Death of a Stranger (9 page)

“And she'll be going again?'' Simon asked eagerly.

“I honestly don't know.''

“If she is—''

“You'd like her to keep her eyes and ears open.''

“Yes. Look, Tim,'' Simon said in a rush, “this is an important assignment for me, it could bring more work of the same kind if I'm successful, which would be a wonderful boost to my business. It would be an enormous help if you both could visit.''

“Who's in charge of your business while you're away?''

The eyes continued to meet his. “A lady competent enough to direct my two young field operators. But I'm not a very good delegator and I can't help hoping nothing big will crop up until I get back.''

“I can understand that.'' Tim found himself relieved – not, to his surprise, solely on his mother's account – that Shaw appeared to have come clean. “All right, I'll tell Anna what you've told me, and if she's due to see the dogs again and there's anything to spot, she'll spot it.''

“I'm sure. I can tell.'' Shaw got to his feet. “Thank you. Tim …'' His original diffidence appeared to have come back.

“Yes?'' Tim stood up.

“No, it's not another favour, I just want you to know … I'm very grateful for your co-operation.'' Shaw ended on a note of finality, starting to turn towards the door. Tim thought he had set out to say something else.

“We'll both do our best. But my priority is to nail the driver of that car, whoever it was.'' Tim paused, glancing yet again at the tree as he gathered his forces. Since Shaw had sat down opposite him he had become steadily less inclined for the trial he still felt forced to put him through. “If Constance Lorimer's car is clean, Simon, it won't let her off the hook, but it will make me consider the possibility of the hit-and-run driver being a contract killer.'' He forced himself to watch Shaw minutely.

“Good God, Tim!'' Shaw flopped back into his chair. Tim saw nothing in his face and bearing beyond shock and horror, but he had no idea, for heaven's sake, how good an actor the man was. “You mean Mrs Lorimer …''

“Mrs Lorimer, or anyone else. If it was a professional he'll have come and gone within hours so we'll have to look into arrivals and departures.'' His own professionalism, thank goodness, was forcing him to take it further. “Simon,'' he said, coming round from behind his desk and stopping in front of Shaw, “do
you
know of anyone else who might want to harm my mother?''

“No!'' Shaw was on his feet again, his eyes blazing, his fists clenched. “No, Tim, I don't! Are you trying to say—''

“I'm a policeman, and I'm trying to look at every possibility.'' With a relief now so strong it surprised him, he was finding Shaw's oblique protestation of innocence convincing. “I don't know how much you see of my mother in England, but if there's anyone there she's afraid of I thought she just might have told you.''

“Yes, of course.'' Shaw sat down again. “ Sorry I flew off the handle. You don't know me.''

“That's true. Is there anyone in England you feel might have wanted to kill her?''

“Not that I know of. Everyone seems very fond of her. And she's never said anything to me. I swear that's the truth.''

“Thank you. Are you intending to go back to the hospital this morning?''

“Well – yes. They've assured me Lorna's ready for visitors.''

Even people who aren't family
? But he didn't really want to say it aloud. “ We may coincide there later, then. Now, my sergeant and I are going to call on Mrs Lorimer's friend Beth Smith. You'll have seen her too yesterday, trying to hold Constance back.''

Beth Smith lived in a stout little stuccoed villa towards the other end of the stretch of road culminating in Constance's crumbling Art Deco. Constance had lived there with her husband when he had run away with Lorna, and Tim remembered being driven past the house by his father after his mother had gone, because his father had muttered ‘The other poor sod' as they passed. He had been talking to himself, but Tim still had a mental picture of his grandmother putting a restraining hand on his arm, then turning round to smile reassuringly at Tim in the back of the car. He supposed he remembered because it was the only time his father had not been in complete control of himself in his son's company. And his anger had been reserved for Geoffrey Lorimer – Tim had never heard a word said by his father against his mother. Lorimer had died of a heart attack within months of the elopement, and Tim's childish hope that his mother would come back to them had turned into an adult belief that his father would have welcomed her if he hadn't died within a couple of years of her departure, his grandmother said of a broken heart.

Tim had never understood how his mother had been able to leave his father, but in a child's simplistic way, even in the midst of his initial misery at her departure, he had seen it as logical and to be expected that Geoffrey Lorimer – that any man – should prefer her to the squat and unattractive Constance. Even then, he recalled, Constance Lorimer had been charmless. Beth Smith, whom Tim hadn't encountered until she had moved to her present home a few months after his mother's departure, had been tall and fair and soft-voiced, and when she came to the door at noon in answer to DS Mahy's knock he saw, face to face with her, how little changed she was from his childhood image.

“Come in, Mr Le Page. I've been expecting you.'' She led him through a hall very different from Constance Lorimer's – white-walled, fresh-smelling, with a gilt-framed mirror and glass shelves carrying ornaments – into a room at the back of the house overlooking the small walled garden in which a young man was at work. Although the old-fashioned french window had been retained the room was still very light, with pale-green chairs and sofa on a pale, faintly green carpet, and there were interesting-looking watercolours on the white walls. Beth Smith, with her looks and taste, must have had a number of suitors, and Tim wondered idly why she had never married. She still looked good, he adjudged, as she turned to him with a smile, and was ageing gracefully: blonde curly hair only a little faded; face, like his mother's, thinning so that the good bones were more prominent; body maintaining its slimness and upright stance. He wondered, less idly, why she was such good friends with Constance Lorimer.

“I won't pretend I don't know why you're here, Inspector Le Page.'' The voice was soft, slightly breathless. He remembered it as she spoke.

“Thank you. I'll come straight to the point, then.'' But he hesitated for a moment, approving the immaculately maintained garden in its surround of high stone wall, the support to so many mature climbing plants it was only intermittently visible. “ Last night at around midnight a car was driven at my mother in L'Hyvreuse. She was dragged clear, so that although she was hit she wasn't run over. The car didn't slow down, and turned left into Cambridge Park Road.''

“Constance told me about your visit to her. And that you think she was the driver,'' Miss Smith said, as he paused.

“Mrs Lorimer was seen – by myself and other people – to make threatening gestures at Mrs Le Page outside St James yesterday afternoon. You were with her, Miss Smith, and were seen attempting to restrain her. No one else in Guernsey, so far as I am aware, nurses a grudge against my mother.''

“Because she took her husband away.'' Beth Smith spoke almost musingly, looking away from the policeman and staring out at the garden. “It's reason enough for a grudge, Inspector Le Page,'' she told the french window. “But it doesn't follow she'd attempt a murder.''

“She tried to run my mother down thirty years ago, when before she and Geoffrey Lorimer left the island.''

“Thirty years ago!'' Beth Smith smiled. “And you think she's cherished murderous intentions over three decades?''

“More to the point,'' Ted Mahy said, “ can you give Mrs Lorimer an alibi for around midnight last night?''

“I wish I could,'' Miss Smith said sadly. She walked over to a chair and indicated the sofa to Tim and Ted. “I could tell you I was with her,'' she went on as they sat down, “ or she with me, but you'd discover this wasn't true and I might have made things worse for her rather than better.''

“Mrs Lorimer told us she didn't take her car out at all yesterday, Miss Smith. Would you be able to corroborate this?''

“I can corroborate that she didn't take it out during the day. We went down to St James by bus, and came back by bus. We had tea at my house, and Constance walked home about nine.''

“Did you try to stop her going to see the wedding?'' DS Mahy asked.

“Of course. But she was determined. She's been determined ever since she read in the
Press
that Mrs Le Page would be there.'' Beth Smith paused. “Constance isn't easy to influence. She's well named.''

“Yes.'' Tim glanced for an instant at the peaceful garden before continuing. The young man had straightened up and was resting with his hands on his hips. The way his eyes caressed the french window made Tim recall the island rumour that Beth Smith had a toyboy. “Miss Smith,'' he said, as he turned back to her, “do you believe Mrs Lorimer could have been driving the car which hit my mother last night?''

She stared at him for a few seconds before replying, her face expressionless. “ That's not a fair question, Mr Le Page,'' she said at last, quietly. “And if your mother hadn't been the victim of last night's hit and run you wouldn't have asked it. I don't think I'm obliged to answer.''

“You're not. No.'' Surprised and ashamed, Tim pulled himself back into professionalism. “ I'm sorry.''

“I couldn't answer it anyway, could I?'' Beth Smith leaned forward in her chair and compelled his eyes to hold her large blue ones. “Constance in her right mind wouldn't consider such a dreadful thing, but who knows how any of us will react under extreme outside pressure?''

Defiantly he blinked. “ I would hardly call my mother's presence at my wedding extreme outside pressure, but I take your point, Miss Smith.'' He and his sergeant got to their feet. “Thank you for your time.''

“How is your mother?'' she asked him as she rose.

“She'll be all right. Dislocated shoulder. Badly cut leg. Shock. She's getting over them.''

“Good. I'm sure Constance will be glad to hear that news, too.'' Was there irony now in those handsome eyes? If she was guilty, Constance Lorimer would be glad for her own skin as well as for Lorna Le Page's, now that her rage had died.

But had it died? Tim realised how anxious he was for his mother to go back to England.

T
im didn't make it to the Golden Rose that day, but when he learned in the evening from Anna that another visit to the Charters' dogs was scheduled he offered the wary suggestion that she might visit them with two motives, and was agreeably surprised that she immediately accepted. Anna was surprised, too, and smiled a rueful inward smile as she realised why she was welcoming the chance to play a part in Tim's investigation: she had never, in either of her marriages, relished the spotlight that falls on a bride, but as her bridegroom ventured his request she recognised what she hoped was an uncharacteristic sense of grievance that her second tenure of that role had been so quickly upstaged by Lorna's accident.

The evening which should have seen them in Scotland was warm and sunny and still. Tim was aware, as every year he was suddenly aware one day in late summer, of the quality of the sunlight starting to thicken as the sun's arc began to contract towards an autumn still a comfortably long way off. At seven the rays were tangled in the top of his other inspirational tree, the one in his own garden where they were sitting, and it was easy for him to dodge the blinding light and look at his wife in the long chair opposite.

It was the first inactive hour of their day. Anna had spent the morning undoing their honeymoon arrangements, and in the afternoon had been received by the skeleton staff at the practice with overt commiseration and inward relief on what was turning out to be a busy Sunday. But even in the eventual peace of the old garden, neither of them could of course relax: Tim saw Anna's bare brown legs twitch irritably on the seat rest, and as he watched them she leaned forward to put her hand over his where it drummed on the wooden arm of his chair. He found it good to feel her new ring chime against his, but the unalloyed pleasure of the contact was short-lived.

“Try to think,'' she said quietly, studying his anxious face. “ Lorna's all right and when she's ready to be discharged she'll go from the hospital to the airport. We're all right, and we'll soon be in Scotland.''

“When I've brought Constance or whoever to justice.''

“I'm glad you said ‘or whoever'. That you can still see Constance as innocent until she's been proved guilty.''

“That's why I'm so anxious to prove it.''

“Forensics have told you her car's clean, you may not be able to. You have to accept that, Tim. If ever there's been a case of cutting one's losses, this is it. The only thing we can be sure of is getting Lorna safely back to London.''

“Constance might follow her.''

“All right. We alert the police in England if Constance leaves Guernsey. Does she leave in the normal way of things?''

“I don't know. I suppose she goes on holiday.''

“I gather she didn't follow your mother when she carried her husband off the island?''

“No.''

“But she did try to run her down before they left. Did she own up to that?''

“She had to. She crashed into a hedge and was unable to drive off so she could hardly deny it. I was very small, but I remember my mother laughing.''