A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  Maggie introduced Anne Hampton.

  ‘Hello,’ she cried, swivelling in her seat to offer me a firm hand and a wide smile topped by an exaggerated expression of sympathy and concern. ‘Gather you’re going to get things going. Thank goodness. High time.’ She spoke in the spirited tones of the hockey fields with a little too much volume and reach. ‘It’s so awful, this lack of action. Awful.’ She was about thirty-five with clear brown eyes and fine arched brows. Close up, the extraordinary yellowness of her hair looked entirely natural, and the overall effect would have been of prettiness if it hadn’t been for the pink blotches that dappled her cheeks, as though from an allergy.

  Maggie pushed a mug of coffee towards me as I sat down.

  ‘I gather you’re organizing the music festival with Grace,’ I said to Anne Hampton.

  ‘Oh, just helping, really. It’s Grace’s thing, you know. She’s the brains. I’m just the brawn. Chasing up promises, pinning people down. The dragon.’ She raised an eyebrow, not at all displeased with the epithet.

  ‘It sounds quite an event.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Grace had got—’ She paused as Maggie pushed her chair back with a loud scrape.

  ‘I have to do things,’ Maggie announced, standing up. ‘Thank you for coming, Anne.’ And she fluttered the fingers of one hand as she passed by.

  ‘ ‘Bye, Mrs Dearden.’

  The term of address was strangely formal for such an informal person as Maggie, and I couldn’t help thinking that Maggie must have wanted it to stay that way.

  Anne continued to smile at the door for a moment after Maggie had closed it behind her. ‘Honestly, what an awful thing this is,’ she cried, turning her smile into a grimace of fellow feeling. ‘I can’t bear to think of poor Grace, of where she could be! Of what might have happened! And Will. It must be just appalling for him, don’t you think? Just dreadful. So happy together. Such a fabulous couple. Honestly, life’s ghastly sometimes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I mean, she wouldn’t have just gone. Not Grace. It’s inconceivable. Something must have happened. I hate to say it, but something awful!’

  ‘Well…Let’s hope not,’ I murmured, more for something to say than anything else.

  ‘You’re right,’ she declared instantly, with sudden fervour, ‘we must hope for the best, mustn’t we? Yes, you’re right! Yes!’

  Maggie’s coffee was delicious, and I drank it avidly. ‘Presumably you’ve seen quite a bit of Grace in recent weeks. Did she seem…different in any way? Did you notice anything unusual?’

  ‘Unusual?’ An expression of puzzlement came over her face while she tried to work out what I could mean by this. ‘Unusual? No. No…Grace was the same as always. You know, calm and together. Organized. Always on time. Always prepared. Always immaculate. Never looking anything but absolutely perfect,’ she cried, with open admiration. ‘Don’t know how she did it! Hard work, I suppose. And planning. Never managed it myself, not the meals and the shopping and getting the children in the right place at the right time. My children are always the ones to lose their shoes and start screaming just when they’re late for school.’ She rounded her eyes in mock exasperation. ‘But Grace—she always had the whole thing organized. Never a moment’s panic. I mean, never. But unusual?’ she echoed, considering the idea once more. ‘No, can’t think of a thing. I mean, she didn’t say anything. She certainly didn’t look any different. She was terribly busy, of course. A little more rushed than usual, perhaps. I mean, not so much time to talk on the phone, and out a lot. But that was the festival. Trying to raise the sponsorship money. It was a bit off slog.’

  ‘She seemed happy?’

  ‘Happy?’ Anne Hampton’s brows twitched with faint disapproval, as though in asking the question I had made a vaguely dishonourable suggestion. ‘Absolutely. Very happy. She was the same as she always was, sweet and lovely and…’ She jigged her head from side to side as she searched the limits of her vocabulary. ‘…well, divine. I mean, just divine. Always a total sweetheart. Honestly, everyone loved her. Everyone. In the village, in the neighbourhood. Everyone she met, really.’ She blinked back a gleam of tears. ‘Actually—’ She pushed her elbows further onto the table and, leaning her pink face towards me, said in a low confiding voice, ‘Actually, I have wondered if…well, because s.he was so gorgeous and lovely, and everyone adoring her and all that…well, I do wonder if some nutter mightn’t have got a thing about her…mightn’t have—you know.’ Her look conveyed unmentionable possibilities.

  ‘A local person, you mean?’

  ‘Well, a farm worker, a tramp, someone like that. You just never know nowadays, do you?

  All these batty people watching horrible videos.’ I made no comment on this. ‘Apart from the festival, Grace wasn’t involved in anything that might have put her in the public arena? I don’t know—local politics, committees?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that. No…Though we did get our picture in the local rag last summer, when we announced the festival. But everyone gets their picture in the local paper at some time or another. It’s not like making the pages of Taller.’ And she gave a bark of a laugh before rearranging her expression into something more serious. ‘Why?’ I shrugged. ‘No particular reason.’

  ‘Ahh,’ she cried, raising an index finger as if to admonish me, ‘what you mean is, was she anywhere where she might have got noticed by a nutter? Was that it?’ She examined my face before rushing on to the next idea. ‘Or doing something that might have made her enemies? Well, I can tell you,’ she continued without drawing breath, ‘that Grace had no enemies. She couldn’t make enemies. Just couldn’t. She was always so lovely to everyone, whoever they were. Dustmen to dukes—not that we’ve got any dukes around here—but she could talk to anyone, charm them completely. Oh, I don’t mean charm them in a horrid way, like some people one knows! No, she only had to be herself, no more than that. Only had to be divine.’ There was admiration in her tone, and something like awe, as though Grace had been as much an icon to Anne Hampton as a friend. I drained my coffee. ‘Well, thank you—’ But Anne Hampton touched a staying hand to my arm and said with the urgency of someone who still has important truths to impart, ‘No, really, we went to see this rather terrifying car dealer. Trying to get some money out of him. It must have been October or November—no, October. He was really very offhand when we walked in, almost rude in fact, and then he took one look at Grace and sort of began to melt, and went on melting until he was just a lovely money-producing person. That’s what Grace called him!’ She chuckled delightedly. ‘A lovely money-producing person. By the end, he couldn’t do enough for the festival. Thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to north Norfolk. Gave us a thousand pounds—well, it was only a Volvo dealership, but it was quite a lot to us, more than we’d hoped for anyway. And he promised us two cars for the week of the festival, to shepherd the musicians around. And it was all due to Grace. I’m just hopeless at the common touch—always have been—but Grace…’ She paused, her eyes grew sharp with new insights. ‘Grace had no side to her, you see. She was open and sweet and lovely, and I think men just wanted to help her. Yes,’ she said, with the satisfaction of someone who is making a good point, ‘I think they felt they had to help her. They felt protective. She had that effect. And it wasn’t just men—we all felt we wanted to help her.’ The veneration was back in her voice, the sense of wonder. ‘I can’t explain it, really, I—’ She winced suddenly and pressed her fingers against her lips. ‘Oh, how awful,’ she whispered. I’m talking about her in the past tense, as though…Really. How awful…’

  The phone began to ring. Anne Hampton spread her hand against her chest and continued to sigh at her lapse. ‘Really,’ she repeated twice. Then, when the ringing continued unabated, she said, ‘Do you think I should answer it? They usually put the machine on, if they’re out.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  The phone sat on a worktop by the door, beside an answering machine. />
  ‘Hello,’ I said into the phone. ‘The Dearden house.’

  Silence.

  I said hello again and recited the phone number off the base of the phone for good measure, to be met by another silence made still deeper by the strong feeling that someone was there.

  Abruptly the line went dead.

  I replaced the receiver.

  ‘Who was it?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Just missed them,’ I said. I dialled 1471, and was given a local number which I jotted down on the phone pad and folded into my pocket.

  Above the phone was a glass-fronted cabinet containing a neat row of cookery books, with, at the far end, two bound notebooks with handwritten labels on their spines: Dinner Parties I, Dinner Parties II.

  ‘Grace is quite a cook, I gather.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ affirmed Anne Hampton. ‘Terrific.’

  I wondered if there was anything that Grace didn’t do terrifically well, or whether Anne Hampton was just easily impressed.

  ‘Very French,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Her cooking. Bit rich for me, to tell the truth. Oh, it’s always delicious, but too creamy for my taste. I’m a simple cook myself, roasts and chops. Grace did a proper diploma, you know, with Prue Leith or someone like that, just before she met Will.’

  I put my coffee mug on a draining board whose surface was like a mirror, and glanced at my watch. ‘Well, I’d better get back to—’

  ‘You know how they met, of course?’ Anne Hampton continued, undaunted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well! It had to be destiny, didn’t it? Fate. I got her to tell me the story once. Normally she didn’t like to talk about it. Felt that people made far too much of it. But what a story! She would have drowned, no doubt about it. Just a whisker away.’ She held up a finger and thumb that were almost touching and gave a shudder. ‘Will got her breathing again, you know. Saved her life! I mean, there’s something sort of wonderful in it, isn’t there? Restores your faith. The power of love and all that.’ She sighed sadly. ‘And now this! It all seems so…tragic.’

  I went to the door. I’ve got to go and talk to the family now. I’ll probably see you again.’

  ‘Oh, yes! I’ll be around. I’m only up the road.’ She added brightly, ‘In your old house! Did you realize?’

  I stared at her.

  ‘We took it over five years ago. We absolutely love the place. You must come and see all the things we’ve done to it.’

  ‘So your husband is…?’

  ‘Senior partner now. Oh, you mean, his name? Julian.’

  She marched past me into the passage and, in her most penetrating voice, sent a series of goodbyes reverberating through the house, as if this might spirit up some occupants. Only when her fourth call received no answer did she put on her coat. ‘Wonder where they’ve got to.’ She pulled open the front door and, peering out, exclaimed, ‘Oh, there.’

  I looked past her and saw a gathering of fifteen or twenty people on the edge of the marsh. At first I couldn’t make out what they were doing and then I saw three men detach themselves from the main group and set off purposefully along the path to the east. By the time I had gone back through the kitchen to grab my coat and made my way down to the water the next search party had set off, also heading east.

  My eyes looked for Will and found him standing to one side of the group, peering at a partially folded map in someone’s hand. His shoulders were hunched high as if against the cold, and he was frowning deeply.

  Maggie was standing on her own, wrapped in a scarf and ankle-length coat. ‘They are searching the Gun Marsh,’ she announced in a flat voice.

  I recognized a few people, a farmer called Yates, a man called Simons, who had been leader of the Fishermen’s Association in my father’s day, the bibulous publican from the Deepwell Arms, the woman who ran the fish shop. ‘Who’s organizing all this, Maggie?’

  ‘Frank Yates, I think,’ she replied vaguely. Then, with something like contempt, ‘They’ve already searched the Gun Marsh. They found nothing. Why search it again?’ And she clicked her tongue.

  ‘They’ve done this before? Gone searching like this?’

  Maggie stared into the distance. ‘Twice…three times. They find nothing.’

  More cars drew up, people grouped and departed. I became aware of two arrivals who did not join the others but stood a few yards away from us, watching silently. It wasn’t just the older man’s raincoat and neat haircut and city shoes which identified his occupation as surely as if he had worn his warrant card on his lapel, it was the way he stood, weight balanced equally on both feet, shoulders back, with the impassive expression police officers acquire with the job.

  The other officer, round-faced, overweight and a decade or more younger, wore jeans on his plump legs, and chunky trainers, and a quilted bomber jacket.

  ‘Which is the investigating officer?’ I whispered to Maggie.

  Following my gaze, noticing the men for the first time, her eyes flashed with indignation, her lips trembled and she scoffed hoarsely. ‘Why do they come and stare like this? Why don’t they search too?’

  ‘They’ve probably searched the area already.’

  She was breathing in ragged snatches, her eyelids fluttering with anger.

  ‘Maggie, it’s all right.’ I hadn’t realized how close to the edge she was.

  Eventually she began to breathe more easily. ‘He thinks bad things, that man,’ she said finally, with a desolation so deep that it might have marked the end of the world.

  ‘Go back to the house, Maggie. Go back and get warm.’

  Dropping her head, she nodded soundlessly before drawing her scarf closer round her face and walking away.

  I had it wrong. It was the overweight jeans-clad man who was Ramsey, while the older straight-backed figure in the raincoat introduced himself as Detective Superintendent Agnew, commander of Norfolk CID.

  I told them I was the Deardens’ solicitor. If this implied that I was a family lawyer more used to conveyancing and wills than crime, then for the moment that suited me very well.

  Agnew appeared to offer the name of the firm against some list in his head. ‘Not a local outfit?’ he asked, in the tone of someone wishing to be put right.

  ‘No.’ I gave him my card.

  He examined it and raised a slight eyebrow. ‘Ah.’

  I didn’t need to be told that London was going to count against me.

  Meeting Ramsey’s moon-faced gaze, I asked him for an update on his investigation.

  ‘We have made extensive enquiries.’ His voice was so flat that he might have been giving evidence. ‘But as yet have no indication as to what might have happened to Mrs Dearden. We have made extensive searches of the immediate area. We have circulated a recent photograph of Mrs Dearden and put her on the missing persons’ register. Local television and local press have carried items and shown photographs. We have checked the usual places, the hospitals and emergency departments.’ He added, ‘All to no avail.’

  ‘House-to-house enquiries?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘The village?’

  ‘The immediate neighbours. The adjacent lanes.’ He spoke stiffly, his small eyes seemed to recede into the plumpness of his face, and I guessed he had inferred some sort of criticism from my question.

  Having no wish to rub him up the wrong way, I nodded lavishly to show that I found his answer entirely satisfactory. ‘And I understand you’ve followed up the possibility of her having gone to London on the Thursday, as she’d planned/

  ‘That’s correct.’

  I waited for him to expand on this. For a while we held each other’s gaze, I expectantly, he with wariness or resistance.

  ‘There is no indication that she went to London,’ he announced finally.

  ‘No obvious means of transport.’

  ‘That’s right. Nothing with the local taxi firms. Checked the station and rail staff—nobody saw her. And she didn’t turn
up to any of her engagements.’

  Again, I made a show of agreeing with him because a little deference never did any harm when you were tarred with the London brush. ‘And the Brasserie restaurant, they hadn’t seen her either?’

  He gave me a wary look, as though, with all this information at my disposal, I must be trying to catch him out. ‘No.’

  ‘Did they know her from previous visits?’

  A slight pause which told me the question probably hadn’t been asked, at least not in that form. ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘And the last appointment at six thirty, the one that was cancelled?’

  Again, the slight defensiveness. ‘Checked out.’

  Agnew had remained studiously aloof from this exchange, keeping his gaze on the activities by the marsh. Now he said to me in his quiet voice, ‘You specialize in crime, I take it, Mrs O’Neill?’

  I had rather given myself away. ‘With family law too.’

  ‘Go together in London, I suppose, family and crime, as often as not?’ His mouth twitched amiably, to show that I shouldn’t take offence from any of this.

  ‘Not as often as one might think,’ I said, just as mildly.

  ‘I was with the Met for five years,’ he said, coming clean. ‘Then Manchester, then Devon. When I came here they told me Norfolk didn’t see much serious crime. But nowadays there’s not a lot of difference wherever you go. Cars, drugs, TV violence. It’s all universal.’ He was in his mid-fifties, I judged; a wiry man with a bony face, a narrow head and steady eyes that gave the impression of judgement and compassion. His thin mousy hair was cut like a soldier’s, very short at the sides, and his collar was a little too big for his birdlike neck. ‘This is a difficult business, Mrs O’Neill,’ he said as though he had made up his mind to be frank with me. ‘I wish we could say we had something to go on. There’s no suggestion of foul play. There’s no suggestion of mental distress or domestic upset. It would appear that Mrs Dearden has vanished into thin air.’

  ‘So what next?’

  With a movements of his head, Agnew deferred to Ramsey, who said blandly, ‘We’ll keep monitoring the case.’