A Dark and Stormy Night (27 page)

The house. This great, rambling house with thirty or so bedrooms, closets, attics – how thoroughly had they searched? And wasn't it possible, as Pat had suggested, that Julie could have been playing with us, going from one room to the next to stay hidden? I had pooh-poohed the idea at the time, but I was beginning to like it.

How could I suggest to the police that they look for her in the house? Request a word with one of them in private? I didn't want to do that without consulting Alan. Well, why not? If we were free to leave, surely we were free to have a confidential conversation. Except that it would look odd to the others if we just walked out.

I was glad the police were there, I reminded myself. Very glad indeed. But they were cramping my style something fierce.

And now more of them were arriving! I heard the whap-whap of helicopter blades drawing near, nearer, deafeningly just outside.

‘What the—' Alan exclaimed, and went to the window along with the rest of us.

‘Oh, no!' said Joyce, and Jim swore.

‘It was inevitable,' said Tom. ‘Are we allowed to talk to them?' he asked the constable who was minding us at the moment.

For the media, in force, had arrived. This was pure jam for them. The most exciting seams of the storm story had been mined and played out. They needed something to keep the readers and the viewers titillated and buying their advertisers' products, and here was a beauty of a new story. It had everything except sex and royalty, and I had no doubt the more creative members of the Fourth Estate would find a way to bring them in somehow.

The knock sounded at the door.

‘I'll go,' said Joyce to the constable. ‘This is still my house, regardless of what has happened here. I'll ask them to wait in the library, shall I, until your . . . er . . . your superior can decide what to do with them.'

There ensued a lovely hullabaloo. DI Bradley, the chief of the officers who had descended upon us, herded the media crowd into the library and began issuing stern instructions about all the places that were off limits to them. The men and women of the press were, by turns, intrusive, rude, noisy and insensitive, but they certainly supplied a grand distraction just when I most welcomed it.

‘Alan,' I said in his ear, ‘I think I know where Julie is.'

He looked at me sharply.

‘I think she's in the house somewhere, probably on the third floor. I think she's been there all the time, just skipping from one room to another while we were looking for her.'

‘It's possible, I suppose,' he agreed. ‘But, as I recall you saying when she went missing, why would she do such a thing?'

‘She's not particularly logical, you know. She's frightened of someone or something, and her idea may be to keep everyone guessing so whatever, or whoever, she's afraid of can't catch up with her.'

‘Childish,' said Alan.

‘Yes, but she is childish in many ways. Oh! That reminds me. Joyce said something, a while back, about her relationship with Julie. The two never got along, and something happened to annoy Julie even more – only Joyce never said what it was. Do you think the Bill would let you ask her what it was?'

‘You, my dear, are beginning to display an alarming gift for English slang. Yes, given my position as a retired officer, I imagine Her Majesty's Constabulary would allow me to interview one of the suspects.'

I was about to object to the word when I saw the twinkle in his eye. ‘And can I be there?' I asked, pushing my luck.

He sighed. ‘I suppose, since you are now free to do as you please and go where you please, you could sit in a corner. I don't see what Joyce and Julie's childhood have to do with anything, though.'

‘I don't know that it does,' I admitted. ‘It's just a loose end, and I don't like loose ends.'

So, when Joyce had freed herself temporarily from the minions of Fleet Street and the Beeb, Alan diverted her to the dining room, and I followed. He closed the door, and we all sat around the table.

‘Joyce, I feel a trifle awkward, since I'm here as your guest,' Alan began, ‘but my wife thinks there may be some use in asking you to finish an anecdote you began earlier.' He sketched out what I had repeated to him, and then asked, ‘Would you tell us what it was that further estranged your sister?'

‘Oh. I can't imagine that it's useful in any way, but I'll tell you. It's just a little embarrassing, that's all.' She took a deep breath. ‘I told you,' she said, looking at me, ‘that the two of us never got along. Julie was always jealous of me, of the attention I got from our parents, of my appearance – I was always prettier, though what it matters now, at our ages – well. The worst thing happened when I was nineteen. There was a great-aunt, my mother's aunt, who had quite a lot of money. She never married, and I was her first niece – named after her, as a matter of fact. She was fond of me, and I of her. We did things together, went places. I think I was almost a daughter to her, and when she died, I was really . . . well, it hit me hard. And then I found out she had left me all her money.'

She fidgeted. ‘Julie was just sixteen then, a bad age for that kind of thing. She'd always felt left out, because Aunt Joyce never paid much attention to her, and she thought it was grossly unfair that I should inherit a fortune and she got nothing.'

‘Oh, dear,' I said from my corner.

‘Yes,' said Joyce, sighing. ‘She got really mad, and even ran away from home for a little while. I didn't know what to do. I didn't really think it was unfair. I had loved Aunt Joyce, and she me, and my mother – her only other relative – didn't need or want the money. Julie had never paid Aunt Joyce the slightest attention except to whine when an expedition was planned and Julie wanted to go.'

‘That might have been somewhat unfair,' I ventured.

‘You'd think so, but it wasn't, really. Julie had a knack for spoiling things. If we went to the county fair, Julie would eat far too much, cotton candy and corn dogs and funnel cakes and all, and get sick and have to go home. Or we'd go to an art gallery and Julie would whine about not having fun and her feet hurt and she was sleepy and . . . well, you get the idea. She didn't really want to
do
any of the things Aunt Joyce and I did, she just wanted to tag along. So it wasn't long before Aunt Joyce and I decided it was easier for everyone to go by ourselves.'

‘Yes, I see. A difficult child. But you were saying, about your inheritance . . .'

‘In the end I talked to my mother about it, and made arrangements to give part of the money to Julie. You might have thought that would make her happy, but no – she wanted half. And you can call me selfish if you want to,' she added with some defiance, ‘but I wasn't prepared to give in to her.'

‘I don't see any reason why you should have,' I said warmly. ‘You'd already done far more than you had to, legally.'

‘Julie never cared a whole lot about what was legal,' said Joyce, and then covered her face with her hands. ‘And how can I sit here talking about her this way, when she may be lying dead out there somewhere this very minute!'

‘That's another thing—' I began, when Alan interrupted.

‘I think we've taken up enough of Joyce's time,' he said. ‘The media are probably slavering to talk to her again. Thank you, Joyce, for your candour. It can't have been easy for you.'

She simply shook her head, and we left her to whatever trial came next.

‘And did that little exercise do any good?'

‘I don't know. It cast more light on Joyce's character, anyway. But bells keep ringing at the back of my mind, begging to be answered, and when I try, they go away. Pat says those kinds of stray thoughts are like cats, who need to be ignored to appear again.'

‘And how right she is. Look, love, we never had any tea, and I for one am pining away. Shall we?'

THIRTY

B
ut we were destined that day to have a somewhat longer wait before the tea we both craved. When we entered the drawing room, we were met by DI Bradley. ‘A word, sir?' He said it politely enough, but his look plainly excluded me from the conversation.

‘I'll just excuse myself, then,' I said, glancing in the direction of the downstairs powder room.

I really did need to use the facilities, and when I came back into the hall, I was very glad I had, or the sight that met me might have led to a regrettable accident.

For assembled there was the whole boiling of us – guests, hosts, staff, police and the media. And in the centre of the buzzing swarm was none other than Julie Harrison.

In handcuffs.

The moment I appeared, the ladies and gentlemen of the press swarmed my way. Here was a new quarry/fount of information/victim – as you choose.

‘What is your relationship to the accused?'

‘Are the murders here the work of a serial killer?'

‘Are you a guest here, or a resident?'

‘How do you feel about ghosts?'

The last came from a young man who had, I think, detected an American accent in my brief ‘No comment' replies to all queries.

For I smilingly refused to answer anything. This was a new experience for me, and not very pleasant. I knew, too, that anything I said might be twisted to suit the purposes of the reporters.

America has its own gutter press, the sort of publications you see in checkout lanes, with headlines about aliens impregnating movie stars (or political figures, depending on who's the hot news at the moment) and the latest sex scandals in Hollywood, and sometimes even rumours-reported-as-fact about British royalty. But the slimiest American ‘news' papers pale by comparison with the English. Certainly there are a good many well-respected papers,
The Times
, the
Telegraph
, the
Guardian
among them. But the worst of the rags in my adopted country print not only the salacious stories you can find in America, but pictures, as well, that would be treated as pornography in many places.

Well, all of us had our clothes on, and no one, so far as I could see, had an arm around anyone inappropriate, but I still wasn't going to say anything at all. Silence can be misconstrued, but not as badly as an inadvertent remark.

I finally managed to reach Alan, who was surrounded by his own phalanx of tormentors, and was also keeping a prudent silence. I couldn't ask him what was going on, with all those eager ears listening, so I simply clung to his arm, letting them take what picture they would – who had a better right to cling, after all? – and waited.

It was only a moment until DI Bradley cleared his throat and spoke in a voice that rivalled my best quiet-the-sixth-grade efforts in my schoolteacher days long ago. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention for a moment, if I may.'

His voice had a nice tone of command. He was, I thought, going to rise even further in his career. The crowd quieted and he smiled kindly.

‘Now I do realize that you all want to know what has happened. Well, there's quite a story here, and it will take some time to tell. Nor have I the eloquence to do it justice. And speaking of justice, you all know that there are laws about what can and cannot be published under certain conditions.'

Murmurs ensued, and they were not happy murmurs. He couldn't be talking about the
sub judice
law, could he? Because that provision barred publication of details about a case once it had gone to trial, but we were a long way from that, surely. I looked questioningly at Alan, but he simply patted my hand.

‘So, given the fact that we are dealing here with a citizen of the United States, who is under the protection of her embassy, I can say little except that we will be taking Mrs David Harrison with us to help us with our enquiries. Thank you.'

‘What about Michael Leonev?' One reporter's voice rose above the others. ‘I understand he's disappeared, possibly drowned.'

‘Yes, that's our understanding. We will, of course, be on the lookout for him. But if he has indeed drowned, it may be some time before his body can be found. Next question?'

‘They're arresting Julie?' I asked Alan, under cover of the volley of questions.

‘That isn't quite what he said,' Alan answered, infuriatingly. And when I looked daggers at him, he went on, ‘Let's get out of here. They're not paying attention to us at the moment; I think we can escape.'

We edged our way to the library, went in, and closed the door, and I exploded. ‘Alan, what is going on? Where did they find Julie? What did he mean, help us with our enquiries?'

‘Slow down, love. One thing at a time. They didn't find Julie, she found them. She simply walked down the stairs, went up to the nearest uniform, and confessed to the murder of her husband.'

I sat down.

‘Alan,' I said when my head stopped whirling, ‘I really, really need that cup of tea.'

‘There's nothing whatever to prevent us going upstairs to make some. That would certainly be easier than getting the attention of either of the Bateses at this point, don't you agree? Let's go through the garden.'

The library was at the end of the south wing, the Palladian section of the house, and had a terrace outside the doors. I'd never used that way out, but once outside I turned to look at the amazing architecture, completely unlike the front of the house. White pillars, a small dome over the second story (this part of the house had only the two), restrained Greek-influenced decoration everywhere – ‘It looks like a miniature version of the Capitol!' I said in awe, and Alan nodded agreement.

We moved down a couple of terraces, the better not to be seen from the house, rounded the west end, and entered by way of the servants hall where we had come in when we first arrived a hundred years or so ago. The elevator took us quietly to the second floor and we got to our room unobserved.