by Faith Martin
‘Delia hasn’t left home, Sissy,’ she said quietly. ‘It isn’t about that.’
Sissy’s small mouth fell open, her colour ebbing away. ‘But I thought . . . I thought that horrible father of hers had brought the police in to find her . . .’
Jenny shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not.’ She looked behind her and saw Ford and Moulton had stopped, realizing that she was not following. Quickly, before one or the other of them started coming back, Jenny said quietly, ‘You and she were planning to leave today, weren’t you?’
Sissy automatically glanced over her shoulder back into the house, no doubt expecting her mother’s accusing presence to loom over her at any moment.
Then she glanced back at the big cook and nodded miserably. ‘Tell her I’m sorry, will you? But she already knows Mum found my money. I told her it was gone . . .’
From inside the house, Cordelia called her daughter’s name imperiously. The girl reacted as if to a whiplash.
‘I must go,’ she said, and turned back. Then she hesitated. She looked back over her shoulder one last time and said quietly, ‘If Dee-Dee didn’t leave . . . is she in any trouble?’
Jenny nodded slowly. ‘I think she may be, yes,’ she said quietly.
Behind her came the crunch of feet in the snow, and Sissy quickly retreated and shut the door. When Jenny turned back, both policemen were standing in front of her, looking curious.
‘Well?’ Moulton said.
She shrugged. ‘Delia and Sissy had planned on leaving home today,’ she said quietly. ‘But something went wrong.’ She would rather not have given the girls away, but she’d learned before, from bitter past experience, that anything in a murder inquiry might turn out to be important, no matter how unrelated it might seem at the time. She’d also learned that it wasn’t particularly clever to keep things from the police.
They tended to be just a bit touchy about it.
Moulton frowned. ‘She was going to leave her mother? All alone, in the state she’s in? And on Christmas Eve, of all days?’ Moulton sounded shocked out of his boots.
Jenny stared at him for a moment, then sighed heavily. She said nothing however.
She was used to the stupidity of men.
* * *
Back at the farm, everyone except Delia was sitting around the kitchen table. The remains of the baked potatoes with cheese and onion topping littered the surface, though very little of it had actually been eaten. Still, she mused, it was better than leaving it in the oven to burn.
She cleared it up without comment. She had dinner to cook, which would have to be a little later than usual. Not that she expected that anyone would complain, under the circumstances.
Bill and Bert sat morosely silent, as if still unable to believe what had happened to their uncle. No doubt it was only Sid’s kind and peace-keeping presence that had made life tolerable for them both at Kelton Farm. But now, with him gone, the future must look bleak indeed.
Jeremy looked nervous. He fiddled with a slice of bread, spreading crumbs around and casting his father quick, worried glances.
Stan Kelton cleared his throat. ‘I know it’s Christmas tomorrow,’ he began, his voice gruff, ‘and if you coppers want to get back to your families, you can,’ he agreed magnanimously, as if he really had any say in it. ‘But if you want to stay here the night, that can be arranged as well. There’s two rooms you can have. Bill can light you a fire in each, if you like. If you don’t, you’d best be going now. There’s another snow squall on the way.’
Ford looked longingly at his superior. He was married with two kiddies under five. He had to get home to read them a story and later on creep into their room and fill their stockings. And for him not to be there on Christmas morning to see them open their presents filled him with a sense of gloom.
On the other hand, this was a murder case. And Sid Kelton had been a relatively wealthy and important man, a man of considerable property. They couldn’t just take the holiday time off without someone high up back at HQ having something unflattering to say about it.
But Moulton, for once, surprised him. He hadn’t missed the gloomy look his sergeant had given him, nor was he unaware of his duties. ‘My sergeant will be leaving,’ he said with quiet authority. ‘But I myself will be staying.’
Ford smiled with relief, even as he felt a wave of guilt wash over him for all the times he’d mentally sworn at his superior, or run him down. But, truth be told, Moulton wasn’t making all that much of a sacrifice. All his children had grown up, and he knew his wife could easily go to their daughter’s for Christmas Day, to save being alone. He asked Ford to tell her as much, and a few minutes later the sergeant left, restraining from whistling cheerfully until he was decently out of earshot of the farm.
Jenny set to work on dinner. As she worked, though, her mind hummed. Delia had left the place that morning, expecting never to come back. No doubt she’d been smuggling out the odd item of clothing, over the weeks, and leaving them with Sissy to hide. And Sissy herself had been hoarding some money, no doubt from the housekeeping.
But when Delia had arrived at The Dell, all excitement and anticipation, it was only to learn that Cordelia had discovered the stash and confiscated it, no doubt thoroughly berating and demoralizing her daughter as she’d done so.
So Delia would be on her own, if she left. And worse even than that, alone and without money. She would have had no choice but to return home in defeat. So she’d have come back to the farm feeling thoroughly enraged, miserable and totally frustrated.
And discovered her uncle, sitting at the table. Good old Sid, who was the real owner of the farm, but who lacked the will and backbone to stand up to her father. Sid, who must have had plenty of money of his own. Had he ever offered her any? Sid, frail and helpless, just sitting there and perhaps smiling at her, totally unaware and seemingly uncaring about the devastating blow she’d just been delivered.
Jenny sighed heavily. It was possible that Delia could have exploded in a moment of madness. But was it likely?
She didn’t know. Not yet. She would try to get to know these people much better in the coming days. To talk to them and listen to them. And hope that one of them let something slip . . . One thing was for sure, she thought grimly, it was going to be a very strange Christmas with a police inspector as a guest, and everyone watching everyone else, and silently wondering, Was it you?
And for one of them, it would be the strangest Christmas of all. Watching the policeman. Waiting to see if he seemed to uncover any clue or any scrap of evidence.
Wondering if he, or she, had really got away with it . . .
CHAPTER EIGHT
Delia awoke on Christmas morning to the sound of church bells drifting across the valley. For a long moment she lay snug and safe in her warm bed, listening to the Westcott Barton church bells tinkling joyously in the clear, frosty air, her mind, for a moment, blissfully blank.
It’s Christmas, she thought then, still sluggish from sleep. And for a moment, everything was still all right. Then, like a cold wave suddenly breaking over her, she thought, London, and wanted to cry. Then, an even colder wave hit her, and she forgot all about her aborted dreams of escape, and she thought instead:
Uncle Sid.
Delia closed her pretty brown eyes for a long painful moment, and her hands curled into fists by her side. If only . . .
She groaned and sat up, and immediately began shivering in the frozen air; she had let the fire go out before going to bed. Hardly surprising in the circumstances, and not for the first time, she swore bitterly to herself about the lack of central heating. The next time she was in town, she’d buy herself an electric fire for her bedroom, no matter how much her father moaned about the cost of power nowadays. Then her spurt of defiance fizzled as she realized that the cost of such appliances was bound to be expensive, and she couldn’t afford to squander even a single pound coin.
She quickly huddled into a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother, and pulle
d on a blouse and a pale blue sweater which was now a shade too small for her. Goosebumps peppered her wrists as she rubbed her hands together for warmth, and to stop her fingers tingling in the cold.
She wondered yet again what sort of kink it was in her father’s makeup that made him so penny-pinching when he was one of the wealthiest men around. Could he be mentally ill?
She was just about to get up and make the bed when a small white packet propped on her dressing table caught her eye. She’d missed it yesterday, being too numb and shocked to notice anything much. Now she frowned and moved cautiously around the bed, her heart suddenly hammering in her chest. She felt suddenly deeply afraid, but couldn’t have said why.
She noticed her own name written on the front, and immediately recognized the handwriting.
Sid’s writing.
With shaking hands she reached for the packet, which felt as cold as pity in her hands, and fumbled with the sealed flap. But, nightmarishly, it seemed to resist her probing fingers, and in the end, she angrily pulled the top off in a sudden jerk, dropping it onto the floor as the thing came apart in her hands.
An explosion of twenty-pound notes fluttered in the air and landed on the thin, faded carpet. For a long moment, Delia simply stared down at the money. Then, like a wondrous child, she bent and carefully collected them all together. There was fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of them when she’d finished counting, which was more than enough to get her to London. She could even rent a little bedsit, whilst she hunted about for a job. She could also take Sissy. But why had Sid done this now?
Suddenly, feverishly, Delia grabbed for the envelope and looked inside. Then she froze as she saw a slim, singly folded piece of paper tucked inside, and licked her painfully dry lips. For a moment, a mad, near-hysterical moment, she wanted to tear the letter into shreds before she could read it. But the moment passed quickly.
She simply had to know.
Slowly she extracted the note and read the few brief words written on one side.
My Dear Delia,
Happy Christmas, my beloved niece.
I hope you find the life you’ve always wanted, and love what you find.
Your loving uncle, Sidney.
For a long moment, Delia stared at the words, as if unable to comprehend them. But, slowly, very slowly, several things became horribly clear.
Sid had known, must have always known, that she intended to leave the farm, and soon. And that he’d always intended to help her. He’d left it until Christmas Day to tell her so. Left it until she was eighteen and could legally act however she liked. He’d left it—
‘Too late,’ Delia whispered, and two large tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Uncle Sid,’ she whispered, her words bouncing off the walls of her room and coming back to her, deepening her grief. ‘Why did you leave it until it was all too late?’
* * *
Bert Kelton paused as the first church bells of the morning pealed across the valley, and looked instinctively towards the village. There, through the bare skeletons of trees, he could just make out the spire of the church and a flock of rooks filling the bare branches of the ash tree beside it.
He turned his back on the sight and made off quickly in the opposite direction, ignoring the bite of fierce frost on his bare hands. He glanced down fondly at the dog trotting in resigned misery beside him. Sid’s dog, really, Bert thought. Sid was the one who kept him hidden under the kitchen table. Many was the time when Bert had had to come in and hoist the dog out of the kitchen before his father got home, knowing that Stan would give the dog a kick in the ribs for daring to come inside.
He could still see Sid’s eyes twinkling at him in silent gratitude, could still see his uncle’s old and ill face crack into a smile as he watched Bert drag the reluctant mutt out into the yard.
‘Come on, Pooch, cheer up,’ he muttered. ‘We have to round the sheep up out of Dingle field. If the thaw comes, the meadow’s bound to flood.’
He didn’t, of course, have to do it on Christmas morning. Neither did he have to do it alone. But he couldn’t face his first Christmas without Janice being there to wish him a Merry Christmas with a laugh and a hug and a kiss under the mistletoe.
Beside him, the dog heaved a great shuddering sigh, as if he’d understood every word, and wasn’t looking forward to it. The sound distracted Bert, who glanced down in the dog’s direction once more and gave a dry, painful laugh. ‘You’re the only sheepdog I ever knew who didn’t like sheep,’ he said, and instantly felt Sid’s ghost was beside him.
‘Ahh, but that’s what makes the hound so interesting,’ Sid had said, when Bert had first told him about the young pup’s aversion to farm work.
Bert almost glanced around, as if expecting to see Sid’s ghost walking beside him, but resisted the impulse with gritted teeth. Instead, he frowned and put his best foot forward, intent on putting as much distance as he could between himself and the farm. He knew, one day, he simply wouldn’t be able to go back. Every day, he had to fight an ever-stronger urge to just turn his back and walk away. Only the fact that he didn’t know where Janice was stopped him. Unless he stayed, and managed to intercept any letter from her before his father got to it, he’d never know where she was.
He didn’t even want to think about what he would do if she ever stopped writing. If she finally believed he didn’t want to know her. Talk to her. Be with her. If that happened, he thought, he could kill—
‘Damn it, Sid, it was all your fault,’ he said aloud, making the dog look up at him, one ear cocked inquisitively. Bert rubbed a hard hand over his brow, and sighed deeply. ‘If only you’d kicked him off the farm years ago, none of this would have happened. I’d still have Janice.’
But Sid hadn’t acted. And now Sid was dead.
In the meadow, Bert surveyed the sheep, which were huddled all along one hedge, away from the wind and nestling in the lee. The snow was barely on the ground there, and they would be reluctant to plough their way through the deepening snow towards the gate.
He glanced down at the dog, which was watching the sheep with misery in his soft brown eyes.
‘Off you go then,’ Bert gave the command, and the dog began crossing the field obediently, forced to make his way through the snow in leaps and bounds, rather than in a straight, walking line.
Bert moved around the field to check out the spot where the wind, sweeping in from the east, had cut a shallow path in the snow. With a few sharp whistles, the dog had them heading that way.
Pooch was puzzled. He knew from past memory that the sheep had to go through the gate, so why was his master giving him commands to take them somewhere else? Then the snow under his paws became less deep, and he understood. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be so bad after all. He began to pant happily, pressing his belly into the ground, watching, turning back, rounding up the silly white objects that didn’t seem to have a brain in their woolly heads.
Then he heard a sharp whistled command that warned of a stray, saw one stupid ewe heading off on her own, and went after her. He nipped at her heels, never, of course, actually touching her. The stupid sheep bleated, skidded to a halt and turned.
And suddenly the world fell out from under him.
Pooch gave a single yip of surprise. He had not forgotten that there was a pond in this field, but the mutt simply hadn’t known where it was, under all the whiteness that surrounded him. Now, terrifyingly, his rear end was immersed in cold, stinging water, and the dog gave a terrified yelp.
He stared at the stupid woolly-headed ewe that was trotting away and joining the others as if it hadn’t a care in the world, and let out another heart-rending yelp as he felt his front paws sliding back on the ice. Desperately, he scrambled with his front paws, trying to dig them in, but he could get no purchase on the ice. His back legs doggy-paddled in the freezing water, and scrambled vainly for a foothold. He was in the pond from his back legs to halfway up his spine now, and he lifted his head and howled. The mutt could feel the heat dr
aining out of him, and he looked across to his where his master was . . .
But his master wasn’t there. The dog whimpered; he hated being alone. He remembered the kind hand of his older master on his head, and wondered where he was. He wanted to be by the fire. And the big human female that had come to his home recently now regularly gave him scraps of meat. He liked her. He didn’t like it when there wasn’t a human around.
He howled for his master, scrambling in the ice but sinking in ever deeper. He was in almost to his shoulders now. And then, suddenly, the most wonderful sound he’d ever heard in all his canine life came from right behind him.
‘All right, Pooch, hold on, boy.’
The dog turned his head and saw his master lying flat on his stomach, one large beefy hand reaching out to him. Fingers curled around the scruff of his neck, hurting him, but Pooch didn’t even whimper as Bert carefully pulled the dog from the icy pond. Pooch trustingly let go of his claw-hold on the ice, allowing himself to be totally submerged for an instant, before Bert could pull him clear.
Bert wriggled back cautiously, very much aware that he couldn’t tell how far out on the pond he was. For a long while he wriggled carefully backwards, splaying his body weight as best he could and pulling the unresisting, shivering mutt with him. Only when he was sure he was clear of the pond did he sit up and drag the shaking dog onto his lap, wrapping his arms around the dog, rubbing warmth back into his quaking furry body.
He’d heard the ice crack a split second before he’d seen the dog slip in, and his heart had almost stopped. Unlike the dog, he had forgotten about the pond, his mind being on other things. If the dog, Sid’s dog, had died because of his stupidity, he wasn’t sure what he’d have done.
‘I’m sorry, Sid,’ Bert said, and found himself foolishly hugging the dog to his chest, crying all over it like a baby. ‘Oh, Sid, I’m so sorry . . .’
Bert Kelton’s shoulders shook as he sobbed like a man finally broken.
