by Fay Sampson
Sian looked up, her plump face serious. “No. He’s not saying anything. They’ve taken the tape away from the sports hut, but no one’s much in the mood for games.”
“Ridiculous,” snapped Jenny. “I know she didn’t do it.”
Aidan wondered at her vehemence.
Upstairs, Jenny stretched herself out on the bed for a rest. He looked down with concern. It had been a long excursion for her.
“Are you all right?”
“I will be.”
He took Melangell downstairs. They found a room at the end of the corridor with a ping-pong table. Melangell proved surprisingly good. It was not difficult to let her beat him. Once, at least.
When he returned to the bedroom an hour later, he was surprised to find Jenny standing by the window, looking sideways across the grounds.
“The inspector’s still here,” she said.
“He’ll be checking up on whatever his team here have discovered today. And all the others he’s got out on the case.”
She turned with sudden decision. “I think I’d like another go at the butts. I was beginning to get the feel of it again, last time.”
He stared at her in astonishment. “You’re not serious? After what’s happened?”
He saw the set of her jaw. “You heard Inspector Denbigh. He thinks because I’ve got terminal cancer I’m too frail to draw a bow in any serious way. I’m going to show him.”
“Jenny! You’ve got nothing to prove. What does it matter what he thinks?”
“It matters to me.”
Jenny borrowed the key from Sian, ignoring the manager’s shocked expression. The three of them made their way in strained silence to the now accessible shed. Jenny went straight for the corner where the yew bow stood. She held it for a while, stroking the polished wood. Then she straightened herself. She gave Melangell six red-and-white flighted arrows to carry. She walked outside.
“Do you want the wheelchair?” Aidan asked.
“No.”
He saw how she glanced sideways at the police room before she drew the bowstring back. If the inspector was there, he would have a clear sight of what she was doing.
The zing of the arrow startled him. He had not seen her fire.
“Hurray!” Melangell jumped up and down, clapping.
The arrow hung quivering in the bullseye.
Jenny fired again. Another hit. And another.
When Aidan next looked sideways, Chief Inspector Denbigh was standing on the step of the workshop, watching.
What is she doing? The questions were racing through Aidan’s mind. Is she just trying to prove a point of feminine pride, that she’s an archer to be reckoned with?
Or something more? Could she possibly be wanting the chief inspector to think that it might not have been Lorna Brown who fired the fatal shot? That for some unguessable reason, it might have been Jenny? His mind reeled.
She fired six arrows. Five of them found the bullseye. Melangell ran to retrieve them. She held them out to her mother.
“No. That’s enough.”
The inspector was walking across the path towards them, tossing his car keys. His bloodhound eyes were thoughtful.
“Very impressive,” he said. “I underrated you, Mrs Davison.”
Back in the bedroom, Aidan exploded.
“What were you playing at? Did you want him to arrest you? Instead of Lorna?”
“What if he did?” she said, defiantly. “How long does it take to prepare a murder trial? I’d be dead by then.”
He stared at her with incredulity. “You’d really do that? To protect her? But what possible motive could he think you had to kill Thaddaeus Brown? You’re not thinking straight.”
“You just said it yourself. To protect Lorna.”
His mouth fell open. He could find no words. He swallowed.
“For a girl you’d only met the day before?”
An expression of worry leaped into her eyes. “Aidan! I wasn’t serious. That inspector was so patronising. I just wanted to show him.”
“Show him! Oh, yes, you certainly did that. Whatever you may have meant by showing off, you realise that you’ve just added yourself to a very small list of suspects? Did you stop to think about Melangell? Knowing her mother went to her grave accused of manslaughter?”
“Manslaughter?” He saw Jenny wince. “Denbigh couldn’t really believe I killed Thaddaeus?”
He was appalled at himself for shouting at her like this, but he was driven by an irrational fear. The words came tumbling out before he could stop them.
“I had a nightmare last night. You were shooting from the wheelchair when Thaddaeus came out of the bushes onto the butts. You were startled. You let the arrow fly, but it went wide and hit him. What if your chief inspector has the same thought now?”
Her blue-grey eyes widened in shock. “Aidan! You can’t have suspected that? That I’d kill a man by accident and say nothing about it?”
It was too late to call the words back. “I told you. It was a nightmare. I never for a moment thought it was true.”
Her cheeks had paled. “But you’ve been carrying the thought around with you all day. That’s why you lost your temper with me.”
She turned away and disappeared into the bathroom.
Chapter Thirteen
AIDAN WAS VERY QUIET over the evening meal. Jenny felt stricken with guilt. She should not have indulged in such reckless showmanship.
She tried to keep up a bright conversation with Melangell, about the possibility of Lake Vyrnwy housing a monster like Loch Ness.
“But Loch Ness is a natural lake. Millions of years old. Lake Vyrnwy’s just a reservoir. They made it in the 1880s.”
“But a baby monster from Loch Ness could have walked there, Mummy. When it got big enough to leave home.”
Pangs of physical pain came at intervals. Jenny tried not to show it, but she knew Aidan would notice the tightening of her face.
But tonight he hardly looked at her. He was supping his watery soup without enthusiasm. Soup should be comfort food, Jenny thought. But it was not up to Josef’s usual standard. Just when they needed comforting.
“Something’s burning.” Melangell’s clear grey gaze was accusing, almost as if she blamed Jenny.
She was right. There was an acrid smell. Jenny looked up, over her daughter’s head. There was a haze of smoke through the hatch to the kitchen.
Sian jumped up from the table where she was dining alone. She sped into the kitchen. The diners could hear the sounds of argument with the cook. Then Sian’s voice rose higher.
“I’m upset! But I’ve got a job to do. So have you.”
Mair raised her eyebrows as she cleared the soup plates. “Sorry, folks. I think the ragout is on hold. Does anyone mind the vegetarian option?”
For a long time after that, Aidan sat silent, staring down at the tablecloth. There were no jokes with Melangell about their missing supper, no comments to Jenny about the strain the staff must be under.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he answered, curtly.
It was some twenty minutes later when Mair appeared with plates of a rather pedestrian cheese pasta.
“I’m demanding a discount,” Colin Ewart announced to the whole dining room, “or there’ll be trouble.”
Harry and Debbie had their heads bent close together over the table. They were talking in low voices. Occasionally they darted nervous glances at Sian.
Jenny suddenly noticed a happy smile spreading over Melangell’s face. It seemed incongruous among so much sadness and tension. She turned her head to follow her daughter’s eyes.
In the doorway of the dining room stood the slight figure of Lorna Brown.
Sian leapt to her feet with a strangled cry. She bounded across the room and hugged Lorna.
“You’re back! They let you go?”
Lorna’s quiet voice came across the intently listening dining room. “Insufficient evidence. They cou
ldn’t charge me.”
“I should think not, indeed! I don’t know how they could even think of suspecting you.”
Lorna pushed the waves of black hair from her pale face. “Someone did it, Sian. They have to find him. Or her.”
A troubled glance passed between the two women.
Jenny turned back to the table to find Aidan’s gaze directed, not at the two in the doorway, but at her. She dared not interpret the look of anguish in his eyes.
Lorna was alone in the dining room, finishing her meal.
Sian came through the lounge with a distracted air, but with a lighter spring to her step. Jenny put out a hand to stop her as she passed them.
“What will happen to Lorna now? Does she have a family? Where are her parents?”
Sian’s face became grave. “Thaddaeus was all she had, poor kid. Her parents broke up when she was small. I get the impression it was a messy divorce. She lost touch with her father years ago. Doesn’t know if he’s still in the country. Her mother was Thaddaeus’s sister. Well, half-sister.”
“I thought he and Lorna didn’t look much alike.”
“No. She’s a real Welsh beauty, isn’t she? That black hair and delicate skin. But Thaddaeus was handsome in his own way. His mother was from Antigua.”
“Where’s Lorna’s mother now?”
Sian sighed. “She died, three years ago. Appointed Thaddaeus as Lorna’s guardian. Since then, he’s been training her to join him in his business.”
“So what will happen now? She doesn’t look much more than sixteen.”
“She’s eighteen.”
“Still, I imagine this isn’t his only business interest. How can a teenager handle all that?”
The manager shrugged. “She’ll manage, I hope. If only because my future depends on her making a success of this. There was something about a trust fund. Anyway, now that Lorna’s back, we can get on to Thaddaeus’s solicitor and read the will. Excuse me, will you? You’ve no idea how much there is to do, with all this happening. I don’t know how I’d have managed if Mair hadn’t come back to help.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stopped you.”
“That’s all right. I’m only sorry it’s spoilt your holiday.”
“And that’s an understatement,” said Colin Ewart, loudly. “‘Ruined’ would be more like it.”
“I’ve said I’m sorry, Mr Ewart. What more can I do?”
The colour was high in Sian’s cheeks as she left the room.
Jenny looked across at Aidan, who was playing Snap with Melangell. Just for a moment, it might have been any normal holiday scene. But the eyes he raised to hers were still troubled.
“I think I’ll go and have a word with Lorna. She looks awfully small and lonely there.”
She went back into the almost empty dining room. The kitchen door was closed, but she could make out Mair’s voice, still irrepressibly cheerful. She wished she could hear what Josef was saying.
Lorna sat at the table by the window, a slight figure against the backdrop of mountains beyond the lawns. She was peeling an apple, her heart-shaped face intent upon the trivial task.
“Is it OK if I join you?”
The girl’s intense blue eyes were wary as she looked up. But she smiled politely. “Help yourself.”
Jenny was not quite sure whether that referred to the wooden fruit bowl on the table, or the chair opposite the girl. She eased herself into it. The pain in her abdomen was worse this evening. But talking to Lorna was better than retiring to bed and being alone with her thoughts and her invaded body.
“I’m terribly sorry about what happened. It would have been awful, anyway, but to be arrested yourself on top of that, when you’re completely on your own…”
“They found me a solicitor.”
It occurred to Jenny that Thaddaeus had been the kind of man who would have hired the best lawyer for her, not left her to the care of a duty solicitor. But even if Lorna was his heir, she couldn’t get her hands on that money yet.
If there was money. Aidan had seemed sure that this venture of the House of the Hare must have left Thaddaeus hugely in debt. Yet how did they know what other enterprises he might have had, which could still have left Lorna a rich woman?
She tore her thoughts away from money to the vulnerable human being across the table from her.
“Sian said you’d lost your parents. I’m sorry. It must be hard to face this without family.”
The girl’s face showed little emotion. “I’ve got used to it. I haven’t seen my father since I was five. Mum died three years ago. Cancer.”
Jenny’s tongue was stilled.
An expression of consternation animated Lorna’s eyes then. “Oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said that. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Jenny managed a small smile. “Partly. There used to be a cancer centre for women here. Something to do with the shrine and the yews. But Aidan and I fell in love with the whole ambience of the place. We wrote a book about it. Well, I wrote the words and Aidan did the photographs. They’re selling it in the church shop.”
“That’s great,” Lorna said, with enthusiasm. The blue eyes deepened their intensity. “That’s why I did it. Made Thaddaeus build this place, so that people like you could come and stay here.”
“It was your idea? Not his? This House of the Hare?”
The girl nodded. “My mum and I came here once. To Pennant Melangell, I mean. The church. This house wasn’t built then. It didn’t cure her, but I think she found a sort of peace. She always remembered it.”
Jenny said softly, “I understand. We wanted to bring Melangell here. To show her what it meant to us. So she’ll always remember why we gave her her name.” Lorna was looking with concern. Jenny made a crooked smile. “I probably only have months to live.”
“And here’s me thinking I was the one with problems. I’m terribly sorry.”
“No, you’re right. In a way, I’ve solved my problems. God and I have come to an agreement about that. He’s going to hold my hand.” She smiled, a little shamefacedly. Would she embarrass Lorna by talking about her faith? But the girl’s mother had also found peace at the shrine.
“Were you and Thaddaeus close?” She knew she was treading on dangerous ground.
“I lived with him. Since she died.” Lorna’s head was bent now, her words hard to distinguish.
“He must have loved you a lot, to build this house for you. To make your dreams come true.”
Lorna’s knuckles tightened on the knife she held.
“Yes,” she said, dully. “I suppose he did.”
There were many more questions Jenny wanted to ask, but to press Lorna further would be inexcusably intrusive.
Instead, she put out her hand impulsively and clasped the girl’s. “I know we’ve only just met. But if there’s anything I can do… If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind. I’ve got Sian.” Her face was closed.
Jenny stood up. “I’ll say goodnight, then. I’m glad you’re back. I suppose the police will need to start asking more questions now.”
“You’d better be careful, then. Sian says you’re a very good shot with that bow.”
Those startling blue eyes looked clearly at her now. Jenny turned in confusion and made for the lounge.
As she entered, she found Aidan was watching her, too.
Jenny lay in bed, watching Aidan undress.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “It was stupid of me.”
Aidan had his back to her. She saw his wiry body still.
“What was?”
“Drawing attention to my archery in front of the inspector.”
There was a difficult silence. Then, “What, exactly, were you trying to tell him?”
She wished he would turn and look at her. Smile, even. She picked at the edge of the sheet. The pain was worse tonight.
“I told you. Showing off what I could d
o. My pride was hurt. And, well, yes, letting him know that Lorna isn’t the only one who was capable of firing that arrow.”
He turned round slowly. His foxy hair was rumpled, where he had pulled his sweater off. His eyes were penitent.
“It was my fault. I never meant to tell you about that nightmare.”
She raised herself on one elbow. “Aidan. Inspector Denbigh wouldn’t seriously think I could have killed him, would he?”
He bent to pick up his pyjamas. His voice came muffled. “How do I know what he thinks, when you march out on to the butts in front of him and show him just how far you can fire an arrow? It must have looked as if you wanted him to see something.”
The enormity of what he was suggesting sank home to her. She stared at him over the duvet.
“He’d think… It’s been more than twenty-four hours, and he’d think that all this time I’d have said nothing?” Her eyes begged him for a denial. “You don’t really think he’ll arrest me? Aidan, we’ve got so little time. Melangell…”
He came hurrying round to her side of the bed. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t want to upset you.”
There were tears on her cheeks. She could not look at him. She felt his hand on her shoulder. He bent and kissed her, tentatively, as if afraid of her reaction.
The last security of her world dropped away. The folly of her pride came swooping in to overshadow her with dark wings. She had taunted the inspector with the vision, not of a frail individual with only months to live, but of a confident woman still strong enough to draw a bow and find her mark. It had not occurred to her that she might be jeopardising the last few weeks she had with Melangell and Aidan.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“The chief inspector’s an intelligent man. We have to trust him.”
Aidan got into bed. She kept her eyes closed and her back turned to him, staring into an inner darkness. She felt his arm fold comfortingly over her.
Chapter Fourteen
DCI DENBIGH RETURNED even before the Davisons had finished breakfast. They joined the group reassembling in the lounge.
Jenny watched the detective chief inspector with apprehension. She was momentarily startled to meet Euan Jones again. She had not seen the young gardener since the day of the murder. He took the chair behind Lorna, as if wanting to be close to her, but too shy to sit openly by her side.
