A Blessing In Disguise (27 page)

‘When we're in Clipton,' I promise, ‘you can choose a couple of tapes for the way back.'

‘I thought Gran and Grandpa could bring me back,' Becky says. ‘Then they could stay for the weekend – or a whole week!'

‘We'll see what they say. They might be too busy,' I suggest.

‘They're
never
too busy to do things!' she says. I know a rebuke when I meet one, though she mightn't have meant it as that.

Of course my mother is there when we arrive, it was never on the cards that she wouldn't be. I reckon she's been watching out of the window for us because she's down at the gate by the time I've switched off the engine. Becky, out of the car and on the pavement in a flash – so quickly that she actually leaves poor Blossom behind – is enveloped in my mother's arms. They walk up the path to the door hand in hand and I follow behind, carrying what I can from the back seat.

‘Don't bother with that, Venus love,' my mother calls out. ‘Dad'll do that. He'll be back in a minute; he's just gone down the road to post a letter.'

After which, follows a lovely day. Roast chicken for lunch, one of Becky's favourites, as my mother well knows; a trip into the town afterwards (and I buy Becky the promised tapes); potato scones for tea, and then soon afterwards I say it's time for me to leave. Dad's fussing about me getting back before dark, but in any case I never like to be out late on Saturdays because it's an early start the next day. Becky hasn't mentioned school, nor has anyone else. Everyone seems happy and contented. Could this, I ask myself, be the beginning of a new era? But perhaps too soon to start counting chickens.

Driving back, I wonder what I might do with the week ahead. Mum and Dad jumped at the chance of returning with Becky and staying for the weekend. ‘We'll come on Saturday and stay until Sunday afternoon,' Mum said, ‘or perhaps Monday morning.'

Meanwhile, apart from work commitments, I have seven whole days before me. Does it sound awful to say I'm almost pleased at the prospect of being on my own; not having the daily battles to get an unwilling Becky off to school, or the apprehension of what sort of mood she'll be in when she comes home? I suppose it does because she, poor mite, has had a worse time than I have.

And then it occurs to me that this could be the week I have the little supper party I'd vaguely planned. It's a bit soon after Sonia's but it's such a good opportunity, and maybe they won't mind. I can but ask. So for the rest of the journey, in my head I'm going through the guest list – which will be exactly the same as it was at Sonia's except that I know I ought to ask the Nugents (but will they fit in?) – and dreaming up menus which are within my capabilities.

When I reach the Vicarage, when I let myself in, it occurs to me that this is the first time I've returned to it after actually having been away. It's a pleasant feeling as I turn the key in the front door. It's mine, and I belong here.

I have not taken more than two strides into the hall before I realize that something is wrong! I don't know what, but there is a cold feeling in my body. For a moment I stand still, unable to move a limb. I'm frightened – and I don't know by what. And then I tell myself not to be stupid, and I take a step forward and with that I know what's wrong. The Madonna and Child which stands on a mahogany table in the hall, as it did in my previous home ever since Philip and I bought it on a day trip to Boulogne, is not there. Nor is the ceramic angel which Philip bought me when we were in Venice and which stands just behind and to the side of the Madonna. Since nothing else is ever allowed to clutter up this particular space, the table is now bare.

I have been burgled!

I feel sick to the stomach. Burgled is something which happens to other people and I never thought could happen to me. And when? When did this happen? I left home at ten o'clock this morning and now it's just after seven. Nine hours, almost all in daylight, though dusk has fallen now, and with that last thought real fear comes to me. Unless it was done in broad daylight it's happened very recently and – and this thought freezes me – he might still be in the house! He might be in the dining room behind that closed door two yards away! He might be upstairs in my bedroom and he might walk down the stairs at any minute, and I know with absolute certainty that the last thing in the world I want is to come face to face with him. I'm assuming it's a ‘him'. I daresay female burglars are as thin on the ground as women priests.

I take a deep breath. My heart is thumping so hard that I think if he's still around he must hear it – and in any case he must have heard me come in by the front door. I wasn't quiet. But common sense – what bit I have left of it – tells me I can't just stand here doing nothing. I must make a move. I must telephone, first the police and secondly – who? Henry Nugent, of course! For a start, his is the number I know by heart and there's no time to start leafing through telephone directories, even if there was one handy. And Henry is my churchwarden and my friend.

The nearest phone is in the sitting room – my mobile is still in the glove compartment in the car. What if he's in the sitting room waiting? And this is the point at which I start to pull myself together. Common sense tells me that if he had been, he'd have made his escape through the window by now. It seems as though I've been standing here, doing nothing, for ever, though probably it's been a minute. I don't know. But now I take another deep breath and walk into the sitting room – and the burglar is not there though there are signs that he has been, but not escaped that way because the window is closed. I see at once that my new video recorder has gone, though not the television, which is probably too bulky or is too old a model to be worth stealing.

I pick up the phone and ring the police at once.

‘Have you looked anywhere else in the house?' I'm asked.

‘No,' I tell the lady.

‘Then don't!' she says. ‘Don't touch anything. Leave everything as it is. We'll be round as soon as we can.'

‘When will that be?' I ask.

‘As soon as we can,' she repeats patiently.

I suppose burglary is so common that it has to take its place in the queue, well behind injuries to life and limb, and when I'm in less of a dither I shall see the sense of that. For now, I telephone Henry and he assures me, without me having asked him, that he'll be with me immediately. While waiting for him I stay where I am, as advised by the police, though I no longer think the burglar is likely to be in the house. If he had been he'd have heard me speaking, have guessed I was on to the police, and he'd have scarpered. And wouldn't I have heard that?

I sit down, my legs are trembling, and while I wait, I look around to see what else might be missing from this room. Not a lot. Some videos and CDs, some knick-knacks. And then – oh what a shame – three rather nice pieces of old Bristol glass of which I was particularly fond. The theft of the glass sparks anger in me. I found all three pieces in an antique shop and I could hardly afford to buy one of them, let alone all three, but I did. And by now I'm convinced I'll never again see anything he's stolen and I find myself hoping that the glass will break into a million pieces before he gets it to wherever he plans to sell it.

True to his word, Henry is here in next to no time. Oh Blessed Henry! He has a key so he lets himself in. Naturally, I'd told him yesterday that I was taking Becky to Clipton and I'd be away for a few hours, but that was no reason for him to make a visit to the Vicarage.

‘First of all,' he says, ‘I'm going to go over every bit of the house. Make quite certain . . .' He breaks off before he says ‘. . . that he's not still here. You'd better come with me, Venus. You'll know where anything's been disturbed.'

He's incredibly thorough. He looks in every room, every wardrobe and cupboard (as he opens each wardrobe door I find myself waiting for someone to fall out!). When it comes to my bedroom he, as with the other rooms, goes in first, then turns round as he says to me, ‘It's a bit of a mess in here. And the window's open. Best to leave it alone until the police get here.' I peer around him and see the contents of my jewellery drawer – or rather the boxes in which my bits were kept – scattered on the floor. My instinct is to start looking, check what's missing, but he says, ‘No, Venus! Let's do the rest of the house.'

So we go into the bathroom and he looks behind the shower curtain. He checks the glory hole under the stairs, and then we zoom upstairs again because he's forgotten about the loft. He's like a streak of lightning. Lastly, we go outside, for which I have to find a torch because by now it's quite dark, and check the garage and the garden.

‘It's quite common to steal garden ornaments,' Henry explains. ‘Or rather nice pots.'

It was in going around the garden that it became obvious where the burglar had got into the house. The gate which leads to the path up to the Downs was swinging open – I'm fussy about keeping it closed, and in any case there's a good, firm latch on it. (No wonder he didn't steal the television, I think, looking at the steepness of the path.) And on my side of the gateway, a yard into the garden, the light from the torch reveals a half-smoked cigarette lying on the ground. I bend to pick it up.

‘No, no!' Henry cries. ‘Leave it for the police!'

He turns and gazes earnestly at the back of the house, then pointing, he says, ‘Aha! That's where he got in and out! That pipe's only inches from your bedroom window.'

Apart from the fact that he is sorry for me I think Henry is quite enjoying this episode. He finds himself in the middle of a TV script and, who knows, might well turn out to be the hero, the gifted amateur against the bungling police.

We are not to know for a while whether the police are bungling or super-efficient, since it is almost half-an-hour – we are back in the house – before the doorbell rings and Henry goes to answer it, returning accompanied by a young woman in uniform who looks as though she's auditioning for ‘The Bill', only she's far too young to get the part.

‘I'm Police Constable June French,' she says. ‘Brampton Police.' And since she shows me her card I have to believe she's not too young.

‘And this lady is Mrs Stanton, Vicar of St Mary's, Thurston,' Henry says, staying in the act.

‘And your first name?' she asks me.

She doesn't turn a hair when I say ‘Venus'. Not showing surprise is probably part of her training.

‘So will you tell me what happened, and then I'd like to take a look around,' she says.

She listens carefully, writes it all down and then I take her round the house, Henry in tow. When she sees the state of my bedroom floor she says, ‘Don't move anything! The Scene-of-Crime Officer will be here soon.'

‘Ah,' Henry says, nodding, ‘the Scene-of-Crime Officer! Well, we've sussed out where the burglar entered and exited!' A few minutes ago Henry said ‘got in and out' but in his present role and in the presence of officialdom ‘entered and exited' sounds better.

We go downstairs again. Constable French asks me to describe the things which I know to be missing, other than from the bedroom, and this I do. ‘I can't think why a burglar should take a Madonna and Child and an angel!' I say. (A Christian burglar?) ‘The Madonna was very distinctive, very modern. Made by nuns in a French convent.' And very dear to me, I would like to add, but I doubt she wants to know that.

‘They can sell practically anything!' she says. ‘It'll probably have found its way to London or Brighton by tomorrow morning.'

So much for my beautiful Madonna! The policewoman doesn't exude the faintest hope of my ever seeing it again.

The Scene-of-Crime Officer arrives, another woman, slightly more mature, taller and thinner. We go through the whole story and the guided tour again and she says if we'll leave her to it there are a few tests she'd like to make in the bedroom.

‘You mean fingerprints?' Henry says. He would like to stay, but she politely shoos him off.

She comes downstairs ten minutes later.

‘Well,' she says to Henry, ‘you were right about the entrance and the exit! The intruder came in and went out by the window. I reckon he was disturbed, made a quick exit, probably when he heard your car draw up. You're lucky he'd left before you came in.'

They are intruders now, not burglars. It sounds more polite. ‘May I intrude on you?' ‘Excuse me for intruding, I'm here to steal your silver . . . !'

Henry nods happily. ‘I thought as much!' he says.

‘I've got two sets of prints from the window frame,' she says. ‘Marigolds.'

‘Marigolds?' Now Henry
is
confused.

‘Rubber gloves. All the burglars wear Marigolds. They learn what to do and what not to do from the TV programmes. Marigolds leave prints, but they're all the same. Marigold prints.'

Henry takes her outside and shows her the open gate and the path to the Downs. She picks up the half-smoked cigarette and puts it in a plastic bag – and that's about it.

‘We'll be in touch,' she says. ‘We'll be giving you a crime number and we'll need a list of what's missing.' Then she adds, almost cheerfully, ‘Even when you've done the list you're sure to find other things have gone! People always do. Please let us know!'

When she's left Henry says, ‘Well, you mustn't stay here tonight, Venus. You must come home with me and Molly will make you up a bed.'

‘Oh, no!' I protest. ‘No, I mustn't do that! It's quite important that I stay here, in my own house. I'm not going to let this sod drive me out. He'd have won then, wouldn't he?' And he'd have won something more important than my Bristol glass and my Madonna, and whatever he's stolen from my bedroom, which I've yet to find out. I can't, at this moment, find the word for what he'd have won if I ran away, even for one night, but he's not going to. I refuse to let him. I am determined not to be a victim.