Why Aren't They Screaming? (16 page)

Loretta smiled uneasily and pushed her hair back from her forehead. It was preposterous! Robert, cool, intelligent Robert – he couldn't possibly be Clara's killer. But – was that why she had drawn back from spending the previous night with him? Had the suspicion already been there, ticking away in her brain since then? No, of course not. Her decision to return to the cottage had been due solely to her anxiety not to intrude upon his grief. In any case, he hadn't got a motive. She had no more reason to suspect Robert than she had Jeremy. And she was inclined to dismiss Ellie's remarks about the latter on the grounds of her obvious prejudice against him; he, like Robert, had no obvious motive, especially as he was a successful art dealer in his own right. On top of which, there was no evidence that he was anywhere near Baldwin's at the time of the murder. It was hopeless.

As Loretta reached this conclusion, there was a loud knocking at the front door. She opened it, and was startled to be addressed in the warmest tones by a complete stranger.

‘Loretta! My poor love,
what
you must have gone through!' The woman lunged forward and kissed her on both cheeks. I absolutely
had
to come straight over and make sure you're all right!' She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Shh, don't say a word. It's the only way I could get past the law.' She pulled a face and jerked her head backwards in the direction of Clara's garden, where two uniformed PCs were regarding her suspiciously from just beyond the hedge. ‘Can I come in? Thanks.' Her voice rose again as she bore Loretta before her
into the room. ‘Darling, what a
thing
to happen!' She turned, gave a cheery wave to the observers outside, and closed the front door. She advanced on Loretta, right hand outstretched.

‘Adela L'Estrange,
Daily Mail.
Well, freelance really, but that's who sent me. Sorry about that, those
beasts
won't let anyone from the press get near you.'

Loretta took in her visitor's swept-back blonde hair, her earrings which resembled gilded birds' nests, and her expensive black linen suit.

‘How did you–'

Ms L'Estrange was putting her handbag on the kitchen table. ‘I was in the area – friends have a cottage down the road, well, it's not a cottage really, not like
this.'
She glanced round the kitchen, conveying an unspoken message of surprise that anyone could live in such cramped conditions. ‘Yes, I was in the area, and obviously I
had
to come. I was on the phone to the newsdesk as soon as I heard about it. Such a loss, such a loss. Now why don't we sit down and you can tell me all about it?'

By this time Loretta had collected her wits. Pointedly, she remained standing.

‘How did you know my name?'

‘Your name? Oh, I made a few inquiries on my way here, always pays to do your homework, you know.' She gave a rich laugh, which set the earrings shaking madly. Loretta watched fascinated, half-expecting a baby bird to tumble out. Then the woman's smile faded and she leaned across the table to clasp Loretta's hand again. ‘I know – I
know
what you're going through.' Her tone was low and vibrant. ‘Losing a friend – it's, oh, it's the
worst
thing. Last year I ... I lost a dear friend – someone I'd been at school with.' She lifted her head and gazed liquidly at Loretta, groping for a chair with her free hand and sinking into it.

‘Actually, I didn't know Clara very well. What did your friend die of?'

‘Oh – it was cancer.'

Adela looked taken aback; Loretta was about to ask her to leave when a thought occurred to her.

‘I suppose you've talked to the police?' she asked. It would be useful to know what sort of line Bailey was giving out.

‘Of course. I had a long chat with Inspector... Bradley this morning. But what our readers want is the personal touch – what Clara was really
like,
as a woman, that is.' She paused, and Loretta forbore to point out that she could hardly say what Clara had been like as a man. ‘The personal touch, that's what I'm after. I want our readers to feel as if they've met her, as if they've lost
a friend.
That's where you can help me, Loretta. Don't you want to do that? For her?'

Loretta sat down and gave what she hoped was a brave smile.

‘I'll help you as much as I can,' she said. ‘But what did Inspector Bailey tell you?'

‘Oh, just the outline,' Adele said, brushing aside the correction. ‘I gather there's some jewellery missing from the house, and they haven't found the weapon. But tell me, Loretta, what was she really like?'

Loretta considered. It looked as though Adela wasn't going to be much use to her, but she couldn't see any harm in answering the question.

‘She was marvellous,' she began, watching as Adela made marks in an otherwise empty notebook. ‘Kind, intelligent, independent – an admirable person, if you know what I mean. Take this business of the peace camp. A lot of people were–'

‘Peace camp?' Adela looked startled.

‘Yes, it's just up the road. Hasn't anyone told you about that? You should go up there and talk to some of the women, I'm sure they'd have something to say about Clara. It's outside the base, RAF Dunstow. Though it's really American. In fact, some of the planes that bombed Libya flew from it. That's why Clara was so against it. She felt passionately about it.'

‘And she – I don't understand. What was her connection with this – peace camp?'

‘It was on her land,' Loretta explained.

‘I see. Actually, it wasn't so much that sort of thing I was after – politics and all that. I mean, one person votes Labour and another Tory, but it doesn't tell you about them as
people,
does it? Now, am I right in thinking there's a daughter?'

‘Yes.'

‘Name? Age.'

Loretta told her; the information was readily available and Adela might as well get it right.

‘And the husband? It's her second marriage, I gather?'

‘Yes.'

‘And...
not
a very happy one?'

Loretta looked up sharply. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘Oh, I expect it's just gossip, you know how these things get inflated out of all proportion...'

‘I don't think I do.'

‘Well, it's common knowledge that they don't – sorry, didn't – get on. There isn't a party in London that Jeremy Frere isn't at, and he usually
accompanied,
if you know what I mean.'

Loretta stared at the journalist, wondering what she was getting at. Was this an attempt to needle Loretta into revealing that Clara had enjoyed a lurid secret love life? She began to get up.

‘I'm sorry, I can't help you. As I said, I didn't know Clara very well.'

‘If you're sure ...' Adela tailed off, not at all put out. If she made a habit of asking questions like this, Loretta thought, she must be used to being rebuffed. ‘While I'm here, there is
one
more thing...' She stopped, her hand on the catch of the front door. ‘D'you happen to know the truth about all those rumours?'

‘Rumours?'

‘About Jeremy Frere's
gallery.'
She spoke as though Loretta was a wilfully stupid child. ‘You must have heard. They say it's in a lot of trouble, last two exhibitions didn't go very well. In fact' – lowering her voice – ‘I've heard the Larry Schmidt stuff absolutely
bombed.
I mean, I'm not surprised. No one really goes for that brutal realism stuff any more, do they? You haven't heard – aah! Get it off!
Get it off!'

Loretta bent down and detached Bertie's claws from the skirt of Adela's suit. The cat wriggled and tried to regain his foothold, but Loretta held him tight.

‘Take it away, I can't stand cats! Look what the wretched creature's done to my dress! You ought to do something about it, it's obviously dangerous!'

‘No, he isn't,' Loretta objected, picking up Bertie and
hugging him. ‘He's just choosy about his friends.'

Adela L'Estrange stared at her for a moment, then pulled open the door with a ‘hmmph' of displeasure.

‘Sorry to have troubled you, I'm sure,' she said, retreating down the path towards Baldwin's. Loretta watched her pick her way across the lawn in her stilettos, pondering the remarks Adela had just made about Jeremy Frere's financial situation. Only half an hour ago she had more or less ruled him out as a suspect on the grounds that he had money of his own. But if Adela's information was correct, the situation now looked rather different.

Except – except that, if Jeremy Frere was involved in his wife's murder, what had happened to Peggy? Loretta let the cat slip to the floor and returned to the chair she'd been sitting in. That Mick might have forced Peggy to leave with him was one thing; Jeremy Frere, on the other hand, had no reason to abduct her. If he had killed his own wife, why stop at someone else's? Unless he was intending to use her as a hostage in the event of the police tracking him down? Loretta shook her head, embarrassed by these ridiculous thoughts. Casting Jeremy as a crazed kidnapper was just as ludicrous as her earlier theory that Clara was the victim of a political assassination. No, if Jeremy Frere was the killer – and there wasn't a shred of evidence to suggest he was – then Peggy's absence from the house must be coincidence.

Loretta suddenly felt very weak, and sat down. The sour smell of last night's ruined meal was making her feel sick, and the walls of the small room seemed to be pressing in upon her. The feeling that she had to get out of the cottage was overwhelming, and her hand was on the catch of the front door before she stopped to consider where she might be going. What she needed, she told herself, was other people – somewhere she could blend in with the mass of humanity as it went about its everyday business. That, and food; lacking though her appetite was, it was now well over twenty-four hours since she'd eaten. Although the rest she'd come to Oxfordshire to find was plainly out of the question, there was no point in neglecting her other bodily needs. Oxford couldn't be more than six or seven miles away, and she'd certainly find plenty of people there – the city was
notoriously over-crowded. And there was bound to be some sort of place where she could get food, even though it was getting towards the end of the lunch hour. She slipped briefly upstairs to pick up a jacket and returned to the kitchen to find her bag; a miaow from Bertie, who had positioned himself in front of the Aga just as he used to in Clara's house, reminded her that she ought to stock up on cat food. It seemed unlikely that the police over in Baldwin's would realize that the cat needed feeding.

She opened the front door, and immediately became aware of raised voices outside. She looked across in the direction of Baldwin's and spotted a figure in the midst of an angry confrontation with a uniformed policeman. It took her only a moment to recognize Jeremy; seconds later he glanced towards the cottage and caught sight of her.

‘Can you believe it?' He strode up the path towards her and stopped on the far side of her car. ‘They won't let me into the house –
my
house, I might add, as Clara's next of kin. What is this, a police state? I thought this was supposed to be a free country! They won't even tell me how long they intend to lounge about in there, drinking my Laphroaig, I don't doubt!'

He glared at her, spots of colour on his pale cheeks. It occurred to Loretta that he might have been drinking. Her initial feeling of guilt on being confronted with the object of her recent suspicions instantly evaporated; there had been no word from Jeremy about Clara, nothing about Loretta's unhappy role in the previous night's events, only this selfish tirade against people who were, after all, getting on with a rather unpleasant job.

‘I'm sure they won't keep you out any longer than necessary,' Loretta said coolly. ‘Is there anything in the house you need urgently? You could try asking them to bring it out to you.'

‘What, ask that bunch of twopenny ha'penny fascists? You must be joking!' He glanced viciously over his left shoulder, then turned back to Loretta. ‘Anyway, what I came to say was, I assume you're moving out now all this's happened? Since Stalin over there won't let me into my own home, it would suit me pretty well to stay here for a day or two. D'you think you'll be out by this evening?'

Loretta regarded him open-mouthed. Even though Jeremy was probably within his rights in asking her to leave, it seemed a bit much to do it without any notice at all. And what was his motive for trying to hustle her out of the way? If Jeremy needed to be in Flitwell, he could jolly well put up at the Green Man for a few days – the ban on Clara hadn't extended to him as far as Loretta knew. Why the rush? Loretta examined Jeremy's bad-tempered face, and all her suspicions came rushing back. She decided to dig her heels in.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘but that's
quite
out of the question. My arrangement with Clara was that I'd be here for a few weeks, and I can't just go back to London at the drop of a hat. I'll have to speak to the people who are renting my flat, for a start.' Her righteous indignation on the part of her mythical tenants was so strong that she completely forgot that, only three days before, she'd been offering to return to London and leave the cottage free for Jeremy. Fortunately for her, he failed to notice the discrepancy, although his colour was rising by the minute. ‘Look,' she said firmly, holding up her hand to forestall whatever he might be going to say, ‘I don't want to quarrel with you. I had a pretty rotten time last night, what with finding Clara's body and giving a statement to the police, and I'm feeling shattered. I'll ring the people in my flat and explain what's happened, and I'm sure they'll do their best to find alternative accommodation. That's the most I can do. I'm sorry if it
inconveniences
you' – she put a sarcastic stress on the word to convey her contempt for his behaviour ‘but that's the way it is. Now, is there anything else?'