Thanet was pretty certain – though of course Agon hadn’t said so – that the tennis coach had seen ensnaring Rachel as the perfect revenge for this humiliating rejection. Thanet suspected too that it was partly Agon’s residual anger with Virginia that had caused him to react so violently when she attacked him.
‘You’re probably right,’ said Joan, when Thanet had finished telling her all this. ‘A man like that, used to making easy conquests, would take it pretty hard when the one woman he’s ever really fallen for laughs in his face when he proposes to her.’
‘My mistake was in more or less dismissing Agon as a suspect,’ said Thanet. ‘And that was because I seriously underestimated Virginia’s love for Rachel.’
‘Her one remaining child.’
‘Exactly. I thought, you see, that she wouldn’t have dared offer to buy Agon off in case he told Rachel about it and Rachel turned against her. And I should think that initially that was true. But when it came to the crunch, when Agon actually proposed to Rachel and was accepted, Virginia was prepared to go to any lengths to get rid of him, regardless of the cost to herself.’
Briefly he imagined the scene the night of Virginia’s death: Virginia clearing up in the kitchen, glancing out of the window and seeing Agon crossing the courtyard to his car, calling out to him on impulse, anxious to do something, anything, to get her daughter out of his clutches. ‘When Agon turned down the very substantial bribe she offered she played her last remaining card and threatened to tell Rachel of her own affair with him. She must have known that if she did it would almost certainly alienate Rachel but by then she was desperate. He said he would flatly deny it had ever happened, that Rachel would certainly take his word against hers, especially in view of the fact that Virginia was so old. He ended up by telling her what he called “a few home truths”. I imagine they were pretty cruel, and I think it was these insults, combined with sheer frustration that Virginia had just seen her last hope of saving Rachel fly out of the window, that made her go for him.’
‘And having thrown her down the well he just put the cover back on and walked off, not knowing if she was alive or dead!’
‘Precisely. It’s not too difficult to believe. I should think Agon has spent his life looking after number one. If he’d gone for help, he’d have had to explain how the accident – if you could call it that – had happened in the first place. Far easier to pretend it never had.’
They were now approaching the A3 turn-off and Thanet signalled and eased into the inner lane.
Joan waited until he had negotiated the complicated roundabout at the top of the slip road before saying, ‘You’ve sometimes said that in domestic murders like this it is often in the character of the victim that the seeds of his own destruction lie. Would you say that was true in this instance?’
‘Partly, I suppose. But I also think that in Virginia’s case circumstances conspired against her. I know that on the surface she seemed to have everything any woman could want – plenty of money, a lovely house and luxurious life-style, – but it wasn’t material satisfaction she was looking for. One after another all the people she loved most were taken away from her and every time it happened she slipped a little more out of control.’
‘Except her husband.’
‘True. But although she always came back to him, needed him as a sort of anchor, I don’t think she could have cared very deeply for him or she surely wouldn’t have treated him the way she did. No, it was her children she truly loved and ultimately it was that love which was her undoing. So I suppose it was her emotional make-up and her husband’s moral cowardice that proved the fatal combination.’
Joan sighed. ‘And it’s their children who are going to have to pay for it.’
‘I’m afraid so. Poor Caroline was doomed from the moment she fell for Dick. Even if the elopement hadn’t gone so drastically wrong, she’d still have spent years in an incestuous relationship and if they’d had children—’
‘I simply cannot understand how her father was prepared to bury his head in the sand and just let that happen!’
But Thanet was still thinking of Caroline. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how sometimes the most trivial of events can have such far-reaching consequences.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t think that the fact that a grandmother returned one day early from a trip abroad would trigger off a tragic mistiming worthy of a Hardy novel, would you?’
‘If you put it like that, no.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ They had just turned off the A3 into Roehampton Lane. ‘Did Alexander give you directions to the hospital?’
‘Yes.’ Joan was rummaging in her handbag. ‘Here they are.’
‘We’d better concentrate, then.’ Thanet never felt more of a country bumpkin than when driving in London.
Twenty minutes later he was turning into a hospital car park for the second time that day, but on this occasion his heart was light and full of joyous anticipation.
Laden with champagne, gifts for Bridget and the baby and the biggest teddy bear Thanet had ever seen they navigated the corridors of the hospital to the maternity ward, where they found Bridget in a little room of her own – a privilege accorded to those who had undergone a caesarian, apparently. And there was a cot beside the bed! The baby must be making good progress, then.
Thanet was also glad to see that now all the anxiety was over, although she still looked rather pale Bridget’s natural ebullience had surfaced once more. Both she and Alexander were understandably glowing with pride and delight. He and Joan tiptoed across to peer into the rather unusual cot, a kind of perspex box.
‘They call it a bassinet,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s used for premature babies, to keep their temperature up.’
‘She’s got your mouth,’ Joan said to Bridget.
Bridget laughed, then winced, clutching her abdomen. ‘Oh, don’t make me laugh, whatever else you do! Alexander’s mum says she’s got Alexander’s!’
‘Have you decided what to call her yet?’
‘Margaret Anna.’
Joan flushed with pleasure. Margaret was her mother’s name. ‘Your grandmother will be thrilled.’
‘But we shall call her Meg. Would you like to pick her up?’
‘Oh, is that allowed?’
‘Of course. Just for a few minutes anyway.’
Alexander, Thanet saw, had produced a video camera and now filmed the scene as Joan carefully lifted up the feather weight bundle and cradled her for a few minutes before handing her to Thanet.
He laid his cheek against the soft down of the baby’s head and inhaled the distinctive, milky scent of new life, admired the perfection of her tiny features. He glanced at Joan and as their eyes met he knew that she too was remembering the moments when they had held their own first-born, now a mother herself. Suddenly he saw himself in a new light, as a link in the chain which joined one generation to another, stretching back into the obscurity of past ages and ahead into the unknown future.
As he laid his new granddaughter back in the cot he said a brief prayer for her health and safety, then turned to watch, smiling, as Bridget began to unwrap her parcels.
At this moment, he thought, there was nowhere on earth that he would rather be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dorothy Simpson is a former French teacher who lives in Kent, England, with her husband. Their three children are all married. This is her fifteenth Luke Thanet novel. Her fifth, Last Seen Alive, won Britain’s prestigious Silver Dagger Award. Her most recent Thanet novels are No Laughing Matter, Wake the Dead, and Once Too Often.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
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authors.simonandschuster.com/Dorothy-Simpson
Also by Dorothy Simpson
Inspector Thanet Series
The Night She Died
Six Feet Under
Puppet for a Corpse
Close Her Eyes
Last Seen Alive
Dead on Arrival
Element of Doubt
Suspicious Death
Dead by Morning
Doomed to Die
Wake the Dead
No Laughing Matter
A Day for Dying
Once Too Often
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Dorothy Simpson
Originally published in Great Britain in 1999 by Little Brown and Company
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ISBN 978-1-5011-5373-0
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Dead and Gone Page 27
