by Fay Sampson
Aidan saw a lid of crumbling metal. There was the faintest rattle of something inside.
“What is it?” Melangell begged. “Is it the hare? It is, isn’t it?”
“Try and see,” Lorna said.
Melangell’s hand removed the lid reverently. She gave a cry of dismay as it fell into two.
Aidan fought back the alarm that said they should not be doing this. They should leave it to the experts.
But Melangell set the fragments aside and reached in. Dirt trickled through her fingers as she drew out a tiny bone. She laid it in her palm and looked down at it in wonder.
Lorna’s hand followed hers, and lifted out a small, blunt skull.
Even Aidan felt the magic of that moment.
Now Lorna looked up, challenging them. “You saw it, didn’t you? You saw me dig it out of the ground. The first time for thousands of years. You can witness that I’m not making it up.”
“Of course,” murmured Parkinson, “we don’t know how it got in the ground. You seemed to knew exactly where to dig.”
She threw him a withering glance. “I told you you wouldn’t understand.”
Aidan’s mind was a mass of confusion. He was still trying to get over the shock of believing that Lorna had abducted Melangell to do her harm. That she was Thaddaeus’s killer. But was she mad? Or had she deliberately tricked them here to provide just the independent witnesses she needed for her discovery?
And did this have anything to do with Caradoc Lewis’s bizarre visit to the museum he had sold? Was this what had been in the boxes he had snatched from under the nose of the unfortunate curator? Had he planted this find? Or… could it be genuine?
But first and foremost, there was the overwhelming joy that Melangell was safe.
Lincoln turned to him. “Sorry, sir. I’m not really into archaeology.”
“If it’s what it seems to be, it’s the burial of the remains of a hare. Two or three thousand years old. Probably a sacrifice. Hares were always sacred in this valley.”
“I’ll leave that to the experts. This young lady has a lot to answer for, taking your kid away like that. If it was one of mine, I’d have been having kittens. But she doesn’t seem to have come to any harm. And Caradoc Lewis isn’t here. He’s the one I thought we were after. I was banking on finding all three of them together…” His voice trailed off. Aidan saw his colour pale. Already he had started to stride back along the path, almost running.
Aidan darted after him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I hope. But I’m asking myself where Caradoc Lewis is now.” He threw an angry glance over his shoulder. “Did she have orders to get us away from the house? Is that what all this performance is about?” He was actually running now. “Meanwhile, I’m afraid we’ve left your wife alone at the house. Just what we warned you never to do.”
Aidan nearly lost his balance. He looked back in dismay.
Parkinson had swept up Melangell in his long arms and was running after them.
The small figure of Lorna Brown stood at the foot of the falls, the urn of hare bones in her arms.
They were back at Caradoc Lewis’s house and their cars. Lincoln was just opening the driver’s door when he smote the heel of his hand against his head.
“Idiot! We came haring out here because your wife remembered something that meant Lorna could have murdered Thaddaeus. And she’d got Melangell. But we were so keen to get the kid back that we’ve left Lorna behind. And she’s back in our sights as prime suspect now.”
“Beg pardon, Sarge,” Parkinson panted as he set Melangell down. “She doesn’t know we’re on to her. She thinks this is all about snatching the kid. No reason for her not to come back to the house in her own good time. Thank God the kid’s not hurt.”
“You don’t think Jenny’s in danger from Caradoc Lewis, then?” Aidan was bundling Melangell into his car.
“It’s all right, Daddy. I can do it myself.” She snatched back the safety belt.
“Whatever it is they’re up to, they’re in this together. I’m sure of it. I haven’t a clue about this hare bones stuff, but it has to be connected. Get back to the falls,” Lincoln ordered Parkinson. “Don’t alarm her. Just say we’d like her to come in for questioning. Make her think it’s just about Melangell.”
“Will do.” Parkinson set off at a loping run.
Lincoln and Aidan’s cars sped away towards the road.
Not far down the track, Aidan saw a black car racing towards them. There was no room to pass. Yet still the other car came on at speed. Aidan peered past the blue flank of Lincoln’s vehicle. With a sense of inevitability he recognized the Jaguar.
One hand on the wheel, Lincoln’s other hand shot out of the window and clamped a blue light to the roof of his unmarked car. He sounded the siren. It seemed an age that the cars hurtled towards each other, before the Jaguar reluctantly stopped. Lincoln was forced to slam on his brakes to avoid colliding with it. Conscious of the precious burden of Melangell in the passenger seat, Aidan had already slowed.
DS Lincoln was flashing his warrant card and shouting, “Police! Back up! I want you off this track in two seconds.”
The window of the Jaguar was wound down. Aidan could neither see the men inside or hear what they said. He inched closer.
It was the purplish, spectacled face of Mr Secker at the driver’s window.
“We need to see Mr Lewis urgently. About Mr Brown’s estate.”
“He’s not there. And God knows what he’s doing while our backs are turned. Back off, or I’ll have you on a charge.”
To Aidan’s relief, the Jaguar gave way, as it had not done for the Davisons on Monday. At speed, and accurately, the black car reversed along the way it had come. Presently it reached an indentation by a field gate and drew over. Lincoln and Aidan sped past.
Through the lowered driver’s window, past Secker, Aidan had a glimpse of Mr McCarthy’s slick blond hair. The pair were staring curiously at him.
What are they doing here, he wondered, heading for Caradoc Lewis’s house?
With a jolt of unease, he looked up at the Jaguar again, now a small black dot in his rear-view mirror.
Thaddaeus had not had time to change his will. Secker and McCarthy now had their hands on Lorna’s trust fund. Whatever feud there had been between Thaddaeus and Caradoc Lewis about the use of land in this valley, the two financiers would continue it. So what could have made Lorna kill her uncle before he signed the codicil that would give her freedom?
But the nearer he got to the House of the Hare, the greater his fear was growing for what might be happening to Jenny. How far might Caradoc go to protect Lorna? The pain of the thought of losing Jenny was all the more intense because there was so little time left. In a few months, he really would lose her, finally. It was no use telling himself that death was not a permanent loss. That was not how it felt now.
The police were with her, weren’t they? PC Watkins was searching the house. Others were combing the grounds. He tried not to let himself think that by now they would have checked every hiding place. They would not have found Melangell. How long before the search moved on beyond the grounds, leaving Jenny alone in the House of the Hare?
Chapter Thirty-one
JENNY WAS FILLED WITH overwhelming anger. How dare Lorna do this to her? Wasn’t it bad enough that she was dying, facing the premature loss of everything she held dear on earth? Did Lorna have to snatch away the last few precious months that Jenny could have with Melangell?
Dismay struck her. How could she be thinking of herself when Melangell’s life was in danger?
She ran into the house, pushing aside the pain and weariness that had been threatening to engulf her. It took only a second to decide where she needed to go.
Running up the shallow golden stairs, surprising herself that she had not thought about using the lift. Down the corridor, the way she remembered hearing those running footsteps.
Lorna’s bedroom door stood open. PC Watkins was
just coming out.
“No luck, I’m afraid.”
Jenny pushed past her. The room was light and airy, even at the end of an overcast afternoon. Unlike Jenny and Aidan’s, it faced east, down the valley of the Tanat, to where the sky opened out between two walls of hills. The white candlewick bedspread had been pulled aside in PC Watkins’ search. Jenny knew she would have checked the wardrobes. All the same, she rifled through the hangers and the chest of drawers. Even pulled out Lorna’s suitcase and opened that. No sign of the white shirt with torn buttons that Aidan had seen Lorna wearing as she ran from the waterfall. The shirt she must have been wearing when she killed Thaddaeus.
Had she buried it? Burned it? Thrown it out with the rubbish?
The fact that it was missing chilled the heat of Jenny’s anger. That she had destroyed it made it all the more certain it had carried evidence of her uncle’s blood.
And Lorna had Melangell.
A tiny voice of common sense asked why Lorna should want to keep a torn shirt. She was surely not a girl who needed to mend her clothes.
It didn’t cancel the fear Jenny felt.
The awful tiredness was creeping up on her again. She was not sure how much longer she could keep going. The room was beginning to swim. But she had to find Melangell.
The Ewarts’ room was empty, stripped. Other unused bedrooms stood ready for guests. Should she search the floor above, where Chief Inspector Denbigh and his sergeant Lincoln had their rooms? And which was Sian’s room, and Josef’s? She did not know.
PC Watkins seemed to be doing a thorough job of checking the house. If Melangell was here, she would have found her.
Jenny was tempted to go into her own room, close the door, lie down on the bed and sleep. Shut out this violent world in the hope that when she woke up everything would be normal again. Melangell would be back.
She would be well.
She made herself walk past and down the stairs.
Marcus Coutts was waiting in the foyer. His eyes lit up when he saw her.
“It’s the little girl this time, is it? How old was she? Seven?”
Jenny stared at him in horror and grasped the banister to steady herself.
“You! Who told you?”
The knowledge hit her. There could only be one way the headline-seeking reporter could have been on the scene of Thaddaeus’s murder so quickly. And now, less than an hour after they realized Melangell was missing.
“Josef! Josef’s been telling you, hasn’t he? For money. You’ve been paying him for information about everything that’s been going on here.”
“I couldn’t possibly say, darling. My sources are confidential. We journalists have our standards.”
She wanted to strike him across the face.
“Do you have a photograph of her?” He held up his hands to restrain her anger. “Could be helping yourself, you know. Picture of her on all the front pages. Anyone seen this girl? Last seen in company of murder suspect. Grieving parents appeal for help.”
The camera was on her in close-up before she could stop him.
She stormed past him, willing herself to stay upright. The kitchen door was at the end of the ground-floor corridor. She threw it open.
Josef had evidently been startled in the middle of preparing supper. Chopped vegetables on the central work table made a shout of brilliant colour. Orange carrots, green courgettes, red beetroot. A wickedly sharp knife lay dropped on the chopping board.
Did that mean Josef had fled?
She gripped the table for support.
Of course not. He would be out searching for Melangell, like everyone else. As she should be.
She could not help herself. She needed to sit down.
There was a kitchen stool, higher and less comfortable than she wanted. She subsided on to it.
She heard some distant calls from the search party, now some distance from the house. They did not have the urgency of something discovered.
The house was silent now. She could not hear PC Watkins. Where had Marcus Coutts gone?
There were footsteps approaching the door. She looked up in apprehension. Was he following her?
It was Sian who came into the kitchen, brisk and purposeful. When she saw Jenny, her rounded features lit up in a strangely satisfied smile.
“So that’s where you’re hiding.”
Jenny jumped to her feet with hope. “Have you found her? Is she safe?”
“I think there’s something you need to come and see.”
Immediately, Jenny’s emotions tipped the other way, making her sway. She could hardly speak. “What do you mean? What have they found?” Her eyes begged Sian for reassurance.
The other woman’s face looked businesslike, neither soothing nor confirming Jenny’s worst fears. “See for yourself.”
As if in a dream, Jenny accompanied her down the long corridor. Sian led her past the dining room and the lounge, across the foyer, and on into the corridor on the western side of the house, where Jenny had not been before.
At the end was a side door. It opened on to a path overhung by a tall laurel hedge. The glossy leaves were wet, though the rain had stopped some time ago. There was a smell of damp earth.
As Sian turned right, there was a glimpse of bright green grass. For a moment, Jenny thought it was the lawn outside the lounge, where Aidan and Melangell had played croquet. But as they came nearer, she saw with a small shock that it was the archery range. The lawn was hidden from them by another bank of shrubs.
This, she thought with sudden awareness, must have been the way that Lorna came in pursuit of Thaddaeus.
The sick tension was growing. In the bushes at the other end of the range was the spot where Thaddaeus had been found stabbed with an arrow. “Please, God!” she prayed. “Let it not be Melangell this time.”
The door of the sports equipment hut hung open. Lorna had indeed started to give Melangell an archery lesson. The golden yew bow lay dropped on the grass. Beside it were three arrows, fletched with two red feathers and one white.
Jenny was feeling dizzy now. Everything had a sense of unreality. When Sian motioned to her, she followed obediently into the hut. A distant part of her brain was warning her of what she might see inside. She could no longer believe this was happening to her, here, now, in the real world.
“Have you told the police?” she managed to whisper.
Something was stirring in her brain, calling her back to awareness. She looked around the hut. Bows, croquet mallets, tennis and badminton racquets. She had seen them all before. Her eyes raked the shadows for something new and sinister, and found nothing.
Baffled, she turned to Sian and found the manager staring at her with a strange smile on her face. In her hands she held a coil of bowstring.
“Appropriate, don’t you think?”
In a second, the string was round Jenny’s throat.
Jenny fought then, using what little strength she had left. She tried to claw the string loose.
Sian whipped her arms behind her in a painful lock. Jenny was gasping for breath. The noose was tight, but Sian had let go of it for a moment. Jenny found herself manhandled backwards and lifted on to a box. Sian’s strength matched the bushranger outfit she wore.
Jenny looked up, and found to her horror that the other end of the cord was already slung over a beam above her head.
“What are you doing? Where’s Melangell?” she choked.
“Oh, don’t worry. Melangell’s safe. It’s you who’s the problem. You’re the only witness to the time Lorna got back.”
“Aidan’s… told… Sergeant Lincoln.” She could barely gasp the words through the increasing pain. Sian was hauling on the cord, drawing it tighter. Black spots were swimming in front of Jenny’s eyes.
“Hearsay, once you’re dead. And your mind was unbalanced. Who’s going to believe you?”
Gathering all her strength, Jenny kicked out. Sian stumbled sideways. For a moment, the pressure on Jenny’s neck lightened.
Her hands were freed, but Sian was now behind her. The cord was in her grip again.
“You can’t get away. I could have killed you already with the pressure point in your neck. No trace. I’d have murdered Thaddaeus for her, if that little fool Lorna had told me straight away what he did to her. He thought he could buy her, body and soul. I’d have got rid of him without resorting to an arrow in his eye.”
Lorna? Jenny groaned. She really had killed her uncle. And it sounded as if Thaddaeus had abused her. The confirmation came too late.
“But that way, the post-mortem would find out you were dead before you hung. This way is better.”
Sian grunted and stepped back. Jenny knew the cord was secure now. She could feel the tension round her choking throat almost lifting her off the box. All that it would need would be for Sian to kick the box away. Jenny would be left hanging, fighting for breath, strangling on a length of the same bowstring she had pulled so confidently three days ago.
A shaft of hope. The police outpost was less than a bowshot away. Someone from there would come by.
Then bitter disappointment. The officers were all out searching for Melangell. They had moved beyond the grounds of the house. No one would stop this.
Her hands were straining for her constricted throat. She could not move them. She had not been aware of the moment when Sian had tied them behind her back. Something soft, that would not leave marks on her wrists. She saw the scenario moments before Sian told her, in that brisk, capable voice of a former PE teacher.
“It will be understandable, if painful, for your family. You saw the end coming. More pain. More weakness. You were a fit woman before the cancer. You couldn’t face the thought of a slow decline. Once they were out of the way, you decided to end it quickly. Probably the shock of Melangell’s disappearance upset the balance of your mind. Your testimony will be worthless. I’ve sworn I saw Lorna arriving back forty minutes later.”
Jenny wanted to scream that it wasn’t like that. That she had accepted the fact of her death and had been going towards it as serenely as she could. That she trusted in God to accompany her through the last shadows. That she had already had talks with Hospicecare, who had promised her a peaceful and painless final journey. That she would never have taken her own life.
