Death of a Stranger (4 page)

“I had that a couple of nights ago. I didn't want to feel less than a hundred per cent tomorrow.'' Tim held his hand out sideways and Anna took it. “So nothing special tonight.''

“D'you want to join Simon and me at the hotel?''

“No, he doesn't,'' Anna said. “But
I
should like to. I've decided to stay at the hotel tonight, Lorna, and get dressed up there in the morning. I think Tim should have a last night of bachelordom and I don't want him around while I'm getting ready.''

Lorna beamed. “ I was all set to persuade you to sleep in the empty bed in my room.'' Anna was touched to feel the sudden relaxation of Tim's hand. “But you'll be better in your own. Your last night of independence too, Anna.''

Lorna was watching her closely, and Anna suspected that if she had had any lingering doubts about tying herself legally to Tim his mother would have seen them. But there were none, and as she smiled her reassurance Anna was aware of the relief in Lorna's eyes. “I don't need it. But I don't need him within viewing distance while I'm turning myself into a bride.'' Anna's hesitation was brief. “You're as welcome as Clare will be, Lorna, to join me for the final stages.''

“Thank you. I will. Where will you both be sleeping on Saturday night?''

“Here,'' Tim said. “Then the earliest plane to Glasgow on Sunday morning. We pick up our hire car at the airport there, then disappear north for a week. Will you be off on Sunday, too?'' His hand clenched round Anna's.

“Oh, I think I'll wait for Simon.'' Lorna, now, wasn't quite meeting his eye. “ He should have completed his business by Wednesday evening – he's wanting to be back in the office on Friday – so I'll take the opportunity of a few nostalgic days.''

This would make for the longest stay his mother had had in Guernsey since she had ceased to live there, and that she should choose to have it during his absence evoked in Tim a disagreeable dual sensation of jealousy and anger.

Lorna was aware of it. “I'm sorry you won't be here, darling. I'll come for a week soon when you are, I promise. And I'll stay in Rouge Rue then, if you'll have me.''

“Of course we will!'' It was Anna who responded, but Tim was mollified enough to make the gesture he had seen for several days that he ought to make. “Look, Mother.'' He disengaged his hand from Anna's and leaned forward. “ If you'd like to stay here while we're away you know the house is yours.''

But not Simon Shaw's
, Tim finished silently.

Lorna didn't hesitate. “ Thank you, darling, I appreciate that absolutely enormously. But I think I'll stay on at the hotel. I feel like a few days' pampering, and I certainly don't feel like buying my meals in a supermarket. You'll have made arrangements for Duffy and the cat?''

“Of course.'' Tim was ashamed of his sense of relief. “ Duffy's going to Clare and Robin, and my WPC Falla, who's a fanatical aleurophile, is going to feed Whitby
in situ
– she's done it before. He prefers home ground and he's learned over nearly ten years that I always come back.''

“That's fine, then, darling.''

“As you say, that's fine.''

Anna smiled to herself as both mother and son leaned back in their chairs, having safely negotiated some nearby quicksands.

Bernard and Marjorie Charters, their son Benjamin standing between them, surveyed for the umpteenth time the charred ruins of the greenhouse which had contained what for the past five years, until the shattering suggestion made by a dinner guest, they had seen as their financial safety net. Neither Bernard nor Marjorie had ever liked the fifteenth-century Florentine religious paintings, companion pieces, which had been left to them by Bernard's brother following his death at his home in Tuscany. They had hung them in the house at first, reluctantly because they had dominated all the other artefacts in the room as well as not being to Bernard's or Marjorie's preferred taste. They had come with papers of authentication, and so Bernard had been confident in his decision, after those five uneasy years in their company, to offer them for sale. Two thefts of important art had taken place in Guernsey at the time he was making up his mind to part with the pictures, and so he had relegated them to the warm dry cupboard in the non-working greenhouse with a clear conscience.

He and Marjorie and Benjamin had been sitting in that greenhouse, as they so often did on spring and summer evenings, when their confidence was shattered by the man they were entertaining, their unofficial art expert friend Henry Thomas. They had dined in the greenhouse, and over coffee afterwards Bernard had told Henry that the pictures were to be sold, and had been so shaken by his response that he remembered every word of the conversation, every detail of the appearance of the greenhouse that warm, sunny evening: the fresh green spirals of the young-leaved plants smothering up each slim supporting column, burgeoning here and there with colour-slashed buds, the sound through the open windows of sparrows quarrelling, Marjorie's face behind a diagonal of sunlight as Henry's comment sank in.

“Oh,'' Henry had said, leaning back heavily in his chair, and Bernard remembered, too, the look of mild dismay on his florid face.

“What's the matter?'' Marjorie had asked. Sharply.

“I'm sorry.'' Henry had leaned forward again. “ I didn't say anything when you first showed me the pictures, because I didn't think you had any idea of selling them and I could see how happy you were just to believe in their value. Bernard, Marjorie'' – Henry had held out his hands as if begging a favour – “I believe they have very little. I believe they are nineteenth-century fakes.''

“No!'' Marjorie had cried out, choking on the mint she was eating, and Bernard could still see the shock then in Benjamin's face, the way he had looked at his mother: protectively, then angrily at Henry. Before Marjorie's obvious distress Benjamin, Bernard recalled as he stood with his wife and son beside the devastation, had had no apparent reaction to Henry's revelation. Perhaps that would have been the case with other twelve-year-olds, but Bernard was inclined, reluctantly, to put it down to the fact that Benjamin was not quite a typical boy of his age. Not backward, that wasn't the right description of his son and it wasn't one that any doctor had ever used except to say that it wasn't applicable, but – well, ever so slightly withdrawn, never in a peer group, never with a best friend, but apparently living contentedly with his own company and his own rich imagination. Benjamin
had
had a best friend, an invisible one called Cobo after the Guernsey bay they had taken him to on holiday when they still lived in England and he was beginning to talk, and the boy had been almost ten before, to Bernard and Marjorie's relief, Cobo had deserted him. But to their disappointment he hadn't put a flesh and blood friend in Cobo's place, although he seemed to get on all right at school. Bernard and Marjorie had been afraid, particularly as he approached his teens, that he might come in for some bullying because of people, young and old, tending to want to storm a citadel which has no wish to offer them admission, and had asked the headmaster to keep a watchful eye. And they were incomers to the island. Bernard and Marjorie themselves had been aware of some reserve when they had bought the land and the greenhouses and started the business, and it had taken a while to build up a clientele. But now they were accepted, and all seemed to be well for Benjamin too, in school. But although he was of course grateful for this, Bernard couldn't get rid of an uneasy feeling that Benjamin's immunity might stem from an awareness in his peers that he was somehow different from themselves. This was such a disturbing feeling, and one so difficult to put into words, he had been unable to discuss it with Marjorie. And as she had said nothing to him, he didn't know what her feelings were. Except that she had been as relieved as he was when the doctor dismissed the possibility of autism. Autistic children didn't respond to what went on around them, the doctor had told them, even by their nearest and dearest. And Benjamin did …

“All right, Daddy?''

As if in illustration of his thoughts, Benjamin responded now to Bernard's involuntary shiver.

“All right, son.''

“No you're not, Daddy.'' Benjamin was starting to cry.

“Oh, darling!''

His mother took him in her arms, and the three of them turned away from the devastation and started to walk slowly back to the house. Both husband and wife were reserved by nature, even with one another, and when they were in the kitchen and Bernard turned to look at Marjorie he was shocked to see the suffering in her face.

He took her hand as she released Benjamin. “It'll be all right,'' he said.

She stared at him, her face now expressionless. “ You think so? Insurance people are very thorough. Even if we don't tell them the pictures may not have been the real thing, somebody else will, because they'll question our business contacts. And probably our friends.''

“
That
thorough?''

“We've got to be prepared for it.'' Marjorie looked down at her son's face, staring up at her in terror, and now Bernard saw unfamiliar compassion in her eyes. “ It's all right, darling,'' she said softly, stroking his brow. “Go to bed.''

They stood in silence as the boy went obediently from the room. When they could hear his feet on the stairs they turned and gripped each other's arms.

“Perhaps we should tell them ourselves,'' Marjorie whispered, “what Henry said about the pictures. Then tell them he's an amateur and that the fire happened before we'd taken them to a professional.''

“If we could produce the authentication we wouldn't need to.'' It had been lost with the pictures, in its plastic pocket stuck to the back of one of them.

“We can get another copy.''

“Where from? Your brother was a recluse.''

“There must be some way. The insurance people will have the best resources. And they'll use them.''

“And if they don't get anywhere?''

“Let's not think about that. And we're looking at the worst scenario. They haven't rejected our claim yet.''

“Or accused us of fraud.''

He looked with concern into her frantic face. “Don't even think of it. Come here.''

She went obediently between his arms, but her face, hidden from his gaze as it rested on his shoulder, was expressive again of her terror of what might be to come.

I
n the excitement of arriving at St James and waiting for Anna to join him Tim forgot about Constance Lorimer. And on his way into the one-time church whose unique round tower had been his lifetime landmark he saw only people he was comfortable with, plus a great many strangers: half the population of the island seemed to be massing in the narrow gateway on the steep hill, and a uniformed constable was on old-fashioned point duty in the road when he and Ted Mahy were driven up. Fortunately the good weather was holding, and the constable was cheerful in shirt sleeves.

“Nice, sir.'' Ted nodded towards the people parting willingly to either side of their car as it squeezed on to the tiny forecourt.

“It's amazing.'' They were all smiling, it seemed, and waving to him, which could have been another reason why he didn't think of Constance. As he got out of the car he thought about his mother's hope for the ritual, at least, of a church wedding: he and Ted arriving first and sitting front right of the centre aisle, Anna walking up it to meet them as they moved out to stand beside her. He had conceded his and Ted's prior arrival, but was happy with Anna's preference for travelling with his mother and the Jamesons and joining him and Ted in the foyer so that they would enter the hall together and make their way as a group up the aisle and on to the hallowed ground of the platform where over the years so many musicians had entertained him. Anna had at first recoiled from the idea of being married on a stage, but had reluctantly agreed when Tim pointed out that if they were elevated there would be no craning of necks among the congregation and all their friends would be true witnesses. And after one consultation she had been happy to leave the choice and arrangement of the flowers, on the stage and off it, to Clare, whose exuberantly unique floral decoration of the greenhouses flanking her nursing home Anna always enjoyed.

Tim had been part of St James stage marriages before, both as best man and witness, and realised with an inward smile as he climbed the central steps, flanked this time by huge bowls of pink-tinged white flowers among which he fleetingly recognised marguerites and roses, that during each of them he had been profoundly thankful not to be the groom. As he gained the platform now he tried to test himself for any doubts that this time it was his right role, but the idea of not marrying Anna was so impossible he abandoned the test as soon as he had set it in favour of gazing with loving approval on his bride, not turned into an alien, fairy-tale creature by a long white gown and a veil but still, even in the simple skirt and jacket and classic blue silk blouse, someone at that moment mysterious, far away in the instant of presenting herself to become legally part of him.

A glorious paradox! Tim found himself grinning at her in his sudden elation, and was happy that her mystery disappeared as she grinned back.

Anna, too, had attempted a test, tried to think of herself as a drowning woman recalling the wonders of independence, and had abandoned the exercise as irrelevant. But was Tim as sure? she wondered in an uncharacteristic moment of panic which showed her as it shocked her how necessary he had become to her. And then he grinned at her, and she was restored to her quietly confident self.

The Registrar-General, coming round from behind the table on which were the documents to be signed and a vase of red roses Clare had insisted on picking from her own garden, welcomed the wedding party and then the twenty or so rows of wedding guests and reminded all present of the solemn and binding nature of the short ceremony about to take place.