by Leo McNeir
“No. Nothing. Barbara covered her tracks all right. What about you, Marnie?”
“I told you, she never confided in me like that. It was all strictly business.”
“But now that you know. Was there nothing, no hint, no careless word?”
“Truly not, Charles.”
“What did Gerard say? Between lovers there are … no secrets. But why would a lover want to know this kind of detail about her past, any more than a husband would?”
“I think he explained that.” Marnie had no desire to go into Gerard’s reasons. The fact that it made the affair more frank, more intimate, more sexy was not something she wanted to drag up at this point. “Anyway, it’s all past history now.”
“You think so, Marnie? Barbara and I never talked about such things when …”
Marnie knew what he meant. “At moments of intimacy with your husband, you’re not necessarily trying to spice things up in that way. You’re building a long-term relationship.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh?”
“No. You see, Barbara and I had an affair for about a year before I split up with my first wife.”
“Your first wife?”
“We were both married at the time. We both got divorced and remarried.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It was in all the papers, not about the affair, but that we were … second time round.”
“I see.” Marnie’s mind was racing. “Did your first wife know you were having an affair with Barbara?”
“Yes.”
“And did her first husband know about you?”
“What do you think we talked about as grounds for divorce, Marnie?” He frowned again. “Why are you so surprised? It’s what happens.”
Lights were flashing and bells were ringing in Marnie’s brain. “Presumably your divorce wasn’t one of these modern no-blame arrangements … it wasn’t amicable?”
“Are they ever? It cost me a million in settlement, plus the house.”
“And do you ever have contact with your first wife, or Barbara’s first husband?”
“Of course not. What’s that got to do with anything? I don’t follow you.”
Marnie pointed at the list that Charles was holding. “You think those might be our only suspects? I’m getting the feeling we could have two more.”
Charles saw the light. “Jesus!”
The inspection of the vicarage, the main reason for Charles’s visit, was an anti-climax after their conversation by the canal. They walked round the house together, Marnie ticking off items from her clipboard schedule, Charles trying to sound enthusiastic about the design.
The tour lasted barely half an hour, and Marnie had only one point left on the list by the time they returned to the hall.
“Is that it, Marnie? It’s all just as I expected. You’ve done a wonderful job.”
“There’s only one more thing: the intruder alarm. I’ll get onto it.”
“Good. I suppose it’s necessary. Such a pity to need that sort of thing out here in the country. Violence is all around us, it seems.”
“Inspector Bartlett was quite insistent on it.”
“Bartlett,” Charles repeated. “Oh yes, the policeman who’s also quite insistent that Gerard is guilty.”
“I think he’s got a point, Charles, about the alarm. There’s at least one family in the village who’d support him on this.”
“That poor young chap. Of course.” Charles turned towards the door. “I’m sure Bartlett’s right about the alarm, but as for his other views, I wonder.”
Marnie did not react. They walked out onto the drive, and she locked the door behind them.
Charles looked up at the handsome facade of the house. “There is one other thing you could have put on your list, Marnie. You were going to order the sign with the name on.”
“You want me to go ahead with that?”
“Of course. The Old Rectory, just as Barbara wanted.”
“I thought you were going to hold back on that for a while, in view of what Angela said about the church’s rules.”
“Look, Marnie, I’ve paid them top rate for the house, my wife has been murdered, my life virtually ruined. Let’s get things in perspective. What I call the house is none of their business. The church authorities have no real power over me. If they say anything, I’ll tell them it’s a kind of memorial to Barbara. That’ll shut them up.”
Marnie spent much of the afternoon on the phone letting her fingers do the walking. Yellow pages listed dozens of companies marketing security systems. She was puzzling over which ones to approach when Anne returned from the hospital with the news that Ronny was being moved from intensive care to a regular ward. He would spend a night or two under observation and probably be sent home at the end of the week.
“What was the verdict?”
“Severe concussion but not a fracture of the skull, three cracked ribs, lots of bruising. They think he was hit with something heavy like an iron steak pan and then thrown across the kitchen. He hit the edge of the workbench with his chest.”
Marnie grimaced. “Can they do anything for his injuries?”
“Lots of rest and painkillers. He’ll be in bed for a couple of weeks, they said.”
“So will you be trotting round with grapes and mopping his brow?”
“Maybe.” Anne spotted the open directory “What’re you looking for?”
“Burglar alarms for Charles. There are loads of firms doing them, all with accreditation from various bodies. I hardly know where to start.”
Anne read the entries over Marnie’s shoulder. “Will Geoff know?”
“Our electrician? Not sure. I think these are installed by specialists.”
“George Stubbs has an alarm system,” Anne said thoughtfully. “There’s a box with a blinking red light on his wall. Might be worth asking him for advice. And there’s Mrs Frightfully-Frightfully at Hanford Hall. I’m sure she’s got one.”
They had given the Georgian house in the next village a makeover the previous year for their client, Mrs Dorothy Vane-Henderson. Anne’s nickname for her had stuck.
“That’s brilliant, Anne. Which reminds me, Charles Taverner sends his thanks for your stencil design. I think I’m becoming superfluous round here. You’re the one with the ideas. All I get is …”
“What?”
“Neil Gerard and his campaign.”
“I thought you were dropping out of that.”
“I am, definitely.”
“I believe you. I mean, I’m glad to hear it.”
Anne climbed the wall ladder to her room to read up on Art Deco graphic design for one of her college projects. She lit a joss stick and angled the desk lamp over the place where she habitually sat by the end of the bed. Lowering herself onto her giant bean bag, she wriggled to a comfortable position, her back against the foot board, and opened the first book. Normally she would have been pleased to receive a compliment from Marnie. But that day she knew that although her alarm suggestion had been sensible, it was not exactly ground-breaking. Marnie’s mind was focused elsewhere, and Anne did not have to be brilliant to guess where that was.
Marnie settled down with the telephone and a mug of coffee. Her mind was on motion sensors and remote keypads when Charles Taverner rang at the end of the afternoon.
“Marnie, I’ve been thinking about your Inspector Bartlett and what he said.”
My inspector Bartlett! “Yes? I’m gradually sorting out the alarm suppliers. It’s more complicated than I imagined.”
“Oh yes.” Charles sounded less than enthusiastic. “I meant about Gerard’s campaign.”
“Oh yes.” Marnie tried to sound dismissive.
“Look, do you think it might be worth –”
“Charles, I told you, I don’t want to get involved in that. I meant it. Really.”
A pause. “I respect your wishes, Marnie. Of course I do. But despite the evidence I can’t help thinking th
at Gerard seems a steady sort of person, so does his sister. I’m giving them at least the benefit of the doubt.”
“Very generous of you, but what does that mean in practical terms?”
“I suppose it means finding out about the … the lovers.”
“If you think there are grounds for re-opening the case, Charles, you should get in touch with Chief Inspector Bruere. He’s the officer responsible for the investigation.”
“But don’t you see, Marnie, that’s precisely why he’s probably the last person to contact. To him, it’s a case solved, a crime statistic with a successful outcome.”
“True, but I’m sure that if he discovered grounds for doubt, he’d want to look into the matter.”
“We don’t have grounds for doubt. All we have – at the moment – is a list of names.”
Marnie did not like the use of we. “Short of employing a private detective, I don’t see what you can hope to achieve, unless you throw your weight behind Sarah Cowan’s campaign. That would get the police jumping.”
“I don’t have enough evidence to be able to do that, Marnie.”
“Quite.”
“Not at this stage. That’s why I thought you might be able to help.”
“I’m sorry, Charles. This is outside my scope. I’ve been involved in police investigations, sure, but always on the outside. I don’t know the first thing about what to do. And to be brutally frank, I have a business to run here, clients, deadlines.”
“I know, I know. Unreasonable of me to ask you. This whole thing has become an obsession with me. I need to sit down quietly and work out what to do for the best. Your idea about a private detective might be one way forward.”
“Think carefully before you do anything, Charles. That’s my advice. You might find you’re going round in circles and only causing yourself even more pain.”
“I’ve thought of that, Marnie. But whatever Barbara did, she was still the most important person in the world to me. Every time I think about her I feel a great weight in the pit of my stomach, knowing I’ll never see her again. So, she had the odd affair. I don’t think I’d have cared, as long as she came back to me in the end.”
That evening after supper, after Anne had gone back to her reading, Marnie and Ralph sat out on the stern deck of Sally Ann in the spring warmth, picking at a bunch of black grapes, cups and saucers on the picnic table between them.
“Charles said a strange thing today, Ralph. He thinks life is about women. What do you think?”
“About women?”
“About men being attracted to them. He said that’s how it all works.”
“Mm, I would’ve thought there were one or two other things as well. But I suppose he’s right, up to a point. Of course the time aspect is important.”
“You mean, having recently lost Barbara, she must be uppermost in his mind at the moment?”
“Not just that, Marnie. I was thinking about time in the sense of lifespan. For many men I think sex – which is probably at the heart of what you’re talking about – assumes great importance at some time in their life. It’s the driving force. Then for many it settles back into a kind of support role, depending on how their relationship works out.”
“People develop, relationships develop – is that what you mean?”
“Fundamentally, yes. I can see what Charles was getting at. It sounds as if he was very much in love with Barbara, to use a rather unfashionable phrase.”
“Why unfashionable?”
“Some people regard it as an outdated concept. We see so many marriages fail. We regard nothing as quite as enduring as people used to think. Perhaps we trust our feelings less these days.”
“Do you see us like that, Ralph?”
“I’m speaking objectively.” He smiled. “As a pedantic academic, not personally. I suspect I’m rather old-fashioned. I know I’ve been lucky to have a second chance at a loving relationship, and it’s become central to my life.”
Marnie reached out for a grape. “Yes. That’s exactly how Charles felt.”
“Then you can imagine how devastated he felt to lose Barbara, and how shattered to find she had betrayed him.”
Later in the shower on Thyrsis, turning slowly under the hot jets, Marnie pictured Gerard’s list of names and tried to imagine what those men meant to Barbara. And somewhere in the background she had an impression of ghostly shapes lurking in the shadows, unseen: Charles’s first wife, Barbara’s first husband. What part might they have played in all this?
Through the hissing of the shower she could hear the voices that had haunted her all day. The trial was perfectly fair … just wrong … What are rules for, if not for breaking? … More frank, more intimate, more sexy … No secrets.
23
Social scientists call it synchronicity. Most people would call it coincidence. For the tabloids it would be a double whammy. To Marnie it felt like the hand of fate gripping her throat.
Wednesday morning was like any normal working day until the phone rang. Marnie was waiting for a delivery date for bathroom fittings for the main farmhouse and was opening the diary as she reached across the desk to take the call. Sarah Cowan was trying to sound relaxed but her voice was tense.
“I’ve got some news, Marnie.”
“Is your … is Neil all right?”
“Yes. Did the e-mail get through to you okay?”
“Yes, it did.”
“And you were able to open the attachment?”
“No problem.” Marnie realised that Sarah’s pretence of having news had given way to the real reason for her call. “I showed the list to Charles Taverner.”
Sarah gasped. “You did? What did he say?”
“Not a lot. He was curious about them, of course, but he knew nothing of the relationships.”
“He never suspected anything? I find that hard to believe, Marnie. He must’ve had some inkling. Nobody’s that clever that they never let anything slip.”
“Well, I’m only telling you how he reacted.”
“Is he, I mean, do you think he’s going to do anything about the list?”
“What can he do?” Across the room the fax machine began ringing. It was the perfect get-out. “Sarah, that’s the other phone. I’m alone in the office. I’d better go.”
“Right. Oh, my news. They’re moving Neil to another prison.”
Sarah blurted it out as the ringing stopped, and the fax began stuttering. Marnie felt a wave of relief wash over her. It was selfish but so good.
“Really?” She was thinking rapidly. Gerard was a convicted murderer. He could go to Dartmoor, perhaps, or that other place on the Isle of Wight. Or maybe Broadmoor, the secure hospital, since he had tried to commit suicide. All of them further away.
Sarah’s voice cut into her thoughts. “They told him last night, and he just rang to let me know. It’s amazing.”
“But probably not a surprise, seeing as how he –”
“No, I mean it’s amazing where they’re sending him. He’s moving to a prison up at Milton Keynes. That’s not far from you, isn’t it? Apparently they have a unit there.”
Sarah continued speaking, but Marnie no longer heard. The name Milton Keynes was echoing in her mind, drowning out every other sound. This was a disaster.
And the morning was about to get worse.
After ending the call with Sarah, Marnie sat thinking over the implications of having Neil Gerard on her doorstep. It was as if the enemy was moving in to surround her. Sarah would be coming up every week to see her brother. Charles would be moving house in just a short while. The pressure on Marnie would grow.
When the phone rang again, Marnie was astonished to see that half an hour had passed. She dreaded answering it.
“Walker and Co, good morning.”
“Marnie? Didn’t you get my message?” It was Neil Jeffries from Willards Brewery, the main contact with her principal client. He sounded tetchy.
Neil! She could not even escape the name. “Hallo,
Neil. Sorry, I’ve been … What can I do for you?”
“As I explained on your answerphone …” He paused to emphasise the point. “I wanted you to ring me back about an important new commission.”
Sometimes a lie was the simplest way out. “I’ve only just got back into the office, haven’t even had time to check the phone. I’m sorry if it needs urgent attention. How can I help you?”
“The company has just agreed terms for a contract to create a wine bar and restaurant in London, in Docklands.”
Marnie perked up. She loved that kind of project. “Adaptation of an existing building?”
“Conversion of a warehouse complex, built around 1820, ground floor and basement with waterside terrace.” He sounded as if he was reading from the brief. “Two-seventy square metres inside for the restaurant plus kitchens, ninety-five for the wine bar. I thought you’d have been keen.”
“Certainly am. What’s the rush?”
“Just the usual pressure from the board to get things moving. Can you give this priority?” He tried to make it sound like a question. “Everett Parker Associates will be the project architects, your old firm.”
“E-mail me the brief and I’ll get onto it. Whereabouts in Docklands is the building?”
“It’s at … hang on,” There was a shuffling of paper. “… Bermuda Reach. It’s not a big development, but it’s quite exclusive, apparently.”
“Bermuda Reach,” Marnie echoed dully.
“You’ve heard of it, Marnie?”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard of it.”
“You’ll need to contact the owner of the marina to arrange a site meeting. He’ll show you round. His name is …” There was the sound of pages being turned again. “Just a mo … it’s here somewhere …”
Marnie could see the name on the print-out of Neil Gerard’s notes on the desk in front of her. “Ian Stuart,” she said.
“What was that?”
“The owner, it’s Ian Stuart.”
“Ah yes, Ian Stuart. Would you like his phone number?”
Would she like it? She’d prefer to throw it in the bin and forget the whole project. “Just e-mail it to me, Neil, with the rest of the stuff.”
