by Nicola Slade
‘Coffee for everyone.’ Eve indicated the tray to Donald and Madeleine who were hanging around uncertainly. Obediently they helped hand round cups then took their own drinks to the far end of the room.
‘It was terrible.’ Fiona sipped at her coffee then drained it and held out her cup for a refill. ‘Thanks, I needed that. No, no more whisky thank you, I’d rather have coffee.’ She shut her eyes and leaned back against the solid chair, trying to marshal her thoughts. ‘I didn’t realise at first how badly she was hurt. I thought she’d just knocked herself out. I know there was a lot of blood but … I just sat there waiting for her to come round and then they whisked her off to the operating theatre. Even then I thought they were relieving the pressure on the brain, trepanning or something, like they do on television …’
She stared at Harriet and Jess who had stayed with her when Sam signalled to the others to make a discreet exit to the drawing room, taking their drinks with them. ‘There’s nobody at home and I didn’t want to be by myself, so I got a taxi back here. I meant to text earlier but I thought there’d be news any minute, so I left it. Then one of the doctors came into the room and told me Linzi had died.’
Harriet pressed her hand gently and a whimper escaped Fiona. ‘I didn’t like her, you know, but I didn’t think she’d die.’
*
Harriet closed Fiona’s bedroom door very softly and turned with a whisper to Sam, who was hanging about outside in case he was needed.
‘She’s taken a couple of aspirins; she’s got a splitting headache and no wonder. I think she’ll sleep now and hopefully manage the whole night but I’ve told her to knock on my door if she wakes to nightmares.’
Her expression was grim as she looked at him. ‘I also promised to sort out Linzi’s things. Fiona’s had more than enough to cope with and this is something I can take off her hands. I’ll do it when we go to bed. Fiona had Linzi’s key; she locked the room before they left in the ambulance, but she’s fretting about the rest of it. I’d rather get it done sooner than later.’
‘I’ll come too.’ He brooked no argument but followed her down from the attic to the main staircase, almost bumping into her as she halted abruptly. What the—?’
‘Sam,’ she said urgently, ‘will you go back upstairs and turn the landing light off, just for a minute? The one on the main landing, not the attic one.’
He knew that tone of voice and did as she asked. ‘Okay, now what?’
‘Look,’ she whispered, pointing, ‘see that Tiffany-style lamp in the niche? If I go and sit at the bottom of the stairs, tell me what colour my hair is.’
Stifling an urge to smack his cousin for being so melodramatic Sam waited patiently until … ‘Good grief, you’re right, Harriet. The predominant colour of the glass is red and it’s reflecting downwards on to you.’ He carried on down the flight of stairs and gave her a hand, hauling her to her feet. ‘Your hair looks reddish instead of blonde. That’s what you saw when you looked down at Seren this morning.’
*
In the drawing room there had been very little discussion of the tragedy after Fiona went upstairs, according to Tim who seemed to have appointed himself liaison to Sam and Harriet.
‘What could anyone say?’ he shrugged. ‘It’s just a horrible accident.’ His eyes met Sam’s. ‘The awful thing is … that although everyone is shocked I don’t get the sense that anyone will mourn her.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I’m as bad, I only feel relief and that makes me feel pretty rotten.’
Sam nodded, no point glossing over the truth. ‘That’s a natural reaction and I’m afraid you’re right,’ he said. ‘Fiona says she’s not heard of any family apart from the three husbands, and as the two later marriages apparently ended in acrimony it’s hard to believe they’ll be grief-stricken. It’s a sad reflection at the end of a life.’
‘Drink, Harriet?’ Tim was pouring one for himself.
Gratefully, she nursed a very small single malt and looked round at the rest of the group. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m for bed soon.’
She had grabbed Sam’s arm as they approached the drawing room door when a thought struck her. ‘Don’t say anything about Fiona wanting me to go through Linzi’s things,’ she hissed, ‘not even to Eve or Hughie. I’ve got the key now and the fewer people who know, the better.’
Sam pursed his lips but nodded. ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said firmly and when she started to argue, he hushed her. ‘Of course I am, don’t be daft. You can go through her personal stuff, but I’ll be there too. I’m not comfortable about you being alone in her room. Anyway, don’t argue, I’m coming.’
*
Seren sat beside Tim on one of the big, comfortable sofas, making her gin and tonic go a long way. She caught his eye and didn’t move when he smiled and quietly put an arm round her. ‘Goodness,’ she thought, ‘we’ve come a long way very quickly. Do I want this?’ The answer came swiftly: ‘I like him; this feels right.’ She leaned against him and tried to put her conflicting emotions into some kind of order.
Earlier, when the ambulance had taken Linzi and Fiona away, Seren had run upstairs to her room, closing the door with exaggerated care.
She stood there, breathing deeply. I can’t break down, she’d told herself. I need to find out for myself. When Linzi comes back I’ll get her alone and talk to her. It hadn’t occurred to her that Linzi might not reappear, more that Linzi would swan in wearing a rakishly attractive bandage and place herself in the centre of attention.
Downstairs the rest of the group had milled around in the hall until Donald suggested they repair to the garden room, but Sam and Harriet were nowhere to be seen. Tim spotted her and looked downcast when she told him she had to go home.
‘I won’t be long,’ she reassured him. ‘I just need to see what the post has brought, that kind of thing. Will you carry on with your painting? Save me a seat beside you, I’ll be back before you know it.’
She’d forced herself to concentrate on the traffic during the 15-20 minutes it took her to drive to Locksley. The Saturday early-evening exodus from the city was building up. Her rented two-bedroomed cottage was pleasant enough but it wasn’t home and she yearned for somewhere of her own, somewhere she would belong.
Letters, bills, circulars, a postcard of Brighton Pavilion from Hafren –‘Wish you were here!’ – nothing that gave her a genuine reason to delay what she had to do.
She pulled out the filing cabinet drawer and lifted out a folder, careful not to look at the array of photographs on the shelf opposite. ‘I can’t do that yet,’ she told herself. ‘One step at a time.’
There were official documents in the folder. Her parents’ death certificates – and her husband Paul’s. She shivered remembering the bleak business of registering his death and the emptiness she felt then. ‘I don’t feel like that now,’ she thought, jerking her head up, startled. ‘I loved him, I truly did, and I miss him, but I’m not bereft any more. Tim —’ She shook her head. Much too soon to think about Tim, no time to think about Paul. There was more urgent business at hand.
She took out the certificates one by one and put them in an orderly heap on the table: Hafren’s birth certificate; her own marriage lines; her parents’ marriage certificate and those of her grandparents on both sides.
There were two official documents left and she drew them out gingerly, her whole body shaking like a leaf: her birth certificate, familiar since childhood; and the other one. It was in a long, official-looking envelope and Seren had not looked at it since she was eighteen.
She knew what it said but she cast about for a delaying tactic until her mother’s voice rang in her ear, urging her to get on with it, for goodness’ sake. So she read it again. Then, and only then, did she stand up, painfully and slowly like an old woman, so that she could look at the photographs.
Her mother, sturdy, blue-eyed and dark-haired; her father broad and stocky; her grandmothers – Gran plump and blue-eyed, and Nana squarely-built, dark and sa
llow. She felt they were chiming in with her mother’s written words, saying ‘Get a move on, Seren We’re here to help you.’
She picked up the photograph of her daughter Hafren and stared lovingly at the slight figure, the delicate features, eager brown eyes and the beautiful copper-toned hair that hung loose over her shoulders.
*
Nina Allison had watched Seren leave Tadema Lodge and wondered whether she should go home herself or even take a stroll round town; anything to get away from the supercharged atmosphere. Her phone pinged – a text from Phil.
‘Will you be home tonight?’
For a moment she felt a stabbing in her chest. A heart attack? Or maybe, she thought with a tight smile that held no humour, a heart that’s breaking?
‘Why? She waited for the answer.
‘Might eat at the club tonight. What are you doing?’
She doubted the golf club would be his destination. ‘When the wife’s away, Phil gets to play.’ She heard the words in her head as she’d overheard him laughing with friends a few months earlier. On that occasion she had slunk away unnoticed, to nurse her wounds, knowing he was talking about Linzi Bray. Who had replaced Linzi? Defeated, she sent him a text: ‘Staying overnight, back after lunch tomorrow. Behave yourself.’
She hated herself for the skittish comment and was seared by the contempt in his reply: ‘As if! Have fun painting, CU tmrw.’
*
Clare Yarrow was having a hard time trying to disguise her exhilaration at all the drama. When the ambulance took Linzi away, Clare had been here, there and everywhere, pressing unwanted sympathy on Bonnie Mercer who looked ghastly and had actually needed a helping hand to stagger back to the house. Clare had been in her element bringing tea and sympathy, tissues and heavy-breathing curiosity. Her patience went unrewarded because Bonnie was clearly in no state to unburden herself as to how it felt to help haul a badly injured woman out of a goldfish pond. She sat there, dumb and blank, barely able to register what anyone said to her.
Later, when Fiona arrived at Tadema Lodge and made her shock announcement, Clare had felt renewed annoyance with Bonnie who had toyed with her dinner, saying little. At Fiona’s dramatic announcement, Bonnie had gone even paler and simply walked out of the dining room. Clare sulked. The silly woman didn’t even know Linzi Bray, she was our next door neighbour, so if anyone ought to feel shocked it’s me. She dismissed any thought of George’s feelings. George didn’t do emotion; he was too busy thinking about his silly model aeroplanes and his vegetable garden.
*
She would have been surprised to know that George was watching her with contempt. That cow of a woman, he brooded. Like a vulture, waiting for more blood to be spilled or some scandal to develop. It should have been her. She should have died instead. The memory of the blood-drenched pond made him restless and he went over to the sideboard, glancing at the local paper with its cover photograph of the young French girl. He felt no passing regret for a lost life and turned instead to the property pages.
‘I wonder,’ he thought, excitement mounting. Houses rarely came up for sale in their road; hens’ teeth, the estate agents told their clients, but why not? ‘It’s a small, inconvenient house but it’s got all those period features the property programmes keep banging on about, along with a decent-sized plot. I could live happily on my own,’ he told himself, with a malevolent glare at his wife.
For years he’d dreamed about life without Clare and suddenly it was all so ridiculously simple. ‘I’ll just get rid of her,’ he decided. ‘Why didn’t I do it before?’ His long, plain face lit up with a satisfied smile.
*
Jess tried her husband’s mobile again. No answer. No answer at the house either, nor at his office. Where the hell was he?
He had stormed into the house at lunchtime the day before – was that only Friday? She paused to blink at all that had happened in the intervening hours.
‘That bitch,’ he’d spluttered, incandescent with rage – and yes, fear too as he gave her an edited version of his confrontation with Linzi Bray. Jess shivered now as she wondered just what he had omitted. Was he in danger of prosecution? Had he overstepped the mark? What was to become of them all if Bill had done something … stupid?
Habit made her reach into her pocket for her pencil and notepad while she let the words tumble and fall into patterns inside her head. Bill, Linzi, the darkness that loomed – all vanished as she began to scribble.
*
Harriet felt disconnected from her surroundings and was grateful to Sam and Tim who kept the atmosphere relatively light. Not that they jollied people along, which would be inappropriate; more that they made sure the conversation didn’t trail away into awkward silences. She had been aware of Bonnie Mercer’s silent distress and felt part sympathy – it had been terrible dealing with Linzi and all the blood – and part irritation. ‘Bonnie should get a grip. I’m not drooping around like a dying swan,’ she told herself, ‘and it was just as bad for me, and much worse for Fiona.
‘Yes, well,’ she snapped at herself in guilty reproof. ‘You just have to be little Miss Perfect don’t you? Always on hand to sort out other people’s mess. Bonnie is probably a more sensitive soul than you are. Even so it was a relief to realise the other woman had disappeared, presumably to bed.’
She was uneasy about the business with the landing light. If Seren’s hair had looked a different colour to her, might someone else have made the same mistake? Seren had insisted she’d been mistaken, that she’d slipped on the stairs, but as Sam had remarked, what did they know about her? A pleasant young woman courageously making a new life after a double bereavement. Harriet sighed; surely it was best to give people the benefit of the doubt?
The vague unease persisted but she dismissed both inner Harriets – the martyr and the headmistress – and pulled herself together. As she glanced round the room, she was startled to intercept George Yarrow’s resentful glare at his wife. If looks could kill, she thought, and was disturbed by his sudden triumphant smile as he looked down at the newspaper.
Chapter 11
‘Heavens, it’s only 10pm.’ Sam looked at his watch. He’d been keeping a careful eye on his cousin Harriet, aware of her exhaustion. ‘I’m off to bed, I’m afraid. It’s been a difficult day and tomorrow will probably be no easier. Good night, all. Coming, Harriet?’
She was grateful for his tact as she hauled herself out of the comfortable armchair, wincing as she remembered the self-imposed task that lay ahead. Better get it over with; it wasn’t fair to lumber Fiona with all the dirty work.
Sam’s announcement heralded a general exodus and there was a ragged chorus of goodnights. Eve flitted into the drawing room to pick up glasses, plump cushions and check that nobody was left behind. Harriet thought she looked grey with fatigue and paused for a word.
‘Do go to bed, Eve,’ she urged. ‘We’re all exhausted. Let’s hope we feel better able to cope after a night’s sleep.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ her hostess managed a faint smile. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be just as grim.’ Her dark eyes were shadowed but she nodded briskly. ‘You’re right though, Harriet, it’s time for bed. Good night.’
*
Sam sat in the small elegant armchair in Linzi’s room and frowned at the pale grey linen upholstery.
‘Smart,’ he commented. ‘Not very practical though.’
Harriet glanced up from the suitcase in which she was packing Linzi’s clothes. ‘It would have suited Linzi then. She must have been forever taking these pale cashmeres and silks to the dry cleaners. Must have cost a fortune.’ Her voice faltered: ‘Oh, Sam—’
‘I know.’He was sympathetic: ‘Feeling guilty about her?’ She nodded, not surprised by his fellow-feeling. ‘Me too, if it makes you feel any better,’ he added. ‘I didn’t like her much, not after the first hour or so, and that’s not really the kind of thing a man of the cloth likes to admit.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she cheered up sudd
enly. ‘Remember that vicar we met two years ago in Brittany? He said the pay was lousy, the senior management incompetent and he didn’t actually believe in God anyway, but it was astonishing how the dog-collar still pulled in the women. If he played his cards right he could have a warm bed a couple of nights a week.’
‘Hah!’ Sam snorted with laughter. ‘Didn’t I tell you the sequel? Seems he was overconfident and got beaten up by an irate husband home unexpectedly from the oil rigs.’
‘Oh dear,’ she went back to her folding and packing, feeling more cheerful. Trust Sam to find a laugh somewhere, and it was a comfort to know that he hadn’t really taken to Linzi either. ‘There we are; that’s all her clothes put in the suitcase. God knows what will happen to it but it’s not our problem.’
She clapped a hand to her mouth in sudden horror. ‘Sam! I’ve just had the most awful thought. Aren’t you supposed to leave everything for the police to check? Am I tampering with evidence?’
‘What on earth are you on about?’ Sam looked startled then got the gist of what she was saying. ‘For goodness’ sake, calm down. If the police wanted to check her stuff they’d have cordoned it off. We’re just helping Fiona, so don’t talk nonsense, Harriet. As far as the police are concerned Linzi’s death was the result of an unfortunate accident and the question of murder doesn’t arise. It’s only speculation on our part.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ her voice was shaky but she felt calmer. ‘What else is there?
‘Drat,’ she frowned. ‘I’m sure Linzi had a dressing gown. It must be behind the bathroom door.’
Sam picked up one of the glossy magazines that Eve had put in every room and was flicking through the pages when he realised that Harriet was unusually silent.
‘What’s the matter?’ he rose and went to the bathroom door. Harriet had emptied the contents of Linzi’s dressing gown pocket on to the broad, tiled window sill. ‘Harriet?’
