The Snares of Death (14 page)

‘The nut cutlets are very nice,' the waitress commented in an almost friendly voice. ‘I recommend them.'

‘All right,' Becca agreed. ‘But with vegetables, I think, rather than salad.'

‘And I'll try the vegetable curry,' Toby decided.

‘With rice.' It was a statement rather than a question.

‘Yes.'

The young woman brought them cutlery, wrapped in bright green paper napkins; Toby waited till she'd gone before he began again. ‘As I was saying, Becca, it's all become very difficult for me. You know how strong my faith has been. You know that I helped to bring my father to Jesus, and that our lives have been built around the faith. But now – I just don't know any more. I
want
to believe it all, but it doesn't make sense to me any more. It's just not as simple as my father –
your
father, too – would like to make it seem.'

‘I'm not sure that I understand,' she said with a small frown.

‘For my father, and your father, it's all so black and white. Things are right, or things are wrong. You believe something, or you don't. You go to heaven, or you go to hell.'

‘Yes . . .'

‘But life just isn't like that! It's not black and white! There are so many shades of grey, Becca . . .' Toby stared down at the table, frowning. ‘So many shades of grey . . .' He looked at her again, his light brown eyes shining, almost as if with unshed tears. ‘Isn't it possible to believe in a God of love, without all the other stuff that goes with it? Without the judgement, and the narrow restrictions? Telling people how to live their lives?
Their
lives, Becca.' His voice shook. ‘Doesn't everyone have the right to live their life as they think best? And the way other people worship – who are
we
to say that it's wrong?'

‘Love,' Becca said. ‘Yes, I see.'

He smiled at her, suddenly radiant. ‘Yes, I knew that you'd understand.' He reached across the table for her hand, and gave it a squeeze.

They talked all through the meal, and through their pudding and their coffee. At last, reluctantly, Toby looked at his watch. ‘I mustn't keep you out any longer,' he said with real regret. ‘Or your father won't let you come out with me again.'

‘Well, it's been a lovely evening, Toby.'

He took her hand again. ‘You have no idea how much it's meant to me, Becca, talking to you like this.' He looked into her eyes earnestly. ‘You're the only person I've ever been able to be totally honest with. I feel so . . . so free now.'

The waitress slapped their bill on the table. ‘You can pay at the desk on your way out,' she announced.

Toby sighed and got up, then helped Becca out of her chair. As he paid the bill, she studied a large poster near the door. ‘Look, Toby. Isn't this poster smashing?'

‘British Animal Rights Coalition,' he read. ‘What a good idea. I think I saw something about them on television a few weeks ago.'

The waitress came around from behind the till. ‘You're welcome to join us any time,' she said with real warmth. ‘Shall I take your names for our mailing list?'

CHAPTER 16

    
Have I not remembered thee in my bed: and thought upon thee when I was waking?

Psalm 63.7

‘Mr Middleton-Brown?' the blonde girl said hesitantly, looking at the paper in her hand. ‘You gave me this letter to type two days ago, on Tuesday. I typed it for you – it's been signed and posted.' If it had been anyone but Mr Middleton-Brown, she wouldn't have dared mention it: Karen, the youngest and newest typist at the firm, the lowest of the low. For anyone else, she would have re-typed the letter, without a word. But Mr Middleton-Brown wasn't like the rest of the solicitors, who treated the typists and secretaries like so many pieces of furniture. Mr Middleton-Brown was different – he was nice. He always had a kind word for everyone and made a point of speaking to the girls by name, treating them like real people.

David looked absently and perplexedly at the paper she'd handed back to him. ‘So I did, Karen. So I did. Well then, never mind.' He went up the stairs to his office and shut the door behind him.

Karen sat for a minute with a puzzled frown. ‘I don't know what's the matter with Mr Middleton-Brown,' she said to the woman who was passing by with a stack of papers. ‘He just hasn't been himself lately.'

Nan perched on the edge of Karen's desk and leaned towards her confidentially. ‘What's he done now?'

‘He just gave me a letter to type that I'd already done, earlier in the week. That's not like him. And . . . oh, I don't know. He just seems so absent-minded. Almost like he doesn't even see you when he's talking to you. And he's been drinking ever so much tea. And keeping his office door shut.'

Nan smiled knowingly. Her position at the firm was a difficult one to define: she'd begun to work there several years ago, completely untrained and unqualified, after her youngest child started school. She'd begun as a general dogsbody, making cups of tea and running the photocopying machine. But her enthusiasm for the job and her natural abilities, along with her down-to-earth common sense, meant that before long she was being asked to do all sorts of things, and she had now become an indispensable fixture at the firm of Goodacre and Whitehouse. Everyone liked Nan, with her infectious smile, her curly brown hair, and her generous figure; even the solicitors knew her by name. ‘Do you know what I think?' she said. ‘I think that Mr Middleton-Brown is in love! It's that time of year, you know.'

Karen's large brown eyes widened. ‘In love! But he's . . . he's so old!'

Nan laughed, realising, as one who was over thirty herself, how differently things appeared to those under eighteen. ‘He's barely over forty. I suppose that must seem old to you – you're only a baby. But take it from me: there are a lot of women who think Mr Middleton-Brown is very attractive indeed.'

Karen shook her head, confronting an unbridgeable generation gap. ‘If you say so. Oh, I know he's awfully sweet, but . . . Do
you
think he's attractive?'

‘Oh, very. Not that I'm looking, mind you. My Charlie keeps me happy.' She chuckled at the thought of her stolid farmer husband, the only man she'd ever wanted.

‘But what makes you think he's in love?' Karen repeated.

‘Oh, I know about these things.' Nan leaned closer. ‘You said yourself he's been absent-minded and dreamy.'

‘Yes . . .'

‘When I took him up his tea a bit ago, he was sitting in his chair, staring off into space, with the daftest smile on his face. I don't think he even knew I was there. I know a man in love when I see one.'

‘But . . . who? Who's he in love with? Anyone we know?'

‘That's the question, isn't it? Who's the lucky woman?' Nan paused dramatically, and looked over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't overheard. ‘Do you know anyone called Lucy?' Karen shook her head. ‘Well, yesterday after he'd gone to lunch, I went up to his office to collect his dirty cups – as you say, he's been drinking tea by the gallon – and just happened to catch sight of his desk blotter. He'd written “Lucy” all over it!'

‘But that's the sort of thing my brother would do – and he's only sixteen!'

Nan chuckled again. ‘Well, that's the thing about men in love. They're all alike – it doesn't matter how old they are!'

Karen selected and absently contemplated a strand of her fine, limp hair, then began chewing the end of it. Her mother deplored this unconscious nervous habit, but haranguing had not cured her of it. ‘I don't know very much about Mr Middleton-Brown. Has he ever been married?'

‘No, I don't think he ever had much of a chance. He lived with his mum – took care of her, you know – till she died last year. She was a right old so-and-so, his mum. Made his life a real misery, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Did you ever meet her?'

‘Oh, I
saw
her once or twice, at the office Christmas do. But she wouldn't have spoken to me – I wasn't grand enough for her. She only talked to the solicitors. A real snob, she was. And he's such a nice man, too.' Nan turned quickly at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

‘Nan, would you mind doing me a favour?' David asked. ‘You know that French restaurant, the newish one?'

‘Oh, yes. My Charlie took me there for a real slap-up meal on our anniversary last year. A
romantic
meal,' she added slyly, with a significant look at Karen. ‘Candlelight, soft music . . .'

‘And it was good, was it? I just wondered if you'd mind ringing up and booking me a table for Saturday night? About eight o'clock, I should think. For two.' He added as an afterthought, ‘And could you check to make sure they do vegetarian food?'

‘Of course, Mr Middleton-Brown.'

‘Thanks, Nan.' He turned and was halfway up the stairs again, before adding over his shoulder, ‘Oh, and would you mind bringing me another cup of tea?'

‘Right away.' She grinned triumphantly at Karen as soon as he was out of sight and earshot. ‘What did I tell you?'

A few minutes later, David sipped the latest cup of tea distractedly. There was a pile of work on his desk – letters, telephone messages, and briefs, all requiring his urgent attention – but he was unable to concentrate on any of it.

The new bed had arrived the previous evening, and it had made some difference, or perhaps his exhaustion had just caught up with him at last – he'd finally slept a bit last night, dreaming again of Lucy. In the dream he had seen her face so clearly, had recognised all the features of the woman he loved.

But what disturbed him so profoundly now was that he was unable to picture her face in his mind, and the harder he tried, the more elusive her image became. He could remember each of her individual features, but they refused to coalesce in his mind into the whole of Lucy. They remained disparate, fragmented, tantalisingly close to being captured. The closest he'd come to picturing her, consciously, had been on the fringes of sleep. And sometimes, when he wasn't trying so hard, she was
almost
there, at the edge of his mind, waiting for him to glimpse her. David closed his eyes in frustration. Would he even recognise her when he saw her? he wondered fancifully. Tomorrow. Not long now. Tomorrow he'd see her.

CHAPTER 17

    
Man being in honour hath no understanding: but is compared unto the beasts that perish.

Psalm 49.20

The new BARC van, purchased with Nicholas Fielding's money, would be a great asset when it arrived, but until that day, Rhys Morgan's estate wagon would have to do. On Thursday evening it was stretched nearly to the limit of its capacity, with Rhys and Maggie in the front, Gary and Nicholas in the back seat, and Bleddyn in the rear with the brochures and the display units.

They'd been making a presentation about BARC that evening, at a meeting of a north Norfolk Deanery Synod. With debates raging on a national level about hunting on church-owned land, many churchmen were beginning to consider their responsibility towards other forms of created life; Rhys had found the invitation to speak tonight a hopeful sign of a new openness in the church.

It had gone reasonably well, he thought. Or at least it would have, had Bob Dexter not felt that he had to make a mark at his first meeting in the Deanery. ‘Just our luck,' he remarked ruefully. ‘That clown Dexter only arrived this week.'

‘He was a real pain in the ass,' Maggie stated. ‘All that “dominion over all living things” crap. What a speciesist.'

‘But at least some of the others were listening to us,' Nicholas said eagerly. ‘And asking some very intelligent questions.'

‘Yeah, that guy who asked about cruelty-free products – that was pretty groovy,' Gary added. ‘He seemed really interested.'

‘He was one of the Walsingham crowd, wasn't he?' asked Rhys.

‘Yeah.'

‘I really think we ought to go to that National Pilgrimage this year,' Maggie put in. ‘We could protest against the killing of foxes on Walsingham-owned land.'

‘Burn candles for the dead foxes?' Nicholas suggested humorously. ‘That would be a laugh.'

‘Huh.' Maggie glowered in the dark. ‘That's not funny. I did that once. We were having this vigil for the dead foxes, with candles. My friend and I were standing by this woman in a fur coat, and we started, you know, kind of flicking drops of wax on to her coat. And do you know what the bitch said to us?'

‘What?'

‘She said she didn't care – she was rich enough to buy another one, and we were only encouraging the fur trade!' She scowled; her glasses slid down her nose, and she stabbed them back into place with a finger.

They all contemplated man's inhumanity to other species in silence for a moment.

‘Would you mind dropping me off at home?' Nicholas requested as they neared Norwich. ‘It's not far out of the way.'

‘Fielding Farms?' Maggie spat. ‘You want us to actually go to Fielding Farms?'

‘Sorry. I didn't think.'

‘It's all right,' Rhys said quickly. ‘We can take you. I don't think it will contaminate us to enter its portals.'

Nicholas hesitated. ‘Maybe . . . do you think you could come in for a coffee? My father's not home tonight, so you wouldn't have to see him.'

‘I could use a coffee,' Rhys accepted.

‘Well,
I
won't go in,' Maggie said heatedly. ‘You can leave me in the car, if you're going in
that
place.'

Rhys refused to be intimidated. ‘Very well, Maggie. Stay in the car, if you like. I'm going in.'

‘I'll keep Maggie company,' Gary offered.