Almost Love (28 page)

“What sort of personal reasons?”

“They’re – confidential,” said Alex. She glanced at Tom, who was regarding her quizzically. “I don’t mean confidential as far as I’m concerned,” she added. “Edmund confided a personal problem to me that he needed to sort out this afternoon and I feel that I should respect his confidence.”

“Fine for now,” said Tim, “but if we feel later that revealing whatever it is may be instrumental to this enquiry we shall expect you to do so. After he’d gone, what did you do?”

“I spent some time recreating the form in digital version – I found some that had already been filled in – so that I would be able to print it out and ask him to sign when I saw him again.”

“You expected that to be later this morning?”

“Yes. I thought that he would come back to the Society before lunch, to return the key. I worked on my summer events programme until midday and, when Edmund had still not appeared, I decided to walk to Broad Street, taking a form with me, so that I could at the same time ask him to sign it and to return the key before he left. I knew that he would not be able to stay into the afternoon.”

“Because of the ‘personal problem’ that you’ve described?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes, he was just leaving. He wanted to borrow one of the files of papers.”

“Did you say that he could?”

Alex gave a short laugh. Tim could not tell whether it was meant to be relaxed or ironical.

“Yes, against my better judgment.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he should have asked the trustees for permission to take something away from the archive; and also to sign another form and, if necessary, to take out insurance, before he did so. Those are the Society’s rules. It’s obvious why they exist.”

“But you let him take the papers anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you had misgivings about it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain why?”

“No, not exactly. It was partly because Edmund was in such a hurry – he seemed flustered and I allowed myself to become flustered, too. And partly because I felt sorry for him – I didn’t wish to put even more difficulties in his way.”

“You mean, besides his personal ones?”

“Yes.”

“So he left with the papers. What did you do?”

“I went back to the office and carried on working on the summer programme.”

“Did you receive any visitors or take any telephone calls?”

“No.”

“Did you make any calls yourself?”

“No. That is, only to Edmund.”

“Why did you call him?”

“Because I’d forgotten to ask him to return the key to the archive. I was – I am – worried about that. I shouldn’t have let him have it and, although it’s unlikely that anyone else will want access to the chapel before I can get the key back, I could get into trouble with the trustees if they find out that the key is missing.”

“I see. How many times did you call Edmund Baker?”

“Three or four.”

“At his office?”

“No, I knew he wouldn’t be there this afternoon. I called his mobile. I wasn’t actually expecting him to be able to reply until later this afternoon or this evening. I knew that he’d be busy. I left several messages for him.”

“All messages about the key?”

“Yes.”

“They all said more or less the same thing?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you call him so many times? Did you doubt that he would get back to you?”

“No, not really. But although I didn’t want to sound panicky, I wanted him to understand the seriousness of the situation – that it was serious for me, anyway.”

“Has he been in touch with you yet?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because after I found the – whatever it is on the kitchen wall – the telephone rang. I answered it and the caller rang off – I may not have got to it in time. But then my mobile started ringing and I answered it immediately, but again the caller rang off. It was an undisclosed number.”

“You think that it might have been Mr Baker?”

“It could have been.”

“We can check that later. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to continue with your account of your day. You say that you worked all afternoon on your summer programme and, apart from yourself breaking off to make the calls to Mr Baker, there were no interruptions. When did you leave your office?”

“At about five-thirty. I don’t know exactly, but it can’t have been much after that.”

“And you walked straight home?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t have taken you more than ten minutes to get back here from the Archaeological Society.”

“It is about a ten-minute walk. I may have taken a little longer, because I stopped to call Edmund once more on my way. But that won’t have held me up for more than a minute or two.”

“I’m sorry to ask this question of you, too – but is there any possibility that you were being followed?”

“No, I don’t think so. I stopped to lean against the wall at the top of the passage while I found Edmund’s number and I’d have noticed if anyone had been hovering close to me. When I got no reply, I didn’t bother to record a further message. I put the phone away and walked down Chapel Lane until I saw that the yard gate was open.”

“That worried you?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I did something quite out of character, actually. I spoke to a stranger, someone I’d never seen before. A woman – an elderly woman – asked me if I was OK and I told her that I knew that something was wrong because of the open gate.”

“What did she say?”

“She tried to comfort me, in a vague sort of way. She clearly thought that I was mentally ill, or at least overwrought. She asked if my husband was at home and suggested that I should go in and put my feet up while he made me a cup of tea.”

“That was rather strange advice, wasn’t it, under the circumstances? And quite a coincidence that your husband had been there a few minutes earlier, hoping to do almost exactly what she suggested?”

“It didn’t occur to me that she was strange. I was much more preoccupied with the open gate.”

“Would you recognise her again? Or be able to piece together an Identikit picture of her?”

“Possibly,” said Alex doubtfully.

“Did she definitely walk away?”

“Yes. She hovered for a while, I thought to make sure that I was all right, and then she walked away towards the town centre – very slowly, but she was quite old.”

“And despite your fear, you decided that you would go into the yard and continue up the steps to the flat.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me why you were so afraid? After all, at this stage, all you had found was the open gate. It could easily have been left open by mistake, by one of the building society people, or by Tom in a hurry.”

Alex paused.

“It’s just one of several things that I don’t have an explanation for that have happened to me recently. They’re probably not connected – they’re probably all coincidences – but they’ve made me more jumpy than usual.”

“I’m not much of a believer in coincidences,” said Tim. “Can you give us more detail?”

“Yes, can you?” said Tom. “It’s the first I knew about it.” His tone was suspicious. Alex flushed. Tim thought for a moment that she was embarrassed, but it became apparent that her face was instead bright with anger.

“You did know,” she said tautly. “I told you about the episode in the passageway. You were too preoccupied with your precious juvenile delinquents to take it in.”

Tom opened his mouth to retaliate, but Tim interrupted him.

“Tell me what happened in the passageway,” he said. “And about the other incidents as well. You say there were several?”

“Yes,” said Alex. She was already embarrassed by her bad-tempered retort. “The first was at the conference – at the hotel that you visited to interview Oliver Sparham. I was standing on my balcony early in the morning and someone was smoking a cigarette beneath it – just out of my sight. I wouldn’t have believed it to have any significance, if a message had not arrived on my breakfast tray. It said ‘Be Careful’.”

“I’m sure you didn’t tell me about
that
,” said Tom.

“I probably didn’t. At the time, I thought that it was just an ill-bred comment from one of the Society delegates – there had been some kind of altercation about paying for wine the night before, which I’d had to sort out. But when I thought about it afterwards – after the episode in the passageway – I decided that perhaps it had been intended as something more personal, more specifically directed towards me.”

“What happened in the passageway?”

“I’d been at a meeting with Edmund Baker and came back late in the evening. It was dark in Chapel Lane and I dropped my keys in the gutter – it had been raining and the keys had dropped into flowing water, so I was anxious to retrieve them quickly. As I bent down, someone threw a cigarette end into the water, just in front of me. It could have hit me. I looked round quickly, but I couldn’t see anyone. They may have been hiding in the chapel doorway – I didn’t wait to find out. I just let myself in as quickly as possible. Tom came out of the kitchen and stood at the top of the steps almost immediately afterwards.”

“Do you recall this now, sir? If so, did you see anything?” Tim asked Tom.

“Yes, I do remember it, but Alex didn’t tell me about the cigarette until we were inside.”

“You didn’t go out again to look?”

“No. She was tired and as far as I was concerned it was an isolated incident. I thought that it might have been teenagers playing a prank or even just a passing drunk who hadn’t noticed her and had pitched the cigarette end into the dark.”

“So, if you’re right about their being connected, there were three incidents altogether? There were no others?”

Alex shook her head, but did not meet Tim’s eye. It crossed his mind that she was hiding something. Alex was thinking that she should tell him about the cigarette smoker who had frightened Edmund when they had visited his secret place, but she knew that this was impossible while Tom was there. Even if he hadn’t been present, she didn’t want this policeman to suspect that her relationship with Edmund was anything more than professional. It could only cause trouble.

“What do you think, Detective Inspector? Do you think that someone was threatening Alex with these incidents?”

“It’s difficult to say. Aside from the break-in, the note is the most concrete evidence that someone was trying to frighten you. Do you still have it?”

“I’m not sure – I think so. If I’ve kept it, it will be in my office, with the other papers from the conference.”

“Perhaps you might look for it tomorrow. I’ll drop by for it, or DC Armstrong will. So, where were we? You climbed the steps to the flat and found the kitchen door open. Was it wide open?”

“Yes, it was bent right back on its hinge.”

“You were already afraid by then, but you still went into the kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you try to get help?”

“It honestly didn’t occur to me. And I wanted to know if Tom was there; I thought that it was possible he’d been taken ill. That could have explained why the gate and the door were both open.”

“What happened when you entered the kitchen?”

“I called Tom’s name, but there was no answer. Then the phone started ringing. I didn’t know whether I should answer it. I couldn’t see it, for one thing; I needed to turn on the light and I couldn’t decide whether or not this was a wise thing to do. So I hesitated for a few moments and then turned it on. The phone stopped ringing as I picked up the receiver, but almost immediately my mobile started instead. I answered it pretty quickly, but the line went dead. And then I saw Tom’s note, saying that he would be late.”

“Did you notice the marks on the kitchen wall at that point?”

“No. I was still thinking about Tom – even though I also thought that there might still be an intruder in the flat, I wanted to make sure that Tom wasn’t here. I looked in every room, but of course I didn’t find him; there was no evidence that anyone had been in any of the rooms, either. As I said when we spoke on the phone, there is nothing missing or out of place. If it weren’t for that horrible mess on the wall, I should believe that Tom was mistaken and that he had left the place wide open in a fit of absent-mindedness.”

“So, having searched every room, you returned to the kitchen?”

“Yes. And that was when I noticed the bloodstains – or whatever they are – on the wall.”

“You can’t therefore be certain that they weren’t put there while you were searching the other rooms?”

“No – but I assume . . .”

“Since Mr Tarrant also says that he did not see them when he was in the kitchen a few minutes earlier, we can’t discount this as a possibility. Could someone have been hiding in the outside area when you came up the steps?”

“Yes – I suppose so; it would be possible for someone to conceal themselves behind the garden furniture – or simply to walk across from the outside area of the maisonette next door.”

“Isn’t there a wall between the two properties?”

“Yes, but it isn’t high: it’s more of a boundary marker than anything. We’ve never tried to cross it, and neither have the people in the other maisonette, as far as I’m aware, but only because we’ve never had reason to. But, my God, the thought of someone out there while I was inside makes my blood run cold!”

“What did you do when you saw the stain on the wall?”

“I screamed. It was another reaction that is quite out of character for me. It had some effect, though, because the young couple who live next door came to see if I was all right.”

“Do you know them?”

“I didn’t until today. But they’ve left their name and telephone number. They were very helpful; they called Tom for me.”

“Why didn’t they stay with you?”

“The young woman did stay, sir, until I arrived,” said Juliet. “Her husband is a chef – he had to go to work.”

“So you have their details?”

“Yes, sir. Their names are Steve and Wendy Allsop. As Mrs Tarrant says, they’ve left their telephone number.”

“We’ll need to see them again this evening,” said Tim. “We don’t want this story going the rounds, if we can help it. Mrs Tarrant, thank you for giving us so much detail. You’ve been extremely helpful. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to bring a Scene of Crime forensics team here now.” He turned to include Tom in the conversation. “Is there anyone that you can stay with tonight? It is likely to be noisy and uncomfortable for you, even if they start with your bedroom.”