“If she had taken something, surely it would have been discovered amongst her possessions after her death, like Buller’s letter.”
“My thought exactly. But her father insisted there was nothing else and his distressed condition discouraged me from persisting with my enquiries. I did contact an amateur historian who’d been with Miss Foxton at the time of her accident, but-”
“John Metherell.”
“Yes. You know him?”
“I’ve met him. He’s writing a book about the wreck of the Association.”
“So I believe. Anyway, he couldn’t help me. Miss Foxton’s discussions with him had been limited to the Association story. The friend Miss Foxton had been staying with on St. Mary’s said Mr. Foxton had taken everything of his daughter’s away with him. It was a dead end.”
“You gave up?”
“I had to. Just as you’ll have to give up trying to find the Tozers’ ring. Eventually.” Shelkin lit another cigarette and inhaled cautiously. “When the time comes, you’ll know. Believe me. I speak from experience.”
NINETEEN
I often attend evensong at the cathedral, Mr. Harding. I did so on Sunday. And I spoke to the dean afterwards. So, I think you’ll agree I have an unimpeachable alibi for the night of the burglary at Heartsease. Even supposing I need one, which, in the absence of any credible motive, I don’t suppose I do, do you?”
Shelkin’s parting shot had hit home. Standing on the platform at Newark North Gate station waiting for the connecting train to London late that cold afternoon, Harding asked himself what, if anything, he had gained from his trip to Lincoln. Considering he had not really wanted to go in the first place, the answer was dismally little. He did not believe Shelkin had either the Tozers’ ring or the missing pages from the Gashry report. Kerry Foxton might have stolen a complete copy of the report from Norman Buller, but it was much more likely she had not. Besides, as Shelkin had said, the contents of those missing pages could hardly matter now, all of two hundred and seventy years later.
Hayley rang as the train was nearing King’s Cross. And Harding made no effort to conceal his pleasure at hearing from her.
“I’m going to come down on the sleeper, even if there isn’t a berth. Sitting up all night’s no hardship if I get to see you in the morning.”
“I’ll find out what time it gets in.”
“Early would be my guess. You don’t have to meet me at the station.”
“But I want to. So, that’s settled. Learn anything useful in Lincoln?”
“Not really.”
“No fresh leads?”
“None I need to follow. Which is a blessing, really. It means I can stop dashing around the country on Barney’s behalf and start…” He hesitated, unsure how to continue, for the simple reason that he had no clear idea of what was to happen next in his life.
“Start what, Tim?”
“We’re going to have to talk about that.”
“Yes. I guess we are. And you know something? I’m looking forward to it.”
“So am I.”
“Until tomorrow, then.”
“Yes. Until tomorrow.”
“’Bye.”
“’Bye, Hayley”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The sleeper rolled out of Paddington just before midnight. There had turned out to be plenty of vacant berths and Harding had a cabin to himself. To his subsequent surprise, given the many problems he was beset by and the many more likely to be created by allowing himself to fall in love with Hayley, he slept like a baby.
It was a grey damp morning in Penzance. Harding could not see Hayley waiting for him on the platform as he left the train, but he was at first undismayed. She might easily have overslept. He checked the station buffet and wandered up and down by the taxi rank. The other sleeper passengers had mostly dispersed by now. Anxiety began to creep over him.
Then a woman called his name. “Tim.” She was moving towards him from the direction of the car park. Harding did not recognize her. She was slimly built, with straw-coloured hair tied in a ponytail and an open, smiling expression. She wore a raincoat over the sort of uniform suit worn by staff in a bank or building society. “You’re Tim Harding?” she called as he drew closer.
“Yes.”
“Jeanette Taylor. Hayley asked me to meet you.”
“Ah. Right.” He smiled. “She’s been staying with you, hasn’t she?”
Jeanette did not return the smile. She looked puzzled. “No,” she said, with a tight little shake of the head.
“You’re in her judo class.”
“Yes. But she hasn’t been staying with me.”
“She phoned me… from your cottage in Mousehole… on Tuesday evening.”
“No, no. I drove her up to Newquay Airport on Tuesday. By the evening, she’d have been on her way to Spain.”
“Spain?”
“On holiday. A spur-of-the-moment thing, she said. She asked me to meet you here this morning and apologize for letting you down. You were hoping to see her while you’re here, apparently.”
“Hoping to see her?” Harding repeated incredulously.
“She asked me to give you this.”
Jeanette handed him an envelope. His name was written on it in broad capitals. TIM. He tore it open and stared in stupefaction at the note inside. Sorry. Truly. H. It occurred to him, with hopeless irrelevance, that strictly speaking he could not be sure she had written it. He had never seen her handwriting. But Jeanette was not lying. He felt leadenly certain of that-if of very little else.
“Can I give you a lift somewhere?” came the chirpy enquiry.
He asked to be taken to Heartsease, pointless though he knew returning there was. The house was silent and empty. Shortly after Jeanette had driven away leaving him staring in at the blank basement windows, an Isbister & Sons van pulled up. Four men had arrived to finish the clear-out. They knew nothing about Hayley and suggested he phone their boss, Clive Isbister, which he did-to little purpose.
“Good morning, Mr. Harding. I’m afraid I’ve heard nothing from the police about the ring. I must say, even though it wasn’t part of the auction, I was surprised you didn’t-”
“Forget the ring. I’m looking for Hayley.”
“Miss Winter? I saw her briefly on Tuesday morning. She said she was going away for a while. Can’t say I blame her, after the burglary.”
“Did she say when she was coming back?”
“No. But I don’t suppose she’ll be gone long. At least, that’s the impression I got. Why?”
“Never mind.”
She must have regretted letting him stay the night. She must have decided to end their relationship before it had properly begun. But why, in that case, had she phoned him in London, twice? Why had she encouraged him to believe she was waiting for him in Penzance when, in reality, she had fled to Spain? It made no sense. To change her mind was one thing. To deceive him like this was something else again. And it did not fit with his reading of her character. It did not fit with anything.
He walked aimlessly towards the sea after leaving Heartsease and found his way to the churchyard at the bottom of Chapel Street, where he sat on a bench among the graves and gazed out despairingly into the grey cold, unconsoling ocean.
He had to find her. He had to persuade her that it could not end like this. But how? According to Jeanette, she had been tense and largely silent during the drive to Newquay and had conspicuously failed to say where in Spain she was going. She had been catching a plane to Gatwick. Her destination beyond that was anyone’s guess.
When Harding’s phone rang, he thought for a crazily hopeful moment that it was Hayley calling to say it had all been a terrible misunderstanding. But it was not Hayley. Instead, he heard the smooth, familiar voice of Starburst International’s finance director.
“Tim? This is Tony Whybrow.”
“Tony?”
“Where are you?”
“Penzanc
e.”
“Really? According to the Mount Prospect, you checked out two days ago. Trying this number was a last throw of the dice. Barney said you’d lost your phone. But he might have got confused. He’s not thinking straight at the moment.”
“Isn’t he?”
“Anyway, thank God I’ve got you. You have to come back, Tim. Right away.”
“Come back?”
“I guess it’ll take most of the day for you to get up to Heathrow from Penzance. But it can’t be helped. I’ll book you on the eight p.m. flight to Nice and meet you when you arrive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We need your help to sort this mess out. If it can be sorted.”
“What mess?”
“Sorry. Getting ahead of myself.” He paused. “There was a break-in at the penthouse last night. Carol was alone at the time. An intruder threatened her with a knife.”
“My God.”
“Don’t worry. Carol’s unharmed. Physically, at any rate. Fortunately, she was able to talk the intruder into putting the knife down and leaving peacefully. She’s badly shaken up, though, as you can imagine. And Barney’s spitting blood. He wanted to call the police in immediately. But I recommended we get your input first.”
“My… input? What-”
“The intruder was Hayley Winter, Tim. And you and I have a great deal to talk about.”
TWENTY
It was eleven o’clock local time when Harding’s plane touched down in Nice. He retained little awareness of the journey that had filled most of the day. The train to Reading; the coach to the airport; the long wait in the terminal; the evening flight across France; they had been a blur somewhere at the margin of his thoughts, barely impinging on his consciousness.
Whybrow had declined to elaborate on his stark report of Hayley’s mercifully aborted attack on Carol. “I’ll give you all the details when we meet.” That had left Harding prey to as many dreadful speculations as his imagination could conjure up. Yet none was more dreadful in its way than the frightening realization that he had understood nothing as it truly was. He had been deceived. He had been manipulated. He had been made a fool of. And just how big a one he suspected Whybrow was going to explain with unsparing clarity.
Whybrow was waiting outside the customs hall. He appeared, as ever, cool and elegant, dressed in a dark suit and open-neck shirt. He was carrying a slim briefcase in one hand and a rolled copy of the Financial Times in the other. He had the fluent carriage of an athlete and the disconcertingly direct gaze of a powerful thinker. He kept his thinning hair bristlingly short and his chin baby-smooth. For all his undemonstrative, quietly spoken manner, there was something narcissistic about him, something faintly scornful of others. Whenever he had made up a drinking threesome with Harding and Tozer, he had always finished the soberest of them by some way with the least about himself revealed. Happiness was control in the world of Tony Whybrow.
“Bad business, Tim,” he said, tapping Harding on the elbow with his newspaper in greeting. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good. Think I’ll feel any better when you’ve told me exactly what happened?”
“No point pretending that’s likely.”
“Are we going to Barney’s now?”
“No. It’s late. And he’s been hitting the bottle. Go and see them in the morning. He’ll be more rational then. And Carol will be calmer. I hope.”
“It must have been a terrible experience for her.”
“Yes. It was.” Whybrow glanced in the direction of the exit leading to the car park. “I’ll drive you to your place. We can talk on the way.”
“OK. But-”
“Let’s go, shall we?” Whybrow cut him off, with a hint of impatience. There was much to say. But the time to say it had not quite come yet.
“You’re sure it was Hayley who did this, aren’t you, Tony?” Harding asked as they settled into Whybrow’s Lexus. “I can’t really believe she’s capable of threatening anyone with a knife.”
“How well do you think you know her?” The car started almost inaudibly and glided out of its parking bay with little apparent intervention from its driver. “You can’t have met her more than a couple of times.”
“I haven’t,” said Harding defensively. “Even so…”
“Here’s the deal, Tim. I only learnt the identity of Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper after Barney had talked you into going to Penzance on his behalf. I wouldn’t have allowed the situation to develop as it has if I’d known sooner. There were simply too many risk factors. As events have resoundingly confirmed.”
“Hold on. Are you saying you knew Hayley… before?”
“Knew of her, yes. I’ll come to that later. Barney and I are in the midst of some particularly delicate negotiations at present. I may have taken my eye off the ball where his family problems are concerned. He certainly did so himself. Hence the impossible position he put you in.”
“Why was it… impossible?”
“Because you didn’t know all or even most of the factors that were in play. Before I explain them, though, I’d better tell you how last night unfolded.” They were clear of the car park now, heading for the main road into Nice. “Hayley rang the penthouse around seven. The phone had rung a couple of times before and Carol had answered, but the caller had hung up. Only when Barney answered did she speak. She introduced herself and confessed straight out to stealing the ring from Heartsease.”
“She said that?”
“She did. She also said she regretted what she’d done and was willing to hand the ring over to Barney and explain why she’d stolen it. She wanted him to meet her in Menton later that evening. He agreed. It was a nicely judged decoy. She said she’d be waiting for him on the promenade near the casino at eight o’clock. He set off, telling Carol he was meeting me to discuss some business emergency. Perhaps if he’d told her the truth, she’d have been more on her guard, though I doubt it. Anyway, while Barney was in Menton, stooging around the sea front as eight o’clock came and went, Hayley was in Monaco. She’d been there when he left, hiding in the shadows near the back gate. As he drove out and the shutter-door came down, she’d wedged a bar under it to stop it closing. Barney’s not the type to wait to make sure the door’s completely shut every time he leaves. You know that. Well, it looks like she did too.”
“So, she got in by rolling under the door?”
“Yes. It wasn’t difficult. And it was even less difficult to get inside the apartment. The patio doors were unlocked. I expect she had some other way in planned, but that made it real easy for her. She crept into the kitchen and took a knife from the block on the worktop. Carol was in the lounge watching television. She never heard a thing. Suddenly there was a knife at her throat. She thought she was going to be killed. There and then.”
“Poor Carol.” Harding shut his eyes for a second, imagining how she must have felt in the moment when she realized her life might be about to end. “What did she do?”
“She was paralysed by fear. Probably just as well. But she wasn’t struck dumb. So, she talked, pleading for her life. At first, she didn’t know who her attacker was. Hayley stayed behind her. Carol reasoned with her as best she could. It was a monologue, apparently. Hayley never said a word. Then, suddenly, she threw down the knife and fled. It was only at that point that Carol recognized her.”
“But she’s never met her before.” It was a feeble objection. Hayley’s resemblance to Kerry Foxton made some form of recognition inevitable. As Whybrow emphasized in his own way by ignoring the point.
“Carol was in shock. She can’t properly account for what she did afterwards. Instead of calling the police, she locked herself in the bathroom, fearing Hayley might come back. She didn’t, of course. She was probably long gone by then. Meanwhile, Barney was starting to worry. He phoned home and got no answer. Then he worried some more. He didn’t want to head back in case Hayley was simply late for their appointment. So, he phoned me and ask
ed me to call round. Carol was still in the bathroom when I got there. I had to do quite a lot of talking just to get her to open the door. I’d searched the apartment by then and was certain no one was hiding anywhere. The bar was still propping open the shutter-door when I arrived, by the way. Hayley hadn’t bothered to remove it. Or maybe she’d been too distraught at her loss of nerve to think of it.”
“How do you know she lost her nerve? Maybe she’d only ever intended to threaten Carol. Though why I can’t imagine.”
“She left something in the kitchen that convinced me she was planning to murder Carol. A pocket recorder, with a tape in it. I listened to the tape while waiting for Barney to drive back from Menton. I’d phoned him, but not the police. I don’t believe in acting hastily. And this is a good example of why that’s always a sensible policy.” Whybrow pressed a button on the dashboard. The radio and hi-fi panel lit up. A tape engaged in the player. And Carol’s voice echoed in the car.
Barney’s playing golf, so I thought I’d give you a call. What are you doing? Treating Humph to a cream tea? It’d be wasted on him. He doesn’t appreciate the good things in life. But I do. Our afternoons together are very good, Tim, very, very good. Shall we-
Whybrow’s finger hit the off switch. Silence reclaimed the foreground. Harding could not suppress a groan as he gazed out through the passenger window into the blackness of the Mediterranean. “That’s quite enough of that, I think, don’t you?” said Whybrow softly.
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