A Year Less a Day

by James Hawkins

  “I keep telling ya. He went to America wiz the Beatles.”

  Bliss had tried rephrasing his question several times, but the answer was always the same, and eventually the old guy had slowly closed the door saying. “Hey, Chuck. If you ain’t gonna listen to me there’s nor a lotta use me talking is there?”

  “I think he means that Sanderson didn’t return home at the end of the tour, although I have no idea where he may be,” Bliss tells Phillips. Then he asks, “What’s the situation with your friend Ruth?”

  “Well at least she’s off the hook for murder. Her husband turned up.”

  “Where?”

  “In the crematorium—natural causes.”

  “Oh, shit. Well I guess that’s good—for her anyway.”

  Other things have been good for Ruth in recent days. Her health has continued its dramatic improvement, Mike Phillips has been a regular visitor and, to the relief of the Button teenagers, Ruth has started taking over the kitchen from their mother.

  “You and your husband are so good to let me stay here,” says Ruth as she makes pepperoni pizza while Trina surfs the Web searching for an escape-proof guinea pig cage. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”

  “You don’t have to,” replies Trina. “Actually, it’s kinda fun knowing the neighbours are all talking about me having a murderess living in the basement.”

  “I’m not a murderess,” protests Ruth, and Trina quickly leaps to pacify her.

  “I know that, Ruth. But people only hear what they want to hear, and to listen to your ex-mother-in-law anyone would think that you somehow gave Jordan cancer.”

  “I don’t know what to do ...” whimpers Ruth, and Trina comforts her.

  “You’ve just got to get your strength up and fight back, that’s all. Hammett thinks the Crown might drop the assault charges ’cuz the surveillance tape was recorded over—‘accidentally,’ the police said, but he doesn’t believe them for a minute.”

  Ruth stops crying and her expression becomes puzzled as she looks at her friend and asks, “How do you know that?”

  Trina reddens and blusters, “I don’t know. Maybe you told me.”

  “No I did not. Hammett hasn’t said anything about that. Anyway, I haven’t seen him for weeks.”

  “Well, maybe ... Maybe Mike told me then.”

  “Oh, of course,” says Ruth, relaxing, though adding, “I wonder why he didn’t tell me?”

  “Probably wants it to be a surprise,” says Trina, desperately hoping that she can get to Phillips before Ruth does.

  chapter fourteen

  The second dawn of Daphne Lovelace’s disappearance holds the promise of a brighter day. The storm has swept on across the North Sea to Scandinavia, where it will be welcomed, but it has left behind both the beauty and the beast. It has finally stopped snowing in Westchester, and the freshly fallen powder has been sculpted by the wind into a myriad of whimsical figures, but the ice demon hides its victims beneath the virginal surface, and it is only a matter of time before someone stumbles across a frozen arm protruding out of an exquisitely carved drift, and a petrified body is dug out from under an avalanche of snow.

  Bliss has been testing his leg since the first light, just as the last flakes were falling and the sky was turning blue with feigned innocence. With a shovel for support he has slogged his way to the woodland at one end of Daphne’s street and, as he struggles back to her house through the deep snow, a quartet of familiar figures wearily trudge in from the main road at the other end.

  Peter and Blossom Jones have crammed into Mavis Longbottom’s Fiat, together with Gino, to make the journey across town, but have been forced to abandon the vehicle in a drift some distance away, and they are on their last legs as they meet Bliss at Daphne’s gate.

  “We came to help with the search,” says Blossom valiantly as Bliss lets them in, and they struggle with heavy coats, gloves, and boots while Mavis desperately dances up and down. “I’m bursting for a pee,” she says as she makes a break for the stairs.

  Minnie Dennon has been woken by the commotion and is emerging sleepy-eyed from Bliss’s bedroom, wearing one of Daphne’s nightdresses, just as Mavis hits the upstairs landing and makes a final dash for the bathroom.

  “Minnie!” exclaims Mavis in disbelief and Bliss, in the hallway below, mutters, “Oh, shit!” under his breath as he ushers the others into the sitting room.

  “I’m already worn out and frozen to death,” admits Blossom, plunking herself beside the fire while Bliss scurries around to get them blankets and hot tea.

  “You shouldn’t be out in this,” he admonishes—but he doesn’t blame them. Leg or no leg, he has every intention of joining the hunt today and vows to himself that he will not return without Daphne. “You had all better stay here,” he tells them as he tucks a rug around Blossom’s legs. “There’s no point in you getting lost out there as well.”

  “But we’ve got to do something,” protests Blossom, as Mavis sneaks in and slyly announces, “I see you’ve got Minnie sleeping in your bed, David.”

  “Yes. And I slept down here on the couch,” snaps Bliss, choking off the topic. “Now has anybody come up with any ideas to find Daphne?”

  “We should hold another seance,” suggests Mavis. “We could ask the spirits to find her.”

  “Mavis,” says Bliss, pulling no punches, “this isn’t a stupid party game. For all we know, Daphne could be lying out there buried in snow.”

  “All the more reason for a seance ...” she starts, but Bliss stomps on her.

  “Seances are just silly hoaxes, Mavis.”

  “The spirits guided us to your man in the photo,” she protests.

  “Rubbish, Mavis,” says Bliss as he gives her an accusatory stare. “Somebody was tapping on the table.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I could feel the vibrations under my fingertips,” he says and Mavis backs down a degree.

  “Well, what do you suggest we do?” she asks acerbically as the phone rings.

  “David?” the voice is weak, indistinct—a figment of Bliss’s imagination perhaps; a vagary of the electronic airwaves.

  “Daphne?” inquires Bliss disbelievingly, and the room deadens.

  “Can’t talk. Pick me up outside Thraxton Manor in fifteen minutes and don’t tell anyone.”

  “Where?” Bliss asks, but the line is dead. “Daphne ...” he calls desperately. “Daphne ...”

  A moment of amazed silence is exploded as a cacophony of voices gabble simultaneously, “Was that her? Was it Daph?”

  “I think so,” says Bliss vaguely, still trying to get his mind in gear, then the cogs click and he makes a run for the hall.

  “Mavis,” he yells, “I need your car. I left mine at the police station.”

  “But where are you going? Where is she?”

  “Peter. Phone the police and tell them to hold the search ...” Bliss starts, then he changes his mind and pulls out his cellphone as he struggles into his boots. “Don’t worry. I’ll do it myself. Now all of you just stay here in case she calls again.”

  “What’s happening? Is she all right? Where is she?”

  Bliss ducks the questions as he heads out, shovel in hand, to beat a path to the main road and Mavis’s car.

  Superintendent Donaldson is briefing the early-shift police officers and the military when he takes Bliss’s call. “For some reason she asked me not to tell anyone,” says Bliss when the superintendent inquires as to Daphne’s whereabouts, “but I’ll call you as soon as I’ve picked her up.”

  Any pain in Bliss’s leg is forgotten in his determination to reach Daphne as quickly as possible, and he practically runs through the deep powdery snow until he reaches the main road and Mavis’s Fiat. Getting the car out of the snow bank where Mavis ditched it takes several minutes and a hefty push from a passing pedestrian, and he is already five minutes late as he hits the gas and sets the wheels spinning. But he knows the route—he had driven past the Maxwell pr
operty with Daphne a few days earlier.

  “That’s where Jeremy lives,” she had pointed out, and he had strained to see the ancient house and stables in the distant trees, but had to be content with just a glimpse through the winter-bare hawthorn hedgerow. However, judging by the massive stone gate pillars and imposing—though rust-streaked—steel gates, he’d had no difficulty imagining the building’s long-lost grandeur.

  “Thraxton Manor,” says the peeling sign on the gate as Bliss drives slowly past, but there is no sign of Daphne in the blinding alpine whiteness, and he is beginning to wonder if there is a second set of gates when he spots a ghostly figure gingerly rising out of the roadside ditch. Daphne, shrouded in a white bed sheet, tries to haul herself up the steep bank to the road, and Bliss slides to a halt and races to her rescue.

  “Thank you, David. Thank you,” she whispers through chattering teeth as he hauls her out of the snow and sees that she is shoeless.

  “Hold on,” he says, picking her up and carrying her in his arms to the car. “Straight to the hospital,” he adds, turning the heat to maximum, but Daphne has other ideas.

  “Ju ... Ju ... Just a warm bath,” she stutters.

  “Don’t argue. You’re going to the hospital,” he says adamantly as he phones Donaldson to call off the search.

  “Where was she?” asks Donaldson, but Bliss needs to concentrate to keep the car on the road.

  “Meet me at Westchester Memorial, guv,” he says as he clicks off the phone.

  “Hold tight please,” Bliss jokes as he expertly fish-tails the car around a snow-clogged bend, but fortunately the main road into the city has been partially plowed and he is soon able to pick up speed. Daphne is shaking so violently that he feels the car vibrating in sympathy and, in the sparse traffic, he keeps a worried eye on her, asking, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m just a silly old woman,” she chatters and Bliss senses in her voice that she is not talking about being lost in the storm.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll soon have you warmed up,” he says. “But, what happened?”

  Daphne pulls herself together and snivels, “I feel such a fool, but it was all Minnie’s fault.”

  Bliss takes a deep breath, hardly daring to ask. “Minnie?”

  “Yes. The stupid woman said that he was Monty Maxwell’s son.”

  “And he wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Who is he, then?”

  “His name’s Jordan Jackson.”

  “Westchester Hospital,” announces Bliss as he pulls into the ambulance bay at the emergency department five minutes later, where Superintendent Donaldson is waiting alongside a full medical team.

  “Ms. Lovelace has a touch of dehydration and hypothermia,” the doctor tells them after a brief examination. “Fortunately, she’s in generally good health so there shouldn’t be any lasting complications, although her feet are a bit of a mess.”

  “When can we see her?” inquires Bliss, but he receives a non-committal shrug.

  “We’ll call you, but we’ll probably keep her in for twenty-four hours, just to be on the safe side. How old is she, by the way?”

  Bliss and Donaldson shrug in unison. “We may as well get something to eat,” suggests Donaldson, tugging Bliss’s arm. “They do a good breakfast in the doctor’s canteen here. The black pudding with baked beans ...”

  “There’s a few people I should phone first,” says Bliss, cutting him off; then he leaves Donaldson to order for him.

  It’s more than two hours before Daphne is sufficiently recovered to explain what happened, but it has taken Bliss most of that time to eat his way through the spread Donaldson laid on. However, he had used the time to inform the senior officer of Daphne’s indiscretion with Monty Maxwell that had so horribly backfired.

  “It’s probably best if you don’t let on that you know,” Bliss is telling the senior officer when a young nurse announces that Daphne is up to receiving visitors.

  “I thought I was a goner in that ditch,” laughs Daphne as Bliss and Donaldson sit on either side of her bed, gently rubbing her still frigid hands a few minutes later.

  “So, what happened, Daphne?” Donaldson asks, and Daphne explains how, with Bliss away in Liverpool for the day, she had decided to pay Jeremy Maxwell a surprise visit, but when she had shown up without warning, he had not been at home.

  “I’d walked all that bloomin’ way,” she moans to Donaldson. “So I was buggered if I was going back home without doing a bit of cleaning up for him.”

  During her previous visits to the apartment above the manor’s stable block, Daphne had discovered a spare door key under a flowerpot, so she had let herself in and begun tidying when a Canadian passport had caught her eye.

  “I was putting a few of his clothes away in a drawer when I found his passport and was just curious to see what his photo was like,” she carries on. “But when I opened it up it gave his name as Jordan Jackson.”

  “Are you absolutely sure it was his passport?” asks Bliss, but Daphne is in no doubt. “Oh, yes. It was his picture, all right.”

  “But when you first visited him did he actually say he was Jeremy Maxwell?” inquires Donaldson.

  “Yes, sir. He did.”

  “Daphne, love, you don’t have to call me ‘sir,’” says Donaldson leaning over her bed. “It’s Ted.”

  “Oh, no, sir. That wouldn’t seem right. Anyway, I’m quite certain it’s not Jeremy. I should have realized when I first spoke to him. He was sort of nervous—vague. He claimed he remembered me, though I don’t suppose that I had any reason to doubt him at the time. Minnie Dennon said it was him, and I was so pleased to see him again. I’ve often wondered what had happened to him after all these years.”

  “But you told me you recognized him,” Bliss reminds her. “You even said that he looked like his father.”

  “Wishful thinking and a failing memory, David.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your memory,” says Bliss, adding, “Don’t worry, we’ll find out what’s going on; but where have you been for two days? We were worried sick.”

  Daphne had been trapped by her own inquisitiveness. No sooner had she found Jackson’s passport than the scrunch of car tires on the gravel driveway had alerted her to the owner’s return. Unable to face him with her new-found knowledge, she had tried taking a back way out of the upstairs apartment, but had found herself ensnared in a hayloft.

  “I couldn’t get down into the stables. I found the trap door, but there was no ladder,” she tells them. “And I couldn’t go back through the apartment because he was there.”

  Slender shafts of daylight penetrated the old tiled roof on Daphne’s first day in the loft, and she had made a bed of hay bales while she waited for the man to leave so she could escape. But he hadn’t left, and the longer she remained in hiding the more difficult it had been to think of a way out.

  “‘I was just looking for bats or a barn owl,’ might have worked in the first ten minutes or so,” she carries on, “but after that I couldn’t do anything but wait. And then it started getting cold.”

  The blizzard had howled through the drafty loft, forcing tendrils of snow between the cracks in the tiles, and Daphne had buried herself deep in the hay for warmth during the first night.

  “I hardly slept,” she admits. “The wind made such a noise that the horses were restless, and some rats kept snuffling around.”

  “You must’ve been terrified,” suggests Donaldson.

  “They were only rats, sir. I was so hungry I would’ve eaten one if I could’ve caught it.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Bliss protests, though guesses that, if pushed, she probably would have.

  “Anyway,” Daphne carries on, “I knew it was morning when I heard him outside starting one of the cars.”

  Not realizing that the driveway was impassable, Daphne had assumed that Maxwell, or whoever he was, was on the point of leaving, and had crept out of her hiding place to make her escape when she’d
heard him returning up the stairs from the stables.

  “I just grabbed a bottle of water and some bed-clothes and shot back into the loft,” she explains. “Then I had to stay there all day and night again until he left this morning.”

  A nurse shows up to run a battery of tests and flushes Bliss and Donaldson out of Daphne’s cubicle. “We’re going to be a little while,” she explains as she hooks up another IV bag, and Bliss gives Daphne’s hand an extra squeeze.

  “I’ll come back this afternoon,” he says. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  The brightness of the midday sun is deceiving as the two officers leave the hospital and feel the wintry chill.

  “Have you got time for lunch?” Donaldson asks as he pulls his coat around him and hustles for his car, but Bliss shakes his head.

  “No. I think I’ll have a word with Mr. Jackson, or whatever his name is, first. There has to be a simple explanation.”

  “The Mitre Hotel’s got a new chef,” continues Donaldson as if he’s not heard. “The venison sausages are really special. You could meet me there afterwards.”

  “Thanks anyway,” calls Bliss, still bloated from breakfast, “but I’ve got a few of Daphne’s friends waiting to hear what’s happened. Next time, perhaps.”

  The occupant of the stable’s apartment at Thraxton Manor has just returned home by the time Bliss drives up the freshly cleared driveway. Two of the stables’ doors are open, revealing a couple of very high-priced mechanical stallions—a Ferrari and a Jaguar—while a new Range Rover idles outside the front door as the owner unloads groceries. Daphne’s tracks from the stables, across the pristine field to a gap in the hedge, are so blatant that Bliss immediately seizes on them as a pretext as he flashes his police ID.

  “Detective Inspector Bliss,” he introduces himself to the tall, middle-aged man who is carting a box of supplies to the door. “We’re looking for an escaped prisoner,” he adds, not entirely untruthfully, but the man seems unconcerned.

  “I haven’t seen anyone.”