by Hazel Holt
“Yes, of course.”
“Because it’s a murder enquiry, you see. So I had to tell him why we got the cottage and some money.”
“I see.”
Brian crumbled the slice of fruit cake on his plate. “I said, ‘I suppose that means I’m a suspect, then?’”
“Surely not!”
“Well, you can see how they’d think so. But he was very polite – didn’t say yes or no.”
“I’m sure you’re not the only person to have a reason to kill him,” I said, “especially now it’s all coming out about what a horrible person he was. I expect the police are talking to lots of people.” I poured us both another cup of tea and went on, “Anyway, I’m so glad you’ve got the cottage. It’s some sort of security for you both.”
“I saw his son a while back,” Brian said. “He came to see me.”
“He came to see you?” I echoed in surprise. “David?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I mean, what for?”
“He knew about Mother and me.”
“Really?”
“He said he was glad we had the cottage and the money.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes, I was really taken aback. Said he’d known for some time. He was going to tell me more, I think, when Mother came in. She’d been lying down, having a bit of a rest when he came. As you can imagine, I was worried how she’d take it, him being there. She’s not good with strangers – well you know that.”
“So what happened?”
“I couldn’t believe it. She really took to him, right from the start, she’s never done that before to anyone.”
“How extraordinary.”
“He was wonderful with her, very gentle and unthreatening. He seemed to know, without being told, how she was. He just chatted to her. Not about anything special, the weather, the ornaments she had on the mantelpiece, things like that. And she loved it. I haven’t seen her like that for years. She even offered to make him a cup of tea, but he said he couldn’t stay. But he asked if he could come again. He said that we had a lot to talk about. I don’t know what he meant by that. But Mother was really pleased. Said to let us know when he was coming and she’d make her special apple cake. I could not believe it.”
“It’s quite extraordinary. I wonder what he wants to talk to you about?”
“Must be something about his father, I suppose, if he wouldn’t say anything while Mother was there.”
“And he didn’t seem upset or put out about it?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Quite the contrary in a way. I mean, from his tone and the way he went on.”
“I wonder if he will come and see you again?”
“Oh, I think he will. He seemed quite positive about that.” He got up. “Well, I’d better get measured up for those shelves instead of rabbiting on here.” He stood there for a moment and then, with a sort of effort, he said, “Mrs Malory, I do appreciate being able to talk to you about all this. I talk to Margaret, of course, but she’s sort of involved and I try to be careful about what I say for fear of upsetting her.”
“I’m sure she understands,” I said.
“Oh yes, of course she does,” he agreed hastily, “it’s just that I really don’t want her to feel hurt about things.”
“She’s probably tougher than you think,” I said. “But I’m always happy to listen whenever you want to talk.”
“I felt rather mean,” I said to Thea, “when he thanked me for listening and I’d been pumping him like mad out of curiosity.”
“Still,” Thea said, “whatever your motive, I’m sure you’re helping him. But how extraordinary about David Middleton!”
“I know. I can’t imagine what he’s up to.”
“It sounds so unlike him.”
“Yes, and the bit about Brian’s mother,” I said, “now that really is weird! I mean, I told you what she was like with me and I reckon I’m reasonably unthreatening.”
“Have you seen David recently?” she asked.
“No, not since the funeral. I told you I saw Bridget, didn’t I, and how she avoided me. I believe they’ve got the boys back home so that should make her happy – though I still can’t imagine what made David change his mind and yank them out of boarding school, after all he’s said about the advantages they’re getting there.”
“Perhaps he did it for Bridget’s sake,” Thea said. “You know, if she was upset about Sidney’s death for some reason.”
“It doesn’t sound like the David I know to consider Bridget’s feelings, and anyway, why should she be so upset about Sidney?”
Thea shrugged. “Who knows. The whole thing seems to me to be full of contradictions – people not being what they seem, or acting out of character.”
“True. Still, the one thing I can’t see is David Middleton playing happy families!”
But that, in fact, is exactly what I did see the following Saturday. I’d gone with Rosemary to the big garden centre near Taunton – the one where we’d seen Brian and his Margaret.
“I know it’s stupid to go to places like that at the weekend,” Rosemary said, “it’s bound to be crowded, but Mother wants a couple of new houseplants, and they do have the best selection, and being Mother she wants them now.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “If we go early we might just manage to get a table and have lunch there.”
We found the plants (“She wanted one of those striped African violets and a yellow begonia – Can you see one anywhere? These are all pink”) and went over to the café which was already nearly full. Rosemary, loaded down with plants, found an empty table while I went to queue for the food. As I stood there I looked around and to my immense surprise saw, in a corner, David, Bridget and their two boys, all eating toasted sandwiches and drinking Coca Cola, just like any other, normal family having a day out. I was so absorbed in this amazing sight that the person behind me in the queue had to touch me on the shoulder when it was my turn to be served.
“Don’t look now,” I said as I put the tray down on the table, “but you’ll never guess who’s sitting over there in the far corner.”
Rosemary craned her neck discreetly. “Good Heavens,” she said. “I don’t believe it, David Middleton being a good husband and father!”
“I know, isn’t it extraordinary? Acting out of character again. You know I told you about him turning up at Brian’s.”
“Most peculiar.”
“And then there was that picture. Did Roger like it, by the way?”
“Yes, he loved it.” She wiped the icing from her Danish pastry off her fingers. “Perhaps David has a split personality, sort of Jekyll and Hyde stuff.”
“Possibly,” I said thoughtfully, “or else we’ve been wrong about him all the time, just as we were wrong about Sidney.”
The group in the corner got up to leave and I heard David say, “Come on you lot, else we’ll be late for the film and have to go to a museum or something!” in a voice I’d never heard him use before – cheerful, jokey and affectionate. Rosemary heard him too and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Well, wonders will never cease. And they all looked so happy!”
“I know. Wasn’t that nice? Peculiar, but nice.”
There was one more surprise to come about David Middleton. I was sitting in the surgery waiting to see Dr Macdonald when Myra Norton came in. I fervently hoped she hadn’t seen me because I didn’t feel up to coping with her tidal wave of talk, but she came over straight away and took the chair next to mine.
“Hello, fancy seeing you here. Nothing wrong, I hope? I’ve got to see Dr Hurst about my varicose veins, really shocking they are, and I don’t fancy those elastic stockings. I tried them once but they felt really funny, if you know what I mean, so I didn’t persevere. You’d think in this day and age – I mean, when they can put a man on the moon – they’d be able to do something, wouldn’t you? I suppose it’ll just be more pills. Honestly, I seem to take so many – and so does Jim,
you should see us at breakfast time counting them out. I said if you turned us upside down we’d rattle!”
“I know, it is awful, isn’t it.”
“So how about you?”
“Oh, nothing much, just routine checks, blood pressure and so on.”
“Jim’s blood pressure goes up and down like a yo-yo. I said to him, ‘You ought to get one of those monitor things you can have strapped to your wrist’, but he wouldn’t. Well, you know what men are like, won’t do anything to help themselves. Betty was saying just the same about Bill and his bronchitis.”
“Are they back from Bournemouth yet? I’ve been meaning to call.”
“No, they’re still there. Well, they were coming back last week, but with all that snow it would have been a difficult journey. Betty said they could go back by train but Susan wouldn’t hear of it and said they should wait until Trevor, that’s their son-in-law, is free to drive them.”
“I’m sure the break will do them good.”
“Oh yes. Bournemouth’s very nice, it used to be very select. We had some really nice holidays there. The sand’s lovely for the kiddies and I always used to say that the shops are almost as good as London.”
“Well, I do hope that Bill will be quite recovered when they get back.”
“So do I. Between ourselves I was quite worried about him, not his usual self at all, and I could tell Betty was really upset about how he was.”
“I’m sure she was.”
“Out walking at all hours, no wonder he got that bronchitis. I said to Jim, ‘He shouldn’t be out in all winds and weathers like that’ and Jim agreed. But you could tell he wasn’t right, very uptight, if you know what I mean. Such a dreadful thing to have happened, and right out of the blue like that!”
“I know it was a terrible shock to him.”
“Well, it would be, wouldn’t it. Terrible!”
“We must hope that the little break will have helped him get over it.”
“Actually, Betty told me he was much better after that man’s son came to see him.”
“David Middleton? Really? Are you sure?”
“Oh yes, Betty said she was as surprised as anything when he turned up and asked to see Bill.”
“I can see that she might be.”
“Just stood on the doorstep, Betty told me, and said, ‘Do you think Bill would see me?’ Well, she asked him in of course and I don’t know what happened because she left them to it, but she said that when he left – and she said he was really nice to her and thanked her ever so much for letting him see Bill – Bill was much more his old self.”
“Really?”
“I think she was surprised because from what she told me he wasn’t usually like that.”
“No.”
“Very stand-offish, she said, kept himself to himself. So when he was so friendly, well, she couldn’t believe it was the same person. Mind you,” she leaned towards me and spoke confidentially, “after what happened it was the least he could do, going to see Bill, I mean. Not that that would make it all right, of course, but I suppose he felt he had to do something in the circumstances.”
“Yes. I’m glad that Bill felt better after seeing him.”
“Oh yes. Betty said he quite perked up – ate all his lunch and had the best night’s sleep he’d had for a long time.”
“That was splendid.”
“I think we all feel better for a good night’s sleep. Jim sleeps like a log no matter what, but if I’m the least bit upset I’ll toss and turn all night and then the next day I’m fit for nothing.”
“I know, it is awful, isn’t it.”
“What I always say is…”
But I never knew what pearl of wisdom she was going to produce because Dr Hurst appeared just then and called her in.
I sat in a sort of daze, turning over in my mind all the newly revealed facets of David Middleton’s personality, unable to reconcile this amiable figure with the taciturn, disagreeable man I thought I knew. I was so lost in thought that Dr Macdonald had to repeat my name several times before I heard him and meekly followed him into his consulting room, where, not surprisingly, my blood pressure was slightly up.
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
“Are you going to Christine’s dinner party?” Rosemary asked.
I groaned. “I suppose I’ll have to. I made an excuse last time, said I had a cold, and I know she didn’t believe me and was quite offended.”
I must say, dinner parties aren’t really my scene. When Peter was alive I dutifully gave them, as one does, for business contacts, but, left to ourselves, we both preferred to see our friends casually in ones and twos. As a widow and a ‘spare woman’ things were more complicated, since, then, a suitable ‘spare man’ had to be found. However in recent years, in such a geriatric society as ours in Taviscombe the number of widows has made such situations largely irrelevant and there is no longer the obligation to match up dinner guests like animals in the Ark.
Christine, though, was the exception. Her dinner parties were resolutely formal so that I was only invited when her brother Desmond, whose wife had died some years ago (“And glad to,” said Rosemary) came to visit and I was deemed a suitable and safe (she was under the misapprehension that Desmond was something of a ‘catch’) dinner companion for him. Actually another reason I dreaded Christine’s parties was that Desmond was one of the most mind-numbingly boring people I have ever met, the sort of man whose conversation induces a sort of cataleptic trance in his listener.
Because Francis was an accountant too, Jack and Rosemary were usually invited to these dinner parties – one of the few things that made the occasions more bearable for me, though I did have to make an effort to avoid Rosemary’s eye when Christine did or said something particularly awful.
“Presumably Desmond is staying with them again,” Rosemary said.
“Don’t, it doesn’t bear thinking of. Oh how I wish I were brave enough to really offend her, so that I’d never have to go there again! I mean, it wouldn’t break my heart if I never saw her or Francis or Desmond ever again. It’s just a sort of social convention that’s stopping me.”
“That and the fact that it would be almost impossible actually to set out to offend someone, don’t you think?” Rosemary said thoughtfully. “It’s something that must happen by accident or not at all.”
Another reason for hating Christine’s parties that one is also expected to dress formally, and with the sort of life I lead my wardrobe is full of tops and skirts with only one or two proper frocks. I took them both out and looked at them. The regulation little black dress had definitely seen better days and did (I had to admit) strain a bit over the hips. The other, an olive green silk shirtwaister, when held up against me, made me, with my winter pallor, look like some creature that had been shut away from the light for several months. Even if it was only for dreary Desmond my pride wouldn’t allow me to appear in public in either of those.
“Well,” I said to Foss who, as usual had followed me upstairs in case I was going to be engaged in something interesting, “I’m jolly well not going to buy anything new, just for Christine’s horrible party.”
I delved into the wardrobe in the forlorn hope of finding something that would “do” and came up with a black velvet skirt, relic of what now seemed like a bygone age when such garments were fashionable, and an equally old “dressy” white blouse. I decided that with a wide belt to hide the safety pin that was needed to accommodate my expanded waistline I could just about get away with it. The blouse was all right as long as I didn’t do anything strenuous, which seemed unlikely in the circumstances.
“Retro,” I said to Foss. “It’s all the rage now.”
He gave me a look of contempt and began to sharpen his claws on the carpet while I bore the clothes away to see what dry cleaning could do for them.
I tried not to arrive at Christine’s too early, but the taxi turned up exactly on time (I didn’t drive myself because I thought th
at I might need a reasonable amount of alcohol to see me through the evening), so I was the first one there. Except for Desmond, of course. Francis gave me a glass of sherry and, fortified by this, I plunged in.
“Did you have a good trip down from London?” I asked Desmond, giving him the opening I knew he wanted. His eyes lit up and he began his usual mile by mile description of the journey, which enabled me to switch off, only odd phrases coming through (“Absolute chaos at the Reading turn-off road-works at Leigh Delamere…three mile tail-back at the Almondsbury interchange…”) so that, familiar as I was with the narrative, I only had to fix an expression of interest on my face and make soothing comments (“How ghastly… dreadful!… The M5 is getting worse by the day!…”) in the rare moments when he paused for breath.
Fortunately Rosemary and Jack arrived fairly soon and the conversation became more general. Knowing Christine’s usual obsession with numbers, I was interested to see who her other two guests would be. They were David and Bridget Middleton. I suppose I really shouldn’t have been surprised, since David was yet another accountant, but I hadn’t realised that they were part of Christine’s “circle”.
They both looked terrific. Bridget was totally unlike her usual mousey self. She was wearing an elegant frock in soft raspberry red (a colour I had never seen her in before) which accentuated the darkness of her hair (could she have had a rinse?) And she positively shone with happiness. She greeted me with what appeared to be great pleasure – it was as if her previous avoidance of me had never been. David, too, looked a different person. I’d noticed in the garden centre how relaxed and easy he was, so different from the slightly surly difficult person I thought I knew and now he was – well, no other word for it – charming.
At the dinner table I was pleased to find that I was seated next to David. True I had Desmond on my other side but years of experience had taught me how to cope with that. While Christine, like a good hostess, devoted herself first to David on her left, I concentrated on the food, while blocking out Desmond’s account of some new export regulation. He was somewhere in the middle order at the Board of Trade, or whatever it’s called now, and his frequent trips to Brussels gave him lots of lovely new material for his endless monologues.
