Whisper the Dead

by Stella Cameron

  ‘We’re managing,’ Dan said.

  Tony wasn’t managing very well. He laced his fingers together between his knees and willed Alex to spit out what she had to say. If he were inclined to turn red he might do it now.

  ‘Good. Frank Lymer was at the Black Dog last night. To be honest I thought he’d gone home. Actually, I wasn’t thinking about him at all. We all got a bit strung out by Grant Hill coming by about the pub name contest … That’s not what I wanted to say to you. We were diverted. My mum had been gone. Well, you know about that. Anyway, I was upset about it and not taking proper notice. We were going to lock up but out comes Frank from a corner – like I said, I didn’t see him there – and he said he was waiting for Gladys. Gladys is his wife. And she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been there since one in the afternoon, you see? She just started work cooking breakfasts for us and she’s really good at it.’

  Tony looked at Dan who either deserved applause for appearing interested and patient, or was just doing what came naturally because people made a habit of waffling on at him.

  ‘I think I’m getting your drift,’ Dan said but Tony didn’t believe him. ‘We’ll get back to Frank and Gladys but I don’t want to forget about … someone called Hill? What did you say his full name was?’

  ‘Grant Hill.’ Her sigh was audible.

  ‘Any relation—’

  ‘His son.’ She cut Dan off. ‘He and his mother brought entries for a contest to name a pub they’re probably going to build in that new development. Or I think that’s where it’s planned for. It was the other day they came. Last night Grant came to find out how it was going with the entries. His mother – that’s Esme – wasn’t there.’

  ‘I see.’

  Again, Tony didn’t see how Dan would make sense of the contest thing, but he’d been quick to pick up on the Hill name, darn it.

  Alex tapped the floor with the toes of her boots and waited.

  ‘Well, we may come back to that but let’s deal with your Frank and Gladys. Frank was waiting in the bar because he thought Gladys was somewhere around but she wasn’t.’

  ‘Exactly. And he got furious when he found that out. He stomped off and I had to run after him. I was very worried – as anyone would be. I felt responsible.’

  ‘Why would you feel responsible, Alex?’

  Tony watched her raise her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t responsible. But I employed her and I should have … no, that makes absolutely no sense. Why would I follow up employees all the time to find out their movements? Silly of me. I’m really rattled about this, Dan. Something isn’t right but I seem to be the only one who thinks so. I called the Lymers’ cottage several times later in the evening. At first Frank said they were private people. As if they had something monumentally secret they couldn’t share. But that was after he’d told me I was to blame for Gladys going missing because I gave her a job! The second time I called him he more or less told me to mind my own business.’

  Dan took out his bag of sticky sweets, the ones he always carried, and offered it to Alex. ‘Have one. Sweet things are good when you feel a bit shocky.’ Damn that warm voice he could put on when he wanted Alex on his side.

  And she took one of his bloody sweet treats.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s nice of you. I used to love these when I was a kid.’ And she put the sherbet lemon in her mouth.

  ‘You carry on at your own pace,’ Dan said. ‘There’s no hurry.’

  No, no hurry at all …

  ‘When I got to the Black Dog this morning, there was Gladys cooking breakfasts, wasn’t she, Tony?’ Her green eyes turned to him for support.

  ‘Yes, darling.’ He took her hand and rested it on his thigh. ‘Damndest thing, Dan. There she was, large as life, cooking breakfast while Liz Hadley served.’

  ‘That’s not the point though,’ Alex commented with a little frown. ‘When I asked Gladys what had happened last night, she told me nothing had happened. And she said she’d ridden her bike home, only she hadn’t – or I don’t think she had. I found it under a layer of ice and snow around lunch time, I think it was. Hugh helped me get it out. He didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about that, but I do.’

  ‘OK,’ Dan said gently. ‘Tell me why you think it was strange. But remember she could have ridden it back today, not that I think it’s likely in this weather. Was it standing where it’s usually put?’

  ‘No, I thought I said it was on its side. Perhaps I didn’t, but it was. The thing is that Gladys said she rode home. Of course, she must have got home because Frank brought her back this morning. And he picked her up again when she was finished with work.’

  Dan tapped a finger against his mouth. ‘I’m very glad you came and told me this,’ he said eventually. ‘It sounds to me as if there may have been a domestic issue between the Lymers, but we’ll keep an eye open just in case. You never know when a piece of seemingly disconnected information will turn the key to something of major importance.’

  Dan stood up and Tony was quick to join him.

  Alex remained where she was, frowning at the floor again.

  ‘You ready to go, Alex?’ Tony asked. ‘It’ll take a while to get up the hill.’

  ‘Yes.’ She got up slowly. ‘Thank you, Dan. I think you’ll remember what I’ve told you tonight – even if I did mess it up a bit. I hope you don’t remember too late.’

  Tony saw how Dan stiffened slightly and straightened his own spine. He didn’t believe in hunches.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The sound of Tony’s laughter stopped Alex. She’d reached the top stair and turned to sit and look down at him. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘You.’ He stood in the hall unwinding his scarf. The dogs had already raced past her to find a bed for the night. ‘Running upstairs without even taking off your coat – or boots. I thought we were going to sit by the fire.’

  She plunked her elbows on her knees and propped her chin on her hands. ‘I’m too cold to wait. I like looking down at you. Do you know we didn’t say a word on the way up here? You only get better looking. I shall have to start thinking about Botox injections or you’ll want to trade me in.’

  He laughed again, shaking his head. ‘I was afraid of this after tonight with Dan. You’re stuck talking in non-sequiturs.’

  ‘That is so mean. I’m going to sleep with Bogie and Katie.’ She carried on to the landing but went to Tony’s room rather than the one the dogs had made their own.

  Alex shed her coat and sat down to work her boots off. If she and Tony ever had a baby, which room would make the best nursery? Slowly she set the second boot down and sat still.

  Tony’s bed was simple, a plain oak head and footboard. His sheets were white cotton covered by a puffy dark gray-and-white striped duvet. Light curtains hung in front of gray blinds and the rest of his furnishings were unobtrusive. Books ruined what would otherwise have been the tidy appearance of the room. Books overflowed two bookcases and made wobbly piles on chests of drawers and the floor.

  This looking around at what she’d seen often enough before was a shield she’d pulled down between that errant thought of nurseries and the muddle it had made of her mind.

  Tony had said he would like them to have children.

  Did she want that – with him?

  Perhaps she did, or would.

  She wouldn’t want children with anyone else.

  Moving quickly, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, stripped off her clothes, left them in a pile on the floor and made a dash and a dive to the bed where she pulled the covers over her head. The only light in the room, beside the bed, shone through the sheet.

  She kept nightgowns and underclothes, changes of outfits, here. She didn’t go to bed naked – or she hadn’t before.

  The door opened and she could feel Tony looking at the bump she made in the bed. Soft carpet swallowed any footsteps but in moments she knew he stood beside her.

  ‘I thought you were s
pending the night with our girls,’ he said quietly.

  Alex thought about her answer for a moment before saying, ‘I changed my mind.’

  ‘Because you want to be with me or because you don’t want the dogs hogging your space?’

  She smiled to herself. ‘I’d rather have you hogging my space.’

  Tony didn’t say anything else and soon she heard water running in the bathroom and his electric toothbrush. How domestic it felt. Was that what she wanted – domesticity? Once she’d been sure she did, now she wasn’t so sure. Sensual warmth suffused Alex’s body and she shivered. She wanted carnal obsession. She would welcome lust.

  And now she was shocking herself. Was this a way of closing out all the uncertainty in her life?

  Tony pulled back the covers. He didn’t smile while he looked down at her.

  The urge to cover herself came quickly and left almost as quickly. Scooting onto her back, Alex put her arms over her head and turned her face away from him. The bed sank as Tony sat beside her thighs and stroked her slowly, watched his hands slide over her skin.

  ‘I need to kiss you,’ he said, turning her face up to his. He did kiss her, but not wildly as some men might have. The kiss was gentle, and when it eventually stopped, Alex wished it hadn’t.

  ‘We’re going to have to do something about us,’ he said, and still he didn’t smile. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  She felt a hard pulse in her throat, a tightening in her belly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Tony turned off the light and pulled her from the bed. ‘I can’t wait much longer – and I can’t restrain what I really want to do with you any longer.’

  Alex felt the cold wall against her back, the heat of his mouth between her breasts. She drove her fingertips into his shoulders, closed her eyes and let her head fall back.

  Rose and deep lavender tinted the sky over distant white-covered hills. If he could, Tony thought, he would hold hard to this time, stop the clocks, keep away the storms that promised to return – and control the complicated bonds that held him to Alex, through incredible pleasure, through the certainty that they belonged together, and the hovering uncertainty that would not let them go.

  Leaning sideways against a jamb in the open kitchen doorway, he was grateful for the little rushes of icy wind that whipped his hair and stung his face. The dogs romped in the snow, barking, their bodies rising and falling as they chased back and forth. They wouldn’t wake Alex – he had heard the shower come on.

  The coffee was made, the bacon ready to go, and the eggs cracked in a bowl for scrambling. He smiled slightly into another gust. After last night she could hardly talk about cholesterol and the need for more exercise.

  Alex had surprised him, although not perhaps as much as she might have. She had given to him, to them, the power of the fervor he’d felt in her many times before, more often in the face of injustice and anger, but he had sensed she held back from being what she really wanted to be when they loved. And what they felt and did was love. Now he grinned. He might have to be patient before he decided it was time for a frank discussion about all the aspects of love, not that he was an expert.

  But he wanted to learn!

  He heard Alex come into the kitchen from the sitting room and looked over his shoulder. She wore leg-hugging black corduroy trousers and a green turtleneck jumper – and she rubbed her hands together, shivering as she came toward him.

  ‘Good morning.’ He held out an arm and pulled her in tight. ‘You look cold. I’ll warm you up.’

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, not quite smothering a grin, and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘No, not again, Alex. It doesn’t matter how much you beg me, I will not do it again right now, even to warm you up.’ He rubbed her arm briskly.

  They both laughed but were immediately sober, and pensive, and watchful. ‘And I don’t want to do this, but I think I’d better tell you what my mother talked to me about yesterday, or some of it. The parts I’m probably going to have to deal with for her, or talk her into doing for herself.’

  ‘Of course. The dogs need to come in. They think they’re both two years old.’ He called Katie and Bogie inside and they arrived, shaking bits of frozen snow from their coats, and promptly went to lie together in front of the kitchen stove.

  ‘They do know how to find the most comfortable spots available.’ Alex took a couple of the towels kept there for the purpose and rubbed down both animals.

  Tony had closed the outer door and now poured her a mug of fresh coffee. ‘Sit. Breakfast is almost ready.’

  ‘Let me finish the cooking.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he told her. ‘I like to do things for you and I don’t get the chance often enough.’

  She met his eyes over her coffee cup. Last night had changed some things – for them both, Tony decided. He could see and feel the difference in her; and sense that she was thinking about some of the same things that had been on his mind for a long time.

  The bacon soon piled up on a plate kept warm in the oven and he started the toast. ‘Butter.’ He put the dish on the table and whisked the eggs by hand.

  And throughout they glanced repeatedly at one another. ‘You look as if you want to say something but you’re not sure you can or maybe that you ought to. Am I right?’ He gave her a plate of bacon and eggs and pulled cutlery from a drawer.

  ‘You might be. Perhaps I should just say you’re good for me, Tony, but I’m not sure how good I am for you.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, really? Let me put your mind at rest. You are extremely good for me and I intend to make sure you stop questioning that. I won’t get it done all at once. Not like a bulldozer. But bit by bit until you believe what I’ve been telling you. Now, eat.’ He joined her with his own plate.

  ‘I want to go back to last night and what I told Dan, but other things first. Mum was missing because she went into London, to Child Protection Services, and picked up the things her mother left for her. She talked about that with Harriet and Mary when we all sat together. You’ll remember that. The photos are interesting and a lot of the notes about family. Even my mum’s drawings from when she was a little girl. She used to draw pictures for her mother. Angela kept them. I’ve got all that to look at. There hasn’t been time to get through much but what I have looked at makes me sad, Tony. I get sick of the damage people do to other people.’

  ‘It seems to be part of the human condition, my love.’

  She got up and went into the hall and returned with a small, bubble-wrapped package. ‘This is my mum’s. She’s going to hang it on a wall at Corner Cottage.’ After looking at it herself, Alex gave Tony a black and white photo in a silver frame that had taken some knocks.

  He studied the faces and the clothes. ‘They aren’t getting married, are they? They’re just kids. But there’s the buttonhole and her rose.’

  ‘Mum thinks they were about 18 and 20 and that is a wedding photo. Those are my mum’s parents, Angela and Simon Devoss. Four months after that Simon was killed by a bus and Angela was pregnant. Both of their families disowned her.’

  He looked steadily at Alex. Breakfast didn’t interest him so much anymore but he wanted her to eat, so he put a forkful of eggs in his mouth.

  ‘It’s a horrible story. She was sent away to Ireland, to a convent where they said she wasn’t married because the ceremony hadn’t been in a church. They wanted to take my mum away from her. The nuns sold the babies.’

  Alex’s cheeks lost their color. She repeatedly ran her fingers through her short, shiny dark curls. Tears welled up and ran down her face until she wiped them away, and then they did it all over again.

  She showed him a silver medallion with her mother’s name on it – her baby’s name. Each time she tried to stop, he made her carry on. They had come this far and now he wanted it all out, or at least what she knew.

  Bogie got up from his spot by the stove and went to put his front paws and chin on her knee. His liquid brown eyes watche
d intently, brows lifting, first one, then the other. If he could cry, too, he would. Alex rubbed him absently.

  ‘When I hoped my mum would talk about my father and what happened to the two of them, she stopped and I couldn’t bring myself to push her anymore. She was tired. But she told me something awful, Tony, about the woman who supposedly wanted to help her after I was born. This woman was a social worker and she’d taken Mum into her own home. It all turned out terribly wrong and now … we’ve got to do something. It’s another thing I need police help for, but after last night I can’t face going back yet.’

  ‘Lily does seem to have an excuse to not keep going when she gets close to talking about the man who was your father,’ Tony said. Why keep pretending otherwise?

  Alex scraped back her chair and got more coffee to fill their mugs. ‘That’s true. It can’t be easy and she has so much to cope with now. Tony, just listen to this. I don’t blame Mum for being scared.’

  With his elbows on the table, he drank coffee and watched the play of emotions across Alex’s face. And he realized how much she must have needed him to let her know he was there for her last night. She wasn’t alone and never would be if he had his way.

  She talked in spurts and he watched her confidence drain away. By the time she finished, he understood why. ‘This Beverly Irving has to be found,’ he told Alex. ‘We can’t make a major move without your mother’s agreement, but this woman doesn’t sound balanced. Where has she been all these years and why is she surfacing now?’

  ‘Exactly. I’ve thought about it over and over and I think I know what we must do first. We need to find out what made Beverly search for my mother – and me – again. She couldn’t just have woken up one morning and thought it was a good idea. Something triggered it.’

  She made sense, of course. ‘But what? What’s happened that’s different and could make Beverly feel threatened? She’s desperate to protect her way of life – whatever that is. What can she think Lily could do to upset it?’

  ‘It all brings us back where I started. We find Beverly Irving. I’m going to the Family Service Office, or wherever it was Mum went to. When Beverly made that bizarre telephone call, she talked about the things my mum had picked up, which means someone there talked to Beverly – they told her about Mum coming. Beverly was angry about that, not that she had any right. Those people know something about her and where she is, don’t they? Or they have some ideas?’