Family and Friends

by Emma Page

  He bought a newspaper at the bookstall and sat down on a bench to read it till the train came in. At last it came smoothly and powerfully into view and he sprang to his feet; it would be good to see Jane again, he had never known a week go by so slowly. She was standing by an open window, craning out to see if he was there. Her face broke into a delighted smile as soon as she caught sight of him.

  When the train halted he swung her down on to the platform and gave her a long kiss. ‘I’ll run you home,’ he said as he picked up her luggage, ‘I’ve got a car for the day.’ He explained about the illness of his boss. ‘Later on, when I’ve done one or two jobs, I could pick you up and we can have lunch together.’

  She walked beside him on to the forecourt. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’d prefer not to go home right away. There won’t be anyone in till lunchtime and there’s something I’d like to see to first.’ He stowed the bags into the car boot, straightened up and looked at her. A little frown of anxiety creased her brows. ‘I’m rather worried,’ she said slowly. I want to tell you about it, see what you think. You might say I’m just letting my imagination run away with me.’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Did something happen while you were away?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, nothing happened, it’s something I–look, suppose we get in the car and drive on a bit.’ She glanced round at the busy forecourt. ‘We can’t talk here.’

  ‘Come on then, jump in.’ He held the car door open. ‘Now,’ he said a few minutes later when he had run the car into a deserted spot, ‘what’s all this about?’

  She drew a deep breath and looked up at him with appeal. ‘I want you to listen to what I have to say, don’t brush it aside, and don’t keep interrupting me with questions.’ She clasped her hands together. ‘You remember the day before I left, I went up to The Sycamores . . .’

  At last she came to a full stop and they both sat in silence for several seconds. ‘I see,’ Kevin said slowly. He put up a hand and scratched his ear. ‘What do you want to do now?’

  ‘Oh!’ she cried with an odd mixture of relief and apprehension, ‘so you don’t think it’s a lot of nonsense?’

  He gave her a long serious look. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t like the sound of it at all.’ She felt the tears prickle in her eyes, she realized now that she’d been more than half counting on his dismissing the whole thing with a laugh.

  ‘I thought,’ she said at last, ‘that we might run out to Mrs Bond’s cottage.’ She saw his puzzled look. ‘I want to see if the cat’s better.’ She had the feeling that if the cat proved to be all right, she would somehow be able to forget her uneasiness, let her shadowy conjectures drop away into oblivion.

  ‘I can’t really see what the cat’s going to prove one way or the other,’ Kevin said, ‘not at this stage. But if it’s what you want—’ He switched on the engine. ‘Do you know where Mrs Bond lives?’

  ‘Oh yes. You fork left at the first junction from here and then I’ll show you.’

  As they approached the cottage he said, ‘There’s no smoke coming from the chimneys, she may be out,’ and a moment later he added, ‘All the curtains are drawn. Could she have gone away?’

  ‘Perhaps she’s still in bed,’ Jane said. ‘She hasn’t got a job to get up for now.’ Then she suddenly remembered Emily coughing and sneezing in the High Street. ‘She might be ill!’ she said in an urgent tone. ‘She could be lying up there without a soul to look after her, she might have flu, she wasn’t at all well the last time I saw her, I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Now don’t get upset,’ he said as he switched off the engine. ‘If she’s ill we can get a doctor for her.’ He took her hand and they walked rapidly up to the cottage door. He rapped briskly on the brass knocker and they both stood with their heads tilted, listening for a movement, a step, a voice. He raised the knocker and rapped again, more loudly. Silence settled back into place as the echoes died away.

  ‘Give a shout,’ he said. ‘She’ll know your voice. It might alarm her to hear a stranger calling out.’

  Jane looked up at the blind windows. ‘Mrs Bond!’ she called. ‘Are you there? It’s me, Jane Underwood!’ There was no reply. ‘Let’s go round the back,’ she said. They skirted the side of the house, repeated the knocking and the calling, without success. Kevin tried the back door but it resisted him; they returned to the front of the house and tried that door but it remained unyielding. ‘She could simply have gone into town,’ Jane said with an attempt at optimism.

  ‘Yes, she could.’ Kevin stood considering. ‘We passed a little shop back there,’ he said at last. ‘We could call in, ask if anyone’s seen her about recently, they might even tell us they saw her go by this morning.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and they went back to the car.

  The shop, a small general store, was empty except for a middle-aged woman arranging tins on a shelf. She turned as they came in, gave them a look of keen assessment.

  ‘Mrs Bond?’ she said, breaking in before Kevin had come to the end of his first sentence. ‘Are you friends of hers?’ Scarcely relatives, not a smart young couple with a car.

  ‘I’m a friend,’ Jane said at once. ‘I’ve known her for years.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid you’re in for a bit of a shock.’ The woman’s tone was compounded of concern and relish. Jane slipped her hand into Kevin’s and gripped his fingers tightly. ‘She’s dead and buried,’ the woman said dramatically. She gave a brisk nod. ‘Buried two days ago, inquest the previous day. An open verdict, they said. Do you know what that means? It means they couldn’t tell how she died.’ Importance rose in her voice. ‘We had the police in here, quite a performance, I can tell you. Here–’ she added suddenly, coming round the counter and thrusting forward a chair, ‘you’d better sit down, you look quite poorly.’ Jane dropped into the chair and put her head in her hands. ‘Would you like a glass of water, dear? It must have given you a turn, it was very upsetting for us.’

  Kevin threw the woman an angry look–blurting it straight out like that, she might have been a little more considerate. He bent down and squeezed Jane’s shoulders. ‘Don’t take it to heart,’ he said in a low voice.

  The woman came back with a tumbler of water. Jane raised it to her lips and took a long steadying drink, then she looked up at the woman.

  ‘I’m all right now, thanks. What happened?’

  ‘There was this gas-man going round reading the meters. When he couldn’t get into the cottage he slipped a card under the door, you know how they do, so you can read the meter yourself, and they call for it next day. Well, he came back next day and the card was still there, sticking out under the door.’ She leaned forward, enjoying the drama of her tale. ‘And the curtains were drawn–in broad daylight. So he came in here and told my husband about it, asked if we knew anything, if she was ill or away, or what. Well, of course she never went away so in the end my husband phoned the police and they broke in. She was lying in bed, stone dead, been dead a couple of days, it seems. They had a post-mortem and everything.’

  ‘What did she die of?’ Kevin asked.

  ‘They said she had the flu and it had turned to pneumonia, very sudden it was, they said it happens like that sometimes. And she’d dosed herself with brandy and a lot of tablets. Sleeping-pills, or something of that sort, she’d taken them with a cup of milk. In the end they couldn’t decide whether it was the pneumonia or the brandy and tablets that had finished her off so they brought in an open verdict, meaning they couldn’t be sure.’

  Jane looked at the woman. ‘Was there a cat?’ she asked. ‘A black cat.’

  The woman frowned and shook her head. ‘I don’t know anything about any cat,’ she said. ‘Mrs Bond never had no cat. If there had been one I dare say the police would have brought it in here for someone to look after it.’

  Jane stood up. ‘I’m quite all right now, thank you,’ she said firmly to Kevin in response to his anxious look. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said to the woman. ‘It was very g
ood of you to explain everything. I hope we haven’t taken up too much of your time.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ Kevin asked as they walked back to the car. ‘Leave things as they are?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Conflicting thoughts whirled through her brain. ‘If poor Emily’s dead—’ She sighed, with an effort she kept back the tears.

  He settled her into the passenger seat. ‘I have to look over a house,’ he said gently. He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s a furnished letting, I have someone wanting to look over it today, I’m just checking it first. Suppose I run you home, I’ve got time. Then I can pick you up later for lunch.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can have lunch with you. Ruth said she’d come home for a few minutes at lunchtime, just to make sure I got back safely, I can’t very well go out. Thanks all the same. If you could just run me home though, I’d be grateful.’ In the silence of home she could make herself a strong cup of coffee, sit down and think.

  ‘All right. I tell you what, I’ll give you a ring some time this afternoon when I’ve taken the client over the house, perhaps we can meet for tea. You can see what you feel like then.’ Shock might strike her later on, she might be forced to retire to bed for the rest of the day. ‘I wouldn’t go doing anything very strenuous when you get home,’ he said. ‘Take it easy.’ He decided to switch to a more cheerful subject. ‘It’s a man from overseas who wants to take a look at Piersons’, he’s been doing an engineering job—’

  ‘Piersons’?’ Jane sat upright. ‘Do you mean the house you have to let? Which Piersons is that? Not Sarah and Arnold Pierson?’

  ‘I don’t know the exact names,’ he said. ‘But of course I have the address. Hold on a moment.’ He stopped the car, thrust his hand into his pocket and took out a notebook. ‘Here you are.’ He held an open page in front of her. ‘That’s the one. To be let for three months in the first instance, with a possibility of renewal.’

  ‘It is their house,’ she said, looking up at him with bewildered eyes. ‘Why are they letting it? Have they left Milbourne?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. My boss was handling it, he’d have all the details. Does it matter?’

  She tried to marshal her thoughts. ‘You’d better drive on again. Don’t take me home just yet, I’ll come with you to the house while you check it, that will give me a chance to think about it.’ He set the car in motion again. ‘Don’t talk to me for a bit,’ she added. ‘I just want to work it out.’

  She cast her mind rapidly back to her meeting with Sarah Pierson at the bus-stop. Going away for a while, Sarah had said, she didn’t know for how long. But surely Arnold would still be living at the house? Had he decided to move into a hotel, take a flat or bedsitter? Why should one or other–or both of them–have suddenly decided to put the house in the hands of an estate agent? Sarah had said nothing about it at the bus-stop but then why should she have done?

  There was no reason why she should have disclosed her entire family business to Jane, especially with old Emily standing a couple of feet away . . . Emily, she thought with a horrid feeling beginning to twist the muscles of her stomach. Emily and the little cat. Emily had been chatting to Sarah for some time before she herself joined them. She raised her hand abruptly to her mouth . . . And Arnold had stood a yard or two away, within earshot, looking in through the windows of the supermarket . . . But what possible connection could there be between that encounter and the decision to put the house up for letting? None at all that she could see . . . And yet . . . and yet . . . Emily was dead and no one seemed very sure how she had died . . .

  ‘This is the house,’ Kevin said, halting the car. She jerked herself out of her whirling thoughts and followed him up the path. Inside, everything was clean and neat, bare of personal belongings. Kevin took out his notebook and pencil. ‘I have to take a look round just to see everything’s in order.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be any difficulty about letting the house,’ he said a few minutes later. ‘Very well maintained, spotlessly clean, and the rent’s reasonable. Now, a look round the back, and then we can go.’

  Outside by the dustbins there were a couple of cardboard boxes and beside them an ancient wooden gramophone. On top of one of the boxes a message had been boldly inked: For collection by the Scouts.

  Kevin removed a lid from a dustbin. Inside was a mass of papers, some crumpled into balls, some torn into thick wedges and a pile of pamphlets and brightly-coloured brochures. ‘They had a good clear-out,’ he said approvingly. ‘You’d be surprised at the way some people go off and leave a house stuffed with all kinds of junk, the tenant has to more or less spring-clean when he takes the place over.’

  Jane glanced in at the bin and saw the gay cover of a travel booklet. ‘Just a moment,’ she said, arresting Kevin’s hand as he was about to replace the lid. ‘I’d like to take a look at those.’ He watched in surprised silence as she removed a handful of the glossy brochures. She sat down on the back doorstep and began to turn the pages.

  Cruises, all the leaflets were for cruises, every conceivable kind of cruise. Photographs of ships looked up at her, beautiful liners, views of dining rooms, cabins, pictures of palm-lined beaches, foreign ports, smiling stewards. Kevin came and sat down beside her.

  ‘Who’s going on a cruise?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, her heart thumping in her chest. ‘Not Sarah, she’s in Bournemouth.’ She remembered Arnold’s eyes looking blindly in at the supermarket and she gave a little shiver. ‘Arnold used to come into the library, he was always taking out travel books.’ She stopped suddenly at one page; a line had been drawn underneath the details of one particular cruise, an inked circle enclosed a date. ‘February the twelfth,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘That’s today.’

  He took the brochure from her, ran his eye over the facts and figures. ‘It costs a small fortune,’ he said. ‘It’s a round-the-world trip. Is your Arnold Pierson a millionaire?’

  She laid a hand on his sleeve, her fingers dug into his arm. ‘He’s an accountant,’ she said. ‘He works for Uncle Owen. And he was a friend of Aunt Zena’s. He knew her right from the time when they were young.’

  ‘An accountant?’ Kevin repeated. ‘Do you suppose your Uncle Owen knows about this trip?’ He frowned, ‘It’s one hell of a long holiday.’

  She jumped to her feet. ‘Let’s go back inside. I’m going to ring Uncle Owen at the factory, I’m going to find out if Arnold has gone away, if he knows about it.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Kevin warned, taking out the keys again. ‘Don’t go making a fool of yourself, the cruise might be nothing more than a pipe-dream, just drawing a line round the kind of holiday you dream about.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ she said, ‘I’ll think of some good reason for asking about him.’

  Inside, she dialled the number and spoke to her uncle’s secretary, she stood waiting while the girl went to see if he was free.

  ‘Hello, Jane.’ Her uncle’s voice at last, touched with surprise. ‘You’re back then. Did you have a good holiday?’ A couple of minutes crawled by while she made suitable conversation. Then she said casually, allowing him to think she was speaking from the library, ‘I’ve just called in here to have a chat with the girls and there’s a query about a missing book.’ It struck her even as she uttered the words that it was rather a frail story but invention threw up nothing more plausible. ‘I said I’d look into it, I was dealing with it before I went away. It’s Arnold Pierson, he took out the book a month ago—’

  ‘Pierson,’ her uncle said in an icy tone.

  ‘Yes, he reported the book as missing—’

  ‘That’s not the only thing that’s missing,’ Owen said. ‘Pierson’s missing as well.’

  ‘Missing? I thought perhaps I could speak to him—’

  ‘I’d like to speak to him myself. He walked out of here last Friday and he hasn’t been back since. Just marched into my office and told my secre
tary he was going off for a holiday, without so much as a by-your-leave. I wasn’t here myself or I’d have had something to say. The audit’s coming up in a couple of weeks, a fine time to take himself off.’

  With an effort Jane kept her voice level. ‘Did he tell your secretary how long he’d be away? Or where he was going?’

  ‘No, he did not. I might have understood if he’d said he felt unwell or produced a doctor’s note or given any reasonable kind of explanation. But he did nothing of the kind. And when she tried to argue with him he more or less told her he mightn’t come back at all if he didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Jane said hesitantly, ‘I mean, the accounts, is there any question of—’

  He gave a grim laugh. ‘I’d like to know the answer to that one myself but I won’t know for certain till the auditors have been in. I’ve got one of the other fellows working on the books now, he hasn’t spotted anything so far. I dare say Pierson got everything well sewn up before he sloped off, it’ll probably take a good long time until we unravel it.’ Jane screwed up her eyes in concentrated thought. Should she say anything about the brochure? Or the fact that the house was in the hands of an agent? Better not, instinct warned her, say nothing for the present, not till you’ve had time to consider it.

  When at last she replaced the receiver she turned to Kevin and swiftly filled in a few gaps for him; he had caught the general drift of the conversation as he stood at her elbow. ‘I’m going to speak to my father about it this evening,’ she said firmly. ‘He’ll know what to do. If he thinks it necessary he can go and see Uncle Owen.’

  On the way out of the house she suddenly remembered she had said nothing to her uncle about Emily Bond’s death. Did he know of it? Yes, of course he must, it had been reported in the paper.