Fear In The Sunlight Part 21

'I don't even know if he did it.'

'What?' She looked at him in surprise. 'Do you mean that?'

'No, I don't suppose I do, and I'd have a hard job to argue with the evidence,' he admitted. 'Perhaps I just enjoy being on the opposite bench to Detective Inspector Roberts as a point of principle. But there's something about it that I don't understand. I can see that Leyton Turnbull hated Bella Hutton. I understand completely why he found it impossible to forgive her or his wife for keeping the birth of his child from him . . .'

'They must have had their reasons.'

'Even so, he missed out on the chance to be someone completely differenta and the shock of that realisation might have tipped him over the edge. But there are still so many unanswered questions. Did Bella Hutton know something else that we're not aware of? Where does Branwen Erley fit in, and what happened to her mother? Why did Turnbull kill himself? All that may be completely irrelevanta and murder is never logical, but if it were my case I'd want to know more.'

'Can't you make it your case? Or at least pull some strings to make sure it's done properly?'

'Not really. All the evidence points very clearly to one conclusion; that's partly what bothers me, but I can hardly use it as a reason to go over someone's head. Chief inspectors aren't supposed to be contrary.'

'Are you sure you're not letting the company affect your judgement?' Josephine asked.

'You mean the temptation to arrest Hitchc.o.c.k and his crew might prove too strong?' He looked a little shamefaced. 'There is an element of that, I suppose. They're all so unpleasant. The sooner we can leave them behind, the better I'll like it.'

Ronnie walked over from the hotel and dragged another deckchair across to join them. 'The next time I'm having a f.u.c.king awful day, I'll think of David Franks,' she said. 'There's always comfort to be found in those worse off.'

'Why? What's happened?'

'Hitchc.o.c.k's fired him.'

'I thought there was trouble,' Josephine said, remembering the look on Alma's face. 'What did he fire him for?'

'Telling Archie about the stunt they were planning with Leyton Turnbull. I've just been talking to David in reception. That was the last straw, apparently. Hitchc.o.c.k's furious.'

'He should have thought of that before he set it up,' Archie said. 'He's lucky I didn't charge them all with wasting police time.'

'David's very indignant about the whole thing, naturally. He says he followed Hitchc.o.c.k's instructions to the letter, and now he's taken the blame for everything.'

'Although hiring an actress for whom Number Seventeen is a position rather than the t.i.tle of a film wasn't the smartest thing to do,' Josephine said. 'Perhaps Alma will manage to smooth things over.'

'Or perhaps he'll decide it's for the best. He told me last night he wanted to strike out on his own.'

'That was probably the champagne talking.'

'Maybe. We'll see.'

'Well, that's me packed.' Lettice sat down and pulled the teapot towards her. 'We could give you a lifta but I'm not sure it would be very comfortable with four of us in the car as well as the luggage.'

'It's all right,' Josephine said quickly. 'Archie and I were going to the Lakes for a couple of days anyway. We'll just lie low here for tonight and head off tomorrow as planned. There's a train to Keswick after breakfast. That's if he's got the small matter of the dog sorted out by then.'

'The dog?' Ronnie asked.

'Bella Hutton's Jack Russell has taken quite a shine to him.'

'I hoped Bridget would be able to take him,' Archie explained, 'but apparently Border Terriers and Jack Russells don't mix, so I'm giving him to Mrs Snipe.'

Archie's housekeeper was notoriously meticulous in her dutiesa and Josephine looked at him doubtfully. 'Have you told her yet?'

'Of course. She's thrilled. She told me it would be just like having a proper star in the house. I don't know what that says about the rest of us.'

Lydia and Marta walked down the hill from the village, and Lettice waved them over. 'What are you two doing now?' she asked, pouring more tea.

'Waiting for someone to fix the car,' Lydia said wearily. 'Apparently we've got a flat battery. Then it's back to London.'

'We're giving Bridget a lift,' Marta added, winking at Archie. 'It'll give us a chance to get to know her better.'

'Yes, she mentioned it.'

'We never did tell you what she did while we were in Cambridge, did we?' Ronnie said, settling into her story. 'It was the most extraordinary thing. She . . .'

Archie's salvation came in an unlikely form. A man in a dark-brown suit came over to the table and cleared his throat politely. 'Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I just have a couple of loose ends to tie up.'

'What is it, Inspector Roberts?' Archie asked, and something in his tone made Josephine look at him in surprise. 'This isn't my case, as you pointed out earlier.'

'It's Miss Fox I'm after, actually,' he said. Josephine saw the fear in Marta's eyes as her past came back to haunt her and opened her mouth to object, but the policeman was in no mood to be interrupted. 'My colleague informs me that you've got a criminal record, miss,' he said, making sure that his voice carried across the lawn. 'Accessory to murder, I believe. With that in mind, it's my duty to ask you where you were between the hours of ten last night and two o'clock this morning?'

Archie got up and went over to stand by Marta. 'Don't be so b.l.o.o.d.y ridiculous, Roberts,' he said quietly. 'You know d.a.m.ned well she had nothing to do with this.'

'Like I said, sir, it's just a formalitya but those loose ends do need to be dealt with.'

'It's all right, Archie,' Marta said. 'I was down by the sea until the storm broke, and then I went back to my room.'

'And can anyone confirm that?'

'I can.' Lydia and Josephine looked at each other. If they had planned it, their words could hardly have been more carefully synchronised.

'Both of you?' Roberts raised an eyebrow at Archie. 'What these girls get up to when our backs are turned, eh sir? It shouldn't be allowed.'

Josephine saw Ronnie glance at Letticea but for once she had the sense to be discreet. In the end, it was Lydia who recovered first. 'We were having a birthday party, Inspector. We didn't know until this morning that it should have been a wake, so I'm sure you'll forgive us for staying up late.'

'You have your answer, Roberts,' Archie said. 'Any more of this and she'll sue you for hara.s.sment. I'll make sure of it.'

'Of course, sir. And you were in your room all night?'

Archie glared at him. 'I left my room after dinner and spent the night at White Horses.'

Roberts looked down his guest list. 'With a Miss Foley? Will she confirm that?'

'Of course she'll b.l.o.o.d.y confirm it.'

'Excellent. You have a safe trip back to London, sir. Oha and just to put your mind at resta there's no abandoned bicycle anywhere along the Harlech road. We've checked.'

17.

David stood on the old quayside, staring out across the estuary to the island. Alma walked down to speak to him, picking up s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation from the tables on the terrace, and wondered how he must feel as something so personal was made lurid and sensational by strangers who knew no better than to appropriate his tragedy as their own. He turned round as he heard her approach, but there was no sign of the hostility that she had expected. 'I'm so sorry, David,' she began, seeing little point in prefacing what she had come here to say.

He cut her off with a rueful smile. 'There's no need for you to apologise. He makes his own decisions.'

'True, but that's not what I meant. What happened to your father, everything that's gone on this weekend a I can't even begin to imagine how hurt you must be.'

'I wouldn't want you to.' A flock of wildfowl took off from the sands, twisting and somersaulting in the breeze; when it settled again, the birds' melancholy clamour rose in volume for a few seconds and then died away. She waited patiently for him to continue. 'I can't hate Turnbull for what he's done, you know,' he said eventually. 'Is that wrong of me?'

Alma shrugged. 'I don't think there's a right and a wrong way to feel. Your emotions are your own: don't hold them up for judgement, by me or by anybody else.'

'He was family. I suppose those loyalties are hard to forget.'

'Bella was family too,' Alma reminded him gently.

'In name, yes, but Bella Hutton was never going to be anybody's aunt. That sort of affection just wasn't in her.' His words were spoken as a fact rather than a criticism, but still he felt the need to qualify them. 'Don't get me wrong: Bella did what was best for me, even though it didn't feel like that at the time. She opened more doors than I could ever have dreamt of knocking at, but she never did anything for me out of lovea and she never grew to love me. We both knew that, and I accepted it.'

'But sometimes you'd have traded the opportunities for the love.'

'Yes. Bella was a star, though, and that life doesn't leave much room for human failings, does it?' Alma shook her head. 'If she couldn't fix something by throwing money at it, then it didn't get fixed.' The first trace of bitterness had entered his voice. 'Do you have any idea how sickening it is to be grateful all the time? Now I'll have to do it for the rest of my life.'

'What do you mean?'

'As soon as the cancer was diagnosed, she told me she was going to leave me a very rich man a so no matter what I achieve off my own bat, it will always be down to the start that Bella Hutton's money gave me.'

'Not necessarily. Whatever the situation was between you, there's no doubt that she believed in you and wanted you to succeed. All right, so it wasn't love a but it was respect, and she didn't give that away easily either.' He looked at her gratefully, and she held out her hand. 'Good luck, David. Not that I think you'll need it.'

18.

Archie was on his way out of the hotel to fetch Bridget when he heard Marta call his name. 'I've been looking for you everywhere,' she said. 'I wanted to thank you.'

He smiled. 'There's nothing to thank me for. I was about the only person who didn't offer you an alibi.'

'Probably just as well: things are complicated enough. But I was talking about earlier. You weren't even aware of what you were doing, but I saw how much you cared about Branwen Erley and everything that had happened to her, and it helped me more than you can ever know.'

'It's part of what I do, Marta. Perhaps the most important part.'

'No. It's part of who you are.' She surprised him by taking his face in her hands and kissing him. 'I've told Bridget she's a lucky woman. Will you let her know we're ready to leave? Someone from the hotel has found us a new battery.'

'So Lydia said. I was just off to White Horses.'

'Do you know where Josephine is?'

'Looking for you.' He nodded to the stairs and left them alone together.

'We're going in a minute,' Marta said. She took Josephine's hand and led her into the peace of the library. 'I wanted to say goodbye properly. Far too much of today has been public, and I suppose you'll be hidden away in Inverness for months on end now. G.o.d knows when I'll see you again.'

'Ronnie and Lettice are launching their autumn collection soon. I thought I might come down for that.'

'But that's in a couple of weeks' time. Lydia was talking about it.'

'I know when it is. And trains do run in August, even in Scotland.' Marta smileda and Josephine put a hand to her cheek. 'I'm tired of running away, Marta. Let's just see what happens.'

19.

The flock of rooks rose as one from the trees and trailed across the sky in loose formation, a shifting, shimmering storm cloud of blue-black. The birds circled the Bell Tower, then descended in rapid, oblique flight, twisting and turning with their wings half closed, and Hitchc.o.c.k a packing his bags at the Watch House a walked out onto the balcony, mesmerised by their numbers. They had performed the ritual at exactly the same time the night beforea and, for a moment, the noise was deafening; the familiar, harsh caw of the flock was punctuated every now and then by one or two birds with a higher-pitched call, and their emphasis suggested to him so many emotions: anger, pleasure, affection, alarm. Everything but regret, and for that he envied them.

Behind him, he heard his wife's footsteps and felt her hand rest gently on his shoulder. 'The car's waiting, Hitch. Are you ready to leave?'

He turned round, careful not to let his eyes stray to the ground where the telltale signs of his folly refused to be washed away. 'Yes,' he said. 'I'm ready.' Alma smiled and took his hand, and they walked together to the door.

20.

Rhiannon stood in the shadows on the landing, hanging back in case Gwyneth was forced to allow the visitor into the house. After a few minutes, she heard the front door close and saw the policeman's image recede through the dusty stained gla.s.s over its frame. She waited, peering through the bal.u.s.ters as Gwyneth walked back across the faded hall rug to the stairs, her figure oddly foreshortened by the angle. She seemed to take an age to climb to the top, as if the effort of greeting the world had been too much, and, when she spoke, her voice was low and hesitant a whether from exhaustion or disbelief, Rhiannon could not say. 'It's over,' she whispered, leaning back against the doorframe. 'We're safe.'

PART SIX.

Shadow of a Doubt.

24 Julya13 August 1954, London and Portmeirion.