The Crow Trap (30 page)

“Yes?”

“Could we speak to your father, please?”

“If it’s about riding you should see Andrea in the yard.”

“No,” Edie said. “It’s not about riding.” She spoke pleasantly. She had spent her career with rude adolescents and knew better than to let them wind her up. “If he’s busy we could talk to your mother.”

“God, she won’t want to see you. She’s got a dinner party tonight and she’s locked in the kitchen.”

“Your father then.”

“I think he’s in the study. I’ll see.”

They watched her disappear into the shadow, bang on a door and yell: “Dad, there are two women to see you. I think they’re selling or JWs.”

He was dark, angular. Rachael could see the resemblance to Bella but he was lankier, thinner faced. She had been expecting someone athletic and weather-beaten but he looked more like an absent-minded academic.

“Yes?” He was cross about being interrupted, only slightly less rude than his daughter.

“We’re not selling anything, Mr. Noble. And we won’t try to convert you. My name’s Edie Lambert. This is my daughter, Rachael. She was a friend of your sister’s.”

“There must be a mistake. I don’t have a sister.” He began to close the door.

“Not now, Mr. Noble,” Edie said gently. “But you did until recently.”

“What are you saying?” “We’re not reporters, Mr. Noble. As I explained, Rachael was a Mend of Bella’s.”

He seemed to come to a decision. “I don’t want to talk here,” he said quietly. “Wait outside.” He went back into the house and they heard the shout, “Lucy, tell your mother those people from the Tourist Board have arrived. I’m taking them over to the cottages.”

On the opposite side of the cobbled yard was an older stable block, grey stone, single storey. There was evidence of recent renovation. A pile of paint tins stood outside. There was a small skip full of rubble. He led them towards the block chatting as if they were who he had claimed them to be.

“We’d wanted to expand the business for some time. In the summer we cater for a lot of tourists beginners who want to go for a ride into the hills, even for full-days treks. We thought it would be a good idea to provide quality self-catering accommodation too. We’ve just raised the capital to convert these.” He paused at the door, still split like a stable’s. “This is where we started off. There was no office or indoor school then. It’s taken years to grow the business to this point.”

He showed them into a kitchen with a quarry-tiled floor, separated from the living space by an oak breakfast bar.

“Very tasteful,” Edie said.

“There are four self-contained cottages.” By now he seemed convinced by his own fiction.

“When did you last see Bella?” Edie asked.

“The day before she killed my father.”

“Not the same day?”

“No, I didn’t see her before I went to work. I couldn’t face breakfast with Father. I still have nightmares about those family meals.” He paused. “I didn’t blame Bella, you know. You mustn’t think that. If I’d been with him all day I’d have killed him.”

“But you didn’t go with her to court?”

“I was supposed to be there. A witness.”

“For the prosecution?”

“I didn’t volunteer! I suppose I could have refused but I was only nineteen. I did as I was told. And in the end I wasn’t needed. They changed the charge from murder to manslaughter and Bella pleaded guilty to that.” He paused. “I went to the secure hospital to visit her but she wouldn’t see me. Perhaps she thought I’d betrayed her by agreeing to appear for the prosecution. I had to come all the way home.” He walked through the living area and sat down, beckoning the women to follow. “Is Bella dead? Is that what you meant before?” “Yes,” Edie said. “Hadn’t you heard?” “I told you. I didn’t hear anything of her. She didn’t answer my letters and eventually I stopped writing. So far as I knew she was still in hospital but if she’d died there I suppose they would have informed me. I was down on all the forms as her next of kin.”

“She left hospital more than ten years ago. She married a farmer Dougie Furness of Black Law.”

“She lived at Black Law Farm?” He gave a sad little laugh. “I lead treks past there every summer. I might even have seen her in the distance. She must really have hated me not to have got in touch. She knew where I was. I wrote and told her when I bought the stables.”

“I think she just wanted to start again. New life, new identity.”

“I suppose I can understand that. Sometimes I just feel like running away.” He smiled. “All this money and investment scares me. My wife’s the business woman, though you wouldn’t think it if you met her.”

“But you started the stables soon after your father died. Your wife wasn’t involved then.”

“Then it didn’t seem like a business. I enjoyed horses so I bought a stable. That was all there was to it.”

“Why did you sell the butcher shops?”

“I hated being a butcher.” Charles Noble was looking out of the small window towards the river. “Father knew I hated it. I wanted to stay on at school. I had dreams of being a vet. I envied Bella for getting out.”

“But then she came back.”

“Yes. Poor Bella.”

“It sounds almost as if you hated your father too.” “Oh, I did,” Charles said. “I always had.”

There was a clatter of hoofs on cobbles as Andrea led her party of girls out on their ride.

“A week after the court case I was approached by a local businessman who made me an offer for the shops and the slaughterhouse. He wasn’t interested in keeping the butchery going. He wanted to develop the property and the land. I could probably have stuck out for more but I signed at once.” Charles paused. “He knocked down the slaughterhouse and built that office block by the river. He must have made a fortune over the years but he paid me enough to buy this place and that was all I wanted.”

“Was the business yours to sell?”

“Father left it to me, if that’s what you mean. There was a will. And I was a junior partner. The old man wouldn’t have liked it, but it was legal.”

“What about Bella?”

“She wasn’t involved in the business but I put the profit from the sale of Father’s house into a separate account in her name. She knew what I was doing. I wrote to tell her.”

“Did she ever use the money?”

“No, it’s still there.”

“Weren’t you ever tempted to use it yourself?”

He blinked up at Edie, hurt. “Of course not. I hoped one day she’d get in touch.”

“Her husband’s disabled. He needs constant nursing care.”

“So perhaps I could help with that.” He considered the idea, seemed pleased. “I should have made more effort to persuade Bella to see me but I was very young. The whole business with Father had been horrible. Not just the way he died I told you I could understand that.

But all the publicity that followed. I felt hounded. Everywhere I went people were talking. I suppose I turned into a bit of a recluse.

Horses were less complicated.

“Then I married and Louise, my wife, thought it would be foolish to get in touch with Bella. I’d told her about the case but she couldn’t really understand what led up to it. Her attitude was why get mixed up in it all now when people have forgotten about it. Bella could find me soon enough if she wanted to.”

“And she definitely didn’t try to contact you recently?”

“No. I wish she had.”

“If she had tried to contact you but got through to your wife instead, would Louise have passed on the message?”

“Of course.” But despite the reply he seemed uncertain. “What are these questions about?”

“Bella committed suicide, Mr. Noble. We think she was troubled. No one at Black Law knew about the manslaughter charge. She was living under an assumed name when she met Dougie Furness. It occurred to us that someone might have discovered her secret, threatened her with exposure.”

“And that’s why she killed herself?”

“We think it’s possible.”

“I wouldn’t do that to her.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. But can you think of anyone from that time who has suddenly appeared in the area again. A friend of Bella’s. Someone who might recognize her.”

He shook his head.

“You’ve not told Bella’s story to anyone?”

Actually, I don’t often think of her now.” He looked at them over thick glasses, demanding their understanding. “Isn’t that a terrible thing to say?”

“What about your wife? Could she have mentioned it to one of her friends?”

“I don’t think it’s really the sort of thing they discuss at the Conservative Ladies’ coffee mornings.”

“If you remember anything which might help would you mind giving me a ring?” Edie said. “It’s my home number. I’m not often there but there’s an answering machine.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “You see, Rachael found the body. It was a terrible shock. I really think that only finding out what led up to the suicide will help her come to terms with it.” Good God, Edie, Rachael thought. You were doing pretty well until then.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

That evening Edie stayed in Kimmerston. There was a meeting of an educational pressure group to which she belonged and of course she felt she was indispensable. Rachael thought anyway that the isolation of Baikie’s had been getting her down. She thrived on constant phone calls, friends dropping in to weep on her shoulder or to drag her into Newcastle for a fix of culture. Anne had sometimes been up for a discussion about a play or a film, but her contribution often stopped after a discussion of the leading male’s anatomy.

In the kitchen at Riverside Terrace Edie had thrown together a meal and tried to persuade her to stay too. Rachael refused she’d brought her own car specially so she could get back and she didn’t want to leave Anne on her own.

“Well, you will take care, darling, won’t you?” Rachael took no notice of this. Edie’s mind was elsewhere. She was already planning her speech. And she’d never been much concerned for Rachael’s physical safety. While other parents stressed out about safe deliverance from parties Edie had been partying herself, assuming rightly that Rachael would have the sense to make her own way home. Edie had been bothered about more difficult things relationships, anxieties, how Rachael felt.

Now though, standing at the top of the steps to see Rachael off, Edie repeated her warning. “I mean it. Don’t stop for anything and keep all the car doors locked. And when you get into the cottage make sure everything’s bolted there too.”

So suddenly Rachael was acutely aware of a danger she had never considered before. If even Edie was worried then she should take special care. Because of this jitteriness she stopped for petrol on the main road although she still had a quarter of a tank, enough to get her to Baikie’s and back several times over. When she tried to start the engine again nothing happened. She’d had a dodgy starter motor for months but hadn’t had the time or the money to get it fixed. Usually all it took was pressure on the bonnet to tilt the car to unstick it but this time, though she and the woman from the petrol station bounced and rocked it, nothing happened. And of course the AA took hours to get out to her, although she played the card of being a woman on her own.

While she was waiting she phoned Black Law and told Joe Ashworth she’d be late. They weren’t to worry. And if Edie phoned they should explain what had happened.

“I was just about to go home,” he said. “There’s still someone here to keep a look out for Mrs. Preece. And the inspector’s about somewhere.

But if you like I’ll hang on so I can come down the lane with you.” She was tempted to agree. Then she thought of his wife, waiting for him. She’d have prepared a meal for him. Perhaps she’d even kept the baby up so Joe could give him a bath. And she remembered her first meeting with Joe Ashworth on the night Bella died. He’d been amazed by the work she did, astonished that a woman could survive on her own in the hills. She could hardly ask for an escort back after putting him right about that.

“Nah,” she said. “Of course not. Besides, I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

It was midsummer in Northumberland and still light at ten o’clock as she sat outside the garage drinking cans of coke and waiting. By the time the car was fixed and she’d driven through the new tubular steel gate onto the hill it was midnight and black. When she got out of the car to open the gate she left the engine running and even then she fumbled with the catch in her haste to pull the gate open, because she was so worried that the car would stall.

The battery must have been low because the headlamps didn’t seem to give out much light. At first she tried to go as quickly as she could but she had to slow down because she was hitting the bank and catching her exhaust on the biggest of the ruts.

A sheep ambled into the track in front of her and she braked sharply and sat, petrified for a moment, staring into its bemused amiable face before realizing what she was looking at.

This is crazy, she thought. Don’t panic. Relax. Think of something else.

So she tried to concentrate on what she and Edie had been doing that day. It wasn’t too late for her to have riding lessons, was it? Just because it wasn’t the sort of thing a right-on mother encouraged her child to do. And she thought of Charles Noble, who’d loved animals too when he was a boy, so much that he’d wanted to become a vet. Yet he’d been forced instead to watch the live cattle and sheep herded from the trucks after market and be turned into meat. His father’s death had saved him from that. It had given him a chance to buy the stables.