Fate Worse Than Death (8 page)

Tait's sharp nose twitched with professional interest. ‘Disappeared?'

‘Well, bolted. I can't say that I blame her – I don't think she would have been at all happy with Desmond Flood – but it's too bad of her not to have been in touch with her mother before now.'

‘Do the local police know about this?'

‘Oh yes. Such a pleasant young woman detective came over from Breckham Market to make enquiries. But then Beryl discovered that Sandra had taken a lot of her clothes with her, so obviously her disappearance was deliberate. She's twenty-two, after all, and entitled to do as she likes. The only niggling worry is that she's usually a considerate girl. But then, she probably felt so frightfully embarrassed about messing up the wedding arrangements that she simply wanted to keep out of the way for a bit.'

Martin relaxed. ‘Hardly surprising,' he agreed. ‘Who was the woman detective, Aunt Con? A sergeant? Hilary Lloyd?'

‘Oh lord, I don't know! Beryl did introduce me – the detective wanted to look round the Horkey road cottage, so of course I went with them – but I can't remember. My head's like a sieve these days. I can never be sure –'

But Martin, alert again, was sniffing the air. ‘Could something be burning?'

Con frowned a denial. Then she jumped to her feet, slapping the crown of her greying head in vexed self-reprimand. ‘Oh what a coot I am! The casserole – I forgot the casserole – !'

She galloped off to the kitchen with a vigour that left her nephew reassured as to the state of her health, if not of his supper.

Hearing her captor approach the door, Sandra stopped her agitated walk about the room. This was it, then. This was the moment when he would bring her supper tray. She had to be ready, now, to pick up the bowl of fruit and custard, fling it accurately in his face and run for her life.

Poised for action, her skin prickling with sweat, her knees shaking, she stood and listened to the unfastening of the door; a strangely distant sound, diminished by the racing thump of her pulse.
Please, God
, she prayed,
give me strength
.

Her captor entered the room, tray in one hand, and closed the door behind him. ‘I have brought your supper,' he said.

He placed the tray on the table. She moved slowly towards it, like a bather wading through deep water. Her vision was blurred. She blinked, trying to focus on the food. There was the usual plate of cold meat and lettuce … but for the first time in the whole of her captivity there was no bowl of stewed fruit.

She lifted her head with difficulty and stared at him. She tried to speak, but her mouth was so dry that it was difficult to get the words out. ‘Where … where are the plums and custard?' she whispered.

He opened a paper bag that lay on the tray and held it out to her, smiling. ‘I thought you would like a change,' he said. ‘A treat.'

The scent of fresh fruit, clean and fragrant in the stifling air of the room, rose to her nostrils. Inside the bag, their firm flesh yellow and crimson under the shining skin, were two large nectarines.

She closed her eyes against the disappointment. The tension drained out of her, running from beneath her eyelids. He sounded hurt, mystified: ‘I thought to please you,' he said.

She shook her head and the tears rolled over her face, mingling with the sweat that stood on the upper lip and draining into the corners of her mouth. ‘I … I … I wanted custard …' she sobbed. ‘If you really want to please me, bring me some custard!'

His expression changed, and even in her distress she realized, for the first time, what pressure he must be under. Until now he had been patient with her. Even kind, according to his lights. But her rejection of his treat clearly angered him. She thought for a moment that he might even fling the fruit at her.

But he controlled himself. He stood for a moment, silent and frustrated. Then he put the nectarines on the table and left, fastening the door behind him.

‘But gosh, it's been in the family for years, Martin. I can remember my grandfather telling me how he was given it by an old farmer in part-payment of a debt. It would be a frightful shame to let it go now.'

‘My dear Aunt Con,' Tait put his hands on her shoulders – she was almost as tall as he was – and gave her a tiny shake, ‘I really can't give a good home to an oak chest as large as that, even if it is carved and dated 1709. Or to your early Victorian writing-desk, though I agree that the marquetry is very pretty. Or to a mahogany table that will extend to seat eight … I do appreciate your generosity, but I can't take any of your furniture. Thank you, but no.'

Con sighed. ‘Dash it – I'd
counted
on your having the best pieces. They're worth a lot, you know, quite apart from their family interest.'

‘I'm sure they are. But you must keep the things with a sentimental value, and the rest can go to a good saleroom. Look, don't worry about having to make all the arrangements for your move, I'll do whatever I can to help. You know you can rely on me.'

She gave him a small, sad version of her crooked smile. ‘Yes, and I'm grateful, though I'm hoping not to cause you too many problems …' Then she brightened: ‘Well, at least there are some nice small pieces that you can't possibly refuse. Come up to my room and see them. I'm afraid everything's in a frightful muddle because I've been sorting through drawers and cupboards – and I'm a terrible slut anyway, as you've probably noticed.'

‘Nonsense,' Martin lied, following her through a door in a corner of the sitting-room and then up the narrow enclosed stairway. He had noticed, of course. There was ample evidence that his aunt was no fonder of – or better at – housework than cookery. He always took it for granted that her cottage would be dusty and untidy, but on this visit it seemed positively dirty.

‘My neighbour Beryl works as a home help,' Con went on over her shoulder as she climbed, taking the stairs more slowly than he remembered from previous visits. ‘She has a passion for cleanliness. I think she's been looking forward to the time when age and infirmity would qualify me for her services, and she could come and give me what she calls “a good turn-out”. She seemed quite disappointed when I told her that I wouldn't be staying around for that to happen.'

‘I'm quite sure
that
wasn't the cause of her disappointment,' protested Martin, laying on the gallantry with a trowel. And why not? It was small enough to return for all that she was giving him, poor old bat.

He edged after her into her bedroom. Here, preparations for her move seemed to be well advanced. Much of the available floor space was occupied by large cardboard cartons that contained heaps of clean but tatty clothing, together with torn diaries, letters and personal papers.

‘I'm going to burn most of this lot,' said Con. ‘I'll get you to help me carry the boxes downstairs later in the week, and then I'll have a jolly good bonfire.'

‘In this weather?' he asked. It was stiflingly hot, up in the bedrooms under the eaves; the Gothic windows, with their pretty leaded panes, were not designed to be opened more than a few inches. He anticipated that, even naked with a single sheet over him, he was unlikely to sleep well.

Con shrugged. ‘A bonfire won't be much fun in this heat,' she agreed, ‘but I simply must get rid of this rubbish. Lord knows why I've kept so many old underpinnings after their shoulder straps have worn through … Anyway, the clothes aren't fit for Oxfam so I'll have to put them out for the dustman. The private papers must be burned, though. I'll just have to make sure that the smoke doesn't offend my neighbours.'

‘Is that bossy woman still at number 10?' asked Martin.

‘Marjorie? Oh yes. She's kind, though, in her way …'

‘She was a pain in the neck on my last visit. I remember her coming round here and telling you what you ought to do at Christmas. Come to think of it, I'm not surprised you're leaving Fodderstone, if only to get out of her way.'

Con turned swiftly from her dressing-table, where she had been rummaging in a drawer. ‘Don't think that, Martin!' she exclaimed earnestly. ‘Don't ever think that it's because of Marjorie that I'm going. My reasons are my own, they're nothing whatever to do with anyone else.'

Then she relaxed, embarrassed by her own vehemence. ‘Marjorie
means
well,' she explained. ‘I'm quite sure that if I were ill she'd be round immediately to help in any way she could.' Con gave her lop-sided grin. ‘I'd probably recover in record time, in sheer self-defence.'

They laughed together, and Con lifted some jewellery boxes from a drawer. ‘
Now
, Martin – these you simply must have: your grandfather's watch and chain and cufflinks.'

He took them with gratitude and surprise. The watch was a fine gold half-hunter, the cufflinks thin gold ovals.

‘I had no idea that anything like this was still in the family,' he said when he had thanked her. ‘I suppose I assumed that they would have gone to my father and been sold long ago.'

‘That was precisely why your grandfather gave them to me,' said Con dryly. ‘Your father inherited
his
grandfather's gold hunter and – as you guessed – promptly sold it. Poor dear Robert – he had so much charm, and so few scruples … And no sense at all when it came to handling money. He couldn't know, of course, that he would be carried off by a heart attack in his forties, but that's no excuse for his failure to make any financial provision for his wife and son. I loved him dearly, and I still miss him, but I have to admit that he was a hopeless spendthrift.'

Martin remembered what Alison had said to him only that morning on the subject of money. As a boy he had loved and admired his light-hearted father; as a sixteen-year-old, realizing that but for his grandparents'generosity his widowed mother would be in financial difficulties, he had been hotly critical of his father's conduct. Now he began to wonder, in the light of what Alison had said, whether his own attitude to money was one of the few things he had inherited from Robert Tait.

But at least he, unlike his father, would eventually have ample capital. There would be no need for
him
to go to the length of selling his grandfather's gold watch, thanks to Aunt Con.

‘Then there's some family silver,' she went on. ‘I want you to have the cigarette box and the candlesticks from the sitting-room, and there's all this lot too – I never bother to get it out because I'm too jolly idle to clean it.'

She took a large box from a cupboard, opened it, unwrapped some protective chamois leather and revealed a hoard of silver: christening mugs, photograph frames, napkin rings, brandy and whisky decanter labels, a porringer, a salver that had been presented to her lawyer father by his partners on his retirement, and a handsome assortment of Victorian knives and spoons and forks. Martin's eyes gleamed. A dining-table was something that he could easily buy when he married; any good mahogany table would do. But to be able to set it with heavy silver bearing the initials of some long-dead Tait would give him a distinct social edge.

He thanked his aunt. The last time he'd seen such a haul of valuables, he told her, was in the possession of a professional burglar.

‘I'm awfully glad you're taking them all,' said Con. ‘It eases my mind a little … there's something I have to tell you, you see. Let's go down and have a glass of sherry, shall we? A pre-supper drink, even though I've burned the supper so badly that we'll have to make do with bread and cheese.'

She began to lead the way downstairs. Tait was about to follow her when he noticed a sampler in a rosewood frame hanging just inside the door of her bedroom. He stopped to look at it.

‘Jolly nice, isn't it?' said Con, returning to join him. ‘That was made by your great-great –' she paused and slapped her head despairingly ‘– oh, gosh, that's gone too. My memory's gone completely …'

Martin was so interested in the sampler that he made no reply. It was a beautiful piece of stitchwork, the colours faded but still distinct, the design a delightfully formal and symmetrical assembly of trees and flowers and birds and dogs and cats and hearts and cupids. At the top were the obligatory letters and numerals; at the bottom, framed by blossoming boughs, was the name of the needlewoman:
Maria Bethell, Aged 10 years, 1842
. And in the centre was a verse illustrating the emphasis placed on infant piety in an age when early death was all too common.

Now in the heat of youthful blood
Remember your Creator, God.
Behold the months come hast'ning on
When you shall say, My joys are gon.

Martin was silent for a moment. Then he said, with no thought of acquisition, ‘Oh, I do like that!'

His aunt, who had been searching through a deed box, produced an old notebook. ‘Here you are,' she cried triumphantly, ‘the family tree. I worked it out years ago, and I want you to have this book and pass it on eventually to your children. Now, I'll show you where Maria Bethell comes in. She married –'

Con held the notebook at arm's length and screwed up her eyes. Marjorie Braithwaite was always telling her that she ought to wear her spectacles on a chain, and that was why she didn't. It was a nuisance, though, to be forever mislaying them; and not merely a nuisance but an increasingly frequent reminder of the way her mind was fraying at the edges. ‘Oh crikey, I can't read a thing without my specs. Where do you suppose I left them, Martin?'

‘Oh,
Aunt
.' He sighed good-humouredly, and ran them to earth in the pantry.

‘Thank you, dear,' said Con vaguely when he returned them. ‘Such a help to have a detective in the family … Ah, that's better. Now look, here's Maria Bethell. She married your great-great-grandfather's brother George in 1853, but died a year later in childbirth. So the verse on her sampler was sadly prophetic, poor child. I say, would you like to take that, too, Martin? The sampler, I mean?'