A Dark and Stormy Night (9 page)

‘The grass ran right up to it, Alan,' said Joyce. ‘I did notice that. It wasn't in the wood, proper – more a part of the lawn. Sort of reminded me of the old oaks in people's yards back home.'

‘Splendid. That helps. It would surprise me very much to learn that our friend was put there in the past two years, and you've strengthened my opinion. Now, Ms Heseltine.'

The femme fatale cocked her head to one side with a half-smile. ‘Yes, luv?'

I refrained from gritting my teeth.

‘You have lived in the village for some time?'

‘All my life – except for Oxford, and my time at Lincoln's Inn, eating my dinners.'

Ed Walinski, sitting next to me, looked bewildered, and I whispered, ‘Part of getting admitted to the Bar. I'll explain later.' I hoped I could. The process confused me, too.

Alan went on. ‘Under normal circumstances I would never ask a lady her age, but may I ask just how long “all my life” implies?'

‘You may,' she cooed in that devastating voice of hers. ‘But as you pointed out, I am under no obligation to answer.' She gave him a brilliant smile.

‘Yes, indeed. I will simply ask, then, if in your years in Branston village – however few or many they may be – you remember anyone going missing.'

He had put just the slightest stress on ‘many', and given me the briefest of sidelong glances. I don't think Miss Glamourpuss of Kent noticed, but I grinned.

‘Not a soul. Except for Harry Upshawe, of course.'

NINE

T
hat caused a stir. Everyone looked at Laurence, who held his hands up in a gesture of annoyance.

Alan frowned. ‘Can you tell me about that, sir? Harry Upshawe is . . .?'

Upshawe sighed. ‘Was. Harry Upshawe was my second cousin. And he died in a plane crash when I was about ten. There was no question of his “going missing”.'

‘This happened when you were ten, you said. That's rather a long time ago. Can you tell me any of the details?'

‘One remembers the pivotal events of one's life, Mr Nesbitt, even the ones that happened fifty years ago. I remember that Harry was going away, going to America. I wasn't sorry, I recall. We were of the same generation, but Harry was too much older than I to have ever been a playmate. In fact he ignored me as much as possible. I was simply the poor relation, the son of his father's no-account cousin.'

‘You disliked him?'

‘I had no attitude toward him at all, really. We almost never saw each other.'

‘But you remember his attitude toward you.'

‘No. I'm sorry if I've conveyed the wrong impression. I remember what my father told me, later, about his attitude. About Harry I remember, from my own memory, only an impression of tallness and a hint that I shouldn't cross him.'

‘And he was killed in a plane crash,' said Alan. ‘You were ten when this happened, you say. That is, when your cousin went away.'

‘Just ten. I remember because it was only a few days after my birthday that we heard he was missing in the crash.'

“‘Heard he was missing”?' Alan's tone made it a question.

‘Yes. It was a private plane, you see, piloted by a friend of Harry's. When it didn't arrive in New York, the authorities launched an investigation. The last radio contact was a message to São Miguel, in the Azores, where the pilot had planned to land for refuelling. He never got there. By the time anyone got out to search there was no sign of the plane, and as far as I know, nothing has ever been found of the wreckage.'

‘Ah. So no bodies were ever recovered.'

‘No, obviously not.' Upshawe sounded impatient.

‘So in actual fact you do not know that the plane crashed, only that it disappeared.'

‘The plane disappeared. Neither the pilot nor my cousin has been heard from in the intervening fifty years. The inference that the plane crashed would seem to be justified.'

Upshawe sounded very stiff. Jim Moynihan cleared his throat.

‘You're thinking me ridiculously precise,' said Alan, smiling. ‘I quite agree with your inference – about the plane. Apparently flight plans were filed, the plane took off with your cousin's friend piloting it, it never reached São Miguel. It is reasonable to assume it crashed. My point is that, so far, I can find no justification for the inference that your cousin was aboard.'

‘But . . . he was going! He told everyone. He left the morning when he said he did, with his luggage.'

‘Who saw him leave?'

‘His father, naturally. No, I'm wrong. His father was away at the time. In London, if I remember correctly. But the servants . . .'

‘Are any of the servants still living, sir?'

Upshawe sagged in his chair. ‘No. My father kept them on, after he inherited the place, and after my father died I could hardly sack them. They'd lived on the estate forever. I pensioned them off when they got too old for the work, but I didn't replace them as they left or died. I couldn't afford to run the place on those lines. That's why I sold it – that, and the fact that I'd never really liked living here. I prefer a simpler way of life.' He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Look, Nesbitt, I do see what you're getting at. My cousin “disappears”. Years later we find bones on his property, bones that could, by a wild stretch of one's imagination, be identified as his. But it's impossible. My cousin's body, or what little must remain of it, lies under two or three thousand metres of cold water, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.'

A polite cough interrupted what threatened to become an awkward silence. ‘Excuse me, sir. Mrs Bates and I have assembled a rudimentary tea in the kitchen, where it is warmer. It is ready when any of you care to partake. It is not all I could wish, but under the circumstances, perhaps it will suffice.' Mr Bates bowed and withdrew, and we followed him gratefully to the warm kitchen.

Mrs Bates was a true wonder. She had transformed store-bought petit-beurre biscuits into a treat by dipping them into melted bittersweet chocolate. She had prepared hot buttered toast over the fire, turning some of it into cinnamon toast and leaving the rest to be spread with homemade marmalade or strawberry jam. She had even, somehow, made scones, plump with currants, and brought out clotted cream for them. I bit into one and looked at her with amazement. ‘You baked? However did you manage?'

She smiled. ‘It's John's doing, really. He's a genius with anything mechanical. He managed to rig a wood fire in the Aga. It isn't terribly reliable, and almost impossible to control, but it made enough heat in the one oven for scones, and I
think
I can brown the steak for supper – and heat some water for washing. There won't be enough for baths, unless he can find time after tea to split a lot more wood.'

Oh, dear. I hadn't thought of that. And we all needed baths, after working outside. Well, we'd just have to make do. Smelling like lumberjacks was going to be the least of our troubles.

‘Speaking of troubles,' I said in an undertone to Alan, who could almost always follow my thoughts, ‘has anyone checked on the Harrisons? I do hate the idea of those two loose cannons rattling around unsupervised.'

‘I don't know, but it's a thought. Jim?'

Our host came over and Alan spoke to him. He nodded and left the room. I'd finished my tea by the time he returned, looking disturbed.

‘They're not in their room,' he reported to Alan in a low tone. ‘I did a pretty thorough tour of the house, including their . . . um . . . lairs of last night. I can't find them anywhere, and their coats and things are gone.'

‘The fools!' Alan smacked the table. ‘You don't suppose they've decided to try to get away? It's quite impossible, and they're very likely to come to grief trying. We'd better organize a search party.'

Jim shook his head. ‘Not yet. I don't want Joyce to know about this, if she doesn't have to. She and Julie dislike each other heartily, but they are sisters, and I know Joyce would get upset. Anyway, if I know Harrison, he'll come back the minute he gets cold, or hungry . . . or thirsty.'

Alan relaxed a little, I saw. ‘You may be right. He isn't a terribly hardy sort, is he? But the thirst could take a while to set in, if he took that bottle with him.'

‘I didn't see it in their room.'

‘So,' I put in, ‘it'll keep them warm and reasonably content for a few hours, at least. I'm with Jim, Alan. Let them wear themselves out. They'll come home like Bo-Peep's sheep, wagging their tails behind them.'

That, as it turned out, was one of my less fortunate remarks.

There didn't seem much to do the rest of the afternoon. The vicar half-heartedly suggested work on the drive, but when no one took him up on it, he seemed relieved and disappeared. Alan called Tom and Lynn in from their vigil with the skeleton; there seemed little point, since a guard couldn't very well be kept up for the next several days. La Heseltine found a copy of
Bleak House
in the library and sat down in front of the kitchen fire to read, with every evidence of enjoyment, about greedy Dickensian lawyers. (I was nastily pleased to see that she required reading glasses.) The Moynihans, with murmured apologies, went upstairs for naps, and Tom and Lynn followed suit. Mike Leonard wandered about restlessly for a while, then disappeared, and Ed Walinski established himself in a sunny corner of the kitchen with a book of Steichen photographs.

I was tired, but too keyed up to sleep, or to read. Scrounging in library drawers, I found a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, one of those virtually impossible ones with irregular edges and a few extra pieces. Alan helped me spread it out on a reading table, and we set to work. I didn't know what had happened to Upshawe and the vicar, but they were also probably napping.

The wind had died down, gradually, sometime after tea. The hard, brilliant sunshine of the day faded into an early twilight, and then quickly to full dark. Mr Bates brought a kerosene lamp into the library, but we had lost whatever interest we'd ever had in the puzzle, and were growing increasingly cold.

‘Let's give it up, shall we, love?' said Alan, and I gladly followed him back to the kitchen, where most of the rest had gathered, and Mrs Bates was trying her best to cook dinner with house guests under foot. I debated offering my help, but a look at her face changed my mind. The best thing I could do was try to stay out of her way.

‘It's going to be really cold tonight,' Alan said.

‘Mmm. Maybe we'd better find another blanket? I'm not going to bother Joyce about it.'

‘That wasn't what I was thinking. The Harrisons haven't come back. Nor does Laurence appear to be around anywhere.'

‘Oh. Oh, dear! Dark out, and cold. Do you think . . . ?'

‘I do. Reluctantly, but I do. Laurence ought to know his way around, but the storm has changed the landscape so much that even he might have got lost. I think we'd better organize search parties to go and look for them. Bloody idiots!'

My husband seldom swears. He was genuinely worried, then.

Three parties were organized: Alan, Mr Bates and Joyce; Jim, Tom and me; and Mike, Ed, Lynn and Pat. The vicar would have been excused on account of age, but he insisted on being included, so he joined Alan and his party. Only Mrs Bates was persuaded to stay in her kitchen, as we would all need something hot when we came back. Pat admitted openly that she was happy to search for Laurence, but had no real desire to hunt for the Harrisons. ‘I hope they got away safely – just so long as they got away,' she remarked, and no one, not even Joyce, could disagree with her.

We all went off with flashlights and lanterns, having set up a communications system by means of the lights and three whistles Mr Bates had produced from somewhere. Alan, who had organized a good many search parties before, handed out ties and scarves and belts and pieces of rope Mr Bates had also found. ‘Hold hands as you leave the house, and then form gradually longer chains as you fan out. Those of you who are heading into the wood will have to drop the links to get through the trees, but keep in contact with each other. Shout. Whistle. We don't want to have to search for the searchers.' He indicated directions for each of the three groups, and we set off.

It was like a gruesome children's game. Jim held the lantern and Tom had a flashlight. I, in the middle between the two men, had no hands free to carry a light, but I was grateful for their support as we walked over the debris-littered lawn, making for the wood to the north-east.

‘Aren't we headed for the tree?' I asked suddenly. We had been silent until then.

Nobody had to ask which tree. ‘We'll need to be careful,' said Jim. ‘That's a hell of a big hole, and the ground is muddy and slippery.'

‘And everything looks different by lantern-light,' Tom added. I shivered, not entirely from the cold, and moved on.

‘I think we'd better spread out now,' said Tom presently. We dropped hands. ‘D., if you tie this scarf around your wrist you can hold this flashlight. Just give a shout or a tug when you need me to drop the other end, to get around a tree.'

I did as he suggested. Jim, on my other side, knotted a couple of neckties around his wrist. We moved forward, more slowly now that we were separated.

I moved very slowly indeed. The flashlight Tom had given me was a powerful one, but no flashlight deals well with shadows. We had to drop our tethers almost immediately; the wood was too dense. I was terrified of falling. I was terrified of what I might find – or not find. The downed trees, which had looked unpleasant enough by day, were now monsters, reaching huge gnarled, arthritic fingers up to trap the unwary. As I moved my flashlight the trees seemed to move, shadowy shapes stopping just the instant before I looked directly at them.