Cold in the Earth

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Of course I do, Sister. Thank you – could you get a message to my registrar to carry on? And find some paper for Inspector Fleming?’

  She fetched some, handed it over with the air of one offering a cup of strychnine, then left in high dudgeon. Fleming rapidly sketched out a rough letterboard and they went back along the corridor to Jake Mason’s room.

  His eyes, which had been closed, opened as they came in. Rosamond went back to her usual seat and took his hand while the consultant stood at the end of the bed with Fleming, holding the paper, beside him.

  ‘Hi, Jake!’ he greeted him. ‘How’s it going? We’ve got an idea here we want to run past you – don’t let it bug you, now, but we thought we’d give it a shot. Do you reckon you could blink your eyes, if I asked you?’

  There was a long, long pause. Fleming was holding her breath; she guessed the others were too. Then, very deliberately, Jake blinked.

  ‘Could be an accident,’ Mbele cautioned. ‘Jake, let’s kick off with one blink for “yes”, two blinks for “no”. Can you hear me?’

  Blink. Rosamond caught her breath on a half-sob.

  ‘Am I doing a handstand?’

  No hesitation. Blink, blink.

  Mbele laughed. ‘Brilliant! Hey, man, we’ve got us a conversation here!’

  ‘Oh, Jake,’ Rosamond said softly, tears standing in her eyes.

  ‘Now, this lady here has a paper with letters. She’ll point, and if there’s something you want to say blink at the letters that spell it. Sound good?’

  Blink.

  ‘OK – but whenever you get tired just blink twice and we’ll pack it in. Right?’

  Blink.

  ‘Maybe we should start with a question. Rosamond, is there something you want to ask?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said very firmly, and moved to stand at the foot of the bed while Mbele and Fleming looked on, smiling, both perhaps expecting something very personal. Rosamond surprised them.

  ‘Jake, is there something that’s been worrying you?’

  Blink.

  ‘Something to do with Diana Warwick’s death?’

  Blink.

  ‘Did you want to tell the police?’

  Even Fleming could see that the eyes, moving from side to side, looked agitated. Blink.

  Mbele stepped forward, frowning. ‘I don’t want him distressed. Jake, shall we stop this?’

  Blink, blink.

  Rosamond’s eyes did not move from her husband’s face, that immobile, drooping mask which could not reflect disquiet within. ‘This is Inspector Fleming, Jake. I told you about her; she’s a good person. Is there something you need to tell her?’

  Blink.

  With a glance at the doctor, who shrugged his consent, Fleming held up the paper, her hands not entirely steady. She pointed to the letters slowly, one at a time; there was no response under she reached ‘I’.

  Blink.

  It was quicker next time; he blinked at ‘B’, then all the way through the alphabet to ‘U’. It was a slow process.

  Mbele had started jotting down the letters Fleming called out as Rosamond watched Jake’s eyes for his responses. Suddenly he said, ‘Hold it, this makes sense.’ His eyes were wide with shock, the whites startling against the black skin. ‘It says, “I buried Di.”’

  ‘It’s not really possible to sue the police for wrongful arrest at this stage, Mrs Mason. At least, not until it has been established that the arrest is, in fact – er – wrongful.’

  The solicitor, who was nervously fiddling with a paper clip, was a small, bald, meek-looking man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a prominent Adam’s apple which was going up and down like a malfunctioning lift as he swallowed convulsively.

  Across the desk Brett Mason was leaning forward in a threatening pose, her pale green eyes bulging with fury and frustration. ‘But I told you! You have my word that these allegations are totally without foundation of any sort. Conrad to behave like that? The idea is absurd.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ His voice squeaked and he coughed to clear it. ‘But this is something you could only pursue at some later date, when matters have been resolved in your son’s favour. Do I gather he has been charged with assault?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re trying to pretend he murdered that wretched girl whose body they found—’

  He shrank back in his seat in horror. ‘Mrs Mason, our firm does not touch criminal cases. I’m sure your son will have his own lawyer—’

  She laughed contemptuously. ‘Oh yes! I saw him in court this morning. Some youth with a shock of hair and sideburns! Conrad seems to think he’s extremely well thought of, but he doesn’t convince me! I shall hold you personally responsible for getting him out of prison and home where he belongs – forthwith!’

  ‘But, Mrs Mason—’

  She rose. ‘I want to hear no buts from you. Your father, who acted for my own dear father all his life, would have put his foot down. I expect you to do the same.’

  Head held high, she made her exit, ignoring his bleated protests. She paused only to say to the receptionist, on her way out, ‘Your employer is a fool and an incompetent,’ before slamming the door too soon to hear the girl’s muttered, ‘Tell me something I didn’t know.’

  Outside in the street, Brett paused uncertainly. What was she to do now? Despite her bluster, she knew she had achieved nothing, and there was nothing else she could think of to do. She had no one who could take charge and assure her that everything would happen just as she wished. She was helpless, unprotected . . . She could feel the tension building which was usually released in one of her petites crises.

  But who then would sympathise, comfort her? Strangers would only stare, might even have her taken away, as poor Papa had been once . . .

  Brett drew a deep breath, clenched her fists tight to control herself. She owed it to Conrad, to Jake, even, to look after herself when they weren’t there to do it. Blinking away tears of self-pity, she looked round and saw that she was outside the Copper Kettle tea-room.

  It wasn’t dark yet, but inside lamps were lit and there was a fire in the old grate at one end of the room. There were small round tables covered with yellow cloths and set with green china and pots of daffodils. At two or three of them, women with shopping bags at their feet were laughing and talking.

  What was there, waiting for her at home? Max, unspeakable Max, who had waylaid her to taunt her about Conrad’s misfortune, asking her what she was planning to do today for her jailbird son. She hadn’t told him, of course, but she hated the thought of going back with the knowledge of failure, back to the cold silence of her flat. There was the tea-room, a haven of comfort . . .

  She turned the highly polished brass handle. The bell above the door jangled as she went in and settled herself at a table close to the fire, lovingly eyeing the home-baking under its glass domes on the counter.

  ‘A pot of tea, please,’ she ordered. ‘And a slice of mocha cake. To start with.’ She could almost taste the soothing, rich, chocolatey smoothness of the buttercream already.

  The cosiness enveloped her like a comfort blanket. She picked up a glossy magazine from a basket on a side-table; they wouldn’t close until half past five so it was a nice long time before she would have to face up to reality again and make the dismal journey back to Chapelton.

  It was beginning to get dark. Laura was so cold it didn’t matter that it was still colder now; even her mind felt numbed and clumsy with it. She thought she might have slept but she didn’t know any more.

  She had dreaded Max’s return at first, but now she could only think of what would happen if he didn’t come to put a swift end to all this. What if she was left here, cold and in pain, to suffer a lingering death? She kept straining her ears for sounds of movement but there was nothing but the muttering of the wind and a rustling in the hedges beyond the walls that confined her.

  She had lived through a lifetime in her mind since the stone grated across this morning: her quiet childhood, her adolescence
clouded by the loss of her sister, her failed marriage, her parents’ deaths, the awful events of these past days . . .

  A sad, sad, summary. If this was indeed the end – and what else could it be? – what had she made of her life? She’d helped people, she knew that, and of course there had been the good times too. But in talking to Marjory Fleming about her work and her home and her family, even as she agonised over her problems, Laura had glimpsed a sort of quiet joy in a busy, cheerful, rewarding life that she had never known and now, unless a miracle happened, never would.

  The wind was whistling through the gap below the stone now, a melancholy sound. Tears began once more to spill silently down her cheeks.

  Marjory Fleming emerged from the hospital and stood outside for a moment, almost in a state of shock. It was dark and a brisk wind was snatching at her clothes and ruffling her hair. She ran her hand through it mechanically, then buttoned up her jacket as she headed for the car park.

  Her brain was teeming. Such an avalanche of information – but was it evidence? The uncertainty had nagged at her all through the last two hours.

  It had been an extraordinary experience. Several times Mr Mbele had intervened, but each time the agonised movements of Jake’s eyes and his swift negative to any suggestion of leaving it for another day had forced the consultant to concede that it was probably more harmful to stop him than to allow him to go on.

  At first, it had been painfully slow, disjointed words and phrases to be pieced together. ‘Max – spoiled – wrong’ had followed ‘I buried Di’ and ‘he killed’. But as the stumbling process went on, Rosamond, ashen-faced but rigidly controlled, began to help him, intuitively supplying words, asking questions, making statements so that he only had to signal ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Mbele had taken over pointing to letters when it was needed to allow Fleming to take notes.

  But what sort of status could this information possibly have in legal terms? Any half-competent defence could drive a coach and horses through it.

  Yet in her own mind Fleming was sure now, without any doubt, that she knew what had happened to Diana Warwick. Max, unstable and dangerously indulged, had found himself humiliated and, as he saw it, displaced in his father’s attentions by a beautiful and headstrong young woman who had seen no need to pander to his sensitivities. Her death and its manner – a mockery of Jake’s obsession with his bulls – was Max’s psychopathic revenge on them both.

  He had left Chapelton that weekend, leaving a note for his father telling him Di had gone ‘where you won’t find her’. Jake spelled out the phrase in full.

  ‘Did you know then what he had done?’ Rosamond’s voice was perfectly steady; Fleming could only marvel at her self-control. There was a long pause, then the slow, definite closing and opening of the haunted eyes.

  He had searched the farm. It took him two weeks to find her in the plinth in the maze, under the stone slab with the Minotaur inscription on the top – ‘Smell,’ he had spelled out, the horror somehow intensified by the enforced lack of emotion.

  For the first time, Rosamond was noticeably shaken. But she went on, ‘Why did you move her? To give her a decent burial?’

  Blink.

  Mindful of Mbele’s watchful presence, Fleming had said nothing. Now she took the risk. ‘Why didn’t you inform the police, Mr Mason?’ she asked gently.

  Jake’s eyes closed; Mbele moved forward uneasily, but then they opened again.

  There was agonised pity on his wife’s face. ‘You couldn’t do it to your darling Max, could you? And – and you blamed yourself.’

  Blink. The eyes slid to the letterboard again.

  ‘Something else?’

  She could not interpret this time. The words had to be painfully spelled out. ‘N-o f-a-m-’

  ‘No family?’

  Blink.

  For once, Rosamond didn’t understand. Fleming had to step in. ‘I think Diana Warwick had told him she had no family. So there would be no one to look for her, no one to mourn her.’ She did not add, ‘She was lying.’

  Blink. The eyelids were drooping now and Mbele stepped forward decisively. ‘That’s it. You’ve said all you need to, Jake. It’s off your conscience.’

  But he wouldn’t close them, looking again to the board. ‘R-o-s,’ he spelled out. ‘L-o-v-e. S-o-r-r-y.’

  The weary eyes closed. Rosamond watched him for a moment, her face working, then walked blindly past the others, out of the room.

  Fleming hesitated. ‘Should I go after her?’

  Mbele shook his head. ‘She’s a very private person. Leave her to cope in her own way.’

  As Fleming gathered her notes together, he had asked, curiously, ‘And where do you go from here, Inspector?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ she told him honestly, and she was still trying to make up her mind as she got back into the car and set off.

  She might know the truth about Diana Warwick’s murder but formal justice wasn’t about truth. It was entirely about proof, and if the evidence of a man who couldn’t speak was deemed inadmissible (she’d have to talk that through with the Procurator Fiscal tomorrow) they’d be in the same position with Max as they had been with Conrad – without even the hope of a confession. Max, she judged, would confess around the same time hell froze.

  Of course, the forensic team would apply its black arts to the hollow plinth where poor Diana Warwick’s body had been stowed. They might even find suspicious fibres from clothing that wasn’t hers. That was comparatively likely. What was supremely unlikely was that they could match them with any item currently in Max Mason’s wardrobe.

  So they’d just have to plod on with the case, leaning on Max in the hope of tripping him up, interviewing people, then interviewing them again. But unless the Fiscal could come up with a legal framework in which Jake could give evidence – or unless, by some miracle, his powers of speech returned – it would become one of those cases which ran into the sand, the cases that were never closed, that officers went back to when they’d a bit of spare time. Older cases than this had been solved that way, of course, and she wouldn’t give up on it. But meantime . . .

  Conrad had appeared in court this morning and pled guilty to the assault; he was on remand, pending reports. The chances were that when the case was called again in three weeks’ time the Sheriff would consider that, given he was a first offender and the actual assault was minor, Conrad had done enough time already and could be released on a deferred sentence, probably with the condition that he underwent psychiatric treatment. But unless Max could be brought to trial, it would always be assumed that he had killed Diana Warwick. Worse still, he would probably believe it himself.

  The original accusation against Jake Mason (and it hadn’t been far from the truth, had it?) had offended Fleming’s sense of justice, even when she believed he would never know. Now, in the face of a much greater injustice, she owed Conrad restitution. She had been foremost in prosecuting the case against him and he was, after all, one of her own officers. She had failed to appreciate the scale of his mental problems and she would have it on her conscience for the rest of her life if Max escaped scot-free. She’d become one of those sad, retired police officers bleating in the Press whenever they did a retrospective – ‘Well, I knew who did it of course but I can’t say . . .’

  Would she, hell! She’d grab it by the throat now.

  They knew who they wanted. They knew where to look. They knew the questions to ask. Max might give himself away, might already have done so—

  Laura! Fleming thought suddenly. He’d talked a lot to Laura, told her about Diana at Chapelton. She needed to go through it all with Laura, as minutely as memory allowed, to see whether there was a chink in the armour through which they could slip a knife.

  She was about half-way back to Kirkluce now. If she called Laura perhaps she could drive in to meet her at police HQ to make a recorded statement. That way, at least when she told Bailey what had happened – which constituted ‘let’s-not-go-there’ territory rig
ht now – at least she could show she was doing something.

  She pulled into a lay-by and dialled the Mains of Craigie number. Bill answered; she was so caught up in her problems that she didn’t even notice that he sounded almost normal.

  ‘Bill, I need to speak to Laura. Is she there?’

  ‘No. It’s funny – said she’d be back for lunch but she didn’t come.’

  ‘Oh.’ Fleming frowned, deflated. Then belatedly she added, ‘How are you, love?’

  ‘OK.’ She could hear constraint in his voice now. ‘Laura was going to have another talk with me before lunch. She promised, but . . .’

  His voice trailed off as if talking had tired him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ she said gently. ‘That’s a shame. I’ll see you later – I shouldn’t be too late.’

  She pulled back out into the traffic, busy now with people on their way home from work. She was disappointed, first that any questioning would have to wait until she saw Laura tonight, second that Laura would have had such a casual attitude to promises. She wouldn’t have read her that way.

  It was nearly half-past five. She could drop in at HQ and write up her notes so that she was well prepared for what was going to be a very sticky interview with Bailey tomorrow, then pop in to see the kids before she headed for home.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re closing now,’ the waitress said politely.

  Brett Mason was the only person left in the tea-room. The fire was dying down and they had switched off some of the lamps; it didn’t look so safe and cosy any more. She rose with a bad grace, took the chit the waitress had left and paid at the counter without leaving a tip.

  She shivered as she stepped into the darkness outside. There was a bitter wind blowing and she pulled her coat closer round her and turned up the ocelot collar. Her spirits dropping with the temperature, she got into her car and headed off wretchedly towards Chapelton.

  25

  ‘Thought you were going straight home tonight, boss?’

  Tam MacNee was on his way off duty when Marjory Fleming came through the door of Police Headquarters. He changed his mind when she told him what had happened.