Asking For Trouble (19 page)

‘Guess away, it won’t do you any good. You wouldn’t last five minutes where I come from, let me tell you that!’

‘Spare me the tales of your seedy lifestyle, Fran. If you don’t like it here, go on back to the smoke. Keep out of our way.’

‘You mean, keep out of your way. Why did you search my room during breakfast?

He glanced at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Did I?’

‘You know you did!’ I snarled. ‘Don’t play stupid games! Ruby wouldn’t need to sneak in. She could go in there openly to vacuum out or something, if she wanted an excuse. It wasn’t likely to be Ariadne and Alastair was with me!’

‘My, what a clever little sleuth! And that’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You fancy yourself as the great detective! Notebooks, camera, all the trimmings.’

He was laughing openly. Anything I said would only encourage his mirth so I seethed in silence.

I had another reason to keep quiet. I had remembered how Alastair had insisted on taking me to the yard after breakfast and talking to Kelly about finding me a horse to ride, even though I’d made it clear I wasn’t keen on that idea. Was he giving Jamie time to go through my gear? I hoped not. But it was Alastair who’d suggested Jamie take me to Winchester. Was that so Jamie could keep an eye on me?

I was feeling miserable by now. I had trusted Alastair. But that was no attitude for a detective to have. From now on, I trusted nobody.

Jamie planned a cross-country route. We took the lane which had been sign-posted ‘Lords Farm’ and bumped along over its potholes. There were high banks to either side and no passing place that I could see. Jamie drove at a fair pace and I hoped we met nothing coming the other way, say a tractor.

Even as I worried about this, we rounded a corner and Jamie slammed on the brakes, cursing. I shot forward, was jerked back by my seat-belt, and grabbed the dashboard. The road ahead was filled with cows. They’d just come out of an open gate from a field on the right and were plodding down the narrow track ahead of us.

We inched forward but it was no good in this narrow defile. They’d more or less come to a stop and we had to stop, too. There were hairy bodies and big soulful eyes all around us. They peered in the windows and swung their mud-caked tails against the car’s sides which obviously drove Jamie wild.

‘Blasted animals! I only had the car cleaned two days ago! Who’s in charge of them?’

‘No one,’ I said, slumping down in my seat. A huge bovine was investigating the door on my side. The creature’s breath was misting up the outside of the window as it snuffled around trying, for all I knew, to get it open, and its gungy muzzle left yucky smears on the glass. You could understand Jamie being so mad.

‘This is ridiculous!’ He was building up a nice head of steam. ‘Fran, get out and clear a way through the brutes!’

‘What? You’re out of your tiny mind!’

He glowered. ‘Go on, you wanted to visit the country. All you have to do is chivvy them a bit. They’ll move for you.’

‘Forget it!’

‘They’re making a helluva mess of my car! What’s the matter, afraid of them? I thought you were the tough sort. All that streetwise guff. I wouldn’t last five minutes where you come from, eh? Well, you don’t seem to be making out very well here!’

I know I should have ignored it. I shouldn’t have risen to it. He was needling me into doing something I shouldn’t. I knew all this but I still took the bait. ‘All right!’ I slipped off my jacket, I couldn’t afford to get that messed up, and got out of the car.

I had a job even to get the door open because the cow which was so interested in it wouldn’t move. I kept pushing the car against it, even though Jamie got very hot under the collar about making the mess on the outside worse, and at last the beast backed off.

Once I was out, I was marooned. The cows were all around me. There was one thing even I knew cows did a lot of, and it made me very careful where I put my feet. Have you any idea how large a cow is? It’s enormous. Like a tank. You do not argue with a cow. It does what it wants and goes where it likes. Not only did they show no sign of moving out of my way, but they seemed to find me some sort of interesting novelty and they all wanted a closer look at me. I was pinned against the car by steaming, smelly, dribbling monsters.

It was a matter of honour, although it felt more like a matter of life and death. I couldn’t get back in the car. Jamie’d never let me forget it. So I edged my way round to the front and clapped my hands.

Zilch. The cows ignored it but the flies which had been buzzing around the cows, now began to investigate me. I flailed my hands around my head to drive them away. When I looked behind me, Jamie was watching through the windscreen, laughing himself sick.

That made me mad. I slapped the nearest cow on the back. ‘Come on, Bluebell, you’ve got to help me! It’s you and me against him!’

It turned its head and gazed at me. There was a black and white one coming up on my left with a moody look in its eye. I had to act as though I was in charge and hope the bluff worked.

I gave a piercing whistle and yelled, ‘Move it!’ Cowboy stuff.

Funnily enough, they did try to move. They shuffled a bit sideways, bumped into one another and started lowing noisily. It was pretty clear to me by now, because I stopped panicking, that something up ahead was preventing them from going on. I shoved my way between them, and sure enough, just around the next bend was the farmyard and the gate was closed. They were all waiting for someone to open it.

I unhitched it and dragged it open. The cows began to plod through at quite a brisk pace and mill about in the yard.

Then a dog ran out and started barking at me. I was trapped between gate and cows so there was nothing I could do but get behind the gate as the dog ran up and began growling at me. The cows didn’t like it much, either, and one of them put down its head and made a little rush at the dog. The dog backed off very sensibly and joined me behind the gate.

We were both rescued by a man in a pullover and gumboots who came out of a barn and shouted, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘The gate was closed, they couldn’t get in!’ I yelled back.

‘Oh, right!’ He began to push the cows around and they ambled off towards the barn and disappeared inside. The cowman or farmer or whatever he was came towards me. He was a big fellow, built like a brick barn. He rested broad, calloused worker’s hands on the top rung of the gate.

‘Who’re you, then?’ he asked.

His voice was educated and he didn’t ask it impolitely, just curious. The dog wasn’t bothered about me now it saw the man didn’t object to me. It sat down waiting, with its tongue lolling out.

I explained about being stuck in the car behind the herd. I’d just finished when there was a beep of a horn and we both looked round to see that Jamie had driven up as far as the gate and was gesticulating to me to get back in the car.

The farmer’s friendly manner cooled distinctly. ‘With him, are you?’ The tone of his voice told that he’d met Jamie before and had much the same opinion of him I had.

‘I’m not with him!’ I denied. ‘I mean, yes, he’s giving me a lift. But that’s as far as it goes. I’m staying at the Monktons as Alastair Monkton’s guest.’

‘Oh, yes?’ He looked at me thoughtfully. His face was sunburned and he had rather nice blue eyes with little crow’s-feet lines at the corner which crinkled up as he squinted into the light, studying me. He was wearing one of those tweed caps they all liked so much, but from beneath it escaped a mop of untidy light brown hair. There was something about him I liked. He was looking at me as though he rather liked the look of me, too.

‘My name’s Fran Varady,’ I decided to establish the acquaintance on a formal basis. ‘Is this Lords Farm? I saw the signpost further back.’

‘Nice to meet you, Fran. Yes, this is Lords Farm. Welcome to it, if you take my meaning!’

He grinned and wiped one of his shovel-hands on the front of his sweater before offering it. ‘I’m Nick Bryant.’ It was pretty obvious he was deliberately ignoring Jamie who was grimacing at me and signalling I should rejoin him.

I tried turning my back on him. Jamie opened the car door and leaned out, yelling, ‘Fran! Are you getting back in this car or are you going to stand there all day gossiping?’

At that point Jamie saw my companion and said loudly and sourly, ‘Oh, it’s you, Bryant? Your wretched beasts have made a mess of my car!’

‘My, my,’ said Nick amiably. ‘So they have. You’ll have to get the brush and bucket out, Jim!’

‘Don’t call me Jim!’ yelled Jamie. He made an obvious effort to regain control. He looked at me and then back at Nick. ‘And how is Mrs Bryant?’

Jamie’s gaze slid maliciously towards me again as he asked. Damn, I thought. The nice ones are always married.

‘She’s fine. Old Mr Monkton and Mrs Cameron, they all right?’

Jamie told him ungraciously that they were, and as there appeared to be no more family members left between us to inquire after, conversation came to a natural end for the time being.

‘I’d better go,’ I said apologetically to Nick. I wanted to talk to him more than ever, now that it was clear he knew Jamie and the Monktons. ‘Look,’ I said quickly in a low voice. ‘This may sound odd, but I need to come back and talk to you some time.’

Jamie squawked, ‘If you don’t get back in this car straight away, I’m going to drive on without you!’

‘I’ve got to go!’ I urged.

Nick glanced at Jamie in no very kindly way. ‘Watch yourself!’ he muttered. ‘And come back any time you like.’

I got back into the car. Jamie was scowling and now he sniffed the air and said, ‘You stink of cows! Open the window!’

‘So, whose fault is that?’

He drove off with a squeal of tyres. I waved farewell to Nick who raised a hand in salute and set off towards the barn and his charges.

‘Shouldn’t have thought Farmer Giles there was your type!’ said Jamie sarcastically.

‘At least he was polite!’

Jamie muttered. After a little while he spoke again, quite calmly, sounding almost polite himself.

‘Look, Fran. We can go on like this, sniping and snarling at each other or we can put our cards on the table, come clean. Last night was a mistake, I admit it. But we really do need to talk.’

He must have thought me simple. It was obvious that he’d realised that I’d made a possible ally in Nick Bryant and he was reformulating his own tactics accordingly. After trying to bully and frighten me, he was trying being nice to me.

‘I don’t have anything I want to talk to you about,’ I told him. ‘And there’s no reason I should. Alastair came to see me in London. He sought me out. I returned the compliment. It’s between him and me.’

Jamie gave a hiss and we swept round a corner. ‘It concerns me too. I
am
family. In fact, I’m the only family they’ve got left apart from Alastair’s son, Phil. I feel responsible for the old people. I am responsible for them. I carry the responsibility for everything round here and I take it seriously!’

I didn’t want to give away anything I’d learned from the letter. I asked casually, ‘Why doesn’t Phil run the stud?’

Jamie hooted. ‘Phil? Hates horses, for a start! Anyway, he doesn’t get on with Alastair. Alastair is a loyal old bird. He tries hard to welcome Phil whenever he shows up. But it’s not easy. If you’d been here when they both – I mean Phil and Marcie, Theresa’s mother – turned up for the funeral, you’d have understood. Talk about undercurrents. Of course, they divorced some time back and Phil’s remarried. He didn’t bring his second wife. I wondered whether he would. But even Phil didn’t have that much nerve.’

That had given me a jolt because I hadn’t realised that Terry had been buried in the time between Alastair coming to the flat and my coming down here. I said so and asked, rather miserably, whether she was buried in the churchyard at Abbotsfield. I’d sat there to eat my tuna sandwich and perhaps she’d been only a few feet away beneath the turf. I didn’t tell Jamie that last bit.

He said she was buried there which made me feel pretty grim. The police had given permission, he said, especially as it was an interment and not a cremation. He didn’t explain that but I guessed the reason. They could always dig her up again if they wanted to.

‘What’s Terry’s mother like? Marcia, you said she’s called?’

He nodded. ‘She’s a gold-plated bitch but I like Marcie. To be fair, she was genuinely cut up at the funeral, so was Phil. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about that. But neither of them could wait to get away afterwards. Phil back to the States and Marcia back to the new man in her life.’ Jamie gave a short laugh. ‘She probably doesn’t trust him enough to leave him for too long.’

I gave it a minute or two, then asked, ‘And that’s the whole family, there’s really no one else?’

‘Not a soul.’ We had reached a junction with a more important, busy road. Jamie drew up, waiting for a break in traffic.

‘I don’t want you down here asking questions. Ariadne’s sick and Alastair is far more frail than he looks. Theresa’s death knocked the stuffing out of both of them. Don’t go making things worse.’

‘I’m not thick!’ I told him crossly. ‘I’d be tactful.’

‘I won’t! If I find you’ve been talking to either of them about it, I’ll break your grubby little neck!’

We didn’t talk again until we reached Winchester. He parked in a public carpark near the town centre.

‘If you want a lift back with me, be here at four. If you’re not here, I’ll assume you’ve caught, or mean to catch, the bus.’

‘I’ll take the bus!’ I told him.

I hadn’t put my jacket back on again when I’d got back in the car after talking to Nick. Now I picked it up. Loose change I’d kept in my pocket for phone calls spilled out and rolled over the well of the front passenger seat, most of it disappearing under the seat itself.

I cursed and scrabbled for it, watched impatiently by Jamie. I pushed my hand under the seat feeling for the coins and my fingertips touched something else, small, pyramid shaped and with a familiar, but momentarily unidentifiable, dusty feel to it. Instinctively, I scooped it up with the coins and withdrew my clasped fist and shoved the whole lot into my pocket.