A Year Less a Day (28 page)

“So, what happened, Daphne?” Donaldson asks, and Daphne explains how, with Bliss away in Liverpool for the day, she had decided to pay Jeremy Maxwell a surprise visit, but when she had shown up without warning, he had not been at home.

“I'd walked all that bloomin' way,” she moans to Donaldson. “So I was buggered if I was going back home without doing a bit of cleaning up for him.”

During her previous visits to the apartment above the manor's stable block, Daphne had discovered a spare door key under a flowerpot, so she had let herself in and begun tidying when a Canadian passport had caught her eye.

“I was putting a few of his clothes away in a drawer when I found his passport and was just curious to see what his photo was like,” she carries on. “But when I opened it up it gave his name as Jordan Jackson.”

“Are you absolutely sure it was his passport?” asks Bliss, but Daphne is in no doubt. “Oh, yes. It was his picture, all right.”

“But when you first visited him did he actually say he was Jeremy Maxwell?” inquires Donaldson.

“Yes, sir. He did.”

“Daphne, love, you don't have to call me ‘sir,'” says Donaldson leaning over her bed. “It's Ted.”

“Oh, no, sir. That wouldn't seem right. Anyway, I'm quite certain it's not Jeremy. I should have realized when I first spoke to him. He was sort of nervous—vague.
He claimed he remembered me, though I don't suppose that I had any reason to doubt him at the time. Minnie Dennon said it was him, and I was so pleased to see him again. I've often wondered what had happened to him after all these years.”

“But you told me you recognized him,” Bliss reminds her. “You even said that he looked like his father.”

“Wishful thinking and a failing memory, David.”

“There's nothing wrong with your memory,” says Bliss, adding, “Don't worry, we'll find out what's going on; but where have you been for two days? We were worried sick.”

Daphne had been trapped by her own inquisitiveness. No sooner had she found Jackson's passport than the scrunch of car tires on the gravel driveway had alerted her to the owner's return. Unable to face him with her new-found knowledge, she had tried taking a back way out of the upstairs apartment, but had found herself ensnared in a hayloft.

“I couldn't get down into the stables. I found the trap door, but there was no ladder,” she tells them. “And I couldn't go back through the apartment because he was there.”

Slender shafts of daylight penetrated the old tiled roof on Daphne's first day in the loft, and she had made a bed of hay bales while she waited for the man to leave so she could escape. But he hadn't left, and the longer she remained in hiding the more difficult it had been to think of a way out.

“‘I was just looking for bats or a barn owl,' might have worked in the first ten minutes or so,” she carries on, “but after that I couldn't do anything but wait. And then it started getting cold.”

The blizzard had howled through the drafty loft,
forcing tendrils of snow between the cracks in the tiles, and Daphne had buried herself deep in the hay for warmth during the first night.

“I hardly slept,” she admits. “The wind made such a noise that the horses were restless, and some rats kept snuffling around.”

“You must've been terrified,” suggests Donaldson.

“They were only rats, sir. I was so hungry I would've eaten one if I could've caught it.”

“You wouldn't,” Bliss protests, though guesses that, if pushed, she probably would have.

“Anyway,” Daphne carries on, “I knew it was morning when I heard him outside starting one of the cars.”

Not realizing that the driveway was impassable, Daphne had assumed that Maxwell, or whoever he was, was on the point of leaving, and had crept out of her hiding place to make her escape when she'd heard him returning up the stairs from the stables.

“I just grabbed a bottle of water and some bed-clothes and shot back into the loft,” she explains. “Then I had to stay there all day and night again until he left this morning.”

A nurse shows up to run a battery of tests and flushes Bliss and Donaldson out of Daphne's cubicle. “We're going to be a little while,” she explains as she hooks up another IV bag, and Bliss gives Daphne's hand an extra squeeze.

“I'll come back this afternoon,” he says. “Don't worry about a thing.”

The brightness of the midday sun is deceiving as the two officers leave the hospital and feel the wintry chill.

“Have you got time for lunch?” Donaldson asks as he pulls his coat around him and hustles for his car, but Bliss shakes his head.

“No. I think I'll have a word with Mr. Jackson, or whatever his name is, first. There has to be a simple explanation.”

“The Mitre Hotel's got a new chef,” continues Donaldson as if he's not heard. “The venison sausages are really special. You could meet me there afterwards.”

“Thanks anyway,” calls Bliss, still bloated from breakfast, “but I've got a few of Daphne's friends waiting to hear what's happened. Next time, perhaps.”

The occupant of the stable's apartment at Thraxton Manor has just returned home by the time Bliss drives up the freshly cleared driveway. Two of the stables' doors are open, revealing a couple of very high-priced mechanical stallions—a Ferrari and a Jaguar—while a new Range Rover idles outside the front door as the owner unloads groceries. Daphne's tracks from the stables, across the pristine field to a gap in the hedge, are so blatant that Bliss immediately seizes on them as a pretext as he flashes his police ID.

“Detective Inspector Bliss,” he introduces himself to the tall, middle-aged man who is carting a box of supplies to the door. “We're looking for an escaped prisoner,” he adds, not entirely untruthfully, but the man seems unconcerned.

“I haven't seen anyone.”

“And you are, sir?”

“Maxwell. Jeremy Maxwell. Why?”

“Just wondered, that's all. You're not English are you?”

“Astute of you—Canadian actually.”

“Is this the Maxwell estate then?” inquires Bliss as he sweeps a look around the grounds and takes in
the decayed manor house together with numerous outbuildings and barns.

“Has been for the past four hundred and fifteen years, Inspector.”

“I guess you're used to this weather,” continues Bliss realizing that he's running out of questions and hoping to start a dialogue.

“Yep.”

So much for that
, thinks Bliss as he struggles for a reason to remain. “Would you mind if I had a look around?” he asks finally. “I have an interest in conversions. I'm thinking of buying an old barn myself.”

“I'm a bit busy at the moment,” says the man, nodding to his supplies. “Some other time, perhaps.”

“Of course. Sorry to disturb you,” says Bliss, turning away; then he spins back hoping to catch his quarry off balance. “I don't suppose you know someone called Jordan Jackson by any chance? I think he's Canadian.”

“Sorry. Never heard of him.”

As Bliss drives away, the new tenant of Thraxton Manor climbs the stairs to his apartment, puts his box of groceries on the kitchen table, and takes a very serious look at a pair of soggy women's shoes that he has dug from the snow near the apartment door. Then he checks his underwear drawer and thoughtfully balances a Canadian passport in his hand.

Daphne doesn't waste time at the hospital, and by three in the afternoon, when Bliss returns as promised, she has cajoled the doctor into releasing her.

“Whatever happened to your shoes?” Bliss asks her as he drives her home.

“I lost them in the snowdrifts outside the stables,” she replies. “I'll have to go back and get them when it thaws.”

“I think you'd better stay away from there—until I find out who he really is.”

“You do believe me, don't you?” she asks warily and Bliss has to admit to a certain confusion.

“It's just that you seemed so positive that it was Jeremy before,” he says as he checks the dashboard clock. “Maybe I'll give Mike Phillips a call and see if they've got any record of either man in Canada. It's about seven-thirty there at the moment. I'll try his cellphone as soon as we get home and get you tucked into bed.”

The sun is just rising over the Rockies as the earth rolls on another day in Vancouver, but a low-pressure system has swept over the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver Island and threatens a deluge. Mike Phillips stands nude, peering out of his hotel window at the slate sky and charcoal clouds, and wishes that he could snuggle back into the giant warm bed. But duty calls, and he gently brushes his lips on an exposed forehead.

“Good morning, Ruth. I have to go to work now,” he coos to the sleepy woman. “Will you be OK?”

“Mike?”

“Yes.”

“Kiss me again, please.”

Phillips laughs. “Anybody would think you've never been properly loved before.” Then he kisses her—tenderly at first, their lips barely touching; their breaths mingling; then deeper and harder, until their tongues entwine and she reaches out to hold him.

“What are you planning for today?” he asks, inching his lips away a fraction as he softly strokes her face and peers into her eyes.

“I could think of something,” she says lasciviously, and draws him back to bed.

Phillips readily slides under the sheets, saying, “I really do have to go soon.”

“I know. I just wanted to give you a little something to make sure you wouldn't forget me by tonight.”

“Oh, I don't think that'll happen,” he says as he runs his hands over her naked body and finds her breasts.

“I'll go round to Trina's to do the laundry and cook dinner as usual,” Ruth says as she gently massages him. “Don't forget: I'm supposed to be staying there as part of my bail conditions.”

“Only when you're not in police custody,” he says, smoothly slipping a hand between her thighs. “And at this particular moment—you are.”

“Is this called fraternizing with the enemy?” she moans as she melts under his touch, then Phillips' phone rings.

“Oh, shit,” mutters Phillips, and is inclined to let it go, but Ruth loses the moment.

“You might as well answer it,” she whispers. “I'm not going anywhere until I've been given all my rights.”

“Mike Phillips,” he calls into the phone with a touch of aggravation.

“Oh, Mike. It's Dave Bliss in England. I haven't screwed up have I?”

“No,” laughs Phillips, “neither of us have. What's happening, Dave? Are you having a party there?”

“Not exactly,” answers Bliss, then explains Daphne's dilemma as Blossom, Mavis, and Peter help their old friend continue her warming trend with a bottle of champagne in the background. Minnie is keeping her head down over some sausage rolls in the kitchen, knowing that it's only a matter of time before Mavis blows the whistle on her unauthorized sleepover.

Prior to picking up Daphne from the hospital, Bliss had raced around replenishing the liquor cabinet and
taking Minnie to the supermarket to restock the cupboards. Then she had bounced around, putting everything straight and desperately trying to get her house in order before the return of Daphne; even snapping at Peter for wanting a chocolate cookie. “They're not made on trees,” she had told him crustily. “Money doesn't grow on Daphne. She's only a pensioner, same as us.”

“Jeremy Maxwell,” Phillips repeats as Bliss asks him to see if anything is known of the man, and the Canadian officer chews the name over as he types it into his laptop. “It's got a ring to it ... I'll check it out as soon as I get to the office,” he says. “Mind you, without a date of birth or a social insurance number, it's a bit of a long shot.”

The name Jordan Jackson, on the other hand, has much greater significance.

“Talk about coincidences,” says Phillips slipping into the bathroom and quietly closing the door behind him. “Ruth's husband was a Jordan Jackson. Though it's a common enough name. What does he look like?”

The similarity between the description furnished by Bliss and the one given to him by Ruth are sufficiently striking to elicit a whistle from the Mountie. “If he wasn't dead, I'd say it could be him,” says Phillips. “But why does she think his name's Jackson?”

“His passport,” explains Bliss, then relates Daphne's story.

“I'd need more info,” says Phillips. “Though, if it is the same Jackson, I'm guessing that somebody lifted his passport from the dump he was living in when he died.”

“But Daphne insists that the guy in Maxwell's house is the one in the passport and, to be honest, if she says it's the same guy, I'm inclined to believe her. You've met her Mike. You know what she's like.”

“Then it has to be a different character altogether. My Jackson is definitely dead. But if you can get me a
date of birth or the passport number, I'll happily see what I can come up with.”

“Leave it to me,” says Bliss. “I'll pay him another visit. There has to be an explanation.”

Thraxton Manor's new occupant appears to be out when Bliss returns just before dusk. In the absence of a bell, Bliss bangs repeatedly on the apartment's door and even tries the handle.

“Anyone home?” Bliss calls as the doorknob refuses to budge, then he stands back to toss a few pieces of gravel at the apartment's window.

“Shit,” he mutters, and is on the point of leaving when he takes Daphne's standpoint. ‘I've come all this bloomin' way ...'”

The flowerpot key has gone, but one of the stables is open and he slips in and searches for the trapdoor leading into the hayloft. A ladder stands against an empty horse stall and tempts him, but the thought of the owner showing up and throwing a fit sends him back to the apartment door.