Deadly Petard (3 page)

‘Well, I’ll be on my way. Lovely to see you again. And you must change your mind and come and spend at least part of a day with me at the hotel. The brochure said the grub was good and the setting’s supposed to be magnificent.’

He never had understood that some people simply didn’t like ostentatious luxury. Even as a boy, he’d always wanted the biggest and the best so that people would see he had the biggest and the best.

When he kissed her goodbye, he made certain it was his scarred right cheek which touched her left one and he smiled when he felt her flinch. Then he said good-night and crossed the very narrow pavement to a parked green Seat 132.

She watched him start the engine, turn, and drive down the sloping road: just before he reached the corner, he put his left hand out of the window and waved.

Knowing a bitter, empty sadness, she stared out to the south, through a gap between two houses on the opposite side of the road, not really seeing the lights of villages or the distant coastline, just visible in the moonlight if one knew where to look. Did other people have to discover that happiness was always rationed and, no matter how much unhappiness one had known in the past, that ration was never sufficient?

She returned into the house, shut and locked the front door, crossed to the fireplace. The logs had almost burned away, leaving a dying, intermittent flame and glowing ashes. Soon, without more logs, there would be very little heat given off, so why not go to bed? But it was still very early. And she’d never get to sleep while her mind was such a maelstrom of memories.

She bent down and picked out a couple of logs from a cane basket and threw them on to the fire, prodded them deeper into the ashes with the toe of her shoe. She went through to the kitchen and poured herself another drink: normally abstemious, there were times when she sought, and found, a measure of comfort in alcohol.

She returned to the sitting-room and sat. She watched small, dancing flames spread along the sides of the two logs. If only the past could be burned into ashes . . .

Memory was a strange, elusive thing, sometimes strong, sometimes weak.

With only a little more talent and strength of character, her father might well have been a success in life: as it was, he had been a failure. While his wife had been alive, he had listened to her advice and had been guided by it, but after her death he had seemed to lose all sense of proportion and self-judgement.

Life had become movement. No sooner settled in one school then moved to another where she was a stranger and therefore an object of scornful interest: no sooner a friendship formed than it was forcibly sundered. They had lived in so many houses and moved so often that none of them had ever become home. They’d had few possessions and the more valuable of these—valuable?—had had to be sold from time to time to try and raise a little capital to finance more movement: the eternal quest to reach the foot of the rainbow.

And then something had happened, and she had never learned what, which had provided them with some capital and brought an end to her father’s restless wanderings. They’d rented a back-to-back in Wealdsham and lived there, month after month. No. 10, Brick Lane. A mean, ugly house in a poor street, as far as most people were concerned: a wonderful home to her.

Keir West had spoken to her only days after they’d moved in. She’d been slowly eating a Mars Bar, slowly because it was a rare treat and the pleasure had to be drawn out. He’d been so friendly that in a gesture which came straight from the heart, she’d offered him some of what remained of the Mars Bar. He’d broken off about two-thirds for himself.

His motto in life had always been a simple one: what’s yours, we share; what’s mine, stays mine. Once, she’d complained about his selfishness. He’d jeered at her and then she hadn’t seen him for days and the loneliness taught her not to complain again.

He’d always had a precocious curiosity: a desire which was almost a need to poke his nose into everything in case he might find something of advantage to himself. So when she’d told him that her father was carrying out experiments in a room always kept locked, and that if these experiments were successful he’d make a fortune, Keir had demanded to see the room . . .

Her father had been out. She could remember getting the key from the kitchen drawer: leading the way along the dark, narrow corridor which smelled of mildew: putting the key in the lock, turning it, and opening the door: Keir pushing past her . . . But then there was a blank and no matter how much she tried to break through the mental fog she could remember nothing more until he was screaming and shrieking that she’d killed him by spilling the acid over him.

Her father, shocked that by disobeying him she’d been responsible for causing such injuries, had forced her to go to the hospital. Keir, lying in the end bed in the children’s ward, had told her that the pain was so terrible he kept fainting. He didn’t faint while she was there. That night she had lain in bed and prayed that she could be hurt as terribly as he’d been hurt by her, so that by her suffering his could be relieved. She had failed to experience any blinding outburst of pain.

Time had blunted her sense of guilt and increasing age had enabled her to realize that logically one could not realistically be held responsible for an accident which had happened when one was young: but her need to make amends, in so far as this was possible, had grown no less. When he wanted her to do something, she did it. Her father, casual enough over most things, had taught her a set of old-fashioned values: to steal was totally wrong. Yet when Keir had needed her as an accomplice, she had helped him steal . . . And, seemingly perversely, she had refused to make friends with others of her own age. Perhaps, subconsciously, she’d realized that had she done so, she’d have gained a far more balanced outlook and then wouldn’t have been nearly so ready to follow him . . .

Her first job had been as a trainee shop assistant. Her first wage packet had been shared with him. (One could hardly have expected him not to take advantage of the circumstances.)

Her father had died suddenly and very soon afterwards Keir had left the neighbourhood, with no one knowing or caring where he’d gone. She’d experienced a crushing loneliness, but by now she found it almost impossible to make friends. Personal relationships of any depth seemed to be beyond her.

Not quite by accident, yet neither by design, she’d discovered that she had a considerable talent for painting. Her father had often told her that his grandfather had been a famous painter and she’d discounted such a story because he was a great romanticist, but she’d suddenly begun to wonder whether he had, after all, been telling the truth. She’d had a few lessons from a man in Wealdsham who’d possessed some technique but little talent, but who had possessed the ability, and generosity of artistic spirit, to recognize talent in others. He’d encouraged her when her self-doubts had threatened to prevent her fulfilling her early promise and it was he who’d persuaded her to apply for a grant to go to an art school—something she would never have done if left to herself.

Three months after leaving art school, she’d sold her first painting: four years after that she’d been making a reasonable living: and one year later Keir had re-entered her life.

He’d developed a slick assurance: a barrow-boy made good. He’d learned to flatter, yet sound sincere, to make a solitary, neryous, unapproachable spinster feel like a princess.

She’d known him as an inveterate liar, yet she’d listened when he had told her she’d become beautiful. (After all, wasn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder, not the mirror?) She could judge he was broke, yet did not draw the obvious conclusion that that was why he had reappeared. He’d moved into her flat and immediately made himself completely at home, listing all his likes and dislikes.

She hadn’t cared how outrageous his demands were. Love was a word that meant different things to different people: to her, it meant being wanted . . .

He’d disengaged skilfully, yet not quite able to hide his apprehension that she might become hysterical and make life difficult for him. Which only showed that he’d never even bothered to understand what kind of a woman she was. He’d told her he was only going away because he couldn’t bear to live off her any longer and when he’d made his fortune he’d be back and nothing would ever again keep them apart. And she had let herself believe him.

She’d become commercially very successful. She’d sold the flat and, fulfilling an ambition, had bought a cottage in the country: Queenswood Farm, three hundred years old, with oak beams, inglenook fireplaces, and a couple of inside walls still with original plaster. Eighteen months after moving into Queenswood Farm, she’d first heard that Keir was engaged to be married. The news had shocked her even if, had she been able to admit this, it should not have surprised her. Then she’d learned that his fiancee was Barbara Hardy, a very wealthy woman, from a county family, at least ten years older than himself. Whereas others had found it degrading that he should so obviously be marrying for money, not love, she had found it comforting . . .

They’d met a few times after the marriage. To her own surprise, she’d found those meetings far less emotionally charged than she’d expected: experience had hardened and taught her. Yet even so, there were times during these meetings, when he smiled at her, when he held her hand a little longer than necessary, or when he chuckled as he told one of his risque jokes, when she experienced a moment of bitter loss.

Then, one late October morning when some trees had begun to shed their leaves and the air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay . . .

The three upstairs bedrooms in Queenswood Farm faced north and she had had a large skylight installed in the end one to turn it into a studio. She was painting there when she heard a car drive in. She swore, hating interruptions when working.

The front doorbell rang and she crossed to her right to put down the palette, but even as she set it on the table, the front door was opened and a man shouted: ‘So how’s the Last Supper coming along: have you got as far as the pud?’

She recognized Keir’s voice and experienced a momentary sense of panic.

In sharp contrast to her paint-stained overalls worn over an ancient sweater and jeans, he had on under a vicuna overcoat a cashmere cardigan, a roll-neck, puce coloured shirt, perfectly creased trousers and twin-coloured brogues. Depending on one’s terms of reference, he was either smartly or preciously dressed.

He kissed her. She drew back quickly.

‘Gertie, I’ll swear you look younger every single time I see you! What’s the secret? Come on, tell me: I could do with a drop of the elixir.’

He looked tired and troubled. She wondered what was worrying him? Money had usually been his only concern, but since marrying Barbara surely he’d plenty of that?

‘Don’t look at me in that way.’

‘In what way?’ she asked.

‘As if you were trying to dissect my soul.’

‘Where’s the knife sharp enough to do that?’

He laughed, put his arm round her waist, and squeezed. ‘One of the many things I so like about you is that touch of ice.’

She moved away, forcing him to drop his arm. ‘D’you want a drink?’

‘Have you ever heard me say no?’

She led the way into the sitting-room, crossed to the very short, very narrow passage which ran on the north side of the huge central double chimney and joined the sitting-room to the dining-room. Since the dining-room could also be reached through the kitchen, she used this passage to house the elegant reproduction cabinet in which she kept the drinks. ‘What would you like?’ she called out.

‘A Scotch. And don’t worry about making it too strong . . . Gertie, d’you mind if I use your phone?’

‘Go right ahead.’

She brought out from the cabinet and put on the top two glasses, a bottle of whisky, and a bottle of sweet white vermouth. As she finished pouring the Scotch, she heard him say: ‘Would it be possible to have a word with Miss Tufton?’

She added soda. He said: ‘Sandra? . . . Who else d’you think it could be? . . . I’ll believe that when they abolish income tax . . . Is it OK? . . . Usual time, usual place. Lots of.’

She gave herself a vermouth and soda and added a slither of lemon peel. She put the glasses on a small plated silver salver and returned to the sitting-room. He was standing by the window, looking out. He turned. ‘That’s all right, then, they can do a service. It’s a hell of a sweat these days, isn’t it, getting a car looked after? You’d think you were doing the garage the service, instead of vice versa.’ He chuckled at the slight play on words. ‘Well—what’s your news? How are the paintings going? By the score?’

‘Why not by the yard?’

‘Don’t take offence, Gertie. You know me—can’t tell a Rubens from a Picasso. But I do like your paintings.’

‘Is that intended as a compliment or an insult?’

‘Come on, darling, relax. Stop taking things so seriously. You’ve obviously been painting too many nymphs and shepherds and need a break from such bucolic frivolities. Tell you what, lunch tomorrow at Leon’s: the only nymph you’re likely to run into there is the odd nyphomaniac’

‘No.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Have it your way. But you know what they say? All work and no play, how the hell can you stay gay?’

He’d called again a week later, after dark, so she’d switched on the outside light and waited to identify him through the hall window before unlocking the front door. When he entered, drops of water slid off his mackintosh on to the brick floor. ‘By God, it’s filthy outside! Rain’s positively lashing down and even the ducks must be shouting uncle.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re looking like a million dollars. Know that?’

She knew she was her usual plain, untidy self. There was a brittleness to his manner, she thought, as if he were under considerable tension.

‘Gertie, I’ve a confession to make. I’ve come to ask a favour. You will help me, won’t you?’

To do what?’

He didn’t answer, but instead took off his mackintosh. ‘Can I drape this over the banisters? When the good God invented rain, He got carried away with his own enthusiasm.’