No Love Lost (23 page)

‘My dear,' she said, her words tumbling over one another in her usual rush, ‘the Chief Constable and I were wondering if you and your husband could come to dinner with us tomorrow night? I do know it's terribly short notice and I am so sorry, but we've been terribly rushed lately and I do want to fit you in.'

I opened my mouth, but she forestalled me.

‘Don't say no until you've heard me. We've got some quite interesting people coming – the Wedgwoods, the Rippers, that girl
Sally French, and – oh, by the way, did you know that that nice young doctor of yours had gone? Left the town, my dear. Fixed it up with young Pettigrew, wrote Dr Browning, and simply left. I believe it was fearfully sudden, he made up his mind last night. Dick Pettigrew told me.' Her eyes peered brightly into mine. ‘Perhaps you knew about it?'

‘I – I wasn't surprised. I mean it doesn't astonish me.' It was not a good effort on my part but then she had flustered me, as she always did with her well-meaning blunderbuss tactics.

‘You'd known him before, had you, Mrs Lane? I thought he was a complete stranger.' This came from little Mrs Roundell, trying to be nice in her fluttering ingenuous way. ‘We all liked him so much. He attended Mother last week and she adored him. Said he was sweet.'

‘And now he's gone.' Hester Raye grimaced. ‘Just our luck in Tinworth. Well now, Mrs Lane, what about tomorrow? Could you pin Victor down for a quarter to eight or eight o'clock? Do come.' She was still holding my arm and now she shook it slightly and came out with one of her typical pronouncements. ‘My Reggie is dying to see you both. I told him all about meeting you yesterday and he was terribly intrigued. He's been worried about you too, you know, just as we all have.'

How dared she say it! She took my breath away, although she had long since ceased to amaze me. I could not believe that the old Chief Constable, who was a very decent but not particularly sensitive man, could have grieved much on my account, but I could easily guess what she had told him.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I did not imagine that Victor and I would ever be going out to dinner together again, but that after all was a thing that Victor had a right to know before anybody else and so I merely stalled.

‘It's very kind of you,' I said, ‘but I really think you'll have to count us out. I don't think I dare fix up anything definite at the moment.'

‘Why not?' This was Amy Petty. She spoke too sharply and too brashly for even the known Jackson family manner to excuse her. Everybody turned and stared at her. She looked very odd, her small eyes defiant and bright spots of colour on her
high cheekbones. She said no more but stood her ground, waiting for me to reply. In the end I had to say something.

‘I'm not at all sure what Victor has fixed,' I explained. ‘He's in London at the moment and I'm not quite sure when he'll be back.'

It seemed an ordinary social pronouncement to me but its effect was extraordinary. There was dead silence. Amy Petty remained looking at me while everybody else glanced awkwardly away.

‘He was home last night. You told my sister so.' The words were forced out of Amy. She was being more impolite than even Tinworth permitted and she realized it, but she appeared to be incapable of controlling herself. I felt almost sorry for her.

‘Why yes,' I said glibly, more, I think, with the idea of putting her at ease than for any other reason, ‘so I did. I thought I'd heard him come in, you see, but he was detained in London and couldn't get back. He telephoned this morning.'

There was a little sigh from them all. Mrs Roundell alone smiled contentedly, as though to say that she had been right after all, and I was just going to pass on down the row to find myself a seat when Miss Bonwitt, who until now had been perfectly silent, said quietly: ‘I am so glad. It was his car, you see. There is just one place in my garden where one can look down through the trees and see it in that corner by the cottage wall.' She had one of those high-pitched apologetic voices which seemed to make every pronouncement sound like a spirit message, inconclusive but faintly ominous.

I swung round on her, startled into frankness. ‘Cottage?' I demanded.

‘Yes, your cottage. Mr Lane's little cottage,' she continued placidly. ‘I daresay you feel it's quite remote out there on the edge of the golf course. I know if it were mine, I should. But actually, as I say, there is one point in my garden where one can look round the shoulder of the hill and see down through the leaves right into the corner where Mr Lane parks his car. I can't see any other part of the cottage, just that one wall at the back. I happened to notice the car there yesterday and naturally I
thought nothing of it, but when I went to the same place this morning to see if I'd dropped one of my gardening gloves I saw the car was still in the same place.'

I stood staring at her, my face drawn and frozen. The cottage! I thought. Oh, how
could
Victor do such a thing so near, so dangerously near? How
could
he subject himself and me to this humiliation?

‘Go and look for him, Mrs Lane.' Once again Amy Petty spoke explosively, as if she could not keep the words back.

‘Oh no,' I protested far too violently, ‘no, of course not. I mean to say, I think Miss Bonwitt must have caught sight of the car on the only two occasions when it happened to be there. I know Victor was calling at the cottage to – to take some things on his way to town, and I expect he called there on the way back. He keeps his golf clubs there, of course. He's probably home by now.'

Miss Bonwitt shook her wispy grey head at me and I noticed for the first time that her eyes were hooded, with webby lids, and were not just dull as I had always thought.

‘Oh no,' she said in a quiet singsong, ‘it wasn't like that, Mrs Lane, it wasn't like that at all. I first noticed the car about four o'clock yesterday afternoon when I was tying up my chrysanthemums, and when I went in about seven it was still there. This morning I got up very early because there is a lot to do in the garden, and it is so cool and pleasant in the dawn. I was out about five and, as I say, I went up to the chrysanthemums to see if I had dropped one of my gloves. The car was still there with the hood still down and the rug half hanging out as I'd seen it before. I did wonder, because you know we had a very sharp shower during the night.'

‘Victor must have forgotten it,' I murmured, and even to my own ears I sounded idiotic.

‘I hope so,' murmured Miss Bonwitt, ‘I hope so indeed. But since the car was still there, and still in exactly the same condition when I set out for the lecture three quarters of an hour ago, I did wonder if Mr Lane could have been taken ill up there alone. I was just mentioning it to the others when you came in … Mrs Lane.'

She made it sound frightful. Although her voice was placid and there were no undertones in it, yet she made it perfectly clear to everybody that she had watched that car all through the hours during which there was light enough to see it.

Hester Raye attempted to come to my rescue in a pleasant heavy way. She had her faults and was often rude, but she had the remnants of a decent upbringing and Amy Petty's performance had shocked her.

‘But if Mrs Lane says Victor telephoned this morning there's some other explanation for the car,' she said cheerfully. ‘Quite probably someone gave him a lift to London from the golf club so he hid his own car. It sounds as if it was hidden if it was in such a funny place, behind the cottage, I mean, and not in front.'

‘Yes,' said Miss Bonwitt quietly, ‘no one could have seen it from the road. That's why I wondered.'

She was silent for a long time and I felt myself shudder. It was a rather extraordinary and unlikely thing for Victor to do. I could believe he might be sufficiently inconsiderate to entertain someone at the cottage for an hour or so, even, since he seemed to have made an effort to conceal the car, all the evening, but I couldn't think that he'd stay there all
day
, especially without looking at his car. He was fussy about things like that. I had not noticed that there had been a shower, but Victor would have made sure, particularly if he had left the hood down.

‘I suppose he did telephone, Mrs Lane?' continued Miss Bonwitt after a long pause, and she raised her wrinkled lids and gave me a surprisingly intelligent stare. ‘Himself, I mean?' She was offering me an easy way out and I hesitated. It occurred to me that she knew rather a lot and had probably seen things before when she was tying up flowers at seven at night or pottering about in the dawn. I did not know what to say. It was rather peculiar, rather alarming.

‘Who sent the message, my dear?' Hester Raye's practical mind was troubled. ‘Who spoke on the telephone?'

‘It came from his club,' I said. It was the only lie I could think of and I hated it and myself and wished to goodness
I'd stuck to the truth in the first place. If Victor
had
been taken ill, broken an ankle or something, as they suggested, I had put up some fine behaviour!

Little Mrs Roundell laughed and clapped her hands. ‘How mysterious!' she said. ‘Or didn't you get it right? I often don't. I hate telephones. Percival says I'm mentally defective when it comes to messages. People gabble and the thing goes plop-plop-squeak, and you get cut off …'

‘Go out there and see, Mrs Lane. I'll drive you.' Amy Petty made it a command and when I glanced at her I saw that there was a queer sick look in her small eyes.

Hester Raye objected. ‘Not
now
,' she said with characteristic blindness to everything but her own convenience. ‘Not before the lecture. The hall is filling up, thank God, but there aren't nearly enough people here yet. My lecturer will be here any minute. Stay. You must stay for the talk.'

‘But if he has been taken
ill
,' said Miss Bonwitt with gentle firmness, ‘and I think he has, you know – the car has never been there so long bef … I mean I think she ought to make sure, Mrs Raye, I do indeed. I think Mrs Lane really ought to make sure.'

Amy Petty's big thin hand closed over my shoulder blade as if she were arresting me, and Izzy, feeling me jump, growled at her from my arms.

‘Go and see.'

‘I would,' announced Mrs Roundell with sudden decision. ‘I think I would. Telephones are the limit, and if he's there in pain or something, well, you'd never forgive yourself, would you? Just go and make sure and then tear back. I'll bag some seats for you near the door. Then you can just slip in.'

‘I'll never forgive you two if you clear off now,' Mrs Raye began, but turned away with a cry of welcome as a stout woman with her arms full of mixed flowers, followed by a pale girl staggering under a tray of vases, came sweeping down the hall towards us.

Amy Petty turned me bodily towards the nearest exit. ‘I'll drive you,' she repeated woodenly.

I went out into the side street which runs down past the back
door of the Library with her, but as I reached the pavement I hesitated.

‘Don't trouble,' I said. ‘I'll go back and get a bicycle. You go to the lecture.'

‘No. I'll come with you. My brother will drive us.'

I stared at her. I knew she had eight or nine brothers, in fact Tinworth appeared to be populated with Jackson menfolk, but I hardly expected to find one standing about in the street waiting to do taxi work.

‘Good heavens, no!' I exclaimed so loudly that a woman passing turned to look at us. I recognized her as the younger of the two sisters who kept the Teashoppe. I smiled at her awkwardly. ‘You certainly won't,' I added to Amy. ‘It's probably all nonsense. I'll go home and see if Victor's back and if he isn't I'll cycle over to the cottage and investigate.'

‘No. We'll drive you.' The Jacksons seemed to be obstinate as well as outspoken. ‘Come along.'

I went with her, her determination adding to my growing alarm. I was through with Victor and in the moments when I permitted myself to think about him I rather hated him, but I didn't like the idea of him lying helpless on a stone floor with a broken leg, him or anybody else. After Miss Bonwitt's tale about the car I knew I'd got to go to the cottage.

As we came over the road I realized why Amy had mentioned her brother. Jim Jackson owned the leather shop on the corner and kept his car in the open yard at its side. He came out of his office at once when she called him and listened to her explanation with tremendous interest. As I observed his slightly foxy face, pink under his sandy hair, my misgivings returned.

‘I
can't
give you all this trouble,' I said. ‘Let me take a taxicab.'

His eyes were bright and knowing and, under his secret amusement, kindly, I thought.

‘Oh, it's no trouble,' he said, and if he had added, ‘It'll give her something to talk about for weeks,' he could not have made himself more clear. ‘You sit in the back with her,' he went on, looking at his sister.

There was nothing for it. They had decided to take me and
take me they did. If I'd not been so worried and embarrassed I should have found them comic. To all intents and purposes I was kidnapped. Jim refused point-blank to call at the school.

‘It's not worth it,' he explained, treading on the accelerator as we passed the gates. ‘It's only a mile and half to the cottage. If he's not there we'll call coming back, unless you want me to run you to London.'

This last remark appeared to strike him as inordinately funny and he kept grinning to himself over it all the way to the golf course. I could see his face reflected in the high polish of the dashboard. I sat in a corner of the car with Amy very close to me and Izzy crouching on my knee. I did not want Victor to be injured, but I found that I was praying that we should find anything in the world rather than an unexplained and inexplicable visitor.