by Nicola Slade
He raised his glass of port to her with a grin, just as the phone rang. Harriet searched under cushions and books, then, just as she was getting exasperated, she unearthed it by the Christmas tree.
‘Hullo? Who? What?’ She beamed at him delightedly. ‘It’s Neil and Alice,’ she told him.
He grabbed the phone from her to add his greetings.
‘Happy Christmas, Sam.’ It was Neil. ‘Congratulate me; she’s agreed to make an honest man out of me at last. We got engaged yesterday on a deserted beach, with white sand, turquoise sea, sapphire sky and all bathed in tropical sunshine. It was magic.’
‘Congratulations indeed.’ Sam was delighted. ‘That’s terrific news, when—’
Harriet snatched the phone back from him. ‘Here, let me … Neil? You’re not married? Oh engaged? How wonderful. Where are you, are you still in Fiji? Tell us all about it.’
‘Yes, we’re still in Fiji,’ he said, the happiness in his voice bubbling over into a spontaneous peal of laughter. ‘It’s magic,’ he said again. ‘Here, Alice wants to tell you all about it.’
‘Harriet?’ Though she was nearly 12,000 miles away Alice sounded near at hand and so happy that Harriet had to wipe away a tear. ‘It’s Boxing Day morning here, Harriet. We got engaged at midday yesterday, Christmas Day. It was so romantic, we went for a walk along this wonderful empty beach and Neil suddenly went down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes!’ Harriet smiled at the excitement in her voice. ‘There’s a jeweller’s here and I’ve got the most beautiful ring, rubies and diamonds, and when we get home we’ll start thinking about planning a wedding. We’ll wait till we’ve sorted everything out with getting rid of the house first.’ Harriet heard the catch in the younger woman’s voice but Alice took a deep breath and continued in a lighter tone.
‘We’re staying at an island resort, it’s like a hotel but with cabins, they call them bures, instead of rooms, all scattered round. We can lie in bed and look straight out at the Pacific – the sea is only a few yards away down the beach. Oh, Harriet, I do love him so!’
The news seemed to put an extra gloss on their happy, comfortable day. While Sam went back to slouch in front of the roaring log fire, Harriet gave a sudden exclamation and went out to the kitchen. She reappeared holding a couple of tall flute glasses and a bottle of Moët she had been hiding in the fridge and which she handed to Sam to open.
‘I suppose I had a sort of inkling that something like this might happen,’ she admitted, accepting her glass from him and raising it in a toast to the happy couple. ‘If they hadn’t rung, it wouldn’t have been wasted. I was going to get it out anyway, to drink to ourselves. Neil did the right thing, getting Alice away so quickly, it was pretty grim once the tabloids did a double-take and decided the story was worth pursuing after all. Still, Matron was wonderfully starchy with those reporters and they soon went haring after another victim.’
‘It’s odd how it all worked out, isn’t it?’ Sam leaned back and stretched out his long legs again, kicking off his shoes to warm his toes at the fire.
‘You thought it was Tim, didn’t you?’ she asked him suddenly. ‘When you left me that note, telling me about his wife. That’s why you were so cross with me when I wouldn’t let you come over to Chambers Forge that night. You were afraid he might do something to me.’
‘Something like that,’ he admitted. ‘I wasn’t sure, not really, any more than you were, that it was him. It was just, when you weighed it all up, the haphazard nature of the enterprise, the whole thing seemed completely mad.’ He shifted into a more comfortable slouch and nodded to her over the rim of his glass. ‘That’s what alerted you, I imagine. The fact that the other two, or three I suppose, if you include Doreen Buchan, though I was never really convinced that she was a player; no, the other two were more or less in full possession of their marbles.
‘I mean, Tim’s plan was downright crazy. It was only by sheer chance that the whole thing came together; so many things could have stopped it in its tracks. The thread could have been spotted by the horn player or it could have snapped harmlessly. Somebody else could have been hurt and in any case it was a miracle nobody else was even touched, no matter what he said about calculating the trajectory. There were too many things left to chance and Ellen Ransom and Fred Buchan had shown themselves to be capable of cunning.’ His eyes clouded for a moment. ‘I know Fred was a victim of circumstances, just as much as Christiane was in her way, but once he’d got away and when he came to this country, he certainly showed plenty of guile. Though who can blame him. I doubt if I would have done anything else, given the circumstances.’
Harriet nodded. ‘That’s more or less how I reasoned it too,’ she said. ‘Everything you’ve said about Fred, being a victim of sorts, applies to Ellen too, though I can’t get that picture out of my head, of her calmly killing her own baby down on the beach one early summer’s morning. It’s almost as bad as the other one … I’ve been having horrible dreams about Fred and his terrible story. Here, pour me some more champagne, Sam. I might sleep better tonight.’
He topped up their glasses then cast a considering look at her. ‘It was surprisingly fortuitous,’ he ventured diffidently. ‘Tim having a fatal heart attack that last night, wasn’t it? A very peaceful death, Matron told me, and not unexpected according to the doctor, not with Tim already having a heart condition. After all, Matron had organized a medical check on all of you, on the Sunday, hadn’t she, to make sure everyone was coping after such a trauma. It was much less distressing for Tim’s family, the fact that they didn’t have to go through all the palaver of an autopsy, seeing that the doctor had only just examined him.’
She gave him an innocent smile and a very slight nod of agreement but his forehead creased in a thoughtful frown.
‘It must have given you a bit of a shock,’ he said, watching her. ‘Finding him like that with his heart tablets on the floor where he must have dropped them before he could open the bottle. What made you go and check up on him?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, you can’t deny that his late night discussion with me was pretty stressful,’ she said. ‘It seemed a good idea to make sure he was feeling better. After all, he’d looked dreadful when he said goodnight.’
No need, she thought, to mention Tim’s sleeping pills to anyone: an old prescription, he’d said, dating back to the time of his wife’s death. There had been no autopsy, no worrying revelations, and no empty bottle left inconveniently on his bedside table. She felt no qualms of conscience about any of her actions, so she resolutely kept her own counsel. She knew however, none better, that her cousin Sam was nobody’s fool.
‘There didn’t seem much point telling anyone about what he had told me,’ she said casually. ‘After all, everyone, including Alice and the police, accepted Christiane Marchant’s death as an accident. The musicians were completely exonerated and Neil had told me only that morning that the euphonium player was now beginning to feel very much better about the whole sorry affair. Why stir up a hornet’s nest? It might well have been an accident after all. Who’s to know Tim wasn’t talking nonsense? He sounded logical enough, I grant you, but he might have completely flipped. Besides,’ she reached for the bottle again. ‘I was the only person who heard him and who knows? I might have dreamed the whole thing. After all, I was completely exhausted that night.’
‘Quite right, Old Hat.’ Sam smiled affectionately at her and she knew that whatever suspicions he might harbour, the matter was now closed. ‘As for our other two prime suspects, I gather poetic justice has befallen them?’
‘It certainly has.’ She roused herself to pass a plate of mince pies. ‘Here, take one, you’re quite safe, I didn’t make them. I bought them in Waitrose yesterday morning. Yes indeed,’ there was a gleam of triumph in her eyes. ‘Fred Buchan had a massive stroke that night so Doreen and Vic have fixed up to move him next door into Hiltingbury House on a permanent basis once he’s out of hospital.’ She munched reflectively. ‘I
suppose we were right not to report him as a war criminal? He was a Nazi, after all.’
Sam shook his head. ‘No, he suffered divine retribution, I’m quite convinced of that. No human agency could touch him. But it was retribution tempered with mercy.’ He was wearing his inward look. ‘As divine retribution always is.’ He sat up straight and smiled affectionately at her. ‘I do truly believe that he found some kind of peace down in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral that day, staring at the statue; that, and confessing his tragic tale to Alice and the rest of us. Besides, there’s a time and place for a spot of mercy from the likes of us too.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ She pursed her lips and nodded. ‘After all, Alice was so anxious to be rid of all the horrors, all the past anguish and the recent misery. What would be the point of raking it all up? Fred Buchan had suffered years of the most dreadful guilt which is retribution after all, a life sentence, in fact. I understand he’s severely paralysed down his right side and can’t speak, but Doreen says it’s quite obvious that he can understand all they say to him.’
Sam winced. ‘Oh Lord, that’s the cruellest punishment of all.’
Harriet nodded in sympathy then recalled the other resident at Firstone Grange whom they had thought deserving of punishment.
‘Did I tell you…?’ she sounded slightly gleeful, and then looked abashed. ‘Matron had a word with Ellen Ransom’s son-in-law and convinced him that it would be a kindness to get Ellen into Hiltingbury House too. She didn’t specify to whom – it would be a kindness, I mean – but he was pretty quick on the uptake and between them they pushed it through before Ellen or her daughter could come up with any objection. A room fell vacant and Matron and her crony leapfrogged Ellen to the top of the waiting list. It’s always who you know.…’
Drowsing in the glow of the firelight Harriet knew Sam was remembering, as she was, the damp, grey December morning when Christiane Marchant was finally sent to her rest.
‘What a sad, injured soul she must have been,’ reflected Sam, looking momentarily unhappy as he considered the warped and twisted mind of the woman who had caused so much pain and misery.
‘Oh, Sam.’ Harriet looked at him with affectionate exasperation. ‘Don’t go all broody about it. There was nothing you could have done for her, even if you’d known. She wasn’t the type to let anyone get close.’ Knowing his tender heart, Harriet decided to keep her real opinion of Christiane MIarchant to herself. I don’t believe, she pondered, that even such an appalling event in her past could have turned a normal woman into a monster. Sad or angry, certainly, insane even, but such a bitch? I don’t think so.
She upended the champagne bottle over his glass. ‘Here, get this inside you and pass me that tin of Quality Street. It’s Christmas Day, let’s just thank God it’s all over and we managed to get out of it unscathed.’
He grinned at her and nodded. ‘Happy Christmas, Old Hat,’ he said, raising his glass to her. ‘Here’s to us.’
By the Same Author
Murder Most Welcome
Death is the Cure
Copyright
© Nicola Slade 2011
First published in Great Britain 2011
This edition 2013
ISBN 978 0 7198 1220 0 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1221 7 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1222 4 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9182 0 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Nicola Slade to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
