It was a little over an hour later that Jonathan returned. Dorothea, as always, seemed more concerned about providing him with lunch than in hearing why he had left for Heathrow the night before without leaving any message behind. She had given Colin and Andrew a lunch of omelettes and coffee and was anxious to do the same for Jonathan, but he rejected it with some impatience, saying that he had just had a good breakfast at Heathrow and now only wanted a drink. It was whisky that he wanted, which was unusual for him. His face, which normally looked so healthy, had a pallid, almost withered look. His eyes were red-veined with fatigue.
“Now what’s all this about Gwen?” he asked. He had dropped into a chair in the sitting room and had drunk about half of his whisky quickly, as if he were relying on it to clear his mind. “She can’t really have disappeared.”
“That’s what we said about you when we found you’d gone missing,” Dorothea said. “We thought perhaps you might just have driven off by yourself for a time to think quietly about what you ought to do. If it hadn’t been for your passport being missing… But we never really hunted for it. I thought perhaps you’d just moved it to a different drawer or something. Where were you meaning to go, Jonathan?”
“Does it matter?” he said. “I don’t really know.”
“You don’t know!” she exclaimed. “You mean you went to Heathrow and you didn’t even know where you were going?”
“That’s just about it,” he said. “We’d have seen what tickets were available. I was rather hoping we’d get to Monte Carlo or somewhere like that. Gwen had quite a bit of money available, so she said, and I’d my credit card. We’d probably have taken a stand-by flight to somewhere or other. It didn’t seem to me to matter much where we ended up once she’d at last agreed to come with me, as I thought she had. Oh God, I’m tired. Have we got to go on talking about it?”
“I thought you wanted to know what had happened to her,” Colin said.
“And you don’t know,” Jonathan replied. “What I’d like is to get out of my clothes and have a bath and go to bed.”
“When did you see her last?” Colin asked.
Jonathan gave a deep yawn.
“Yesterday evening,” he said. “In The Running Man. She phoned me from there after she’d got back from seeing Erica and said she wanted to see me. And as you know, I told you I was going there to have a drink with a friend. And I thought she wanted to see me to make some final arrangements about our leaving. We’d decided days ago—before Christmas, before the bomb—that we’d leave together on Boxing Day and go to the South of France, and once we were there we’d really think about the future. I thought we ought simply to tell Nicholas how things were and leave openly, but she seemed to be scared of doing that, though she never quite explained why. Then when I met her at The Running Man she told me that she wanted to call the whole thing off.”
“For good, or just temporarily, till the shock of the bomb had worn off a little?” Colin enquired.
“I don’t think she knew herself,” Jonathan said.
“But you persuaded her to go ahead with your plan.”
“Yes.”
“There are some things about it I don’t understand,” Andrew said. “Why didn’t you pick her up at her gate and take her to Heathrow in your car?”
“Because we weren’t sure when she’d be able to get out,” Jonathan said. “Our idea was that she’d wait till she was sure Nicholas was asleep—she was going to give him a couple of sleeping pills—then she’d slip out. But we didn’t know when that would be, and if I’d been in my car, waiting perhaps for quite a long time somewhere in the lane, someone might have seen it and thought it was a bit queer my just waiting there. If the police had been around, for instance, they might actually have stopped us getting away. So we thought it’d be best if I simply drove off to Heathrow on my own and she’d follow me in her car when she could safely get away. And I got to Heathrow and I waited and I waited…” He finished his whisky and gave another exhausted yawn. “Well, that’s about all. I kept on hoping, and it wasn’t until about halfway through this morning that I admitted to myself she simply wasn’t coming. Until then I kept telling myself she hadn’t been able to get away in the night because Nicholas hadn’t gone to sleep or something. But in the morning she could easily have taken her car, saying she was going on some errand, then actually driven off to join me. But in the end I understood she’d simply agreed to all our plans the evening before as a way of keeping me quiet and getting rid of me. She never meant to come.”
“Except that now she’s missing,” Colin said, “so she went somewhere.”
“What about her car?” Jonathan asked. “Is that missing too?”
“No,” Colin said, “and nor are any of her clothes or a suitcase, or so Nicholas says. Dorothea isn’t inclined to believe him.”
“That isn’t true,” Dorothea said. “I only feel it isn’t absolutely certain that he’d know if she’d taken anything with her. But I’m sure he’s right when he says her handbag’s missing. He says she took that away with her.”
“So if she wasn’t carrying anything like a suitcase, she could easily have walked away,” Jonathan said. He frowned thoughtfully. “If she’d left in the early morning, not in the night, she could have caught a bus into Rockford, then she could have taken a train to London, and from there… D’you know, I believe I ought to have gone on waiting at Heathrow. She could have gone there from Victoria, but it would have taken her till later in the morning to do it. Yes, honestly I believe that’s what she may have done! Nicholas didn’t go to sleep, or she wasn’t sure that he did, and so she simply slipped away very quietly out of the house without bothering about a suitcase, and didn’t take the car because opening up the garage and so on might have disturbed him, and set off on foot.” He sprang to his feet. “Look, I’ve got to get back to Heathrow as quickly as I can.”
“Jonathan darling, sit down,” Dorothea said. “Or go and have that bath you want and some sleep. She isn’t waiting for you at Heathrow. If she really went there in the way you think, she’ll have realised when she got there and couldn’t find you that you’d given her up and gone home. So she’ll either phone you here or she’ll come here herself. Or what I think is more probable is that she didn’t go to Heathrow at all, but went somewhere to escape from both you and Nicholas and think things out in peace. And if that sounds cruel to you, I’m sorry, but I can understand how she may have felt that she’d got to do something of the sort. You say she’s scared of Nicholas, and for all we know she’s scared of you too. I think she’s a person who’s always been scared of a lot of things.”
“But where could she go if she hasn’t got a suitcase?” Jonathan asked. “Hotels don’t exactly make you welcome if you haven’t any luggage.”
“Has she any special friends or relations she might have gone to?” Colin asked.
“Not that I know of,” Jonathan said. “I know her parents are dead.”
“A place she might have gone to,” Dorothea said, “if she got to London, is the Haslams’ flat. I believe Henry was there for the night, but he said he was going to come back here in the morning, so if she didn’t get there too early she’d have had the place to herself.”
“But how would she have got in?”
“Didn’t she go to see Erica in the hospital yesterday, and mightn’t she have told Erica the whole story, and mightn’t Erica actually have suggested she should go to the flat to hide for a little while, and given her her own key? You know I think that might be the answer to the whole problem. You see, she could even borrow Erica’s clothes.”
Jonathan gave his mother a wondering look, as he sometimes did when he thought she was talking sense.
“Then what I’ve got to do is to telephone the Haslams’ flat,” he said. “Have you got their number?”
“No,” Dorothea said, “but I can get it in a moment from the Deardens.”
“I’d stick to Directory Enquiries,” Colin said. “If Nicholas answers he’s liable to be specially anxious to get you to help him trace his wife, which perhaps you don’t yet want to do.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t phone at all,” Andrew said. “She seems to have made it evident that she wants to be left in peace.”
But Jonathan was not inclined to follow this advice. He dialled Directory Enquiries, asking for the Haslams’ number, and afterwards dialled the number that he was given. He held the telephone to his ear for a long time while the ringing tone went on and on. Then at last he put the telephone down with a slam and without a word went out of the room.
“So I was wrong,” Dorothea said. “She isn’t there.”
“Or she’s gone out, or knowing that it was probably Jonathan ringing, didn’t choose to answer,” Colin said.
“And now what are we going to do?” she asked. “Oh, I’ve begun to hate that woman. I don’t believe Jonathan’s ever meant anything to her and she doesn’t care how much he gets hurt.”
“I think the first thing we’ve got to do is tell Nicholas that Jonathan has come home and that Gwen isn’t with him,” Colin said. “I’ll go round right away. It might be a good idea if you come too. You may be able to get Lyn to talk to you.”
Dorothea nodded and went to fetch a coat. The two of them left the house together.
Andrew decided to indulge himself for once in a short sleep and sat down in a chair near to the electric fire. But sleep did not come. He felt drowsy enough, but failed to slip away into complete unconsciousness. After a little while rhymes took over in his brain.
Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill,
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still…
It was maddening, but there was one thing for which he was thankful. Christmas was over. There was holly still along the tops of the pictures, and there were Christmas cards looking gay on the tree-branch in its pot of earth, but the challenge to be merry had gone. With luck, he thought, he might never again feel any obligation to be merry at Christmas. Next year he might just lay in a good supply of frozen food, lock and bolt the door against the world, leave the telephone unanswered and wait until Christmas and New Year were safely past before emerging. For any festivity, any dinner with friends, any party however pleasant, would only remind him of the tragedy of Upper Cullonden and leave him with an ache in his heart.
Colin and Dorothea were really very dear friends, and he could not help sharing in the pain that they were suffering, all of which was connected, of course, with the folly of their son. If he had not started a love affair with that woman next door, if he had not chosen the most preposterous of times to try to elope with her, if the bomb in the lane had not so very probably been meant for him, Christmas might have been no worse than most Christmases were for childless people—a time, that was to say, of overeating, often followed by indigestion; of drinking more than usual, which it was true was a help; and a slightly futile attempt to recapture some of the joys of childhood.
“ ‘Heap on more wood!’—” No, he did not intend to let those lines occupy his mind. The best way to prevent that, he knew, was to think of some other lines. But when he tried to do this, all that came to him were some ridiculous words.
I gotta phone,
You gotta phone,
All God’s chilluns got phones,
When I get to Heaven goin’ to phone all my friends,
Goin’ to ring up all over God’s Heaven…
He sat up with a start. Had he actually been asleep for a little while? Telephones, of course, were on his mind because the question of who could have telephoned whom seemed to be a central matter in the disaster here. Henry Haslam admitted that he had had a call from Thomas Waterman on the day of the bombing.
Was that important?
Lyn Goddard insisted that no one had called the Deardens on that day.
Was that true?
Gwen Dearden had called Jonathan, asking him to meet her at The Running Man, and there, according to him, she had promised to meet him later at Heathrow.
Was that really what she had done?
Jonathan had called Dorothea from Heathrow to say that Gwen had never arrived. Then what had happened to her? She had not answered when Jonathan telephoned the Haslams’ flat, but had she been there? Who could tell? Not the telephone itself. It occurred to Andrew that life must really have been far simpler before the fearful thing was invented. Fearful because few things could produce such a sense of nervous frustration as a call that ought to have been made but was not, or one that simply went unanswered.
Andrew began to think about Gwen. He had never before given her much thought. She was nice-looking, even charming, courteous and sufficiently intelligent, or so she had always seemed to him; but what was there about her to make a young man like Jonathan, who was attractive enough himself to have a fairly wide choice open to him among women, fall so fatally in love with her? For fatal perhaps it had been. If it had been Nicholas who planted the bomb, and jealousy had been his motive…
But that would mean that he too was passionately devoted to her, no doubt with a slightly insane sort of love, but one which nevertheless was powerful enough to drive him to an act of incredible horror. What was there about her to make it even possible to think of such things? Under her quiet exterior there must be a great wealth of emotion, of passion, of tenderness, the possession of which perhaps she herself did not fully understand. At all events, she had not wanted to make use of them. Challenged, she had fled. She had escaped, gone into hiding, rejected all that was offered to her. She was more than a little neurotic, Andrew was inclined to think, a person who took refuge in hysteria as soon as she was shocked or frightened. But many very neurotic people have great charm…
Andrew started, for the door had suddenly opened; Jonathan came in.
“Are they still over there?” he asked, giving a nod vaguely in the direction of the Deardens’ house.
“So far as I know,” Andrew answered.
Jonathan sat down on the sofa where his mother normally sat. Almost as if he were imitating her, he put his feet up, and leaning back against the cushions, folded his hands under his head and crossed his ankles. Andrew considered him with detachment. He was certainly good-looking, with more suggestion of strength about him than there was about Nicholas, which was not only because of his youth. Rather, Andrew thought, it was in spite of his youth. There was an air of promise about him, of qualities yet to develop. If Gwen had stuck to the plan that she and Jonathan were said to have made in The Running Man, Andrew would not have found it surprising.
“I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to move into Rockford,” Jonathan said.
“That may be a good idea,” Andrew said.
“Of course I can’t do it at once,” Jonathan went on. “I’ll have to wait until things have calmed down. Then I think I’ll go into lodgings for a bit, then look for a flat. There’s just one problem.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want them to feel hurt at my moving out. Do you think they will?”
“Not very seriously. As a matter of fact, it may be a bit of a relief to them.”
“Because of getting me away from Gwen? That’s partly why I want to go, of course. I don’t think she’ll come back till I go.”
“You think she will come back?”
“Why not?”
“Will Nicholas want her back?”
“No doubt about it. After what he’s done to keep her… No!” Jonathan raised a hand to stop Andrew speaking. “I know what you’re going to say. And of course I realise we haven’t the least certainty he did it, but unless they find the man who did, she’ll go on having that little doubt at the back of her mind and she won’t stay with him.”
“Rockford isn’t very far away,” Andrew said. “You could still see her.”
“I’ll only do that if she comes looking for me.” There was a sudden sternness on Jonathan’s face, which gave him the air that he sometimes had of being older than he was. “But what I wanted to ask you, Andrew, is will you tell Mum for me what I mean to do, and if she’s upset, try to convince her that it’s the best thing for all of us.”
“As I said, I don’t think she’ll be too much upset,” Andrew said. “She’s had a feeling of guilt about your living here, in case it’s because she’s been too possessive. She’s read all the right books about that sort of thing.”
“All the same, it’s what she is, you know. You can show a sort of possessiveness by holding back and letting it be seen how much that hurts you. I think I did that with Gwen.”
“I didn’t know there was much holding back on your part.”
“Oh yes, there was!”
“Yet you stayed on here, just to be near her.”
Jonathan gave a short little bark of laughter. “All right, I did, and you don’t approve of it. And you’re quite right, it’s ended in ruin for all of us. But what do you think I ought to have done? Give her up, I suppose.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But honestly, what do you think I ought to have done?”
“I haven’t any idea,” Andrew answered, “except that at the moment I feel you’re putting on an act of some sort. I’m not sure if you’re just trying to convince me that you’re giving Gwen up when you’ve no intention of doing so, or if you’re really trying to convince yourself about it. But something doesn’t ring quite true.”
“Do you care much which it is?”
“Why should I?”
“Because for one thing you’re very attached to my parents, and if you couldn’t care less what happens to me, you do care about them. So if my walking out now, or as soon as I can get away, is going to hurt them, it’ll worry you. Perhaps not very much. You’re always careful not to get too involved with other people, but you’ll blame me for it.”
“You seem to want me to blame you for something.”
Jonathan swung his feet down abruptly and sat facing Andrew, holding his head in his hands.
“Oh, Andrew, I don’t. It’s just that I’m in such a mess. Everything’s such a mess. Really I want you to tell me you don’t blame me.”
Andrew thought over his answer for a moment before he said, “Let’s leave it at that. You aren’t a child anymore. You’ve got to sort those things out for yourself.”
Jonathan closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them and stared at the carpet at his feet.
“You’re right, of course. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
As he said it Andrew heard the front door open and close, and Colin and Dorothea came into the room.
Colin had an arm round Dorothea, as if in some way he were trying to protect her. They stood looking rather vacantly at Andrew and Jonathan, but almost at once Dorothea shot off to the kitchen to get tea. There were no cucumber sandwiches that afternoon, but only some slightly stale biscuits. When Andrew asked if there was any news of Gwen, Colin replied that there was not. He added that when he had told Nicholas of Jonathan’s waiting for her at Heathrow, Nicholas had decided to call the police and report that she was missing. He believed that, after the explosion of the bomb and seeing what she had of her father-in-law’s body in the burning car in the lane, she might be suffering so severely from shock that she was experiencing an attack of amnesia and perhaps might be wandering somewhere now, alone and lost.
Colin and Dorothea had not attempted to dissuade him from telling this to the police, but had left before they arrived. All the time that Colin was talking Jonathan sat as he had been when they came in, staring down at the carpet with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
When Dorothea wheeled the tea trolley into the room he raised his head and said, “They’ll be coming here any time now, won’t they?”
“I expect so,” Colin said.
“And they’ll want to question me. And d’you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to get into my car and drive off fast. I don’t know where. Anywhere. Only there’d be no point in doing it really, because they’d catch up with me sooner or later.” Jonathan accepted the cup of tea that his mother held out to him and looked up at her with a trace of a smile. “It’s all right, Mum, I don’t really mean to do it. I’m going to wait here like a good boy and answer everything they ask me. But I don’t believe in the amnesia theory. I think Gwen knew only too well what she was doing.”
“Henry’s still over there,” Colin said. “After all he didn’t go home yesterday evening. Nicholas lent him a pair of Lucas’s pyjamas and Lucas’s razor this morning, and just what they did about a toothbrush I don’t know. Perhaps they had a spare in the house.”
“I wonder why he stayed,” Jonathan said.
“I think he felt it might make things easier for Nicholas and Lyn,” Dorothea said. “You know what Henry’s like. Conventional to the limit. He probably felt there’d be some impropriety about leaving them there alone together and that it was his duty to stay.”
“If anyone felt that, Lyn could have come here, couldn’t she?” Jonathan said.
“Anyway, she didn’t,” Colin replied with an abruptness that showed how much his nerves were on edge. He seemed to avoid looking at Jonathan, as if by doing that he could avoid the thought that it was at least to some extent Jonathan’s doing that Gwen had vanished.
The police did not arrive until a little after five o’clock. Detective Inspector Roland’s square face with the heavy-lidded eyes had a look of grimness about it which Andrew noticed, wondering why he had not specially done so before. Then he thought that perhaps he had been aware of it from the first but had preferred not to think that Roland had any strong feelings, other than purely professional ones, about the case on which he was engaged. But now it seemed to Andrew the man was angry. Perhaps only angry because he was being kept from going home for his tea, or else because he felt bewildered and unsure of himself and did not like the condition. Sergeant Porter had his usual look of being somehow pleasantly surprised at finding himself in such agreeable company.
Dorothea immediately offered the two detectives tea, but Roland refused it for both of them with only the merest shake of his head.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask Mr. Jonathan Cahill one or two questions,” he said and in his usual way added, “Nothing important probably, but he may be able to help us.” He sat down in the chair that Colin had offered him, but his eyes were steadily on Jonathan. “I believe you had planned to go abroad with Mrs. Dearden.”
“So I thought,” Jonathan said.
“When did you decide to do this?” Roland asked.
“Yesterday evening.”
“You mean you hadn’t thought of doing it before that?”
“Yes, of course we had. We’d been thinking of it for months. But there always seemed to be a good reason why we hadn’t found just the right time for it. I suppose that ought to have warned me. I mean, it should have told me that she wasn’t really serious about the project. Only I just preferred not to think about that. Next question?”
“My next question is just why you decided yesterday evening to leave last night.” This time Roland did not pretend that the question was unimportant.
“Because I put it to her that I wasn’t going to go on waiting,” Jonathan said. “I told her I’d had enough of it.”
“And this was in The Running Man?”
“Yes, it was.”
“And isn’t it a fact that it was she who telephoned you from there, asking you to join her? It was she who arranged that meeting, not you.”
Jonathan looked puzzled. “Yes, it was.”
“And what was her object?”
“I suppose to tell me she’d decided against leaving her husband. But I persuaded her—I thought I’d persuaded her—to come away with me after all. We arranged to meet at Heathrow sometime during the night or in the early morning, and get tickets on whatever plane we could. We didn’t fix a definite time for meeting because she didn’t know when she’d be able to slip out of the house. And I realise now that she gave in and agreed with everything I suggested much too easily. She never meant to go, she just saw that the easiest way to put me off was to agree to all I wanted.”
“Yet she did leave her husband,” Roland said.
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
Jonathan did not reply at once, and when he did it was with a sound of reluctance.
“I’m only guessing, but I’ve a feeling it’s connected with a belief she had that he was responsible for his father’s death. Not that she exactly believed that, but she was haunted by an idea that it might be the truth. And she was determined not to give any evidence against him. Whether she actually had any evidence…” He paused and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m inclined to doubt it, but I really don’t know.”
“Didn’t she telephone you in your office in the late afternoon of December the twenty-third, and didn’t you leave the office immediately after her call instead of staying on for the Christmas party that was being held there that evening?”
Colin interrupted, “Inspector, I don’t know where this is leading, but I’m beginning to feel that my son shouldn’t answer any more of your questions without our solicitor being present.”
“It’s all right,” Jonathan said, “I don’t mind answering. Yes, it’s quite true Gwen phoned me and said she wanted to talk to me, and we arranged to meet in The Running Man about six o’clock. But before we did, while I was on my way home, the bomb went off and of course we didn’t have any meeting then.”
“Did she say anything then about why she wanted to see you?”
“No, but of course it was to tell me the things she told me yesterday evening.”
“Could it be that she was making sure that you would come along the lane at the usual time, instead of staying on for your office party for she didn’t know how long?”
Jonathan drew in a shaky breath, staring at Roland incredulously.
“You’re suggesting she planted the bomb in the lane to try to kill me!”
“No, only that she made that telephone call,” Roland replied. “And she might have made it under some compulsion.”
“What kind of compulsion were you thinking of, Inspector?” Andrew asked. “A gun in her back, for instance?”
“I’ve known stranger things than that happen,” Roland said, and Sergeant Porter nodded his head vigorously as if to show that he too had had his experiences. “However, while agreeing that it doesn’t sound too probable and forgetting it for the moment, it may interest you to know that we’re holding Thomas Waterman and that he’ll probably be charged with the murder of Sir Lucas Dearden. He’s admitted now that he spoke on the telephone to Mr. Haslam in the afternoon of the twenty-third, asking him how he could get in touch with Sir Lucas, and that Mr. Haslam told him Sir Lucas was on his way home. That isn’t exactly a confession, of course, and once he’d admitted it he announced he wasn’t going to answer any more questions, but my guess is he’ll end up by pleading guilty.”
“Did Mr. Haslam come to see you and tell you about that telephone call?” Jonathan asked.
“Yes, and it was when he did that that Waterman admitted it was true,” Roland said. “Well, I think that’s all for now. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” He looked at Andrew. “You’re staying here for the present, are you, Professor?”
Suddenly Andrew wondered how much longer he would in fact be staying. The arrangement that he had originally made with the Cahills was that he should stay until December the twenty-eighth. The pressure of the holiday would have been over by then, and when he returned home shops would have opened and he would have been able to stock in supplies against the New Year siege. But now it was possible that he would be required to stay, though how he could be useful he did not know. However, he was one of the people who had heard the bomb explode and had been on the scene immediately after it. He might still be questioned, even though he had nothing to say, and at any rate to leave might draw unwelcome attention to himself. When the two detectives had gone, he thought, he would discuss the matter with Colin and Dorothea.
His answer to Roland’s question was a vague nod, and Roland and the sergeant left a few minutes later.
Dorothea turned swiftly on Jonathan and said, “You never told us anything about that telephone call from Gwen to your office.”
He gave a deep sigh and said, “No.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why should I?”
“No—no, of course there was no reason why you should.” She was looking more than usually distraught. “I’m in a muddle, that’s all. The call was before all these awful things started happening, wasn’t it? And Gwen couldn’t have been expecting anything—”
“Mum!” Jonathan broke in. “What are you trying to say? Of course Gwen wasn’t expecting anything.”
At that moment the telephone shrilled.
Colin picked it up and said in an irritated tone, “Cahill speaking.” Then he listened for a moment and said, “Hold on, he’s just here.” He turned to Andrew. “For you.”
Andrew could not think who could be ringing him up at that number, but he went to Colin’s side and took the telephone from him.
A woman’s voice said quietly, “This is Lyn Goddard. I’d like to talk to you. Could you meet me in about a quarter of an hour in the bar of The Running Man?”
“I could,” Andrew said, “but I’d feel happier about it if you gave me some idea what you want to talk about.”
“I’d sooner not,” she said. “I imagine you aren’t alone in that room you’re in, are you?”
“No.”
“You couldn’t talk freely at your end.”
“Perhaps not.”
“So let’s say it had better keep till we meet. If a quarter of an hour isn’t convenient, it could be later.”
“A quarter of an hour will do.”
“Thank you.” She rang off.
Andrew put the telephone down and said, “That was Lyn Goddard. She wants me to go off immediately and meet her in The Running Man. She wouldn’t say why, except that she wants to talk to me. Do any of you mind my going?”
“Of course not,” Colin said. “It’s your business.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Jonathan objected uneasily. “If there’s something she knows, oughtn’t she to tell it to us all? Perhaps the best thing would be if I went along with you.”
“I don’t think she wants that,” Andrew said.
“If she did, she’d have said so, wouldn’t she?” Colin said. “No, go along, Andrew. You’ll know if she’s got something to tell you that you think we ought to know.”
Thankful for Colin’s calm and good sense, Andrew put on his overcoat, took the torch and set off down the dark lane towards the village.
He could not resist lingering at the gate for a moment, sending the beam of the torch this way and that over the charred hedgerows near to where the burning car had stood. It would not take the hedges long, he thought, to regain their normal growth, and if any fragment of the car had been blasted into them or along the ground, these would all have been carefully collected and removed by the police. He doubted if such things would yield any clues. The solution of what had happened would probably be found in what a small group of people had to say about one another.
Had Lyn Goddard anything to say of any significance, he wondered, and why had she chosen him to talk to? One answer to that last question might simply be that both he and she were outsiders, not a part of the little world of Upper Cullonden. Or she might have the idea, as some people had, that he was clever and perceptive and able to give good advice. He shrank at the thought, but set off walking briskly towards the village.
He found her waiting for him in the lounge bar of The Running Man. There were only three or four other people in it. It was in the old part of the building and had a low, dark, beamed ceiling, small windows over which crimson curtains were drawn, a few low round tables with chairs around them and a narrow bar behind which stood a bald-headed man of immense portliness. This, Andrew supposed, was Joe Hobson of whom Colin had spoken, the man who had told him that Thomas Waterman was staying at the inn.
Lyn Goddard was sitting at one of the little tables. She had a glass before her which contained either gin and orange juice or plain orange juice. She raised a hand in a small gesture of greeting as Andrew went to the bar and ordered a whisky and soda. She was wearing a tweed coat over the same grey dress she had worn on all the occasions he had seen her. She wore no makeup on her pale, calm face.
Andrew brought his whisky to her table and sat down facing her.
“Well, here I am,” he said.
“Yes,” she acknowledged. “It was good of you to come. Did the Cahills mind my asking you to come?”
“If they did, they didn’t say so.”
“So you think they did.”
“I think they mind everything that’s happened since that bomb blast. A little more mystery is neither here nor there. But of course you’ve your reason for wanting to see me. I hope it’s something I’m going to be able to tell them about, because we’re very old friends and keeping something rather obviously to myself isn’t going to be easy. So I rather hope you aren’t going to tell me anything in confidence.”
“I see.” She fingered her glass and gazed, not at him, but slightly to one side of him with a wide, unfocussed stare. “I’ll have to leave it to you how much you tell them. I don’t want to insist on anything. But isn’t it a fact that they believe Gwen and Jonathan were going away together?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Only it isn’t true, you see.”
She was still avoiding looking at him, and for once there was an expression of uncertainty on the face that was usually so quietly confident.
“Is that something you know for sure, or is it just something you’ve guessed?” he asked.
“I know it for sure—well, almost for sure,” she answered. “In the end it’s pretty well impossible to know what other people are going to do, isn’t it?”
“Pretty nearly, if not quite always,” he agreed. “You don’t think she ever intended to meet Jonathan at Heathrow?”
“I’m certain she didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she isn’t in the least in love with him. She’s deeply, you might say almost desperately, in love with Nicholas. It’s Nicholas who isn’t in love with Gwen. He’s in love with me.”
She met his eyes at last, and he had no doubt of her sincerity.
“And she knows this, does she?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “That was why she wanted Nicholas to agree to live abroad. It was to get him away from me.”
“Since when has she known it?”
“For about the last year.”
“Yet she invited you here for Christmas.”
“Yes, but it was Nicholas who insisted on that. He wanted things to be cleared up amongst the three of us. And Sir Lucas wasn’t going to be here. We’d never have managed to get anywhere if he’d been there to interfere. Gwen would have confided in him and he’d have bullied Nicholas in the way he usually did and Nicholas would have given in. He’s a—a very yielding sort of person.”
She might as easily have said a weak one, but it seemed she loved him in spite of it. Perhaps she felt she had enough strength for the two of them.
“You and he—forgive the question—have been lovers, have you, and Gwen accepted this rather than give Nicholas up?” Andrew said.
“As a matter of fact, no, we haven’t been lovers,” she answered. “Nicholas wouldn’t leave her as long as she held on to him so frantically. He said he couldn’t hurt her so much. And I wasn’t ready for one of those shared relationships.”
He wondered whether or not to believe her. He drank some whisky, then after a moment asked, “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I’m really worried about her,” she said. “What’s really happened to her? And because I don’t want you to think that Nicholas had any motive for harming Jonathan. If she’d left him it would have been the best possible thing for Nicholas. If the bomb in the lane was intended for Jonathan, it wasn’t Nicholas who put it there.”
“Have you any idea then who it could have been?”
“No, but I don’t know a great deal about Jonathan. He may have all sorts of enemies.”
“Suppose it wasn’t Jonathan who was the target. Suppose the bomb was always meant for Dearden.”
“And you still think it could have been Nicholas…” She gave a little gasp. “That’s what Gwen thought at first. She thought he wanted money so that he could give up his writing and go away with me, but provide for her at the same time. That’s why she was frightened of him and screamed when he went near her. So many things pointing to him! And you probably think, no smoke without fire.”
“I believe there are all sorts of ways of producing smoke without fire nowadays, just as you can have fire without smoke,” Andrew said. “At the moment I’ve no suspicions of Nicholas, though it’s true that now he’s a rich man and he can stop writing spy stories if the fact is that he isn’t much interested in them. But there’s something you seem to have forgotten. It was your statement that there was no telephone call to the Deardens’ house on the day of the bomb, and I, for one, have felt inclined to believe you. But you’ve just made some more statements which make it very easy for one to assume that if there’d been a call to Nicholas during the day, telling him that his father was on the way home, you’d have done your very best to cover up the fact.”
She considered what he had said, then shook her head. “I didn’t. There was no call.”
“Well, what do you want me to do now?” he asked. “Not, presumably, tell what you’ve been telling me to the police. Yet somehow you want me to use it to clear Nicholas. Have you any suggestions about that, because if there’s any way I can help, I’ll do what I can.”
“You haven’t any ideas of your own about it?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
Suddenly she looked vulnerable and unsure of herself, almost as if she might start to cry.
“I thought you’d have some idea, now that you know so much,” she said shakily. “I thought you’ve so much understanding, you’d be sure to be able to help us. I thought if I confided in you you’d be sure to be able to tell me what I ought to do.”
Andrew felt the shrinking sensation that usually assailed him if anyone accused him of being wise.
Reluctantly, wishing that he need not answer at all, he said what seemed to him to commit him least.
“All that I can suggest is that you should wait and see. After all, things haven’t got very far yet, have they? We don’t know what the police may have uncovered by now, for one thing. I think if I were you I’d be inclined not to tell what you’ve told me to anyone else. A time may come when you’ll have to talk about it, but I don’t think that time is yet.”
“But if you think it could be Nicholas…” She broke off as the door into the bar opened and Henry Haslam came in. He came to their table. His face was sternly grave. Standing over them, looking massively stout but at the same time formidable, he said, “I was told I’d find you here. They’ve found Gwen. Her body was in one of those toolsheds on the allotments. It had been there for some hours. She’d been strangled.”