The Coffin Trail
Page 29
‘I’m sorry about Simon,’ he said awkwardly.
‘Yes, well.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Of course, you’re taking a risk yourself. Killing can become an easy option. A habit. Why should I scruple at one more death?’
Even as she spoke, she put down her glass and walked away from him, towards the corner of the room. He recalled Simon bragging about the thickness of the walls in the tower. Behind closed doors, someone could scream like a dying pig and nobody outside would hear a sound. Tash halted next to a bookcase. On its top, a pair of heavy brass bookends in the shape of lions enclosed a row of Wainwrights. She lifted one of the bookends and a couple of the books tumbled on to the floor.
‘Because it’s pointless,’ he said. ‘You’d never get away with it.’
‘What’s happened to Simon is pointless,’ she said. ‘I could make a sort of statement by killing you. A grand theatrical gesture. Show how pointless our whole fucking lives are – when you get down to it all.’
He felt himself tensing. The living room had two doors, one leading up to the tower, the other linking with the main part of the Hall. He could run if he chose, run back the way they had come. Indecision paralysed him. He’d never talked to a murderer before. What would his father have done?
Tash took a stride towards him. He caught the whiff of alcohol on her breath as she ran her finger along the edge of the bookend. She was caressing the lion’s mane as if fondling a pet.
‘Dusty,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘That’s what happens when you don’t have a housekeeper to keep things nice and tidy.’
Daniel took a breath. Hannah had told him that the m.o. in the killings of Gabrielle and Jean were the same. They’d both been bludgeoned first, rendered insensible so that the killer could destroy them at leisure.
He could hear Hannah speaking of his father. I saw him face danger, many times, and he never flinched.
So: was he his father’s son?
Neither of them moved.
Tick, tick, tick.
Presently, Tash shook her head. Turning, she replaced the brass lion on top of the bookcase.
‘I think it’s time to go.’
As he watched, she spun on her heel and walked out through the door that led to the tower. The heavy key rattled in the lock. For an instant, he thought he was trapped.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. He could walk back into the main building and she was no longer there to stand in his way. So why would she lock the door?
Shit.
Images suddenly poured into his head, as if someone had opened a sluice-valve. He could hear Aimee’s message on his mobile phone, feel the pounding of his heart as he realised what she meant to do. He was back in Cornmarket, temples throbbing as he raced along the pavement. He could hear excited whispers, see fingers pointing up into the sky. Up to the top of St Michael’s Tower.
Not again.
His limbs unfroze and somehow he stumbled through the door and into the corridor. As he flung open the door that led out to the courtyard, he told himself that he was already too late.
But she was still there, gazing down from the battlements. He was staring into the sun, screwing up his eyes as he tried to focus on the slight figure outlined against the sky. She’d waited for him. He had a chance, a last chance to save her. He cried out:
‘Tash!’
Her reply drifted away in the breeze. He thought she said:
‘Gabrielle.’
His stomach clenched. He was powerless to do anything but watch as she climbed on to the parapet and stepped off into the air.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hannah pointed to the grey bulk of the Sacrifice Stone looming before them. ‘So the legend had a grain of truth. You did look Death in the eye.’
Daniel followed as she picked her way along the narrow track on Priest Edge. The ground was bare underfoot. In the distance he could see the coffin trail winding down the fell. Since the drama of the previous week he’d made his apologies to the editor of Contemporary Historian and abandoned his article about corpse roads. Only last night he’d dreamed of Tash Dumelow jolting down the coffin trail in exultant mood, unaware that in the farmhouse below, a curtain was twitching.
When they reached the Stone he said, ‘I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t be climbing up it again.’
‘Glad to hear you say so,’ she scolded. ‘The Lakes aren’t a theme park. People ought to leave its monuments alone.’
‘Sorry, it was an aberration. Put it down to the ignorance of an off-comer. It’ll take time for me to behave like a native. Even longer to feel like one.’
‘Thirty years minimum, no reduction for good behaviour. Never mind the tourism and the twee craft shops, Daniel. This is a private corner of the world. You can’t just march in and hope to belong.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
‘Still happy you moved here?’
‘No regrets.’
‘Despite all that’s happened?’
He brushed his fingers against the Stone, feeling its roughness. ‘Somehow the Lakes have got under my skin. Besides, at least one good thing’s been achieved. Barrie’s name has been cleared. Even if not by a court of law.’
‘What’s so wonderful about the judgment of a court of law? I’ve seen a few dodgy verdicts in my time, I promise you.’
‘When we had dinner, you mentioned that case about the man who hired the hitman, Golac. Still rankles that he got off scot free?’
‘You bet. Unfinished business.’
He’d heard her use the phrase before, it seemed to have a resonance for her. ‘Like my father and the murder of Gabrielle Anders.’
She was glaring at him. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about Tash instead of confronting her?’
‘It would have been the sensible thing to do.’
‘Too right.’
‘Leaving Oxford and coming here wasn’t sensible, either. Trouble is, I’m sick – yes, I’m so sick – of doing the sensible thing.’
‘You should have trusted me.’
‘I realise that,’ he said quietly. ‘It wasn’t about not trusting you. Please believe me.’
She swivelled, as if wanting to change the subject, and gazed down the slope towards Tarn Fold. ‘How’s the work on the cottage going?’
‘On bad days, it feels as though it will never end. As though I’ll never get the dust out of my sinuses and the wood shavings out of my hair. On good days, well, things are taking shape.’
‘And Miranda, is she glad she made the move?’
He looked at the traces of his footprints on the track. Soon the farmers would be praying for rain. People were never satisfied for long.
‘Most of the time, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Whether she will still be so glad after she gets back from London, who knows? I’m not sure – not convinced any more that she really thought this through. When the excitement fades…’
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t pry. None of my business.’
‘I’m turning my attention to the garden. It’s a wilderness, yet there’s something that puzzles me. As if it were laid out according to a strange, lop-sided design. The only snag is, I can’t make any sense of it.’
She put her head to one side, weighing him up. ‘Mysteries fascinate you, don’t they?’
‘History is stuffed with them. Every historian wants to find answers to the puzzles of the past.’
‘You said something earlier, about the moment Tash threw herself from the pele tower. You had a flashback.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
He sighed. ‘Why not?’
He didn’t look at her as he talked about the death of his lover, but he was conscious of her intense scrutiny. When he’d finished, he said, ‘My old boss thinks that by moving to the Lakes, I’m running away from what happened to Aimee. If he’s right, it certainly didn’t work. I’ve spent all my life hungering after knowledge. I’m never satisfied until I understand. That’s fine for a historian,
but it causes trouble in the real world. If I hadn’t confronted Tash, she’d be alive today.’
‘Do you wish she’d lived?’
He shrugged. ‘What matters is that she didn’t want to.’
A few moments passed. Hannah checked her watch. ‘I’d better be going.’
‘Marc will be getting back from the book fair soon, I guess.’
‘Maybe.’
Something in her voice caused him to look up. ‘Something wrong?’
She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Nothing that can’t be sorted out, I suppose.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’
She hesitated. ‘I – I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
‘Okay.’
‘You understand what I mean?’ Her shoulders were hunched, her tone defensive. ‘I don’t want to sound secretive, especially when you told me all about Aimee. But some things need to stay private.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll walk you back to the car.’
In silence, they made their way along the edge of the fell and then down the coffin trail, towards Brack Hall and the farm. Hannah had parked at the point where the trail joined the lane. When they reached her car, she offered her hand. It was warm to touch.
‘Perhaps I’ll see you again sometime.’
He wondered if he should kiss her. Just a peck on the cheek, nothing more. He leaned towards her and her eyes widened. Something in her expression unsettled him. Shit, he thought.
Slowly, trying not to show his reluctance, he drew back.
‘So how are things here?’ Miranda asked as he unlocked the front door.
From the moment he’d picked her up at Oxenholme station, she’d scarcely drawn breath. The jaunt to London had been an unqualified success. She’d seen friends, lunched at the next table to a couple of hunky actors from a long-running soap, and accepted Suki’s offer to contribute a regular column to the magazine. The pay was amazing and the friends mouth-wateringly envious of her idyllic lifestyle in the Lakes. A couple of people she’d wanted to see had been away, but it didn’t matter because she’d soon have another chance to catch up with them. She needed to go back to Wapping to chat up an ex-boyfriend who had moved to The Sunday Times and might be interested in occasional lifestyle features. No need to be jealous, she’d assured Daniel; the boyfriend had finally decided he was gay and was living with a bloke who was a driver on the London Underground.
‘Eddie says he’ll be starting work on the bothy next week. And I took Tash’s watercolour and gave it to the Oxfam shop. Otherwise, not quite as exciting as they were for you, by the sound of it.’
‘Listen,’ she said as he put down her suitcase. ‘You’ve already had enough excitement to last a lifetime. I still can’t get over the idea of Tash killing her own housekeeper. Let alone this horrid picture that keeps coming into my mind of her splattered all over the courtyard. All the blood and the brains – ugh! This is a beautiful part of the world, I’ve been telling everyone, but…weird, somehow.’
‘You’re still glad we moved here?’
‘Of course! Let’s face it, I’ve fallen on my feet. If we didn’t have a cottage in the country, Suki would never have crossed my palm with silver. I only wish you hadn’t made me promise not to write about the murders. I could have made a small fortune. All the same…’
‘Yes?’
‘The agent still hasn’t found a buyer for my flat. Not at the price I wanted.’
‘You are asking top dollar.’
‘Why not? It’s an up-and-coming area. But I was wondering whether it might be an idea to keep the flat. It would be so useful to have a place to stay in the city. Our very own pied-à-terre. What do you think?’
‘Why would we need it?’
In playful mood, she wagged a finger. ‘Don’t forget what you said about Tash. She wanted to start again, but you said it was impossible. We’re all the prisoners of our history.’
‘God,’ he said gloomily. ‘I can be pretentious sometimes.’
‘You’re an Oxford don,’ she said, punching him gently in the stomach. ‘It comes with the territory.’
He shook his head. ‘Oxford’s in the past. I’m not going back.’
‘You’ll change your mind. Everybody does in the end.’
‘Not me.’
‘Daniel.’ Her tone was patient and kind. ‘The Lake District is wonderful, but it is a bit – well, remote. We don’t want to cut ourselves off.’
‘But that’s what we agreed.’
She reached towards him and started to unbuckle his belt. ‘Hey, let’s not argue. I’ve only been home five minutes and there are far better ways we can spend the time.’
He closed his eyes as she touched him. She still had the gift of making him forget everything but the here and now. Trouble was, with his eyes shut, his brain played a trick on him. Wove a dark spell that made his body tremble.
No point denying it, no point in trying to fool himself. In his mind, Miranda too had changed places. For a few seconds before he jolted back to his senses, the wandering hands belonged to Hannah Scarlett.
Author’s Note
I could not have written this book without help from a great many people. Too many, in fact, to acknowledge each of them individually. I would like, though, to single out my family, Roger Forsdyke, Alan McDonald, Ted Brown, Gill Longford, Ann Cleeves and Ian Peacock, all of whom provided particular assistance with my researches, together with my agent Mandy Little, my publisher David Shelley and everyone at Allison & Busby who helped in bringing this book to publication. Representatives of Cumbria Constabulary, Merseyside Police and Cumbria Tourist Board provided invaluable assistance. At the risk of stating the obvious, I should add that although some of the people in the novel have surnames often found in Cumbria, all the characters, businesses and incidents depicted are fictitious.
Martin Edwards
About the Author
MARTIN EDWARDS was born in Cheshire. He read Law at Oxford and then trained as a solicitor. He is married with two children, and is currently a partner at Mace & Jones law firm, based in Liverpool and Manchester. The author of the acclaimed series of legal mysteries featuring Harry Devlin, he is also a critic and has edited various short story collections.
www.martinedwardsbooks.com
By Martin Edwards
LAKE DISTRICT MYSTERIES
The Coffin Trail
The Cipher Garden
The Arsenic Labyrint
The Serpent Pool
HARRY DEVLIN NOVELS
Waterloo Sunset
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
13 Charlotte Mews
London W1T 4EJ
www.allisonandbusby.com
Copyright © 2004 by MARTIN EDWARDS
Hardcover published in Great Britain in 2004.
Paperback edition published in 2005.
This ebook edition published in 2011.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1021–8
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