Charity Page 48

  ‘Fancy forgetting to lock the door,’ she muttered as she found it still on the latch. She paused in the hall, looking across the drawing room to the library and glanced at her watch.

  It was too early to wake Stephen, so she turned into the dining room to make her way to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

  She frowned at the cooker. It was still on a low heat. Opening the door she found Charity’s supper, now a dark brown mass.

  ‘Perhaps Stephen forgot to tell her.’ She sighed, scraping it into the bin and leaving the plate to soak. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she returned to the drawing room and pulled back the curtains. Only then did she notice that there was no car in the drive.

  Puzzled, she went upstairs, taking her coat off as she went. Quietly she opened the door of the room Charity was intended to sleep in, only to find the bed empty.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose she decided not to come with the storm and all. He’ll have that to hold against her now.’

  Dawn hung up her coat, changed into her uniform and brushed her hair before going downstairs again.

  It was eight o’clock when she went into Stephen’s room with the tea tray. In the gloom she could see him lying asleep on his back just as he always did. She put the tray down on the desk and went to draw back the curtains.

  As light flooded into the room, she screamed, clutching her apron between her hands.

  His face was blue, eyes bulging out of his head like azure marbles and his mouth gaping open.

  Despite all Dawn’s training and her familiarity with death she was rooted to the spot with horror.

  It was the worst day Dawn Giles had ever experienced. First Dr Harris arrived, then the local police, then a police doctor, who confirmed Dr Harris’s opinion that Stephen had been strapped down securely while still sleeping, then suffocated with a pillow.

  Margaret arrived for work at nine, but instead of being allowed the comfort of talking to another woman, a policeman ordered Dawn curtly to stay in the drawing room until she’d been questioned.

  Suddenly the house was crawling with men. Some in uniform, some plain clothes, and not one of them seemed to realise just how upset Dawn was. They took over the house, poking into every drawer, every cupboard and asking so many questions.

  They took Charity’s, Prue’s and Toby’s telephone numbers but didn’t tell Dawn whether or not they’d been able to contact any of them.

  Stephen’s body was photographed, then later taken away for a post-mortem and she still wasn’t allowed to move. Worse still, Dawn realised with ever growing horror that she was a prime suspect.

  At five in the afternoon the police got the message that Charity Stratton had been found in a hospital in Ealing. Admitted seriously injured less than two hours after the time of Stephen’s death, her car had crashed as she came off the Oxford road.

  Dawn didn’t know how to react to this further tragedy in the family, and it didn’t help that the police wouldn’t explain anything. Had Charity been here? Was it possible that she had killed Stephen? Or was it just coincidence?

  At ten Dawn went to bed, but knew she wouldn’t sleep. All alone in the big house, she was scared. Not just of all the strange creaking sounds the Priory made at night, but of the future.

  She had been told by the police not to leave the house, or to gossip with anyone about the investigation. They’d locked Stephen’s room and taken away the key.

  Everything she’d worked for these seven years – gone. Who would want to employ her as a nurse when it got out that she’d left her last patient all alone?

  The police were informing both Prudence and Toby about the murder and soon they’d be here, doubtless blaming her for everything. Neither of them would give her a reference now.

  Charity was aware of someone sitting beside her, though she couldn’t see them, just as she’d been aware of people handling her on and off for some time. She had memories of terrible pain, but could feel nothing now.

  Her right arm wouldn’t move, it seemed to be held fast, but her left fingers were touching something bumpy and soft. She moved them slightly, like a blind person reading Braille, but no message came back to her. Slowly she lifted them up to her face.

  ‘Miss Stratton?’ A deep male voice spoke.

  She tried to move her head in the direction of the voice, but a sharp pain in her neck prevented her. Slowly she lowered her hand to her mouth. It felt so strange, something like after having an injection at the dentist, puffy, yet numb, then as she felt upwards towards her eyes her fingers touched a bandage.

  ‘What’s happened to me?’ Her voice came out as a croak, her hand feverishly discovering that her entire head seemed to be bandaged.

  ‘You’re in Ealing hospital. You had a bad accident in your car. Do you remember?’

  ‘My car?’

  She could picture herself in her car. She was in a traffic jam just by Lord’s Cricket Ground and someone was honking a horn at her because she hadn’t moved when the car in front did. She moved the memory frame forward and saw herself getting out at her flat, locking the car and going in.

  She could hear the man telling her about an accident at Hanger Lane, about the passengers in another car she hit, but it meant nothing.

  ‘Am I blind?’ she whispered.

  She could tell he’d moved closer to her; she could feel his breath on her cheek.

  ‘No. Your eyes and head are bandaged because of bad cuts, and your arm’s broken. But the doctor will come and tell you about it.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’ Her lips were sore and her tongue felt too big for her mouth.

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ he said. ‘Jim Baker. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to wake up. How do you feel?’

  She couldn’t answer that question accurately. Maybe if she could see how bad her injuries were she’d be able to make an assessment. She felt numb, her mind cloudy, and apart from her fingers touching the blanket she had no real feeling.

  ‘Am I paralysed?’ she asked weakly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied and she heard sympathy in his voice. ‘But the doctor will come any minute.’

  She felt herself drifting off again, and even though she was aware the man was speaking to her, it meant nothing.

  ‘She woke for a minute or two.’ Jim Baker got up and moved towards the policeman who’d come to relieve him. ‘But she didn’t say much.’

  Charity had been admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital thirty-six hours earlier but once it was discovered she was the niece of the wealthy man who had been murdered in Oxford the day before, she had been moved up to a private room on the second floor. The two policemen had been sitting with her in shifts since then, waiting for her to come round.

  PC James Baker was stout, prematurely balding even though he was only thirty. Unambitious, he usually ended up being given jobs like this because of his patient, caring nature. Martin Cox was the same age, and they had joined the force at the same time, twelve years ago. Already their sympathies were aroused by the patient, regardless of whether or not she’d played some part in the murder. Lying in that bed she looked so small and helpless, like a child.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Hugh Mainwaring stared at the newspaper in front of him. He had a client waiting to see him, a pile of briefs that needed checking through and there were letters he should dictate for his typist, but he was stunned by all the memories thrusting their way back into his mind.

  ‘Charity,’ he muttered to himself.

  His office was small and cluttered. A gloomy room which befitted his status as a junior partner in the firm of solicitors, tucked away on the second floor of their chambers in the Temple.

  Today had started as uneventfully as all other days. He caught the eight-fifteen train from Staines, just as he did every morning. In his pin-striped dark suit, bowler hat, furled umbrella and briefcase, he blended in with all the other City gents who flocked to the City daily. He nodded to men he saw e
ach morning and resigned himself to folding his copy of The Times and attempting to read it standing up, as it was a rare day when he managed to get a seat.

  It was doubtful he’d have even noticed the small item about a retired colonel found dead in his bed if it hadn’t happened in Oxford. He idly wondered whether ‘suspicious circumstances’ meant the man had been poisoned, shot or strangled, then moved on to something else.

  Had it not been for Simon, one of the articled clerks, he probably wouldn’t have heard anything more about the case for a day or two.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind a bedside vigil with her myself!’ Simon was saying, to giggles from the typing pool, hanging over a copy of the Daily Mirror. Simon fancied himself as a ladies’ man, despite the fact that he was only five foot three with a round, chubby face. Hugh paused, more from amusement at Simon’s schoolboyish glee than interest in the object of his admiration.

  ‘Blonde or brunette?’ he asked, fully expecting Simon to report rapturously on the girl’s vital statistics. ‘Has she got big ones?’

  ‘You men are so insensitive.’ Judy the older of the two typists, a bookish girl with glasses, looked offended. ‘The poor girl’s in hospital fighting for her life. How can you treat it so lightly?’

  Hugh moved closer to the paper on the desk, but even as he read the headline POLICE IN BEDSIDE VIGIL, the picture beneath it of a beautiful blonde woman made his head spin. He sat down with a bump on a typing stool.

  ‘I say Hugh, you’ve gone as white as a sheet!’ Simon said. ‘Do you know her?’

  Denial was instinctive.

  ‘Just for a moment I thought I did.’ Hugh forced himself to smile. ‘One too many drinks last night!’

  He left the typing pool seconds later, but instead of going to his office went out into the street to buy another copy of the paper.

  It was like having twelve years stripped away. Hugh’s heart was pumping and his palms were sweaty. In his head Charity had stayed as she’d been when he saw her ride off on her bike that last day at the cottage, boyishly slender in little blue shorts, her hair long and straight, her sweet innocent face distorted by tears.

  This other Charity looked to be a beautiful woman, with a coolly distant expression and a harder look in her eyes.

  *

  It was five in the afternoon before he had time to get his thoughts together. All day between court appearances, reading briefs and interviewing two clients, Charity had been flitting through his mind. He could recall every detail about that summer romance. He’d often relived it in his mind and had been surprised at how long she stayed with him, despite the number of other girls he’d slept with at Oxford.

  Hugh had always been considered a lucky chap. He had breezed through school and Oxford effortlessly, liked by almost all his tutors, looked up to by other students and very successful with women. But somehow, somewhere along the line a light had gone out, and he’d lost his glow.

  Marrying Sophie Alton had been perhaps slightly influenced by the fact that Beresford, her father, was a High Court judge, but Hugh had honestly thought he loved her at the time.

  The temptation, based on his teenage memory, was too strong. His hand strayed to the phone. The least he could do was check out how badly hurt she was and maybe discover how involved she was in the death of her uncle.

  Half an hour later Hugh was still in his office. He was aware he’d missed his usual train home and that Charles Sommerville, a colleague, was coming to dinner. His police contact said she was badly injured, that she had no memory of driving anywhere.

  ‘Oh Hugh, I’m furious. You are naughty being late tonight.’ Sophie came out of the kitchen as he stepped into the hall. ‘Charles and Hilary will be here in five minutes and I was expecting some help.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Hugh put his umbrella in the stand by the door and kissed her proffered cheek. He was tempted to say that she’d had all day to prepare dinner. Cooking for two old friends wasn’t exactly beyond a woman who boasted she could knock up a cordon bleu meal in half an hour, and she had a daily woman in anyway. ‘What needs doing?’

  ‘Nothing now,’ she sulked. ‘I’ve even opened the claret. You’d better get changed.’

  Sophie’s prettiness was of the chocolate-box variety: strawberry blonde, with pink and white skin and a hint of freckles on her slightly upturned nose. In a long, pintuck-bodiced Laura Ashley dress, she was a real Home Counties girl. She liked everything to be perfect, a kind of romantic dream in soft focus. Ruffles on every flower-sprigged curtain, a profusion of cream lace and gentility.

  Hugh had made no protests as each room in their mock-Georgian house was transformed into pretty feminine perfection. Sophie scoured antique shops for the stripped pine furniture, studied the glossy magazines for further inspiration to create an image of Edwardian fussiness. But tonight as he went into their bedroom and saw the satin and lace-trimmed pillows strewn on the canopied bed, he had a desire to sweep them all off. Open the window to let out the smell of pot-pourri, and untidy those perfectly placed bottles of expensive perfume.

  A dark blue velvet frame trimmed with ribbon on his chest of drawers held a photograph of Sophie in her wedding dress, with beside it a small crystal vase of freesia. He took out his gold cufflinks, put them into the tiny tray left for the purpose and winced at the photograph.

  Their wedding day had been the first time he had realised how entirely self-centred Sophie was. Everything from her ridiculously expensive dress to his top hat and tails, the open-topped vintage car and even her lace parasol had been designed to show herself off. He had been well down her list of priorities that day.

  ‘Damn you,’ Hugh muttered as he went into the bathroom for a shower. He wasn’t sure if he meant Charity for invading his thoughts again, or Sophie for not turning out to be quite the loving partner he’d expected.

  Hugh slipped away to his study while Sophie was showing Charles and his wife some holiday snaps, using the excuse that he had to telephone a client urgently.

  ‘How the hell are you, Rob?’ he said, quite forgetting he had neglected his old chum shamefully over the past ten years. ‘It’s Hugh! Long time no see!’

  He kept up the lighthearted banter for some minutes before he began to realise that Rob didn’t sound particularly pleased to hear from him.

  ‘Look, I’ll get to the point, old man,’ he said, having the grace to blush a little. ‘Have you seen the papers today? Charity – you remember her, don’t you? – Well she’s had a bad car accident, and you being a doctor, well I thought you’d be well placed to find out how she is.’

  Dr Robert Cuthbertson put the phone down and for a moment he was too stunned by the news from Hugh to even think.

  ‘Charity,’ he said aloud.

  He could recall a picture of her as clearly as if he’d seen her this afternoon. Yet it was twelve years ago when he’d stood at the cottage door and seen her for the first time.

  She’d been wearing a pink cotton dress that day; her legs and arms bare and her long blonde hair windswept from riding her bike. Her smile was as shy as his own and he remembered being acutely aware of his acne and his weedy frame, next to Hugh’s teen idol perfection.

  Charity had stayed in Rob’s head and heart long after his tan from that summer had faded and he couldn’t count the times he’d ridden his bike up past Bowes Court school with the faint hope he might just run into her.

  He stood up, leaving his sitting room to get the telephone directory from the hall, but as he saw his reflection in the hall mirror he was again reminded of how much time had passed and the changes that must have taken place in all three of them.

  Rob had had a spurt of growth after that summer. Now he was a presentable five feet ten, and no one, not even wonderboy Hugh Mainwaring, could accuse him of being a weed any longer. Rob could never have been described as handsome – his fair hair flopped, he got freckles in the sun and there wasn’t one remarkable feature in his face – but his patients responded to him, nurses claimed he ha
d a kissable mouth, and it was a face that seemed to improve with maturity.

  Rob’s life hadn’t turned out a bit as he’d supposed it would that summer in the cottage. He didn’t even get to Oxford. When his mother came back from Italy she’d collapsed with a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide, so Rob stayed at home instead. It was during this time as he helped look after his mother that his whole outlook changed and he decided to become a doctor. He got a place later in a pre-medical course at St Bart’s in London, but it wasn’t until six years later, still at St Bart’s doing his pre-registration year, that he realised medical or surgical work wasn’t for him, but psychiatry. Now he was a senior registrar at Colney Hatch mental hospital.

  Rob lived at Albemarle Mansions, a quaintly Victorian block of flats just off Baker Street. His grandmother had bought the flat for him for his twenty-first birthday, though she never understood why he wanted such an odd, old-fashioned place, aside from it being a smart address.

  But then Rob loved the odd, the unexplained, even the bizarre; that was why he liked psychiatry. His flat was like a rabbit warren: long narrow passages, peculiar shaped rooms, an impractical place with great character.

  He’d furnished it with antiques from his grandmother, not because they were valuable, but because he loved to have memories of her and they looked right here. Girlfriends said the place was creepy, but that was because he seldom remembered to replace light bulbs. His work at the hospital didn’t give him much time for tidying up. In his sitting room books were piled on the floor, a mountain of papers spilled over his desk, and his bedroom was even worse.

  After Rob had rung the Ealing hospital he sat at his piano and began to play. He had been working his way through Beatles numbers for some weeks, but he found it ironic that the one he picked tonight was ‘Girl’.

  ‘She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry, but you don’t regret a single day,’ he sang softly.

  PC Jim Baker was bored stiff. He couldn’t think why they were still mounting a twenty-four-hour guard on Charity Stratton as it was patently obvious she has neither the strength nor the inclination to run away.