Echoes of Silence

by Marjorie Eccles

  Lifting her coat from the rail in the hall, she couldn’t resist looking at herself in the mirror. What she saw made her catch her breath in surprise, while a smile spread slowly across her face. Her hair, newly washed, hadn’t yet gone lank and greasy as it would later, the ear-rings danced, the stained-glass colours of the cardigan gave her a little colour. She’d even put on a dab of lipstick.

  She slipped on her coat, pulled the door to and started down the path with an unaccustomed spring in her step.

  It was then that she heard the noise coming from the garage.

  ‘He must have come home when I was in the bath,’ Sonia wept, sobbing into the already sodden ball of tissues crumpled in her hand. ‘But why? Why?’

  ‘Sonia.’

  Polly held the other woman’s thin frame in warm, loving arms and tried to control her own shock and – yes, outrage. Peter had opted out, yet again. For, although sticking a hosepipe from the car exhaust in through the car window was a fearful – and in one way, courageous – thing for him to have done, it was not unbelievable. He hadn’t even left a note. To do that to poor Sonia - on her birthday, too! When it had evidently been so important to her to share it with Peter: the dining-table beautifully set for two, and Sonia, smelling strongly of Harriet’s Body Shop bath salts, with her obviously newly washed hair hanging over a face now swollen with tears. Still wearing the unaccustomed ear-rings and the long jacket Ginny had sent which, even in the state she was in, did wonders for her.

  ‘How could she, Polly?’

  ‘She?’ Sonia, hardly knowing what she was saying, obviously meant ‘he’. ‘Who can say what he was feeling, love?’ Polly murmured, pouring more tea.

  ‘I don’t mean Peter! I mean how could she have been so stupid as to make that idiotic confession? If she hadn’t said anything, no one would even have thought of suspecting Peter! That’s what made him do it. How could he face going through all that again?’

  Polly had never heard Sonia so vehement, never before heard her blame a single soul for anything.

  Yet another knock on the door. Another sympathiser, no doubt, another kind offer to help. The telephone and the door bell had never stopped ringing: neighbours, friends, parishioners - Mrs Lumb the Leveller from the Old Vicarage offering to preside over the MU carol concert, Eva Spriggs, the busybody from across the road, bringing a delicate sponge cake … she was answering the door now, round of body, warm of heart, not averse to being involved in the drama of the situation, but eager to help, if only by acting as doorkeeper. It was impossible not to be impressed by the warmth and sympathy coming from all corners, equally impossible not to notice the sorrow was for Sonia, rather than Peter. Not ‘poor Sonia’ at all, with her unassuming and compliant nature, but good, kind-hearted, hard-working Sonia, respected and evidently loved in the parish.

  Viewing her in this different light, Polly acknowledged and admired the dignity with which she pulled herself together as Eva Spriggs ushered in more callers.

  The police, of course, had had to be involved, and it was with little surprise but a quick leap of something she didn’t quite recognise that Polly saw Tom Richmond. He was not alone. Accompanying him was a bulkier man, towering above him, though Richmond himself was over six foot: Superintendent Farr, an avuncular figure, with far from avuncular eyes. Surely a suicide didn’t warrant a superintendent?

  Richmond seemed well on the way to becoming a permanent fixture in their lives, and would be until … Until what? Until Wyn Austwick’s murderer had been found? For longer than that, she knew. He would probe deeper and ever deeper … until he had successfully proved that Beth Richmond hadn’t been killed by her mother, Isobel.

  Polly had never believed that Isobel had killed Beth. She supposed no one ever wanted to admit, even in the teeth of the evidence, that someone they’d known and liked could have been capable of such a wicked thing as murder. But she felt as though she knew it in her bones as true that Isobel could never have killed Beth. Or even if, by some outlandish, freakish, chance, she had been the unwitting cause of Beth dying, she would never have concealed her child in that way.

  She had been such a gentle soul, in danger of spoiling Beth by giving in to her rather than by chastising her. She scolded the little girl occasionally, of course she did, what mother didn’t? But not so very often, for Beth hadn’t been an especially difficult child – not when compared with the disturbed, violently antisocial children Polly taught. A bit rebellious, yes, disobedient from time to time, but nothing major, nothing like as much as she might have been, considering her life had been screwed up through no fault of her own, and that she hadn’t yet adjusted to the changes. She’d been eight years old, for God’s sake.

  The fact remained that someone had killed her.

  When it had happened, ten years ago, Polly had been spending a crazy weekend with a group of friends, after the wedding of two of them. The wedding had taken place in a village on the Cornish coast, as nearly off the end of England as you could get, so there was no chance of driving home the same night, just supposing any of them had been in any condition to drive. The group had taken a rented cottage for the weekend, meant to sleep six. Ten – or maybe more – had crammed in, occupying chairs, floors and sofas, carrying on the celebrations. One of the chaps was a stranger to Polly, a loose-limbed Adonis with floppy dark hair and laughing blue eyes and no moral conscience. Three months later, before this last was apparent, they were married.

  While Polly was being swept off her feet by Tony Winslow in a Cornish village, sense and sensibility blotted out by his charm, the sombre events in Steynton were being played out. She hadn’t known about it until she’d got back to college, when an urgent telephone call had brought both joy and disaster – on the one hand, news of the birth of twins to Ginny and Leon, and on the other of Beth’s disappearance.

  She drove home to Yorkshire the following day, ditching all her classes and commitments, battling up from London through increasingly treacherous weather, cursing her decision to drive when she found the M62 closed because of snow, and that she was being redirected miles and miles out of her way, along roads hardly less navigable. Low Rigg had still been in an uproar when she finally got there: Peter being questioned by the police, Isobel, prostrate with grief and illness. Birth, and what eventually turned out to be death, happening within a couple of days – Ginny’s delight and happiness overshadowed and dimmed by the appalling tension, the endless wait for news of Beth that never came. Placid and undemonstrative though Ginny outwardly appeared towards her boisterous little boys, Polly had always sensed that the twins’ birth at that particular, poignant moment had made them doubly precious in her eyes, a brush of angel wings across the darkness and misery of those long January days, the miracle of new life in some way making sense of the unutterable sadness and pain of a child’s death.

  For Beth had to be dead by then. Hope for her had dwindled, though the search had continued, hampered by the appalling weather. And afterwards had come the endless questioning, the suspicions … Sonia was right. Peter wouldn’t have been capable of facing up to all that again.

  She was wearing swirling layers of warm fabric, a velvet, printed waistcoat, and long boots, yet she clasped her arms across her chest, hugging herself, feeling as if she’d never be warm again.

  The big superintendent hadn’t stayed long after all, had been replaced by a young woman in a sheepskin jacket named Sally. She was kind and firm with Sonia and had persuaded her to take the sedative prescribed by the doctor and to lie down. She’d stayed on with Tom Richmond to manage the rest of the business, but he’d eventually sent her back to the station and was now seated in the kitchen with Polly, mugs of muddy liquid in front of them, made from a cheap, instant coffee powder, all she’d been able to find.

  They sat uncomfortably wedged either side of a pine table with integral benches, reminding Richmond of those in a set-aside picnic area off a motorway. She picked up her mug and held it with her hands clasped round it, seeking it
s warmth, not drinking. Richmond had already manfully downed most of the repellent brew, which had at least had the one virtue of being hot.

  ‘So that’s it,’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I suppose this wraps it all up?’ He looked at her without answering. She swallowed and went on, ‘What Peter’s done – to my untutored way of thinking, it seems tantamount to a confession … Perhaps you were right all along to suspect him … Perhaps my mother really did know the truth.’

  ‘I wish it were as simple as that.’

  Her eyes grew wide as she digested this. ‘It wasn’t suicide?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, no. We’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report but I don’t think there’s much doubt he took his own life.’

  ‘Oh! Then … then, you do think he could have murdered Wyn Austwick – that it wasn’t necessarily true what he told Sonia, that he spent the time walking.’

  ‘Walking,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s possible, you know. Very typical, something he’d done ever since he was a boy. For miles and miles, over the moors. Alone. But …’ She was dismayed to find her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, this is rough on you.’

  ‘It’s rough on us all.’ She took a determined gulp from her mug, swallowed it down. ‘Do you know what I keep thinking? I keep asking myself how he could do it when he believed in the after-life. How could he – how can anyone who believes that – be sure the agony, the punishment, will end, that it won’t just go on and on?’

  He was very quiet.

  ‘Do you know what I keep thinking?’ he answered eventually. ‘That you’d be better with a nip of whisky than that coffee. And then getting off home. Or rather the other way round, if you have to drive. Mrs Denshaw won’t be awake for some time, and your sister’s coming later, isn’t she?’

  ‘I have to pick the children up from school, anyway. You’re right, this coffee’s disgusting.’ She picked up both mugs, rose and poured what was left down the sink before rinsing them.

  When she turned round, he saw that her face had taken on a look of determination. She leaned back, her hands on either side of her, gripping the edge of the sink. ‘You asked me the other day if I knew anything about Elf’s origins. I don’t know why you wanted to know, and these are other people’s secrets – but if it will help to clear up all this mess … You implied Philip was her father. Well, I think he probably is.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘I don’t actually know, not for certain. But I’ve been putting two and two together and yes, it explains quite a lot. I suspect Elf knows – it may seem incredible to you that the rest of us have never been told, but you see, my aunt, Philip’s wife, was still alive when Elf was born. She’d been ill for a long time – but twenty-eight years ago, people weren’t so accommodating about that sort of thing. Philip is rather strait-laced as well, and he’s always been very sensitive to what people think about him.’

  ‘Your mother must have been very understanding to take in his illegitimate child as one of her own family,’ he said ambiguously.

  ‘There were strings attached.’ She came to sit down again, and some time passed as she gathered her thoughts. Then she explained what the family had learned from Philip a few nights ago, about their father leaving no money and Philip stepping into the breach with his offer. ‘He didn’t actually say so, but I think taking Elf in was a condition of the agreement. You know, it really wasn’t a bad way out of a very awkward solution.’

  Especially for Philip Denshaw, thought Richmond. ‘Thank you for telling me that.’

  ‘I might wish I hadn’t, later.’

  She smiled ruefully but the way she’d said that made him sure that there were still gaps in this story she hadn’t filled in. He had a feeling she might, if he gave her time, that the results would be worth his patience. Why he should feel so convinced that this confirmation of Elvira Graham’s parentage had very definite bearings on his own child’s death was something he kept asking himself. So far he’d found no satisfactory answer.

  He needed to talk with some person who’d been there at the time, someone unbiased and able to keep calm in the face of crisis as Philip Denshaw seemingly had. Aware that he was a man with his own secrets, and not apparently inclined to divulge them, Richmond nevertheless determined to talk to him.

  Before he left, he tore a page from his notebook and scribbled his home number. ‘Any time you need me,’ he said.

  16

  Steynton never quite went to sleep. A busy main road ran through the valley town, bearing heavy traffic towards the motorway, even throughout the night. Along the road were public houses and a Chinese takeaway and a disco that stayed open late to cater for the local night life. But at half-past nine that night there was little going on. The road had been kept cleared and gritted, and snowploughs and traffic had pushed the snow into dirty heaps on the pavement edges. It was very cold. More snow was expected and, apart from carefree youth, not many people were prepared to face the prospect of getting themselves stuck in their cars or involved in a pile-up on the icy roads, preferring the comfort of their own firesides on a night such as this.

  Richmond saw that the lights were still on in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel, however, and its car-park well filled. The members of the Steynton Choral Society must be a dedicated lot, or perhaps better equipped for driving in these conditions than he was, he reflected, drawing his own car up alongside a four-wheel drive vehicle and spotting several more in the vicinity.

  For the first time in his life, Philip Denshaw felt glad that one of his musical evenings was nearly over.

  The rehearsal for Judas Maccabeus had been going for nearly two hours, and the rafters rang in the old chapel where choirs had sung with zeal and gusto for generations. It had been built in the days of religious fervour to accommodate a congregation of three hundred, with an overflow in the gallery. Since then, varnished pine had given way to white paint, the walls were now claret colour, the central heating had been updated and the hard wooden pews provided with cushions. People no longer saw the need to equate religion with discomfort. But they still loved to sing.

  Sheer love of music, a tradition of lusty hymn-singing that had been passed down through the generations, was inherent in this choir; they were not afraid to raise their voices in full-throated, joyful harmony, quite unlike the soft cooing of a Welsh male voice choir, say, but just as seductive in its own way.

  Tonight they were not singing as well as they might: a missed note here, one voice a beat behind, a ragged finish to a phrase, perhaps infected by his own inner unease.

  ‘Stop! That’s it for tonight. Next Tuesday at eight. Thank you all very much.’

  Surprise showed on all faces. Ten minutes before time, when it was usually ten minutes after, or even twenty! Especially when there was only a fortnight to go before the final performance, with all the usual last-minute hitches and complications: winter colds and coughs, a virus among the sopranos. One of the specially booked principals down with laryngitis – or temperament - and her understudy, a young woman who sang like an angel, not wishing her ill but daring to hope …

  But Philip Denshaw, usually a rigid taskmaster, had declared the rehearsal over and, remembering the road conditions outside, most of them were willing enough to depart. Scores were shuffled together, outdoor clothes donned, farewells exchanged, and Philip, at last left alone, gathered his own things together and felt for his car keys as he walked to the back of the chapel.

  A stranger sat in one of these pews at the back. How long had he been sitting there, listening? There was a familiarity about him, a face half-remembered. He stood up as Philip approached him. ‘DCI Richmond,’ he said, offering a police warrant card for inspection.

  Beth’s father. Seen as a grainy newspaper photo, ten years ago, never completely forgotten. Philip felt his pulses beating, the blood draining away from his heart, then the heat rising in his face.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he
managed, calmly enough.

  ‘Wonderful singing,’ commented the policeman, waving a hand to indicate that Philip should sit down. Philip nodded acknowledgement and took a seat at the end of the pew opposite, turning to face Richmond, the aisle between them. Richmond told him he was investigating the murder of Wyn Austwick.

  ‘Then you’ve come to the wrong place. I didn’t have anything to do with that book my sister-in-law was having published.’

  ‘Mrs Austwick was a member of your choir here, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was. But I don’t know all the members personally. She was just one of the contraltos, pleasant voice, that’s all I knew about her. Except that she wasn’t very trustworthy – about turning up, I mean. Missed a lot of rehearsals.’

  Richmond could see that damned her in Denshaw’s eyes as not worthy of more attention, he made it clear she had impinged on him as nothing more than a voice, but Richmond pressed on with his questions. He found no further enlightenment. Philip insisted he had never met Wyn Austwick outside the choir rehearsals, had no idea where she lived. He hadn’t even known about the book she was writing for Freya until after her death. ‘Freya’s death,’ he added.

  ‘Distressing, two family bereavements, so close together like that, Mrs Denshaw, then her son. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you, yes, it is upsetting. You get used to it as you get older, folk dropping off one by one, but Freya was younger than me. Makes you think.’

  He had to be well on in his seventies, but he looked hale and hearty enough at the moment, plump and pink-cheeked, his sparse white hair scraped horizontally across a bald pate. You could never tell how death affected people, however. And intimations of mortality must inevitably be strong after losing two close relatives in such quick succession.

  ‘Must do. Not yet forty, your nephew, I’m told. An untimely end. It’s always disturbing when something like that happens, when you can’t see a reason.’