Hot on the Trail (16 page)

At least the police had turned up in the nick of time and from then on everything had gone right. As Eve fell from her chair, Charles jumped up, but he tripped on the rug and fell over. A couple of the police officers were then able to seize him and he was taken away muttering Victoria’s name over and over again. Despite protesting, Eve was taken to the hospital to be checked over, but was soon sent back to the hotel.

“So, is it back to sightseeing tomorrow, David?” Eve asked.

“Are you up to it?”

    “Yes, of course. We’ve missed so much with all this hassle, what with Joanna and Charles and then my house and being poisoned; that we’ve not seen a lot of Perth. I think we need to get back to enjoying ourselves.”

“I thought you might want to give up and go home?”

“Of course not. I want to put this behind me. I’m certainly not going to be chased out of the country.”

David was a little disappointed by her reply. He wouldn’t have minded going home after all that had happened, but as Eve had been the victim, he thought that it had to be her decision.

Now that Eve was safe and sound, David had unfortunately resumed worrying about all the problems relating to her house, in particular who had poisoned her. He couldn’t forget that when Eve had been kidnapped by Charles, they had gone to the house to try and discover if Marion was the one who should be in prison, not Vera. However, they were still none the wiser about Marion’s innocence.

Eve, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten all about this and in a way, David was glad. No doubt she would remember, but for the moment he decided it was best not to remind her. She needed to take things easy and not think about any problems for the time being.

“Well then, where do you want to go tomorrow, Eve?” he asked instead.

“Let’s get the guide book out and plan the next few days.”

 David smiled. He was pleased that she seemed to have forgotten about the house. She definitely looked like she wanted to enjoy her holiday now and he decided he would try to do the same.

The next few days went by quickly and in David’s opinion, surprisingly pleasantly. He was determined to put the past few days behind them and he decided to take charge for once. He wanted to make sure that Eve saw as much of Perth and the surrounding area as possible. Most of all, he wanted her to be happy.

They spent a day visiting the neighboring port town of Fremantle, a pulsating and exciting city with bustling markets, lively cafes and plenty of colonial history for them to absorb themselves in. There were great shops for Eve to get her well-needed dose of retail therapy and art galleries for David to wander round while Eve shopped.

    They also visited Fremantle prison which had only stopped serving as a jail in 1991.  With solitary cells and gallows, they both found it to have an eerie atmosphere.

On another day they went to Caversham wildlife park, David wanting to indulge Eve’s love of animals. Then finally, they enjoyed wine tasting in the Swan Valley. Eve was in her element as she considered herself to be a great connoisseur of wines.

Every evening they returned to their hotel exhausted, but after showers and a short lie down, were ready to go out to dinner, willing to try different places each night.

After a few days however, as they sat eating their main course in a sophisticated Italian restaurant, David noticed that Eve was picking at her food and seemed miles away. He was pretty certain he knew why, but he wasn’t going to say anything. It was up to her to broach the subject if that was what she wanted.

For the first two days since her kidnapping ordeal, Eve just wanted to try and forget it; in fact she wanted to forget about every crime she had been involved in, she wanted to forget about Dimitris Kastrinakis, she wanted to forget about Vera and Marion, she wanted to forget about Joanna Neonakis and most of all, she wanted to forget about Charles Sheffield.

However, despite David’s efforts to make her days as pleasant as possible, her nights had been more difficult. David had not realized that anything was wrong as she had refused to wake him. He had been trying so hard to make sure she was having a lovely time that she didn’t want to spoil it. 

The first two nights after it had all happened, she had woken up a few times having panic attacks about Charles. She had thought of all the scenarios that could have happened instead of what did. Having panic attacks were so out of character for her and she didn’t like them one bit.  

Luckily, the following night she slept right through, but she was still thinking about Charles during the day. She wanted it to stop, feeling that she was weak letting him take over her mind. Nevertheless, she still managed to hide this from David, keeping a smile on her face throughout the day.

By the evening of the fourth night she was thinking a little less of Charles, but now Vera and Marion had replaced him.

“David,” Eve ventured, putting her knife and fork down, unable to eat anymore of her gnocchi. She wasn’t sure if she was wise bringing up the subject, but she didn’t feel as if she could keep her thoughts to herself anymore. “I think we should go to the house tomorrow.”

“Why?” David answered abruptly. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to see that house ever again.

“It’s still my house and I’m not going to leave it to rot.”

“Perhaps you should think about selling it after all.”

“No,” Eve said quickly. “It’s my house and nobody is going to drive me out of it. And talking about that, we never did find out if it was Vera or Marion who tried to kill me. I presume Vera is still in jail waiting for her trial?”

“I have no idea where Vera is, but I think we should leave everything to the police, don’t you, darling? They’re better equipped to deal with this than you are.”

“I’m not sure. As much as I’m not keen on Vera, I don’t think she did all those awful things. Perhaps we could set a trap for Marion.”

“No, Eve,” David said firmly. “Not after what you’ve just been through. I can’t believe that you’d want to do anything ever again after the experience you had with Charles.”

“But I can’t leave things as they are. What if it is Marion? I could leave the house to go back to Crete and come back later to find it burnt down.”

“All I’ll agree to, Eve, is that we’ll go to the house and talk to Marion, That’s all, nothing else. We’ll go tomorrow morning.”

Eve smiled and thanked David, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

I knew it wouldn’t take too much to wear him down. One step at a time, that’s all it takes.

Charles was fading from Eve’s mind quite quickly now, as Marion took over.

* * *

After breakfast the following day, Eve and David set out for the house. Eve was feeling quite excited at the thought of solving, another case although she wasn’t quite certain how she was going to do it. It would be quite difficult to catch Marion in the act of actually doing something to her or to the house. In fact she probably wouldn’t do anything now that Vera was in prison.

Eve felt sorry for Vera. Eve had read on the internet that morning that bail had been set at 300,000 Australian dollars, but none of her family had that sort of money so she was stuck in jail. Eve certainly wasn’t going to pay it. There was still a chance that Vera was guilty. Eve hadn’t completely ruled her out of the picture.

Arriving at the house, they both went inside straightaway. Eve felt a little strange as she entered, perhaps even a touch frightened. She remembered the last time she was there and was more than pleased that David was with her this time.

Eve took David straight into the kitchen to show him the finished product. He was impressed with it, but looking at Eve’s face, he saw no joy there as he would have expected. Had Charles Sheffield ruined the house for her, or was this temporary? He wondered if she would ever get over the experience. She said she wanted to keep the house, but if she kept thinking about Charles, there would be no point.

All of a sudden they heard a knocking at the door.

“It’s usually Vera who knocks as soon as I arrive,” Eve said, a slight smile appearing on her face. “Can’t say it’ll be her this time.”  

Eve went to open the door and was pleased to see Sarah standing there. Eve thought it was nice to have met one normal person amongst the group of oddballs she had been unfortunate to have encountered on her visit to Australia.

“Sarah, how lovely to see you. Do come in.”

‘I saw you arrive and had to come over.”

“Go and sit in the lounge. I was just about to make a coffee.”

This time, Eve had come to her house prepared and had brought tea, coffee, milk, sugar and biscuits with her.

It wasn’t long before Eve came into the lounge with the coffee. Sarah, who had been chatting to David, spoke to her immediately. 

    “I was so sorry to hear about the ordeal you went through. You’re alright now though, aren’t you? You look well”

“Yes, I’m fine. Well, just about. It did frighten me quite a bit. Charles Sheffield suffers from some sort of mental disorder and I don’t think he was taking his meds. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. A lot of the things he said didn’t quite make sense. I do feel I was lucky to get out of there alive.”

“Oh Eve, it must have been awful for you. Hopefully he’ll be put away for a long time.”

“I’m sure he will.”   

“And now you’ve still got all this business about the house hanging over you. I met Trevor, Vera’s son, the other day, and he’s adamant his mother didn’t do anything, not the fire, the burglary and most of all, poisoning you.”

“He called me too. I must say, I do have a tendency to believe him.”

“You do? Thank goodness. We, that is all of us in the street, do as well. We think Marion’s behind it all.”
David and Eve glanced at each other. This wasn’t missed by Sarah.

“You’ve thought about it too?” she exclaimed.

“Well it has crossed our minds.”

“There is something you should know about your house, Eve. It once belonged to Marion’s aunt. She died twenty-five years ago and left the house to her sister, Marion’s mother. Marion was apparently closer to her aunt than her mother and spent a lot of time in your house. She always expected it to be hers one day. However, her mother thought differently and wanted the money so she put it up for sale. Eventually your cousin bought it. Marion’s parents died recently and since then there have been strange goings-on in the house, so called haunting and she kept being burgled. Now you too have been burgled, had your shed set on fire and been poisoned. We’re all certain it’s Marion. As much as Vera would love her son to live next door, neither of them has got the money to buy the house and as much as Trev loves his mum, it would drive him crazy to be so close to her.”

“When you put it like that, it seems pretty likely that Marion’s the one who did all those things. The police have to be told.”

“They have been, but they say it’s just hearsay,” Sarah replied. “It’s not real proof. And Trevor was the one to tell them so they probably thought he was making it up, but other people down the street will definitely back him up.”

“Personally, I don’t think they’ve got concrete proof it was Vera who put the belladonna in our wine. The bottle was put back in the fridge so anyone could have tampered with it before Vera came round with it to top us up,” Eve commented.

“If you hadn’t mentioned being ill after eating the lamington, perhaps they wouldn’t have arrested her,” David suggested.

“Oh, don’t say that,” Eve moaned. “It makes me feel terrible.”

“I don’t think Vera blames you,” Saran put in. “It would help though if you didn’t put the house on the market for a while. I mean, I don’t know if you were thinking about it, but if you don’t, it may make Marion do something else which would clear Vera.”

“I wasn’t intending to sell the house, at least not yet, even though David wants me to.”

“I only suggested it because of everything that has happened, including Charles kidnapping you from here. You can’t feel happy in this house can you, Eve.”

“You know me, David, I get over things. Admittedly, this is taking me a bit longer than usual, but I will forget about it, don’t worry.”

David knew he was beaten. Eve would probably never sell the house and she’d be spending even less time on Crete than before, what with her trips to England as well.  He was disappointed, having thought that once they were married they would be spending most of their time together on Crete. Now it looked like she would never settle down and he couldn’t believe what a fool he was for ever thinking she could.

“Would you like me to keep an eye on the house for you, Eve?” Sarah asked.

“I wouldn’t mind. I ended up with quite a few sets of keys, so I’ll give you one. Perhaps you could check each morning to make sure there’s not been any more burglaries or anything else untoward.”

“Ok. I’m very pleased to help.”

Eve felt as if a load had been lifted off her mind. Sarah was nice and she seemed the ideal person to keep an eye on the house.

* * *

After Sarah left, Eve and David went next-door to speak to Marion. However, they might as well not have bothered for all the good it did them.

Entering Marion’s garden, Eve saw the curtains twitching on one of the upstairs bedroom windows. She was relieved that Marion was in and they hadn’t made a wasted journey.

David rang the doorbell, but nobody came to answer it.

“She’s there, David.” Eve said. “I saw her curtains twitching.”

David knocked a few times and finally Marion came to the door.

“Yes, can I help you,” Marion asked, a little sharply.

“We’d like to ask you a couple of questions if you don’t mind, Marion. Can we come in?”

“No. No, you can’t come in. If you have something to ask, ask it here.”

She sounded defensive and Eve was surprised. Although they hadn’t become friends in hospital, they had chatted a great deal and Eve thought Marion would be at least civil. Perhaps she was already thinking that they had come to accuse her of doing all the things Vera was in jail for.

“Certain things have come to our notice which give us reason to believe that you should be the one in jail, not Vera,” David said.