by Anne Morice
“I don’t see why you find it necessary to repeat things I know already. There is no secret about them.”
“But it was a secret for a time, was it not? James also told you that he believed this to be just a temporary aberration and that Rosamund would come back. When this happened, he did not want their reunion to be soured by the fact that the story had become the subject of local gossip and he therefore begged you not to repeat anything he had told you. As a woman of principle, you kept your word, not even mentioning it to Elsa. That was how things stood until a few days later, when you received a letter from Rosamund yourself. Naturally enough, since she had not sworn you to secrecy, you considered that you had now been released from your promise. So the first thing you did was to show the letter to Elsa. You agree?”
“I keep saying so, but it still doesn’t explain why you should imagine I had written it myself.”
“Well, I’ve given you the facts and now we come to the assumptions, which are based mainly on the premise that the letter was such an obvious forgery.”
“In what way obvious?”
“Not in the handwriting, which in any case I wouldn’t have recognised. It was the style which was the give-away. It was simply not the way in which one woman would write to another.”
“Elsa found no flaw in it.”
“Yes, but we both know how trusting she is and as soon as it was pointed out to her that it might be a fake she suggested as much to you and you told her that you had suspected it all along. That was what first gave me the idea that you had written it.”
“But why me?”
“Because I felt sure that you had not given James your promise without some misgivings. On the other hand, you realised that these could be due to prejudice on your part and you decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. But then, as the days went by and there was still no word from Rosamund, the misgivings grew stronger and you felt that you had to do something positive. You still couldn’t bring yourself to break your promise, so you had to find a way to make it null and void and you wrote the letter. It was clever thinking because, if, by some remote chance, Rosamund turned up alive and well and denied having written it, you would have lost nothing. If not, it would provide you with the excuse you needed to bring the police in and you tried to word it in such a way that even Elsa’s suspicions would be aroused. You didn’t lay it on thick enough, though, and it was sheer fluke that I got to hear about it.”
“Not entirely. She asked me whether I would mind her showing it to you and I gave her every encouragement. I may say that your reaction was exactly what I had been hoping for.”
“So you do admit it?”
“My dear, I admit everything, with one exception. I did not write the letter. I might have done so, if I’d thought of it, I suppose, but I am not so clever as you appear to believe and, fortunately, someone else saved me the trouble. If you’ve finished your coffee, we can bring this discussion to an end. I have to collect Tim from the Parish Hall in ten minutes.”
“And no doubt you feel it would be prudent to consult him before committing yourself any further?”
“My dear, you really are the most impudent young woman I ever met, and I must warn you that my patience is not inexhaustible. I really cannot see that this is any business of yours, but since you have set yourself up as an inquisitor, I have done my best to humour you. Now, for the last time, I did not forge the letter. Whether you believe that or not is a matter of indifference to me, but I refuse to discuss it further. Is that clear?”
“Oh, clear as daylight, Louise, but it is now my turn to warn you. I mentioned earlier that my conclusions were based on facts as well as assumptions, and there is one fact which you have yet to hear.”
“Oh, very well, if you must, but please try to make it short.”
“Whoever did forge it went to some trouble to disguise his or her own style of correspondence, so some other model had to be found and that’s where he or she fell flat on his or her face.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it may not be the way she would have written to you, or any other woman friend, but it was certainly the way she had once written to James. After you’d left him and were thinking over what he’d told you, you doubtless formed the opinion that he had been lying to you about the farewell note, but you were only half right. She had written just such a letter to him two years ago. It made such an impression that he was able to reel it off to you verbatim. Now, what you have to bear in mind, Louise, is that only three people were in a position to know how that first letter was worded. They are the one who wrote it, the one to whom it was written and yourself.”
“Did that do the trick?” Toby asked.
“Oh, she blustered on for a bit, but the fight had gone out of her. I felt a bit mean, to tell you the truth.”
“Better coming from you, I’d have thought, than having it flung at her in court.”
“All the same, there was a trick in it and, if she hadn’t been so shattered, she’d have noticed it.”
“Well, I’m not shattered and I haven’t noticed it either.”
“She should have pointed out there was a fourth person who could have read the original letter, probably did. He is the one for whose sake it was written and who James believes to be the murderer.”
“My dear Tessa, you’re not telling me you believe in this mythical lover figure?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not for one minute.”
“Then how do you explain why she was continually darting off on her own for days at a time and claiming to be with her cousin in London?”
“I explain it by pointing out that your informant was James.”
“Why would he have made it up?”
“For the simple purpose of establishing that his wife had a lover. I daresay these trips of hers weren’t half so frequent as he now makes out and when they did occur she had simply gone to stay with friends in Sussex.”
“Well, I admit that Alan did say she’d kept up with some of them, but can you explain why James found it necessary to invent such a tale?”
“Like all gardeners, his work was mapped out months in advance. When the season came for Rosamund to disappear, it would be revealed to a shocked community that she has made up this story about being so devoted to her cousin, in order to account for her regular absences from home. What other reason for such deceit than a love affair? With any luck, you will swallow it whole and accept that she has run away with the other man. Failing that, he still has story number two up his sleeve. That was the one he told you and you were willing to believe it, which must have been encouraging for him.”
“In that case, why didn’t he stay and brazen it out? Why has he now bolted?”
“Lost his nerve, I daresay, and fell back on plan three, only to be used in the direst emergency.”
“So, in effect, you are saying that he not only murdered her, but that it had been planned down to the last detail months or years in advance?”
“Yes, and that’s why I considered you were unwise to spend so much time with him.”
“Well, it’s not Robin’s view and you see what that means, don’t you? My two mentors have now taken up their positions at opposite poles. It will not be easy to steer a straight course between them. Why do you keep gazing out of the window while I am talking to you?”
“Because the Carrington girl has been sitting in her car for the past five minutes and it is beginning to worry me. Do you suppose she can have fainted?”
“It is more likely that she is nerving herself to come inside and tell me something I know already.”
“Well, I can see that would take nerve, but why bother?”
“She is not aware that I know it already. The hesitation is due to the fact that she has a problem which she would like to share with me, but fears that by doing so she will be throwing a loved one to the lions.”
“With all that in mind, it would not surprise me if she had fainted.
Perhaps you should go and revive her?”
“Thank goodness, you’ve come, Tessa! I need your advice, but it gave me the jitters to see Toby glaring at me like that.”
“It has been known to have that effect. Let’s go and sit on the tree trunk and let him glare away unseen by either of us.”
“It has heard many confidences in its time,” I remarked, as we walked over the Common, “including Ellen giving her all when it was the prop for the Round Table. I take it there is an element of chivalry mixed up in this problem of yours?”
“So you’ve guessed what it’s all about? You saw more in my report than I did myself?”
“Not until I heard that Marc and Andrea had had a row. I suppose the truth is that they were together on the night of the fire, but had separated several hours earlier than she chose to tell the Coroner?”
“Right! She said the film had given her a headache and she was going straight home. Well, you know yourself that it doesn’t take much more than an hour to drive down at that time of night and he went through the roof when he heard her say she hadn’t got home until after one o’clock. The trouble with Marc, though, is that he’s so single-minded that he can only ever see the question from one point of view, and it didn’t hit him until later that she might have had some quite different reason for lying about it than the one he’d first thought of.”
“And now he’s debating what he ought to do about it? The answer, of course, is nothing.”
“Just what I said. I’m glad you agree.”
“And, anyway, what can he do? The case is closed now. He couldn’t get it re-opened, even if he wished to.”
“It’s not as simple as that, Tessa. He’s still dotty about her, you see, and he still wants to marry her. Honestly, don’t you often think that sex can be the most awful scourge?”
“Not often, no.”
“Well, it is when it gets otherwise sane and adult people into this kind of mess. One half of him realises that she’s an exhibitionist and manic-depressive, to name but two, but the other half says that’s perfectly okay. He kids himself that it’s all on account of her rotten childhood, her mother dying when she was born and her stepmother being such a washout. He thinks she’ll be a different character when she has a background of her own and a doting husband to gratify her every whim.”
“Then he’ll be able to look out of the window at all the flying pigs.”
“I know and, what’s more, I don’t believe he gives a damn whether she set fire to her boring old stepmother or not. He’d find some way to excuse it, given time, but that’s not his only worry.”
“It would be enough for most people. What else?”
“Well, you see, he’s always been hooked on this idea that, whoever else she might lie to, she’d always be straight with him. If only she’d tell him what she was up to during those missing two hours, even if it included murder and arson, he’d pat her head and tell her not to worry, but she won’t. She just rants on about how beastly he is not to trust her. If you ask me, she hasn’t gone to the Hebrides because she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but because she can’t stand any more of those reproachful looks.”
“Has he been in touch with her since she left?”
“No. Apparently, these friends she’s staying with have a holiday cottage somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. All very spartan and primitive and the nearest telephone is half a mile away. So far, she hasn’t felt strong enough to walk to it.”
“Then how can I advise you, Millie? It sounds to me as though the affair is over and he’ll just have to learn to live without it.”
“I thought you’d be able to produce something a bit more inspiring than that to tide him over the worst.”
“Oh, I could reel off half a dozen, starting with the one about his being well out of it, since he could never be sure she wouldn’t be seized by the urge to set fire to him one of these days, but it wouldn’t do any good.”
“So you do believe she had something to do with it?”
“Let’s say I consider her to be capable of it and, if the opportunity happened to turn up when she was in the mood for that sort of game, I daresay she wouldn’t have hesitated. There’s just one snag.”
“What’s that?”
“Self-dramatisation. I bet she was dead scared during the inquest but, having come through that unscathed and finding life a bit of an anti-climax, it would never surprise me if she had now adopted the role of a beautiful, Victorian-type murderess. Not to be played on a world stage, mark you, but to an audience of one, who is responding with gratifying attention, one might add.”
“It would still leave all that time unaccounted for,” Millie objected.
“Not necessarily. If she’d arrived home just after her father and gone to her room, as Toby pointed out, she could have found a dozen ways to occupy herself before she started crashing about in the bathroom.”
“So why lie about it?”
“Because at first, if this version is correct, she was anxious for it not to be known that she was in the house between midnight and one a.m. That, you will recall, is the approximate time when the fire is estimated to have started. She could not tell what verdict the jury would come up with, whether there would be suspicion in the air and, if so, who it might fall on. There was even the possibility that the Coroner might think it worth asking her what she had been doing between the time she came home and when she went to bed. But he didn’t and, once she was safely out of that wood, the mood changed. Everything had become dull and ordinary again and she thought it would be fun to liven it up by putting Marc through a few hoops. I really believe, you know, that I’ve talked myself round. After all, I regard that as the most likely explanation for her present behaviour.”
“Not much consolation for my poor little brother!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. The role will soon lose its attraction. It’s very limiting, you know. Not much you can do to expand and develop it and I daresay that even now, as she sits gazing out over the rain-sodden landscape, she’s rewriting the play and casting herself in a new part.”
“So you think we can tell him to stop worrying because your second sight tells you that it’s all going to roses again as soon as she gets home?”
“No, I wouldn’t advise that. We might be letting ourselves in for trouble. You’re not going to believe this, Millie, but I could so easily be wrong.”
SEVENTEEN
“Two dead females and two missing persons,” I announced, “or maybe one missing person and three dead females. Could there be a connection?”
“If so, we shall rely on you to find it,” Robin replied. “Who’s the imponderable?”
“Andrea. Missing, but not so far presumed dead.”
“Not in the Hebrides, after all?”
“As her father has now discovered. Being somewhat obsessive about the girl, he got worried when he didn’t hear from her, not so much as a postcard to say she wished he was there. He was afraid her depression might have caused her to walk into the Atlantic, which it no doubt would have done, provided the beach was ringed with life guards. Anyway, he sent a telegram.”
“And?”
“She was supposed to go by train to Oban, you see. In fact, he saw her off from King’s Cross. It was a night train and she was to catch the boat train the next morning to the island. It leaves at eleven and she was booked into the hotel, so that she could bath and change and so on. When the boat docked she wasn’t on board and her name hadn’t been ticked off the passenger list. The friends who’d gone to meet her rang the hotel, but she hadn’t checked in there either. So they thought ‘Oh well, that’s Andrea for you!’ and concluded she’d changed her mind. It wasn’t until the telegram arrived that they realised their mistake and that was yesterday, five days after the official E.T.A.”
“What an extraordinary story!”
“Yes, isn’t it? Though I doubt if it will have much of a run. She is probably sitting on a beach in St. Tropez. Only, o
f course, that wouldn’t sound nearly so romantic and Brontë-esque as roaming around in the glens of the Outer Hebrides.”
“So not very seriously missing, you think?”
“I wouldn’t rule out the alternative, though. No one could deny that Andrea must have aroused more murderous feelings in those around her than many you could name. How are you getting on with your own missing person?”
“It’s a sore subject. Some balm in it for you, though.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“It’s more a case of what hasn’t happened. We had concluded, you see, mistakenly as it turns out, that McGrath had done a bunk within hours of the first search party setting out to look for the missing boy. The fact that he appeared to have acted so promptly, as though foreseeing from the start the dangers that could lie ahead for him, seemed almost an admission of guilt. It strengthened our hand, to that extent, but it also gave him a four-day start and made it that much easier for him to cover his tracks. That all clear?”
“As daylight, thank you, but where had you slipped up?”
“Being so keen to make up for the lost time, we were a trifle over-hasty in setting up the machinery for blocking escape routes and all the other routine business which goes into action for a criminal on the run. We accepted too many assumptions without stopping to verify them.”
“The first report about the boy came on the air at nine on Thursday evening and McGrath had already left Orchard House when Mrs. Baker arrived there at nine on Friday morning. The first assumption was that he’d left Sowerley at some point during the intervening twelve hours.”
“Very natural!”
“Yes, well, one of the routine measures I spoke of was to put out a call to garages and filling stations.”
“But nothing came of it?”
“Not a murmur. That’s not unusual in the ordinary way, particularly with all these self-service places around. But there’s usually someone in charge and on the look-out and, in this case, we might reasonably have expected to jog a memory or two. For one thing, Range Rovers aren’t all that thick on the ground and the man who was driving this one is no ordinary type either. Once seen, not easily forgotten, you’d have thought.”
