‘So you’re thinking if someone came along—someone being Harry Johnson’s girlfriend—and wanted to take out one of the boys, Mrs. Copley-Sutton would permit this?’ said Jury.
‘If the visitor claimed to be some relative or even friend of the family. Yes, I think she would. Especially if a sizable donation to the school came along with the family friend. This headmistress has a reputation for being a bit of a wide lady, so to speak. Nothing terrible, of course; she’s very nice to the children, but still—’ Dryer shrugged. ‘Do you have your mobile?’
Jury said he hadn’t, feeling as if he were letting down the wired world.
‘Here, take this.’ Dryer pulled open a drawer, got out a mobile phone, tossed it to Jury. ‘I hate the damned things. I’ve got a whole rap on instant access. Cells, Internet, computers. Yes, I know one must have one for emergencies, still, something’s gone out of life with all those things. Suspense, maybe.’
Jury smiled. Suspense. He liked that.
‘We have time for a sandwich,’ said Dryer. ‘Let’s go to the Bird on the Wing. It’s the nearest, also the fastest service. But what a silly name for a pub. I prefer they all be named the George or the Rose and Crown.’
The school’s maintenance man, Mr. Purdy—he called himself ‘janitor,’ not one for dressing up mops and brooms with ribbons and bells—was also reading the paper. This woman that got murdered—something about her looked familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He sat on thinking for a moment, then got on with his work.
It was Mr. Purdy Timmy came upon first.
The janitor was returning a mop to his maintenance room, his little fiefdom. Purdy was quite proud of that room, like an office, it was, and a place to escape to when Mrs. Copley-Sutton was on the prowl, looking for things to complain about. It was a place to sit and have a drink, too. He looked around when he felt the tug on his sleeve.
‘Why, hello, young Timmy, how are you keeping?’
Purdy was surprised, actually, that Timmy had made it all this way down the long hall. The outside wall was a row of windows. Timmy always got stuck on one or another of them, forever looking out, from one to the other he’d go, stopping, as if they gave on different prospects. Yet each one had the same view of the car park and the front of the school off to the right. There was a little arched entry way of gray stone that jutted out like a canopy. It was a pretty building. The school would be all right, it would be fine, if only there had been more sports for the kiddies, more equipment.
Timmy held up the newspaper and pointed to the picture.
‘Ah. Just let me get me specs on, Tim.’ Purdy got the eyeglasses out of their heavy case that snapped like an animal when he closed it. ‘Ah, yeah, read about that poor woman. It’s a mystery, that is.’
Timmy pointed back and forth several times, from the paper to himself.
Mr. Purdy frowned. ‘There’s something about her looks familiar. Is it somebody you knew, then?’
The boy, ordinarily not as noisy and excitable as some of the others, was nodding his head and at the same time bouncing back and forth from one foot to another, as if getting the whole engine going would make Mr. Purdy understand.
‘Okay, now, Timmy, now what do we do?’
The boy was near to crying with all of this effort and the importance of it.
‘Well, let’s go see the head, then.’ Mr. Purdy had never much cared for Mrs. Copley-Sutton, but he didn’t know what else to do for Timmy, to try to help him out. He took the boy’s hand and they went off down the hall.
Mrs. Copley-Sutton was sitting at the desk in the large foyer, a long, polished table positioned so that it faced the entryway. There was a brass plaque on it marked RECEPTION. She wasn’t, of course, simply the receptionist, but she did take over the desk from time to time, careful to position there another brass plaque, this with her name and HEAD in smaller letters below it. It all looked sort of elegant, Mr. Purdy thought, with the exception of the head herself.
‘What is it, Mr. Purdy? Why have you brought Timmy? Hello, Timmy.’ She smiled.
‘It’s to do with this paper, madam.’
‘And what’s that, then, Mr. Purdy?’
He put the paper on the desk, folded so that she could see the photo. ‘It’s this woman. Timmy seems to be upset by the picture.’
‘Really. Well, I don’t believe I know who she is. It’s most unfortunate for the poor woman, but I don’t see—is it because somebody killed her, Timmy?’
For Timmy, this was an impossible question. If he nodded yes, then she would think it was the killing that bothered him; if he shook his head no, then she wouldn’t realize it was the woman herself that was the problem. So he indicated neither answer, hoping maybe that she’d put the question differently.
‘I don’t see the problem, then, Mr. Purdy.’ She smiled again at Timing and wished she was fonder of children.
The janitor thought it was like Father Ryland with his go-thy-way-and-sin-no-more dismissal. Now there was a priest God could have done without. ‘I just think madam.’
‘Mr. Purdy, please go back to your duties and leave the thinking to me.’
Purdy nodded, and, taking Timmy’s hand, whispered they’d find another way. Timmy was very agitated as they walked across the foyer. ‘Now, why don’t you go outside for a bit? There’s Brian and Peter still here and a couple others—and I saw them a moment ago kicking a football around.’
Timmy had no desire to kick a football around, and even less desire to do it with Brian and Peter, but he thought he would like to go outside and sit by the frog pond. So he nodded to Mr. Purdy and walked over to one of the doors in the rear and stepped out onto green lawn.
Timmy really didn’t much like Brian or Peter or most of the others who were down at the other end of the garden doing what Mr. Purdy had said, kicking a football around. Most seemed to have families who sometimes came to take them out—dad or mum or uncle—to take them off for the Christmas hols or Whitsun or even just out for the day. But then he remembered what the dad or mum had been like and decided maybe he wasn’t so unlucky after all. Adults were so stupid around kids like him, talking loud as if you were deaf, or down as if you were stupid. No, some of those relations he’d seen he wouldn’t want to have.
It was the reason he’d so much liked Rose or Rosa, for she had been like family, and Peter and the others had been envious because she was so pretty. An aunt who’d just got back from traveling the world and lived in Italy. Imagine.
They had gone, the three of them (for Timmy counted the dog Mungo as a third party), to an IceDelite between the school and the village, where he had eaten a double Razzberry Blitz and where she’d gone into the ladies and come out looking quite different. Looking like someone else. Her long pale hair was now glossy brown and short. The sunglasses had been exchanged for eyeglasses, smart looking, narrow with a metal frame. The bright red lipstick was changed for a softer, milky rose shade.
It was all to be a marvelous trick, she said. They were going to look at property, a few houses, and it would only take a couple of hours. Then they could stop somewhere for dinner before she took him back to the school.
His name, just for the day, was to be Robbie; hers, Glynnis. Robbie was what she would call him around other people, if they ran into other people and in case anyone should ask him. (Not that asking him would do much good.) She had even given him ten pounds. He kept the note in his shoe, more as a souvenir than for safekeeping.
Yes, it had been a marvelous trick—although he never had discovered the trick of it—and a marvelous day.
Timmy sat on the stone bench thinking about her and about that day. So lost in thought he was about what to do, he hardly registered the car sitting on the other side of the wall, part of whose hood he could see through the iron grating of the fence. It was a narrow side road that cars didn’t usually venture up. He was curious and got up and started toward the gate, a little distance away.
It was then he saw the dog, who st
arted circling around and then squeezed under the gate and ran, big ears flapping, off and back and off again and back.
Mungo!
Mungo jumped, up on him, nearly knocking him down and Timmy laughed.
But Mungo ran in the other direction, away from the gate, and turned and waited for Timmy.
Come on come on don’t get in that car!
The man called, ‘Timmy!’
Mungo barked. Run away, run away!
Timmy sensed something; he smelled something, as often he did, picking up a scent almost as well as a dog. But he couldn’t get a picture of it in his mind.
‘Timmy! Mungo!’
Timmy did not see the man who belonged to the voice. He was on the other side of the wall. So Timmy went through the gate, Mungo reluctantly following.
He had only two seconds to wonder why this big black car was parked here by the side of the school, when someone behind him quickly wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him back.
‘Open your eyes.’
In the Bird, a dandyish pub with a lot of chintz and window seating. Jury and Dryer were both having cheese salad sandwiches.
‘What about that little girl,’ said Dryer, munching lettuce, ‘the one who found the body?’
‘Tilda.’ Again Jury heard Harry’s voice in the house in Belgravia:
What little girl?
Tilda saw the car coming up the drive. She was in the drawing room having tea with the Queen (the Queen’s role here performed by Oogli, her Inuit doll) when she heard a car and ran to the window.
Tilda ran back, plucked Oogli from the silk sofa and raced from the room and then from the house. When she got to the Wendy house, she was out of breath, but all right. She was not sure, even, why she was afraid, running, but she was. So she supposed she ought to be.
Timmy did not want to get out of the car.
When he’d opened his eyes again, he couldn’t see. He wasn’t blind; it was just that his vision was blurred, as if he were looking at objects through rings of water.
He knew it was the same house, even if he couldn’t see it sharply, couldn’t make out the details or see the edges. It was the house that Rosa had taken him to.
He did not want to get out, but he would have to; in another minute he would be pulled out by this man, this stranger, whom he couldn’t see except as a tall blurry figure.
Mungo had scrambled out when the man who’d been driving got out and locked the doors. Timmy could make out Mungo when he looked through the car window. He was sitting there on the gravel in front of the house. When Timmy put his face up against the window, Mungo made a few scampering forays forward and backward—
Which puzzled Timmy.
—and then took off like a shot running toward the house and then running back.
What was the dog trying to do or say? He wanted Timmy to get out of the car.
Now.
Tilda didn’t see him, didn’t hear him, didn’t know he was there until he grabbed her from behind, hard. Somehow he must have found a path through the wood. He came up behind her.
‘Open your eyes,’ he said.
The arm wrapped round her neck grew tighter. The temptation was to seal her eyes shut as if that would help her. The hold grew tighter; he’d choke her to death. She opened them. A fluid, several drops of it, was forced into each eye. She blinked, tried to blink it away but she couldn’t. Tilda shook her head several times, eyes closed.
He wasn’t hurting her, just holding her tightly against him as if his life depended on it. Tilda found this almost funny, that somebody’s life depended on her. That she was that important.
He held her that way for what seemed like a long time; she guessed it was only minutes. But they stood locked together until his arm eased up just a little.
With a force, a strength she had no idea she possessed, she broke away, suddenly, when his arm relaxed just a little.
He yelled. She hurtled herself into the woods. If he was thinking not being able to see clearly would stop her, must stop anyone running through woods, well, he was wrong. She knew this place too well. Blind, she would almost be able to find her way through these trees. And she knew exactly which tree she wanted. She darted from tree to tree. She zigzagged.
She heard him, and then he must have stopped.
After feeling over the collection of buttons on the inside of the car door, the driver’s door, Timmy finally managed to hit the right one; he unlocked the door, pushed down on the handle and was out of the car.
Timmy could see the white blur of Mungo, rushing toward the house.
When Timmy hesitated—he wasn’t sure what to do—Mungo rushed back, forward, back forward, as before.
Timmy followed, slowly, then quickly. He could see the front of the house and then Mungo, more visible, less visible, running to the other side.
He ran, and now so did Timmy.
The man yelled at both of them, yelled something Timmy couldn’t hear and Mungo paid no attention to.
* * *
Tilda heard them coming—dog and boy. From what she could see, squinting in her partial blindness, they were racing each other.
The dog got there first—the woman who’d come that day long ago had called him Mungo, hadn’t she, when she was calling for the two of them to come? Mungo was running a circle round the bottom of the tree. She really liked him and would have laughed if it all wasn’t so frightening.
‘Can you see? Can you see properly?’ she asked him.
Nothing. No reply. But she could tell he was trying to, motions of his head and hands.
She remembered, then, he didn’t, or couldn’t, talk. He made a keening sound. She bet that whatever the man had used in her eyes, he’d put in the boy’s, too.
Tilda put her hand on his shoulder, ran it down his arm and found his hand. ‘If you can’t see squeeze my hand.’ He did, hard.
She heard a shout and looked toward the house. A figure moved on the patio and down the steps. He seemed in no hurry walking down the wide lawns. He was whistling.
Timmy heard him even at this distance. Timmy heard everything. It was hard, hearing everything.
The dog grabbed Tilda’s sock with his teeth and pulled. At the same time the boy grabbed her hand and yanked her.
The three of them took off deeper into the woods. At first, Tilda thought maybe they could go to her house. But when she looked toward the wide lawn through the trees, she could see he was moving a little faster and there wouldn’t be time.
She made it to the big oak and said, ‘You can climb, can’t you?’
Timmy (who’d never climbed a tree in his life) got hold of her hand, squeezed it hard, yes.
Tilda blessed this tree she was climbing and blessed herself for knowing it so well she could climb it without seeing it properly. Well, she’d climbed it in the dark, hadn’t she? She knew how high she could go and the best branch to sit on. Another branch and another. She looked down; the boy was coming. He was coming up quickly, like a monkey. But she guessed being followed by someone this dangerous could turn anybody into a monkey.
Another branch, another branch, and she stopped. The boy caught up, almost completely out of breath. She motioned for him to sit on the branch just below her.
What about the dog. Mungo? He had started up barking again and for a moment she was afraid he was at the bottom of their tree. But no, he’d gone somewhere else.
The man had come into the woods. He was calling the boy. His name was Timmy. Tilda had forgotten his name. Now, the man was whistling for the dog Mungo.
Mungo sounded farther away than he had a minute ago. The man had stopped right beneath their tree, but now walked off, in the direction of the bark, which grew a little fainter still. Tilda blessed the dog; he was leading the man away from this tree.
She calculated it was almost five minutes since he’d followed the dog’s barking. They might be able to get down from the tree and get home through the woods if the dog had led the man off in a whole differ
ent direction. She put a foot on Timmy’s branch and whispered for him to go down. He scrambled off, lowering himself to another branch.
Squinting her eyes did no good, they were too cloudy. They felt like rain. But she’d be able to separate a moving figure from the rest of the woods, and as she set her foot on each new branch, she could tell there was no one moving around. When they reached the ground, she heard Mungo’s bark coming closer. She grabbed onto Timmy and whispered to him to follow her.
Timmy didn’t move. Mungo’s barking was getting closer, sounded almost what she’d call hysterical (if her aunt had been doing it).
Tilda pulled on the boy, but he stood fast.
Then she knew he was waiting for Mungo. He wouldn’t budge without the dog.
In a few seconds, here was Mungo bursting through the trees, probably in one last attempt to get them out of this place.
Of course, it was too late, for here he came. The tall figure stood over them sounding as pleased as if he’d found some secret hoard of treasure. Tilda found Timmy’s hand, and Mungo just stopped.
‘Well, that was fun, kids.’
Funny, but he sounded friendly, not at all dangerous.
That was how, Tilda bet, the most dangerous ones sounded.
50
Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Copley-Sutton was still at reception and musing over the delights of Upper Sloane Street, then turning her mind to improvements sorely needed at Lark Rise Special School.
Suddenly the door opened and a man, a stranger, walked in and up to the desk.
He showed her identification. New Scotland Yard? What on earth . . . ?
‘Superintendent Richard Jury. Are you Mrs Copley-Sutton?’
Hand smoothing hair again, she answered, ‘Yes. I’m the head. May I help you?’
He showed her the local paper, the item and picture of Rosa Paston. ‘Do you know this woman?’
Again, here was this dead woman being brought up. She frowned, took the paper to look at the photo more closely, but still couldn’t place her. ‘No, I’ve never seen her.’
The Old Wine Shades Page 27
