The Rotting Spot (A Bruce and Bennett Mystery)

by Valerie Laws

  ‘Oh dear. There’s her protectiveness towards Peg. But Peg can’t reach her standards at all. I can see she’d make a saint impatient and irritable. What about Seymour though? He must fall a long way short of Liz’s standards.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ Erica said sharply, thinking of Seymour’s possible impregnation of Peg which she hadn’t told Rina about.

  ‘You told me he raises the wrist. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I think Seymour was her childhood dream guy. He represented, and still does, the level she could achieve if she worked hard enough. Maybe she sees him as something she’s won by her efforts. Maybe this is pushing it, Rina. These are just tendencies remember.’

  ‘What about Peg, the charcoal woman?’ Rina swigged her double espresso.

  ‘Carbo Veg. It really does fit her, you know. It’s almost uncanny. Listen, ‘mentally slow, never been right since some long-ago traumatic event, not interested in new ideas or happenings, likes fresh air but not the dark.’

  ‘Sounds more like a victim than a possible suspect. What’s the downside of Peg?’

  ‘What, apart from slow thought-processes, being out of touch, clinging to past trouble … well there’s a tendency to be superstitious, be fearful of supernatural forces, and tenaciously following fixed ideas and dogma.’

  ‘There’s her religious streak. She sounds much more passive than Liz.’

  ‘Yes, but giving your mind over to dogma and supernatural powers can be a way of blocking your conscience, committing acts that you can justify to yourself without taking responsibility.’

  ‘So where does that get us?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, it just helps to think about them this way.’

  ‘What about me, am I a raging psycho as well? You’re always saying I’m a classic Nat Mur, salt of the earth.’

  ‘You’re perfect, you know that.’ This was not the time to start reeling off Nat Mur’s faults.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m Ignatia. Tendency to self blame, all sorts of horrors. Sometimes an inability to be violent. Not necessarily a good thing, if I was under attack for example. Anyway, just because someone’s remedy picture doesn’t have anything sinister sounding in it, doesn’t mean they can’t do something evil. We can all do bad things, depending on our motivation. It just helps to show why they could do it, or in what way.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m er, going up country to the Seatons’ cottage later. With Steve, Toby’s dad.’

  ‘Toby’s fit dad. Why?’

  ‘Oh, Liz wants to talk to us about Lucy, see if we can brainstorm and get some new ideas about why she went missing, how to track her down, that sort of thing. I think it’s worth doing, though I’m wary of getting involved with them too much.’ She couldn’t give any more details to Rina.

  ‘You already are involved too much.’

  Will reached across to open the front passenger door, as Erica opened the back door herself and got in behind Will, and next to Steve. The car set off smoothly. Erica could see part of Will’s face in the mirror. He was impassive, but there was a tension in the air.

  ‘Shouldn’t be too long,’ he said tersely. ‘We need to pick up Sally first. Is your seatbelt on, Erica? If we stop suddenly, you might burst my aorta.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Erica, fastening it as she spoke. ‘I wouldn’t want to er, break your heart, inspector.’

  Will, looking in the mirror, saw Steve’s hand take hold of Erica’s and squeeze it. Erica, looking in the same mirror, wondered why Will’s mouth tightened. Who pushed the stick up his ass? She smiled at Steve, whose long legs were folded up behind the passenger seat in front. There was a current flowing between the three of them. Like pi, Erica thought. Something real, about the relationship they shared, but impossible to fully define. Oddly, pi was the number of radians in a triangle, which they formed right now, a right- angled triangle …

  ‘What are you thinking about Erica?’ Steve spoke quietly as if repressed by the atmosphere.

  ‘There are pi radians in a triangle,’ she replied.

  This put an end to conversation pretty effectively. They each sunk into their own thoughts, until Will drew up at Sally’s new little semi, and she came out like a sunny interval. The new quadrilateral in the car seemed to have a lighter tone, but still they made rather desultory conversation. Sally and Will talked shop, Steve was quiet, and Erica gazed out of the window, having regained her hand from Steve, and watched as houses gave way to trees and fields, and thence to moorland criss-crossed with tumbled dry stone walls.

  As the lowering sun was lighting the landscape with an amber glow like heather honey, they pulled up at the cottage, and emerged into a burbling of curlews.

  Seymour looked ghastly, more drawn than Erica remembered from the pub, and his hands shook as he let them in. In the kitchen, which looked out on a field of sheep strafed by swallows, every box was ticked: rosy tiled floor, big pine farmhouse table, mismatched wooden chairs, hooky mat in front of the aga, copper pans hanging up, pottery mugs from craft shops.

  ‘Please sit down,’ Seymour had a wheeze in his voice, and coughed when he’d spoken. He pushed the kettle onto the hotplate of the aga and it began to spit and bobble like Mickey’s used to do … Erica felt tears prick her eyes. She exchanged glances with Steve, and saw his shock at Seymour’s appearance. Seymour started making tea and coffee with exaggerated care, putting out ‘home-made’ style biscuits, moving like an old man.

  When they all had hot drinks, and were sitting round the table, with Seymour standing in front of the aga, the chair at the head of the table empty, the door opened and in came Liz Seaton. She held herself erect, looking her trademark elegant self, but her skin seemed dry and sallow, and there were rings round her eyes. Nux Vom symptoms, Erica noted.

  ‘Good evening, Inspector, Constable, Erica. Steve!’ She bestowed a dry leaf of a kiss on Steve’s cheek, in recognition of his almost family status as her shrewd eyes raked them all. Steve received it awkwardly. The continued absence of Lucy from all their lives, and Toby from the Seatons’, filled the room like the scent of dead flowers. Liz sat down at the head of the table, and Seymour moved to stand behind her like a bodyguard. Yet Erica had the sense that Liz was guarding him.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Seaton.’ Will spoke stiffly. ‘Good of you to ask us.’

  Erica forced herself to eat her shortbread, like sand in her mouth.

  ‘How are you, Liz?’ she asked, when she’d washed it down with tea. ‘You look tired. Not sleeping?’

  ‘No wonder,’ said Seymour defensively.

  Liz put a hand on his without turning. ‘Yes, and I’ve been getting headaches. It’s all the stress, I know, but it feels like, I don’t know –’

  ‘Like a nail being driven in above your eyes?’ Typical Nux headache.

  ‘Why yes!’ Liz was startled, but soon rallied to take control. ‘I felt, we both did, that you should hear what really happened. First I must remind you that I do not want my sister Peg troubled with this.’

  ‘We understand,’ Will spoke for them all formally. His hand twitched up and fell again. Trying not to push up his hair, thought Erica.

  ‘Secondly I must tell you,’ Liz began, in measured tones that suddenly sounded like the product of elocution lessons on someone who’d risen in society by their own efforts. Maggie Thatcher, Erica thought. She’s like Maggie Thatcher. With better fashion sense. She’s even got the boozy husband. Liz stuck after those four words, as if her throat had suddenly dried, and took a sip of tea. She began again.

  ‘We’ve never heard this story of my mother and some soldier. To think our mother has carried such a secret for so many years … I must admit I feel hurt that she didn’t feel able to confide in me, but most of all I feel saddened that she carried the burden alone. This story may or may not be true, we’ve more on our minds at the moment than war stories, but it’s put an eventuality into your minds, according to Inspector Bennett, which was also apparent to Lucy, and may account f
or her leaving.’

  She looked down at her hands, clasped round the mug. Steve shifted uneasily in his chair, opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again as she looked up with proud defiance and carried on.

  ‘So it’s as well that you know, and hopefully will keep to yourselves, that I am not Lucy’s biological mother. My sister Peg is.’

  The whole room froze with shock. Are these words really coming out of her mouth? Eating and drinking were suspended. It was a bit like hearing the queen talk about her sex life.

  ‘You all know that I am a consultant obstetrician. I have helped many women have healthy babies. It is all the more ironic therefore, that I proved unable to have children myself.’

  Nobody moved, held in equilibrium between curiosity and embarrassment. Irregular periods, dubious functioning of ovaries, Erica automatically recalled from her Nux Vomica notes.

  ‘Seymour and I put off having a family until I was secure in my career. It wasn’t easy then, for a woman to become a consultant, break into the golf-course fraternity. When I decided it was time to have a baby, I found I could not become pregnant. I told no-one at all, except Seymour my husband, who was most supportive.’

  Everyone looked at Seymour, remembering his possible role in what had happened with some horror. He kept his eyes on his wife.

  Liz took a deep breath as if about to launch herself off a high diving board. ‘Everyone has always commented on the striking resemblance between Lucy and her father. This will no doubt have suggested some sordid possibilities to you, but I must beg you to dismiss them. Seymour would never commit such a – such an act. The person who made Peg pregnant was me.’

  Her sister! Another shockwave ran round the room.

  ‘Surrogacy was not usual then, but it was not difficult for me, with my professional skills and some very basic equipment, to impregnate my sister in the way that lesbian couples so often do now. Peg had the very best of care from me, but we told no-one. Peg hid her pregnancy, I faked a pregnancy, not difficult either, it’s been done by uneducated girls who plan to steal babies.’

  ‘That’s true,’ put in Will when Liz paused. ‘A girl called Julie Kelley did just that, after her boyfriend said he was leaving her. She took a newborn baby from a hospital, and the family were all celebrating what they thought was the birth of a new family member while police searched and the parents went frantic.’

  ‘Indeed. My colleagues at the hospital did not think it odd that I apparently went ‘elsewhere’ for my prenatal care and delivery. It’s not unusual for medical staff to feel uncomfortable about having intimate treatment from colleagues they work with. Lucy was born, I delivered her, and from then on she was my daughter. I love her as much as any mother can. Peg has coped with this very well. She’s been a second mother to Lucy anyway.’

  The silence held.

  ‘So, as you can see, this is a purely family matter. If indeed Lucy heard this story and came to her own conclusions, we can understand how distressed she must be.’

  Two tears ran suddenly down Liz’s face like water down a window. She did not react to them at all. They seemed to somehow be absorbed into her dry skin like rain on a parched field.

  ‘Lucy will feel deceived, but once she comes home, we can mend the breach in our relationship. I feel certain that she will come back, for Toby’s sake if not for ours. You see, as far as we knew, there was no reason for her ever to find out. We knew nothing of Peg’s real father, or probable real father, or that his colour blindness would come out in Toby.’

  Liz stopped speaking. She leaned back in her chair against Seymour’s chest, and he gently stroked her hair. Suddenly he spoke. His voice was hoarse.

  ‘We wanted a baby so much, you see. Liz was determined I should be a father, even if she could not give birth herself.’

  Sally Banner, riveted, but with no personal involvement with the Seatons or anyone present, had been thinking hard.

  ‘Look, Mrs Seaton, Mr Seaton, I know you don’t want us to question Mrs Westfield, but why would she agree to such a procedure? Surely she’s a religious woman, the idea of becoming pregnant by her brother in law, even if sex were not involved, would be repugnant to her? To say nothing of her husband, George was it? Or how she’d feel handing over the baby.’

  ‘There’s another point too,’ Erica spoke up, emboldened by Sally’s contribution. ‘Surely the timing was very inappropriate? Peg’s daughter Molly had just run away from home; sure, she was still around, turning up at parties and so on for some months of her mother’s pregnancy, but Peg must have been in a state! How could she, how could you put her through this?’

  Liz’s sallow face flushed.

  ‘None of us knew Molly was dead until a few days ago! As far as we knew, she’d be back when she’d made her point. You are both young women, concerned mostly with preventing conception. You can have no idea of the powerful urge to have a child, what it’s like when you wait and wait and nothing happens, and then you find out it never will! We’d already discussed the surrogacy idea with Peg and George, but we might well have put it off a couple more years. It was Molly’s leaving home that brought it forward. We thought that if Molly left home for good, went off to London or somewhere and left Peg and George alone, Peg would never want to give up a baby. That was our incentive for the timing. Peg and George had an incentive too, added to the one we’d already offered them.’

  Seymour took over. ‘My brother-in-law George had a dicky ticker all along. Not only that, he had business problems. He had a well-respected butchery business, but the people who respected it had started to drive to supermarkets for their meat, and respect doesn’t pay the bills. Liz and I both had good salaries coming in. We offered to bail him out, and take care of Peg if anything happened to him. We paid for his treatment privately as well.’

  ‘We had offered to pay school fees for our niece Molly to go to a good private school,’ Liz went on. ‘This was all before Molly fell out with her mother. Peg refused that part of our help. She’d heard girls on the bus in private school uniform talking about abortion and drinking and sex, and decided Molly would be in moral danger there. Peg was very unworldly, still is; this was the late Seventies, schoolgirls all over the Western world were talking that way. Then when she discovered Molly was sleeping with Paul Reed, she jumped at our offer to send Molly to a different private school. We all assumed she’d come home eventually. Peg was desperately worried about her moral welfare and most of all, her immortal soul. There’s a Christian girls’ boarding school about twenty minutes by train from the city, we offered to pay to send her there. She could have come home at weekends, and it would have kept her away from Paul, and any other temptations.’

  ‘But how could it be Christian to be a surrogate, for an old-fashioned woman like your sister?’ Sally persisted.

  ‘On the contrary, it was a very Christian act. An act of sacrifice. And didn’t someone else give birth to a baby not their husband’s, two thousand years ago? Nobody mocks Joseph do they? Peg believed it was something she could do for the good of us all. She could get help for her husband, the business, her daughter. She could help me and Seymour have our longed-for child. She could pay the price for her sins and failings. In her mind, she’d done something wrong for Molly to turn out like she did. She was a normal teenage kid, but to Peg, in 1978 remember, she’d gone badly off the rails. God must be punishing her, Peg, for something she’d done. All these factors came together. She hoped in fact that by doing this for us, she’d bring Molly back. Of course, by the time Lucy was born, Molly had vanished completely, but she still hoped she’d come back. She couldn’t have kept Lucy anyway, one look at her proclaimed her to be Seymour’s child. In some ways it was a help, all the worry over Molly, Peg stayed indoors a lot, lost weight, wore shapeless clothes, it was easier to hide her pregnancy.’

  I wonder who pointed out the holy family parallel, Erica thought grimly. But Steve was thinking on different lines.

  ‘Peg really must be Lucy’s mot
her,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Lucy had a baby for me, remember. Living saints, the pair of them.’

  ‘I can understand why Peg would do it,’ Erica said. ‘But I still think it was pretty wrong, to take advantage of her vulnerability at a time like that! It sounds to me like she was manipulated into it. She ended up having to watch you bring up her daughter, when her own had gone.’

  ‘Yes, and where had she gone?’ Seymour was animated now, alive with anger. ‘Murdered! By a maniac who wanted her skull! Didn’t he dig up some girl’s pony, just to have its head? If you can understand how someone can be so fanatical about collecting skulls, surely you can understand how infinitely more powerful is the urge to have a child? Liz has saved hundreds of babies and their mothers, helped so many women get pregnant. It was so unfair, that she couldn’t have a baby of her own! As for our niece, we loved Molly too, you know, we had no way of knowing she’d been murdered, we too hoped she’d come back. Peg only had one child in the first place because of her husband’s condition, she wouldn’t have had another in the normal course of events.’

  ‘It wasn’t all sacrifice for Peg.’ Liz spoke defensively. ‘She’d always been the less academic sister, the less attractive. I’d always done a lot for her, and now she had a chance to right the balance, she could do something I couldn’t! Oh how can you understand, so young, you assume you can have children, you can have no idea of the pain infertility causes. Look at Steve, I expect you thought he’d been selfish getting Lucy pregnant during her training. But I understood! Didn’t I Steve?’

  ‘Yes, I’d no idea how until now. You were wonderful when Toby was born. So supportive to Lucy and me. I feel that guilty I haven’t brought him to see you since Lucy went, but…’

  ‘We deserve it, from her point of view; how we’ll ever regain Lucy’s trust I don’t know. But we must. She means the world to us. All of us, Peg included.’

  Suddenly Seymour was sobbing, and Liz stood and embraced him as he shook with tears, the chair caught ludicrously and touchingly between them. Erica caught a whiff of alcohol from him as if he was crying whisky. The whole thing sickened her. Steve got up too, and put his arms round Lucy’s parents. For that was what they were really.