Death of a Stranger (12 page)

“Does Beth Smith have no influence?'' Anna whispered.

Lorna shrugged her uninjured shoulder. “If she sees Constance as her foil, she may like her this way.''

A wavering and fuzzy-edged second circle had appeared above the glass sunburst in the top part of the door, and there was a grinding sound as the door shook for a few seconds before jolting inwards. Constance Lorimer's head would not have reached the sunburst, and Anna was prepared for the sight of the tall Beth Smith.

Lorna, too, appeared ready for Constance's friend. “Miss Smith!'' There could have been a slight emphasis on the first word. “ I've come to see Constance. This is my daughter-in-law Mrs Le Page, as you will know from your presence on Saturday at my son's wedding. I need her arm at the moment because of the injuries I sustained later that day. May we come in, please? Ah! Constance!''

A squat figure, cigarette in hand, was hovering in the doorway of one of the front rooms, frowning at what must be the two featureless dark shapes against the dazzle through the open front door. Beth Smith stood aside in silence, and Anna and Lorna advanced into the hall. Still arm in arm with her mother-in-law, Anna felt Lorna's chest heave and heard her catch of breath before the retch rose in her own throat and she managed to subdue it with a cough. Constance Lorimer's hall smelt terrible, and piercing the staleness of dust, tobacco and old food there was a sharp note of decay. Damp rot at least, Anna adjudged as she tried to wipe her wet eyes unobtrusively, if not the faster growing kind.

“What are you doing here, Lorna Le Page?''

The voice was deep for a woman, the voice of a lifelong female smoker, and Anna welcomed the smell of fresh tobacco as a comparative cleanser of the olfactory cocktail she was hoping Lorna at least would get used to sufficiently to do herself justice. Surely Beth Smith didn't eat food prepared in Constance Lorimer's kitchen?

“Do you really have to ask me that, Constance?''

“Yes, I do.'' The response was prompt and sharp. “ So you'd better tell me. Come in!''

She made an impatient gesture, then led the way into the room from which she had emerged as they arrived, toiling along as if her hips were painful. It was only then that Beth Smith shut the front door, and Anna suspected she had been attempting to lessen the impact of the interior of her friend's house on people entering it for the first time.

The room into which Constance led them had a transom window open and was slightly less odiferous than the hall. Anna realised to her relief that she had regained control of her throat. As Lorna had alerted her, the room had been furnished to match the architectural style of the house, and the creamy white which had been so popular as a background to Art Deco – plain stippled walls, unpatterned carpet, three-piece suite – was still grubbily in place.

“You'd better sit down, Mrs Le Page,'' Constance suggested, when she had looked Lorna up and down. She had planted her slippered feet a little apart in front of a once-white fireplace decorated with intermittent slabs of malachite, towards which she flicked her ash backwards without turning round, and Anna had a fantasy that she was a mushroom growth attached to the floor, nurtured by the damp below and around her. And the skin of her face and hands was the colour of fungus, supporting the illusion. Searching for something to explain Geoffrey Lorimer's youthful indiscretion, Anna saw that his wife's hair was still dark, wavy and abundant, the sort of hair that however much neglected can never look too badly untidy or unkempt, and that in the mushroom-coloured face there glittered a pair of huge and beautiful brown eyes.

“I prefer to stand, thank you,'' Lorna responded, to Anna's relief still in a temperate tone of voice. And she was relaxed enough to squeeze Anna's arm and nod towards the mug on the low mantelshelf half full of a mahogany-coloured liquid.

“As you please. Now—''

“I'll sit down, Constance. Unless you prefer me to leave the room.'' Beth Smith made a token move towards the door.

“Mrs Le Page and I have nothing confidential to say to one another. Nothing to say at all, unless she has come to apologise thirty years late. So sit down, Beth, by all means.''

“Apology is connected with my visit, Mrs Lorimer,'' Lorna said, as Beth Smith, in a graceful gesture, sat down on the edge of the armchair nearest to the door. Anna had felt Lorna's reaction as Constance spoke in the trembling of her arm, and it was another stab of relief to hear her continue to speak calmly. “I would like an apology from you for your attempt to kill me on Saturday night. After you have given me an explanation of why you drove your car at me for a second time.''

“I didn't drive my car at you, Mrs Le Page.''

“Or perhaps I'll give
you
one,'' Lorna continued, as if there had been no response. “Unless you are ill you must have known that you couldn't get away with it. So you must be ill. And as your illness is making you violent, you obviously need to be restrained. I shall speak to the police before I leave the island.''

Lorna sustained her slow, quiet tone to the end of her speech, but Anna was aware of the increasing tremor of her body.

“A word to your son?'' Constance Lorimer rasped scornfully.

“Don't waste your energies, Mrs Le Page.''
I am still the one who is Mrs Lorimer
. Anna heard the subtext as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. “The police have just returned my car, which of course showed no signs of an accident it wasn't involved in. I didn't drive at you on Saturday night, but I can believe from what I know of you that there must be a number of people who might well have done. And that's what I'll tell whoever you set on me.''

“Constance, dear …'' Beth Smith murmured.

“Oh, let her say what she wants to say, Miss Smith. It's so crazy it's almost entertaining.'' Lorna imposed a brief look of amusement on to her tense face. “Which is more than I can say for her house. I wonder you can visit such a pigsty; five minutes in it has been enough for me.''

“Be careful, Mrs Le Page.'' Constance Lorimer's voice had sunk to a growl. “Remember there is a law of libel and slander.''
Yes, please remember
, Anna begged in her head, grateful for the warning she herself could not have dared to give.

Lorna gave a choking cough Anna suspected of being contrived because it was the only face-saving way of dealing with her adversary's return threat. “I can't stay here any longer,'' she said, after ostentatiously wiping her eyes. “And I've said what I came to say. I know you tried to kill me on Saturday, Constance, and I believe that only someone who is mentally ill can nurse a hatred so strong it survives three decades intact. Let's go, Anna.''

“Yes, go, Mrs Le Page. And go carefully.''

Constance Lorimer's fierce eyes could have been glaring through a mask, they were the only points of life in her inert bloodless face. She made no move from where she was planted, feeding Anna's fantasy that she was a vegetable growth, and it was Beth Smith who rose from her chair in another graceful gesture and led the way out into the hall and swiftly across to the front door, which she immediately opened.

Lorna started to gulp in air, then asked Miss Smith how she could stand it.

“Constance and I have been friends a long time.'' The voice was soft and light, but Miss Smith lowered it as she went on. “And now she needs me. I don't know whether or not she tried to injure you, Mrs Le Page, she denies it to me, too, but I
am
worried about her state of mind.'' Miss Smith paused, her large blue eyes troubled. “I don't want to upset you, particularly when you're not well, but I don't think she has ever properly recovered from Geoffrey's departure. She was never outgoing, but she's become more and more reclusive, especially in the last few years.''

“She's lucky to have a friend like you.''

Beth Smith, after a glance towards the open sitting-room door, led the way out of the house. “ Don't make too much of that,'' she said, coming to a stop halfway along the short path to the gate. “I have other friends and other interests. And when Constance and I eat together, it's either in a restaurant or at my house. Now, I must go back to her. She may not have shown it, but she'll be very upset.''

“I didn't show it either, did I?'' Lorna demanded, when they were in the car and Anna was struggling to fasten her passenger's seatbelt. “ But I'm very upset too.''

“You did well. Which doesn't mean I wasn't worried—''

“Beth Smith wasn't taking notes and I don't suppose there was a tape running in that terrible room.'' Lorna took a deep breath and sank down into her seat. “I feel better for that, Anna. Do you have to go back to work?''

“I've no more visits today, but I'd like to look in at the surgery before the day's out.'' Anna glanced at the clock. “Say by half-past five. And anyway I think you should be back at the hospital by then. So we've got almost an hour. Would you like a nostalgic drive around?''

“I'd love it.''

“Any special place?''

“Geoffrey and I used to go north to L'Ancresse, there's so much space there. I remember running about on the grass, not going anywhere, just trying to run away from tension. It happened with Geoffrey and me during the autumn and winter, and sometimes at L'Ancresse we could feel we were the only people in the world and that everything was easy. It won't be like that on a fine summer's day, and I can't run or walk, so let's just park on the common and open the windows. There used to be cows tethered along the grass verge by the Route de l'Ancresse,'' Lorna observed wistfully as they set off. “And even in the rough between the golf course fairways. Lovely barrel-bodied ginger Guernsey cows.''

“There still are.''

They came across two lying down and two grazing. Cars carrying yellow Hs for ‘Hire' held them up as tourists in front of them slowed down for their children to lean out of windows and call delightedly to the indifferent beasts.

Between golf course and common Anna turned seawards. Two martello towers stood sentinel on the course itself at the back of L'Ancresse Bay, and their road ended at the foot of another, at a car-park which like so many in Guernsey's coastal places was a natural stony plateau, scarcely adapted. The park was still nearly full, but there was a space facing the sea. “There must be more martello towers here than anywhere else on the island,'' Anna commented as the tyres crunched into it. “ Tim calls them nice, crumbly-textured cabinet puddings.''

“I know. He's tended since childhood to go in for strained and/or culinary metaphors.'' Lorna smiled reminiscently. “ Because of the coast in the north being at sea level and sandy it was reckoned to be the most vulnerable part of the island to invasion by Napoleon. Hence the cluster of towers. And Fort Marchant out on the headland in front of us. Geoffrey and I used to go there.'' Lorna sighed again as she wound her window down, and the freshness of the sea crept into the car without cooling the warm air. “Guernsey tips north which is why we have all those spectacular cliffs in the south and those coy little bays so hard to reach. But I like the generosity of the coast up here and the huge feeling of space. Even the grey of the rocks. Have you noticed how the rocks change colour as you move along the coast? On the south and west coasts they're pink and thousands of years older than the grey north. Don't look so surprised, Anna.'' Lorna burst out laughing. “I was bright at school and very interested in the strange little place where I'd been born.''

“You miss it, don't you?''

“Of course. Especially on a day like this.''

The clouds had disappeared but the featureless blue sky was paling towards evening, beginning to draw colour out of the blue sea and the tree-belted green land stretched wide behind the bay. The curved yellow beach of L'Ancresse Bay ahead of them, and the edge of the lapping tide, were still speckled with people, but some of them were packing up, and as Anna and Lorna lapsed into silence two adults and three children wreathed in beach equipment came laggingly up to their car.

“Has Simon told you how his assignment's going?'' Anna asked, when they had watched the slow process of loading up and seen the family drive off.

“No. But he never does.''

“I had to visit the Charters' dogs this afternoon, and I talked as much about the fire as I felt I could without making Marjorie Charters suspicious. She's certainly very tense. But I suppose with so much money at stake … They seem very ambitious about the business.''

“I'm afraid, Anna,'' Lorna said in a rush.

“Constance won't dare to try anything else.''

“No … I suppose it's Constance I'm afraid of, but … I hope Simon won't do anything rash.''

For an instant, before Lorna's face went blank, Anna saw in it a mingling of concern and affection that convinced her of something she would not tell Tim: his mother loved the young man she had brought with her to his wedding.

“
I
want you to go to Scotland!'' Lorna announced later that evening, when she was resting on her hospital bed and Anna and Tim were seated each side of her. “ I'm fine now but I'll stay here until I leave Guernsey, and I promise I won't do that until they're ready to discharge me.''

“No more visits to Constance Lorimer, Mother?''

“I've no more to say to her. The only visit I shall make, darlings, is into the past if Simon has time to take me on another run around.''

“Is he still intending to leave on Wednesday?'' Anna asked, after waiting a moment to give Tim the chance he didn't take.

“Probably. But I don't expect to be far behind him.''