‘Perhaps we’ll meet again,’ she murmured.
She was a woman who needed a confidante, preferably a stranger. Already, she’d confided more to me than she would have done to a local friend.
Then she nodded, and strode away down the slope. I watched her go, to become a small moving doll, before I turned to Oliver.
‘Do you want children, Oliver?’
He looked startled. ‘Well…I suppose.’
‘Little Ollies running around?’
‘I’d never be able to handle them, with my dicky arm,’ he suggested hopefully.
‘Nonsense. Nine months from now your arm will be a hundred per cent.’
‘From now?’
‘A figure of speech, Oliver. I wonder how far he could throw a shotgun.’
‘What?’
‘Just a thought. This wonder-man, Glenn Thomas…I wonder if he could throw a shotgun as far as Harris Steadman obviously could.’
He got to his feet. ‘Now what’re you thinking?’
I put out a hand. He took it with his left and hauled me up. I was suddenly aware of the clack of mallet against ball behind us, and cries of triumph.
‘One shotgun is missing, Oliver,’ I explained. ‘You must’ve realised that we can’t just dismiss it. There was one extra shot, too. So it could be important. Obviously, the police—’
‘That includes me, Phil. Remember? I was here, that night.’
‘You were the very first here.’
I was flapping at my slacks, though at this top edge of the field the grass had grown lush and thick, right up to the nodding overhang of the rhododendrons, so there’d been no dust.
‘I was in on the search, Phil, if that’s what you mean. Once Clare had come out with the basic story, the super—he was there by that time—got us to collecting all the guns from the lawn. That was absolutely necessary, because poor Clare was close to hysteria, almost fighting to get out there and collect ‘em up herself. And damn it, she’d have been capable of it, though she was close to a nervous and physical collapse. So the super gave her a solemn promise he’d have all the guns collected from the lawn. As he’d have done, anyway. They were part of the evidence.’
‘So you searched?’
‘A whole squad of us. We’d got a bit more light laid on by that time…and I heard that another team came on when it was daylight, and they searched too. So we can’t have missed one. All this, you understand, was routine, not simply to satisfy Clare that we’d got all her guns safe inside. Just tidy procedure. And we did get ‘em all, Phil. After all, the grass wasn’t long. They couldn’t very well hide in it.’
‘I did wonder about the grass,’ I said softly, really to myself. Oliver seemed eager to get moving, to head down the slope and into all the excitement of beautiful babies and slightly mouldy jams. I didn’t feel the same about it. The fête was a distraction, as far as I was concerned.
‘Phil?’ He tilted his head at me.
‘The point is, Oliver…you didn’t get them all, and you can’t get round that. One’s missing. So where did it get to?’
‘Let somebody else worry about that,’ he said, somewhat impatiently, ‘and let’s go and see what’s going on. I wonder if I could throw a wellie with my left arm.’
‘I wouldn’t let it worry you, Oliver. You’d be up against the best wellie whangers in the county. And there is a gun missing, and I am worried about it.’
He sighed, lifted his shoulders, leaned down and plucked a stalk of grass, chewed it, spat it out in disgust, and said, ‘We got all the guns that were gettable, Phil. I promise you. The furthest Harris had thrown any of them was no more than three-quarters of the way across the lawn. What in heaven’s name did you expect? It wasn’t hammer throwing, you know. He wouldn’t have had the room to whirl ‘em round and round. And he couldn’t have whirled ‘em vertically. Ask yourself. He’d have hit the ceiling. All he’d have been able to do was…well, throw ‘em. Just throw. What’re you thinking?’
‘Perhaps I’d better ask Glenn Thomas.’
‘He couldn’t tell you different. And I was there.’ He hesitated, ran his hand up the back of his neck, glanced furtively at the activity down at the bottom of the slope, cocked his head at me, and said, ‘Why’re you staring at me like that, Phil?’
‘What you said. You were there. But you weren’t there when they were actually being thrown, and you said, yourself—remember?—that people can do remarkable things when they’re under emotional stress. And aren’t we assuming, perhaps wrongly, that Harris was one of those completely unfeeling people who’re never under any emotional stress? Perhaps he could have done it. Perhaps Glenn would know what Harris was like…’
‘What’re you getting at, Phil?’ He was now sounding impatient. ‘Sometimes you’re—’
‘I don’t know,’ I cut in. ‘But somehow a gun went missing. If it could’ve been thrown far enough—I’m only saying if—well, look at the slope. Look at the kids sliding down on their trays. And on that night it would’ve been soaked. A flying gun could slide down, right down there. Even into the lake. Perhaps.’
But there’s a limit to Oliver’s patience. He made an angry gesture and turned away.
‘Oh, stop talking nonsense, Phil. Sometimes you take things too far. I’m going down there. Are you coming?’
And he didn’t wait to find out, but strode off in one of his huffs. It wasn’t that he was impatient with me, it was because I’d disappointed him. As he had me.
I didn’t look round to follow his progress, but stared miserably at the hedge. Oliver had failed to discuss it with me, and thus help me clear it in my own mind. And he’d completely missed the point I’d been trying to make.
If someone we knew nothing about at the moment had been the other side of that hedge, on the lawn, or had been crossing it, on that special night in September six years ago, then he or she might have picked up a gun, which would have been lying there asking to be picked up, loaded it, and…and…done what? He could not possibly have subsequently shot Harris with it. Clare had said she’d closed the front door after her when she’d run round to the front.
But it would explain Clare’s mysterious third shot, though why, if someone had picked up a stray gun and taken it away, would that person have troubled to fire it? At nothing? Certainly it couldn’t have been at Harris, because he would have been inaccessible at that time.
That idea simply led to a dead end. So what was I thinking? Or rather—what thought was niggling at me, demanding to be brought out into the light? That was where I needed Oliver’s help. And he wasn’t there.
And even here, I realised in disgust, my eyes focusing again, there were people who managed to leave their litter behind them.
Hidden in the long grass, a little way beneath the overhang of the rhododendron and behind where Josie had been sitting, I could just detect a hard, brown shape that suggested a discarded beer bottle.
Except that it wasn’t, when I parted the grass sufficiently to be able to see it.
Then I was on my feet, with my hands cupped to my mouth. ‘Oliver! Oliver! Come back…
He paused, turned, stared.
‘Quick, quick!’ Though there was no hurry.
Then, catching the tone of my voice, even though shouted, he came hurrying. Not running, not up that slope, but he was striding fast.
‘What is it? What?’
I knelt down and parted the grass. He knelt beside me.
It was a flat piece of wood, walnut or mahogany perhaps, about eight inches by five, nailed to a stake or the like that had been hammered into the ground. Into its surface, indelibly, had been burned—probably with the end of a red-hot poker—the inscription:
HARRISON
B/D 5 SEPT
1986
‘What could it mean?’ I asked. ‘Was that the date?’
‘When it happened, yes.’
I bit my lip. ‘Perhaps the poker slipped.’
We got to our feet, but not before I’d r
earranged the grass to cover it again.
‘What d’you mean—slipped?’
‘Perhaps it was intended to read: D-stroke-D. Then it could’ve meant: Harrison, date of death, 5 September 1986.’
‘But his name was Harris.’
‘Short for Harrison,’ I suggested.
‘There’s no Christian name of Harrison.’
‘There’s an American film star, Harrison Ford.’
He was throwing objections at me, stimulating my imagination. It was something Oliver loved doing.
‘This was before Harrison Ford’s time.’ He reached out and touched my cheek. ‘Oh Phil,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t reach too far. It’s that romantic streak of yours. You’re imagining some woman, planting that…’
‘He’s supposed to have had several women. Wasn’t it you who said that?’
But I was taking it too far for him, and his mind wasn’t fully on it. ‘So what if he had?’ he demanded, his patience very thin indeed, beaten thin, like gold, till it was nearly transparent. ‘It’s you, imagining somebody so potty over him that she’d plant a memorial to him…’
‘Where he died.’ I found I could agree with that proposition. I had recently been talking to a woman who would be devastated if Glenn Thomas met a sudden death.
‘Then it should’ve been nailed to the wall in the gunroom,’ he said facetiously. ‘That’s where he died.’
‘You don’t care!’ I cried. ‘And—potty! Where did you get that from?’ I had to get back at him in some way. Suddenly, it was all going wrong between us.
‘Potty is a grand old slang word meaning: feeble-minded.’
‘Oh, I see. So the sort of love and devotion necessary to bring about that kind of gesture has to be in the mind of some feeble-minded female? If that’s your opinion of love, it strikes me, Oliver, then it’s not for me.’
‘Now…Phil…’
‘Love! You don’t know a thing about it. All you want is to get me into bed. If that’s your love, you can keep it. Yes, keep it to yourself, because it’d mean it’s yourself you love, and…and…’
But he was walking away, and couldn’t see that he had me weeping.
For once, our to-and-fro method of dredging for logic and reason had broken down. I had been too persistent.
‘Oliver!’ I shouted. ‘Wait for me.’ And I ran, stumbling after him, because, I suppose, I was potty.
6
Five summers had been lost. They had no doubt held their annual fêtes, but these had been paltry things, unsatisfactory when compared with the expansive freedom that Collington House and its successive owners had been able to offer. Clare had to do nothing now but be there, walking amongst them, but she was like a flame darting through tinder. Look around, and where there was a flash of activity she would be at its centre. So many women wanted to kiss her cheek; so many men wanted to lay their arms across her shoulders, and hopefully kiss her on the lips. And she carried it along with a sublime air of dignity, gaiety and perfect poise.
I made no attempt to approach her. We…Oliver and I…were the strangers here, accepted, but not of her congregation.
Oliver and I had said no word of reconciliation. Words were not necessary. I’d simply linked my arm in his, and he’d smiled down at me and bent to kiss my lips. Then we walked on together quietly content, and watched from the side-lines.
We were there when she judged the babies. There had to be rules, I supposed, perhaps being born since the previous fête. This year’s crop. But if anything was required to put a person off starting a family, this was it. They were a uniformly drab and depressing collection. I watched as Clare performed. She picked each one from the doting mother’s arms, and kissed and hugged it with apparent joy and admiration, sublimely unaware of the dangerous path she was treading. There were seventeen. Whatever she did (and there was nothing at all to recommend any single one) she was going to be hated, if only temporarily, by sixteen mothers. Even Clare’s popularity couldn’t possibly override this inevitability, I thought. I wondered whether she herself, at that early age, had looked so unattractive.
Yet she made her choice, and managed to convey the difficulty she’d encountered in choosing one beautiful baby from the most wonderful collection she had ever seen. Then, strangely, she was applauded, and everybody knew how correct she had been.
It takes quite a personality to do that, I realised. But I had already decided that Clare was somebody out of the ordinary.
‘I’ll be over by the wellies,’ said Oliver with yearning, and he slunk off. Coward.
I watched, now alone, as Clare judged the jams, as she judged the fruit cakes, the home-made wines, the flower arrangements, and so on. She fascinated me. It was quite a while before I understood exactly what she was doing. Each of the original seventeen baby-displayers in some way won a first prize for something. Or someone in their family did. That was very clever of Clare. I couldn’t help clapping my hands as she awarded the seventeenth, for a crocheted doily.
A man’s voice beside me said, ‘She does that every time. Everybody sees through it, and nobody would have it otherwise.’
I turned. He was a slightly built but tall man, somewhat formally dressed for such an event as this, even wearing a neat tie to his crisp white shirt, and he was eyeing me with grey, twinkling eyes that indicated he knew who I was.
‘You’re Philipa Lowe, I believe,’ he went on. ‘It’s got around. I thought I’d have a word with you.’
‘I’m flattered.’
I was also suspicious. There was a suggestion that his intention was to give me a warning, if only a one-word warning.
‘And you are?’ I asked politely.
‘Ralph Purslowe. A local resident, you could say.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
We formally shook hands. There was, I thought, a mocking glint in his eyes, but, I was pleased to note, a degree of admiration and interest.
‘And why’, I asked, ‘could I say that you’re a local resident? Is it that I’m permitted to say it? I’m intrigued. Say on, Mr Ralph Purslowe.’
‘Inspector,’ he corrected me. ‘Of police, not drains or buses.’
‘You’re off duty?’
‘In so far as I ever am.’
That had to mean that he was in the CID.
‘And you’re wondering what I’m doing here?’ I asked, smiling up at him in what I hoped he’d take as a friendly manner. ‘And worrying that I might disturb the innocent enjoyment of all these splendid people?’
‘Not at all.’
‘You ought to have a word with my friend, Oliver Simpson. You’ll find him watching the wellies being thrown. Whanged, they call it.’
‘I’ve done that. We know each other—sergeants together. And he isn’t watching, he’s chucking with the best.’ He nodded solemnly.
I laughed. ‘Left-handed?’
‘What’s the matter with his right arm?’
‘Oh…that. He tried to take a shotgun off somebody.’
He clicked his tongue. ‘Typical. He always was a bit of a fool.’
‘Isn’t he!’ I agreed.
‘But he’s doing quite well with his left, I thought.’
I nodded. Oliver would. We began to stroll around. He was known, apparently, to most of the people swarming past us. I cocked my head at him.
‘Let’s not pad around it discreetly,’ I suggested. ‘There’s nothing social about this little interview, as I’m sure you’re aware of the reason I came here in the first place, and you know, or you’ve guessed, why I’m still here.’
He walked me a few more paces silently, deftly warding off a rush of children, screamingly intent on getting from A to B in the shortest possible time and for no apparent reason.
‘You’re still here, I’d guess,’ he decided, ‘because you’ve got your car blocked off, and you’re not concerned too much about that because you reckon you might as well use the time exploring some grand idea of your own.’
‘What grand id
ea?’
‘I’d suggest you’re trying to find evidence that Clare didn’t kill her husband. No—let me finish, if you will. No harm in that, you would say. But…why trouble? Nobody cares around here, in fact they’re all on Clare’s side, and it’s the people around here who matter to Clare. Harris Steadman was universally disliked—hated, even. So who might gain, even if you succeeded in proving her innocence?’
I answered briskly. ‘If I could prove it, she might finish up with a tidy sum in damages.’
‘Would that matter to her? She’s loaded.’
‘Vindication…’
‘Quite frankly, I think she’s proud of her reputation. Basks in it. The woman who shot Harris Steadman. She’s even envied…so many people would’ve pounced on the chance to do it. You know how it is, these days…anti-authority. They’re on her side. It’s as though she sacrificed herself for the good of the whole community.’
I gave a tiny bark of a laugh. I couldn’t hold it back.
‘Oh yes,’ he went on placidly. ‘You can laugh, but it’s where her popularity lies. You’re wasting your time, Philipa Lowe. That’s what I’m trying to get across to you. You’re up against a blank wall. You might as well go home and forget it.’
We paused for a few moments of silence, in which I was supposed to be considering his advice. The sports events were in full flow, the really young ones at this stage. They were falling over in the three-legged race, and little girls were concentrating with bulging eyes in the egg and spoon race.
‘You told me you know Oliver?’ I asked at last.
‘Oh yes. We worked together for several years.’
‘Friends?’
I noticed that he was smiling at me knowingly, already aware of what I intended to say.
‘Good friends, yes.’
‘So you ought to be aware that he was taken off the Harris Steadman case because of—’
He held up a hand to stop me. ‘Because of a certain amount of intimacy with Clare?’ He smiled at my expression. ‘But if you know that, I’m surprised you aren’t anxious to get him away from the vicinity.’
‘I’m not worried on that score.’
‘No.’
I studied his bland expression. Had there been just a hint of a question mark after that monosyllable?
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