Death is a Word (15 page)

His attitude was very wary now but he said, ‘Yes, I gather that Eva was thinking of getting them published – I’m sure any publisher would want them, they must be most interesting.’

‘I certainly found them so,’ I said, ‘when I went through them.’

‘You did?’

‘Yesterday. Which is why I asked you to come here today.’ He didn’t speak so I went on. ‘In addition to all
his professional papers he also kept a sort of journal of his travels, including an account of his time in South America. You met him there, I believe.’

‘Yes. He got us out of a really tight spot – I told Eva about it.’

‘I remember her telling me. But, what you didn’t tell Eva was your connection with the explosion at that chemical factory. Alan had quite a lot to say about that in his journal.’

He was silent for a moment then he said steadily, ‘That was a long time ago and I was completely exonerated of any blame. It was a very distressing incident, people were killed – I didn’t tell Eva because I didn’t want to upset her.’

‘People were killed,’ I said, ‘and it was very distressing. For them and for their families. Alan found it distressing too. If you remember, he was a reporter, someone who instinctively investigated things – you don’t imagine he would have let go of something like that.’

‘I can’t imagine what he thought he’d found,’ Donald said easily. ‘There was a very full inquiry, there was no evidence of mismanagement, and, as I said, I was completely cleared of any blame for what was a very distressing incident.’

I could see that Rosemary was longing to let fly so I said quickly, ‘There was no evidence because people were afraid to say anything that might cause them to lose their jobs. But they were willing to talk to Alan.’

‘In such circumstances people will always look for someone to blame. I suppose I was an obvious target – there is always a lot of jealousy at certain levels. I’m sorry Alan was misled.’

He paused for a moment and then he went on, ‘I
don’t know what he may have written in this journal, but I can assure you that I have done nothing wrong.’

‘But when you knew about the papers,’ Rosemary burst out, ‘you were worried there might be something in them that would expose you, that’s why you were so anxious to “help” with them!’

He smiled. ‘I was merely trying to give Eva a hand with something she obviously found difficult to do – understandably so.’

‘And I suppose,’ Rosemary said fiercely, ‘you had nothing to do with the fire in the garage – a fire that should have destroyed them and might have killed Eva!’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with this precious journal, but if you’re going to go about making accusations like that then I’ll have to give instructions to my solicitor.’

‘And what about Eva?’ Rosemary was unstoppable now. ‘Did you think that by marrying her you could get at the papers and destroy them?’

‘That is an unforgivable thing to say,’ he said, tight-lipped. ‘I loved Eva and she loved me – I was desolated when she died.’

‘That’s easy enough to say now she’s dead,’ Rosemary persisted. ‘What do you think she’d have said if she’d known what you’d done? What do you
imagine everyone will think when they know?’

‘I’ve already warned you not to make libellous statements—’ he began.

‘Oh, in a place like Taviscombe,’ Rosemary said, ‘you don’t have to spell things out. Just the hint that there’s something not quite right with somebody – that’s enough.’

‘I think what Rosemary means,’ I said, ‘is that it would be better if you left. As you say, there’s no hard evidence about what you did, but there’s enough in Alan’s journals to convince us that Taviscombe would be a better place without you.’

He got up. ‘There’s no reason why I should stay here and listen to this nonsense and, as for leaving Taviscombe, I will not be blackmailed in this way. I will do as I think fit. I have nothing more to say to you on this matter.’

He went away and as the door slammed behind him, Rosemary said, ‘Do you think he will go? I’d really like to have done
something
to make him pay for what he did.’

‘So would I, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can actually do. But I think he will leave Taviscombe – that was a good remark of yours about hinting. And he still doesn’t know exactly what Alan wrote – I don’t think he’d want to risk it.’

Rosemary sighed. ‘You’re right, of course, but
I do feel frustrated – for Eva’s sake as much as for anything else. Just think what might have happened.’

I was not surprised that when I next went to Brunswick Lodge, I heard Anthea bewailing the loss of such a useful committee member.

‘He was invaluable in such a lot of ways,’ she was saying to Alison Shelby. ‘I really don’t know what we’ll do without him. And I never got him to give that second talk – it would have been so interesting, and we made such a nice lot of money from his first one.’

‘Why is he leaving, then?’ Alison asked. ‘He only just got here!’

‘Oh, something to do with business, I believe – I didn’t get the details.’

‘I thought he’d retired.’

‘Oh no, he was in a very important position with his firm and they needed him as a consultant, or whatever they call it. I think he’s got to go abroad. Anyway, he’s put that lovely house on the market. Such a shame; it had a really big garden and I was hoping we could have a garden party there to raise funds for the wiring here, it’s turning out to be more expensive than we thought and Derek is being so difficult about it all.’

Further speculation about Donald Webster’s departure was lost in Anthea’s endless complaints about Derek’s intransigence.

Rosemary and I decided not to tell Mrs Dudley anything that had happened. We knew how much it would upset her. But she was less easy to satisfy. ‘It is the most extraordinary thing,’ she said to me when I went to tea. ‘He’d settled here so well. Such a popular man, so well thought of. I was not sure at first about his involvement with poor Eva, but they did seem to be fond of each other. He was absolutely devastated when she died. I remember him coming to see me shortly after that. He and I got on so well; I like to think that he turned to me at a time like that. I said what I could to comfort him, but these things go very deep with a sensitive person like that.’

I made a suitable murmur.

‘I must say,’ she said, ‘I was surprised that he didn’t see fit to come and say goodbye to me.
Not
a very gentlemanly way to behave. I am most disappointed in him. After all,’ she continued with increased vigour, ‘I did introduce him to the best Taviscombe society and I might have expected some sort of consideration in return. There he is, gone, and no one seems to know
where
.’ This seemed to be a major cause for complaint. Or,’ she said, ‘why. What possible reason could he have had to leave when there was everything he could possibly want here?’

‘Perhaps it was something to do with his job,’ I suggested.

‘That’s as may be, but it is no reason to go off like that without a word to people who have done their best to make him feel at home in Taviscombe. I have had him to tea here – and lunch too – and made him welcome in my home and I do resent being treated in such a way.’

‘Oh well,’ Rosemary said when I told her about Mrs Dudley’s reaction. ‘It’s best that she should be angry with him for his lack of politeness than for the real reason. That would really be too much for her.’

‘Absolutely.’

Rosemary laughed. ‘She actually said that
I
was always prejudiced against him – the nearest she could get to admitting that she was wrong and I was right. Oh well, she’ll get over it. Thank goodness she’s got Patrick to occupy her. He still comes quite often. She’s getting him to go on working on that family tree that Eva started. Apparently Daniel was going to do something about it before …’

‘I think that would be a good thing,’ I said. ‘Another shared interest for them. And it’s something he can feel he’s doing for Daniel.’

‘Eva’s laptop is still at the cottage,’ Patrick said when I saw him next, ‘and Rosemary said it would be all right for me to use it because it has the genealogy
stuff on it. There’s not much, Eva had only just made a start, and Daniel – Daniel didn’t have time to do much to it.’

‘Is it difficult to trace things?’ I asked. ‘I’ve always wanted to look up my family, and Peter’s, but there seemed to be so many things to wade through.’

‘It’s a bit tedious, going through all the census entries, but I’m getting the hang of it.’

‘Well do keep up the good work, it means a lot to Mrs Dudley.’

‘I try to report back to her,’ he said ‘I think it helps her, just talking about them all. Not that she knows much about Eva’s immediate family, but she’s got quite a lot to say about some of the more distant relations on her husband’s side of the family.’

I laughed. ‘I bet she has!’

‘Actually,’ Patrick went on ‘there’s quite a lot of Eva’s things still at the cottage. Rosemary more or less left things as they were when Dan came down and I’m not sure what she wants done with them. I haven’t really liked to ask her …’

‘No, of course you haven’t. I’ll have a word with her, shall I?’

‘Thank you. That would be best.’ There was a silence for a minute then he said, ‘I believe Donald Webster has gone away. Do you know if he’s coming back?’

‘I wouldn’t think so. Why do you ask?’

‘Just the other day I came across a book of his – at least it had his name written in it – and I ought to get it back to him.’

‘I suppose he must have lent it to Eva,’ I said. ‘What was the book?’

‘Some sort of travel book, about South America. What shall I do with it?’

‘Oh, put it with the other books, I don’t think anyone knows where he’s gone, so you can’t return it.’

Donald Webster’s sudden departure was something of a nine days’ wonder but was swiftly overtaken by an escalation of the disagreement between Anthea and Derek over the rewiring, sides were being taken (and umbrage) and such an atmosphere of hostility that several of the more sensitive members avoided Brunswick Lodge altogether.

‘I wonder where he’s gone?’ Rosemary said. ‘Putting his house on the market was pretty final.’

‘The general opinion favours abroad,’ I replied, ‘and I expect that’s the most likely –
not
back to South America, though. Anyway, the main thing is he’s gone and I know you feel he shouldn’t have got away with things, but I think it’s better in the end.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Oh, by the way, Patrick was wondering what you
wanted to do about Eva’s things at the cottage. He didn’t like to approach you directly; I think he felt it might be painful for you to decide.’

‘Well, I did rather put things off after she died and then it seemed all right to leave things as they were when Daniel was there. But now – I don’t know. I suppose I must do something now that Daniel’s left the cottage to Patrick. He did ask me about the laptop, and of course I did say go on using it, but there’s a lot of other stuff, even though we took Alan’s papers away. Oh dear, I really don’t know what to do.’

‘I don’t think Patrick’s in any hurry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he’s happy to leave things as they are until you’ve had a little think.’

‘It’s all been such a mess, one thing after another – first Alan, then Eva, then Daniel! I suppose I really ought to ask Mother what she thinks, but I expect she won’t want me to do anything that might upset Patrick and make him go away.’

Rosemary’s words about one thing after another stayed with me and somehow nagged away until I confronted them. It
was
an unusual set of circumstances, the three of them going so suddenly and in such a short space of time. Alan’s death, I accepted, was simply from natural causes and so, in a way was Eva’s. And
yet there was something different about that. She died suddenly and alone and, although there appeared to be a perfectly understandable medical reason for it, I still felt uneasy. Possibly it was guilt, because I hadn’t been able to do anything at the time, but somehow I felt it wasn’t just that. Not with Daniel’s unexplained death coming so soon after. That was not a tragic accident, but something deliberate, and if that was deliberate, what about Eva’s death? Could that, somehow, have been arranged? But how and why?

I tried to put it out of my mind and didn’t even tell Rosemary what I was thinking. I was quite busy just then, because Thea had a gastric upset and I was taking Alice back and forth to school and feeding her and making the odd casserole for Michael and I had enough to do just keeping up with things, not to mention the animals who, as usual, resented my attention given to anyone but them. However, when I was in the chemist collecting a prescription for Thea, something occurred to me. It was a very tentative idea and I put it to one side until I could examine it properly.

When I got home I sat down with a cup of tea and tried to concentrate. Being in the chemist had reminded me of an occasion when I’d been given the wrong prescription. That had been at a very busy time when there was a long queue of people waiting and too few assistants to
deal with them. They’d been short-staffed for quite a while and things did sometimes get a bit chaotic. I’d taken back the wrong prescription and got the right one, but they were too busy to do more than give me a hasty apology. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, just accepting, as you do, that things were difficult for them. But now it occurred to me that, for someone with something more sinister in mind, it might have been the perfect opportunity to tamper with someone else’s medication.

If that person had gone in at a busy time (and it was perfectly possible to calculate when things would be at their worst) and said they were collecting Eva’s prescription for her, as I’d just collected one for Thea, it wouldn’t have been queried but they would have simply handed it over. Then that person could have taken it home, very carefully undone the packaging, opened the box of syringes and tampered with them in some way, perhaps substituting sterile water for the insulin. Then doing up the packaging, the person could have taken it back (at an equally busy time) and exchanged it for his or her own prescription with no questions asked. It was most unlikely that any of the assistants would have remembered an incident that happened only too frequently. When Eva collected her prescription, she would have had no idea that the contents had been interfered with.

It was possible. Certain things would have been necessary. The person must have known Eva well enough to know when she collected her prescription (usually monthly, like me), would have to have had a prescription themselves or to have been in the habit of collecting one for someone else, and had to have known about the possibility of confusion at certain times of day. It could have been done.

Eva would have used the syringes, expecting them to contain insulin, then, when she got that virus, even if she’d been in a state to go on using them, they would have had no effect. The fact of the virus giving a reason for her not to take her insulin was a piece of luck for the killer. It all fitted in. It was all very complicated and, even, far-fetched and what reason would anyone have for killing Eva? The only person who had anything like a motive was Donald Webster. He was away at the time of her death and if he’d tampered with the medication he had the opportunity to give himself the perfect alibi. Would he really have gone that far? If Rosemary had been right in accusing him of putting Eva’s life in danger when (if) he set fire to the garage, then I suppose the idea of killing Eva by some other means might have been possible. But it seemed a terrible step to take to get his hands on some papers that just might have contained references to his actions in South America.