She notified the insurance company immediately, but she took no steps to replace the larger items. If her suspicions were correct, she might recover them.
The thief had taken one of her decorated boxes. Mark, she remembered, had admired it.
Dealing with all this occupied her throughout Friday. In the evening, she telephoned Richard and asked him if he could spare the time to come and see her the next morning. It was important. When he arrived, she described the burglary and said that the police, so far, had no clues.
‘But I’ve a suspect in mind,’ she said. ‘Young Mark. I didn’t say so to the police because I hope to deal with it myself, perhaps with your aid.’ She explained her theory, based on Mark’s possession of a key.
‘You think he had help,’ said Richard, when he had heard her out.
‘I don’t think he could have carried all those things by himself,’ she said. ‘Do you?’
‘Not really. You’ve got Terry in mind, haven’t you? And you think we might find the things they took?’
‘If it was those two boys, yes. Before they try to sell them,’ she answered. ‘I don’t want to believe that they’re the culprits, but I’ve good reason to suspect Mark.’
‘Yes, you have,’ he agreed. ‘Terry gets plenty of pocket money. I know, because I provide it.’ He pondered. ‘Shall we go and see Mark’s mother? If he confesses and Terry’s involved, then we’ll tackle him.’
Marigold understood that he wanted to approach the possible culprits in that order because he did not want a confrontation with Terry if he was not involved.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about casting Terry as an accomplice but I don’t know any other friends of Mark’s.’
‘No offence taken,’ said Richard, who thought Terry, if he knew about Mark’s key, could well have been the ring leader.
Together, they set out. The rain had eased off and the grey, dank day was raw. Richard had come by car as he was on his way to do the shopping. They drove round to Susan Conway’s house and rang the bell, which was answered promptly.
‘Yes?’ Susan stared at the pair, the elderly woman with a felt hat pulled down above her sallow face, whom she had never seen before, and the tall, sad-looking man whom she recognised but could not identify. Susan met so many people in the course of her work that she found it difficult to place those she came across only rarely.
Richard saw her problem.
‘Richard Gardner,’ he reminded her. ‘And this is Miss Darwin who lives at The Willows.’
‘Yes?’ Susan said again. She was busy cleaning the house and they were a tiresome interruption.
‘The Willows,’ Richard repeated. ‘Where Mr Morton lived.’
‘I don’t know Mr Morton or The Willows,’ Susan said, using professional calm to hide her impatience. She had remembered who Richard was: stepfather of the disappearing Terry.
‘Mark knew him,’ Richard said.
‘Mark and he were friends,’ said Marigold, intervening. ‘I bought the house from Mr Morton’s executors. He lent Mark books,’ she added. ‘Coot Club, for example.’
‘Oh!’ Susan still looked puzzled, but here was a ray of light. ‘I thought he borrowed them from Ivy – the woman who looks after him when I’m working,’ she said. ‘How did he get them from Mr Morton? How were they friends?’ Then, facing the inevitable, for she must discover what had been going on, she stood aside. ‘Won’t you come in?’ she said.
She was an attractive woman. Richard had thought so when they met before. Her fair hair was cut short, almost like a boy’s, and she had very blue eyes; he could see that she was irritated by their visit and had had a major surprise about Mark’s activities. She led them into her sitting-room, which was functionally furnished; the chair and sofa looked like those often seen in a hotel bar, covered in soft grey-blue leather. Perhaps they came from a hotel supplier; maybe she got a discount through the trade.
They all sat down, and Susan, who wore narrow black trousers and a long pink sweater, leaned forward, looking intently at Miss Darwin.
‘You said Mark knew a man called Mr Morton, who lent him books,’ she said. ‘I want to know about him. What sort of man was he?’ All sorts of possibilities were passing through her mind.
‘He was an elderly invalid who died just before Christmas,’ said Miss Darwin. ‘I never met him. He’d had a stroke. He was unable to walk far.’
‘And?’
‘He wasn’t a child molester, Mrs Conway,’ Richard said. He had followed the direction of her thoughts.
‘Did Terry know him? Why are you both here?’ asked Susan.
‘Mark’s been to see me, too,’ Miss Darwin told her, adding, ‘I’ve been pleased to make his acquaintance.’
Clearly, he hadn’t told his mother about his visits. Miss Darwin did not want to get him into still more trouble than he might be in already; there had to be a reason for his secrecy.
‘Where was he last night, Mrs Conway? Between eight and ten o’clock,’ asked Richard.
‘At Ivy’s – Mrs Burton’s,’ Susan answered. ‘I was on late duty and he stayed over. He does sometimes.’ She coloured up suddenly. She had spent the night at The Golden Accord, with David; it was the third time this had happened, made possible by Ivy keeping Mark. Susan was not quite sure where this was leading her, but she had let herself stray into it. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Someone entered my house last night, while I was at a choral society rehearsal,’ said Miss Darwin. ‘They stole my video recorder, a portable radio, some jewellery, and other items.’
‘Are you accusing Mark?’ Susan’s anger rose. ‘How dare you!’ she exclaimed. ‘He’d never do anything like that.’
‘He has friends you don’t seem to know about, like Mr Morton,’ said Miss Darwin. ‘And he could enter the house. He has a key.’
‘He wouldn’t steal!’ Susan was insistent, and still furiously indignant, but a doubt was entering her mind. How could she be certain? She knew so little about Mark’s daily life, trusting him to Ivy, who could not watch him all the time. She’d agreed that he was old enough to play in the park and visit his friends, and come home alone. ‘You think Terry did this with him,’ she said, turning to Richard. ‘That’s why you’re here.’
‘He couldn’t have carried everything himself,’ said Richard. ‘If it was Mark, he must have had some help.’
‘Then it was Terry’s idea,’ said Susan. ‘Mark would never plan such a thing – and Terry’s been in trouble before.’
‘That’s true, but not for theft,’ said Richard, admiring her spirited defence of her son. ‘Why don’t we ask Mark about it?’ he suggested. ‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s still at Ivy’s,’ Susan said, more calmly. She had been back only half an hour herself. ‘I’m due to fetch him soon.’
‘Suppose you do that straight away,’ suggested Richard.
‘I will,’ said Susan. ‘But what about the police? You must have reported the burglary. You said it took place on Thursday night. A whole day’s gone by.’
‘I have reported it,’ Miss Darwin said. ‘But I didn’t mention Mark. I thought, if it was him, we might recover what was taken and no more need be said, as long as he is made to see the error of his ways.’
She did not want to believe that Mark was a thief. They’d grown so friendly and she looked forward to seeing him. He always rang the bell and waited to be admitted. Once or twice she’d asked him for his key and he had said that he’d forgotten it. She wasn’t sure if this was true; She had bought some books she’d hoped he’d read, and she had taken him along to the library one evening, getting the librarian to enrol him. It seemed that no one else – not his mother, nor Ivy – had thought of doing this. Then she’d had the melancholy room re-done in a way that he might find appealing, equipping it with a table and chair so that if he wanted to, he could do his homework there. He’d used it several times and said that it was brilliant.
‘I’m sure Mark’s completely in
nocent,’ said Susan. ‘But we must get to the bottom of this now. I’ll ring Ivy and tell her I’m coming round for him at once. Please wait here for us. I’ll only be a few minutes.’
But Ivy said that Mark was out. He’d gone to Merrifields to see his friend Terry.
‘We didn’t see him when we were on our way here,’ said Richard. ‘We could have missed him, though, while I was picking you up, Miss Darwin.’
Inconsequentially, Marigold wondered if he would ever use her Christian name.
‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘Shall we go and see?’
Verity had planned, that Saturday, to go to an exhibition of water colours at a gallery some twenty miles away. Nowadays she plotted to avoid Richard, either by shutting herself in her studio or by going out. His long, lugubrious face was a constant reproach, and for some weeks they had shared an unacknowledged conspiracy to escape from one another. He went to his choral society on Thursday nights and had just joined an amateur drama group which met on Tuesdays. Verity had taunted him about it.
‘You’ll make a fool of yourself. You can’t act,’ she said.
Richard thought he acted all the time. At work, he played the part of an efficient executive; at home, he adopted the role of benign parent and caring husband. Sometimes he wondered if he ever felt a genuine emotion or uttered a spontaneous word.
‘I shan’t be acting,’ he informed her. ‘I’m helping the stage manager.’
To his amazement, the stage manager proved to be the thin woman from the train, who was a solicitor with a city firm. She was getting married in September.
What if Verity, in one of her sudden fits of togetherness, offered her services as a scenery painter? But she didn’t; since Christmas there had been no such lightning impulses.
She rarely went out at night, sometimes talking about joining another evening class but never doing so. Lately, she had often been in an alcoholic haze when he came home, and that was better than the belligerence which usually preceded that stage. For her own part, Verity could not bear to contemplate the plight that would have been hers and the boys’ if Richard had not rescued them, and by inference, her debt to him. At that time, she had been popping pep pills as well as drinking; she was heavily in debt; the two boys lacked confidence and Terry had been bed-wetting. All that ended when she and Richard married. For months she had limited her drinking, and, in the euphoria of her new romance, had given up the pills. When this wore off, she turned to tranquillisers instead of winding herself up artificially; that happened now without a stimulant because Richard irritated her so much. He was too patient. He suffered all her provocation as she tested him to see how much he would take before he hit her, but he never did. The boys’ father had not lasted any time at all.
Verity, in her calmer moments, knew that her conduct was indefensible, but she never blamed herself; it was all Richard’s fault. He was so weak. He simply walked away when she was wound up for a quarrel.
That morning, she drank two cups of black coffee and ate a piece of dry toast, in her dressing-gown, then went upstairs to have a bath before the exhibition. She’d dress up, pull out all the stops, become the painter lady; maybe she’d meet people she knew and be encouraged to mount an exhibition of her own. That was her world, the world of art: if she hadn’t saddled herself with a family, she could be having a successful career by now. She often thought like this, dreaming of the might-have-been. She lay in the bath, her hair pinned on top of her head, a few damp wisps trailing over her shoulders. Her body made islands in the foam: thin breasts, bony knees when she bent her legs. Her ribs, masked now, stood out against her white skin. Verity did not want to believe that she was unattractive; slenderness was desirable, wasn’t it? But Richard didn’t want her: not like that.
Tears of self-pity began to run down her cheeks as she lay there in the water, almost forgetting her plan for the day ahead, and then, breaking in upon her miserable wallowing, she heard voices.
Terry was talking, and there was another voice she did not recognise until she heard her son call his friend by name. It was Mark.
‘We’ve got no dad, either,’ Terry was saying. ‘So what?’
‘Don’t you ever see him?’
‘Not really. Not for years,’ said Terry. ‘But he will come back,’ he added confidently, reassuring himself, not his auditor.
‘And you’ve got him – Mr Gardner—’ Mark persisted.
‘Cat’s his name,’ said Terry.
‘Him,’ Mark repeated. ‘He’s like a dad.’
There was a rustling sound, paper tearing. The boys were eating crisps.
‘He’s not our dad,’ said Terry. ‘Our dad’s an artist, like mum is.’
Verity, by this time, was lying motionless in the cooling water, listening intently. The voices, she realised, were being transmitted to her up the bath overflow pipe; the boys must be sitting near the outlet.
She had met the boys’ father when they were both art students and he had gone on to become a graphic designer with a promising career, which he abandoned when he left her and went abroad. She did not know what he was doing now. It was so unfair that he had gone away and left them all; look what had become of them – her talent wasting, her sons dependent on an unfeeling man who loved none of them.
At this point in her thoughts she craved a drink, but the boys had resumed their conversation and she was compelled to listen.
‘If your mum died, he’d look after you,’ Mark was saying. ‘Mr Gardner, I mean.’
‘Well – yes,’ Terry admitted, such a thought never having crossed his mind.
‘And you’ve got a gran and granddad, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
They had two sets, in fact, though they never heard from the pair belonging to their father. There were some aunts and uncles too, also invisible.
‘I haven’t,’ Mark said, cheerfully. ‘Only my mum. I sometimes wonder what would happen if she got run over. Perhaps Ivy would look after me, like she does when Mum’s away.’
‘I expect so,’ Terry said, not really interested. ‘There’s always the social,’ he added. They’d come to see his mum once or twice before Cat came into their lives.
Mark didn’t want to think about the social. They were all-powerful and could whisk you off without you having any choice. Dreadful things could happen to you in their care, he knew; he’d seen it on the telly, Ivy and Sharon clucking about it, while they thought that he was too intent upon his book to take in what was being said. Now and then, the dread of being left without his mother rose up like a nightmare in his mind. If that were to happen, there was no human soul responsible for him. He used to think that Tom would see that he was safe; more than once, when assailed by this rare panic, he’d mentally moved in to The Willows. But Tom had gone now; there was no safety net for him, unless Ivy took pity on him, but without Mum to pay for him, how could she afford to?
He seemed a long time answering. Verity wondered if the boys had moved away, and she sat up in the water, wringing out her sponge, ready to soap herself. Then she heard Richard’s voice.
‘Ah – Terry – Mark – there you are,’ he said. ‘I want a word with both of you. So does Miss Darwin. Come into the house.’
He sounded very stern. Richard was never angry, only annoyed, severe, reproving; these moods scarcely varied in degree.
Now what had the boys been doing?
Verity did not want to know. She sank down again, submerged her ears beneath the water and turned on the hot tap with her long, thin toes.
After a while, when all was silent, she stepped out of the bath and dried herself. Her hair had got quite wet and needed blowing dry. This took time.
She still had her own car, a small Fiat; Richard allowed her that and paid for it, including the petrol bill at a local garage.
Let him deal with this latest escapade, she thought, leaving the house quietly while voices droned on from behind the closed drawing-room door.
She did not ask herself
where Justin was; sometimes it was better not to know, and it was not until hours later that she began to feel aggrieved because whatever had happened concerned one of her sons, and Richard had not thought fit to see that she was told.
19
Miss Darwin became certain, very early in the discussion, that Mark was not the thief. He hadn’t understood, at first, what he was being accused of having done.
‘You’ve been going to The Willows,’ his mother had pitched in, before either Miss Darwin or Richard could open the bowling. She’d stated it as fact. She knew.
Mark, looking at Miss Darwin and Mr Gardner, saw them regarding him with very serious expressions on their faces. He was not afraid of either; in fact he liked both of them and was accustomed, now, to Miss Darwin’s grim features. She could smile; he had seen her do so, especially when she’d had her glass of whisky. Besides, grown-ups were often hideous: children too, sometimes. He could name a few.
‘You’ve still got a key, haven’t you, Mark?’ Miss Darwin intervened.
‘It’s on my ring,’ he said, patting his waist. Beneath his anorak, he had a key-ring snapped to his belt. While he answered, he avoided looking at his mother. Mounds of explanations lay ahead. He knew that she was not just annoyed, but puzzled.
‘Did you go into my house last night, Mark?’ Miss Darwin pursued.
‘No. I was at Ivy’s. Me and Sharon played cards and then I went to bed,’ he said. He’d read in bed, a book borrowed from the library, by Terry Pratchett. It was good.
‘What time was that?’ asked Richard.
‘Nine, about,’ said Mark.
‘What’s all this about you going to The Willows?’ Susan demanded. ‘What’s been going on?’
Serious Intent Page 19
