A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  He gave a long ragged sigh which was almost a laugh. ‘So I shouldn’t take it personally?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  But he wasn’t really expecting an answer and, walking on, we fell into step. Aware of his eyes on me, I looked across at him.

  He said, in a rough voice, ‘Glad you’re here, Alex.’

  ‘Me too.’ And I reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  Chapter Three

  ‘The festival—all to do with the music festival.’ Will turned a page of the diary and waved a hand at various entries. ‘Anne Hampton, the doctor’s wife—she was running the thing with Grace. And BG is Beth Gregson. She does the secretarial work, types the letters.’

  ‘And SM?’ I asked, wishing that Will hadn’t insisted on my taking Grace’s chair at the bureau, hadn’t perched himself on the arm of a nearby sofa so that he was forced to lean awkwardly across the flap of the desk.

  ‘That’s the accounts man, umm…Stephen…’ He pressed his fingertips against his eyelids in an effort of memory. ‘For heaven’s sake…Stephen…Stephen…Makim. That’s it—Makim.

  I wrote the name down. ‘All these people are local?’

  His doubt finally erupted in a violent shrug. ‘Yes. But they’re friends, Alex. Friends.’

  ‘Of course. I was only trying to establish if Grace had met anyone recently she didn’t know well.’

  He was persuaded, but only just. ‘There’s nobody here she wouldn’t have known, except for a few suppliers and tradesmen.’ Seeing from my expression that I was ruling nothing out, he looked incredulous, then thoughtful, until, reluctantly coming round to the idea at last, he leafed back through the pages. ‘Okay,’ he said, settling down to the task. ‘Goddards…they’re the marquee people. I think SO, anyway. And…’ He went to the next entry. ‘These are the caterers. And Lamb, he’s the plumber…’

  I was listening and making notes, but also watching him quietly. On the marsh he had seemed almost like another person, the anxiety in him and the frustration, the way his emotions had flown across his face. I had been thrown, too, by the inadequacies of my memory, the way it had managed to leave out whole aspects of him, had lost the subtleties and idiosyncrasies of his character, the details of his face. Yet gradually the person sitting beside me began to blend into my recollections of him. The gestures, the expressive hands, the long fingers that drew sudden patterns in the air. The line of his eyebrows, the wide well-shaped mouth, the distinctive voice; and the dark hair—always the hair—thick and wavy and rather wild. Recognizing these things, he seemed both familiar and extraordinarily new to me, a faded memory repainted in bright colours.

  In the diary he had reached the Wednesday before Grace disappeared and a service call from the oil delivery man. ‘That’s it,’ he said and glanced up so quickly that he caught me staring at him.

  ‘Well, I’ll check them all out, just to be sure,’ I said, looking down at my notes.

  ‘Even virtual strangers?’

  ‘Especially virtual strangers, perhaps.’

  His mouth tightened.

  I referred back to the diary. ‘There’s an EW mentioned somewhere. At two p.m. Who’s that?’

  He raised an eyebrow, faintly surprised and decidedly cool. ‘Your brother.’

  ‘Oh.’ I turned this into a question with a lift of my hand.

  ‘You didn’t know? He’s lending Wickham Lodge for the festival.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘Grace felt it was the ideal place for it.’ Something in Will’s tone suggested that he himself hadn’t been quite so enthusiastic about the idea. ‘Not too grand,’ he recounted as if quoting from a brochure, ‘not bound up in National Trust regulations like the stately homes, but big enough for a decent marquee and a field for car parking.’

  ‘I had no idea. Edward never tells me anything.’

  ‘It was settled months ago.’ He returned to the diary. ‘That’s it. I don’t think there’s anybody else in here.’

  We moved on to Grace’s planned trip to London, and Will became animated again.

  ‘The dentist’s called Bennett. I’ve got his number in the kitchen. Hang on.’ He padded across the pristine expanse of carpet in thick socks—he had left his boots at the back door—and returned a few moments later with a wide green leather-bound book with alphabet indentations cut into the pages. ‘Bennett.’ Settling on the sofa arm once more, he thumbed open a page and ran his eye down the list. ‘Here.’ He passed the book to me so that I could copy the number. ‘I called him, of course, first thing on Friday.’

  ‘And Grace hadn’t turned up for her appointment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You tried the restaurant as well? The Brasserie?’

  ‘Yes, but there was no reservation in Grace’s name.’

  ‘You don’t know who she was having lunch with?’

  He lifted a casual shoulder. A friend…A potential sponsor. She still had seven thousand pounds to raise. It was hard work.’

  The telephone rang. Scooping up the receiver, Will listened for a brief moment before informing the enquirer that there was no news and briskly ringing off. ‘I wouldn’t bother to answer the damn thing at all,’ he said, banging the phone back on the hook, ‘except I don’t want to miss the police.’

  ‘How often do they call?’

  ‘Oh, twice a day. But it’s usually this DC Barbara Smith. She’s pleasant enough, but junior.’

  ‘And the officer in charge?’

  ‘Ramsey? He just turns up now and again. Though not for a while now. A day or so.’

  I wondered if Ramsey, far from treating the disappearance as a possible fatality, had relegated it to a non-vulnerable missing person (matrimonial). It was a subcategory of missing person which never appeared on any official form but which guaranteed a case low priority. Yet, even as I considered this, I dismissed it again. The police could hardly ignore the fact that Grace had taken no clothes or money. Was Ramsey just being secretive, then? Or busy following leads elsewhere?

  I said, ‘What about friends in London? You checked with them?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘None of them was due to lunch with Grace on Thursday?’

  ‘Seems not.’

  ‘And had any of them lunched with her in recent months?’

  He looked at me with sudden intensity. ‘Didn’t ask that.’

  ‘When you spoke to the Brasserie did you happen to ask them if anyone had failed to show up for lunch that day? Anyone with a reservation?’

  He grimaced at missing such an obvious question. ‘Didn’t ask that either.’

  ‘We can find out easily enough.’ I looked at the five o’clock entry. ‘Now, Grace’s mother…’

  ‘Veronica.’ His eyes flashed.

  ‘Did she hear from Grace that day?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has she got any idea what might have happened?’

  ‘None. But then she…’ For no obvious reason he lost momentum and frowned into the distance.

  I left it a moment before asking, ‘Was there any particular reason that Grace was going to see her, do you know?’

  ‘Sorry?’ He tore himself away from whatever was absorbing him. ‘Reason? Umm…No…Nothing special. She hadn’t seen Veronica for some time, that was all. And she felt she should.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind if I went and talked to Veronica?’

  He stared at me intensely again, and his eyes were very dark. ‘I don’t know. I’d have to speak to her first.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She can be’—he cast around for a diplomatic word—‘difficult. She’s apt to harp on about things which don’t have a great deal to do with whatever you’re talking about. She has her favourite bugbears. One of which’—his abrupt smile was ironic and devoid of humour—‘is me. She thinks that Grace married beneath her.’

  ‘Ah,’ I murmured sympathetically. ‘But of course she wouldn’t be the first paren
t to think that.’

  ‘But most parents wouldn’t take every opportunity to say so! She’s even trying to blame me for what’s happened. You know—why wasn’t I here for Grace, why did I leave her alone in the house, all that sort of stuff.’

  ‘People do that when they’re frightened—look for someone to blame.’

  ‘Oh, she’s not just looking.’ And he rolled his eyes expressively, though more in weary disbelief than rancour.

  I took us back to the diary, to the crossed-out entry with the address near Regent’s Park. ‘And this cancelled appointment? Who’s AWP?’

  The tension came back into his face. ‘Don’t know. The police say they’ve checked it out and are satisfied that this person can’t help them with their enquiries.’ He repeated dangerously, ‘Can’t help them with their enquiries. What does that mean?’ he added caustically. ‘The person doesn’t exist? Wasn’t there? Went up in smoke?’

  ‘They haven’t told you the person’s name?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, we have the address, it shouldn’t be difficult to find out. It would help to have a photography though, if you can spare one.’

  He looked at me blankly.

  ‘A photograph of Grace.’

  Of course. The police took…I’m not sure if…’ Losing the thread, he put his hands over his face and dragged them down his cheeks, momentarily distorting his features. I wondered if he was getting any sleep, and whether he’d asked his doctor for anything in the way of a tranquillizer.

  ‘No, I remember now…’ He clasped a hand to his forehead, as though to clear his thoughts. ‘They returned it. It’s in the office. I’ll get it out for you.’

  ‘And may I take this?’ I indicated the green leather address book.

  ‘I’d like to say yes, but it’s all I have.’

  There was a moment of complete misunderstanding between us.

  I placed my hand lightly on his arm and said with compassion, ‘I’ll return it safe and sound in a couple of days, I promise. I know how precious these things can be.’

  Looking puzzled, he said, ‘But I need it. I use it all the time.’

  I withdrew my hand. ‘It’s not Grace’s?’

  ‘No, it belongs to the house. Grace had her own address book. Well, a sort of miniature Filofax.’

  ‘I see. I thought…’ I smiled briefly and awkwardly. ‘May I have a look at Grace’s book, then?’

  He seemed puzzled again. ‘But it’s missing. With her handbag.’

  I absorbed this slowly. ‘I hadn’t realized. I thought there was nothing missing.’

  The bafflement lingered in his expression. ‘I thought I’d told you about the handbag.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I know now.’

  He pulled a face, as if this lapse of memory was both inexplicable and faintly alarming.

  ‘She would have had a bit of money with her, then,’ I murmured.

  He nodded inattentively.

  I picked up the large green address book. ‘I’ll copy what I need from this, if I may. It won’t take long.’

  Still looking rather dazed, he said, ‘Would you like some coffee?’ He attempted a smile, which only succeeded in tipping his mouth askew and making him look rather cross.

  I smiled. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  He stood up and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, looked away towards the window. ‘The worst thing is deciding what to tell Charlie.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Maggie keeps telling him that his mother’s just gone away for a while but I don’t think he believes that for a minute. He’s not stupid.’

  ‘And you? What have you told him?’

  A pause, or a hesitation. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He hasn’t asked?’

  It was another moment before he answered. ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps it’d be best to leave it there, then.’

  He stared intently at the window. ‘I don’t know what to do, Alex. I don’t know what to…understand.’ It wasn’t the word he wanted or intended, but I knew what he meant.

  ‘The important thing is to make sure that everything possible is being done.’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned back. ‘Yes.’ His smile worked a little better this time, and it was difficult to meet his gaze without remembering the humour and ebullience that had always lain behind it in the past and the powerful affection he had stirred in me.

  ‘One thing,’ I said as he moved off. ‘Was Grace planning to come back from London on that Thursday night?’

  He paused at the door, his back to the window, his face in shadow. ‘She wasn’t absolutely sure.’ His voice had deepened. If she missed the last train she was going to stay with her mother.’

  When he’d gone I thought how simple it was to re-establish the basics of friendships the easy communication, the sense of shared experience, but how difficult to take such a relationship into the realms of disclosure. To ask Will if Grace could have had friends he didn’t know about, if he was aware of what she did when she was away from him—even to ask if she were happy—was to imply a measure of evasion, even deceit, in their relationships and draw him into a defensive position where he might be tempted to offer less than the truth.

  Before starting on the address book, I lifted the phone to try DI Ramsey. Sitting there at Grace’s desk, her phone pressed to my ear, her diary in front of me, her presence suddenly seemed very strong. I remembered Will introducing me to her all those years ago. It was in the garden here at Marsh House, only yards from this room. We hadn’t spoken for long, just a minute or two, but I could still see her with absolute clarity as she stood in front of me, a slender figure in a long summer dress, offering her thin white hand to me. She had listened to Will’s introduction with a slightly quizzical expression, she had murmured some greeting. I knew she hadn’t caught my name, I knew she had no idea who I was, but she smiled her famous smile anyway, lifting her mouth sweetly at the corners while dipping her head, so that she looked at you upwards, from under her brows, and you couldn’t help noticing the blueness of her eyes. A moment later she turned to smile at the person next to me, it might even have been my father, and I noticed the way her eyes widened and sparkled with sudden laughter as if the two of them were enjoying some enormous private joke. I had stood there watching her, listening to her, not joining in, yet at the same time quite incapable of moving away. Then all other perceptions had been swept aside by the mention of a birthday. Someone was going to be twenty-one. I understood with a shock: Grace was going to be twenty-one. Even twelve years later I could remember the astonishment I had felt, and the stab of mortification. When Will had hit the age of pubs and parties and student holidays, I had suddenly become too young for him. The three years between us had become an apparently unbridgeable chasm. We had still gone for walks on the marshes, we had still talked, we had still been close—or so it had seemed to me—yet increasingly I had become the one to search him out. He had other friends for the evenings, for trips to the cinema, for skiing holidays in Austria. Then just as the age gap had begun to narrow again, I had gone away to university and discovered junk food and insecurities and clothes that did me no favours. At twenty-two, finals over, confidence blooming, I had been packing up to come home when the news of Grace and Will’s engagement had broken. Meeting Grace that day, finding her two years younger than me and infinitely more lovely, had proved altogether too much for my raw and tender heart, and I had slipped quickly away.

  I closed the diary and put it on one side. I dialled Norwich CID. When I had first tried them on our return to the house I had been lobbed into the telephonic black hole peculiar to police stations everywhere, in which you are left connected to a ringing extension which neither answers nor returns your call to the switchboard. This time, however, I was put through to an extension that answered immediately. A chirpy female voice announced herself as DC Smith and confirmed that she was assigned to the Grace Dearden case.

  I explained who I was and that I
wanted to come in and talk to DI Ramsey that afternoon.

  ‘I’m not sure anyone will be available,’ she said.

  Were they so busy? I wondered. Was the inquiry so far-reaching? I said, ‘What, no one at all?’

  ‘I’ll have to check,’ she said. ‘Can I come back to you?’

  I was getting a feeling here, and the feeling wasn’t good. I gave her my mobile number and said I’d like to come in between two and four that afternoon, if that was at all possible.

  Ringing off, the feeling intensified. After ten years as a crime solicitor I’d developed an instinct for the sort of regime under which a divisional CID operated. Within the Met there were happy stations and miserable ones, squads where you couldn’t help suspecting that some of its officers were less than scrupulous and others where such a thought would never enter your head; CIDs where almost everyone seemed to have lost heart and to drift through the motions, and CIDs where they all drove themselves into the ground, trying to do their best under crime statistics and paperwork that rose at an equally depressing rate. It seemed to me that a CID where a detective sergeant couldn’t invite me round without permission was not likely to be a very efficient or happy division.

  I opened Grace’s diary in mid-December and, with the help of the address book, started to make a list of the names, addresses and numbers of every person Grace had met by appointment over the intervening two months. Halfway through the January entries I was distracted by the sound of a knock at the front door and voices, Will’s firsts then a female’s, which was high and rather piercing. The voices faded down the corridor towards the kitchen.

  Finishing my notes, I closed the diary and took the address book back to the kitchen. The female voice reached me well before I saw its owner, a slender woman in a cream rollneck sweater and jeans sitting at the kitchen table. Under the starlights her heavy shoulder-length hair seemed startlingly yellow and her skin rather too pink, giving the effect of a doll. Maggie, sitting opposite this vivid creature, wearing one of her more unreadable expressions, appeared yet more grey. Will, if he had been there at all, had disappeared, and there was no sign of Charlie.