Embrace Me (8 page)

Jenny was to interview the vicar, the Reverend Edward Hardcastle, while Joe’s first appointment was with the staff at Sefton Park and Harry’s with Gerry and Cimmy Havelock. They left the pub separately, Harry in his car, the others on foot. Each of them had called in advance to arrange an appointment at Harry’s insistence. Joe would have been happier catching people off guard. When asked about possibly gaining the advantage by surprise, Harry told his assistants, ‘I prefer them to be concerned about having to be interviewed by New Scotland Yard. A night of anxiety to put them on edge about some stranger delving into their lives and secrets.’

The small eighteenth-century stone church and yard were set on a hillock just above the village with a view of the duck pond, the pub being nearly on the edge of the village in one direction and the road leading to Sefton Park the other. There was something of the
beau idéal
about the scene, made even more so by the ancient yews in and around the area. Jenny Sullivan knew she was witnessing a scene of the highest type of excellence and beauty, such as she had never before experienced. When she reached the door of the church she turned round to view Sefton Under Edge. A sense of perfection, something special, stirred her emotions and brought tears to her eyes. She simply could not understand why this place had taken such a grip on her.

She heard the church door open but made no effort to see who stood behind her. The scene before her was too idyllic and she was trying to hold on to the moment for as long as she could. She felt she was experiencing a taste of heaven on earth. It vanished when the vicar placed his hand on her shoulder.

‘A place kissed by the angels, don’t you think?’ he observed.

‘You know, Reverend Hardcastle, I do think that. I feel very privileged to be here.’

‘So do we all, my dear. That’s why we try never to abuse it.’

She put out her hand and shook the vicar’s, introducing herself. Jenny was surprised to feel a tremor in his fingertips. He looked quite handsome and she sensed he was a good soul, as one would expect of a clergyman. Yet he seemed unable to look her directly in the eye. His were always shifting. Jenny sensed that he was not at all at ease about being interviewed. He offered her a tour of the building and a stroll through the church yard where she might view the ancient headstones. Jenny declined his invitation, saying that she would like a tour one day but for the moment must get on with her investigation.

The sun was bright and hot even at that early hour of the morning and Jenny suggested they should carry on their interview sitting on an old stone bench overlooking the village. She sensed she was at the right time, in the right place, and was certain of it when he suggested they should go to the vicarage instead and let his wife make them tea. When she declined he offered her tea at Miss Marble’s. He even suggested coffee at the pub. It was clear he was frightened of being interviewed alone. Jenny was too good a detective not to realise she had him where she wanted him and would certainly keep him that way.

She began her interrogation of Edward Hardcastle with the usual questions about himself and his family: how long he had been vicar of Sefton Under Edge, the lifestyle of the community, the behaviour of its residents. The more questions she asked, the more personal they became and the more nervous he seemed to be. They did, however, have some empathy with one another. The vicar sensed the detective was trying to do her job with as much discretion as possible, while Jenny sensed from his answers and his manner that he was not trying in any way to hinder her. The longer the interview lasted, the more sure she became that he was leaning on her for support in some way. The vicar was hiding a secret, she was sure of that, and though she wanted to learn it, she felt sorry that it was going to be at his expense.

Jenny, having at last run out of the mundane questions so necessary to any investigation, prepared herself to deliver her
coup de grâce
. She sat silently for several seconds then rose from the bench and paced back and forth in front of Hardcastle, abruptly stopping short before him.

‘Are you hiding Lady Olivia, Reverend Hardcastle?’ she asked.

Her voice had changed now, all softness gone. Her question took Edward Hardcastle by surprise. He visibly paled. ‘No,’ he stammered.

‘Is anyone else in the village keeping her in hiding?’ she asked with that same steely edge to her voice.

‘Not to my knowledge. And if they were I’d know about it,’ he answered.

‘I’m sorry to upset you with these questions about Lady Olivia as clearly I am,’ she told him in a softer, more friendly voice as she sat down beside him once more.

‘Much as I would like that not to be the case, I’m afraid it is. You can’t imagine how much her disappearance is upsetting everyone in the village and at the Park,’ he told her, a tremor of emotion in his voice.

The vicar was breaking down, just as Jenny had hoped he would do. Now she withheld all mercy and went after him in honeyed tones. ‘How well did you know Lady Olivia?’

‘Well, Detective Sullivan,’ he replied.

‘Days, weeks, months, years? Casually, intimately?’ Jenny pressed him.

‘I believe this interview to be an invasion of my privacy,’ said the vicar, and rose from the bench.

‘Please sit down. You must answer my questions whether you believe them to be an invasion of your private life or not. If you care for Lady Olivia, you should confide all that you know about her and her whereabouts to me. Even any thoughts on where she might be. The more information I can gather about her to obtain a true picture of her, the better the chance we have of finding her. And, believe me, that we must do if there is to be any hope of clearing her name. Surely that is what you want?’

‘You simply do not understand what torture this scandal and the disappearance of Olivia is for the friends who love her. Of course we want her name cleared and for her to come home but that isn’t going to happen, is it?’

‘Then you believe she’s guilty of murder?’

‘I didn’t say that. What I am saying is you will have to clear her name
in absentia
for she is gone from us forever. It’s a
tragedy for her that she will be hunted all her life, and for us that we will never see her again.’

‘We will find her, you know. One way or the other.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked the vicar in a voice that was barely a whisper.

‘Dead or alive,’ she answered.

With that he rose from the bench and walked away from the detective. He took no more than a couple of steps before he turned around and, walking back to Jenny, said, ‘You must, I realise, do your duty but I wish that you had known Olivia then you would understand what a special young woman she is. You would see that she could not have done such a thing as to take another’s life unless she was fighting for her own. And, knowing her, you would not hound her so ruthlessly. Is the life she must now lead – alone, dead to all she loved – not punishment enough? If you would stop chasing her down like a wild animal, she might find the courage and the time to repent her misdeeds and get on with a new life.’

The vicar was trembling, on the verge of breaking down. Jenny rose from the bench and led him back to it. They sat down together. ‘You were in love with her,’ said the astonished detective.

He slumped over and placed his head in his hands. He wanted to weep but the tears would not come. He had been carrying his love for Olivia in the dark recesses of his soul. Had kept his guilty secret and been conducting a fantasy sexual affair with her for so many years it was now a part of his life. At last someone recognised his passion for Olivia. It was very nearly a miracle that Jenny’s words should unchain his secret. She had set him free to face his love for Olivia.

‘Why don’t you tell me about it? Maybe then I can learn what she’s really like and will be better able to help her,’ Jenny cajoled.

‘I’ve known her ever since I took over this parish. She was always an enchantress even as a little girl. Year after year as she grew up we waited for her to lose her beauty and charm to adolescence, in young womanhood to gain a more sober approach to life. It never happened. She was well brought up like the Buchanan girls, her best friends, but there was about her
something untamed, a wild and fearless nature that drove her always to live on the edge, to take that little step further. She was a friend to my children, always in and out of our house. She has a very good mind and often challenged me theologically. She knew how to stir my blood. On her eighteenth birthday ball at Sefton Park, a glamorous affair with hundreds of guests including all the village, young and old alike, she outshone every person present. There wasn’t a man in the ballroom who did not lust after her. I was just one of them. She had seduced me years before and I had not realised it.

‘It was so natural for her to make men feel wonderful, so irresistible. She made love to you with her flattering, teasing, challenging ways. I hungered for her, wanted a taste of her, to hold in my heart and soul forever. She felt something special for me and let me know it in a hundred different ways and as often as she could. I was tantalised by the richness of her spirit and wanted it to rub off on me. Time and again she taunted me with her sexuality, not as a tease but because she knew how much I wanted her without the courage to take her from fear of scandal, love for my wife and family, and most of all deference to God and all I believed in.

‘My fantasy sexual life with Olivia turned into an obsession. There wasn’t a day went by that I did not live a portion of it in lust with her. All in my mind. You see, I never touched her. I never told her how I felt about her. Thoughts of sex, some of it depraved, were taking over my life. We would go on long walks together along the banks of the trout stream, ostensibly talking theology. But all the time in my mind I was fantasising about sex with Olivia. It was the same for her too though she never spoke to me about it. She showed me in the way she would touch my hand or sometimes kiss it, stroke my cheek, rub her body against mine. Once she ran her finger across my lips and I very nearly swooned with the thrill of her touch. I was tortured with love for her.

‘One day she saw my pain and said the only intimate words that ever passed between us. “Edward – love, passion, sex – for me they are transient things, wonderful games so long as my partner knows they are fun and only one side can be the winner.
I never play with a man if it’s going to shoot arrows into his heart and leave him to bleed to death. It’s always hard to leave someone you love but we must part because you love me too much.”’

Jenny had to clear her throat before she could reply. ‘You still love her!’

‘How can I not? No other human being or belief, with the possible exception of my faith, has given me more, set me free as Olivia has. Who has been more honest and loving towards me, asking for nothing without making demands? Would that she had come to me that night for help! I don’t know what I would have done but it would never have been to trap her into something she knew she could not do: turn herself in. My heart is sore to think of her alone somewhere in the world, having to reinvent herself to save her life. I pray that God will protect her. I think it somewhat pathetic that that is all I can do for someone who has given me so much pleasure and asked for nothing in return. What you have to know, Detective Sullivan, is that she is a giver, she is love, even if she is maybe a murderer. But we will never know that for sure. She has left us free to believe whatever we choose to believe. She fled the scene of that crime because she believed it was the right thing for her to do, for her own self-preservation and for her friends’ peace of mind. She simply could not bend to the scandal.

‘I can tell you one more thing about Olivia. She would never have stooped so low as you have to get me to break down and confess. And now, would you like to visit our church?’ asked the Reverend Hardcastle.

Jenny Sullivan had never before been made to feel as low as she did at that moment. She felt as dirty as if she had crawled through mud to win his painful confession.

Chapter 8

September and Angelica were as close as two sisters could be. They thought of Olivia as part of their extended family, almost a sister. Angelica was four years older than September, a year younger than Olivia. September and Olivia had always been goddesses in her eyes and James a god. The three women and James confided in one another and when Marguerite came on the scene as lover to James she too had soon become a part of their lives, an intimate friend.

There was something vaguely incestuous about their closeness that was apparent to their wide circle of friends. Not that anyone believed for a minute that James slept with his sisters. It was more the demonstrative way they behaved when together. They had all had long-term as well as brief relationships. They had even swapped partners with ease, excited by the threesomes and group sex that took place when lust led them into sexual game playing. In their intimate group, love and sex were transitory pleasures. It had been Olivia who had made them understand the beauty and the thrill of untrammelled sex and how to keep it uncomplicated.

They were dazzling, thrilling, fun people. Intelligent, bright and amusing, with enough style and class to know how never to be vulgar and flaunt their sexual freedom and preferences in public. For that reason they had an intriguing reputation which was gossiped about but never proved.

The Buchanans worked hard and played hard. Each of them an achiever and all successful. Marguerite was a media star; Olivia brilliant at anything she wanted to be, but passion and love were her greatest achievements. She had always been the
teacher, the leader of her friends. September, a dedicated and successful painter, had the eye of the critics and the support of several museums. Angelica was a young surgeon of great promise. And their brother James, who ran the estate, was a famed lepidopterist with discoveries of several rare butterflies to his credit. Their work and achievements made them fascinating people to be with. They all worked very hard on their lives and their souls.

September hardly slept after she’d walked away from Harry. All night long she tried to work out in her mind what was happening to her. It was something fundamental, so strong and so right that she no longer felt like the same person. She felt herself to be something more than she had been when she’d held out her hand to him and he had swung himself behind her on her horse. Was it possible that real and true love could instantly turn your life around? Olivia would have approved of their falling in love. Had it not been she who had said that she was always in love, and happy to submit totally to her man of the moment in the name of that love? That was, so long as she was able to keep her own counsel. Once that was denied her the romance was over.

Olivia had loved James that way but they could not sustain their love. The break-up had been no one’s fault. Being apart allowed them still to love one another, even occasionally have sex together.

The prince had brought about fundamental changes in Olivia. Thinking about it, September believed that Olivia had found her real and true love just as she had recognised hers in Harry. The tragedy of Olivia and her prince was that he was a rotter who found a jewel of a woman and wanted to enslave rather than appreciate her. Olivia was real true love personified. The prince real true depravity.

September’s first loyalty had to be to her friend. Harry would understand that, she was certain. After an agonising night September decided that whatever happened with Olivia she would stand by her but to give Harry up was an impossibility. She had asked him to let Olivia go, he had declined and that would have to be the end of it. There was nothing to be done but
to take their love affair a day at a time. Fate had declared she would be agonising over one or the other of them for the rest of her life.

September telephoned Angelica in her Oxford rooms but there was no answer. A message left on the machine informed her that her sister would be at Sefton Park in time for lunch. September felt a wave of relief wash over her. To be with her was better than discussing on the telephone how love for Harry was changing her life.

Angelica was in bed with her lover Neville Brett when the silence and darkness of the room was broken by the sound of the telephone and then September’s voice on the answer machine. It meant nothing to the lovers who were lost in a sexual landscape so beautiful and exciting it was impossible for them to be distracted by the outside world.

Angelica and Neville had been carrying on a clandestine affair for more than two years. They were extremely happy with the arrangement they had with one another until six months before when Marguerite had come into their lives in more than a casual way.

Neville, a Harley Street consultant with an international reputation for excellence, was a tall, broad-shouldered man who had more the look of an athlete than a surgeon with his silver-grey hair which he wore on the long side, his dark brown eyes, a square face that was large and interesting, pronounced cheek bones and a handsome Roman nose. He was something special. No one could quite label what made him that way. It was more a combination of things. His appearance of powerful masculinity, his warm, gentle but firm manner, his sense of humour and remarkable ability with the scalpel added up to excellence as a surgeon and a compassionate human being.

Neville was the sort of man who knew how to put his life and career together, how to make his family work if not his marriage. At the time he met Angelica he was still happily married with four children. His wife was not. For all the years of their married life he had mistakenly believed that she loved him. He had never been unfaithful to her until he met three women
visiting one of his patients. The patient was a Saudi prince and the three women were Marguerite, Olivia and Angelica.

The charm and vivacity these women exuded was something he had never experienced before. They were formidable females, hard to resist for their beauty, intelligence and sensuality. He spent no more than fifteen minutes in their company and for the first time ever realised that he was a lonely man. That passion and love had eluded him because his wife, whom he’d thought possessed those things, simply withheld them from him.

They had married when they were young and had their children straight away. She had chased after Neville until she caught him. It was one of those marriages where they went through hard times, poverty, his rarely having time for her and their children while he built his career. She had been happy then, running his life and their family. It was when things got better and the accolades from his peers and patients kept coming, and money was no longer a problem, that his wife became unhappy. She was always competing with him, treating him with little more than disdain. In public and private always trying to control him. He was not bothered by her behaviour, never spoke to her about it except merely to suggest to her that her obsession with being in control was neither healthy nor good for any of the family. That because of her pathological need to control and her attention seeking, their life together had lost its lustre and most certainly love.

For days after he met the three women Neville could not get them out of his mind. It excited him to remember those few minutes. As a result he walked with a quicker step, he smiled more, felt alive in a new and different way than he had ever felt before. The next time he made love with his wife he realised that she actually worked at not enjoying sex with him. Her orgasms seemed to come in spite of her holding back. Neville understood now that she resented giving him the passion and sex he wanted to share with her.

It took three beautiful ladies and their magical love and sensuality to show him how little his wife gave him. How she had controlled their marriage and their family and was constantly diminishing him to raise herself a little higher. Then, having seen it so clearly, he felt sadness for his wife because she would never
be more than the wife of Mr Neville Brett, because that was all she wanted. It was enough for her but not enough for him. And so after considerable thought he took a sabbatical from her and his Harley Street practice and accepted a post as Director of Surgery at a hospital in Oxford.

He had been there for several months when, after a five-hour operation, exhausted and concerned for his patient, he was sitting in the ante-chamber to the operating theatre when another surgeon entered from an adjacent theatre and sat down next to him. Both were still in their greens: cap, mask, and gowns. Neville’s mask was off, dangling round his neck. He reached down next to him and took a cigar from the box of Dunhill’s Special Havana. Then, looking at the doctor sitting next to him, reached for the box, opened it and offered one. The surgeon removed the mask with one hand and pulled the cap off with another, revealing a head of short curly chestnut brown hair and a lovely face wearing a smile that warmed his heart. They both burst into laughter.

Neville closed the lid of the box and replaced it on the chair next to him. ‘Well! You’re a lovely surprise, and clearly not a smoker of Havana cigars,’ he told Angelica, a smile of delight still on his face.

‘No, but my brother is.’

Neville was enchanted by her. He retrieved the wooden box and, opening the lid once more, said, ‘Then you must select one for him.’

Angelica made her selection and, placing it close to her ear, rolled it between her fingers, then sniffed it. ‘That’s very generous of you, Mr Brett. Come home with me this evening and smoke it with him.’

‘That’s extraordinarily kind of you, but I think I would rather take you out to dinner. You see, I have wondered about you and the other two women you were with when we met before. If you dine with me this evening you can satisfy my interest.’

They had dined that evening and a life of erotic wonder opened for them. A sexual love affair developed that both entered with their eyes open to the reality of their situation. Both Angelica and Neville accepted the difference in their ages,
their passion for their work, his being a married man. They conducted their affair without illusions and kept their liaison as secret as possible without hurting their relationship, always keeping in mind that both of them deserved better than they were giving each other.

Neville wanted an exciting, beautiful, clever wife – all the things that Angelica was. But this generous, thrilling young woman had too much life to live and work to do before she was ready to be a wife. They loved their life together and each other too much to sacrifice all Angelica’s dreams and ambitions. Theirs was an intense affair made more so by the fact that they knew that one day a very special woman who was not twenty-eight would come along and put an end to their stolen moments of exquisite bliss.

Now Neville was lying on his side, holding Angelica close in his arms, one of her legs draped over his hip. His thrusts were slow and deliberate, deep, bringing her enormous pleasure. They kissed: lips, nipples. His hands and mouth ravaged her. She moaned with pleasure.

He held back his own pleasure until she had come several times and finally allowed himself the luxury of yet another orgasm. When they came together and she felt the warmth of his life’s force flowing into her, she clung on to his phallus, gripped it tight with her cunt, made love to him with it. Her passion overflowed and she kept coming in orgasms one after the other, giving, giving herself totally to him.

Neville could feel his heart racing, his passion for such perfect sex with Angelica at that moment taking over his life. He was experiencing perfect bliss. So overwhelmed was he by his lust, by the sheer joy he discovered in all things erotic and love with a woman wanting to give, to please, submit to her man and derive exquisite bliss for herself in doing so, that tears were rolling from the corners of his eyes.

Angelica licked the salty teardrops from his cheeks and crawled into his arms. Entwined they fell asleep.

Harry arrived at Sefton Park just before eleven o’clock for his appointment with Sir James. But first he asked Fever if he could
speak to September. He simply couldn’t lose her. The aged butler told him she was not at home but had left a message for him. Fever handed him an envelope and Harry was ushered by the butler into the library. Once alone there he opened the envelope and read:

Harry closed his eyes for several seconds and took deep breaths. He had not realised how fearful he had been that she was lost to him forever. Opening his eyes, he read the lines aloud to the empty room. How clever she was to have chosen them from the Old Testament. They said it all without saying too much or too little. She made no commitment but insinuated, ‘It’s all still possible for us.’ He knew in his heart, as he was certain she did, that there was hope for them. He placed the note in the inside pocket of his jacket where it lay close to his heart. How clever and honest she was. He loved her all the more.

James entered the library followed by Fever who tottered in carrying a large and heavy French baroque silver tray laden with a coffee service, cups, saucers and plates none of which matched. It was nevertheless the finest porcelain, bits of Limoges, Sèvres, Haviland, the last of the family’s dinner, tea and coffee services. A Lalique pedestal dish proffered a pyramid of chocolate oatmeal biscuits made by Mrs Much. The old butler’s hands shook dangerously while the china trembled and slid around on the tray. Harry very nearly sighed with relief when the tray was finally placed on one of the library tables. He was amazed to see everything still intact on the tray rather than on the floor.

James poured the coffee. While handing a cup and saucer to Harry, he said, ‘Fever has run this house for more than sixty-five years. One learns to ignore certain aspects of his performance. It is after all only right since he turns a blind eye to our lifestyle. He is the oldest member of this household. I thought you bore up very well and appreciate the way you didn’t offer to relieve him of his burden. He would have been mortified.’