A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  ‘No?’

  He waved the comment away. ‘Just something I heard. From the old days.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Listen, this was years and years ago. A mate of mine, he told me Grace had a big thing for him then. In fact, no reason not to tell you—it was Dan Elliott, the actor.’ I remembered Veronica telling me about him, how he’d been in love with Grace. ‘They had a big bust-up. He ditched her. Dan’s a bit of a shit that way, a real lady-killer until the going gets serious, then he’s off like a shot—and Grace, she cut up roughs according to him. Gave him a hell of a time, he says. A real virago. Pursued him, threatened him, wouldn’t let go. Tried the overdose trick—the lot.’

  ‘A serious overdose?’

  ‘No,’ he scoffed emphatically. ‘Just a few pills to get Dan to her bedside. You know the sort of thing. Anyway, then Grace went off and married Will on the rebound. Well, that’s Dan’s story anyway. A big relief for him. Though he says he met her again not so long ago and she was fine about it. No bad feelings. But that’s Grace. Get on with life, put on a show. Yeah,’ he went on reminiscently, ‘Grace had her share of knocks all right, just like the rest of us. But she was a battler. A real goer. No quarter asked, none given.’ He gave a grin of approval. ‘I have to say I thought she was one hell of a girl!’

  ‘You got on?’

  ‘Oh, what!’ he exclaimed. ‘You bet. House on fire. We understood each other. We spoke the same language, you might say. She didn’t have to pretend with me, didn’t have to pretend she was anything but what she was. I knew what she was about, and I admired her for it.’ The curiosity must have shown in my face because he cast me a sharp glance. ‘And the answer to the next question is no, there was nothing between us. She was a very lovely lady, but it wouldn’t have been right. I would’ve felt I was taking advantage.’

  I tried to keep the amazement out of my face. ‘Advantage?’

  ‘She wasn’t happy, was she? A bit desperate, really. And ladies don’t know what they want when they’re in a state, do they? You can’t just wade in, you get a whole heap of problems. She wanted a bloke with all the trimmings—commitment, future, joint account. I thought it best to keep clear.’

  Struggling to come to terms with this vision of Barry as the generous-spirited Lothario, the charmer who felt bound to fend off women to protect them from themselves, I mumbled, ‘I didn’t realize. I thought…But you said she was so confident, so together.’

  He gave me an old-fashioned look, as if he suspected me of playing the innocent. ‘The marriage was in trouble, though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well…all marriages have problems.’

  ‘But she was having one hell of a time.’

  Suddenly I began to get the picture. ‘Was she now?’

  ‘Our Will was a bit of a nightmare, wasn’t he?’ He waved his glass to encompass a whole host of problems. ‘Money. Other women.’

  ‘That’s what Grace told you?’

  He caught my drift instantly. ‘You think it wasn’t like that?’

  ‘I think she might have enlarged on the truth when it suited her.’

  Unexpectedly, the thought seemed to amuse him. ‘I wouldn’t have put it past her. That was half the fun with her, the games she played. But having said that, everyone knew Will was up against it financially and that Grace had all the money. It was common knowledge.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You’re looking doubtful again.’

  ‘Because as far as I can gather Grace didn’t have that much money. And if she contributed anything financially to the marriage, it was probably a long time ago.’

  Barry looked away thoughtfully before draining his champagne. ‘If she lied, she was a bloody good liar.’ There was admiration in his tone.

  ‘But you—you didn’t make a mistake about seeing her that evening, driving down to the marsh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you far away?’

  No. Just a few yards. I was going out, stopped at the gates, saw this car coming like hell. Glimpsed her face as she went by. It was her all right. Recognized the car too. No mistake.’

  ‘Why did you wait before going to the police?’

  ‘I was in Hong Kong and LA. Left that Friday night. Didn’t know Grace was missing till I got back.’

  When I didn’t speak, he looked away towards the window and chuckled quietly to himself. ‘Interesting about the money. She looked so classy, you’d think she had it coming out of her ears.’

  ‘She said she was rich?’

  ‘Yeah.’ And he smiled again in admiration.

  ‘What else did she tell you?’

  ‘What, that mightn’t have been true?’ He raised a palm, which suggested everything and anything. Then, as another thought came to him, he grew very serious. ‘There was one thing. She dropped a big hint that Will had roughed her up a bit.’

  I stared at him, aghast. ‘Have you mentioned this to the police?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Thought it was the right thing to do.’

  I finished my drink hurriedly and Barry saw me to the door.

  ‘Just for the record,’ he said, his hand on the latch, ‘I think she’d got a bloke lined up somewhere.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Call it instinct.’ He turned his lazy, roué’s gaze on me. ‘A bloke like me, I can always tell. Women give out signals, you know. Whether they mean to or not. To begin with, back last summer, Grace was on the hunt. Couldn’t miss it, the way she eyed me, the way she eyed other men. She had wicked eyes, you know. Innocent but sort of wicked. Determined, too. She wanted out from her marriage, I could see that, clear as day. Then later in the summer she got another look in her eye, a sort of I’m-in-the-frame look, a sort of I’ve-found-the-guy look. You know?’

  I pretended I did.

  ‘Then…it must have been September, when we had this meeting at my office, her mobile rang all of a sudden. Some arrangement for meeting up later.’ His eyes took on a foxy glint. ‘But she definitely wasn’t talking to a girlfriend, you know what I mean?’

  There was an accident at the beginning of the Mil and a ten-mile jam. By the time I reached Deepwell it was eleven thirty, though it might have been far later, the village was so dark and so still. Marsh House looked as though it had been locked up for the night. There were no outside lights and nothing showing in the downstairs windows, just the glimmer of a light upstairs.

  The front door was locked but, feeling my way round to the side of the house, I found the kitchen door open. Turning on a lights I looked for a note and found none. In the hall I called out softly and heard deep silence.

  I went into the drawing room and touched the switch. Grace’s world of lemon and blue silk sprang coldly into life. Sitting at her desk, I began to search for the one thing that I must have missed.

  There was nothing on the bank statements. Mobile phones had to be paid for by direct debit, strictly monthly, yet the only direct debits were for interest payments and insurance premiums. I went through the cheque stubs, just to be sure, though I knew that none of the phone companies permitted payment by cheque. I found Grace had made only one regular monthly payment without an identifiable recipient marked on the stub. Every month since the previous July Grace had paid between £29.38 and £36 to ‘SP’. On no fewer than five occasions the amount had been for exactly £29.38, which—I allowed myself a small measure of hope—suggested a fixed-time tariff she hadn’t, in those particular months, exceeded.

  But ‘SP’: the initials matched no mobile phone company I knew of. I could phone each company in turn, but if the account wasn’t in Grace’s name it would be a hopeless task. I looked back through the stubs once more and noticed that the entry on the July stub hadn’t been quite the same as the others. The payment had been made not to ‘SF’ but to ‘SP’. I went back further, to the June stubs, and found a payment for £58.76, which—I calculated it quickly—was exactly double the minimum monthly payment she had paid subsequently. The pay
ee had been entered on the stub as: ‘Stephen M.’. I chased back through my memory, but I was fairly sure that only one Stephen M. had ever been mentioned in relation to Grace: the accountant-cum-treasurer of the music festival, Stephen Makim. Making further connections, I translated the subsequent S-P as ‘Stephen—phone’.

  Back in the kitchen, I flicked through the local directory and found Stephen Makim’s number, with an address in Fakenham. As I noted it down, I heard a faint bump somewhere in the house. In the quiet of the nighty it sounded like something falling. Closing the address book, I went quietly into the hall and stood on the wide flagstones, listening hard, hearing nothing.

  Eventually I went back to the drawing room and, putting the cheque stubs away, closed the desk and turned off the lights. I paused again in the hall, my senses reaching out into the house. Then I caught it: the faint but unmistakable rhythm of a man breathing in sleeps dragging heavily on air, almost but not quite snoring.

  He was stretched out on the sofa in the unlit sitting room, and I couldn’t help thinking that I seemed destined to know men who had difficulty in making their way to bed at night.

  ‘Will?’ He lay on his side, his head cradled on the bend of one arm. He looked beautiful in sleep, the line of his eyebrows, the curve of his mouth, the frame of dark hair. I crouched beside him and, in the shadowy light from the hall, watched him silently, like a lover in the night.

  I watched him for a long time before I called his name again.

  He stirred and mumbled. He opened a slit of one eye and peered at me uncertainly.

  ‘It’s Ali,’ I said.

  ‘Ah.’ He laughed softly. ‘Ah,’ Eyes closed again, he reached an arm out to me and, sliding a hand round the back of my head, drew me towards him. I dropped forward onto my knees, I let myself be conveyed, I told myself there would be no harm. As my cheek came up against his, as his arm fell to my shoulders and pulled me tight against him, he murmured dreamily, ‘Ali, I was waiting for you. Waiting for ever.’

  ‘I’m here now.’

  ‘Waiting…Had some wine for you. But…’ He gave a groan of mock rebuke. ‘Drank it all.’

  ‘Yes.’ I had smelt it on his breath, I knew he’d had too much.

  ‘Good wine, though. Thought I’d better drink it before the bloody dragon got it.’

  His cheek was warm against mine. I drew in the smell of his skin, the faint blend of soap or spice and some elusive indeterminate masculine scent. ‘The dragon?’

  He growled, ‘ Veronica. Bad, sad, mad Veronica. Sent me a nasty letter.’

  ‘In what way nasty?’

  ‘Says bad things. Says I’m trying to steal Grace’s money.’

  ‘I’ll look into it in the morning. I’ll deal with it.’

  His hand moved slowly over my back, stroking it in what might have been a caress or a search for reassurance. ‘She’s mad and bad,’ he mumbled. ‘How can anyone be mad and bad?’

  ‘Forget about it now. Don’t think about it.’

  He sighed, agreeing or dozing off.

  ‘Ali?’ he whispered from his half sleep.

  ‘Yes?’

  He sighed again, but more contentedly. ‘Such a…strange…thing.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Here…Back here…with us.’

  He squeezed me closer, he moved his cheek affectionately against mine. ‘Back here…with us.’ His mouth brushed against my ear.

  The moment for unreality had passed. I pulled away.

  He opened both eyes blearily and squinted at me. ‘Where are you going? Don’t go.’

  I sat back on my heels, I removed his arm gently from my shoulders. ‘You should go to bed,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he pleaded. ‘Please don’t go.’

  ‘I’ll stay in the house tonight. I’ll be here.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.

  ‘Such nightmares, Ali.’

  ‘No nightmares tonight.’

  He reached for my hand and, tucking it close against his chest, would have fallen asleep again, but, needing no instruction on how to get a man to go to bed against his wishes, I soon had him on his feet and on his way towards the stairs.

  He muttered morosely. ‘Was thinking, Ali…We waste it all. Waste it.’

  ‘What?’

  He climbed two stairs before halting. ‘Time. Life. Everything.’

  ‘Nothing’s ever wasted.’

  ‘Her life…Mine…What was it all for?’

  ‘Big questions, Will.’

  ‘Big answers.’ Then: ‘No answers.’

  I forged him on to the first landing. ‘Tell me,’ I said, striking a casual note, ‘did you ever find a mobile belonging to Grace?’

  He paused with a foot on the next tread, he surveyed me with glassy eyes. ‘Mobile? She didn’t have a mobile.’

  ‘Couldn’t she have had the use of one, though?’

  ‘No, no.’ He waved a jerky uncoordinated arm. ‘She didn’t have a mobile. No, no.’

  We started up the last flight only for him to slow up again. An almost comical expression of puzzlement came over his face. ‘Why d’you think she had a mobile, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Someone said they’d seen her with one.’

  His hand flipped through the air. ‘Never had a mobile.’

  In the bedroom, I persuaded him to take a few clothes off. As he rolled into bed, he murmured, ‘I’m drunk, Ali. Drunk…’

  ‘Nothing to be done about it now.’

  ‘But I hate drinking too much. Hate it. Wouldn’t do it if…No good at being alone. After Charlie’s in bed, can’t stand it, Ali. Being alone.’

  My heart tightened, I said briskly, ‘Can’t Maggie move in for a while?’

  ‘Keep seeing her…This dream. Keep seeing her. All that water…So cold, so cold…’

  ‘Perhaps you and Charlie should go and stay with friends for a while.’

  ‘Stay. Don’ wanna stay…’ His eyelids had given up the battle. ‘Jilly’s a pompous prat…’

  ‘Julian?’

  He grunted, ‘Anne…keeps asking us to go…stay as long as we like.’

  I wasn’t sure which was more disturbing, the thought of him staying in my old home, or sleeping under the same roof as Anne Hampton. ‘I was thinking of further away. Another part of the country.’

  ‘Can’t ask Frank to keep doing the farm…can’t…’ He yawned, he lost tracks he dug his head deeper into the pillow. ‘So good, Ali.’ His voice drifted gently. ‘So good…don’t go…’

  ‘I won’t go.’

  I looked around the room, at the dressing table littered with perfumes and cosmetics, at the banks of wardrobes, at the long silk scarves hanging from the cheval mirror. The bed itself was dominated by a majestic awning of flowered pink and green chintz that rose from the matching headboard in pencilled pleats to a rail suspended above the foot of the bed, from where it hung in a deep pelmet.

  When I looked at Will again he was asleep.

  I was on my way down the stairs when the phone rang, very shrill in the stillness. I ran quickly into the hall and picked it up.

  The silence was long and deep.

  ‘Hello?’ I repeated several times.

  A click as the person rang off. I looked at the time: well past midnight.

  I dialled 1471. The disembodied voice informed me of the time of the call and the number which had called me. I stabbed my finger on the rest, and dialled 1471 again, but there was no mistake: the call had come from Wickham Lodge.

  Chapter Ten

  The house stood in a neat cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Fakenham, one of six or seven identical mock-Georgian homes with columned porticoes and sash windows and disciplined lawns edged with daffodils. Three of the homes had BMWs parked on the garage aprons. Stephen Makim’s had a Lexus.

  He looked much as I’d imagined from his voice, an energetic man of about forty-five, as neat and trim as his house,
wearing large spectacles, a salesman’s grey suit with a crisp white shirt and sports club tie.

  ‘I did tell the police,’ he said as he showed me into a living room with a raspberry velveteen three-piece suite and matching curtains. ‘I said Grace had been using a Cellnet phone for her work. I did tell them.’

  There were sounds of breakfasting from the back of the house, young voices arguing and being urged to hurry up. We sat opposite each other on identical armchairs.

  ‘The phone was registered to you, though?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was my phone, but I hardly used it any more, you see. I’m based at head office now, don’t travel like I used to, and Grace needed it for the festival, so she took it over for the duration, so to speak. Insisted on paying for the phone itself, and wouldn’t charge for any of the calls. I kept trying to tell her she could get the festival calls reimbursed from sponsorship funds, but she said it was too much bother to separate out the personal calls from the festival calls. Life was too short, she said.’ He blinked rapidly, and said in a voice muffled with emotion, ‘I did try to persuade her, but she insisted on paying for the lot. She said maybe she’d charge the calls around the time of the festival itself, when she’d be using the phone a lot. She said then it would make sense.’ He blinked some more, and rearranged his mouth.

  ‘She didn’t have a phone of her own, then?’