This Way Out (19 page)

‘Christine's quite right,' he concluded. ‘Sam might well have deterred the intruder and I blame myself, entirely, for losing him.'

‘No need to be too hard on yourself, Mr Cartwright. You couldn't have lost the dog at a worse time, as it happens, but you weren't to know that. Tell you what – as you can't drive, I'll get the patrol man in that area to keep a look out for your beagle.'

The chief inspector opened his briefcase, produced a large-scale map and spread it on the table. ‘Now – whereabouts were you at the time?'

Derek breathed more easily. Obviously they had seen nothing suspicious in his story, thank God. He would have preferred to do without police assistance, but in his anxiety to comfort Christine and – hopefully – get the dog back before the family assembled, he pointed out the road where he had last seen Sam. The two detectives eyed the distance from there to Wyveling, and then looked up at him.

‘That's a long way to go to take your dog for a walk,' suggested the chief inspector mildly.

‘Well, I – I had to visit a client in that area.'

‘Of course,' said the sergeant, ‘you're in life assurance, aren't you? Right, then, I'll get a message through to the patrol car: one fully grown beagle dog, black, white and tan, yes?'

‘Yes. And thank you very much.'

The defectives made ready to go. There had been nothing at all alarming about the interview, but as they stood side by side they gave the impression of being a potentially formidable team.

The sergeant smiled at Derek. ‘Can't promise anything, Mr Cartwright, but we'll do our best.'

‘To find the murderer,' said the chief inspector, ‘as well as the dog.'

With Les Harding's assistance Derek spent the rest of the morning in the forest. He found the right area without much difficulty, but on a sunny Sunday, with parked cars and people about, everywhere looked different. He couldn't identify exactly where he had left the car, or which of the many forest rides he had walked the dog in. While Les continued to drive slowly along the narrow roads, looking about and stopping to ask anyone he saw, Derek plunged in and out of the pine trees, holding his aching hand up against his chest and calling, calling.

But Sam was nowhere to be found.

‘We need to talk to you, Dad.'

Lyn had inherited her attractive face and figure, and her colour sense, from her mother's side of the family; her lack of sentimentality came direct from Enid. Derek had seen his daughter shed tears for her grandmother during the course of the afternoon, but primarily she seemed to be angry. When she eventually cornered him outside Mrs Collins's back door, Lyn's eyes were fierce and her voice had an edge to it.

Tim and Richard stood behind her, less fierce but equally determined. Crowded round by his progeny, Derek tried to offer excuses: there was nothing he would like more than a good long family chat, but with him staying there and them at the Hardings' it wasn't really possible to hold a private conversation, was it? Better to wait until they could get back home, to the Brickyard.

‘No, we're going to talk tonight,' said Richard. ‘Mum doesn't want the Hardings to feel obliged to feed us, so I've arranged a meal at the Five Bells, at seven o'clock. All right?'

Derek did his best to get out of going. He didn't want to leave their mother, he said; but he knew that after the emotion of her children's homecoming she had fallen into an exhausted sleep. He couldn't face the stares and sympathy of the villagers, he said; but his efficient younger son had arranged for them to eat in a back room. The food at the Five Bells was notoriously poor, he protested finally, and all three of them looked at him with something like contempt. ‘For God's sake, Dad,' Tim growled through his massive beard, ‘at a time like this, what does it matter?'

None of them had been close to their grandmother, and Derek had been surprised by the strength of their grief. The first hours after their arrival had been filled with sorrow and outrage, and with compassion for their mother. Now, though, they were showing signs of restlessness.

Had Enid died of natural causes, the need to make arrangements for the funeral would at least have kept them all occupied. Had they been in their own home, there would have been meals to prepare and routines to follow. As it was, there was nothing for any of them to do; the murder enquiry had pushed them to the side of their own lives. Derek supposed that Christine would want her mother's funeral to be at Southwold, where her father was buried, but there was obviously no need to discuss it with her yet. And anyway she was still reluctant, for whatever reason, to talk to him.

His children escorted him to the Five Bells by way of the field path, with the sun setting behind Doddenham church on the other side of the valley. It was only a matter of days since he had last used the path, but during that time the cow parsley and docks had grown by inches, narrowing the way so that they had to walk in single file.

‘If we meet anyone, I'll do the talking,' Richard said as he strode ahead. But as Derek followed, with the other two close behind, he felt considerably more apprehensive about the coming conversation with them than about any chance encounter with a neighbour.

They rounded the churchyard wall unseen, skidded down through the spinney behind the Five Bells, and sneaked into the pub through the back door. The landlord, mumbling with suppressed curiosity, showed them into a little-used room that smelled of rising damp. While he fetched their drinks his wife, tiptoeing reverentially, served them with platters of gnarled rump steak and oven-ready chips, garnished with peas from the freezer and squishy tomatoes.

Derek couldn't eat; couldn't have eaten, even had the meal been appetizing. Richard sawed up his steak for him, unasked, but all Derek did was sip whisky, push the food about with his fork, and watch his children refuel themselves.

He was fond of them, as he hoped they were of him, but he found it difficult to relate to any of them. He privately deplored the casual expletives and the taste for beer that Lyn had brought home from medical school; he resented being organized by Richard; and he simply couldn't come to terms with being addressed as ‘Dad'by such a whiskery man as Tim, who looked exactly like the sepia family photographs of his own great-grandfather.

Derek and Christine had done their best to give the three of them – as well as Laurie – a happy childhood. But in comparison with some unharmonious couples they knew, who had centred their emotions on their children, he and his wife had always and unequivocally given their devotion to each other.

Christine mattered to him far more than Tim or Richard or Lyn. If, as he suspected, they were ganging up on him because he'd lost the dog, he could comfort himself with the knowledge that what he'd done had been entirely for his wife's ultimate benefit. With any luck, Sam would be found. And Derek was still convinced that when she'd had a chance to get over the horror of what that bastard Packer had done, Christine would be thankful for the freedom he had won for her.

What his children had to say, initially, was mild enough. They were frustrated because they could do nothing useful, and embarrassed by the Hardings'hospitality. Richard and Lyn both had exams to face, Tim was in the middle of erecting barriers round part of a Suffolk beach that was a breeding sanctuary for the little tern, and now that they had all done what they could to comfort their mother they were anxious to get away as soon as possible.

‘We thought we'd push off tomorrow,' said Richard. ‘But we'll be back next weekend to see Mum – if you're still here, that is. And of course we'll be at the funeral, whenever and wherever.'

Tim growled agreement. ‘But before we go, Dad,' he said, wiping beer from his whiskers, ‘we want to know what your plans are.'

They were all looking at him.

‘Plans?' said Derek.

‘You must have been making some, for Mum's sake,' said Lyn impatiently. ‘What are the two of you going to do now?'

In fact, his plans had never extended beyond getting rid of Enid. He had supposed that, once the funeral was over, he and Christine would be able to return to normal almost immediately. That had been the whole idea, to regain their home for themselves for as much – or as little – as remained of Christine's life. But now that Packer had fouled things up, Derek could see that his wife was going to take longer than he'd imagined to get over her mother's death.

‘It's difficult to plan anything,' he explained, ‘until the police let us have the Brickyard back. But I think I'll take your mother for a holiday as soon as possible, somewhere in Devon or Cornwall, just to give her a chance to recuperate. Then perhaps I could leave her with her Long cousins in Swindon while I come back to work. I'll have the house redecorated while she's away – the hall and our bedroom, anyway, and of course your grandmother's room. That'll have to be completely refurbished.'

Lyn drew a sharp, audible breath. All three of them were staring at him as though they couldn't believe their ears.

‘
Refurbished
?' she exploded. ‘Christ – have you gone completely our of your mind?'

He stared back, affronted. ‘What d'you mean?'

‘You can hardly go on living at the Brickyard after Gran has been murdered there,' said Tim gruffly.

‘And even if
you
could,' said Richard, ‘Mum certainly can't.' His shoulders sagged; he suddenly looked very young. ‘We've lost poor Gran, and we've lost our home as well. It's good-bye to the Brickyard for all of us.'

Derek was speechless.

It had never occurred to him that there would be any problem about continuing to live at the Brickyard. But it wasn't his fault that he hadn't thought of it. If only that bastard Packer had carried out the plan and quietly smothered Enid, Derek was sure that Christine would have had no qualms about going on living there.

The family were right, though. After what she'd seen last night, Christine would find the house unbearable. The village too; probably the whole area. So now, in her state of health, she was going to have to go through all the harassment of trailing about the countryside viewing other properties, and then the upheaval of moving. Poor, poor Christine – what she was being put through … and all on account of that devil Packer! God, what he wouldn't do to him if ever he saw him again –

Derek pushed aside his plate. ‘You're right, of course,' he admitted. ‘I'm sorry – I just didn't think.'

‘You never do think, do you?' To his astonishment, Lyn began blazing at him from across the table. ‘At least, not as far as Mum's concerned. You never bother to take her feelings into account. You're simply planning to do what suits you, and assuming that it's in her best interests as well as your own.'

‘That's not true!'

‘Oh yes, it is, I've seen it happening before. You think of her only in relation to yourself, never as a person in her own right.'

Derek was hot with indignation. ‘You don't know what you're talking about. I'm devoted to your mother.'

‘Oh yes – you've always made a big thing about that, haven't you? All right, I know you care about her, Dad. But you don't even begin to understand her. F'r instance, you've obviously no idea how shattered she's been by that mastectomy. Don't you realize what a devastating thing it is for a woman?'

‘Of course I realize it. God knows I've done everything to reassure her that it doesn't make her any less attractive –'

‘Attractive? To you, you mean?' Lyn slammed back her chair in disgust.

‘There you go again! That's absolutely typical. Can't you see that it's not the way you feel about her that matters, it's the way she feels about herself? She's been a deeply unhappy woman – and I'm furious with you for not letting me know as soon as she found the lump in her breast. There was probably no need for her to have a radical mastectomy. That hospital's notorious for doing it as a matter of routine on every breast cancer patient. If only you'd told me I'd have come home right away and discussed the alternatives with her – and kicked up a fuss at the hospital if necessary.
Why
didn't you let me know, Dad? Why didn't you give me a chance to help her?'

‘Because it was nothing to do with you, Lyn,' said Derek sharply. ‘It was a matter for your mother and myself.'

‘“And yourself”! It's her body, not yours – and not some out-of-date consultant's either. Well, all I can say is, thank God for Sylvia Collins – at least Mum's now got someone sympathetic to talk to.'

‘Except that you can't go on staying with Mrs Collins indefinitely,' pointed out Richard. ‘And Mum won't want to go back to the Brickyard even for one night. You could always use Gran's flat in Southwold, I suppose – only it's too far from your office. So where will you go?'

Derek propped his elbows on the table and rested his aching head on his one good hand. Lyn's attack had been so unexpected, so bloody unjust. She'd got it all wrong about him and her mother, but he was too weary to argue with her. And how the hell could they expect him to make any decisions, when he was still in shock after the horror of last night?

‘I don't know,' he mumbled. They could see the bandages on his left hand – didn't they understand that it hurt? Couldn't they leave him alone?

‘And the other thing we need to sort out, while we're here,' growled Tim, ‘is what happened yesterday afternoon. How did you come to lose poor old Sam? Why on earth did you take the dog for a walk in the forest in the pouring rain – and in your office suit? What exactly were you
doing
yesterday, Dad?'

Derek was saved by a loud knock on the door. He hurried to answer it, and found the two detectives there.

‘Sorry to intrude, Mr Cartwright,' said the chief inspector, ducking his head as he came through the low doorway. ‘We're on our way back to Breckham Market, and we just wanted a final word with you.'