A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

‘This is Carol Yates.’

  ‘Mrs Yates!’ I gave a nervous laugh. ‘Of course. I’m sorry to bother you.’ Pulling a ready-made excuse out of the air, I said I was calling to see if it was convenient for Frank to move the last of Maggie’s furniture the next day.

  Ringing off, I dialled the number with the Norwich code. It was answered by an agricultural merchant.

  The relief crept over me. Will had no lover. No traceable full-blooded lover, at any rate, which was the only sort that mattered. No man could have a full-time lover and not communicate with her; no man could maintain an illicit relationship without giving his lover the reassurance of regular calls. And while a man might be forced to call his lover from his office now and again, all his instincts would draw him to the mobile. The mobile, irresistible, clandestine, was

  J

  the medium of the modern affair.

  My relief grew sharper: if I couldn’t discover evidence of another woman, then neither would the police. For the police, people’s lives were a series of clichés and the possession of a lover was more than enough reason for a man to kill his wife, more than enough reason to close their minds to all the other possibilities.

  There was only one problem with all this, and I had been trying to avoid it. If lovers needed to talk so badly, then how had Grace managed to communicate with Mr Gordon of Hans Place? How had she survived the separations between lunch dates?

  I tried Ray on his mobile.

  He answered to a background of traffic noise. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Norfolk.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach you.’

  ‘Mobile turned off. Listen, I’m desperate for that Hans Place information.’

  ‘Right-ho. Got a bit more. The trust which owns the place is controlled by a family called Aubrey. The trust is Guernsey-based, like I told you, but no indication of where the family come from, and a bit difficult to find out. You know what these Guernsey lawyers are like.’

  No Mr Gordon. I suppressed my disappointment. ‘Keep on it, would you, Ray? I need a name, a workplace number, some way of talking to them.’

  ‘I’m on to it,’ he promised. ‘Would have given it more time, but had a panic on.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Lost a witness. But, listen, I have got a name for your Regent’s Park geezer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘25 Avon Court on Prince Albert Road is leased by’—he paused as if to check his notes—‘a Mr Barry Holland, who runs a company called…hang on, got it here somewhere—’

  ‘Clawfoot Productions.’

  ‘You know the guy?’ Traffic droned through the earpiece, then Ray’s voice said, ‘Hello? Alex? Hello? You still there?’

  ‘I’m here…Thanks, Ray…’

  ‘Enough on Mr Holland, then?’

  ‘Plenty. Just stay with Hans Place.’

  I put the phone down, my brain filled with images of Grace and Barry Holland. Sponsorship business? Other business? Friendship? Love? Adventure? For a wild instant I wondered if he might keep a second flat in Hans Place, but it seemed unlikely.

  Lovers. I tried to imagine the two of them together. Barry, the boy-made-good pop promoter whose hair would always be a little too slick, suits a little too broad-shouldered, aftershave a little too powerful, and the elegant classical-music-loving Grace with her effortless fastidious style and—Jilly’s words came back

  —her grand manner. I couldn’t think of anything they could possibly have in common, although that of course had never prevented

  people from being drawn to each other. Yet, even allowing for sex and the power of money, I simply couldn’t see them as an item. Barry’s relative lack of refinement, his rather flashy veneer, would have repelled Grace. It came to me with new clarity: Grace had been a snob, and not the harmless sort who clings rather desperately to her own kind, rather the type who aggressively seeks higher social ground.

  No, it had to be a simple matter of money that had brought Barry and Grace together, a subject on which they were both, in their separate ways, experts.

  I realized that I didn’t even know if Barry was married or otherwise attached.

  Before leaving Will’s desk, I couldn’t resist moving a couple of stray bills onto the appropriate piles, and then it seemed a simple matter to sort the rest of the paper-drift into some kind of order.

  You don’t see things, and you see them. Putting a letter on the correspondence pile, I hardly glanced at it, yet I found myself pulling it back towards me and reading it in more detail. It must have been the numbers that had caught my eye, the sheer size of the sum. The letter was from Will’s bank manager, to say he was prepared to offer Will a mortgage of £250,000 against the value of the house and farm tenancy. He realized that this was below the £300,000 that Will had wanted, but it was the absolute maximum he could offer.

  Chapter Nine

  Paul’s car was parked neatly outside the house, parallel to the kerb. The porch lantern was on, and through the spare-room window I could see the glow of the landing light. I found it impossible not to tick these things off in my mind, just as I found it difficult not to notice that two days after the dustmen’s visit the rubbish bins were still out of their cuddy, their lids upside down on the pavings and that a new telephone directory lay uncollected by the flower urn. Such tiny things: I was angry with myself for even noticing.

  I let myself in and called a greeting.

  Paul appeared from the living room, a fluid smile on his face. ‘Welcome home, stranger.’

  As we put our arms around each other I savoured the moment of homecoming, though in the same instant, rising in the same emotional breath, I felt a familiar ache of foreboding.

  ‘You’re late!’ Paul cried, holding me at arm’s length.

  ‘Am I?’ I tried not to look too closely into his face in case I should see the signs. ‘Had we said a time?’

  He wagged a finger in mock reprimand. ‘Dinner. You were going to be here for dinner. Still, it may not be spoilt yet. I hope, anyway.’

  The drink lay thick on his voice and in his eyes, and I looked away.

  Guiding me by the shoulder, he led me towards the kitchen, to a table laid as though for guests, with candles, napkins and best wine glasses. I was touched by the trouble he had taken, but uneasy too.

  Playing the waiter, he pulled out my chair with a flourish and, protecting his hands with a dishcloth that was far too thin, slid a plate precariously out of the oven and almost dropped it.

  ‘Careful!’

  ‘No, I’m there! I’m there!’ Grimacing at the heat, he rushed the plate onto the table and, rearranging the dishcloth around the edges, placed it in front of me.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting hot.’ It was salmon with peas and fried potatoes.

  ‘Ah ha!’ he declared flamboyantly. ‘It’s hot you’ve got!’ Pouring some wine, he sat opposite and gestured me to eat.

  ‘What about you?’ He had laid a place for himself.

  ‘Big lunch,’ he said breezily. ‘Not hungry.’ He motioned me towards the food again.

  ‘Salmon. Didn’t your pa used to call it a poacher’s dinner?’

  ‘A poacher’s feast, he used to say!’

  ‘A feast indeed,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  He grinned modestly but evasively, his eyes continually slipping away from mine.

  I ate a little only to find that I, too, wasn’t hungry. ‘Well, what’s the news?’ I asked lightly.

  ‘The news?’ He made a show of thinking about it. ‘We’re fine at the office. Ahead of the game. A bit of a struggle the other day. But really fine now.’ His smile was very quick and very bright.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And?’ He gave me an ingenuous look. ‘Nothing, really. No, that’s it.’

  ‘No problems?’

  ‘No, no.’ And still his eyes wouldn’t settle on my face.

  ‘But Ray said you’d had a panic?’

  ‘Oh, just for a moment there. Lost an alibi witn
ess in a burglary.’

  ‘Ah.’ I left it a moment before asking, ‘And what about that GBH? Munro, wasn’t it?’

  He didn’t quite manage to conceal the edge to his voice. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I just wondered when it was coming to court.’

  ‘Oh, not for ages yet.’ His voice was casual but his body was delivering quite different messages.

  ‘Nothing you want to talk about?’

  ‘No. Why should there be?’

  ‘It was just…I don’t know, I got the feeling you weren’t happy about it. That there was some problem.’

  ‘Why do you always think there has to be a problem?’ he blazed suddenly. ‘Really, Lexxy, you always manage to see doom and gloom as far as I’m concerned.’

  I lowered my fork. ‘Doom and gloom? No, darling. No, I was just asking, that’s all.’

  ‘The way you talk, I feel like I’m the one who’s done something wrong!’

  I laughed falsely. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you, that’s how you are! You always manage to make me feel bad.’ His face was flushed, his eyes glaring. Even allowing for the drink, his indignation was beyond all reason. He cried suddenly, ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ and, pushing his chair back, stomped out of the room.

  Stunned by this switch of mood, I sat absolutely motionless.

  He returned a moment later with a large whisky which he deposited on the table with a clunk. Sitting down again, he shot me an aggrieved glance. ‘And don’t give me that look!’

  I said helplessly, ‘If I’m looking, it’s only because I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Well, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! Don’t pretend!’

  A bubble of indignation surfaced, I felt a sudden heat. ‘I think I’d better leave you to your drink.’ Getting untidily to my feet, I found my way out of the room and upstairs to the bathroom where I turned the taps on full blast. When Paul appeared a few minutes later, the bath was almost overflowing and I was sitting on the chair, staring at the wall.

  Turning off the water, Paul sat awkwardly on the edge of the bath and fumbled for my hand. ‘God, and now you’re crying. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t blame you, Lexxy. Really I don’t.

  Sometimes I just feel . . ,’ He groped for the thought. ‘I feel…that somehow you’re judging me all the time.’

  ‘I judge you when the drink does the talking, I judge you then all right.’

  ‘And I can’t blame you. I can’t.’

  I looked into his face. ‘You can see, then? You can see what it does to you?’

  ‘It’s only when things get tense, that’s all…I get carried away. When things get tense.’

  ‘It’s not just then, Paul. It’s all the time.’

  ‘I’ll cut down. I promise. Really I will. Cut right down.’

  ‘But you won’t stop.’

  ‘I will if you want me to.’

  ‘It’s not what ,’ want. It’s what you want that counts.’

  ‘You’re right, Lexxy. You’re always right.’ The way he said this, it sounded like a reproach.

  ‘Why do you do it, Paul? Why? Is it us? Is it our marriage?’

  ‘No, no, Lexxy. No.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong. Really. Nothing at all. I’ll cut down, I promise. Right down.’

  We were silent for a time, then he sighed heavily and said in the tone of a boy owning up to a misdemeanour, ‘I’m going to lose my licence.’

  I stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What?’

  ‘They stopped me the other night, two uniformed guys.’

  It was a moment before I managed to take it in. ‘How far over the limit?’

  He laughed, shame-faced. ‘Three.’

  ‘Three times. God.’ A car was absolutely essential for our work, for getting to police stations late at nighty not to mention the more distant courts during the day.

  He said airily, ‘I’ll use cabs.’

  Cabs would never work, and we both knew it, but I bit the comment back. ‘You could take all the work close to home. Give the night duties to the others,’ I suggested, knowing that we didn’t have enough qualified staff to cover the nights.

  ‘The cabs’ll be fine once I get them organized.’

  I didn’t have the heart to argue. Slumped on the edge of the bath, Paul looked much older suddenly, and, for all his weighty, more insubstantial. His eyes were puffy, his skin colourless, his hair drab. I saw a man who’d lost his confidence and self-regard, and with it his capacity for optimism and joy, leaving a dull shadow of himself.

  ‘We’ll manage somehow,’ I said. ‘Sturgess is ready to do some of the easier stuff.’

  His eyes shifted uneasily, he was tense again. ‘We have to talk about Sturgess.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s going to have to go.’

  I stared at him. ‘Go? Why?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a real sage,’ he said rapidly. ‘Let’s just say he’s not with us in spirit, not at all.

  Making mistakes. Overstepping the mark/

  ‘But how? What’s he done exactly?’

  Paul made a dismissive gesture, as if the business were far too complex to discuss in detail. ‘Oh, failed to follow instructions. And more than once, too. Nearly landed one client in shtuck. Keeps getting himself into situations—’

  ‘Situations? What sort of situations?’

  He met my eye with difficulty. ‘Oh, asking questions he shouldn’t ask. And, worse still, getting the answers, for God’s sake. Making it impossible to represent people. Oh, but there’ve been plenty of other things too, Lexxy. A whole bundle of things. Been building up for some time. No,’ he said fiercely, as if I’d been arguing against the idea, ‘he has to go, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘If you feel that strongly.’

  He stood up. ‘He has to go!’

  ‘Okay.’

  He looked surprised at my compliance, and a little uncertain, as though he distrusted such an easy win. Eventually he mumbled, ‘Your dinner’s probably died a death.’

  ‘I wasn’t that hungry, to tell the truth.’

  ‘I’ll chuck it, then.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘You’ll be going back to Norfolk, will you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘As soon as I can.’

  He eyed me thoughtfully, sadly, as if I had just confirmed something irrevocable for him, before nodding and turning away.

  I bathed and washed my hair and stood under a cold shower for as long as I could bear it. Filled with the nervous energy that cold water and tiredness can bring, I went down to the study to tackle the mail. From the kitchen I could hear the clink of plates as Paul padded about, clearing away. Shutting the study door behind me, I put some Mozart on the CD player and started on the accumulation of bills and letters. Sorting through old papers, I found myself staring at the notes I had made when I had got Will’s original message all those evenings ago. Checklists, procedures for missing persons, then at the bottom of the sheet: Medical problems? Emotional problems? Secret life?

  Staring at ‘Secret life’ it struck me that Will was right, that if Grace had had a lover then she had conducted the affair with quite extraordinary secrecy, more secrecy than most women would ever have managed or indeed wanted. She had confided in no one, it seemed, not Anne Hampton, who appeared to have been her closest woman friend, and not—though this was less surprising—her mother. She hadn’t given the smallest hint, so it seemed, to anyone at all. There had been no rumours about her, not so much as a breath. Either she had been immensely self-controlled or immensely anxious not to be found out.

  My view of Grace shifted again, and again, a flickering picture that wouldn’t hold still. Was she the cold-hearted conniving wife that Will had described? Or simply worried about the repercussions of being discovered? It was hard to imagine Grace anxious about anything or anybody. Unless—it came to me sudden
ly—she had been worried about scaring the lover off. Or—an even more promising thought—it was the lover himself who’d insisted on absolute secrecy, who’d had too much to lose from being found out. Perhaps he’d insisted on doing all the phoning and forbidden Grace from making any calls.

  I went through the mail and paid the bills. When I’d sealed the last cheque I entered the amounts on the bank statement and calculated the new balance. The account was in credit: it was always in credit; Paul couldn’t bear the thought of an overdraft. All the utilities were paid monthly by direct debits while insurance premiums and other large bills came out of a special savings account. As a result of this stringency, our monthly expenditure hardly varied. Neither of us had the time to spend much on luxuries. Even when we’d carpeted and furnished the house Paul had planned it meticulously so that, by economizing on holidays and restaurants, we’d been able to pay for everything out of current income.

  Grace hadn’t budgeted at all. Grace had gone for what she’d wanted when she wanted it, and what she’d wanted was the very best. Will had told me that Grace had paid for the over-expenditure out of her own money. Yet unless I’d missed something in the bank statements, unless she’d transferred money by a circuitous route, it appeared she hadn’t paid for very much at all. I wondered what had prompted Will to make this remark, whether he’d said it out of a lingering sense of loyalty or because for some misguided reason he’d believed it to be true.

  It was another half-hour before I’d scribbled instructions to the cleaning lady and written the last note. I came out of the study into silence. No squawking from the TV, no light from the kitchen. The living room was in darkness too, though in recent months this hadn’t necessarily meant it was uninhabited, and peering over the back of the sofa, I found Paul stretched out, snoring gently, mouth gaping wide, looking the picture of a drunk. I was tempted to leave him for once, tempted to let him wake in the early hours, cold and alone, yet there was nothing I could teach Paul about loneliness, nothing that a childhood in a hard-drinking household hadn’t already taught him.

  I went round the sofa and shook him gently by the shoulder. ‘Come on. Time for bed.’

  He groaned and pulled his shoulder away.