by Pam Weaver
Ernest became agitated. ‘I’ve got to tell you …’ he said looking at Kipper, ‘about Danny …’ He began to cough.
‘You really must rest,’ the nurse insisted.
‘We’ll come back when you’re feeling better,’ Kipper soothed.
Ann put the brown paper bag back into the locker as the nurse stood over him with two pills on a small tray. Obediently, Ernest took them one by one, washing them down with a sip of water.
‘You do realise, he’s very poorly, don’t you?’ said the nurse quietly behind her hand. She raised her voice to speak directly to her patient. ‘Good man. Now you lie back and try and get some sleep.’
Kipper walked briskly to the door. ‘Goodnight, Mr Franks.’
Ernest didn’t acknowledge him. He had closed his eyes and was relaxed on the pillow. Ann couldn’t resist leaning over him and giving him a feather-like kiss on his cheek. ‘Goodnight, Ernest.’
Ernest Franks sighed. ‘Night, Eileen, love …’ ‘you will come back, won’t you? You must know … Danny …’ His eyes closed and he drifted into sleep.
On the way home, PC Kipling was apologetic. ‘I shouldn’t have taken you there. I had no idea what he was going to say but I would ask you to keep this to yourself.’
‘It’s all a bit worrying, isn’t it?’ said Ann. ‘Especially now that Dottie and Patsy have gone missing.’
‘Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill,’ said Kipper. ‘We don’t know that they are missing.’ Ann sat grim-faced. ‘What about Ernest?’
Kipper shrugged. ‘I will report it to my superiors but, despite what he’s just told us, he’s unreliable. Half the time he’s away with the fairies, isn’t he?’
They had reached Mary Prior’s place. ‘Thanks for dropping me back,’ said Ann.
‘Don’t forget,’ he reminded her, ‘this is strictly between ourselves.’
As she jumped out of the car, Ann couldn’t help feeling very worried about Dottie and Patsy.
Thirty-Seven
Mary listened open-mouthed as Ann told her what had happened at the hospital. Once Edna turned up, the whole story was repeated verbatim.
‘I can’t see how we can do it,’ said Mary. ‘I mean, I don’t want to sound melodramatic, hen, but even if everything is all right, who’s to say she’ll be back by Saturday?’
Edna shrugged. ‘She’ll probably walk in here, right as rain at any minute.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about those chickens,’ said Ann.
‘Whoever killed them,’ said Edna. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t Dottie.’
‘Like Vince said, it was the work of a madman.’ They glanced around at each other nervously.
‘Do you think Kipper will keep looking for her?’ Ann asked.
Mary nodded. ‘He’d make a good detective.’
They all stared miserably into their teacups. ‘We can’t just leave it to him,’ said Mary. ‘One of us ought to go and look for her.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Ann. ‘I’m a single mum. Can’t go traipsing around the country, and besides, where would I start?’
‘Nor me. I’ve got five kids and a husband,’ Mary reminded them.
‘I would if I could, dear,’ said Edna. ‘But my old rheumatics …’
‘Then what we need,’ Mary said, ‘is someone who has plenty of time and nothing much to do.’
There was a second of silence before everyone looked up.
‘Sylvie,’ they chorused.
‘Mummy,’ said Brian, bursting into the kitchen. ‘That man is outside Auntie Dottie’s house again.
John Landers was pushing a letter through the letterbox at Myrtle Cottage. He had written formally and addressed it to Mr and Mrs Cox. In it he had told them that he had just been passing the area and had called in on the off-chance that he might see Patricia. After that he wrote the usual sort of keeping-in-touch letter, asking after their health and Patricia’s welfare. Even though John felt honour-bound to make quite sure that the child was well, he had made his enquiry as light-hearted as possible for two good reasons. If Dottie, as he supposed by yesterday’s shenanigans, had left her husband, Reg Cox wouldn’t feel in any way threatened by his visit. But if the three of them had simply gone on holiday, as everyone else supposed, they would be quick to reply, having the need to apologise for his wasted journey.
The collapsed well had now been roped off and the police had satisfied themselves that no one had fallen down the shaft.
While sitting by the open fire in the pub last night, John overheard some of the locals talking. Everyone was puzzled by the Coxs’ disappearance. It was, the regulars agreed, totally out of character. Rumour had it that the detective sergeant and the detective constable hadn’t been too happy about being dragged out to the village to deal with a bag containing a few dead chickens weighted down with a hammer, and after that, there had been a lot of laughter revolving around eating kippers and chicken soup.
John Landers couldn’t help feeling that if the Coxs had been moneyed people, the crime of kidnapping would have been uppermost in the mind of the law enforcement officers. But, to give him his due, PC Kipling had tried to persuade the DC that he should mount an investigation. As soon as the bag had been retrieved, with (it had to be said) a great deal of open hostility and ridicule aimed towards the village bobby, the scaffolding planks had been left for safety’s sake.
‘Excuse me.’ A neighbour looked over the fence. John recognised her from the day before.
‘Good morning,’ he smiled affably. ‘Mrs Pearce, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
John raised his hat. ‘Any news of Mr and Mrs Cox?’
Ann shook her head and John Landers became conscious of two other women standing by Ann’s back door. ‘I don’t know if you know,’ he went on, ‘but I accompanied Patricia from Australia.’
‘We guessed who you were,’ she said, ‘although from what Dottie said, we thought you would be a lot older.’
‘And not so good looking,’ Mary muttered near Edna’s ear.
‘I wonder if I might have a word with you?’ John asked.
‘We’re not much for gossiping, if you know what I mean,’ said Ann, looking around at her friends.
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to,’ he said. ‘And I’m not at liberty to discuss confidentialities but as friends of Mrs Cox, I wondered if you might be able to throw some light on the matter.’
‘We all reckon,’ said Ann cautiously, ‘there’s something funny going on.’
Dottie felt the bed dip but she didn’t open her eyes. Her head felt as if it weighed as much as a sewing machine and her mouth tasted like the bottom of a parrot cage. A sickly sweet smell drifted towards her but she couldn’t work out what it was.
She heard Reg say, ‘She says she can’t sell the place. She can’t do bloody anything until she’s thirty.’
Dottie breathed in a waft of stale cheap perfume. It wasn’t one she used but she had smelled it before.
‘All tied up, eh?’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Then if you ask me, lover, she’s worth more to you dead than alive.’
Sitting in Ann’s kitchen, John listened to Dottie’s friends as they told him how much Dottie meant to them. Ann told him in glowing terms how Dottie helped her get a job which enabled her to pull herself back out of the gutter and Mary and Edna shared a few wartime experiences on the farm. Finally, Mary told him about Dottie’s love for Patsy, as they all called her.
As they talked, it dawned on John that he had fallen in love with Dottie. The revelation almost took the wind out of him, but something told him that it must remain a secret for the time being. It had probably begun when he was untangling her hair from the tree branch and even now, as he remembered, his heart ached for her. Her blue-green eyes, her soft mouth, her hair … such a lovely colour, like burnished bronze. His daydream was sweet. Her hair must be quite long. He wondered what it would be like when it wasn’t tied up in that rather severe bun. He even remembered her smell. H
e never had been a man for heavy perfume, but his head felt light as he thought of her natural fragrance. She wore lipstick, but not too much, and he could even remember the laughter lines around her eyes …
Yes, her friends were absolutely right. Dottie wasn’t the sort of woman to go off without telling anyone. She was kind and considerate. She would know that people would worry. And she certainly wouldn’t risk losing her job.
Everything became very quiet. He was aware that they were all looking at him. John blinked and cleared his throat noisily. ‘And what about Mr Cox?’
‘He doesn’t think very much of me,’ said Ann. ‘I keep out of his way.’
‘He’s a dark one, that one,’ said Mary. ‘He gave her a black eye once.’
John’s blood ran cold. What an idiot he’d been. A dark one … a black eye … He should have insisted on proper background checks before he’d left Patricia with Reg Cox. He shouldn’t have listened to Brenda’s protestations that everything would be all right. His chest was filled with rage.
Edna had gasped in horror. ‘Reg gave Dottie a black eye? You never said.’
‘It wasn’t my place to,’ said Mary crisply. ‘Anyway, she tried to make out it wasn’t much. But I told her, no matter what you do, there’s no cause for a man to hit a woman, isn’t that right, Doctor? Anyway, she said he’d never done it before, and it was an accident. She reckoned he just got a bit upset about the little girl, that’s all.’
‘Upset?’ John interrupted crossly. ‘Why was he upset?’
‘Because of the way she looks, I suppose,’ said Mary shaking her head. ‘You people are supposed to tell the parents about the child they’re adopting, aren’t you? I can’t think why you adoption people never told him she had coloured blood in her. He should have been told before they sent her.’
They were all nodding in agreement. Clearly they had no idea that Patricia was supposed to be Reg’s natural offspring, but they were unanimous about Reg’s dislike of the child. His mind drifted back to Dottie. What was it like for her living with Reg?
‘Are they happily married?’ he asked, although he could hardly bear to hear the answer.
Mary shrugged. ‘She’s pregnant.’
John said nothing but it felt like the bottom had fallen out of his world. He’d thought … hoped, that she no longer had relations with Reg.
Edna and Ann gasped. ‘What? Are you serious?’
Mary nodded. ‘She’s having Reg’s baby.’
‘After all this time,’ Edna said slowly, ‘I don’t know whether to be happy or sad.’
‘I’d top myself if I was having his kid,’ said Ann ominously.
John smiled grimly. ‘Could they have gone to visit relatives?’
‘Dottie came to live with Bessie because she didn’t have a soul in the world,’ said Mary. ‘And I can’t honestly say as I’ve ever seen any of Reg’s relatives, have you?’
Ann and Edna shook their heads.
‘And if she was going away, she would have asked me to look after the chickens,’ Ann insisted. ‘She loved those birds.’
‘PC Kipling believes Mrs Cox killed the chickens.’
‘Dottie wouldn’t do that,’ said Edna. ‘She would only kill a chicken if it was going to be eaten – and before you suggest they might have been diseased, let me tell you, I’ve looked at them very carefully and there’s nothing wrong with those fowl.’
‘That’s right,’ Mary went on. ‘It’s such a waste. Have you seen the price of chicken these days? Dottie would have put them on somebody’s doorstep if she didn’t want to eat them. She wouldn’t chuck them down the well. Those birds would have made a nice meal for someone.’
‘What about a fox?’ asked John. ‘There’s talk that one might have got into the henhouse.’
Edna shook her head. ‘And I’m telling you, no fox has been at those chickens.’
John regarded them carefully. ‘You think Mr Cox did it, don’t you?’
There was an awkward silence and then Ann said, ‘The truth of it is, Dr Landers, we’ve all got a really bad feeling about all this.’
Edna nodded. ‘Something has happened to them. I can feel it in me water.’
‘I’m not sure exactly what I can do,’ said John, reaching for his hat. He stood to go. ‘But I’ll ask around. The trouble is, I’m not sure where to start.’
Thanking them for their time, he made his way back to his room at the Warnes Hotel. He was glad to have met with Dottie’s friends but their concern only served to fan the flame of his own terrible sense of foreboding.
Thirty-Eight
When John walked into the Jolly Farmer that night, a large crowd of regulars were huddled noisily around the fireplace. Above the chatter, John could hear someone, a man, sobbing. The landlord, Terry Dore, pushed past him with a double whisky in his hand.
‘Glad to see you, Doc,’ he said. ‘Could you have a butcher’s at one of my regulars? He’s had a bit of a shock.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t got my bag with me,’ John apologised. ‘But I’ll take a look.’
He followed the landlord into the confused mêlée.
‘Here you are, son,’ said Terry holding out the whisky. ‘Get that down your neck, and then the doc here wants to take a look at you.’
‘I’d prefer it if I could look at him before he drinks alcohol,’ John interrupted.
The landlord stepped aside and John Landers was suddenly face to face with a tear-stained Reg Cox. They both blinked at each other in surprise.
Reg was very dishevelled. His hair was wild and his coat splattered with mud. The collar of his shirt was greasy and clearly needed changing.
John spoke first, his tone measured. ‘Everyone has been very concerned about you and your family, Mr Cox.’
Reg said nothing.
‘The landlord wants me to give you a quick look, if you don’t mind.’
He caught hold of Reg’s limp wrist and began counting his pulse. There didn’t appear to be anything physically wrong with the man but he was clearly distraught about something. When John had finished his examination, it took a couple of glasses of Terry Dore’s best malt whisky before Reg could stop shaking. ‘Have you come to see my Patsy?’ he asked John.
‘Yes, I have. Where is she?’
Reg’s face crumpled. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
John struggled to make sense of what he was saying when Terry took the words out of his mouth.
‘What yer mean, you don’t know?’ Terry demanded.
‘She’s been taken.’
‘Taken? Taken where?’
‘I don’t know,’ Reg whimpered.
While the people around them murmured and shook their heads, John felt as if something had gripped the pit of his stomach. ‘I think it best if someone gets the constable,’ he said.
‘Already done, sir,’ said Terry. ‘I sent my lad Paul. He’ll be back in a minute.’
‘I’m here now,’ said a deep and reassuring voice behind them. ‘What’s up?’
PC Kipling was in civilian clothes. They were a bit scruffy and he had one or two dead leaves stuck to his jacket. He smelled pleasantly of autumn bonfire. ‘Ah, Reg. I’m glad to see you’re back,’ he said. ‘Going off like that without telling a living soul where you were going has caused a fine how d’you do in the village, I can tell you.’
‘He says his girl’s been took off,’ Terry blurted out.
‘Took off?’ Kipper snorted. ‘You been watching too many of them Hollywood films, Reg.’
Reg’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a fact, Mr Kipling? Well, let me tell you, I’ve been going out of my mind looking for them, but I can’t find either of them, not my Patsy or Dot.’
John stared somewhere into space. Had she really left him? He’d known she wasn’t happy almost from the moment they’d met. There was sadness in her eyes even back then. Hearing she was pregnant put a whole different complexion on things. If she was having her husband’s child there must be a marriage ther
e … and yet there was still something about her that made him want to make things right for her, make her laugh, protect her … He swallowed hard. If she had run off, would he ever see her again?
Reg downed the last of the whisky and glanced up at Terry but this time there was no response. The bar fell silent. Everything seemed rather surreal. Where was Dottie? Where was Patsy?
Reg looked down at his shoes, turning his foot this way and that so that everyone could see the mud caked on the bottom. ‘Look at the state of my shoes. I must have walked twenty mile or more.’
Kipper took out his police notebook from his back pocket.
‘But we all thought you’d gone off together,’ said Vince Dobbs.
‘We did,’ Reg continued. ‘I took them to the hotel where Dot and I went for our honeymoon. Sea View in Eastbourne. It’s only a step from the seafront. Lovely place, top notch. She’s been working so hard just lately, see – I thought I’d surprise them.’
John was conscious of the people around him exchanging sentimental smiles but he kept his eye on Reg. He wasn’t normally a sceptical person but he had a growing gut feeling the man was playing to the gallery. When Dottie sent that last letter to him, she had been troubled about something. All this talk about surprises and honeymoon hotels … Reg had never seemed the caring, tender-hearted type before.
‘We had the best time.’ Reg went on. ‘We walked round the town and I bought my girl a candyfloss. We spent the afternoon in the pictures and on the way back to the guesthouse, I took them into a café for fish and chips.’ He stared into his empty glass.
A tall bespectacled man snatched Reg’s glass from his hand. ‘For God’s sake, give the man a drink, Landlord.’
‘Thanks, Eric,’ Reg said without looking up.
‘Go on then, son,’ said Eric, his voice low.
John started at the top of Reg’s bowed head. Something was wrong. Something was badly wrong.
Reg spread his hands and wiped his palms down the side of his trousers. ‘I loved that little girl, as God is my witness, I loved her. But she didn’t want me to have her, did she? She wanted her all to herself.’ His voice dropped to a barely audible whisper. ‘When did any of you last see all of us doing something together … something as a family? The truth of the matter is, she wouldn’t include me. Jealous, that’s what she was. Jealous as sin.’
