The Judgement of Strangers (35 page)

David. David. David.

I ran down the steps to the lawn towards the source of the scream. James flicked on the torch and followed. We pounded in the direction of the pool. My feet skidded on the wet grass. Rain ran down my cheeks and filled my eyes. The beam danced like a will-o’-the-wisp in front of us. I stumbled and almost fell down the short flight of steps from the lawn.

Rain speckled the surface of the water. The torchlight swooped from one side of the pool to another. It picked out Audrey in the shallow end, her hair hanging wet and loose on her shoulders, and the skirt of her dress floating around her on the water. She was standing with her arms upraised, her mouth wide open and her head thrown back as if she were addressing a deity only she could see.

David. David. David.

The beam danced on. It showed a woman in Vanessa’s dress, lying on her belly in the water, with Vanessa’s hair floating like black seaweed beside Audrey’s ballooning skirt.

The light skipped onwards. The water was no longer merely blue: reds and pinks swirled like clouds on a dawn sky. Its surface was pockmarked with a shifting pattern of raindrops.

David. David. David.

The wind soughed in the branches of the trees beyond the pool, and the leaves of the copper beech rustled. The beam danced back, light as a feather, first to Audrey and then to Vanessa. All the while the baying continued.

David. David. David.

Only one thing could have been worse than Vanessa dead.

I had few memories of the rest of the night after we found her floating in the swimming pool, and they were little better than a succession of snapshots. Even their sequence was uncertain. In my mind I shuffled them to and fro, trying to put them into order, trying to make sense out of nonsense. Coherence is a weapon against chaos, against fear, against evil. I made myself believe that.

First in the sequence came the stench of chlorine filling my nostrils. The water was cold, almost icy. It slapped and patted me like a hostile masseuse. It did not want me to reach Vanessa.

David. David. David.

I was aware of an obstacle, of something clinging to me, hindering me from reaching Vanessa. I made an effort and threw it aside. Did I hit it? Not
it
: her. Audrey.

Vanessa lay in the water like a log – a thing not a person. I pawed at her, trying to get a grip. Her dress ripped. Tendrils of hair coiled around my wrist. I thought again: yes,
how like seaweed
. I hooked my arms under her armpits and pulled the top half of her body out of the water. Even with the water partly supporting her lower half, she was so heavy I could hardly raise her. She might have been made of iron.
A dead weight.

I hauled her up. Her head lolled against my shoulder. I held her, squeezing her against my chest as, less than an hour earlier, I had held Joanna. Slowly I staggered towards the side of the pool. It was as if I were fighting my way through chilly treacle. A torch flashed like a spotlight across my face. A man was shouting but I did not have the energy to listen to the words.

David. David. David.

There was a splash. The water rocked in the pool and drops of it spattered on my face. James was beside me.

‘Give her to me,’ he ordered.

I shook my head. She was my burden.

He took no notice. He prised one of my arms free and between us we half carried, half dragged Vanessa towards the ladder at the shallow end.

A little later, she lay on her back beside the pool and around her spread dark stains of blood and water. James crouched over her like an animal over its prey. Was he hitting her? Kissing her? I tried to stop him but someone held me back. Later still, perhaps, James issued orders. Blankets, bandages, hot-water bottles, ambulances. He sent people here, demanded things from there. How odd, I thought – a moment ago he was drunk, but now he seems perfectly sober.

Around us in the darkness people gathered. I heard a siren. I saw a flashing light, barely visible through the bushes of the shrubbery.

‘No, no, no,’ someone was saying; and I did not realize it was myself until Mary Vintner wrapped a blanket round my shoulders and told me to be quiet.

‘The boys,’ I muttered to her. ‘The boys mustn’t see this. Where are they?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Mary said. ‘They’re safe. We’ll look after them.’

‘And Rosemary?’

‘Don’t worry.’

There were police cars in the drive as well as an ambulance. In the ambulance, they made me lie down. I could not see what they were doing to Vanessa. The ride was very bumpy.

‘Drive more carefully,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t shake her up.’

Nobody heard me; I was not even sure that I had spoken aloud.

At the hospital, they put me in a chair. Somebody gave me a cup of tea. People talked to me and I talked back to them. What I remember most clearly, however, was a cracked tile above a washbasin in a room where they took Vanessa. The crack had a curve to it. I stared at it for what seemed like hours. The longer I stared, the more I was convinced that the line the crack described was identical to the curve of Joanna’s cheek from eye socket to chin. It was clearly a sign. But I could not interpret its significance.

I saw two hands before me: one palm upwards, holding two white tablets, and the other with a glass of water between forefinger and thumb.

‘Not heroin,’ I said, perhaps aloud. ‘Not heroin.’

‘These will help you relax,’ a woman’s voice said with such authority that I knew that she was telling the truth. ‘Swallow them.’

There was also a policeman. Before or afterwards? Or both? He wore a uniform. As he talked, he turned his cap round and round in his hands. His fingernails were chewed to the quick, and there were bright orange nicotine stains on the fingers. His voice was ugly. I did not hear what he said.

I must have slept because I remember waking. When I woke, it was as though I had climbed out of a pit of darkness into a world I had never seen before, into a bleak, featureless landscape which stretched, flat as a table, all around for as far as I could see; and above my head was the vast hemisphere of the sky; a Fen landscape, such as had surrounded me at Rosington. It was silent, apart from a faint beating of wings which might have been no more than the pulsing of my own heart.

Janet – oh Janet
. Something was wrong, worse than wrong.
Not Janet. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong woman. Vanessa? Joanna?

I remembered the pills on the woman’s hand – barbiturates? – before I remembered what had happened to Vanessa. I turned my head on the pillow. The first thing I saw was another uniformed policeman. This one had the face of a child. His scared eyes met mine. Why was he afraid of me? I stared at him.

‘How – how are you feeling?’

He didn’t wait for an answer. He stood up, opened the door and murmured something to a person I could not see.

‘My wife,’ I said; my voice sounded weak and strained. ‘How is she?’

‘Detective Inspector Jeevons will be here in a moment,’ the constable said. ‘He’ll probably be able to tell you.’

‘Surely you know?’

‘Me? No one tells me anything.’

‘But is she alive?’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, his hand on the door, eager to be gone. ‘I just don’t know.’

It was nearly an hour before I saw the inspector. In the meantime a nurse brought me tea.

‘My wife?’

‘Still unconscious. But she’s pulled through the night.’

While I drank the tea, I sat in a pair of borrowed pyjamas in an armchair by the window, looking down on a hospital car park where people with sad, intent faces passed to and fro. I assumed that someone had taken away the clothes I had been wearing last night to dry them – and possibly for examination, as well. I found blood encrusted under my fingernails and washed my hands over and over again. I tried to pray but I could not find words. After a while I simply sat there and watched the car park. At last there was a tap on the door.

Sergeant Clough sidled into the room after Detective Inspector Jeevons. Clough was more subdued than I had seen him before. He kept his brown, bald head bowed and did not speak unless Jeevons asked him to. Jeevons was younger – a man in his early forties with a dark, cadaverous face, coarse skin and black hair; he had long sideburns that reached to the bottom of his ears.

‘My wife. How is she?’

‘She’s alive, sir,’ Jeevons said. ‘But her condition’s very serious.’

‘I can’t remember properly. What happened to her? How was she hurt?’

‘She was stabbed in the left shoulder and hit over the head, probably with an ashtray. Then she fell or was pushed into the swimming pool at Roth Park. By that time she was probably unconscious.’

A woman in Vanessa’s dress, lying on her belly in the water, with Vanessa’s hair floating black and glistening around the head …

‘But she was face downwards. She wouldn’t have been able to breathe.’ I swallowed. ‘Will she live?’

‘I don’t know. The
doctors
don’t know. I’m sorry, sir – but there it is.’ He looked peeved, as though the uncertainty irritated him. ‘We’ve arrested her attacker.’

My eyes were open but they saw only the swimming pool, the dark stains on the clear water.
Pink clouds in a dawn sky. Red in the morning, shepherd’s warning.

‘Are you well enough for a little chat?’

I nodded. Clough had already opened his notebook.

‘I understand there’d been bad feeling between your wife and Audrey Oliphant for some time?’

‘I knew they didn’t get on. But surely you’re not implying –’

‘Just asking a few questions, sir. Sorry to have to trouble you at a time like this, but it has to be done. Now – several witnesses have told us that Mrs Byfield and Miss Oliphant were having words near the swimming pool just before the attack. Heated words, it seems. There had been another exchange of views, too, but that was in the house, and much earlier in the evening. This one was while you and Mr Clifford were looking at the fire. Do you remember the fire?’

‘The burning bush – tree, I mean?’

He frowned at me. ‘The one on that bit of waste ground near the garden.’

‘I rang the police.’

‘That’s right. You were going to see if there had been a break-in at the Vicarage. Remember?’

‘Yes. But then –’

‘Your daughter says she saw Miss Oliphant starting the fire. I gather she was burning some valuable papers which belonged to your wife. Or rather which had been loaned to her.’

‘
Audrey
did that?’

‘So it seems. Dr Vintner tells me that Audrey Oliphant is going through the menopause. Women can do funny things at that stage in their lives. Spiteful. A little unbalanced, even.’ Jeevons stared out of the window. ‘We’ve seen her diary.’

I thought of the red exercise book I had seen in Audrey’s sitting room.

‘Did you realize that Audrey Oliphant was in love with you, sir?’

‘Surely that’s putting it a bit strongly, Inspector? She’s a devout churchgoer and I suppose as her priest I –’

‘She wasn’t interested in you just as a priest, sir. Take it from me. We got something else from that diary. She thought your wife was responsible for cutting up her cat.’

‘But that’s absolutely ridiculous.’

‘So it seems,’ he said again, baring his teeth in an unpleasant smile. ‘But people do make themselves believe ridiculous things. It’s human nature.’ He sighed. ‘And then they go and act out the consequences.’

‘Are you suggesting that Audrey Oliphant attacked my wife?’

‘Mr Clifford tells us there was a knife down there. He’d been cutting up cheese earlier in the evening in that little changing hut. We found the knife in the bottom of the pool. There was an ashtray in there as well – a heavy, cut-glass thing, with sharp corners. According to Mr Clifford, it was on the verandah of the changing hut. No prints on either of them, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re telling me that Miss Oliphant went for my wife with a knife and an ashtray? In a homicidal frenzy?’

‘For what it’s worth, I think she was trying to help your wife afterwards. So it seems. We think she was trying to pull her out. I dare say they’ll take that into account.’

My mind grappled with his words. ‘Who will?’

‘The court. Miss Oliphant’s in custody, now. She’ll be charged later this morning.’

‘It – it doesn’t seem possible.’

‘It never does, sir, until it happens. But there’s very little doubt about it. You see, your daughter saw them fighting on the edge of the pool. She saw Miss Oliphant with the knife. And then she scooped something up from the verandah.’

The room was silent. Engines revved in the car park below.

‘Where is my daughter?’

Jeevons glanced at his notebook. ‘She’s with friends. Mr and Mrs Potter. We had a word with her earlier this morning.’

‘And Michael? My godson – what’s happened to him?’

‘He spent the night with Dr and Mrs Vintner. We’ve not talked to him yet. I’m told he’s been asking after you.’

‘I must see Vanessa.’ I said Vanessa’s name but I saw Joanna’s face in my mind: it was as if a screen slid back in my memory: Joanna reminded me of Toby, his attack on Rosemary and the two men dripping in the doorway of Roth Park. ‘What happened about the drugs?’