Gone Away

by Hazel Holt

  Gone Away

  by

  Hazel Holt

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  * * * * *

  Published by Coffeetown Press on Smashwords

  PO Box 95462 Seattle, WA 98145

  Gone Away

  Copyright © 2010 by Hazel Holt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Contact: info@coffeetownpress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-049-4 (Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-051-7 (ePub)

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  Gone Away

  * * * * *

  Sheila Mallory is a middle-aged widow, a published expert on nineteenth-century novelists and is possessed of an insatiable curiosity.

  A long-standing friend asks for Sheila’s help when his fiancée vanishes from her home and job in the West Country seaside town where Sheila has lived all her life. She agrees somewhat reluctantly, but the mysterious circumstances of the disappearance soon intrigue her. Plumbing the depths of the coffee-morning circuit and the long memories of many a pillar of the local community, combined with her own deductive powers, leads Sheila to a horrific discovery.

  Gone Away is an intriguing murder mystery in the classic tradition, and it is also an affectionate and perceptive novel about the lives and manners of a country town whose tranquil routine is disturbed by violent death.

  Hazel Holt’s début as a crime novelist promises much entertainment and satisfaction for lovers of the English detection novel.

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  I must say, the first time I saw Lee Montgomery I didn’t take to her at all. She was standing by the bar, buying another round of drinks for the men. Looking at her as she leaned against the counter, wearing one of those soft fawn suede jackets and beautifully cut trousers, I felt short, dull and provincial, although, until that moment, I’d been perfectly happy with my good Jaeger suit and my best (uncomfortable) shoes. I could see that Rosemary and Anthea weren’t too keen on her either. They looked up from the murmured conversation they had been having and raised their eyebrows significantly as I came in.

  My old friend Charles Richardson had rung me the evening before.

  ‘Sheila, dear, I’m back in Taviscombe. Longing to see you. Can you manage a pub lunch tomorrow? I’ve asked Ronnie and Anthea and Jack and Rosemary – all the old crowd – and I specially want you to come. There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s rather marvellous.’

  All Charles’s girl-friends were marvellous, so I didn’t take much notice when he went on (‘Looks fabulous ... elegant ... witty, vivacious...’) until he mentioned the word marriage.

  ‘She runs an estate agency here – the one that’s selling Mother’s house for me ... marvellous business woman ... I’m thinking of giving up my job in the States and coming home

  – I’ll get some sort of consultancy over here ... put some money into Lee’s business ... really want to settle down in Taviscombe ... back to my roots, as they say...’ Charles and I had been at the local county school together

  – goodness, it must be well over thirty years ago – and so had the others. Except for Charles, we had all stayed in the small West Country town where we had grown up and had married locally, within our own little circle. But Charles had gone out into the world. He worked for one of those big multi-nationals and had lived in remote, exotic places, until he finally settled in America, married a girl from Texas and had two children. The marriage hadn’t lasted, though, and Charles was soon back in the social swim of Cincinnati as an eligible bachelor. He kept me up to date with all his girl-friends, so much so that I really used to dread the sight of an American airmail stamp. I suppose I represented home, a fixed point in a shifting world, and, since I had been his first love in those far-off school days, I might be supposed to lend a sympathetic ear to his romantic entanglements. After his mother died about six months ago, he came back to Taviscombe to sell her house, but there were legal complications and he said he would be back soon. And here he was, talking about marriage.

  I was curious, to say the least, to see the woman who had finally trapped – I found I used the word instinctively – poor Charles. Anthea and Rosemary were saying ‘poor Charles’ too, as we sat in the pub waiting for the men to order the food, still hanging around Lee at the bar.

  She came over and Charles introduced me.

  ‘This is my dear Sheila,’ he said, putting his arm around my shoulders, ‘whom I’ve told you so much about.’

  Her eyes flickered over us both and, obviously dismissing me as any kind of threat, she gave me a warm smile and held out her hand.

  ‘Indeed he has,’ she said. ‘Never stops talking about you! His oldest friend!’

  I smiled back, less warmly, making some colourless, conventional murmur.

  As we drank our gin and tonics and ate our bar snacks, I looked at her more carefully. Seen close to, she was nearer forty than thirty. Her hair, I decided regretfully, was a natural ash blonde, thick and curly, and her eyes were a deep, unusual blue. She certainly looked marvellous and I could see why Charles was smitten. But still. She looks neurotic, I thought, watching her lighting yet another cigarette and tapping off non-existent ash with red-tipped fingers. She wore several rings, including a wedding ring. Charles said that she was divorced too, as if that somehow brought them closer together. Her manner towards him was comradely rather than loving – one of the chaps. Perhaps that was what he found intriguing.

  When we all left the pub and walked through the car park, I wasn’t really surprised to find that she drove a dark green Jaguar, not brand new, but obviously expensive.

  ‘Well!’ said Anthea, as they drove away. ‘She’s certainly got poor old Charles exactly where she wants him!’

  ‘Just what he needs.’ Jack said. ‘Marvellous woman! Anyway, it’ll be grand having Charles back here again.’

  We contemplated this thought for a while.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I said doubtfully, ‘though, in a way, it’s part of Charles’s charm – being in faraway places.’

  Rosemary laughed. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

  Charles returned to America and life went on as usual. I found myself deeply involved in arrangements for our Christmas Fayre for Help the Aged and my thoughts revolved almost exclusively around lists of cake-makers and who was going to tell Miss Whittaker that she certainly couldn’t run the children’s Bran Tub after the mess she made of it last year. A middle-aged widow – I’m fifty-four actually – living in a small sea-side town must expect to be deeply involved in local activities. Taviscombe, indeed, is a town full of widows, but since I am younger and, relatively speaking, more mobile than most of them, I find that rather more is expected of me. When my husband died two years ago, well-meaning friends involved me in all sorts of voluntary work to ‘take me out of myself, and since I was still quite dazed and numb after Peter’s long illness and death, I simply did what was put in front of me, as it were, and after a while I found that they were right and that being busy d
id help.

  Peter was a solicitor. Like me, he was born here and he was well-known in the town and had many friends, most of them people he had helped in some way, for he was a kind, generous and compassion-ate man. After he died I think that Rosemary and Anthea had some idea of my marrying Charles, but, fond as I had always been of him, I knew that it would never have worked. When you have known one really marvellous person everyone else seems second best, and I didn’t want second best.

  Then, of course, there is My Work, as my son Michael irreverently calls it. I write the occasional volume of literary criticism – mostly about the more obscure Victorian novelists

  – and am published by one of the university presses. Not many copies seem to get sold, but they do provoke an enjoyable amount of theory and counter-theory from other workers in the field, so that a good time is had by all those inhabitants of that esoteric little world of Lit. Crit. Very few people in Taviscombe have read my books, though several kind friends have ordered them from the library, but they have given me a little local fame and a defined place in our close-knit society: ‘Sheila Malory is very literary of course, but quite useful on committees.’

  In fact, I rather enjoy my Good Works: the Red Cross and Help the Aged, of course (who knows how soon one might want their help oneself?) as well as fetes and jumble sales and coffee mornings for St Stephen’s Restoration Fund, and Bring and Buy sales for the Friends of the Local Museum Association, not to mention the Archaeological Society and the Literary Society (where I am occasionally asked to give a short paper). And then, of course, there is Michael. Although he is nominally at Oxford, reading History, it seems to me that university terms are much shorter than they used to be, since he always seems to be at home requiring three large meals a day and constant laundry. It will be seen, then, that I lead what might be called a full life.

  One morning just before Christmas I was standing outside Boots feeling rather annoyed. My car was being serviced and I had walked the mile into Taviscombe thinking that I didn’t need much in the way of shopping – just a few odds and ends plus a quick visit to the bank and a long queue at the Post Office (oh the tyranny of the Christmas Card List). But I had been carried away by the glitter of Christmas decorations and, on impulse, had bought a large and ridiculously expensive box of crackers and other seasonal fripperies. Last year, after Peter’s death, neither Michael nor I had felt much like celebrations, but this year I suddenly felt I’d like to make it really festive, with a tree, snapdragon and a Yule log if I could find one. Consequently I was loaded down with inconveniently shaped parcels and facing a tiresome walk. The last of the half-dozen taxis that were usually parked outside the market had been snapped up by a small but determined woman whose Yorkshire terrier had firmly wound its lead around my legs, immobilising me at a critical moment. The wind was bitingly cold and I wished I had worn a heavier coat. It might even be a white Christmas at this rate. As I stood there, wondering, whether to wait for a taxi to return or start walking, I was aware that a car had drawn up beside me and someone was leaning across and opening the passenger door. It was Lee Montgomery in her green Jaguar.

  ‘Hop in,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  My first instinct was to refuse. I hadn’t seen her again after Charles had gone back to America. Well, that is not strictly true. I had, when shopping, glanced casually into the estate agent’s window, peering round the photographs of Attractive Period Cottages and Charming Converted Coach-houses, trying to catch a glimpse of her. In the brightly lit interior I had seen her blonde head leaning forward as she persuasively spread out details of desirable residences for potential customers. A shadowy figure sat at another, lesser, desk in the corner, presumably doing the typing and general slave work. But we had not met face to face.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘I’m holding up the traffic’

  I got in, rather flustered, tossing my packages into the back in such a hurry that I felt I had probably broken some of the more delicate Christmas Tree decorations. This made me feel even more churlish towards Lee until I pulled myself together and remembered my manners.

  ‘Thank you. It was so good of you. It’s absolutely freezing on that corner and there’s no knowing when there’ll be another taxi – I think they all go into hibernation in the winter!’

  She laughed rather more than my feeble joke deserved, and I had the feeling that she wanted to placate me for some reason.

  ‘Look.’ she said suddenly. ‘Are you in a great rush or anything? I mean, can you spare the time to come and have a drink before lunch?’

  I must have hesitated a moment too long, because she added, ‘Please, I want to talk to you about some-thing. It’s rather important. Well, it is to me. I’d be so grateful.’

  I was immediately curious.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’d like to very much. Won’t you stop off and have a drink with me?’

  ‘Well, actually, I’ve got to go up over the moor to collect some keys for a property. It’s out towards Brendon and I said I’d be there by twelve-thirty – the caretaker can’t wait after then. So if you wouldn’t mind coming with me first, we could go on to the Stag Hunters at Brendon – they do quite good food there too.’

  ‘That would be very nice,’ I said rather formally.

  As we drove she made no further reference to what she wanted to talk about. Instead she told me about her various property dealings – I had to admit that she was very amusing and her stories were vivid and funny. She seemed quite relaxed now. The moment of tension at the beginning of our conversation had gone and she was sitting easily, her hands resting lightly on the leather-bound steering wheel. She was wearing those driving gloves that have pieces cut out of the back – the sort worn by what I think of as Proper Drivers, who know about revs and double-declutching and nought to sixty in however many minutes it is.

  ‘This is a beautiful car,’ I said as we surged smoothly up Porlock Hill. I reached out and touched the walnut dashboard with my finger-tips. ‘So elegant as well as so powerful.’

  ‘I adore it!’ she said, with such a sudden intensity that I turned to look at her in surprise. She gave a little laugh. ‘It represents everything I wanted when I was young.’ she explained. ‘When I had absolutely nothing. It was the very first thing I bought when I finally got my hands on some money.’ The phrase hung between us and she laughed again. ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  We chatted amiably enough as we drove further into the heart of the moor. She was easy to talk to, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to call her ‘Lee’, a rather affected, made-up name, I thought, presumably a more dashing form of a pedestrian one.

  The sky was iron grey and the moorland on either side of us was raked by wind so that the scrub oaks seemed to be twisted and tormented as if possessed. The sheep huddled in what shelter they could find and a few ponies stood forlornly by a gate. There was very little traffic and the car swung round the bends of the road as if it, too, had a life and vitality of its own. We turned off the main road down towards Brendon, but instead of going down the hill she took a sharp turning to the right, along a steep, narrow lane, and then left at a farm gate.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this way before.’ I said. ‘Where does it lead to?’

  ‘Oh, only the house. It’s a dead end. Just the house and then open moor.’

  We rounded a wind-break of beech trees and turned into a short drive. The house at the end was quite hidden from the road by a dip in the hill, but as we approached I saw that it was a large stone building, well-built and handsome, with stabling and several out-buildings. There was a lawn outside the front door and a quantity of rhododendron bushes and shrubs. I commented on them to my companion.

  ‘They must look glorious when they’re all in bloom. I don’t suppose it’s possible to grow very much in the way of flowers here, though I suppose you could have bulbs and various types of heather.’

  ‘It’s a very good property,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come a
nd have a look or would you rather stay in the car? I won’t be long.’

  I love looking over houses so I said I’d come with her and got out of the car. The wind took me by surprise – it was miserably cold outside and I hurried after Lee towards the house. She didn’t go to the front door, but went round the side, past the stable block, to what seemed to be the kitchen door. The back of the house was dark, overgrown with shrubs and trees right up to the back door.

  ‘A bit gloomy.’ I said. ‘I imagine all this was servants’ quarters – I suppose it didn’t matter about them having any light. But I suppose there aren’t any servants now. Difficult to get anyone to stay this far out – unless they’re horsy and want free stabling in return for a little light domestic work.’

  We went into the kitchen, which was large and seemed very bleak and empty. The desolation was emphasised by a few abandoned saucepans and kitchen utensils. There was certainly a lot of modernisation to be done before this could be described as ‘desirable’, I thought. I followed Lee along a passage and out into the main body of the house. It had obviously been a hunting lodge in the days when such places were built on Exmoor for the stag-hunting season. The rooms were very Edwardian, elegant and spacious, with high ceilings and handsome fittings on the panelled doors. The wallpaper was patched with damp and the cold struck us in the face as we entered the drawing room.

  The caretaker obviously felt the cold too, since he was anxious to hand over the keys and be off. We heard him drive away and Lee said, ‘Come on, we’ll freeze to death here. Let’s go and have a warming G and T.’

  As we drove away I looked back at the house.