Blood on the Wood (15 page)

The name hung in the air.

‘What about her?' I said. I could guess, but I wanted Adam to say it. He took his time, with long gaps between the words.

‘Miss Foster has suffered great distress in the last few days because of my brother's actions. I think it's our responsibility – yours as well as ours – to see that she doesn't suffer any more from intrusive police questioning.'

‘How can what I say affect that?'

‘I gather from Carol that Felicia was in a state of great distress just now.'

‘Yes.'

‘I think you'll agree that you would not have been in a position to witness that distress if you hadn't come into our house stealthily and uninvited.'

‘I might have come into the house stealthily, but I went to Miss Foster's room quite openly.'

‘This isn't a matter for legalities.' (I thought that rich coming from Adam, who'd been trying to take a high legal tone, but said nothing.) ‘It's a matter of, well … decency. If Felicia said or did in her distress anything she might regret later, it would be inhuman to pass that on without very good reason.'

‘I agree. But suppose there were good reasons?'

‘Such as?'

I let my eyes go where most of our minds must have been, towards the studio.

‘Somebody's done this terrible, grotesque thing to us,' Adam said.

‘To you? I thought it was to Miss Smith.'

‘To all of us. Are you going to let that ruin Felicia's life? She's distressed anyway. If she's subjected to police questioning, she could break down entirely.'

‘Perhaps she already has,' I said.

I made my decision. I'd already told Daniel what I'd seen in the summerhouse. Now they'd have to know it as well. I told the story as flatly as possible, from the time I heard the shot at the gate to taking the gun from Felicia. Three pairs of eyes were on me, Adam's hostile, Oliver's bleary, Carol's scared. When I finished talking, she was the one who broke the silence.

‘She said she'd found the gun there?'

‘That's what she told me. It might not have been true.'

Adam ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it so that he suddenly looked much more like his younger brother. Up to that point, I guessed, he really had believed he could control the effects of what had happened. Now he doubted it.

‘Is that why you said she was shot, Miss Bray?'

‘I don't know she was shot, but the gun was in my mind, yes.'

It must have occurred to him, as to me, that we could find out one way or the other by going next door and lifting the cloth from Daisy's body. He didn't suggest it, so neither did I.

‘What became of the gun after you say you took it from Miss Foster?'

I tried not to resent his use of ‘you say'. He had another shock coming to him.

‘It was in my possession for perhaps two or three hours, then I gave it to Daniel.'

Carol flinched and let go of Oliver's hand.

‘In
your
possession?' Adam said. ‘You're admitting you had a gun for most of the evening?'

‘I'm telling you, not admitting. I had it in my pocket, I didn't fire it, I told Daniel what had happened and gave it to him.'

‘When was this?'

‘About ten o'clock, I think.'

Carol had her fingertips together, pressed against her forehead. She said, from behind them, ‘If she was shot, wouldn't we have heard it?'

‘Perhaps you did,' I said.

‘What?'

‘I gather you and Mr Venn were having a conversation at dinner about boys shooting rabbits.'

The fingertips came down, showing dark, horrified eyes.

‘No!' But it was an appeal, not a denial.

Oliver said, presumably catching at something he could understand, ‘Lads from the village with shotguns. I wish they wouldn't.'

‘You must have heard something,' I said to Carol. ‘You were out in the garden calling Felicia. You even asked her if it was the boys shooting rabbits.'

‘Yes. Yes, I did. I remember I did hear a shot but … oh God.'

‘A shot or shots?'

‘Don't answer.' Adam got up and sat beside his wife on the arm of the sofa. ‘Carol, you don't have to answer that.' He looked at me. ‘What are you trying to do?'

‘I think what the rest of us are trying to do. Decide if there's anything we don't tell the police.'

‘Are you seriously intending to put into their heads the idea that Felicia took a revolver, shot Miss Smith with it and hid her body in the cabinet? Is that what you're going to say to them?'

‘She won't. Of course she won't,' Carol said.

She was nearly crying. Oliver just stared.

‘Of course I'm not,' I said. ‘I've no idea how Daisy Smith died. But it is a fact that I took a revolver from Miss Foster and later handed it to your brother.'

Impasse. Adam drew in a deep breath of air and let it out slowly.

‘I can't delay going for the police much longer. They'll want to question us all about who she is and how her body was found, then there will be a post-mortem. We might not face the sorts of questions we're anticipating until after that. Perhaps not at all if there turns out to be a simple explanation for her death.'

I wondered how he thought there could be, but didn't say so. I was impressed in spite of myself by the way he was trying to keep in control of himself and us.

‘If there is a simple explanation, then we might very much regret anything we'd said to throw unjust suspicion on Felicia and increase her suffering. After all, attempted suicide is a crime. Of course, it could only be an assumption that she was attempting any such thing.'

‘That's quite true.'

‘So the police will want to know how you came to find the girl's body and about her staying at the Scipian camp…' (Neat, I thought, keep it away from the family.) ‘… but unless you bring up the subject, they'll have no reason to question you about anything involving my brother or Felicia.'

‘So,' I said, ‘you're suggesting that we conceal Daniel's two engagements, Miss Foster's probable attempt to shoot herself and the fact that I handed over a revolver to Daniel?'

Conceal something else, too, something that only I knew about. Six words from a woman almost dissolving from fear and grief.
‘I had a gun, didn't I?'
It felt like a theft even to have heard them, and the last thing I wanted to do was to pass them on to the police.

‘I'm not suggesting we should keep anything from the police, only that we should be careful to tell them only what is strictly necessary to—'

As Adam was speaking, a face appeared in the mirror behind him. A pale face, desperate looking, surrounded by wild dark curls. I noticed it first because I was facing the mirror. It took me a second to realise that I was seeing a reflection from the window behind us. I turned and there was Daniel, mouthing something, jiggling at the closed window catch. Adam had seen him too by then and stopped what he was saying. He looked scared. I think we all were, as if letting him in would bring some new horror. Carol recovered first. She got up, released the catch, opened the window.

‘Daniel, where have you been?'

‘What's happened? What are you all doing up?'

Daniel squeezed through the narrow window frame and into the room, looking for a moment horribly like the creeping Long Lankin in the carving. Then he noticed me and some of the alarm went out of his eyes.

‘Oh so that's what it's about, is it? You went and got caught after all.' Then, to his family, ‘For goodness sake, don't make such a performance about it. It's only a picture. Listen, I've got something a lot more important to tell you. Seeing as you're up anyway, you might as well hear it together.'

He was keyed-up, unstoppable. Adam stood up, took a step towards him.

‘Daniel, hold on. If you say something now you might regret—'

‘Regret? It's all regrets. I've made a god-awful mess of things and the only thing I can do now is make a clean breast of it and—'

‘Daniel!'

Adam actually tried to grab his brother but Daniel sidestepped him with a dancer's quickness and took up position on the rug in front of the fireplace.

‘Listen, everybody. I've behaved like an idiot. I wanted to help Daisy, but I was wrong to do it at the expense of Felicia. So I'm going to wake Felicia up and tell her that if she'll have me, the engagement's on again.'

We were staring at him, speechless. Adam was frozen, the hand he'd reached out to grab Daniel fallen back at his side.

‘Well, don't look at me like that,' Daniel said. ‘It was what you all wanted, wasn't it? And you've got Miss Bray to thank. She made me see what I was doing. She told me … told me about something Felicia might have been thinking of and—'

‘Daniel, will you please listen.'

Adam had found his voice at last, but Daniel swept on.

‘I still care about Daisy. She's not going back to that hovel and that awful family, whatever happens. We'll find her a place to live—'

‘Daisy's dead.'

Adam flung it at him, not being able to stop him any other way. Even then, Daniel was so intent on what he was saying that he didn't take it in at first.

‘… get her qualified as a music or dance teacher – What did you say?'

‘She's dead. Daisy's dead.'

He just stared, mouth open, eyes blank. Then, ‘How? What happened?'

Nobody said anything. He started swaying where he stood. ‘No, no, no,' he said.

Adam went over to him, put an arm round his shoulder and walked him away to the far end of the room. Daniel went as unresistingly as a puppet. An upholstered bench stood against the far wall, in half shadow away from the lamplight. Adam let him slump down there and sat beside him. The brothers' heads were close together and Adam was talking in a low voice, out of our hearing.

Oliver looked at Carol, scared and fretful. ‘What's he saying to him? What's happening?'

She didn't answer. We were all poleaxed with weariness. A clock struck, low and mellow from the mantelpiece. Three o'clock. The sky outside was still dark. From the other end of the room, the murmuring went on. When I glanced that way, Daniel's head was down and he was moving it from side to side, but there was no way of telling whether that meant disagreement or bewilderment. It was half an hour before they came back to us, Daniel walking on his own now but tentatively, as if he didn't trust the floor under his feet.

Adam said, ‘I'm taking the gig and going to tell the police. We can't put it off any longer.'

‘Down to the police house?' Carol asked.

‘No, this isn't a matter for the village bobby. I'll go straight into Chipping Norton and tell them at the police station.' Adam looked at me. ‘When the police come, it's up to each of us what we tell them.' But he'd made his opinion clear enough, and his eyes told me what he expected.

‘I'd better go and find my friend,' I said. ‘On your way to the police, perhaps you'd be kind enough to drop her off at the railway station.' Just a nod from him, an agreement sealed almost before I knew I'd made a decision.

*   *   *

Bobbie didn't like it. I found her in the kitchen, sitting at the big scrubbed wooden table, drinking tea with Annie and the cook. From the way they had their heads together when I came in I knew they'd been deep in conversation. I took Bobbie outside to the corridor.

‘Mr Venn's taking you to the junction,' I said. ‘With luck, there'll be a train back to town in a couple of hours. Don't ask him any questions.'

‘Am I taking the Bessie Broadbeam with me?'

‘No. Forget about her.'

By now the picture was so far from my mind that I'd forgotten we'd left it propped up in the studio.

‘I don't see the point, then. I might as well wait until the police get here.'

I tried to keep a hold on my temper. My doubts about what I was doing made it difficult to take the firm line needed in dealing with Bobbie.

‘There's nothing for you to tell them. I saw and heard everything that you did.'

‘I've been thinking, if Daisy and Daniel Venn had an arrangement that she'd come to meet him and—'

I could have throttled her. ‘Why in the world should she have come to meet him?'

‘Well, they were engaged, weren't they and—'

‘How did you hear about that?'

‘Annie and the cook were talking about it. Apparently there was this fearful row when he announced it because he was engaged to the other woman and…'

It was dawning on me how impossible it would be for Adam to keep this hidden. Still, I did my best.

‘Things are bad enough without gossip. I'd strongly suggest that you don't repeat it and you say as little as possible about anything that's happened here to anyone.'

I was almost past caring about the Venn family. What mattered was getting Bobbie off the premises.

‘But there'll have to be a court case, won't there?'

‘Yes. And if you stay here you'll end up in dock on a charge of attempted burglary, or in the witness box in a murder case. Or possibly both. Is that what you want?'

‘I shouldn't mind.'

‘Well your mother would, and your aunt.' (Emmeline too, but I hardly dared think about what she'd say.) ‘I suppose you'll have to tell them something. You can say that you delivered the picture to me as arranged, then somebody in the Venn household got killed and I said you must go home. That's true at least, as far as it goes. Apart from that, don't talk about it any more than you have to.'

Normally I'd have hesitated in coaching a young woman in concealing things, but Bobbie was a special case.

‘But what will happen to you?'

‘Don't worry about me. I'm older than you. I can deal with it.' I'd serious doubts about that, but luckily Bobbie didn't seem to hear them in my voice. She sighed.