The War Widow

by Lorna Gray

  At first, my former husband seemed to belong to that old world too. He was his usual stocky, rugged self. More than ten years older than me, his eyes had that same intensity and he still had that pure nervous energy that could dominate the room. Christi was the only one who seemed to absorb it and become greater herself. I thought they deemed Adam to be firmly out of the play-acting by virtue of his habitual stillness. It was taken for insignificance by those who didn’t know him but, for me, it carried its own kind of strength.

  Rhys was saying loudly and slightly scathingly, “Your missing policeman wasn’t cast into the waterfall in my stead. No one was. I take no responsibility for the assumption that I died because—”

  He was interrupted by Gregory. His loyal friend was the oldest man in the room and he was looking like a child in the dunce’s corner in his schoolboy blue blazer. He was supplying in a tone of deep distaste, “— It’s not your fault we thought you’d died because all your note expressed was apologies, it didn’t indicate what for.”

  He’d been surprised when Rhys had descended the stairs. He’d been very surprised. And I think quite deeply wounded that he hadn’t been in on the secret.

  Jim wasn’t surprised. He was unemotionally recording the details as Rhys told him with a rushed sort of arrogance, “We did it in the evening. There’d been heavy rain so the place was pretty wild. I took Christi’s camera and a bundle of old clothes and dropped them both over the edge. I needed to leave some traces behind. I waited for some people to walk by, let out a great yell, and then ducked into the back seat of our car while Christi staged her screaming fit.” I didn’t know if Rhys noticed that he’d just contradicted his own statement that it wasn’t his fault that we’d thought he had died. “The police arrived at the waterfalls, my wife gave her statement and that was it except she had to give her name. She wasn’t supposed to but the constables there were determined to see formal identification. Luckily, she had an old card for Anthea Christel floating around in her purse. It was fortunate since it was the only identity that wasn’t traceable back to me.”

  Jim’s eyebrows lifted as he made a note but he didn’t speak.

  From his large comfortable chair in front of me, Rhys was oblivious to the fact that he was quite cheerfully implicating his wife in the crime of perverting the course of justice and saying, “Christi and I have been in Richmond ever since. No one would have any reason to find us there. No one knew where we were moving to. No one even knew that we were married, not even our local friends.”

  Here Rhys inclined his head towards Gregory. His patron acknowledged the regret from his stool. As Rhys turned, I saw his face more clearly for the first time and I realised I’d been wrong when I’d thought he didn’t mind this. Rhys’s eyebrows were drawn low over fine black eyelashes and deepset green. The familiar arrogance was an act. I knew him. I could see the restlessness that burned beneath; the strain that didn’t quite belong to the old world of this gallery; the fear that had aged his features dramatically and the anticipation that, after weeks of cruelty, it might at last be drawing to a close.

  Unexpectedly, Adam broke into the silence. He paused in the midst of leafing through one set of old commissioning letters and the next. He remarked idly, “Christel. Germanic in origin, isn’t it? I suppose the name stood you in good stead in Italy?”

  Christi turned her head. We all did. Her lips curved. “I hope, Mr Hitchen, you aren’t about to start accusing me of being a Nazi sympathiser? Perhaps you think this is the great secret Detective Constable Black uncovered while he was masquerading as a journalist? Perhaps you think I killed him?” The smooth tones were mocking, but only just.

  Gregory intervened wearily. He said soothingly, “I’m sure Mr Hitchen is just trying to build a clear picture. We all are. He doesn’t mean to be sharp.”

  “Adam Hitchen,” stated Jim dryly, “would do well to remember that he is not here as an investigator. Otherwise he can go into the front room and wait with my constables.”

  Not all the constables were in the exhibition room. There were still three outside in the courtyard.

  I saw Adam jerk his head in a manner that passed for agreement and began leafing through one of the client order books he’d drawn off the top of the cabinet beside him. Its companion was in the collection that lay on the desk before Christi. That one would presumably bear the details of his portrait session with Rhys recorded by my own neat hand. I stared at it for a moment only to be distracted by Jim remarking, “Mr Williams, you said no one would ‘find’ you in Richmond. We’ve established that today you took the precaution of slipping in discreetly though the courtyard so that no one could witness your arrival. You hid in the linen cupboard when your good friend Gregory Scott knocked on the door and moved later to the more spacious accommodation of your bath once I and my team had undertaken a quick search of the building.” His gaze narrowed. “Have you been attempting to hide from the police?”

  My former husband dismissed the implication. “If you’re meaning to ask whether I followed that journalist-cum-policeman, confronted him and then disposed of him, I have to tell you once and for all that I haven’t seen that man since he supposedly discovered something at the racecourse that day and came scurrying back here alone. And if I really had been responsible for his disappearance, why should I then need to send those men tearing after my ex-wife?”

  “But you did send those men tearing after your ex-wife.” Adam spoke very quietly from his corner. The comment brought my head round. He caught my eye at last; he caught a glimpse of the worry in my mind that had nothing to do with Rhys’s behaviour to me. Adam’s answering look was designed to be reassuring albeit it with a faint query on his lips. He didn’t understand these people and this place as I did.

  Jim chose to pretend that Adam hadn’t spoken. “What happened that sent Black racing back here?” the policeman asked Rhys. “What did he discover at the racecourse?”

  Jim was adopting what I took to be his calm and methodical style of questioning. He didn’t try for friendship with Rhys. Obviously he saved that sort of nonsense for people like me.

  Then, it came to me with a bolt; he saved it for people he was truly investigating.

  Christi was oblivious. She was disturbed I think by the lack of room that was being left for the account of their suffering. She told Jim shrilly, “I can’t go on like this. We only came back today to pick up a few last things. This is the first time I’ve been back to this place and I hadn’t been here more than half an hour when dear Greg let himself in without so much as a knock on the door and then you and your ragtag herd of constables and assistants did the same only an hour later.”

  Across the room, Adam stirred restlessly in his lean against the doorframe. He’d already discarded the client order book and reset it upon its pile. Now he demanded, “What things? The gallery is practically empty. These stacks of books and all these boxes; they’re just old records, aren’t they? What should you wish to retrieve? And why today?”

  I thought he wanted to know what was so different now that today they’d felt safe enough to return.

  Rhys didn’t like this manner of speaking to his wife. With his gaze fixed on the policemen who fidgeted just outside the windows, he remarked, “Why are we doing this here? Why aren’t you putting your men to the task of cataloguing this place like I think you’re supposed to? And why aren’t we taking a little walk down to the police station away from all these bystanders?”

  His frustration was reasonable enough but there was something that jarred in the way Christi reacted. She wasn’t distressed now. She elegantly adjusted her position so that one trousered leg crossed neatly over the other. She made it look like it was accidental but as soon as Rhys made the point about leaving the policemen to search this place alone, I saw her toe give his shin a very little nudge. Bringing his temper to heel. It made me straighten with a bolt on my awkward pile of boxes.

  “Adam. Enough.” Oblivious to the silent exchange between Christi
and her husband, Jim’s reprimand was mild. He was examining his notes again. He read aloud, “You last saw Detective Constable Black at the race meeting on Saturday the eighth, is that correct?”

  Rhys had his hands resting on the arms of his chair. There was a cut on the back of his thumb and a faint smear of blood where the barely healed nick had recently received a knock. It looked sore. Some things were not an act.

  His tension certainly wasn’t for show. He was looking like he considered these questions about the missing policeman were a waste of his time. Irrelevant. Now he confided grudgingly, “As I recall, we were talking about research. We always were. I think he’d imagined it would be a few weeks’ work and then we’d have a launch party and that would be it. He hadn’t quite anticipated that each collaboration starts with several months of study and then the real work begins. It makes sense now I know he was a policeman all along.” A faint smirk. His head twisted towards his old friend. “He was a very convincing journalist, wasn’t he, Greg? He certainly rivalled you on his power to produce bad sporting jokes. I suppose you think there’s no chance of finishing that project now.”

  Gregory’s retort was dry. “It would be a shade tactless.”

  His disapproval was only a token. He was still Rhys’s friend.

  “I had no idea he’d even let himself in.” Rhys was moving onwards now, steadily approaching whatever it was he wanted to say. “I had no idea he’d been here until some tall carrot of a man pitched up on the doorstep early on the Sunday morning—”

  “Clarke?”

  “Yes, Clarke.” The policeman’s interjection was met a shade wearily. “And he told me quite cheerfully that this journalist fellow had been nosing about here the day before and unearthed something he shouldn’t only to inconveniently misplace it. Clarke thought I knew what it was. But I didn’t. I couldn’t even tell that Black had been in here that night. Did you, Sergeant, find any evidence yourself that your man Black had been here?” This was a challenge. The policeman gave a noncommittal shrug.

  Satisfied, my ex-husband added, “I said as much to this brute who was standing on my doorstep but that just made him wonder if whatever it was hadn’t actually left the premises at all – with Black, I mean. And then our orange-topped beanpole informed me that I should be very clear about the consequences of not handing it over. His turn of phrase was, let’s say, a little choice.”

  “It was for Miss Ward too.” This was from Adam. Gregory flicked him a dark little glance. He’d noticed the use of my maiden name. For the first time Jim looked irritated.

  “Mr Hitchen,” he said severely. Once he was sure the point had been observed, the policeman asked Rhys, “And had he?”

  Rhys looked blank. “Had he what?”

  “Left you anything?”

  “No, of course not. You’re missing the point—” Frustration flared. I thought for a moment temper was going to make Rhys explain precisely what his point was. It was clear that as far as he was concerned Jim wasn’t following the right path. Then Christi quietly put out her hand to lightly touch his and Rhys calmed abruptly. It was like a light dimming. This woman really did stand out for Rhys as different from all the rest.

  Rhys added rather too blandly, “All your sly policeman left me when he disappeared was a big aggressive man standing in my doorway. They hounded me for two days before I got desperate. I think they were waiting to see if anything came in the post to Black’s house or mine, or was exposed in a newspaper headline or wherever; but of course it wasn’t. So then they got impatient. Threats of limbs lost, dependents scared – you can imagine the sort of thing – and it suddenly occurred to me that they might think to turn on Christi. I had to protect her. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  He didn’t say it but he might as well have done. He had to protect her at the cost of my safety.

  Jim tilted his head in acknowledgement. I found that my fingernails were digging into my palms. I caught Gregory watching me with an expression on his face of fascinated revulsion. His lips parted and I knew suddenly he was going to speak to me; to play his usual part as the sympathetic friend and draw me in as the neglected outsider. I recoiled and found Adam’s gaze on me instead. This time his look carried a real question and all I could give him was a shake of my head. I didn’t know what was wrong.

  It wasn’t Rhys’s admission that he’d knowingly sent Clarke after me at any rate. It was almost funny really how long I’d spent dreading the revelation of precisely this, and fearing what it would teach me about the value of my life. Because now it was here and it was the truth, all I felt was a vague surprise that I’d bothered to think it would teach me anything at all. After all, Rhys had never shown much concern for my welfare before.

  Now I was expecting Rhys to give a plain narrative of his troubles that would lead us finally into an appreciation of just how much he had suffered. I was certainly prepared to find myself being tipped into guilt when he proved I could never quite sympathise enough with the terrors that had driven him to give Clarke my name. But shame wasn’t his ambition here. The patterns were following their habitual course in that the insignificance of my wishes barely even rated an acknowledgement, but none of this was being laid out for me. And this time I really didn’t think the target could merely be his old wife’s dreary self-esteem.

  Rhys was saying blandly, “They wouldn’t believe me, you see, when I said I didn’t have it; that I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t have many other options left. So we hatched a plan.”

  Jim shifted in his chair to lean against the soft rounded arm. His face was relaxed but abruptly I saw the depth of his concentration. He was aware of the dance Rhys was leading. He was letting Rhys do it. Jim was waiting to learn if he was being ranked like me as a bystander. The realisation carried relief for me. Jim said, “Let me summarise this swiftly. You let these people – Clarke and his fellow – think you were running scared to your parents in Aberystwyth. Then you staged your fall and planted a convenient witness on the bridge in the form of Miss Christel, now Mrs Williams. Then you went into hiding and re-emerged here today. Were you going to use this return as a chance to declare publicly that you were very much alive after all?”

  “Ultimately, yes, but not like this.”

  This made the policeman pause. For me it affirmed Adam’s observation that something had changed to make Rhys abruptly feel less afraid. Jim asked, “Did you come straight here from London this morning?”

  “No. We stayed with friends last night. Yesterday I was in Aberystwyth. I’d been in Aberystwyth for the better part of three days.”

  As he said it, Rhys appeared to know he was at last conceding something valuable; something that would be noticed. Rhys said it roughly. Almost defiantly.

  Then he added with rather less excitement, “I felt it was important to lay my mother’s grief to rest. And tell her about Christi at long last.”

  “Good of you.” This was terse, surprisingly, from Gregory.

  Rhys didn’t hear. He wasn’t laying this out for his old friend’s benefit. He gave me a jolt when he abruptly turned to me and addressed me boldly, confidently, unapologetically. He told me, “You know, you gave me the scare of my life when you appeared on that street in Aberystwyth.”

  My voice was strange, I hadn’t used it for so long. I had to swallow twice to get it working. “Outside your mother’s house?”

  He conceded the point with a faint tilt of his head. “I very nearly bolted. You looked like a ghost.”

  My heart was suddenly beating. I said, “So did you.”

  I was remembering the hundred other times when the ghost had haunted me just because some stranger had turned his head in such a way that my beleaguered mind had been able to match the movement to some vague memory. I remembered the real sound his mother’s front door had made as it had clicked shut.

  It was Christi who snagged at my memory now. She was watching her husband like she was anticipating something thrilling. It was then that I
noticed that the exhibition catalogues that rested in piles on the desk before her were old ones from the year before the war. The small pile of catalogues in the stack by Adam’s side were all from Rhys’s first collaboration and comeback exhibition.

  The majority of the exhibition catalogues here were those that had been created for the two launch events Adam had attended.

  Across the room, Gregory’s voice suddenly drew all eyes to my face. He said clearly, “Are you unwell, Kate? Do you need some air? Come and sit with me by the door. You’ve gone as white as a sheet.”

  Chapter 31

  For a moment Gregory was absolutely determined to infuriate me with attention that I certainly did not want. Then in the next I think he’d realised I had absolutely no intention of joining him on the perch adjacent to his seat nearer the door, and he was now occupied with checking the time on his watch and then distracting Adam by asking him in a whisper to confirm his watch was correct. I could feel the strain of Adam’s concentration as his mind strayed and fought to return to me.

  It snapped back to my face when I asked Jim clearly, “You said that little had been removed since your last visit but how many of the books in this room have been placed into new arrangements?”

  Jim ignored me with such intensity that it had teeth. I blinked, stunned. He was examining his notes again. His head lifted to focus firmly on Rhys. “There are just two things I still can’t quite grasp in your account. The first is where in all that did they get the idea to go after the former Mrs Williams?”

  Rhys approved of this question. His head turned, grey hair flecking black. His manner had that old confidence that had once been used to tell me he had a new model. “I told them. I had to do something to protect Christi. It didn’t take a genius to guess that these brutes knew enough about the workings of the gallery to have seen Christi going in and out, even if they didn’t know the rest. But it’s also her gallery.” A tip of his head back over his shoulder towards me. “It wasn’t hard to arrange a sly telephone call to that russet-haired lamppost to hint at last that our missing journalist might have been dealing with her instead. By the time they’d thought of a few more questions to ask me, I’d disappeared and she was the only link left.”