Echoes of Silence

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Call it what you want, you’re still an independent bugger.’

  Charlie was right, of course. He’d always steered a lone course. Not always a good team member, and that had gone against him, had damaged his career prospects once or twice in the early days, until he’d learned to bend to the wind over the years. His ambition, which had once cost him his wife and child, was still strong, but if it had to be sacrificed in the process of finding out who’d killed Beth, he discovered it didn’t matter a damn.

  It wasn’t until he was half-way back to the Woolpack, striding out, head down against the icy, needle-sharp rain, invigorating as a cold shower, that it occurred to him to wonder why he hadn’t mentioned his meeting with Polly Winslow to Charlie Rawnsley.

  6

  Old Mrs Wadsworth lived in a little low house near the cottage which used to be Elf’s and was now lived in by the Nagles. She still made her own bread, and when she was in a good mood she made extra, selling it to those of her neighbours who had either no time or no inclination to follow her example. No doubt against some trading standard or other, but who was going to tell on her when it was so delicious?

  Freya was making her breakfast coffee when Dot Nagle arrived with one of Mrs Wadsworth’s teacakes, still warm from the oven. Freya poured another mug of coffee and they shared the bread, liberally spread with butter. Dot, lean as a skinned rabbit, had never had to worry about gaining weight and Freya had occasionally thought lately, astonishing herself, why worry? At my age? It didn’t seem to make any difference to her figure. She still measured the same as she had forty years ago.

  ‘I’ve come to a decision, Dot,’ she announced, pouring herself more coffee.

  Dot raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t tell me – you’re going to change your will.’

  Freya smiled faintly, then looked dismal. ‘As if what I have to leave would matter to anybody!’

  ‘I wouldn’t go around saying that, if I was you,’ Dot said bluntly, lighting a cigarette and leaving Freya to wonder exactly how much more Dot knew than she’d been told.

  Dot was nominally housekeeper here at Low Rigg, though her duties were unspecified and more often neglected than not, and their relationship was far more complex than that of mistress and employee, or even close friends. There was deep affection between them, though at times sparring partners might be a more applicable term. Although the Nagles didn’t live in, Dot spent more time at the big house than she did in her own, and when Eddie wasn’t dog racing or working at his part-time job at the health club, he was always around the kitchen or in the snug corner he’d made for himself in what had once been the stables, which had latterly accommodated the legendary Daimler and now gave house room to a sedate Rover.

  Freya had to put up with Eddie for various reasons, one of them being Dot, though she detested him and couldn’t for the life in her see what Dot saw in him. For one thing, his unfortunate appearance repulsed Freya, to whom physical beauty was paramount, and for another, she suspected he had pocketed a substantial sum from the sale of the Daimler several years ago – vintage models like that surely sold for far more than he said it had fetched? – but she had no means of proving it now. His attitude appalled her, and sometimes frightened her, too, but he was useful around the place when he felt like being so.

  Having swallowed the last delicious morsel of bread and butter, she returned to her original remark. ‘I’ve been having second thoughts. About the Austwick woman. I think maybe I ought to give up the idea. She’s been getting too nosy.’

  ‘I could have told you she would,’ Dot responded tartly. Which in fact she had, several times, but Freya had chosen to brush aside the warnings. It cost her something now to admit that she’d been wrong: Dot had been antagonistic to Wyn Austwick from the start, more so to the very idea of the memoirs, but she herself had been impressed with the notion of seeing her achievements laid down in black and white, in an actual book with some of her best photographs included. She gave Dot a half-hearted version of the Look which, as always, was lost on Dot, who merely shrugged and said, ‘Send her packing, then.’

  ‘It’s not quite as easy as that …’

  ‘What do you mean? You haven’t been saying anything you shouldn’t, have you?’

  For a moment, she looked quite as inimical as Eddie at his worst and Freya shrank. ‘Of course I haven’t said anything, but she’s been poking around among my papers and I don’t like that. I’m not sure I ought to trust her.’

  ‘Let her poke around all she wants, there’s nothing to find.’ She paused. ‘Is there?’

  ‘No,’ Freya said.

  Dot continued the long, considering stare. ‘She won’t like getting the push. You’ve got yourself into this thing, so just you watch you don’t let your tongue run away with you.’ She blew a cloud of smoke across the table and Freya pointedly put the lid on the butter dish. She’d told Dot hundreds of times she didn’t like her smoking in the kitchen, but it made no difference.

  ‘It’s not only me, you know,’ she said, looking aggrieved.

  ‘Nobody else is going to say anything, not now, why should they?’

  Why, indeed? For years there’d been silence, nobody had said anything, not even to each other. Low Rigg Hall had become a house of secrets, a family together, but apart, each keeping their own counsel. None of them ever spoke of that time, but for Freya at least it was never absent from her thoughts. She had turned it over in her mind – the way things had happened and the way she wished things had happened – so often that everything had grown muddled and sometimes she wasn’t clear as to what the truth actually was. Added to that, her arthritis was troubling her so much she could think of little else and there were times when she didn’t need to pretend to be confused. And now – Wyn Austwick … She wished she’d never heard of the woman.

  ‘When she gets back from Benidorm or wherever, she’s going to talk to Elf.’

  ‘Elf?’ Dot asked sharply. ‘What on earth does she want with her?’

  ‘She says she can make a better-rounded book if she speaks to everyone connected with the family.’

  Dot snorted. ‘She won’t get anything out of Elf, I’ll guarantee that!’

  Freya did not feel reassured. You never knew, with that young woman. Her daughters thought she judged Elf too harshly, but she was so wilful. From the moment she’d been introduced into the family, all their lives had begun to alter. A little, changeling thing, even as a baby but a few months old, she’d disrupted the household as none of the other children had ever been allowed to. Temper tantrums, sulks, screams, disobedience … there was no controlling her, there never had been, she did exactly as she pleased, except with Dot, who wouldn’t tolerate such behaviour from anyone, despite having a soft corner for the girl. But Elf never showed much affection for anyone except Philip – and then, for a short time, Peter, though that hadn’t lasted. It had always been Philip who had the patience to make the sun shine again for her … though alas, now even Philip was persona non grata. As the girl grew up, Freya came to think of her as an evil spirit, but she couldn’t turn her out. And she’d grown out of all that nonsense now, of course, she was a controlled, self-possessed woman, who rarely lost her temper – but she never gave out her thoughts, either. And Freya had the feeling that they might be very dangerous indeed.

  ‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘I just hope you’re right, Dot.’

  The bank had a recently constructed car-park, carved ingeniously from a sloping, awkwardly shaped, vacant space left by the demolition of an old-established pork-butcher’s premises which had lost the battle with the supermarkets. Shrubs and trees softened its edges. Admonitory notices forbade parking there by non-customers of the bank but in spite of that it was always full when the bank itself was nearly empty. The parking in Steynton, like everywhere else, got worse every day, thought Polly.

  It was a crisp, sunny day and she was content to sit at the wheel for a while, watching the last of the leaves float down from the trees, occasionally lo
oking at her watch. It wasn’t like Ginny to be so late. That’s my privilege, Polly admitted with a wry grimace. They’d have finished serving lunches at the Woolpack if she didn’t arrive soon, and there was quite a bit they must talk about before Ginny was due back at her boutique – not least these so-called memoirs of their mother’s, which they wanted to discuss in peace and privacy. They’d also arranged to go and look at the house in Ingham’s Fold after a quick sandwich. Polly knew she could trust Ginny to give her a frank opinion, and she’d know just whether, or how, it could be fixed up to best advantage. That was one of the perks of having someone like Ginny, always so calmly certain of herself, as an elder sister.

  Where was she? Polly looked again at her watch and the dire possibility struck her … had the time they’d agreed to meet been twelve o’clock, not one? Oh damn, it was more than a possibility, the way she was about getting times right! Ginny would have waited, perhaps up to twenty minutes, but not more. Knowing Polly as she did, she’d have guessed the truth and given up and gone back to the shop. Polly thought she’d better go along to Roydholme and make her peace with her sister as best she could.

  She slid the key in the ignition and was about to start the engine when there was a tap on the nearside window. She swung round, reprieved, but no, it wasn’t Ginny, it was someone she’d hoped to avoid in future. Tom Richmond.

  He tapped again and, reluctantly, she wound down the window, whereupon he leaned his head in. ‘Mrs Winslow, spare me a moment?’

  Maybe it was just because she now knew he was a policeman that the words seemed to her to sound ominous, more like an order than a request, and her hackles rose. Nevertheless, she leaned across and opened the door.

  ‘I won’t keep you long.’ He slipped into the passenger seat and twisted to face her. ‘I only wanted to let you know that I’ve just moved back here to work, so it’s unrealistic to suppose we shall never meet – no, let me finish, please,’ he added hastily when he saw she might be about to intervene. ‘I appreciate what prompted you to say what you did the last time we met, but you’re wrong. What happened ten years ago is old history now. I don’t bear your family any particular grudge. There’s no reason that I can see why we shouldn’t be civil with each other.’

  She was trying not to remember her previous gauche reaction to finding out who he was. He was reasonable and pleasant, a tall man with thick, grey-blond hair and a lived-in face. No longer the stony-faced young man she’d glimpsed at the funeral of his ex-wife, grieving for his still missing daughter and perhaps for the wreck of his marriage as well, but an older, controlled man stamped with an air of authority and decision and a look of something else, not quite understood, in his eyes.

  She sighed and said, looking down at her hands, ‘I overreacted, I know. It’s just that – I have a daughter the same age as - as Beth was. I can’t know, but I can imagine – I think I can imagine – what you must have felt …’

  She could see him doubting that, but her sympathy was genuine, even if she did feel she might be going slightly over the top when she added, ‘You’ve every right to feel badly towards me. It was my family. She was in our care.’

  ‘Even if I felt that, it’s pointless blaming anyone. You needn’t be afraid of me, I’m not harbouring thoughts of revenge.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with a small, embarrassed laugh, ‘I hardly thought that. Well …’ She reached towards the ignition. ‘I appreciate what you say … I have to go, now.’

  ‘Another minute. Do you think we could meet – have a meal together somewhere? Talk?’

  The quick colour rushed to her face. She looked down at her hands on the steering wheel. ‘I – don’t really think that would be possible.’

  ‘Think about it. I’ll be in touch, but meanwhile – think about it.’

  Out of her rear-view mirror as she drove off, she saw him standing, watching her. Immobile, a dark expression on his face. She felt her stomach lurch – whether from fear, or something else, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  Richmond watched her drive off, despising himself for having exerted himself to win her over, simply because she might be useful in the future. He’d also lied to her when he said he bore no ill-will to any of her family. To any except the one who might have killed his daughter, he should have said.

  And yet, he’d surprised himself with that invitation to her to have a meal with him, though she’d been in his thoughts ever since meeting her in the coffee bar. He’d asked about her and found she was divorced, and like himself had only just come back here to live. He’d half expected her refusal, but he wasn’t giving up.

  He climbed into his own car and drove through Towngate to a short street half-way up the hill. He’d found somewhere to live - or rather, Charlie had found it for him. In Albert Street, one of a pair squeezed between the Bethel chapel and a corner shop. ‘It’s Molly Pickles as was that owns it,’ Charlie had told Richmond. ‘Her brother left it to her when he died.’

  Both small, Edwardian houses had been bought forty-five years ago by the corner shop’s owner as wedding gifts for his son and his daughter on their respective marriages. The shop had passed into other hands when he died and had many times changed ownership. It was presently run by a Pakistani couple, but Molly Greenwood, now widowed, had lived in her house ever since her father had given it to her on her wedding day, as had her brother, Leonard Pickles, in his, until his death a few months ago. He’d been a childless widower and had left his house to his sister. Molly, a comfortable, voluble lady, was glad enough to let it, furnished, short term, on Charlie Rawnsley’s recommendation, until her daughter made up her mind about marrying that dozy article of a boyfriend she was living with.

  Richmond felt himself in a time warp as he wandered around the tiny premises. Stone built, with sash windows. Two up, two down, kitchen and living-room below and the small second bedroom over the stairs made into a bathroom, it had been untouched since being furnished just after the war. A beige-tiled fireplace adorned with a row of relentlessly burnished brass ornaments, a three-piece suite in rust-coloured uncut moquette with crocheted chair-backs, and a highly polished square oak dining-table with four chairs round it and a matching sideboard. The only modern additions were a gas fire and a television set of overwhelming dimensions.

  The house made him feel like Gulliver in Lilliput. If he stood in the centre of the kitchen and stretched his arms out he could touch all four walls. You had to skirt the dining-table to get to the fire. He knew if he stayed much longer it would begin to give him the screaming habdabs but for the moment it would have to do. He’d thought his only problem would be keeping up the formidable standards of cleanliness – even the forty-odd-year-old gas cooker shone like new – but the problem was solved by Mrs Greenwood announcing that if he wanted her to she’d pop in every day and keep an eye on the place, as she’d been doing for her brother ever since his wife had died twelve years ago. Richmond didn’t relish what he suspected could be an invasion of his privacy but he didn’t doubt that his new landlady believed no man capable of doing anything other than bring in the coal and help with the washing up.

  ‘She’s a good lass, Molly,’ Charlie said. ‘Providing you don’t tell her owt you don’t want everybody in the northern union to know. Keeping her mouth shut’s never been her strong point.’

  Wyn Austwick made the preparations that were now habitual to her before going away. She’d always liked to see things nice and tidy, but when you owned your own place, such things became specially important. She looked round with a sense of pride and achievement. This cosy little bungalow in Cresswell Close was the best place she’d ever lived in. She might even, if things went as she planned and hoped, settle here permanently. She’d had enough of moving around, living in rented rooms, and relished being comfortably alone, with her own things round her, and having only herself to please. There might be something to look forward to in the future, after all. For an instant she had a qualm of misgiving about that and closed her eyes, but
it soon passed.

  She cleaned out the fridge, carefully turned off the gas, water and electricity, opened her case to put in the document she’d shown Tom Richmond. Better safe than sorry. She checked again that she had everything necessary, then zipped up the case. The door bell rang. That would be the taxi she’d ordered.

  Slipping her coat on, she gave a last quick look round to see that she’d missed nothing, then picked her case up, went into the hall and opened the front door. The last person she wanted to see was standing on the doorstep.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’

  ‘It won’t take long to explain, but we’d best go inside, unless you want all the neighbours to know.’

  ‘It won’t do any good,’ she retorted, ‘but now you’re here, you’d better come in and tell me what you want. Only for a minute, mind. I’m expecting a taxi.’

  7

  Councillor Bob Widdop wasn’t built for walking any further than needs must. The last time he’d walked this far had been from the concourse at Manchester airport to the jet waiting to take him on holiday to Madeira. He puffed valiantly on, several feet behind the trim form of his companion, Councillor Mrs Joanna Martin, as she walked lightly this Monday morning across the rough, uneven, rock-strewn ground of the old stone-quarry workings, overgrown now with grass and weeds and therefore all the more hazardous.

  ‘Come on, Bob,’ she encouraged over her shoulder. ‘Only another fifty yards, it won’t kill you.’

  Councillor Widdop seriously doubted this. All right for some. All right for him, if he’d been twenty years younger, the same age as Joanna, one of the new breed of councillors, one of these young, trendy mothers with a university degree and seemingly limitless energy. A share in the running of her husband’s information technology firm, three young children – and she still found time to sit on the council. A member of the public works committee, and relentless in pursuing causes. He toiled on, wishing he hadn’t had that heavy fry-up for his breakfast.