Trial by Fire

by Frances Fyfield

  Ànd Mr Sumner? Why did he come and teach you out of school?'

  The regard was suddenly very wary, then far too nonchalant. 'Oh, I asked if he could. My English isn't as good as the rest, you see, and I wanted to take the exam a year early, to get it out of the way.'

  For a child so articulate, Helen found this unconvincing, but refrained from saying so.

  She was getting close to the limit of acceptable questions, but refused to resist the temptation to ask more. 'Did you like Mr Sumner?' she asked, but the child was uncomfortable.

  `Like him?' she said loudly, voice full of infantile scorn. 'Like him? No, of course not. He's a teacher, isn't he?'

  Evelyn bent her head to the cream of the second coffee, leaving Helen to wonder why a girl of fourteen, presumably with better things to do, should ask for extra tuition in a subject where she was highly unlikely to need it. She recalled in her own misspent teenage years avoiding official study like the plague, and remembered with sudden clarity her crush on a history master in the dim days of school. An hour alone with him would have been like an offer of paradise.

  Perhaps Evelyn had suffered the same, persuaded her parents into a course that offered contact with the beloved. An idle thought. She turned and looked out of the window. 'You can see the whole world pass by from here,' she remarked cheerfully, sensing she would receive precious little more response from the girl. 'Look at all these familiar faces.' Adding calmly,

  'Your father is coming up the street, Evelyn. I should duck unless you want him to see you.'

  The child leaned back, pulled Bario's pink curtain in front of her face, smiled at Helen in sudden appreciation. John Blundell passed into his office two doors down.

  Àll clear,' said Helen, and Evelyn released the curtain. One dislodged earring landed on the cloth. 'Yours,' Helen uttered as she proffered it back, turning again to face the view outside in order to hide the deliberately blank look on her face, forming one more question she knew would be the last. 'You do like jewellery, don't you?'

  Evelyn was clipping the orb back on to her ear. 'Not this stuff, not really. I like the better stuff, but I have to wear this in case .. . Well, never mind. I quite like it, really.'

  Fastening it back with fingers made clumsy by her distaste.

  `Yes, I think I know what you mean,' Helen ventured. 'We sometimes have to wear things people give us. Just to please them.' In her mind's eye was the drawing of Mrs Blundell's missing jewellery, purloined from Evelyn's father, jewellery so different from Evelyn's own the pieces she had seen yesterday, glittering on the desk, exhibits in the short case against William Featherstone. Evelyn was regarding her with a look of fathomless suspicion. 'Oh, yes,' Helen continued artlessly, 'you can see the whole population from here.'

  Evelyn accepted the distraction, looked outside. 'Nobody's got any time. They never stop painting their bloody houses, buying bigger cars, and having breakdowns. I hate it here,'

  she said suddenly and vehemently with a force recognizable as something more than childish pique.

  `So do I,' said Helen.

  There was a full minute's awkward pause.

  Evelyn fidgeted, eager to move on. Home, then, to their no doubt empty houses.

  Helen paid the bill. 'Where now?' she asked by way of farewell as they stepped into the street.

  `Don't know. Lunch, I expect,' Evelyn replied, eyes fixed forward, secretive again, anxious to be gone.

  `Not back on the bus to court?'

  No.' A brief smile, two retreating steps, a new anxiety as she turned on her heel and marched away.

  A definite, hurried walk, hands in hip pockets, lovely lithe figure that would have been the envy of a mature woman in its immature perfection, still childish nevertheless. On impulse, Helen stood in the next shop doorway, watching Evelyn's progress, partly to see if her anxiety would force her to break into a run, partly to make sure she did not board the Waltham-bound bus, which had pulled into the stop a few yards beyond on the green. As Helen watched, William Featherstone jumped from the exit doors of the bus, bounding toward Evelyn, his face, even from Helen's distant view, alight with his best delirious smile, fading as the girl strode past him, a quick cut of her hand forbidding recognition, moving faster and out of sight.

  He started towards her, took two steps in her direction, pulled himself up short, and stopped with the guilty embarrassment of one who has remembered some broken code of manners, looking around to see if his infringement was noticed. Then he resumed his grin and crossed the road with studied carelessness, hands in pockets, copying the way Evelyn had walked but with none of her authority. Poacher's pockets, thought Helen: and you know that girl as well as she knows you. William Featherstone, what is your business with Evelyn Blundell and her earrings?

  Then the next thought: tell Bailey. Back to the instinct to tell Bailey all the odd details of her day. If he would listen, that was. If he did not choose to listen these days to the neater and far more relevant conclusions of his pretty detective constable. If he didn't say, 'Helen, my dear, just because she has lost her mother does not mean I am entitled to cross-examine all members of the family about all the aspects of their lives.'

  Helen went home, looking at her feet, faintly ashamed of spying. I must learn, she told herself, to trust nothing but evidence. Learn to do as Branston does: go home and shut the doors. Stop looking in people's windows. They do not like snooping. It is not the way of a community bent on privacy. This village togetherness hides a sad apartness. Go home, Helen West. Go home and close the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  God, what a poxy afternoon, Amanda silently complained, dreadful day from eight-thirty a.m. until now. What the hell had Bailey been doing all day, leaving her with all the legwork and, as it happened, a fair bit of humiliation thrown in? Perhaps he had calculated that last bit with the Featherstones. Amanda Scott pressed the horn on her car, tried to overtake a truck, realized her own dangerous speed, pulled back, and swore.

  She only swore in private, found it therapeutic but considered it disgraceful in public.

  The rage was dying, but she remained angry until she pulled into the forecourt of her block of flats in Woodford, where some sort of reconciliation with the world occurred as she parked the car. Come on, patting her hair in the mirror in an automatic gesture, it wasn't all bad: you might have found an opportunity today. But to be virtually chased out-of-doors by mad Harold Featherstone, behaving and appearing like a caveman, was humiliation indeed.

  On top of that last labour of the afternoon, she had found Bailey still absent from the office at five, unobtainable anywhere by phone for her to recount how comprehensively she had fulfilled orders and what a good girl she had been. Amanda needed support, needed him to listen to her achievements, and besides which knew very well that it was imperative for an officer as ambitious as she to have her efficiency on record. She would have to telephone him at home, and if she had earlier been of two minds about whether to tell the dear superintendent or nice Mr Redwood about Bailey's girlfriend bringing Evelyn Blundell into court, she certainly wasn't going to keep her mouth shut now.

  Good: lipstick still intact. She smiled at herself in the gleaming window of her car as she locked the door, resigned now to her day's work and the prospect of an evening's wallpapering. Amanda spent half of her spare time in the beautification of her small maisonette. But maybe as a result of her afternoon, she might get lucky with a bigger, better flat. Or luckier still with a rich widower. She'd always known she was not designed for some fellow detective constable with a beer belly and long working hours.

  A lonely widower with a very large income would be good enough for starters.

  Chance would be a fine thing. The furore of the Featherstones passed from her mind. So did the fact that she had achieved none of her goals in either of the two households she had visited, omissions easily forgotten in the search for self-justification. Exhaustion, irritation, and conspicuous devotion to duty deserved their own reward.


  No, it had not, after all, been such a bad day, Amanda reflected over the soapsuds of her three breakfast dishes — bowl for museli, cup and saucer for decaffeinated coffee — must look after the health. She had been the one in charge of the committal proceedings, subject of thanks from Harmoner, 'for favouring us with your presence, my dear.' Ya, ya, ya, nice to hear, but nothing he could say was going to enhance her promotion prospects. Better to impress Redwood, and even that was scarcely worthwhile.

  She did not consider it kind of Bailey to let her take the accolades for his immaculate preparation, suspected he had only done so to give himself a free morning after, and he had obviously taken the afternoon as well. Amanda had a suspicious mind. He was up to something. So what? The man wasn't married, after all. She wondered if his girlfriend knew.

  She had thought what a good-looking man Bailey was, had thought . . . Well, never mind what she thought eight months ago. She closed the subject and put away her tea towel. She didn't think it now; ambition had moved on.

  So the committal was fine, no problem there. One murderer, fey-looking bastard en route to the crown court, quite handsome in a way, and everything hunky-dory, with the prosecution smelling of roses and the police, too, for wrapping it up so quickly. Then the rest of the day's impossible orders issued with a smile, while Bailey had the nerve to imagine that she did not realize he found her neither particularly likable nor attractive. He was bound to prefer that little woman of his, à solicitor you might know'. Although Amanda did not regard police officers of any age as suitable for mating purposes — and Bailey was a bit old, let's face it — she was still mildly insulted by his preference for a bit of social status as well as the sort of casual elegance Helen West managed so easily and she herself could never achieve.

  You and I came from the same stable, Bailey boy. Stop pretending you didn't. She put the dishes back in the cupboard, looked at her neat kitchen with mixed satisfaction and discontent, admiring its shiny surfaces, stirred by the resentment when she thought of the splendour of J. Blundell's mansion. Come now, Amanda, you should be moving forward in life. You've come a long way in twenty-six years, but you should be further forward than this.

  From Waltham Court, she had driven to Blundell's house. 'Call on the man,' Bailey had said, gauging to the minute how long the court proceedings would last. 'He goes home for lunch. Tell him what happened at court, be concerned. But most important of all, find some way to search the house. We've done it after a fashion, but not that thoroughly.'

  `Couldn't PC Bowles do that?' she had asked, meaning quite plainly, I'm a detective, sir, not a trooper.

  `Yes, he could. But Blundell understandably wouldn't like a few plods rummaging all over his house. He won't mind you. I want a thorough search for that jewellery. Explain to him the formality: tell him we have to eliminate the very remote possibility of her having hidden it in the house, dropped it, whatever, even if he did see her wearing it just before she went out.'

  `Don't you believe him?'

  `Yes, as far as he thinks he saw it. Amanda felt a frisson of excitement. 'We don't know if she came back before meeting Sumner. Or whether Blundell was drunk or vague. But I want you to have a look in his room, and the daughter's. A good look in the daughter's. Doesn't matter why. It's important. Oh, and ask after the child. Find out what she does with herself. She's been given appointments with a kind of counsellor, but she never shows up. Don't tell him that, but try to find out why. Use your charm.'

  Go and wow Mr John Blundell, in other words. Waste an hour of a sunny afternoon poking around his house looking for jewellery Sumner had clearly sold weeks since. Piss off.

  Then go and see the Featherstones — gently, mind — and ask them what their son does nights and days. What's that got to do with anything? Amanda asked silently. I'm on the murder squad, not the small-fire-and-two-bit-shoplifter squad. Leave those jobs to uniforms.

  Not out loud, no point in complaining. Close as a clam, Mr Handsome Bailey, good at delegating work, but not ideas. Dislike was becoming reciprocal. She only accepted the afternoon's dumb-fool assignments for the opportunity of a gander at Blundell's house. Dream house; she wanted it. Or if not that, something comparable. She deserved it.

  Detective Scott had found the grieving widower in the kitchen at two o'clock eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, been greeted with enthusiasm, explained her mission prettily, and noticed that he looked a trifle lonely. Talking through the morning's progress, she managed to make Sumner's continued imprisonment sound like a triumph rather than the elaborate formality it had been.

  `Good, good,' he said absently, 'I'm so pleased,' which seemed a mild response from the bereaved, but Amanda expected that was something to do with grief. She did not know much about grief, never having suffered such a thing in her life. He was certainly responsive enough to make a cup of coffee, offer a drink, which she refused. 'Quite right,' he said, and seemed suddenly disposed to please.

  `How's your daughter?' Amanda asked.

  Òh . . . out, always out. She sees her friends, goes to her aunt, back about tea time. Then studies in the evening, darling child. Good girl, very good girl.'

  That would do. Amanda was not particularly disposed to ask more about the daughter, felt capable of inventing details to fill in the gaps. Then she had complimented him on his kitchen, her wide smile and white teeth hiding the savage reflection on how her own abode had the same surface area in entirety, including her share of the garden. She put warmth into her remarks and felt him come alive.

  `More coffee?'

  Òh, yes, please, if you're sure you can spare the time.' Charm him, Bailey had said. Looking at this kitchen, Amanda would have whored for him. He was smiling like an angel, quite bearable to look at, and patently well heeled.

  `Where do you live, Miss Scott?'

  Òh, call me Amanda. I live in Woodford, actually.' Smoothing the skirt and patting the hair while his back was turned. 'Only a little flat,' belittling her pride and joy with a wave of the wrist. 'I bought it from you, as it happens. Your Woodford agency.'

  `Really? What a coincidence. When was that?' Animated chat on what was sold when and where in their own six square miles, why it was sold and for how much. They were rolling on common ground. Both were fascinated by space and prices and value for money and floors and ceilings, he globally, she personally but with the same passion. They revelled in the respective merits of pitch or pine, sloped roofs or flat, whether the entrance was important. Enjoying herself hugely, she only just remembered to ease in the proposition about searching the house in which she was receiving such benign hospitality.

  He moved the subject aside adroitly like a bill postponed to another day. 'Oh, no, not yet . . . Must say, excellent commercial mind you have, Amanda. Ever thought of taking up estate agency? You'd be marvellous.'

  `Do you think so? I've always been interested.' Flattered, she slid down the tangent, only resurrecting the searching-for-jewellery business ten minutes later.

  `What for?' he asked, puzzled

  `For Mr Bailey.' She withdrew herself carefully from blame for the intrusion. 'He thinks we might have missed it somewhere. Have to make absolutely sure it isn't here. You know, tucked in a drawer in your room, your daughter's room, one of the spare rooms. Or in a coat pocket or something. You know.'

  He did know, turned away to refill the kettle and reach for a bottle of white wine from the fridge. She was bound to like white wine, not a whisky lady. Just a glass, come on, Amanda, won't do you any harm. What she would not like, nor would he, to ruin this budding relationship, was the sight of the bareness of his daughter's room. Pretty stingy furniture in there, disgraceful, really, when he came to think of it, rotten old desk, very small cupboard and child's bed.

  Yvonne had always said that was enough for her, and after a while Evie had stopped asking for anything else. It shamed him, the poverty of it. Much less would sweet Amanda like to see, or he to show her, the rows of clothes hidden by wardrobe doors in his
own room.

  There were things he might have liked to do with Miss Scott in that room, but they did not include a search of coat pockets. There was not a single item of the dear deceased's clothing that was not torn to shreds. He was beginning to wonder how he was going to get the garments out of the house.

  `Now listen, Amanda.' Placing a hand on hers, noting the lack of resistance. 'Why don't you tell Mr Bailey you've been through the place with a fine-tooth comb? Because I have, I can assure you, and

  you'd never find anything I'd missed. Turned over everything, I did. But fussy, your boss, is he?' She nodded vigorously, tut-tutting at his criticism, but smiling compliance.

  `That's OK, then. What I was wondering . . . well, never mind. Presumptuous of me . .

  . I shouldn't.'

  `Go on,' said Amanda.

  `Well, I was wondering . . . It's nothing, really, but I do like to help. I'm sure we could find you a better flat than you have, you know, a good little bargain. In Branston, maybe. I always hear about them, always know when to pick 'em up, if you see what I mean. Interested? Nice girl like you, kind to an old man. Girl like you deserves to get on.'

  Amanda's thoughts exactly. The rout of her distraction was complete and she beamed goodwill.

  Òh, Mr Blundell, you shouldn't. I'm here on business, but how kind of you.'

  `Not at all, my dear, and do call me John. It's a pleasure to help someone I like, not all these toffee-nosed solicitors, city people, think they're the bee's knees.' A quick stroke of brilliance, stroking the chip on Amanda's shoulder. 'Tell you what. Perhaps when I've marshalled a few ideas we could have dinner and chat about it when you're not on duty. Ever tried Bario's?'

  O brave new world: she had never been to Bario's, had dreamed of living among the select trees of Branston instead of in the service area of Woodford.

  Ì know a chap who does a wonderful line in discount furniture, too,' John continued, and they were off again, all thoughts of searching the house shoved downwind of his after-shave, her perfume, and the riveting discussion of bargains.