Country Plot (38 page)

‘I shall enjoy watching you take her on in her own territory,' Kitty said; and added: ‘It isn't, is it?'

‘What isn't what?'

‘Your broken heart – aching?'

‘Not a twinge.'

‘Oh good. I should hate to think—'

‘No, I told you I was over Patrick, and I am. I just feel a bit – empty, that's all.'

Kitty drank her coffee. ‘I wonder when Xander will be back,' she said, as if it was apropos of nothing in particular.

‘DARLING, HOW ARE YOU?'

‘Hello, Mummy. There's no need to shout. Long-distance lines are very clear these days.'

‘I just wanted to see how you're settling in.' Annabel modified the volume slightly. ‘How are you getting on with Kitty?'

‘Wonderfully! I love her.'

‘Oh good. She always was a terrific girl. Full of bounce. Always up for everything.'

‘She still is. We're opening her house to the public.'

‘I know, darling, Sybil told me. I must say I think it's terrific of you, and just what's needed. Houses are such a
millstone
, even ordinary houses, and that great barracks of a place of Kitty's has, what, fifty bedrooms—?'

‘Nine.'

‘—and simply acres and
acres
of grounds. Must cost a fortune to keep up, but if you open it she can hire all the people she needs to keep it going, and go and live in a cottage somewhere.'

Jenna gathered that her mother had missed the point somewhere but it was too much effort to unravel it.

‘House ownership is a fool's game these days,' Annabel went on blithely, from someone else's yacht on the way to someone else's villa. ‘But I must come down and see you next time I'm in England, and visit darling Kitty.'

‘I might not be here much longer,' Jenna mentioned. ‘I'm supposed to be finishing mid-June.'

Annabel sounded alarmed. ‘Darling,
we
can't have you. This wretched boat has to have something done to it – have its bottom scraped or something. It'll be out of commission for a month or something ghastly, so we have to move into a hotel until we can go to Cap. Clifford wants a Greek island, for the light –
just
the wrong time of year when the prices start to go up. And so inconvenient. I should see if Kitty can't keep you a bit longer, darling, really I should. Maybe until you're ready to go back to London.'

‘Don't worry, Mummy, I shan't be bothering you.' Knowing how short her mother's calls generally were, Jenna hastened to get her question in. ‘Mummy, do you remember the Lathams?'

‘Kitty's friends? Of course I do, darling. We were all very inty at one time, the six of us, until Xenia Latham divorced Geoffrey and broke his heart. She was spectacularly beautiful. Only frightfully Russian and temperamental, you know? All smouldering passions and sultry seductiveness, interspersed with screaming rages.
Too
exhausting! It must have worn Geoffrey out, and the more she let everything out, the more he bottled it in. I always though they were a frightfully mismatched pair. Though he had hidden depths,' she mused.

Jenna was alarmed. ‘Mummy, what do you mean?'

‘Oh, nothing sinister, darling. He was typically English, that's all, frightfully buttoned up on the outside but very human inside if you could get past the shell, and with a nice sense of humour when it was allowed out, which Xenia never had, of course. These East Europeans are all so
serious
. I have to go, darling, Geoffrey's waiting to use the phone.'

‘Wait, wait, Mummy, please!' Jenna said urgently. ‘Do you remember Alexander?'

‘Alexander who? Can't it wait until next time, darling?'

‘No, it's important, I must know now. Alexander Latham, their son.'

‘Oh, he was just a little boy. Yes, I remember him. Very dark, handsome, quite like Xenia to look at. Not that Geoffrey wasn't good-looking too in that very English way. Rupert Brooke-ish.'

‘Alexander?'

‘No, Geoffrey. Alexander was very quiet. Had a tendency to lurk, as I remember.'

‘Lurk?'

‘You'd turn around and there'd he'd be, watching you. You never saw him come or go, but you'd stumble over him in doorways and dark corners. Strange child.'

‘Mummy, this is really, really important, so please tell me: has Alexander got any reason to disapprove of you?'

‘Of
me
? Of course not. What
can
you mean?'

‘When he wants to disapprove of me, he says, “You're just like your mother.” What does that mean?' She had a horrid thought. ‘Mummy, you didn't have an affair with Geoffrey, did you?'

‘What a thing to suggest! Of course not. I was always faithful to your father,' Annabel said with convincing indignation. Then she added, ‘But, wait, now. I wonder . . .'

‘What?'

‘Well, after the split-up, Geoffrey was frightfully cut up. The fling he had didn't last, of course, and he really adored Xenia, and wanted to get back together but she was implacable. He had no one to turn to – you know these silent-suffering men. But somehow he managed to unburden himself to me. Used to phone me up and talk for hours. And we'd meet sometimes for lunch in town so he could sob on the shoulder – metaphorically speaking, of course. But it was all absolutely innocent, darling, I promise you. I was insanely in love with your father. Totally madders.'

‘I believe you,' Jenna said. ‘But I wonder if Alexander got hold of the wrong end of the stick somehow?'

‘It's possible, I suppose,' Annabel acknowledged, ‘because of the lurking thing that I mentioned. And later, when Xenia died, I spent a lot of time talking to Geoffrey, because he was devastated, even though they'd been divorced for a long time by then. Alexander would have been about seventeen or eighteen, I suppose. A bad time for a boy in the best of circumstances, but to lose his mother – and he
had
adored her, quite beyond her merits in my opinion. He might have misconstrued, being emotionally upset already. In fact,' she added thoughtfully, ‘I seem to remember an occasion when he arrived at the flat – Geoffrey's – and found me there. We were only talking, of course, but was there a bit of smouldering and stalking out and door slamming? I think there might have been. Of course, one pays no attention to that sort of thing in teenage boys. Catching them
not
smouldering and slamming is the trick, so naturally one wouldn't have made anything of it at the time. Oh dear,' she said suddenly. ‘Has that poor boy gone his whole life thinking I seduced his father?'

‘I don't know, but it's possible. I'll bet that's what it is.'

‘Well, give him my love when you see him,' Annabel said blithely.

The inappropriateness of the reaction made Jenna laugh. Her mother was incorrigible, so there was no sense in worrying about it. ‘Mummy, do you absolutely promise there was nothing going on between you and Geoffrey?'

‘Most excellent oath, darling. I was fond of the poor chump, but no bodily fluids were ever exchanged, I swear. Does that satisfy you?'

‘Absolutely,' Jenna said. ‘Thanks, Mummy. That's made a lot of things clearer.'

‘Darling,' Annabel said, ‘I'm so intrigued. Are you getting a
thing
for Alexander Latham?'

‘No!' Jenna protested.

‘Not even a teensy
thinglet
? If he's half as handsome now as he was as a boy – and it would be
such
a good match for you, because he's bound to come into Holtby House when Kitty dies. She hasn't any other relatives.'

‘I thought you said house ownership was an intolerable burden?'

‘Not if it pays its way. You don't have to live there. And, darling, you're not getting any younger. It's time you settled down. One's looks start to go off after thirty, no matter what cream one uses – though I do recommend you use a good one. It's false economy to go for the cheaper brands, when it's something as important as your skin.'

Jenna could only laugh. ‘I'll do my best to get married, I promise, but Alexander Latham's already engaged, and in any case, he won't be inheriting Holtby House.'

‘Oh. Well, that's no use then. In that case, you'd better keep looking. But don't take too long, darling. Must go now, Clifford's having a fit about the phone bill. Love to Kitty.'

And she was gone.

Jenna put the phone down thoughtfully. Yes, it did make a lot of things clearer. If he really believed Annabel had had an affair with his father – and given his feelings about women running off with other men, Stephanie-style, and his deep belief in faithfulness and reliability – it was no wonder that seeing Jenna, who everyone said looked very like her mother, had aroused unhappy memories and suspicions. She would tell him the truth, and hope that it would draw a splinter that had been troubling him for a long time. It would be a case of choosing the right moment, of course, for a tricky revelation like that. But at their last parting he seemed to have been softening towards her, so perhaps when he came back – whenever that was – he would be more receptive. She ought to do it, for his sake and the sake of Truth, before she left Holtby House, because it was unlikely their paths would ever cross after that.

It was surprising how sad that thought made her feel.

Watch did not come when she rattled the dog leads in the kitchen, but Barney glued his head to her thigh and smiled up at her, so she went for her afternoon walk with only one dog. Afterwards she was very glad she had, for if Watch had been with her as well, the outcome might have been tragic. She was walking along one of the lanes, with Barney ambling somewhere near on a loose lead, and her mind was preoccupied with all the unanswered questions that had been put into it recently, so she wasn't much attending to externals. Afterwards she realized she had heard the car coming, but had paid no attention: after all, this was a road, so you expected traffic on it, and country people all seemed to drive too fast.

But the car, coming up behind her, actually accelerated at the point the driver must have seen her. Barney, just ahead of her, turned his head, and in the last second some instinct of self preservation made her jump. There was hardly any grass verge at that point, just a narrow strip of grass between the road and a big, thick hawthorn hedge which at this time of year was in full growth. There was virtually nowhere
to
jump, but she flung herself sideways into the hedge as the car screamed past, still accelerating. She heard Barney give a high yelp of pain, at the same moment as the bushy hedge bounced her back and her thigh hit something hard which reeled her round and made her fall. She landed on her seat in the road, sprayed with a shower of grit and bits of dead leaf. Her momentum tossed her on to her back with her legs in the air, so she only got a brief glimpse of a low black car, and by the time she had sat up it had disappeared.

Her thigh was white-hot with pain, and she was afraid for a moment it had been broken. Her hands were trembling with shock as she tried, flinchingly, to examine it. Her jeans had not torn and there was no blood, which was a relief, and she could wiggle her toes, which was a good sign. She hitched herself out of the road on to the grass trip as a precaution, and after a few minutes when the pain had subsided to a throb, she undid her zip and eased the jeans down to look at the damage. A big red mark promised the mother and father of a bruise, but she was fairly sure now that's all it was. She must have just glanced the car as she rebounded out of the hedge.

Barney was licking at his flank, and she remembered his yelp of pain and pulled him to her. She felt where he was licking and found a piece of gypsum the size of her thumbnail – left in the road from the last resurfacing, presumably – embedded in his flesh. It must have been spat out from under the wheels, she supposed, and hit poor Barn. She whipped it out and it bled a little, but Barney made no fuss, and at once began licking at it again. When she dragged herself to her feet he got up too and seemed to be moving without difficulty. Cautiously she put her weight on the injured leg and there was no sharp pain. With Barney on a short leash on the safe side of her, and keeping as far on to the grass as the hedge would allow, she made her way home.

By the time she got back to Holtby House, she was sure her leg was all right, though she would have a pretty fine trophy in all the colours of the rainbow by the next day. Barney seemed all right, too, but she determined to clean the wound properly with antiseptic. She would have to tell Kitty, for that reason if no other, but she decided to make light of the incident, and not mention her bruise. She would say it was a car going too fast that had spat a stone out – a common enough phenomenon – and that she hadn't seen the make or number plate, which was true. Kitty knew, as they all did, that people drove too fast round these lanes, and there had been accidents enough over the years, some of them fatal.

But Jenna couldn't help remembering, when she replayed the tape in her mind, how the car had speeded up, and how close it had been when it passed her. If it had kept to the centre of the lane there would have been plenty of room. If she had not jumped . . . Could it possibly be that someone had tried to hit her, perhaps to kill her? No, surely not! Those things didn't happen in real life, only in books. And it was a terribly inefficient method of murder. Unless it had been just a spur of the moment thing, seeing her and driving at her on impulse . . . It would have had to be someone so overcome with rage and hate for the instant that they weren't thinking clearly of the consequences. She might not have been killed, only injured.

Hospitalized. Put out of the game.

By a hit-and-run driver who couldn't be identified.

Someone who hated her and wanted to get rid of her, at least as far as the County Hospital, if not all the way to a specialist unit or private hospital in London.