by Ann Granger
The woman, still staring bemusedly at Meredith, shook her head. ‘No, he left about, oh, ten minutes ago.’
‘Left?’ Meredith could help but sound incredulous. ‘But I didn’t see him on the way here from the village.’
The woman blinked. ‘Do you want to come indoors?’ she asked. ‘You’re getting fair drowned there.’ She peered past her. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘I – I walked. I won’t come in, thanks. I came with Alan, with the superintendent, and I’ve really got to find him.’
Another surprised blink. ‘Well, perhaps he’ll come back. Or I can run you back to the village, if he doesn’t. You’ll be a policewoman?’
‘No.’ Meredith pushed back wet hair from her eyes. ‘Look, you’re sure he left? He’s not around the farm somewhere?’
‘Only if his car’s still there.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Then he’s left.’
This conversation was going round in circles, getting nowhere, and Meredith felt herself growing desperate.
‘Then where could he have gone?’ she insisted, still believing Alan must be somewhere here.
The woman gave her an odd look. ‘If you didn’t see him on the road, then he must have turned right and gone down to the woods.’
The woods. Of course, he’d been drawn back to the woods by his obsession with the Potato Man.
Meredith muttered, ‘Thank you! Sorry to have disturbed you …’ and turned away.
The woman exclaimed, ‘You’re never going down there! It’s not a place to go – it’s not a place for a woman on her own.’
‘I have to find him, it’s urgent.’
The woman was looking at her in distress. Seeing Meredith was adamant, she said, ‘Hang on, then, I’ll give you a brolly if you must go!’ She pulled a battered umbrella from a stand in the hall and handed it to Meredith. ‘I still think you’d do best to wait for him here. If he is in the woods, then he’s still got to drive back past the turning to the farm. If you were to wait down there, you’d see him and he’d see you. There’s no need for you to go down to the woods.’
Her obstinate insistence that Meredith shouldn’t go alone to Stovey Woods seemed disproportionate to the circumstances. Meredith would hardly get wetter waiting at the side of the road, by the sign to the farm, than walking to the woods. Come to that, she could hardly get any wetter, anyway. She was drenched to the skin already. Even the offer of the umbrella seemed superfluous but it was kindly meant and it would be churlish to refuse.
‘Thanks for the umbrella,’ Meredith gasped. ‘I can’t wait.’
She hastened back across the yard, aware the woman stood in her doorway, watching her retreat with the same distressed expression.
The umbrella, which was a large old-fashioned model, made progress a little drier but no easier. The wind caught at it and threatened to turn it inside-out if she kept it upright. If she lowered it in front of her, the force of the wind pushed her back. At the end of the track to the farm, Meredith abandoned her attempt to make use of the brolly, refurled it and propped it against the farm sign where it could be seen, turned right and began to jog towards the mass of the trees ahead. She was so wet now, it no longer mattered.
Eventually she reached the end of the road and the edge of the woods. There at long last she saw, parked to one side, the welcome sight of Alan’s car. But he wasn’t in it and when she tried the door, it was locked. She took out her mobile again and tried his number, still without luck. He was in the woods and communication with him impossible. It must be a dead spot in there. She could wait here like a drowned rat or go into the woods after him. In among the trees it would at least be sheltered. However, if she did that, there was just a chance they’d miss each other and she’d return to find he’d driven off. Meredith tore a scrap of paper from the notebook in her bag and printed on it, I’m in the woods. Wait for me. She stuck it under the windscreen wiper. That should do it. Meredith scrambled over the stile and plunged into the trees.
Once among the tall trunks she was protected from the worst of the weather, though she could hear the rain rustling in the branches above her. Every minute or so it found its way through and splashed down on her head. At least the wind didn’t permeate the mass of trunks. She cupped her hands round her mouth and shouted, ‘Alan!’
Her voice was swallowed up by the trees. She went a little further on, following a narrow deer track, and tried again but with as little luck. He couldn’t be far, surely? Where could he be making for? Perhaps for the place where Dr Morgan had found the bones. But Meredith didn’t know where that was.
She had left the comforting glimpse of the open fields at her back and was now deep in Stovey Woods. Far from a sense of loneliness now, she had the feeling she was surrounded by watching eyes. The impression that she’d had on the road was redoubled. She spun round. Nothing. Still the eerie sensation was growing until the moment came when, with absolute certainty, she knew she wasn’t alone. Something – someone? – was there, every instinct, every nerve in her body told her so. She couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear or smell it, but her skin tingled and she had a heightened awareness of her own progress. Evolution was sloughing away and she had begun to move differently, placing her feet carefully on the pine-needle strewn ground, head high and casting about for movement in her immediate surrounds, ears straining for the slightest indication as primitive instincts long dormant were awakened by the need of this oldest of survival techniques, that of hunter and hunted. She was both, hunting Alan and in turn herself being hunted – by what? She regretted having abandoned the umbrella. It would have given her some kind of weapon, some means of keeping whatever it was at bay.
She shouted Alan’s name again, trying to keep the panic from sounding in her voice. Very, very faintly she thought she heard an answering call and her heart leapt as a feeling of relief swept over her. He was ahead of her. He wasn’t far away. She wasn’t alone but it was Alan who was there.
And then she heard it to the right. A crack of twig as if something had stepped on it. Meredith froze, her heart beating wildly. She called, ‘Hello?’
No reply. There were animals in these woods. It was a deer perhaps. Yes, almost certainly. She hurried on. Alan was ahead. She repeated the three words like a mantra. He’d heard her call. He’d be coming towards her.
Yet behind her, somewhere over to her right, it was still there, keeping pace with her. Look intently among the trees though she might, she couldn’t catch sight of it. But more twigs snapped. She began to fancy she heard laboured breathing. It had to be fancy. She told herself it must be fancy.
Suddenly she found herself in a small clearing. It came upon her with disconcerting suddeness. Before there had been trees sheltering her but now she was out in the open and standing on the rim of a depression. If there was any living thing behind her, it could see her clearly. Staked out, she thought grimly, like a goat awaiting the tiger. Around the rim of the hollow, deer tracks ran off it in all directions into the surrounding trees. She had no way of knowing if Alan had come this way, or if he had, which one path he had taken. She called desperately for the last time, ‘Alan!’
Then it was upon her, leaping from the dark mass of trunks, crashing across the intervening space, breathing stertorously. She spun round, throwing up her arm in an automatic gesture to protect her head. Her opponent was there, no longer a tracker, but face-to-face, in appearance both confusing and terrifying. ‘It’ was revealed as female, a woman not young, a woman wearing slacks and a waterproof jacket. A woman with oddly-coloured pinkish hair and staring eyes, gaping mouth. A woman brandishing a carving knife.
The knife slashed through the air, just missing Meredith’s shoulder. The arm was raised again. Meredith grabbed it and tried to twist it and force her assailant to drop the weapon. But the woman was strong, unbelievably strong. With all her own strength Meredith pushed her away and eluding the flailing knife, began to run back the way she’d come. She was younger and lighter. She
had to be able to out-run whoever this was. But the sheltering trees she sought betrayed her. She tripped on a protruding root, flung out her arms in vain to save herself, and sprawled full length with her face in the carpet of pine needles. Rolling over on to her back, scrabbling for a handhold, she looked up and saw the woman looming over her. The knife was raised again. The round face with its staring eyes shone with a wild triumph.
Then, from one of the other tracks into the trees, something else came bounding out and across the clearing towards them. To Meredith’s terrified gaze it was an apparition as fearsome as the one standing over her. It was a beast and one which for a split second seemed out of time, leapt from some medieval past. Then she saw it was a huge shaggy hound, dark in colour and the size of a Shetland pony. Ears and red tongue flapping, it covered the clearing in a split second and launched itself at Meredith’s assailant.
Under its weight, the woman went down as if poleaxed. The knife flew out of her hand and landed inches from Meredith who grabbed it and scrambled on to her knees. The hound had placed its great paws firmly on the fallen assailant’s chest, pinning her down, and was enthusiastically licking her face. Helpless beneath its weight and the assault of the rough tongue on her features, the assailant was cursing the animal and struggling vainly to push it away.
From out of the trees in the wake of the hound came a familiar figure in long skirts, rainbow-hued pullover under a grubby body-warmer, and a plastic rain-hat. She lumbered across the clearing towards them, shouting: ‘Roger! Roger! Leave it! Bad dog!’
‘No!’ shouted Meredith. ‘Tell him to stay right where he is!’
Muriel Scott panted to a halt beside her. ‘Why?’ she asked in a practical voice.
Meredith held up the knife. ‘She tried to kill me. She killed Hester.’
Mrs Scott peered at the figure on the ground. ‘Dilys did? Why?’
Meredith gasped, ‘I saw the things in the kitchen, I saw the Potato Man’s collection.’
‘Did you?’ said a new, male voice.
They all looked towards the sound. Alan Markby had arrived and was standing a few feet away.
He stepped forward and grasped Meredith’s shoulders. ‘You’re all right? Not hurt?’
‘Yes, yes!’ She pointed a shaky finger at the glowering prostrate Dilys. ‘She – she – She frightened me out of my skin!’
‘It’s over now. I’ll take care of it,’ he said and she felt the panic seep out of her.
He held out his hand. Meredith passed him the knife, remembering belatedly to hold it by the tip of the blade, and watched him take his handkerchief and carefully wrap it round the handle.
‘Right, Dilys,’ he said to the figure on the ground. ‘If Mrs Scott will kindly call Roger to heel, you can get up. Then we can all go back to Lower Stovey and have a word with your father.’
The short journey back to Lower Stovey in Alan’s car had to be the strangest Meredith had ever made. Unable to fit in Roger, Muriel Scott had set off to walk him back home. After a brief discussion Meredith declared herself recovered enough from her fear to drive, at a snail’s pace, the short distance to Lower Stovey. She was all too aware of Markby sitting in the back seat alongside a silent Dilys Twelvetrees. The woman’s face was impassive now. Her workworn hands lay folded on her knees. She stared straight ahead. Markby had phoned Dave Pearce and told him to meet them at the Twelvetrees’ cottage but it would be at least twenty-five minutes before he got there.
At the cottage, Markby drew up, and they all decanted themselves into the street.
‘Alan—’ Meredith touched his sleeve. ‘Before I came down to the woods, the old man had a bad attack of angina. I helped him home. He mightn’t be fit enough to answer questions.’
He nodded. ‘We’ll see. Key?’ he asked Dilys.
Sullenly she pulled it from her jacket pocket.
‘Open up, then, please.’
Dilys obeyed grudgingly.
‘Go in first, if you would. Tell your father I’d like a word.’
Dilys glared at him and, still silent, went into the cottage. They followed her and waited in the narrow hall.
Dilys had gone into the parlour. They heard her say, ‘Dad?’ There was no reply and after a pause they heard her coming back.
Alan swore softly under his breath and put out a hand to throw back the parlour door.
Their line of sight was blocked by the solid form of Dilys, standing before them, something of the look of triumph back on her face.
‘You won’t be talking to him,’ she said. ‘Not now, not never.’ Her eyes gleamed mockingly.
Markby pushed past her. Old Billy still sat in the chair where Meredith had left him. His stick was propped against his knees and his right arm hung over the chair. Beneath his dangling hand, the little medicine bottle lay on the carpet, the pills were scattered across it. His eyelids drooped over glazed eyes.
Markby drew in a sharp breath. To the end the Potato Man had eluded him.
Behind him, Dilys, quietly exultant, said, ‘See? I told you. You ain’t never going to get him now.’
Chapter Sixteen
At that moment they were all startled by the unexpected sound of someone clearing his throat behind them.
A youngish man in a sports jacket was standing in the doorway. He was carrying a medical bag.
‘Dr Stewart,’ he introduced himself. ‘Come to see Mr Twelvetrees.’
‘Your patient is in here,’ Markby told him. ‘But I’m afraid you’re a little too late.’
As they all were.
Stewart uttered an exclamation and hurried past him into the parlour.
As he passed Dilys, she spoke for the first time. ‘No use hurrying yourself, doctor. He’ll wait for you.’
Her voice was swallowed up in the noise of a car drawing up. Pearce’s voice could be heard calling, ‘Superintendent? Are you in there?’
Markby went into the hall and found Pearce just ducking his head beneath the low lintel to enter. Behind him stood Ginny Holding and, in the background, a uniformed man.
‘Where’s the woman?’ Pearce asked bluntly.
Markby jerked his head towards the parlour. ‘In there with her father who’s just died. You’ll have to tread carefully, but I think we can be sure we’ve got the murderer of Hester Millar. As to why, I’m sure we can work that one out now.’
Meredith came out of the parlour, pale-faced. ‘I feel dreadful. I should never have left the poor old chap alone. He insisted. He said his daughter would be coming in soon. I’d told the woman at the pub to call Dr Stewart and I – well, I was desperate to find you and tell you about the things in the kitchen. Are they still there?’
‘Damn!’ Markby muttered. He ran down the hall and into the kitchen. The table was bare. He swore loudly and forcefully.
Meredith appeared at his elbow. She glanced at the bare table-top and observed, ‘I really screwed this up, didn’t I? I should have stayed here until I could get you on my mobile, kept an eye on Billy and made sure the box of oddments wasn’t moved. Sorry.’
He hunched his shoulders. ‘Don’t apologize. You reacted naturally given the shock you’d had. Either Dilys before she set off after you or the old man himself before he collapsed hid the evidence. Let’s hope it was the old man. He couldn’t have moved far and it’s probably still on the premises. Dilys, on the other hand, might have got rid of it anywhere between here and Stovey Woods. It’s easy to guess what happened. She came home moments after you left her father, heard from him that you’d brought him home and you’d gained entry to the cottage via the back door and the kitchen. She knew you couldn’t have missed his box of trophies and you were bound to tell me about them. She set out after you, determined to reach you before you reached me.’
‘She nearly did,’ Meredith said with a shudder.
‘Yes.’ Soberly he added, ‘I should have thought of that. I’d been putting it together in my head slowly for the past week, but after I’d spoken to Linda Jones I was sure.
Old Billy Twelvetrees was the Potato Man of twenty-two years ago. I should also have realised that Dilys must know and have known for years.’
‘And have kept silent?’ she stared at him incredulously.
‘Would you have spoken up in her situation? She lives in this village. She has nowhere else to go. Besides, twenty-two years is a long time ago. She’d believed it buried and forgotten.’
He shook his head and added, ‘You know, the problem with meeting for the first time people who are already very old, is that it’s hard to imagine them younger and even more difficult to imagine them involved in violence. You knew Twelvetrees only as an old fellow, lame and using a walking stick, wheezing with breathing problems. How could he ever have been a threat? Even to suspect him of anything must seem uncharitable. I or someone else must have interviewed him years ago when we talked to all the village men, but he was so changed that even I saw him as a totally different person, a new acquaintance. I only recognised Martin Jones because I saw him in his own stables. Out of his familiar environment, who knows, I probably shouldn’t have recognised him, either!
‘I see now I made a mistake too, back then and again now. I was assuming that rape would be the crime of a much younger man, someone in his twenties. Yet Ruth had tipped us off, had we had ears to hear. She told us, if you recall, that running from Stovey Woods where she’d encountered Simon Hastings, she almost ran into Twelvetrees. But, as she pointed out to us, he was a lot younger then, not “old” at all, only in his late fifties, hale and hearty. He worked for Martin Jones right by Stovey Woods. No one would ever give a second thought to seeing him around there. Ruth didn’t. It was where he was supposed to be.’
‘Ruth!’ exclaimed Meredith. ‘She must be wondering where on earth we are!’
As they hurried out of the house they passed Dilys being ushered into a police car by Sergeant Holding.
‘Tell the inspector we’ve gone to see Mrs Aston,’ Markby ordered her.
