Faithful unto Death Read online

  Shona, having long since appreciated the abandonment of all previous rules and regulations, was lolling in an armchair on a mass of scatter cushions. She jumped down when the two women left and followed with a melancholy swagger. As Barnaby replaced the receiver, Reg began to argue.

  “Photographs aren’t real life. You should get someone who knew her to do a proper identification. Try Mr. March-banks, from the office. Or Miss Travers from Personnel. They thought the world of Brenda.”

  To his shame, Barnaby became aware of a flicker of irritation, as if this man’s refusal to accept the loss of his only child was somewhat irrational. After all, it was not as if such a reaction was out of the ordinary. Shock took different people different ways and one of the most common was an inability to believe that what had truly happened, had happened. And who would not use every ounce of energy to hold the smashing of their entire world at bay? How would I cope if it was Cully? wondered the Chief Inspector. And knew that it would finish him.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Brockley?”

  “Yes.” Reg walked hesitantly to the nearest chair, running the tips of his fingers over the arm before lowering his body, like a blind person. He said, almost to himself, “Why on earth would Brenda have been at Heathrow?”

  Unable to answer, Barnaby asked if there was anyone Reg would like the police to contact.

  “What?”

  “A neighbour? A relative perhaps?”

  “What for?”

  “You and your wife will need some support, sir.” Silence. “And help, if only of a practical nature.”

  “We’re a very private family.”

  It seemed unnecessarily cruel to point out that they would not be very private for much longer. The fact that their daughter had lived next door to a couple who were themselves currently making lurid headlines would not be missed by the tabloids. In next to no time journalists and photographers could be swarming all over their neat little pea shingle drive. Barnaby wondered if he could perhaps prepare the Brockleys for this invasion without being too blunt about it. He suggested they might like to go and stay with friends for a few days. Dully, Reg explained that they had no friends.

  Audrey, having brought Iris back into the sitting room, was handing round cups of tea when the doorbell rang.

  Barnaby had been brief on the telephone, simply telling the Brockleys’ GP that they had received very bad news and that his presence was urgently required. Audrey let Dr. Jennings in and spoke to him in the hall, explaining the situation in more detail. He entered the room looking deeply shocked, went over to Iris and began to talk quietly. Eventually he persuaded her to get up and he and Audrey half led, half carried her upstairs.

  As soon as they had gone, Barnaby began to speak. He did this from regretful necessity knowing, from long experience, that there was no way to make the sudden transition from the personal to the practical sound anything but crude, even heartless.

  “I was wondering, Mr. Brockley . . .”

  Reg did not respond. He was sitting quietly, resting his elbow on one knee and his forehead in the heel of his hand, as if shading his eyes from an unspeakable catastrophe.

  “. . . if you feel up to answering one or two questions.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, Brenda. Time is very important in a situation like this. Your daughter has already been dead for perhaps five days. The sooner we can start to gather information, the better our chances are of catching whoever brought this tragedy about.”

  In normal circumstances this sort of fudge-up would have rung an extremely loud warning bell, for there was no logical reason why knowing the background to a random hit and run victim’s life would help trace the driver responsible. Barnaby was banking on Reg’s devastation not to spot this. And on his remarkable subjection to authority.

  “So if you could tell me a little—”

  “She was very highly respected.”

  “I’m sure—”

  “You won’t find anyone to say a word against her.”

  “Forgive me if I recap on ground you may have covered at the station,” he would look over the couple’s earlier interview when he got back, “but it’s obviously very important that we get every detail absolutely right. She dashed out of the house—I think that was how you put it—at around about seven thirty.”

  “Watchdog was on.”

  “Did Brenda say anything at all as she went out?”

  “She just ran off.”

  “Nothing about meeting anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Did she take a coat?”

  “No.” He was becoming querulous. “I told them all this.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, Mr. Brockley. You said Brenda had no special friends. Was there anyone at work perhaps she was close to?”

  “No person more than another. She got on with everyone.”

  Barnaby took this with a grain of salt. No one got on with everyone, but the pitifully unattractive needs must develop their own defences and stratagems against rejection. Perhaps Brenda’s had been a continuously compliant and ingratiating manner. Well, he would soon find out.

  “They bought her a lovely brooch,” said Reg. “With her name on.”

  “What about telephone calls at home? Or letters?”

  “From men, you mean?”

  “Not necessarily, sir.”

  “Brenda was very choosy.”

  Barnaby narrowed the circle, asking about possible acquaintances in Fawcett Green. He got nowhere. Brenda Brockley had got up, gone to work, come home, had her tea, walked her dog and gone to bed. That was it. The life plan.

  “Although . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s nothing, really. Just that, over the last few days, she has been, well, different.”

  “In what way?”

  “Abrupt. She’s always had a lovely way with her. Mummy and I insisted. Courtesy costs nothing. But then she started getting all reserved. Not joining in the conversation. Refusing to answer questions about her day. That sort of thing.”

  Barnaby, who lived half his life in just such a manner, much to his wife’s annoyance, hardly knew what to say. But it was interesting that this change in Brenda’s behaviour seemed to have taken place around the time of Simone Hollingsworth’s disappearance.

  “I suppose we’ll never know what the problem was now.” Reg’s voice had become strained and forlorn.

  There seemed little point, at this stage, in being any more precise or stringent. It could even be counterproductive. Iris, when she was in any sort of state to answer questions, might well be more helpful.

  Barnaby explained that it could be necessary to make Brenda’s room available for examination some time during the next few days. Bearing this in mind, would Mr. Brockley have any objection if he, Barnaby, had a look around right now?

  “Normally I’d have to say no,” replied Reg. He got up quickly, as if glad to have a definitive objective. Almost bustling across the carpet. “Her door was always locked, you see.”

  “Oh?” Barnaby was immediately intrigued as to why a blameless spinster, long past the adolescent “Keep Out—This Means You!” phase, would do such a thing.

  “But she dashed off in such a rush she didn’t take her bag.” As they climbed the stairs he added, unhappily, “We’ve spent a lot of time up here, over the past few days.”

  He hovered wretchedly just inside the door while Barnaby, who would much rather have had the place to himself, looked around the silent, abandoned room.

  A pink candlewick dressing gown was draped over the back of a chair. The curtains and bedspread were of a matching trellised print of insipid leaves and flowers. There was a clock radio and a couple of framed country scenes so completely characterless they could have been set almost anywhere. Above the bed was a large framed print of two small street urchins, a boy and a girl, holding hands and crying. Tears, in the form of several tiny, clear glass beads, were glued to their cheeks.

  Barnaby,
who had seen the likeness more than once before, remained bewildered. What sort of person would want, permanently displayed in their home, images of distressed children?

  He opened the wardrobe and looked briefly inside. Duncoloured suits, a single patterned dress (brown and olive green), several pairs of highly polished black and navy court shoes, all on trees. A drab overcoat. Dressing-table drawers revealed some plain cotton underwear and several pairs of heavy denier, flesh-coloured tights. They held no perfume or make-up. Perhaps she had long ago recognised the futility of any attempt at cosmetic improvement, let alone transformation.

  Close to the narrow, single bed was a glass shelf supported by curly metal brackets, painted white. This held soft toys and a small stack of romantic novels.

  Barnaby turned his attention to the pretty antique desk placed by the window. He lifted the lid. The desk was empty but for a flat, dark green, beautifully marked book which he took out and opened. An action that finally provoked Reg into speech.

  “Inspector, if you wouldn’t mind. I think that could be rather personal.”

  “It’s the personal that might help us the most, Mr. Brockley.” Barnaby switched on the little goose-necked lamp, adjusted the pink shade, opened the pages at random and began to read.

  April 3rd: Today a new departure. A has discovered where I work! Emerging from the office I literally “cannoned” into him. And there was something about his expression—slightly guilty but at the same time eager and excited—that told me this was no coincidence.

  After this accidental (quote unquote) collision there was nothing for it but that he absolutely must take me to lunch. We went to the Lotus Garden where much hilarity ensued due to my complete incompetence vis à vis chopsticks. He insisted on advising me which, needless to say, involved a lot of “hands on” tuition. His fingers are slender but so strong. Did they press a little too firmly and with unnecessary warmth? He has such laughing eyes. When they met mine I think we both realised that something hugely significant had just occurred.

  The Chief Inspector, his expression one of amazed disbelief, flicked through several more pages of vivid green script that should surely have been purple, and picked up the thread.

  May 7th: Strictly against instructions A has started to ring me at the Coalport. Need I say “raised eyebrows all round”? Trish Travers commenting on his sexy voice, everyone asking questions. I maintained a discreet silence, simply saying “no comment at this stage.”

  I’m determined not to succumb but he is so good-looking. Persuaded into another lunch—this time at the Star of India. He confessed then what I have long suspected. That his marriage is an empty sham and his life desperately unhappy. Little does he know that I also have experienced loneliness, that special He having proved elusive. Until now. Much against my better judgement and purely out of sympathy, I allowed my hand to rest briefly on his. Those laughing eyes became deadly serious and seemed to look directly into my soul. I think I knew then that there was no turning back.

  Barnaby dipped into the saga three or four more times. The gist, style and content did not change. On the point of closing the diary, he noticed a photograph pasted inside the front cover. He passed the book over, saying, “Have you seen this, sir?”

  Reg’s stretched out hand was tentative. Longing to be privy to his child’s innermost thoughts when she was alive, he now experienced feelings of severe unease at such an intrusion.

  “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “Just look at the photograph, if you will.”

  Reg stared at the picture, his eyes and mouth circles of stupefaction. He handed the diary back. “It’s Alan.” Then, as if trying to clarify an impenetrably murky situation, “From the property adjacent.” He walked, stiff-legged, to Brenda’s pretty little mother-of-pearl seat and leaned on it. “What does this mean? What is she writing? I don’t understand.”

  “There are several meetings of a romantic nature described here, Mr. Brockley. A courtship, as it were.”

  “With Hollingsworth?”

  “No name is mentioned in full.” Though a closer reading, he hoped, would prove otherwise. “But the initial A does recur from time to time. And this, coupled with the photograph—”

  “But we hardly knew them. I told you that the other day.”

  “You and your wife may hardly have know them but—”

  “Oh God! You don’t think it was Alan who . . .” Reg’s face was contorted, crazed with pain. “Could that be why he took his own life?”

  At this point Audrey appeared in the doorway to say that Iris was now asleep and that Dr. Jennings had left but would call again first thing in the morning.

  Reg cried out, “My little girl. Brenda, oh Brenda.”

  Audrey helped him up and persuaded him to go downstairs. As the two of them left the room, Barnaby thought about Reg’s agonised suggestion. Until the motorist responsible was apprehended, no one would know precisely when Brenda Brockley died; even after a post-mortem, there was always a certain amount of uncertainty. But if she had been killed last Monday night before, say, ten thirty Hollingsworth could have been responsible. He was out and about and on wheels. And it was certainly possible, given reasonable traffic conditions, to drive to Heathrow and back in under three hours.

  So, means and opportunity may turn out to be not so problematical. But motive? That was a facer. Barnaby found it difficult to believe that Alan Hollingsworth was sexually involved with the Brockleys’ daughter. His guess was that her secret writings were as much a work of fiction as the Mills and Boon novels on the little glass shelf. Not that extremely ugly woman were inevitably unable to hold a man in thrall: history had plenty of examples to prove otherwise. The Duchess of Constantinople, whose lovers were legion, was said to have warts on her nose, one shoulder higher than the other and breath to set the Bosphorus on fire.

  But in this particular instance Barnaby felt convinced he was right. Perhaps because Hollingsworth’s obsession with his wife was so consuming as to make an interest in any other woman appear unlikely. But how had Brenda viewed next door’s marriage? Did she, keeping herself to herself in this sad little cell, really know anything about it at all?

  Working on the open mind principle, Barnaby considered, for one wild moment, the idea of the Brockleys’ daughter as Simone’s kidnapper. She may well have been jealous of Simone, and even wished to do her harm. And deliberately driving Alan half mad with anxiety was also not entirely out of the question. Unrequited love could spawn behaviour both cruel and perverse. But when would she have had the time? Unless subsequent interviews at the Coalport and National proved absenteeism, every moment of her blameless, tightly organised life seemed to have been accounted for. Which meant an accomplice.

  Rapidly painting himself into a more and more impossible corner, the Chief Inspector shook the whole muddle from his mind and turned once more to the diary.

  The viridian script, tightly crammed, jigged about on the page. He flicked back and forth and then, suddenly, there was a breathing space. A cool expanse of blank lemon paper. It was broken by two lines, calmly written in pencil. He addressed himself to the brief paragraph and the words flew like arrows, straight to his heart.

  People say what you’ve never had you never miss. That isn’t true. You dream of what you’re missing all night long. And then you ache, all through the day.

  By 8 a.m. on Monday morning the incident room was as busy as a hive of bees. There was still a certain amount of fresh information coming through regarding the Hollingsworth case, including several sightings. Desk staff, civilian and uniformed alike, listened and transcribed.

  In Brick Lane, Simone had worn a gold and scarlet sari and bells on her toes. In Telford she posed as a him, in Devizes as a traffic warden. Near Stratford-on-Avon she sported on the deck of a canal barge in Gipsy earrings and little else.

  More sensibly and closer to home on the day of her disappearance, Mrs. Hollingsworth had appeared at Uxbridge Tube station loaded with Marks and Spen
cer’s shopping and constantly looking at her watch “as if she was waiting for a friend.”

  On a Country Route bus to Aylesbury a passenger had sat next to someone wearing a shocking pink linen jacket over a flowered dress with a pattern similar to Simone’s. Though this person had auburn hair and was wearing dark glasses, she still bore a close resemblance to the kidnapped woman. As the informant left the bus at Flackwell Heath she had no idea of the woman’s final destination.

  Thirdly, and most promising of all, Simone had been spotted getting into a shabby white van parked only a few yards from the department store where she had last been genuinely sighted. The person who reported this had not noticed the number but did recall that the vehicle was unmarked. In other words, not trade.

  Barnaby, refreshed after a Sunday spent pottering in his garden and lying in the deck-chair, caught up with all the other salient stuff, then asked that an “anxious to trace” notice be put out on the van driver. Also that every store in Causton, including charity shops, be questioned over the sale of an auburn wig and a pink jacket. For Mrs. Hollingsworth had certainly not been carrying either item when she boarded the market bus at Fawcett Green.

  Finally he asked for some posters of Simone showing the relevant time and date of her supposed sighting to be plastered all over Uxbridge Tube station, entrance hall and platforms. You never knew your luck.

  After this he retired to the quietest corner he could find. A briefing had been called for eight thirty which was in about twenty minutes’ time. The Chief Inspector took with him some strong coffee and Brenda Brockley’s diary which he had been perusing, on and off, since breakfast.

  A closer reading had not revealed the significance of the gold and silver asterisks and little scarlet hearts and Barnaby doubted now that he would ever understand their significance. But if they remained mysterious, Brenda’s adventures were proving to be sadly conventional. There was no breaking of banks in Monte Carlo or skiing in Gstaad. No yachting on wine-dark seas beneath a brazen Aegean sky. She did not even go to Ascot or Cowes.