Death of a Stranger (25 page)

“Constance is so passive she accepted my overtures. She could take them or leave them, as she could take or leave anyone and almost anything else, but she soon discovered that I brought her advantages. She had Geoffrey's reluctant pittance, while I had a small fortune from my father. She didn't like driving – and her sight has become so bad she shouldn't be on the road – and I did. She didn't like cooking, but she liked eating the meals I made for her. She couldn't be bothered going to the cinema, but when I took her she said how much better the films were on a big screen. And so on. And when we learned you were coming back for your son's wedding, Lorna Le Page, I was even able to persuade her she was still angry. When we were outside St James and saw the tall, fair young man standing beside you I told her he was your toyboy and made her believe she was angry enough to raise her fist. You saw it. And you smiled.'' Beth Smith got to her feet and started to pace the room. Lorna found it difficult to turn her head to follow her, but Beth was soon back within her field of vision, standing in fact in front of her, so close that Lorna could see the fury in her face.

“But I knew who he was, and I was the one who was angry, Lorna Le Page! I was angry because of the worst thing of all that you did. You presented me, on the steps of St James, with Geoffrey as a young man. Had you forgotten what he looked like while you were looking at other men? Did it never occur to you that Constance might recognise him? Weren't you afraid when she raised her fist? But it wasn't Constance you had to be afraid of, Lorna Le Page, it was me. Even if Constance had had real fire in her belly she wouldn't have been able to see the young Geoffrey the way I saw him – those beautiful eyes of hers couldn't see detail the width of the forecourt. But my eyes could. And I saw the son who ought to have been mine.''

Beth Smith seemed to disappear, and it took Lorna a few moments to realise that she had dropped back into her chair the other side of the fireplace. She was aware of the dark shape on the sofa moving and coughing.

“Geoffrey had made a promise to me, Lorna Le Page. A promise which at the time he made it I believed he would keep.'' Lorna was able to hear far more clearly than she was able to see – didn't they say that hearing was the last faculty to be lost when one was dying? – and Beth Smith's laugh was horrible. “ He had promised me that if he gave me the baby I wanted he would leave Constance publicly and he and I would be married. I longed for that baby, Lorna, I yearned for it. Every month … But he gave it to you, and when it was thirty years old you showed it to me. I think that was the cruellest thing you ever did.''

“But I didn't know …'' Oh, how little she
had
known! “Beth … He gave me Simon because I was able to conceive him. If
you'd
been able—''

She had said the wrong thing. Beth Smith was standing over her again, and this time her arm was raised. Lorna knew, somewhere far off, that it was only because the man on the sofa shouted, “No!'' that Beth didn't strike her.

“I can't wait any longer,'' Beth said, turning away from Lorna and moving towards the sofa.

“You better had, Beth,'' the man said, getting to his feet. “You don't want the police to find another dead body.''

“The police … The police won't be coming!''

“I'm afraid they will.''

“But we agreed … You'd ring the Le Page house from a call-box! To cancel the 1471!''

“I did make a call-box call, sweetheart. I rang the police in case someone else rang the Le Page house after I did and the 1471 didn't work.''

Beth Smith let out a dreadful sound, half snarl, half wail, and Lorna thought she saw her raise her arm again. But the man caught it and twisted it behind her back, and the sound shrank to a yelp of pain.

“You thought you could buy me, Beth,'' he panted as he forced her towards the sofa. “And I thought so, too. But when it came to murder I found you couldn't. It's gone far enough. Too far.''

“You fool!'' She had managed to turn her head so that she was looking up into his face. “ It was going so well! They'd have arrested the fellow from the Golden Rose. And no one would have known Mrs Le Page had been brought here before she disappeared.'' Suddenly she was limp. “Alan, you love me, you can't live without me, tell me you're joking, tell me—''

“I'm not joking. And I can hear a car.''

Beth Smith screamed, and tried to bite him. Lorna wished dreamily that she could help the young man to subdue her, but he seemed to be managing all right on his own. He had her full length and face down on the sofa by the time Tim and DS Mahy came into the room.

“
B
ut how did you get in?'' Lorna asked, she didn't know how much later. All she knew was that the rocking, retching zoom through space which had been the aftermath of her visit to Beth Smith had at last come to an end, and she was lying, relaxed and comfortable, in the guest bed in Rouge Rue with Tim and Anna to each side of her.

“We found the front door open,'' Tim told her. “Beth Smith's toyboy had left it for us, he told us later at the station.''

“He had a lovely profile. Constance …''

“As innocent as the day. Innocent of any insight, any ability to read other people, if everything Beth Smith has said is to be believed.''

Something unsatisfactory had started nudging at the back of Lorna's mind, and she suddenly knew what it was.

“I can only remember here and there what she said.'' She tried to struggle to a sitting position, but Tim held her gently down. “It's like a film that keeps fading out so that you can't follow it properly. I'm sorry, darlings.''

“I'm surprised you remember anything, you were so powerfully tranquillised. But don't worry. Beth Smith had been waiting three decades for her grand confrontation, and she wasn't going to let it pass unrecorded. Her toyboy had his orders to switch a tape on when she started in on you.''

“I think I saw him do it, but I didn't understand … Was it Beth or her man who drove at me in L'Hyvreuse?''

“It was Beth. He's aided and abetted, but that's as far as he's gone. Beth misread him, or thought her influence over him was a lot stronger than it was. When she told him what she'd done to Simon he'd had enough. And he appears to feel bad about setting Simon up. He was following him on Beth's instructions the second time he went to the Golden Rose, and he listened in to the call Simon made on his mobile to the London office of the insurance company. He says he was only a hedge-width away, and heard Simon agree to go in that night. We know from Ian Taylor of the London office that that's what Simon
did
agree. But only if he could enter without breaking, which I'm glad about, although what the hell does it matter now?'' Lorna murmured a protest, and he took her hand as he went on. “Alan Hart – the toyboy – reported to Beth as ordered, and she told us herself that she parked in L'Hyvreuse that night and followed Simon when he left the Duke of Richmond. She knew where he was going, so I assume she kept far enough behind for Simon not to be aware he was being followed. She said she went straight to the forecourt of the Golden Rose and parked among the few other cars there. She didn't see Simon's car, but she'd hardly expected him to drive in and only had a short wait before he appeared on foot. She stayed there until he reappeared, gave him a few moments, then drove out into the lane – and we know the rest. She also told us …'' Tim hesitated, looking gravely into his mother's eyes.

“Told you what, Tim?'' she whispered. “ Please go on.''

“She told us it was seeing his father's face again, so clear and close under the lamps by the gate, that made her run him down. Up till then she hadn't known what she was going to do, if anything. I think the shock of seeing Simon for the first time on the steps of St James and recognising his father in him had sent her over the edge. Well, she'd already tried to run you down. She'd never come to terms with Lorimer's desertion, and when she discovered after thirty years that he'd given the child he'd promised her to someone else …''

Anna as well as Tim was now looking at her with a sorrow of such gravity Lorna felt she owed it to them to explain how she felt about Geoffrey's wretched deception.

“Listen,'' she said, and this time Tim let her sit upright. “ Your father was a good man, Tim.''

“My father …?''

She could see apprehension joining the sadness in their two faces, and had to suppress a giggle as she suspected them of wondering if her experience had turned her brain. “ No,'' she assured them. “ I haven't gone mad too. It's just that there's something I have to say. When I deserted your father, Tim, I took with me a burden of guilt I've never shed. And never wanted to shed, because I've a puritan conscience buried in me somewhere and I felt it was my just punishment. When I took Geoffrey away, I thought from Constance'' – she saw them exchange a brief relieved smile as they noticed the rueful twist she could feel on her own lips – “ that burden was doubled. I'd injured two good men. Geoffrey's near-perfection combined with your father's total goodness was very hard to live up to – even harder, somehow, when they had both died and could never do anything to dim their pristine images.'' Lorna felt her self-mocking smile again, then the solemnity of her face as she looked from one to the other of them, knowing how important it was to her to define correctly what her new knowledge of Geoffrey had done to her memory of him. “ It's funny, Tim,'' she heard herself saying. “ If I'd ever discovered your father was less than an honourable man I'd have felt the whole world had crumbled. Discovering that Geoffrey was less than honourable … I'm feeling
relieved
. As if I've shed a load.''

“Perhaps your subconscious suspected he wasn't worth it,'' Anna suggested.

“I don't know. Perhaps I disguised my lust as esteem to make myself feel better about what I was doing. But Tim …'' Lorna seized his arm. “ In the end, it's your father who's with me. Geoffrey's gone, he dissolved in those few moments Beth told me about him, and I'm more sure by the minute that I'm happy to let him go. Now I can mourn what I did to your father. And feel like his wife again. Does that make you angry, darling?''

“Of course not. It makes me glad.'' For the second time Tim hesitated. “ But don't be too hard on Geoffrey. He was Simon's father.''

“Yes. But Simon should have been Beth's.'' It was extraordinary how clear everything had suddenly become to her. The sunshine filling the simple, white-walled room seemed like the expression of the clarity with which she was seeing the past, the present, and even the future “If she could have conceived, everything would have been different. I would have stayed with your father, and Beth would have been a normal, happy mother. Simon would have been different. But he'd have been alive.''

“We can't be sure of any of that,'' Anna responded swiftly.

“We certainly can't be sure you'd have stayed with Father,'' Tim ventured. He knew it was a gamble which if it failed could cause damage to them all. But he also thought he knew his mother, and to his relief he was right: her tense face relaxed into a smile.

“No, we can't, darling. But we do know – because I know – that I've never ceased to honour him above all men. Oh, Tim …''

It was her most welcome weeping since Simon had died. When it was over Tim suggested that she sleep for an hour before the lunch one of them would bring up to her.

“Lunch!'' Lorna had nestled down into the bed, but sprang up and seized his hand again. “But I thought … It was nearly lunchtime when I was at Beth's. How have you had time to talk to her and her toyboy? You have to mean supper, Tim, or I
am
going mad.''

“You didn't have any lunch when you left Beth Smith's,'' Tim said. “And you had your supper last night by drip in the Princess Elizabeth. Shock, and Beth Smith's ministrations. But they let us bring you home for the night, and you've woken up in the middle of a sunny tomorrow morning.''

“So I've lost a day and a night.'' Lorna fell back on her pillow, winded by a lesser but still highly disconcerting shock. “Well, I do seem to have been dreaming bad dreams for a long, long time. They're all I can remember since I saw you and that nice sergeant of yours coming through Beth Smith's sitting-room doorway.''

“I saw you pass out. Alan Hart told me it was only tranquillisers, but we called an ambulance. How on earth did Hart persuade a policeman's mother to get into an unmarked car?''

Her embarrassed wriggle went the length of the bed. “He showed me an ID and I only glanced at it. I wouldn't have known exactly how it ought to look, anyway. I'm sorry, Tim.''

“You're no different from the majority of the population. I suspect Alan Hart has made capital out of that forgery a few times.''

“He isn't a murderer, though,'' Lorna said. “And he saved my life.''

“After putting it on the line. But yes, that will help him. Beth Smith's in hospital under police guard. I don't think there's a chance of her ever being at liberty again.''

“A-a-a-h!'' Lorna stretched her limbs and smiled from one to the other of them. “ I will go to sleep now, darlings. So long as you promise to rebook your Scottish honeymoon. For the day after you book my flight to London.''

“We'll try. But first, Mother … There'll be Simon's funeral.''

They braced themselves for the pain of her remembering, and watched her wince and turn her head into the pillow.

“He seems so long gone, I forgot,'' she whispered.

“I wonder you haven't forgotten everything, with what Beth Smith did to you,'' Tim said rallyingly. “ I should be able to find out this afternoon when he'll be released to us.''