The Shortest Journey (7 page)

I led her into the sitting room and mentally groaned.
I had embarked on the dog-washing straight after breakfast, before
I had done any tidying up and the room was just as I had left it
the night before. Then I had had a sudden fit of rearranging some
of my books and there were piles of them on the floor as well as a
dirty coffee cup (me), a dog bowl (Tris), an empty saucer (Foss)
and a half-chewed Bonio (Tessa).

‘Oh dear,’ I said helplessly, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t
got around to clearing up this morning. Do, please, sit down.’

She removed a pile of newspaper cuttings from one of
the chairs and sat down cautiously.

‘Oh, I quite understand. You intellectuals have your
minds on higher things.’

I ignored this remark and offered her coffee.

‘No, thank you. It’s very kind of you but I haven’t
much time. Goodness...’ She broke off and brought out from the seat
of the chair an old cabbage stalk.

‘Oh, how awful! It’s Tess – she keeps thinking she’s
a retriever and bringing things in from the compost heap! I do hope
it hasn’t marked your skirt.’ It was just my luck that she was
wearing a pale coffee-coloured suit which probably showed every
speck.

She cast the cabbage stalk to the ground with some
distaste and said impatiently, ‘Never mind, I expect it will clean.
I wanted to talk to you about Mummy.’

‘Oh dear, yes. It must be such a dreadfully worrying
time for you. I was absolutely appalled when Mrs Wilmot told
me.’

‘You really have no idea where she is? I know she
used to confide in you and I did hope that you might have a clue as
to where she might have gone.’

‘I’m sorry. She never gave me any sort of hint that
she might be going anywhere. And anyway, it really does sound as if
she meant to come back – I mean, she told Ivy that she’d be back
for tea. I am most horribly afraid that there must have been some
sort of accident. I suppose you haven’t heard anything else from
the police?’

‘No, nothing. I don’t know what sort of enquiries
they’ve been making but it does seem most peculiar that no one
seems to have seen her. Can you think of anything at all that might
have happened to her?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’

Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to tell Thelma about
the sleeping tablets. She was Mrs Rossiter’s daughter and she did
seem very anxious about her mother’s disappearance, but I had the
feeling that the concern was somehow for herself and not for her
mother. It was concern, but not distress.

‘It couldn’t have happened at a more difficult time,’
Thelma said.

‘Yes, of course, you’ve got all these new commitments
you were telling me about, those splendid new clients.’

‘Yes, there is that – and it really hasn’t been easy
finding time to come down here and try and sort things out. I blame
Mrs Wilmot. What is the use of a matron who lets her old people go
wandering about like that, without any sort of check on them?’

‘Oh, come now, they’re not in prison.’

‘Well, you know what I mean. It’s quite
irresponsible. I shall be writing a very strong letter of complaint
to the Managing Director. I suppose I could sue, if something has
happened to Mummy.’

Her voice became more animated at the prospect and
she continued, ‘No, all that is inconvenient enough, but what’s
really awkward is that she should be missing now that Aunt Maud is
dying.’

‘Oh dear, yes. I do see that it must be very
upsetting for her. If they’ve told her, that is. I mean, they may
just have kept it from her.’

‘What on earth do you mean? Oh, I see. No, it’s not
that. No, the problem is that if Mummy’s still not been found when
Aunt Maud dies, it’s going to be absolute hell trying to sort out
the Trust.’

‘The Trust?’

‘Yes, my grandfather was a most peculiar old man and
he left his money tied up in a really tiresome way.’

‘Oh dear. I know that Trusts can be rather odd. Peter
used to tell me about some very eccentric ones he had to deal
with.’

‘Gordon says that all Trusts are set up simply to
make money for the lawyers,’ she said.

I laughed, though I don’t think she meant it as a
joke.

‘Anyway.’ she continued, ‘the whole thing is
thoroughly ill-conceived. I suppose I’d better tell you, then
you’ll see how difficult all this is going to be for me. I expect
you know that my grandfather made a great deal of money in South
Africa. He owned three department stores – in Johannesburg and
Durban and one in Pietermaritzburg. He sold the Jo’burg and Durban
stores in the nineteen-thirties when he brought his daughters back
to England – my grandmother had died by then. But he wouldn’t sell
the Pietermaritzburg store. It was the first one he opened and
somehow he felt sentimental about it, I suppose.’ Her tone nicely
combined respect for her grandfather’s business acumen and contempt
for his sentiment. ‘When Mummy and Aunt Maud married, he set up
this Trust. They would each have a moiety – that’s a share.’ she
explained condescendingly. (I didn’t remind her that I had been
married for over twenty years to a solicitor.) ‘A share of the
interest on the money he got from the sale of the two stores. It
was over a million then, in the ‘thirties – and a million was a
million in those days. And, of course, it was pretty shrewdly
invested. He was a good businessman. I suppose.’ she said
complacently, ‘that’s where I get it from. Anyway, under the Trust
Mummy and Aunt Maud inherited the interest, not the capital, and
could only bequeath it to their children – not to their husbands.
For some reason Grandfather never had a very high opinion of
Daddy’s business sense and he always said that Uncle James would
never make old bones – and do you know, he was right, because Uncle
James died only ten years after they were married.’

‘Goodness!’ I said, quite overwhelmed by all this
financial detail. ‘The problems of wealth. But what happens to the
capital?’

‘Oh, that remains intact in the Trust, rather like an
entail, so that the interest continues through the generations.
But’ – and here her lips set in a thin line of disapproval –
‘there’s the question of the third department store.’

‘The one in Pietermaritzburg?’

‘Yes. He had this thing about keeping it in the
family. So he said in his will that it must always remain a private
company and it must also be kept intact, under one owner. The
company mustn’t ever be divided up but must go to the heir – the
eldest child, whether male or female – of his surviving
daughter.’

‘So that if your aunt Maud dies first, then your
mother’s heir – and that would be you, because you’re older than
Alan – will inherit it, but if your mother dies before your aunt
Maud, then your cousin Marion will get it.’

‘Exactly. And the amount of money is quite
staggering. You see, in addition to the day-to-day profits of the
business, and it’s a really big concern now, there’s all the money
from it (and the interest on that) that’s been mounting up since
Grandfather died. That’s in another Trust fund. You see what I mean
about lawyers; they must have made a fortune out of it
already!’

I decided to ignore this slight on the legal
profession. ‘It does seem a very complicated situation. And, as you
say, there is a great deal of money involved.’

‘Exactly.’ Her voice rose and she became more excited
than I had ever seen her. ‘You see how monstrous it is – and you
can see how unbelievably difficult it is that Mummy should have
disappeared just now when Aunt Maud is on her last legs.’

‘Yes, I do see...’

‘I bet Marion can’t wait to get her hands on that
money – and that playboy husband of hers, he’s never done a day’s
work in his life; they’ve just sponged off Aunt Maud all these
years. It’s so unfair when you think how hard Gordon and I have
worked and how much difference it would make to the business to
have that sort of extra capital just now. I’m sure that if
Grandfather were alive he would see that we ought to have it.’

I refrained from pointing out that if her grandfather
were alive the situation wouldn’t have arisen and chose another
tack. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met Marion’s husband.’

‘Van, they call him. He’s Dutch. Such a peculiar
thing to marry a Dutchman! He’s supposed to be a painter, but I’ve
never heard that he’s sold any of his pictures. They’ve lived for
ages with Aunt Maud in that dreary house just outside Inverness.
They’ve got a pack of unruly children, I can’t remember how many.
They used to come down and stay with us sometimes – I can’t think
why. Daddy always made it perfectly clear that they weren’t
welcome, but you know how thick-skinned some people are. And
Mummy’s always been rather silly and sentimental about Family, as
she calls it.’

A sudden tapping at the window made her turn
sharply.

‘Oh, don’t be alarmed. It’s Foss, my cat, he wants to
come in.’

I got up and unlatched the window and Foss leapt down
with a loud cry. With that particular instinct cats have for
annoying people who dislike them, he made straight for Thelma and
jumped up on to her lap, where he kneaded her skirt with his claws,
thereby finishing its destruction. Thelma, in her turn, uttered a
cry that was almost Siamese in its intensity, and I rushed over to
remove my errant animal. With some difficulty I managed to unhook
his claws and, lifting him off in spite of his very vocal protests,
pushed him outside the door, where he continued to make his
feelings known.

In some trepidation I turned back to Thelma.

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I do hope he hasn’t pulled
too many threads. Sometimes you can pull them back from the other
side – such an attractive skirt...’

It was a measure of her preoccupation with things
financial that she didn’t make any cutting remarks about
uncontrollable animals. Ignoring my incoherent babbling, she said,
‘You do realise how absolutely vital it is that we find Mummy
immediately. Otherwise the legal complications that will arise
when Aunt Maud dies will be appalling – it will cost a fortune!
Simon – he’s our solicitor – is marvellous, but you know how the
money gets simply eaten up by any sort of protracted legal wrangle.
So are you sure there’s nothing you can tell me that might throw
any light on what can have happened to her?’

I decided then that wild horses wouldn’t make me tell
Thelma about the sleeping tablets. In fact I was so disgusted by
her blatantly mercenary attitude that I could hardly bring myself
to be civil.

‘No,’ I said curtly, ‘I’ve told you. I know
nothing.’

My unaccustomed tone seemed to make her suspicious
and she gave me a hard stare before she got to her feet and picked
up her handbag.

‘Well, if you do hear anything, please get in touch.
You have my number – just a minute, I’ll give you the office one as
well.’

She opened her bag and found a business card which
she handed to me. I took it without looking at it and went to open
the door.

‘Have you got your car here?’

‘Yes, I drove down. British Rail is quite hopeless
nowadays.’

A black BMW was parked in the drive but I didn’t go
with her as she got into it, nor did I wave as she drove away. I
just stood in the doorway until she was out of sight.

Foss was in the kitchen when I went in, sitting
hopefully on the draining-board, waiting for someone to turn on the
tap so that he could bat at the water. I snatched him up and hugged
him, which surprised but did not displease him.

‘Oh, Foss,’ I said, ‘what a good boy you are!
Destroying Thelma’s beastly skirt like that!’

He opened his large blue eyes and regarded me
benevolently.

‘What an unspeakable person she is! How dear Mrs R.
could have produced such a foul daughter …’

I put Foss back on to the draining-board and absently
turned on the tap for him. As the water dribbled into the sink I
considered the strange financial arrangements that Thelma had told
me about. For the first time I contemplated the possibility that
Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance might have been engineered by someone
who wanted her out of the way. That she might have been abducted,
even killed. The idea seemed fantastic – such things could not
happen in a place like Taviscombe. ‘What, in our house!’ Lady
Macbeth’s words echoed through my head in that irritating way that
quotations sometimes do, going round and round meaninglessly.

The people who would benefit most from her
disappearance would, I supposed, be Marion and her husband. I tried
to remember my rare meetings with Marion, when we were all
children and she had come down occasionally to stay at the Manor. I
had a vague recollection of a tall, rather awkward girl, who always
seemed to be plunging about – clumsy, too. I remembered an
unpleasant scene with Colonel Rossiter when she had somehow
contrived to break a valuable Chinese vase. And she had apparently
plunged into relationships in the same awkward way. I recalled
confidential grown-up conversations between Mrs Rossiter and my
mother, lowered voices which I heard with one ear while I was
flicking over the pages of
Country Life
on the blessed
occasions when Thelma wasn’t there. Maud, it seemed, was very
worried about Marion. She had taken up with a rock-and-roll singer,
with an actor, with a plumber ... The plumber was bought off by
Maud, the rest had drifted away. Marion had settled down, and taken
a secretarial course, was going to train as a physiotherapist, had
gone to Holland as an au pair. She came back from Holland with a
Dutch husband. From Maud’s point of view, I think it suited her to
have Marion and her family living with her. As Thelma had said,
what the Dutchman wanted was to be maintained in a comfortable
style so that he could go on painting and Marion seemed to have
settled for family life and a lot of children.

But their pleasant life-style would still go on when
Maud was dead. Marion would inherit her mother’s interest in the
capital; they would be no worse off. But people do strange things
when a lot of money is involved, and a million pounds is a lot of
money. If they had arranged to meet Mrs Rossiter in Taunton, had
driven her to some lonely spot in the Quantocks ... No. These were
silly morbid imaginings – more suited to one of those television
thrillers that caused Mrs Jankiewicz so much disquiet. I turned the
tap off briskly and went in to tidy up the sitting room.