The Witch of Exmoor (26 page)

Gogo, sitting on the edge of Rosemary's bed, takes up this theme. ‘A popular part of the world for retired people,' she echoed. ‘And Frieda, out for a cheap pensioner's lunch. Do you really think it can have been her? And who on earth can she have been with? She didn't know anybody round here, did she?'

‘God knows,' says Rosemary, applying cream of almonds to her hands and elbows. ‘God knows what she got up to when we weren't watching. But it doesn't sound very likely. Still, he did seem to know where the house was. So I suppose it might have been her.'

‘Daniel says we've got to look for the will tomorrow,' says Gogo. ‘I think that's a bit crude and premature, don't you?'

Rosemary looked sharply at her sister, through the dressing-table mirror.

‘Well, he is a lawyer,' she concedes. ‘Do you think Frieda made him an executor?'

‘I'm sure she didn't. He'd have known if she had. He's been on to Howard Partridge, you know. Didn't he tell you?'

Rosemary shakes her head and starts to brush her hair.

‘He didn't tell
me
either, but Patsy did,' says Gogo.

The room is hot and full of the smells of Rosemary's nightly rituals, which overlay the older smells of tobacco. This is a heavy smoker of a hotel. The two sisters are rarely in such proximity, for they now inhabit larger spaces, so that even when they are together, they rarely find themselves as close. It makes them physically uneasy. They are troubled, as though something is expected of them. And it is. As Rosemary too settles upon the bed, high up on her pillow, her back to the crushed rose padded button plush velvet bedhead, and tucks her knees under the top sheet, Gogo at the bed's foot speaks again.

‘Did Frieda ever speak to you about her sister Hilda?'

Rosemary shakes her head.‘Why do you ask?'

‘I just wondered. What happened to her.'

‘She never mentioned her. Do you think she can still be alive?'

‘I don't suppose so. We would surely have heard something if she were.'

‘I don't know about that.'

‘She'd have kept in touch with Grandma, surely.'

‘There was some quarrel,' says Rosemary flatly.

‘It's surprising that Frieda was so loyal to Grandma, really. Considering,' says Gogo.

‘Considering what mean old cows they both were,' says Rosemary with more energy, then, gathering strength, rushing at the fence, rising, clearing it. ‘Considering that we don't know whether our own father's alive or dead.'

Gogo is silent. Rosemary is silent. These words have never been spoken between them. They have followed Daniel's prohibition, and of their father they never speak. He has been written out of the text of their lives. It is as though he has never been. Unmentioned for so many years, he cannot now be invoked without a great tearing and rending.

‘Oh, God,' says Gogo. ‘I can't face all this. I want to go home.'

‘It's not going to be as easy as that,' says Rosemary, with a small note of satisfaction in her voice. She is pleased with herself for having braved Gogo, braved her father, braved the past. She has said the unsayable. She has cleared the fence and now, for a mile or two, she leads the field.

***

No will is revealed by the Sunday search of Ashcombe, but other useful and interesting items come to light. Daniel, Gogo and Rosemary find the butler's pantry and the family silver and the toenails of the devil, and they locate the boxes which contain Frieda's genealogical research. There had been a bonfire, but not of these papers. They discover her word-processor, which is no longer attempting to speak to them, for one of the police visitors, disliking the waste of electricity, had thoughtfully turned it off. Rosemary, who understands such machines, turns it on, and brings up a list of what seem to be Frieda's files. This, they agree, may be vital, but the labels of the files are, like the labels of all such files, cryptic. It will take them time and some luck to unlock the secrets of the box, and they are not calm enough to try.

Not many communications seem to have reached Ashcombe from the outside world. A request to fill in the Electoral Register, a couple of religious pamphlets and an appeal from the Lifeboat Association he neglected on a window-sill inside the front porch, together with an opened Jifiy bag addressed to Mr F. H. Palmer. This Daniel investigates, and finds that it contains a booklet called
The Householder's Guide to Radon,
fifth edition, published by the Department of the Environment, and an envelope containing a letter from the National R.adio-logical Protection Board addressed to Ms Frieda Haxby Palmer. Daniel scans the letter rapidly, and notes that it had thanked his mother for her co-operation in testing her home for radon, and advised her that, if her detectors had been accurately placed according to instructions, they recorded, when corrected for seasonal variations, ‘an average radon level over the year of 850 Bq m-3. As this is above the Action Level, it is advisable to reduce the level as soon as reasonably practicable.'

Daniel replaces the Jiffy bag on the window-sill, and pockets the letter, without drawing it to the attention of his sisters. He will ponder its ominous implications later.

They also discover a highly coloured postcard of Mount Teide on Tenerife from one Susan Stokes, correctly addressed and including a post code, which says, enigmatically, ‘Doing a Sleeping Beauty at the moment. Great fun. What about you?', and a letter from a Mr Glover in Yeovil, thanking Miss Haxby for her great kindness in looking after his prize pigeon Paula. Paula has returned home safely (to join Peter, Paul, Priscilla, Pansy, Posy, and all the other Pees!) and is now restored to full health, thanks to Miss Haxby's care: he had taken the liberty of enclosing the introductory leaflet of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, and a copy of
Homing World,
in case her experience of sheltering Paula has led her to think of keeping pigeons herself!

What is one to make of these small fragments of an Ashcombe-based social life? They present Frieda Haxby as an innocent pensioner, a responsible citizen, almost as a good neighbour (though Yeovil, it is true, is fifty miles or more away): there is nothing here to suggest that she might be, or have been, either more or less than the nice if slightly eccentric old lady into whose contours the barman at the Royal Oak had tried to squeeze her.

And what is one to lift, of her leavings? Should they take the box files, the computer, the silver? They have not time to explore further, and they are afraid that if they take their spoils, even in her own best interests, she will arrive screeching like an avenging angel, clouded in wrath. ‘Do you
remember,'
says Rosemary, giggling nervously, ‘how
cross
she used to get when we went into her room when she was working.'

‘Yes,' says Gogo, ‘and how we were always ignoring her. We were always interrupting her. God knows how she got anything done.'

‘She worked nights,' says Daniel. ‘She had a will of iron, and she worked nights.'

As they hesitate, in the butler's pantry, they hear a loud knocking at the door, and jump guiltily, like thieves. Rosemary returns the Swedish medal to its box, Gogo shuts the lid of the tarnished Palmer cutlery, as they hear a door bang, and footsteps approaching down the stone corridor. A man's footsteps, heavy, deliberate: they sigh with relief.

 

The detective inspector is clearly not satisfied with their answers, although he is very polite. Nor do they themselves find their own answers satisfactory. They sit in the drawing-room and try to explain, but of course they cannot explain.

Why had Mrs Haxby Palmer (he'd got that right, for a start, which was improbable) decided to settle in this part of the world? What had first brought her here? Had she intended to stay? What were her connections?

Their replies sound thin. They are unable to say why she had chosen to live here. They agree that the house is large, for a woman alone, and in bad repair. As far as they know, she has no connections here. (Shall they mention that friendly pensioner? As they have never met her and do not know her name and doubt if she can exist, it seems unwise.) How did she come across the house in the first place?

They look at one another, unhappily. They have not had time to collude, and Mr Rorty knows it. Daniel is getting irritable; he dares not risk showing it, but his sisters can tell. They do not know whether they want Daniel to assert himself or not. After a pause, he does.

‘She saw it advertised in an estate agent's window,' Daniel says, a little coldly.

‘In Taunton?'

‘We understood it was in Taunton,' says Daniel, even more coldly.

The detective inspector does not ask what she was doing in Taunton, but his silence, his attentive expression, ask the question for him. This time it is Gogo who answers.

‘She was in Taunton in search of a meatless hamburger, we believe,' she says provocatively. She has had enough of being intimidated. Mr Rorty looks even more quizzical, so she pursues. She tells him the story of Frieda's investigation of the meat-free burger, of her visit to the Trading Inspector in Taunton, of her interest in the firm that made Hot Snax. She does not tell him about Timon's feast, but the memory of it fortifies her, and she can see–all three of them can see–that she has made a wise decision in expounding Frieda's case. Mr Rorty listens with interest. The story is ludicrous, but he does not appear to find it so. Mr Rorty makes notes in his notebook.

‘And so,' concludes Gogo, ‘finding herself in Taunton, at one stage in her quest, she saw the picture of the house in the shop window, and she bought it. That's the kind of woman she was. I mean, is.'

Mr Rorty is mollified by this confession of idiosyncrasy. Yes, he knows Mrs Haxby Palmer is a writer, and appreciates her need for solitude. Writing her memoirs, you say? How interesting. Now can they, as her family, think of any reason why she might have chosen to disappear, of her own free will?

Dumbly, they shake their heads. Are they suspects, accessories?

He thanks them for their co-operation. The search will continue, and he will let them know as soon as there is any news. Meanwhile, if they will get in touch with him if they hear anything from Mrs Palmer, he will be most grateful. He hands them his card.

As they part, in the courtyard–they are keen to see him off, for they wish to assert that this is their territory, not his–he asks them, casually, ‘Is your mother by any chance a smoker?'

Gogo, again, takes it upon herself to answer. ‘I'm afraid she is,' she says with disapproval. ‘She took it up late in life, but yes, I'm afraid she does smoke.'

‘Why do you ask?' says Daniel suspiciously.

‘Just checking,' says Mr Rorty. ‘Checking the possibility of intruders, that's all. Somebody had been smoking, and there are butts in the garden, that kind of thing. Butts down on the beach. But from what you say, it was probably just your mother. Not many people walk along here.' He grins, collusively. ‘Too steep for most folk, isn't it?'

And off drove Mr Rorty, congratulating himself on not having mentioned the fact that in the next cove three plastic-wrapped bales of high-grade Moroccan cannabis had been washed up earlier in the week–the second big haul in two months. It didn't seem as if the old girl had had anything to do with it, but you never can tell. She's certainly been smoking the stuff, but that was another matter. That was her own affair. She'd chosen a fine and private place to do it, and it looked as though, wherever she'd got to now, she was beyond prosecution. It looked like it was just a coincidence. He'd tell the local boys to get the dogs out on Monday. You could rot for years in this undergrowth.

***

At the end of the next week, an Identikit impression of a young man was posted up outside the police stations of West Somerset and Devon, and released to the local press. A copy of it was also sent to each of the Palmer family. Daniel Palmer opened his over breakfast, and silently handed it to Patsy. She looked at it for a cold moment and said, ‘That's Will Paine.' The backs of her wrists prickled, as they did when she'd had a near hit in the car.

Frieda Haxby Palmer had been seen with the young man in Exeter, in Minehead, in Ilfracombe, in Bideford and in Westward Ho!

The photofit was an excellent, an unmistakable likeness. There was Will Paine to the life: his sweet smile, his short cropped hair, his symmetrically chipped teeth. His dark skin. There aren't all that many black men in Exeter, Minehead, Ilfracombe, Bideford and Westward Ho! According to D'Anger's almanac, there were 0.8 per cent in most of these places, though Exeter boasted 1.45. Not much in the way of cover. And anyway, Will Paine had the kind of face that stayed in the memory. He was such a nice-looking boy.

‘I don't believe it,' said Patsy. ‘I don't believe there was any harm in him.'

Daniel looked at her with that ironic expression which had thrown panic into the prose of many a hard-boiled witness. It seemed on this occasion justified.

‘What do they say?' rallied Patsy, ready to spring to the defence.

‘Wanted for questioning. In connection with the disappearance of. And with cash withdrawals from various cashpoints.'

Patsy breathed sharply. ‘So he stole her cashcard. That's not the end of the world.'

‘Nobody said it was. It's what he did with the body that's of interest.'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous,' said Patsy. ‘You're not suggesting he murdered her, are you?'

‘Somebody seems to be,' said Daniel reasonably.

‘I don't believe it,' repeated Patsy stubbornly. But, of course, she did. And, dutifully, like a good citizen, she rang Mr Rorty and spilled the beans. She owned up to an acquaintance with Will Paine.

 

Reports from the witnesses who had drawn such a damning likeness of Will Paine were confusing. He had, it is true, been seen in the company of a grey-haired, large-nosed woman of middle height; she had been wearing an old Persian-lamb jacket, grey trousers and Wellington boots, and he a leather jacket and black trousers. The couple had been spotted together in the vicinity of several cashpoints. But at no point did he appear to be threatening or menacing her; indeed, one observer, a female taxi-driver in Westward Ho!, alleged that it had been the other way round. The woman had been pushing the young man towards the bank and urging him to insert the plastic card he was holding. He had appeared reluctant.