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Authors: J F Straker

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As she came out into the clearing surrounding the cottage she was again met by the full force of the rain. The once well-stocked and carefully tended garden was now a near wilderness, with the woodland undergrowth relentlessly encroaching. She hurried up the weed-encrusted path to the front door, paused in the porch to remove her hood and shake the raindrops from her mackintosh, rapped twice on the door and went in.

Claud Philipson was in the kitchen, where he spent most of his days, watching television. He gave her a nod and bade her good-morning and returned his gaze to the screen. Elizabeth knew most of his history. A retired builder and a bachelor, he suffered from a serious heart condition but had thwarted all Doctor Holden’s efforts to get him into a home. A Compton Rye woman, a Mrs Webster, came in twice weekly to do his washing and the necessary cleaning, and his niece, Kate Marston, visited him sporadically. His refusal to leave the cottage was generally ascribed to a spirit of independence, but there were those who held a different view. In his younger and more agile days he had gained the reputation of being a woman-chaser, and although now too old for chasing he still made passes at some of his female visitors, a licence that would have been denied him in a home. The passes were easily evaded and no one complained. ‘If it gives the old boy a kick, what’s wrong with a bit of slap and tickle?’ had been Ivy Bates’s cheerful comment, and Elizabeth had recently heard it rumoured that that hussy Cheryl Mason, for one, even encouraged him. He had never made a pass at Elizabeth, for which she was thankful—even though it might be seen as a slight to her femininity. She was only 39, and considered herself to be not unattractive.

She dished out the food and put the plates ready for him on the table. Usually the money was there to be collected. Today it was not, and she said briskly, ‘Don’t let it get cold, Mr Philipson, it’s not all that hot. And may I have the sixty-five pence, please?’

‘Isn’t it there?’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

He got up slowly and produced a handful of coins from a trouser pocket. Even at 78 and despite the grey pallor of his skin, he managed to exude an atmosphere of masculine virility. His hair was still plentiful, an unruly white mop crowning his craggy face; a small goatee beard gave length to his chin. He had large, powerful-looking hands, and his lean, upright body showed none of the flabbiness of age.

He counted the money onto the table. Elizabeth tended to discourage conversation on such visits, aiming to be in and out of the house as fast as decency permitted. After all, the longer she stayed with one the longer the others would have to wait for their meals and the colder their meals would be when they got them. Yet the rumour about Cheryl Mason had intrigued as well as disgusted her, and for once she was tempted to linger.

‘You weren’t looking too good when I was here last,’ she said, gathering up the coins. ‘Feeling better, are you?’

‘Better ain’t something I’m ever likely to be,’ he said, in his deep, throaty voice. ‘For me it’s all downhill.’

‘Oh, come now, Mr Philipson! You’re just being pessimistic.’ Greatly daring, she added, ‘You must get your lady friend to cheer you up.’

‘What lady friend?’ There was a challenge in his voice.

‘Well, like—’ No, she couldn’t say it. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t got a lady friend.’

‘Maybe.’ A sly grin lit his face. ‘You offering, then?’

She managed a laugh. ‘I’m sure you can’t be that hard up.’ Lacking the nerve to probe further, she put the money in her purse and picked up the food containers. ‘Well, I must be off. It’s after one o’clock and I’ve other calls to make.’

The rain was still pelting down, and she paused in the porch to adjust her hood. But as she hurried into the woods her mind was fixed on the rumour about Cheryl Mason. Just what did she and the old man get up to together?

*

Moira Bassett stared at her brother in dismay. Water dripped from his hair to run in rivulets down his cheeks. His mackintosh had darkened with the rain. His breeches were soaked, his boots and leggings caked with mud.

‘What in Heaven’s name have you been up to, Toby?’ she exclaimed. ‘You look half drowned.’

He reached for a kitchen towel to dry his hair. ‘It’s raining,’ he said.

‘I know it’s raining. But you couldn’t have got that wet just coming back from the pub.’

He ignored that. ‘Dinner ready?’ he asked.

‘Of course it’s ready. Been ready half an hour. But you’re not sitting down like that.’

‘I wasn’t aiming to.’

He removed his mackintosh and boots and went upstairs. When he returned, changed and dry, he sat down and watched her spoon stewed cod and mashed potatoes on to his plate. It was always fish on Fridays. The Bassetts had been brought up as Catholics, although Toby had long since ceased going to Mass. Normally cheerfully garrulous, he ate now in silence, the hint of a frown puckering his brow. Moira wondered what was bothering him.

‘Nothing’s bothering me,’ he said when she asked.

‘Come off it, Toby! Like I said, you didn’t get that wet just coming back from the pub. So where’ve you been, eh?’

‘I’ve been checking the traps, haven’t I?’

‘In this weather?’ Moira hated his poaching, as she hated his other illegal pursuits. But he was her brother and she loved him, and she knew she could never change him. ‘About all you’ll have caught is a cold.’

He put down his knife and fork. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, my girl,’ he said. ‘I’ve caught me the biggest rabbit you’ve ever bloody well seen.’ He shook his head. ‘Trouble is, I’m not sure I know what to do with it.’

 

Chapter Two

 

Although Westbourne House, the Compton Rye home of the Holden family, was undeniably old, it comprised such a medley of periods and styles that it was difficult to date accurately. The roof sloped and curled in all directions, the ground floor was on varying levels so that one had to watch one’s step or mind one’s head when moving from one room to another, the upper floor sloped from front to back, the floorboards creaked and groaned underfoot, doors did not fit neatly into jambs nor windows into frames. With so many outlets for heat loss the cost of running the oil central heating system was prohibitive, and the Holdens used it sparingly, relying on coal or log fires on all but the coldest days. Yet they loved the house. Situated some six hundred yards west of the village on the Compton Morris road, it had considerable charm, with a delightful garden and superb views to the south and west. During the fourteen years they had lived there they had talked repeatedly of rectifying some of the faults. But it had seemed that one undertaking would inevitably lead to another, and the probable cost of the total had shocked them into doing nothing. It would have to wait, at least until after the children had finished their education.

Frances Holden was one of the most popular women in the tight little community of the four villages. Her husband Tom, and Natalie and Victor, their two children, adored her. So did Whisky and Soda, the two cairn terriers, and Smudge the cat. Hiawatha, the tortoise, was not a demonstrative animal, but if he had affection for anyone it was probably for Frances, who fed him titbits and assured his comfort during hibernation. She was unflagging in her service to the community, both individually and collectively. The sick and the bereaved could always count on her sympathy, expressed in deeds as well as in words. Inevitably she was elected to most of the village committees, although she was president or chairwoman of none, preferring to serve rather than to lead. Now in her forty-second year, she seemed possessed of almost inexhaustible energy, which perhaps helped to account for her slim, willowy figure. No one, not even her husband, described her as beautiful. Her face was too thin and too long, giving undue prominence to the chin. Her blue eyes were too pale, her ears too flat, her mouth too large; her blonde hair, worn shoulder-length, seldom managed to look tidy. But she was a happy person with a warm and charming personality, and no one had ever been heard to speak ill of her.

On Tuesdays and Fridays Tom Holden held both morning and evening surgeries at the medical centre in Limpsted which he shared with three other doctors, and he did not return home for lunch, and on those days during term time, with Natalie and Victor away at boarding schools, Frances was content with a light snack at midday. But not in the holidays. In the holidays the children needed a proper lunch. What they did not need and did not want was regimentation, and she tried to make lunch times elastic to suit their plans. On that particular August Friday they had gone for a long walk with the dogs through Rye Woods and up past Holland Farm and, caught in the heavy rain, had returned home later than expected and drenched to the skin. While they bathed and changed Frances gave the dogs a good towelling. It was after one-thirty when the family eventually sat down to lunch.

They were eating lemon mousse when the telephone rang. Natalie, who was nearest the door, pushed back her chair. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said.

The telephone was in the hall. They could hear her voice but not the words. When she returned she said, ‘It’s Miss Marsh. She says her meal hasn’t arrived.’

‘It hasn’t?’ Frances looked at her watch. ‘Goodness! It’s after two. Someone must have had a breakdown. Tell her—no, leave it, darling. I’ll talk to her.’

She had joined the Meals on Wheels service five years previously, on the entreaty of a friend who was then running the service. Three years later she had been persuaded to take temporary charge while the friend went into hospital and, when the friend failed to recover from her operation, had reluctantly agreed to continue in charge. With so many other commitments she would have preferred that someone else should take over. But no one else had offered and she had found herself stuck with it.

Miss Marsh lived in one of the council flats on the Glendale estate, north of West Deering, and was calling from the pay telephone installed for the benefit of the tenants. Usually the food arrived sometime between twelve-thirty and one-fifteen, she told Frances, depending on who was delivering it, and she would have rung earlier had not the rain been so heavy. ‘It’s some distance from the flat,’ she explained, ‘and I didn’t want to get wet. My rheumatism, you see. But it’s stopped now, thank goodness!’

Frances expressed sympathy. ‘We’ll get something to you as soon as we can,’ she promised. ‘Even if it’s only a sandwich.’

‘I’m not paying sixty-five pee for a sandwich,’ Miss Marsh said.

‘No, of course not. Don’t worry, Miss Marsh, you’ll get your meal. But it may have to be in the evening. It depends, you see, on what’s gone wrong.’

‘No meat, then,’ Miss Marsh warned. ‘Not at night, it keeps me awake. So does cheese. It’ll have to be fish.’

Frances was tempted to retort that she was not running a restaurant, that the menu was table d’hôte and not à la carte. Instead she promised to bear the warning in mind. ‘Do you know if Mrs Golding is also waiting for her meal?’ she asked. Mrs Golding was the other customer in the flats.

Miss Marsh did not know. Frances rang off and checked her list of helpers and dates. Elizabeth Doyle. She rang the Manor and waited impatiently while the ringing tone went on and on and on. When eventually Andrew answered the call his speech was slurred and he sounded distrait and she realized with surprise that he was the worse for drink. Most untypical, she thought. No, Andrew said, Elizabeth was not at home. Neither was her car, nor the food she and Mrs Trotter had been preparing when he had gone out some time after eleven. So presumably she was still out delivering the meals. She should have completed the round long before this, Frances told him, and asked to speak to his father. Sorry, Andrew said, Dad’s away for the weekend. There’s only me here. Shall I ask Elizabeth to ring you when she returns? Please, Frances said. And rang off.

Only three people who used the Meals on Wheels service were on the telephone. She rang them all, and all said their meals had been delivered around the usual time. Old Mr Philipson was the most helpful. Mrs Doyle had left the cottage shortly after one o’clock, he said, remarking that she still had two more calls to make. Miss Marsh and Mrs Golding, Frances thought—which implied that Elizabeth had travelled the circuit anti-clockwise. But what had happened to her after leaving Philipson’s cottage? From there it was less than two miles to the Glendale estate if one went by Yellham Lane, only slightly longer via the village. Had her car broken down or been involved in an accident? In either case surely Elizabeth would have contacted her, or asked someone else to do so. Which seemed to leave her somewhere in Rye Woods, perhaps lying immobilized with a broken leg or ankle—unconscious, even—after having tripped and fallen as she made her way back to the car.

It was an unhappy possibility demanding prompt action. A more pressing situation, as she explained to the children, than the possible hunger of Miss Marsh and Mrs Golding. ‘I’ll get the car out and try to find her,’ she said. ‘And perhaps you two could cut some sandwiches, eh? Ham—cheese—there’s both in the fridge. I’ll deliver them when I get back.’

‘We could take them,’ Victor said. ‘On our bikes. I mean, you might be some time, mightn’t you?’

‘You wouldn’t mind? It’s over three miles to the estate. Nearly four.’

‘That’s nothing,’ Victor said. ‘Off you go, Mum. Leave it to us.’

The dogs followed her out to the car. Not this time, she told them. Soda was reasonably docile on his own, happy to curl up on the back seat. Whisky, however, insisted on being in front, preferably on a passenger’s lap, from where he had a better view through the windscreen of what lay ahead. But the sight of another dog sent him berserk. He would bound about the car, barking and growling; and Soda, always the copycat, would join in. If Elizabeth Doyle had met with an accident and had to be ferried home or to hospital, a couple of rampaging terriers was something she could do without.

She drove directly to the track that led to Philipson’s cottage. The gate was open and she bumped her way across the field to the wood, confident that that was where Elizabeth’s car would be. But it was not. And if the car had gone then presumably so had Elizabeth. Which made a further search of the woods superfluous. So had she got it wrong? Frances wondered. She had assumed that Elizabeth had followed an anti-clockwise circuit, visiting the houses in order. But perhaps Elizabeth did not work that way. Cheryl Mason, for instance, made Philipson’s cottage her final call, on the pretext that the time spent in walking there and back through the woods allowed the food in the remaining hot-boxes to cool—although according to general belief the true reason was that it allowed her more time with the old man in which to render services unconnected with Meals on Wheels. Perhaps Elizabeth too had her own particular routine. Philipson’s information that she had left him with just two calls to make seemed to belie that. But the old man could be mistaken. Frances drove slowly round the circuit, checking that each of the customers had had a meal delivered and keeping a sharp look-out for Elizabeth’s car. She even drove up Yellham Lane and back through West Deering village. It was all to no avail. There was no sign of Elizabeth and no sign of her car.

She returned home to find the children awaiting her, having cut and delivered the sandwiches. A further call to the Manor elicited the information from Andrew, now sounding listless but sober, that Elizabeth still had not returned. To Frances the situation seemed crazy, incomprehensible. Why would Elizabeth drive off into the blue, so to speak, with two meals still undelivered? A sudden, inexplicable rebellion against what she was doing? It would be untypical of the public face of Elizabeth, but who knew the private face? An act of mercy? Driving a sick or injured person, perhaps someone with whom her car had been in collision, to hospital in Limpsted, and then too shaken by the incident to drive home? Elizabeth was not one to be easily shaken. And would she not at least have contacted Andrew?

Neither Frances nor the children could find a satisfactory answer to the problem. At six-fifteen they took fish fingers and peas and chips, with tinned fruit for a sweet, to Miss Marsh and Mrs Golding, and were told by the former that she could not possibly be expected to digest fried food at night—a complaint that for once failed to evoke sympathy in Frances. It was a relief for all three when Tom arrived home and they could put the mystery to him. ‘This is for the police,’ Tom said, after yet another unproductive call to the Manor. ‘If Philipson was right about the time she left him she’s been missing for over six hours. I’m surprised Andrew hasn’t been on to them already.’

‘Andrew and his stepmother aren’t on the same wavelength,’ Victor said. ‘I don’t think he’d be bothered if she’d gone for good.’

‘That’s unkind, Victor,’ Frances said. ‘And I’m sure it isn’t true.’

‘I’m not,’ Tom said, ‘but no matter. I’ll ring Pearson.’ Pearson was the local constable. ‘Let him sort it out.’

‘Pearson’s on holiday,’ Victor said. ‘In Spain.’

‘Is he? Oh! Well, in that case—’

‘Why not try Mr Hasted?’ Frances suggested. ‘He could be home.’

‘Good thinking. Yes, I’ll do that.’

At five feet eight inches Detective Inspector George Hasted was short for a policeman, but what he lacked in height he gained in breadth. He was a real bull of a man with a thick neck and large hands and feet and heavy thighs. Bronzed and bearded, his bushy, wayward brows above intense grey-green eyes gave him a rather fierce appearance which was belied by a quiet, almost gentle voice that hardened into anger only under extreme provocation. A member of the county CID and stationed at its headquarters in Limpsted, for the past four years he had lived with his wife Sybil and his small son Jason in West Deering; and if, because of his profession, he had not yet become fully integrated into the community, he was liked and respected. There were no reservations in their acceptance of his wife. Young and pretty and gregarious, within a year she had joined the Women’s Institute and the Young Wives Guild. She helped with the local play group and was Secretary of the West Deering Bonfire Society. Had it not been that she was now nearly nine months pregnant she would have been playing that summer for the village stoolball club.

The Holdens were drinking after-dinner coffee when Hasted arrived. Frances lifted Smudge off an armchair for the inspector to sit, tried unsuccessfully to curb the exuberant welcome of the dogs, gave him coffee and told him of the bizarre disappearance of Elizabeth Doyle. And Hasted listened. He liked the Holdens. Tom Holden was Sybil’s doctor, a kind and caring man, and he admired Frances’s unbounded service to the community. He did not know the children well, but he knew they were popular. At 15, Natalie was similar to her mother in appearance, and possessed of the same lively outlook. Victor was a year older. Darker and thicker, with an incipient moustache that he fingered constantly, he was the quieter and more serious of the two.

‘Constable Pearson’s on holiday,’ Tom said, when Frances had finished on a question mark. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered you.’

‘I’m glad you did,’ Hasted said. ‘I gather you’ve no solution to suggest?’

‘None,’ Frances said. ‘I mean, she isn’t the sort of person to go off like that on the spur of the moment. She’s so—well, so organized.’

BOOK: A Choice of Victims
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