‘I made a complete cock-up of it!’ declared Hazel bitterly. ‘I behaved like an amateur. Worse: like a girly amateur!’
It was now mid-morning. She’d been thoroughly debriefed by DCI Gorman and Superintendent Maybourne, and the adrenalin rush that had left her shrill and shaking for the first hour had long since receded. Now she was able to review the night’s events with a cold and critical eye, and she wasn’t pleased by what she saw.
Ash had taken one look at her when she arrived at the bookshop, drawn the blind and taken her back to Highfield Road, where he was now plying her with hot chocolate for the shock.
They had the big stone house to themselves. The boys were at school and their nanny was shopping in town. Hazel sat down beside Patience on the kitchen sofa while Ash heated the milk. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Is that what Dave said?’
‘It’s what he must have thought.’
‘What did he say?’
She vented a weary sigh. ‘He said I’d done the right thing by locking myself in the bathroom and calling for help.’
‘What did Superintendent Maybourne say?’
‘Pretty much the same thing. But Gabriel, he was there – right there, within a few feet of me. If I hadn’t panicked, if I’d thrown open the door while he was trying the knob, I could have seen who it was. I could have put an end to this.’
‘He could have killed you,’ Ash said.
‘He hasn’t been sending me presents because he wants me dead!’
‘He started off by sending you presents. You don’t know what he wants now. Only that he thought it was worth risking being caught, and all that would follow from that. You cannot afford to underestimate what this man is capable of.’
Hazel knew he was right. It didn’t make her feel any better about cowering in a bath while an intruder prowled her house.
‘Do you know how he got in?’ asked Ash.
Hazel nodded. ‘He used a glass cutter to make a hole in the pane in the back door. Then he reached through and turned the key.’
‘Which was in the lock.’
‘Which was in the lock,’ she agreed. ‘All right, this time it was a bad idea. If there’d been a fire, it would have seemed like a good idea.’
‘I suppose fingerprints are out of the question?’
She nodded glumly. ‘Gloves.’
‘And nothing on the camera?’
‘Only Railway Street with nobody in sight. We put the camera at the front – that’s where he was leaving his little presents.’
‘You can’t cover every possibility,’ said Ash. ‘But you saw him as he left.’
‘I saw his back. I can give a fair description of his parka, that’s about all.’
‘Tall man? Short?’
Hazel shrugged. ‘Somewhere in between. Maybe on the solid side. Or that might just have been the parka.’
‘He never looked round?’
‘Not while I was there. And the hood covered his head – I don’t even know if he was bald or bearded.’
‘Did you see any kind of a weapon?’
‘I hardly saw anything at all,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t say he wasn’t armed.’
For a moment neither of them said anything more. They sipped the chocolate, explored the contents of the biscuit tin.
Ash broke the silence. ‘You know you can’t go back there?’
‘Of course I can,’ said Hazel, surprised. ‘The glazier replaced the panel in the door.’
‘For God’s sake,’ exploded Ash, ‘I’m not worried about the draught! I’m worried that next time he does it, you won’t hear him. You cannot sleep in that house again until he’s been found and dealt with.’
‘And how long’s that likely to take?’ demanded Hazel. ‘Weeks? Months? I’m not sleeping on your sofa for the foreseeable future.’
‘You can have my room,’ he offered in a low voice.
His diffidence still had the power to charm her. She touched the back of his hand with her fingers. ‘Thank you. But no. I told you before, I’m not running scared from this man.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
She was about to lie, thought better of it. ‘Of course I was. There’s no need for everyone to know, though, is there?’
‘You should be scared. A week ago you had a secret admirer: last night you were threatened by an intruder in your house. That’s too big a progression in too short a time. What’s he going to do next? He’s not going to be content with leaving small tokens of appreciation on your doorstep any more.’
Much as she wanted to dismiss his concerns, Hazel knew he was right. Whoever was doing this had crossed a Rubicon when he broke into her house and padded round looking for her. The arrival of the area car might have scared him off, but it wouldn’t keep him away. Something was drawing him to her, something that perhaps he understood no better than she did but which he could not resist. He would be back. Or he would find her somewhere else.
‘What do you think I should do?’
Ash dared to hope that she would listen to reason. ‘I think you should get out of Norbold for a while. Go and visit your dad. The investigation will go on just as well without you. When Dave Gorman makes an arrest, you can come back and see if it all makes sense when you know who’s been doing it.’
At least she was considering it. ‘What if he follows me? It wouldn’t be that difficult for him to find out I have only one close relative, and where he lives. I don’t want to take my trouble to his door.’
Fred Best was an old soldier: Ash thought he was probably still capable of dealing with most forms of trouble. But he understood her reluctance. ‘What about Pete Byrfield, then? He wouldn’t have to give up his bed for you. And you’d be close enough to see your dad without being under his roof.’
The idea had a certain appeal. Hazel had grown up on the country estate where her father was handyman to Peregrine, 28th Earl Byrfield, widely known as Pete. She’d ridden his sisters’ out-grown ponies and he’d pulled her pigtails. Meeting again as adults, he’d been rather surprised that (a) Hazel Best the grubby tomboy had turned into a notably good-looking young woman, and that (b) the old easy friendship had survived a decade apart.
‘I suppose I could ask him,’ she said slowly.
‘Hazel,’ said Ash sternly, ‘you solved a mystery that was tearing his family apart. You really think he’s going to begrudge you B&B for a couple of weeks?’
‘All right,’ she decided. ‘I’ll ask him.’
Ash drove her to Cambridgeshire. There were three good reasons for Hazel to leave her car in Norbold, although Ash thought she was only aware of two of them. If the stalker saw her car in its usual place, he might venture to approach the house again, and although Meadowvale couldn’t spare the manpower for a 24/7 surveillance, frequent drive-bys in unmarked cars might spot him. As well as that, she didn’t want her car to be seen anywhere near her father’s house – if the stalker realised she was missing, he might think it worth the three-hour drive to check if she was visiting her father.
The third reason, the one Ash hadn’t mentioned to Hazel, was that if she didn’t have her own transport at Byrfield, she couldn’t get bored after three days in the country, wonder how the investigation was progressing and nip home to check.
‘What did Pete say when you called him?’ asked Ash as he drove.
‘He seemed pleased, and a little concerned, and said we were going to have a cracking good time.’
Ash liked the 28th earl. Not because he was a snob but because Byrfield wasn’t either. They both recognised that the only difference between the earl’s domain and the farms of his neighbours was a hamper full of ceremonial robes mouldering gently in the attic, and that a rowdy bullock was unlikely to be impressed by ermine and strawberry leaves. Pete Byrfield was a farmer: not just in name, in welly boots as well.
‘That was nice of him. He must have been missing you.’
‘Well, maybe,’ murmured Hazel. ‘Mainly, I think he was happy his mother’s spending Christmas in London.’
‘And you’re going to spend it with your father and the Byrfields.’ There were three of them, or four if you counted David Sperrin, who was the 27th earl’s by-blow. It was a tribute to the family how well they all got on, mostly by being very pragmatic and slightly eccentric and not giving a toss what anyone else thought. If it was true that the dowager countess had proved less generous than her children, it was also the case that she never showed much generosity to anyone so David didn’t feel it as a particular burden. Also, his own mother didn’t like him much either.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Hazel retorted sharply. ‘It’s three weeks to Christmas – surely this will be sorted out before then?’
Ash shrugged. ‘It’ll take as long as it takes. Enjoy the break. If you’re still there, I’ll bring the boys down for a visit on Boxing Day.’
‘Yes, do – that would be nice.’ Hazel was watching the winter landscape pour steadily past the car window and thinking: Don’t count on it.
Pete Byrfield met them at the front door of his ancestral home, but they didn’t go in that way. He led them round the side to the kitchen door. He’d been TB-testing cattle, and several of them had left their mark on him.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he called from the scullery, where he was stripping off boots and overalls to reveal a cleaner – rather than a clean – layer of sweater and cords underneath. ‘I’ve been worried. Are you all right? What the hell’s going on?’
He sounded so troubled that Hazel attempted to make light of it. But Byrfield wasn’t fooled. The plain facts were unavoidable. Someone had broken into her house, at night, while she was alone and asleep. And it wasn’t a random burglary attempt: it was personal.
‘Thank God you’re safe. And I’m glad you thought to come here. You’re always welcome at Byrfield – I don’t need to say that, do I? We’ll look after you, I promise.’
He was a tall, narrow man in his mid-thirties, with fair hair already thinning and rather more teeth and less chin than might have been considered ideal. But for the fact that an earlier Byrfield distinguished himself at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, he might have been a middle-ranking academic at a red-brick university.
He turned to Ash. ‘Are you staying tonight, Gabriel?’
Ash shook his head. ‘I’d better get back. I’ve left my nanny trying to outfit one archangel and one shepherd from the contents of the dressing-up box plus some of my mother’s old curtains, and the nativity play’s on Friday.’
They waved him off from the top of the steps. ‘I’ve booked dinner in Burford,’ said Pete. ‘We’re picking your dad up on the way past.’