The Shape of Snakes (7 page)

I leaned across the table to refill their wineglasses while I thought lazily about going inside to fetch lunch, a simple affair of cold meat, salad and French bread. "If it was one of her neighbors who robbed her," I said idly, "they might have kept some of the pieces, particularly if they weren't of any value. The peacock feathers in the artillery shell, for example ... the one John Hewlett described. When I read his letter I couldn't help thinking they were the kind of things someone would hang on to, if only because feathers could never be specifically identified as Annie's."

Sheila eyed me curiously. "You seem to have quite a down on her neighbors," she remarked. "Why is that?"

Sam answered for me. "The whole damn street took against her after she labeled them racists at the inquest. They plagued us for weeks with abusive phone calls. It's the reason we left England."

Liar!
I thought.

"No wonder you hate them," said Larry sympathetically.

It was a throwaway line, which Sheila, with a questioning lift of her eyebrows, invited me to expand upon. Instead I stood up and said it was time for lunch. I had learned to talk about threatening phone calls without becoming strident...

...but
hate
? That was a different matter entirely.
 

Sheila and I walked down to the paddock after lunch and leaned on the rail to watch the horses nibble halfheartedly at the withered vegetation. "Larry and I always assumed it was professional thieves," she told me. "I don't think it ever occurred to us that it might have been someone closer to home."

"How would professionals know what was in the house?" I asked. "You said yourself she never let anyone inside."

"That's equally true of her neighbors," she pointed out reasonably. "She was more suspicious of them than she was of strangers."

"They used to look through her windows," I said, remembering how I'd come across a gang of young thugs making faces at her through the glass. "The children were the worst. They thought it was funny to frighten her."

Sheila caught at the brim of her hat as a warm breeze blew across the field. "Larry's convinced it was whoever did that valuation she showed me. He thinks it was a scam-someone knocking on doors and posing as an art or antiques expert in order to find out which houses were worth robbing."

It makes sense
, I thought.

"But I don't agree with him," she went on. "I'm almost certain it was a Sotheby's valuation because I remember thinking that the figures must be right if a bona fide auction house had come up with them." She sighed. "And now I'm furious with myself that I didn't question it at the time. I mean, the whole episode was very odd. What prompted her to get a valuation? And how on earth did she gear herself up to letting a stranger loose on her treasures?" She shook her wrist and rattled the jade bracelet against her watch. "When she asked me to choose a present she wouldn't let me touch anything. I had to choose by sight, not by feel."

"When did she show you the valuation?"

"Sometime during the summer. I remember she was particularly difficult that day. One minute she wanted me to read it, the next she snatched it away as if she thought I was going to steal it. She used to get caught in mental loops that made her repeat the same words and actions over and over until something new pushed her on to another track. She could be very tiresome when she was in that sort of mood, which is probably why I didn't question what the valuation was for."

"An insurance condition?" I suggested. "No valuation, no insurance."

She gave an exasperated sigh. "That's what the police said and it made me boiling mad. 'You can't have it both ways,' I told them. Either she was a mindless cretin who let cats and drink destroy her life, or she was so switched on that she was able to organize insurance for herself. It might have helped if I could have talked to her bank manager but by the time I got around to thinking about it he was long gone. Someone told me he was working in Saudi Arabia but I never followed it up."

(
I
had, and I could remember the man's answer verbatim down a crackly line from Riyadh. "I can't help you, I'm afraid. Unfortunately Miss Butts decided I was stealing her money, so I passed her account to my deputy, who died five years ago.")

"Did you think of contacting Sotheby's to find out if they still had a copy of the valuation and why she wanted it?" I asked.

"No, but it wouldn't have made any difference if I had," she said with a dry laugh. "Larry started getting stroppy about the amount of time I was wasting so I put the husband and children first and let Annie go."

I thought about Sam's fury over the policeman in Hong Kong. "It's very irritating, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Doing your duty."

"Yes." She pulled a wry smile. "The worst is yet to come, though."

"How do you mean?"

"Larry's older than I am and he's here under sufferance until I reach pensionable age ... and that's only two years away. Then we retire to his condo in Florida."

"Why?" I asked curiously.

"It's the bargain we made when he took on me and the children." She read my expression as criticism. "We don't have the same sort of marriage as you and Sam. The plan was to return to the States when Larry retired, but he agreed to wait after I was offered this job in Dorset. He said he could tolerate another few years as long we weren't in London." She sighed. "It's a long story ... full of compromise."

"It sounds it," I said sympathetically. "Do you want to live in Florida?"

"No," she said honestly, "but I want lonely old age even less. I've seen too much of it to consider it as an option."

It was a salutary warning, coming from a doctor. "What makes you think Sam's and my marriage is any different?"

She shrugged. "He wouldn't abandon you if you gave him an ultimatum."

I was about to point out that Sam had done it once and there was no reason to imagine he wouldn't do it again. But I realized she was probably right. Somewhere along the line our roles had changed and it was Sam who feared ultimatums now. "He's more afraid of loneliness than I am," I said slowly. "which means I hold the cards in our relationship ... just as Larry does in yours."

She glanced at me in surprise. "That's a very calculated way of looking at it."

"Born out of experience," I said lightly. "I think real loneliness is to be abandoned
inside
a relationship ... to find yourself questioning your worth all the time. I know what that's like, and I know I can survive it. I imagine the same is true of Larry. He's been there, done it, got the T-shirt ... and you haven't. Neither has Sam. It puts you both at a disadvantage."

"Larry wouldn't know what loneliness was if it smacked him in the face," she protested. "He's the most gregarious creature I know. It drives me to distraction sometimes. I'm constantly being hauled out to social functions when all I want to do is sleep because I'm dog-tired from pandering to the ill all day."

I smiled at her. "That's the whole point. You're leading a fulfilled existence and Larry isn't. He has to go outside to find a sense of purpose. Yours is so strong you just fall asleep and prepare for the next day's challenges."

She propped her arms on the fence and stared across the field. "Is this your way of telling me Annie was your sense of purpose?"

"Part of it."

"You had babies," she said. "Didn't they fill a gap?"

"Did yours?"

"No, but then I had a career. In any case I'm not remotely maternal. I can cope with my patients being totally dependent on me ... but not my children. I expect my children to fend for themselves."

I wondered if she was listening to herself, and whether she'd asked Larry how he felt about the professional/private divide. "Mine just added to the general anxiety," I said, joining her at the fence. "My elder one did, anyway. We moved to Hong Kong while I was pregnant and a child was about the last thing I needed at that stage."

"How did Sam take it?"

"Blindly."

Sheila gave a snort of laughter. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He had a son," I said dryly. "He was thrilled ... just so long as someone else looked after it." We stood in companionable silence for a few moments, understanding each other. "Do you still have a copy of the list you made of Annie's possessions?" I asked her next.

"Isn't it in the file?"

"No."

She looked doubtful. "I'll have a look when I get home ... the problem is we threw so much out when we moved down here seven years ago. The other thing that's missing is the correspondence I had with the social worker. I remember she wrote a long letter describing the interior of Annie's house, but none of it was in the file when I photocopied it for you. I'm afraid it must have come adrift during the move."

I wondered what else had come adrift and indulged in a few dark thoughts about Larry, who clearly wasn't above a little sabotage to ensure that his needs came first.
Shades of Sam?
"Could you make another list?"

"I can try. It won't be as detailed as the first. What do you expect to find?"

"Nothing valuable," I said. "Little things that someone might have kept."

"Like the peacock feathers?"

I nodded.

"They could never be used as evidence."

"I know but..." I hesitated, afraid of sounding ridiculous. "It's a stupid idea really but supposing you put on your list the peacock feathers, the silhouette pictures of her grandparents and ... well, other things of little or no value ... a wooden statue, say..." I ran out of ideas. "I just thought that if 1 found someone with a similar combination in their house, I'd at least feel I was on the right track."

She threw me a startled glance. "Does that mean you're going to look?"

I shrugged self-consciously.

"But where would you start, for goodness' sake?"

"Graham Road? There must be someone left who was there in 1978. If I knock on a few doors I might come up with something." I spoke only to give her an answer, not because I had any intention of taking such a scattergun approach. I watched her expression change to one of skepticism.

"But why? It'll just be a lot of hard work for nothing. Larry was right when he said there'd be no prosecution."

"I wouldn't be looking for a prosecution for theft, Sheila; I'd be looking for a prosecution for murder. As the chief superintendent said in his letter to you, it would be different if there were question marks over Annie's death." I smiled. "Well, there are ... and I intend to prove it."

She searched my face intently for a moment. "What really happened between you and Annie that night?" she asked abruptly. "Drury showed me your statement, but you said she never spoke to you."

"She didn't."

"Then ...
why
?"

"I've got nothing better to do at the moment."

It wasn't much of an explanation but it seemed to satisfy her. "I doubt many of her neighbors will still be there," she warned. "Most of them had moved on even before we left."

"What about the vicar?" I asked. "He was always visiting people in Graham Road."

She pulled on the brim of her hat to shade her eyes from the sun. "I don't think he's there anymore."

I lifted one shoulder in a relaxed shrug. "His successor at St. Mark's ought to be able to tell me where he is. Do you know his name?"

"The new vicar? No."

"What about the one who knew Annie?"

She didn't answer immediately, and I turned to look at her. Her expression was impossible to read because her eyes were still in shade, but the set of her jaw was very grim. "Peter Stanhope," she said.
 

Letter from Libby Williams-formerly
of 21 Graham Road-dated 1982

Southampton

Octobers, 1982

Dear M,

Thought the enclosed might interest you. 1 went up to see some old friends in Richmond and happened upon the Rich. & Twick by chance. Skullduggery abounds, it seems, and there won't be much love lost between cloth and stethoscope following the Rev's libelous remarks! I remember him from Annie's funeral-a fat little bloke with sweaty palms-but don't think I ever came across the doctor. Jock and I had a man with a huge mustache.

All goes well here. I'm into my final year and after numerous attempts-a girl has to do what a girl has to do if she isn't to make the same mistake again!-I have finally met a winner. Sweet guy by the name of Jim Garth. Watch this space, as they say!

Love,
Libby

Local Doctor Denies Neglect

Dr. Sheila Arnold, 41, a partner at the Cromwell Street Surgery, Richmond, denies neglect after Frederick Potts, 87, was discovered close to death earlier this week in his flat in Charming Towers. Mr. Potts owes his life to his neighbor, Mrs. Gwen Roberts, 62. "I heard Fred banging on the party wall," she said, "so I phoned the police."

Police described Mr. Potts's condition as "shocking." He had been unable to get out of bed for several days and was in severe pain from untreated ulcers on his legs and back. He was also dehydrated and undernourished. Dr. Arnold was questioned by police following alleged claims from neighbors that she had refused to arrange nursing care for Mr. Potts because "he had been abusive to carers in the past." Dr. Arnold denies the claims.