Almost Love (25 page)

“That’s all right; leave the file here and I’ll check the card index for you now. You can either come back for it today or tomorrow morning, whichever you prefer. I’ll call you if I think there’ll be a delay in granting permission; but as I’ve already said, I think that is unlikely.”

“Alex, please, I’m anxious to get on with this now and I doubt if I’ll be able to come back today, because this visit to the doctor’s bound to have an adverse effect on Krystyna’s state of mind. Can’t I just sign the form and take the file for a few days? I give you my word that I won’t remove anything from it.”

Alex felt compromised. She knew that if Edmund had been any bone fide researcher in a hurry she would almost certainly have said yes. She doubted his motives, yet she found it impossible to show that she didn’t trust him.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “But you have to sign the form – here it is – and I’m going to say that the papers have been loaned to you for six days. That means you have to return them first thing next Monday. Is that OK?”

Edmund nodded. He was already scribbling his signature on the form as she spoke.

“By the way,” she said as playfully as she could. “I thought I saw you putting something in your boot when I turned the corner just now. You aren’t absconding with some of the Society’s possessions, are you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Edmund, frowning. “You should know better than to ask that.”

He opened the nearside rear door of his car and placed the file carefully on the back seat, wedging it in place with a travel rug.

“Thank you for this, Alex,” he said, affable again. “You won’t regret it, I promise you; I shall have something very exciting to show you soon.” He bent to kiss her cheek again, a little more tenderly than on the earlier occasion in her office.

She put her hand on his arm.

“Good luck this afternoon, Edmund,” she said. “I do hope that the doctor will be able to help Krystyna.”

His brows knitted again.

“I doubt very much whether anyone can help Krystyna now,” he said, “but one has to make the effort, I suppose. No stone left unturned, eh?” He gave her one of his sunny smiles, then climbed into the car and started the engine.

Alex watched him drive off. His last comment could hardly have been more inappropriate. She felt shocked by its coarse joviality. She could only excuse it by supposing that Edmund was trying to conceal some deeper feelings of despair and anxiety.

As his car rounded the corner and disappeared, she suddenly remembered that he had not returned the key to the chapel. It was an oversight, she supposed, but an annoying one. She would have to ask him to return it tomorrow. She could not allow it to be missing for six days. It would give her the opportunity to ask him to bring the file of documents back with him so that she could check them against the catalogue cards.

She returned to her office, dispirited and uneasy. She knew that she would have to spend the rest of the afternoon completing the summer schedule if she were to get it off the ground, but her heart was no longer in it.

Chapter Thirty-Three

That afternoon Alex left two separate messages for Edmund, one on his office landline and one on his cellphone. On each occasion she asked him to get in touch with her as soon as possible to arrange the return of the key to the archive. She had tried to sound as calm and matter-of-fact as she could, despite the anxiety which nagged at her. She fervently wished that she had not let him have the key. It was unlikely that it would be needed, she knew, but what would she say if one of the trustees visited and asked to see the archive? She cursed her own carelessness for not having had a duplicate key made.

She still had not heard from Edmund at six o’clock that evening. She debated whether to call him at home, but told herself that it would be too much of an infringement of his privacy, especially as she knew that Krystyna was unwell. No, she thought fiercely, despising her own dishonesty, that isn’t the reason; it’s because I’m afraid of having to talk to Krystyna if she should herself take the call.

Alex walked home slowly, depressed. She would put an end to this charade of a liaison. Carolyn had been right. Carolyn was usually very clear-sighted about other people’s emotional entanglements.

Alex shivered as she turned into the Chapel Lane passageway. Since the episode with the cigarette butt, she had been nervous about walking the last few steps from the end of the passage to the yard gate. Today the street lights had come on, however, and there were several people in view, some using the lane as a short-cut to the Pied Calf pub. If she thought about it logically, she knew that she was safe here. She hated this wretched feeling of apprehension that kept her held in its grip and she believed that it, too, could be traced to the start of her relationship with Edmund. ‘Self-esteem’, she murmured; that elusive quality so beloved of the self-help books that Carolyn swore by. It was unfair to blame Edmund for her loss of it; she had been his accomplice every step of the way. Well, she would change that.

She already had the key to the yard gate in her hand when she rounded the corner. The gate was always locked except when she and Tom or the people who worked in the building society below the flat were coming or going; none of them ever left it unlocked, let alone open.

Alex stood stock still in the middle of the path, then clutched suddenly at the wall for support. The yard gate was swinging on its hinge.

“Are you all right?”

A motherly woman wearing a pill-box hat fashioned from some kind of hairy synthetic material had grasped her gently by the elbow.

“Yes,” said Alex. “No. The gate’s open.”

The woman followed her gaze. Her face was thick with powder, her chin bristly. She regarded Alex with watery, curious eyes.

“Do you live there?” she asked.

“Yes, and the gate is always closed. We keep it locked.”

“Well, perhaps someone forgot. Is your husband in?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Alex. She looked at her watch. It was almost six-thirty. Tom would be sure to be home by now.

“Well, if I were you, I’d go in and ask him to make you a cup of tea. Put your feet up for a while. You probably need a little rest.” She had a gratingly sing-song voice.

“I – thank you,” said Alex. The woman meant well, but Alex couldn’t stand to be patronised. She had to get away from her.

“You’ll be all right, now?”

“Yes, of course,” said Alex. She walked sedately to the gate and then looked round once before she crossed the threshold. The woman gave an encouraging little wave, gloved hand held to shoulder height, fingers wiggling, then turned and continued on her way.

Alex raced up the steps.

When she reached the door of the flat, it also was hanging open.

“Tom?” She called. “Tom!” She was almost screaming now.

There was no reply. If Tom had been inside the flat, he must surely have heard her.

The telephone started ringing. There was an extension in the kitchen. Alex steeled herself to walk through the door and answer it. If the flat had been burgled, surely the intruder would not still be inside? The open door, the open gate: both suggested a hurried departure. Someone still inside the building would have covered their tracks better.

She needed to know where Tom was. She made herself walk into the cool dark room. She snapped on the light. She inhaled the familiar nutty smell of the old wooden work-bench. She found it hard to focus her eyes, partly because she had just come in from the street, partly because she felt faint. She seized the receiver just as the phone stopped ringing.

Alex replaced the receiver carefully, as if it were made of glass. She hovered uncomfortably beside the open doorway. She did not know what to do. She was afraid of going further into the flat unaccompanied, afraid to stay where she was. She stared at the phone as if it were an oracle, and saw an old envelope standing next to it, propped against a bottle of olive oil. She snatched it up. On it Tom had scrawled: “Just called in briefly – hoped you might be home early. Padgett case again – sorry. Back late. Tx.”

Alex knew now that she must search the flat. She crept silently along the narrow hall to the sitting room, and edged her way through the door, which was standing ajar. It squeaked horribly on its rusty hinge as she pushed it.

The sitting-room was as they had left it that morning, their coffee cups from the night before still on the hearth, one of Tom’s social worker magazines tossed untidily on the sofa. The pendulum of the long case clock, an heirloom from Tom’s family, moved steadily back and forth, clicking slightly with each measured movement.

There was only one other downstairs room – the dining-room – and its door, as usual, was firmly closed. She knew that it had a habit of sticking, so she pressed her shoulder against it and turned the handle suddenly to get some leverage. She burst into the room rather suddenly, making more noise than she had intended.

Inside, she found another serene, deserted space with no evidence of recent use. She and Tom barely went into the dining-room during the week. It seemed to be just as she had left it when she’d cleaned it the previous weekend, except that the freesias that she had placed in a crystal vase on the Victorian gate-legged table were beginning to die and had dropped some of their blooms onto its polished top. They had scattered a faint trail of yellow pollen.

Alex listened intently. If an intruder was still on the premises, he – or she – would be sure to have heard her now. She could detect no unsettling sounds, nothing that might indicate that she was not alone. The upstairs rooms presented the greatest challenge. If she had surprised someone on the first floor, she thought she would have stood a chance of running out of the flat, or at least have been able to attract attention by pounding on the sitting-room window that overlooked the Sheep Market. On the second floor she would be trapped – the two bedrooms were three storeys up, their windows small and set deep into the thick walls, so that it was impossible to look into them from the street below. And the steep narrow staircase was the only way out.

There was no going back. She took her mobile from her handbag and held it in her hand. She would speed-dial Tom’s number as soon as she heard a sound. She edged her way up the stairs, stopping to listen frequently, but she could hear nothing.

Both bedroom doors were ajar. Alex went into the guest room first. She had stripped the bed after Marie and her partner had stayed on Friday night. The quilt was rolled into a neat sausage in the middle of the bed, the discarded sheets and pillowcases in a pile near the window, just where she had left them. Alex looked fleetingly at the cupboard that had been built into the wall many decades before, but she knew it to be filled with linen-laden shelves. There was not the space to conceal a person, not even a child.

The bedroom that she shared with Tom was the last room left. It was a big room with a walk-in cupboard. She would have to search it carefully, perhaps get very close to a would-be assailant. Her fear was acute. She was terrified by what she might find on the other side of this door.

Unlike the dining-room’s, its door it was loose-fitting; someone had removed it from its hinges decades ago, and re-hung it so that it opened inwards. It had a small panel of frosted glass let into it in the centre, high up, presumably to allow a glimmer of natural light to filter through to the landing. Alex stretched up and tried to look through the small opaque window. She could discern the outline of the bed and her cheval mirror. There seemed to be no movement in the room.

She opened the door slowly, inadvertently rattling the round brass doorknob, and stood, framed, in the doorway.

The bed had been made. This was certainly not her doing – she knew that she had left the quilt furled at the bed’s foot – but it was possible that Tom had taken into his head to neaten it when he had left the note.

Alex dropped to her hands and knees and looked under the bed. There was nothing but dust and discarded novels.

She got up, and moved across to the closet, pulling its door open suddenly as she had the sitting-room door downstairs. She put her hand into each of the two rails of dresses and suits, parted them and searched the floor beneath them. There was no evidence that they had been tampered with.

Unless there was someone cowering in the tiny bathroom next to the kitchen, she had established that she was alone in the flat. Perhaps there had been no intruder; perhaps her alarm had been caused by Tom himself. Could he have been so preoccupied with the Padgett case that he had left both the gate and the flat door not only unlocked but wide open? Alex was doubtful, but she had to acknowledge that it was possible.

She walked slowly back to the top of the stairs. She was about to descend them when the outside door banged loudly. Alex caught her breath and ran towards the sound. If there was an intruder and he or she had either succeeded in hiding from her or had returned, she had no option but to confront them now.

She burst into the kitchen. The outside door that led into it had banged shut. The kitchen itself was empty. Alex flung open the only other door that led from it: the bathroom, too, was unoccupied.

Cautiously, she moved to the outside door and opened it. She took a few steps outside. The flat roof was deserted save for the few shrubs that she grew in tubs and the ornate wrought iron table at which she and Tom sat and drank coffee on warm weekends. She peered over the staircase railings, but could see no-one.

Someone had slammed the door, though; she was convinced of it. It was dark now, but the evening was still, with no hint of a breeze. The door had closed like a thunderclap. Someone had pulled it hard; they had deliberately slammed it shut to frighten her.

The phone started ringing again. She reached it much more quickly this time. It was still ringing when she lifted the receiver. She said ‘Hello?’ There was a click, then nothing. The caller had hung up, though it had rung only three times.

Alex turned to rest her back against the work-bench.

“Oh, Tom,” she thought. “Come home soon.”

Then she raised her eyes and screamed.