Deception and Desire (41 page)

‘I didn't know you had arthritis.'

‘Oh dear, yes! In my hands.'

Dulcie extended them for inspection. Maggie could see no evidence of arthritis – her mother's fragile wrists and slim, tapering fingers with perfectly manicured nails looked to her much as they always had done.

‘Sometimes I can hardly bear to hold a knife and fork,' Dulcie murmured plaintively. ‘But I try not to complain. Harry fusses over me so if I do. Now, we don't want to talk about my little ailments, do we? Come into the drawing room, dear. I have the coffee pot on.'

The drawing room was small but genteel and, as always, perfectly ordered, cushions plumped, glossy coffee-table books on gardening set out rather pretentiously. Harry was sitting near the window, a cup of coffee on a low table at his elbow, reading the
Daily Telegraph.
He folded it carefully as Maggie and Dulcie entered, managing to make the gesture appear somewhat ungracious, and stacked the paper neatly into a rack strategically placed near his chair.

‘Margaret! Your mother was expecting to see you yesterday, you know.'

‘I never said I'd come yesterday,' Maggie protested. ‘And anyway, I had a migraine.'

‘Oh dear, do you get those too?' Dulcie enquired. ‘I used to suffer from them dreadfully – I expect you remember. I have been known to lie in a darkened room for anything up to a whole week, but I don't seem to get them quite as badly nowadays. By the time you are my age, Margaret, you probably won't get them at all. And they are obviously not as serious as mine used to be.'

‘No, I don't expect they are, Mother,' Maggie said.

Dulcie poured coffee into bone-china cups (‘ I hate pottery – so clumsy!' she always said) and passed one to Maggie, who perched rather uncomfortably on the edge of a brocade-covered chair.

‘So, how is Ari?' Dulcie asked with perfect conversational politeness yet somehow managing at the same time to convey her disapproval.

‘He's well. Working hard as usual.' Maggie had not the slightest intention of discussing her marital problems with her mother who would, she knew, delight in them whilst pretending concern.

‘And his family?'

‘Yes.'

‘They don't know how lucky they are,' Dulcie sighed. ‘It must be wonderful to be so closely knit.'

‘Oh Mother, you know you'd hate to have me and Ros under your feet all the time.'

‘Darling, what a thing to say! I should adore to be allowed to share in your lives. I realise where you are concerned that is simply not possible, but Rosalie … She lives so close by and yet I scarcely ever see her.'

Maggie's heart came into her mouth and she found herself wondering suddenly whether any of them would ever see Ros again.

‘Mother, I am very worried about Ros,' she said.

Harry snorted impatiently and Dulcie sighed.

‘So you keep saying. I'm afraid I fail to see what all the fuss is about. Rosalie does her own thing. She always has.'

‘Not to this extent. Even Mike doesn't know where she is.'

Dulcie sniffed eloquently. ‘The PE teacher, you mean. I expect Rosalie has found someone more suitable. I never did think he was her style. Even Brendan, unfortunately as he turned out, had more about him. He was a radio personality after all. But a
PE teacher
at that dreadful school …'

‘Has she ever mentioned anyone else to you?' Maggie asked.

‘Good heavens, no!' Dulcie sipped her coffee elegantly. ‘There was that Vandina man, of course. She used to talk about him rather often. But that was some time ago now.'

‘What Vandina man?'

‘The main one – Van something. He sounded foreign. But I think he's dead now. Rather a pity – he would have made a good match for Ros.'

‘If you mean Van Kendrick, he was already married.'

‘Was he? Oh well, that doesn't seem to stop young people nowadays.'

‘He was her boss,' Maggie said. ‘Nothing more.'

‘If you say so, dear. Personally I think there was more to it than that.'

‘Mother, you know how fanatical Ros is about her work,' Maggie said, irritated. ‘ Van Kendrick's name would have been bound to crop up in conversation.'

Dulcie shrugged. ‘ Well, since he's dead I suppose it's all academic anyway. And you are right about Ros being fanatical where work is concerned. I really don't know where her drive comes from!'

Not from you, that's for sure, Maggie thought crossly.

‘Has Ros seen Brendan recently, do you know?' she asked, changing tack.

‘Not that I know of. I was saying the other day, we never hear Brendan on the wireless these days. Do you know why that is?'

‘I think he lost his job, Mother.'

‘Lazy toad,' the Colonel interjected.

‘I beg your pardon, dear?'

‘His name came up at the Rotary lunch a couple of weeks ago. Old Forsythe said he'd applied to them for a job. Naturally he didn't get it. With a reputation like his they wouldn't touch him with a bargepole.'

Alan Forsythe, a fellow Rotarian, was a leading light in the local commercial radio station.

‘You didn't tell me that!' Dulcie said, piqued.

‘Didn't want to upset you, old girl. Thought it better not to, in view of the things that were being said about him.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘Oh, gone completely off the rails. Forsythe thought he'd gone a bit batty, due to drink probably. Said he was quite irrational and seemed to be going blank-o. Had trouble remembering his own name, according to Forsythe.'

‘Oh surely not!'

‘Well, you know what I mean. Seen it in the army when a fellow drinks too much – he loses himself. Alcohol destroys the brain cells. It'll be his liver next, mark my words. He'll be dead of cirrhosis before he's forty.'

‘Oh dear, I do hope not! Perhaps Rosalie is better off without him.'

‘Believe you me, she is.'

‘He did behave very badly towards Rosalie,' Dulcie conceded. For a moment she was lost in thought, her butterfly brain working overtime as she put together, for the first time, unpleasant and conveniently forgotten happenings from the past with the more ominous aspects of the present situation. ‘You don't think he has harmed Rosalie in some way, do you?' she asked anxiously.

‘I don't know, Mother,' Maggie said. ‘ But I think he could be capable of it.'

‘Oh my goodness! Do you suppose we should go to the police?'

‘We already have – remember?'

‘Oh yes, of course – they came here. But do they know about Brendan? Perhaps
you
should phone them, Harry, tell them what sort of man he is. If you were to mention Alan Forsythe's name, tell them what he knows about him, they would surely take notice.'

‘All Forsythe said was that he is useless these days as a broadcaster. There's no law against that, unfortunately,' the Colonel replied testily. ‘Don't upset yourself, my dear. What are you thinking of, Margaret, frightening your mother in this way.'

‘But if Rosalie …'

‘Harry's right, Mother,' Maggie said. ‘There's nothing new you can tell the police. They seem convinced Ros has gone off of her own accord – just as you were. There's no point getting yourself into a state. There could be any number of explanations for her disappearance.'

Dulcie thought again for a few moments, then brightened.

‘You're right. Let's put it out of our minds and talk about something different. Goodness knows, we see you so seldom, we don't want to spoil it by being morbid!'

Her short concentration span exhausted and her ability to shut out anything which might trouble her reasserting itself, Dulcie steered the conversation towards the mundane and the frivolous and, most of all, to herself. When Maggie left, midway through the afternoon, Ros had not been mentioned again.

Driving back to Bristol Maggie tried to convince herself that her mother was right to refuse to be worried. In all probability there was a perfectly rational explanation for Ros's disappearance which she and Mike had refused to acknowledge because it did not suit them to. Dreadful as it was to imagine that something horrific had happened to her, at least it left the image of the Ros they loved intact. But if she had run off with someone else or if she was, as Jayne had suggested, the Vandina mole, taking the salary of one employer whilst actually working for another, and betraying the trust placed in her, then she immediately became a different person, someone Maggie did not know at all. Dulcie, however, looked at it in quite a different light. She could, it seemed, happily accept Ros for whatever she was in the most simplistic way.

Back at the cottage Maggie parked the car, wondering what to do next. The feeling of helplessness and utter frustration was beginning to get to her. She had seen all the people who might be able to help and had come up with nothing. And Ros was still missing.

There was an official-looking envelope addressed to Ros in the mail basket; Maggie took it into the kitchen, tearing it open as she went. She had no qualms now about opening Ros's mail – if she turned up safe and well and was angry about the invasion of her privacy so be it. In the meantime Maggie was anxious to learn everything she could about her sister's life in the search for a clue. On this occasion, however, when she realised that the envelope contained a bank statement she did wonder momentarily whether she was going too far by prying into Ros's finances. But she cast her eye down the statement all the same, noting Ros's healthy bank balance, the input of her substantial salary and a number of large standing orders – her mortgage repayment, insurance premiums and a budget account transfer. Then, somewhere at the back of her mind, alarm bells began to jangle and she ran her eye once again down the column of outgoings.

The statement was a bi-monthly one and in the early weeks regular withdrawals had been made using a cashpoint card. But towards the latter part of the statement there were no such withdrawals. Maggie traced the date of the last one – two days before Ros had disappeared. After that – nothing. The only recent outgoings were a few standing orders and a couple of cheques which obviously pre-dated her disappearance.

Maggie felt sick with sudden dread. Surely if Ros had gone away she would have needed cash by now? The final withdrawal was not a particularly large one – the same fifty pounds that Ros apparently took out for spending money every week. And there were no recent cheques or Switch transactions either, nothing to indicate that she had paid hotel or restaurant bills, nothing to cover a train fare from Bristol to anywhere.

It was possible, of course, that if she was with someone then it was he who was picking up the bills. But Ros was nothing if not independent – she liked to pay her own way. Then again, perhaps she was using Access or Visa, but there was no large payment in the statement which might indicate a credit card bill. And in any case surely she would need
cash
, to make small everyday purchases if nothing else.

Maggie's feeling of foreboding deepened. She glanced at her watch. Mike should be home from school by now – unless he had another cricket match. She went back into the hall, but before she could pick up the telephone it began ringing. Telepathy, she thought. Mike is ringing me. She snatched it up.

‘Hello?'

‘Maggie? It's Steve Lomax.'

For a moment, her mind elsewhere, she couldn't think who Steve Lomax was. Then she remembered.

‘Steve. Hello.' It was difficult to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

‘I was wondering if perhaps I could take you out for a drink this evening.'

‘This evening?' She was thinking quickly. She had hoped to see Mike this evening, but Steve was a definite link with Ros, a contact with Vandina. If Brendan had nothing to do with Ros's disappearance then something connected with Vandina offered the only other real possibility.

‘Perhaps you already have other arrangements,' he was saying smoothly.

‘No … no, I haven't any plans for tonight.'

‘Then can I persuade you to spend it with me?'

‘All right. Why not?'

‘Good! Shall I pick you up? Say about eight?'

‘Fine. I'll look forward to it.'

She put the phone down, then picked it up again and dialled Mike's number. But it was only his answering machine.

‘I need to speak to you,' she said. ‘ I shall be going out at about eight. Perhaps if you get in before then you could call me.'

She replaced the receiver, and only then did she realise she was trembling.

‘So – what was all that about, darling?'

Steve Lomax replaced the telephone receiver and swung his blue leather swivel chair around to see Jayne Peters-Browne standing in the doorway of his office.

Her pose was studiedly sultry – and striking – one hand raised against the door jamb so that the creamy silk of her blouse strained over her full breasts, one hip thrust provocatively forward, but instead of the usual rush of desire he felt only irritation.

As a lover Jayne was matchless; he did not think he had ever known a woman with more to offer. He liked her voraciousness; the fact that she was totally uninhibited was a sensual turn-on. Making love to her was like making love to an active volcano, stimulating, satisfying and somehow darkly dangerous. But the fact that he took her to bed did not give her the right to invade the other areas of his life. It didn't mean she had any claims on him – and it certainly did not mean she could walk into his office uninvited and quiz him on private telephone calls she might overhear.

‘Did you want something?' he asked coolly.

For a moment she looked slightly nonplussed. Then her expression hardened, green eyes sharp, full lips taking on a downward droop.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did. I wanted to ask you about the plans Dinah has to reverse the Reubens déb ‚cle.'