The Shortest Journey (8 page)

After my housework I changed into something more
respectable and put the now clean and dry dogs into the car to take
them down to the beach for a run. I also thought that the sea air
might blow away the dismal and unhealthy thoughts that were
churning round in my mind.

Although it was a lovely sunny day and the Bristol
Channel was looking almost a Mediterranean blue, the holiday season
hadn’t begun so the beach was pleasantly deserted. I slithered down
over the pebbles and let the dogs off their leads. They rushed
madly along the sand and back to me and then in wide circles,
barking delightedly. I wished that I could plunge so quickly and
easily into that same mindless bliss. I walked slowly after them,
stooping occasionally to pick up a shell or examine a piece of
driftwood, trying to empty my mind of thought.

I was aware of the dogs rushing up to another person
also walking a dog and I quickened my steps. It was Ed Cooper, the
taxi driver who had taken Mrs Rossiter into Taunton. I went towards
him, calling to Tris and Tess.

‘Hello, Mr Cooper. How are you? Are my dogs being a
nuisance?’

‘No, m’dear, my old Bess likes a romp.’

The dogs were all rushing about together in what
seemed a friendly fashion, so I turned to Mr Cooper. We made polite
conversation about the weather and the Red Cross and then I said,
‘What a strange thing that was at West Lodge – Mrs Rossiter going
off like that!’

He looked annoyed and muttered something about people
trying to put the blame on someone who was only doing his job.

‘Not on you, surely! That would be ridiculous!’

My vigorous response seemed to hearten him and he
continued more coherently.

‘Well, here’s the way it is. I reckon no one wants to
take the blame for the old lady’s disappearance, so they all had a
go at me!’

‘Had a go?’

‘Well, that Mrs Wilmot saying I shouldn’t have let
her come back on her own. I ask you, ’tisn’t for me to say what my
ladies should do, they wouldn’t like it. And it weren’t as if she
wasn’t all there, if you see what I mean, m’dear – she were quite
sharp, a very nice lady, very friendly. I’ve driven her a couple of
times and she always sits in front with me and chats – not like
some of them, sitting in the back and never speaking a word, like I
were part of the car!’

‘What did she chat about when you were driving up to
Taunton?’

‘Oh, things in general. Quite a bit about my garden.
She liked a nice garden, always used to comment on those we passed,
what they had in them and such. I think she missed her flowers in
that place. What else? Now, let me think. She were asking me about
my boy Dave. I’d told her about him last time I drove her – he’s
got this muscular dystrophy, you know what I mean? And he’s had to
go into this institution for a bit, just to learn how to go on,
then we can have him home again. Anyhow, Mrs Rossiter, she
remembered and asked about him, very kindly. As a matter of fact’ –
he paused and looked at me cautiously – ‘she gave me a whole tenner
as a tip. I didn’t want to take it – well, it were too much – but
she said it were to buy something to take to the boy when the wife
and I went to see him.’

‘That was just like her!’ I exclaimed.

‘I never asked...’ he said defensively.

‘I’m sure you didn’t. No, she loved children.’

‘I didn’t tell that Mrs Wilmot about it, either. Or
Sergeant Page. They might have thought I were up to something.’

‘Oh, you saw the police?’

‘Sergeant Page came round to my house. Gave my wife a
nasty turn to find him on the doorstep when she got back from
shopping, I can tell you. She thought something had happened to me.
Anyway, he asked me where I’d dropped Mrs Rossiter in Taunton – it
were in Church Square, back of Marks and Spencer. A lot of my
ladies like to be dropped there. Handy for the shopping, you
see.’

‘And that was the last you saw of her?’

He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Well, there
were something. But nothing I could swear to.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I didn’t mention it to Mrs Wilmot. Her going
on at me like that, I weren’t going to say no more than I had to.
Well, you can understand how I felt, m’dear. And that Sergeant Page
– very officious he is, you should have heard the way he went on
that time when one of my braking lights were a bit dodgy. I tried
to explain how it was, but all he’d say were, “The facts, sir,
that’s all I want, not excuses.” All sarcastic. So, you see, I
didn’t think it were no use telling him something I only sort of
noticed out of the corner of my eye, you might say. Not a
fact
,’ he said with heavy irony.

‘What did you see?’ I asked.

‘Well, it were like this, m’dear. I had that tenner
from Mrs Rossiter and while I were in Taunton I thought I’d go and
get the boy some of those special paints – poster paints they call
them – from that art shop round the back of the precinct. Dave,
he’s very keen on his painting. The pictures don’t look like
anything you’d recognise, though his mother thinks the world of
them, but he likes doing them and they say it does him good. Anyway
I puts the car in that car park down by the river and I were just
walking through to that machine for my ticket when I thought I saw
Mrs Rossiter.’

‘You thought?’

‘Well, it were just a glimpse, through the parked
cars. It looked like she were talking to a man and a woman and then
the man took her arm and they all got into a car.’

‘What were they like, the man and the woman?’

‘Couldn’t really say, m’dear. They had their backs to
me.’

‘Were they old or young?’

‘Couldn’t properly tell. It were only a quick
glimpse, and it had come on to rain a bit by then and they were
both wearing macs. He had on a hat, some kind of tweed fishing hat,
and she had a scarf tied round her head. You know how it is when
you can’t see people’s faces.’

‘Yes, of course. What sort of car?’

‘Some sort of Ford, an Escort I think, black – but I
could be mistaken. I could be mistaken about the whole thing. I
mean, it might not have been Mrs Rossiter at all.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, this lady were wearing a mac, like Mrs
Rossiter were, but she’d got a scarf tied round her head too, and
Mrs Rossiter, she hadn’t been wearing one of them when I dropped
her off. Though, of course, it weren’t raining then. But you see
how I can’t tell anyone, when it’s all sort of vague. I don’t want
them going on at me and coming bothering the wife again. She’s got
enough to fret about with the boy...’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Any road, I’ve told you now, m’dear. You see what
you make of it.’

He bent to pat his dog, which had left my two
investigating a rock pool and returned to her master.

‘Good girl, Bess. Well, I must be off, m’dear. The
wife’ll have the dinner waiting. You won’t let on what I told
you?’

‘No, of course not. I hope your boy is home
soon.’

He gave me a sort of salute and went off across the
sands, his dog at his heels.

I stood in a daze, thinking about what he had told
me. Now Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance seemed much more sinister.
Could she have been kidnapped? Surely not – not in Taunton and in
broad daylight! My thoughts returned to Marion and her husband. A
man and a woman. She knew them, would naturally trust them, happily
get into a car and be driven away – to what? To be murdered? The
death of a frail old lady, with a heart condition, could easily be
passed off as an accident.

I felt I ought to tell the police, but then Mr Cooper
had told me his story in confidence. If I went to the police now he
would be in trouble for suppressing evidence, or whatever they
called it. Besides, he might have been mistaken. But somehow I knew
that he was not. In my mind’s eye was the picture of Mrs Rossiter,
a man’s hand on her arm, getting into a car. It was a picture that
I knew would stay with me, distressing, haunting even, but I
didn’t, at the moment, see what I could do about it.

I was in the pet shop buying a large bag of cat
litter and other necessities when I ran into Ella Lydgate. Ella is
a civil servant who took early retirement and is thus able to
devote her entire life to animals. Whenever anyone finds a stray
dog or cat – or budgerigar or tortoise for that matter – it’s
always Ella they turn to. As often as not she’s up and about at
five o’clock in the morning crawling under some garden shed in the
pale light of dawn to coax out a terrified half-wild cat. She
boasts that she’s always managed to find a home for every animal
that came to her – though sometimes she has cheated a bit and kept
the really impossible cases herself. Her little house somehow
contrives to remain neat and tidy although she now has eleven cats
and three dogs.

‘Hello, Ella,’ I said. ‘Can I give you a hand back to
the house with those?’

‘Oh, thank you, Sheila, that would be kind. And while
you’re there I can show you the new photos of Flora and the
kittens.’

Flora was a tiny little grey-and-white cat I had
found in the woods with two half-starved kittens. I do most
sincerely hope that there is a special hell reserved for those who
are cruel to children and animals. The poor little creature had
obviously been thrown out of a car when her owners discovered that
she was pregnant – I can’t imagine the sort of people who could do
such a thing. With Ella’s help I had housed and fed them and helped
to tame the kittens and she had found them a home down in Devon
where they could all be together. Like most of Ella’s rescue
attempts, it had a happy ending.

I held the heavy box of tins of cat food while Ella
opened the front door. A great cacophony of barking greeted us and
two feline shapes dashed past into the front garden.

‘Quiet, Pixie! Quiet, Jetty! I’ll just go into the
kitchen and let them know I’m back. You go into the sitting room. I
won’t be a minute.’

In the tiny sitting room there were cats on every
chair and several on the broad window sill, some with the net
curtains caught up over their heads where they were looking out.
There were food dishes (mostly licked clean) each on its own
plastic mat, cat-litter trays on folded newspapers in two corners
of the room and a variety of cat-nip mice, small rubber balls and
doggy-chews, but the general effect was one of order. I reflected
that my house, with two dogs and one fastidious Siamese, always
looked much more chaotic. I wondered enviously how Ella managed it.
I picked up a large marmalade cat from the sofa and sat down with
it on my lap where it settled comfortably, purring loudly as I
stroked it.

Ella came in with one of the numerous albums full of
photographs sent to her by the new and loving owners of her
protégées. She flipped over the pages and said, ‘There! Look how
the kittens have grown. They’re quite tame now, even that very
nervous little grey one.’

As she sat down on the sofa beside me the marmalade
cat jumped down and went over to sit on Ella’s lap instead –
animals always preferred Ella to anyone else.

‘Now then, Sandy!’ she reproved him. ‘What will
Sheila think of your manners, abandoning her like that!’

‘He’s beautiful,’ I said, ‘such a lovely coat.’

I suddenly thought of something.

‘Did you call him Sandy? Was he Mrs Rossiter’s cat? I
thought I recognised him.’

‘That’s right. Poor soul, she was dreadfully upset
about not being able to keep him when she went into West Lodge. She
loved that cat, didn’t she, Sandy?’ The cat looked up at her and
she bent and put her face against his head. ‘Her daughter, what’s
her name, Thelma, she wanted her mother to have him put down. Can
you imagine? Well, Mrs Rossiter wouldn’t do it. She came to me in
such a state! Her daughter had made all the arrangements about West
Lodge and poor Mrs Rossiter didn’t feel she could go against her.
Well, you know what a meek little person she is; the soul of
kindness, could never say boo to a goose. There was Thelma saying
that Sandy had had a good life – he’s fifteen – and that it would
be the kindest thing to have him put to sleep and that her mother
had to go into West Lodge because she couldn’t manage on her own
any more.’

‘How awful!’

‘Well, we couldn’t let a beautiful boy like this be
put to sleep, could we? So I said I’d take him. Mrs Rossiter knew
he’d be all right with me.’

‘Bless you, Ella. What would we all do without
you!’

‘Well, one more doesn’t make much difference and it’s
not easy finding a home for an elderly gentleman of fifteen. Though
I must say,’ she continued, ‘it never seemed to me right to say
that Mrs Rossiter couldn’t look after herself. Not in that big
house, maybe, but she could have had a nice little flat, a ground
floor one with a bit of garden for Sandy. But that daughter of hers
always did rule the roost and I don’t suppose she wanted to have to
bother about her mother, finding a flat and so forth. Easier to put
her into a home and have poor Sandy here put down. Honestly,
Sheila, sometimes I’m really glad I’ve got no family, only the
animals. They never let you down!’

‘I know. I mean, I’m lucky that Michael is so
marvellous – when I think of Thelma! – but there have been times,
when Mother and Peter died and Michael was away in Oxford, when I
don’t think I could have got through if it hadn’t been for the
animals.’

We looked at each other and smiled.

‘Idiots, aren’t we?’ I said. ‘Still, I’d rather be
silly about animals than be like the Thelmas of this world. But, oh
dear, poor Mrs Rossiter.’

‘She comes round sometimes to see him. She sits here
on this sofa with him on her lap and has a little weep and I make
us a cup of tea and I think she goes away feeling better.’

‘I’m sure she does.’