Element of Chance
Element of Chance
Emma Page
A standalone mystery from the author of the Kelsey and Lambert series.A mystery story that centres around the young and successful Alison Rolt. Complex strands of small town life unravel in the search for a murderer.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_560647f2-82b9-549b-a2ea-2d7e5eb7c5bd)
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain in 1975 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1975
Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780008175948
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175955
Version [2016-02-18]
DEDICATION (#ulink_9936a0ad-4bd6-574f-a145-8774cd495bf0)
For Ginge
Poet Extraordinary
CONTENTS
Cover (#uc2fb17db-bf84-55cd-a17a-58c988594ad8)
Title Page (#u29a0ddaf-535b-58cc-9e73-9bdfeb54dfe2)
Dedication (#ulink_46a119b6-18b3-584d-b4ca-08c65851483a)
Copyright (#ulink_372e39a8-cca9-53b2-a908-53461f7151ed)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_2b6b0c25-9641-56a3-84a2-9514354fd729)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_c75a9cb1-abd7-503f-baeb-92946907e816)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_e74c5b0c-42e5-5605-b12f-85fb843c3d75)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_30205ee2-6254-50db-bd6d-e3c71ec4f57f)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_dc57ee18-bfd2-575d-ad6f-f98bae174d1b)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By Emma Page (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_2efb5112-c139-5bb1-bca3-a29732d7bce2)
SEVEN-FIFTEEN on a calm, palely golden Friday morning in October. Andrew Rolt – Area Manager of CeeJay Plant Hire Limited – came slowly down the stairs of his large Victorian house on the outskirts of Barbourne. He was already dressed for work in a dark business suit; the skilful cut of the jacket concealed his thickening waistline, the beginnings of a paunch. Although he was not much over forty his brown hair was liberally streaked with grey. He was still passably good-looking in a boyish way; his features retained something of a vulnerable air.
He reached the front hall and went slowly towards the rear of the house. He had slept badly again, felt little appetite at the thought of toast or coffee. He halted in the doorway of the big silent kitchen and turned his head in the direction of the dining room with its store of bottles discreetly housed in the sideboard. He felt jittery, apprehensive. Surely the letter must come by this morning’s post. It had reached his ears in the gossipy interchanges of the trade that the interviews for the Kain Engineering job were scheduled for next Monday afternoon. If his name was on the short list they must surely let him know by today.
He had expected to hear yesterday morning, had come downstairs confident that he’d find the letter in the wire cage on the inside of the front door. He’d sent off two previous applications for jobs in September, both unsuccessful; when the second application had come to nothing he realized what was holding him back. This time he had corrected the error. He hadn’t put ‘Living apart’ in the box opposite ‘Marital status’; this time he had simply written: ‘Married.’
But yesterday there had been no word from Kain Engineering. There is still Friday, he had told himself, rallying almost at once from the old feeling of hopelessness that rose in him at the sight of the empty letter cage; there is no need yet for despair. It was despair that threatened him nowadays, a sense of failure and isolation that confronted him in unexpected moments, leaping out from behind a word, a look. He had to break out now from the barriers closing round him. In a couple of years he would be forty-five; he must make the push without delay – and must succeed in it – if he was to escape the insidious downward slope.
He glanced at his watch. Seven twenty-two. The post was scarcely ever later than seven-thirty. He turned from the kitchen and walked hesitantly towards the dining room. Nothing wrong with just one drink, it would make bearable the next few minutes of waiting.
In the large dining room with its tall windows framed in long drapes of plum-coloured velvet, he stooped to open the sideboard cupboard, paused with one hand already reaching for a bottle and stood for a moment with his eyes closed. No, he would not take a drink. He straightened up, sighed deeply and closed the cupboard.
He went quickly into the hall and let himself out into the garden, kept in trim by a jobbing gardener and glowing now with the deep rich colours of autumn. Chrysanthemums, dahlias, asters; shrubs with their soaring sprays and thick clusters of berries, white, scarlet and purple.
He wandered along the neat paths, contemplated the drift of yellow leaves in the shrubbery, ran a finger over the creamy ruffles of a late rose. He had gone to a nursery five years ago when Alison had said she would marry him. He had been astounded at his good fortune, had felt a great surge of optimism, a fierce late blossoming of the romantic impulse. He had selected twenty-one rose bushes – one for every year of Alison’s life. He had created this pretty little rose garden with a vision of the two of them strolling beside it in warm summer evenings.
By the time the bushes had established themselves, when they had been in the ground scarcely more than two years, Alison had turned her back on the marriage, had walked out on him, had returned to secretarial work.
She hadn’t mentioned divorce. She had no legal grounds for such a step and it was certainly the last thing he wanted. In the first few months after her departure he had telephoned, written, gone to see her, made a succession of appeals for her return. By degrees the appeals grew less frequent, died away. He no longer cherished any very strong hope that they would succeed and now that they had lived apart for over two years he was afraid to approach her again. His action might make her realize that sufficient time had gone by to allow a petition for divorce by consent.
Out on the road, some little distance away, he heard the sound of a vehicle. A light sweat broke out on his forehead. He began to walk back towards the house with an air of casualness. The vehicle slowed to make the turn in through the gates. It came up the drive, disclosing itself as a red mail van; it halted when Rolt stepped into view. He took the letters from the postman and flipped them apart.
‘A mild morning,’ the postman said. ‘Could be sunny later on.’ Rolt saw the postmark on the third letter. He turned over the envelope and read the seal on the back: Kain Engineering. His heart seemed to rise up in his chest, suspend its beat for a long moment and then drop back with a thud.
‘They talked about rain in the forecast,’ the postman said. ‘They get it wrong two days out of three.’ Rolt glanced up, aware that the man had said something. He smiled, nodded vaguely and plunged off across the grass, ripping open the thick white paper, unable to wait till he got into the house.
He fumbled at the folded sheet. His eyes raced over the lines of typing. The words sprang out at him like whorls of fire … Interview … Monday … 3.30 p.m.
He raised his head and looked up at the pearly sky. The mail van went back down the drive and out into the road. A flood of joy washed over Rolt. Careful, he told himself, must keep my grip. He walked up the short flight of stone steps that led to the front door. His pace was consciously brisk, his manner controlled and competent.
I’ll get Alison back, he said in his mind with total confidence. He had something to offer her now. And she’d had time to think things over, she was no longer an inexperienced girl. She’d see sense, realize where her best interests – the best interests of both of them – lay. And no doubt by now she’d had more than enough of turning out in all weathers five days a week to go to the office. She’d probably wondered why he hadn’t been in touch with her lately. After all, if she actually wanted a divorce, she could have approached him as soon as the two years were up. And she had no steady boy-friend, he was pretty certain of that.
He let himself into the house and closed the door behind him with a precise click. Silence settled back over the high-ceilinged rooms, the spacious hallway, lofty staircase, wide landings. He stood looking down at the carpet with its subdued pattern of blues and greys. Things would sort themselves out, it would all come right in the end. Just to get Alison back would at once make him feel younger, more positive and hopeful, give direction and purpose to his life.
He raised his head and glanced about him. Yes, that’s it, he said to himself with decision. I’ll phone Alison, I’ll get the whole thing settled … But possibly not before the Kain interview … Probably best not to speak to her before three-thirty next Monday afternoon … For if by some remote chance she put on a voice of ice, if she refused to listen to reason, how then could he possibly conduct himself with cheerful confidence during the ordeal of the interview?
No, he would get the job first and then phone Alison; he’d have something concrete to lay before her then, something more enticing than vague, optimistic proposals. He put up a hand and rubbed his chin. In actual fact, he thought, I’d offer her anything to get her back. He imagined himself phrasing the words over the phone … Just say what it is you want and you can have it. How could any woman resist an offer like that? Anything she wanted … Well, of course, it went without saying, anything within reason.
He placed his hands together, linked the fingers, rubbed the palms against each other with a sense of satisfaction and relief. He noted with pleasure his feeling of control and competence, of being in charge of himself and his existence. And now, with all that resolved, what about one little drink? Not as a prop or a crutch – certainly not. Nor as a shield or a distorting mirror. But perfectly normally and wholesomely, by way of celebration.
Five minutes later he was sitting at ease in the dining room when he remembered the other letters the postman had handed him. He set down his glass and picked up the little pile of envelopes. Nothing of great consequence. The telephone account, a couple of receipts, and a bill for the perfume he had given Celia Brettell on her birthday last month. Her thirty-third birthday according to Miss Brettell, her thirty-eighth according to uncharitable intimates. Every year at Christmas and on her birthday – with the exception of the couple of years of his marriage – he rang the changes between chocolates, flowers, books and perfumes, being careful never to give her anything more personal. He flicked the sheet of paper against his fingers, thinking about Celia.
He had known her for years, liked her well enough. There had been a time when he had almost allowed her to steer him towards the altar, from lack of any alternative and more attractive prospect. But that of course had been in the days before Alison.
He thrust the bill back into its envelope and instantly forgot about Miss Brettell. He gathered up the rest of his mail, stood up, finished his drink and went upstairs, half smiling, thinking with pleasurable expectation about the interview on Monday.
Monday morning, ten minutes past seven. In the bedroom of her ground-floor flat in Fairview, a solid Edwardian villa set on the lower slopes of the hills that cradled Barbourne, Alison Rolt drew back the curtains and looked out at the day. A little over two miles separated Fairview from Andrew Rolt’s Victorian residence on the other side of Barbourne.
Quite a pleasant day. A light veil of mist obscured the view but there was a strong hint of warmth and sunshine later in the morning.
She went swiftly along to the bathroom and turned on the taps, piled her long hair on top of her head, squeezing the springy tresses into a waterproof cap ruched and frilled with pale blue nylon.
She flung a handful of salts into the water and stepped in. There was a suggestion of the exotic about her; she was small, slender and delicately made, still three or four years away from thirty. A pale olive skin deepened by suntan, quick movements, easy grace.
The only sound came from the water running into the cistern and her own soapy splashings. But I don’t in the least mind being alone in the house, she thought, leaning back in the pale green water. She wasn’t nervous; she found the quiet a pleasant contrast to the daily bustle at the office. And in any case the situation was likely to be merely temporary; the two upper flats were sure to be tenanted again before long.
She came out of her thoughts with the recollection that it was Monday morning, that she had made up her mind on Friday to start a campaign to restore the efficiency of the girls who worked under her. She was junior partner at the Kingfisher Secretarial Agency in Barbourne, she had striven for high standards in the time she had held the post – a little less than a year. She had achieved a fair degree of success, only to find some of her efforts being undone in the last month or two.
In the middle of the summer Kingfisher had finally absorbed the remnants of Tyler’s, the other secretarial agency in the town. Before her move to Kingfisher Alison had worked at Tyler’s for eighteen months. It was a long-established agency but it had grown increasingly complacent, opposed to inevitable change, partly because old Mr Tyler had no son or daughter to inject fresh ideas into the business. He had seen the Kingfisher start up six years ago; he had felt no concern, considering the new agency an upstart enterprise likely to remain small and unimportant or else fade out altogether.
But Kingfisher had steadily expanded, nibbling unremittingly at the edges of Tyler’s business, gradually luring away staff, enticing and retaining clients. A little over a year ago Mr Tyler died. The ownership of his agency passed to his widowed sister, an elderly invalid living in a South Coast nursing home, with no interest in the business apart from the money it might bring her. One of the senior members of staff – a man of no very great competence, not far off retiring age – was promoted to manager.
The flowers had scarcely withered on Mr Tyler’s grave when Alison received an approach from the rival agency of Kingfisher. Judith Padmore, the founder and sole owner of Kingfisher, had had her eye on Alison for some time, well aware that it was largely Mrs Rolt’s ability and youthful energy that allowed Tyler’s to struggle on at all. Miss Padmore was a shrewd, hard-working woman with long commercial experience behind her. Now in late middle age and ready to take a little more leisure, she made her proposition in a forthright manner. A junior partnership, a percentage of the healthy Kingfisher profits in return for an investment of capital and the application of Mrs Rolt’s talents to the business.
It had taken Alison no time at all to say yes. She had joined Tyler’s when she closed the door on her marriage. She was twenty-three years old at the time, determined to make a good career for herself; she believed she had found a suitable niche. But her ambition had increased along with her experience. She hadn’t much enjoyed the final six months at Tyler’s and the bleak realization that in spite of all her endeavours she was now merely part of a rapidly failing concern.
After her departure Tyler’s had struggled on under its inadequate manager, finally giving up the ghost a few months ago when the manager decided to retire. Miss Padmore took over what was left of the business and goodwill, the few remaining staff, together with the furnishings and equipment, all in exchange for a lump sum paid over to the invalid lady on the South Coast.
The graphs on the walls of Miss Padmore’s office already showed a marked upswing and could be expected to present an increasingly satisfactory appearance for the next year or two. But there’s a fairly rigid natural limit to expansion in a town of this size, Alison thought, squeezing the sponge over her slender shoulders.
She lay back in the bath and stared up at the ceiling. She’d probably have to move on in a couple of years, seek lusher pastures. She blew out a long calculating breath.
Nothing in her thoughts so much as brushed against an image of Andrew or flicked awareness of his existence into the forefront of her mind. Her marriage – or what was legally left of it – was now totally lacking in significance for her. When some chance happening brought it to her recollection it seemed as if she was recalling with difficulty an almost-forgotten interlude. She felt more and more that exciting possibilities were opening out before her, that the real business of her life was only just beginning.
The sound of the newsboy’s whistle reached her ears. It must be turned a quarter to eight. She pulled out the bath plug and stretched out a hand for a towel. She stood up and dried herself with easy, rapid movements. Along with the goods and chattels that had moved across from Tyler’s in the course of the final transfer, there had also come a certain tinge of slackness that began before long to affect the Kingfisher staff. Girls started to arrive a little late in the mornings, to vanish a trifle early in the evenings, to absent themselves for an occasional afternoon without good reason.
And the time has come to root the slackness out, Alison thought, stepping out of the bath and flinging down the towel. She picked up a bottle of lotion and began to massage it into the fine smooth skin of her calves and thighs.
When she got back to her bedroom the clock showed five minutes to eight. She pulled open a drawer, looked rapidly through the filmy underthings. She certainly couldn’t risk being late for work herself if she was going to get her campaign off to a good start. Some of the girls were only too quick to take advantage of any little lapse on the part of the management.
The central police station in Barbourne was a modern building, bright and airy. The reception area was almost empty at this time on a Monday morning; it had a leisurely air after the busy traffic of the weekend. On a bench against the wall an old man sat alone in a patient, relaxed attitude.
Detective Sergeant Colin Viner stood in front of the long polished counter, dealing with a couple of girls, office workers, who had come in to report an incident which had taken place – or which they said had taken place – on Friday night. Viner was not at all sure that he was disposed to believe their unsupported tale of a man springing out at one of them as she walked home alone across the hill from an evening class in the town.
There had been vague rumours for some little time of a man haunting the hills. Nothing substantiated, nothing serious. Such rumours were not uncommon; often the episode which sparked them off was nothing more than a prank, a moment’s mischief.
‘It’s a great pity you didn’t manage to get a good look at the man,’ Viner said briskly. He slid a speculative glance at the taller of the two girls, the victim of the alleged assault – or more precisely, of the attempted assault, for the girl, according to her story, had taken to her heels at once with scarcely more than a finger laid upon her. She was really quite pretty in a fluid, drooping way … and he had always been rather partial to fluid, drooping girls … He flicked the thought away and returned his attention to business. He’d have liked a little more evidence than the statement of this young woman whose path – during the short time he’d been stationed in Barbourne – had crossed his own a little more frequently than he was inclined to put down to the simple workings of chance.
‘If you could give me some idea of the man’s age, his height—’ He ran his eye over the brief details he had jotted down about the girl: Tessa Drake, eighteen years old, shared a small flat with the other girl in Leofric Gardens, a run-down area of Barbourne. Employed as a shorthand-typist by the Kingfisher Secretarial Agency.
On her way to work now, twenty past eight by the station clock, having – so she said – spent the best part of the weekend recovering from her nasty experience of Friday night and bracing herself – with the moral support of her friend who stood now levelling at Viner a sternly challenging gaze – to walk up the steps of the police station and recount her shocking tale.
‘Did the man say anything?’ Viner asked without hope. ‘I don’t know what you expect us to do when you can tell us practically nothing.’
‘Well, she was very upset.’ The friend, little more than five feet in height but bristling with protective ferocity, jerked her head in indignation. ‘Who wouldn’t be? A man jumping out at her like that.’
Detective-Inspector Bennett came striding into the hall and swept a glance over the reception area. He closed his eyes for an instant at the sight of old James Ottaway once again on his bench, now sitting bolt upright, staring rigidly ahead. Bennett came to a halt a few yards from where Sergeant Viner was writing something down with an air of resigned boredom.
‘Mandy Webb. Nineteen years old,’ Viner said aloud as he wrote the words. He glanced up at the second girl. ‘The same address in Leofric Gardens?’ She nodded. ‘And you work at the same place as your friend?’
‘No. We used to work together. At Tyler’s agency. When it folded up Tessa went to Kingfisher and I got a job at CeeJay Plant Hire.’
‘You’d better get off to work then,’ Viner said. ‘Both of you. Wouldn’t do to keep your bosses waiting.’ He caught sight of Inspector Bennett. ‘These young ladies have come across – or fancy they’ve come across – our phantom prowler,’ he said as Bennett came over. ‘Most upset,’ Viner added with unsubtle irony. ‘So upset they didn’t notice anything about him.’
Bennett ran his eye over the girls, the short one like a terrier with her fringe of fawn-coloured hair, and the taller one, not bad-looking in her dreamy way. He frowned. Hadn’t the tall one been into the station only a week or two back on some pretext or other? He flicked a sour-grape look at Viner’s smooth tanned skin and thick dark hair; a pity the sergeant had nothing better to do than stand around encouraging silly girls to run in and out making eyes at him.
‘You might explain to these young ladies,’ Bennett said with threatening jocularity, ‘that there’s such a thing as being charged with wasting police time.’ The tall girl gave him a look of faint alarm, the other lowered her eyes with an expression of contempt.
‘Foolish girls,’ Bennett said, gazing idly about, ‘are inclined to pick up snippets of rumour.’ His glance rested on James Ottaway still peering resolutely into vacancy; at least it wasn’t one of the old fellow’s noisily obstreperous days, something to be thankful for. ‘Frivolous minds seize on a titbit,’ Bennett said. ‘They touch it up, embroider it.’ He jerked his head round, frowned at the girls with a look from which jocularity had abruptly vanished. ‘Then they come in here with their daft tales, trying it on, looking for a bit of importance.’ He nodded over towards the door. ‘Go on, scarper. Go and waste your bosses’ time.’ When they had taken themselves off a few yards, pink-cheeked and bridling, Bennett said loudly, ‘The tall one, Miss Droopy Drawers—’
‘Tessa Drake,’ Viner said, unwilling to play along any further with the inspector’s needling game.
‘Miss Droopy Drawers,’ Bennett repeated more loudly. ‘She fancies you. That’s what all this is in aid of.’ His eyes held no amusement. ‘Don’t encourage her. Gives the station an untidy look.’
‘I most certainly never—’ Viner began with angry protest but Bennett held up a hand.
‘Just a joke,’ he said smoothly. ‘Got to be able to take a joke.’ Over by the door Tessa Drake turned her head and glanced back at Viner. She gave him an amused smile.
Beneath the graceful leaves of a vast green plant set on a ledge, old Ottaway rose suddenly from his bench and said in a high clear voice, ‘I come not to bring you peace but a sword.’
‘He’s off again,’ Bennett said with weary irritation. A constable, coming up from the canteen, caught the tail end of Ottaway’s utterance and quickened his pace along the corridor.
‘Now Jezebel was a whore,’ Ottaway said on a half-singing note. The constable reached him as he raised his right arm and cried, ‘A painted whore of Babylon.’
‘That’s all right then,’ the constable said, firmly soothing. He slipped a steely hand under the old man’s elbow. ‘Come along.’ He began to propel his captive towards the door. ‘Nobody worries about Jezebel any more.’ Ottaway was well known in the station; he had long been a widower, lived alone, had grown increasingly eccentric.
A few yards from the door Ottaway halted. ‘I want to register a complaint,’ he said suddenly in a normal voice. ‘About the posters outside the cinema. Most indecent. Not at all the thing for women and children to be faced with.’
‘We’ll see to it,’ the constable said. ‘Leave it to us. No need for you to worry.’ He steered Ottaway out on to the steps, pointed him in the direction of home.
Certainly not the liveliest of mornings. Viner glanced at his watch. Might as well go and see that woman about the furnished house dispute. Probably not theft at all, simple carelessness most likely. He crossed over to the window and looked out. The mist was beginning to lift, it might turn out to be one of those softly golden October days. He wouldn’t bother with a car. It was no distance, he’d enjoy the walk. He turned from the window and met Inspector Bennett’s questioning frown.
‘I’m just off to talk to the furnished-house woman,’ Viner said.
Bennett slid him a sly, teasing look edged with malice. ‘Don’t go chatting her up, then. She struck me as a bit of a man-eater.’
‘I can take care of myself.’ Viner added a half smile to the end of his words, to neutralize the irritation showing in his tone. He’d recently got himself transferred to Barbourne after the girl he’d been engaged to had suddenly married someone else. Bennett had ferreted about till he’d uncovered the story. He’d found several opportunities to flick at Viner barbed little remarks about women in general and Viner’s relationship with them – or what the inspector apparently fancied might be Viner’s relationship with them – in particular.
The air was fresh and sweet when Viner came out of the station into the grey and gold morning. A few minutes later, as he walked up the High Street, he noticed for the first time a grey stone building standing between a bookshop and a bank. A fair-sized building, solid, prosperous-looking, with the name painted on a board in elegant gilt lettering: The Kingfisher Secretarial Agency.
He halted on the edge of the pavement, gazing across at the premises. Through the ground-floor windows he could see girls moving about. He felt a sharp surge of loneliness. Barbourne was barely twenty miles from his native town of Chaddesley but he had set foot in it perhaps only half-a-dozen times before his official transfer a few weeks before; the very unfamiliarity of the place was the main reason he had chosen it.
At the centre window on the first floor a girl leaned forward, lifted a hand in greeting, smiled down at him. Colin recognized her at once; Tessa Drake, eighteen years old. For several seconds he continued to look up at her with an expressionless face; she remained smiling down at him. Then he turned and walked rapidly away up the High Street.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_e17af8e2-3a62-5b72-bfde-58d5b215c346)
THE INTERIOR of the Kingfisher Agency was pleasantly warm. Hazel Ratcliff pulled off her coat as she came into the first-floor office. ‘That wretched bus,’ she said in a voice of habitual grievance. ‘It gets later every morning.’ She went over to the window and stood beside Tessa Drake who was looking down into the street. ‘What’s so interesting out there?’ she asked. Her eyes followed Tessa’s gaze, lighted on a tall broad-shouldered man walking swiftly up the road. Still an eye for a well-built man, Hazel Ratcliff, in spite of the years slipping well past thirty; still hopeful in spite of precious little encouragement.
She turned from the window. ‘Come on, we can’t stand here all day,’ she said forcefully. ‘To work!’ She dealt Tessa a would-be playful blow on the shoulder with twelve solid stones behind the punch. ‘If we don’t get started we’ll have Mrs Rolt after us.’
‘You ought to find somewhere to live in Barbourne,’ Tessa said idly. ‘Then you wouldn’t have this fuss about being late. I can’t think why you want to live in the country.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Hazel said with energy. ‘Not now.’ She was one of the staff who had come over in the summer from Tyler’s. Her widowed mother had died shortly afterwards, leaving Hazel bereft of immediate family. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to give up the cottage and move right into town,’ she said. ‘But you tell me where I can get a decent flat at a reasonable rent.’
The office manager put his head round the door. ‘Come along, ladies,’ he said in his precise way. ‘Mustn’t get the week off to a bad start.’ He gave Miss Ratcliff a speculative glance; he had caught the tail end of the conversation. A flat … just possible that he might be able to help her. A heavily built woman, Miss Ratcliff, unpleasingly wide in the hips. But a good skin, all that country air. And rather large, quite pretty eyes.
‘Just coming, Mr Yoxall,’ Hazel said. ‘Has Miss Padmore been asking for me?’
He shook his head. ‘No, but she will be, in a minute or two.’ If Hazel were to lose two or three stones, package herself a good deal less dowdily, lighten the colour of her hair, she might turn out to be quite passable. He followed the two females into the corridor. He didn’t turn an assessing eye on Tessa Drake, knowing that the most extravagantly drawn bounds of possibility couldn’t be expected to include eighteen-year-old girls with willowy figures and pretty faces.
He went up the short flight of steps to Mrs Rolt’s office and knocked at her door. ‘Just one moment,’ she said when he came in; she was sorting a bundle of papers. He stood silently by the desk, watching her with a calm, detached look. Without doubt a striking-looking girl, though not altogether to his taste. He didn’t particularly admire the evident traces of foreign blood. He understood that her mother had been the daughter of a Greek artist, a sculptor or something of that sort. Quite an arty background really, her father had taught art here in Barbourne.
She dealt with the last of the papers, sat back and gazed at him. Then all at once she remembered his uncle’s death; her face took on a look of commiseration.
‘I was sorry to hear about your uncle,’ she said. Old George Yoxall had died early on Saturday morning, in the local hospital where he had been taken a few weeks previously after a heart attack. He had been Mrs Rolt’s landlord; he had occupied the top flat in Fairview. The middle flat had been tenanted by a pair of young men during the time Alison had rented the garden flat. Not the same pair of young men but a rather bewildering succession of young men connected to each other in a variety of ways: friends, relatives, colleagues. The last young man had gone abroad just before George Yoxall’s heart attack and the matter of the tenancy had been allowed to stand over while he was in hospital.
‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ Yoxall said. ‘To ask if I might take tomorrow afternoon off to go to the funeral.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Highly inconvenient, but she could scarcely refuse. She would have liked to ask him what was going to happen to the flats but it seemed hardly politic to raise the question at this moment. He had a somewhat withdrawn air. Had he been deeply affected by his uncle’s death? He certainly used to visit the old man regularly, she was accustomed to seeing him on the stairs at Fairview. It had been through him that she had heard about the flat in the first place, shortly after she had joined Kingfisher.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here for the morning as usual.’
She stood up. ‘Oh, while I think of it—’ She went over to a filing cabinet and pulled open one of the lower drawers. ‘You remember the girls we interviewed the week before last for that post with the textile firm?’ She knelt on the floor, leafed through papers. ‘If you’d just glance at these two applications. I think we might see the girls again.’ She passed him the sheets. ‘One of them might be suitable for the job at the transport depot.’
She sat back on her heels and considered him for a moment as he bent his head over the pages. Might he have expectations from his uncle? Old Mr Yoxall had owned quite a bit of property. There were other relatives, she knew that, she’d glimpsed them sometimes.
She picked up a folder, glanced through it. Ah well, either Mr Yoxall or one of the executors would tell her soon enough if she’d have to move. She gave a faint sigh. She very much hoped she wouldn’t have to start looking for somewhere else. Fairview would suit her very well for the remainder of the time she envisaged living in Barbourne. She liked the house; it was spacious and comfortable, the large garden so agreeably private, with a gate that gave direct access to the hill.
She stood up. ‘You might take those application forms with you,’ she said to Yoxall. ‘Have another look at them, let me know what you think.’
At ten o’clock Alison closed the door on the rattle and clack of the large main office and walked briskly upstairs. As always on a Monday morning there were a dozen matters she must discuss with her senior partner. She came up to the landing and saw that Hazel Ratcliff was just coming out of Miss Padmore’s room. The half-smiling look Hazel wore changed abruptly to one of impersonal coolness as she caught sight of Alison. She stood back against the wall to let her go by, in a posture of almost aggressive deference.
Oh Lord, Alison thought, suppressing a sigh, her attitude seems to be getting worse instead of better. She had known Hazel during the eighteen months she had worked at Tyler’s and had got on reasonably well with her in spite of what Alison always felt to be Hazel’s instinctive dislike for an obviously more successful and attractive female.
Hazel was the kind of woman to identify herself with her employer, particularly if the employer was a man. She had been very loyal to old Mr Tyler and when, very shortly after his death, Alison had announced her intention of leaving Tyler’s, Hazel had behaved as if she thought Alison guilty of the grossest treachery. An opinion she saw no reason to modify when she realized that Alison was taking with her to Kingfisher a substantial number of Tyler clients.
Even though Hazel had now joined Kingfisher herself there was little sign of any thaw in her manner. She seemed to feel the ceaseless necessity to make it clear that her own connection with Kingfisher was due solely to the lamentable demise of Tyler’s, a calamity she appeared to think Alison had helped to precipitate by her departure.
Alison smiled now with determined friendliness at Hazel standing back against the wall. ‘Good morning, Hazel,’ she said resolutely. ‘Is Miss Padmore busy just now?’
Hazel gave her an unsmiling look. ‘Not that I’m aware of, Mrs Rolt.’ She went off down the stairs. Alison stood for a moment looking after her. Hazel was supposed to divide her time equally between both partners but already she had unmistakably attached herself to Miss Padmore. Alison had more or less given up summoning her, preferring to see at the other side of her desk the cheerful face of a willing – if less competent – junior.
She shook her head, dismissing the subject, and rapped smartly on the door of her senior partner’s office.
Judith Padmore was running a pencil down a column of figures when Alison came in. She held up a hand for silence till she had set down the total, then she sat back in her chair and gazed at Alison. She was an efficient-looking woman dressed with provincial smartness in a neat tailored suit. Her hair was trimly set, carefully tinted to mask the grey.
‘We must try to do something about accommodation for Hazel,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s really not very sensible for her to go on living at the back of beyond.’
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_3acac9e7-0881-541b-9afe-03c3743a63e6)
THE BARBOURNE branch of CeeJay Plant Hire Limited was situated on a sprawling industrial estate a short distance outside the town. It occupied a large stone building with a vast yard crammed with dumpers, diggers, excavators, handling, shifting and loading equipment of every description.
In his airy office on the first floor Andrew Rolt sat at his desk, explaining the more intricate details of a contract proposal to Paul Hulme, who was standing at his side, looking down at the papers spread out before them.
‘Yes, I think I’ve got that,’ Hulme said deferentially. I’d have got it a lot quicker if Rolt had been able to keep his mind on what he was telling me, he thought. ‘There is just one other point I’m not clear about.’ He picked up one of the sheets, ran a finger down it.
‘Leave it,’ Rolt said abruptly. He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘You’ve got the gist of the thing. I’ll fill in the gaps another time. You can put all this away now, you can get on with that other stuff for the time being.’ He jerked his head at a wire basket full of documents.
Hulme began to gather up the papers from the desk. He arranged them in an orderly pile, crossed the room and put them in a drawer. He was a trimly built, neat-featured young man with an air of control and calculation. He was being trained as a hire contract negotiator and at the same time carried out a number of duties as a general assistant to Rolt.
Hulme picked up the wire basket. In the doorway he paused and looked back at Rolt. ‘Is there anything I can get you? Coffee? Or tea?’ No doubt about it, Rolt’s manner was preoccupied, even faintly distressed.
‘What’s that?’ Rolt turned his head. ‘Oh, no thanks, nothing.’ He strove to keep sharpness from his tone. ‘No need to hurry too much over that stuff, take your time.’ The lad had a tendency to wet-nurse him; there were times when he didn’t find it amusing.
He looked down at his desk, at a sheaf of letters that must be answered. He gave a long sigh. ‘Send Miss Webb in, will you?’ he said to Hulme. The chore wouldn’t grow any more attractive for being postponed. And he would be away pretty well all the afternoon at Kain Engineering.
Mandy Webb was in the outer office. She looked up as Rolt’s door opened, picked up her notebook and came over at once on Hulme’s nod. He didn’t stand back for her in the doorway but remained half blocking the entrance so that she had to squeeze past. They exchanged a long, intimate, unsmiling look.
Mandy took her seat a little to one side of Rolt’s desk. He shuffled the letters together, selected one at random, ran his eye over it and began to dictate. A quarter of the way through the batch, his vagrant attention suddenly abandoned the mail completely. Mandy was sitting with her legs crossed, her notebook resting on her right knee; her head was still bent, her pencil still poised. He saw her all at once not as Miss Webb, short and none too pretty, the junior secretary who had been with CeeJay a matter of weeks, but simply as a female.
He stared at her without subterfuge. What would it be like to start all over again with someone entirely new, to put the past behind him for ever? For a moment the idea seemed exhilarating as if by some magic he might find youth and innocence again along with courage. But the moment passed. I couldn’t do it, he thought, clenching his fist over the scatter of letters. It would need the kind of confidence and self-esteem he had never greatly possessed even when he’d started out on life. His grip on the remnants of these essential qualities was now so insecure that he dared not risk putting it to any more exacting test than those inescapably facing him.
And the effort it would take to find the right woman, the expenditure of time, of energy. And no guarantee of any more lasting success even if he succeeded in finding and winning this mythical being.
Mandy raised her head at the lengthening silence. Her eyes, bold, confident, young, met his. He picked up the next letter and resumed dictation.
Ten minutes later he finished the pile. He sat back in his chair and watched with relief as the door closed behind her. He had barely time to draw a sweet breath of solitude when there was a brief knock and the under-manager, Arthur Ford, entered almost at the same instant.
‘Come in,’ Rolt said loudly when Ford was already inside the room. Ford looked surprised for a moment and then smiled as if humouring an invalid.
‘Beryl’s been on to me again to ask you over one evening,’ he said. ‘My life won’t be worth living if I’ve got to tell her I can’t persuade you.’ Beneath the cheerful surface words others less cheerful rose unspoken into the air … All alone in that great empty house, can’t be good for you …
Rolt closed his eyes for a second. Impossible to choke the fellow off, pushy and intrusive as he was, when all he was doing was trying to display goodwill.
‘Nothing in the least formal,’ Ford said. ‘Just a few drinks, a bite to eat. And a hand of cards.’
Heaven preserve me from such ghastly jollity, Rolt said in his head, unable to voice a refusal until Ford committed the cardinal error of mentioning a specific date.
Ford instantly obliged by committing the error. ‘What about tomorrow?’ he suggested.
At once Rolt said in a friendly tone, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t manage tomorrow. I’ve already got something fixed. But it’s very kind of Beryl to think of me.’ Dreadful woman, he thought, that appalling mixture of ignorance, prejudice, gentility and ruthlessness.
Ford began to marshal his guns. ‘Friday then?’ he said amiably.
Rolt shook his head with an air of regret. ‘I’m afraid I’m busy on Friday evening as well.’
Ford let off another salvo. ‘How about Saturday?’
Rolt pretended to give the notion some thought. ‘Mm,’ he said on a deceptively affirmative note that caused Ford’s eyes to glisten in momentary satisfaction. ‘Saturday ought to be – oh no, stupid of me, I’ve just remembered, Saturday’s no good either.’
A steely determination came into Ford’s expression. ‘Yes, I know how it is,’ he said as if abandoning the struggle. Then he fired his big guns. ‘Name your own day, that’ll be best. I know Beryl will be delighted to fit in with whatever’s convenient to you.’
There’s no help for it, Rolt said to himself with resigned amusement, all at once relaxed now that there was no way of winning. ‘Wednesday,’ he said magnanimously. ‘The day after tomorrow. How would that suit you?’
‘Wednesday would be fine.’ Ford couldn’t resist a smile of victory.
‘But tell Beryl not to go to any trouble,’ Rolt said without hope.
‘I’ll tell her.’ Ford spread his hands. ‘But it won’t be any use. You know what women are.’
Rolt looked at him suddenly like a man taking part in an entirely different conversation. ‘Oh yes,’ he said in a voice from that other dialogue, ‘I know what women are.’
A quarter to one. In the records office on the ground floor at CeeJay, Arthur Ford looked at his watch. He ought to be thinking of clearing up, popping up to the first floor to collect Robin, get off home in time for lunch. His son – in fact Robin was his only child – had left the local grammar school a year ago. He was doing three-month training stints in various departments at CeeJay, was considered a bright lad, possible executive material.
Ford glanced out of the window and saw Celia Brettell’s silver-grey car pulling up on the forecourt. She stepped out on to the concrete. She wasn’t carrying a briefcase, only a handbag, so this wasn’t going to be a business visit but one of her personal swoops to take Andrew Rolt off to lunch.
Ford watched her approach the side entrance. Good-looking in her hard-edged way, considerably more hard-edged now than when she’d first walked into CeeJay on the look-out for good secondhand plant, ten or twelve years ago. Chestnut-brown hair, grey eyes, smooth pale skin; well groomed, carefully presented. But the whole package lacking any suggestion of mystery or romance. She had done everything she could possibly do with her appearance but there was nothing she could do about her aura, which radiated an unmistakable air of natural dominance, strong purpose, shrewdness and a highly practical approach to life and very probably also to love.
Ford neither liked nor disliked her. She was one small factor in his career situation and so he was obliged to take a certain amount of notice of her. But he couldn’t help admiring her. She was successful in a pretty tough area of commercial life; she had the essential bulldog quality.
He had known her since the first time she’d walked up the steps of CeeJay, well before the day Alison Lloyd had set foot in the place as a junior secretary. Alison had married her boss in the classic tradition – and they’d all been so sure once upon a time that he’d marry Celia. When the marriage broke up after only a couple of years it wasn’t very long before Celia’s business visits – which had continued as usual – began to coincide once more with the approach of Andrew’s lunch hour.
It occurred to Ford suddenly and with total certainty that Celia was at long last going to succeed in marrying Rolt. He stepped back from the window and went out through the door of the records office, arriving in the lobby in time to present a casual appearance of having just come down the side staircase as Celia Brettell entered the building.
‘Oh – hello there!’ he said with a friendly smile. ‘Haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you for a week or two.’
Oh yes, Celia said to herself, and precisely what is old Creepy Crawly up to this time? Aloud she said, ‘That last lot of trenchers hadn’t been properly maintained. You’ll have to keep a sharper eye on the lads.’
His smile grew if anything a trifle more friendly. ‘I’ll certainly take note of it,’ he said affably.
‘Is Andrew about?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes. He’s in his office. Oh, by the way,’ he added, ‘I’ve just remembered, he’s looking in on us on Wednesday evening. On Beryl and myself, that is. I don’t know if you’d care to join us. You’d be very welcome.’ He knew that would get her; she simply wouldn’t be able to say no to a chance of spending a few hours in Rolt’s company, however diluted. ‘Nothing very fancy, you understand, just a pleasant homely evening.’
Whatever it’ll be, it won’t be that, Celia thought grimly. However had Andrew allowed himself to accept such a frightful invitation? ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, burnishing her expression into a smile. ‘I’d love to come.’ With so many lies thickening the air she couldn’t resist throwing in another. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet your wife.’
‘Something else I’ve remembered,’ Ford said with a knowing air. ‘What’s this gossip I hear about a merger between Sugdens and Murdoch Factors?’ Sugdens was the comparatively small but highly efficient firm for which Celia worked; Murdoch Factors was much larger, with a wider range of interests. If there was anything in the whisper – and it had reached Ford’s permanently-cocked ears only recently and as the merest breath of rumour – then it seemed to him a good deal more likely that the deal would be a take-over rather than a merger.
Celia’s smile vanished. ‘That!’ she said brusquely. ‘I don’t know who started that particular hare but there’s nothing in it. I can assure you of that.’
‘It sounded a bit of a wild tale to me,’ Ford said lightly. Maybe you don’t want to know about it, he said to himself, could be you’d lose your job, whether it’s a merger or a take-over. Could be also, he added in his mind with a sudden sense of illumination, that it’s the reason why you’re closing in on Rolt. Time was going inexorably by, she wasn’t getting any younger. And of course she’d always been irremediably stuck on Rolt.
‘Kindly contradict the rumour if you should hear it again,’ Celia said with force. She walked away towards the stairs, she went rapidly up. He stood looking after her with amused approval. That one never knows when she’s beaten, he thought – and so of course she never will be beaten.
What was I about to do when I looked out of the window and saw Celia Brettell? he asked himself a moment later, staring up at the ceiling. Oh yes, he answered himself almost at once, I was going to collect Robin. He was just about to go upstairs when he heard a light patter of footsteps along the first-floor corridor and Mandy Webb came into view. He raised a hand, called out to her.
‘Miss Webb – you might trot along and winkle Robin out for me. Tell him to get a move on or we’ll be late for lunch.’ He turned away without waiting for any acknowledgement on Mandy’s part, and went off to get his coat.
It wouldn’t do Mr Ford any harm to polish up his manners, Mandy said resentfully to herself as she went reluctantly off to carry out his command.
She found Robin standing by the window in an empty office. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand, he was gazing down at the car park. He was a slimly built lad of medium height; he had short brown hair with all suggestion of curl sternly suppressed.
‘Your dad wants you,’ Mandy said without preamble. He turned and gave her a blank look. His face was long and pale, he had large grey-blue eyes.
She felt a sudden impatient touch of sympathy for him, imagining what it must be like to be blessed with a dad like his. ‘Lunchtime,’ she said in a more kindly fashion. ‘Your dad’s all set and raring to go. You’d better get off downstairs.’
Robin made a small jerky movement of his head. ‘Oh yes, thank you, I’ll go right away. Very kind of you to come and tell me.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said automatically. She paused on the threshold and looked back at him. She and Tessa might ask him along to one of their parties some time. He looked as if he could do with a bit of livening up. But she said nothing about it yet. She’d have to mention it to Tessa first.
It occurred to her as she went along the corridor to the cloakroom that it might also do her a bit of good with Mr Ford if she did a kindness to his one and only chick; it might sweeten old Ford’s disposition towards her, make him speak up for her perhaps in due course when promotions were being handed out. She bit her lip, considering the notion. Mm, bit of a long shot, but possibly worth a try.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_852e1421-8c23-5b6e-b97f-3a47d0ba1b18)
AN UNEXPECTED interview with a new client meant that it was one o’clock when Alison finally managed to get off to lunch. She was very hungry, she’d had nothing for breakfast but a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. She’d treat herself to a really good lunch, take her time over it. She might try that place by the old market, it prided itself on its grills.
She paused on her way out and put her head round the door of Hazel Ratcliff’s overheated little sanctum. Hazel scarcely ever went out for lunch; she brought a vast number of sandwiches and great slabs of cake from home.
‘I may be a little late back,’ Alison said. ‘I haven’t got an appointment till a quarter to three but you might take any messages that come for me.’
‘Yes, of course, Mrs Rolt,’ Hazel said without more than a brief upward glance. She had munched her way through the greater part of her lunch and was now engaged in crocheting a small square of tangerine-coloured wool. A little pile of completed squares in a variety of bright shades lay on a piece of white tissue paper well out of range of stray crumbs.
‘What lovely colours!’ Alison said. ‘Are you making something for the Fair?’ A Combined Charities Autumn Fair was being held in a few weeks’ time with the object of raising funds which would be distributed at Christmas among various worthy causes. Alison could hardly fail to be aware of the project, for which Hazel worked assiduously; several other members of the Kingfisher staff were either busy making an assortment of saleable objects or had promised to act as stallholders and general assistants on the day.
Alison had so far done nothing to help. She intended to call in at the Fair and patronize a few stalls; she felt that was all anyone had a right to expect of her. Now it occurred to her that an offer of help might be politic.
‘I’m making cushions,’ Hazel said in a slightly mollified tone. She reached into a zip-topped bag on the floor beside her. ‘This is one I’ve just finished.’ She held out a cushion about twelve inches square with a brilliant design of motifs in different colours arranged in a pattern of concentric oblongs.
‘That’s beautiful,’ Alison said without exaggeration. ‘Did you design it yourself?’
Hazel shook her head. ‘No, it’s one of my mother’s designs. She was very good at needlework.’ She was silent for a moment, then she spoke in a bracing tone. ‘We’re using three of her crochet designs, they’re all based on the same idea as this. Oblongs, squares and circles. And two gros point designs. Jacobean.’
‘I’d like to see one of those,’ Alison said. ‘I’ve always been fond of gros point work.’
‘I haven’t got one here to show you.’ Hazel pondered for a moment. ‘I wonder if Mr Yoxall has.’
‘Mr Yoxall?’ Alison said in surprise.
‘Yes.’ Hazel sounded mildly irritated. ‘He’s very good at gros point. A lot of men do embroidery.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘He’s making some cushions for the Fair. And he’s doing a lot to help generally.’ She fixed on Alison an eye full of accusation. ‘Everyone’s doing what they can.’
‘Yes,’ Alison said. ‘Actually I’d like to do something to help, if it’s not too late to offer. I find I’ve a little more free time just at present.’
‘Oh well,’ Hazel said, a fraction more warmly, ‘that’s good news. As a matter of fact we’re in a bit of a jam, the woman who was going to run the objets d’art stall has had to go up north to look after her grandchildren. Her daughter’s gone into hospital and it looks as if she’s going to be there for some time. Do you think you could take on the stall? I know nothing about art, but you ought to be good at it. You have the right artistic background.’ A reference to the fact that Alison’s father – a well-known figure in this part of the county in his day – had been a painter, creating precise, delicate landscapes in water colours.
‘Yes, I’m sure I could manage it,’ Alison said. Impossible now to refuse without plunging Hazel back into hostility. She became aware of the time. ‘I must go or I won’t get anything to eat.’
‘That’s settled then,’ Hazel said firmly. ‘To be absolutely in order of course we should have to get the agreement of the committee.’ A lively note entered her voice. ‘If you’re free this evening why not come along to the committee meeting? You’ll need to be given all the details about the stall. The meeting’s at half past seven.’
‘Yes, I can manage that,’ Alison said. ‘Where do the meetings take place?’ She knew the Fair was to be held in a church hall close to where she lived; she saw the gaily-painted posters twice a day when she passed the building.
‘The members take it in turns to hold the meetings in their own houses. This week it’s the chairman’s house. Or I should say the chairwoman.’
‘And who is the chairwoman?’ Alison asked.
‘Mrs Ford. Beryl Ford.’ Oh Lord, Alison thought, I don’t want to get mixed up with the Fords. She’d known Arthur Ford when she worked at CeeJay and during the two years her marriage had lasted; she had never greatly cared for him. ‘I imagine you know where Mrs Ford lives,’ Hazel added.
‘Yes, I believe so,’ Alison said casually. She had set foot in the house once or twice as a young junior at Ceejay.
There was really nothing she could do to wriggle out of it now. ‘Very well,’ she said briskly. ‘Mrs Ford’s house. Half past seven. I’ll be there.’
Beryl Ford was in the kitchen dishing up lunch when her husband and son reached home.
‘Chicken,’ Arthur Ford said as soon as the front door swung open at his key. He gave a second sniff. ‘And apple pie.’ Other men might go home on Mondays to an uninspiring lunch knocked up from yesterday’s remains – or not even be allowed home at all but provided with a packet of sandwiches or a nod towards the works canteen – but not Arthur Ford. Oh dear no. Beryl Ford knew better than to try that one on. Or at least she knew better now after twenty years of marriage. Some things she could get away with, some areas where she could wear the trousers, but as far as grub was concerned she knew from early and deeply-etched experience precisely where the limits of tolerance lay.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Robin said. He followed his father into the over-furnished dining room. Beryl came bustling in from the kitchen, carrying a tray. Her face was flushed, her brilliantly blonde hair was starting to slip from its moorings.
‘Here you are at last then,’ she said sharply. ‘Sit down.’ She began to slap food on to plates.
‘I don’t want very much,’ Robin said mildly. His mother dug the spoon into the casserole, didn’t bother to comment, piled up his plate and handed it to him. ‘Eat that,’ she commanded. ‘Put some flesh on your bones.’ He took the plate without protest and began to eat.
‘You were ten minutes late coming in today,’ Beryl said to her husband in a challenging tone. He made no reply but concentrated on the food. ‘Don’t be late again this evening,’ she said on a higher note. ‘I’ve got a committee meeting here tonight. The Charities Fair. I can’t be kept hanging about in the kitchen,’ Neither Arthur nor Robin gave any sign that they had heard what she said. She lobbed out her own helping and plonked her thin frame down on her chair. ‘I hope we find someone to take over the art stall,’ she said a moment later in a somewhat less querulous tone. ‘I keep asking around but I can’t come up with anyone suitable.’
Arthur finished chewing a succulent morsel of chicken. He speared another on his fork. ‘I hope you haven’t got any committee meetings on Wednesday evening,’ he said in a calm, pleasant voice. ‘If you have you’d better cancel them.’
Beryl raised her head abruptly like a gun dog that had got wind of game. ‘What’s so special about Wednesday?’ she asked, giving him a penetrating glance.
‘Rolt’s coming to supper,’ Arthur said in a throwaway manner. Beryl flashed him an incredulous, delighted look. ‘And Madame Celia is coming with him,’ Arthur said, still deadpan.
Beryl flung down her fork. ‘Never!’ she cried. ‘Not Celia Brettell! I just don’t believe it!’
‘Believe it or believe it not,’ Arthur said with tranquil majesty, ‘on Wednesday evening the pair of them will set foot in this house.’ He gave a massive nod. ‘For supper and cards.’ He fixed Robin with a patriarchal look. ‘You’ll be here, naturally.’
‘I was going to play squash at the youth club,’ Robin said without any note in his voice other than that of flat statement.
Arthur inclined his head briefly in regret for the necessity to cancel the squash game. ‘You’ll be here,’ he said amiably. No need to argue or raise his voice, always a trifle surprised when he heard of other men having pitched battles with their offspring.
‘I suppose I’ll have to lay on a banquet for his lordship,’ Beryl said, divided between pleasure at the thought of being licensed to splash out freely and irritation at the notion that all her efforts were going to be directed towards providing lavish hospitality for Andrew Rolt – who had as good as done Arthur out of the area manager’s job at CeeJay – and that stuck-up creature Celia Brettell, with her flash car and mighty high opinion of herself. She began to consider the meal in detail. Steak? Sirloin? Chicken? Or a turkey – ‘what about a turkey?’
‘Claret,’ Arthur said on a musing note. ‘Or a really good hock?’ Must remember to get a dryish sherry for Rolt. He held out his plate. ‘I’ll have a bit more of that chicken’ he said graciously. He felt a sudden keen increase in his appetite.
‘I’d like some more coffee, if we’ve time,’ Celia Brettell said. The cheese had been rather salty.
‘Yes, that’s all right.’ Andrew signalled the waiter. Another ten minutes or so before he need take the road for his interview.
‘Would you plan to move from Barbourne?’ Celia asked. He appreciated the way she didn’t add ‘if you get the job’, seeming to accept without question that he would be successful.
He raised his shoulders. ‘I couldn’t say at this stage. I’d have to see how it worked out.’ Kain Engineering was only twenty miles away, just over the border of the next county. Near enough to let him keep his present house if he wished, but far enough removed both in actual distance and psychologically – by virtue of that county border – to provide a liberating sense of making a completely fresh start, if he did decide to move.
He steered the conversation back to impersonal topics; he had grown skilled at this in the years he had known Celia. Not that he had any particular desire to choke off her questions about this new job; it was simply that he wanted to forget the whole thing until he found himself walking in through the wide swing doors at Kain. He had been pleased when she had turned up and suggested lunch; he hadn’t in the least been looking forward to a jittery meal on his own.
His nerves were agreeably steady, he noted with satisfaction as he paid the bill and saw Celia to her car. The pleasant, calm feeling lasted throughout the drive. The traffic was a good deal lighter than he had expected and he realized as he approached the main gates that he was faced with a nasty stretch of time that he hadn’t bargained for.
He didn’t turn in through the gates but drove a little further on to a lay-by. The feeling of serenity had drained away. He leaned back against the upholstery, closed his eyes and tried to relax. At once a host of disturbing thoughts besieged his brain. He did his best to obliterate them, but it was useless. After a couple of minutes he opened his eyes and sat up. He stepped out of the car and looked round.
A hundred yards away on the left he could see the painted sign of a pub. He bit his lip, staring at the sign. He had managed to keep off drink at lunch, he certainly wasn’t going to have any now; it would be kissing goodbye to any chance of the job. He turned his head. A short distance off, on the right, stood a phone kiosk. At once his spirits lightened.
I’ll ring Alison, he thought with relief, I’ll tell her where I am and what I’m doing, she’s bound to be interested, after all it concerns her very closely. He dug in his pocket for the coins, crossed the road and went rapidly towards the kiosk.
Alison had only a few minutes to spare before her next appointment when the phone rang on her desk. Her smooth professional manner underwent an alteration as soon as she recognized Andrew’s voice. Surprise, followed instantly by wariness, entered her tone.
‘What prompts this call?’ she asked across his opening civilities. ‘I’m very busy just now.’
He gave a nervous laugh. ‘I have an interview at three o’clock.’ He sketched in brief details. ‘I thought you might care to wish me luck.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said crisply. ‘If this job is what you want, then I certainly hope you get it.’
‘I’m speaking from a box outside the Works.’ He was desperate now to keep her on the other end of the line. ‘It’s a pleasant situation. Open country not far away. You’d like it.’
‘Oh yes?’ she said, now only half listening. With her free hand she drew towards her a file of papers. She opened it and began to scan the pages.
‘And it’s not much more than twenty miles from Barbourne.’ His tone grew warmer. ‘It wouldn’t necessarily mean moving house.’ She said nothing, he abandoned caution. ‘It could be exactly as you pleased. We could move or not, just as you chose.’
As she turned a page his words suddenly got through to her. She withdrew her fingers abruptly from the file.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply. ‘What has your moving to do with me?’
He was at once invaded by panic that she might force him out into the open, might make him spell out his wish to mend the marriage, the terms he had in mind. And if she then rejected those proposals, leaving him to get through the next few minutes as best he could, he would face the interview in the total certainty of failure.
He gave another laugh. ‘I seem to have caught you at an inconvenient moment. I’m sorry, I’ll ring off.’ He put down the receiver without giving her time to reply. He let out a long trembling breath, stood for a few seconds with his eyes closed, steadying himself, wiping the conversation from his mind, summoning up what remained to him of poise and assurance.
When the phone clicked and buzzed in Alison’s ear she raised her shoulders, pulled a face of momentary irritation and then dropped the instrument back on to its hook.
She glanced at her watch. She was on the verge of dismissing Andrew from her mind when some of the implications of his call began to filter into the forefront of her brain. He seemed very anxious to get this new job; he talked as if it meant quite a bit more money. It would suit him very well if she were to return to him. And he was prepared to go to some lengths to entice her back.
‘Mm,’ she said aloud. She tapped her fingers on the desk. When she married Andrew he had seemed to her to represent security. She thought him well-off, successful, destined before long to become even more successful. She had overvalued his ability – and undervalued her own. But her ideas had altered. She’d learned a thing or two since she’d left him.
In the corridor outside she heard footsteps. Her client, no doubt. All thought of Andrew’s call vanished from her mind.
So far the interview was going well. The four men facing Andrew across the table were sitting upright, still wearing expressions of concentrated interest. He felt alert and stimulated. He knew he had done himself justice up to this point but he daren’t relax yet. The tricky bit was still to come, might raise its head at any moment.
‘And your family,’ the Chairman said genially, glancing down at the application form. ‘I see that you’re married. No children.’ He looked up. ‘I take it your wife is in full agreement with your application. I’m sure I needn’t tell you how important that is.’ He smiled. ‘We like the wives to come willingly.’
Andrew gave an answering smile, indicating with a nod his general agreement with the Chairman’s remarks.
‘She hasn’t a career of her own, or anything of that sort?’ the Chairman said. ‘Nothing to prevent her playing her full part here as your wife?’
Andrew hesitated, moved his head fractionally sideways, stared at the surface of the table.
‘She has a job,’ he said. ‘But it’s scarcely a career. I don’t think it’s all that important to her. I’m sure she’d be prepared to give it up if I was appointed.’
The Chairman gave him a long considering look. ‘We like to meet the wife,’ he said pleasantly, ‘before we reach any firm decision.’ He spread his hands. ‘I take it your wife would be able to come along very soon?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Good. Then perhaps we could fix a time now?’
Andrew shifted in his chair. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ he said with a half-smiling, deprecating air. ‘It would have to be fitted in with her job commitments. I’d have to speak to her first.’
‘We’ve another couple of candidates to see,’ the Chairman said. ‘You can use the phone here.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the outer office. ‘Speak to your wife about it, arrange a day to suit her. Then we can have another word with you, settle it all before you go.’
Andrew said nothing, his face expressed no more than a general wish to be co-operative. ‘We want to finalize this appointment as soon as possible,’ the Chairman said. ‘We’d like to eliminate unnecessary delays.’ There was another slight pause.
‘Actually,’ Andrew said on a high, light note, ‘my wife and I—’ To his horror he found he couldn’t complete the sentence, his mind was a total blank.
‘Yes?’ the Chairman said. ‘Some difficulty there?’
Andrew’s mind cleared. He nodded in relief. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘We’re living apart. Just temporarily, of course.’
There was a slight stir round the table. ‘I would prefer to speak to her in person,’ Andrew said. ‘It would be far better than the phone. I could call to see her this evening.’
‘How long have you lived apart?’ The Chairman’s tone was polite and neutral, like a doctor enquiring about symptoms.
‘Two and a half years.’
‘A longish time,’ the Chairman said. Long enough to get a divorce, his manner suggested. Or to patch things up if they were ever going to be patched up.
Andrew glanced round the table, knowing even before he did so that it was no good, they’d written him off. Men of decision were what they liked, men of regular life. His glance demolished the last vestige of hope. They were all sitting back in their chairs, relaxed, switched off, no longer bothering even to look at him, simply waiting till the next man took his place.
‘Right then,’ the Chairman said suddenly. He looked across at Andrew, gave him a brief impersonal smile. ‘You’ll be hearing from us within the next day or two.’ No longer any mention of urgent phone calls to Mrs Rolt from the next room. ‘Thank you for coming along.’
That is it, Andrew said to himself with fierce emphasis as he came out into the car park. Finally and irreversibly it. I have finished with Alison. My mind is irrevocably made up. I will not try to hang on to her a moment longer. I’ll get a divorce and marry Celia. She’d back me up in any job, any activity. She’d resign from Sugdens if he asked her to, she’d devote herself with pleasure to being his full-time wife.
He got into his car and eased it out towards the gates. He tried to conjure up a joyful vision of domestic warmth and intimacy such as he had never experienced even in his childhood. He did his best to whip up a feeling of ardour as he contemplated the idea of Celia waiting to greet him at the end of a busy day. She’s had plenty of experience of the hard world of business, he told himself, she’d understand the pressures.
But the prospect remained obstinately bleak, vaguely depressing. It seemed to him that marriage to Celia would signal the end of his youth, would rush him headlong into middle age.
He drove slowly up the road, past the pub, now locked and shuttered. It would be hours yet before they opened again. And he wanted a drink very much indeed. No reason now to resist the idea. And he did after all have something to celebrate – his very decisively settled future.
He would drive on into the town, find an off-licence, have his own little private party in some secluded spot.
On the edge of the town he came to a vast supermarket with a sign that mentioned among the varied delights within a section devoted to wines and spirits. He parked the car and went inside. He bought a nice little selection of conveniently-sized bottles. On his way out again he paused and looked round the long aisles, at the female assistants, the young housewives, the adolescent girls, trying to visualize himself striking up an acquaintance with such fashionably dressed and coiffured creatures, progressing through the ritual stages of intimacy to marriage and children.
It would take months, years possibly. And he didn’t have the time to wait. It would take persistence and effort, charm and gaiety, energy and ardour.
And I don’t have a single damned ounce to spare of any of those highly desirable qualities, he told himself, almost with exuberance, clutching to his chest the bottles in their discreet paper sack.
It’s definitely going to have to be Celia, he told himself yet again as he crossed the car park. The idea seemed more tolerable now. He drove back towards the open country, found a pleasant spot in a lane beneath overhanging trees and opened the first of his bottles. After ten minutes the idea of marrying Celia appeared a good deal more tolerable, after twenty he became greatly pleased with it.
The whole thing would be settled by the time he was summoned to his next interview. He saw himself facing another quartet of shrewd-eyed men. He would be alert and confident. ‘My wife and I reached a civilized agreement’, he was saying in that pleasing vision. ‘A divorce by consent. No recriminations, by far the best way. It’s going through any day now. I shall be marrying again very soon, a sensible, competent woman—’
He frowned, took another swig at his bottle and rephrased that. ‘A most charming woman, highly suitable in every way. And a successful businesswoman into the bargain. A great asset. Yes, certainly she would come along to be introduced.’ She most certainly would, he thought, she’d leap at the chance. ‘And she’d resign her post at Sugdens, no question about that.’ No question at all, he echoed, she’d be penning her resignation before he got the marriage proposal out of his mouth.
The bottle was now empty. I’ll phone Alison before I start on another, he thought. I’ll tell her what I’ve decided. He would go along to see his solicitor in the morning of course – and he’d get round to mentioning the whole thing to Celia at some time or other, no immediate rush about that – but just at this moment he felt a strong impulse to say it all to Alison. Burn his boats, get it over and done with. As he set the car in motion and drove along looking for a phone kiosk he felt light-headed, almost happy.
Alison was drinking a cup of tea when he rang. She had managed to snatch a few minutes’ peace, was sitting at her desk cradling the cup in her hands.
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Andrew said in a quick voice, high and accusatory. ‘I want a divorce. On the two-year-by-agreement principle. I take it you’ve no objection. I expect you’re bloody pleased.’
He’d been drinking, Alison noted. ‘How did the interview go?’ she asked. ‘Am I to congratulate you?’
‘No bloody good,’ he said. ‘It was the marriage set-up that did for me. They didn’t like it, they didn’t like it one little bit. They like things to be one way or the other. And come to that,’ he added almost in a shout, ‘so do I. I’ve had enough of this neither-fish-nor-flesh nonsense. They wanted me to produce a wife, a one hundred per cent wife, dinner parties, functions, business trips, the lot.’
He’d want a pretty quick divorce, she thought. Tie the whole thing up at the solicitors’ right away, file the petition pronto, not much delay in that sort of case these days. He’d want to be able to marry Celia with the speed of light, produce her like a rabbit from a hat the next time he was asked.
‘I’m sorry about the job,’ she said.
‘Ah well.’ His tone was faintly mollified. ‘Better luck next time. I’ll get along to my solicitor tomorrow morning, get him cracking with the divorce. No point in hanging about.’
‘Divorce,’ she echoed on a reflective note. ‘I’m not so sure I really want one.’
He was brought up short, she heard him gasp.
‘You mean – you’re considering – you mean – you might come back to me?’ By God, he wished she’d told him that when he’d phoned her earlier. He felt a wild leap of his heart, he could have sung out with joy. What did the lousy interview matter now? Plenty of better jobs. He grinned at his image in the little mirror on the kiosk wall.
‘We’ll meet,’ he said with persuasive force. ‘We’ll talk things over. Get it all settled. I’ll come over to Fairview this evening.’
‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ Alison said. ‘I’m not committing myself to anything at this stage. You must understand that.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘Of course I understand. Very natural.’ She couldn’t be expected to climb down from her high horse all in an instant, she’d have her pride to consider.
‘All I’m saying just now,’ she added, ‘is that I’m not sure I want a divorce. I’d need to think about it very carefully.’
‘We could make a fresh start,’ he said with joyful energy. ‘There are great jobs going, terrific salaries. I could tackle anything if you came back. I’d give you anything you want.’ Maybe he hadn’t been the most generous husband in the world but he’d learned his lesson, he’d shower her with luxuries. ‘We must meet,’ he said again. ‘I can tell you anything you want to know, listen to anything you’ve got to say.’
‘Not just yet,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t be rushed. Be fair, you have rather sprung this on me.’ Marriage hadn’t taken long to turn him from a moderately open-handed lover into a tight-fisted husband – probably, she judged now, his natural attitude. The idea of reunion seemed likely to release his purse strings once more.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Of course you must take what time you need.’
She glanced at her watch. ‘I must ring off. I have an appointment.’
‘Oh – yes – certainly,’ he said at once. He felt great, marvellous, as he put down the receiver. He left the kiosk, went back to the car, shoved the bottles aside in a rush of disgust. He didn’t need any booze now, he was on top of the world, reborn.
He set the car in motion, headed towards home. His brain was full of plans, moves, applications, interviews, in a fierce resurgence of hope.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_1f429954-91d5-509d-834a-a71ec82be7a1)
SHORTLY AFTER half past five Alison put on her coat. The sky had grown leaden, it promised to be a chilly evening. As she opened her office door she saw Hazel Ratcliff going briskly by with a handful of papers. Hazel paused and gave her a sharp look.
‘You won’t forget about the meeting, Mrs Rolt?’
‘Of course not,’ Alison said. ‘Half past seven, I’ll be there.’
Hazel’s features relaxed slightly. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain,’ she said in a more affable tone. ‘But it seems as if it’s going to.’
‘You’ll have your work cut out to get home and back again for half past seven,’ Alison said.
‘I shan’t even try,’ Hazel said with energy. ‘It would be impossible with the buses as they are now.’ She jerked her head in the direction of her own room. ‘I’ve brought extra sandwiches. I’ll stay on here and catch up with a bit of work till it’s time for the meeting.’
I do believe I detected a faint increase in warmth in her manner, Alison thought with satisfaction as she went off down the stairs. She paused for a moment. Perhaps she ought to ask Hazel to join her for a meal, it might be a good move.
But she wasn’t going to eat at home herself. There was hardly any food in the flat and she didn’t in the least feel like battling round the streets in a last-minute effort to shop. She was going to call in at the Mayflower café for a snack and a chance to sit back and draw her breath before the rigours of the evening.
No, she would eat alone. She set off again down the stairs. It really would be altogether too much to ask that she should take Hazel along to the Mayflower and sit opposite her while she chomped her way through a mountain of baked beans.
Large drops of rain were starting to fall as Colin Viner pushed his way out of the supermarket. Still undecided how to deal with the flatness of the evening opening out before him, he took a firmer grip of his shopping bag and began to mooch along the pavement.
A flurry of rain drove him into a doorway; he turned and glanced at the shop window and saw that it was in fact a café. His spirits rose fractionally. He could go inside and have a cup of tea, give himself time to consider how to kill the next few hours.
The place was almost full but there was a table for two over against the wall with one empty chair. The young woman occupying the other chair leaned forward to pick something up and Viner saw her more clearly. A good-looking girl, long dark hair gleaming under the light. She sat back in her chair again and looked idly out at the street. A slightly olive skin, large dark eyes.
He felt a stir in some quarter of his brain, a teasing half-recollection. Oddly combined with a strong flavour of distaste. He frowned. Had he seen her before? Here, in Barbourne? No, surely not, for that would mean he had come across her in the last week or two and he couldn’t have forgotten her so soon.
He pushed open the café door. Half-a-dozen people came towards him from the direction of the cash desk, anxious for buses and home. An elderly woman, hurrying a little too fast, caught the heel of her shoe against a chair leg and almost fell to the floor, saving herself at the last moment by clutching at the trim waist of a very tall upright old man in front of her.
‘God bless my soul!’ the old man said in loud clear tones, feeling himself encircled for the first time in twenty-five years in a powerful feminine embrace. Tins and packets cascaded from the woman’s holdall, rattling and bouncing between the agitated feet of customers pressing towards the exit.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ the woman said in a deeply humiliated voice. Viner bent down to pick up the groceries. A small cardboard drum had rolled under one of the tables so that he had to kneel and fish it out, murmuring apologies to the occupants of the table, who continued to consult their menus without paying the slightest attention to either himself or what they clearly considered an ill-bred little uproar.
I suppose I’d better be going, Alison thought, roused from her reverie by some minor commotion at the other side of the tearoom. She looked about, gathered up her things. Rain no longer blew against the window, the sky was beginning to clear. She wouldn’t bother taking a bus, she had time to walk.
As she came away from the cash desk she became aware of a tall young man getting up from his knees a couple of yards away, giving her a rueful grin. He was helping some old duck with her gear. He shepherded her to the door and then turned back into the café, looking over at Alison, almost as if he knew her.
She was faintly puzzled. Was he someone she ought to recognize? Some client from the agency – or from her days at Tyler’s perhaps? Then all at once she knew him. Good heavens! Colin Viner! After how many years?
She swung round to face him, laughing. ‘Colin!’ she said. ‘It is Colin Viner, isn’t it?’ It must be twelve or thirteen years since she’d last seen him. He’d been a couple of forms above her at Chaddesley Grammar School; she’d had to leave, had been transferred to the Barbourne school when her father had taken a post as art lecturer at the Barbourne College of Art. It was just herself and her father by then; her mother had died during an influenza epidemic three years before.
He was beside her now, smiling down at her, striving to recall her name. Just when he thought he’d have to confess he couldn’t remember it, his brain flung up the long-ago syllables.
‘Alison!’ he said in triumph. ‘Alison Lloyd!’ It came to him in the same moment that he hadn’t known her all that well, she was a couple of years younger than he was. And it came to him also that he hadn’t much liked her. But the reason for his dislike – that eluded him.
‘I’m not Alison Lloyd any more,’ she said. ‘I’m Alison Rolt. I got married a few years ago.’ She pulled a face. ‘Not a very good idea, it came unstuck.’
People began to push past them. ‘We’d better move,’ he said. He walked beside her to the door, came out and stood on the windy pavement.
‘What are you doing in Barbourne?’ she asked. ‘Do you live here now?’
‘I was transferred here a few weeks ago. I’m in the police. A detective sergeant, to be precise.’
She made a little grimace of affected awe. ‘Fancy!’ She scrutinized his face with a candour left over from the shared days of childhood. ‘You haven’t really changed all that much.’
‘Come and have a drink this evening,’ he suggested. Infinitely better than sitting alone in his lodgings. ‘Or dinner,’ he said. ‘We could have a good old gossip.’
She shook her head. ‘This evening’s no good. I have a committee meeting.’ She laughed. ‘It’s not really my style. I’ve been roped in to help with the Charities Fair. But I could make it another evening. Tomorrow – or Wednesday.’
‘Wednesday then,’ he said. ‘The Montrose Hotel? Seven-thirty?’
William Yoxall was the first member of the Charities Fair Committee to arrive at the Fords’ house. Robin Ford answered his ring at the door and ushered him into the dining room, where his parents were engaged in some last-minute rearrangement of the furniture.
‘It’s no good,’ Beryl Ford was saying sharply as Yoxall came in. ‘That trolley will have to go out, otherwise someone is going to have to sit on top of the sideboard.’ She gave Yoxall a distracted glance. ‘You here already? It’s not gone seven, surely?’
‘No,’ he said soothingly. ‘You’ve plenty of time. I’m on the early side.’
‘You can give me a hand with this then,’ Arthur Ford said. He jerked his head at the side table, laden now with china, cutlery, silverware. Plates of fancy biscuits, little cakes elaborately iced.
‘Certainly.’ Yoxall took one end of the table and heaved it back under Arthur’s directions into a more convenient position.
‘Always the same,’ Arthur said with philosophic joviality. ‘Beryl can never settle down to enjoy a social evening unless she’s made one hell of a domestic upset first.’
‘Another couple of chairs from the sitting room,’ Beryl said to Robin. ‘Those two straight chairs by the window.’ She darted an anxious glance into the mirror above the hearth, raised both hands and stabbed at her carefully constructed hairdo. She was wearing a tight-fitting dress of electric blue crepe festooned with pleated whorls and frills that did nothing for her bony figure.
‘That’s it then,’ Arthur said forcefully a few minutes later. ‘If you’re not satisfied now you never will be. Come on, Robin, we’ll make ourselves scarce before your mother has time to think up a fresh move.’
‘Come into the kitchen,’ Beryl said to Yoxall. ‘You can talk to me while I get on with one or two jobs. Oh – I was nearly forgetting,’ she added on a higher note. ‘You’ll never guess who Hazel Ratcliff has got to take over the Art stall.’ She flung William a look full of challenge. ‘Go on! See if you can tell me!’
‘I’ve no idea,’ William said mildly.
‘Mrs Rolt! There,’ she added as she saw his eyes blink open. ‘I knew you’d be surprised. She’s coming along this evening.’ She led the way into the kitchen. ‘We must have everything just so for her ladyship.’ She reached into a cupboard and took out a coffee percolator with important movements. ‘I’m not having her go away and say she found anything to criticize.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘I expect you think her very good-looking,’ Beryl said, almost accusatory.
‘She certainly has a striking appearance.’ His tone lacked enthusiasm. ‘I can’t say I greatly admire that type.’
‘My own opinion exactly,’ Beryl said with energy. ‘Altogether too exotic for my taste.’ She pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘Her mother was a foreigner, I understand. A Greek, I believe.’
William nodded with a reflective air. Then he looked about him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
She sent a harassed glance round the room. ‘No, not really.’ She banged things down on to a tray. ‘That wretched creature Yardley phoned again to ask if he could serve on the committee,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got a nerve! After the way I choked him off last time, I really couldn’t credit that he’d ask again. He sounded as if he’d had more than enough to drink and that was at five o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘I hope you weren’t too hard on him,’ William said. At forty-two Yoxall was too young to have served in the war, but he had some kind of notion of what things had been like for Brian Yardley.
Now turned fifty, gaunt and greying, Yardley had been a local hero in 1940 when William was a child at primary school. A Battle of Britain pilot, shot down in the final days of that epic struggle, appallingly burned, put together again afterwards over a long period punctuated with bouts of despair and bitterness, Yardley had eventually forced himself to surface once more into the life of Barbourne, take his grotesque face – that had been so pleasing to look at when he had climbed into his plane that August day – and his disfigured body about the streets and thoroughfares. A course, William had often thought, requiring very nearly as much courage as anything Yardley had done in the war.
‘I’ve no patience with him,’ Beryl said. No, you haven’t, Yoxall thought. She would never trouble to look below the surface disorder of the personality that now served Yardley in some sort of fashion as his last remaining shield against the terrors of existence; she couldn’t be bothered to show mercy to the disturbed, distressed soul underneath.
‘He’s still trading on his war service,’ she said, ‘even if he doesn’t mention it. We’re all supposed to overlook the fact that he’s half drunk half the time.’
Yardley had tried his hand at a number of jobs in the painful time of his attempts at readjustment. He had succeeded at none of them. For the last few years he had run a small antique business; he seemed to be making a living out of it. At all events he hadn’t yet gone bankrupt.
‘It wouldn’t have done any harm to let him help with the Fair,’ Yoxall said.
Beryl made a sound of distaste. ‘He simply wants to be noticed. Anything to get attention. He’s prepared to force himself on people—’ She was interrupted by a ring at the front door. ‘I’ll go and answer that.’ She glanced at Yoxall. ‘You’d better go on into the dining room.’
‘Why, Mrs Rolt!’ he heard her exclaim a few moments later in a voice like syrup dripping from the blade of a knife. ‘How very nice to see you! Do come in. I was delighted when Hazel rang to tell me …’
I’d forgotten the atmosphere of this house, Alison thought as she suffered the attentions of Mrs Ford. She remembered all at once how it had seemed to her when she was a junior at CeeJay, sent to the house with some query when Arthur Ford was absent from the office because of a passing indisposition. Cramped and crowded as if some manic interior decorator had attempted to fill every inch of space.
And covers on everything that could conceivably be covered: the telephone, radio magazines, the backs of chairs, tops of furniture, even the seat in the lavatory. And what wasn’t hidden away was caged or confined, barricaded behind the doors of built-in fitments, thrust into decorated containers and canisters, enclosed in glass, fenced in behind metal grilles.
It hadn’t changed much since she had last stepped over the threshold. New carpets, a more violent shade of paint, wallpaper of a different but equally restless pattern; the essentials remained the same.
The doorbell rang again. Cars drew up outside. Beryl’s face took on a glow of pleasurable concentration as she darted about, admitting, ushering, chattering.
‘Seven o’clock!’ she cried as the clock on the mantelshelf chimed, just when she was closing the door of the dining room behind the last arrival. ‘All ready to start on time!’
An hour and a half later when the arguing, feuding and jostling for position had reached a temporary lull, Arthur put his head round the door. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing the cogitations,’ he said jovially. He nodded greetings round the table. ‘I’m just off,’ he said to his wife. He jerked his head in the direction of the outside world. ‘I shan’t be very late.’ He smiled expansively at the circle of faces. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’ His face vanished from the aperture.
‘We might as well take a break now,’ Beryl said as the front door closed behind him. Concentration had been effectively broken, refreshments would allow the combatants to restore themselves for the second half of the fray. She sprang to her feet and went out into the passage.
‘Robin!’ She sent a piercing shout into the upper regions. ‘Come down and give me a hand! ‘
He came down almost at once, made himself useful, handed cups and plates, talked politely to the committee members.
Alison accepted a canapé from the dish he held out. She gave him an unthinking, automatic smile. A faint flush rose in his cheeks. He lingered beside her, still holding out the dish.
‘Wake up there!’ Beryl called out sharply to him a few moments later. Alison caught her eye, briefly registered the quality of its gaze – controlling, possessive, more than a little tinged with suspicion and hostility. She looked up at Robin, flashed him another smile but this time fully switched on, brilliant.
‘I’ll have another of those,’ she said. ‘They’re delicious.’ She began to chat to him with animation, asked him about his interests, if he ever went to the theatre.
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Emma Page
A standalone mystery from the author of the Kelsey and Lambert series.A mystery story that centres around the young and successful Alison Rolt. Complex strands of small town life unravel in the search for a murderer.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_560647f2-82b9-549b-a2ea-2d7e5eb7c5bd)
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain in 1975 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1975
Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780008175948
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175955
Version [2016-02-18]
DEDICATION (#ulink_9936a0ad-4bd6-574f-a145-8774cd495bf0)
For Ginge
Poet Extraordinary
CONTENTS
Cover (#uc2fb17db-bf84-55cd-a17a-58c988594ad8)
Title Page (#u29a0ddaf-535b-58cc-9e73-9bdfeb54dfe2)
Dedication (#ulink_46a119b6-18b3-584d-b4ca-08c65851483a)
Copyright (#ulink_372e39a8-cca9-53b2-a908-53461f7151ed)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_2b6b0c25-9641-56a3-84a2-9514354fd729)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_c75a9cb1-abd7-503f-baeb-92946907e816)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_e74c5b0c-42e5-5605-b12f-85fb843c3d75)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_30205ee2-6254-50db-bd6d-e3c71ec4f57f)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_dc57ee18-bfd2-575d-ad6f-f98bae174d1b)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By Emma Page (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_2efb5112-c139-5bb1-bca3-a29732d7bce2)
SEVEN-FIFTEEN on a calm, palely golden Friday morning in October. Andrew Rolt – Area Manager of CeeJay Plant Hire Limited – came slowly down the stairs of his large Victorian house on the outskirts of Barbourne. He was already dressed for work in a dark business suit; the skilful cut of the jacket concealed his thickening waistline, the beginnings of a paunch. Although he was not much over forty his brown hair was liberally streaked with grey. He was still passably good-looking in a boyish way; his features retained something of a vulnerable air.
He reached the front hall and went slowly towards the rear of the house. He had slept badly again, felt little appetite at the thought of toast or coffee. He halted in the doorway of the big silent kitchen and turned his head in the direction of the dining room with its store of bottles discreetly housed in the sideboard. He felt jittery, apprehensive. Surely the letter must come by this morning’s post. It had reached his ears in the gossipy interchanges of the trade that the interviews for the Kain Engineering job were scheduled for next Monday afternoon. If his name was on the short list they must surely let him know by today.
He had expected to hear yesterday morning, had come downstairs confident that he’d find the letter in the wire cage on the inside of the front door. He’d sent off two previous applications for jobs in September, both unsuccessful; when the second application had come to nothing he realized what was holding him back. This time he had corrected the error. He hadn’t put ‘Living apart’ in the box opposite ‘Marital status’; this time he had simply written: ‘Married.’
But yesterday there had been no word from Kain Engineering. There is still Friday, he had told himself, rallying almost at once from the old feeling of hopelessness that rose in him at the sight of the empty letter cage; there is no need yet for despair. It was despair that threatened him nowadays, a sense of failure and isolation that confronted him in unexpected moments, leaping out from behind a word, a look. He had to break out now from the barriers closing round him. In a couple of years he would be forty-five; he must make the push without delay – and must succeed in it – if he was to escape the insidious downward slope.
He glanced at his watch. Seven twenty-two. The post was scarcely ever later than seven-thirty. He turned from the kitchen and walked hesitantly towards the dining room. Nothing wrong with just one drink, it would make bearable the next few minutes of waiting.
In the large dining room with its tall windows framed in long drapes of plum-coloured velvet, he stooped to open the sideboard cupboard, paused with one hand already reaching for a bottle and stood for a moment with his eyes closed. No, he would not take a drink. He straightened up, sighed deeply and closed the cupboard.
He went quickly into the hall and let himself out into the garden, kept in trim by a jobbing gardener and glowing now with the deep rich colours of autumn. Chrysanthemums, dahlias, asters; shrubs with their soaring sprays and thick clusters of berries, white, scarlet and purple.
He wandered along the neat paths, contemplated the drift of yellow leaves in the shrubbery, ran a finger over the creamy ruffles of a late rose. He had gone to a nursery five years ago when Alison had said she would marry him. He had been astounded at his good fortune, had felt a great surge of optimism, a fierce late blossoming of the romantic impulse. He had selected twenty-one rose bushes – one for every year of Alison’s life. He had created this pretty little rose garden with a vision of the two of them strolling beside it in warm summer evenings.
By the time the bushes had established themselves, when they had been in the ground scarcely more than two years, Alison had turned her back on the marriage, had walked out on him, had returned to secretarial work.
She hadn’t mentioned divorce. She had no legal grounds for such a step and it was certainly the last thing he wanted. In the first few months after her departure he had telephoned, written, gone to see her, made a succession of appeals for her return. By degrees the appeals grew less frequent, died away. He no longer cherished any very strong hope that they would succeed and now that they had lived apart for over two years he was afraid to approach her again. His action might make her realize that sufficient time had gone by to allow a petition for divorce by consent.
Out on the road, some little distance away, he heard the sound of a vehicle. A light sweat broke out on his forehead. He began to walk back towards the house with an air of casualness. The vehicle slowed to make the turn in through the gates. It came up the drive, disclosing itself as a red mail van; it halted when Rolt stepped into view. He took the letters from the postman and flipped them apart.
‘A mild morning,’ the postman said. ‘Could be sunny later on.’ Rolt saw the postmark on the third letter. He turned over the envelope and read the seal on the back: Kain Engineering. His heart seemed to rise up in his chest, suspend its beat for a long moment and then drop back with a thud.
‘They talked about rain in the forecast,’ the postman said. ‘They get it wrong two days out of three.’ Rolt glanced up, aware that the man had said something. He smiled, nodded vaguely and plunged off across the grass, ripping open the thick white paper, unable to wait till he got into the house.
He fumbled at the folded sheet. His eyes raced over the lines of typing. The words sprang out at him like whorls of fire … Interview … Monday … 3.30 p.m.
He raised his head and looked up at the pearly sky. The mail van went back down the drive and out into the road. A flood of joy washed over Rolt. Careful, he told himself, must keep my grip. He walked up the short flight of stone steps that led to the front door. His pace was consciously brisk, his manner controlled and competent.
I’ll get Alison back, he said in his mind with total confidence. He had something to offer her now. And she’d had time to think things over, she was no longer an inexperienced girl. She’d see sense, realize where her best interests – the best interests of both of them – lay. And no doubt by now she’d had more than enough of turning out in all weathers five days a week to go to the office. She’d probably wondered why he hadn’t been in touch with her lately. After all, if she actually wanted a divorce, she could have approached him as soon as the two years were up. And she had no steady boy-friend, he was pretty certain of that.
He let himself into the house and closed the door behind him with a precise click. Silence settled back over the high-ceilinged rooms, the spacious hallway, lofty staircase, wide landings. He stood looking down at the carpet with its subdued pattern of blues and greys. Things would sort themselves out, it would all come right in the end. Just to get Alison back would at once make him feel younger, more positive and hopeful, give direction and purpose to his life.
He raised his head and glanced about him. Yes, that’s it, he said to himself with decision. I’ll phone Alison, I’ll get the whole thing settled … But possibly not before the Kain interview … Probably best not to speak to her before three-thirty next Monday afternoon … For if by some remote chance she put on a voice of ice, if she refused to listen to reason, how then could he possibly conduct himself with cheerful confidence during the ordeal of the interview?
No, he would get the job first and then phone Alison; he’d have something concrete to lay before her then, something more enticing than vague, optimistic proposals. He put up a hand and rubbed his chin. In actual fact, he thought, I’d offer her anything to get her back. He imagined himself phrasing the words over the phone … Just say what it is you want and you can have it. How could any woman resist an offer like that? Anything she wanted … Well, of course, it went without saying, anything within reason.
He placed his hands together, linked the fingers, rubbed the palms against each other with a sense of satisfaction and relief. He noted with pleasure his feeling of control and competence, of being in charge of himself and his existence. And now, with all that resolved, what about one little drink? Not as a prop or a crutch – certainly not. Nor as a shield or a distorting mirror. But perfectly normally and wholesomely, by way of celebration.
Five minutes later he was sitting at ease in the dining room when he remembered the other letters the postman had handed him. He set down his glass and picked up the little pile of envelopes. Nothing of great consequence. The telephone account, a couple of receipts, and a bill for the perfume he had given Celia Brettell on her birthday last month. Her thirty-third birthday according to Miss Brettell, her thirty-eighth according to uncharitable intimates. Every year at Christmas and on her birthday – with the exception of the couple of years of his marriage – he rang the changes between chocolates, flowers, books and perfumes, being careful never to give her anything more personal. He flicked the sheet of paper against his fingers, thinking about Celia.
He had known her for years, liked her well enough. There had been a time when he had almost allowed her to steer him towards the altar, from lack of any alternative and more attractive prospect. But that of course had been in the days before Alison.
He thrust the bill back into its envelope and instantly forgot about Miss Brettell. He gathered up the rest of his mail, stood up, finished his drink and went upstairs, half smiling, thinking with pleasurable expectation about the interview on Monday.
Monday morning, ten minutes past seven. In the bedroom of her ground-floor flat in Fairview, a solid Edwardian villa set on the lower slopes of the hills that cradled Barbourne, Alison Rolt drew back the curtains and looked out at the day. A little over two miles separated Fairview from Andrew Rolt’s Victorian residence on the other side of Barbourne.
Quite a pleasant day. A light veil of mist obscured the view but there was a strong hint of warmth and sunshine later in the morning.
She went swiftly along to the bathroom and turned on the taps, piled her long hair on top of her head, squeezing the springy tresses into a waterproof cap ruched and frilled with pale blue nylon.
She flung a handful of salts into the water and stepped in. There was a suggestion of the exotic about her; she was small, slender and delicately made, still three or four years away from thirty. A pale olive skin deepened by suntan, quick movements, easy grace.
The only sound came from the water running into the cistern and her own soapy splashings. But I don’t in the least mind being alone in the house, she thought, leaning back in the pale green water. She wasn’t nervous; she found the quiet a pleasant contrast to the daily bustle at the office. And in any case the situation was likely to be merely temporary; the two upper flats were sure to be tenanted again before long.
She came out of her thoughts with the recollection that it was Monday morning, that she had made up her mind on Friday to start a campaign to restore the efficiency of the girls who worked under her. She was junior partner at the Kingfisher Secretarial Agency in Barbourne, she had striven for high standards in the time she had held the post – a little less than a year. She had achieved a fair degree of success, only to find some of her efforts being undone in the last month or two.
In the middle of the summer Kingfisher had finally absorbed the remnants of Tyler’s, the other secretarial agency in the town. Before her move to Kingfisher Alison had worked at Tyler’s for eighteen months. It was a long-established agency but it had grown increasingly complacent, opposed to inevitable change, partly because old Mr Tyler had no son or daughter to inject fresh ideas into the business. He had seen the Kingfisher start up six years ago; he had felt no concern, considering the new agency an upstart enterprise likely to remain small and unimportant or else fade out altogether.
But Kingfisher had steadily expanded, nibbling unremittingly at the edges of Tyler’s business, gradually luring away staff, enticing and retaining clients. A little over a year ago Mr Tyler died. The ownership of his agency passed to his widowed sister, an elderly invalid living in a South Coast nursing home, with no interest in the business apart from the money it might bring her. One of the senior members of staff – a man of no very great competence, not far off retiring age – was promoted to manager.
The flowers had scarcely withered on Mr Tyler’s grave when Alison received an approach from the rival agency of Kingfisher. Judith Padmore, the founder and sole owner of Kingfisher, had had her eye on Alison for some time, well aware that it was largely Mrs Rolt’s ability and youthful energy that allowed Tyler’s to struggle on at all. Miss Padmore was a shrewd, hard-working woman with long commercial experience behind her. Now in late middle age and ready to take a little more leisure, she made her proposition in a forthright manner. A junior partnership, a percentage of the healthy Kingfisher profits in return for an investment of capital and the application of Mrs Rolt’s talents to the business.
It had taken Alison no time at all to say yes. She had joined Tyler’s when she closed the door on her marriage. She was twenty-three years old at the time, determined to make a good career for herself; she believed she had found a suitable niche. But her ambition had increased along with her experience. She hadn’t much enjoyed the final six months at Tyler’s and the bleak realization that in spite of all her endeavours she was now merely part of a rapidly failing concern.
After her departure Tyler’s had struggled on under its inadequate manager, finally giving up the ghost a few months ago when the manager decided to retire. Miss Padmore took over what was left of the business and goodwill, the few remaining staff, together with the furnishings and equipment, all in exchange for a lump sum paid over to the invalid lady on the South Coast.
The graphs on the walls of Miss Padmore’s office already showed a marked upswing and could be expected to present an increasingly satisfactory appearance for the next year or two. But there’s a fairly rigid natural limit to expansion in a town of this size, Alison thought, squeezing the sponge over her slender shoulders.
She lay back in the bath and stared up at the ceiling. She’d probably have to move on in a couple of years, seek lusher pastures. She blew out a long calculating breath.
Nothing in her thoughts so much as brushed against an image of Andrew or flicked awareness of his existence into the forefront of her mind. Her marriage – or what was legally left of it – was now totally lacking in significance for her. When some chance happening brought it to her recollection it seemed as if she was recalling with difficulty an almost-forgotten interlude. She felt more and more that exciting possibilities were opening out before her, that the real business of her life was only just beginning.
The sound of the newsboy’s whistle reached her ears. It must be turned a quarter to eight. She pulled out the bath plug and stretched out a hand for a towel. She stood up and dried herself with easy, rapid movements. Along with the goods and chattels that had moved across from Tyler’s in the course of the final transfer, there had also come a certain tinge of slackness that began before long to affect the Kingfisher staff. Girls started to arrive a little late in the mornings, to vanish a trifle early in the evenings, to absent themselves for an occasional afternoon without good reason.
And the time has come to root the slackness out, Alison thought, stepping out of the bath and flinging down the towel. She picked up a bottle of lotion and began to massage it into the fine smooth skin of her calves and thighs.
When she got back to her bedroom the clock showed five minutes to eight. She pulled open a drawer, looked rapidly through the filmy underthings. She certainly couldn’t risk being late for work herself if she was going to get her campaign off to a good start. Some of the girls were only too quick to take advantage of any little lapse on the part of the management.
The central police station in Barbourne was a modern building, bright and airy. The reception area was almost empty at this time on a Monday morning; it had a leisurely air after the busy traffic of the weekend. On a bench against the wall an old man sat alone in a patient, relaxed attitude.
Detective Sergeant Colin Viner stood in front of the long polished counter, dealing with a couple of girls, office workers, who had come in to report an incident which had taken place – or which they said had taken place – on Friday night. Viner was not at all sure that he was disposed to believe their unsupported tale of a man springing out at one of them as she walked home alone across the hill from an evening class in the town.
There had been vague rumours for some little time of a man haunting the hills. Nothing substantiated, nothing serious. Such rumours were not uncommon; often the episode which sparked them off was nothing more than a prank, a moment’s mischief.
‘It’s a great pity you didn’t manage to get a good look at the man,’ Viner said briskly. He slid a speculative glance at the taller of the two girls, the victim of the alleged assault – or more precisely, of the attempted assault, for the girl, according to her story, had taken to her heels at once with scarcely more than a finger laid upon her. She was really quite pretty in a fluid, drooping way … and he had always been rather partial to fluid, drooping girls … He flicked the thought away and returned his attention to business. He’d have liked a little more evidence than the statement of this young woman whose path – during the short time he’d been stationed in Barbourne – had crossed his own a little more frequently than he was inclined to put down to the simple workings of chance.
‘If you could give me some idea of the man’s age, his height—’ He ran his eye over the brief details he had jotted down about the girl: Tessa Drake, eighteen years old, shared a small flat with the other girl in Leofric Gardens, a run-down area of Barbourne. Employed as a shorthand-typist by the Kingfisher Secretarial Agency.
On her way to work now, twenty past eight by the station clock, having – so she said – spent the best part of the weekend recovering from her nasty experience of Friday night and bracing herself – with the moral support of her friend who stood now levelling at Viner a sternly challenging gaze – to walk up the steps of the police station and recount her shocking tale.
‘Did the man say anything?’ Viner asked without hope. ‘I don’t know what you expect us to do when you can tell us practically nothing.’
‘Well, she was very upset.’ The friend, little more than five feet in height but bristling with protective ferocity, jerked her head in indignation. ‘Who wouldn’t be? A man jumping out at her like that.’
Detective-Inspector Bennett came striding into the hall and swept a glance over the reception area. He closed his eyes for an instant at the sight of old James Ottaway once again on his bench, now sitting bolt upright, staring rigidly ahead. Bennett came to a halt a few yards from where Sergeant Viner was writing something down with an air of resigned boredom.
‘Mandy Webb. Nineteen years old,’ Viner said aloud as he wrote the words. He glanced up at the second girl. ‘The same address in Leofric Gardens?’ She nodded. ‘And you work at the same place as your friend?’
‘No. We used to work together. At Tyler’s agency. When it folded up Tessa went to Kingfisher and I got a job at CeeJay Plant Hire.’
‘You’d better get off to work then,’ Viner said. ‘Both of you. Wouldn’t do to keep your bosses waiting.’ He caught sight of Inspector Bennett. ‘These young ladies have come across – or fancy they’ve come across – our phantom prowler,’ he said as Bennett came over. ‘Most upset,’ Viner added with unsubtle irony. ‘So upset they didn’t notice anything about him.’
Bennett ran his eye over the girls, the short one like a terrier with her fringe of fawn-coloured hair, and the taller one, not bad-looking in her dreamy way. He frowned. Hadn’t the tall one been into the station only a week or two back on some pretext or other? He flicked a sour-grape look at Viner’s smooth tanned skin and thick dark hair; a pity the sergeant had nothing better to do than stand around encouraging silly girls to run in and out making eyes at him.
‘You might explain to these young ladies,’ Bennett said with threatening jocularity, ‘that there’s such a thing as being charged with wasting police time.’ The tall girl gave him a look of faint alarm, the other lowered her eyes with an expression of contempt.
‘Foolish girls,’ Bennett said, gazing idly about, ‘are inclined to pick up snippets of rumour.’ His glance rested on James Ottaway still peering resolutely into vacancy; at least it wasn’t one of the old fellow’s noisily obstreperous days, something to be thankful for. ‘Frivolous minds seize on a titbit,’ Bennett said. ‘They touch it up, embroider it.’ He jerked his head round, frowned at the girls with a look from which jocularity had abruptly vanished. ‘Then they come in here with their daft tales, trying it on, looking for a bit of importance.’ He nodded over towards the door. ‘Go on, scarper. Go and waste your bosses’ time.’ When they had taken themselves off a few yards, pink-cheeked and bridling, Bennett said loudly, ‘The tall one, Miss Droopy Drawers—’
‘Tessa Drake,’ Viner said, unwilling to play along any further with the inspector’s needling game.
‘Miss Droopy Drawers,’ Bennett repeated more loudly. ‘She fancies you. That’s what all this is in aid of.’ His eyes held no amusement. ‘Don’t encourage her. Gives the station an untidy look.’
‘I most certainly never—’ Viner began with angry protest but Bennett held up a hand.
‘Just a joke,’ he said smoothly. ‘Got to be able to take a joke.’ Over by the door Tessa Drake turned her head and glanced back at Viner. She gave him an amused smile.
Beneath the graceful leaves of a vast green plant set on a ledge, old Ottaway rose suddenly from his bench and said in a high clear voice, ‘I come not to bring you peace but a sword.’
‘He’s off again,’ Bennett said with weary irritation. A constable, coming up from the canteen, caught the tail end of Ottaway’s utterance and quickened his pace along the corridor.
‘Now Jezebel was a whore,’ Ottaway said on a half-singing note. The constable reached him as he raised his right arm and cried, ‘A painted whore of Babylon.’
‘That’s all right then,’ the constable said, firmly soothing. He slipped a steely hand under the old man’s elbow. ‘Come along.’ He began to propel his captive towards the door. ‘Nobody worries about Jezebel any more.’ Ottaway was well known in the station; he had long been a widower, lived alone, had grown increasingly eccentric.
A few yards from the door Ottaway halted. ‘I want to register a complaint,’ he said suddenly in a normal voice. ‘About the posters outside the cinema. Most indecent. Not at all the thing for women and children to be faced with.’
‘We’ll see to it,’ the constable said. ‘Leave it to us. No need for you to worry.’ He steered Ottaway out on to the steps, pointed him in the direction of home.
Certainly not the liveliest of mornings. Viner glanced at his watch. Might as well go and see that woman about the furnished house dispute. Probably not theft at all, simple carelessness most likely. He crossed over to the window and looked out. The mist was beginning to lift, it might turn out to be one of those softly golden October days. He wouldn’t bother with a car. It was no distance, he’d enjoy the walk. He turned from the window and met Inspector Bennett’s questioning frown.
‘I’m just off to talk to the furnished-house woman,’ Viner said.
Bennett slid him a sly, teasing look edged with malice. ‘Don’t go chatting her up, then. She struck me as a bit of a man-eater.’
‘I can take care of myself.’ Viner added a half smile to the end of his words, to neutralize the irritation showing in his tone. He’d recently got himself transferred to Barbourne after the girl he’d been engaged to had suddenly married someone else. Bennett had ferreted about till he’d uncovered the story. He’d found several opportunities to flick at Viner barbed little remarks about women in general and Viner’s relationship with them – or what the inspector apparently fancied might be Viner’s relationship with them – in particular.
The air was fresh and sweet when Viner came out of the station into the grey and gold morning. A few minutes later, as he walked up the High Street, he noticed for the first time a grey stone building standing between a bookshop and a bank. A fair-sized building, solid, prosperous-looking, with the name painted on a board in elegant gilt lettering: The Kingfisher Secretarial Agency.
He halted on the edge of the pavement, gazing across at the premises. Through the ground-floor windows he could see girls moving about. He felt a sharp surge of loneliness. Barbourne was barely twenty miles from his native town of Chaddesley but he had set foot in it perhaps only half-a-dozen times before his official transfer a few weeks before; the very unfamiliarity of the place was the main reason he had chosen it.
At the centre window on the first floor a girl leaned forward, lifted a hand in greeting, smiled down at him. Colin recognized her at once; Tessa Drake, eighteen years old. For several seconds he continued to look up at her with an expressionless face; she remained smiling down at him. Then he turned and walked rapidly away up the High Street.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_e17af8e2-3a62-5b72-bfde-58d5b215c346)
THE INTERIOR of the Kingfisher Agency was pleasantly warm. Hazel Ratcliff pulled off her coat as she came into the first-floor office. ‘That wretched bus,’ she said in a voice of habitual grievance. ‘It gets later every morning.’ She went over to the window and stood beside Tessa Drake who was looking down into the street. ‘What’s so interesting out there?’ she asked. Her eyes followed Tessa’s gaze, lighted on a tall broad-shouldered man walking swiftly up the road. Still an eye for a well-built man, Hazel Ratcliff, in spite of the years slipping well past thirty; still hopeful in spite of precious little encouragement.
She turned from the window. ‘Come on, we can’t stand here all day,’ she said forcefully. ‘To work!’ She dealt Tessa a would-be playful blow on the shoulder with twelve solid stones behind the punch. ‘If we don’t get started we’ll have Mrs Rolt after us.’
‘You ought to find somewhere to live in Barbourne,’ Tessa said idly. ‘Then you wouldn’t have this fuss about being late. I can’t think why you want to live in the country.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Hazel said with energy. ‘Not now.’ She was one of the staff who had come over in the summer from Tyler’s. Her widowed mother had died shortly afterwards, leaving Hazel bereft of immediate family. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to give up the cottage and move right into town,’ she said. ‘But you tell me where I can get a decent flat at a reasonable rent.’
The office manager put his head round the door. ‘Come along, ladies,’ he said in his precise way. ‘Mustn’t get the week off to a bad start.’ He gave Miss Ratcliff a speculative glance; he had caught the tail end of the conversation. A flat … just possible that he might be able to help her. A heavily built woman, Miss Ratcliff, unpleasingly wide in the hips. But a good skin, all that country air. And rather large, quite pretty eyes.
‘Just coming, Mr Yoxall,’ Hazel said. ‘Has Miss Padmore been asking for me?’
He shook his head. ‘No, but she will be, in a minute or two.’ If Hazel were to lose two or three stones, package herself a good deal less dowdily, lighten the colour of her hair, she might turn out to be quite passable. He followed the two females into the corridor. He didn’t turn an assessing eye on Tessa Drake, knowing that the most extravagantly drawn bounds of possibility couldn’t be expected to include eighteen-year-old girls with willowy figures and pretty faces.
He went up the short flight of steps to Mrs Rolt’s office and knocked at her door. ‘Just one moment,’ she said when he came in; she was sorting a bundle of papers. He stood silently by the desk, watching her with a calm, detached look. Without doubt a striking-looking girl, though not altogether to his taste. He didn’t particularly admire the evident traces of foreign blood. He understood that her mother had been the daughter of a Greek artist, a sculptor or something of that sort. Quite an arty background really, her father had taught art here in Barbourne.
She dealt with the last of the papers, sat back and gazed at him. Then all at once she remembered his uncle’s death; her face took on a look of commiseration.
‘I was sorry to hear about your uncle,’ she said. Old George Yoxall had died early on Saturday morning, in the local hospital where he had been taken a few weeks previously after a heart attack. He had been Mrs Rolt’s landlord; he had occupied the top flat in Fairview. The middle flat had been tenanted by a pair of young men during the time Alison had rented the garden flat. Not the same pair of young men but a rather bewildering succession of young men connected to each other in a variety of ways: friends, relatives, colleagues. The last young man had gone abroad just before George Yoxall’s heart attack and the matter of the tenancy had been allowed to stand over while he was in hospital.
‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ Yoxall said. ‘To ask if I might take tomorrow afternoon off to go to the funeral.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Highly inconvenient, but she could scarcely refuse. She would have liked to ask him what was going to happen to the flats but it seemed hardly politic to raise the question at this moment. He had a somewhat withdrawn air. Had he been deeply affected by his uncle’s death? He certainly used to visit the old man regularly, she was accustomed to seeing him on the stairs at Fairview. It had been through him that she had heard about the flat in the first place, shortly after she had joined Kingfisher.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here for the morning as usual.’
She stood up. ‘Oh, while I think of it—’ She went over to a filing cabinet and pulled open one of the lower drawers. ‘You remember the girls we interviewed the week before last for that post with the textile firm?’ She knelt on the floor, leafed through papers. ‘If you’d just glance at these two applications. I think we might see the girls again.’ She passed him the sheets. ‘One of them might be suitable for the job at the transport depot.’
She sat back on her heels and considered him for a moment as he bent his head over the pages. Might he have expectations from his uncle? Old Mr Yoxall had owned quite a bit of property. There were other relatives, she knew that, she’d glimpsed them sometimes.
She picked up a folder, glanced through it. Ah well, either Mr Yoxall or one of the executors would tell her soon enough if she’d have to move. She gave a faint sigh. She very much hoped she wouldn’t have to start looking for somewhere else. Fairview would suit her very well for the remainder of the time she envisaged living in Barbourne. She liked the house; it was spacious and comfortable, the large garden so agreeably private, with a gate that gave direct access to the hill.
She stood up. ‘You might take those application forms with you,’ she said to Yoxall. ‘Have another look at them, let me know what you think.’
At ten o’clock Alison closed the door on the rattle and clack of the large main office and walked briskly upstairs. As always on a Monday morning there were a dozen matters she must discuss with her senior partner. She came up to the landing and saw that Hazel Ratcliff was just coming out of Miss Padmore’s room. The half-smiling look Hazel wore changed abruptly to one of impersonal coolness as she caught sight of Alison. She stood back against the wall to let her go by, in a posture of almost aggressive deference.
Oh Lord, Alison thought, suppressing a sigh, her attitude seems to be getting worse instead of better. She had known Hazel during the eighteen months she had worked at Tyler’s and had got on reasonably well with her in spite of what Alison always felt to be Hazel’s instinctive dislike for an obviously more successful and attractive female.
Hazel was the kind of woman to identify herself with her employer, particularly if the employer was a man. She had been very loyal to old Mr Tyler and when, very shortly after his death, Alison had announced her intention of leaving Tyler’s, Hazel had behaved as if she thought Alison guilty of the grossest treachery. An opinion she saw no reason to modify when she realized that Alison was taking with her to Kingfisher a substantial number of Tyler clients.
Even though Hazel had now joined Kingfisher herself there was little sign of any thaw in her manner. She seemed to feel the ceaseless necessity to make it clear that her own connection with Kingfisher was due solely to the lamentable demise of Tyler’s, a calamity she appeared to think Alison had helped to precipitate by her departure.
Alison smiled now with determined friendliness at Hazel standing back against the wall. ‘Good morning, Hazel,’ she said resolutely. ‘Is Miss Padmore busy just now?’
Hazel gave her an unsmiling look. ‘Not that I’m aware of, Mrs Rolt.’ She went off down the stairs. Alison stood for a moment looking after her. Hazel was supposed to divide her time equally between both partners but already she had unmistakably attached herself to Miss Padmore. Alison had more or less given up summoning her, preferring to see at the other side of her desk the cheerful face of a willing – if less competent – junior.
She shook her head, dismissing the subject, and rapped smartly on the door of her senior partner’s office.
Judith Padmore was running a pencil down a column of figures when Alison came in. She held up a hand for silence till she had set down the total, then she sat back in her chair and gazed at Alison. She was an efficient-looking woman dressed with provincial smartness in a neat tailored suit. Her hair was trimly set, carefully tinted to mask the grey.
‘We must try to do something about accommodation for Hazel,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s really not very sensible for her to go on living at the back of beyond.’
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_3acac9e7-0881-541b-9afe-03c3743a63e6)
THE BARBOURNE branch of CeeJay Plant Hire Limited was situated on a sprawling industrial estate a short distance outside the town. It occupied a large stone building with a vast yard crammed with dumpers, diggers, excavators, handling, shifting and loading equipment of every description.
In his airy office on the first floor Andrew Rolt sat at his desk, explaining the more intricate details of a contract proposal to Paul Hulme, who was standing at his side, looking down at the papers spread out before them.
‘Yes, I think I’ve got that,’ Hulme said deferentially. I’d have got it a lot quicker if Rolt had been able to keep his mind on what he was telling me, he thought. ‘There is just one other point I’m not clear about.’ He picked up one of the sheets, ran a finger down it.
‘Leave it,’ Rolt said abruptly. He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘You’ve got the gist of the thing. I’ll fill in the gaps another time. You can put all this away now, you can get on with that other stuff for the time being.’ He jerked his head at a wire basket full of documents.
Hulme began to gather up the papers from the desk. He arranged them in an orderly pile, crossed the room and put them in a drawer. He was a trimly built, neat-featured young man with an air of control and calculation. He was being trained as a hire contract negotiator and at the same time carried out a number of duties as a general assistant to Rolt.
Hulme picked up the wire basket. In the doorway he paused and looked back at Rolt. ‘Is there anything I can get you? Coffee? Or tea?’ No doubt about it, Rolt’s manner was preoccupied, even faintly distressed.
‘What’s that?’ Rolt turned his head. ‘Oh, no thanks, nothing.’ He strove to keep sharpness from his tone. ‘No need to hurry too much over that stuff, take your time.’ The lad had a tendency to wet-nurse him; there were times when he didn’t find it amusing.
He looked down at his desk, at a sheaf of letters that must be answered. He gave a long sigh. ‘Send Miss Webb in, will you?’ he said to Hulme. The chore wouldn’t grow any more attractive for being postponed. And he would be away pretty well all the afternoon at Kain Engineering.
Mandy Webb was in the outer office. She looked up as Rolt’s door opened, picked up her notebook and came over at once on Hulme’s nod. He didn’t stand back for her in the doorway but remained half blocking the entrance so that she had to squeeze past. They exchanged a long, intimate, unsmiling look.
Mandy took her seat a little to one side of Rolt’s desk. He shuffled the letters together, selected one at random, ran his eye over it and began to dictate. A quarter of the way through the batch, his vagrant attention suddenly abandoned the mail completely. Mandy was sitting with her legs crossed, her notebook resting on her right knee; her head was still bent, her pencil still poised. He saw her all at once not as Miss Webb, short and none too pretty, the junior secretary who had been with CeeJay a matter of weeks, but simply as a female.
He stared at her without subterfuge. What would it be like to start all over again with someone entirely new, to put the past behind him for ever? For a moment the idea seemed exhilarating as if by some magic he might find youth and innocence again along with courage. But the moment passed. I couldn’t do it, he thought, clenching his fist over the scatter of letters. It would need the kind of confidence and self-esteem he had never greatly possessed even when he’d started out on life. His grip on the remnants of these essential qualities was now so insecure that he dared not risk putting it to any more exacting test than those inescapably facing him.
And the effort it would take to find the right woman, the expenditure of time, of energy. And no guarantee of any more lasting success even if he succeeded in finding and winning this mythical being.
Mandy raised her head at the lengthening silence. Her eyes, bold, confident, young, met his. He picked up the next letter and resumed dictation.
Ten minutes later he finished the pile. He sat back in his chair and watched with relief as the door closed behind her. He had barely time to draw a sweet breath of solitude when there was a brief knock and the under-manager, Arthur Ford, entered almost at the same instant.
‘Come in,’ Rolt said loudly when Ford was already inside the room. Ford looked surprised for a moment and then smiled as if humouring an invalid.
‘Beryl’s been on to me again to ask you over one evening,’ he said. ‘My life won’t be worth living if I’ve got to tell her I can’t persuade you.’ Beneath the cheerful surface words others less cheerful rose unspoken into the air … All alone in that great empty house, can’t be good for you …
Rolt closed his eyes for a second. Impossible to choke the fellow off, pushy and intrusive as he was, when all he was doing was trying to display goodwill.
‘Nothing in the least formal,’ Ford said. ‘Just a few drinks, a bite to eat. And a hand of cards.’
Heaven preserve me from such ghastly jollity, Rolt said in his head, unable to voice a refusal until Ford committed the cardinal error of mentioning a specific date.
Ford instantly obliged by committing the error. ‘What about tomorrow?’ he suggested.
At once Rolt said in a friendly tone, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t manage tomorrow. I’ve already got something fixed. But it’s very kind of Beryl to think of me.’ Dreadful woman, he thought, that appalling mixture of ignorance, prejudice, gentility and ruthlessness.
Ford began to marshal his guns. ‘Friday then?’ he said amiably.
Rolt shook his head with an air of regret. ‘I’m afraid I’m busy on Friday evening as well.’
Ford let off another salvo. ‘How about Saturday?’
Rolt pretended to give the notion some thought. ‘Mm,’ he said on a deceptively affirmative note that caused Ford’s eyes to glisten in momentary satisfaction. ‘Saturday ought to be – oh no, stupid of me, I’ve just remembered, Saturday’s no good either.’
A steely determination came into Ford’s expression. ‘Yes, I know how it is,’ he said as if abandoning the struggle. Then he fired his big guns. ‘Name your own day, that’ll be best. I know Beryl will be delighted to fit in with whatever’s convenient to you.’
There’s no help for it, Rolt said to himself with resigned amusement, all at once relaxed now that there was no way of winning. ‘Wednesday,’ he said magnanimously. ‘The day after tomorrow. How would that suit you?’
‘Wednesday would be fine.’ Ford couldn’t resist a smile of victory.
‘But tell Beryl not to go to any trouble,’ Rolt said without hope.
‘I’ll tell her.’ Ford spread his hands. ‘But it won’t be any use. You know what women are.’
Rolt looked at him suddenly like a man taking part in an entirely different conversation. ‘Oh yes,’ he said in a voice from that other dialogue, ‘I know what women are.’
A quarter to one. In the records office on the ground floor at CeeJay, Arthur Ford looked at his watch. He ought to be thinking of clearing up, popping up to the first floor to collect Robin, get off home in time for lunch. His son – in fact Robin was his only child – had left the local grammar school a year ago. He was doing three-month training stints in various departments at CeeJay, was considered a bright lad, possible executive material.
Ford glanced out of the window and saw Celia Brettell’s silver-grey car pulling up on the forecourt. She stepped out on to the concrete. She wasn’t carrying a briefcase, only a handbag, so this wasn’t going to be a business visit but one of her personal swoops to take Andrew Rolt off to lunch.
Ford watched her approach the side entrance. Good-looking in her hard-edged way, considerably more hard-edged now than when she’d first walked into CeeJay on the look-out for good secondhand plant, ten or twelve years ago. Chestnut-brown hair, grey eyes, smooth pale skin; well groomed, carefully presented. But the whole package lacking any suggestion of mystery or romance. She had done everything she could possibly do with her appearance but there was nothing she could do about her aura, which radiated an unmistakable air of natural dominance, strong purpose, shrewdness and a highly practical approach to life and very probably also to love.
Ford neither liked nor disliked her. She was one small factor in his career situation and so he was obliged to take a certain amount of notice of her. But he couldn’t help admiring her. She was successful in a pretty tough area of commercial life; she had the essential bulldog quality.
He had known her since the first time she’d walked up the steps of CeeJay, well before the day Alison Lloyd had set foot in the place as a junior secretary. Alison had married her boss in the classic tradition – and they’d all been so sure once upon a time that he’d marry Celia. When the marriage broke up after only a couple of years it wasn’t very long before Celia’s business visits – which had continued as usual – began to coincide once more with the approach of Andrew’s lunch hour.
It occurred to Ford suddenly and with total certainty that Celia was at long last going to succeed in marrying Rolt. He stepped back from the window and went out through the door of the records office, arriving in the lobby in time to present a casual appearance of having just come down the side staircase as Celia Brettell entered the building.
‘Oh – hello there!’ he said with a friendly smile. ‘Haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you for a week or two.’
Oh yes, Celia said to herself, and precisely what is old Creepy Crawly up to this time? Aloud she said, ‘That last lot of trenchers hadn’t been properly maintained. You’ll have to keep a sharper eye on the lads.’
His smile grew if anything a trifle more friendly. ‘I’ll certainly take note of it,’ he said affably.
‘Is Andrew about?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes. He’s in his office. Oh, by the way,’ he added, ‘I’ve just remembered, he’s looking in on us on Wednesday evening. On Beryl and myself, that is. I don’t know if you’d care to join us. You’d be very welcome.’ He knew that would get her; she simply wouldn’t be able to say no to a chance of spending a few hours in Rolt’s company, however diluted. ‘Nothing very fancy, you understand, just a pleasant homely evening.’
Whatever it’ll be, it won’t be that, Celia thought grimly. However had Andrew allowed himself to accept such a frightful invitation? ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, burnishing her expression into a smile. ‘I’d love to come.’ With so many lies thickening the air she couldn’t resist throwing in another. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet your wife.’
‘Something else I’ve remembered,’ Ford said with a knowing air. ‘What’s this gossip I hear about a merger between Sugdens and Murdoch Factors?’ Sugdens was the comparatively small but highly efficient firm for which Celia worked; Murdoch Factors was much larger, with a wider range of interests. If there was anything in the whisper – and it had reached Ford’s permanently-cocked ears only recently and as the merest breath of rumour – then it seemed to him a good deal more likely that the deal would be a take-over rather than a merger.
Celia’s smile vanished. ‘That!’ she said brusquely. ‘I don’t know who started that particular hare but there’s nothing in it. I can assure you of that.’
‘It sounded a bit of a wild tale to me,’ Ford said lightly. Maybe you don’t want to know about it, he said to himself, could be you’d lose your job, whether it’s a merger or a take-over. Could be also, he added in his mind with a sudden sense of illumination, that it’s the reason why you’re closing in on Rolt. Time was going inexorably by, she wasn’t getting any younger. And of course she’d always been irremediably stuck on Rolt.
‘Kindly contradict the rumour if you should hear it again,’ Celia said with force. She walked away towards the stairs, she went rapidly up. He stood looking after her with amused approval. That one never knows when she’s beaten, he thought – and so of course she never will be beaten.
What was I about to do when I looked out of the window and saw Celia Brettell? he asked himself a moment later, staring up at the ceiling. Oh yes, he answered himself almost at once, I was going to collect Robin. He was just about to go upstairs when he heard a light patter of footsteps along the first-floor corridor and Mandy Webb came into view. He raised a hand, called out to her.
‘Miss Webb – you might trot along and winkle Robin out for me. Tell him to get a move on or we’ll be late for lunch.’ He turned away without waiting for any acknowledgement on Mandy’s part, and went off to get his coat.
It wouldn’t do Mr Ford any harm to polish up his manners, Mandy said resentfully to herself as she went reluctantly off to carry out his command.
She found Robin standing by the window in an empty office. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand, he was gazing down at the car park. He was a slimly built lad of medium height; he had short brown hair with all suggestion of curl sternly suppressed.
‘Your dad wants you,’ Mandy said without preamble. He turned and gave her a blank look. His face was long and pale, he had large grey-blue eyes.
She felt a sudden impatient touch of sympathy for him, imagining what it must be like to be blessed with a dad like his. ‘Lunchtime,’ she said in a more kindly fashion. ‘Your dad’s all set and raring to go. You’d better get off downstairs.’
Robin made a small jerky movement of his head. ‘Oh yes, thank you, I’ll go right away. Very kind of you to come and tell me.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said automatically. She paused on the threshold and looked back at him. She and Tessa might ask him along to one of their parties some time. He looked as if he could do with a bit of livening up. But she said nothing about it yet. She’d have to mention it to Tessa first.
It occurred to her as she went along the corridor to the cloakroom that it might also do her a bit of good with Mr Ford if she did a kindness to his one and only chick; it might sweeten old Ford’s disposition towards her, make him speak up for her perhaps in due course when promotions were being handed out. She bit her lip, considering the notion. Mm, bit of a long shot, but possibly worth a try.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_852e1421-8c23-5b6e-b97f-3a47d0ba1b18)
AN UNEXPECTED interview with a new client meant that it was one o’clock when Alison finally managed to get off to lunch. She was very hungry, she’d had nothing for breakfast but a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. She’d treat herself to a really good lunch, take her time over it. She might try that place by the old market, it prided itself on its grills.
She paused on her way out and put her head round the door of Hazel Ratcliff’s overheated little sanctum. Hazel scarcely ever went out for lunch; she brought a vast number of sandwiches and great slabs of cake from home.
‘I may be a little late back,’ Alison said. ‘I haven’t got an appointment till a quarter to three but you might take any messages that come for me.’
‘Yes, of course, Mrs Rolt,’ Hazel said without more than a brief upward glance. She had munched her way through the greater part of her lunch and was now engaged in crocheting a small square of tangerine-coloured wool. A little pile of completed squares in a variety of bright shades lay on a piece of white tissue paper well out of range of stray crumbs.
‘What lovely colours!’ Alison said. ‘Are you making something for the Fair?’ A Combined Charities Autumn Fair was being held in a few weeks’ time with the object of raising funds which would be distributed at Christmas among various worthy causes. Alison could hardly fail to be aware of the project, for which Hazel worked assiduously; several other members of the Kingfisher staff were either busy making an assortment of saleable objects or had promised to act as stallholders and general assistants on the day.
Alison had so far done nothing to help. She intended to call in at the Fair and patronize a few stalls; she felt that was all anyone had a right to expect of her. Now it occurred to her that an offer of help might be politic.
‘I’m making cushions,’ Hazel said in a slightly mollified tone. She reached into a zip-topped bag on the floor beside her. ‘This is one I’ve just finished.’ She held out a cushion about twelve inches square with a brilliant design of motifs in different colours arranged in a pattern of concentric oblongs.
‘That’s beautiful,’ Alison said without exaggeration. ‘Did you design it yourself?’
Hazel shook her head. ‘No, it’s one of my mother’s designs. She was very good at needlework.’ She was silent for a moment, then she spoke in a bracing tone. ‘We’re using three of her crochet designs, they’re all based on the same idea as this. Oblongs, squares and circles. And two gros point designs. Jacobean.’
‘I’d like to see one of those,’ Alison said. ‘I’ve always been fond of gros point work.’
‘I haven’t got one here to show you.’ Hazel pondered for a moment. ‘I wonder if Mr Yoxall has.’
‘Mr Yoxall?’ Alison said in surprise.
‘Yes.’ Hazel sounded mildly irritated. ‘He’s very good at gros point. A lot of men do embroidery.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘He’s making some cushions for the Fair. And he’s doing a lot to help generally.’ She fixed on Alison an eye full of accusation. ‘Everyone’s doing what they can.’
‘Yes,’ Alison said. ‘Actually I’d like to do something to help, if it’s not too late to offer. I find I’ve a little more free time just at present.’
‘Oh well,’ Hazel said, a fraction more warmly, ‘that’s good news. As a matter of fact we’re in a bit of a jam, the woman who was going to run the objets d’art stall has had to go up north to look after her grandchildren. Her daughter’s gone into hospital and it looks as if she’s going to be there for some time. Do you think you could take on the stall? I know nothing about art, but you ought to be good at it. You have the right artistic background.’ A reference to the fact that Alison’s father – a well-known figure in this part of the county in his day – had been a painter, creating precise, delicate landscapes in water colours.
‘Yes, I’m sure I could manage it,’ Alison said. Impossible now to refuse without plunging Hazel back into hostility. She became aware of the time. ‘I must go or I won’t get anything to eat.’
‘That’s settled then,’ Hazel said firmly. ‘To be absolutely in order of course we should have to get the agreement of the committee.’ A lively note entered her voice. ‘If you’re free this evening why not come along to the committee meeting? You’ll need to be given all the details about the stall. The meeting’s at half past seven.’
‘Yes, I can manage that,’ Alison said. ‘Where do the meetings take place?’ She knew the Fair was to be held in a church hall close to where she lived; she saw the gaily-painted posters twice a day when she passed the building.
‘The members take it in turns to hold the meetings in their own houses. This week it’s the chairman’s house. Or I should say the chairwoman.’
‘And who is the chairwoman?’ Alison asked.
‘Mrs Ford. Beryl Ford.’ Oh Lord, Alison thought, I don’t want to get mixed up with the Fords. She’d known Arthur Ford when she worked at CeeJay and during the two years her marriage had lasted; she had never greatly cared for him. ‘I imagine you know where Mrs Ford lives,’ Hazel added.
‘Yes, I believe so,’ Alison said casually. She had set foot in the house once or twice as a young junior at Ceejay.
There was really nothing she could do to wriggle out of it now. ‘Very well,’ she said briskly. ‘Mrs Ford’s house. Half past seven. I’ll be there.’
Beryl Ford was in the kitchen dishing up lunch when her husband and son reached home.
‘Chicken,’ Arthur Ford said as soon as the front door swung open at his key. He gave a second sniff. ‘And apple pie.’ Other men might go home on Mondays to an uninspiring lunch knocked up from yesterday’s remains – or not even be allowed home at all but provided with a packet of sandwiches or a nod towards the works canteen – but not Arthur Ford. Oh dear no. Beryl Ford knew better than to try that one on. Or at least she knew better now after twenty years of marriage. Some things she could get away with, some areas where she could wear the trousers, but as far as grub was concerned she knew from early and deeply-etched experience precisely where the limits of tolerance lay.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Robin said. He followed his father into the over-furnished dining room. Beryl came bustling in from the kitchen, carrying a tray. Her face was flushed, her brilliantly blonde hair was starting to slip from its moorings.
‘Here you are at last then,’ she said sharply. ‘Sit down.’ She began to slap food on to plates.
‘I don’t want very much,’ Robin said mildly. His mother dug the spoon into the casserole, didn’t bother to comment, piled up his plate and handed it to him. ‘Eat that,’ she commanded. ‘Put some flesh on your bones.’ He took the plate without protest and began to eat.
‘You were ten minutes late coming in today,’ Beryl said to her husband in a challenging tone. He made no reply but concentrated on the food. ‘Don’t be late again this evening,’ she said on a higher note. ‘I’ve got a committee meeting here tonight. The Charities Fair. I can’t be kept hanging about in the kitchen,’ Neither Arthur nor Robin gave any sign that they had heard what she said. She lobbed out her own helping and plonked her thin frame down on her chair. ‘I hope we find someone to take over the art stall,’ she said a moment later in a somewhat less querulous tone. ‘I keep asking around but I can’t come up with anyone suitable.’
Arthur finished chewing a succulent morsel of chicken. He speared another on his fork. ‘I hope you haven’t got any committee meetings on Wednesday evening,’ he said in a calm, pleasant voice. ‘If you have you’d better cancel them.’
Beryl raised her head abruptly like a gun dog that had got wind of game. ‘What’s so special about Wednesday?’ she asked, giving him a penetrating glance.
‘Rolt’s coming to supper,’ Arthur said in a throwaway manner. Beryl flashed him an incredulous, delighted look. ‘And Madame Celia is coming with him,’ Arthur said, still deadpan.
Beryl flung down her fork. ‘Never!’ she cried. ‘Not Celia Brettell! I just don’t believe it!’
‘Believe it or believe it not,’ Arthur said with tranquil majesty, ‘on Wednesday evening the pair of them will set foot in this house.’ He gave a massive nod. ‘For supper and cards.’ He fixed Robin with a patriarchal look. ‘You’ll be here, naturally.’
‘I was going to play squash at the youth club,’ Robin said without any note in his voice other than that of flat statement.
Arthur inclined his head briefly in regret for the necessity to cancel the squash game. ‘You’ll be here,’ he said amiably. No need to argue or raise his voice, always a trifle surprised when he heard of other men having pitched battles with their offspring.
‘I suppose I’ll have to lay on a banquet for his lordship,’ Beryl said, divided between pleasure at the thought of being licensed to splash out freely and irritation at the notion that all her efforts were going to be directed towards providing lavish hospitality for Andrew Rolt – who had as good as done Arthur out of the area manager’s job at CeeJay – and that stuck-up creature Celia Brettell, with her flash car and mighty high opinion of herself. She began to consider the meal in detail. Steak? Sirloin? Chicken? Or a turkey – ‘what about a turkey?’
‘Claret,’ Arthur said on a musing note. ‘Or a really good hock?’ Must remember to get a dryish sherry for Rolt. He held out his plate. ‘I’ll have a bit more of that chicken’ he said graciously. He felt a sudden keen increase in his appetite.
‘I’d like some more coffee, if we’ve time,’ Celia Brettell said. The cheese had been rather salty.
‘Yes, that’s all right.’ Andrew signalled the waiter. Another ten minutes or so before he need take the road for his interview.
‘Would you plan to move from Barbourne?’ Celia asked. He appreciated the way she didn’t add ‘if you get the job’, seeming to accept without question that he would be successful.
He raised his shoulders. ‘I couldn’t say at this stage. I’d have to see how it worked out.’ Kain Engineering was only twenty miles away, just over the border of the next county. Near enough to let him keep his present house if he wished, but far enough removed both in actual distance and psychologically – by virtue of that county border – to provide a liberating sense of making a completely fresh start, if he did decide to move.
He steered the conversation back to impersonal topics; he had grown skilled at this in the years he had known Celia. Not that he had any particular desire to choke off her questions about this new job; it was simply that he wanted to forget the whole thing until he found himself walking in through the wide swing doors at Kain. He had been pleased when she had turned up and suggested lunch; he hadn’t in the least been looking forward to a jittery meal on his own.
His nerves were agreeably steady, he noted with satisfaction as he paid the bill and saw Celia to her car. The pleasant, calm feeling lasted throughout the drive. The traffic was a good deal lighter than he had expected and he realized as he approached the main gates that he was faced with a nasty stretch of time that he hadn’t bargained for.
He didn’t turn in through the gates but drove a little further on to a lay-by. The feeling of serenity had drained away. He leaned back against the upholstery, closed his eyes and tried to relax. At once a host of disturbing thoughts besieged his brain. He did his best to obliterate them, but it was useless. After a couple of minutes he opened his eyes and sat up. He stepped out of the car and looked round.
A hundred yards away on the left he could see the painted sign of a pub. He bit his lip, staring at the sign. He had managed to keep off drink at lunch, he certainly wasn’t going to have any now; it would be kissing goodbye to any chance of the job. He turned his head. A short distance off, on the right, stood a phone kiosk. At once his spirits lightened.
I’ll ring Alison, he thought with relief, I’ll tell her where I am and what I’m doing, she’s bound to be interested, after all it concerns her very closely. He dug in his pocket for the coins, crossed the road and went rapidly towards the kiosk.
Alison had only a few minutes to spare before her next appointment when the phone rang on her desk. Her smooth professional manner underwent an alteration as soon as she recognized Andrew’s voice. Surprise, followed instantly by wariness, entered her tone.
‘What prompts this call?’ she asked across his opening civilities. ‘I’m very busy just now.’
He gave a nervous laugh. ‘I have an interview at three o’clock.’ He sketched in brief details. ‘I thought you might care to wish me luck.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said crisply. ‘If this job is what you want, then I certainly hope you get it.’
‘I’m speaking from a box outside the Works.’ He was desperate now to keep her on the other end of the line. ‘It’s a pleasant situation. Open country not far away. You’d like it.’
‘Oh yes?’ she said, now only half listening. With her free hand she drew towards her a file of papers. She opened it and began to scan the pages.
‘And it’s not much more than twenty miles from Barbourne.’ His tone grew warmer. ‘It wouldn’t necessarily mean moving house.’ She said nothing, he abandoned caution. ‘It could be exactly as you pleased. We could move or not, just as you chose.’
As she turned a page his words suddenly got through to her. She withdrew her fingers abruptly from the file.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply. ‘What has your moving to do with me?’
He was at once invaded by panic that she might force him out into the open, might make him spell out his wish to mend the marriage, the terms he had in mind. And if she then rejected those proposals, leaving him to get through the next few minutes as best he could, he would face the interview in the total certainty of failure.
He gave another laugh. ‘I seem to have caught you at an inconvenient moment. I’m sorry, I’ll ring off.’ He put down the receiver without giving her time to reply. He let out a long trembling breath, stood for a few seconds with his eyes closed, steadying himself, wiping the conversation from his mind, summoning up what remained to him of poise and assurance.
When the phone clicked and buzzed in Alison’s ear she raised her shoulders, pulled a face of momentary irritation and then dropped the instrument back on to its hook.
She glanced at her watch. She was on the verge of dismissing Andrew from her mind when some of the implications of his call began to filter into the forefront of her brain. He seemed very anxious to get this new job; he talked as if it meant quite a bit more money. It would suit him very well if she were to return to him. And he was prepared to go to some lengths to entice her back.
‘Mm,’ she said aloud. She tapped her fingers on the desk. When she married Andrew he had seemed to her to represent security. She thought him well-off, successful, destined before long to become even more successful. She had overvalued his ability – and undervalued her own. But her ideas had altered. She’d learned a thing or two since she’d left him.
In the corridor outside she heard footsteps. Her client, no doubt. All thought of Andrew’s call vanished from her mind.
So far the interview was going well. The four men facing Andrew across the table were sitting upright, still wearing expressions of concentrated interest. He felt alert and stimulated. He knew he had done himself justice up to this point but he daren’t relax yet. The tricky bit was still to come, might raise its head at any moment.
‘And your family,’ the Chairman said genially, glancing down at the application form. ‘I see that you’re married. No children.’ He looked up. ‘I take it your wife is in full agreement with your application. I’m sure I needn’t tell you how important that is.’ He smiled. ‘We like the wives to come willingly.’
Andrew gave an answering smile, indicating with a nod his general agreement with the Chairman’s remarks.
‘She hasn’t a career of her own, or anything of that sort?’ the Chairman said. ‘Nothing to prevent her playing her full part here as your wife?’
Andrew hesitated, moved his head fractionally sideways, stared at the surface of the table.
‘She has a job,’ he said. ‘But it’s scarcely a career. I don’t think it’s all that important to her. I’m sure she’d be prepared to give it up if I was appointed.’
The Chairman gave him a long considering look. ‘We like to meet the wife,’ he said pleasantly, ‘before we reach any firm decision.’ He spread his hands. ‘I take it your wife would be able to come along very soon?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Good. Then perhaps we could fix a time now?’
Andrew shifted in his chair. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ he said with a half-smiling, deprecating air. ‘It would have to be fitted in with her job commitments. I’d have to speak to her first.’
‘We’ve another couple of candidates to see,’ the Chairman said. ‘You can use the phone here.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the outer office. ‘Speak to your wife about it, arrange a day to suit her. Then we can have another word with you, settle it all before you go.’
Andrew said nothing, his face expressed no more than a general wish to be co-operative. ‘We want to finalize this appointment as soon as possible,’ the Chairman said. ‘We’d like to eliminate unnecessary delays.’ There was another slight pause.
‘Actually,’ Andrew said on a high, light note, ‘my wife and I—’ To his horror he found he couldn’t complete the sentence, his mind was a total blank.
‘Yes?’ the Chairman said. ‘Some difficulty there?’
Andrew’s mind cleared. He nodded in relief. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘We’re living apart. Just temporarily, of course.’
There was a slight stir round the table. ‘I would prefer to speak to her in person,’ Andrew said. ‘It would be far better than the phone. I could call to see her this evening.’
‘How long have you lived apart?’ The Chairman’s tone was polite and neutral, like a doctor enquiring about symptoms.
‘Two and a half years.’
‘A longish time,’ the Chairman said. Long enough to get a divorce, his manner suggested. Or to patch things up if they were ever going to be patched up.
Andrew glanced round the table, knowing even before he did so that it was no good, they’d written him off. Men of decision were what they liked, men of regular life. His glance demolished the last vestige of hope. They were all sitting back in their chairs, relaxed, switched off, no longer bothering even to look at him, simply waiting till the next man took his place.
‘Right then,’ the Chairman said suddenly. He looked across at Andrew, gave him a brief impersonal smile. ‘You’ll be hearing from us within the next day or two.’ No longer any mention of urgent phone calls to Mrs Rolt from the next room. ‘Thank you for coming along.’
That is it, Andrew said to himself with fierce emphasis as he came out into the car park. Finally and irreversibly it. I have finished with Alison. My mind is irrevocably made up. I will not try to hang on to her a moment longer. I’ll get a divorce and marry Celia. She’d back me up in any job, any activity. She’d resign from Sugdens if he asked her to, she’d devote herself with pleasure to being his full-time wife.
He got into his car and eased it out towards the gates. He tried to conjure up a joyful vision of domestic warmth and intimacy such as he had never experienced even in his childhood. He did his best to whip up a feeling of ardour as he contemplated the idea of Celia waiting to greet him at the end of a busy day. She’s had plenty of experience of the hard world of business, he told himself, she’d understand the pressures.
But the prospect remained obstinately bleak, vaguely depressing. It seemed to him that marriage to Celia would signal the end of his youth, would rush him headlong into middle age.
He drove slowly up the road, past the pub, now locked and shuttered. It would be hours yet before they opened again. And he wanted a drink very much indeed. No reason now to resist the idea. And he did after all have something to celebrate – his very decisively settled future.
He would drive on into the town, find an off-licence, have his own little private party in some secluded spot.
On the edge of the town he came to a vast supermarket with a sign that mentioned among the varied delights within a section devoted to wines and spirits. He parked the car and went inside. He bought a nice little selection of conveniently-sized bottles. On his way out again he paused and looked round the long aisles, at the female assistants, the young housewives, the adolescent girls, trying to visualize himself striking up an acquaintance with such fashionably dressed and coiffured creatures, progressing through the ritual stages of intimacy to marriage and children.
It would take months, years possibly. And he didn’t have the time to wait. It would take persistence and effort, charm and gaiety, energy and ardour.
And I don’t have a single damned ounce to spare of any of those highly desirable qualities, he told himself, almost with exuberance, clutching to his chest the bottles in their discreet paper sack.
It’s definitely going to have to be Celia, he told himself yet again as he crossed the car park. The idea seemed more tolerable now. He drove back towards the open country, found a pleasant spot in a lane beneath overhanging trees and opened the first of his bottles. After ten minutes the idea of marrying Celia appeared a good deal more tolerable, after twenty he became greatly pleased with it.
The whole thing would be settled by the time he was summoned to his next interview. He saw himself facing another quartet of shrewd-eyed men. He would be alert and confident. ‘My wife and I reached a civilized agreement’, he was saying in that pleasing vision. ‘A divorce by consent. No recriminations, by far the best way. It’s going through any day now. I shall be marrying again very soon, a sensible, competent woman—’
He frowned, took another swig at his bottle and rephrased that. ‘A most charming woman, highly suitable in every way. And a successful businesswoman into the bargain. A great asset. Yes, certainly she would come along to be introduced.’ She most certainly would, he thought, she’d leap at the chance. ‘And she’d resign her post at Sugdens, no question about that.’ No question at all, he echoed, she’d be penning her resignation before he got the marriage proposal out of his mouth.
The bottle was now empty. I’ll phone Alison before I start on another, he thought. I’ll tell her what I’ve decided. He would go along to see his solicitor in the morning of course – and he’d get round to mentioning the whole thing to Celia at some time or other, no immediate rush about that – but just at this moment he felt a strong impulse to say it all to Alison. Burn his boats, get it over and done with. As he set the car in motion and drove along looking for a phone kiosk he felt light-headed, almost happy.
Alison was drinking a cup of tea when he rang. She had managed to snatch a few minutes’ peace, was sitting at her desk cradling the cup in her hands.
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Andrew said in a quick voice, high and accusatory. ‘I want a divorce. On the two-year-by-agreement principle. I take it you’ve no objection. I expect you’re bloody pleased.’
He’d been drinking, Alison noted. ‘How did the interview go?’ she asked. ‘Am I to congratulate you?’
‘No bloody good,’ he said. ‘It was the marriage set-up that did for me. They didn’t like it, they didn’t like it one little bit. They like things to be one way or the other. And come to that,’ he added almost in a shout, ‘so do I. I’ve had enough of this neither-fish-nor-flesh nonsense. They wanted me to produce a wife, a one hundred per cent wife, dinner parties, functions, business trips, the lot.’
He’d want a pretty quick divorce, she thought. Tie the whole thing up at the solicitors’ right away, file the petition pronto, not much delay in that sort of case these days. He’d want to be able to marry Celia with the speed of light, produce her like a rabbit from a hat the next time he was asked.
‘I’m sorry about the job,’ she said.
‘Ah well.’ His tone was faintly mollified. ‘Better luck next time. I’ll get along to my solicitor tomorrow morning, get him cracking with the divorce. No point in hanging about.’
‘Divorce,’ she echoed on a reflective note. ‘I’m not so sure I really want one.’
He was brought up short, she heard him gasp.
‘You mean – you’re considering – you mean – you might come back to me?’ By God, he wished she’d told him that when he’d phoned her earlier. He felt a wild leap of his heart, he could have sung out with joy. What did the lousy interview matter now? Plenty of better jobs. He grinned at his image in the little mirror on the kiosk wall.
‘We’ll meet,’ he said with persuasive force. ‘We’ll talk things over. Get it all settled. I’ll come over to Fairview this evening.’
‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ Alison said. ‘I’m not committing myself to anything at this stage. You must understand that.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘Of course I understand. Very natural.’ She couldn’t be expected to climb down from her high horse all in an instant, she’d have her pride to consider.
‘All I’m saying just now,’ she added, ‘is that I’m not sure I want a divorce. I’d need to think about it very carefully.’
‘We could make a fresh start,’ he said with joyful energy. ‘There are great jobs going, terrific salaries. I could tackle anything if you came back. I’d give you anything you want.’ Maybe he hadn’t been the most generous husband in the world but he’d learned his lesson, he’d shower her with luxuries. ‘We must meet,’ he said again. ‘I can tell you anything you want to know, listen to anything you’ve got to say.’
‘Not just yet,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t be rushed. Be fair, you have rather sprung this on me.’ Marriage hadn’t taken long to turn him from a moderately open-handed lover into a tight-fisted husband – probably, she judged now, his natural attitude. The idea of reunion seemed likely to release his purse strings once more.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Of course you must take what time you need.’
She glanced at her watch. ‘I must ring off. I have an appointment.’
‘Oh – yes – certainly,’ he said at once. He felt great, marvellous, as he put down the receiver. He left the kiosk, went back to the car, shoved the bottles aside in a rush of disgust. He didn’t need any booze now, he was on top of the world, reborn.
He set the car in motion, headed towards home. His brain was full of plans, moves, applications, interviews, in a fierce resurgence of hope.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_1f429954-91d5-509d-834a-a71ec82be7a1)
SHORTLY AFTER half past five Alison put on her coat. The sky had grown leaden, it promised to be a chilly evening. As she opened her office door she saw Hazel Ratcliff going briskly by with a handful of papers. Hazel paused and gave her a sharp look.
‘You won’t forget about the meeting, Mrs Rolt?’
‘Of course not,’ Alison said. ‘Half past seven, I’ll be there.’
Hazel’s features relaxed slightly. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain,’ she said in a more affable tone. ‘But it seems as if it’s going to.’
‘You’ll have your work cut out to get home and back again for half past seven,’ Alison said.
‘I shan’t even try,’ Hazel said with energy. ‘It would be impossible with the buses as they are now.’ She jerked her head in the direction of her own room. ‘I’ve brought extra sandwiches. I’ll stay on here and catch up with a bit of work till it’s time for the meeting.’
I do believe I detected a faint increase in warmth in her manner, Alison thought with satisfaction as she went off down the stairs. She paused for a moment. Perhaps she ought to ask Hazel to join her for a meal, it might be a good move.
But she wasn’t going to eat at home herself. There was hardly any food in the flat and she didn’t in the least feel like battling round the streets in a last-minute effort to shop. She was going to call in at the Mayflower café for a snack and a chance to sit back and draw her breath before the rigours of the evening.
No, she would eat alone. She set off again down the stairs. It really would be altogether too much to ask that she should take Hazel along to the Mayflower and sit opposite her while she chomped her way through a mountain of baked beans.
Large drops of rain were starting to fall as Colin Viner pushed his way out of the supermarket. Still undecided how to deal with the flatness of the evening opening out before him, he took a firmer grip of his shopping bag and began to mooch along the pavement.
A flurry of rain drove him into a doorway; he turned and glanced at the shop window and saw that it was in fact a café. His spirits rose fractionally. He could go inside and have a cup of tea, give himself time to consider how to kill the next few hours.
The place was almost full but there was a table for two over against the wall with one empty chair. The young woman occupying the other chair leaned forward to pick something up and Viner saw her more clearly. A good-looking girl, long dark hair gleaming under the light. She sat back in her chair again and looked idly out at the street. A slightly olive skin, large dark eyes.
He felt a stir in some quarter of his brain, a teasing half-recollection. Oddly combined with a strong flavour of distaste. He frowned. Had he seen her before? Here, in Barbourne? No, surely not, for that would mean he had come across her in the last week or two and he couldn’t have forgotten her so soon.
He pushed open the café door. Half-a-dozen people came towards him from the direction of the cash desk, anxious for buses and home. An elderly woman, hurrying a little too fast, caught the heel of her shoe against a chair leg and almost fell to the floor, saving herself at the last moment by clutching at the trim waist of a very tall upright old man in front of her.
‘God bless my soul!’ the old man said in loud clear tones, feeling himself encircled for the first time in twenty-five years in a powerful feminine embrace. Tins and packets cascaded from the woman’s holdall, rattling and bouncing between the agitated feet of customers pressing towards the exit.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ the woman said in a deeply humiliated voice. Viner bent down to pick up the groceries. A small cardboard drum had rolled under one of the tables so that he had to kneel and fish it out, murmuring apologies to the occupants of the table, who continued to consult their menus without paying the slightest attention to either himself or what they clearly considered an ill-bred little uproar.
I suppose I’d better be going, Alison thought, roused from her reverie by some minor commotion at the other side of the tearoom. She looked about, gathered up her things. Rain no longer blew against the window, the sky was beginning to clear. She wouldn’t bother taking a bus, she had time to walk.
As she came away from the cash desk she became aware of a tall young man getting up from his knees a couple of yards away, giving her a rueful grin. He was helping some old duck with her gear. He shepherded her to the door and then turned back into the café, looking over at Alison, almost as if he knew her.
She was faintly puzzled. Was he someone she ought to recognize? Some client from the agency – or from her days at Tyler’s perhaps? Then all at once she knew him. Good heavens! Colin Viner! After how many years?
She swung round to face him, laughing. ‘Colin!’ she said. ‘It is Colin Viner, isn’t it?’ It must be twelve or thirteen years since she’d last seen him. He’d been a couple of forms above her at Chaddesley Grammar School; she’d had to leave, had been transferred to the Barbourne school when her father had taken a post as art lecturer at the Barbourne College of Art. It was just herself and her father by then; her mother had died during an influenza epidemic three years before.
He was beside her now, smiling down at her, striving to recall her name. Just when he thought he’d have to confess he couldn’t remember it, his brain flung up the long-ago syllables.
‘Alison!’ he said in triumph. ‘Alison Lloyd!’ It came to him in the same moment that he hadn’t known her all that well, she was a couple of years younger than he was. And it came to him also that he hadn’t much liked her. But the reason for his dislike – that eluded him.
‘I’m not Alison Lloyd any more,’ she said. ‘I’m Alison Rolt. I got married a few years ago.’ She pulled a face. ‘Not a very good idea, it came unstuck.’
People began to push past them. ‘We’d better move,’ he said. He walked beside her to the door, came out and stood on the windy pavement.
‘What are you doing in Barbourne?’ she asked. ‘Do you live here now?’
‘I was transferred here a few weeks ago. I’m in the police. A detective sergeant, to be precise.’
She made a little grimace of affected awe. ‘Fancy!’ She scrutinized his face with a candour left over from the shared days of childhood. ‘You haven’t really changed all that much.’
‘Come and have a drink this evening,’ he suggested. Infinitely better than sitting alone in his lodgings. ‘Or dinner,’ he said. ‘We could have a good old gossip.’
She shook her head. ‘This evening’s no good. I have a committee meeting.’ She laughed. ‘It’s not really my style. I’ve been roped in to help with the Charities Fair. But I could make it another evening. Tomorrow – or Wednesday.’
‘Wednesday then,’ he said. ‘The Montrose Hotel? Seven-thirty?’
William Yoxall was the first member of the Charities Fair Committee to arrive at the Fords’ house. Robin Ford answered his ring at the door and ushered him into the dining room, where his parents were engaged in some last-minute rearrangement of the furniture.
‘It’s no good,’ Beryl Ford was saying sharply as Yoxall came in. ‘That trolley will have to go out, otherwise someone is going to have to sit on top of the sideboard.’ She gave Yoxall a distracted glance. ‘You here already? It’s not gone seven, surely?’
‘No,’ he said soothingly. ‘You’ve plenty of time. I’m on the early side.’
‘You can give me a hand with this then,’ Arthur Ford said. He jerked his head at the side table, laden now with china, cutlery, silverware. Plates of fancy biscuits, little cakes elaborately iced.
‘Certainly.’ Yoxall took one end of the table and heaved it back under Arthur’s directions into a more convenient position.
‘Always the same,’ Arthur said with philosophic joviality. ‘Beryl can never settle down to enjoy a social evening unless she’s made one hell of a domestic upset first.’
‘Another couple of chairs from the sitting room,’ Beryl said to Robin. ‘Those two straight chairs by the window.’ She darted an anxious glance into the mirror above the hearth, raised both hands and stabbed at her carefully constructed hairdo. She was wearing a tight-fitting dress of electric blue crepe festooned with pleated whorls and frills that did nothing for her bony figure.
‘That’s it then,’ Arthur said forcefully a few minutes later. ‘If you’re not satisfied now you never will be. Come on, Robin, we’ll make ourselves scarce before your mother has time to think up a fresh move.’
‘Come into the kitchen,’ Beryl said to Yoxall. ‘You can talk to me while I get on with one or two jobs. Oh – I was nearly forgetting,’ she added on a higher note. ‘You’ll never guess who Hazel Ratcliff has got to take over the Art stall.’ She flung William a look full of challenge. ‘Go on! See if you can tell me!’
‘I’ve no idea,’ William said mildly.
‘Mrs Rolt! There,’ she added as she saw his eyes blink open. ‘I knew you’d be surprised. She’s coming along this evening.’ She led the way into the kitchen. ‘We must have everything just so for her ladyship.’ She reached into a cupboard and took out a coffee percolator with important movements. ‘I’m not having her go away and say she found anything to criticize.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘I expect you think her very good-looking,’ Beryl said, almost accusatory.
‘She certainly has a striking appearance.’ His tone lacked enthusiasm. ‘I can’t say I greatly admire that type.’
‘My own opinion exactly,’ Beryl said with energy. ‘Altogether too exotic for my taste.’ She pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘Her mother was a foreigner, I understand. A Greek, I believe.’
William nodded with a reflective air. Then he looked about him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
She sent a harassed glance round the room. ‘No, not really.’ She banged things down on to a tray. ‘That wretched creature Yardley phoned again to ask if he could serve on the committee,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got a nerve! After the way I choked him off last time, I really couldn’t credit that he’d ask again. He sounded as if he’d had more than enough to drink and that was at five o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘I hope you weren’t too hard on him,’ William said. At forty-two Yoxall was too young to have served in the war, but he had some kind of notion of what things had been like for Brian Yardley.
Now turned fifty, gaunt and greying, Yardley had been a local hero in 1940 when William was a child at primary school. A Battle of Britain pilot, shot down in the final days of that epic struggle, appallingly burned, put together again afterwards over a long period punctuated with bouts of despair and bitterness, Yardley had eventually forced himself to surface once more into the life of Barbourne, take his grotesque face – that had been so pleasing to look at when he had climbed into his plane that August day – and his disfigured body about the streets and thoroughfares. A course, William had often thought, requiring very nearly as much courage as anything Yardley had done in the war.
‘I’ve no patience with him,’ Beryl said. No, you haven’t, Yoxall thought. She would never trouble to look below the surface disorder of the personality that now served Yardley in some sort of fashion as his last remaining shield against the terrors of existence; she couldn’t be bothered to show mercy to the disturbed, distressed soul underneath.
‘He’s still trading on his war service,’ she said, ‘even if he doesn’t mention it. We’re all supposed to overlook the fact that he’s half drunk half the time.’
Yardley had tried his hand at a number of jobs in the painful time of his attempts at readjustment. He had succeeded at none of them. For the last few years he had run a small antique business; he seemed to be making a living out of it. At all events he hadn’t yet gone bankrupt.
‘It wouldn’t have done any harm to let him help with the Fair,’ Yoxall said.
Beryl made a sound of distaste. ‘He simply wants to be noticed. Anything to get attention. He’s prepared to force himself on people—’ She was interrupted by a ring at the front door. ‘I’ll go and answer that.’ She glanced at Yoxall. ‘You’d better go on into the dining room.’
‘Why, Mrs Rolt!’ he heard her exclaim a few moments later in a voice like syrup dripping from the blade of a knife. ‘How very nice to see you! Do come in. I was delighted when Hazel rang to tell me …’
I’d forgotten the atmosphere of this house, Alison thought as she suffered the attentions of Mrs Ford. She remembered all at once how it had seemed to her when she was a junior at CeeJay, sent to the house with some query when Arthur Ford was absent from the office because of a passing indisposition. Cramped and crowded as if some manic interior decorator had attempted to fill every inch of space.
And covers on everything that could conceivably be covered: the telephone, radio magazines, the backs of chairs, tops of furniture, even the seat in the lavatory. And what wasn’t hidden away was caged or confined, barricaded behind the doors of built-in fitments, thrust into decorated containers and canisters, enclosed in glass, fenced in behind metal grilles.
It hadn’t changed much since she had last stepped over the threshold. New carpets, a more violent shade of paint, wallpaper of a different but equally restless pattern; the essentials remained the same.
The doorbell rang again. Cars drew up outside. Beryl’s face took on a glow of pleasurable concentration as she darted about, admitting, ushering, chattering.
‘Seven o’clock!’ she cried as the clock on the mantelshelf chimed, just when she was closing the door of the dining room behind the last arrival. ‘All ready to start on time!’
An hour and a half later when the arguing, feuding and jostling for position had reached a temporary lull, Arthur put his head round the door. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing the cogitations,’ he said jovially. He nodded greetings round the table. ‘I’m just off,’ he said to his wife. He jerked his head in the direction of the outside world. ‘I shan’t be very late.’ He smiled expansively at the circle of faces. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’ His face vanished from the aperture.
‘We might as well take a break now,’ Beryl said as the front door closed behind him. Concentration had been effectively broken, refreshments would allow the combatants to restore themselves for the second half of the fray. She sprang to her feet and went out into the passage.
‘Robin!’ She sent a piercing shout into the upper regions. ‘Come down and give me a hand! ‘
He came down almost at once, made himself useful, handed cups and plates, talked politely to the committee members.
Alison accepted a canapé from the dish he held out. She gave him an unthinking, automatic smile. A faint flush rose in his cheeks. He lingered beside her, still holding out the dish.
‘Wake up there!’ Beryl called out sharply to him a few moments later. Alison caught her eye, briefly registered the quality of its gaze – controlling, possessive, more than a little tinged with suspicion and hostility. She looked up at Robin, flashed him another smile but this time fully switched on, brilliant.
‘I’ll have another of those,’ she said. ‘They’re delicious.’ She began to chat to him with animation, asked him about his interests, if he ever went to the theatre.
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Emma Page
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 17.04.2024
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О книге: A standalone mystery from the author of the Kelsey and Lambert series.A mystery story that centres around the young and successful Alison Rolt. Complex strands of small town life unravel in the search for a murderer.