didn’t have a child, or she might have done what Father and everyone else did to us, not letting on how bad Mother was. He was only trying to protect us, and we thought the worst of him.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry that I was so nasty to him about Jenny, he didn’t deserve that.’

  ‘Or Jenny either. I believe a lot of men came home from the war really messed up. Awful for their families. By the way, what did you and Grace talk about while I was outside?’

  ‘A bit about you; and I told her about Alan, the boy I met in Bournemouth on the day you disappeared. He’s at Bristol University now.’

  ‘Speaking of which, I suppose I ought to start thinking about a career.’

  ‘Get completely fit before you do that,’ she said. ‘I had planned to go to London to work once I’d passed my Pitman’s night-school course. Maybe we should both go? Anyway, what do you want to do? And don’t tell me you still want to be an explorer!’

  Duncan laughed. ‘Yes, that was the plan, wasn’t it? It feels as if that was ten years ago. I think I’d like to be a doctor, but I’ll have so much catching up to do with O and A levels.’

  ‘It would be worth it, though. I think you’d make a great doctor, and Dad and Grandmother will be thrilled!’

  ‘Gran doesn’t actually do thrilled,’ he pointed out, grinning wickedly. ‘She’s more likely to say, “You think you’ve got the brains for that?” ’

  Maisy laughed. ‘She told me when I first came home that I should aim higher than being a secretary. But now she knows about Jenny being Dad’s secretary she’ll probably suggest I work for a rich and clever married man and hope his wife dies.’