Night Visit (21 page)

With
the best imagination in the world she could never know how terrible.

19

I had only one consolation in the dying days of November and early days of December. Ruth burst into surgery late one Thursday evening, her bump proudly prominent. She sat opposite me. ‘Wonderful to see you, Harry,’ she said. ‘And how are things?’

‘
Complicated,’ I said guardedly. ‘Very complicated.’

Thankfully
she didn’t seem to know anything about Danny Small’s death.

‘
Did you do anything about Pritchard?’

I
shook my head. ‘I did but I didn’t get anywhere. The headmaster thinks I’m gunning for him. The police consider the Melanie Carnforth case closed. Even Neil seems to think I’m going a bit over the top. No one believes there’s any cause for concern. They think he’s safe now.’

‘
Well, I don’t,’ she said firmly. ‘And the trouble with situations like this is that no one takes a blind bit of notice until something happens again.’ Her face was earnest. ‘Maybe if they’d found the child’s body in the first place there would have been something to connect him. But I suppose without that…’ She looked troubled. ‘You have to do something.’

‘But
until Pritchard makes a move…’

Ruth
nodded sagely. ‘Then we’ll get him, Harry,’ she said, ‘because we’re both keeping an eye on him. We know.’

I
measured Ruth’s blood pressure and took her urine and blood samples before asking her to lie on the couch. Obediently she lay down and proffered her swollen belly. I put my hands on just above the umbilicus.

It
was
a
miracle
.
I
felt
the
baby
kick
.
Not
just
kick
.
It
kicked
me
.

I
had felt babies kick before. But this was different. This was Ruth’s child, conceived against all odds, in spite of my warnings.

She
raised herself on her elbow and touched my wrist almost timidly. ‘That’s why we have to preserve the sanctity of life,’ she said. She heaved her swollen abdomen upright. ‘Life is too precious to have it wasted—ever, in any way, for any reason.’ Her face clouded. ‘That poor child,’ she said, pulling her dress down over her abdomen. Her thoughts had returned to Melanie. Maybe it was Ruth’s sentiments that spurred me on but I knew it was time to talk to Vera.

*

There was snow in the air as I crossed the causeway early in December and turned right to climb the hill to the farm. The fields were iced with frost and there was not an animal in sight. Even they were sheltering. The cold conjured up a memory of Reuben. I recalled saying something to him one day about the freezing weather, almost apologising for the cold. He’d given me a puzzled look. His face had been still craggy then; it had been before the cancer had pared it to the bone. ‘We farmers,’ he had said, ‘we welcome the frost. It’s one of the times we can get a tractor on the field without getting bogged down.’ And he’d chuckled at me, a townie, who didn’t understand that to the farmers there was both good and bad in all weathers. And as I shivered I recalled that in the years that I had known him I had never heard him complain about anything. Not even that final, debilitating illness.

He
had been a good man. I owed it to him to clear his name.

‘
Help me.’

I
scanned the woods and saw nothing but dark trees, pressing together, shielding any view.

Vera
was surprised to see me. ‘Well, doctor,’ she said, ‘there’s no one ill here today.’ But the wide smile on her face robbed the words of any sense of dismissal. Instead she held the door open and welcomed me in for some tea.

‘
Now what’s brought you up here?’ she asked. ‘And don’t try telling me you were just passing.’

I
laughed, feeling more at home here than I had done for the entire year. I felt as though now I could be honest with her.

‘
I came to talk to you about Melanie,’ I said.

Apart
from a slight raising of the eyebrows I wouldn’t have been certain that Vera had even heard. When she did finally speak she sounded puzzled. ‘But it happened such a long time ago, Doctor. You never even knew her. Why are you so interested?’

‘
Because Reuben wanted me to help,’ I said simply.

She
brushed my hand and repeated her earlier sentiments. ‘He had such faith in you,’ she said. ‘Too much. I told him. But it’s good of you to care.’

‘
I was fond of Reuben.’

‘
I know that,’ she said. Then her face hardened. ‘No one else cares in this town. To them our little girl was an outsider. Not one of theirs.’

‘
Maybe that’s another reason why I feel involved.’ I attempted a smile. ‘I’m an outsider too. Or I feel one these days.’

‘
Maybe,’ she said.

‘
Vera,’ I said tentatively. Even I hesitated to resurrect this particular ghost. I knew it was dangerous territory. ‘Someone called Anthony Pritchard was questioned in connection with Melanie’s disappearance?’

Puzzled,
she nodded. ‘Ye-es?’

‘
Did you think...?’

She
raised her head with great effort. ‘I didn’t know what to think,’ she said. ‘We all knew the Pritchards were strange folk. His mother kept herself to herself. His father died in peculiar circumstances.’

‘
I know all about that,’ I said.

Her
mouth puckered. ‘You do?’

‘
Yes. What I want to know was, was there anything else that led the police to suspect Pritchard?’

‘
Well,’ she thought for a minute. ‘He lived near. I mean not many people do live within a mile of this place. And Melanie can’t have gone far.’ Her eyes sparkled with tears. ‘She was only six. And then there was the dress.’

‘
Where
exactly
did they find it?’

‘
Right at the top of Gordon’s Lane,’ she said quietly. ‘Stuffed in the hedge.’

This
was the most dangerous bit. ‘Would it trouble you to know he’s working with children, in a school?’

‘
I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘I just don’t know. I was never sure myself. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything to her. He
seemed
harmless.’ She fingered the sleeve of her sweater. ‘You think it
was
him?’

I
nodded and she stood up. ‘Then I’m going to the police. I’m going to tell them. To think he’s been sitting under our noses for all these years. I’ve spoken to him in the town. If I’d have known...’ Hatred flashed across her face. ‘I would have killed him myself.’

I
shivered as a gust of icy wind found the gap beneath the door. ‘Maybe you should wait until we’ve got proof before speaking to the police,’ I said.

She
sank back in the chair. ‘I just want her found. As I’ve got older finding her seems the most important thing to me. I want her found even if it is just to lay her to rest with Reuben.’

‘
Do you?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Then help me.’

Abruptly
she left the room and when she came back she was holding something, a red, nylon rucksack, slightly worn and faded.

It
was Melanie’s.

‘
Her mother and father didn’t want it,’ she said. ‘Neither did the police because she didn’t have it with her that day. We kept it, Reuben and me. It was all we had left of her.’ She slung it across her shoulders, far too small for an adult. But perfectly sized for a child of six. ‘So proud of it she was, when she arrived. Carrying all her own luggage. Like a big girl.’

Vera
dropped the bag onto the table and I touched it superstitiously, as though I could divine the child’s fate.

‘
You can borrow it,’ she said, ‘but I shall want it back.’

I
picked it up and hugged it to me. ‘Do you mind,’ I said, ‘if I walk across your field? There’s something I want to look at.’

She
gave a wry smile. ‘Be my guest,’ she said, ‘but I shan’t come with you. I’ve the cattle to feed before it gets dark.’

I
said goodbye to her awkwardly, aware that by bringing up the subject I had reopened a painful wound, one that had healed over only lightly.

So
I lifted the latch and crunched my way over the frosty field towards the line of trees until I reached the rotting stump. As I had suspected my dreams had not deceived me but had resurrected a subconscious visual image. The bracket fungus was the size of a saucer, brown and inches thick, just as it had been in my dream.

What
else
had
I
tucked
away
?

I
stood for a while before mouthing a prayer of promise over Reuben’s grave. Then I slung the tiny rucksack over my arm and walked back to my car. As I drove back down through the wood I kept glancing across at Melanie’s bag. Mediums use articles to locate people, superstitiously believing they hold a latent force that will guide them.

Maybe
this would lead me to the child. But I was passive about this belief, keeping it in my car for two whole days, picking it up whenever I could, even going so far as to bury my face in it. But no strange messages came from it, no electric impulses. Nothing. It simply lay there, an inanimate object. And inside were Melanie’s clothes, shorts, T-shirts, spare trainers. No dresses. Like most girls she had spurned dresses—except the one.

It
took two days of inactivity before I was spurred into action. I knew I must act
for
the child, firstly by chasing up the result of Amelia Pritchard’s sample. That would be my angle of attack, reasoning. If I could put Pritchard under suspicion and thus back under the eyes of the police surely they would reconsider his involvement in Melanie’s disappearance. And they might speak to the education authority and put a stop to him working at the school.

The
lab was, as always, uncurious but factual. ‘Some sort of muscarinic agent,’ the technician reported.

‘
Can’t you be a bit more specific?’

‘
Well, not really,’ she said.

I
tried to prompt her. ‘What are we talking about here? A drug?’

‘
Well, we can guess.’

‘
Go on.’

‘
Well,’ she said, ‘the trouble is that all the stomach contents had already been vomited up. That is, anything solid,’ she finished apologetically. ‘So all we’ve really got to work on are the toxins.’

This
was cagey, defensive talk but I recognised it as the speech we all hide behind when we are not sure, having been trained not to make guesses. But it was no good to me. I needed facts.

‘
This woman died,’ I said.

‘
I’m not surprised. The toxin level was very high.’

Again
helpful but unhelpful. I had to show my hand. ‘Could these toxic levels be due to ingestion of poisonous fungi?’

‘
Oh.’ The chemist drew in a long breath. ‘Well, maybe. I’d really have to know the circumstances a little better. It could be. Was the patient in the habit of getting up at dawn to harvest mushrooms?’ It was a serious question but spoken in a jokey tone.

‘
No. She was more or less bedridden.’

‘
Well, I don’t understand then how the mistake could have happened. I mean commercial growers...’

‘
It was no mistake.’

Silence
down the phone. Then, ‘Be very careful, Doctor.’

‘
Keep the sample,’ I said, and put the phone down. I knew it now. Pritchard had fed his mother some of Duncan’s favourite poisonous fungi. Maybe as a late revenge for his father’s death. Maybe because Amelia knew something that made her a liability now I was showing an interest in Melanie’s disappearance. Or was it the renewed interest in her late husband’s death that had forced the issue out into the open? Perhaps she had started to ramble and the risk for Pritchard had been too great.

I
picked the phone up again but this time I dialled the coroner’s number. The official channels could deal with this aspect.

Give
Lemming some credit. He listened. Right the way through before giving a long sigh. ‘But Doctor, you say that your suspicions were aroused because the deceased’s husband died almost fifty years ago in the same way?’

Even
to my ears the entire hypothesis sounded weak. ‘Ye-es.’