by Nicola Slade
She gazed down the years and remembered David, that long ago first love, with his floppy dark hair and his gangling arms and legs, smiling as she recalled that he had courted her with talk of the geography degree he planned to do at Oxford and by enthusing about a coming school field trip where he would be let loose with theodolites and other exciting equipment. Well, she thought. If I had married David then become pregnant by another man while he was away fighting, would I have got rid of the baby?
It would have been difficult, to say the least. When Harriet had been seventeen, abortion was still illegal and dangerous, but what if the situation had been similar to that long-ago hypothetical wartime emergency? I wouldn’t have done what Ellen did, she told herself fiercely. It would have broken my parents’ hearts but they would never have rejected me; we’d have managed somehow. They’d have stiffened their already upright spines, held their noses and their heads in the air and brooked no malicious remarks from family, friends or neighbours.
That was one reason why she had felt so upset at Ellen’s confession. The other had to be dredged up from a much deeper, darker place of secrets. There had been a man, there had been a baby, but no drastic action had been necessary; nature had taken its course and at the time her overriding emotion had been one of relief. The man was married and she had just been appointed to her first deputy headship. It would all have been extremely messy, but now she realized that part of her bitterly regretted that loss. That she had never grieved, never felt a need to grieve. Now Ellen’s story had unlocked that secret door.
Last night’s harsh and painful tears had been some kind of release, she acknowledged; a final admission of grief for the children she had never had, never before recognized that she had wanted. She was dismayed now to find that her dislike of Ellen Ransom had hardened perceptibly and that the momentary sympathy and fellow feeling she had experienced during the previous night’s confession had completely vanished.
Wiping a stray tear away and blowing her nose, she considered those two other women, the young girls on the beach, long ago. Christiane Marchant, for so long now appearing in Harriet’s imagination like the Bad Fairy at the feast, was confirmed in her role now. It’s possible, Harriet supposed, that there’s an argument that the woman had just escaped from a terrifying situation and was afraid of landing in something just as bad. Harriet pursed her lips. Reasons, she thought – but not an excuse. People have survived worse ordeals and stayed humane.
Not my place to judge though, she concluded; it’s so far outside my own experience, so how can I say what I would have done? But what about the other one, Ellen Ransom, who saw herself so completely as the innocent victim, caught in the toils of a cold, scheming blackmailer. Ellen resented the fact that she had been, in her own eyes, treated badly both by life and the circumstances that had let her to stray in the first place, and now, recently, by the terrifying reappearance of her nemesis. Suddenly Ellen didn’t look so much like a victim after all.
Among the many sensible and sensitive innovations that Pauline Winslow had introduced at Firstone Grange, one of the most appreciated was the provision of an electric kettle and tea-and coffee-making facilities. Every evening Gemma flitted from room to room, turning down the bedclothes, checking on the radiators, and placing a small covered jug of fresh milk on the tea tray, along with a small Tupperware box of home-made biscuits. Firstone Grange might well be expensive but, Harriet thought, you certainly got your money’s worth.
She clambered stiffly out of bed and switched on the kettle, thoughtfully refilled last night by Gemma as part of her routine. Cuddling into her holly-red dressing gown and thrusting her feet into sensible fleecy-lined moccasins, Harriet went to stand by the window, managing, in spite of her misery, to find some kind of uplift in her spirits as she made out a lighter streak to the east breaking through the early morning gloom.
‘Morning has broken, like the first morning,’ she sang, then sniffled at her own eternal optimism. You corny old Pollyanna, she scolded herself but she knew she was already feeling better; had turned the corner from the ordeal of the previous night.
And even then, she clicked her tongue in annoyance, I still didn’t find out if Ellen Ransom actually killed her old friend and enemy. After all that emotion, Harriet realized, so urgent had been her need to get rid of the woman, to be alone, that she had forgotten to probe further. She’s poisonous, she reflected, just as bad as the other one was.
She sipped her coffee, still standing at the window, wondering what the day would bring. With a slight shrug she turned back into the room and spotted the blanket tossed casually across the armchair. Ellen had changed her mind, once into her narrative, and without comment had reached for the soft woollen blanket and draped it over her knees as she sat there, leaning forward to justify her actions. Harriet shrank at the memory of that self-righteous face, with those unpleasant eyes, and the slight flecking of spittle at the lips. Ellen had thrust her face too close to Harriet, invading her personal space, and Harriet, intimidated, had recoiled, leaning back into her banked-up pillows.
Harriet stared now in distaste at the blanket then quite deliberately she took it between her thumb and forefinger and threw it on to the floor. With an equally deliberate motion she emptied the dregs of her coffee mug over it, the brown stain spreading shockingly over the blue, fine-woven wool.
Sorry, Mrs Turner, she apologized, but I don’t want that in my room, not with her smell and her touch and her slime on it. She scanned the rest of the room, her eyes dissatisfied, wondering if she should spray the place with deodorant in a vain attempt to rid the room of all traces of Ellen Ransom. I want the whole place fumigated, she thought.
Foolishness. She looked at her watch and calculated that it would be another forty minutes or so until the early morning tea arrived. Not worth going back to bed for, so she had a quick bath and put on a comfortable grey skirt with a heather-coloured cashmere sweater, clasping a string of rough-cut amethyst beads round her throat.
Now what? What to do till the early tea arrived? She sat down on her bed, shrinking from the thought of the armchair with its recollection of Ellen Ransom pouring out her story. No use trying to concentrate on the book that lay open on her bedside table, and early morning television held no attraction. However, she really needed to rid her room of the forbidding silence, so she turned to the radio to seek distraction with the local BBC breakfast show. In the cheerful, friendly company of her favourite early morning presenter, Harriet found herself calming down a bit.
There would be time enough to think about this latest development when she could get hold of Sam and discuss things with him, to mull it over and offer it up for his consideration. In spite of her sibling-like relationship with him, (which meant by definition, that like most male relatives, he was useless), Harriet knew very well that when it came to a crisis Sam was rock steady.
Besides, he was quite simply her oldest and best friend. A rueful grin lightened her face as she recalled his anxious warning of the night before. He wasn’t very far wrong, she conceded, harking back to the suffocating terror of that first waking, with Ellen’s hand clamped tightly over her mouth. Well, now she knew. If she and Sam were looking for a suspect who could be capable of murder, Ellen fitted the bill only too well. She was a physically strong woman, in spite of her years, and she had killed once. She had also, by her own admission, felt a murderous hatred for the Breton woman, the cuckoo in the nest at Firstone Grange.
But, and it was a fairly big but, she had not been alone in feeling that particular emotion. There had been others in that little group in the hall, so conveniently situated to do murder, if indeed murder had been done. There had been several people clustered near that table, others who could have pulled the fatal thread, and yet others who had been well positioned to give a quick snip with nail scissors or with a penknife. Most important of all, there had been other people there who had hated and feared Christiane Marchant.
Drring! Drring! For once, when the
alarm went off, Sam Hathaway woke straight away, eager and alert for the challenges of the day. There was the inevitable stabbing at his heart as he thought of Avril, but he scrambled out of bed and into the bathroom without that dreadful hiatus between hope and despair, that momentary belief that it had all been a nightmare, that she was there beside him. This morning Sam knew it had all been a nightmare all right, and that it was a nightmare that was never going to leave him, but today he had things to do, people to see, a sense of purpose. Avril would have understood, he knew that; she would have been pushing him out of the house, encouraging him to get on with life.
Showered and shaved he set out briskly for early communion in the cathedral and in the glorious frosty peace he was more aware than ever of Avril’s loving presence. Don’t leave me, he pleaded silently and knew a moment of comfort, knew that she would always be in his heart. Refreshed spiritually he was ready for the fray, bursting to get over to Chambers Forge to sort out Harriet’s problem. A glance at his watch made the decision for him. Matron Winslow would be impervious to his charm at such an early hour so he might as well go home and refresh the body, now that the soul had received its top-up. His administrative duties and his work in the Diocesan Office were none too onerous; in a sense he knew that he had been winding down ever since Avril’s death and he determined now that his next birthday would be the clincher. Not that he intended to sit back, certainly not. There was always locum work, particularly when it came to services conducted at the crematorium which, unlike some of his colleagues who disliked them, he quite enjoyed in an odd way – he was often meeting people who had no other contact with the church and so he tried to make the encounter both meaningful and comforting. Beside this there must be other people who had need of his energy and his experience. Financially comfortable, Sam was trusting to providence that something would turn up soon.
In the meantime here was Harriet and the conundrum she had set him; not a three-pipe problem à la Sherlock Holmes, he decided, but definitely a full English breakfast with all the trimmings. Replete after egg, bacon, mushroom, fried bread and black pudding, Sam lingered over his third cup of coffee and reflected on the situation at Firstone Grange. His first inclination had been to laugh at Harriet’s far-fetched theory. Murder? It was absurd, particularly when considered in the light of the slightly stifling gentility of Pauline Winslow and her creation. But much as he had pooh-poohed the idea, especially her suggestion as to the method, he was gradually coming round to the notion that she might indeed have a point. He was sensitive to atmosphere and right from his first visit he had felt the general unease amongst the residents at Firstone Grange. It had been there then and it was still there now and it could not be explained away by the events of Friday evening.
He applied logic to the ‘accident’. Of course it could be explained away as an entirely unfortunate sequence of occurrences which had culminated in such a distressing result. That in itself would be enough to establish some bad vibes but he, like Harriet, was now almost convinced that there was something else.
The phone interrupted his train of thought. It was Harriet.
‘I wondered if you’d be free to come to lunch with me, Sam?’
Her voice sounded slightly odd, carefully neutral, as though she was afraid to say too much. It was very unlike Harriet. He tested the water.
‘That would be very pleasant,’ he replied. ‘Any particular reason or just the pleasure of my company?’
For a moment he thought the sound she made, and hastily disguised, had been a sob but it was ridiculous, Harriet never cried, so he dismissed the idea and she went on.
‘Matron just buttonholed me,’ she said, her voice still sounding flat. ‘Apparently the Colonel has ordered a taxi and two of the ladies are going out to lunch with him, meeting up with his son and daughter-in-law somewhere. It was an unexpected, spur of the moment treat and that being the case, a favoured few of us are allowed to invite guests. I’m one of teacher’s pets, you see.’
It had occurred to him that Harriet might be speaking so formally because Matron was there, but apparently not. He set aside the slight anxiety her tone had aroused and welcomed the livelier note in her voice, accepting her invitation with pleasure.
‘Come quite early, Sam.’ It was back again, he could detect that odd, slight unhappiness. ‘We can have a sherry before lunch and a good long talk.’
She rang off and Sam was left staring at the phone in his hand. Wondering.
Gemma was washing up the breakfast things at Firstone Lodge. She had arrived back at work on the dot of 8.30 this morning, and she sang as she scrubbed out pans, emptied the dishwasher and scrubbed down the kitchen work surfaces. A night at home under her mother’s powerful but benign influence had gone a long way towards settling her mind. Her surprise rout of the hitherto sacred figure of Ryan had also given her a boost, though she was starting to feel slightly apprehensive.
What if he won’t take no for an answer, she fretted. What if he gets, well – funny? It took very little to make Ryan ‘funny’, she knew from past experience, and it wasn’t good when that happened. As she scrubbed and sang and daydreamed there came a knock at the back scullery door and she gave a little scream as she saw a large shape outlined against the frosted glass panel. A large, male shape.
‘Hullo, Gemma.’ It was Kieran, bashful moon face beaming, big clumsy hands fidgeting, great clodhopping size thirteens shifting from side to side.
‘Oh! You didn’t half give me a fright. I thought it might be Ryan.’ She shrank back a little, giving him a nervous, sidelong glance. ‘He isn’t – he isn’t out there is he, Kieran?’
‘No, I’m on me own.’ He hastened to reassure her, breathing hard in his earnestness. ‘I just wanted to come and tell you I’m glad you dumped him, Gemma. He’s not good enough for you, never was.’
They stood in the doorway, smiling foolishly at each other, then she shot him a look of apology. ‘I can’t ask you in, Kieran, I’m ever so sorry, but we’re not supposed to have personal calls or visitors. But I’m ever so glad you came round, it was really nice of you.’
He beamed even more widely and she realized that he was shifting around on the spot, obviously trying to pluck up courage to say something. He opened his mouth and burst out: ‘I wish, I mean – will you come out with me, Gemma? We could go to the pictures in Southampton if you like. I could borrow my brother’s car; you know I passed my test in the summer. I’d look after you, I promise. I wouldn’t drive too fast or nothing.’
She felt a warmth spreading through her, a genuine feeling of pleasure and her eyes shone. ‘I’d really like that, Kieran. But what about Ryan? What if he gets, you know – what if he gets all funny about it, about us?’
For a moment Kieran’s shoulders drooped, then he rallied and puffed out his chest. ‘What can he do? I’m twice as big as him and I’m the one that always has to get him out of trouble whenever he picks a fight. He’s all talk and trousers.’
The village church at Locksley was not Doreen Buchan’s usual haunt on a Sunday morning but today her mind was restless and sought any solace, any distraction that it could find. The exterior of the church always disappointed her a little, her taste running to imposing gothic with spires and gargoyles. The small village church, with its squat, square brick-built tower, red tile-hung roof and walls of the local dressed flint, render and stone, was undoubtedly ancient, but to Doreen it looked scruffy and run down. The only bit she really liked was the addition the locals all regarded as a joke, the spindly late-Victorian spire added by a Gothic enthusiast in the mid-nineteenth century, a vicar with private means. Doreen admired the iron-framed monstrosity while deploring the ominous tilt to starboard that the rest of the village regarded with tolerant amusement.
The inside of the church was much better, closer to her expectations. With its stark white-washed walls, uneven floors paved in ancient terracotta quarry tiles and rush-seated chairs instead of pews, it lacked the glamour Doreen felt a church should p
rovide, but the atmosphere soothed her. It was so old there were even gas brackets carrying mantles on the walls. Doreen had once been about to ask the vicar if they were as old as the church when a chance remark from Harriet Quigley, about the Edwardian parishioner who had donated them to the church, had set Doreen right and prevented an embarrassing faux pas. There was a stillness, a peace that transcended the bustle of outside life, but the church was also alive with a kind of energy and power and the light that streamed through the coloured glass in the east window threw a delicate rainbow pattern across the transept.
The service was strictly traditional in accordance with village inclination, held there once a month as part of the vicar’s rounds. Doreen always found comfort in the majestic language of the King James’s Bible and the Book of Common Prayer as well as the well-known hymn tunes, strictly Ancient and Modern. But calmed and refreshed as she undoubtedly was, Doreen Buchan knew that today it had not been enough, that there would be no rest for her troubled spirit until she had sought the confessional.
‘Good morning, Doreen.’ It was Neil Slater, waving to her as he drove past. It looked as if he had just nipped home to pick up something, she thought. He wasn’t there last night – Vic had remarked on the unlighted flat when he came in from a swift half at the pub; he had made some joke about Neil getting his oats, something like that. Vic could be very coarse, sometimes. He had whistled loudly, a real builder’s wolf whistle, when he saw what she was wearing this morning.
‘Blimey, Dor,’ he had said, opening his eyes as he took in her new look. ‘You’re all done up like a Christmas tree! What’s this in aid of then? It’s not like you to go for bright colours like that.’
‘Don’t you like it, Vic?’ she had faltered, but he soon put her right.
