Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  ‘What do you think?’ said Harry.

  ‘I think I’d like to know how you obtained these.’

  ‘Through Kingdom’s secretary. She knew Heather quite well and she doesn’t trust Kingdom. She thinks he may have prolonged Heather’s treatment unnecessarily.’

  ‘Her initials are Z.L.?’

  ‘Yes. Zohra Labrooy.’

  Dysart leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘And it was she who discovered Kingdom was absent from the Versorelli Institute on the eleventh of November?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I made some enquiries about the establishment, you know. It’s a private psychiatric clinic. Judging by its fees, it caters only for the wealthiest of clients. Foreign patients are a speciality, discretion a byword. As far as I can establish, the Versorelli Institute is the sort of place where an embarrassingly disturbed relative can be securely if expensively maintained and, in time, forgotten.’

  A vision came to Harry’s mind of a large gabled house set among snow-covered pine trees, with alsatians patrolling the grounds and Heather’s frightened face glimpsed at an upper window. ‘Do you think Heather’s being held there?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know, Harry.’ Dysart pulled himself upright and a gleam of concentration came to his eyes. ‘You said Miss Labrooy suspected Kingdom of being reluctant to admit Heather had made a complete recovery. Why should that be?’

  ‘Because he wanted her to remain dependent on him.’

  ‘All right. Let’s agree there’s a hint of that in his notes. When she went away, what did he do?’

  ‘He bided his time. Then he followed her to Rhodes and persuaded her to accompany him to Geneva.’

  ‘She went voluntarily, you think?’

  ‘For some reason, she agreed to meet him on Profitis Ilias in secret. Presumably for the same reason she agreed to travel incognito to Switzerland.’

  ‘Where she’s been ever since?’

  ‘At the Versorelli Institute, yes.’

  Dysart frowned and let out a slow sigh. ‘The same thought came into my mind, Harry. The man’s personality; his absence from the Institute on the day in question; these notes; the King coincidence. They all point to the conclusion you’ve drawn. But as far as proof goes I’m afraid they also amount to absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  Dysart swung his chair round and gazed through the window at the darkening skyline. ‘What indeed?’ He reached back across the desk and snapped on a lamp. ‘First, I think we need to satisfy ourselves that the Mallenders genuinely don’t know where Heather is.’

  ‘You mean Kingdom might have been acting on their behalf?’

  ‘It’s a remote possibility, but a real one. I thought I knew Charlie Mallender and what he was capable of, but the pressure he and Roy put on me over the Phormio contract proves I was wrong. We know they threatened Heather with re-committal to Challenbrooke Hospital unless she cooperated with them. Well, they may have gone a step further and recruited Kingdom to do their bidding. For some reason, they may have preferred people to believe Heather had disappeared rather than been confined in a Swiss asylum against her will.’

  ‘If so, they’re not likely to admit it, are they?’

  ‘No, they’re not.’ Dysart smiled faintly. ‘But I shall be able to tell if they’re lying. I telephoned Roy last week and made clear your friend Mossop wasn’t to be hounded. I thought then I might have to see them face to face in order to reinforce the message. Well, I think the time’s come to pay them a visit.’

  ‘When will you go?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you want me to come too?’

  ‘No, Harry. Your differences with Roy would only complicate matters. I’d prefer you to wait here. I should be back within the day.’

  ‘And then?’

  Dysart’s expression grew stern. ‘Then the time for standing idly by will be over, Harry. The time to act will have come.’

  45

  DYSART SET OFF for Weymouth at dawn the following morning. Harry heard the Daimler growling away down the drive as he lay half-awake in bed and Nancy, the housekeeper who served him breakfast an hour later, confirmed that her employer had made ‘an uncommon early start’. It was also Nancy who gave Harry directions into the nearby village of Blackawton. With several cupfuls of strong coffee, three rashers of crispy bacon and two of the neighbouring farm’s free-range eggs inside him, he set off to walk the route on a morning whose brightness and warmth seemed more suitable for spring than the depth of winter. There was genuine pleasure to be had from a tramp along damp and deserted lanes in such conditions, but Harry was set on something more purposeful: the scene of Heather’s fourteenth photograph.

  Half an hour brought him to the fringes of the village and there, rather than at the church whose tower he had been aiming at, he found what he was looking for: an overspill graveyard set in a small field – a cluster of no more than fifty graves beyond which the ground fell away steeply, opening up a limitless vista of patchwork farmland and wooded valleys. He stood amongst the stones for several minutes, letting the breeze ruffle his hair and the details of the view seep into his mind. It was, he reckoned, just about the nearest mankind could come to a perfect place. A humble field, exposed to wind and sun and rain, on the edge of a peaceful village. Who could crave Westminster Abbey after seeing this?

  FRANCIS DESMOND HOLLINRAKE. As Harry looked at the gold letters carved in the black marble stone, he wondered what had prompted Heather to photograph it. The other pictures she had taken had followed a pattern in which Virginia Dysart’s father seemed to play no part.

  ‘You’re an early riser,’ said a female voice from behind him. When he turned round, it was to see Virginia Dysart striding towards him. She wore jeans, a guernsey, a red silk scarf and a sheepskin jacket and was smiling broadly. In all of this was scarcely recognizable the stern horsewoman or the silent dinner-table companion of the previous night.

  ‘Not as early as some.’

  ‘You mean Dysart?’ It was a strange way to refer to her husband. It declared a distance between them that excused her from explanation. ‘He hardly sleeps, it seems to me. Politically a great asset, I believe.’

  ‘You know where he’s gone?’

  ‘Yes.’ The smile tightened. She glanced down at the grave. ‘What brings you here, Harry? My father died fifteen years ago.’

  ‘So I see. Do you visit his grave often?’

  She would not be shamed into pretence, her expression declared. ‘Hardly ever.’

  ‘Then I could ask you the same question. Why this morning?’

  ‘I thought I might find you here. Nancy told me which way you’d come.’

  ‘And you guessed this was my destination?’

  ‘Oh no. It was no guess.’ She timed a pause to perfection. ‘The last time I was here was with Heather.’

  The last time was with Heather. Harry glanced back at the panorama of miniature folded fields and could almost believe for an instant that it was autumn as well as winter, that Heather was between and beside them, that that day and this had become simultaneous. For the last time was with Heather.

  ‘How did you know she came here, Harry?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  She ignored his denial and in so doing declared its futility. ‘She wanted to hear all about my father, you know. But you do know, of course, don’t you?’

  When Harry looked at her, he could not be sure what piece of knowledge she meant: Heather’s intentions or her infidelity. ‘Did you bring her here?’

  ‘Yes. She asked me to. She took a photograph. I thought that odd. Macabre, I suppose. Look in any family album and you’ll see weddings and baptisms galore. But never funerals. Love and birth. But never death. Heather, on the other hand … Death was all that concerned her. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact, I don’t.’

  She smiled. ‘Will you come for a ride with me, Harry? In the car, I mean.
I left it in the lane.’

  ‘A ride where?’

  Another smile. ‘Where I took Heather, of course. Where else?’

  * * *

  Virginia drove fast but expertly, the scarlet Mercedes hugging the rutted bends as they surged east from Blackawton. Harry had glimpsed a sign in the village stating four miles as the distance to Dartmouth and it seemed scarcely as many minutes before they were speeding down a long straight hill towards the mast-stippled blue of the harbour, with the manicured grounds of Britannia Royal Naval College climbing away to their left.

  ‘Heather stayed at Strete Barton the weekend before she went to Rhodes,’ Virginia explained, slowing as they neared the foot of the hill. ‘I had to come into Dartmouth on the Saturday morning and I invited her along. Little did I know what she had in mind for the journey. First the stop at the graveyard, then the endless questions. Mildly curious to start with, then almost obsessive, as if she wanted to glean every scrap of information she could.’

  They pulled up by the harbourside and climbed from the car. Dog-walkers and out-of-season tourists were patrolling the broad pavement, moored dinghies knocking gently against each other in the swell of the estuary. On the opposite shore, cottage roofs were dotted along the thickly wooded slopes. Virginia leaned back against the waterside railings and gazed towards the College standing four-square and red-bricked on its landscaped summit above the town.

  ‘Has Dysart ever told you how we met, Harry?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he has.’

  ‘Up there.’ She nodded towards the College. ‘Because of that. Divisional cocktail party, September 1968. He was a cadet then, just down from Oxford. I was one of the eligible local girls invited along for the budding officers to practise their social skills on. Nineteen, that’s all. So very very young.’ She sighed. ‘Three months later, we were engaged.

  ‘You knew Dysart when he was at Oxford, Harry. That should give you some idea why I was so taken with him. He had the looks and brains of a god. I was tongue-tied and nervous, shivering in some silly summer frock. I just couldn’t believe it when he chose to talk to me. And as for asking me out … Well, it seemed like a dream come true. The parties. The late nights. The wild rides through the lanes in his MG. Taking him home to meet my father. Dancing with him at the end-of-term ball. The gown I wore. The things he said. A glass of champagne by one of those tall windows. The lights of Dartmouth below us. My heart thumping so hard I was afraid it might burst out of me. The whispered proposal. The tremulous acceptance. I was so proud at his passing-out parade a couple of days later. So proud that he was mine.’ She shook her head. ‘You must think I’m mad to be talking like this. You must think I never was the vulnerable young girl I’m describing.’

  A tall, remote and finely boned beauty in her wedding dress. A gloved handshake and a meaningless smile at the reception. Then, years later, a fleeting visit to Lindos: he had seen her walking along the beach one spring morning in a white bikini and could remember thinking how majestic she was, how haughty she seemed with her head tossed back and her wet hair falling across her shoulders. She had never come again. This, it suddenly occurred to him, was all he knew of her, this and a testy encounter at Minter’s door. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because it’s what I told Heather.’

  ‘But why me?’

  ‘Because Dysart asked me to. Last night he asked me to tell you everything I’d told Heather when she was here. And I agreed. I agreed, while he was in Weymouth, to put you in the picture.’ She smiled. ‘There’s just one tiny little irony.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘He doesn’t know what I told Heather. He doesn’t know what I’m telling you.’

  The Green Dragon, Stoke Fleming, had just opened its doors when Harry and Virginia arrived. It was a cold, ill-aired and unpopulated inn tucked away down a side-turning in the first village south of Dartmouth. Why they had called there Harry did not know. Nor did he even try to object when Virginia ordered and paid for the drinks. They took them to a window table. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, with obvious relish, tossed her hair back and gazed around the bar, chin raised and eyes narrowed, disdain bordering on contempt ingrained in her expression.

  ‘The cadet divisions all had adopted pubs,’ she said after a first swallow of vodka. ‘This was Dysart’s divisional watering hole. I met him here quite often and would sit at this very table, watching him and the others cavorting and carousing, waiting patiently for him to buy me another g and t or spare me a few words. God, I was submissive then, so very much what I was expected to be. Just like we all were.’

  ‘But not anymore?’

  She smiled. ‘Do you know why I stay with Dysart, Harry?’

  ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Because he owns Strete Barton. Christ, of all the ironies: that man owns my family home. My father, you see, had been in financial difficulties for years without my knowing. Paying for my education – not to mention my wedding – can’t have helped. I suppose he looked upon Dysart as the son he’d never had, the man who might take over the running of the farm when he couldn’t cope any longer. So he began confiding in him, seeking his advice and following it. Then he started borrowing money from him – big money. He ended up mortgaging the whole place to him. And neither of them told me. My father must have been too ashamed to face me with it. Besides, I suppose he thought he could pay Dysart off without me ever knowing. Instead of which, he died and willing me the property signified nothing. It was Dysart’s in all but name and has been ever since. It was his decision to rent out the farmland to neighbours and keep just the house, for instance. Always his decision.’

  ‘Surely you could have farmed it yourself.’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Harry. You know what I am – a pampered bitch. Dysart made sure of that. He’s always known what I wanted more than freedom from him: fine clothes, jewellery, thoroughbred horses, fast cars, a generous allowance.’

  ‘Even so—’

  ‘I could leave him?’ A smile of self-reproach. ‘No. Then I’d lose everything.’ Her eyes drifted out of focus. ‘I didn’t tell Heather any of this. I was on my best behaviour with her. Besides, she didn’t know about Jon.’ The name was out: the pretence was over. ‘He’s one of my interim revenges, you see. ‘

  ‘Interim?’

  ‘He’ll do, until I find a better way.’

  ‘A better way of what?’

  ‘Of making Dysart pay for the life he’s made me lead.’

  * * *

  The speed of Virginia’s driving turned the high-hedged lanes to a blur. Staring out at them, Harry wondered why, wherever he went in Heather’s footsteps, he found bitterness and disappointment, sad and sterile lives led against bankrupt pasts and mortgaged futures. A need for fresh air came suddenly upon him. He lowered the window and breathed in deeply.

  ‘Where’s Heather, Harry?’ said Virginia. When he looked across at her, he saw that she was smiling. ‘It’s not such a stupid question as it sounds. What I mean is: do you think she is somewhere?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really? Somewhere specific, living and breathing, eating and sleeping? You think that? Because I’m not sure I do. Heather seemed to me almost, well, almost ethereal. As if her grasp on the real world was weaker than most. As if she could easily have lost touch with it one day for no apparent reason. ‘

  ‘Is that a serious suggestion?’

  ‘At least it fits the facts. A mountaintop is where you’d expect such a person to vanish.’

  Harry was reminded of a conversation he had had with Miltiades. ‘You mean death without a corpse?’ he murmured.

  Virginia nodded. ‘It’s a good phrase for it.’

  ‘It’s not original.’

  ‘Never mind. One thing’s certain: Heather was the diametric opposite of her sister, as unworldly as Clare was—’

  ‘You knew Clare?’

  ‘Of course. And before you ask, yes, I knew
she was trying to blackmail Dysart. She came down here last year, a few weeks before her death, and informed me, in that precise, hard-faced way of hers, that she was carrying his child.’

  There was a sharp deceleration and a jolt as they turned in to the Strete Barton drive. ‘Did you believe her?’ said Harry.

  ‘No I didn’t. There was something about her story that wasn’t quite right. It was too pat, too simple, too obvious a trap for Dysart to have fallen into. That’s why I said nothing to Jon about it. If I ever do give him something to use against Dysart, I want to be sure it’ll stick.’

  ‘But if you had been sure?’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t have hesitated.’ So there it was, calmly and shamelessly stated. In Virginia, Dysart had what no man deserved in a wife: a potential enemy. ‘Shocked?’ she disingenuously enquired.

  Before Harry could answer, an inconsistency strayed across his mind. Clare had come to Strete Barton a few weeks before her death? Surely that could not be right, not if – ‘When exactly did Clare visit you?’

  ‘Mmm? Oh, it was the May Day bank holiday. Dysart was opening a fête or something in his constituency. That’s how she must have known she’d find me alone here.’

  ‘May Day?’

  ‘Yes. You know: the first Monday in the month. Surely they’d made that a holiday before you moved to Rhodes.’

  Harry frowned. This did not make sense. According to Dysart, Clare had unveiled her threat to him at the Skein of Geese on 16 May. It was inconceivable that she had first shown her hand to Virginia. Therefore Virginia must be mistaken. It was easy enough, after all. There were two bank holidays in May. She must simply have confused them. As the car drilled over the cattle-grid, he was about to press her on the point when the thought was banished from his mind by a sudden braking and the sight of Nancy hurrying towards them across the yard with an anxious look on her face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Virginia as they climbed from the car.