She tapped the table top quietly with her fingers.
“First, there was a Zeppelin and six fiery stars,” she recapped. “And then Gerard’s story ended and it was at that point that the young man in his biplane decided to come up behind us and fly low over us and give us a fright, just as we were on our way home and thinking we were safe. It was something we were not expecting.”
The words brought her up with a start.
“Something we were not expecting,” she repeated. “Oh, dear.”
She focussed on them more deeply and pursued the conclusion they were leading her to.
“Mother was frightened by the aeroplane because it was something she did not understand and it surprised her. But I heard it coming before either she or sister Alice did. I knew it was coming then, and I heard it again earlier this evening, didn’t I, Rani? A faint growling, purring noise like a truck rumbling up the road outside heard through the walls of the house. It was while Gerard was finishing his story and I heard it coming, something that no one else has yet heard, something unexpected, something threatening, trying to sneak up behind us to frighten us. Oh, my goodness, Rani. I don’t like these thoughts at all.”
The dog sensed her mistress’ deepening concern and put a paw up on to her knee in gentle reassurance.
“If I am right, then the whole business of Janet Brinsley’s murder is not yet at an end. There is something more to come, something unexpected and something frightening. Which brings me back to the stars that fell from the burning Zeppelin and the three that flared and burned out before their time. Three stars for three men. One is almost certainly for Mark Brinsley. Susan said of him ‘he is danger’. That is what she said. Gerard was quite clear on it. And a second star must be for our Gerard or else why would I be being bothered by all this dreaming? But who is the third one for? It is not Miss Susan. It has to be a man, and so far we have assumed it is our Gerard’s new policeman friend Sergeant Chak.”
She sipped her tea and made a final attempt to put the puzzle in her mind into its proper order. From the distant hallway of her small home she heard her oak-cased clock strike three. Three strikes and three stars. She registered that over an hour had passed since she had woken in turmoil and that her tea had gone cold.
“I wonder who the pilot was in our dream?” she asked. “Could that be Sergeant Chak? He is certainly someone who has seen a lot of violence, and that regrettably is a fair description of the work of our police these days. And I did call out ‘it’s one of ours’ when I saw the biplane with its Royal Flying Corps markings. ‘There’s nothing to fear, it is one of ours,’ I said. And Sergeant Chak is one of ours, isn’t he, Rani?”
Sergeant Chak, the young man in his biplane, on patrol to defend them against undeserved and unasked for violence, unwittingly and unexpectedly exposing his friends to danger while he pursues the Crater gangland family for their crimes. The picture sat inextinguishably over her thoughts. If it was true, she had no idea what to do about it. But she had to save Gerard’s star.
Her companion pawed once again at her knee.
“Yes, you are quite right, Rani,” she finally acknowledged. “And thank you for reminding me. It all comes back to Miss Susan breaking our sister Alice’s vase. It was not chosen randomly and it was not broken out of spite. Something was frightening her and Gerard hasn’t been able to tell us what it was, has he? So we will have to ask her ourselves. That was a most useful reminder, Rani.”
She reprised her thoughts one final time but was far too tired to trouble them any further.
“We must rest for a day or two and catch up on our sleep,” she sighed. “And then we must go in search of Miss Susan and ask her what it was that was frightening her so much that she stayed with our Gerard and then smashed his vase as she left. Come along, I think we can both go back to bed now. It is almost morning and we have a lot to do.”
A final quarter of biscuit was caught deftly from mid-air and, delighted by the result, Rani followed her mistress back up the stairs to the placid atmosphere of their bedroom.
“Sleep well, Rani,” called her mistress as she extinguished the bedside light.
Rani turned her customary three turns around her blanket and also settled down to undisturbed slumber for what remained of the night.
Chapter 38
Aunt Gwendoline found two day’s rest remarkably recuperative, so it was late on the third morning by the time she had carefully applied a minimum of face powder and lipstick, ensured that she had on her most comfortable town walking shoes, fastened the tail of the fox fur collar of her overcoat into the animal’s spring-clip jaws, and adjusted her simple but elegant hat with its peacock’s feather standing proudly erect at the front.
“One has a tendency to let one’s self go as one gets older and that would never do for us, would it?” she explained to Rani. “We will be smart.”
Rani’s coat was adjusted, and after a final review of them both in the hallway mirror Aunt Gwendoline collected her horn handled walking cane from the hall stand and they left at a leisurely pace to catch the bus into town. There was, after all, plenty of time.
The journey was pleasant and sunny on a fine autumn day, and alighting in the town centre Aunt Gwendoline immediately turned right in the direction of a particular tea shop.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” apologised the young woman coming around the corner in the opposite direction and almost colliding with her. “Gosh, I’m sorry, oh hello, it’s Aunt Gwendoline.”
“Good morning, Miss Susan,” Aunt Gwendoline beamed to her. “What a pleasant surprise. I must say you are looking well.”
“Thank you, I am,” Sue stammered in return.
She was momentarily flustered by the unexpected encounter. It had been more than two months since she had walked out on Gerard and a confusion of memories and guilt suddenly surged forwards in her that she could not immediately control.
“I’m just on my way to my lunch break,” she blurted out with no particular thought in mind.
“That is capital,” smiled Aunt Gwendoline. “There’s a small café around the corner here which does a nice fresh pot of tea and home-made scones with jam and cream. I was just thinking of having some. I’m sure they also do more substantial food if that is what you are looking for. Will you join me?”
Sue looked into Aunt Gwendoline’s steady and clear blue eyes and could not help smiling back to her. She did not know that she wanted to be reminded of uncomfortable events so recently in the past, but Aunt Gwendoline was such a refined old lady and not directly a part of them.
“That would be lovely,” she replied.
“‘Cool’, is the current idiomatic response I believe, is it not?” Aunt Gwendoline asked.
“Not quite,” laughed Sue. “But close enough.”
There was a pleasant table situated in from the window where they could watch the passing crowds and enjoy the sunshine without being on display, and they ordered their food and drinks. A silence followed in which Sue’s feelings of awkwardness returned and she wondered whether it had been a good idea to have a snack lunch with Aunt Gwendoline and why she had been so quick to agree to it. Some memories still coiled disturbingly within her but somehow it seemed unforgivably ungracious to say ‘no’ to the powder soft old lady sitting opposite her.
“How’s Gerard?” she began cautiously.
“He’s fine,” answered Aunt Gwendoline. “He told me that you two were no longer close friends.”
“He’s a nice person, Aunt Gwendoline, really lovely. I didn’t want to hurt him or cause him any upset, but we couldn’t have gone on as we were. He didn’t do anything wrong or anything like that, you know. It was me really. I just felt there was nothing left in our relationship and that all it could do was end in tears. So, I thought it was best to break it off while we were still friends.”
She realised she was explaining too much but the words tumbled out of her.
“He’ll get over it,” smiled Aunt Gwendoline. “He is ro
bust and will no doubt soon be off to the jungles of Southeast Asia on another one of his earth moving expeditions. But how are you managing? I gather you were on the point of leaving him just before that terrible business of Janet Brinsley’s murder occurred. Its timing must have been very difficult for you.”
Sue could not hide her surprise.
“Did Gerard tell you that?” she asked.
“Good gracious, no. He had no idea. He never said anything.”
“We weren’t suited, you know.”
“I know that, Susan dear. It was never going to last, but Gerard had not got to the point of discovering that for himself. You didn’t do anything wrong. You merely came to the conclusion before he did and acted upon it. Ah, here is our tea.”
“You must think me a terrible butterfly,” smiled Sue sheepishly.
“On the contrary, I have the highest regard for you. Your relationship as you call it was at an end and you did what you had to. But when trouble erupted you put your plans on hold and stayed with Gerard to give him support. I can only consider that very kind of you and it is certainly not something that I would reproach you for. In his own way Gerard understands that too, although he is a little puzzled about the manner of your departure.”
“You mean me breaking his vase,” Sue replied, shifting awkwardly in her seat. “Yes, I’m sorry about that. I know it was rather special to him. It came from one of his Aunts, I believe.”
“My late sister, his great-aunt Alice.”
“Oh, dear,” Sue answered. “I didn’t know that. That makes it doubly embarrassing for me. I did like it, really I did. It was special to me too although I don’t know why. Was is very valuable? I know Ger’s mother thought it was Ming.”
Aunt Gwendoline chuckled. “No, it was not Ming,” she assured her. “And Gerard and I have already had that conversation. It was not particularly valuable and he should be able to replace it easily enough.”
“That’s something at any rate,” concluded Sue.
She looked out at the sunshine, taking a few seconds to organise her thoughts.
“Aunt Gwendoline, does it make sense for me to say that I do not know why I broke Ger’s vase?” she asked.
Aunt Gwendoline waited.
“It was special to me. I felt somehow drawn to it, and when Ger and I couldn’t see eye to eye about things I would go and stand in front of it in the hallway and look at it. It was silly I suppose.”
“It was only an old vase,” agreed Aunt Gwendoline.
“I know,” answered Sue. “But it was strange how as things blew up between us, particularly after Janet Brinsley was murdered, I would spend hours just staring at it and even talking to it. Can you imagine that? I talked to Ger’s vase. Things were very tense between us and I suppose I was looking for answers. And I felt that something that had lived as long as that vase just had to have some answers in it somewhere.”
Aunt Gwendoline did not reply.
“I was really rotten to Ger,” Sue continued quietly. “It’s very kind of you to say so but I don’t know that I really gave him much support. I even took up smoking again just to annoy him. I was difficult, and if I’m honest I was hoping that we would end up in a blazing row so that I could walk out and leave all the blame with him. But Ger isn’t like that. He’s too nice. He wouldn’t argue or lose his temper with a fly. He is just too gentle.”
“He did make a lot of excuses for you,” Aunt Gwendoline confirmed.
“Oh dear, that makes me feel worse. Did I hurt him badly? I didn’t want to but I just had to get out of what was happening. Aunt Gwendoline, does it sound crazy if I say that after Janet was murdered I became more and more scared?”
Aunt Gwendoline did not move. The young woman sitting opposite her was looking piercingly at her, pleading for answers to the questions they both had inside them.
“A lot of how I felt straight after Janet’s murder can be explained by what was done to her,” continued Sue more calmly. “It was terrible, but after the immediate shock of what happened had died down, I wasn’t worried by her memory. I didn’t really think the Craters would come back to get us and it wasn’t Ger that scared me. He would never have hurt me and he was wonderful at listening to me and trying to understand how I felt. But somehow I couldn’t feel that I could tell him what was going on in my head, so I wasn’t able to tell him why I was so scared.”
She wrestled with her thoughts and looked out at the sunshine again. It was not easy recreating how she felt but Aunt Gwendoline seemed to understand.
“It wasn’t Ger that I was scared of,” she repeated. “But I began to feel scared when I was around him. I couldn’t tell him about it because it was all so irrational. I couldn’t explain it to myself, never mind to him, and yet I got to feeling so frightened, especially when Mark was around. I began to think I was going mad.”
“So you talked to Gerard’s vase instead,” Aunt Gwendoline prompted.
“Yes, I talked to his vase,” Sue smiled. “But please, Aunt Gwendoline, please don’t think that Ger ever did anything to frighten me. He didn’t. He is the gentlest man I know. That’s what made it all so insane. I couldn’t be frightened of him. If I was really honest, I would have to say it was Mark who frightened me.”
The words jumped out of her and she winced at their release. After so much time and denial they could only sound like a betrayal.
Chapter 39
“We were all such good friends together,” Sue continued, listening carefully to her own words as if she was hearing them for the first time. “Neither Ger nor I had ever seen any anger between Mark and Janet. He was only ever the loving husband and she adored him. It was inconceivable that any woman could ever feel anything but safe in his presence. And yet it was after Janet’s murder that he began to frighten me.”
Aunt Gwendoline reached out to the flaming Zeppelin and its falling stars, and to the young man with dead eyes flying his biplane arrow-straight on a mission. Both images were too far away to discern very much about them. Rani stirred momentarily against her feet under the table.
“It’s easy to say that Mark went off the rails and temporarily lost touch with reality, and so I became frightening,” Sue reasoned. “Janet had been horribly murdered so it is not surprising the shock sent him out of his mind. But he changed in a way I can’t explain. He changed quite suddenly, and especially after that aborted trial of the Craters. He became different. Does it sound weird, Aunt Gwendoline, to say that one day I suddenly found I could not look at him without seeing a sort of fog hanging around him? It’s too dramatic to say it was like a dark cloud that went with him wherever he went, but that was the general feeling of it. It was like an aura that was never there before. It was not there in reality, of course. It was just in my imagination. But it frightened me.”
She paused while she considered her words.
“I couldn’t explain it to Ger,” she resumed. “I couldn’t even explain it to myself. It’s never easy to try and explain the irrational so I couldn’t tell Ger that his friend was getting darker and darker and more and more sinister. It got worse and worse all through the time when Mark was trying to work himself to death and later when he tried to drink himself out of existence. Oh God, they were terrible times. I desperately hoped Ger would see the change in Mark too and that I wouldn’t have to explain it. But he didn’t, or couldn’t, and he is very loyal. But what worried me more and more was that whatever it was that was surrounding Mark seemed to be reaching out to Ger whenever the two of them were together. It was totally insane. Even to that last morning when Mark poked his head around the kitchen door looking all spick and span and ready to say ‘goodbye’, that evil mist thing hung round him. It was so menacing. I thought I was going completely round the twist.”
She sniffed and reached for her handkerchief as two tears fell off her chin to scatter the scone crumbs on her plate.
“I knew then that I had to get away,” she sighed at last. “I knew it on that last morning when Mark s
aid that it was all over and that he had given up drinking and that everything was going to go back to normal. I couldn’t believe him. Even as he spoke it was as if he was talking to me through his mist, and it scared me to the point where I couldn’t look at him. Ger couldn’t see it, and Mark himself didn’t seem to be aware of it. And I knew it wasn’t there really, which is why I really thought I was going mad.”
She sniffed into her handkerchief and looked across to Aunt Gwendoline though tear filled eyes.
“I had pleaded with Ger to let Mark go, to hand him over to professional help and have nothing more to do with him. But Ger couldn’t leave his friend and I couldn’t give him any rational reason why he should, other than that I was scared of something that didn’t exist. In the end, I waited until he had left for work and I packed my things. On my way out, I passed his vase sitting on its pedestal in the hallway. I stopped and looked at it and suddenly wanted to ask it what was happening to me, and for it to tell me why I was feeling like I was. That really did send me into a panic. I was asking a vase why something that didn’t exist scared me. It was a vase. How could it answer me?”
“It couldn’t,” replied Aunt Gwendoline. “But that doesn’t mean that talking to it was unreasonable. Gardeners are well known for talking to their plants.”
Sue felt the sound of Aunt Gwendoline’s voice break through the armour of her agitation and a faint smile stopped her tears.
“Ger told me you sometimes talk to your aspidistra,” she said.
“Did he?” responded Aunt Gwendoline in some surprise.
She had not realised it had become so obvious. She would have to be more careful in future.
“Well, if I do at least it gives me the satisfaction of being able to have the last word, and I can also be sure it will not gossip afterwards.”
“Yes, there is that,” smiled Sue. “But even so, I couldn’t leave Ger’s vase where it was, not with it knowing so much. So, I took one of Ger’s golf clubs out of the cupboard and smashed it so hard that it could never be put together again. I didn’t do it to hurt Ger, Aunt Gwendoline. Really I didn’t. I did it because I had to. And then I walked out.”
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