Kate found herself telling Françoise the whole story of her visit to Corsica and the events leading up to it. Having cast herself on the Frenchwoman’s mercy in so melodramatic a manner she could hardly do less, and in any case, she trusted Françoise. During her recital the bloody mask of the dog, purple tongue lolling between yellowed teeth, kept sliding into her mind, and it seemed she’d never be rid of that stench of animal death.
Françoise, black eyes bright, nodded once or twice at what she heard, but it didn’t seem to amaze her unduly. Perhaps its operatic overtones did not seem all that outlandish to the Southern mind: hatred between two brothers, disowning of one of them, tragic death of the other, mysterious secret possessed by the old grandmother who might or might not have been killed for it … In Mediterranean lands the passions ran high and were seen to run high: none of that furtive reticence which was responsible for some of the more stalwart, as well as the more unpleasant, aspects of the Northern character.
In the meantime, Françoise had dispatched Mario, one of her reprehensible but loyal customers, to the Hotel Univers armed with Kate’s key; he was to pack all her belongings, pay her bill, answer no questions, give no information, and return to l’Oasis as quickly as possible.
Kate noticed that even he seemed to have paled slightly following his encounter with what lay on her bed, but perhaps this was only because he, like Françoise, knew the meaning of the Dog. She said, ‘You obviously realize that it indicates death. I’ve never heard of an incident where death hasn’t followed the Dog. Sometimes soon, sometimes late, but always.’ She drank a little cognac. ‘However, you don’t live here, and for you I think it means something slightly different. It’s a warning, and I’m quite sure that this man, Lombardi, is behind it, acting on instructions from your charming uncle in England. It says, “Leave Corsica, and stop inquiring into matters which are not your concern.” You agree?’
‘Yes. But I’m not going to stop.’
Françoise regarded her very seriously; then there blossomed on to her face that singular smile which so altered her entire personality. ‘I too would refuse to stop. For the same reasons, I’m sure.’
‘They wouldn’t try to scare me off unless I was on the right track.’
‘Exactly.’
‘It was a hideous experience, and I’m sorry I’ve put you to all this trouble, but … Yes, I’m glad it happened.’
‘Don’t be too glad, it’s not over yet.’ She leaned forward to emphasize her point. ‘You plan to go to La Spezia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Between now and the moment you get on that boat you must on no account be seen by anyone.’
‘But …’
‘No buts. I will take you to my sister’s house. She has a flat she lets to tourists in the summer.’ She held up a magisterial hand to forestall argument. ‘And please—no more English nonsense about giving me trouble. It is one of your countrymen’s least appealing characteristics, this refusal of help before it’s even given.’
‘You seem to know us very well.’
‘My second lover was an Englishman—your Consular Service. A charming man, but we weren’t compatible except in bed. Which brings me directly to the other thing I must ask, and I beg you to listen to me. It was brave of you to embark on this investigation alone—I would have done the same. But you have put yourself in great danger. The Dog may follow you.’
She could see that the image thus conjured up struck Kate with horror: padding feet, the slit throat, the terrible stench, following, following. She took swift advantage of it, adding, ‘You must send for a man. You’re an attractive girl, there are men you can trust.’ Netta had said the same, and Françoise received the same answer: ‘I’d rather not.’
‘Then you’re more of a fool than I am, and I wash my hands of you.’ She leaned back, brandy glass under her nose. ‘Men are not very useful,’ she conceded, ‘but sometimes they’re essential. They think practically. We can, but we tend not to.’
Kate nodded. Françoise would be surprised at how few men she actually knew, but in any case there was only one she’d consider asking for help—Steve. And she was irritated with herself to find that even in this near-disastrous situation the idea of seeing him again overwhelmed her with excitement.
‘If,’ added Françoise, reading her expression with accuracy, ‘he is a lover, so much the better—he will protect you more effectively. Telephone him.’
‘Now?’ panic gripping her.
‘Certainly now.’
‘He’s a very busy man, he may not even be in London.’
‘Ring him, my friend.’
If Kate had decided on the spur of the moment to call Steve from Hill Manor or Woodman’s he would have been out, or in New York, or at a conference in Edinburgh, and his answering-machine would have instructed her to leave a message after the bleep. From Corsica, where communication with mainland France was by no means infallible, at an awkward hour of the evening, with Françoise eyeing her ironically, he of course answered on the second ring—he must have been sitting at his desk or lying on his bed.
‘Steve?’
‘Kate, for God’s sake! I was thinking of you at that very second. Where are you?’
‘Corsica.’
‘Alone, I hope.’
‘Well … yes—I mean, that’s the point, Steve. I seem to have got myself in rather a mess, and I was wondering … It’ll be terribly inconvenient, but …’
Françoise leaned over and took the telephone out of her hand. ‘Monsieur Steve, my name is Françoise and I am her good friend …’
Kate had suspected, on being told about the Consular lover, that Françoise probably spoke some English: perfect English as it now appeared. How typically French that she’d given no indication of the fact. She was saying, ‘She’s not in rather a mess, she’s in extreme danger and her life has been threatened. She badly needs your help, can you come to her? Good. Then you must fly Air France to Bastia airport, Poretta. Take a cab from there to a bar called I’Oasis, 56 rue Adamo. Have you got that? Ask for me—Françoise. Now I give her back to you.’
‘Jesus!’ said Steve’s voice. ‘Quite a woman!’
‘She’s that all right. But Steve, if you can’t make it …’
‘Of course I’ll make it. What the hell have you been up to?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Tell me tomorrow. I love you.’
Kate replied, ‘Oh!’ in genuine surprise. Laughing, he rang off.
Françoise said, in French, needless to say, ‘Forgive my interruption. Calls to England are not cheap, and the British are often incapable of coming to the point. Particularly if the emotions are involved.’
Kate laughed. ‘I owe you for the call anyway.’
‘Not now. I will keep an addition of what you owe me, and we’ll settle at the end.’
What followed was as incisive. Behind l’Oasis ran a narrow street, no more than an alley but large enough to accommodate Françoise’s little Peugeot. Anna conducted Kate across a yard behind the bar and, on hearing the car, opened the gate. Kate got into the back seat and, feeling foolish, lay down, half on the seat, half on the floor. Françoise threw a travelling-rug over her, then a couple of empty wine cartons. Her suitcase was popped into the hatchback by the same Mario who had retrieved it from the hotel, and that was that.
Twenty minutes later they drove into the integral garage of a neat little modern villa at Alzetto, a mile or two north of Bastia and on a hillside overlooking the sparkling lights of the coast. Madame Jeanne Barbet, the sister, turned out to be as unlike Françoise—physically—as it was possible to be: a plump and amiable French housewife with curly brown hair and a fussy taste in clothes; but she was just as efficient, just as unfazed by circumstances. The flat was bright, adequately and sensibly equipped for vacationing parents with young children. It was self-contained, but an iron grille now covered the front door, and the only access was through Madame Barbet’s own house. ‘In any case,’ said Françoise, departing, ‘who knows you’re here? Nobody.’
Kate had promised to telephone Daniel at seven; she was an hour and a half late, and knew how much he’d be looking forward to the call and how disappointed, even anxious, he’d be when it didn’t come. So as soon as she was alone in the flat she dialled the Woodman’s number. It rang three times and then stopped; a moment later she was nearly deafened by a high-pitched howl. It was the first time, ever, that she’d called him and not heard his voice almost immediately. Unsettling.
She tried the number again, and this time it didn’t ring at all, neither did it howl at her; there was merely an eerie hissing silence. She told herself that it was quite possible that the phone was out of order, but something in her stomach derided the easy way out. She began to be sure that all was not well at Woodman’s. She should never have left him alone there; she was mad.
On the day after his Uncle Mark’s two visits, one clandestine, the other overt (which was also his sister’s Day of the Dog), Daniel sat waiting for further developments. He was in a divided state of mind: the cautious Daniel, very much aware of his physical vulnerability, toyed with the idea of phoning his rugby-playing friend, Tom, and asking him to come up to the cottage as soon as possible; he would then explain something of the situation confronting him—not in all its complexity, which would only blow a fuse in Tom’s mind—and act upon whatever advice Tom offered. If Mark Ackland returned, as Daniel was sure he would, it would be interesting to see him reacting to Tom’s muscular youth and his size: the taller by at least two inches. On the other hand, a more devious Daniel was curious to know what his Uncle Mark’s next move might be in pursuit of the letter, and even more curious to know how he himself might outwit this move. There was good sense in the first choice, and a shadow of hubris over the second. Hubris was naturally the more interesting option, it always is, hence mankind’s record of stupidity.
Allowing arrogance and acumen to continue their age-old battle at the back of his mind, Daniel turned his mind to something which had been exercising him ever since his last conversation with his sister: Andrew Howard. Kate’s theory was sensible and straightforward: their grandmother had, stupidly, consulted him over the secret which she was proposing to divulge, incriminating Mark Ackland. The lawyer had at once betrayed her confidence by nipping over to Longwater and relaying the whole thing to Mark. The result had been the death of Lydia.
What had been Andrew Howard’s motive? There was only one which made any sense at all: he proposed to blackmail Mark Ackland.
This was where Kate’s theory began to fall to pieces; it would not make sense for a blackmailer to go running back to his victim merely because Daniel and his sister had been to see Rosemary Howard with the now-famous letter. Andrew had certainly wanted to get his hands on it and, had he done so, might have used it at Longwater for his own base purposes; but he hadn’t got hold of it, and still he’d gone dashing over to Longwater in his Mercedes, where he could have done no more than report on its existence; hence the search of Woodman’s and his uncle’s second, bullying visit.
All this suggested a theory somewhat different from Kate’s. She herself had said, regarding their grandmother’s consultation with Andrew, ‘Good God, I’d have thought old Lydia was a better judge of character,’ and he, Daniel, had replied, ‘You’re right, she was.’
That was the key. Lydia had sensed that the lawyer, son of her best friend or not, wasn’t to be trusted and she hadn’t told him what was in her mind. After this profitless meeting, Andrew had reported to Longwater, by pre-arrangement or with an eye on possible future gain. He had very little to say, and what he did say could have made no sense to him at all, he didn’t possess enough pieces of the puzzle; but Mark possessed them all right and, fitting them together, knew that there was only one thing to be done: stop Lydia’s potentially menacing mouth.
Daniel saw the puzzle analogy—a jigsaw-puzzle analogy—as fitting the circumstances to a T: not only the past and Lydia’s death, but the present in which Kate in Corsica and himself in England were in the process of searching for a lot of important pieces which had fallen on to the floor and been lost; his new surmise regarding Andrew was only one such, of minor importance he had to admit, but it could lead to a revelation of the whole. It was this: the lawyer possessed no more pieces of the jigsaw than they did—rather less since he hadn’t seen the letter and they had. He was therefore engaged in the same investigation as they were; was, in fact, an unwitting confederate who might possess interesting clues as yet unknown to Daniel and Kate. Daniel now saw it as his prime purpose to get hold of that information by hook or by crook. It was even possible that Andrew Howard, without knowing it, held the linking pieces which would reveal the whole design of the puzzle.
Meanwhile, the pleasant spring day of cloud and sunshine and drifting cloud-shadows continued towards noon, and passed it, with nothing happening to disturb the peace of Woodman’s. Daniel relaxed somewhat and gave up the idea of summoning Tom’s help: no longer activated by hubris, as far as he knew, but by afternoon torpor. He hadn’t slept well the night before; waking or sleeping, his Uncle Mark’s face tended to appear and reappear, and twice he awoke in fear having dreamed that he’d heard or seen the Range-Rover approaching stealthily through the woods.
The result of this was that after tea he felt his head drooping over the book he was trying to read; he took off his glasses, rearranged himself in the wheelchair and prepared for a nap. Both front and back doors were locked and only a very small window by the fireplace was open for fresh air. He felt secure. He slept.
It must have been the thump of the exploding petrol-tank which jolted him awake. The room was in half-darkness, due to a clouded dusk, but it was alive with the shuddering light of flames. He jerked his chair to the window and saw that his Mini was ablaze, sending up leaping swirls of fire out of all proportion to its size. The trees under which it was parked tossed their seared branches as if in agony.
Daniel’s instinct was to go out and see what he could do in the way of rescue, but his second thought was naturally that in his crippled condition he could do nothing. He drew back from the window and sat hunched in his chair, biting the forefinger of his left hand, trying to marshal his thoughts. He had no doubt that his Uncle Mark was responsible, whether in person or by proxy didn’t matter. A normal reaction might have been to call the police immediately, but the thought had only to flash across Daniel’s mind for him to abandon it. Mr Ackland of Longwater behaving like some common hooligan, the very idea! He could see the expressions of incredulity on the faces of the local constabulary.
In the past there had been undesirable elements hanging around the woods: once a stealthy infiltration of so-called travellers, encamped in filth: once an invasion of motorcyclists, all half stoned, zooming up and down the rides attired in black leather, like denizens of the pit: always poachers of different kinds. Uncle Mark would have a variety of scapegoats to hand: quite apart from the fact that Mr Ackland of Longwater House, friend of the lord lieutenant and twice as rich, was scarcely likely to play such tricks: and on his own nephew, a poor cripple!
Yet Daniel was sure that it had been Mark’s doing; and, as surely, he was now isolated at Woodman’s, a mile and a half from the village. The obvious intention was to scare him, and it had worked. He pushed his chair over to the telephone and dialled the number of the Woolpack. Tom would have him out of the cottage within fifteen minutes. It took him a short while to realize that the phone was dead: the line had been cut.
He had never doubted that his Uncle Mark really did mean to get the letter, but somehow the savage implementation of this wish was none the less shocking. A dozen or more visions of what might happen next crossed his mind, each more disturbing than the last. He doubted that Mark would actually take his life, but he couldn’t excise from his memory the angry voice saying, ‘You’re a fool. There are worse things than eviction, you’d better consider that.’
The idea struck him almost immediately but he rejected it as out of the question, absurd. Obviously he must hide. Could the trap door to the attic be locked from the inside? No. And piling furniture on top of it, always supposing he could perform such a feat, would achieve nothing because it opened downwards in order to allow the descent of the ladder. There was nowhere else, no cellar, not even a sturdy shed. If he hurried, while daylight lasted, he could perhaps hobble a short distance into the woods, but then what? He couldn’t climb a tree, and covering himself with fallen leaves would be worse than useless since the lord of the manor was always accompanied by one or more dogs which would immediately discover him. A year ago, perhaps even less, he could probably have got as far as the village on his crutches, but that was before the new deterioration of his serviceable leg. Now he knew he couldn’t rely on it to give him the necessary balance. He would fall, and might not be able to stand up again.
At last, the rejected idea came sidling back into his mind in all its absurdity. Could he, somehow, in spite of various dips and one quite steep hill, and in spite of the way being far from smooth, make the journey in his wheelchair? No, no—out of the question! So what was the alternative? To sit here, waiting for Mark Ackland to arrive and continue the interrogation? His every nerve rebelled against that course.
Supposing there were men waiting outside, waiting for him to emerge? Well, supposing there were—what difference did that make: to be caught outside, at least making an effort to escape, or to be caught in here doing nothing?
Suddenly he was full of determination. Anything was better than supine inaction. He struggled into his coat, clamped his crutches to the side of the chair, picked up the flashlight which always stood on the table, put on his toughest gloves, then wheeled himself to the door.
If the Range-Rover were to approach it would use the south-western track which came directly up the hill from Longwater. The way to the village was at the back of the cottage, to the north; and, though rough, it clung to the opposite slope and was steep: dangerously steep perhaps, but think how quickly its gradient would remove him from Woodman’s. He could do it, he would do it.
Perhaps the most alarming but by no means the hardest part lay in opening the front door. It was impossible not to imagine two large men, a couple of compliant gamekeepers perhaps, standing on each side of it. But there was no one. Daniel paused, listening. Only the normal night noises of the woods and a metallic creak or groan from his now burnt-out car. Heat from it wafted towards him with the smell of melted plastic.
Obviously the plan had been to cut off his escape and scare him witless; then allow him to stew in his own fear for a while; then pay a call and see if his attitude towards answering questions had perhaps changed. He pushed off from the door, circling without mishap the more or less level ground which surrounded the cottage, aiming for a break in the trees where the downhill track began.
Yes, it was steep all right, with a tendency to slope transversely, but he knew the chair well and could feel, almost as if it was part of his body, its reactions to tilt and balance; so far he wasn’t even taking a risk, but still he leaned his weight in the opposite direction like a lone sailor in a strong wind.
It was by now getting dark, so that he had to sense as much as see what lay directly in front of him; the last thing he wanted to do was use his flashlight which, through the fine foliage of spring, would probably be visible from some considerable distance. The chair was a good one, solid, with strong brakes which he had to clutch very hard indeed against this steep hill. Daniel knew that at the bottom of it he would wish that he’d agreed to have an electrically-assisted chair, but they were awkward and heavy and he didn’t like them.
Once, on a damp patch, he went into a terrifying skid and feared that he was going to turn sideways; the locked wheels would then topple the chair and throw him heaven knew how far down the hill, probably off the path. If he could recover at all from such a disaster, it would take him an hour to crawl back, perhaps right the chair, perhaps clamber into it again. Luckily the skidding wheels struck a stone, or the end of a fallen bough; the chair slewed around the other way, and Daniel just, but only just, prevented it leaving the track altogether, plunging downhill through undergrowth and finally, no doubt, wrecking itself and him against a tree.
At the bottom of the hill he stopped and listened again. A gust of wind stirred the branches above him and moved on. A fox was barking in the far distance. No other sound.
In the gully where he now sat, a good half-mile away from Woodman’s, there was sometimes a stream, in winter a torrent. He wheeled himself carefully across its slushy bed, praying that he wouldn’t get bogged down, and by exerting all his strength managed to climb out of it: a tiny rise which might as well have been a cliff. It gave him a foretaste of what was to come.
He knew his arms were very strong, but they had never been put to a test like this. The upward slope covered perhaps a hundred and fifty yards, and every inch of it was physical anguish. He pushed on the wheels and pushed again, and then jammed on the brakes and recovered. Then, again, a push and another push, and another grab for the brake. By God, if anyone came after him, and his tracks would be easy to follow, he’d be caught on this hillside like a fly on a windowpane. But no one came, there was no stomach-churning flash of lights, pinning him to the steep path; and so, push and … push, and stop. Push—and push—and the brake.
The pain of the ascent ran through his arms like some brutal form of sciatica: his back began to ache, he could almost feel his spine buckling—and of course the torment wracked his pelvis and spread to his pathetic legs: insofar as they were able to feel anything at all.
He refused to look upwards towards the top, which was only a dark tree-mazed line against a paler sky, but concentrated on each push and push and rest, each push and push and rest. In spite of the gloves, his hands were already raw with blisters; he knew he was mad ever to have embarked on this exploit; he was snuffling to himself, half weeping with the pain, and then …
Then suddenly there was no more hill. He raised his head and found himself at the top of it. He wiped his nose and his eyes and looked up through the lacy branches to find that a new moon had sailed out from behind cloud; and for once he hadn’t seen it through glass, so he wished with a vengeance, and began to put his wish into instant practice by pushing off down the long gentle slope ahead.
There were a few uphill stretches, yes, but they were nothing compared to that agonizing climb. He refused to allow himself to believe that he might after all do it, but the thought kept flitting through his mind, urging him on. His hands had started to bleed, making the gloves slippery.
Another hundred yards and, he estimated (for it was now quite dark, with only a glimmer of moonlight indicating the track) that he would come to the drive. Of course it would be a blessed salvation to turn on to the smooth surface and go that way to the village. The distance might be slightly greater, but how simple it would be, and all downhill. But instinctively he sensed it to be a dangerous route. Supposing a car were to come sweeping up or down the drive? Supposing his disappearance had been noted and the lodge-keeper told to keep an eye open for him? No, he would stay with the track; the going might be more difficult, but at least there would be no cars.
In fact, he was much closer to the drive than he’d thought, and its exact whereabouts was revealed to him by the very thing which was urging him to avoid it; he saw, only some twenty yards ahead, a dancing radiance which, at the same moment as he heard the engine, became the full glare of headlights. There was nothing he could do. The hillside rose sharply on one side and fell away as sharply on the other. No friendly bush, no cover of any sort. If the driver, whoever it might be, so much as glanced to his right as he crossed the line of the track he would see the figure frozen to the wheelchair—could not fail to do so.
Hypnotized like a rabbit by the glare, Daniel sat unblinking, unbreathing. He could now see the actual headlamps flickering through the trees, the dark shape of the vehicle. It was on top of him, and there was no chance whatever that he wouldn’t be seen. He waited in agony for the sound of hastily applied brakes … but it didn’t come: only the sound of the car receding, slowing as it approached the lodge and the road beyond.
Daniel took an enormous gulp of cool night air. Glancing down the hill he could see, through trees, that the car had even turned away from the village. He gripped the wheels and urged the chair forward; it bumped across the hard surface of the drive and, slithering slightly, found the track on the far side of it. Another two hundred yards, and he could glimpse, below and ahead, the warmly-lit and welcoming windows of the first cottages. By God, he’d done it!
Minutes later he was in the back yard of the Woolpack, clutching his bleeding hands together, gasping for breath and looking up, far far up, into the face of his towering friend, Tom Duff. Tom assimilated the emergency at a glance and did something he would never have dreamed of doing under ordinary circumstances; he picked Daniel out of the chair and carried him into the back parlour; and Daniel, who would normally have been infuriated by such abject dependence, found that under these far from normal conditions he didn’t mind at all.
When Kate had recovered from the shock of not hearing her brother’s voice over the telephone, and when, at her fourth attempt, a maddening recorded voice told her that the line was out of order, she immediately thought of the Woolpack; found her address book in the disordered depths of her shoulder-bag, looked up the number, and so at length spoke to Daniel, some half an hour after his arrival at the pub.
She listened, with growing anger, to his story; after which he listened, with irritating lack of surprise, to hers: it was exactly the kind of thing he’d expected all along. Moreover the time factor made it clear that his last two visits from Mark Ackland were divided by Lombardi’s report from Cortiano concerning Kate’s sudden appearance there. The destruction of his little car, no less than the shocking arrival of the slaughtered dog, were the results.
Kate was expecting him to plead with her to come home and forget the whole thing; the fact that he did nothing of the sort, coupled with an uncharacteristic air of truculence, made her realize that recent events had radically changed his way of thinking. She said, ‘What I can’t understand is why he’s come out into the open like this—trying to scare us both off.’
‘Pure bloody arrogance. He despises us, he always has. Half-witted cripple and his sister who works as a chambermaid in some hotel.’
‘He must be the one who’s half-witted.’
‘Arrogance usually is. He feels a hundred per cent secure, Kate. Did I go to the police when he destroyed my wretched little car? Of course not, he’d have had a cosy chat with the chief constable, wouldn’t he?’
‘But he’s given himself away. He’s told us there is a secret and he’s not going to let us get hold of it.’
‘That’s right. Arrogance again. If it came to our word against his he knows who’d win.’
With only a trace of hesitation, Kate said, ‘I … I’ve asked Steve to come here. You were right, I can’t manage on my own.’
‘Good.’ He had never been one for I-told-you-so. ‘Then what?’
‘Italy. What we’re looking for happened there, no doubt about it. What are you going to do?’
‘The Duffs want me to stay here, keep my head down, until my hands are OK. I can just about use the crutches, but I can’t touch the chair.’
‘It’s too near Longwater. You know how they talk in that village.’
‘The Duffs don’t talk.’
‘Doctors do.’
‘I’m not having a doctor, Tom’s dealing with it. All that mayhem on the rugger-field, he knows what he’s doing.’
‘Bless him, give him my love. But Daniel, we’ve got to be careful. You’ve just told me how powerful Mark is—don’t go underestimating him.’
‘“Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of men …’”
She was glad he was still able to quote, even in his present predicament, but she had to reply, ‘I know that one. Macbeth—and look what happened to him!’
Next morning Daniel called Ava, his cleaning lady, and said he wouldn’t be needing her for the rest of the week because he was going away, they’d settle up later. Meanwhile Tom drove up to Woodman’s in search of clothes, books, and a few other odds and ends which Daniel needed. If Mark Ackland or any of his henchmen appeared, he intended to ask for Daniel, register surprise at his absence and depart.
As things turned out, he came back with the required belongings and the news that the lock on the front door had been changed, thus rendering Daniel’s key useless. Asked how he’d got in, he smiled his innocent smile and said, ‘I leaned on the back door a bit. Worst pair of bolts I ever came across—just fell off.’
Later that afternoon, lying half asleep on his bed, Daniel found that Andrew Howard had slipped back into his thoughts. It had been his intention to suggest a peaceable meeting; he still felt that fat Andrew might unwittingly hold information which could be added to what he already knew. But now it occurred to him that he hadn’t given nearly enough thought to the matter. Apart from the unlikelihood of the lawyer agreeing to see him, peaceably or not, anything he might know could only have been gleaned from his mother. It was evident that Rosemary Howard had no intention of betraying any of Lydia’s secrets, but the fact remained: she was the one who knew all there was to know, and moreover she was far more likely than her wily son to reveal an important clue.
Daniel saw his course quite clearly now; he must get Andrew safely out of the way for a few hours and then make a return visit to The Pines. He began to consider ways and means.