Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (13 page)

We were married on a day like this, she thought, unaccountably excited. The wind smelled of salt and the sun was hotter but it felt just the same. They had been married quietly and quickly in Suffolk, where they were both based with the army just after the war. Neither had close relatives to invite, so they had invited no one at all, just two acquaintances to be witnesses. ‘What has it to do with anyone else?’ George had asked and she had agreed. After the simple ceremony they had cycled to the coast through fields of corn, riper than this one, through the wide and empty country. The wind blew over the fields from the sea and all the way along the straight, narrow road she longed to touch him, but they did not even link fingers and they hardly spoke. They spent one night in a small white cottage at Minsmere before George returned to Berlin.

I knew what he was like then, she thought. He was just the same: compulsive, frightened of failure. I loved him for it. I knew he would go back to Berlin because he had work to do, though he could have spent longer with me. We could have had a real honeymoon. In the same way he felt he had to go to Puddleworth with Alan Pritchard. He would give me the same sort of freedom.

She leaned over a wooden gate and looked down the valley towards the town. The wind blew through a small group of trees, turning the undersides of the leaves to the sun, making them silver grey with reflected light. It had been a long time since she had thought of George with that degree of intensity. They seemed too old and too used to each other for introspection.

Perhaps I should leave that to the teenagers, she thought, and remembered Helen and the Oliver boy. She hoped they would be happy.

Her resentment gone, she considered again the events of the morning. Away from Gorse Hill the reluctance of Richard to talk to his wife seemed curious, even sinister. The death of Eleanor Masefield seemed to have reversed the relationship between husband and wife. Veronica, even in her grief and confusion, was stronger and more decisive and Richard had gone to pieces. The girls had been left alone to cope with their shock and grief as best they could. Molly was intrigued by the family, and the possibility of a prolonged stay at Gorse Hill was no longer a hardship. She wanted to find out more about them. She wanted to know what was going on.

Perhaps I’ll find out who killed Eleanor Masefield before George does, she thought, elated by the wind and the memory of her passion for him. The idea was a challenge and an amusement. It would teach George, she thought, to take her for granted. She pulled her jacket around her and walked into the town.

Helen saw Molly in the town, but turned down an empty side street so that the woman should not see her. She did not want anyone to know that she had left school early. She had only gone into school to see Laurie. Her father had said that she and Fanny could stay at home and he seemed so fraught and distressed about Mother that she had felt she should have stayed at Gorse Hill to look after him. But she had needed to talk to Laurie, to find out why he had disappeared from Gorse Hill the day before, to be reassured that he had nothing to do with her grandmother’s death. So she had walked to the school on the other side of the town, as usual but when she got there no one had seen Laurie and she had left again during the mid-morning break.

In the town most of the people she passed were elderly. The small shops catered for their needs – there was a preponderance of chemists and shops selling Crimplene dresses, surgical stockings and winceyette nightdresses. The young mothers who still lived in Sarne went to the superstore on the bypass for their groceries and to Hereford for their clothes. Sarne itself seemed intent on preserving the serious nature of shopping and would have preferred ration books and Eastern European queues. There was no sense of fun or pleasure, no wine bars, boutiques or bookshops. On other occasions Helen would have been irritated by the tedium of the place but today she welcomed it and walked on without speaking to anyone.

She knew where Laurie lived though she had never been to his home. She had visited the council estate occasionally with her mother, delivering commodes and walking frames to elderly residents for the WRVS. She had never been there alone and as she walked past the pretty, well-kept gardens she felt that people were peering behind lace curtains and that everyone knew who she was and why she was there. Outside the Llewellyns’ house two toddlers with runny noses stopped playing in the jungle of long grass, pushed their faces against the bars of the broken gate and stared at her as she walked past.

The house on the end, where Laurie lived, was a little larger than the others and although the garden was tidier than the Llewellyns’ it did not meet the general standard. The grass had been roughly cut but there were no flowers in the front border and the hedge was overgrown. As she walked up the path to the front door Helen realized that she was shaking.

Nan Oliver opened the door. She had been awake all night. Michael and Carol had been reluctant to go back to sleep after being wakened by the police and even when they had settled she had been too worried to sleep. There had been no news of Steve.

‘Hello, Mrs Oliver,’ Helen said. It would have been so much easier if Laurie’s mother had not been there. ‘Is Laurie at home?’

‘Why?’ Nan Oliver demanded. What did this patronizing madam from Gorse Hill want from her family? Nan had always kept her private life separate from her work. ‘We had nothing to do with Mrs Masefield’s death.’ Helen was bewildered. She had not expected such hostility.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Laurie’s a friend. I’d like to talk to him.’

‘You’d better come in,’ Nan Oliver said. ‘He’s upstairs. I’ll give him a shout.’

She showed Helen into the front room. ‘It’s a mess,’ she said. ‘The police were here until all hours last night.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Helen said, as if she were in some way responsible for the inconvenience caused by the police.

On her way out of the room to call Laurie, Mrs Oliver hesitated.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said formally, ‘about your grandmother’s death. It must have been a terrible shock, especially to your mother.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said. She was grateful for the expected proprieties. ‘It was.’

Then the woman was gone. Helen could hear her heavy, tired footsteps on the stairs. She returned a few minutes later followed by Laurie, and stood just inside the door.

‘Would you like some tea?’ she said immediately, so that Helen could not look at Laurie at once to see how he seemed, but had to say politely that she would like tea, thank you, and that she took milk but not sugar and no, she didn’t mind it strong.

Mrs Oliver gave them a piercing and perceptive stare, then went into the kitchen and they could hear the sound of running water and the banging of crockery.

‘She doesn’t like me,’ Helen whispered. It seemed more important then than her grandmother’s death.

Laurie smiled. ‘She doesn’t like any of our girlfriends,’ he said. He looked tired, like his mother, with black smudges under his eyes.

‘Where did you go?’ she cried suddenly. ‘Yesterday. I looked for you and you weren’t there.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘ I didn’t know. About your grandmother. I had a row with my father. Then I came home.’

‘But you should have told me,’ she said. She would never have treated him like that.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again and he began to cry. She moved next to him, put her arms round him and pulled his head on to her shoulder, then stroked his stiff, black hair.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, as if talking to a baby, ‘I didn’t realize. I thought you didn’t care any more. I thought you had just forgotten about me.’

He pulled away from her indignantly. It seemed inconceivable to him now that he could have just forgotten about her, though that was precisely what had happened. He convinced himself and her that she mattered more to him than anything. There were still tears in his eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. I was so upset after seeing my father I didn’t want you to see me like that. I didn’t think you could care for someone so weak.’

‘Silly,’ she said. ‘You should have known. I don’t think you’re weak.’ She paused and took his hand. ‘Even if you were,’ she said, ‘I’m strong enough for both of us.’ They sat for a moment in silence. She looked towards the kitchen. ‘Can we go for a walk later?’ she said. ‘I want to talk.’

Before he could answer his mother came in. He was grateful for the interruption. He was in no state to make any decision. He was happy to be sitting there next to Helen. Helen thought Nan Oliver must have been listening but she looked at the older woman with increased confidence. Nan Oliver stared back. She had too much to cope with, she thought, without Helen Mead upsetting Laurie. She saw his tears and despite, her exhaustion felt protective and anxious. Laurie seemed oblivious of the tension between Helen and his mother. He had been learning a new song and the melody eddied round his mind. He could concentrate on nothing else. It had been a way of escaping the worry about his father and Steve and now it had taken him over.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ Helen asked, setting her cup and saucer on a small table. ‘You look as if you could do with some air.’

‘His dinner’s nearly ready,’ Nan Oliver said quickly. ‘He should stay here in case there’s any news.’

Laurie hovered between them, his mind filled with music.

‘I’m not really hungry,’ he said. He did not want to offend Helen again so soon. His mother would get over it. It did not occur to him that she really needed his company. She had always been so strong.

Nan Oliver shrugged her shoulders, tired and beaten.

‘Don’t be long,’ she said, with a last flicker of resistance. ‘You’ll have to be here when the little ones get home from school in case I have to go out.’

On the doorstep he hesitated, realizing for the first time how he was abandoning her, but Helen had taken his hand and was pulling him down the path.

Now they were out of the house Helen was not quite sure where to go. They wandered back towards the town.

‘Do you think your father killed Eleanor?’ Helen asked. It would be rather brave, she thought, to be the girlfriend of a murderer’s son.

‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled, still affected by the music and the reproach in his mother’s face.

‘It must be a dreadful worry,’ she said, sympathetic, understanding.

‘I’m not bothered about Dad,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel he belongs to us any more. It’s Steve. I wish I knew where he was.’

‘Perhaps he’s hiding,’ she said. ‘Not because he was involved at all but because he’s heard the police are looking for your father and he’s frightened. You must know him well. Where would he go? Friends?’

Laurie shook his head. ‘ The police have tried them,’ he said.

‘Didn’t he have any special places where he might be hiding?’ she asked, determined to help. ‘There was an old pigsty at the bottom of the garden at Gorse Hill where I used to go when I was a kid. I liked sitting there, especially when it was raining. Then I seemed cut off from the world. If I were running away that’s where I’d go.’

Laurie shook his head. ‘By the time we moved here we were too old for that sort of thing,’ he said, so that she felt foolish.

By that time they had reached the empty market square at the centre of the town. There was the smell of seed and grain from the agricultural suppliers on the corner and of frying bacon from the café on the end of the high street. The wind blew scraps of straw in swirls.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Shall we go in and have a coffee?’

He drifted after her, trying to think of an excuse to go home to his mother. The café was run by a fat bald man with a cigarette in his mouth. Helen had never been in there before. There was a full-length window looking on to the street, so they sat at the table like dummies in a shop window, fully visible from the pavement.

‘Oh no,’ Helen said. ‘There’s that little lady who’s staying at Gorse Hill, I hope she doesn’t tell Dad that I’ve missed school.’

Laurie said nothing. He wished he were back at home in his bedroom, with his guitar. His passion for Helen had faded. She was just another woman who might look after him and who made demands on him.

‘Perhaps she can help us to find your brother,’ Helen said, suddenly excited. She was determined to make herself indispensable to Laurie’s family. Then they would have to like her. ‘ Her husband’s a private detective. He’s the man Eleanor called in to look after the peregrines.’

Laurie muttered that in that case he could not be a very good detective but Helen was already on her feet, and to Laurie’s embarrassment began to wave.

Molly bought a mug of coffee and joined them at the table. She said nothing and waited for them to speak.

‘Laurie’s worried about his brother,’ Helen said. Now that the woman was sitting beside her she seemed more intelligent, more daunting than Helen had previously realized. The girl was suddenly shy. She did not want to make a fool of herself even for Laurie. ‘We wondered if you had any ideas about how we should start looking for him.’

‘The police are very good at that sort of thing,’ Molly said. She was thinking that this might be an opportunity to prove to George that their business and their marriage were an equal partnership, that she was as skilled at gaining information as he was. She drank some of the milky coffee and looked at Laurie.

‘Did Steve tell you where he had met his father to discuss the proposed new job?’ she asked. He thought back to the angry confrontation in his bedroom.

‘They met in a pub,’ he said. ‘In the Hop Pole.’

That, thought Molly, was an extraordinary stroke of luck. She had known the landladies of the Hop Pole for years.

‘I could ask in there for you,’ Molly said. ‘One of the regular customers may have overheard their discussion. They might have heard Steve and your father making plans.’

‘Shall we come with you?’ Helen asked. Molly shook her head.

‘You’re well known,’ she said. ‘There’s been a lot of publicity about the murder. I could be more discreet. I’ll tell you tonight if I have any luck.’

They left the café together. Molly, said goodbye and hurried off. Helen and Laurie stood awkwardly on the pavement.