Authors: Aline Templeton
This
was one of the occasions when Margaret felt a pang of regret over her single state. It was a rare occurrence: too often long-married couples made her wonder if they shared the nature of St Aldegonde, reputed to delight in marriages and public executions.
She
turned to sorting through her correspondence. There wasn’t much: one or two late Christmas cards, a couple of circulars and nothing, she noted with relief, addressed using an old-fashioned typewriter. Then she came to a parcel underneath, untidily-wrapped and directed in uneven, ill-formed capitals. It had not come by post. She looked at it with a rising sense of unease.
Ted
noticed her change of expression. ‘Something wrong, Margaret?’
‘
I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s just–’ Overcoming a feeling of reluctance, she forced herself to open it, then stared in some bewilderment at the little blue book.
‘
It’s a child’s diary,’ she said. ‘A diary from 1967. Who in the world could be sending me that?’
She
shook it, expecting a note to fall out, then searched through the wrappings for any clue. Finding none, she opened the book under the Brancombes’ interested eyes.
‘
1st January: Today we went to the panto. I wore my new dress.’ Oh, and she couldn’t spell ‘laugh’ – look. Daddy obviously wasn’t easily amused!
‘
What age is she, I wonder? There are a few other spelling mistakes, but it’s very neat in general.’
She
came to the blank pages. Now she’s given up. That always happened to me. I never seemed to have anything to confide to my diary in February, and after that the relationship became one of embarrassment. But see, here we are again. Oh – oh, good gracious. How dreadfully, dreadfully sad. Look.’
The
other two bent over her shoulder and read the stark entry announcing the child’s mother’s death. They read on, through all the details of that hideous Christmas, the news of her brother’s death, all told with childish simplicity and unreliable spelling. When they came to the pages of final despair – black, black, black – there were tears in Margaret’s eyes and Jean was openly weeping.
Ted
cleared his throat. ‘Poor little thing,’ he said, and blew his nose loudly in a red-spotted handkerchief.
‘
It’s her, of course,’ Margaret said softly. ‘This is Missy, and this is what caused it all. It was just too much for her to cope with and she blotted it out, created someone who could cope with it for her, just as Robert said. And now something else has happened, something that is too much for her in adult life, and her creation has returned to haunt her. To haunt us all.’
‘
We’ve got to help her.’ Jean was twisting her hankie in her fingers. ‘We’ve got to do something.’
‘
It’s certainly a cry for help,’ Margaret said. ‘But the trouble is, it’s a very imperfect one. She told me on the phone she was in desperate distress; she’s explained to me why, now. But she hasn’t said who.’
‘
Perhaps she’s going to. Perhaps that’s the next step,’ Jean suggested. ‘It’s too much to expect her to trust you all at once, but given time –’
Ted
stared at them. ‘We give this to the police,’ he said. Now. This minute.’
‘
But –’
‘
You can’t –’
The
two pairs of eyes fixed on him held identical expressions of accusatory horror, and Ted flushed.
‘
Look, I’m not being heartless. That’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. But you’re not just talking about a woman with problems, you’re talking about a woman who’s gone mad. I don’t suppose that’s what they call it – Robert would have some fancy technical name, I’ve no doubt – but that’s what she is. At this very moment she may be planning to burn down another house. You were lucky on Thursday night, Margaret, you know that. Someone else may not be so lucky.’
The
women exchanged glances.
Margaret
said slowly, ‘I’m a priest, Ted; she’s addressed the parcel to me as the vicar. It’s – it’s a problem I’ve had a lot of difficulty with already. How do I balance up the dangers against the betrayal of trust?’
Ted
snorted, but it was Jean who said, slowly, as if she were thinking aloud, ‘But – are you sure it would be a betrayal? She doesn’t ask you to keep it a secret, after all, does she? Perhaps she sent this to you, hoping that you would do just that – take it to the police, so that they could stop her before she did anything worse.’
Torn,
Margaret stroked the soft cover, trying to feel her way through to the ethical decision. She could think of objections to both courses of action, but there was no doubt which was the more sensible. And where moral issues were concerned, common sense was often the best, and indeed the only guide you had.
She
sighed. ‘All right, Ted,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘I think you’ll get Robert at the police station in Burdley. That would be the best thing.’
Ted
came back from the phone saying, ‘They’ll be here in twenty minutes. And Robert says not to touch it – fingerprints.’
‘
Oops,’ said Margaret, looking down at the book which she was still holding protectively between her hands, as if somehow that might shelter its owner. ‘Oh well, they’ve taken my prints already, so they’ll be able to eliminate them, no doubt. In any case, how could I have known what was in it unless I’d touched it – silly man.’
However,
she tipped it neatly on to the wrapper then slid both off her knees on to a coffee table without touching them again, while Jean scurried off to the kitchen to set up a tray with tea and enough cakes to supply the complete operational strength of Burdley division.
When
Robert arrived, Vezey was with him, as well as a silent young man, also in plain clothes, whom Vezey addressed as Dave.
Vezey,
taking large tweezers out of his pocket, lifted the book on to a convenient surface, and with Robert looking on opened it, held it flat with the end of a pencil and turned the pages by the same method. He made no comment, but when they had finished he clicked his fingers and Dave produced two large plastic bags. The book was dropped into one and the wrapper into another; the bags were sealed and labelled.
‘
Thank you,’ Vezey said curtly. ‘We’ll go back and get on with that right away. I’d like you too, Robert, if you don’t mind.’
‘
But you’ll stay and have some tea,’ Jean protested, her hospitable soul outraged. ‘It’s on a tray, all ready...’
‘
You’re very kind. But we’ve got no time to waste. There’s another long night still ahead of us.’
They
went out, and the chill that struck the room was not solely from the cold damp air that came in through the open front door.
***
Laura Ferrars said, ‘I think we should put this house on the market and move away from here.’
She
and James were alone together in the sitting room having coffee after supper. She made the dramatic statement with a strange, dream-like lack of emphasis, but James, for once shocked out of his usual cool detachment, positively jumped with surprise.
‘
What did you say?’
‘
The house. That we should sell it. You don’t really want me to repeat it, you heard me perfectly well. It’s just that you don’t want to believe I said it.’
‘
It’s not that I don’t want to believe it. It’s that
I
can’t
believe it. We’ve lived in this house for fifteen years; it was your dream house, remember? Space for the girls to have their own rooms, this little sitting room as well as the big one – ’
‘
Oh, there’s nothing especially wrong with the
house
.’ Laura’s voice quavered as she dismissed fifteen years of meticulous planning, decorating and furnishing. ‘It’s where it is, here, in this place, this awful, awful place.’
This
was, paradoxically, helpful. James believed he understood: the Boltons’ fire had been very upsetting, and now of course everyone was running around panicking because of the attack on poor Margaret Moon. And yes, theoretically, they could be next – anyone could be next – but that didn’t make it likely, and this sort of hysteria certainly wasn’t constructive. It wasn’t like Laura to behave in such an extreme manner, but then she had been behaving very oddly ever since her disappointment over the job.
He
said soothingly, ‘Look, this unpleasantness is all temporary. With the effort the police are putting in now, they’re bound to find whoever it is before long, and things will return to normal. My dear, it’s perfectly natural you should be upset, but I have to say I think you’re getting it just a little out of proportion.’
‘
Is it the money?’ Laura said, her voice rising. ‘We’d get a really good price for this house, so you wouldn’t lose out at all on the money side. Which, of course is all you really care about, isn’t it?’
James
was moved to protest.
‘
That’s utter nonsense, Laura, and you know it. I’m simply stunned by what you seem to be saying. You love this house, or so you’ve always said, and all our friends are here –’
‘
Friends? What friends are these?’
‘
Laura, perhaps I’m being stupid,’ he said with the maddening assurance of one who considers the suggestion unfeasible, ‘but this is a conversation I am entirely failing to understand. We’ve been friends with the Boltons and the McEvoys for years, and Hayley too, of course, and the Cartwrights and the Joneses and –’
‘
These are not
friends
. They’re acquaintances of long standing. And even you can hardly be insensitive enough to describe Piers McEvoy as my friend. It’s his fault I’m in the state I’m in now. He’s – he’s an insect. If I could rub him out with my foot, I would.
‘
I need to get away, James. I can’t be responsible for what will happen if you make me stay here. Something terrible. I need a new life, real friends – friends I can trust, who trust me –’
Once
again, James believed he had seen the light. The girls had had a spat, that was it, and it was true enough that Piers had been a complete sod over that appointment.
He
said kindly, ‘You know as well as I do, my dear, that making friends doesn’t happen like that –’
‘
Do I? How do you know what I know?’ Her eyes were dangerous, too bright. ‘And don’t call me “my dear”. It’s what you call your bloody maiden aunt, “my dear”.’
There
was a frantic note in her voice, and he was starting to be seriously alarmed. ‘Laura –’
‘
Oh, shut up! “My dear” – that’s just your mark, isn’t it? Where’s the excitement, where’s the passion in that? Where’s the passion in our marriage, come to that?
‘
What’s happened to us, James? Where did they go, the people we used to be? When did the dream disappear?’
She
was almost shouting now, and he shushed her nervously. The girls, mercifully, were out, but the way she was going on the people next door would be able to hear her.
‘
Oh, don’t shush me, James! Can’t you hear what I’m saying? Can’t you understand how wrong, how dreadfully wrong things are – ’ She caught her breath on a furious sob. ‘But you don’t want to know, do you? The only passion you have left is a passion for monotony!’
For
a moment anger flared. Just for a moment, he was tempted to shout back, to detail at the top of his voice his own dissatisfactions. He too had had his painful accommodations to make, like giving up the precarious criminal bar to be a commercial solicitor when the girls were born. She had never acknowledged that sacrifice, or perhaps he had never made his wretchedness evident. Perhaps by then it had already become easier to pretend that everything was absolutely fine. But it was certainly too late now – years too late – and control was a habit long-established.
With
heightened colour he rose from the armchair at the opposite side of the fireplace. With what he felt to be a certain dignity, he said, ‘I’m sorry you’re so distraught. Clearly this is something we have to talk about when you are feeling calmer, but there is absolutely no point in prolonging this discussion now, and I have no intention of doing so.’
He
left the room and heard, with a sense of unreality, the crash of some piece of crockery hitting the back of the door he had just shut, then a wail and a tempest of frenzied sobbing from his wife.
He
put his hand to his brow and found that he was sweating. He felt completely, uncharacteristically, at a loss. What should he do now?
Get
out of the house until she calmed down, suggested itself as the only answer. It was probably the time of the month; she was often pretty touchy around then. She’d have a good cry, take a couple of aspirins, go to bed and feel better in the morning.
The
golf club came to mind as the obvious haven. He was not usually what is termed a ‘clubbable man’ but tonight the thought of male company was very attractive. There were women members too, of course – it performed the social function of a country club – but the ambience was distinctly masculine and the women tended to be unobtrusive. Just at the moment that was a very soothing thought.