by J M Gregson
She was a good two inches taller than her husband, slim as she had been when they met in Lyon a quarter of a century earlier, elegant in simple white blouse and dark blue trousers. Where her husband’s remaining fringe of hair was almost white about his temples, her raven tresses were as unflecked with grey as ever they had been; even Stanley was ignorant of the small helping hand they needed now from a bottle.
‘So where were you?’ she said. Her assumed weariness concealed a natural sharpness; beneath the drooping lids of her eyes, Denise Freeman observed her husband closely, and with distaste.
‘Last night?’ He attempted an indifference he could not sustain. ‘Oh, working, I expect.’
Her look of smouldering contempt warned him he would need to do better than this. He tried to hold the silence between them, but her will was so much stronger than his that he eventually had to speak.
‘I had a drink.’
‘Or two, or three.’
‘It’s not a crime.’
‘No.’ She studied the vase of flowers she was arranging, added an extra stem of alstromeria at the back. ‘In Oldford, was this?’
Stanley Freeman, autocratic deployer of labour and intransigent head of Freeman Estates, felt like a novice mouse in the clutches of a highly experienced cat.
‘In Gloucester.’
‘Ah. Alone, of course?’ The curl of her lips reinforced the disdain in her voice.
‘With no one you know.’ He was drawn on despite his better judgement.
‘No. I wouldn’t move in her circles.’
‘You wouldn’t move in his.’ There was a sudden flash of defiance as Stanley looked his wife full in the face and attempted to match her scorn. But he could not equal the cool contempt in her dark pupils, and his eyes fell to his knees as he slumped on to one of the mahogany stand-chairs by the table. He twisted the wide band of gold automatically on his thick finger; his lips set like those of a sullen child.
Denise Freeman wondered how she could ever have been so eager to marry him, even those many years before. Looking at the features puffed with drink and smoking, the stocky, overweight frame with its unattractive paunch, the seedy flashiness of her husband’s clothes, she wondered how far she had moved on from the slim, bronzed French girl whose dark good looks had been so suited by bridal white. Compared with Stanley, she had worn well – but what a comparison! She must beware of the discontent she saw so often about her mouth nowadays: no woman was improved by it, however understandable its causes.
She set her face into a determined, experimental smile, estimating its effect in the mirror. She would not think about what she proposed for the evening until her husband was safely off the premises. Stanley, looking up suddenly into her face, felt laughter would bounce off those brilliant white teeth as if they were icicles. She was like a toothpaste commercial which had gone wrong. Perhaps the intrusion of such an image into his normally unimaginative mind upset his judgement, for he made the mistake of resuming their dialogue.
‘He’s a car dealer in Cheltenham,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t know him. Wouldn’t want to.’
‘No.’ She set the flowers on top of the cocktail cabinet, moved them an inch left, studied them anew.
‘It was business.’ He was drawn on by her monosyllables as surely as any tickled trout. ‘I’m trying to set up a deal for the pool of cars. To part-exchange the five of them in a month or two.’
‘Six, with mine. If you still insist on one for your receptionist, who doesn’t merit one.’
‘It doesn’t cost much. I like to treat her like the rest.’
It was an old argument between them. No receptionist before Jane Davidson had been afforded a company car, and she patently did not need one in the business as the others did.
Denise extracted a small dahlia she thought superfluous to her arrangement, then crushed it slowly in her small right fist. Both pairs of eyes watched the knuckles whiten as her fingers squeezed and the flower disappeared, then saw the crushed ball of red drop unrecognizable into the flower trug with the other waste. It grew a little there, raising the odd twisted petal aloft before it rolled sideways and lay still; it was like the death-throes of some small mammal. She examined the faint crimson stain the flower had left on the insides of her fingers; he had to force himself to speak.
‘I can change your car if you like. I thought you were happy with the Renault.’ At least he was diverting the talk from his drinking companion. ‘I wouldn’t get the same part-exchange on that as the Fords.’
‘Better than Harry Bloxham at Granger’s, was he, your new man?’ It was delivered with a carefully casual air. Only the small, mirthless smile showed her triumph. They always dealt with Granger’s. He had forgotten she knew Harry Bloxham.
‘Maybe,’ he said desperately. She did not reply. Both of them had known from the start that he was lying. Both of them knew now that his lying had been exposed. The exchange had reached its natural conclusion.
As Stanley drove his Granada quietly through the lanes, his hands trembled and he was glad of the automatic gear-box. Things couldn’t go on like this. He slipped one of his wife’s valium tablets into his mouth: his need was clearly greater than hers. It took time for him to re-establish his image as the autocrat of the office, even in his own mind. When he parked, he was tempted towards the hip-flask, but it was too early yet for liquor; that would come later in the day.
*
If Freeman had known he was observed, he might have been more circumspect. As it was, he drew himself up to his full height and checked that the back of his leisure shirt was securely in his trousers: he should be wearing tie and jacket in the office, but he had been too anxious to get out of the house to think of changing. It would be, ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ for his staff again.
Four eyes watched him unblinkingly as he tidied his unsuitable clothing and took a long deep breath. Had Freeman not been preoccupied with his own problems, he would have seen his Deputy Managing Director, parked only three spaces beyond him in the small public car park. George Robson watched him curiously from the front seat of his Sierra, noting his chief’s unease and speculating upon the reasons for it. Perhaps Stanley had been feeling the sharp edge of Denise’s tongue again. Well, serve him right if he had, the slob. Why he should neglect his well-preserved French spouse was a constant mystery to George. Those long legs, those slim, active hips, those sun-tanned shoulders, those dark, bedroom eyes… Verbal speculation gave way to visual fantasies that needed no words to frame them.
A foot behind George Robson’s greying head, two soft brown eyes watched Stanley Freeman’s retreating back with even greater intensity. Their gaze had been fixed unbroken upon the owner of Freeman Estates ever since he had parked the dark blue Granada. As he paused before striding away, there came from three inches behind those eyes a low, valedictory growl.
‘Easy, Fred,’ said George Robson, and the Labrador immediately detached his eyes from the retreating figure and licked the back of his master’s neck; it was as if some spell had been abruptly broken, returning him to a life of movement and affections. George wondered if he had communicated his own dislike of his chief to the dog, for Fred was normally the most amiable of beasts.
‘Some of us have work to do,’ said Robson heavily: the dog would not recognize the disgruntled cliché as readily as his wife and staff. He eased the Sierra into gear and moved slowly out of the car park to meet his client. Fred sat erect as a dowager on the back seat, examining modern suburb and ancient grassland with equal interest.
And George Robson, not for the first time, mused as he drove on how pleasant life would be if Stanley Freeman were removed from it.
Chapter 2
In the evening, the showers passed away eastwards and the sky cleared to a sharp blue, which deepened as the sun sank. On such a summer evening, there are few pleasanter places than England, and within England few pleasanter areas than rural Gloucestershire.
The car moved so quietly that it scarcely distur
bed the peace of its surroundings. It was a Rolls-Royce, beige to most eyes, but to the man who had devised its advertising material oyster metallic. It purred through this lush green country like a large contented animal, past farmlands whence yeomen had gone to Agincourt and cricket fields where W.G. had played a century ago. The man drove carefully. He was not used to roads as winding and narrow as these. And there was no need to hurry: they had put back the appointment to nine to make sure he would not be late, but now it seemed they had ample time. He slowed almost to a halt so as to savour the silhouette of a village church against the sun’s dying fire. When a man reached sixty, beauty seemed perpetually tinged with reminders of mortality. ‘That churchyard could tell some tales,’ he said as they glided past it. The idiom was his wife’s, but the accent was North American.
‘Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,’
quoted the woman beside him. This time the elocution was as English as the lines. It was the delivery of her schooldays, thirty years earlier.
The woman who sat with a road atlas on her knee was fifteen years younger than the driver; at first glance the difference looked greater. Her make-up was applied carefully but sparingly. She checked it now in the vanity mirror: it minimized the effect of the few crows’ feet that nowadays threatened the skin around the clear blue eyes, made the thin lips a little more generous, held at bay time’s work upon the neck.
‘“Rude” meaning in this case “untutored”,’ she said, mimicking the pedantic tones of an English mistress of those distant times. Miss Moss, she thought suddenly, recalling a name she had thought gone forever. Perhaps this region had that effect.
As if to destroy such illusions, a car appeared abruptly around the curve in front of them. It was in the middle of the road and going much too fast on the bend. It rocked crazily as the driver corrected its course, righted itself, passed them safely enough with a couple of feet to spare, and roared noisily out of their world.
‘Lunatic!’ said Henry T. Harben and his wife in unscripted unison. The unexpected agreement dissolved the moment of fear into laughter. He found his hand upon her arm in unconscious protection; both of them were glad to see it there.
‘Probably some youngster anxious to meet his girlfriend,’ said Henry. ‘I’m glad we weren’t any closer to that bend when he came round it.’
‘It’s the paraphernalia of modern living again,’ said Margaret Harben. ‘The swains who pursued their doxies here in times past were no doubt much less dangerous.’
‘Except to the doxies,’ said Henry, piloting the Rolls cautiously round the blind bend whence the car had appeared; the lane stretched empty and inviting for several hundred yards ahead of them.
‘I’m not even sure it was a man,’ said Margaret, wondering if this fairness was a kind of inverted feminism. ‘Whoever it was was crouched very low behind the wheel. Perhaps he or she didn’t want to be seen, driving like that. Ah, this could be it.’ She looked from the map on her knees to the high stone gateposts which rose before them. Her husband slowed the big car to a gentle halt beside the elaborate wrought iron of the open gates.
‘Lydon Hall,’ he confirmed with satisfaction. He could now read the gold leaf lettering on the gates, but he had recognized the imposing entrance from the brochure photograph. He eased the Rolls between the high posts of mellow Cotswold stone and stopped it on the gravel within to view the house.
It was worth the appraisal. This evening would have flattered many houses, but on Lydon Hall the golden twilight had a remarkable effect. The frontage was basically of dark red brick, but liberally laced with the honey-coloured stone characteristic of this area. In this light the building enhanced rather than impaired the landscape. The chimneys stretched towards the highest boughs of oak and beech behind the house, until from this distance they seemed to touch them.
It was an illusion of course. The trees were a good forty yards behind the house, but the long rays of the setting sun flattened perspective and made the house and its arboreal frame seem one design. Henry T. Harben did not consider himself an imaginative man, would indeed have been rather insulted by any suggestion that seemed to detract from his reputation as a hard-headed businessman. But for a moment he was moved, and not ashamed to be seen so.
‘I guess I see the attraction of living here now,’ he said quietly.
‘You can’t put a price on history,’ said Margaret as the Rolls moved forward. Gravel crunched unnaturally loud beneath the great wheels in the evening stillness.
‘That’s true,’ agreed Henry, glancing again at the high windows; they blazed briefly with brilliant fire as the last rays caught them with the car’s movement. ‘Tudor, I sup-pose. We didn’t have history then.’
Margaret smiled and put her hand lightly upon his wrist. He was two hundred years out, but there would be time enough for correction when his interest firmed into ownership. She had already made up her mind that this was the property for her, unless the interior had been ruined by some insensitive modern hand or the jaws of deathwatch beetle.
‘Sure is an interesting piece of real estate,’ said Henry, as they eased to a halt by a studded oak door that seemed designed to hold a siege at bay. He ignored his wife’s wince at the transatlantic idiom; it had been quite deliberate, a signal of his return to economic acumen after his moment of sentiment. Though his wife had her own shrewdnesses, he preferred to see her as unversed in the ways of a wicked commercial world, and he as her sturdy protector. As they sat for a moment and savoured the frontage of Lydon Hall, she looked across at him affectionately. No one else would consider her an ingenue, but if Henry wanted it that way she would go along with him. He was a good man, as well as a rich one; it was the second marriage for both of them, and she wasn’t going to let it fail for the sake of small, unimportant compromises. With the unspoken understanding of the well-matched couple, they stepped out of the Rolls and stood looking at the upper windows, where a wistaria which might have begun to climb a century earlier was dropping its last blooms.
‘Where is Stanley Freeman?’ Henry voiced the thoughts of both of them. The only sound was the last of the evening birdsong, the only visible movement their own.
‘Perhaps he’s been delayed,’ said Margaret. She wanted to go and look through one of the big windows, but her English reserve made it seem like spying. ‘Let’s walk round the outside and look at the grounds.’
Their steps rang unnaturally loud in the stillness as they skirted the high walls. There were sunken rose gardens at the back of the house, full of bloom, with the colours brilliant in the twilight. No sun crept in here now, for the house shaded this area from the last beams. There was a yew hedge beyond the roses. Between this and the trees, now revealed in their full majesty, was a perfect lawn. Though the house was empty, this had been mown and clipped at the edges, perhaps earlier that day. The wide, regular bands of green left by the mower gave the deserted place an air of the Mary Celeste in the silence. Whether or not because of the onset of nightfall, Margaret Harben suddenly shivered.
‘Freeman is careless of his time for a man trying to sell a place at this price,’ said her husband. Even in this peaceful atmosphere, he was irked a little by bad business practice.
‘If he doesn’t come quickly, the last of the light will be gone before we get inside,’ said his wife. She walked across the broad stone paving stones of the terrace, which ran across the entire width of the back of the house, to the big double French windows. As she peered in, careless now of decorum, the door moved silently under her gentlest of touches. She put her fingers on the handle and the door swung fully open. Involuntarily, they both looked behind them for any sign of life in the acre or so they could see. There was none. They looked interrogatively at each other, then back to the dark void beyond the gaping door. This was even more like the Mary Celeste.
‘Should we go in and look around?’ said Henry. It was a rhetorical question: neither of them could resist
the invitation of the open door.
‘That’s what we came for,’ said his wife. Her taut little smile could not disguise her sudden nervousness at these unaccountable circumstances. They went through the doors and into the old house.
The drawing-room where they found themselves was furnished with a spare elegance. Armchairs with tapestry covers flanked what looked like an Adam fireplace. There were two standard lamps, neither of them switched on, an empty magazine rack, a chaise-longue with delicately carved back and legs, a Regency side-table and bookcase. The wood panelling on the walls made the room seem even darker, so that at first they could distinguish little of this detail.
Margaret Harben crossed cautiously to the door at the far side of the room and switched on the light beside it. ‘Can we afford it?’ she said excitedly. She knew the answer, but wanted to hear Henry affirm it. She stopped when she saw her husband’s profile, rigid with shock.
Then she looked past him, to see what he had seen. In the chair by the fireplace was a figure she could not at first comprehend. For an instant, the polythene bag on the lifeless wide-eyed head brought back absurdly the doll she had bought a month earlier for her small niece. But these eyes were no doll’s eyes. They were wide with a final, desperate horror. And these lips, thrown wide against the polythene as the face fought a last brief battle for breath, were no doll’s lips.
The late Stanley Freeman had not after all failed their rendevous.
Chapter 3
Within twelve hours of its discovery, Stanley Freeman’s death was well on the way to becoming a mere official statistic.
When Chief Superintendent Lambert arrived at his desk that morning, the death did not even take prime place among the papers which awaited him. He came upon it third down in the pile of official reports and reminders from his subordinates. The report was typed neatly and conscientiously by DI Rushton. A piece of scrap paper was attached by a paper clip to denote its unofficial status. Across it Rushton had written, ‘Looks like another EXIT suicide?’ The question-mark was small and at some remove from the phrase, as if it had been added in caution. The bald statement might be embarrassing to a rising detective-inspector if events proved him wrong; a question-mark transformed a prediction into a more speculative sally, in case hindsight should prove this necessary.
