Set in Stone, page 11
part #10 of Robert Goddard Series
I’d already packed my bags and loaded them into my car. There was nothing left for me to do but drive away in Lucy’s wake. I followed her route at first, round the northern shore of Rutland Water to Empingham. She’d be on the A1 by now, I reckoned, speeding south. I headed back round the southern shore, planning to stop at the lakeside car park near Edith Weston and consider my options. For the moment, I had absolutely no idea where I was going to go.
Before I’d reached Edith Weston, however, I noticed a car behind me in the rear-view mirror. It was a grey Morris Minor. It slowed as I slowed, accelerated as I accelerated. It was Rainbird. And he was following me.
He went on following, all the way to the car park. There wasn’t another vehicle on the entire expanse of tarmac when we arrived. I stopped in the centre and watched him trace a wide arc round the white-lined bays that finally brought him to a halt right next to me, facing in the opposite direction. He wound down his window. Mine was already open.
“Good morning, Tony,” he said, giving me his scoutmaster’s grin. “Spot of insomnia?”
“What do you want, Norman?”
“It’s more a question of what you want, isn’t it? Something to do, perhaps. Somewhere to go.”
“I’m not running errands for you.”
“You’d be doing yourself a favour.”
“How do you make that out?”
“You’re as eager to penetrate the secrets of that house as I am.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “And this is your best chance of doing so.”
“Don’t tell me. It’s Strathallan’s address.”
“Correct.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Yes you are. Besides…” He held the piece of paper out across the narrow gap between us. It fluttered faintly in the breeze. His grin broadened. “You’ve got nothing better to do, have you?”
FIVE
So I found myself on the Al after all that day, heading north, not south. Rainbird had it about right, damn him to hell. I wanted answers to questions, and I had the best of all reasons to go in search of them. Whether I liked it or not, I was part of the mystery now. I’d left Otherways, but it hadn’t left me. I’d seen things there, and done things there, I couldn’t quite believe. But I couldn’t deny them, either. I was running away, it’s true—from Lucy, from Matt, from myself. But I was also running after something. I just didn’t know what it was.
It was late afternoon when I crossed the Forth Road Bridge into Fife, early evening by the time I tracked down the address Rainbird had given me: Broomhaven, one of ten or a dozen large, bland modern bungalows in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a village a few miles inland from St Andrews. The houses themselves could have been in suburban Surrey. Only the distant view they commanded of St Andrews Bay, sparkling and benign in the mellow sunshine, testified to how far I’d travelled.
I spotted Strathallan even before I was certain which house was his. A short, straight-backed old man, with a full head of yellowy-white hair and a firm-jawed face, was mowing a lawn that didn’t seem to need it in broad meticulous stripes. He was my man. I felt sure of it. And there was the neatly inscribed sign at the foot of the drive to confirm it: Broomhaven.
He throttled back the mower as I climbed out of the car and approached. “Mr Strathallan?”
“Aye.” The mower engine cut out. Strathallan cocked his head and frowned enquiringly at me. He had to be pushing eighty, but he looked more like a fit sixty-five-year-old, a man unlikely to entertain notions of the kind I was eager to discuss.
“My name’s Tony Sheridan. We’ve never met.”
“Nor have we. I’ve got a good memory for faces.”
“I’m a friend of Matt and Lucy Prior. The people who bought Otherways from you.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve been staying with them recently.”
“At Otherways?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve come a long way, then.”
“I have.”
“To see me?”
“Yes.”
“Why might that be?”
“It’s a little…difficult to explain. I was hoping…we might talk.”
“About what?”
“Some…strange experiences I’ve had there.”
The frown became more of a scowl. “You’ve come to the wrong man, Mr Sheridan.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I can’t help you.” With that, he started the mower again and took off up the lawn at a measured tread.
I stood there, curbing my impatience, as he progressed up and down his clipped and shaved rectangle of weedless grass. Several minutes passed. He reached the end of the last swathe, stopped and turned off the mower. I walked across to join him.
“Still here?”
“It’s too late to start back for Rutland.”
“Best find yourself some accommodation, then. There are several hotels in St Andrews.”
“You’d be doing me an enormous favour if you at least heard me out.”
“But I don’t owe you a favour, small or large.”
“Maybe you owe the Priors one. For failing to mention the murder at Otherways.”
“Caveat emptor. They should know that.”
“I read Martin Fisher’s article. In the magazine you left behind.”
“What magazine was that?”
“I read Fisher’s book, as well. Seven Faces of Treason.”
“You’ve clearly been busy.”
“I also know about your daughter.”
“Leave her be.”
“I wish I could. The thing is, I think I may have seen her.”
He turned away slightly, leaning heavily on the handlebar of the mower. “Rosalind’s more than twenty years dead, man. What the hell do you mean by coming all the way up here to say a thing like that?”
“I can’t believe you lived at Otherways for as long as you did without experiencing some of its…stranger qualities.”
“I didn’t see any ghosts, if that’s what you mean.”
“They may have been there, even if you didn’t see them.”
“That’s the kind of rubbish my wife used to—” He broke off with a snort. His knuckles were white where his hands clasped the mower. “Will I never be free of it?” he growled.
“We can never be free of the past.”
“Nor the future, eh?” He seemed to look through and beyond me, smiling gently at some thought my words had planted in his mind. “Well, we’ll let that lie. I’ll tell you this. Through all the years we lived at Otherways after Rosalind’s death, she never appeared to us. Jean would have liked her to, God knows, but she never did. So, why to you, a total stranger?”
“I can’t answer that. I may have been dreaming. I seemed to see somebody, in the room she slept in, where I’ve been sleeping myself. Of course, I’ve never even seen a photograph of your daughter, so how could I recognize her? But you must have a photograph.”
“And, no doubt, if I show it to you, you’ll say that clinches it.”
“I’m not trying to make a fool of you, Mr Strathallan.”
“What are you trying to do?”
“Pin something down. For my benefit, not yours. I admit that.”
His eyebrows twitched in surprise. “Well, you’re candid. I’ll say that for you.”
“Could I see a photograph of Rosalind?”
He thought for a moment, then he sighed. “Very well. If you must. Come inside.”
The interior of Broomhaven was as immaculate as the exterior, though far too spartan to seem in any way homely. It was furnished smartly enough, but there wasn’t a single picture on the walls, nor the merest hint of anything decorative. Strathallan had reverted to barrack-room order and cleanliness in his old age. He had no place left in his life for the detritus of former times, as the roomful of clutter at Other- ways had testified. Even the promised photograph of his dead only child had to be fetched from a closed bureau drawer, loudly though the empty mantelpiece in the drawing room cried out for a framed snapshot or two.
“Here you are,” he said. “It was taken at her graduation, a month or so before her death.”
“Yes.” I looked at it. “I see.” And what I saw, beyond reasonable doubt, was the woman I’d dreamed of, standing by my bed at Otherways: a dream of a woman I’d never met.
“You look neither surprised nor disappointed.”
“Because I am neither.” I handed the photograph back. “I believe it was your daughter I saw. But I don’t expect you to believe it.”
“That’s just as well.”
“Could I ask you…why you think she killed herself?”
“You could ask. But I couldn’t answer. She had everything to look forward to. And we made sure she wanted for nothing. She was going to be married that autumn.”
“To Martin Fisher.”
“The very same.”
“Could he have been the reason?”
“No, no. Martin was a good lad.”
“But inquisitive about the past.”
Strathallan shrugged. “It was his occupation. Still is, as far as I know.”
“Did he ever succeed in tracking down James Milner’s confession?”
“I wouldn’t know. He and Jean used to keep in touch. But, since Jean died…I haven’t bothered.”
“Is it possible, do you think, that Rosalind’s suicide and the Milner murder were somehow connected?”
“Utterly impossible, I’d have said.”
“She never…saw anything odd herself…at Otherways?”
“Certainly not.” His vehemence was too much. It was clear to me he was lying. I might have believed him, of course, but for the evidence of the diary. There I had the advantage of him. He didn’t know the diary existed. “She was a sensible, well balanced girl.”
“Not altogether, surely.”
“What would you know?”
“Nothing. Obviously.”
“Aye. Aye, of course. I’m sorry.” He flapped a hand apologetically. “It upsets me to talk about it, even now, after all these years. That’s why I try not to. Not even to think about it. Such a waste. Such a criminal waste.” He walked off with the photograph, shaking his head dolefully. When he came back, he said, “Will you have a drink?” He sounded as if he genuinely wanted me to accept. Perhaps none of his defensive strategies were quite proof against loneliness.
“All right. Thank you. I will.”
“Whisky?”
“Fine.”
He poured us both generous measures of an Islay malt, and we sat down in leather armchairs on either side of the gleamingly empty fireplace, the evening sunlight slanting between us.
“Why did you move here, Mr Strathallan?”
“I’m a local boy. I enjoy my golf. But only links golf is the genuine article. Those Midlands courses are effeminate creatures.”
“I wonder you didn’t leave Rutland sooner, then.”
“I would have, but for Jean. She wanted to stay at Other ways, close to her memories of Rosalind. The girl was born there, after all. Jean felt leaving would be an admission that we had really lost her.”
“But you had.”
“Aye. So, when Jean died…” He shrugged and sipped his whisky. “Who’s been feeding you all this about the Milners, Mr Sheridan? I should like to know who I’ve to thank for your visit. Who I’ve to thank for passing on my address, come to that.”
“Lucy found the magazine amongst your stuff. You can hardly complain, since you left it there.”
“I suppose not.”
“For the rest, you can blame Norman Rainbird.”
Strathallan snorted in disgust. “Rainbird? Good God. You can’t rely on a word that man says. If he is a man, rather than some new species of amphibian that’s crawled out of Rutland Water.”
“He can be disarmingly accurate about a lot of things.”
“Including my whereabouts, it seems. It makes my flesh creep to think he’s keeping track of me. Why, in God’s name?”
“You must know, surely.”
“The confession?”
“Yes. He believes James Milner sent it to Daisy Temple, by way of explanation, or expiation, for his murder of her sister, and that Daisy subsequently gave it to you.”
“Aye, aye. To help heal the wounds inflicted by Rosalind’s suicide. I’ve heard all that. From Rainbird himself. God knows where he gets it from. It’s all rubbish. Daisy Temple never gave me sight of such a document, far less the keeping of it.”
I had no sense now that Strathallan was lying. This sounded like the unvarnished truth. “Martin Fisher also seemed to believe Daisy was the recipient.”
“So he did. And so she may have been. But it’s equally possible James Milner told that Rutland Mercury man, Garvey, that he’d written a confession simply to get him off his back. Alternatively, the recipient may have been Milner’s brother, rather than his sister-in-law. Either way, the document would be conclusively out of reach. Poor Martin never cared to entertain that thought. He always wanted to believe the key to those two brothers’ lives lay waiting somewhere for him to close his hand around it.”
“He seems to have abandoned the search since.”
“He abandoned it the day Rosalind died. That was the breaking of him, I should say. He took it hard. And that’s to his credit, I suppose. Perhaps you don’t know what it’s like to lose the woman you love.”
“I do, as a matter of fact. My wife…died recently.”
“She did?” He looked at me more in amazement than sympathy.
“A cliff fall. Near our home, in Cornwall. I’m…trying to come to terms with it.”
“You’ll not find that easy.” He rose and, without consulting me, topped up my glass. Then he topped up his own and sat down again. “Have you considered that this could explain what you experienced at Otherways?”
“As a trauma-induced hallucination, you mean?”
“Aye. Something like that.”
“I’d be happy to. But for the fact that my hallucination turns out to be an uncanny likeness of somebody I’ve never met or seen—other than in the photograph you just showed me.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“I feel sure.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Everything is possible, isn’t it?”
“No. I regret to have to tell you it isn’t.”
“Didn’t Rosalind ever once hint that something was wrong? That Otherways was…affecting her?”
“She did not.” He sipped his whisky and stared into the glass.
Then he smiled, almost in spite of himself, and said, “The truth is, Mr Sheridan, that my daughter had started seeing ghosts, shall we call them?—at Otherways, I’m the last person she’d have confided in.” He tapped his forehead. “Too rigid a mind, do you see? Too many years of military conditioning. She’d have known better than to come to me.”
“Who would she have gone to, then? Your wife?”
“No, no. Jean was far too cowed by me to be any use in that regard. I see that now, clearly enough. And Rosalind saw it even then. Nor do I think she’d have cared to burden her fiancé with such stuff. They were still at the starry-eyed stage, you understand. A mite early for worrying psychological revelations.”
“Did she have a particularly close friend?”
“None so very close. Nor any who’d know Otherways at all well. Except…” He grimaced. “There was Cristina.”
“Who was she?”
“Our au pair. Cristina…Pedreira, her name was. She lived with us that last year of Rosalind’s life. We’d had others before, but none who’d been on Rosalind’s wavelength the way Cristina seemed to be. After the funeral, she had the effrontery—and the heartlessness—to tell us we hadn’t understood our daughter. That Rosalind had needed help and we hadn’t supplied it.”
“Help with what?”
“God knows. She never said. Or if she did…” He drank some more whisky. “It was a grim time. I was angry as well as grieving. Angry at Rosalind for doing such a stupid, drastic thing. And at myself for not spotting the signs that she might. I was hardly in a receptive mood when that Portuguese bitch started—”
“Portuguese, did you say?”
“Aye. Cristina was Portuguese. The one before her was Finnish. The one before her was Greek. Oh, it was a regular United Nations.”
“But Cristina Pedreira was Portuguese. From Lisbon, perhaps?”
“Maybe. I can’t recall.”
“Emile Posnan ended up in Lisbon.”
“What of it?”
“It’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“That’s all it is, at best. We got her through the usual agency, man. There can’t have been any…” He frowned. “At least, I think that’s how we got her. Jean handled all the arrangements. I don’t…It’s so long ago.”
“What’s happened to her?”
“We sent her packing.”
“Back to Portugal?”
“Back to wherever the blue blazes she wanted to go. Out of our lives.”
“Do you wish you’d never bought Otherways?”
“Of course. It seemed a good deal at the time. It seemed about the only good thing to come out of the Milner case. Those security breaches at Harwell did my career no favours, I can tell you. But the Milners were bad luck, weren’t they? I should never have had anything to do with them. Or their house.”
“Do you believe in luck?”
“It seems I have to. Otherways has obliged me to, you could say. Or the people who’ve lived there have. Lived and died. I only hope the Priors have broken the trend.”
“You don’t sound very confident.”
“How can I be? The record speaks for itself.”
“Is Cedric Milner still alive?”
“I’ve heard nothing to suggest he isn’t. Eking out a miserable old age in some crumbling apartment block in Moscow is how I prefer to think of him. The collapse of the Soviet Union must have hit his sort hard, I’m glad to say.”
“Martin Fisher never seems to have got to grips with his reasons for selling out.”
“No more did I. The man was an enigma.”
“You really think the material he passed on was important?”
“It didn’t come any more important. Not then. The Bomb, man. Death-dealing stuff. How could he give that away to a monster like Stalin?”
