Joanna was swift to reassure her. ‘It’s all right, Miss Patterson. It’ll be my boyfriend. Don’t worry.’
Lydia Patterson crossed to the door in three short strides and tugged it open.
Matthew stood there, Eloise clinging to his arm.
Lydia stared at them both before turning effusive. ‘Come in. Come in, the pair of you. You must be cold.’
Chapter Twenty-three
Joanna had never seen Eloise act shy before. She sat still, clinging to her father, on the big, shabby sofa and stared at the floor; she looked smaller. Lydia had come alive with the two visitors. She bustled into the kitchen, produced more cake, another cup of tea, lemonade for Eloise. She must have assumed it was what children drank. Matthew she virtually ignored, all her questions were addressed to the shrinking child.
‘And how old are you, my dear?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘And where do you go to school?’
The formulaic questions continued, Joanna meeting Matthew’s eyes with a trace of amusement. She hadn’t thought his daughter could possibly be so demure. Neither had he judging by the lift of his eyebrows.
Suddenly Eloise looked straight at Lydia Patterson and the solution to her behaviour was explained. ‘I’ve read one of your books,’ she said, flushing slightly.
Instantly Lydia looked wary. Maybe this was a penalty of writing books, meeting the readers, having to take their criticisms on the chin and still smile.
Eloise continued. ‘They aren’t about animals at all, are they? You just use fur and feathers as a ploy. They’re about people, aren’t they? Really nasty people doing horrible things to each other. You just pretend, don’t you, that they’re animal stories, just to get away with being horrible about humans. But it doesn’t fool people, you know, especially children. They know. What I’d like to know is where do you find such shitty people?’
‘Eloise!’ Matthew’s face had also turned pink. They shared this tendency, father and daughter, to colour in response to embarrassment.
‘Real life.’
Eloise was unabashed. ‘Why do you feel you have to pretend they’re animals?’
‘Because I think it makes it more interesting – more fun.’ Lydia’s eyes seemed to have shrunk to tiny, sharp pinpoints.
‘But it doesn’t.’ Eloise was persistent. ‘It would be more interesting if the stories were about real people and you stopped hiding and pretending and laughing.’
‘Then what sort of stories would they be, young lady?’
Eloise stared. The silence in the small room thickened so even Sam ‘n’ Ella seemed affected by the atmosphere. They stopped clawing at their straw and their duckings stilled, their beady eyes jerked around the room.
Joanna cast her mind back to the gaudy picture of a brown hen cartooned on the cover. It had been a story about a treasured possession, about pride, about destruction, jealousy and deceit.
A satisfied smile softened Lydia’s face, her strange eyes were staring at a point far beyond Joanna’s head.
‘I still think you should write about people,’ Eloise persisted.
‘Eloise,’ Matthew admonished for the second time.
Joanna stood up quickly. ‘Thank you very much, Miss Patterson. You’ve been a help.’
Lydia ushered them to the door, stopping to speak again to Eloise. ‘Thank you for your advice, young lady. Maybe one day I will –’ her eyes locked into Joanna’s ‘– do as you suggest and write a story about real people.’ Her huge body seemed to shake with amusement. ‘Though what my publishers will have to say about my transfer of affections, I don’t know, and they won’t suit my young readers at all.’
‘They might.’ Eloise’s bluntness was unabated. ‘It strikes me you don’t really understand children at all.’
‘Many children’s writers don’t,’ Lydia countered swiftly. ‘Maybe it’s that that makes them write such good stories.’
Even Eloise could find no reply. She clattered down the steps and stood at the passenger side of the car, waiting for Matthew to unlock the doors. To insist on a front seat would have made Joanna look petty; she climbed in the back of the car and said nothing. She had plenty to chew over.
Matthew waited until Eloise was running a bath before he made his comment, in typical understated, quiet tones. ‘Perceptive little blighter, isn’t she?’ His pride was obvious.
Joanna dreamed that night of hens and eggs and foxes, of rabbits with cheeky furry faces, all paddling in thick, sludgy mud that somehow turned into a battlefield where three children, hand in hand, crossed towards enemy lines. Two girls in white pinafores stepping elegantly as ghosts towards huge guns spewing out bullets. Death, carnage, suffering all around – a blood-splattered field – yet their pinafores remained purest white. No mud. No blood. No soot or dirt. A youth in battledress helped them over the tussocks, the Arnie of the photographs. Dapper, strong and confident as he helped his sisters. But even with his support one of them slid into a deep, mud-lined puddle and held her arms out. ‘Help me, Arnie.’ It was Nan, her pinafore altered into the brocade wedding dress of the photograph. Joanna watched her slither down into the mud, the white still startlingly bright right up to the point where she vanished altogether. And through the sludge rose a stone. Massacre of the Innocent, it read. Massacre of the Innocent.
Joanna woke in a cold sweat, her arms still reaching out to pull Nan Lawrence from the mud. She picked up the alarm clock.
It was five o’clock in the morning.
She padded downstairs, her mind working overtime, clear and sound in the early morning, the world around her silent in the cottage full of sleepers. She boiled the kettle, made some coffee and went through into the small sitting room. She took the figure of Old Age from the cabinet, studied the lined face, the bent posture, such a contrast from the figure of youth. She wanted to wake Matthew but he slept above. She waited until seven before disturbing him with a mug of coffee, perching on the end of the bed.
One good thing about being a medic was that he seemed to have the capacity to be alert seconds out of a deep sleep – necessary in a doctor, useful in a lover too. She bent forward and kissed him. ‘Morning, my darling.’
He sat up, took the coffee and grinned. ‘What are you looking so happy about?’
Eloise goes in a couple of days.
‘I think we might be about to crack the case, Matt. At least, I’m getting a bit of insight into it. It was nothing to do with the attacks on old ladies, except for one of them.’
‘That old biddy helped you last night then?’
She nodded, rumpled his hair and kissed him again.
He spotted the figure in her hand and quickly made the connection. ‘And more answers in the night?’
‘I’ve just realized how obvious some of it was, Matt,’ she said. ‘Some of it has stared me in the face right the way through. Everything was sitting there, waiting for me to rediscover it but I was too distracted by the burglaries. And you, Matthew, gave me the very biggest of clues.’
He pulled her head across his chest. ‘You know what, Jo,’ he said softly, ‘you are at your best when you’re just about to bring a case to conclusion.’
She lay for a while, breathing in the faint tang of aftershave. And you, my darling,’ she replied, ‘are at your very best first thing in the morning.’
Chapter Twenty-four
8.30 a.m. Tuesday, November 3rd
By eight-thirty she was in the station, impatiently waiting for Korpanski to turn up. Never at his best in the morning he arrived at eight forty-five and listened to her ramblings without comment.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Where first?’
‘Christian Patterson, don’t you think?’
Mike still looked confused. ‘But I thought ...’
She tried to suppress the bubbling excitement in her voice. ‘He thinks he’s got away with it, Mike. One thing I can’t stand is cocksure villains.’
She dangled her car keys in front of him. ‘And for
once we’ll use my car and I’ll do all the driving.’
He winced. Joanna’s battered Peugeot 205 was not the smoothest of rides, neither was it speedy. He opened his mouth to object but she had already whisked through the door. As he scampered down the steps he heard the unmistakable purr of a diesel engine.
They covered the distance to Spite Hall in ten minutes. The clouds hung low over the ugly building, shrouding the house behind. As they turned up the drive Joanna reflected that however many times she turned off the Macclesfield road she would never fail to be revolted by the ruination of such an elegant building. ‘I wonder –’ she raised her thoughts ‘– when they’ll pull it down.’
Mike shrugged. ‘Wills and things,’ he said. ‘Probate. I bet it’ll take years.’
She looked at him. ‘I bet it won’t.’
She clicked open her seat belt and opened the door, met mist so heavy it saturated her skin. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Are you going to arrest him?’
‘Oh yes, we’ll haul him in now. He’s had his freedom. We’ve got our evidence.’
She was used to waiting for Arnold Patterson to answer the door but today he surprised her. He must have been in the hall already. ‘Inspector,’ he said.
She looked at him through new eyes, seeing not only the bent, arthritic old man but the young soldier, the doting older brother, Nan and Lydia’s adored hero.
He regarded her very steadily before dropping his eyes to the floor. ‘You’ll have come to see Christian.’
He knew. He’d known all along what his grandson was capable of and yet he had shielded him, said nothing, through a misguided sense of family loyalty? Joanna didn’t think so. Through fear? But even peering hard into the old man’s eyes she could pick up no trace of fear. The realization came to her with a shock. He hadn’t wanted to interfere.
Arnie dropped his eyelids and shuffled along the corridor.
Joanna wanted to speak to him, to tell him she had seen the photographs, that she had understood that they had been extraordinary times, that nothing then had been normal, that events had taken place that could not have been justified in times of peace. The words stuck in her throat, nothing seemed appropriate.
She made a gesture – half-smile, half-friendly, a hint of the professional – and she and Korpanski walked past the old man, along the hall, up the staircase.
She and Korpanski made no effort to soften their steps as they crossed the landing and followed the curving stairs to the attic floor.
Joanna glanced at Mike, reading his instinct like an open book. She knew he wanted to crash through the door, grab Patterson by the collar, click the cuffs on and frogmarch him downstairs, without caring whether he missed a step or two – or six.
She threw him a warning glance and rapped on the door. ‘Christian. It’s the police.’
He was standing in the middle of the room, wearing bulky headphones, his head jerking in time to the beat. He must have seen them out of the corner of his eye; he crossed the room and switched the decks off.
‘What a nice surprise,’ he said politely.
Joanna gazed at him. Why, she wondered, had he allowed himself to fall so deeply under her influence? Long ago events could have had no interest or bearing on his life. And yet ... She met Christian’s frank stare. Was there any point in questioning such an accomplished liar? Should they just charge him and sweat it out in the station?
‘Let’s caution him, Mike,’ she said.
Christian looked astonished. ‘You can’t think ...’ He looked from one to the other, perspiration dampening his brow. ‘You don’t think I ... You can’t?’
And to Joanna’s intense satisfaction she realized he was finally rattled.
Chapter Twenty-five
Korpanski liked the new caution, plenty of words for him to spin out, intimidate his victim with. He drew himself up to his full height of six feet three inches. ‘Christian Patterson,’ he said, ‘you are charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on Cecily Marlowe on the second of September of this year. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ He finished with a hard, hostile stare.
Give Christian his due, he had recovered himself. Still pale, slightly frightened but in control, very quietly he gave his name and address and fixed his eyes – and, it seemed, his hopes – on Joanna.
‘Is there anything you want to say, Christian?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m saying nothing,’ he said, ‘except that I want the family solicitor summoned.’
Joanna sighed. She had not expected a full confession but all her questions remained unanswered. Christian returned her gaze with a clear, defensive stare. Unabashed. Unashamed.
And believing him guilty Joanna felt a surge of frustration and anger. She wanted to challenge him, accuse him. You carve up an old lady, terrorize her so she never returns to the house she’s inhabited for more than fifty years and you won’t even tell us the reason?
Christian Patterson leaned forwards, his eyes glittering. ‘Prove it,’ he said. Joanna said nothing, merely studied him. Christian’s face slowly changed. ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill my great-aunt,’ he repeated. ‘I couldn’t have done that, you couldn’t believe I would, I couldn’t have hurt her!’
And yet, at her bidding, you could commit an act of cruelty against a woman you must hardly have known for a reason you probably never knew, let alone understood? She was beginning to understand what a dangerous old woman Nan Lawrence had been. There must have been other old enemies, plenty of them, not only her brother and sister but another more sinister one. Something must have pushed him beyond tolerance so he had been the one to strike first. No wonder so many bones had been splintered and with such force. The blows had been struck with the accumulated anger of years. More than fifty years.
Arnold Patterson was waiting for them downstairs, his face upturned to meet his grandson’s glance. ‘Always knew you were a chip off the block,’ he said. ‘Got ‘er in you, and my father too, all that was rotten.’ He stumped back towards the sitting room, Christian watching him without saying a word.
They began the interview an hour later when the family solicitor had been summoned from his offices.
Korpanski flicked a couple of pictures of Cecily Marlowe across the desk, they had been taken two days post attack. Christian glanced down, lifted his eyes again, and dropped them. Behind the bravado Joanna could read something almost approaching shame. Remorse? That favourite solicitor’s plea for the guilty.
Christian looked up boldly. ‘Nasty injuries,’ he commented. Joanna nodded coldly.
‘What evidence have you against my client?’
And as the law required that she reveal all while still protecting him, she laid the evidence before the solicitor: primarily the booty from the robbery at Cecily Marlowe’s that had turned up at Nan’s house – where Christian was almost the only frequent visitor.
By four o’clock that afternoon they’d gleaned all they were going to from Christian Patterson. Nothing. He was playing for time using silence as his weapon. None of Joanna’s questions had been answered, all the time she was speaking to him her mind was batting furiously with the problems. Christian didn’t strike her as a compliant sort of chap, blindly doing what he was asked, and she didn’t really swallow the theory that Nan Lawrence had held some sort of a Svengali influence over the youth. She was relying on the assumption that Cecily Marlowe would finally admit it had been Christian Patterson who had assaulted her. But the motive continued to baffle until she saw Christian’s gaze dropping to the photographs and his eyes brighten. That was when she knew why. He had done it because he had wanted to; he had enjoyed terrorizing Cecily Marlowe. Cleverly hidden behind a convincing facade of urbanity was the familial streak of cruelty. He had used Nan Lawrence’s desire for revenge for his own purposes, not becau
se she had asked him but because it had suited him.
But now her mind grappled with the next questions. Why had Nan Lawrence wanted revenge on her old friend and what connection did it have with her own murder?
The weather was as crisp as a winter’s day as she and Mike again took the Macclesfield road towards Brushton Grange and turned up the now familiar track. Behind the great house the sky was a cold Wedgwood blue, promising imminent frost.
‘Just leave me alone for a moment, Mike,’ Joanna said as he switched the engine off. ‘I want to think.’
She walked slowly all the way round Spite Hall and tried to imagine the days when it had been built. As she rounded the back she noticed a movement in the dust-shrouded window of Brushton Grange. Arnold Patterson must have anticipated her return. He was watching her, as he must have watched the construction of this ugly edifice, from that very window, powerless to stop it.
Joanna stopped in her tracks, suddenly sensing some other darker purpose. Why had Spite Hall really been built? Through the terms of the will? Or had there been another more powerful reason? Now Joanna believed so.
She watched him through the window. As still as a statue, staring through as though oblivious to her. Maybe like many ancient folk he had one foot too firmly in the past to ever be entirely in the present. And as Joanna stared at him she realized he hardly knew – or cared – that she was there. He was seeing something else – the green fields and croquet lawns of pre-war days?
She rounded the corner and returned to the car. Mike was leaning against it, arms folded, occasionally kicking the tyres with impatience. He looked relieved to see her.
‘Solved it?’
‘Not quite’, she said, but we’re getting there, Mike. We are getting there.’
‘I’m really glad you included me in that,’ he drawled sarcastically.
She didn’t answer him but led the way towards the steps and the front door of Brushton Grange. And this time Arnold was waiting there to meet them. He straightened up to stare deep into Joanna’s eyes, saying nothing. But there was a line of communication far more effective than any which had yet been established between them. She read pain, shame, deep, deep regret. After a brief pause he nodded as though satisfied.
Embroidering Shrouds Page 20
