‘You do?’ I repeated. ‘Such as what?’
‘I thought we ought to know which—if any—young lady of the parish had an abortion at around the time Harris died. If she didn’t have the money, it would’ve been in a local hospital. So…common knowledge.’
It surprised me a little that he seemed to have completely accepted Clare’s revelations, but more that he seemed now to be questioning what she’d said. In any event, pregnancies can be terminated in other ways but abortion, the most common being birth. I didn’t pick him up on it.
‘If it was common knowledge, you ought to know,’ I pointed out.
‘I was in the CID at that time. We didn’t get the contact the beat coppers did.’
‘No. I suppose not. Can we watch something else, Oliver? The dust’s getting in my throat.’
‘Of course.’ He led me away, towards the lake. It was looking more extensive the closer we approached it. There were rowing boats on its surface, scudding and splashing around, and one or two lying idle.
‘A boat?’ I suggested.
‘My arm…’
‘I can row, Oliver.’
‘Is there anything your father didn’t teach you? It’s a wonder he didn’t send you to Oxford, and get you in one of the eights.’
I was silent. We stood on the shore and stared out over the water. On the far side of the lake, as Oliver had expected, there were people, experts, setting up the firework display.
It was the first time he had expressed any bitterness in respect of his disability; the first time he’d directed it at me. I was quite aware that the lusty competition going on in all directions must have brought this to his attention, so that my offer had done no more than thrust it to the fore.
‘Is it that you hate my father, Oliver?’ I asked at last, trying to sound casual, as though I was merely searching for knowledge.
‘Not hate him. Of course not.’ His arm tightened round my shoulders. ‘I love what he made of you. It’s just…’ He allowed it to fade away.
I waited, but he did not amplify. ‘Just what, damn it? I’d like to know in what way I fall short to requirements.’
‘It’s just that…oh hell, why did I get into this?’
‘Yes…why? What’s upsetting you, Oliver? What’ve I done wrong?’
‘Nothing. Never anything wrong. But sometimes…’
‘Sometimes?’ I managed to purr it.
‘Sometimes, I think, you ought to be more feminine. That’s all.’ That’s all! To tell a woman that she ought to be more feminine! Did he class me as a hawkish, loud-mouthed feminist…
I turned and gave him as hard a shove as I could, given the weakness of my sex. He slid down the bank, rolling into the water. And I forgave him at once.
He came up spluttering, the bale of hay nudging him, and I offered him a hand, digging in my heels because I reckoned he would do his best to pull me in beside him. And up he came, splashing soggily.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he complained, swinging his arms about. ‘I’ve got no change of clothes and we’re thirty miles from home. You’re too blasted touchy, Phil.’
We both ignored the laughter from the near-naked sunbathers around us.
‘Oh, stop fussing,’ I told him. ‘Get your clothes off and hang ‘em in a tree. They’ll be dry in no time. You can keep your Y-fronts on if you like. Look around you. Half the natives are nearly naked.’ But these were teenagers, and might therefore be excused. However…‘We would be considered more peculiar clothed than undressed.’
‘We?’ asked Oliver, peeling off his wet clothes. He was wearing boxer shorts.
‘It would look unfeminine if I remained fully clothed,’ I explained. ‘And you wouldn’t want that.’
‘True,’ he said, grinning. Oliver’s darker moods last a very short while.
So we lay there on the bank of the lake, me in bra and briefs, and no one would have regarded us as different from the pairs of youngsters around us. Except, I noted, that they all seemed to be tightly clasped together. For a moment I considered whether, in order to merge completely, it might be better if we, too, were tightly clasped together. Perhaps it was the reaction from pushing him into the water, but suddenly I felt a warmth for Oliver that almost demanded that we should be similarly entwined. But so far, in my quest for marriage, I had resisted what would inevitably follow if I relaxed—the sun warm on our naked flesh—and though that would add the final touch to our acceptance into the youthful exploratory club that surrounded us, I felt that the price of admission would be too much to pay. The way I was feeling, our performance, being more mature, would probably attract a round of applause from our fellow members. Severely, I forced my mind to the mundane matter of murder.
‘And why’, I asked, ‘would you want to discover who had an abortion, when Clare’s made it very clear that she doesn’t want us asking around and troubling people?’
‘Because I suspect that nobody did, at that time. And not simply because Harris was dead, and couldn’t come up with the money. No. It’s just that it didn’t sound right, Phillie. Not right at all.’
I rolled over and faced him. ‘You mean you’re disbelieving the golden truths your ex-mistress trusted to us?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call her that.’
‘It’s what she was.’
‘It’s what she wasn’t. Only rarely, Phillie. Not often. Not often enough to be a mistress.’
‘Can you put a positive figure on your definition—’
‘Keep to the point, please,’ he said severely. ‘I believe Clare was lying again. Doing it very well…and I don’t think her anger was put on. She was angry, at that time. But…would Harris have gone to her and asked for money for that? Wouldn’t he have invented some other debt, or something? Clare herself mentioned that Harris was in desperate need of money. And isn’t it more usual for the pregnant woman to do the approaching? Wouldn’t it be more natural for her to go to the wife, or at least threaten to go to the wife? No, Phil. I just can’t see Harris going to Clare for money, and then even suggesting it could be for another woman’s pregnancy—suggesting that Clare would want it to be hidden. No…she was reaching for some sort of pity. Or rather, for sympathy. Pity would be no good for her. Pity’s empty.’
Sometimes he surprises me. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. She’s been coming round to the point of actually admitting she shot him.’
He looked startled. ‘Did it sound like that? I can’t imagine such a thing from Clare—an actual admission.’
‘Then she was trying to put across the fact that she had damned good justification for shooting him.’ I nodded severely.
‘Does she need that?’
‘You said it yourself—she was angling for sympathy and understanding.’
‘She’s got it already,’ he said, waving an embracing arm. ‘From everybody.’
‘Not from me, and she knows it.’ I rolled back, staring at the sky. ‘Not perhaps enough from you, Oliver, either.’
He sounded annoyed. ‘What the hell…’
I spoke very softly, picking my words with care. ‘If—in spite of the fact that she did kill him—she had your sympathy and forgiveness for her deceit—‘
‘Drop it, Phil, please.’
‘Then she could hope you would be able to persuade me to accept that she did, after all, shoot him—and I would then leave her in peace.’
‘For God’s sake!’
I sat up. There was a completely alien anger in his eyes.
‘But you maintain that Harris would never have gone to her for money to terminate another woman’s pregnancy?’ I asked this casually.
Still he seemed angry. ‘I can’t see it.’
‘Then—it seems—she’s failed to obtain your full sympathy and understanding.’ I grinned at him.
A vestige of his anger still remained. But, as I’d expected, my grin softened it, and he knew I’d been ribbing him. Or thought he knew. I hadn’t been.
‘Correct,’ he said f
latly. ‘I wonder if my clothes are dry yet. I’m beginning to feel a bit conspicuous.’
‘Are you? Why?’
‘We’re the only couple here not exploring the joys of sex.’
I sprang to my feet to check. Yes—his clothes were dry. Well…dry enough. Mine, of course, had not been wet.
We dressed. It took me half the time that Oliver needed.
‘And I don’t agree,’ I said.
‘With what?’
‘That Harris wouldn’t have gone to Clare about another woman’s pregnancy. Look at how it was, if we’ve got the partial truth and it wasn’t all a string of lies. She knew she could have children, because she’d had one. She lost that child, and her husband, in the same car crash. Then she acquired another husband—Harris. Don’t you think that having another child would be her first thought, when she chose him? Big and masculine. Don’t you think that would be foremost in her mind? And when a child didn’t come along, she would blame him. She would torment him to go for tests. She would demand her right to have a child. Heavens, Oliver, have you thought of this? She had other men, you amongst them. Perhaps that was in her mind. No affection involved. No love. Sex without love! Revolting. Yet she—’
‘Does this go on much longer?’
I sighed. There was a dangerous light in his eyes.
‘It stops right here, Oliver. She would taunt him—Harris. She would plague him. So…if he did get another woman pregnant, wouldn’t he throw that fact in her face? Yes…he would love going to her for money, to terminate a pregnancy she’d claimed he could never bring about. And heavens…wouldn’t that send her way over the top into a bout of uncontrollable fury—’
‘You’ve made your point, Phil.’
‘You go along with it?’
‘Oh yes, yes.’ He sounded impatient. ‘He’d ask her for money, but not with any expectation of getting it. Not a chance. And he’d know that. But that would be the ultimate insult, to wave a pregnancy under her nose—and he’d love it. The icing on the cake, he’d see it as. Oh yes.’
But if Oliver accepted it, he certainly wasn’t at all happy about it. In fact, he looked thoroughly miserable. Crimes of violence would have been routine to him. Theft, jealousy, self-protection, he would be able to accept all of those, and remain emotionally uninvolved. Crimes of sex were a different thing. We were down to the basic reasons for existence. He would hate such crimes, and this one brushed against him too intimately.
‘So don’t you think, Oliver,’ I suggested, as he forced damp socks into damp shoes, ‘that we ought to be enquiring about local abortions at around that time? As you suggested.’
‘Let’s see if we can find a cup of tea and something to eat.’
‘Well…don’t you?’
‘Why else d’you think I was looking for Ralph Purslowe? I did say that.’
‘Yes, so you did.’ I took his arm. ‘Oliver, I wish you wouldn’t do this to me.’
‘Do what?’
‘Lead me on. You’d worked all this out before, so why did you let us get into an argument?’
‘Because, my sweet…’ He reached over to squeeze the hand I had tucked into his arm, ‘I love to see your eyes go all wild when you’re furious. Love it.’
‘Then don’t push your luck. It’s that marquee over there. He got me a cup of tea. Your Inspector Purslowe did.’
‘But he didn’t mention abortions?’
‘Not over a cup of tea, no. He was concerned with impressing on me how many people had been queuing up for a go at Harris Steadman.’
‘No hints as to pregnancy?’
‘Only in a general way. Harris seemed to have been very active.’
‘Perhaps he hadn’t got anybody specific in mind.’
We walked on. The marquee became closer. There was a queue to get in, blast it.
I have a distinct dislike for queues, almost a morbid fear. I feel that I am drawn on to a production line, one of a powerless stream of jolting bottles, inevitably to be filled at the end but with no way to withdraw. Or rather, one can always withdraw, but at the sacrifice of a number of precious places.
‘A quarter of an hour,’ I said, viewing the length of the queue and watching how fast they shuffled. ‘Get something for me, Oliver, will you? Anything. I’ll be back.’
‘I get all the rotten jobs. Where are you off to?’
‘Your friend Ralph said I ought to visit Madame Acarti. Now’s the chance.’
‘Alice Carter.’ He nodded. ‘Ralph’s wife. She uses her maiden name in the line of business.’
‘Ah yes. I’ll be off, then. It’ll be that tent I saw, over by the far hedge, I’d guess.’
It was somewhat isolated, and I’d not noticed anyone going near it for a long while. Business was slack.
‘That’s it,’ Oliver said. ‘The messages from the other world that DS Alice Carter would wish to discuss with the locals would be very private indeed.’
I left him. My shoes were not ideal for walking on turf, though the grass was short, as had been the lawn in front of the gunroom. It’s so easy to take things for granted, I thought. You are presented with a fact, and you don’t query it. But now, I considered that fact. Clare had returned to a house prepared for her: groceries in the kitchen and her showcases beautifully restored. I’d noticed that although little dusting had been done in the rest of the house, those showcases had been polished when I’d seen them, the glass fronts gleaming. Preparations for her return had been made. But she had, after all, known of her early release from prison, had known over a month before. Hadn’t she sent instructions to the estate agent to withdraw Collington House from the market?
And, now that I knew her better, I could see that the incorrect price quoted on the prospectus might well have been a deliberate trick of Clare’s. She would make the gesture of putting the house on the market, but knowing she had in reserve a means of discouraging any interested buyers. It would’ve been much more fun than simply refusing any valid offer at a realistic price. It had to be another of her flights of self-dramatisation.
So she had returned, knowing that everything would be ready to receive her. Including the fête? Yes, she wouldn’t have forgotten that. As soon as a positive date for her release was known, she would have arranged a date for the fête accordingly. How better to greet again, as my lady of the manor, her own beloved congregation?
Damn it, the woman’s making me cynical, I thought. It was annoying to have one’s emotions so easily manipulated by another person.
But I walked her treasured turf on the way to Madame Acarti’s den. I was in no doubt that Glenn Thomas had brought all this about, and had probably organised the fête. He would do anything for Clare.
What are you thinking, Phil? I asked myself. Glenn had his eye on Josie Knight, if the clasped hands I’d trodden on meant anything.
It was during my indecisive wanderings that I became aware of another person’s interest. Standing close to the hedge, but a hundred yards further down the gentle slope from the tent, was Glenn Thomas. I wandered slowly towards him. Now he was wearing his jacket, but standing, hands on hips, with it drawn back. His shirt was still open to the navel, his chin jutting towards the lair of Madame Acarti. He was so concentrated on his thoughts that he gave a small jerk when I spoke at his shoulder.
‘Trying to make up your mind?’ I asked.
He darted a brief glance at me, then continued to glower at the tent. ‘I’ve made it. I’m going to ask her to leave.’
‘She doesn’t seem to be getting much custom, anyway.’
‘I’ve passed the word around.’
‘You disapprove, obviously. Don’t you believe in the occult, Glenn? Don’t you believe that the future might be predicted?’
Again the brief glance, no doubt to note whether I was serious. ‘Occult! My left foot.’
‘There’s no need to be delicate with me, you know. And there’s nothing mysterious about what goes on in that tent. It’s no more than gentle hints—that al
l is known, and that the minor misdemeanours have been observed. And if those stop, all will be forgotten and forgiven. Quite frankly, I think it’s a very good idea. Better the subtle warning than the hand on your collar.’
But he was stubborn. Glenn Thomas was a man of simple but firm loyalties. Your friend, and he was a friend for life. Briefly, I wondered whether Josie realised this. A wife was a wife, and that was it. By heaven, how relaxing it would be to have such a man at your side, inflexibly. He would kill anyone who harmed you. But wasn’t that why I clung to Oliver? He, too, was such a man. Didn’t he realise that this was why I wanted to marry him?
But my thoughts were wandering. I dragged them back ruthlessly. He hadn’t responded to my comment.
‘Have you the authority to ask her to leave?’ I asked. ‘It’s Clare’s land.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course it is. But it was Clare who asked me to arrange all this. She didn’t ask for a police presence, though.’
‘Doing no harm, surely.’
‘Doing a hell of a lot of harm, if you ask me. Paltry stuff, that’s all it is. The village shop open on Sunday morning! Pah! You’d think it was Sainsbury’s. And old Ted Martin driving on an expired car tax. Or Julie Fisher, hawking her…doing favours for money. The poor dear’s getting past it, and how’ll she live on her pension? And young Tony Leach, riding his pushbike at night without lights. Petty, paltry, a waste of time. I can take care of all that.’
Glenn Thomas, it seemed to me, was suffering from a severe attack of lord-of-the-manor-itis. He saw himself as the focal point of the whole community. People came to him…
‘People come to me,’ he said, reading my mind. ‘I help out, if there’s trouble.’
So what did he feel about the return of Clare Steadman? Would they compete in a battle for local influence? Or would they…surely not. But Clare would certainly be looking out for another husband. Where did Josie come in all this? And did she realise it?
‘So tell her to leave,’ I said, gesturing towards the tent. ‘Though, mind you, you might find yourself with a whole bundle of your own minor aberrations to answer for.’
A Shot at Nothing Page 14
