Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

  “Please let me stay and help Jane,” I said eagerly “I promise I won’t make any more trouble for you. I won’t even mention Brian’s name again. You can trust me ...”

  But he was shaking his head sadly. “There’s no going back for us, Kim. It’s too late—much too late. Whatever happens now, it’s something we can’t avoid.”

  “It’s all my fault,” I cried in sharp anguish. “I shouldn’t have interfered. What had Brian Hearne got to do with me?” I looked up at Drew pleadingly. “Can you ever forgive me for what I’ve done?”

  He let go my arm abruptly, but he managed a faint wisp of a smile. “You did what you thought was right, Kim. You’re much too honest a person to do anything else.”

  We stood together in that dim cavern of a hall, and there seemed nothing more to say. Or perhaps we were on the brink of saying too much.

  But there was one thing I had to ask him.

  “Drew, you don’t really believe that your aunt killed Brian, do you?”

  “I don’t know.” He spread his hands in painful helplessness. “I don’t know what to think any more.”

  “But you can’t imagine his own mother would ... !”

  Tansy had brought Drew up from childhood. It must have hurt him unbearably to admit the possibility that she could do such a dreadful thing.

  “How can I know anything for sure?” he said, and I saw the agony in his eyes before he looked away. “How can we ever know just what happened that night?”

  “But I do know,” I cut in without a pause for thought. “I know how Brian died.”

  He jerked his head round to look at me again, his face tense with astonishment.

  From above came the hollow sound of high heels on the stairs, and a moment later Corinne and Verity appeared.

  Drew muttered swiftly, “I must talk to you about this later on.” Then, as the two women came closer, he said loudly, “Meantime, I suppose I’d better do something about that damned jacket.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I had come to my bedroom to escape. I couldn’t take the family’s glances of silent accusation. Everyone blamed me for what had happened.

  Even Drew! Though he had tried to be kind, he must hate me now for what I had done to Tansy. I loved Drew, and yet I had hurt him terribly. Would he ever be able to forgive me?

  It was impossible to keep still. I paced around the room, back and forth, stopping at the window to pull aside a curtain and stare into the darkness.

  Gwen wouldn’t be arriving for at least, another hour, And when she did come, what then? Even if Gwen was willing to admit her own guilt quite openly, would that make this awful situation any better?

  Alone now in my room, with time to think, Tansy’s outburst seemed even more fantastic. Why had she made that extraordinary confession?

  The easiest explanation was some sudden mental derangement, sparked off by the sight of her dead son’s jacket. And yet ... I couldn’t shake off a growing feeling there was more to it than that.

  In the hush of silence that was normal at Mildenhall, the slight noise startled me. A tiny rustling sound. From across the room I saw an envelope appearing under the door.

  Swiftly, I went over and picked it up. There was nothing written on it. Just a plain white envelope, sealed down.

  I threw open the door, but there was nobody in sight. The dim corridor stretched empty on either side.

  My door still ajar, I ripped open the envelope and drew out a small sheet of notepaper. The typed message was brief.

  I must talk to you again, urgently. Will you come down to the farm office, where we won’t be disturbed. Make it just as soon as you can, please, I’ll be waiting. Drew.

  For some moments I didn’t move, staring down at the note unhappily. I’d been hoping that Gwen would arrive before I needed to talk to Drew again. I wanted her to be the one to tell him what had really happened. But it wasn’t in me to refuse Drew’s urgent appeal, I would do exactly as he asked—go down to the office at the trout farm and see him there.

  I grabbed myself a gabardine raincoat and pulled the belt up tight. And I slipped on a pair of walking shoes. Within a minute I emerged and crept downstairs. The house was filled with a false sense of peace.

  Outside, there was a half moon above thin, racing clouds. A wind was rustling the heavy rhododendron leaves and whining through the fir trees above. I decided to take the longer way round, sticking to the drive. I didn’t know the short cut through the trees well enough to use it in the dark.

  I was glad of the raincoat. The evening air was cooling fast, and the wind made it seem colder still. I turned up the collar and snuggled into it, feeling in some odd way that it gave me protection from the dark unknown of the surrounding woodland.

  Suddenly, quite close at hand, a stag bellowed. I stopped. Then panicking, I began to run. Reason told me there was nothing to fear, but still I ran on till I had to slow down for lack of breath.

  I was glad when the first of the ponds appeared, glittering silver in the pale moonlight. Within minutes I was out in the clearing, the fish farm spread before me. Everything was quiet but for the wind moaning in the surrounding trees. Occasionally, there came a soft deep plop of a fish from across the water.

  I followed the road where it struck between the ponds, heading for the buildings on the far side. Out in the open the moonlight was sufficient for me to walk briskly, yet I couldn’t altogether suppress my old dread of dark water. I remembered with a shudder the night the lights went out and I was left stranded on a precarious narrow path. That episode remained a mystery.

  The solid block of buildings cast long shadows, fuzzily grey upon the water, black where they touched the roadway. There was no light showing, but of course Drew’s office was round at the back. He’d be waiting for me there. Was he impatient, unsure perhaps that I was coming?

  Right ahead of me a car engine snatched into noisy life, and in the same instant the headlamps were switched on. I hadn’t noticed the car parked in the deep shadow.

  As it revved up hard and swung on to the roadway, the blaze of light hit me full square. I was blinded. But stupidly I stood where I was, peering into the dazzling glare, frantically signaling my presence. The thing was coming up fast. Straight towards me ...

  I yelled and flung myself sideways with all my strength—just in time. The action was prompted by raw instinct, without conscious thought, without any consideration of where I should land,

  I felt myself falling, and then the cold black water closed over my head.

  When I came to the surface again I was gasping and spluttering. The full sodden weight of my clothes dragged heavily. I felt around for the bottom, hut I was out of my depth. I struggled, keeping afloat somehow, and managed to kick off my shoes,

  My frenzied splashing made it difficult to see anything. Vaguely I picked out a dark figure standing above me.

  “Here, Kim,” a voice called. “Grab hold of this.”

  It was Corinne! Stupidly, even in this crisis situation, I noted that for the first time she had called me Kim.

  “Grab what?” I yelled back “I can’t see.”

  I felt a sharp prod at my shoulder, and realized Corinne was holding some sort of pole. She seemed to be trying to catch it under the neck of my raincoat.

  So I was going to be hooked from the pond like a fish! Well, that suited me all right. As long as I got out, I wasn’t going to argue about how it was done.

  I tried to help Corinne all I could by making a swirling sort of breaststroke towards the side. I’d be pretty heavy for her to manage, with all these wet clothes clinging to me. If we weren’t careful, she’d end up in the water, too.

  The pole at my neck seemed to be hindering rather than helping, but at last I reached the embankment. I stretched up and could just touch the concrete edge of the roadway about a foot above my head.

  “Go and fetch Drew,” I shouted up at Corinne. “He’s in the office. I can hang on for a bit.”

  I couldn’t u
nderstand why Drew hadn’t heard all the noise. I’d have expected him to be listening for me. And what was Corinne doing down here at the ponds? And why in heaven had she driven the car so crazily that it almost ran me down? It would have, in fact, if I hadn’t jumped out of the way.

  It was as if she’d meant to hit me!

  Corinne hadn’t moved. She was still standing above me on the road, still keeping the long pole hooked into my collar. I guessed it was the handle of one of the long sickles they used for cutting water weed.

  “Go on,” I yelled. “Why don’t you fetch Drew?”

  For an answer I got a savage jab with the pole. Its force took me out from the side and down into the water.

  More than fear, I felt astonishment as I choked and struggled desperately, fighting to get to the surface again. But I couldn’t; the pole was pressing me down deeper.

  Panic fear and despair took over as I realized that, this was quite deliberate. Corinne was trying to drown me.

  I couldn’t escape. There was no hope for me with the pole twisted under the neck of my raincoat, holding me down. It was only seconds before the pressure on my lungs would force me to give up and gulp in water.

  My one tiny chance was somehow to get free of the coat. But the belt, pulled tight at my waist, defeated me.

  Another self, detached and separate, stood quietly by while odd ideas flashed through my frightened mind. Ideas of life and death. Memories of childhood, and fear of the coming unknown,

  Was I drowning already?

  The belt buckle would not give. I tugged madly at it, cursing the strength of the thing. And then suddenly it was undone, and the relief made me swallow some water. Spluttering, I struggled to get my arms free of the sleeves. And then I was out of the coat, and the pole had lost its deadly hook on me.

  With a final effort I kicked back to the surface.

  Where was Drew? Why didn’t he hear? Why didn’t he come to help me?

  Battling for short sweet breaths, I must have shouted his name. I heard Corinne’s savage laughter.

  “You’ll have to call louder than that for your darling Drew. He’s not here.”

  It didn’t penetrate, then.

  “Drew!” I cried despairingly. “Help me, Drew!”

  Treading water, flinging far too much strength into the simple task of keeping afloat, I had little energy to spare for facing up to Corinne. In the whirling background of my mind I heard her shouting at me. It sounded like mockery. Spiteful, searing mockery.

  There was a streak of something silver in the pale moonlight. But it wasn’t silver, it was hard steel. The wicked blade of the long sickle came whistling across the water in a wide, sweeping arc.

  I had to duck under again to miss it. And when I surfaced, choking, I saw it coming at me from the other side.

  I gulped air and dived again and again before I was able to swim a few strokes under water and get beyond Corinne’s reach. Idiotically, I lashed myself for being so feeble in the water. My casual bathing, idling in the sun at pools, had not fitted me for this grim fight.

  Then by a miracle my kicking feet struck something solid. I tried to balance on it and found my head and shoulders were held clear above water level. There must have been some sort of boulder standing up from the floor of the pond. Its top was quite small, but just enough for me to perch on. A tiny, submerged, life-saving island.

  It gave me the breathing space my aching lungs craved for, and I sucked in air with prayers of thankfulness.

  It was only as my panting subsided that I began to realise the full extent of my danger. The pond water, fed by currents from underground springs, was at winter temperature. My whole body was numb with cold. I was hardly able to think, in no condition to combat a deadly enemy.

  I had no idea why Corinne should want to kill me, but it was blazingly evident that she did. And she would almost certainly succeed. What was there to stop her?

  If I tried to swim to the farther side, away from Corinne, she had only to run round the bank. She could easily beat me to it

  The thought of Drew was a sharp pain. Where was he? Surely he and Corinne couldn’t have planned this monstrous thing together? I couldn’t believe it.

  “Drew,” I shouted again, “Drew, where are you?”

  “He’s with Bill Wayne.” Corinne’s voice came back at me almost conversationally. “I saw him go down to the cottage myself.”

  “You’re lying! I know you’re lying.”

  She laughed harshly. “If you’re puzzled about that little note, I might as well tell you that I sent it. I wanted to get you down here on your own, you see.”

  “You sent it?”

  So there was no help coming from Drew!

  In my new despair the icy water seemed to bite into me. The thinning clouds broke, and stark moonlight lit the .scene with bleak impartiality. I could see Corinne on the embankment, still gripping the long-handled sickle. A triumphant figure spelling death to me.

  A few yards along the road the car stood abandoned. Its headlamps still blazed out, floodlighting the trees.

  Corinne was shouting at me again. “I’ve been watching you, Miss Clever-Clever Bennett. I’ve seen you adding things up in your sly little mind.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I jerked out.

  “Don’t try to come the sweet innocent with me. You’ve guessed about Brian, haven’t you? I heard you telling Drew you knew how he died.”

  I was too numbed and confused to understand fully what Corinne meant. But I grasped enough to realise that she was somehow involved in Brian’s death.

  “And now,” said Corinne viciously, “it’s your turn.”

  I saw her bend down quickly to pick something off the ground. An instant later came a loud splash barely two feet from my head, where the stone had hit the water.

  But Corinne was only having fun. She was playing a waiting game, I suppose. She must have known I couldn’t last long in that freezing water.

  “You chose it the hard way, like this,” she mocked. “If you hadn’t dodged the car just now it would all have been over nice and quickly. Now it’ll have to be like it was with Brian. I’ll have to wait for you to drown.”

  Corinne was somehow involved, yes. But the mystery surrounding Brian Hearne’s death still wasn’t fully explained.

  I forced control into my shivering jaw enough to say, “But Gwen told me she pushed him in ...”

  Corinne laughed loudly. “So she did, the old battle-axe! Only Brian got out again. When I was driving home I came across him sitting in the middle of the road laughing like a loon. He didn’t have his jacket on then, so he must have taken it off himself.”

  “And you ... you pushed him into the water again?”

  “I made damn sure he didn’t get out the second time. He was drunk, of course, as usual, so I didn’t have to wait too long.”

  “But why?” I cried incredulously. “Why?”

  I suppose I was really asking a larger question. Why, when she’d got everything, did Corinne have to make such a mess of it all? Why, when she had the luck to be married to Drew Barrington, should she ever have got herself tangled with any other man?

  “Brian said he’d decided to walk out on me,” she spat, in suddenly flaring rage. “He thought it was all a screamingly funny joke. He said it would suit him very nicely to disappear for a bit, so why not let Gwen think he’d been drowned, and his body washed away or something. It would serve the old bitch right. He didn’t have a second thought about leaving me—and he had the damned nerve to expect me to accept that.” Corinne’s anger had petered out, and she began giggling inanely. “It didn’t strike the poor fool that he was handing me a chance on a plate. If anyone suspected his death was not an accident, Gwen would take the blame.”

  “What about Jane?” I asked, appalled. “Was she with you? Did she see ... ?”

  Another stone came whizzing towards me. Before I could duck, it hit the water just ahead of my face,

  Quickly, Cori
nne stopped and gathered more stones. She rained them at me in a frenzy, as if the mention of Jane had enraged her afresh.

  “Don’t think I haven’t seen you making a big play for my husband, Kim Bennett! What a trick that was, giving him the patter about your magic cure for his poor little daughter!”

  She stopped abruptly and turned her head, as if listening. I couldn’t hear anything myself. Only the busy chattering of my teeth as I fought against cold and fear.

  But something had alerted Corinne. She was suddenly afraid, urgently afraid. She grabbed at the sickle again, swinging the blade out across the water. But now I was several feet beyond range of the vicious knife edge.

  “Why don’t you come here where I can reach you?” Corrine screamed. Then raising the sickle above her head, she flung it at me like a javelin.

  I couldn’t duck in time. The tip of the blade caught my cheek and I felt a slashing sting, and then the warmth of flowing blood.

  But at least Corinne was no longer armed. Could I swim to the bank and clamber out to meet her on equal terms?

  The feeble hope died at birth. It was impossible. I was cramped, numbed right through. I doubted if I could manage to swim just those few yards in the cold black water. I knew I could never haul myself out over the edge, even without an enemy there to push me back.

  It was just a matter of time before the cold got me and I went under. Corrine need do nothing more. She could stand guard on the roadway and watch me drown.

  The Mildenhall ponds would have claimed another victim. It would be officially recorded as another “tragic accident.”

  But Corinne seemed impatient for me to die. She was searching the ground for more big stones. Not finding any, she ran over to the car and dragged something from the boot. I heard the clink of metal. The tool kit!

  She dumped the heavy box on the bank and unripped it, spilling the contents, I watched in cold horror as she raised her arm and took deliberate aim.

  This time the splash was bigger than ever, and terrifyingly near. A heavy hammer, perhaps, or a wrench. Whatever it was, the blow would certainly have finished me if Corinne had found her target.