Strangers at the Gate Page 17

  ‘He was on holiday,’ said Julie. ‘He had gone off on a trip to cheer himself up. He was losing his wife and he was scared he’d lose his kids. There’s always some stupid judge’ll give custody to the mother.’

  ‘Not that mother!’ Paddy said.

  ‘Things we’ve seen,’ said Julie, darkly. ‘So he went off on a treat. Who could blame him?’

  ‘The papers blamed him,’ Abby said. ‘He showed me the clippings one time. The tabloids had a field day.’

  ‘Where was he?’ I asked. I knew how the gutter press liked to twist things.

  ‘He was on the Orient Express,’ Julie said.

  ‘You’re kidding!’ said Shannon.

  ‘It had been a pipe-dream ever since he was a little boy.’ Julie sounded defensive.

  ‘But could it be any fishier?’ said Shannon. ‘He went on a trip on a train that’s like a flipping code-word for getting away with murder.’

  But that wasn’t what was bothering me. What was bothering me? There was a faint memory of something I’d seen or something someone had said. A trace so faint it faded before I could grasp it. For some reason, the slide show from Dudgeon, Dudgeon and Lamb came into my mind, the endless loop of pictures, each bleaching out as the next filled in, changing, changing, as if you were travelling past them on a journey. But the wisp of thought was gone.

  ‘What was your idea?’ Paddy said. ‘Just out of interest.’

  I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t very realistic, even if we accepted Lovatt as a murderer. It’s not worth airing, if he’s definitely not. Look, we need – someone needs – to go up to the house and see if we can get solid proof that they’ve scarpered. Then we need to phone the cops and get this show on the road.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ Julie said.

  Paddy was shaking his head and I was sure his face had drained of some colour. No, he was telling me. No. He couldn’t walk into that kitchen again. He was safe, because I couldn’t make him.

  ‘What exactly is it you expect to find?’ said Abby.

  ‘Emptied wardrobes,’ I said. ‘Shredded papers. Fridge turned off and propped open, I don’t know, but there’s got to be a difference between a house you’ve walked away from for three weeks and a house you’ve left for ever.’

  Abby was nodding. ‘Okay. Will you come along, Finnie? Like you said. I’d be happier if there was a witness from outside the firm.’

  ‘Even if I’m married to the junior – only – partner?’

  ‘You caught me,’ Abby said, and her sallow cheeks were faintly pink for a moment. ‘I think you being a deacon’ll make it look less dodgy that we’re breaking into our boss’s house.’

  ‘Shannon,’ I said, ‘will you stay here with Paddy or can we drop you back at your place?’

  Shannon shook her head and took another sip of tea. ‘I’ll stay.’

  It was raining even harder now. Little floods were coursing and chuckling down each side of the drive to pool between the gateposts, and when we looked past the flashing wiper blades, the veils of rain falling between the black trees looked too solid to push through. Abby put her headlights on full beam and crawled along, hunched forward in her seat.

  ‘I’ve been to the house before, Finnie,’ Julie was saying. ‘Plenty of times. Lovatt and Tuft always ask the staff round at Christmas and again in the summer. But it’s a thought to go in uninvited and start poking around. What if we’re wrong?’

  ‘And they come back from Brazil and report you for housebreaking?’ said Abby. ‘That’s why there’s three of us, backing each other up. We can say we were worried.’

  ‘If you thought the email was dodgy, you’d be worried,’ I said.

  ‘Dodgy how?’ said Abby.

  I’d slipped up. The email was dodgy as hell, but I wasn’t supposed to know that.

  ‘Maybe there’s an alarm set,’ I said, ‘and it’ll be out of our hands as soon as we open the front door. If it’s linked to the police station, we won’t even have to call them.’

  That distracted them from my gaffe about the email, but Abby laughed it off. ‘Tuft and Lovatt aren’t the burglar-alarm sort,’ she said. ‘They’re the spare-key-in-a-fake-stone sort.’

  ‘But they’re not that sort!’ Julie said. She had rubbed a clear patch in the condensation in the passenger-side window and she was pointing at the house as we drew up on the flooded gravel, feeling the tyres wedge into the sludge as the car stopped. ‘The storm door’s open to the vestibule. There’s no way they’d have left the house like that for three weeks, never mind for good.’

  ‘Of course they didn’t,’ Abby said. ‘They’re back. Or they haven’t actually left yet. The lights are on, so there’s definitely someone in there. Let’s go.’ She had switched off the engine but now she started it up again and threw the car into reverse.

  ‘Maybe it’s a house-sitter,’ I said. ‘We could knock and ask what they know.’

  ‘I can’t see Lovatt and Tuft using a house-sitter,’ said Julie, ‘even if the holiday story is true. And if they’ve done a runner they’re hardly going to have someone in there.’

  ‘Or what day does the cleaner come?’ I said. I was getting desperate. As much as I dreaded walking into the air of that house after three days, and as much as I dreaded the sight lying beyond that kitchen island, at least once I’d faced the worst, it would be over. I would be able to stop thinking about them: her dull eyes and slashed palms, the slump of his chest over her body and that black butterfly. Once someone knew, it would stop. I could open my eyes and forget this dark prayer of memories, each point – eyes, hands, mouth, back – like a bead on a poisonous rosary.

  ‘They haven’t got a cleaner,’ Julie said. ‘Tuft’s a bit of a stickler when it comes to housework ‒ isn’t that right, Abby? Wouldn’t trust a cleaner to do it right.’

  ‘Look, I’ll go on my own,’ I said, as Abby swung round to point the car back down the drive. ‘I’ll go and knock and see if anyone answers. They can’t sack anyone for that.’ Then I was out and splashing across the gravel before they could stop me.

  I couldn’t help breathing in deep, to see if any of the smell that must have been filling the house, like a cloud of mustard gas, had seeped out around the edges of that stained-glass vestibule door. All I could smell was the rain, sharp with pine and soft with rot, but vegetative rot – mushrooms and mould. Not the sick sweetness of meat beginning to bloom and slough.

  I leaned forward and pressed the doorbell. I heard it inside the house and a helpless picture filled my head of Tuft’s clouded eyes blinking and her curled hand coming round to shake Lovatt’s stiff shoulder. Her mouth moved around the shrinking cake of blood that filled it as she whispered, ‘There’s someone at the door.’ Then Lovatt, creaking and groaning, with the knife blade screeching against his vertebrae as he moved, would pull himself up to his feet and begin to walk, hair falling in hanks from his decaying scalp and bursts of gas popping from his joints as he moved them. He was coming my way.

  ‘Well?’

  I screamed and turned to shove away whatever horror had sidled up behind me. Julie went sprawling backwards, clutching at the ivy to stay on her feet.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Abby called over from the car.

  ‘What was that?’ said Julie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t hear a thing with this hood up and I was concentrating on whether there was any noise inside. I think I heard something in there.’

  Abby had joined us now. She went straight past me into the vestibule and turned. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I thought I heard a noise inside the house,’ I said. ‘But I rang and no one answered.’

  ‘Ring again,’ said Julie. And this time we all stood with our heads cocked, waiting. The silence was broken only by the rain drilling on the roof, blatting on the car, pattering on the ivy leaves all round the door.

  Abby banged on the wooden transom between the stai
ned-glass panels and we waited again.

  ‘Oh, stuff this,’ Julie said. ‘There’s something not right. Lights on, door open?’ She was rummaging at the roots of the ivy plant to one side of the door among some lichened old curling stones and drying pot plants. ‘I’m getting the spare key.’

  ‘Try it first,’ I said to Abby. ‘You never know.’

  I took a deep breath and held it as Abby reached out and pushed the handle down. She started back in surprise as the door clicked and swung open.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Julie. ‘That’s not right. That’s not right at all.’

  ‘Okay, now we’re on solid legal ground,’ Abby said. ‘We knew they were away, we came up the drive, saw lights on, saw the door open, tried the handle and found it unlocked. Anyone would be worried about this, wouldn’t they?’

  She had opened the door wide and was looking either way, with her head inside and her feet still on the vestibule tiles.

  Julie, close behind her, leaned over her shoulder and shouted, ‘Anyone at home?’

  I was as far back as I could get on the step without being out in the rain. I waited for one of them to react, but Abby stepped onto the parquet floor of the hall and Julie followed her. Neither of them sniffed or gagged or said anything, except when Abby turned to me and asked, ‘You coming?’

  The hood pulled close around my ears seemed to make my pulse thump so loudly I thought each beat must be visible. My breath hissed through my teeth, shaky with sobs. But I stepped forward. I closed my mouth and breathed in deeply.

  There was nothing. The air inside Widdershins smelt like polish and dust, faintly of wood smoke, faintly of cooking, of coffee, of a woman’s perfume, of soap set out in dishes, and of softener used on clothes. It smelt of nothing.

  ‘Where will we start?’ Julie said. ‘I could go through the wardrobes.’ She was moving towards the stairs.

  ‘I’ll start in Lovatt’s desk in his study,’ said Abby.

  ‘What about me?’ My voice had lost all its volume, all its power. It was just a breath leaking out of my open mouth.

  ‘God, I really did give you a turn, didn’t I?’ Julie said. ‘You’re still waxy.’ She rummaged in a side pocket of her handbag. ‘Suck a sweetie,’ she said, holding out a wrapped toffee. I took it and smiled thanks, but I held it in my fist. I’d retch if I tried to eat it and my hands would shake getting the wrapper off.

  ‘You could look through the household papers,’ Abby said to me. ‘See if there’s anything.’

  ‘And where would the household papers be?’ I asked, sure that I knew.

  ‘In the kitchen, at a guess,’ said Abby. ‘Down that long passageway.’

  It seemed longer than ever, telescoping as I looked towards the half-open kitchen door. I breathed again. How was it possible that the stink had come and gone already? Even a mouse took longer than three days to desiccate.

  I shivered. And then I thought I knew. It was January and they were hardy country folk. The house was cold and ventilated and it hadn’t started yet. The changes hadn’t begun. When I opened the door it would be the same sight that had been living behind my eyes since Monday. There would be nothing worse, because nothing different.

  I pushed the door and entered, my eyes flicking to the island, to the one smear of red on the rim of the hob.

  It wasn’t there.

  I gazed at the long, unbroken, reflected shine on the white ceramic. Could a mouse, could a rat, have licked it away? Would a mouse, would a rat, bother with a smear of dried blood when such a feast lay on the floor?

  Could enough rats have eaten everything before it started to rot, before the stink began? And – everything eaten, the clothes tunnelled hollow and the bones stripped clean – would a rat, would a mouse, lick up even that one last smear?

  Scared to lift my feet in case my balance deserted me, I shuffled to the end of the island and, holding on as the room began to spin around my fading consciousness, I leaned and looked and saw.

  Tuft and Lovatt Dudgeon were gone.

  Friday

  Chapter 21

  The Reverend Robert Waugh would have made a good headmaster in a black-and-white film. The Winslow Boy, was it? Mr Chips? He was looking at me over his glasses, his fingers steepled and pressed against his lips, nearly managing to hide his shock under a performance of disapproval.

  ‘And how did you come to be in possession of this knowledge before me?’ he said.

  ‘Paddy went up there yesterday to … I don’t know why, actually, but he found it winding down. Packing confidential papers, shredding the rest. Shutting up shop. They were down to a skeleton staff anyway, apparently. And yesterday the office manager was finishing off.’

  ‘And your husband just went ahead and told you all of this?’

  ‘I think it was probably part of why we got the jobs, don’t you? A matched pair to pool our resources and work harder for St Angela’s together than any other two people could work apart.’

  ‘You work,’ said Waugh, ‘for Simmerton Kirk.’

  ‘Good to know,’ I said. ‘Here was me thinking my job might be on a shoogly nail now. I suppose the fundraising machine can just redirect itself. How do we decide where, though? If I get a vote I’d say keep it more local.’

  ‘We can take care of all of these questions when Mrs Dudgeon returns from her unexpected holiday.’

  ‘Yeah, about that,’ I said. ‘That’s something else, Robert. I don’t think that’s going to be happening.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tuft coming back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look, I only came in to soften the blow a bit. I’ll leave it to the experts to tell you the details.’

  ‘What experts?’

  ‘The police are here to interview you. They’re just outside.’ He blinked at me. ‘So, I’ll show them in, will I? And crack on? I’ve got plenty to do in my safe-as-houses job today.’

  I didn’t know why I was antagonising him. Except that I was sure my job was a goner, no matter what he said. I stood up and opened the door, letting him see the uniformed copper who was waiting to talk to him.

  Give him his due, he still managed to ask me: ‘Are you ill, Finnie? You seem out of sorts this morning. Off-kilter. Did you have a late night?’

  He was asking me if I was drunk and I didn’t blame him. I could feel myself sliding towards some kind of meltdown and I didn’t much care. Yesterday, at Widdershins, staring down at the clean kitchen floor, my headache had vanished, like a flicked switch. The tension of the past four days, all the fear, all the dread, had flooded up and over and left me reeling.

  By the time Abby and Julie came back, I had managed to drag a chair out from under the table and sink into it, but that was all.

  ‘Well, that’s a turn-up,’ Julie said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What turn-up?’

  She was so full of her discoveries, she sailed on regardless. ‘They’ve definitely not taken all their stuff with them. I don’t think they’ve taken any of their stuff with them.’

  ‘They might have bought all new holiday clobber,’ I said. I was staring at the floor as if I might see an outline, or a smudge of blood, but there was nothing.

  ‘I went into the bathroom and they haven’t taken their prescription bottles. Folk that age – even if they’re healthy – they’re always on a few pills.’

  ‘They might have counted out three weeks’ worth,’ I said. ‘Taken it in daily dispensers.’

  Abby had been listening but she cut in now. ‘They’ve fled. Left everything at their backs. The desk’s like the Mary Celeste. Unpaid bills. Uncashed cheques. A road-tax form that needs seen to.’

  ‘If they’ve fled to a country with no extradition,’ Julie said, ‘why would they care about road tax?’

  ‘You didn’t let me finish. They’ve left credit cards ‒’

  ‘They’ve probably got new ones.’

  ‘‒ and they’ve left about ten thousand pounds’
worth of cash.’

  That shut Julie up. She turned my way. ‘What did you find, Finnie?’ she asked. ‘And what did you say was wrong with you?’

  Abby looked at me properly for the first time then and frowned.

  ‘Stop me if this is a daft idea,’ I said, ‘but do you think they’re okay? I’m worried that they’re not on holiday in Brazil, or even gone to live in Brazil. I’m worried that two people in trouble have disappeared and the things they’ve wound up – the partnership in the firm and St Angela’s – are the things that need to be wound up for other people’s sake. And the things they haven’t bothered with – bills and car tax – are the things that only concern them. I’m worried most of all, if I’m honest, that they’ve gone somewhere you don’t need money.’

  Julie sat down opposite me and stared. ‘You think they’re dead?’

  I nodded. ‘I think the whole thing – whatever the hell it was – got too much for them and they decided to end it all. They stopped St Angela’s and basically handed over the law firm to Paddy and then they just—’

  ‘Why would that be, then?’ said Abby. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not jealous. I just wonder why they didn’t wind up Dudgeon, Dudgeon and Lamb as well?’

  ‘Because it’s legitimate?’ said Julie. ‘Unlike St Angela’s.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Wouldn’t they have left a note?’ Julie went on.

  ‘There’s nothing in the study,’ Abby said.

  I stood up and walked over to the little household desk that was fitted into an alcove beyond the table. The desk I was supposed to be searching anyway. It was as neat and orderly as everything else in Tuft Dudgeon’s life. A monthly planner covered the entire surface and I could see various appointments and reminders written in the pretty but illegible hand of an elderly lady. The entries carried on past today, on into the year. They were lighter as the weeks went by but they were there.

  ‘I don’t think it was a joint decision,’ I said. ‘Not if this is Tuft’s writing on the calendar.’

  Abby came over and looked. ‘It is,’ she said. ‘But that’s Lovatt’s there.’