The Shortest Journey

by Hazel Holt

  In some trepidation I turned back to Thelma.

  ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I do hope he hasn’t pulled too many threads. Sometimes you can pull them back from the other side – such an attractive skirt...’

  It was a measure of her preoccupation with things financial that she didn’t make any cutting remarks about uncontrollable animals. Ignoring my incoherent babbling, she said, ‘You do realise how absolutely vital it is that we find Mummy immediately. Otherwise the legal complications that will arise when Aunt Maud dies will be appalling – it will cost a fortune! Simon – he’s our solicitor – is marvellous, but you know how the money gets simply eaten up by any sort of protracted legal wrangle. So are you sure there’s nothing you can tell me that might throw any light on what can have happened to her?’

  I decided then that wild horses wouldn’t make me tell Thelma about the sleeping tablets. In fact I was so disgusted by her blatantly mercenary attitude that I could hardly bring myself to be civil.

  ‘No,’ I said curtly, ‘I’ve told you. I know nothing.’

  My unaccustomed tone seemed to make her suspicious and she gave me a hard stare before she got to her feet and picked up her handbag.

  ‘Well, if you do hear anything, please get in touch. You have my number – just a minute, I’ll give you the office one as well.’

  She opened her bag and found a business card which she handed to me. I took it without looking at it and went to open the door.

  ‘Have you got your car here?’

  ‘Yes, I drove down. British Rail is quite hopeless nowadays.’

  A black BMW was parked in the drive but I didn’t go with her as she got into it, nor did I wave as she drove away. I just stood in the doorway until she was out of sight.

  Foss was in the kitchen when I went in, sitting hopefully on the draining-board, waiting for someone to turn on the tap so that he could bat at the water. I snatched him up and hugged him, which surprised but did not displease him.

  ‘Oh, Foss,’ I said, ‘what a good boy you are! Destroying Thelma’s beastly skirt like that!’

  He opened his large blue eyes and regarded me benevolently.

  ‘What an unspeakable person she is! How dear Mrs R. could have produced such a foul daughter …’

  I put Foss back on to the draining-board and absently turned on the tap for him. As the water dribbled into the sink I considered the strange financial arrangements that Thelma had told me about. For the first time I contemplated the possibility that Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance might have been engineered by someone who wanted her out of the way. That she might have been abducted, even killed. The idea seemed fantastic – such things could not happen in a place like Taviscombe. ‘What, in our house!’ Lady Macbeth’s words echoed through my head in that irritating way that quotations sometimes do, going round and round meaninglessly.

  The people who would benefit most from her disappearance would, I supposed, be Marion and her husband. I tried to remember my rare meetings with Marion, when we were all children and she had come down occasionally to stay at the Manor. I had a vague recollection of a tall, rather awkward girl, who always seemed to be plunging about – clumsy, too. I remembered an unpleasant scene with Colonel Rossiter when she had somehow contrived to break a valuable Chinese vase. And she had apparently plunged into relationships in the same awkward way. I recalled confidential grown-up conversations between Mrs Rossiter and my mother, lowered voices which I heard with one ear while I was flicking over the pages of Country Life on the blessed occasions when Thelma wasn’t there. Maud, it seemed, was very worried about Marion. She had taken up with a rock-and-roll singer, with an actor, with a plumber ... The plumber was bought off by Maud, the rest had drifted away. Marion had settled down, and taken a secretarial course, was going to train as a physiotherapist, had gone to Holland as an au pair. She came back from Holland with a Dutch husband. From Maud’s point of view, I think it suited her to have Marion and her family living with her. As Thelma had said, what the Dutchman wanted was to be maintained in a comfortable style so that he could go on painting and Marion seemed to have settled for family life and a lot of children.

  But their pleasant life-style would still go on when Maud was dead. Marion would inherit her mother’s interest in the capital; they would be no worse off. But people do strange things when a lot of money is involved, and a million pounds is a lot of money. If they had arranged to meet Mrs Rossiter in Taunton, had driven her to some lonely spot in the Quantocks ... No. These were silly morbid imaginings – more suited to one of those television thrillers that caused Mrs Jankiewicz so much disquiet. I turned the tap off briskly and went in to tidy up the sitting room.

  After my housework I changed into something more respectable and put the now clean and dry dogs into the car to take them down to the beach for a run. I also thought that the sea air might blow away the dismal and unhealthy thoughts that were churning round in my mind.

  Although it was a lovely sunny day and the Bristol Channel was looking almost a Mediterranean blue, the holiday season hadn’t begun so the beach was pleasantly deserted. I slithered down over the pebbles and let the dogs off their leads. They rushed madly along the sand and back to me and then in wide circles, barking delightedly. I wished that I could plunge so quickly and easily into that same mindless bliss. I walked slowly after them, stooping occasionally to pick up a shell or examine a piece of driftwood, trying to empty my mind of thought.

  I was aware of the dogs rushing up to another person also walking a dog and I quickened my steps. It was Ed Cooper, the taxi driver who had taken Mrs Rossiter into Taunton. I went towards him, calling to Tris and Tess.

  ‘Hello, Mr Cooper. How are you? Are my dogs being a nuisance?’

  ‘No, m’dear, my old Bess likes a romp.’

  The dogs were all rushing about together in what seemed a friendly fashion, so I turned to Mr Cooper. We made polite conversation about the weather and the Red Cross and then I said, ‘What a strange thing that was at West Lodge – Mrs Rossiter going off like that!’

  He looked annoyed and muttered something about people trying to put the blame on someone who was only doing his job.

  ‘Not on you, surely! That would be ridiculous!’

  My vigorous response seemed to hearten him and he continued more coherently.

  ‘Well, here’s the way it is. I reckon no one wants to take the blame for the old lady’s disappearance, so they all had a go at me!’

  ‘Had a go?’

  ‘Well, that Mrs Wilmot saying I shouldn’t have let her come back on her own. I ask you, ’tisn’t for me to say what my ladies should do, they wouldn’t like it. And it weren’t as if she wasn’t all there, if you see what I mean, m’dear – she were quite sharp, a very nice lady, very friendly. I’ve driven her a couple of times and she always sits in front with me and chats – not like some of them, sitting in the back and never speaking a word, like I were part of the car!’

  ‘What did she chat about when you were driving up to Taunton?’

  ‘Oh, things in general. Quite a bit about my garden. She liked a nice garden, always used to comment on those we passed, what they had in them and such. I think she missed her flowers in that place. What else? Now, let me think. She were asking me about my boy Dave. I’d told her about him last time I drove her – he’s got this muscular dystrophy, you know what I mean? And he’s had to go into this institution for a bit, just to learn how to go on, then we can have him home again. Anyhow, Mrs Rossiter, she remembered and asked about him, very kindly. As a matter of fact’ – he paused and looked at me cautiously – ‘she gave me a whole tenner as a tip. I didn’t want to take it – well, it were too much – but she said it were to buy something to take to the boy when the wife and I went to see him.’

  ‘That was just like her!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘I never asked...’ he said defensively.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t. No, she loved children.’

  ‘I didn’t tell that M
rs Wilmot about it, either. Or Sergeant Page. They might have thought I were up to something.’

  ‘Oh, you saw the police?’

  ‘Sergeant Page came round to my house. Gave my wife a nasty turn to find him on the doorstep when she got back from shopping, I can tell you. She thought something had happened to me. Anyway, he asked me where I’d dropped Mrs Rossiter in Taunton – it were in Church Square, back of Marks and Spencer. A lot of my ladies like to be dropped there. Handy for the shopping, you see.’

  ‘And that was the last you saw of her?’

  He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Well, there were something. But nothing I could swear to.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t mention it to Mrs Wilmot. Her going on at me like that, I weren’t going to say no more than I had to. Well, you can understand how I felt, m’dear. And that Sergeant Page – very officious he is, you should have heard the way he went on that time when one of my braking lights were a bit dodgy. I tried to explain how it was, but all he’d say were, “The facts, sir, that’s all I want, not excuses.” All sarcastic. So, you see, I didn’t think it were no use telling him something I only sort of noticed out of the corner of my eye, you might say. Not a fact,’ he said with heavy irony.

  ‘What did you see?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it were like this, m’dear. I had that tenner from Mrs Rossiter and while I were in Taunton I thought I’d go and get the boy some of those special paints – poster paints they call them – from that art shop round the back of the precinct. Dave, he’s very keen on his painting. The pictures don’t look like anything you’d recognise, though his mother thinks the world of them, but he likes doing them and they say it does him good. Anyway I puts the car in that car park down by the river and I were just walking through to that machine for my ticket when I thought I saw Mrs Rossiter.’

  ‘You thought?’

  ‘Well, it were just a glimpse, through the parked cars. It looked like she were talking to a man and a woman and then the man took her arm and they all got into a car.’

  ‘What were they like, the man and the woman?’

  ‘Couldn’t really say, m’dear. They had their backs to me.’

  ‘Were they old or young?’

  ‘Couldn’t properly tell. It were only a quick glimpse, and it had come on to rain a bit by then and they were both wearing macs. He had on a hat, some kind of tweed fishing hat, and she had a scarf tied round her head. You know how it is when you can’t see people’s faces.’

  ‘Yes, of course. What sort of car?’

  ‘Some sort of Ford, an Escort I think, black – but I could be mistaken. I could be mistaken about the whole thing. I mean, it might not have been Mrs Rossiter at all.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, this lady were wearing a mac, like Mrs Rossiter were, but she’d got a scarf tied round her head too, and Mrs Rossiter, she hadn’t been wearing one of them when I dropped her off. Though, of course, it weren’t raining then. But you see how I can’t tell anyone, when it’s all sort of vague. I don’t want them going on at me and coming bothering the wife again. She’s got enough to fret about with the boy...’

  ‘Yes, I can see that,’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘Any road, I’ve told you now, m’dear. You see what you make of it.’

  He bent to pat his dog, which had left my two investigating a rock pool and returned to her master.

  ‘Good girl, Bess. Well, I must be off, m’dear. The wife’ll have the dinner waiting. You won’t let on what I told you?’

  ‘No, of course not. I hope your boy is home soon.’

  He gave me a sort of salute and went off across the sands, his dog at his heels.

  I stood in a daze, thinking about what he had told me. Now Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance seemed much more sinister. Could she have been kidnapped? Surely not – not in Taunton and in broad daylight! My thoughts returned to Marion and her husband. A man and a woman. She knew them, would naturally trust them, happily get into a car and be driven away – to what? To be murdered? The death of a frail old lady, with a heart condition, could easily be passed off as an accident.

  I felt I ought to tell the police, but then Mr Cooper had told me his story in confidence. If I went to the police now he would be in trouble for suppressing evidence, or whatever they called it. Besides, he might have been mistaken. But somehow I knew that he was not. In my mind’s eye was the picture of Mrs Rossiter, a man’s hand on her arm, getting into a car. It was a picture that I knew would stay with me, distressing, haunting even, but I didn’t, at the moment, see what I could do about it.

  Chapter Five

  I was in the pet shop buying a large bag of cat litter and other necessities when I ran into Ella Lydgate. Ella is a civil servant who took early retirement and is thus able to devote her entire life to animals. Whenever anyone finds a stray dog or cat – or budgerigar or tortoise for that matter – it’s always Ella they turn to. As often as not she’s up and about at five o’clock in the morning crawling under some garden shed in the pale light of dawn to coax out a terrified half-wild cat. She boasts that she’s always managed to find a home for every animal that came to her – though sometimes she has cheated a bit and kept the really impossible cases herself. Her little house somehow contrives to remain neat and tidy although she now has eleven cats and three dogs.

  ‘Hello, Ella,’ I said. ‘Can I give you a hand back to the house with those?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Sheila, that would be kind. And while you’re there I can show you the new photos of Flora and the kittens.’

  Flora was a tiny little grey-and-white cat I had found in the woods with two half-starved kittens. I do most sincerely hope that there is a special hell reserved for those who are cruel to children and animals. The poor little creature had obviously been thrown out of a car when her owners discovered that she was pregnant – I can’t imagine the sort of people who could do such a thing. With Ella’s help I had housed and fed them and helped to tame the kittens and she had found them a home down in Devon where they could all be together. Like most of Ella’s rescue attempts, it had a happy ending.

  I held the heavy box of tins of cat food while Ella opened the front door. A great cacophony of barking greeted us and two feline shapes dashed past into the front garden.

  ‘Quiet, Pixie! Quiet, Jetty! I’ll just go into the kitchen and let them know I’m back. You go into the sitting room. I won’t be a minute.’

  In the tiny sitting room there were cats on every chair and several on the broad window sill, some with the net curtains caught up over their heads where they were looking out. There were food dishes (mostly licked clean) each on its own plastic mat, cat-litter trays on folded newspapers in two corners of the room and a variety of cat-nip mice, small rubber balls and doggy-chews, but the general effect was one of order. I reflected that my house, with two dogs and one fastidious Siamese, always looked much more chaotic. I wondered enviously how Ella managed it. I picked up a large marmalade cat from the sofa and sat down with it on my lap where it settled comfortably, purring loudly as I stroked it.

  Ella came in with one of the numerous albums full of photographs sent to her by the new and loving owners of her protégées. She flipped over the pages and said, ‘There! Look how the kittens have grown. They’re quite tame now, even that very nervous little grey one.’

  As she sat down on the sofa beside me the marmalade cat jumped down and went over to sit on Ella’s lap instead – animals always preferred Ella to anyone else.

  ‘Now then, Sandy!’ she reproved him. ‘What will Sheila think of your manners, abandoning her like that!’

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ I said, ‘such a lovely coat.’

  I suddenly thought of something.

  ‘Did you call him Sandy? Was he Mrs Rossiter’s cat? I thought I recognised him.’

  ‘That’s right. Poor soul, she was dreadfully upset about not being able to keep him when she went into West Lodge. She
loved that cat, didn’t she, Sandy?’ The cat looked up at her and she bent and put her face against his head. ‘Her daughter, what’s her name, Thelma, she wanted her mother to have him put down. Can you imagine? Well, Mrs Rossiter wouldn’t do it. She came to me in such a state! Her daughter had made all the arrangements about West Lodge and poor Mrs Rossiter didn’t feel she could go against her. Well, you know what a meek little person she is; the soul of kindness, could never say boo to a goose. There was Thelma saying that Sandy had had a good life – he’s fifteen – and that it would be the kindest thing to have him put to sleep and that her mother had to go into West Lodge because she couldn’t manage on her own any more.’

  ‘How awful!’

  ‘Well, we couldn’t let a beautiful boy like this be put to sleep, could we? So I said I’d take him. Mrs Rossiter knew he’d be all right with me.’

  ‘Bless you, Ella. What would we all do without you!’

  ‘Well, one more doesn’t make much difference and it’s not easy finding a home for an elderly gentleman of fifteen. Though I must say,’ she continued, ‘it never seemed to me right to say that Mrs Rossiter couldn’t look after herself. Not in that big house, maybe, but she could have had a nice little flat, a ground floor one with a bit of garden for Sandy. But that daughter of hers always did rule the roost and I don’t suppose she wanted to have to bother about her mother, finding a flat and so forth. Easier to put her into a home and have poor Sandy here put down. Honestly, Sheila, sometimes I’m really glad I’ve got no family, only the animals. They never let you down!’