by Lorna Gray
“Do I? No, I’m fine thank you.” A lamp flared into life as he set a match to it and I blinked rapidly in the amber light, turning hastily to busy myself with hanging the saddle over a chair-back, desperate to avoid any kind of interrogation. “Must just be the cold air outside.”
My hands finished smoothing the old leather of the saddle flaps and then, not even thinking that I might be betraying a lie, I asked, “Did you know that was my favourite?”
He didn’t need to question my meaning. “I did. Your father taught it to me once, and I remember your delight as he played it.”
“Oh.” In my surprise my voice came out as a flat croak and I cursed myself for somehow managing to sound cross, even when I truly was not. Somehow I had turned to face him once more. “I mean—”
There was an impatient yell from next door. “Is anyone going to answer that telephone?”
Even as Freddy spoke, I heard it. A bizarrely distant ringing penetrated with all the subtlety of a bludgeon and the peculiar stillness between us abruptly vanished to the echo of the telephone’s shrill urgency.
“Oh!” I cried, feeling very strange in a way I couldn’t even begin to describe. Squeezing past the table and Matthew, I hurried across the room to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Hello?” came a quavering voice in return.
“Hello. This is Eleanor Phillips, who am I speaking to please?”
“Oh hello my dear.”
This really wasn’t going well. I waited for the person to continue and after a rather long pause the woman spoke again. “Oh, er, well. Mavis is here with me.”
Wondering whether it was too soon to be rude, I said, “That’s good. Can I help you?”
“It’s Mary Croft, dear. How are you?”
I was suddenly acutely aware of Matthew’s presence as he turned to lean against the doorframe, observing me while the remnants of the moment before still played behind his eyes.
“Hello Mrs Croft. I’m very well, thank you. How are you?” I said carefully, watching his face.
He gave a little start and, with a sudden intensity of concentration, moved closer to perch on the arm of the settee.
“Oh dear me,” said Matthew’s mother breathlessly, “I’ve just had the police round to see me again. They were very kind of course, but they were saying such horrible things; such awful things. Mavis – my sister, do you remember her? – wouldn’t let me stay on my own so she’s here too which is very kind of her. But I can’t put it out of my mind. Have you heard?”
Turning away so that Matthew could not see my face, I answered cautiously, “I’ve heard, Mrs Croft. I had the police here yesterday myself.”
“It’s just awful, isn’t it? They were asking me such questions; I hardly knew what to say. Of course my boy hasn’t got a history of violence! What a thing to ask! And then they were asking whether I’d seen or heard from him. It was just horrible.”
I made a sympathetic noise, feeling a deceitful fraud and barely knowing what I should say. Finally, I managed limply, “Yes it is terrible, they asked me something similar. Is there anything I can do?”
“Bless you, dear, you always were a lamb. But no, nothing, thank you.” She hesitated, then added, “I just feel so awful. It’s in the press and everything, and they’re saying such hideous things about him. They’re saying that there is enough evidence to hang him if they catch him, but I know he didn’t do it, he can’t have done. Not my Matthew. Why he’s the most kind, most wonderful…” There was something that sounded horribly like a sob.
“He’s … um, he always was nice, Mrs Croft.”
It sounded painfully lukewarm, even to me. I felt torn, desperately wishing to give her the comfort she needed but crippled by the embarrassment of being asked to speak in such personal terms of the man who had once introduced me to her as his future wife – hard enough in any circumstance but presently made infinitely worse by the knowledge that the very same man was at this moment listening intently to every single word that I said.
Matthew made some involuntary movement on the settee and I glanced back at him. He looked terrible, pale again, and the hard line of his mouth clearly betrayed his miserable frustration at the grief he was causing to his mother. His gaze flicked up to catch mine and seemed to understand what I was thinking, and the expression in his unhappy face appeared to only convey compassionate gratitude that I should be saying anything at all.
Shame hit me hard again and suddenly my selfish discomfort vanished. I said what I ought to have admitted days ago.
“I don’t believe what they’re saying for a moment, Mrs Croft. I don’t need your description of his good character to know that it’s just not possible. I know he is innocent.”
“You do?” All of a sudden, her voice brightened to show only a faint tremble of emotion. “Good girl, I’m so glad to hear that. You make me feel braver already. If he’s not entirely friendless, there’s hope yet, isn’t there? There has to be.”
“Of course there is,” I said crisply. “And he certainly isn’t friendless.”
She gave a soft little sigh that was terribly sad. “I’m really calling because I couldn’t rest without finding out whether he has been to see you. I know he can’t come here, but he was talking about you only the other week, about how he wanted to, although you might think he shouldn’t, and he was going to anyway; and I kind of hoped he might have done.”
Her words had blurred into a garbled rush and it took me a moment to decipher her meaning.
“Have I seen him?” I repeated slowly, looking at Matthew. His gaze lifted to hold mine and he gave a single shake of his head. “No, I’m sorry, Mrs Croft, I haven’t. But I’m sure he’s coping. He’s a very resourceful man, remember, and I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is.”
“Yes dear, I’m sure you’re right.” She sounded so painfully uncertain.
“I know I am. He’s quite capable of looking after himself, isn’t he? You can trust Matthew to not do anything foolish.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she repeated and then hesitated. “But they’re after my darling boy with dogs and guns … Guns!”
I thanked all the lucky stars in heaven and all the lesser saints and their cherubim that the report of him being shot did not appear to have reached her. “I’m sure he’s perfectly safe, you know,” I said decisively. “Any sensible person can see that he didn’t do it, it’s just the press blowing it all out of proportion. The police are being very thorough and I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it soon.”
“Do you think so?” She suddenly sounded much more cheerful. “Oh goodness, there’s the operator, no, I won’t have another three minutes. I’d better go, my dear. Do look out for him, won’t you? And if you happen to see him, tell him I…” The telephone went dead as she panicked and cut herself off.
I set the receiver back on its hook and slowly turned to face the room once more. I was somehow feeling incredibly exposed again, without even quite knowing why.
In his own face there was something of the expression that had met me that morning, something like caution and vaguely wary. He said quietly, “This doesn’t seem to have been said enough recently; but thank you.”
“She’s all right, Matthew. No, really she is. Her sister is with her, and she sounded fine. I think she just wanted to do her bit to counter the newspaper reports.”
“The hacks have taken hold of it, have they?” He made a fist and then forced himself to release it, looking suddenly so utterly defeated that I forgot restraint for the moment and went over to cover his determinedly relaxed hand briefly with mine.
“It’ll work out,” I said as he looked up and gave me a small lopsided smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “It won’t be long before we’ve found the truth and then everything will be just as it was.”
“Yes,” he confirmed and his hand flexed in his lap again.
“And besides,” I added, folding my arms and staring regally down my nose at him. “I won’t let them hurt yo
u. They’ll have to get past me first.”
This feeble attempt at a bit of silver-screen bravado did at last have the desired effect and finally I saw a more convincing smile pluck at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, suddenly enthusiastic. “I haven’t told you about my day! I found out something which will cheer you up. Can we have tea and I’ll tell you about it? Currently I’m too weak from hunger to get my thoughts into anything resembling a logical order.”
“Wait for me! Don’t say anything interesting until I’m there!” Freddy’s voice came as a wild shout from the other room.
Matthew’s smile suddenly widened to real warmth as he climbed to his feet to move past me towards the fire. “You two really brighten an otherwise dreary existence, do you know that?”
“What with all the yelling, unpredictable outbursts and everything?”
He laughed as he lifted the lid of the pan. “Particularly with those. They remind me I’m alive.”
Rabbit stew proved to be remarkably tasty if a little gamey and it was only as we set about our second helpings that I was finally able to spare a thought for the day’s events.
“Their names are Davey and Simon Turford,” I announced, smugly dipping a piece of bread in the remains of the sauce before waggling it at them, “and they are brothers. I also suspect that they are from Yorkshire, although the accent is too diluted to determine which part.”
“How on earth did you discover all that?” Matthew’s incredulity made me laugh. Freddy was staring at me with new-found respect.
I quickly told them of my adventure, glossing carefully over Simon Turford’s unpleasant allusions for Freddy’s sake, although I suspected that the other was not fooled by my light-hearted tone. Any particular upset for me was long past anyway, and the stupefied silence which followed the conclusion of my tale was worth a thousand such brutish run-ins.
“Well,” said Matthew after a long pause. “That certainly gives us something to go on.”
“It does?” Freddy asked.
“Why yes, Freddy, it gives us a lot. We now know their names, that they’re northern men – which may tell us something in itself – and that they’re here with the express permission of Sir William's Estate. That alone must be quite significant.”
“Hicks didn’t seem very comfortable with ordering them about though.” I sat back, finally allowing the very undignified feelings of triumph to begin to fade. “I’m not sure what that means, but I feel that it means something. He almost seemed afraid.”
“Perhaps they don’t answer to him. Could they answer straight to Sir William?”
“You’re wondering whether he was the man on the other end of the telephone?”
“Whoever it was, he was clearly the boss of them. Simon, who definitely isn’t an Irishman as we now know,” a nod in my direction, “was reasonably polite and even called him ‘sir’ at one point. Although I can’t quite see what would motivate Sir William to require that one of his own tenants be murdered.”
“But then we already know Jamie tried to tell you something he shouldn’t. It must have been a pretty terrible secret to push them to murder.”
“You think so? Perhaps Jamie was simply messing about with his usual shady dealings and got on the wrong side of them, or rather, their boss. After all – as I think you’ve already experienced, our two Turford brothers are pretty rough customers and I’m not sure it would take much to make them violent.”
“Yes, but it is a big step up from violence to murder, Matthew, really it is. Think about it – someone can be bullied into silence easily enough, but to deliberately order their killing is an entirely different matter. You’ve got to deal with the body and not to mention you then have the police crawling all over the place, poking their noses in to just the thing you were desperately trying to keep secret.”
“So it is something big.”
His wooden insistence left us mute and we sat for a minute, dismally meditating.
“There’s something else too.” The sudden sound of Matthew’s voice made me and Freddy both jump.
“There is?”
He smiled as the boy and I spoke in unison. “Yes. All this time I’ve been thinking that they’re just hanging about at the farm to see if I turn up again, but that’s illogical. Why wait there, exactly where I know they’ll be, when they could be looking for me at any number of other more likely places?”
“But surely that’s the point? With John …” I felt a strange hesitation to use his name again. ”With John and his men looking under every stone for you, and the police searching everywhere else, there’s little use in their trailing about the countryside as well. You’ve been back once already, who’s to say you wouldn’t again?”
“True. Damn, I hadn’t thought of that.” He thought for a moment. “But what if … what if we’re going about this all wrong. What if it truly doesn’t have anything to do with me at all? Perhaps what we should actually be trying to work out is what’s keeping them there in the first place, I mean specifically there. After all, something must have been going on long before I stumbled onto the scene. Yes, I know they might be on the lookout for me, but what if that is secondary to their primary motive?”
“Which is …?”
“To guard something.”
“What like? Treasure?”
A laugh. “I knew that would get your attention, Freddy. But for the sake of argument, yes; why not treasure, although drugs or restricted foodstuffs are equally possible. You did mention a secret: Maybe they’re not waiting for me at all, maybe they’re guarding the farm from me. Hicks told you they were guarding the crime scene – perhaps he wasn’t wrong.”
I mulled this over carefully. “So you are involved.”
“Well, me and anyone else who happens to be riding by,” he corrected with a smile. “I think they can safely presume that after trying to pin his murder on me, I might take a certain degree of personal interest in exposing them. The silly thing about it is that all they’ve achieved by bullying you is to draw more attention to themselves.”
“Tea,” I said firmly into the pause.
Freddy entertained us while the kettle boiled with excited musings on what the treasure might be, if it could really be gold and whether they might notice if we took some of it. “We’d hand the rest in to the police, of course,” he finished piously.
“Of course,” confirmed Matthew dryly.
My fingers accidentally touched his as I handed him the milk. It was only a simple everyday sort of contact but even so it made me give an involuntary flinch as though my skin had been singed. He only seemed to grimace a little as he took his hand away.
“You mentioned Sir William, what of him?” I asked, focusing very hard on my role as his assistant.
Matthew smiled wryly, perfectly ignorant of the nameless disquiet in my idiotic mind. “Well, he’s a true brother of the Colonel – believes he rules by ‘Divine Right’ or some such nonsense, doesn’t he? I passed him in the street just after I was demobbed. There I was walking home for only the second time in just over six years with my kit bag in my hand, feeling disorientated because even though you expect time to have stood still, it most definitely hasn’t, and he practically drove the car over me yelling ‘Out of the way, boy!’ as if I were still fourteen years old and stealing apples from his tree. Only I wasn’t fourteen, I was thirty-three and pretty tough looking with my close-cropped hair and battle-worn scowl.”
“I didn’t know you lived in Miserden!” Freddy gave an excited squeak. “How come we’ve never happened to see you?”
Matthew shifted uncomfortably in his chair and flicked a little glance towards me. I found a remarkable interest in examining the dregs of my tea.
“Oh!” Freddy suddenly turned beetroot. He coughed, “Ahem. Anyway, what were you saying about Sir William?”
Matthew picked up the thread very smoothly. “Trying not to show my prejudices here, I think I can safely say that Sir William is a stereotyp
ical example of a rich man too much used to having what he wants, all silken charm to his friends and a bully to everyone else. That being said, I’m not sure I'd go so far as to claim I've witnessed any true villainy – any thoughts, Eleanor?”
“I'm sorry, but I feel duty bound at this point to admit that much as I'd like to lend evidence to your assessment I've only ever personally encountered the neighbourly side of the man, with particular reference to the steadiness of his attentions to my father. There are rumours that the Langton Family is struggling financially, but really, who isn't at the moment? I suppose if their situation were particularly bad, as the head of the family Sir William might take it upon himself to do something drastic. I certainly wouldn't like to trust to his general benevolence if something occurred to make him truly angry, particularly if whatever I'd done was making claims upon his public standing, but even then, it's his brother that has the reputation for decisive action, not him.”
“Hmmm,” was all Matthew said in reply. Then, “Well, we’re not going to get anywhere unless we know what it is that the Turford brothers are trying to hide.”
I looked up sharply, suddenly wary of what he was hinting at. “You’re not going up there again?”
“I’ll help,” Freddy immediately piped up.
Matthew caught my glance. “No, Freddy. Thank you but there’s no need. I was just getting carried away.”
“Oh.” Freddy looked instantly crestfallen, clearly seeing his chances of fame and fortune vanishing before his eyes.
“Oh indeed,” I said firmly. “Time for bed I think, young man.”
Freddy whined. “Not fair.”
Matthew laughed. “Off to bed with you. I’ve got a special task for you in the morning, anyway.”
“Really?” Freddy brightened immediately.
“Yes, really. Now goodnight.”
Disappointed to be dispatched off to bed like a child, Freddy trudged his way upstairs, huffing and puffing as he went and I watched him go with affectionate amusement; he really was a lovely boy. But then Matthew must have shifted in his chair because all of a sudden I was acutely aware that we were alone, and the realisation was absolutely, overwhelmingly terrifying.
