No Love Lost (28 page)

‘Huh!' he said at last. ‘So Amy destroyed the extra cup and plate, did she? And why did you suppose she did that?'

‘To save scandal. We didn't dream he'd been murdered.'

A crow of laughter with no mirth in it whatever escaped him and his round eyes were wary for a change.

‘How long have you known Amy? Six months, eh? I've known her thirty years. She married a lad I loved like a son and
I always reckon he died to get away from her. Caught pneumonia and died just to get a bit of peace.' He was genuinely moved, I saw to my astonishment. Forgetting himself entirely, he leant across the table and wagged a finger at me. ‘I said to him on his death-bed, “George,” I said, “make the effort, old son, Hang on, hang on.” He smiled at me and said, “What's the use, Pop? I'm tired of her and her darned family.” Then he died. That's Amy.'

He smiled at me with surprising bitterness, remembered who I was and where we were, and pulled himself up abruptly.

‘I ought not to have said all that,' he said seriously. That's what's wrong with knowing a town inside out. The people become too real to you. But Amy's a Jackson and to a Jackson no one matters twopenn'orth of cold coffee but another Jackson. Amy was saving scandal all right.'

A great light broke over me and at last I saw what ought to have been obvious to me from the very beginning, but which had been completely mysterious because I did not want to know of its existence.

‘Maureen,' I said aloud. ‘Maureen. The scandal last winter was about Victor and Maureen?'

Uncle Fred South nodded casually. That this might be news to me did not seem to occur to him.

‘The family was just banding together to make him marry her,' he went on, ‘when along he comes with a brand-new wife who was much more his style, much prettier, much more polite, and without a family behind her. They were always a bit slow, the Jacksons, slow off the mark. They can't help it. It's the country in them.' He grinned. ‘They'd have got rid of him, banded together, and forced him to quit the town if it hadn't been for Maureen. She was angry, but she couldn't do without him seemingly. Well, well, we'll see if Maureen bought that picnic box. Maisie Bowers is a sharp kid. She'll remember if she served her.'

I was crouching over the table with my head between my clenched hands. Many things which before had been mysterious were now devastatingly clear. But not the main problem. This development seemed to make that more dark than ever. Amy
Petty had forced me to make the discovery of Victor's death. As I looked back that seemed so very obvious that I was amazed I had not spotted it at the time. I remembered her pallid smile of triumph when Jim had gone to find the torch, and understood it at last.

‘But in that case why did she come round here with someone asking for Victor?' I said aloud. ‘If Maureen shot him, why …?'

‘She didn't shoot him.' Uncle Fred South spoke as flatly as if had had inside information from some heavenly headquarters.

‘Well then, if a Jackson shot …?'

‘No Jackson ever shot anybody.' Again he made the statement sound irrefutable fact. ‘They'll band together and beggar a man and drive him to suicide or out of his mind. They'll have their revenge on him if they consider he's crossed them and they'll never let up if they take it to the third or fourth generation, but they'd never shoot anybody, or poison them or bang them on the head like you or I might.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because they're very just, upright people and the backbone of this here nation,' he said primly. ‘Did you say Maureen wasn't alone when she came round here in the night? Who was with her? Was it Amy?'

‘It could have been she.' As soon as he made the suggestion I felt sure he was right. ‘Whoever it was stayed in the shadow and I assumed it was a man. Maureen was very upset. I thought she was giggling.'

He moved his head up and down very decidedly once or twice.

‘It was Amy,' he said. ‘That's about it. Maureen would go to Amy and they'd discuss what to do. Finally Maureen would get her way and they'd come round to make sure.'

‘Sure of what?' I demanded, completely foxed by him and his lightning reconstructions.

‘Sure he wasn't down the well,' said Uncle Fred South calmly, ‘the well with the broken trap door. That's what Maureen found when she went in to meet him yesterday afternoon with her picnic box. That wasn't Tinworth's idea of a lunch, young lady, that was tea, or a cocktail snack to be washed down from
a flask. Depend upon it, that's what happened. Perhaps she waited around for a bit and then got to exploring, but when she saw the broken trap, well, it's my bet she wasn't in the place two seconds after that.'

‘But he might have been in there alive.'

‘Not a hope. Maureen would know that, and she'd be off like a streak so that no one tried to connect her with any trouble. Once she was safe, then she'd start thinking. Amy is the one she would tell. Yes, come to think of it, Amy is obvious.'

‘How can you possibly know all this?' I demanded ‘You're jumping to conclusions, just like you were about me and Andy.'

He acknowledged the thrust with a bow of his close-cropped head and for a second the twinkle returned to his eyes.

‘I know the Jacksons like my wife knows the ingredients she puts in her cooking,' he said. ‘Show her anything that comes out of the oven and she'll tell you every item that's in it, and what was done to them before they were put in there. Perhaps I don't know you and the doctor quite so well, but I'm learning. What sort of footing are you two on? Tell me that and I could tell you things about yourselves that neither of you know.'

‘But I've told you,' I began helplessly.

He beamed at me with unexpected friendliness. ‘You've been very frank, more than Amy has, the vixen. I've a good mind to go and get that madam out of her bed. Fancy her thinking she could put one over on me after all these years!' He got up and stretched himself. ‘Would you be afraid to stay here alone tonight?'

‘No,' I said. ‘I've got Izzy and it's almost morning.'

He seemed still undecided. ‘The old woman had to go home but she'll be back very early. I'd leave one of my boys with you but I need 'em all.'

‘It's perfectly all right,' I said firmly. ‘I'd like to be alone.'

He pounced on that. ‘There's no point in you prowling round the house looking for more evidence to destroy. We've been over it with a toothcomb. What we've missed doesn't exist.'

‘I don't want to look for anything. I've told you the truth. All I want to do is to go to bed.'

He appeared to come to a sudden decision. ‘All right. All
right. Hurry upstairs and pop under the blanket. You can lock your door if you like. Take the dog. He's a nice little chap, likes me.'

He bent to scratch Izzy's ears and laughed when the little animal flattened them and shied away from him. I gathered the dog up in my arms and stumbled upstairs, too tired to be anything but thankful to get away. My room was very tidy and I knew at once that it had been searched. All my suitcases had been opened. I was sure of it because they were fastened so neatly, the straps pulled so tight.

I got into bed, put Izzy on the end of it, and lay down. Then I turned off the light.

Downstairs there was considerable movement. The police, who had arrived as silent as ghosts, were leaving like the boys at end of term. Although I was at the top of the house I could hear their boots on the parquet and twice the door slammed. My window was wide open and I heard them leave one after the other. I heard the Superintendent's voice in the courtyard and another which I was pretty certain was Detective Root's. Outside the sky was brightening rapidly and from far away over the fields the unearthly cry which is cockcrow echoed in the quiet air. I heard the police cars drive off and the sound of their engines fading away down Tortham Road. Then everything was silent.

I was too exhausted even to sleep and I was horribly afraid. While I had been listening to the Superintendent talking about the Jacksons I had fooled myself into thinking that I had convinced him, and that everything was going to be all right, but the moment I was alone the full frightfulness of the situation returned and I remembered his summing up word for word, as if I were hearing it over again. Someone had killed Victor in cold blood. I had lied again and again concerning his whereabouts. Andy had been wandering about in the vicinity of the murder at the time when it had been committed.

I lay there letting the thoughts turn over and over in my mind until the whole story became distorted and out of touch with reality. It was the crime itself which became so utterly monstrous. I thought of a dozen unlikely explanations for it. Once,
even, I wondered if Andy could conceivably have got into some extraordinary set of circumstances in which he had somehow fired the shot. Yet in that unreal, half-light world of terror I knew that was absurd. It was far easier to imagine that in a fit of amnesia I had done it myself. The problem remained.

Meanwhile the sky grew slowly brighter and the early morning sounds began to multiply in the world outside. I don't know how long it was before I first heard the car. The noise was very faint at first, a far-off petrol engine, not very new, pounding towards me through the dawn. It got louder and louder and I could hear it roaring up the road.

The squeal of brakes as it stopped took me by surprise, it sounded so close. Then a door slammed loudly and in the clear silent air I heard feet on the gravel in the drive. They came closer and closer until with a sharp, swift tattoo they found the stones of the courtyard. Someone was striding quickly and noisily into the school with as much assurance as if it belonged to him. Izzy sat up, his ears pricked, but he did not bark and I wriggled up on the pillows, my heart thudding so noisily I could hardly hear anything else. Under my window the footsteps paused and there was a moment of complete quiet until, quite suddenly, there came a tremendous banging at the front door, sharp, hard knocking as though from a man in a rage.

Izzy began to bark at last and I leapt out on to the floor just as the the very last voice in the world which I had expected came up to me, loud and unmistakable.

‘Liz!' Andy was shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Liz, where are you? What are you doing in this darned morgue alone? Liz!'

I put my head out of the window. My eyes were smarting but I was half laughing too, I was so glad to hear him.

‘Andy, be quiet. You'll wake the neighbourhood. Here I am.'

‘Well then, for heaven's sake,' he exclaimed, turning a relieved face up to me in the faint light, ‘come down and let me in. What do they want to do, turn you into a raving lunatic?'

‘I'm all right,' I assured him. ‘Wait a minute.'

I raced down the stairs through the silent house, with Izzy flip-flopping behind me, got the door open, drew Andy in and
took him up to the dining-room. It was warm in there and the cloth was still on the table, although the remains of the meal had been cleared. I opened a window to air the place and I recall that my hands were so unsteady I could hardly find the catch.

Andy was silent, which was unusual in him, and when he helped me with the window I was aware of the suppressed anxiety that possessed him.

‘It was madness to leave you up here alone,' he said. ‘I can't understand them.'

I'm all right now I know you are,' I admitted frankly. ‘I thought they'd arrested you.'

‘Arrested me?' His dark hair appeared to bristle as he turned towards me, lean and rakish, his skin drawn tight with weariness. ‘Did they tell you that?'

‘Not exactly. They conveyed it.'

He grunted. ‘They think they're being clever, don't they? I've been invited to talk, that's all so far. But they can't pin anything on me. How can they? I'd only met the man for five minutes.'

I was not convinced. ‘You don't understand,' I began, ‘they've got it all worked out. They think I rode out to the golf course on a bicycle, gave you Victor's gun, and –'

He was standing close beside me and at that moment, without any preamble whatever, he turned and put his arms round me and kissed me very hard. I don't remember any surprise, only an intense relief. It was as if a load I did not know I was carrying had slid off my shoulders forever. I kissed him back and put my hands behind his head to hold him to me.

We stood quiet for a long time. At last he said earnestly, ‘I love you, Liz. I'm crazy about you. I must be or I shouldn't be here now. It's gone on for a long time, too, or I shouldn't have come to Tinworth in the first place. You love me just as desperately, you know that, don't you?'

‘Yes,' I said, still in the same strange liberated mood. ‘I realized it tonight when I was talking to the Superintendent.'

He sighed. ‘I was pretty clear about myself Thursday, when we were in the car,' he admitted gloomily. ‘However mad it seemed at the time, we ought to have just kept on driving. I haven't been very intelligent.'

I stepped back from him and walked down the room because I could not bear to be close to him any longer, and as soon as he was out of reach I felt I could not bear that either. I sat down at the table and he stood staring at me wistfully.

‘What are you thinking?' he inquired at last.

I opened my mouth to reply, changed my mind, and shrugged my shoulders. I could not bring myself to say it, but there was a dead body between us. We'd got to find out about Victor. He was watching me closely, and presently he grinned at me wryly with rather heartbreaking fondness.

‘You're not so much conventional as civilized, aren't you, Liz?' he said, and settled himself on the arm of the chair by the fireplace.

I put my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands while the nightmare settled over me again.