Reflections Page 5

  Losing his telescope caused him the most grief. It would also be hardest to replace. He’d made it himself, and it had taken time and facilities he couldn’t duplicate in Marta’s spare room. Eventually he would build another, bigger and better; until then he’d acquired a second-hand reflector whose mirrors were in good order even if the frame had seen better days. It was an Altazimuth and he really wanted a motorised equatorial mounting; as against that, he could afford it. In astronomy the bells and whistles come pricy. Brodie suggested waiting until he could get what he wanted, but he seemed to think the universe would forget how it worked if he left it to its own devices for too long. Start contracting; develop a blue shift; go off in a huff and collapse in a Big Splat.

  For the same reason he couldn’t imagine spending even a few days at Sparrow Hill without his window on the stars. He unscrewed wing-nuts and disconnected struts until the telescope folded its scuffed legs like a tired flamingo and tucked itself meekly into the car. Daniel had already worked out that the terrace outside Serena’s french windows would give him a firm footing and a commanding view.

  Driving up Guildford Road Brodie asked what he’d made of the girls.

  Daniel thought for a moment. “They’re holding together by sheer willpower. The older girl’s withdrawn, the younger one’s too bright. They were right there when this thing blew up, they took the full impact; but when the dust cleared they sat up without a mark on them. They don’t know how they’re supposed to feel. I don’t know if they’ve even begun grieving yet. I think they’re still in denial.”

  Brodie frowned. “They must know what happened?”

  “Of course they do. But they daren’t admit how devastating it was. It changed their lives forever, practically and emotionally, but they’re trying to ignore that. Compartmentalising:

  putting it in a box and leaving it shut. Pretending it was no big deal so it can’t go on hurting for too long.

  “But it was a huge deal, and the repercussions will run for the rest of their lives, and when they start to confront it the grief and the fear will be overwhelming. At that point they’ll need professional help, and I don’t mean with calculus. I hope that by then we’ll know each other well enough, they’ll trust me enough, to tell me what they need.”

  Brodie glanced at him, affection laced with concern. “The things we get involved in! Daniel, don’t—” She stopped.

  He looked at her. “What?”

  She drew a deep breath. “There’s a lot of pain in that house. Don’t get so close to the children that they end up dumping it on you. You were hired as their teacher: not their guardian, their shrink or their priest. You can’t make everything all right for them. If you try they’ll let you shoulder as much of the burden as you can carry—and when you fold under it they’ll despise you. Keep a professional distance. It’s in their interests as well as yours. I don’t want to see you damaged by this.”

  His eyes were disappointed. She knew better than to meet them, to expose herself to their gentle, heart-stopping reproof until she heard herself apologising when she knew she was right. She knew Daniel. She knew his weaknesses, one of which was giving himself too generously to answer other people’s needs. Time and again he failed to hold enough in reserve to protect himself. The danger of him doing it now, of trying so hard to protect these traumatised children that he’d be torn apart by the shrapnel, was both real and imminent.

  “Don’t do that,” Brodie hissed in her teeth.

  “Do what?”

  “Look at me like that! Like I’m Snow White’s wicked stepmother. Of course I want what’s best for the girls. But I want them to get it from people who can help them without getting drawn into the tragedy. Your heart’s in the right place, Daniel, but you never know where to stop. It’s like being a blood-donor. It’s a great, generous, humanitarian thing -unless you give more than you can spare and end up in a body-bag, which is plain stupid. Help them by all means. But don’t let them feed off you.”

  Now he was annoyed. The fair brows gathered behind the bridge of his glasses, and if they’d been on foot he’d have drawn himself up to his full five-foot-seven. “I’ve never heard such nonsense! They’re not vampires: they’re two frightened little girls, and I’ll help them any way I can. Just as

  —heaven forbid she should find herself in a similar situation

  —I’d try to help Paddy. Don’t tell me to keep my distance: it’s contact those girls need. If I was afraid to make contact I wouldn’t be going there now.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  Peris met them in the courtyard. “I thought you might need a hand.” She looked in the back of the car. “I see I was wrong.”

  “I haven’t a lot of worldly goods just now,” explained Daniel.

  Peris watched in puzzlement as he extricated the folded telescope. “What is that?”

  “Daniel’s teddy bear,” said Brodie nastily, “he never goes anywhere without it. Mrs Daws, could you show me Serena’s room? And anywhere else that she kept personal papers?”

  They left Daniel to move in and set off for a tour of Sparrow Hill.

  Serena’s bedroom was on the first floor. It was clearly her bedroom, not hers and Robert’s: the paper was a pretty floral, the curtains and bedspread bought to match. There was a double bed but one dressing-table, one chair, one wardrobe. There was no evidence of a man’s presence anywhere in the room.

  The dressing-table drawer was full of cosmetics. “Is there a study or a library somewhere?” asked Brodie. “With a desk she may have used?”

  “This way.” Peris took her downstairs to a small room at the side of the house overlooking the garden. It was another intensely feminine room: a small chintz sofa, a velvet slipper-chair and a delicate bonheur-du-jour for writing at. A silver frame on top held a picture of the girls on ponies.

  Brodie opened the desk and began leafing through the pigeon-holes. She was searching for a diary, an address-book and any letters Serena had kept. When she had built a tidy pile on the writing surface she said, “Can I take these with me?”

  Peris gave a slightly bemused shrug. “Sure. The police have finished here. But there’s nothing about Constance. We checked.”

  “I know. But if I contact all these people, one of them may know where Constance is. Or know someone else who may know.”

  “How long’s that going to take?”

  Brodie wasn’t going to tell her the truth, which was a few hours—she didn’t pretend that what she did was difficult but there was no need to rub clients’ faces in just how easy much of it was. She said, “I know time’s an issue. Hopefully I’ll have spoken to most of these people within a few days. I may have found Constance by then, or at least have got a line on her whereabouts. But don’t be discouraged if it takes a little longer. It’s surprisingly hard to disappear in this country I’ll find her before you need to go home.

  “Of course, there’s no guarantee she’ll do as you ask. She might not want or be able to take on Serena’s girls, even temporarily. Have you thought what you’ll do if she says no?”

  Peris sighed. “It won’t be our decision. There are procedures to go through, paperwork to do, legal requirements to meet—we can’t just buy a couple of extra plane seats and take them back with us. If Constance can’t take them before I have to go home, the girls will go into care. We’re hoping it won’t be for too long and they’ll come and join us when they’re able to. But it’s not something any of us is comfortable with.”

  She found a shopping-bag and Brodie shovelled the papers into it. Then she checked the room to make sure she’d missed nothing.

  She found herself looking at the photograph on top of the desk again. She frowned. “When was this taken?”

  Peris leaned over her shoulder. “Can’t have been long ago or the girls would look younger.”

  “Then why are they wearing bowler hats? Adults can please themselves, but children have to wear proper riding-hats that meet modern safety sta
ndards.” She knew this because Paddy wanted to start riding.

  They studied the picture together: two girls in tweed jackets and baggy jodhpurs mounted on a couple of sharp-looking ponies. The truth dawned on both women at about the same time.

  “Those aren’t our girls,” said Peris. “That’s Serena, aged about twelve. It’s twenty-five years since that picture was taken.”

  Brodie nodded. “And if that’s Serena, the other girl is probably Constance. I’ll take this too—it might help.”

  “Do you want to see the studio?”

  “I’ll stick my head in, see if Daniel’s finished playing with his telescope.”

  Peris chuckled. “That’s a nice young man you’ve got.”

  Brodie laughed too. “Yes, he is a nice young man; but he’s not mine. We’re just friends. I don’t know why people find it so hard to believe.”

  “Me neither,” said Peris, and though Brodie looked at her hard she managed to keep a straight face until the younger woman turned away.

  Brodie dropped the bag in the car on her way across the courtyard. She let herself into the cottage. “Making yourself at home?”

  Daniel wasn’t alone. The french windows were open and he was out on the little terrace making fine adjustments to the telescope. He hadn’t so much as unpacked his toothbrush but he was coaxing the finderscope on the side of the reflector into alignment with the main mirror. She’d seen him do this often enough that she didn’t need to ask. The two girls, on the other hand, were fascinated, perched on the drystone wall and craning their heads to follow every delicate movement of his fingers.

  When Brodie said drily, “Every peeping Tom should have one,” all three of them started. The girls looked at her warily. Daniel sighed and started making his minute adjustments again.

  Now Brodie understood why Peris had seen the photograph in the study without realising the girls were not her nieces. They were amazingly alike. The younger girl was the spitting image of her mother at the same age—the sharp little face, the bright eyes, the unruly shag of floss-fair hair—while the elder had the same strong, determined face and long dark curls as her aunt. Slap bowler hats on their heads and no one would know the difference.

  They were looking at her as if she were intruding.

  Daniel introduced them. “Brodie, I’d like you to meet Juanita and Emerald Daws. Girls, this is my friend Mrs Farrell. She’s looking for your aunt Constance.”

  They didn’t even try to be polite. Em turned her back and Johnny said coldly, “Well, she isn’t here.”

  Brodie’s eyes narrowed. Because she was often the tallest person in any company, men included, she didn’t usually wear heels; but she could walk as if on the highest, sharpest stilettos ever forged. She crossed the studio and framed herself in the french window, taking possession of everything inside and out with one deliberate glance. Then she slid her gaze unhurriedly sideways till it pinned Johnny to the wall. “Go and put the kettle on, there’s a dear, while the grownups talk.”

  Colour raced up Johnny’s cheeks. She lurched to her feet and struggled to get the words out.“I’m not the servant! Peris does that!” She flounced out, Em riding her wake like a pram-dinghy behind a schooner.

  Brodie sat down demurely on the freshly vacated wall. “That’s better.”

  Daniel clung onto his patience. “You’re not making things easier.”

  “It’s no part of my job to make things easier for a pair of little madams who, however unfortunate their predicament, desperately need to learn some manners.”

  “No,” said Daniel quietly. “But it is part of mine. If not to help me, why are you here?”

  “I’m looking for anything of Serena’s that might be useful. I wondered what there was in here.”

  They went back inside. Daniel stood in the middle of the living room, looking round hopefully as if asking for volunteers. Brodie began a systematic search that involved opening every drawer and every cupboard.

  She found papers in a wooden chest in the living room, but they were all concerned with painting: order-forms and bills for materials, and articles she’d torn out of magazines. And she found the cupboard with the paintings in it.

  She blinked and stepped back, not shocked but certainly surprised. It wasn’t the sort of work she expected from a mother of two. Perhaps that was naive. Perhaps the very confines of her life made such escapism desirable. Except that desire was conspicuous by its absence.

  “Ah,” said Daniel, standing behind her. “You found them.”

  “You mean, you hid them?”

  He shrugged, discomfited. For a man who was clearly tolerant and liberal-minded, he had an odd little prudish streak that amused Brodie every time she could bait him into demonstrating it. Almost everything Daniel knew—and he knew a great deal—he’d learned from books. He’d gone from school to university to school and his experience of the real world was correspondingly narrow. Sometimes it showed. “It’s not my idea of art.”

  “If you’d found a Goya odalisque in the cupboard you’d have put it up.”

  He thought about that. Then he gave a rueful chuckle. “Do you know, I’m not sure I would?” One of the drawbacks with being fearlessly honest was that sometimes you had to admit to things you’d rather not. Sometimes it would be so easy, and so harmless, just to make the conventional response. Naked dead people art, naked live people pornography; “Waiting For Godot” an inspired allegory on the human condition; nuclear power dangerous, evil, bad. Once you started questioning the received wisdoms, and being honest about your conclusions, you raised your head above the parapet and it was only a matter of time before someone started shooting.

  Brodie returned her gaze to the painting and pursed her lips. “So this is the boy she was seeing. The one it was all about.”

  Daniel nodded. “Nicky Speers. He works at the farm across the road. I’m not sure that what happened was about him, though. He just happened to be Serena’s current project when the situation went critical.”

  “They weren’t in love, then?”

  Daniel regarded the canvas sombrely. “Do they look to be in love?”

  Brodie had her mouth open to say one thing, then saw what he meant. “No. No, they really don’t, do they? It looks as if she offered him just enough money that he couldn’t refuse. That’s not a portrait of the artist’s lover. It’s a painting of meat.”

  “The only use she had for him, so far as I can tell,” Daniel said softly, “was to make her husband jealous.”

  They put the paintings away again. The air in the little cottage tasted more of sorrow than horror.

  Brodie shook herself. “Across the road, you said?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Where Nicky Speers works.”

  Daniel had known Brodie Farrell long enough to know she didn’t make casual conversation. His eyes were alarmed. “You can’t possibly!”

  She feigned innocence. “Can’t possibly what?”

  “Comer a nineteen-year-old labourer at his place of work and ask about his relationship with a married woman who’s just been murdered by her husband! Even you have to draw the line somewhere.”

  Privately, Brodie liked being thought of as ruthless. “She may have said something to him about her sister. It won’t hurt to ask.”

  “It’ll hurt him!”

  “You drop your kit and sprawl on a silver sheet so a married woman can humiliate her husband, it’s a bit late in the day to come over all coy.”

  Daniel frowned pensively. “I don’t claim to be an authority, but somehow I doubt they were talking about her sister.”

  Brodie laughed. “Daniel, you’re such an innocent sometimes! Of course he doesn’t know anything about her sister. It’s an excuse to pay him a visit.”

  “But—why would you want to?”

  She nodded negligently at the cupboard door. “I’ve seen the advert, now I want to examine the goods.”

  Chapter Seven

  Nine days into the murder inquiry, D
etective Superintendent Deacon knew no more than he had two hours after he first went to Sparrow Hill. He hadn’t found Robert Daws. He hadn’t found anyone who had seen or heard from Daws since the death of his wife. He hadn’t found his car, or anyone who had seen it after that day. His passport, credit cards and mobile phone were all missing but there was no record of any of them being used in the last nine days. The man seemed to have fled Sparrow Hill, leaving his wife bleeding on her studio floor, and disappeared into thin air.

  Leaving his young daughters alone with their mother’s body. Well, he panicked. He had to get away before the alarm was raised, and didn’t think about the girls until it was too late. He’d know someone would take care of them. He might have guessed his brother would come home. But it had taken forty-eight hours for Hugo to arrive: forty-eight hours in which the only support those girls had was a rota of WPCs who stayed with them in the main house while Deacon’s team busied themselves in the cottage.

  It had been deeply unpleasant for the adults involved: who could guess how those two young girls had felt? If he hadn’t known Hugo Daws was on his way Deacon would have had Social Services remove them from the scene, however tearful their protests. He had never been happier to see anyone than when the tall thin man got out on one side of the hired car and the broad black woman on the other, and he was able to transfer responsibility for the shocked and grief-stricken children to a blood relative.

  Deacon was no good with children. His marriage had been brief and happily unblessed; since then he’d spent his time almost exclusively with criminals, other police officers and barmaids. It had not equipped him to deal with children of any age or either sex. Treating them like other people -perhaps with a limited vocabulary although Deacon wasn’t a man to use long words when pithy short ones would do -simply never occurred to him.