Sneaking around irritated Alex, and perhaps also vaguely amused her. She drove with pained attention, just fast enough not to draw any attention and alternately grumbled and smiled to herself. When she borrowed Lily’s silver Fiesta, there had been dire threats about what would probably happen to her if she insisted on driving, ‘in your condition.’ Lily’s fussing was a small price to pay for not having to struggle up to sit in her own vehicle, or risk being noticed leaving the village in the Land Rover.
The roads were still damp but the day showed signs of being showy bright. Steam rose from winding dry stone walls where the sun warmed them. Horses ambled to poke hopeful noses over the top at the few passers-by on foot.
Tony had done his best, and failed, to be sanguine about Alex spending the night at the cottage. Thinking about the question in his eyes, before trying to shut out visions of Jay Gibbon’s performance, turned her stomach. At least staying at the cottage made leaving the village unseen even easier.
She had slipped her arm out of the sling to rest her hand on the automatic gear shift. Never again would she sneer at those who didn’t drive manual transmissions.
The foot was more of a problem than her shoulder. The main thing was to avoid pressing hard or suddenly on the accelerator, that and using her left foot for the brake. Her greatest fear was an unexpected brake when she might forget and slam the wrong foot down.
Her mum was a gem, best mum in the world. She wouldn’t let on that Alex had left the village, even to Tony who would be trying to catch up at the clinic and needed to visit three farms later, fortunately. O’Reilly wanted to see her. He phoned Corner Cottage shortly before she left but she’d listened to his message without picking up.
On the run. That’s how she felt. Avoiding O’Reilly and putting off what she’d avoided last night: telling Tony about the will. She had promised Radhika that she wouldn’t mention it to anyone – but increasingly doubted Tony had been included in that, Radhika had said as much.
Be honest with yourself. You’re afraid he’ll try to stop you from digging any deeper into ‘police business.’
Alex drove along a single lane, pass-at-your-own-peril, road between broad sweeping fields that would turn pinkish purple with lavender in July. Even thinking about lavender harvest time brought the ghost of the heady scent that would slither through open car windows for miles around.
Half a pint of a Donnington Ale and a ploughman’s lunch while she looked out over the hills and valleys sounded perfect. From the Mount Inn she’d have a panoramic view of the surrounding villages with sheep on hills, legs skinny beneath ballooning coats, and crops starting to look serious about getting ready for eventual harvest.
The only vehicle ahead of her was a mud-caked green tractor, bouncing along with its driver riding the high seat as if he were on a horse at an easy walk. He rocked onto the verge to let her pass.
She needed to get away, to have time to think. Being under what felt like constant surveillance frazzled her. ‘Ouch.’ Her ankle complained bitterly when her mind wandered and she did forget to use the opposite foot instead.
Some said the village of Stanton was the most distinguished, the most picturesque in the Cotswolds. If asked she would have to put in a few words for her beautiful Folly-on-Weir. But once on the outskirts of Stanton the world seemed to slip away, or perhaps she’d driven straight through Alice’s looking glass.
Stanton’s cottages, built of honey-colored stone, most of them thatched, bulged, sometimes seeming to hang over the road, along the winding streets. She had to give a long look at one particular cottage she passed. It had a window with its sill almost touching the pavement and a short door that rested at the same level, only with the threshold beneath the surface of the street.
Vines grew thick over doors, their popping leaves shiny.
Her mirror still showed no sign of following and familiar vehicles. Alex relaxed a little. Her fear had been that O’Reilly, who was an habitual early riser, or Tony, would see her leave and follow.
The Church of St Michael and All Angels, a late Norman building, had to be in the perfect spot and with the perfect soil for roses. Along an aged wall, emerald green buds with peeping hints of petals, would soon bloom coral and yellow, and pink. Alex knew how seasons changed the gardens, could see the colors in her mind.
This wasn’t a day to stop. Her destination was the pub, the Mount Inn. From its elevated position, the name must have been an easy choice. Alex reached the place where luncheon trade spilled onto a side porch and hovered in clumps at the main door. The soft day must be drawing customers outside, that and the urge to smoke.
Alex drove past the building and turned left up a steep drive and into the parking lot at the back of the building. Some workmen were busy with paint while another worked on the gardens. She knew all too well how much effort it took to keep up a pub, especially with long open hours being the norm.
With the sling back in place and her crutch beneath her arm, although she expected to prefer hobbling without the crutch shortly, she went through the back door of the pub and into the main bar. The place was crowded but a man sitting alone at a corner table glanced at her wounded body and nodded before taking his plate and glass outside.
Even on a dry day, horse was the predominant aroma in these parts, with a strong whiff of beer and hot pub grub mixed in. Alex slid into a chair facing the windows. This was the place to come if you wanted to study tweeds, breeches, and riding boots that showed wear and wore it well. Most patrons kept their laughter and conversation to a refined hum but the guffaws tended to break out from time to time.
She ordered a half of Double Donn and settled for a ham and cheese sandwich. Her hunger had faded and the ploughman’s would be too much. This was where she’d chosen to come to try and work her way through what they did and didn’t know about Pamela Gibbon’s death and what was obviously an unfolding case that wouldn’t be over while the key player remained on the loose and determined to get what he wanted.
A conviction she didn’t much like was that Venetia Stroud would be worth another visit. Her behavior toward Alex, and the way she’d followed Jay to Leaves of Comfort, raised too many questions to ignore. Going alone for a second time was a lousy idea, but if she mentioned it to Tony he was likely to want to involve the police. They didn’t have a good excuse to tell them about Venetia, not one with a solid foundation.
Through the windows, Alex looked downhill to the roofs and towers of Stanton. In the distance, fields of acid yellow rapeseed rolled out between other crops. People either loved or hated the stuff and its smell, so like its cabbage cousin, but she couldn’t help getting a charge from the unabashedly carnival brilliance.
‘How are you managing to drive like that, Alex?’
She gritted her teeth and swiveled to look up into Harry Stroud’s grey eyes. With the bottom of his hacking jacket pushed back and his hands sunk in the pockets of tan twill trousers, he fitted into the Mount perfectly. A finely checked shirt and solid green tie completed the outfit. Sometimes there was comfort in seeing these familiar solid types but not this one and not now.
She shook her head, amazed to see him there. ‘I’m driving just fine, thanks.’
‘May I join you?’ He was already lowering himself into a chair opposite hers. ‘I’m not going to lie. I saw you leave the village in Lily’s car and I followed you. Took me a while since I stayed a long way back. Then I had to get up the nerve to follow you in here.’
Alex bristled. ‘You still think that was a good idea?’
‘Be gentle with me,’ he said and gave a lopsided smile that didn’t charm her. ‘I was a fool that night at my place. My only excuse is that I’d been through a lot already and you were a surprise. I feel as if the whole village is against me.’
‘Really? Why? I hadn’t noticed you being treated any differently from normal.’ Had the major told his son about Jay’s ramblings?
‘Oh, God.’ Elbows on the table and fingers driven into short dark curls, he bowed his head. ‘This gets more bloody awful by the moment. I don’t know what’s going on. Do you?’
Ah, he had no idea she was aware copies of the will had been circulated to beneficiaries. ‘How is your mother?’ She could also play frustrating games when she had to. ‘Did she enjoy the ballet that night?’ Did she ever get there after nailing Jay Gibbon at Leaves of Comfort? Did she intend to go at all?
‘You won’t forget that in a hurry.’
‘No, I won’t. Before you start interrogating me, why not give me a sensible explanation for your mother’s, and then your own behavior? Shouldn’t you be in the City at your office?’ He didn’t seem to have any particular schedule and never had.
‘I do most of my work directly with my clients. At their homes. They prefer it that way and so do I.’
Alex shrugged. She thought he looked a little wild, disoriented even. But she tensed at an impression of excitement barely tamped down. And then, why wouldn’t he be excited? He was to be a very wealthy man.
A waitress brought her beer and sandwich and looked at Harry who said, ‘I’ll have the same,’ in an expressionless voice.
‘If I tell you what I think will you keep it to yourself?’ he asked.
Before she could agree or disagree, he went on.
‘My mother isn’t the most stable woman in the world but I love her. She has always cared about me which is more than I can say about some people. I don’t know who planted the doubt, but I do think she’s worried that I might have had something to do with Pamela’s death. It wasn’t supposed to be common knowledge that we saw each other sometimes, but with village life … well, I don’t have to finish that explanation, do I? When you came to the house, Mother probably wanted to convince you there wasn’t any truth in the rumors.’
The beer was perfect and crusty wheat bread had been cut into thick slices for the sandwich. ‘And locking me into your rooms was the way to do that?’
‘She said that was an accident. She told me what you said, about supporting me. It was pretty much what you said to me. That you didn’t think the attention I’m getting is fair and you wanted to reassure me of that. If what happened was deliberate it was wrong, but couldn’t she have been afraid you’d leave without seeing me? Or change your mind before you could back me up?’
His eyes became earnest, the expression vaguely sad and very worried as they gazed into hers.
‘She could have been, but she went about everything the wrong way. And you didn’t help, Harry. You behaved badly. You scared me to death and I’m not sure that wasn’t what you wanted.’
‘Well it wasn’t. I blew it. Simple as that. I want to make it right with you, Alex. And I want you to help me out – there, I’ve said it.’
Skin across Alex’s back tightened. Her scalp prickled. It was nothing – she must remember that these sensations came when she was upset and in an unfamiliar situation. Like when she was closing in on the body of a dead man in the snow last winter, and listening to that man’s dog howl the death wail she could not mistake …
A premonition of danger.
‘Is there anything else you want to say?’ Alex stared at him, watched the pupils of his eyes contract and a pulse beat visibly at his temples. He might not be lying, but neither was he telling all of the truth. He wanted far more than to tell her he regretted that nasty night.
‘You were with Radhika at the hospital yesterday. I saw you go in with Harrison. How is she?’ Muscles in his jaw flexed.
If there were such things as warning bells, they would be jangling. One of the reasons for her slipping away from the village was to allow her to decide how to tell Tony what Radhika had said without sending him directly to the police. And the will … the woman had begged her not to tell anyone about the will.
Harry had followed her purely to ask about Radhika, she was sure of it. What she didn’t know was why he would have any interest in the other woman. It even seemed a stretch that he’d care about her or the attack on her at all.
Damn it, she must be losing her mind. He wanted to know if Radhika had seen Pamela’s will by last night and mentioned it to Alex.
He wanted to find out if she knew what was in that will.
‘Alex?’ Harry prompted. ‘How’s Radhika. How are her eyes? I wasn’t allowed in to see her. They said it was too late.’
‘She’s not in the best shape but she’ll be OK.’
‘Pamela thought a lot of her, y’know. She helped her get started in Folly. Is it true she’s probably going to move away? I’d like to help her – for Pamela.’
Keeping him at bay without giving away how much she knew could get sticky. ‘I don’t believe so. She likes it here. She has friends.’ He was being fed information by some source that wasn’t obvious – how else would he know Radhika Malek was talking about leaving Folly?
‘When will she get out of the hospital?’
The arrival of his beer and sandwich was a welcome break to let her collect her thoughts a bit.
‘Good beer, Donnington’s,’ Harry said after a first, long swallow. ‘When’s Radhika going home?’
He wasn’t going to let it go. ‘I don’t know. She’s pretty badly banged up.’
‘You were in there with that detective. What did he ask her, apart from the obvious?’
‘He didn’t question her much in front of me.’ That much was true. ‘He left pretty soon after I got there.’
‘Will she go back to her cottage when she’s discharged?’
Didn’t he realize his blunt questioning sounded suspicious? ‘If she does she’ll need help for a while. Her fingers will be splinted and bandaged for some time.’ There couldn’t be anything wrong with saying that.
‘Poor girl,’ Harry said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Who would do a thing like that to her. She’s … she isn’t anyone you’d even notice. Why her?’
Harry obviously hadn’t really looked at Radhika Malek when she was her exotic self.
‘What are people in Folly saying about me, Alex?’ Harry asked, leaning toward her earnestly. ‘You wouldn’t say anything to hurt anyone. But people talk to you. When I turn up, they stop talking. I want to know what they don’t want me to hear.’
From the next room came the unexpected sound of a fiddle, played well. Grabbing an excuse to turn away, Alex saw people move toward the music. She recognized the piece. An old Scottish folk song, ‘Lassie Wi’theYellow Coatie,’ or that was what she remembered. It sounded so right here and some customers started to sway to the sound.
‘Alex?’
Reluctantly, she turned back to Harry. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is if you like that sort of thing. I asked you a question. Please, Alex, you were always the one who understood.’
And he had been decent enough to her as long as that didn’t include taking her to his home. Childhood was gone, and it needed to be forgotten. ‘I understand that I can’t tell you what you want to know.’
‘You had a reporter staying at the Dog,’ he said. ‘Name of Patrick Guest. He’s tried to question me several times. I’ve avoided him. He’s been given reason to think I’m worth questioning.’
Guest still hung around, sometimes taking off in his car for hours but returning eventually. It surprised her that there had not been more media interest, but Folly was tiny and Pamela had not been a celebrity.
‘Harry,’ she said firmly, ‘I came up here to get away. These have been awful days for a lot of us. I can’t tell you what you want to know. But I will mention that you ought to think twice the next time you’re tempted to thump a woman’s shoulder.’ She shouldn’t have said it, but she had.
His eyebrows rose. He glanced at the sling and blinked several times. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t try that on me. You can’t blame me for something that happened to you when I wasn’t even around. You said you got hurt falling down some steps somewhere.’
‘In the dark. At your parents’ house. And that was after you whacked a hand down on top of my shoulder. And having too much to drink won’t excuse you. I haven’t told anyone what really happened and I don’t intend to. Neither will I forget. I don’t owe you anything, Harry, so stay out of my way.’
‘But—’ his mouth fell open – ‘but you said you understood that I’ve been badly treated. You came to the house to offer support. Now I’m asking you to support me. You’re in the loop, I know you are. You could help me be prepared to deflect the lies they’re cooking up against me.’
The tightening of her skin was familiar, nothing to do with the temperature, just detachment, and in this case, disgust.
‘Will you do that, Alex? Will you help me? They say justice always gets served but we both know that isn’t true. I know you could stand up for the man I really am.’
‘Harry,’ she said quietly, ‘I’ll never do anything to hurt you, but I don’t know what kind of man you really are.’ Except scared.
He looked at her, long and silent. ‘You and Tony Harrison found Pamela’s body.’
‘If I could forget it, I would.’
‘Where was she?’
Hysterical laughter at the next table gave Alex a momentary sensation of the world gone mad. A spray of beer droplets from a man’s wide open mouth had her looking for a way to escape.
‘You know where she was.’ Alex clenched her hands in her lap. ‘The whole village knows where she was.’
He remembered his beer, took it halfway to his mouth and put it down again without drinking. ‘I was just checking you out in case they’re keeping back the truth.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘To see if someone puts a foot in it by letting on where she really was.’
His forehead shone with sweat. If this was when he’d decided to crack up, at least they weren’t alone the way they had been the last time he went over the top. ‘I was there, Harry. Unfortunately.’ She swallowed. ‘Pamela’s body was at the bottom of that horrible shaft.’
Harry covered his eyes with both hands and rested his elbows on the table. The fiddle music continued only Alex didn’t know what the fiddler was playing anymore.
She touched Harry’s arm tentatively, tempted to console him by saying no one suspected him, but she didn’t know that, didn’t know if she believed it herself.
‘There was stuff in the old tower,’ he mumbled indistinctly. ‘Vivian was asked about it when they took her in. They told her not to say anything but she told me that much. We hardly know each other but she’s decent to me. Anything could have been put there if someone’s trying to frame me.’
‘Harry!’ She tugged on his rough sleeve until he looked at her with reddened eyes. ‘You’re driving yourself insane. You’ve been questioned haven’t you?’
‘Twice.’
‘Did the police say you were a suspect?’
‘No, but they said I couldn’t leave the area. They told Vivian that, too. And my mother, for all the sense that makes. We’re being victimized for being Pamela’s friends.’
‘In that case a lot of us are. The plods want to be able to get hold of any number of us. Was your mother one of Pamela’s friends? She didn’t make it sound that way when I spoke to her.’
Harry glanced at her sharply. ‘Mother likes to test the waters. She’s always looking for reactions to what she says. I think she liked Pamela well enough.’
That was a great big porky, and only raised more questions.
The barmaid came to the table. ‘Can I get you something else?’
They both shook their heads and Alex didn’t react to the woman’s significant glances at people waiting for tables.
‘Tell me what Radhika said last night.’ The abrupt belligerence was ugly.
‘Don’t try pushing me around,’ Alex said. ‘It won’t work.’
‘Did she show you something – something she got yesterday?’
She scarcely dared breathe. If he came right out and talked about the will would she be more likely to think he was innocent of any wrongdoing?
‘What is she supposed to have got? All these hints are ridiculous.’
He regarded her closely. ‘All right. Forget it. What was in that tower?’
‘Stop it, Harry. If you want to know that, ask the police. I didn’t take an inventory and I’m not in charge of the case.’
‘You’re not going to help me, are you?’ His lips turned down in a sneer. ‘You want to get back at any of us who know what you are. You’re enjoying this.’
Someone bumped into the back of her chair. She winced at the jolt to her shoulder. ‘I think you should go,’ she said. And for some crazy reason she wanted to laugh. ‘You are so narrow, so small. And you’re a snob, Harry, you must be to suggest something like that. What I am? Disgusting, that’s what you are.’
‘Did you see—’
‘Please go away.’
‘Alex, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I feel helpless, that’s all. Did you see a bag in the tower – with a bunch of things in it? Binoculars, maybe?’
This conversation needed to end. ‘There were lots of things up there.’ A lie was her only option unless she wanted to risk saying something she shouldn’t. ‘I don’t remember anything in particular except a tarp covering a pile of stuff.’
Harry breathed in and she saw his shoulders relax a little.
The noise level grew. A big group of backpacking walkers clomped in, walking canes in hand, their faces ruddy from the sun and air. They ordered beers, laughed, rocked on their heels discussing the latest rambles and the energy they gave off brought out smiles in all directions.
‘Have you lost your binoculars?’ Alex asked. What could it hurt? He’d mentioned them first.
He darted a look around the bar and back to her. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about. Let’s have a real drink.’
‘No, thanks, I’d better be off,’ she said.
‘What does that tosser want?’ Harry said, surprising her with his vehemence. In seconds she was taken aback to see Dan O’Reilly approach, a grim line to his mouth. His dark, curly hair standing on end from the wind gave him a less world-weary look but from Alex’s angle, the scar she’d noted months ago caught the light and still looked quite new.
He nodded at Alex and she expected him to make a crack about her not answering her phone. Instead he gave Harry his attention. ‘Good thing that car of yours is hard to miss.’
‘What did you do?’ Harry asked with slightly bared teeth. ‘Put out an all points bulletin?’
‘You’re watching too much TV, Stroud. I need to talk to you and I think you were told to make sure we know where you are.’
‘You told me to stick around and I have.’
‘Enough of that. Alex, excuse us, please.’
She almost said, gladly. ‘I need to get back anyway,’ she said, making to get up.
‘If you don’t mind, you and I will have a few words. And this would be as good a place than any. Mr Stroud and I won’t be long.’
What choice did she have? She watched O’Reilly lead Harry toward the back entrance of the Mount and ordered coffee. O’Reilly wanted to get her on her own, away from Tony, that much was obvious.
Just out of her grasp, barely hanging onto the edges of her mind, was something she needed to recall, something she’d missed. The harder she concentrated the more tenuous and out of reach the recollection became.
Was it something someone had said?
Harry was the only one she’d really spoken to today. Alex went over their conversation but she couldn’t find the trigger she needed.