Why Aren't They Screaming? (15 page)

‘Oh, don't worry about me,' Loretta said distractedly. ‘Let me make you some tea.' If she was going to have to go through the whole dreadful story, she would need something to sustain her. She peered round the room, noticing again the charred remnants of the previous night's meal.

‘Leave it to me,' said Here, pulling up a chair and guiding Loretta into it. ‘Take it easy.'

A sob broke from Ellie, who fumbled in her jeans and brought out a large, crumpled handkerchief. ‘It
is
true, isn't it? Clara's dead.' She sat down suddenly, blowing her nose hard. Here went to her side and helplessly stroked her hair.
After a moment he moved away and got on with the job of making tea. The brief silence in the room was broken by a wail from outside, followed by a scratching noise on the other side of the front door. Loretta got up and opened it, whereupon Clara's cat started forward and wound in and out of her legs.

‘Bertie, you poor boy,' she said, guessing that the animal hadn't been fed since the previous day. She went to the fridge, took out a carton of milk, and poured some on to a saucer. The cat's loud purr began before the saucer reached the floor, and he lapped it eagerly. When he'd finished, he went to Loretta's chair, jumped on to her knees and curled himself up in a ball. Here placed three mugs on the table and filled them with tea.

‘OK. Loretta, you up to telling us what's happened?'

Loretta nodded and sipped her tea. It was too hot, and she put the mug back on the table. Speaking in a low voice, she gave a concise and unadorned account of the events of the previous evening, leaving out distressing details like the body's sprawling posture.

‘Jesus Christ.' Here shook his head from side to side. ‘Jesus Christ.'

‘Do
you
think Peggy did it?' Ellie asked abruptly.

‘Of course not!' Loretta was horrified' ‘But I
am
afraid she's been taken away against her will. By her husband.'

‘Where was Jeremy Frere last night?' Ellie's second question was as sudden as her first.

‘Now wait a minute –' Here began, but Ellie ignored him.

‘Don't they say most murders are committed by members of the family? I wouldn't put anything past that cocky little bugger,' she said viciously. ‘D'you know where he was?' She looked fiercely at Loretta.

‘In London, I suppose?' Loretta said vaguely.

‘You
suppose?'
Ellie pounced on her like prosecuting counsel.

‘Honey, Loretta can't be expected to know his exact movements,' Here protested.

‘Sorry.' Ellie sighed and wiped her nose. ‘It's no good glaring at me, darling, I'm upset.'

Loretta returned to the point. ‘Peggy said something about
Jeremy going to London when I saw her yesterday afternoon. The police wanted to know how to get hold of him, and Robert thought he was in the London phone book. He's got a flat over the gallery or something?'

‘Or something,' Ellie said grimly. ‘What the papers like to call a love nest, I think. He never spends a night alone if he can help it. Poor Clara.' Her resentment against Jeremy was clearly a long-standing one.

‘OK, no one's denying he gave Clara a rough time. But that ain't the same as bumping her off. Anyway, say he is involved, why steal his own wife's jewellery? He's her next of kin, right?' Here's tone was quietly reasonable.

‘To make it look like a burglary. That's what people do, isn't it?' Ellie appealed to Loretta. She thought for a moment, then drew her breath in sharply. ‘Oh God, what about Imogen? Has anyone told her?'

‘The police were going to send someone to see her at Sussex,' Loretta said. They said they'd go first thing this morning.'

‘Right.
That's
why there was nothing on the news,' Here said. ‘They inform the relatives first. Christ, what a thing.'

‘She'd better come and stay with us,' Ellie said firmly. ‘She won't want to be over there' – she nodded in the direction of Baldwin's – ‘on her own. Or with that creep.'

‘Sure.'

They lapsed into silence. Loretta shifted awkwardly in her chair, anxious not to disturb the cat.

‘You got a radio?' Here was looking at his watch. ‘There might be something on the twelve o'clock news.'

Loretta pointed across the room and Here got up to turn it on. They listened to a Central Office of Information announcement about the danger of forest fires in the current spell of good weather, followed by a warning that it was illegal to pick certain types of wild flowers. Then the news began, with Clara's murder the second item.

‘Detectives in Oxfordshire have launched a murder hunt after the body of Mrs Clara Wolstonecroft, the well-known author and illustrator of children's books, was found at her home in the village of Flitwell.

‘Mrs Wolstonecroft's body was found around ten o'clock
last night by a neighbour. Police say she'd been shot. Mrs Wolstonecroft, who was fifty-one, was the winner of last year's Beatrix Potter Award for services to children's literature. A police spokesman said several leads were being followed.'

‘No mention of Peggy,' Loretta said, relieved. Perhaps Bailey really was keeping an open mind?

‘She was so proud of that,' Ellie said. ‘The award,' she explained, seeing Loretta's blank look. ‘They don't give it every year, it's not like the Booker Prize. It only goes to people who are really good.'

She thought for a minute, then spoke again.

‘What now?'

‘I guess we wait,' Here said resignedly. ‘Well, hell, what
else
can we do?' He got up and turned the radio off.

Both women were staring accusingly at him. Ellie made an impatient gesture with her hand.

‘
I
don't know. It just seems wrong to – to sit around and do nothing when–'

‘OK, but what do you suggest? We don't have the resources of the cops. I don't see we have any choice.'

‘I suppose you're right. Oh! What if Imo's trying to contact us? We should be at home!'

Ellie swallowed the last of her tea and headed towards the door. Here followed, turning to speak to Loretta.

‘You all right here on your own? Want to come back with us?'

‘Thanks, Here, but I won't. I've got things to do here. I'm fine, really.' She needed time to think, and she might as well tidy up the cottage while she was doing so. She got up, letting the cat slip gently to the floor, and saw them out.

Ten minutes later she was lying in a hot bath waiting for the warmth of the water to relax her muscles. From a chair on the other side of the small room Clara's cat stared intently at her, occasionally blinking his deep yellow eyes. He seemed to expect her to do something.

‘What
can
I do?' she asked, half to herself and half to the cat. She was bitterly aware of the irony of her situation; less than a year before she'd stumbled on evidence of a violent
crime in a borrowed flat in Paris and, for reasons which seemed compelling at the time, had failed to go to the police. The results of that decision had been so disconcerting, and so painful, that Loretta had resolved to waste no time in alerting the authorities in the unlikely event of ever again finding herself in a remotely similar position. This time she'd cooperated fully – apart from the business of the midnight voices, and she could imagine Bailey's reaction to
that
little revelation – and where had it got her? She couldn't help worrying about his attitude to Peggy; the fact that the girl hadn't been mentioned on the news didn't amount to much when she came to think about it.

Loretta sat up and added more water to the bath. Lying back, she tried to think the thing through logically. If Peggy wasn't the killer, or in cahoots with that shadowy entity – and Loretta considered herself a sufficiently good judge of character to be sure she wasn't – what were the other possibilities? A vision of Peggy dragged protesting from the scene of the crime by her husband was so uncomfortable that Loretta sat up and reached for the soap to dispel it. But wasn't she jumping the gun? Wasn't it just as likely that Peggy had left the house of her own accord in the afternoon or early evening? Perhaps she had gone back to London, or set off for her mother's house in – no, Loretta remembered that Peggy had been careful not to mention where her mother lived. Or was it her mother's sister? But, if that was the case, surely Peggy would come forward as soon as she heard about the murder? Much as Loretta distrusted Chief Inspector Bailey, he'd done nothing so far to frighten Peggy off. Unless – unless Peggy suspected Mick had had something to do with the killing ... Loretta leaned over the side of the bath and pulled a towel from the mahogany towel rail. She dried herself briskly and pulled on trousers and a T-shirt. It was all so
frustrating.

She returned to the kitchen, made another cup of tea, and half-heartedly opened a packet of biscuits. She ought to eat something, but her appetite had completely deserted her. She nibbled a chocolate digestive, still trying to make sense of what had happened. The most obvious suspect, surely, was Mick. He had reason to hate Clara – Loretta vividly recalled
the loathing in his eyes as he lay pinned to the ground at the peace camp on Monday – and was known to be violent. But how did that tie up with the sustained campaign of intimidation against Clara in the days before her death? The idea that the threats had nothing to do with the murder was something Loretta couldn't bring herself to accept. And yet – she now knew the identity of the perpetrators of at least the paint-throwing incident, and she had to agree with Bailey that the three youths he'd mentioned were unlikely to have popped round to kill Clara immediately after being bailed. On the other hand, even Bailey hadn't suggested the boys were responsible for all the hostile acts directed against Clara and the peace camp; Clara's decision to invite the peace women on to her land had upset an extraordinary number of people, ranging from the landlord of the Green Man to the local police chief to Colin Kendall-Cole. Now there was a thought: what had the MP been doing at Baldwin's last night? He
said
he'd come to reason with Clara about the camp but, if he knew her as well as he claimed, he must have known he was embarking on a futile exercise. And he'd certainly been on the scene very soon after the murder. Loretta was beginning to get excited when several points struck her. Kendall-Cole had been searched by the police in her presence, he'd even handed over his car keys without a protest, and there'd been no sign of the murder weapon or the missing jewellery. Nor did he have an obvious motive. Was it really plausible that a Conservative MP, right-wing though he was, would up and shoot one of his constituents because he had a political disagreement with her? It was certainly a new twist to the concept of extra-parliamentary activity. Now she came to think of it, there was even some indirect evidence to support Colin's story that he'd been summoned to the house by Clara; according to Peggy, Clara had been so infuriated by Colin's article in the
Telegraph
that she'd phoned the paper to complain. It was perfectly possible that, getting no satisfaction from that quarter, she'd rung up the MP and demanded to see him. Reluctantly, Loretta moved Colin down her list of suspects. It was a pity; remembering his high-handed behaviour, and the way he hadn't even bothered to register her name, she'd rather
relished the idea of his being cautioned and led away.

She got up, threw a half-eaten biscuit into the bin, and began to stack dirty dishes in the sink. The question of motive was troubling her. If Clara's death really was connected with the threats against her, and therefore with her role as protector of the peace camp, shouldn't Loretta consider the possibility of some sort of conspiracy against her? But by whom? She recalled Clara's suspicions about the involvement in the attack on the camp of the local residents' group – what was it called? RALF, that was it. Somehow she couldn't visualize an alliance of local estate agents and farmers sitting in the back room of the Green Man, orchestrating Clara's removal. What about the Americans? Didn't they have the most obvious motive to get rid of Clara? Loretta turned off the taps and dried her hands. Conspiracy theories made her uneasy. In spite of her hostility to the presence of American bases on British soil, she couldn't really believe they'd go as far as murder to get rid of the peace camp. Yes, they were sometimes brutal; she remembered reading a leaked memo in the newspapers in which an American division at Greenham had boasted about running over a peace protestor outside one of the gates. And they were certainly abnormally sensitive at the moment in the wake of the barrage of criticism of their raid on Libya. But an actual murder? In any case, killing Clara wouldn't necessarily bring about the eviction of the peace camp at Dunstow – that would depend, presumably, on who inherited the land. Loretta was sure Imo's attitude to the peace camp would be far more sympathetic than Jeremy's. She wondered how she could discover the contents of Clara's will, if it existed. Ask Imo? That seemed the simplest thing, although Loretta was anxious not to add to the girl's distress. She made a mental note to inquire if a suitable opportunity presented itself.

She wandered aimlessly round the kitchen, pausing to straighten the towel and drying-up cloths hanging on the rail in front of the Aga. What
was
she thinking of? Clara as the victim of political assassination? Her imagination was too vivid. Wasn't it just as likely that Clara had disturbed a common or garden burglar who, in line with the general
trend towards more violent crime, had reacted with unexpected savagery? Loretta considered for a moment, then sighed. This line of reasoning, instead of cutting down the number of suspects, made it impossibly wide. Anyone could have walked quietly across the garden, unobserved by herself and Robert in the cottage. Herself and Robert? Had she any grounds for excluding him from her list of candidates? Had Robert slipped into Baldwin's, shot Clara twice, then sauntered casually over to Keeper's Cottage? After all, it was on his prompting that she had gone to the house to speak to Clara. Was this a daring ploy on his part to ensure that she, and not he, would discover the body?