A Medal For Murder (5 page)

 
 

Lucy Wolfendale had triumphed in the part of Anna Tellwright. The applause made her feel as if she were floating. She felt her spirit inhabit the entire theatre, reaching out to everyone there, buoyed up on their applause. Afterwards, she wanted to drink champagne, and dance in some magnificent ballroom. Instead, she had made do with a glass of sherry in the theatre bar, while warding off the sick-making attentions of Rodney Milner’s lecherous old goat of a father. Ugh.

If it were not for her good friends, she would have gone mad.

Now here she was at close on midnight, on the back of a bicycle. Droplets of rain hit the back of her neck and trickled down her spine.

‘I didn’t imagine it would pelt it down for my big adventure.’ Lucy leaned into Dylan’s back. ‘I can’t bear being on a bicycle in the rain.’

Dylan did not answer straight away. He pedalled along the bumpy road as if the devil were after them.

At the turning for Stonehook Road, he slowed down. ‘It’s not going to let up. Do you want to turn back?’

‘No!’

They continued in silence along the winding road. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Finally the tower loomed in the dark field, lit by the moon. Seeing it at night gave Lucy a jolt. It looked so very different. Menacing.

Dylan slowed down. He brought the bicycle to a stop by the side of the road.

Lucy climbed off, shaking away the raindrops. She hopped from foot to foot. ‘Just a mo . . . Let me . . .’ She leaned on his shoulder, shaking her leg. ‘Oh, oh, oh! Pins and needles!’

The hem of her skirt was soaked from wheel splashes. Dylan leaned the bike against the hawthorn hedge. He unclipped the lamp from the handlebars. ‘There’s still time to change your mind.’

‘Don’t be a big baby.’ She took the lamp from him and began to look for the gap in the hedge. ‘My mind’s made up.’

He followed, reaching out to stop her. ‘Do you have to? Why not be at home when the postman comes in the morning? Intercept the note before your granddad sees it?’

‘Dylan! Then I’d be a soppy drip.’ She shook free of him. Let him be a coward if he wanted. He looked the part, only a little taller than she was, skinny, and with something of the child about him still. ‘I can’t see the gap,’ she called. ‘We’ll have to climb the gate.’ Lamp in one hand, she put a foot on the second bar of the gate. ‘Don’t go all useless on me. You said you’d help.’

‘That was on a sunny day,’ he said lamely. ‘It seemed a good idea.’

She was on one side of the gate, he on the other, not
moving. She put her hand on his. ‘I have to do this. I only want what is mine.’

It was that June Sunday afternoon when they rehearsed together. She had sworn him to secrecy. When she told him she wanted to train as an actress, and had applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she hardly dared hope anything would come of it. When she was offered an audition, she feared she would not find a good enough lie to cover her two-day disappearance, or she would not scrimp together the fare to London. Her grandfather was such a miser, like the miser in the play. But being Lucy, she did find the money. Being Lucy, she was offered a place at RADA, and she intended to take it up.

On her twenty-first birthday she had asked her grandfather outright for the legacy she knew to be hers. He refused.

Lucy got the idea for the ransom note from one of Miss Fell’s library books. A thousand pounds would pay her fees at RADA, and her board and lodgings in London.

Now here she was on this wet August night, struggling to make her dream come true, and with only Dylan to help. He was turning out to be a wet blanket, a cowardy custard.

‘What if your grandfather works out that you sent the ransom note?’

‘Well then, let him. He’ll know I mean it.’ She began to stride across the field.

Dylan climbed after her, hurrying to catch up. ‘He’ll call the police.’

She turned. The moon lit their way. She saw that Dylan was looking at the ground, trying to avoid stepping
on buttercups and daisies. ‘Granddad won’t call the police. He will pay up because he is afraid.’

‘Of what?’ Dylan asked.

They were so close that Lucy had the sudden picture in her mind of the two of them as a pair of bedraggled scarecrows in a field. They would cling together against all the birds of prey in the world. But she would have to do the protecting. Dylan had not one ounce of courage or initiative in his body.

‘I’m not sure what Granddad is afraid of. Scandal I suppose.’

Even as a little girl she had known that her grandfather did not want to draw attention to himself. Her low heels sunk into the soft ground. Dampness from the grass tickled her ankles through her stockings.

Lucy shone a light on the lock in the old oak door. Dylan inserted the heavy iron key and turned it. With a noisy creak, the door opened. They stood stock still. Lucy shuddered. ‘It’s black as pitch in here.’

‘That’s what I’m saying. You’re not going to like it. It will be scary at night . . .’

She stepped inside. The beam from the lamp showed cracked floorboards, and a dark void beneath. He said, ‘Stop! The boards are giving way. There’s a ten-foot drop to nowhere.’

She tugged at his sleeve. ‘Then let’s go up the stairs. Don’t look down.’

Dylan sniffed. ‘That stench! This lower floor must have been used to store something that rotted. That’s why the floorboards are breaking, cracking.’

A straight staircase with two missing treads led to the floor above.

‘Steady, Lucy!’

‘Don’t fuss.’

A mullion window, its glass cracked, let in a smidgen of moonlight.

When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, Lucy saw that everything was in place, just as she had left it: blankets, bottle of water, biscuit tin with food, candles and matches. She struck a match and lit a candle.

Dylan took a sharp breath. ‘This place would go up like a tinderbox. I wish I’d never . . .’

‘It will be all right.’ She lit a second candle and let the grease drip to the floor, then fixed the candle in its own wax.

‘It’s madness,’ Dylan moaned.

‘Sometimes madness is best. And you won’t say that when it’s all over. I’m only demanding my due. One thousand pounds might sound a lot, but not if you say it quickly. For heaven’s sake, if a fictional character like Anna Tellwright in the play can come into fifty thousand pounds . . . And there’ll be something for you, for helping me.’

‘I don’t want any money.’

‘Nothing bad is going to happen. Anyway, I can let myself out at any time, so stop worrying.’ She reached out a hand. ‘Let’s look at the moon. Let’s count the stars. Let’s dance on the battlements. Is that what they’re called?’ She led the way to a narrow spiral staircase. ‘Come up to the top. I’ve brought a compass. I’ll give you the lie of the land.’

He followed reluctantly. ‘I know the lie of the land, and I don’t feel like dancing.’

‘You see, these stairs are quite firm.’

They reached the top of the tower.

‘Isn’t it glorious?’ She flung out her arms. ‘You can see for miles.’

The moon lit the surrounding fields. To the east, the blur of a copse formed a dark backdrop. Stars glittered for attention. Hay-making had been going on in a distant field and the scent still hung in the air. Dylan said, ‘Whoever built this tower came up here to look at the stars.’

‘Or to dance with his true love.’ She held out her arms and began to sing. ‘If you were the only boy in the world, and I were the only girl, nothing else would matter in the world today . . . Come on! Dance with me!’

‘I’m dreaming,’ he said, reaching out, one arm around her waist, another on her shoulder. ‘I shall wake up soon.’

‘Go on dreaming, but sing.’

‘If you were the only girl in the world . . .’

They danced around the roof of the tower.

‘When I’m an actress, you must come to any stage door in the world and ask to see me. I’ll never forget my friend in need, Dylan. I feel I’ve loved you, like Anna loved Willie. Something true and forever.’

‘Then . . .’

‘Shh.’ She put a finger to his lips. ‘I’ll remember you forever, wherever life takes me.’ She laughed. ‘We gave old Milner the slip all right. He was determined to give me a lift . . .’

‘That’s not all he was determined about,’ Dylan said.

‘And your face!’

‘Don’t talk about him.’

‘He’s odious. If I were a man and a character actor, I would study him. As it is . . .’ She made a sound of
pretend vomiting. ‘Can you imagine that he and my granddad actually thought I would marry him?’

‘Yes, I can imagine.’

‘What century, what country in their mind are they living in?’

‘No one can force you to marry. People can say “I do not” as well as they say “I do”. Anyway, don’t think about that. It will give you nightmares.’

‘You should go now, Dylan.’

‘Let me stay and look after you. I’ll watch you as you sleep.’

‘You’ve done enough. You need to be fine and frisky for work tomorrow. The girls will be swarming to the window of Croker & Company to catch a glimpse of you.’

‘I doubt it.’ Reluctantly, he turned up his collar.

She followed him down the stairs.

He would not take the lantern. ‘The moon will be out again soon. Goodnight, Lucy.’

‘Goodnight.’ She turned the key in the lock, went back up the stairs and watched him cross the field. At the gate, he looked back and waved.

For a moment she thought he would turn tail and hurry back to her.

Yesterday Lucy had purloined her grandfather’s army groundsheet and khaki blankets. She had borrowed a bike and brought what she needed to the tower. Her chosen spot was by the wall on the top floor, the level below the parapet. Her tapestry shoulder bag formed a pillow.

She had taken a big gamble, she knew that. What if, when Granddad opened the ransom note, he set aside
the habit of a lifetime and went to the authorities? Well, they would not find her. No one would. This place had been abandoned years ago.

Of course tomorrow was Saturday and he could not go to the bank. But she had thought of that. Let him sweat. Let him fester all day Saturday and all through Sunday. Let him run mad in his mind. He would be knocking on the door of the bank first thing Monday morning.

She frowned. Of course it was always possible that he really did not have her legacy, that he had gambled it away, or spent it, that he had been leading her up the garden path all these years, saying there was something substantial for her in that dim distant future that had arrived with the break of dawn on the 6th of August this year, her twenty-first birthday.

In that case, he had better know how to get some money, because she would have it. She would live her life, away from him and his weapons, uniforms, medals, his ancient nonsense.

Something touched Lucy’s face in the darkness. Something scuttled by her hair, a stealthy creature pitter-pattering. She lay very still. The tower moved and breathed. Its nooks and crannies held the scent of long-ago harvests. She could taste dust and hay-making in the back of her throat. The grey stone walls reeked of eternity, and the wooden floor of pity and decay.

‘Fallen into disuse,’ was how Dylan said he would describe it if the tower found its way into the files of Croker & Company, House Agents.

She had chosen the tower as her hiding place after elimination of other possibilities. Dylan would have risked his job if he hid her in his rooms above the house
agent’s offices. Girl friends would not understand her determination and need for secrecy. They had mothers who would not keep her confidence.

There was another reason that had nothing to do with logic or sense. All through her childhood, Lucy adored fairy tales. She felt the ring of truth that chimed with something in her own soul. A fairy tale girl, miller’s daughter or princess, would somehow find her true self, would be granted her deepest wish. But before that, a trial must be endured, a solitary struggle with no certainty of success.

Without being able to put it into words, Lucy knew that if she could pass three nights in this tower, the future would fall into the palm of her hand. And it must be three nights, the magical number three. Tonight, Friday, her grandfather would sleep soundly, suspecting nothing. On Saturday morning, when the note dropped onto the doormat, he would begin to stew. All Saturday he would plot and plan how to get the money, the thousand pounds. He would take out his bank books and do calculations. The thought of parting with the smallest sum always gave him the runs. When a bill arrived, the lavatory flushed so often, the house rattled. How glad she was to be out of there, out of that mausoleum, and soon it would be forever. Granddad would lie awake all Saturday night. Sunday, he would stride the room. The only person he might possibly confide in would be Mr Milner, his partner in board games, his partner in the plan to ruin her life. If so, let them rustle up the money between them. On Monday morning, Granddad would go to the bank. Monday at noon would come her deliverance.