Set in Stone, page 19
part #10 of Robert Goddard Series
“Oh dear. Not the smash on the A606 near Oakham? It was on the local news.” He wafted an explanatory hand towards a transistor radio on the bedside cabinet. “It sounded bad.”
“It was.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Its only blessing is that it puts your blackmail attempt into proper perspective.”
“My…what?”
“Tony’s told me all about it,” put in Daisy.
“Has he really?”
“You don’t deny it?”
“It depends what you mean by ‘deny’.”
“You admit threatening Tony with illicit tape recordings of private conversations?”
“I admit discussing such tape recordings with Tony at the Whipper-in last night, a few short hours before Mr Prior’s…accident.” He beamed at us, as if he’d perfectly refuted any suggestion of impropriety on his part.
“This is inexcusable and intolerable,” said Daisy. “You’ve behaved outrageously.”
“I have?”
“I want you out of this house. Today.”
“Don’t think I’m being unreasonable, dear lady, but I’ve paid my rent up to the end of this month.”
“Then I’ll repay it. You either leave or we call the police.”
“You’re bluffing.” He looked from one to the other of us. “Somewhat unconvincingly, I must say.”
“Try us,” I said, looking him in the eye.
“Well, I certainly have no wish to stay where I’m not wanted.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it is time to move on.”
“I want the tapes, Norman. And I want to know where the bugs are.”
“I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Hand them over.”
“If I could, I would.” He spread his hands and smiled. “There are no tapes, Tony. No bugs, either. No concealed listening devices of any kind.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I made it up. It was a ruse. A litmus test for my theory concerning you and Mrs Prior. I entirely lack the technical expertise to use or deploy such equipment, even supposing I knew where to obtain it. No, no. It had no basis in fact. Why should it have?” His smile broadened. “When I could obtain such gratifying results simply by…exercising my imagination.”
“You’re lying.” Angered by the thought that he wasn’t lying, I launched myself across the room and hauled him out of his chair. “And I mean to—”
One moment he was staring at me, goggle-eyed, a limp weight sagging in my hands, the next he’d somehow slipped from my grasp, grabbed me by the wrists and whirled me round as effortlessly as a child spinning a top. And then I was bent across the table beside his chair, my face pressed against the cover of Tristram Shandy, my right arm doubled up behind my back, pain searing through my shoulder. “You mean to what, Tony?” Rainbird mildly enquired as he ratcheted up the pressure on my arm. “I’d so like to know.”
“Let him go!” cried Daisy. “Let him go at once.”
“By all means.” Suddenly, I was released. Rainbird stepped away from me and I eased my arm back to my side. “Your wish is my command.”
“Are you all right, Tony?” Daisy looked at me anxiously as she helped me up.
“It’s OK,” I panted. “I’m fine.”
“Of course he’s fine,” said Rainbird, smiling blithely at us, and displaying not the least hint of breathlessness. “There was never any possibility he wouldn’t be. I was merely defending myself. Tony was in…expert hands, so to speak.”
“Get out of my house,” said Daisy, speaking slowly and coldly, but with alarm bubbling audibly behind her self control. “This minute.”
“It will take me rather longer than a minute to pack, seasoned traveller though I am. But pack I will. And be gone within the hour, without further ado. Nor a moment’s quibbling about the unexpired portion of my rent. Can I say fairer? I think not.” He dropped to his knees beside the bed, pulled a suitcase out from underneath it, stood it upright and released the catches. Then, holding the case shut, he turned and grinned at us. “Until then, I should appreciate some privacy.” The grin dropped away and was replaced by a steely glare. “Get out of my room. Both of you. This minute.”
Daisy asked me to stay until Rainbird had left. I think she was unnerved by the sudden switch in his character. He was certainly physically stronger and more agile than I’d given him credit for. I felt unnerved myself, as well as foolish. Rainbird the oleaginous schemer was one thing; Rainbird the man of action quite another.
“I’d always thought him a harmless eccentric,” she said, as we sat in the drawing room, drinking coffee in an atmosphere of fragile calm. “I had no idea, you must believe me, that he was capable of anything like this.”
“He’s after something at Otherways. It’s the house that really interests him. I expect that’s why he chose to lodge with you in the first place.”
“He’s never mentioned Otherways to me.”
“Probably because he was afraid you’d send him packing if he did.”
“Why should I have done that?”
“Because the house holds a lot of secrets. And quite a few of those secrets involve you.” I looked at her frankly. “Cards on the table, Daisy. Lucy warned me off the subject, but too much has happened for me to mince around it any longer. If I believed in ghosts I’d call Otherways a haunted house.”
“But you don’t believe in them.”
“I’m not sure. What about you?”
“I’ve never seen a ghost, Tony. At Otherways, or anywhere else.”
“When did you last set foot in that house?”
“I’ve not been there for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Many years.”
“But how many? Precisely.”
“It was the day of Ann’s funeral.”
“That long?”
“Yes.” She looked towards the bust of her sister, standing in the window, filtered sunlight moving across its green-veined marble features in time to the gentle movement of a curtain behind it. “Precisely that long.”
“It’s only a few miles away. You knew the Strathallans. You’re Lucy’s friend. How have you avoided going there?”
“It’s not the how you’re interested in, Tony. It’s the why.”
“True enough.”
“Memories are the problem, not ghosts. Memories of Cedric as well as Ann.”
“When did you last see him?”
“The spring of 1947. He visited Otherways shortly after the RAF vacated it and he called here to see me. It was a somewhat strained encounter. I sensed there would never be another. And there never was.”
“Why did you break off your engagement?”
“We could hardly not break it off, given that Cedric’s brother had murdered my sister. But that is a superficial answer, of course. Our love would have endured had it been strong enough. Clearly, it wasn’t.”
“You know some people have suggested Cedric witnessed the murder—may even have been the murderer?”
“By ‘some people’ you mean the late Donald Garvey. I’m well aware of the story he put about. It’s complete nonsense. Cedric was out cycling at the time. He got home to find Ann dead and James waiting calmly for the police to arrive.”
“So, you never doubted his version of events?”
“I did not.”
“Nor his brother’s?”
“No. I’d seen enough of James and Ann that summer to know something was wrong between them. Ann told me James seemed to be suspicious of her, but she couldn’t understand why. There were no grounds for it, Tony. Ann wasn’t having an affair with Cedric. She wouldn’t have been able to conceal that from me.”
“But James convinced himself she was.”
“Yes.”
“There must have been a reason.”
“Indeed there must. But I have no idea what it was. He refused to see me or Cedric after his arrest. And he said nothing in court. All we have is his barrister’s statement at his trial. And that didn’t give a reason.”
“We might have more, if the confession Rainbird’s so anxious to lay his hands on really exists.”
“Quite so.”
“Do you think it does?”
“I honestly don’t know. My only advantage over everyone else where that’s concerned is that I know for a fact I don’t have it and have never seen it.”
“But Cedric?”
“It might have been sent to him. He might have decided to keep it from me. If it was ever written in the first place. Assuming all of that, which is a good deal, well, Cedric’s silence suggests he didn’t want it to see the light of day. In which case, he probably destroyed it. Hunt as high or low as he likes, Mr Rainbird isn’t going to find it. And nor—” She broke off as footsteps sounded on the stairs. “Ah. Talk of the Devil.”
We watched through the window as Rainbird clumped out onto the drive, a suitcase in either hand and a briefcase wedged under one arm. He loaded them into the boot of his car, then walked back into the house, without so much as a glance in our direction.
“I’ll be glad to see the back of him,” said Daisy, as his heavy tread receded up the stairs. “I should have asked him to leave months ago, when I realized Lucinda found his presence here worrying.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“He gave me no specific cause. Clean, tidy, quiet, and a prompt payer. The model lodger, in some ways.”
“But not in others.”
“No. Not in others.”
“Where did he come from?”
“London. He supplied a reference from a landlady in…Brentford, I think it was.”
“What do you know about his background?”
“Nothing really. He’s always been so vague.”
“A man of mystery.”
“If you like. But most mysteries merely conceal a hollow core.”
“Not in this case.”
“You may be right.”
“What’s he really after? That’s the question. He said, if I found the confession, I’d find out why he wanted it.”
“He was teasing you. Since he’s never seen the confession, it follows he can’t promise it will tell you anything.”
“It was more than a tease. I had the impression…he meant it.”
A door slammed above us. We listened as Rainbird descended the stairs. He paused in the hallway. We heard him tap the barometer and tut-tut at the reading. Then he knocked at the drawing room door and came in.
“Your keys, Miss Temple.” He dropped them on a console table beside the bronze bust of a bald middle-aged man. “You have my word I hold no duplicates. But you could always have the locks changed, if you thought it necessary.”
“Goodbye, Mr Rainbird,” said Daisy, with studied neutrality.
“Goodbye, dear lady.” He smiled at her, then looked across at me, his smile curling out and up into a smirk of satisfaction. “I’ll be in touch, Tony. Never fear.”
I planned to return to the hospital as soon as Rainbird had gone. But there was a question I’d yet to put to Daisy. Her answer, whatever it turned out to be, was important, more important than just about anything else.
“People who live at Otherways imagine things, Daisy. You could say they see things. There’s a pattern to the lives they lead there. Some of them—the susceptible ones—fall under its spell. James Milner. Rosalind Strathallan. And Matt Prior.”
“Come, come.”
“When we met last night, he said some strange things. They made me realize he was harbouring certain…unaccountable suspicions about Lucy.”
“About her and you?”
“No. Something else. Something…worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“He seemed to think she’d lied to him about where she was…the day Marina died.”
I was looking straight at her as I finished the sentence, alert for any hint of discomposure in her face. There was none. Her expression was as placid, or as well sculpted, as that of her sister, preserved in marble on the other side of the room.
“Lucy was with you, I gather.”
“That’s right.”
“You went to the races?”
“Yes. At Worcester. I remember it well. We had such a nice day. Then, the following morning, I heard the terrible news…about your wife.”
“You were together all day?”
“Yes. We were.”
“And you didn’t go anywhere else, apart from Worcester?”
“No. Well, we stopped for dinner on the way back. Near Warwick. But that was all. What are you getting at?”
“Matt reckoned there were too many miles on the clock in Lucy’s car for a round trip to Worcester.”
“That’s absurd. I can assure you we went there and back and nowhere else.”
“I believe you.”
“So I should hope.”
“But that means Matt imagined the discrepancy, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. I suppose it does.”
“A discrepancy he was expecting to find. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been looking for it.”
“Why would he have been looking for it?”
“You tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“No. Exactly.”
“Exactly what?” She frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”
“The house, Daisy. It’s got to him the way it got to your brother-in-law. Something there seeps into the mind and distorts it. Something there…is dangerous.” She shook her head. “I…I can’t believe that.”
“Neither can I.” I paused. “But I can’t disbelieve it, either.” I stood up and moved towards the door. “Not any more.”
One thing was settled between Daisy and me before I left. Neither of us would breathe a word to Lucy about Matt’s manifestly unfounded suspicions. This was no time to burden her with such stuff. Maybe there never would be a time.
As for Rainbird, we agreed she’d probably be too pleased he was gone to query the circumstances. I couldn’t shrug them off so easily, though. Maybe he’d conned me about listening devices, maybe not. If he had, his guesswork had been uncannily good. If he hadn’t, his denial that there were any in place was the real con. I needed to know which, badly. And that was when I remembered how grateful a former client had been for my headhunting of an electronic security expert to render their City HQ leak-proof. I had a favour to call in.
Lucy was at Matt’s bedside when I reached the hospital. There’d been no change in his condition. He remained unconscious: drained, dripped and ventilated. Lucy herself was beginning to look ill with fatigue. The ICU ward sister advised her to go home and get some rest; it was going to be a long haul. I tried to talk her into following the sister’s advice over a canteen lunch, which she ate even less of than I did.
“I want to be there when he wakes up,” she countered. “To make him understand I still care about him.”
“If you go on like this, you’ll be in the next bed by the time that happens. Why don’t I drive you to Maydew House? You can get a few hours’ sleep and come back here this evening.”
“I don’t want to go there. Not with Rainbird hanging about.”
“He won’t be. He’s moved out.”
“When did that happen?”
“This morning. A snap decision, apparently. Just like the man.”
“Rainbird’s moved out?” She didn’t seem to have the energy to make much of it. “He’s gone?”
“Perhaps flown’s the more appropriate word to use about him.”
She thought for a moment, utterly failing to notice the joke, then said, “All right.”
“You’ll go?”
“Everyone seems to think I should,”
“I’m sure it’s—”
“Megan was here earlier.”
“Sorry?”
“Megan Blackwell, Matt’s PA. She was terribly upset. She’s always been devoted to him, you know. Well, Matt inspires devotion, doesn’t he? Except in those closest to him.”
“Listen, Lucy, I—”
“Why did this have to happen? I keep asking myself. Why?”
“It didn’t have to.”
“That’s worse, then, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if it didn’t have to, it shouldn’t have, should it?”
A silence fell. There was no answer to Lucy’s question. “I’d better phone Daisy and tell her we’re coming,” I said, pushing back my chair with a squeal of rubber on lino. “I won’t be long.”
When I got back to the table a few minutes later, Lucy had pushed her plate to one side and was holding a pocket diary in her hand, studying the entries intently. I wondered for a crazy moment if it was Rosalind Strathallan’s, since I’d never known Lucy to use one, but, as I sat down, I recognized the handwriting as Matt’s. And then I noticed the bloodstains on the cover and the edges of the pages.
“They seemed very concerned to give this to me,” she said listlessly. “God knows why.”
“Protocol, I suppose.”
“There’s hardly anything in it. Megan kept his business diary. Just…odd jottings.” She held it open and pushed it across the table. “Funny entry for today, though.”
I looked down at it. Lois Carmichael, Matt had written. Ram Jam, 6. “What does it mean?”
“The Ram Jam’s a pub on the Great North Road, near Stretton. Looks like he was planning to meet Lois Carmichael there this evening.”
“And who’s she?”
“I don’t know. Nor does Megan. No idea at all. Strange, really. There’s no phone number, either, so I can’t even tell her she’s going to have a wasted journey.”
“Perhaps someone should be there to explain.”
“Could you go?”
“Sure.” It was stranger than Lucy seemed to appreciate. Matt’s smooth, orderly, predictable existence didn’t really have room for appointments with people his wife, his best friend and his personal assistant had never so much as heard of. “No problem.”
We got to Maydew House around mid-afternoon. Daisy had already made a room up for Lucy, who obediently took a couple of the sleeping pills the hospital had given her and went off to bed. She’d said something during the journey about needing clean clothes and I’d volunteered to fetch some from Otherways. I said I’d call in there on the way to or from the Ram Jam. What I omitted to mention was that I had another reason for going to Otherways. Like Matt, I had an appointment no-one else knew about.
