Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘This is my mother,’ says Avril, cheeks aflame, holding Ed’s arm tightly. ‘And, Mother, this is my friend Ed.’

  ‘Friend?’ says her mother, her nose sharpening.

  ‘Well, my boyfriend actually,’ giggles Avril like a schoolgirl before the head teacher.

  ‘You never wrote to me about him. You never mentioned him on the phone.’

  ‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Well, it certainly is a surprise.’ Avril’s mother makes a show of wiping a wet hand down her pinny before holding it out to Ed. ‘Good evening, Ed. I really have to apologize, my cauliflower cheese won’t stretch to a fourth.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of intruding—’

  ‘I don’t want any either,’ says Avril quickly. ‘We’ve all already eaten. And this is my friend Kirsty.’

  ‘Quite a reception committee,’ says Avril’s mother dryly.

  Driven to break the awkward silence, Avril carries on miserably, ‘Kirsty is renting one of these caravans for the winter.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, how ghastly for you,’ says Avril’s mother. ‘Whatever happened? Are you homeless? Come and sit down in one of our deckchairs. They’re quite comfortable really. Richard, Richard! I asked you to put the other one out… and would anyone like a drink? As you’re here, I think we can stretch.’

  Between the Stotts’ caravan and its neighbour there is a gap of about twelve feet, and onto that space Avril’s mother has already stamped her presence. A folding clothes rack, neat with tea towels, hand towels and clean yellow dusters, is parked beside a hedgehog foot scraper, two flowering pot plants and two extended sunloungers complete with fringed parasols.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to a beer,’ says Ed, quickly taking a seat before offering one to Avril.

  ‘Oh no.’ Mrs Stott’s laugh is haughty. ‘Nothing alcoholic, Edward, I’m afraid. Home-made lemonade, Avril’s favourite, or Lilt, Richard’s preferred tipple. And what do you do for living, might I ask?’

  ‘He is the hotel golf professional, Mother.’

  ‘Oh? That’s nice. And how about you, Kirsty? Do you do anything interesting?’

  ‘No, I’m just a chambermaid,’ Kirsty admits.

  ‘One of the Burleston skivvies,’ jokes Ed, siding with Avril’s mother and accepting her home-made lemonade.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s not like that—’

  ‘I’m sure,’ crows Avril’s mother, ‘poor Kirsty doesn’t need you to speak up for her, Avril.’

  ‘Avril is easily influenced, I’ve noticed that,’ says Ed, joking again.

  ‘It’s a jolly good thing you have noticed, Edward. That has always been one of Avril’s weaknesses, hasn’t it, Avril?’

  ‘Oh, Mother, do stop it! You’ve only just arrived. Please leave me alone.’

  ‘Your mother cares about you, Avril.’

  ‘And there’s no need for you to side with her, Ed.’

  Now they are all sitting round awkwardly, three in deckchairs, including Ed, and Avril and Kirsty perched on the end of the two sunbeds.

  ‘Avril,’ and Ed reaches over proprietorially to take her hand, ‘when are you going to tell your parents about Bernadette’s book and all the excitement?’

  Avril withdraws her hand. ‘Actually, I did want to wait—’

  ‘What’s this? What’s been going on, Avril? What haven’t you told us?’

  ‘Well, it’s all quite extraordinary,’ Ed butts in. ‘I must say, Mrs Stott, this lemonade of yours is marvellous. Avril’s little Irish friend has written a book, with the aid of Avril’s office skills, and both of them have been leading quite the high life of late.’

  There is no worse way Avril’s mother could have been told about the success of her daughter, and Kirsty could slap Ed’s face. If Avril’s involvement with Ed continues, all she is doing is swapping one undermining influence for another.

  ‘I’ve been doing my best to help her spend all this free time usefully by trying to introduce Avril to golf, but it’s been a hard slog in between all the magazine articles, interviews and photographers. I am quite surprised, Mrs Stott, that you haven’t already seen your daughter’s picture in the Guardian.’

  ‘Stop it, Ed,’ cries the stricken Avril, sickened by Ed’s disloyal behaviour.

  ‘We don’t take that sort of paper,’ says Avril’s mother sniffily, ‘we prefer to stick with straightforward, sensible news. The Daily Mail is good enough for us, and we don’t bother with music and the arts, do we, Richard?’ Mrs Stott turns angrily on Avril. ‘I hope Ed is not suggesting that you’ve given up your job, that good job I helped you to get, all those important qualifications you worked for?’

  ‘Avril’s young, Mrs Stott,’ says the wretched Ed, to Kirsty’s absolute fury, sitting, amused, on his deckchair with his chubby legs spread, resting his lemonade on his paunch, ‘don’t be too hard on her. When you’re young it’s easy to be tempted by ideas of quick fame and fortune, and some of the people surrounding Avril and her dramatic little friend Bernie are really not the sort I think you and your husband would approve of.’

  ‘I have obviously come down here just in time,’ says Avril’s mother with steel in her voice. ‘I had my misgivings, Richard knows that. Thank goodness you were here, Edward. And what sort of part have you been playing in this vulgar little fiasco?’ She turns to face Kirsty.

  ‘Kirsty has nothing to do with it,’ cries Avril, puffing up, close to tears, ‘and it’s nothing like what Ed’s just told you. Listen!’ she almost shrieks, summing up the dregs of her courage, ‘let me explain—’

  ‘Oh, Avril, don’t waste your time,’ snaps Kirsty, mortified to see her friend brought down so unjustly and with the aid of the one person she has just learned to trust. ‘You have no need to have anything more to do with these paganized people. Remember Magdalene! Would she have put up with this? Ed is a brown-nosing, big-headed idolater who only wants you for your money.’

  ‘Who do you think you are, young lady?’

  ‘Be silent, you unholy creature. Just remember this when you’re old and alone and Avril is living it up on the other side of the world. The pen is mightier than the sword and if I had a pen in my hand now I would poke out your devilish eyes.’

  How did she come to make such a speech? Where did those words come from? As Kirsty makes her way to reception to see Mrs Gilcrest she is overcome by the anger inside her, the fury that spilled out so fluently, the word power she experienced and the intoxicating sense of elation as she saw Mrs Stott’s shocked face and the admiration in Avril’s.

  Magdalene?

  Oh yes. The power is hers.

  But where will it take her and what should she do with it?

  Seventeen

  SEAS OF TRIALS AND cups of sorrows.

  Calamity and Slough of Despond.

  The luckless Ed Board has passed over and Fluffy the cat has gone missing.

  And this is a most inopportune place for Graham Stott, the murderer, to find himself in.

  The Burleston is swarming with pigs and Graham, whose nerve-racking journey has tired him out, is unaware that the hotel pro has been found in the rough with his head staved in by his own four wood. So rightly paranoid is Graham that he thinks they are all waiting for him.

  Since his last lift to the end of the A30 he has had to walk, or skulk, for eight miles before reaching his destination and, although Graham is not used to walking, to nick a car at this sensitive time would do fatal damage to his new image. Not that there are many cars around that the street-cred Graham would be seen dead in. Kicked out of his home by a cruel mother, Graham is a young boy looking for work, and visiting his sister for help. When he thought of it this way a blistering self-pity welled up in him, and once he had to wipe his eyes on the sleeve of his bomber jacket. He was hobbling now, his right foot was blistered and his hunger and thirst increased, but nobody cared. Nobody cared. Every time he saw headlights creep over the sky like a sunrise being wound on, Graham dove into the nearest hedgerow. The few cars passed
slowly, as if their drivers were asleep. Every time he heard a dog bark he detoured round the threatening farmhouse. He soon grew used to the country sounds—the hoot of an owl, the low of a cow right next to the hedge, a bird, disturbed in its nest—but a vixen being pursued by a dog fox raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He thought it was a mad woman screaming and the sound stayed in his ears like eardrops, tickling and freezing them long after the sodding creatures had gone.

  It was warm work on this hot summer’s night and he still shook under the blow of the horror of the crime he had committed. At least here, in the dark night, he was safe from the multitude of eyes in the city, the awful publicity of the sunlight. The stars overhead presided over a frightening stillness, something Graham was quite unused to. The signposts he passed looked like gibbets. What a good thing people weren’t hanged any more. Graham rubbed his neck, shivered all over, and lit another of his precious fags. He wished he was safe back in prison, they shouldn’t have let him out. Were they after him even now? Had the forensic blokes come up with something that linked him inexorably to the crime?

  His unhappy fingers felt the dark stubble on his chin and his hunted eyes stared round him. He was not inhuman. He had not meant to kill her, so why did everyone hate him? God knows the inside of his head. God must be on his side.

  At daybreak he was well on his way, and signposts to Burleston Cove gave him hope. The sooner all this was behind him the better. Avril could give him the alibi he needed. Avril could tell them he had been with her. He had always managed to manipulate Avril and nothing had changed since then, had it? Poor, childish, timid little cow.

  The road, no longer climbing, led into a broad driveway fringed with high rhododendrons. Mainly in darkness, save for the few odd glimmering lights, the building itself rose up to his left, and Graham took the sandy track to the beach where he planned to wait and get some kip until morning.

  Little irritations become large annoyances.

  Avril is not one for spiteful thoughts, but Bernie and Dominic are so selfish. In the hard put-you-up in the dressing room she wakes to the bleeping of the bedside phone and thumps and squeals from the four-poster bed that Bernie and Dominic have taken over.

  She picks up the phone. ‘Avril! Avril! Is that you?’

  Oh no, not Mother. Not now.

  For one blissful moment she had forgotten about the hideous row she and Mother had had last night; not just she and Mother, but she and Ed had finished up not speaking. Avril walked home with Kirsty. Ed, for whom Avril had such hopes, has turned out to be a disloyal cad and as elderly in his thinking as Mother.

  So her heart takes a plunge as reality dawns. And it plunges further when she hears the news. ‘Fluffy has gone missing!’

  ‘Oh no!’ And the very worst thing of all is the surge of guilt, because in all the confusion of yesterday evening she never gave poor Fluffy a thought. She hadn’t even asked after her; she had failed Fluffy by not even bothering to go into the caravan to search her out. Fluffy must have known that Avril was there, and perhaps she tried to struggle out of bed, mewing hopelessly.

  ‘Your father let her out before we settled down to bed and Fluffy never came back. We haven’t had a wink of sleep, searching round and calling for her, because this is alien territory for Fluffy and she’s probably lost somewhere and frightened. She’s already missed one lot of tablets.’

  ‘I’ll be over right away,’ says Avril, climbing out of her rosebud pyjamas.

  She would have to walk, of course, because nothing would induce her to ask the despicable Ed for a lift, and Candice Love, with her black Saab convertible she had driven down from London, doesn’t get up until gone ten.

  There’s no point in disturbing Bernie to tell her where she’s going. Avril has done her duty as supporter and companion, and now, more and more, she is left out of discussions and meetings and replaced by Dominic Coates. Mostly she feels like a spare part. Bernie is in her element and Dominic makes the perfect escort, suave as he is, at ease in the very best of company, protective and romantic. As Candice Love said yesterday, ‘Dominic adds that particular frisson that was needed to make it a perfect partnership.’

  Avril is surprised to be accosted by a man in the revolving doorway of the foyer. ‘May I ask where you’re going, miss?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Avril, ever eager to oblige, ‘my cat is missing and I’m going to look for it.’

  ‘Can I take your name, please?’ And he produces a list and ticks her off.

  ‘Does this mean you will be remaining in the Burleston hotel grounds this morning?’

  ‘No,’ says Avril, still too submissive to think of asking what this is about. She does notice that there are more people than normal hanging around the reception area at this early hour of the day, strangers, people not in holiday mode. When she looks outside she sees two police cars with uniformed policemen on walkie talkies. But she waits politely until she is told. ‘I am going to the Happy Stay caravan park where my parents are staying.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry, miss, I will have to ask you to change your plans and stay in the vicinity for the rest of today. A man has been found dead on the golf course and unfortunately it looks as if the death is not a natural one.’

  ‘But what about poor Fluffy?’ Avril is almost in tears, talk of death on the golf course is really the final straw. Who could it be? Some old, ailing guest having an early morning putt?

  ‘I can’t help you there I’m afraid, miss, I have my orders.’

  ‘What do you mean by not natural? Has there been an accident?’

  The brown-suited man lowers his eyebrows as if they are in mourning. ‘It looks as if somebody else might be involved.’

  ‘Who?’

  The policeman smiles patiently. ‘If you could make sure you stay around so we can ask you questions if we need to, we would be grateful, Miss Stott.’

  ‘Avril, can I have a word,’ says Mr Derek, gesticulating.

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Just for a moment. Step into my office, would you?’

  So Avril, perplexed, steps inside.

  ‘Sit down, Avril.’ This is a very far cry from the first time she was summoned in here by Mr Derek’s fearsome call, when she was made to sit in the hardbacked chair, trembling over her shorthand. Now she sits dizzily in a round, pink, silken effort with long, sturdy arms and tasselled cushions. She feels like the Queen on her throne. She looks at her former employer with questioning dolly-blue eyes.

  ‘I thought I’d better tell you, Avril, I thought it might be kinder if the news came from me, but I know you and Ed Board were fairly friendly.’ Here Mr Derek clears his throat and takes a reviving sip of water. ‘So I realize it will be painful for you to know that the body they found at seven thirty this morning was that of Edward Board, our golf professional.’

  She can hardly breathe. The shock is tremendous. That someone she knew so well is dead. ‘Oh no…’

  But there is more… ‘and that his wife, Margaret Board, is already on her way.’

  ‘His wife?’

  Mr Derek nods sympathetically. ‘I believe she is leaving the children with her mother.’

  ‘But I never knew Ed had a wife, or children.’

  Mr Derek carries on gently. ‘Margaret Board lives in Tintagel. She preferred not to live in at the hotel; considered it too cut off for the children, I believe. Ed visited regularly, of course, and spent most of his free time there.’

  ‘You said Ed’s body has been found?’ Helplessly shrugging, Avril can hardly take all this in. Ridiculously Avril tries her hardest not to feel like Ed’s murderer. She couldn’t possibly have killed Ed, could she? She certainly hates him enough. But she has an alibi, the police will know that. There is a limit to what anyone, even Avril, will own up to of her own free will.

  ‘A vicious blow to the head, apparently. Of course the media will make a meal of it. It’s all rather ghastly and certainly not the sort of hanky panky we want going on round here.’ Mr Derek’s r
efined nostrils flare. ‘The police pathologist is with them now. They think Ed was searching for a lost ball.’

  ‘But I was with him last night. When could he have been playing golf?’

  ‘His body was still warm, they tell me,’ says Mr Derek queasily, ‘so we can only assume poor Ed went for an early morning practice session. He was always an early riser.’

  Shamefully, Mother’s favourite expression comes instantly to mind, ‘The early bird catches the worm.’ Well, Ed caught a damn sight more than worms. He probably had dew on his moustache, that ugly red scrubbing brush seemed to catch any available liquid, and Avril finds herself oddly unaffected by the thought of Ed’s violent demise. She is far more concerned about Fluffy the cat.

  Avril hurries back upstairs to tell Bernie and Dominic the news. Thank God they are no longer bonking, but Bernie is padding around drinking coffee in her new sea-grey negligee and Dominic looks like a male model, tucking into a princely breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled egg.

  The dramatic news hardly concerns them, they are so engrossed in each other. The fact that Ed was important to Avril seems to have slipped Bernie’s mind, which is hurtful. Bernie has no knowledge of Avril’s upsetting experience last night; as far as she knows Avril must be heartbroken.

  ‘He was always a bit of a nerd,’ she says unkindly, gliding towards the window to see if she can spot any drama, but you can’t quite see the golf course from their room. ‘He wanted you for your money, that’s all. It’s better that he’s out of the way. Avril, you’ll get over him.’

  ‘But Ed could have been murdered! Dammit!’ says Avril, infuriated by Bernie’s cold condescension. ‘A man is dead, there’s a murderer on the loose!’

  ‘Probably some tramp—’

  ‘Since when have you seen a tramp around here?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Avril, do I?’ sighs Bernie, the silken drape of her sleeves hanging like moon-struck moths’ wings. ‘As long as the publicity doesn’t push us out of the limelight. Does Candice know yet?’