The Hunted Hare

by Fay Sampson

  By the time she got back to the chair, she was more tired than she expected. But she would not give in. She made herself keep going until she had been at the butts for an hour.

  Time for coffee.

  The house seemed empty. But as Jenny made her way across the hall, Sian appeared from her office.

  “How was it? Did you find the chair a help?”

  “Yes and no. It took some getting used to, drawing the bow sitting down. But it meant I could keep going for longer than if I’d been on my feet the whole time. I could do with a sit-down now, though. Any chance of a cup of coffee?”

  “Coming up. Make yourself at home in the lounge. I’m sorry there’s no one else about. The youngsters are off hill-walking. I think the Ewarts have gone back to the church. Mrs Ewart is having a lot of pain in her back. They really hope St Melangell can cure her.”

  “Do you think she can? I mean, does that sort of thing really happen?”

  “Miracles? Like Lourdes? It’s hard for me to say. But people believe it does.”

  Jenny stood, considering this. Was that where she should be? Praying in the church for a miracle?

  Did you have to be here, in Pennant Melangell, to pray for help? She knew that at home and across the country, friends were praying for her. And still the oncologist had told her that there was little more they could do. Five months, perhaps. She tried not to be afraid of the shadow that was coming. To meet it bravely, even joyfully. To believe in what lay beyond. The words of the requiem echoed in her mind. May light perpetual shine upon her.

  She grieved for Aidan and Melangell. She grieved for her own bereavement of their future.

  The leather armchair enfolded her kindly. The coffee was rich and strong. She would go to her room presently and rest.

  The dining room was even emptier than last night. Only the Ewarts had come back for lunch. Jenny hesitated.

  “Would you mind if I joined you? It seems a bit stand-offish to be eating on my own.”

  “Of course. Our pleasure.” Colin Ewart motioned to a chair.

  Rachel, she noticed, did not smile. She looked drawn with pain.

  “Is your back bad today?” Jenny asked.

  Colin’s large hand smashed down on the table. “There was all that stuff in the brochure about this place. How people had come here for centuries to get healed. It’s a con.”

  “Colin.” Rachel put out her hand to his in embarrassment. “It’s early days yet. They say there’s a healing service on Thursday. You’ve got to be patient.”

  Is this what it’s like, Jenny thought, if you set your faith on a miracle cure and nothing happens? Does it destroy the peace you might otherwise weave for yourself? Or do I just not have enough faith?

  “I’m telling you,” Colin went on. “If nothing’s happened by the end of this week… If Rachel’s not better, I’m telling that Mr Brown straight. He’s no business putting that on his website. Just to get people here.”

  Jenny was beginning to wish she had opted to lunch alone.

  The meal passed awkwardly. Jenny enjoyed her spicy chicken salad. Archery seemed to have revived her flagging appetite. But Rachel ate little, and her husband glowered through the meal.

  Should we have come back here? Jenny wondered. Or kept our precious memory of this place intact?

  After lunch, she headed towards the lift. There were voices in the foyer. She was just in time to see Thaddaeus disappearing down the corridor to the right marked “PRIVATE”. Sian shot Jenny a small, embarrassed smile. She looked untypically flustered.

  On the landing, the sound of tyres on gravel made Jenny pause. Through the front-facing window she saw the Ewarts driving off. And slewing sharply to stop in front of the house, the black Jaguar of yesterday. Two men got out. One small, rotund, with dark-rimmed glasses and grey-black hair curled closely against his scalp. The other taller, square-shouldered, blond. Their closely tailored suits looked oddly out of place in a spot usually frequented by holidaymakers and hikers.

  She crossed to her bedroom, picked up the book from her bedside table and lay down. The archery had tired her more than she expected. She had turned two pages before the book began to fall from her limp hand…

  She was drifting away when she heard the sound of raised voices below. Men’s voices. A twitch of curiosity wondered whose they could be.

  Then the house fell quiet again. Sleep claimed her.

  She struggled to remember where she was. What time of day. Her hand groped for the watch on the bedside table and did not find it. She opened her reluctant eyes and sat up. The watch was still on her wrist. It showed twenty to three. It was still afternoon. Aidan and Melangell should be back soon.

  She got out of bed feeling refreshed. There was an ache in her arms. It took her a moment to remember using the bow that morning. This was a good pain. Wholesome.

  She splashed water on her face and retied the pink-and-purple scarf over her bald head.

  Before she went downstairs with her book, she walked out on to the balcony. She drank in again the view of mountains and woodland. There were splashes of colour in the grounds. Rhododendrons and azaleas.

  She searched the garden below for any sign of Euan in his red checked shirt. Had he worked all morning in the shrubbery by the archery range, or moved on to the flowerbeds or vegetable plot?

  These were extensive grounds. One more expense for the House of the Hare. How could Thaddaeus make it pay, with so few guests?

  There was no one in sight.

  Then she stiffened. There was a high cry by the row of outbuildings beyond the archery range. A slender figure in a black skirt and grey sweater came running into view from the side of the house. Lorna Brown.

  “Euan!” Jenny heard the wail distinctly.

  And here he was, running out of one of the sheds to meet her.

  Lorna fell into his arms. Her black hair cascaded over his shoulder. They were too far away for Jenny to hear what she was saying. But from her heaving body, she was sure that Lorna was pouring out a story to him.

  Euan gripped her fiercely, then let her go. His head went up to look at the house. Jenny withdrew swiftly behind the long folkweave curtains.

  She sat down on the bed and found she was trembling. Even at that distance, the emotion of that meeting had shaken her. Something had happened to Lorna. Something that had made Euan Jones blaze with anger.

  Troubled, Jenny took her book downstairs to one of the wicker chairs on the patio and tried to lose herself in a world of fiction.

  Chapter Seven

  MELANGELL WAS QUIETER on the way back. She no longer skipped to the sides of the road, examining every unfamiliar flower or newborn lamb.

  “Tired?” Aidan asked.

  “Quite a bit. But the waterfall was nice.”

  The low tower of the church came as a welcome sign of familiarity. Aidan marvelled again at how well hidden the House of the Hare was among its trees. Only when they turned in between its gateposts did its angled planes and clear windows rise up in front of them.

  The afternoon peace was shattered by the roar of a car engine unnecessarily revved. A black Jaguar shot from the car park in a spray of gravel and zoomed towards the gate. Aidan and Melangell leapt out of the way.

  “Them again!” Aidan watched the aggressive spin that slewed the car on to the road. “What’s the point in buying an expensive, whisper-quiet car like that, and then driving it like boy racers?”

  “They didn’t look like boy racers,” Melangell said. “They’re wearing posh suits and ties. They look all wrong for the country. Not like you.” Aidan looked down ruefully at his peat-stained shorts and his jumper stuck with bits of gorse.

  “I suppose they have business with Mr Brown.”

  “I wouldn’t do business with them.”

  “No. But you’re not a million or so pounds in debt. I guess he may be. Seven of us guests are hardly going to pay for all this… Boots off,” he ordered at the door.

  Melangell removed her tr
ainers. They padded in their socks across the wooden floor.

  Sian appeared from her office behind the reception desk.

  “She’s out on the terrace, enjoying the afternoon sun.”

  “Did the archery go well?”

  “I think so.”

  Jenny was leaning back in a cane chair among flowered cushions. Aidan could not see her face from behind, but he sensed the relaxation of her pose and was grateful. He tiptoed up and dropped a kiss on her forehead.

  She opened lazy eyes and put up a hand to clasp his. “How was the waterfall?”

  “Tremendous! It comes down and down and down out of the sky.” Melangell slipped round to stand in front of her. “And we heard two men arguing and it was Mr Brown and a very Welsh man called Caradoc Lewis. And before that we saw Lorna Brown and she was crying. And Mr Lewis let us walk back through his garden so we didn’t have climb up the hill again.”

  Jenny looked bewildered at Aidan. He made a wry face.

  “It’s true, but not necessarily in that order. We met Lorna first, coming away from the waterfall. She really did look distressed. I’ve been kicking myself ever since that I didn’t do more to make her tell us what was wrong. But then we came across Thaddaeus at Caradoc Lewis’s. If something had happened to Lorna, you’d think her uncle would be the one she’d go to. Instead, she was rushing back to Pennant Melangell on her own.”

  “Unless she was running away from him,” Melangell said.

  “Her shirt was torn. I thought at first it might be a boyfriend… Something got out of hand. But the only people who were near were the two men.”

  Jenny looked up at him, her eyes dark. “She was still in tears when she came back here. She went straight to those outbuildings over there. To Euan Jones. He’s the boy that does the gardens.”

  “You think he… Thaddaeus…?” He cast a warning glance at Melangell.

  Jenny shrugged. “You were there. I wasn’t. I find it hard to believe that. But it’s been worrying me all afternoon. At least… Well, it was rather nice out here in the sun. I think I dozed off again.”

  He stroked her scarfed head. “I’m not sure this is something we can get involved in. I tried to help, but she just ran past me.”

  He settled himself into a chair beside her. Melangell had begun to make a daisy chain. The peace of the garden was broken only by the murmur of wood pigeons.

  Then out of the shrubbery that separated the house from the archery range someone came running. It was Harry Townsend, one of the young walkers staying at the house. His rucksack bounced on his thin shoulders as he sprinted towards them. Moments later, his dark-haired partner Debbie broke into view. She was looking back over her shoulder as she ran.

  Fear rose in Aidan’s throat. He leapt to his feet. He should not have let Lorna Brown pass him when something was so obviously wrong. Had something worse been done to her?

  Harry reached the terrace. His young face was distraught. “Where’s Sian? Something terrible’s happened. Back there,” he panted. “In the bushes. We took a short cut down from the mountain and he’s… he’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Thaddaeus. Mr Brown.”

  “You go!” Jenny cried, rising from her chair. “Harry! Get Sian to ring 999.”

  Aidan tore across the lawn. Thoughts were somersaulting through his head. Thaddaeus? Not Lorna?

  He was aware of Melangell running beside him.

  “Go back!” he ordered.

  When he looked round, she was standing where he had left her, a little figure in the middle of the lawn.

  He tried to remember where Harry and Debbie had broken out of the trees. A path led through the rhododendrons. Red blossoms shattered as he rushed past.

  The path ended in grass. The big man’s body was not where Aidan had expected to come upon it, hidden among the screening bushes. Instead, it came into view at the end of the shrubbery, at the side of the archery range, quite near the butts.

  Thaddaeus lay on his back. A red-and-white feathered arrow skewered one eye socket.

  Aidan stopped dead. Then he moved closer and bent over the body. There was no need to feel for a pulse. The owner of the House of the Hare was undeniably dead. The other eye was open, staring unseeing at the spring sky.

  He could not help it. He had done his share of selling news photographs. His first instinct was to reach for his camera. He had left it standing with his rucksack beside his chair, back there across the lawn. Yet his eye still composed the picture in front of him.

  The way the red quill matched the scarlet of the blood. The slight iridescence of the fluid escaping from the ruined eye. The mouth stretched in the rictus of shock.

  One part of his mind was appalled that he could think like this. Yet he recognized that this was what he did. Took photographs. And the instinct of professionalism saved him from the true horror in front of him. The imaginary lens and viewfinder sheltered him from the full blast of reality.

  It was only when he took his eyes away that he felt sick.

  Harry and Debbie had followed him back, more slowly. They stood a little way off. Debbie was crying. Harry had his arm around her shoulders.

  From far behind he heard Melangell’s high voice. “No, Mummy. You’re to go back. Daddy said so.”

  It was not strictly true, but he blessed her for it.

  It was a relief when Sian came running, not directly from the house but from the other end of the archery range. She was pale, but struggling to take control of the situation. Her khaki slacks and shirt gave the comforting impression of a uniform.

  “I rang the ambulance first. Then the kids told me it was no use. I’ve called the police. They have to come from Llanfyllin, so it will take them a while.”

  “There’s no need for you to stay,” Aidan told the young couple. “There’s nothing you can do. Go and get yourselves a hot drink.” To Sian: “I can stay with him, if you like. You’ll have things you need to see to.”

  None of them saw her coming. Lorna’s high shriek shocked Aidan, almost more than the sight of the dead man had. She had her hand to her mouth, biting her fingers. He noticed she had changed out of the torn shirt and stained jeans. She wore a grey, tight-fitting sweater and a black skirt. Eerily funereal. Beside her, a boy her age in a tartan shirt had his arm round her. He must be Euan, the gardener Jenny had told him about. Beyond the butts were the sheds where she had said the young pair had met.

  Sian went to Lorna. “You shouldn’t be here, love. Let me take you back to the house. This is a dreadful business. Dreadful.”

  “What…? Who did it?” The girl’s voice was shaking.

  “Goodness knows. That will be for the police to find out.”

  Sian’s arm was firm round the girl, steering her away.

  The little crowd was dispersing, leaving Aidan with the macabre remains. Only Euan stayed. He glared down at the prostrate form of his employer, with the arrow of death still upright in his skull.

  “He deserved it,” he muttered.

  Chapter Eight

  THE POLICEWOMAN CAME more quickly than Aidan had expected. He heard her talking to Sian as they came through the bushes.

  “I was in the area, ‘making enquiries’, as we say. Mine was the nearest car, so I got landed with it.”

  They came out on to the grass. She was a small dark woman.

  “Dear God!” She recovered her professionalism. “Well, you don’t need a degree in forensics to tell he’s dead, do you?” She held out her hand, then changed her mind and showed him her warrant card. “PC Watkins. Was it you who found the body?”

  “No. It was a couple of teenagers who are staying at the house.”

  “Harry Townsend and Debbie French,” Sian put in. “They were coming back from a walk on the hills and took a short cut through the grounds. A nice pair, but they’re a bit shaken up by this.”

  “I’m not surprised. Like King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, isn’t it?”

  “I said I’d stay around
until you came,” Aidan explained.

  “Good of you. Who do you think shot him?” PC Watkins turned to Sian. “Could it have been an accident? Someone missed the target and was too frightened to say?”

  Sian shook her head. “I’ve no idea. As far as I know, no one was shooting this afternoon. Nobody asked me for the key to the games shed.”

  “That would be where?”

  Sian pointed to the wooden building where Jenny had chosen her bow that morning. “I keep the key at reception. I suppose someone could have helped themselves.”

  Constable Watkins seemed to shake herself out of her train of thought. “I’m running ahead of myself. Whatever happened, he certainly didn’t die of natural causes. In fact, they might as well have put it straight through to CID as soon as they heard about it.”

  She drew out her radio.

  “I don’t know if you’ll get a signal,” Sian said. “We have trouble with mobile phones, because we’re pretty hemmed in by mountains. You can use the land line back in the house if you need to.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a hook-up to the system through my car radio set. And there are a couple of things I need from the car.”

  The policewoman looked at Aidan a little unhappily. “I’m sorry to land you with this again, sir. Would you mind staying with the body a little longer? I’ll be right back.” She disappeared with Sian.

  But it was not Watkins who relieved him of his macabre responsibility. Two uniformed policemen came striding up the archery range. A burly sergeant with pepper-and-salt hair and a lanky constable.

  “Sergeant Morris and PC Roberts. We’ll take over now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are you the CID? I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” He looked at their uniforms in surprise.

  “She’s called them in, has she?” snorted the sergeant. “At least she’s done something right. But you’d think she’d have the gumption to mark off the crime scene. Roberts, get some tape.”